The Inspector-General of Misconception (2 page)

Why of all the great achievements – our battlefield record, our fine civic arrangements, and the other wise components of our culture and nationhood – should we seize on this particular boast?

Even if it were true, if there were a ‘measure' by which seafood could be graded and ranked, or if we alone of all the nations of the world had a coastline and a fishing industry, it would not be to our credit as a culture.

It would be our good luck but not something we could claim as an achievement.

But it is true that cultures do boast of natural wonders which land in the lap of their birth place.

But ‘seafood'?

And to boast of having the ‘best oysters'!?

We looked, firstly, at the claim that Australia had the best oysters in the world. Especially, that of Sydney people that the Sydney rock oyster was ‘the best in the world'.

We sent out an AOA (All Oyster Alert) to Interpol and gastronomic authorities around the world and received an interesting result.

All cultures think their oysters are the best in the world
.

Further, that all the reports received at Our Office about the worth of their oysters on a universal scale were from men.

What had we stumbled on here?

Readers will recall that in the examination of oyster abuse we confronted the oyster-eating inhibition which comes from the resemblance of the oyster to human semen.

The most encouraging interpretation of the boast about having ‘the best oysters' which our team could come up with was that the boast came from men whose gender esteem, at this point in history, was shaky.

It would seem that men who are suffering an anxiety from the ongoing redefinition of the male role, at least still cling to a harmless primitive pride in their national ‘oyster'.

That is, to spell it out, a pride in their own manly essence.

We go too far you say?

While on the matter of lubricity. The oyster more than most food (perhaps the fig, date and banana compete) is seen as a point where the human body and food symbolically meet.

While we do not have any brief or jurisdiction about the cooking of oysters, we do wish to place on record a dish invented by the late John Abernethy, one of our great publishers – the barbecue dish of the Abernethy Oyster Sausage.

The Abernethy Oyster Sausage is a dish where the beef butchers' sausage is half-cooked, taken from the
barbecue and slit open, oysters are placed along the slit, and the sausage returned to the barbecue until fully cooked.

It is eaten in the hand.

The phallic sausage absorbs the oyster flavour, and creates something resembling the flavour of the vagina running with sperm. One might speculate that it provides something for everyone's taste.

(Oh, have we said something wrong, again?)

It is only natural to make associations between foods and parts of the body – where the food and the body become poetry – lubricous or not.

We do not wish to
dwell
on this but comprehensiveness demands a few more notations.

For example, Barbara Holland in her book
Endangered Pleasures
mentions oyster-eating as being ‘lubricous'.

So does Tim Herbert in his wonderful essay on the anus in Australian culture – he refers to the ‘lubricous oyster' (the
Sydney Review
, August 1995).

A Toast:
‘To the Memory of the
Sydney Review
'.

In recent weeks there has been some questioning in parliament and the media of the terms of reference of the Office of the Inspector-General of Misconception.

We believe that the Prime Minister has suggested that we are engaged in some sort of political ‘stew'.

We are disturbed about the Prime Minister's disparaging use of the word ‘stew'. We believe that the stew is an honourable dish. He has to realise that when he speaks like that it makes it difficult for stews everywhere to advance in the society.

This month Our Office has been pondering the paradox that while Australia is one of the great dairying nations of the world, we have been slow to understand cheese or, what is called gourmet cheese; to distinguish it from those over-processed, incorrectly made yellow dairy products.

Misconceptions about cheese abound and these involve the Australian identity and gracious living which is why The Office was called in.

Furthermore, as usual,
we are alarmed
.

The history of cheese in this country is not a happy story.

May we be permitted to illustrate with a personal reminiscence? As a child in the heart of the heart of the richest dairying country in Australia, the south coast of New South Wales, in a family which invented, manufactured and supplied machinery to the dairying and cheese-making industry, the only cheese we tasted as a child was Kraft cheddar and smoked cheddar; neither of which were made in the district in which we grew up.

Now we want to say this quite emphatically, as with tinned food, Kraft cheddar is not bad
in itself.

As for smoked cheese, we believe this could, at a pinch, be defended. It does combine something of the elemental bland solace of milk (the breast) with the comforting smell of warm, snorting farm animals in a barn, combined with the smells and flavours of the smoky open wood fire.

That is, elemental flavours of the hearth and of Times Passed and Lost. But we do not wish, as a statutory body, to defend smoked cheese at this point in our gastronomic history.

May we begin the Inquiry's indulgence and continue our personal nostalgia?

In the thirties, our father installed vats and Ronaldson
and Tippett diesel engines at the cheese factories on the New South Wales far south coast in places such as Yatte-yattah, Bodalla, Kameruka, Moruya, Tilba Tilba, Central Tilba, Candelo and Bega.

