Today's Menu

Today I shall be mostly eating -

- but before I tell you, I'd like to mention the important subject of Afternoon Tea which is v. good at The Midland Hotel in Morecambe, and which I ate yesterday. Look, I'll prove it:

Whilst one is deciding which cake to eat first, the sky and sea meld in a blue-grey sweep of bay, shimmering beyond the plate glass windows of the sun terrace. Eric Gill designed a glorious medallion for the hotel's entrance. I was entranced.

Earlier, my companion and I (hem, hem - note how effortlessly I slipped into restaurant criticese - Giles Coren, watch your back) had been lost in a second-hand book shop with a stuffed goose, and had met the chap who tracked down the Carnforth Station clock to a garden shed in Hammersmith. It has a tick - no, more of a thud - like a steady heartbeat as the nails that weight it fall when the pendulum swings. (The clock, you fool, not the garden shed.) We also met the horologist who had revived the clock after its shed sojourn, and a characterful buffet barman. You will agree that our afternoon tea had been well earned.

Tea at The Midland is the title of a prize-winning short story by David Constantine. You can listen to a little of it here. Though I'm not sure I believe that the vast plate glass windows shook; they looked far too steadfast.

As local bowling champion, Tinker Pulford, will attest, in the North people talk - whether one wants them to or not. I am glad. Silent types would never have encouraged us to stand under a vast Victorian clock listening for a heartbeat.

But that's enough of yesterday. Today I shall be mostly eating ...

Breakfast: carrot juice with fresh ginger
Lunch: carrot and orange soup.
Afternoon tea: carrot cake
Dinner: carrot loaf with carrot purée, carrot julienne and carrot salad.
Supper: boiled carrots.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will spot a theme. It could be worse. Eric Gill did dreadful things to his dog. I am merely planning to do dreadful things to the characterful buffet barman.

The Saddest Story in the World

Last year, I was working as Poetry Waitress ("So, ladies, what can I get you? Tea? Coffee? And would you like a sonnet with that?") when an elderly lady told me the most tragic story I have ever heard.

I have just re-read The Aeneid and even Chapter 4, where Dido (a name ripe for graffiti) throws herself onto the funeral pyre is nowhere near as sad as The Tale of Brownie.

Brownie was the only hen hatched from seven eggs in an airing cupboard in a small terraced house in Prescot in 1948. Her brothers were destined for pies, stews and rissoles, but Brownie was spoiled. She was cuddled, petted, never fed egg sandwiches - What? Encourage cannibalism? - and nested in a tea-chest by the kitchen range at night.

When the children came home from school, the first thing they asked for was Brownie. They kissed her before they went to bed. At weekends, they followed her up and down the alley as she pecked in the gutter for scraps.

Over time, Brownie developed a nervous complaint that caused her feathers to moult. The children were distraught. Brownie shivered with cold.

The children's mother knitted Brownie a pullover out of green wool. (She was a woman unbound by stereotype or cliché). Brownie regained her joie de vivre.

For a day.

The next morning, the children ran into the kitchen to greet their pet and found her hanging by the neck, swinging from the mantlepiece, strangled by her new pullover.

Now, can you think of a single story that is sadder than that?

Morris

I'm not saying I have to grow a beard, he said, But I'll look weird if I don't. I moved into the spare room. You have to draw the line somewhere. He went out three times a week to practise; sticks, swords, pigs' bladders - these days you can get anything off the Internet. I'll be home by nine, he said, then ten, then eleven. Not that he could sneak in after a skin-full. His bells gave him away. And you can't tiptoe in clogs.

I've never liked Morris anythings. There was a Maurice at The Playhouse. The handyman. His wife - Mrs Maurice - passed out at a cast party, in a bed on stage. La Traviata, a big four-poster all trailing lace curtains and satin sheets. Maurice was in the Green Room goosing the usherettes. That summer, when the theatre was dark, he painted the skirting boards in the ladies' loo red. People said it was tactless. A bit pointed. I never understood what they meant, but then I was only sixteen and there was a lot I didn't understand.

There's a lot I don't understand now, if I'm honest.

And the other Morris. I'd offer my cheek and he'd turn my head to kiss me full on the lips. Sometimes he tried to slip in his tongue. Cold lips, like a dead fish. I kissed him out of politeness, because it would have been too rude not to. Once, he crept into my bedroom. I was half asleep, half awake - almost dreaming. He loomed over me and I saw my mother. And even though I was twenty-four, I raised up my arms like a child to hug her, then felt those clammy lips stealing away my breath and screamed. As if a scream would stop a man like him.

