Food, glorious food

I’ve been suffering from a bad attack of frozen shoulder which has been agony and meant not being able to type or write – bit of an occupational hazard for a writer. Today it’s feeling a bit better but as I have to transcribe an interview I did on Friday, and am interviewing Ian Rankin on Monday (a phoner, sadly, not meeting the man in person), I am saving my energies, so here is something I was asked to write some time ago. About food.

About 15 years ago I developed an intolerance to caffeine which means that tea, coffee and chocolate turns me into a hyperactive lunatic incapable of sitting still. My heart pounds, my hands shake – it’s like having a panic attack. A high price to pay for a few moments of indulgence.

So now I drink decaff coffee, Rooibosh tea and pass on chocolate. Occasionally the odd bit is tolerated, but only a little.

But oh, I do miss it. Looking at a piece of chocolate cake the other day, I could taste the rich velvety sweetness on my tongue. The seductive way it would stick to my teeth. I would sample the dark heaviness for minutes, hours later. Chocolate should be made by kings and queens for royalty, I think. When indulging in chocolate, it should be eaten slowly, every mouthful savoured, lingered over.

I long for the rich bitter taste of freshly brewed coffee that goes so well with bacon sarnies or buttery croissants. When I smell fresh coffee drifting out from someone’s window I sniff, like a Bisto kid, and the smell of it invigorates me, even if I can’t drink it. If other people have a cup, I grab it and inhale, like a glue sniffer. I can imagine the seductive way it slips down my throat, seeps round my system like a snake, winding up the parts that other drugs can’t reach.

I remember, years ago, having friends over for a meal and someone brought a home made tiramisu. This was a way of combining all our favourite foods in one. A smorgasbord of secret delights. A marriage of two powerful families: the rich, powerful coffee with the sensuous, fecund chocolate. Their union resulted in a dish of previously unimagined decadence with an ermine lacing of cream, topped with teasing shavings of chocolate.

Who could resist that?

Interviews and Insecurities

Trust me to tempt fate. Just when I thought I could get stuck into the novel, along comes an interview that will need a lot of preparation. I'm interviewing Patrick Gale, prior to the publication of his latest novel, The Whole Day Through.

As with any interview, I am concerned that I prepare well, which means trawling through old interviews, learning about his background, thinking up new questions, and reading his new novel. I'm currently cross eyed from staring at the computer screen and my brain's reached saturation point.

Before any interview, I am always nervous. Rather like stage fright. Another journalist friend thinks this is a good thing. “It keeps you focused and means you don't get complacent,” she said. “It means you end up doing a good interview.” (I can only hope.) In fact, preparation is the key to a good interview. Compiling the right questions.

But my nerves usually filter into a bad case of sudden insecurity - can I do this person justice? Will he/she – and I – be pleased with the end result? Will my editor be pleased?

There's also the matter of the recession which has hit the main magazine I work for. Redundancies have been made, cuts implemented and many rumours flying around. Obviously as a freelancer I can't be made redundant, but the threat of No Work is always there.

Having said all that, would I swap jobs? Go back to working in an office, or juggling bureaucracy? Would I hell....

Patrick Gale

Yesterday I went to a Wonderful Words day (run by Cornish libraries) with several poets and authors including Patrick Gale, famous for his most recent novel, Notes From An Exhibition, which was picked up by the Richard & Judy book club earlier this year. His website is here . It’s a fascinating novel about a Cornish artist in Penzance and how she and her family are affected by her manic depression, or bipolar disorder as it’s called now. She is ‘saved’ by her husband who is a staunch Quaker, another fascinating topic. If you haven’t read it – do.

I have to say my concentration was somewhat shattered by a) appalling signeage at Tremough Campus (Falmouth university) which directed us the wrong way to start off with. Having wandered round, lost, for twenty minutes, we finally found the right building and the right room, only to discover that they’d run out of hot water and tea. On the basis that if you want something done, do it yourself, I volunteered to go and get some hot water. I was sent on a wild goose chase but finally found the staff room, boiled up two kettles and tipped them into the thermos and returned only to find that no water would come out of it. It turned out the necessary siphon part was missing so we had to nick it out of another thermos.

So you can see that wasted another twenty minutes and I wasn’t my most suave and sophisticated by this time – just gasping for a cuppa. And then I looked round the room and – well. His photographs don’t do him justice. He is stunning. Tall and slim, wearing a cream linen jacket, mauve and white striped shirt (believe me, it suited him wonderfully) and navy blue trousers. But it was his dark eyes that drew me, and dark eyelashes, plus when he smiled, which was often, his eyes crinkled up and he revealed white, even teeth.

In case any of you are getting the wrong idea, I would like to say that I know he lives with his ‘hubby’, Aidan, on a farm near Land’s End. I know, but I can look – and drool – and I did. When not reminding myself that I was a journalist and therefore sort of on duty.

So I sat and listened and watched (nice hands too) and he talks very well – funny, bursting with intelligence, fascinating about Quakers and their way of life. And all the questions he was asked about how he writes, his thought processes, what he does when he’s stuck – I sat there thinking, ‘I do that. Oh, and I do that too.’ Which was kind of heartening and not. The not bit being that while I am delighted at his success (and it’s taken him 10 novels to start actually making money at it), the other part of me is thinking, ‘I want to be there. I want to be published. Now!’ (And no I havent heard back from that agent yet.)

Anyway it was a fascinating morning and he signed one of this books and – the best bit - he’s agreed to give me an interview next year when his next novel comes out. I can’t wait….

Sorry - what did you say?

It’s not often I long for the weekend to be over, but this one I was counting down the hours till 10 past 4 this afternoon.

I’ve gone deaf – sorry, hard of hearing - you see. This happens on a regular occurrence because I have narrow entrances to my ears and when too much wax builds up, my ears need to be syringed. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, but in order for it to happen, I have to put oil in my ears for 5 days before hand. This means that the wax tends to clog up my ears, I feel a huge pressure round my sinuses and inside my head, and frankly Monday afternoon cannot come round soon enough.

As luck would have it, on Friday morning I had to do a phone interview with a consultant. Tricky when you can’t hear the other person well. So I had to start off by saying, “I’M REALLY SORRY BUT I’VE GOT BLOCKED UP EARS AND CAN’T HEAR VERY WELL.”

“THAT’S ALL RIGHT,” he said. “I’LL SHOUT!”

Which he did. And in fact it was fascinating – and I was taping it in case I missed anything - but that’s another story.

Being deaf is a strange experience. Other worldly. Isolating. Removed. All these things. I’m not entirely deaf, of course, but the little I can hear comes from the end of a very long tunnel. If one of my ears pops, I jump, realising how incredibly noisy the radio is, or Mollie’s bark.

Everyday things that I’ve taken for granted suddenly become impossible, or at best far reaching. I start to try and work out what people are saying by watching their mouths. It makes me miserable and weepy. I feel like a little girl, wanting someone to sort it all out for me.

I often think how terrible it must be to lose your sight, but being deaf would run a close second.

Meanwhile roll on 10 past 4 this afternoon…