BJ Tunstall

Author: BJ Tunstall

  • The immortal wakes

    He didn’t lie with her until her mortal heart slowed, slowed, slowed to just a mumble in his big ear

    His yawn a tunnel through time

    A window too

    Took respite in a cave to ease his arthritic thumb

    For many moons and one sun

    For most of the Neolithic age

    The immoral wakes

    Remembers centuries as minutes but what is time?

    Memory is a river that churns ocean to ocean and cascades into the bluest of space

    Thinks, as one thumb circles another for maybe a week

    Ponders, without a clash of eyelids for no one knows how long

    Imagining a tunnel through a cave wall 

    He might dig sooner or later

    It matters less as he turns and sleeps some more

    The immortal wakes

    You can forget love, he told a beast that lay beside him injured from a great fall, perhaps from a higher cliff, perhaps from the sky

    The immortal slept through the crash, the thud 

    The dust cloud had settled by the time his eyelids like a cape on a bat opened wide and took in light

    The beast could do very little but listen

    The immortal wakes

    He told the beast he had loved harder than the fall he’d taken days maybe weeks earlier

    The beast groaned (so perhaps it was weeks)

    He loved hard and deep like the tunnel he might dig

    many moons ago

    He didn’t lie with her until her mortal heart slowed, slowed, slowed to just a mumble in his big ear

    They walked across mountains and planes, her asleep on his back, in his pouch, on the crown of his head

    Her mortal rhythm taps on his skin

    Skin maligned with the scars of eternity 

    Scars you’d expect, basins of old sweat, slowly drying up as he sleeps

    They leapt like leopards until they flew like birds, he felt love was like that

    leaps monumental and over and over until you feel like you are a bird

    Across oceans they swam one hand digging through the weighted water striding onwards

    the other keeping her mortal heart tapping against the palm of his hand held just above the water

    He lay with her until her mortal heart slowed, slowed, slowed, slowed to just silence in his big ear 

    then the wind from the oceans, the very same oceans they once swam together, whipping across the earth

    lifted the dust, the very same dust that surely settled upon his cape-like eyelids as they lay closed when the beast fell from a great height

    became powdery blow on a brittle cave wall

    he sent the wind back to the oceans with a scream that gave no one any rest least of him

    until

    upon a sleep he embarked to hold his memory of her in a thousand winter’s dreaming

    The immortal wakes

    he barely recalled the feeling of grief and why she was important

    the beast smiled and asked, so you can forget pain but not love? The story of love is eternal not the feeling, the immortal said looking at the beast’s one lazy eye holding up

    so joy or pain or even indifference is just evidence of love but the story remains eternal?

    yes, the story of love remains eternal

    the beast began to shake with laughter and wished that he could move closer to the immortal and breathe in his wisdom but he was broken or just heavy with despair, after his great fall

    I shan’t ask how long you’ve been here then said the beast

    oh that question is my favourite question

    so?

    forever and a day

    probably he thought and smiled at the beast but for me it’s more about what I shall I do next and can I be bothered?

    I know hurry as a concept but not as a compulsion

    perhaps the last beast that fell from a great height told me

    perhaps he didn’t fall and perhaps he wasn’t a beast but he did tell me about being in a hurry or she did, perhaps it was a she or a child, yet to to be either in presentation

    anyway hurrying is not for me

    the beast sighed loudly, the dust billowed and hung in the air a long long time

    the immortal wakes

    and realised that the beast was at the end of a love story, a great love story

  • Ashes to ashes, tat to tut

    “Babs saw all the things she loathed in herself also in her son. His loose skin and wide open heart”

    David Bowie said in his song Queen Bitch
    She’s so swishy in her satin and tat
    In her frock coat
    and bipperty-bopperty hat

    Tat is good bad and sometimes bad good, unnecessary but a statement none the less.

