From The Debt to Pleasure, John Lanchester

Facts


The Chinese ideogram for crisis comprises two characters - 'danger' and 'opportunity.'

Food


Caviare -from beluga (biggest fish), ossetra, sevruga (smallest fish.)

Daube - stew named after 'daubiere' pot.

Bouillabaisse - bouillir and abaisser (boil and reduce.)
Cook quickly to ensure emulsification of oil and water.

Saffron - 4000 stigmas of Crocus sativus for one ounce. Use only one or two threads.

John Dory (St Pierre (fr.) - thumbprint of St Peter on head.)

Oregano - essential to pizza.

Omelette - base must be wiped but not washed, cast-iron pan seven-inch diameter, thick base. Turn eggs a few times with forks - don't beat - use good butter; add eggs when foam subsides and before it changes colour. Confine the filling of omelette to a tablespoon or two. Melt butter over high heat.

The Normandy diet of cream and apples is reminiscent of the harsh winters that drove Norsemen south.

Peach stones and roasted apple-seeds contain cyanide toxin.
Flesh poisoned by cyanide smells of almonds.

Potato - its popularity led to a virtual mono-culture in Ireland, which played a part in the famine which killed a million.

English cooking is dominated by sweet and sour - lamb and mint sauce.

Chilli heat is reduced by starchy and cool things - rice, potato, bananas, beer, yoghurt - not the 'non-interventionist' water.

Shellfish goes with cummin.

Aioli - 2 egg yolks + four cloves of garlic + one pint of olive oil + lemon juice.
Repels flies; the garlic taste is detectable on the skin for 72 hours afterwards.

In Poland, green vegetables are called wloszczyzna 'things Italian'.
North, passionate about butter, beer, potatoes, meat, South - fruit, veg, oils, fish.

Tomato - Lyscopersicon esculentum 'the edible wolf's peach.'

Jacket potatoes - in their nightshirts in Italian.


Drinks


Chilled martini - vermouth and gin + a grace-note (olive, lemon.)
'The silver bullet' - left in freezer to gellify.
Served unbruised -shaken not stirred.
martini + onion = gibson

Vodka - diminutive of voda (Slavic - water)
Eau de vie (French)
Akvavit (Scandinavia)
Usquebaugh - water of life (Ireland)

Aperitifs -

Should be dry and cold to stimulate appetite,
Should keep the drinker aware of how many he has had (unlike thick eggy drinks)
Martinis, daiquiris, whiskey sours
Meditteranean drinks - anis, pernods, ouzos, arracks and punt-e-mes,
calvados okay as 'sidecar.'
g and t, bourbon (not Scotch whisky, nor Campari and vermouth - too nastily flavoured.)

Quotes


'A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory.' (Keats)

Winter is the 'morte saison quand les loups se vivent de vent.' (Villon)

'The salad is the glory of every French dinner and the disgrace of most in England.'
(Captain Ford c1846)

'The artist is living in a state of seige.' (Auden)

'A beer and potato guilt culture.' (Auden)

'Once the improbable has been ruled out, the solution must lie in the realm of the impossible.' (Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle)

'Beware any enterprise requiring new clothes.' (Thoreau)

I eavesdropped.
Now your voice haunts me

I just want distance.
That's me

We are just passers by

(they bow before they part)

Even the day is moved
(it begins to rain)

Confessing itself is a lack of trust


From Don't Look Back, South Korea

'If people think' accepted by Orange Coast Review. This poem originally appeared in Smiths Knoll in 2006. My first stateside publication.

Two Dreams

In Yorkshire gym, my company much younger and including two girls in wheelchairs. Three indoor goals are interspersed across the opposite end. I make a tackle and strike the ball, which rolls into the farthest left of the three. Everyone cheers.

I ask an adult, 'Why is it called The Arriviste club?' She replies, 'The view. Look at the view we have -' gesturing to the goals. Time has come to pack up and go. A young girl leaves first, but tells me in the doorway, 'It's my birthday today. I'm having a party down the road.' I tell her 'I'll see what I can do.' As I wait around, the game begins again. One of the disabled girls rubs her bare forearm against mine and holds it there.

