Friday, 21 March 2014

75. A Salmagundi of Pretty Stories



“What a good story Artognou says”

The Story of Frances & Gavin.
The Story of Kay & Steve.
The Story of Anna & Erna.

How Recipes Became Both Political & Poetical.
How Tuna Salad Was Invented.
How I Was the First Martock Boy to Eat Muësli.
How Macedonian Means Cut up Very Small (& Where I Learnt This).
How I Came to a Deep & Embarrassing Relationship with Certain Brands.
How the Rawness of Some Wounds Remains for Ever.

A list of characters:
Sra Cabeça di Batata
You
The Little Potato Heads
La Belle Mayonnaise
The Laird & Lady of Eigg
Our Rash Friends from Bacon End[1]
The Dill Children
Lots more Martock folk, a-rattling as they come
Nik & Jeanette
– we’re waiting for them again –
Mopsy Cat & Cat Milliband
St Paul the Englishman
– but no saints from Tarsus, please![2]
Amos Weisz, healed, not burning
Karla & Darrel, welcome to dinner
All The Young Poets
– we haven’t forgotten you –
Several Olympic Champions We Now Know and Love, Their Names so Familiar to Us as Not to Need Mentioning at All[3]
A Large Bowl, gently vibrating still
Nick Carter of Mars
The Real King Arthur
Charlie Marx, too, despite it all
Our Descendants (if any)
The Older Poets, do not forget them
Hey! Nick & Jeanette have arrived!

What can happen next:
rioting & dieting
finding & blinding
living & giving
tasting & wasting
sprinkling & tinkling
peeling & wheeling
cutting & rutting
seeding & needing
and more cutting, some slutting
mixing & fixing
draining & paining
adding & gadding
wishing & squishing
forking & dorking
tasting again & hasting still
bearing & sharing
matching & hatching
opening & happening
– it all does that

These recipes will marry the same.
You will move to America.
Art will marry improvisation.
I shall die.
The potato salad will marry my wife.
Her recipe will move back to America.
Poolside snacking will not marry Singapore.
Erna Weiss will have a major operation; and has already been joined in London by her grand-daughter.
Cooking will marry us.
Tuna salad & Ginie will return to their origins.
My life will not marry.
Another little sandwich filling will suddenly make everything right.
Sauerkraut, salami & tabasco sauce will marry.
Only bastard blends will survive.
The algorithms of taste will marry jackpot winners.
Part of a slot machine will become as god in some ruined high street.
The final full-stop will marry the close square brackets, and they will both move to Italy.


[1] Great Canfield. There’s a beautiful C13 fresco of the Virgin & Child in the church. Thank you, Natalie, for inviting me to your wedding.
[2] excepting from this old Theodore, exotic scholar & refugee
[3] rather like brand names

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