    A Londoner will tell you tut describes items with no aesthetic merit or use or monetary value. In England a Northerner may use tat and a Southerner may use tut to describe the same load of old stuff.
    A load of old tat is usually a comment on someone else’s stuff rather than a comment on your own stuff. It’s a way of mocking your friend’s unhealthy attachment to a load of old stuff. It’s often resented by the owner but somehow unmovable. Tat is the gossip of the unconscious. It tells you something you need to know about yourself that’s uncomfortable and that you are probably not ready to hear. The reason will reveal itself eventually but in the meantime the tut appears ominously innocuous.

    Ian Dury a Londoner said in his song Clever Trevor
    Nothing underfoot comes to nothing less to add to a load of old tut and I ain’t half not half glad cos there’s nowhere to put it, even if I had
    Ian is trapped in his tut, helpless, it will just appear elsewhere so he makes no attempt to move it. Tut seems to be an immovable beast.

    Tat is also piles of stuff that you are planning to sort or read or cut up. Pile makers are always the less pretty sister, the less athletic brother, chastised, the stuck, the people who want to be someone else, the person always 15 minutes late. Pile makers add to the pile more than they chip away at it. Chipping away at it is always hindered by something that has no relationship with reducing the pile.

    Christopher says ‘I need to get stuck into that pile but I’m trying to sell that chair first’
    Christopher says ‘I will sort all of that soon I just need to move the glass cabinet’
    Christopher says these things as if the pile might fall on the top of him as he starts the vigorous task of ignoring the voice that lists all the horrible things that might happen to him if he throws it away. Christopher avoids sorting the pile anyway he can. Over complicating matters and making the job seem bigger prolongs his time with the pile. Found in the pile are unpaid utility bill, important news articles, several brochures on cancer, an empty Valium packet and an autumn leaf. The pile holds significance in Christopher’s mind because at one point something important was in the pile. It gives everything else in the pile a value it never had before. A torn envelope is suddenly punching above its weight in such a pile. The empty Valium packet could be a reminder of something or does it have a repeat prescription on the back of it? He’s not sure what item in the pile makes the pile significant. This will keep the pile from reducing for a long time. Christopher won’t make the connection, the empty Valium packet has something to do with the proliferation of piles around the house. Christopher’s muscles are like jelly so sorting a pile is difficult. He will be waiting on a delivery of a universal remote control that won’t work before attempting to sort the pile. The connection between the two is not obvious. Perhaps there is. But regardless he will float into slumber and wake up still angry but unable to swing a punch.
    Christopher says ‘I just need to get that universal remote control before sorting the pile’

    A corner often needs tat. A cane basket, an old suitcase, a few logs, maybe some wool, a few books, hats. This gives a corner a story, it’s now more than a single point where two walls meet. As important as that meeting is.

    In two up two down house in a small town in the north of Wales lived Babs and John. Babs put a rusty brass kettle that had never poured a single cup of tea in a fireplace that had never seen single flicker of a flame. John sat in the same recliner every night but couldn’t fully extend the footrest because it would tip the magazine rack over which sat beside the recliner in the only place it could sit unhindered by another object. One leg ached all the time because it was just short of fully extended. John longed to stretch out both legs but had given up worrying about it as it felt like the slightest inconvenience not worthy of discussion. A set of brown rugs folded in equal parts of eight and one wool throw scrolled on top sat beside the magazine rack. These rugs were not meant to warm the knees but rather warm the air. Their tempting warm aesthetic was their main purpose.
    In the spare bedroom were a collection of dolls in rows, the biggest dolls at the back cascading to the smallest at the front, with an array of wonky and startled eyes sometimes on the same doll’s face. Each had the roughly the same facial expression but the longer you stared at their faces the more they differed from each other. They could look menacing and they could look kind and sometimes blank. Some were in conversation if you tilted their heads slightly. Babs wasn’t particularly fond of dolls nor was she was particularly maternal. The dolls just warmed up a cold back room. A pink rose quilt covered the guest bed and the light shade and the tissue box on the side table. The quilt was tightly tucked under a springy mattress and it took some digging to peel it back and climb in.

