Well, a virtual visit, via exerpts from Clarissa Dickson-Wright's new-ish biography on the Daily Mail site. In the mid 'nineties we used to love watching the BBC series where she and Jennifer Paterson roared around the UK on a vintage motorcycle and sidecar, stopping to cook in those oh-so-quaint examples of moneyed old England, the kitchen always equipped with a massive Aga stove. drooled over those enamelled giants, my love affair with them only ending when I realized that a stove that stayed on ALL THE TIME was not suited to summers in southern Canada, not to mention the cost (then starting around 2K) being somewhat prohibitive.
Like many others, I also enjoyed their very non-pc attitudes toward smoking, midday martinis, ogling young men from the edges of cricket fields, and best of all, veritable vats of butter for everything they cooked. Ah, it was food porn at its best for me, a youngish fat lady myself. The series lasted for three seasons until Jennifer died of lung cancer.
Now up pops Dickson-Wright's new biography Spilling the Beans . Surprise, surprise she has a background of awful, awful, deathly family alcoholism and a very abusive father, well hidden by a very wealthy privileged family. She's a recovering alcoholic herself and has absorbed many of the life lessons from AA, and yet... I have to wonder if for all her candor (not to mention some deliciously evil digs at Tony & Cherie Booth-Blair), she has looked at how food has filled the gap of her life that alcohol once did.
I guess I'm caught in that paradox. I admire her no holds barred attitude towards life, someone has to champion our right to eat foie gras at least once in a while, but I don't want to trade my life for hers.
No comments:
Post a Comment