When my "other
half" recently went away for ten days I became conscious of just how
apt that particular epithet is: the fabric of life which is daily woven
by two people living together soon peters out to a tatty fringe as one's warp runs
out of weft. I have taken advantage of the opportunity temporarily to pursue my
interests with unabated selfishness but am aware, even so, that the danger of
unbridled self-indulgence is a tendency towards excess. As the man who built a
replica of the Starship Enterprise's command deck in the dining room said,
"I think it might have had an adverse effect on my second marriage."
On the very
first day of my solo sojourn I had a reminder of the extent to which our
domestic arrangements are a result of compromise agreements rigorously enforced
in the interests of harmonious co-habitation. I had reason to visit a person
living alone and was intrigued to see that dishes from the last evening meal
were unwashed, that the place was littered with clothes, books and gadgets and
that everything was laid out to suit the preferences of a single occupant - who
was not even in a position to offer me a seat. I went home determined not to
fall into such antisocial ways.
Time
continued to pass quickly enough, the majority of one day being spent on the
phone to the TomTom helpline. I tried in vain to convince three operatives in
turn that my device had stopped functioning and that I wasn't a technophobe
moron who just didn't know how to connect it to a USB port: and yes, I had
tried turning it off and back on again - several times. My problem was
eventually "elevated" to a specialist who sounded quite alarmed when
I described one of the symptoms and, after consulting seven colleagues, all of
whom were flummoxed, admitted that the fault must be with the device, not me.
It had been
a very trying day so when I retired to bed I took the lazy, selfish option of
listening to Book at Bedtime. It's
such a good idea but, just as it puts children to sleep, so it does me, which
means there is no dodging the necessity of reading the book in the end. Mind
you, there are plenty of sleep-inducing programmes on TV as I discovered on
assuming total control of the channels. The one that promised most interest but
delivered most zzzzs was BBC 4's architectural programme Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness. And the unfettered freedom to
watch any film I wanted led inevitably to my choosing a dud: Sid and Nancy, the story of the
relationship between the famous Sex Pistol and his girlfriend. It was so dreary
that I was left emotionally unmoved even by their predictably early deaths.
But it's not
all solitary media-consumption and techno-chores: one evening I had friends
around for dinner. This is normally a double act and so, aware that I had to
take responsibility for front-of-house as well as kitchen, I planned a menu
which could be prepared in advance and finished with a flourish before any alcohol-induced
laxity set in. I settled on a main course of confit duck leg, green beans and Gratin de Pommes de Terre à la Dauphinoise, of which the latter was the
trickiest since I had no prior knowledge of it. Frantic searches through stacks
of neglected cookery books (I must replace them with an app) finally turned up
a recipe by the authentically French-sounding Auguste Escoffier and the
resulting dish was declared "a triumph" by at least one of my
esteemed guests.
The question
is this: if my other half failed to return, would I slide deeper into lazy,
self-absorbed, squalid ways or would I learn more new recipes?
No comments:
Post a Comment