    The freezer was packed solid with frozen food. The freezer door was decorated in crayon sketches and magnets with sayings about life’s peculiarities. The door held in garden peas, fish fingers, pizza subs and chocolate muffins. Ice mushroomed around the stiff plastic bags and spiked in furry corners. Babs was ready for any contingency, nuclear war, a long winter. She lived in loose hanging shirts that draped over tight-fitting jumpers, she dressed to cover up her body. Babs hated being fat, the hate was less painful when she ate.
    Tat is the accumulation of items that have no functional purpose for the sake of filling a space.
    Tat can be a legacy of staying in one place for a long time or it can be a cry for help.

    Babs and John’s son ordered something small from a mail order catalogue every week. The arrival of a parcel the next day had nothing to do with the object inside but rather the thrill of the gift. One day the mail didn’t arrive. His cheeks caved in so sharply the universe was sucked into the hole left by his despair. He once bought a miniature clamp. It never left it’s packet. What does a miniature clamp hold, maybe a tea towel. It went on a shelf beside a box of dead matches and an empty bottle of oil covered in glitter and a fluorescent hair band that had lost its elasticity. Sometimes he would clutter his room with so much tat he couldn’t find his bed. He would then re-organise it all neatly and spread it about again. Babs saw all the things she loathed in herself also in her son. His loose skin and wide open heart. His attachment to useless things. He never spent a lot of money, maybe a few dollars. It was about the parcel, the arrival, the unwrapping, the status of receiving. Tat is not worthless to those who accumulate it. All that stuff protects.

    Babs watched her son grow larger. She could see he was making the same mistake she did. He smiled excitedly when she put down fish fingers on white fluffy bread lathered in mayonnaise. He helped her clean offices in the city. He sometimes forgot to spray wipe the desks so she would whack him across the head, making his ears pink. She hit him for the small things because she couldn’t hit him for eating the food she put down. That would make no sense. The fat grew around his bones like the tat around his bed. When he was rejected for being too fat to have sex with or too nice to have a relationship with, he’d put all his tat in garbage bags and shove it in a cupboard. As he slowly recovered from feelings of unworthiness the tat returned; new books, long billowy shirts, picture frames and the creep of the contents in the garbage bags from the cupboard back to his room. To free himself of the tat he would need therapy and in his sessions he would need to hate his mother for sending him mixed messages of affection as teenager. Hate his mother for over feeding him. Hate him for slapping his fat leaving a white tattoo on his skin that fades as her hand sways back passed her hip. But he would rather hate himself than hate his mother and let the tat be a small price to pay.

    Babs will decorate a bookshelf until she can’t pull out a single book for the tat. She’ll display candles, brass rings, incense sticks, figurines, feathers, tobacco pipes and she will also have a universal remote control that every few years wakes up and changes the channel on the TV next door. She has books on the very top of the book shelf and quite impressively manages to store a small dolls house, a tennis racket cover and Balinese fan collection on top of these books. The book shelf will forever be a cumbersome thing about to topple but she will continue to decorate it with frilly regrets, best intentions and memory catches. And a picture of her son.

  • Privilege

    A white boy born into a poor family must find it hard to understand the idea of white privilege

    A black boy born into a poor family must find it hard to understand racism

    racism is pain unheard and unwitnessed

    class war

    privilege is a mood not a status

    black deaths matter

    Uncle Ben scrapped its Uncle Ben on the front of the 2 minute rice something about a century old stereotype

    Quaker Oats scrapped it’s Aunt Jemima syrup and pancakes, comfort food looking a bit like slavery

    All this because a black George Floyd managed to gasp “I can’t breathe” in ear shot of a smart phone when he’s neck was being stomped on by a white cop

    Token change, all ads up, I guess

    Even the British Broadcasting Commission cast more black actors in it’s period dramas, to represent

    Hope it says to each and every little black boy yes you can swan around in a top hat and high-buttoned, single breasted waistcoat one day

    no matter how historically inaccurate

    All this makes me feel like real change has come to food and TV

  • 1987

    “Suddenly he sat up and pointed at me. “Haha look at the size of your mouth! You could suck 10 cocks with that!””

