I love the word “uxorious”, which means “excessively fond of one’s wife”. If there were equivalent terms for “husband” and “cat”, I’d be both.
Why yes I am feeling chatty today, as a matter of fact.
Hot damn, I’m having my own little Bastille Day here. Pain au chocolat for breakfast, Luna Park steak frites for lunch with a stop at Tartine afterwards for a blackberry tart and coffee.
Sadly, though, it was a farewell. Regret to inform that Mister Bennett is no longer in the house.
Did I mention I love food? Transcripts of interviews with David Karp, fruit detective. I must have a Halawy date.
Spencer Day as Enrique Iglesias, Trixie Carr as Pink (“Don’t let me get me”) and Brandon Burell as Beyonce Knowles (“Bootylicious”, in falsetto).
I laughed so hard I thought I’d fall off my stool.
Crimson Club, The Stud, 9th and Harrison, second Wednesday of every month. I shouldn’t even be telling you, I barely managed to get a stool as it was.
I dreamed the baby was born, but it was a boy, and immensely fat – so much so that it had no neck. Instead, its head and torso formed one huge jiggling egg of sweaty flesh. It had coarse black hair, and when it looked at me, it spat.
J: We went to the meadow on the other side of Army Street.
R: There’s a meadow there?
J (impatiently): In my dream. It was you and me and Big, and we looked at all the wildlife. There were some sheep on a hill. They had one ear much bigger than the other. Big said Adrian and Sam had been involved with these sheep, but they turned out to be too much trouble.
R: Trouble how?
J: Too opinionated. There was also a termite’s nest that had what looked like an owl inside, but when it came out, it was a tiny jaguar. It wended its way through our legs.
R: Wended.
J: Yes.
R: And the opinionated sheep had one ear bigger than the other?
J: It might have been that I was seeing one ear edge-on.
J: You want me to upgrade your shiny new thing-thing?
R: Shiny new thing-thing? You mean the baby? What software do you run on a baby?
J: Google?
He also had a dream where I was worried about terrorists building geodesic domes from spent nuclear fuel rods.
God, I love food. Food is good.
Amuse-bouche: Thomas Keller’s signature, tiny ice cream cones with salmon tartare or tomato and eggplant.
Chris: That wasn’t an appetizer. That was a taunt.
Turley 2000 Zinfandel
Chris: This doesn’t taste like the kind of Californian wine we get in London.
Big: That’s because it’s *good*.
1. Oysters in pearls
Jeremy: I’ve never tasted oysters as *sweet* before.
2. Duck terrine layered with perigord truffles. Cracked pepper and a design of 40 year old balsamic vinegar. Brioche toast. The others had a Belgian endive with a banana curry.
J: Banana!
Big: I know. It got me a beauty.
3. Almond-encrusted pompano with pasta in a lemon curd sauce. Amazing, but Chris had a salad of heirloom tomatoes marinated in basil-infused olive oil, with a mandarin and tomato sorbet on the side.
R: Chris, honey, sweetie darling.
Kathryn: Did I mention I had a spare bed?
Chris: You were offering me *your* bed before.
K: Sure! Can I try the salad?
Capiaux Pinot Noir 2000 from Russian River
Kathryn: This pinot is *very*…
Chris: I never liked pinot till I had a good one.
Big: What, just now?
4. Lobster tail and claw, in a port, coffee and chocolate sauce, with a Mission fig
Big: That’s all my buttons pressed.
Rachel: Is there *anything* I like that isn’t in here?
Big (to Adam, the waiter): Is there ecstasy in the sauce?
5. Steak tartare for the others, duck breast for me, with a Kodota fig this time.
R: This is the fig I do not give.
Alban Vineyards Lorraine Syrah 1999 – WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW
6. Roast saddle of lamb on a tomato ragout with artichoke hearts. Chris had a potato thing.
Chris: I don’t know what happened to those potatoes, but they tasted great.
Big: Which means it was probably illegal.
Chris: When we went to Naxos, the restaurants boasted about having the best potatoes in the Cyclades. We made it our joke – “This is the best G&T in the Cyclades!” Then we went to a restaurant and ordered, and said “Oh, we’d like some potatoes as well.” And the potatoes. Were. Amazing. I think there’s only one spot on the island where it curves into a cove where conditions are right for potatoes to grow. Maybe five potatoes a year. But they are the best. Potatoes. In the Cyclades.
7. PUMPKIN! TARTE! TATIN! And the best pecorino I’ve had. And yet more truffles for Chris.
J: Too many truffles?
Chris: It’s more a question of whether the taste of the truffles overcomes the taste of the food, or vice versa. It seems to alternate. Very nice.
J: Truffle wrestling.
Chris: Exactly.
J: Zwoop(1) electronic noses for truffle finding.
Sticky for Squishy: Chateau Reynon Cadillac 1998 – WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW
Alon: Sensory overload.
8: Pink! Pearl! Apple! Sorbet!!!
R: I’m resorting to punctuation.
Kathryn: That’s a lot of exclamation marks.
9. DESSERT! Chocolately thing, with chocolate…
R: I think I’m losing my descriptive powers.
Alon: Crispy chocolate, creamy chocolate.
Big: Gooey chocolate.
J: Your one brain cell seems to have been overwhelmed.
Chris: Mine is a series of allotropes of pineapple.
But wait! There’s more! Vanilla bean creme brulee and lemongrass pot de creme.
