Day 718: I Link To An Albanian

Little to report, other than the endless production of jam and the 'countdown' to my second blog anniversary (!!!).

However, I have found the web-blog of an Albanian (who learnt her English from the internets, no less), whose main hobby (apart from learning English from the internets) is collecting photographs of dogs in wigs. You cannot, as they say, say fairer than that.

Day 707: I Have English Teeth

"In England, my teeth are considered rather good", I squeak. I am attempting to look supercilious whilst horizontal on a high-technological dentist's chair. I am not succeeding.

"I will be the judge of THAT", says the dentist. She is a lady; her husband is a cosmetic surgeon. Their eyes met across an escalator on a Toronto underground station; weeks later (O happy chance that brings us randomly together!), they were introduced at a party; a year after that, they were married. They have five children and live what is called a 'lifestyle' lifestyle, involving matching pouffes, spreads in local newspapers and stories about their romance bound in plastic and inserted in a fake Morocco folder in the upholstered waiting room.

When we meet for the first time, she asks me a great many questions, some of them involving the state of my mental health. "Have you ever visited a dentist outside Britain?", she asks. She looks sad when I tell her I have not; it is like telling an oenologist that you have only ever consumed Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon.

In the books and on the television that comes from 'across the pond', they talk about English teeth like they are bad. In England, you do not notice them being particularly awful; after all, many of us are equipped with a set of efficient, if slightly off-colour, teeth; more to the point, we are all (in some almost primeval way) dimly aware that if the worst comes to the worst, we can have our rotting stumps removed and replaced with a spanking set of dentures that will, at night, fizz gently in their special glass whilst we dream of treacle tart and trifle.

We are led to believe that the Americans are fools; that their heads are empty, filled only with great glistening slabs, eternally brushed and tended to by multi-millionaire cosmetic dentists, and good for no more than flashing in the Californian sun. It is almost as if good teeth are somehow a mark of vanity; of a life badly led, spent looking at oneself in the mirror and brushing one's hair before going out in public.

The truth is alarming. Canadians (North Americans in a great many ways!) have, on the whole, quite beautiful teeth. Even the ones who say they are frightened of dentists have beautiful teeth; bright without being too bright, set in firm pink gums, perfectly hewn for gnawing on maple taffee and logs and snapping the tops off Molson bottles.

They are quite distracting, these beautiful teeth. They make me want to close my mouth in public. They make me say strange things to colleagues; why, only last week I looked one in the mouth and sobbed: "My God! Your teeth! They are so beautiful!". I have bought yet another electric toothbrush and a water pic, three types of floss, two types of toothpaste and yet another type of mouthwash; in the supermarket I stand, slack-jawed, staring in wonder at the home whitening kits.

But it is no good. I have always brushed and flossed my teeth twice at day, and sometimes three times a day. I do it in the right style, according to all the tooth-brushing experts. But still they insist on being bad. One has fallen out. The other, saved with the glue of a white filling two years ago, has snapped clean in half. According to the Canadian dentist, my teeth are in grave danger of falling out altogether; I am apparently showing symptoms of potential future gum disease. They are rather yellow, apparently; the front one, chipped by my brother in 1975, could be straightened; it is a miracle that my jaw is not misaligned.

"Your teeth are not good", says the dentist. "Every time English people come here I think, surely one will have good teeth! But no, all of you have terrible teeth. Do your dentists actually go to dental school?".

I am released on to the street some time later clutching a free lip balm and a 'dental health plan' that will cost approximately $3.2m to execute. I leave Toronto and come back to Montreal.

That afternoon, I get the number of a Montreal dentist from the woman with the beautiful teeth. Something shifts: that day I notice, for the first time, the cheerful night-time signage of the neon-lit Canadian dentist. In their happy shapes I see the hope of future teeth, smiling brightly and bravely into hopeful morning. It is not too late. No. It is not too late. (What is more, according to the signage, in Montreal the toothbrushes make sex with the toothpaste!!!)

Day 706: I Urge You To Buy A Book

No, but really. It is quite ridiculous. I have mentioned this before, but I really do urge you to rush to buy this book. (A light application of your readerfingers upon this link will take you to the right spot at Amazon.)

In it, it shows you how to make bread without all the kneading and fanciness. You need to buy a couple of things (e.g. a pizza stone and thing to shove the bread in the oven with), but for an outlay of a few quid, you get to make your own bread, every day, in a fantastic 'proper cook' style; and what's more, it is bloody delicious, yes yes, like the bread you get from fancy bakers that costs a tenner and is usually hand crafted by some humourless tofu-shoe-wearing white-dreadlocked worthy* at the local farmers' market. You know, the kind of bread that is probably good for you, and yet quite delicious.

