Nathalie Bouffe

ENTERING KIRKHAMSHIRE

I realized with a gulp as I checked my bank balance at Euston station after paying for my ticket to Lancaster that I had 40 pence to my name, meant to last me til Friday (mongers, I'd be willing to wager, are far more likely to know the start date of the next pay period than that of their own menstrual period).  Graham had mentioned a cheap B&B, and I was intending to pay for drinks and dinner.  A significant problem, we'll agree, was at hand. 

(Ironically, the nearest person to me at the time was none other than Richard Goddamn Branson, who was posing for a photo op near the ticket office.  I tried to avoid drowning both of us in the flood of rejection slips that spouted from the cash machine). 

Wisdom holds that the farther up England you go, the nicer people become.  Well, Martin Tkalez hails from Morden, but other than that, the theory seems to stick.  When I got to Preston, Graham told me sheepishly that the cheap B&B was full, so he'd made a reservation at a slightly posher one, down the road.  And paid for it.

Well, slap me on the bottom and call me Betsy, I do know how to wield a credit card properly and told him so in no uncertain terms, but he'd have none of it, bless.

I was on my way up north to see Martin Gott's new lambs, new cheese room and new baby, and to go shooting with Graham Kirkham, a man who, when I first met him, must have spoke for forty minutes before I understood a single word he said.  To get a feel for the Lancashire accent, imagine the offspring a Canadian park ranger, Dallas cheerleader, and Glasgow cabbie would produce after nine months spent stuck in an elevator.  Add the laugh of a rhino and the heart of an angel and you've pretty much got Graham Kirkham, sine qua non.  I called him from the train station.  "Where are you?" I said.  "I'll come and get you," he answered.  "Oh shit, wait, I've still got my smelly wellies on.  Forget it.  You come here, it's too embahrahssing!"  When I climbed into the refrigerated van, I was too excited to speak properly.  "What are we going to shoot?" I asked him.  "GIRLIE, WE'RE GOING TO SHOOT THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING!" roared Kirkham.  He's way louder in person than over the phone.

Scratch That

So, I said I came back from Wales all refreshed and rejuvenated and fairly bursting with health.  Yeah...that didn't last.  This week I've rediscovered all sorts of appetites, but none more so than the most literal: for the past three days, I've had about eight meals between my mornings and midnights.  On Tuesday I tore into my last, greedily hoarded package of Vienna Fingers (see 1, 2 and 3 ).  What's today, Thursday?  The last one is eyeing me, all lonely-like from its cheap plastic tray.

Mmmmm.....

Rejoin your brothers, old friend.

p.s.  This guy is waaay out of line.
p.p.s. These dudes, now...far more hip to the scene! My preference would be for the Munch-ems, VF and cake eraser combo.

A Too-Smug Frances Moore Lappé Moment Gone Awry

 

To say that after a viscous, fluttery late Saturday night spent singing off-key karaoke at notorious, red-ceilinged Hackney boozer the Dolphin, I was loath to embark upon three trains to Wales is rather an understatement.  Sundays are the one day I'm exempt from the obnoxious beeping that announce the glauque beginning of my other days, and I keep that sacred, staying in bed usually until six or seven p.m.  If you're a Londoner, you'll admit: for the last six months, there's been little reason to leave the bed on Sunday afternoon, other than to go up to the window and realize how much better off you are back under the sheets.

But my love for Victoria Stewy-Libby is such that I roused myself and packed a bag for Bristol.  I was seeing so blurry that I lost (and then found) my phone and missed the first train, which meant spending two hours in that lousiest of Welsh towns, Swansea.  I sat in the basement bar of the Grand Hotel across the train station and drank cups of tea so slowly that they went cold before I reached the bottom, watching the two other patrons of the bar drink noiseless pints spellbound by the rugby on wide-screen TVs behind them.  Two younger lads came in, evidently for a 'catch-up,' plonked themselves on barstools, spoke for five minutes, and drank the next three pints stone-silent, staring fixedly ahead.  I had a four-minute cell-phone conversation, and in it probably spoke more words than the sum of everyone else in the two grim hours we were sat there.

It did get better after that.  The train to Pembroke Dock (Doc Penfro in Welsh) is a rickety, quasi steam-powered affair that breaks up into pieces at the entrance of every province until by Camarthen there remains just one wagon, and I had to request that it stop at Kilgetty.  Not only that, but the track limns the beautiful sand spits of the Camarthen Bay delta, staying unperturbably level as the ground leaps up and down in dunes and gullies and angular wet plains of ridged gray silt.  The happy few in our huffing westbound carriage stared transfixed at the long fuchsia and orange ventures the dying sun made into the slate-colored pools of resting water in the bogs, like a technicolored cat's tongue lapping up mercury-water.

My Week With Dysentery

I don't know what the hell made me so sick, but I've a hunch it was karma.  When you burn candles at every possible end for a year and a half without the merest blip of phlegm or backsplash of bacteria, you've got a big one coming, and in my case, it was The Mother Of All Diarrheas.  I can only thank my lucky stars that I was in Wales when it happened rather than Hackney. 

Dysentery Scenario I, Lower Clapton, Hackney:
Seven a.m. Wednesday morning approaches, signaled by the hip-hop being turned up another forty decibels, the arrival of another eight guests, and rising plumes of smoke through the floorboards of a shade and odor indicating a move from Class Bs to Class As.
Nathalie: Rrrhhhhaaaaaaa, I want to die.....

Dysentery Scenario II, Ivy Chimney Cottage, Pembrokeshire, West Wales:
Seven a.m. Wednesday morning approaches, signaled by the cat's jumping onto the duvet for a snuggle and Vickie replacing my hot-water-bottle with a new one before she's off to work.  Sheep graze quietly on the meadows outside. 
Nathalie: Rrrhhhhaaaaaaa, I want to die.....

Okay, so being sick sucks wherever you are, but I was definitely better off splashing up Vickie's toilet bowl.  I left the house once this week, to visit the doctor: I was seen immediately, given medicine for free, and back in bed within the hour.  Had I gone to the clinic on Lower Clapton Road, I'd have had to wait for about six hours for an appointment, surrounded by gunshot victims and smackheads mumbling for methadone (This is total speculation, of course--I've never been there.  But I bet I'm not far off.)