Day Three

Actu­al­ly, while there was obvi­ous­ly a Day Three, we did­n’t rec­og­nize it as such. I think that dur­ing the first two days, we were all so over­whelmed by the amount of respon­si­bil­i­ty we had for being there that there was­n’t much chance to count up the days. Does that make any kind of sense? It was fair­ly gru­elling to get through the first two days, being will­ing to strip off the armor of pride, sen­si­tiv­i­ty, you name it: all the aspects of one’s writ­ing per­son­al­i­ty that have to be the first things to go, if you’re going to learn anything.

So on the third day, we were faced with a tremen­dous chal­lenge. The night before had been the first din­ner we were respon­si­ble for: not I, but four of my mates. And our tutor Tamasin had scotched the planned mack­er­el (thank you, God, I don’t like mack­er­el) for salmon. Fair enough. Only the only avail­able salmon was farmed, and let me tell you, Tamasin can­not say enough, strong­ly enough, about the evils of farmed salmon. I think it’s like veal that’s been raised in lit­tle light­less box­es and fed God knows what, so that the unhap­pi­ness of the lit­tle beasts is a cen­tral part of the fla­vor of the meat. So the salmon was fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle to begin with, poor thing.

Then there was Jack. To give him cred­it, he was the only pro­fes­sion­al chef among us, and he had STAN­DARDS. And then there’s the com­plex­i­ty of ego in a kitchen: who is in charge, whose wish­es are ulti­mate­ly respect­ed, who gives orders and who fol­lows them. Soli­tary as I am in my kitchen 99 days out of 100, these are all issues that hold lit­tle weight with me. I have the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of being com­plete­ly in charge, but the only crea­tures around to give orders to would be the cats. So I have the hon­or of order­ing the menu, doing the shop­ping, cre­at­ing all over the place, serv­ing, and clear­ing up. Not much ego fight­ing avail­able in that sce­nario. I had no idea.

Chefs get sarky about their kitchens! And dare I say it, men are real­ly sil­ly about the dra­ma and the hier­ar­chy of cook­ing. The times I had a man in that kitchen come to the sink where I was invari­ably scrub­bing out a pot, and casu­al­ly throw a skil­let or bowl in the sink (“my” sink? not real­ly!), say­ing absolute­ly noth­ing but clear­ly expect­ing I’d wash up! I can’t count the num­ber of times. Last night after din­ner, John hand­ed me a par­tic­u­lar­ly vile skil­let and said, “That needs to soak,” and I had to laugh. “That is the CLAS­SIC line to come from any man in any kitchen! ‘Soak­ing’ is a pure euphemism for ‘if I let it lie there long enough, some woman will scrub it for me’!” The look on his face was price­less: it was as if I had uncov­ered one of the great secrets of the bat­tles between the sex­es. I’m remind­ed of Grace Kel­ly’s say­ing to Celeste Holm in “High Soci­ety”, “Aren’t men won­der­ful?” And Celeste replies dri­ly, “The lit­tle dears.”

But I digress. My point is that the salmon din­ner was felt by Jack to be an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter. The salmon was over­cooked, the pota­toes not timed prop­er­ly, the only good thing about the entire din­ner was a dish of warm sauteed cucum­bers with pars­ley and but­ter, and THAT had been Tamas­in’s cre­ation. So there was a lot of unhap­py skulk­ing about going on, a lot of mut­ter­ings. I myself was sim­ply so hap­py to eat some­thing some­one else cooked for me that I could not bring myself to argue. Clear­ly I do not pos­sess the killer chef gene.

So Day Three saw us in the barn, ready to write. And the assign­ment? Write a restau­rant review of the pre­vi­ous night’s din­ner. Oh dear. So we all got down to it. I became so involved in the elab­o­rate fan­ta­sy I wove around the restau­rant hav­ing been closed down for months only to reopen in a flur­ry of pub­lic­i­ty and excite­ment that I frankly ran out of time before I could describe the food prop­er­ly! Always one to weave a sto­ry rather than get down to the busi­ness of crit­i­ciz­ing some­one… Any­way, it came time for us to read out our pieces (mine was received in pre­cise­ly the unin­ter­est­ed silence it deserved), and we went round the room hear­ing every­one’s reac­tions to the salmon, the pota­toes, the cucum­bers. Every­one was kind. Fair enough. We came to Jack him­self, the chef in ques­tion, and for some rea­son he looked com­plete­ly furi­ous. He looked around and said, “Just for the record, I hope you lis­ten to your taste­buds and don’t tell your­selves lies when you eat,” and then read out HIS review, which was unac­count­ably of a Thai place in Isling­ton. Hmmm…

Of course it turned out lat­er that he was out of the room when the brief was giv­en, and did­n’t know we had been assigned to write about HIS MEAL. Imag­ine his reac­tion when absolute­ly EVERY­ONE chose to write about HIS MEAL. He must have been apoplec­tic, poor man. Once the mis­un­der­stand­ing was cleared up, he regained his sang froid. But can you imagine?