Something happened in a Morris Minor. It wasn't minor, that's all I want to say about that.

So you can see, I'm not being hysterical. And I am glad my husband's got a hobby. A man needs a hobby. Just not this one.

Addicted

Basia has never smoked. She doesn't like the taste of alcohol. She tried drugs once; snorted cocaine at a cast party, but blew her nose immediately and was surprised by the fuss.

She is driven by other addictions; an obsession with handicrafts; knitting, patchwork, hooking rugs. She has never sent a shop-bought card. Her dining table is inlaid with a mosaic of large blue fish. She spent three months shaping the tesserae out of air-hardening clay. Now she eats her meals from a tray on her lap.

She spends all of her spare cash in art and craft shops; the haberdashery floor of department stores; the cheap market stalls where silk flowers are two for a pound.

There is not a lot of spare cash. Wardrobe assistants in provincial theatres are not well paid.

Three nights a week she is rota-ed as a Theatrical Dresser. She is careless with props; the gloves, hats, strings of pearls that make costume changes stressful. She ignores the play's progress, sitting in the wings knitting or sewing. Flustered actors irritate with their demands for buttons to be fastened. She is careless with pins and needles.

"You stupid cow!" Friar Tuck shouted when his heel was stabbed.

Basia is a thief, but a very honest thief. She would never steal from work, and when she does steal from a shop she always pays for something else at the same time. She regards this as Buy One Get One Free. She stands at a till, slipping a craft knife or a tube of bugle beads into her bag as she roots around for her purse to pay for a skein of embroidery silk.

Recently, however, she finds that she is stealing things she doesn’t need; sandalwood oil, a manicure set, drill bits. She makes a point of chatting to security guards in shops, asking for directions to the stencil paints or yoghurt-covered raisins. As they answer, she slides Kosher stock cubes or pork-flavoured dog chews up her coat sleeve. She thinks most men are stupid.

Last week she stitched a secret pocket into her coat.

Her friend, Rob, says she is going too far. “What if you get caught, Basia?”

“Pff!” she snorts, snipping off a trailing thread.

“You’ll get a criminal record. You won’t be able to join the Civil Service or travel to America.”

“I don't like Abroad,” she says, producing a duck-shaped egg cup from her sleeve. “Here, for you. I don’t eat eggs.”

Rob blames the Polish grandmother. All that talk of the War and communist deprivations. Basia behaves as if rationing is making a comeback. He has seen the restaurant sachets of sugar exploding from the cupboard under her sink.

Basia now refuses to go shopping with Rob. He has become nervous and makes her look suspicious by default. She misses their trips to town, but he is too much of a liability.

She met him at art school four years ago. They almost slept together but the moment passed. He is trying to make a name as an Installation Artist. His flat is strewn with banana skins in varying stages of decomposition, from green, to yellow, brown and shriveled black. He smells like a compost heap; a musty sweetness. He has asked Basia to save her apple cores and egg shells.

“I don’t eat eggs,” she reminds him.

To be honest, Basia doubts whether Rob will ever make it big in the art world. He has the soul of a policeman.

The Skyrack

At lunchtimes, I worked with Elsie. Seventy-six, arthritic she said during the War she had to knock on the door of the Snug. Flushed ladies adjusted their stockings; she’d look the other way as she gathered empty glasses and catch a wink from a man in uniform.

The apprentices from Leeds United boarded with her. They got homesick and she made them miss their grannies.

Her son-in-law, a folk-singer, gave her that marry-joo-arna to try last month.

“What was it like?”

She sniffed. “I’d rather have a cup of tea.”

A croupier from the casino was in after his shift, heard my curiosity; offered to initiate me. I took him at face-value – I was a silly girl – and followed him home.

His mother was waiting. She put down her book, made space on the sofa. Sat too close.

He made instant coffee, black and bitter, picked a green apple from a bowl on the table, scooped out the pale, watery flesh; lined it with silver foil. He stabbed at the waxy skin with a hollowed Biro, sucked at the beads of juice. There was a block of something brown, crumbled between his long fingers. His Zippo lighter flared. Outside the sky was falling dark.

He sighed, passed the pipe to his mother.

She sucked hungrily swallowing the sweet, heady smoke said, “This makes him randy. I used to dress up his last one. I like to feel involved.”

The croupier smiled, rubbed his thumb in slow circles just above her knee. She passed the apple-pipe to me.

As I said, I was a silly girl.