    When I was a child my mother pu​t me on the Pritikin Diet, a ​low-fat, high-fibre diet which forms part of the Pritikin programme for diet and exercise. A lifestyle regimen created by Nathan Pritikin. The book describing the diet became a best-seller while I wasted away. By the time I was 12 I looked like an Ethiopian supermodel. In the same year Bob Geldof launched Live Aid and pictures of starving Ethiopians were splashed all over our TV screens. I knew I wasn’t alone.

    For years I had a recurring dream. My mother is handing out chocolate biscuits to a long line of children. By the time she gets to me the chocolate biscuit packet is empty. The dream then starts again and again it ends with an empty packet of chocolate biscuits. When I found my father’s secret jar of loose change the first thing I did was buy a packet of chocolate fucking biscuits. Oreo too, American biscuits wonder-filled with churro-flavored creme. I gobbled the lot in a carpark behind the Cole’s New World. Oreo are still my favorite biscuit not just because of the secret trans fat goodness but because they come without a plastic tray. You can rip open the packet with your teeth and scull. Wash down with milk. Oreo’s are best stored in the freezer. Discover them late at night, behind the frozen peas.

    Family Hold Back or FHB is a code the adults in my family applied to kids when guests arrive unexpectedly and there was potentially not enough food to go round. FHB was whispered from family member to family member. I remember watching the guests pile food high on to their plates unaware of the holes I was drilling in the back of their heads and the sacrifice I was making in the shadows of FHB. I resented FHB with my whole being I began to devise sophisticated strategies for getting my dream foods into my mouth; chocolate biscuits with cream centers, soft coffee roles with pink icing and sherbet.

    I’d been self harming with sherbet behind the school dunnies for months. While the other kids smoked cigarettes, I scooped packet after packet of sherbet into my mouth to make up for the lost years in the Pritikin wilderness. A handsome student dentist discovered a carnival of rot in my mouth at my 6 monthly check-up and set to work filling the cavities. He decided not to use anesthetic for reasons I’m still unaware of. Budget cuts, sadomasochism, whatever, it was my first memory of torture. My mouth kept closing and the dentist assistant kept saying “a little wider, a little wider, a little wider” finally my mouth flipped open doubling it’s capacity and astounding even the dentist. “Woah there tiger, don’t eat us” 10 years later when I had my impacted wisdom teeth removed under a general anaesthetic, the surgeon remarked how big my mouth was. “I was butchered by a dentist when I was 7″ I said. He laughed heartily, so much so it must have slipped his mind to prescribe me any pain killers. Once home I had to rely on ice packs to ease the pain. It was torturous. I remember my mother telling me while I lay in bed in excruciating pain that pain is relative and it couldn’t possibly be worse than child birth.

    My polyamorous girlfriend Tracey told me about an older man she was seeing. He was 17, she was 15. He was cool and looked just like Morrissey from The Smiths. I was 14 and had never heard of The Smiths. Although I was old enough to get the punkness of a band naming themselves after the most popular surname in the English-speaking world. After school one day we caught a bus to West End where this guy lived. His flatmate let us in and we walked into a warehouse space with hessian sacks strewn across parched floors and cheesecloth throws over purple bean bags. Incense was billowing from a window ledge. Tie dyed pantaloons and rainbow knitted ponchos hung on big brass hooks sticking out of the wall. Empty bottles of red wine lay on their side. Tracey nodded at me with her eyes, relishing my excitement. I could hear a hollow crooning coming from the ceiling, I looked up. Sitting at the top of some narrow fold out stairs leading to a loft was a man with high quaffed hair and a strong jaw line singing to a song playing in the background. One foot dangled through the stairs, the other propped up to his chest. He was writing with a red pencil on to rice paper held together by string. Tracey called out to him “Hey you”

    “Hey sweetie” he said but wholly distracted, saying hello it seemed had wasted a second of his valuable time. 

    “This is BJ” she yelled.

    He glared at me and sung even louder.

