Is pladding (platonic lunching and dining) merely a sign of the times, the thing of the future, a pursuit of the ageing, or just a necessarily reduced way for the ageing to pursue happiness?
Platonic lunching and dining is of course already the norm among members of
the same sex, but it is becoming increasingly common among members of the
opposite sex too.
Resting and chatting among women friends and mothers in the Maltese/Scandinavian Riviera of converted farmhouses and pools with outdoor rooms last week, that are increasingly becoming the only havens left in Malta, got me thinking about lunching and dining (or just eating out).
This led me to thinking how it is about so much more than the food, and whether the platonic element increasingly enhances the food experience or vice versa?
One of the mothers present was worried about her 15-year-old daughter being asked out to dinner by an 18-year-old, who was taking her to one of Malta’s best restaurants.
The mum was understandably anxious, firstly because the guy was older, and secondly because of the venue, as a normal date with one of her peers would mean a coke and a hot dog/burger in a simple bar, whereas taking you out for dinner was often a prelude to other things, and a way of life which most of us think is beyond, or should be beyond the experience of your average 15-year-old?
The mum was understandably keen of course, for her 15-year-old to have platonic relationships with the opposite sex for as long as possible.
But of course it could all just be platonic, and eating some fresh fish and rucola salad a hell of a lot healthier than the junk which passes as food which is the normal diet of most young people who are out and about, almost anywhere in the developed world today.
Amid all the deserved moaning and groaning about how expensive life is, and how our national consumerism is making Malta deteriorate at an ever faster rate, I do think food is one thing where we are improving our act.
Magazines like Taste, and particularly the numerous letters which come into that publication, reflect our national passion-cum-obsession with food, and all that goes into our stomachs and passes as food.
Wherever you go, people seem happiest when they are stuffing their faces. Food is truly our national drug, and this applies equally if we are eating simple but fabulous Italian food in our many restaurants, or homemade timpana complete with dining table, and chairs and barbeque for the main course, off any of our sandy beaches.
We Maltese love to eat and eating, it appears, makes us happy even as an end in itself, rather than as a prelude to other things, which is where pladding is becoming increasingly common.
Very many people of the opposite sex are today often lunching and sometimes dining with each other, totally platonically.
This of course would not be accepted as such by anyone who is observing them who would always assume an affair is in progress, but very often it isn’t.
People do enjoy talking and eating together even as an end in itself, and one of Gozo’s foodies recently told me he thought that all pladders should set up a club or association to perhaps give this increasing activity more of a focus and a recognisable identity, as a legitimate, harmless and indeed healthy activity.
Pursuing happiness is not something we Europeans do that directly though, although we clearly do it indirectly via the great cuisines of say France, Spain and Italy. And if you watch the explosion of programmes hosted by chefs on English-speaking TV and elsewhere, you can really see that food is increasingly replacing drink as a source of happiness for the Brits and others too.
Of course it is the Americans who almost alone have made the pursuit of happiness part of their national identity. How many other countries put not only happiness, but the pursuit of happiness down as their legitimate right and concern as a nation? The importance of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
And incidentally they still serve enormous portions of food almost wherever you go in the States.
Still we Maltese, apparently (according to a report in the Malta Independent on Sunday last week), top the happiness league table of the western world by coming 40th. Perhaps the right to eat well should be enshrined in our Constitution, and pladding become part of the Maltese and English modern vocabulary of Minglish? Now is that a Constitutional amendment we could all agree on?
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