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July 28, 2007
The Parable of The Ugly Cheese.
Approaches To Creativity.
I had a nightmare last week. Not caused by eating cheese, though there was cheese in the offing as it turned out thanks to Radio 4’s Food Programme broadcast the following afternoon.
“Twenty-four years of my life spent on it”, I woke myself up shouting.
Twenty-four years of trial and error touring alone, having an average of forty-two pounds a week to live on during one very lean period so the Suffolk Coastal District Council Housing Benefit Investigation Department was able to inform me, performing in spite of everything from pulled calf muscles and pleurisy to thrush caught when I was having an affair with a married man whose wife had it and which chaffed like hell when I grands fouetté relevé’d, getting to the stage when I was such a sunk soufflé of tiredness I accidentally auditioned for Miss aka Nicky Ness Ruler of the CSE to be sent to Iraq, honing Galina to ten minutes of Pas De Chatting, innuendoing, and swooning into the arms of a Royal Marine Commando on a stage made-shift from six orange crates covered in flattened scoff boxes in the deserts of Um Qasar.
It was three am; and I worry that I often wake then, because the accepted wisdom is that a person with depression wakes at two, one with anxiety at four. I was sitting up gesturing to what would be the heavens beyond but that was actually the box with my Poundstretcher Christmas Tree in on top of the wardrobe.
“Twenty-four years”, I repeated, snuggling down to count Shades to get me back off to sleep.
Sleepless In Sweden Heaven And Hell
The cheese segment (see what I did there?) of the Food Programme came from a food and drink festival on the banks of the Dordogne. It began with a French cheesy saying of one English cheese, “Now it does not have a story. But given time in the future and it will. The English must not be afraid to make modern, ugly cheeses. There is too much pretty imitation French cheese to be seen.”
“Absolutely”, I said, not looking up from a one-man PC Solitaire Olympics.
Next two festivals exhibiters were interviewed about their approach to making cheese. First up the man who had not flinched from foisting on the world the ugly bugger of a cheese discussed above.
“It was all I ever dreamed of, making cheese”, he said in a Lancashire accent, “and I know that sounds daft, but it was. It wasn’t in my family or anything – my father was an accountant – but I hankered to make cheese. Then I saw come on the market the only dairy that I thought we – my wife and I – would ever be able to afford – so I talked her into giving up everything we had in the North and moving down to Somerset where this dairy small-holding happened to be. And for a while, I have to say, it didn’t all turn out well. I had a recipe that I followed, but it wasn’t producing a cheese we could sell, let alone that was going to excite anyone. Everything we’d put into that business, too. I could see it going down the pan. Then one very late night I was so tired, I made a mistake with the amounts I put in the mix, and against all the odds, the result was outstanding. I remember the look on the wife’s face when she tried it, and friends told me they loved it, we sold out at the local markets, so that decided me to give it a try over here.”
Next up a woman from Bayswater.
“I was already involved in a number of catering outlets anyway, and we had a good look round Neale’s Yard, for one example, to see what was missing from the market, and we decided there was room for a strong Brie-like soft white with a strong cabbage after-taste, so we went into production and here we are with it.”
Don’t you hope it chokes her?
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