Outraged of OX1
It is becoming all too easy to consider oneself a culinary genius. Of course, any precocious talent that necessarily diverts energy from domestic chores is useful during the vacation, when parents seem keen to reduce their progeny (that's us, folks) to slave status. Stacking the dishwasher at the behest of the mother is not my scene. I suppose I should be grateful that the torment of a rota has, as yet, eluded our household. Nevertheless, I hope you have taken full advantage of the culinary opportunities of the Easter break.
A groaning refrigerator is a wonderful thing, and throws into sharp relief the typically empty student flats of eighth week, by which time poverty has set in big time. A trip to a supermarket, with free rein on the credit card, is an opportunity rather than a necessity and must be seen as such if you are to transmute into Oxford's answer to Jamie Oliver, although you might also have to purchase an innovative means of transport and shop at markets for the illusion to be complete. Another advantage to cooking chez soi is that the kitchen is unlikely either to rate a government health warning or to require a grant for implements. Frying pan, anyone?
Having recently witnessed the full horror of buffet-style meals, I am convinced that an opening for a young ingenue, or pretentious wannabe, depending on your viewpoint, would be none too difficult to obtain. One advantage of the canteen-style buffet revolution, allegedly, is the fact that one can control the quality of one's plate. I can categorically refute such a suggestion. Buffet rage is abroad, and those who meet around the hotplate are unlikely to escape a brawl. A buffet ridicules the childhood precept of 'eat what's put in front of you'. Implicit in this parental commandment is restraint: eat what is put in front of you, and no more.
A buffet pokes fun at restraint, rather like effusively apologetic 'train managers'. A buffet is the playground of the glutton, the bugbear of the gourmet. Sated faces fill the dining room and the dessert table is constantly swamped: access to the chocolate gateau requires a strategic manoeuvre of military precision. Portion control is irrelevant in this culinary minefield. As is any notion that chicken, pork and squid might belong on the same plate in a parallel universe, but might not commingle to each other's mutual advantage on the palate. Michael Winner's observation that 'good, wholesome food, simply cooked', is infinitely superior to 'ponced-about plate decoration' is apposite. He has a point, but even if a buffet produces wholesome food at the outset, the latter is necessarily compromised by presentation. Valiant attempts to arrange food in a pleasing manner fail in the face of abundance and incompatibility of ingredient. My father's response is to eschew the polyfiller pastries: in atonement for our collective saccharine sins, he feasts on a bowl of oranges.
Temper is an obvious pre-requisite for the elementary chef, but you have been warned: tantrums must tally with results. Your grateful family must learn to accept that rage is a twenty-first century phenomenon.
To cite a further example: I am currently raging about the shoddy service of this train. Last week, I suffered from an acute bout of desk rage, possibly prompted and certainly exacerbated by telephone rage. Waiting for trains is not chic. Being repetitiously bombarded with reasons for tardiness is a lesson in role reversal for any student dabbling in the art of deadline evasion. Like Sally Tomato in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, whose colourful weekly 'weather reports' would astonish Holly Golightly, a certain cross-country rail carrier is obviously employing a creative genius in the voice-over department. Yet the value of continuity is eluding them. To elaborate: if the same service is twice delayed by approximately twenty minutes, for the sake of sheer credibility, to cite the same reason both times would surely constitute sensible public relations. The passenger, or rather, the 'customer' ' a semantic abdication of responsibility ' has long since ceased to rely on punctuality promises. This cynical customer does not wish to know why the service is failing ad infinitum. A single excuse would suffice.
The rage of this waiting game is very different to en route rage itself. Why we are constantly asked to accept the most abject and iterative of apologies 'for the late running of this service' is a source both of misery and mystery. I consciously do not accept the proffered repentance; to do so would imply that I will not presently be composing a forthcoming missive requesting a full refund. To do so would be to break ranks with other militant 'customers'. To do so would be to introduce an element of forgiveness. These endless announcements are a blatant attempt to establish a customer-company rapport and in doing so, to sweep under the carpet the twenty wasted minutes that would have been better spent under the duvet. I shrink from such a proposition.
According to one worldly Times reporter, a feature is merely a series of observations on a theme. I therefore feel in no way compelled to reach a conclusion.
26th Apr 2001