    “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt. Now I know how Joan of Arc felt”

    He sounded out of tune to me but so did the singer he was imitating. Neither sounded happy. I wondered if he positioned himself like that for our arrival or if he was a cripple that had to crawl around the apartment and he was waiting for us to carry him down the stairs. The guy on the cassette started again “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt, now I know how Joan of Arc felt”. I thought “who the fuck is Joan of Arc?”

    She grabbed me by the shoulder and whispered “Isn’t he fab?” I don’t think she knew who Joan of Arc was either.

    I shrugged and asked loudly “What is this music?” He got up and disappeared into his loft. Tracey grabbed me and we followed him. I crawled into the loft and noticed the ceiling was covered with sheets of paper with lyrics or poetry scribbled all over them. He was waiting for us lying on his back across a low set Futon bed, one foot tapping the floor and the other extended out. The music was louder and the next song even more obnoxiously miserable than the last. I said again “What is this music?” Suddenly he sat up and pointed at me. “Haha look at the size of your mouth! You could suck 10 cocks with that!”

     I laughed, I’d only contemplated one cock, maybe two. I asked again about the guy moaning in the background.

    “It’s Morrissey from The Smiths, just the best band ever, they are so ironic. I would die for Morrissey”

    Tracey jumped on the bed, pitched her back against the wall and sparked up a cigarette.

    “Me too” she said.

    I crawled on to the bed but balanced myself on the edge, anxious about the 10 cocks possibly coming my way.

    Tracey started to sing with Morrissey, she whined with a strange melodic joy like she was in pain but happy about it. I sparked up a cigarette too.

    The guitar jangled and wobbled like it had been thrown from a balcony, still plugged in. I wanted to take the cassette to my room and listen to every song carefully to discover the secrets this music held. It made good looking men open their legs and talk about cock. “This one’s called Bigmouth Strikes Again. He wrote it for you” The cool guy lent across Tracey who was now between us.

    This cool guy put his lips on mine. The cold rush of wetness that came from his mouth repulsed me and turned me on. I didn’t know it was possible to experience opposing feelings simultaneously. I opened my mouth and almost swallowed his face. The cool guy screamed and recoiled “Eeek big mouth strikes again!” My ego remained intact because in that moment, as I scraped my teeth along the top of my tongue to remove the taste of his peppery aftershave, I became a man.

  • Protected: The year the drugs worked

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  • Mexican striptease

    “I dined at La Bodega Negra the night after Kylie Minogue was seen exiting not so discretely”

    I’m rarely seen at the right places or attend the right parties but last night I dined at La Bodega Negra the night after Kylie Minogue was seen exiting not so discretely. Candy insisted we dine there not just so I could bathe in the waft of Miss Minogue but because she thought I might enjoy a restaurant disguised as a striptease bar. She was right. We meekly entered and were greeted by a Clockwork Orange ringmaster. I knew immediately this was place was high concept low carbs. The carcass of a piano and a tiny proscenium arch (perhaps where Kylie did a number the night before) made a former basement look like the deluge of a post-apocalyptic circus on the run. The waitress was sharply beautiful and tantalisingly non-committal allowing us to decide if the miniature tacos displayed on a charred wooden rack were going to be enough. And just as the striptease once eased into the private lap dance, the tacos fell short of hitting the spot. Appetites whet, we ordered Fresh Crab Tostaditas, Seafood Rice Cazuela and another rack of tacos. The creamy Cazuela was more risotto than soup with cheeky capers stirred though. We fought over the last grain of rice, no love lost deep in boutique tapas. Intoxicated by ghosts we dug up stories of our past, remembering the infamous pole dancing mother and our own performances entangled in a spider’s web made of chains.