That after­noon I tried real­ly hard to rewrite my two pieces that had been so thor­ough­ly, let’s see, GONE OVER by our hard-work­ing tutors. From my per­spec­tive as a for­mer pro­fes­sor, I can assure that it is no pic­nic to have to read the var­i­ous high­ly-charged out­pour­ings of stu­dents’ pens. We each of us obvi­ous­ly feels deserv­ing of the most thought­ful scruti­ny! It can be tempt­ing to say gen­er­al things, to say sup­port­ive but ulti­mate­ly mean­ing­less things, just to get it over. Not these two. To a per­son, each of us felt we’d been well and tru­ly read, ana­lyzed, cor­rect­ed, con­tex­tu­al­ized. To be sure, it’s not easy to be on the receiv­ing end of so much high-pow­ered atten­tion. And it must be kept in mind while one is (well, all right, I am) try­ing to absorb the com­men­tary: these peo­ple are hot­ly admired pro­fes­sion­al writ­ers with extreme­ly high stan­dards. So a lit­tle qui­et weep­ing into one’s jumper sleeve is only to be expect­ed, isn’t it? After all, they know good writ­ing, and they know rub­bish, and they were only too ready to divide up one’s writ­ing into those two cat­e­gories. If one was lucky enough to have any­thing in the for­mer, that is. Sigh.

One of my hap­pi­est mem­o­ries of Day Three? Loung­ing around on the rather dodgy sofas in the barn, just before cock­tail time, rewrit­ing my pieces in a desul­to­ry sort of way, Edward read­ing, or per­haps not even read­ing, “In Defence of Food,” Roger prop­ping up my cam­era on a roll of paper tow­el, tak­ing end­less (and end­less­ly bor­ing) pho­tographs of me to try to get the light metre right, Char­lie across the room work­ing on his bul­let points for his tuto­ri­als with Tamasin and Orlan­do… pure peace. Day Three, late after­noon, when you know you’ve accom­plished about all you will get done on that day, you’ve recov­ered from Days One and Two, you know you’re over halfway there, and the sense that you should hug it all close is begin­ning to steal over you. When I real­ized that I had wast­ed a huge amount of emo­tion­al ener­gy dread­ing going! Only to have it all be quite won­der­ful. Then, as so often hap­pens, the calm was made that much more so when Orlan­do came sweep­ing in and sat him­self down at the mas­sive grand piano in the cor­ner of the room and began play­ing sort of 1970s Top 40 clap­trap, all the beloved songs of my piano-play­ing child­hood from music books with titles like “Music to Love By,” Bee-Gees, the Cap­tain and Toni Tenille, but also Ivor Nov­el­lo and NOel Coward…

The atmos­phere was pos­i­tive­ly cat­like in its rest­ful lux­u­ry. Nev­er to be repeat­ed. And all the more inter­est­ing and pre­cious for that.

Then in swept the the mag­nif­i­cent Simon Parkes from the Food Pro­gramme on Radio 4 swept in in all his 6 foot 4 splen­dor, to speak to us after din­ner about his career in broad­cast­ing. That voice! Like melt­ed choco­late. He has the demeanor of a Stephen Fry, in a way: larg­er than life, but more dap­per, and with an expan­sive ges­ture now and then to match his voice. He read aloud from his new book about India, The Cal­cut­ta Kitchen, mes­meris­ing us all, under the ridicu­lous heaters sus­pend­ed from the roof of the barn (we’ll all prob­a­bly die pre­cise­ly 1 hour and fif­teen min­utes ear­li­er than we would have done with­out the hideous fug com­ing out of those things).

Isn’t it fun­ny how I have had vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing to say about food? That’s part­ly down to the rather pathet­ic nature of what we were offered to eat, but part­ly as well a result of the stu­dents’ iden­ti­ties being pri­mar­i­ly writ­ers, and sec­on­dar­i­ly as food writ­ers. Which is as Tamasin assured us it should be: it’s about the qual­i­ty of the writing.

Well, I’m off on this nasty rainy day to col­lect Avery. She’s had a major life tri­umph: last evening, at the school pool where we were splash­ing around before din­ner, she learned to dive. After prob­a­bly 8 long years of try­ing, being fright­ened, being annoyed with me because div­ing is one of my few true skills, sud­den­ly last night it all came togeth­er. The lit­tle sprite is so proud of her­self she could bust, and so we will be back at the pool on Thurs­day evening to make sure it was­n’t all a dream. Dear girl. And tomor­row… Day Four. Which had its own dra­ma, to be sure.