I write in honor of and possibly somewhat in the style of Clive James, a writer
I admire. To me he was an amusing curmudgeon and critic. I have been
surprised by coverage and appreciation in the New York Times, which suggests he
had a following in the U.S.; he was often rude about Americans and just
generally doesn’t seem quite their cup of tea.
So here goes. I still have an outsider’s view of Thanksgiving and I still find
the holiday strange, bordering on absurd. It’s as if America had declared a
“let’s ruin food day.” Where, I ask, is the radical fringe who wonder whether
this is a wise choice. The fundamental idea of the holiday the world
understands: gather friends and family for a celebratory meal. Name me a
culture that doesn’t do that. But I know of nootherculture that so goes out
of its way to made the food inedible, fraught, awful. And I grew up in
Britain.
How hard is it to roast a fowl? Shortly after we came down from the trees,
humans learned to put a bird on a spit and let fire do its magic. In our
advanced we turn the beast upside down, shove it in the oven—which one has to
remember to switch on—let the juices flow through the parts that could dry out,
wait a bit, turn the thing right side up for half an hour before it's done.
Serve hot, with all accompanying veg and so on, hot.
As you know lukewarm food, to use Terry Pratchett’s lovely turn of phrase, is
an abomination unto Nunco. Sometimes things come up, revolution breaks out,
the big game comes on, and a side dish is unfortunately not as hot as it should
be. People apologize; they know a mistake has been made. Not so at
Thanksgiving. The task seems to be not only to make food as lukewarm or cold
as possible but also to do a flavor-ectomy on any dish that threatens to be
good. Also to spread cut meat on a great big platter to maximize the surface
area that’s exposed to cooling air.
What is it with these people? In the post prandial daze people speculate about
how they could make matters worse. If you boiled the turkey in a mix of swamp
ooze and fish, then sent it to Antartica and back on a camel, would you crack
the secret of roasting a bird? I read that there are hotlines on how to salvage
a turkey cooking disaster (I forgot to remove the frozen giblets; I forgot to
defrost the beast), how to convince people that jello salad is a lot better
than suicide, what wine to serve with marshmallows.
I used to think that I had met many of the worst cooks in the world—this is my
heritage—but then I started attending Thanksgiving. “Would you like some more
lukewarm sweet potato with cinnamon, apple, ginger, pineapple, and sesame oil?
It’s a recipe I found online…”
There’s only one possible response, distraction. “Was that an elephant landing
on your greenhouse?"
Different subject. As I walked Hamish on Saturday, I was overtaken several
times by the boy scouts’ minivan. They were delivering the fundraising wreaths
we once sold to raise money for Highland Dancing. Everyone here does it. If
you are feeling wreathless, wait a moment. I’ll send the Junior Pig Stickers
and Nettle Raising Jamboree Club to your door. “Buy a wreath for Christmas,”
is such a strange request when you’ve just returned from Britain where there
are wreaths everywhere, fresh laid to commemorate the end of World War One.
“Who died?” my brain asks as the scouts go past. “Can’t be Jesus, surely.
That’s not till Spring.”
Obviously I couldn’t talk with the chickens about this, so we tried Imperialism.
“Our view,” said Mimo, “is that we have been sent here with a purpose and as
such we have to maintain standards.”
“Standards,” Pecorino echoed.
Appenzeller kept her distance. The long nights have resulted in some friction
and occasional violence. Mimo gets on their nerves; Appenzeller has a tendency
to bully. Pecorino currently looks the best of the three. There’s a lot to be
said for staying out of trouble.
“Sent from where?” was my question. “You said you’d been sent?”
“No idea,” Mimo was frank. “But we assume the others have been recalled to the
mother country.”
“Or ship,” Appenzeller offered.
“Or ship,” Pecorino confirmed.
“The others?”
“Those who are no longer with us.” Mimo looked solemn.
“Cheddar, Rocky and Wensleydale?”
“Wensleydale,” Pecorino echoed, in tribute.
“Exactly,” said Mimo. “We believe they were recalled for a briefing of some
sort.”
“They’ve stepped away from their desks?”
Appenzeller looked quite alarmed. “Is ‘desk’ synonymous with body? I don’t
like the sound of that at all. Body is a perfectly fine word for the thing we
inhabit.”
“It’s quite all right,” I assured them. “Desk comes from dish or platter,
which is to say that everything arises from food. Someone who has stepped away
from their desk has, if we reach back far enough, stepped away from their food.”
Mimo was the first to applaud, “Absolutely. That is indeed what they have
done, generously leaving more for the three of us.”
“What,” I asked, “will you do if the mothership…or land…decides to get in
touch?”
“We’ll cross that bridge,” said Appenzeller, “when it drops from the sky.”
L. warned me not to go out on Friday afternoon, it being Black. Or if I was
going out, could I take J.’s parcel to the post office? I said I could and I
was delighted to find that at the post office there was not one customer in
line ahead, so…quick visit, right? Nope. Guy on the right wanted to talk
about his operation and then could he have some of those six dollar stamps,
maybe two... are they more than six dollars,...seven? Oh, and they come in
groups of four… Let me think for a moment…
And the other lady, a blond with a blond daughter, paid, changed her mind,
asked for something, changed her mind again… Eventually it was my turn.
“Just one parcel, to Allentown.”
The lady behind the counter entered the zip and promptly directed the parcel to
the wrong address. This happened with the last parcel I sent J. There must be
a predictive thing in the computer. Alas the counter lady had printed out the
label, so she had to fill out a form, tear the label in half, attach one half
to one side of the form, the other to the other, and then we were ready to
begin again. She was pleasant and apologetic, but had very little English.
There must be a scheme to hire, I don’t know, refugees? Sending one parcel
took thirty minutes and almost that many dollars.
Amateurs were also abroad in the grocery stores. In the fancy one I gave up
and abandoned my basket. In the other, I waited while the lady ahead of me at
the checkout looked at the total, opened her bag, pulled out her purse,
searched for money…as if paying was an extraordinary thing. “What, you have to
pay? I thought I was waiting in the free line. I’ve never had to pay before.”
By the way, if you want your French refreshed, consider this from Le Monde: Que
l’on apprécie ou pas sa pop bubble-gum et son style de jeune fille rangée, il
faut reconnaître à la star américaine Taylor Swift un certain courage quand il
s’agit de combattre les pratiques abusives de l’industrie du disque et de faire
entendre sa voix.
"Le pop bubble-gum." Go ahead, enjoy saying it. I tried it on the chickens
and they are now sheltering from the cold and rain singing, “My boy... pop
bubble gum." Mimo, you’ll recall, is short for Mimolette, a cheese produced
around the city of Lille in France, so she has some affinity for French sounds.
But I was astonished when she put together the following sentence, “Le fond de
l’air est frais.” Astonished, is what I was; I had no idea she could speak any
version of French, far less a sentence with a pun in it. Of course all three
chickens are bi-lingual by one standard; they speak both chicken and English.
But a tri-lingual chicken? Maybe she knows other languages too? Zut alors.
Did James finish as a curmudgeon? Not at all. “It would be bad manners to
complain.” What an exit line:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/dec/01/clive-james-last-interview-philip-larkin-rachel-cooke?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
<https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/dec/01/clive-james-last-interview-philip-larkin-rachel-cooke?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other>
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