  • Here’s to things we love

    Oh here’s to Brighton

    A town that says ‘do your worst’

    Says here’s to the hug that won’t let go first, taking the sting out of signal failure at Three Bridges

    Says here’s to the archers and all the weekend flotsam that washes up beneath 

    Says here’s to the orderly queue of shit even deeper below, a feat of Victorian engineering

    Says here’s to a grubby sunset and the whirling twirling starlings 

    Says here’s to 11,000 a year at American Express, crisp and shiny in a Primark suit

    Says here’s to chips and curry sauce and the crunch of leather jackets

    Says here’s to pile-it-high roasts with all the trimmings and the gurning turning chefs with nicotine knuckles

    Says here’s to the Steiner school kids and their lost ambition 

    like mist drifting across the downs 

    Says here’s to saying sorry 100 times in the Kemp Town Coop and the calming absence of choice

    Says here’s to the wind between the tower blocks battering your London hair

    Says here’s to a sun drenched nap, half way back to Hove

    Says here’s to setting sail in a mobility scooter, “ahoy” says the fat man blowing along the prom 

    Says here’s to giggling at the turnip palace as you pass the joint, resting your head on a soft white thigh

    Says here’s to an overpriced painted rock and a passive aggressive sales pitch in the hallway of an open house

    Says here’s to watching over us wise old channel like a tear in the sack of an eye ready to roll

    Says here’s to the beach of misshaped hearts

    Says here’s to falling asleep on the couch Sunday night and missing the rail replacement bus

    Says here’s to getting here

    Says here’s to never leaving

    Here’s to the things we love

  • A Melbourne thing

    “He was the perfect Melbourne waiter, reading his customers and matching any hint of enthusiasm with flirty temptation. Also known as sexy up-selling”

    The wait staff in Melbourne restaurants are renowned for their intimacy. When you’re fresh from another country their warmth can feel suspicious. Exciting even. It always takes me a few days to climatise to the keen service. Lingering eye contact and a hand on a shoulder usually means imminent death or intercourse everywhere else in the world but not in Melbourne. I feel like the waiter and I should swap numbers but then he slams the bill down in front of me and shatters my illusion. I tip heavily of course. On departure I feel like I’ve invested a level of emotion equal to whirlwind romance. Now I live in London and visit Melbourne the warmth of service still confuses me but I welcome the unguarded moments and the universal truth that everything is better in Australia, as most Australians will tell you.

    When I left Australia in 2006 I left my most precious friend and dining companion Kim. I’ve been unable to enjoy a dining experience to its full extent without Kim across from me, smoking and swishing cheap wine about usually down her chin. She’s the wasabi to my sushi. I know my first evening meal should be with her. I swing by in a cab and scoop her up from her duplex in the outer precincts of Melbourne. In the back of the cab we swig something strong from a siler flask she produces from her handbag and I direct the driver to the hotly recommended Newmarket in St Kilda.

    St Kilda is Kim’s old stomping ground back when she could dine on the kindest of strangers just by letting her blonde hair catch the dewy seaside light.

    Kim and I discuss the curse of overfamiliar waiters over a bottle of wine. Her phone number has found its way into many a waiter’s apron only to find out he was simply doing his job, very well indeed. It seems even the locals find the attentive service confusing.

    Soft taco with soft shell crab in fennel and guacamole followed by kingfish in a spicy salsa was hot to trot and a cleansing Sauvignon Blanc from the Pyrenees to knock it off.

    The waiter join us at the table to talk us through the dessert menu. He sat down and took it in turns to look deeply into our eyes. I knew this now to be just a Melbourne thing, so I directed my hand away from his knee. 

    Piqued but not satisfied with the conditioned-based intimacy of the night before I met my friends Dean, Andrew and Bruno for lunch at the Stokehouse the next day, hoping for another loose but this time homosexual Melbourne waiter. The Stokehouse on St Kilda Beach is well loved by Melbournites’. The building burnt almost to rubble in 2014 and was redesigned into the current Stokehouse. Its all about the raw beautiful morsels and fat buttery whites.