I am quite overwhelmed by the whole thing. It is bliss. I shall put up photographs and you will see what I mean - right this very minute, for example, a loaf of that slightly sour bread, studded with dried apricots and pecans, is rising, waiting to be baked, smothered in my home-made strawberry jam, and finally crammed into my hot receiving monkeymouth.**



* This type of person invariably went to public school, is called Piers, and went through a phase of having a dog on a string and living in trees. At the weekend, he goes back to Mummy in Gloucestershire; she washes his tie-died pantaloons and feeds him roast pheasant. He tells the friends with whom he shares a 'space' in Hackney that he is going to a 'retreat'. It is only a 'retreat' in as much as he 'retreats' to the sitting-room, whereupon he sits in front of the television scratching his testicles and watching the EastEnders omnibus.

** I have attempted to fill this paragraph with some of the more unpleasantly vulgar food words; can you spot them all? The glaring omission is 'moistened', of course.

Day 702: I Do Not Want The Waiters To Lick The Bread Out

We are dining in a 'ress-trundt', as Ramsay would say. It is a bit fancy, i.e. there are tablecloths, waiters, more than one knife and fork, etc. I am with my companion and 'life partner', a French-Canadian veterinary research pathologist who cuts his own hair and likes bats. He is one hundred per cent bilingual, but still foreign; in other words he has an accent.

"Here, they give you bread with tongues."

I am astonished! In my head is bread and next to it a small rectangular dish bearing larks' tongues, all lined up in a row and garnished* with some curlyparsley. "Tongues?".

"Yes. Tongues."

Suddenly it is getting much worse. Now in my head the waiters are bringing the bread to the table in a basket; they line up and then somehow flick the bread from the basket onto our plates using their tongues, which are like giant versions of what lizards have curled in their heads.

I am going a bit red in the face, and I am starting to get quite angry. This is not making any sense at all!!!

"What do you mean, they put the bread on our plates with tongues? What are you talking about?".

The pathologist makes a pincer movement in the air with his microscope-manipulating scientistfingers. "Tongues! Tongues! You pick things up with them!".

I fall silent. We drink the wine. The waiter comes with bread.




* vile word, like 'notepaper' and 'pardon'.

Day 689: I Wonder About Toast Racks

I am attempting to give myself an immediate and cheap 'permanent' hairstyle by sticking a knife in the toaster. My PopTart* is stuck!!!

Some time later, I am seated at the breakfast table of our palatial Quebec mansion. Sundry toasted goods are strewn over the table like so many pieces of flotsam and jetsam; crumbs loll on the carpet; tiny patches of steam gather on the table where the toast has fallen; slowly, it becomes soggy. A dog barks in the distance; someone, somewhere, is playing Genesis' "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)". (Me, I'm just a lawnmower.)

The pathologist with whom I share a house (and occasionally toothbrush, if we are on a journey and I have forgotten mine) sighs as he watches me bend my toast backwards and forthwards. "We need a toast rack", I say.

Suddenly I am in every British hotel everywhere. It is the morning and we are sitting in the 'restaurant'. There is a big window, and through it I can see the sea; it is probably Bournemouth. Old ladies and men are walking up and down the front in macintoshes and their umbrellas are being blown inside out. They would like to be sitting inside a tea shop drinking cups of tea and eating macaroons, but they are not.

A lady in a burgundy uniform approaches: do I want tea or coffee, and do I want my toast white or brown?

I know what is coming next!!!!! There is a pot of tea, and there is toast. It is in a toast rack. It is cut in triangles and it is going cold, but cold in a non-soggy style; it is becoming chewy. On it, you must put butter and Marmite or jam or marmalade from a plastic pod. You will eat it all, and the lady will come with your scrambled egg and lone sausage, and she will put it down and she will say: "more toast?", and you will say, "yes". One hour later you will still be eating toast.

"A toast rack?", says the pathologist. I push the cat off the table, where she is trying to make sweet love to the cheese. "You can't get those here. When I think of England, I think of toast racks. I don't think I've seen them anywhere else."

"When you think about England you think about toast racks?", I roar, wiping jam from my eye. "You could be thinking about all sorts of things, like the Queen, and Shakespeare, and Gordon Brown's glass eye, or our newspapers (which are better than yours) or Nigella Lawson's bosoms, and you say toast racks?"

The pathologist looks unmoved. Over the following months, I visit a great many shops looking for a toast rack. There are none. I try and find on the line in Canada; there appear to be none, unless on a ghastly 'British Fayre' web-site. My mother asks: "is there anything you want from England?", for she is coming to visit. When she arrives a week later, she brings with her a toast rack, and my father.

It is helping a very great deal. Despite its many practical benefits (holds toast and prevents it from becoming soggy), it also helps alleviate the constant confusion generated by the fact that petrol stations do not sell Ginster's Cornish Pasties, or that it is impossible to buy a good newspaper or knickers that fit: in short, my toast rack is alleviating my homesickness (whilst providing an excellent practical service). What a boon!


*I am not really making PopTarts. Do not worry. I am toasting bread that I have made with my own hands from straw and the dust from the cat litter tray. Or that, at least, is what it tastes like.

In other news, I offer you some film of Genesis performing I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe). "What the cocking hell is Peter Gabriel doing, and why are you suddenly so very interested in early Genesis?", I hear you cry. It is a long story, my friends, and one that is not without some embarrassment.