I am now on herbal infusions. This Twinings packet came as part of a Christmas present and I have just opened it after indulging in half a box of yummy bits and pieces from Mariella who has baked so many things this Christmas that she cannot bear to look at another sweet, she tells me. I haven’t baked a thing and it has been years since I made a mince pie or got up and down from the Christmas table, with a cylone outside in Mauritius to set the pudding boiling. For years I did that on a tropical island where turkeys were flown out from Paris together with the fois gras and where every other Baby Jesus was black. Our Baby Jesus is still black and absolutely adorable. I enjoyed it all then and invited Indian, Muslim and Chinese to our table whenever possible.
Anyway, I thought after all the indulging at my brother’s on Christmas day and dinner at my sister’s on New Year’s Day and what went on in the way of eating for at least two week’s before, I would not want to touch food ever again. Well, this feeling doesn’t last for long alas. You think you’ve eaten enough for a week and after a few hours you start feeling peckish again.
My brave sister-in-law cooked everything for a delicious Christmas lunch with all members of the family who were here being very noisy. Well, if we start drinking early that’s the way it goes. At the end of a traditional and delicious lunch one nephew who has spent almost all his 34 Christmas lunches in England quietly with his parents and brother, brought out some sheets of carols for us to sing while coffee and chocolates were being prepared in the kitchen. For 34 years it has just been the four of them, now suddenly there were some 16 of us croaking away. Helena decided she wanted to sing something different…some Italian top-of-the-pops love song and no one could stop her. As we sang ‘We Three Kings’ my sister said I was just like Balthasar:
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb
Maybe she is right but it is difficult to be merry under certain circumstances and I hate nothing more than forced merriment. I refuse to play the game. I belong to a different species altogether and simply cannot join the posse and refuse to try. I will be merry when I feel like it but it will be rarely on Christmas day.
One of my nephews gave me Lynne Truss’s Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life (or six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door).
Lynne Truss is the author of the celebrated Eats, Shoots & Leaves and I am loving it. Her writing is entertaining and easy to follow and of course she wrote a book about rudeness in the name of us all. To quote the blurb: “It is about the rudeness of the modern world, and the sense of outrage that infects us every day as we discover that other people are – generally speaking – crass, selfish and inconsiderate. In her follow-up to Eats etc. Lynne Truss asks why rudeness is a universal flashpoint and examines specific sources of affront. Whatever happened to “please” and “thank you”? Why do people behave in public as if they are in private? (These awful reality shows on television are certainly partly to blame. I mean who wants to see largely ugly people cutting up onions, washing up and drying dishes and in their bathrobes, sweeping or picking their noses. Ugly, too ugly. Put them all with their faces to the wall and shoot them.)
This book is, obviously, a big, systematic moan about modern life. It is not about how to balance the peas on the back of a fork or about finger bowls and making certain that you don’t swig from one. And the expression ‘Talk to the hand’ used as a title sort of yokes it all together. It specifically alludes to a response of staggering rudeness best known from The Jerry Springer Show – ‘Talk to the hand, ‘coz the face ain’t listening’, accompanied by an aggressive palm held out at arm’s length.” In Oscar Wilde’s words: “Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.” I must spend a weekend afternoon soon, in between my quilt and my electric blanket, with a glass of cognac or wine and finish it.
On New Year’s Day it was dinner at one of my sister’s. She welcomed us in her Egyptian costume which she wears mainly to entertain intimates like us. She can still carry a slung belt with panache and is a size 12, but then she rarely indulges and does all sorts of exercise. Apart from the gold and black top and skirt she wore a low-slung gold belt in the form of Cleopatra’s asp. My sister looked nothing like Guido Reni’s Cleopatra who is half naked. At least, unlike so many of a certain age that I know, she still has a sense of fun and can produce an excellent dinner ‘under duress’ as she keeps on reminding me.
A most enjoyable evening. And the following day her husband came up with the remains of the dessert which I had particularly praised. This is why she is a size 12. I ate it for supper and thoroughly enjoyed it vowing it would be my last indulgence for a few weeks.
I took along with me a box of chocolates given to me as a Christmas present when I was in London by Professor Peter Lewis. A lovely round black box called Seven Deadly Sins. Now last year I had eaten every single chocolate in a similar box, on my own. Each chocolate has been placed in a separate round box and each named after one of the seven deadly sins: Pride, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Anger and Sloth. This year I wanted to share it with my family as I had found the chocolates both delicious and amusing. Dinner was by candlelight so I don’t know who helped himself to which Deadly Sin but it was all part of a pleasant evening spent with the family, which doesn’t happen all that often.
These promises to ourselves to eat less at this time of the year are a waste of time. On my birthday which is so close to the New Year that hardly anyone ever takes any notice of it, my darling sister-in-law not only turned up with a present but with generous portions of her delicious Christmas pudding and Christmas cake. So I postponed my diet yet again and sat down in my warm living room, made a hot mug of hot chocolate and ate the pudding, postponing the eating of the cake to the morrow.
Back to my stay in London where one evening was spent in Purley with my young one and Mauritian friends from at least 25 years ago. Jacques is a chemical engineer and accountant and ran Gilbey’s when we were in Mauritius. His wife Chantal is also an accountant and was a colleague at the University of Mauritius and we share many a story of
meetings of Faculty Boards and other boards. She is also an able auditor. They moved from
Mauritius to England just before I came to Malta some 20 years ago and they now lead a leisurely life with their daughter Julia
who is studying medicine. It was Jacques’ 59th birthday so they invited us and some friends and relatives to a Chinese restaurant nearby. As always with
Jacques and Chantal there was much delicious food on the table and afterwards we went back to their home for cake and champagne. It was a lovely evening, with old friends with whom I
had shared so many events in my life.
When they lived in Mauritius, Chantal would organize her many aunts to cook for several of us. She had a trellis table she added to her normal dining room table and a dozen and more of us sat and enjoyed the delicious
food which was home-made and lovingly prepared. I cherish these memories of days spent in their lovely home in Floreal or in some house on the beach which we used to rent. Happy days. Jacques now helps their church of St Gertrude and Chantal teaches some three times a week. I told them I want to be in Purley for Jacque’s 60th birthday next year. But who knows, God may have other plans?
Professeur Alain Blondy has just emailed to let me know that the former ambassador of France in Malta, Patrick Chrismant who is presently ambassador in Ulaan Bator, Mongolia has just been awarded the Legion d’Honneur. So well deserved. Such a good man.
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