And we had one of our first lessons in gastronomy from him. We had bread and cheese for lunch when we accompanied him on one of his business trips down to the farms and dairy factories of the south coast and we said how much we liked the bread and cheese.

He said that bread and cheese was a simple dish but one of the finest.

Back then these factories found little domestic market for their cheeses which were exported or perhaps used industrially in food processing.

Except for Bega cheese, the cheeses sold under these names no longer come from small, local cheese factories and single breed dairies.

Their honourable names have been taken up and applied to cheese made in mass-production factories elsewhere. The Bodalla cheese, for example, sold in the supermarkets is not made at the village of Bodalla; although there is a cheese factory at Bodalla which sells locally to passing customers.

Legend has it that the cheese from these old coastal factories was enhanced by seagulls who nested in the rafters above the vats. If there are any seagulls reading this column we wish to say that no offence is intended.

In the eighties, Chef Bilson made goats' cheese in the cellar of the nightclub/restaurant in Sydney called Kinsellas, and again, similar environmental factors enhanced
his cheese; although the ambient flavours were more human than avian.

Certainly the goats which were kept in the cellar were often a source of much amusement late after the show had finished. But there is no need to
go into that
and, anyhow, we cannot use the names of the goats because it is prohibited under the Family Law Goat Act.

First Indictment:
The ghastly misconception about cheese which this Inquiry is addressing is this: cheeses, as with oysters (groan), are a living thing and
should not be refrigerated
although Bilson suggests using refrigeration to slow down the development of a too-quickly-ripening-cheese.

Real cheese is alive with micro-flora and should remain so during the eating.

Although cheese in Australia is made, regrettably, with pasteurised milk (that is, dead milk) bacteria is introduced into the cheese-making processes to bring it back to life.

Ideally, you buy the fresh, living cheese and eat it that day or the next and do not need to store it. The cheese shop from which you buy the cheese will, of course, keep the cheese in its cool, dark, earthy, cellars beneath the shop.

And if you have cheese left over you too will put it down in a covered cheese holder among your wines in the cellar, won't you?

Now that the Cold War is over, you could convert your nuclear fall-out shelter to this use.

Second Indictment:
As all customers know, but very
few restaurants do, cheese should
never be served chilled
.

The late Joss Davies, a Welsh
bon vivant
, and a well-known lone diner once in a restaurant took a frigid, solid Camembert cheese which had been served to him and pressed it against the cheek of a waiter. To make, presumably, a point.

And it must soon occur to restaurants that individual servings of mixed cheeses (and the serving of single-serve desserts) are running against the dining practice of Australians.

In Paris, that remarkable salon host Monique Delamotte, pointed out to us that visiting Australians take more cheese from the cheese plate than they can eat, leaving the excess on their plate uneaten.

Not only is this wasteful but cheese is seen as a crafted product in a French household and is used appreciatively, not off-handedly.

Where does cheese fit into the configuration of our meal?

The French meal pattern goes appetiser/entrée/main course/CHEESE/dessert/coffee.

The English tend to have dessert
and then cheese
which we believe has something going for it in that the conclusion of the meal with a savoury dish such as cheese leads to after-dinner drinks and jollities.

The Americans eat cheese before the meal as an aperitif. Now look, this Office is not ‘anti-American' but, unless the meal which follows is clearly to be without cheese, it is untimely and something of a misuse of the beauty of cheese.

A tasty cheddar with pre-dinner drinks could perhaps be defended.

Frustratingly, a whole cheese-eating culture has to exist before cheese can become a happy, easy part of our gastronomy.

That is, there has to be a high consumer demand. Cheese has to be a customary part of the domestic, as well as the restaurant, meal.

Cheese could then be bought in small quantities at any number of places for the immediate meal.

It would mean too, that the turnover of the stores would then be high and the condition of cheese in the store would be sound.

Why should we eat cheese? The introduction of varied small courses into a meal, domestic or restaurant, makes the meal itself more stimulating and, at the same time, prolongs the meal, allowing the face-to-face conversational situation of a good table, and the delight in the bountifulness of the planet, to be extended in an exquisitely structured way.

Such a meal is also a reward for our labours that day or a consolation for the trials of that day.

The leisurely meal with touches of grandeur in its food, napery, glassware, cutlery and wine also nobly defies the busyness and exigency of the crudely functional view of life (if you need the name of our naperer or cutler please contact our secretary).

For two hours or so, we can live well.

If you do not wish to extend the face-to-face conversational situation in your present domestic arrangement,
please call our secretary and make an appointment.