-

At a table with S.A. talking us through a text accompanied by music. The music appears to be by M.E.S. I am in charge of the tape-recorder, and - at first - regard events from a balcony. The place is lost on the tape and when I press play, only an amplified hum is audible. I fast forward and turn it over, to find the tape reads 'Kurious Orange'. Someone else takes over and finds the correct place. Someone leans over to me: 'I don't want to push it, but you need to rest.'

At table, I am next to S.A. We talk and I take the chance to rest my forearm against his. Later he is at my left. He passes round photocopies of paintings. I invert an impressionist painting of cypress trees and tell Liam 'Cezanne's pear.' We try to stifle our laughter. In front of Simon, I find myself drawn into discussion. 'Money gives you two things,' I say, 'the freedom to experience, and freedom from worry.' This I direct to S.A.'s ears, he seems to be in agreement.

As he hands out a photocopied sheet of three of his poems, he hands me the one with his notes, then offers me a virgin copy. I take the amended one to see what he has written. 'I'll have to do that again,' he says.

Earlier he says 'I was in the video for 'Going Underground' when I was much younger. '

Seam submission: 'Towing the Line', 'Accident', 'Wheeled In', 'in Tearful Weather'
Smiths Knoll submission: 'Cold Remedy', 'Ten Below, Chicago', 'Simon', 'George', 'School'

Two Dreams

Fall asleep on train - the route runs through three 'T's, the last one Tuscany. But we are not there yet. I walk along a long path of sand; to my left, horses and dogs run up a slope towards me. Damascan straight road. There are hotels to my right and left which become further apart either side of the sea. Maps refer to 'The Three 'T's' and it seems I have just walked the Golden Fleece.

I go up to my hotel room. I figure, although I booked it for yesterday, I still have access today. I look out the window at the sand and sea. A man is playing beautiful music.

I go down to the street. The man is on a slope of sand. A guy with blonde white hair says to me 'It sounds nice, but he plays it non-stop.' I strain to see his instrument, hidden from my view. It sounds mechanical, like a wind-up organ. 'Are you here for long? I could walk you.' I go with him. He seems ageless.

I wonder, as we are walking to the end, about my safety. We mount some steps and he pushes past a long man with a white cane. He turns to me. I deny any part in it. As I walk past him, the white haired boy and he exchange glances and the boy slips him money. I garner that each strip of beach is owned or 'worked' by one person and that I will get beaten and mugged at the end. I round the corner and slip down a second flight of stairs, head back to the hotel.

The toilet bowl is stained with dried urine. I am listening to great French music, not from G., but the boy. I feel bad not to be able to trust him. There is a piano in my room, lid down.

I recall that hotels have a check out time. Perhaps I was wrong to presume I had access. I must clean up and leave; slip out.

-

After my class, students have a swimming lesson. I want to swim. I turn away from them in the changing rooms. The rooms gradually turn into desks and adjoin the library. I wander too far and am among books and people studying; head back, past women showering, eventually must settle on changing against a bookcase.

Magma Submission – 'Fable', 'Nights', 'Between Stations', 'Neighbour', 'No Distance', 'Chicago'

Aesthetica Submission - 'Half-Term', 'Thai', 'Ration', 'Acquaintance', 'It's my contention'

France? Istanbul?

Margrit at the Haberdasher's Shop

Her self possession ill at ease with her upper-case letters.

Dream


Simon Armitage meeting me, glad to see me, takes me up to the Lake District, a moonscape with peaked hills often topped with green lichen. Everything is pinched, liked the volcanoes on the Little Prince's planet. It is hard progress, but breathtaking.

Company - S.A. as a force for good.

Voices from the Gallery reading, The Arthouse, Bradford on Avon

readers: Alan Summers, John Bentley, Liz Watts, me


Part one: 'Worship', 'A Butcher's Girl', 'In the Field of Les Feux D'Artifices'
Part two: 'Nights', 'Simon', 'Clientele'

Richard: 'I could hear the music, rhythm.'
Woman, on exit: 'Thanks for the excellent poems.'


Teaching

Goodbye to Brazilian group, creative writing exercises.

Ideal Shopping Centre:

A class of
Czech students
patiently waiting
to be taught

A dog in a field waiting to be walked

A ram - emblematic

Girls who write up the page

A teashop with no music nor staff, a kettle beside a cup, a box of roibosh tea.