Drink and make merry

Patterns made easy

Celebrated with ale, that age betwixt childhood and
adolescence,
The rotunda at night, stolen gulps, smokes and acquiescence.
All manner of triumphs enabled by septic adult sorts.
And ne’er a win, lose or draw without the pulling of corks.
The weekends come and the practise emerges
Of hastily downed fluids to prompt social urges.
Galvanised thru proficiency and earning a new mate
whose beery breathed counsel one can henceforth relate.
One's very own composition, an ensemble of bottlenecks to strum,
Now to celebrate with keys in the ignition and nursing the rum.

S.Cumper Feb 2012

My Empathy-Cred

We reclined, replete after a long leisurely lunch, children played outside and our teenagers hid inside and schemed. A introspective silence descended as we, comfortable enough in our friendship not to have a white noise of words buzz around meaninglessly. Each counting his or her blessings, surveying the bucolic scene outside and the tingled by the warm sea breeze lazily sweeping from the estuary the conversation turned to the injustices of the third world.
It always strikes me when, after a what is sometimes the briefest moment of pure enjoyment, where one feels really great to be alive, some of us have this guilt that creeps into the space where the pleasure sat barely long enough to leave a warm impression.
Its like this inability to embrace our fortunes without the caboose of anxiety and guilt following close behind. This mood loomed over our post lunch spread.
Around the table, a tale of injustice and hardship from the less fortunate peoples around the globe, each more severe than the last until we were all mired in a gloomy rut, the inevitable terminus on this straight conversational track.
Scratching the surface of the issue that we rely on impoverished and exploited people to keep us living the way we are accustomed to is a great way to paint yourself into a morally ambiguous corner.
The harsh fact is that dominant societies have always taken advantage of others less prosperous. Does this make it right? Of course not. Surely trying to buy ethically is a start? Yes it is.
However don't kid yourselves that by purchasing a goat for a village is going to insulate you from further notions of uncomfortableness when the overwhelming nature of this problem niggles at your conscience.
Its a particularly middle class malady, all this hand wringing between sips of Chardy in my opinion. Yes its an insidious and gargantuan problem but it deserves to be more front and centre not just a way to prove ones empathy-cred after a good feed at the tough.

Goodbye Tony Bilson, hello journeyman chef

I spied you observing from the pot-wash.
Your searching eyes dart from the sweeping gestures of the pasta maker
and the circulations of a hand stirring the Sugo to settle momentarily on a boiling pot of salted water.
‘Le system’ is already obvious to you, yet so hard to teach many.
An angry burn catches your attention on the hand sweeping excess flour from a bench and cause’s you to blink-away the imagined sting as the flour wafts down to settle like a grey shadow on the floor.
The broom in your hands stirs, you know what to do but you don’t wait for instruction.
This gesture sets you apart and makes me grin; I remember my younger self, similarly disposed.
Not yet ground down, jaundiced or fatigued.
Back when turning the page meant another exciting revelation, not the closure of another venerable institution or the melancholic lament of a jubilant time long since passed.
Perhaps one’s life does flash before our eyes when we face the finality of the future, our baton change heralding a time to let it all go, like a full-time match klaxon.
I read Tony Billson’s words yesterday and they have been knocking around in my head ever since.
‘I’m leaving restaurants behind’ he said conclusively. I only read the words but they detonated with a despondency that made me shiver.
A lifetime of cooking and of culture: all for what exactly?
To walk away from this intricate and delicate web which had linked so many people through the years and generations, through the shared experience of being nurtured at the table shook my foundations. Is it just vanity to suggest that a legacy of sorts remains, that one has added a shiny veneer to the fibres of our culture by dedicating ones career to restaurants?
All those ideas, meals, service, craft and time that had transpired are immeasurable really. All, except in this case, for an inevitable truth: it all ended up in the toilet, metaphorically and literally.
For such a swashbuckling voyage to end so forlornly, going out with a whimper as it were and leaving the question whether it was all worth while unanswered, compels me to consider the bright-eyed person in front of me, my hand trembling over the authority that will ensnare or liberate them, depending if history will be charitable or not.
Years from now, when I’ve become garden-mulch, will this person drag their gaze up from their bloated belly and aching limbs, calloused fingers and liver damage to declare: ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the stoves’.