    Dean (the-boyfriend-that-got-away-in-the-early-90s) flags down the waiter for the saltwater ceviche with fermented chilli and desert lime. I flag down the oysters with finger lime and yuzu. Dean uses a knife to divide the ceviche among 4 in perfect potions. I immediately resent the fact we are 4 and I fantasise about the other’s having violent skin eruptions to the oysters. I wonder if I could order more and I share this thought with the waiter. He says he once had 7 of the ceviche, I laugh and he clarifies he wishes he had 7. I wonder why he came up with 7, after all he did recite the specials board with whet insight and he looked the type to eat 7. Or I looked the type. He was the perfect Melbourne waiter, reading his customers and matching any hint of enthusiasm with flirty temptation. Also known as sexy up-selling. Oh the dance! I think about beautiful morsels and wonder if it’s the morsel that drives the appreciation. I once peeled hundreds of salted pistachios and put them all in my mouth. I hoped this would cure the moreish pull of pistachios. I figured it’s the constant not getting enough pistachio that drives the need for more. It worked for a night. The iceberg lettuce with sheep’s yogurt dressing, river mint and tarragon is a simple pleasure. Made me appreciate the iceberg as the jewel of lettuce rather than the mother of dregs at the bottom of a lunchbox.

    Dean is 48 today and he wonders what’s next for him as he hurtles toward 50 faster than you can say ‘fetch mummy her fags’. He slices his iceberg lettuce wedge with a savage joy and I wish I could be delighted by lettuce. He is happy, at least for the moment, with a plate of lettuce. And it’s Melbourne where a wedge of lettuce with a splash of balsamic is a no nonsense tasty entree. Because our produce is SIMPLY DAVOINE, any Aussie will tell you (over and over again) Another Melbourne thing like the flirty waiters. I miss it when I skid back into Heathrow and sink my teeth into a cold steak bake at Greggs. I look at Dean (the-boyfriend-that-got-away-in-the-early-90s) and I want to tell him this is as good as it gets but I refrain just in case we get a bucket of fried chicken on our way home, like the old days. Or bump into the drug dealer, like the old days. Happiness is watching an old friend smile over a glass of wine.

  • Car crash romance

    “Right now if I had to choose between my Italian lover Marco and Parmesan I’d choose Parmesan. He doesn’t mind. It’s Parmesan after all. Italian’s are rarely jealous if you choose food over them”

    I don’t do romance. Having said that when you have an Italian lover a romantic dinner is a non-negotiable, even if he doesn’t finish work till 10pm and the restaurant is probably going to be full of couples having the same conversation about feeling coerced into feeling romantic. An Italian restaurant loves a 11pm booking. They welcome you with open arms and a knowing smile, Italian time. My Anglo-Saxon stomach has reduced to a trembling prune but my eyes conceal this with a bright eagerness to please. This is starvation to anyone who is not Italian. I take the hug. Maddalena is a family restaurant that knocks out tremendous wood fired oven pizzas and homemade pasta. My Italian lover lives across the road. He can smell the pizza from his bathroom. He rattles on in Italian to the waitress who shrugs a lot and smiles and then shrugs some more. The tables are all blotched by red wine stains and feather like shavings of Parmigiano-Reggianon. We were here at the tail end of a busy Valentine’s day. The place is all ours now except for the old Italian father snoring in the corner. I can see the point of a 11pm dinner. It’s very civilized. Damn it, I even feel a faint ripple of romance coming over me. He’s won again.

    The first dish he made me when we were dating was Bresaola Carpaccio. Bresaola is a lean dried salted beef from the Valtellina, a long Alpine valley in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy. Pronounced breh-ZOW-lah. I’d read somewhere that Bresaola was made from depressed ponies but he disputed this with a fierceness (it’s not like I pushed his mother off a cliff) that made me think perhaps I was right. He made it clear in no uncertain terms that Bresaola can also be made from venison or horse meat, grass-fed, trimmed of all fat and then rubbed with salt and spices before being hung to air-dry for several months. The spices vary, pepper, juniper berries, cinnamon, cloves. The end product is far less fatty than prosciutto, and a bit firmer, with a deep red colour and delicate, aromatic flavour.

    So Bresaola Carpaccio. Let me recount the ways. Start by arranging slices of Bresaola like flower petals on a white plate. Then drizzle with some extra-virgin olive oil, a squeeze of fresh lemon, and make a small pile of fresh arugula (rocket) in the center. Top it all with some shavings of aged Parmigiano-Reggianon.

