Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 September 2006 15:20:59
I had a meal out in Paris.
Now you may have formed a mental picture of the evening I'm going to describe, so I should probably clarify that a student friend had invited us, and 4 or 5 other people, round to his tiny student room to cook for us. The first thing that comes back to me as I recall this is the heat. It was summer, in the centre of Paris and there were far too many of us squashed into a tiny room, with a cooker on.
The food was great - I recall a starter of deep-fried camembert in breadcrumbs (made as we watched) and it carried on in the same vein; I think there were 4 or 5 courses. Each course Fréd, our host, would cook, and then serve, and we would sit down and eat it together. And we would talk. Since Fréd was a great raconteur there tended to be a lot of talking. And then, after a long while, you could tell that Fréd would start to feel a little bit hungry. But he was talking and distracted, so the signals from his stomach weren't really being processed by his brain. Eventually the signals would get stronger (and I suppose I could sense them because my stomach was also shouting out much the same signals and I gave them more attention because I wasn't really following the conversation, my French not being that great). And at last, Fréd would realise that he was hungry. Being polite, of course, he wouldn't do anything because, after all, you can't really ask your host for more food because you're hungry, can you? And so Fréd's stomach would keep complaining until he couldn't concentrate on the raconteur-ing anymore. And probably at that point he would really start to feel let down by the cook and then .... and only then .... would it dawn on him that he was the cook. So then off he would go and cook the next course. And that happened with each course.
It was hugely entertaining, even though it was the slowest meal I have ever eaten (and I've eaten some spectacularly slow meals in my time). But it was watching Fréd get more irate at the person responsible for the food and only eventually realizing or acknowledging that that person was him; that is what really struck me. Because I find myself doing that so often. For example after our services at church we serve tea and coffee in the hall. This past Sunday we had a lot of visitors so it would have been a good idea to make a good impression on them. But the chairs and tables weren't set out in the hall as they should have been so the whole thing was a bit of a shambles (which, admittedly, is a more honest view of our church; one of our own elders, likened us in a sermon to Mr Bean). Watching all this I felt a bit irate and tracing things back to the source I felt that I really should say something to the deacon responsible for catering in the church as they were surely the one ultimately in charge. And it was me. Ho hum. As Sarte didn't say, l'enfer, c'est moi.