Alon: This is just like a pot of fat. I’m not complaining…
J: Kathryn gently slides under the table.
Oh my sweet Lord! Macaroons!
R: It’s a! It’s a! It’s one of those choux pastry things with custard inside!
J looks blank.
R: YOU USE THEM TO MAKE CROQUENBOUCHE!
J: Ah, a profiterole.
R: YES! IT’S A TINY PROFITEROLE! May God have mercy on our souls.
And then Adam brought out the chocolate truffles.
(1) Zwoop is an abbreviation for “There’s an interesting article in this week’s New Scientist about…”
R: When I feel sad, my nipples ache. I think it’s a milk thing.
J: You’re lachrymose.
1. The Second Amendment
Rebecca: I have an old .45 with no recoil.
Paul: You’ve never fired that one have you?
Rebecca: I have not fired that one.
Paul: It would break your arm.
Rebecca: Yes. And I have a .22. And I want to get a shotgun, for personal protection. I’d saw it off and keep it under my pillow, and if I saw anyone coming at me in my bedroom at night, bang. With a shotgun, it won’t go through the walls, and it won’t kill you unlesss you’re very, very close to me. I don’t really want to kill anyone.
Jeremy: The paperwork.
Rebecca: Exactly!
2. A successful shopping trip
Emily: I bought shoes and a vibrator!
Mark: Do they match?
3. Unprecedented
Me: Eeuw, heterosexual germs in your hot tub!
Peter: Darling, that’s what chlorine’s for.
1. 20th near Folsom
Homeless guy: Can you spare me a cigarette?
R: Sorry, don’t smoke.
Hg: Any change?
R: Sorry.
Hg: Ferrari?
R: Sure, you can have my Ferrari.
Hg: What color?
R: Red.
Hg (testily): They’re all red.
2. Folsom & 20th
Another homeless guy: Spare a quarter?
R: Sorry.
Ahg: But I’m hungry!
R: Me too.
Ahg: And I’m broke. And my toenail hurts.
3. At the Moonbase
Kirsty: Timor’s over. The Solomon Islands are over. My mum’s retired from saving the world. She’s going to open a B&B. She’ll get bored in about two minutes.
J: Unless she opens it in Somalia.
K: Don’t even suggest it.
J (being Kirsty’s mum): ‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to get doilies around here?’
pasted around my monitor. Clockwise, starting top left:
“valuation, revenue, cash burn, forecasts” – useful financial metrics for privately held companies.
“when hairballs come to fruition” – a particularly juicy mixed metaphor, courtesy of our London editor, famous for such.
Dial-in number for Monday morning editorial conference call.
To-do list – stories in progress.
“EAT ENOUGH!!!”
The Tibetan Book of Thoroughbred Training, from Jane Smiley’s novel Horse Heaven.
A chart equating the old, familiar IBM product names (S/390, AS400) with their bland replacements (zSeries, iSeries).
Mobile number for Nick in New York.
One post-it note has been banished to my noticeboard: it lists Borges’ animals.
In my Amazon Gold Box today: a nail gun.
They know me all too well.
It usually takes twenty minutes to half an hour to deal with my otherwise superb mechanic, so my heart somewhat sank when I realized Wim urgently needed brake work and so I’d probably miss the Monday morning teleconference.
Not so. I breezed in. “Rachel, right?” said Jerry.
“Ancient Volksie, no brakes,” I explained.
“Need a lift?” he asked.
I got to work in time to make a cup of tea and check my email before the call.
I feel both smooth and sharp.
Mark and Big have only been here 48 hours, but already the Vulcan mind meld is in effect.
J: Can you pass me the plum, no, the pear, the apricot…
Big: The peach?
J: I’m having trouble with fruit names.
IN UNISON:
Mark: It’s Mark.
J (pointing): Mark, right?
I had a complementary dream to this one. There were three hessian sacks with children inside. They were all intended to be thrown off the castle walls. (“Good idea,” said Big.)
I only saved one, but in it was a dark-haired baby like Knoa. I was determined above all things to protect her. An angry mob pursued me through the castle, hell-bent on sacrificing the girl in accordance with prophecy, but I managed to evade them, and she was still alive when I woke up.
I’m a little embarrassed: my dreams aren’t usually quite so transparent.
Kathryn: I read your blog but lately it’s just poetry.
R: Yes. Well. The best thing about studying English is…
Mark: Ooh, this oughta be good.
R: …is that the poems stay with you.
Big: That’s worth four years of your life?
R: Six. Well, okay, the best thing about studying English is spending six years doing no work at all and drinking on two continents, all at your parents’ expense.
Mark: That’s what you do now.
Big: Yes, but she’s paying for it.
R: Good point. The second best thing about studying English is getting a job where you don’t have to do much work and you can fund your own drinking. The third best thing about studying English is, no wait, it’s that I get to mock Colin for saying “gifted us with” instead of “gave us”.
Big: Still don’t see why that’s wrong.
R: It just is. Trust me. Anyway. The fourth best thing about studying English, but it’s still good, okay? Is that you get to keep the poems.
Mark: That’s nice, dear.
“The good news is I found out my ex-boyfriend isn’t my biological brother after all.”
“The first time was terrible, then we both fell asleep. The second time, on the plus side, he had a hardon, but on the minus side, also a strong gag reflex. So it was better AND worse.”
preoccupations