    I love Parmesan cheese. I often sit in bed and munch on a triangle of Parmigiano-Reggianon and wash it down with a bottle of Rioja. It’s my winter remedy for everything from the common cold to suicidal ideation. Do try it at home. I wondered why I loved it so much and then I discovered of all the cheeses Parmesan has the highest fat content. Ah yes, just another obsession that kills me. I eat lightning fast. If you’ve read my blog over the years you’ll know why (my mother starved me when I was a child). I eat a triangle of Parmesan in minutes, sometimes in seconds come mid-winter. It’s a triangle shape for easy munching and possibly for easy grating and shaving. I’m only guessing. Google it yourself (I’m devouring a triangle and a bottle of Rioja Alta 890 Gran Reserva 2005 as we speak and can’t help you). Right now if I had to choose between my Italian lover Marco and Parmesan I’d choose Parmesan. He doesn’t mind. It’s Parmesan after all. Italian’s are rarely jealous if you choose food over them. It’s crystalline, grainy texture makes my cheeks prickle and throb. When you wash it down with Rioja the sharpness is immediately dulled, and the fruity nutty flavours explode and you can feel a slight burning sensation in your sinuses. The first recorded reference to Parmesan, in 1254, documents that a noble woman from Genoa traded her house for the guarantee of an annual supply of 53 pounds of cheese produced in Parma. Today my Italian lover tomorrow my house. 

    I look at him and then open my phone to read a description of how Bresaola is made. I read aloud “Bresaola is aged two or three months until it becomes hard and turns a dark red, almost purple colour. It is lean and tender with a sweet musty smell” This is an accurate description of my dinner companion I realise. We acknowledge the coincidence, exchanging a curled lip.

    “Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve. You could also add some thinly sliced white truffles. Alternatively, you can add small, sliced marinated mushrooms”

    He snarls at the suggestion of truffles and now opens his phone. He reads aloud in strange English Italian.

    “A strict trimming process is essential to give the unique flavour. The meat loses up to 40% of its original weight during ageing” he points at me and laughs.

    Who said romance is dead?

  • Reflector

    Arcade Fire had successfully recruited my body and now they were coming for my soul.

    I’m an Arcade Fire superfan, ready to do whatever they tell me. I buy the merch and Google search “where does Régine Chassagne live?” every few days, giving Kate Bush a rest. Founder Régine Chassagne plays accordion, drums, xylophone, hurdy-gurdy, keyboards and organ sometimes at the same time (as do the other band members). She dreams songs backwards in her head. I saw them live at Wembley Arena in 2017 with two other superfans and like most superfans I was a bit judgemental toward the disturbing display of unchecked superfannery going on. The floor was empty and suddenly the whole place was a turgid sea of superfans creating shapes with their writhing bodies seemingly for the band’s exclusive pleasure. Arcade Fire had successfully recruited my body and now they were coming for my soul. Superfan devotion I suspect has been cultivated using subliminal messaging and by the time they get to Everything Now they shamelessly flash slogans that find a permanent home in our subconscious. I need them. Frontman Win Butler played “It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)” to his unborn son during the making of Reflektor and he claims the song still quiets him. Arcade Fire hypnotise their children. I saw a comment below concert footage of Arcade Fire on YouTube. Stevens Smith. 1 year ago. “Once you’ve seen them live your just a full on crack head to their music fact”

    Proof that music is in your DNA lvino Rey American jazz guitarist and bandleader is Win’s granddad and Arcade Fire have a big band feel, arrangements are written in strophic form with the same phrase and chord structure repeated several times. Sound familiar, superfans? I win.

    Funeral, Neon Bible, The Suburbs were about looking back, fueled by nostalgia, loss and jocundity. Reflektor is colder and is about looking in and seeing what you want to see. Refektor explores the new digital mythology and its impact on our sense of self. Screens that became a mirror rather than a window, from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs. Fact. And yes I used the word ‘jocundity’.