First Finding:
The National Food Authority (there is such a body) is hereby ordered to acquiesce to the demand by the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers' Association (nor are we inventing this body) that raw-milk cheese be permitted to be made in this country.

Second Finding:
The National Heart Foundation at present places cheese on the ‘Avoid Where Possible' list. The National Heart Foundation is hereby instructed to remove crafted cheese, appreciatively eaten, from this listing.

We now wish to address the question of Handling Christmas Alone intended not for those who are genuine waifs and strays but more for Those Who Do Not Believe in Christmas and Those Who Do Not Believe in Families and those other malcontents of the world who, because of having been given too many ‘educational' presents as a child, find Christmas Gloomy Beyond Words.

In particular, we wish to focus on the etiquette difficulties experienced by those who prefer to dine alone at Christmas in five-star restaurants.

On being pitied

The first problem is a gross misconception by Normal Society, that on Christmas Day the lone diner is to be treated as a focus of some pity.

Those who pity the lone Christmas diner assume that he or she is either a stranger in a foreign land or has no
one in their life who would wish to dine with them.

The lone diner appears to others as a poignant, if not heartbreaking, sight.

The lone diner is likely to receive notes sent from the other tables requesting that he or she ‘join' a table of generous, joyous,
pitying
strangers.

Or sometimes the staff of the restaurant, unable to bear the sight of a seemingly friendless soul seated there amidst all the ‘gaiety' of intimate and loving tables of people, will invite the diner to the staff table in the kitchen.

This may have the motive of removing the lone diner from sight.

Naturally, the lone diner will refuse all these invitations.

Dressing

It goes without saying that dressing in tails, white scarf, and a homburg is the most snappy shield against the pity of the world. Or anything else from the world.

At any time of the day or night.

For men and for women.

On meeting the accusing question

Upon arriving at the restaurant, the maître d' will, as he or she removes one's overcoat, inevitably ask the indelicate question, ‘Is sir or madam dining alone?'

It is important not to flinch at the question and all it implies.
Social outcast, social outcast, social outcast
.

It is important not to ‘over answer'. Avoid rushing out with an over-elaborate excuse such as, ‘Oh, my brother
Don and his wife were supposed to meet me but his child is ill with a new strain of virus which he caught while on a school excursion to Mongolia and which is puzzling Western medicine and which involves half-hourly administering of a herb which can only be found in Antarctica and has to be flown in by airforce helicopter and which causes convulsions which requires the child to be held down forcibly by both parents. And so they couldn't join me for dinner.'

No. When asked if you are dining alone, simply say, ‘Most assuredly.'

When you enter the restaurant, you may be asked to put on a ‘jolly' paper hat. You may choose to wear it in the spirit of the occasion or you may choose not to wear it. But take the hat. It could be of use later in the meal (see below, under the heading Inaudible Sobbing).

At the table, the table attendant will also say, ‘Dining alone are we?' with the stress on the ‘we', sometimes with less aplomb than the maître d' because the table attendant knows that he or she will have to ‘put up' with you, the lone diner, all evening.

The response to the table attendant is this: In your mind play a favourite piece of music and with your index finger conduct that piece of music.

Forget about the Christmas cracker

Unless the restaurant is particularly sensitive and removes it, you will find at the place setting a Christmas cracker.

Do not under any circumstances pull it yourself.

Don't.

We suggest a prop

The lone Christmas diner requires a ploy which will go some way to blocking the pitying curiosity of Normal Society there in the restaurant.

The much revered late Professor Henry Mayer used the best restaurants in the city to dine alone to mark student examination papers.

That, of course, is the perfect excuse for solitary dining but not on Christmas Day. The Mayer ploy is, therefore, not recommended.

Reading is essential or morbidity will surely creep in.

However, reading seems to others to be a transparently sad cover for loneliness. We have a suggestion: The reading matter, book or magazine, or whatever, can be concealed within an official governmental binder which will imply an urgent state duty which cannot pause to acknowledge public holidays or the birth of Christ.

There is another ploy for introducing a book to the table.

Have your choice of book pre-wrapped as a Christmas present, with a card attached, and carry it under your arm as you enter the restaurant.

Make sure the maître d' sees it and then, when the table attendant is there, read the card, exclaim with pleasure, noisily unwrap the book, and ask the table attendant to take away the expensive wrapping paper, ribbons and bows.

The fake present will also create the impression that you have a friend
somewhere out there.

If you wish, for the hell of it, you could inscribe the
card with something along the lines of, ‘No one could have greater admiration or affection for any living person than that I, and many, many others throughout the world hold for you, the true and living Braveheart. Signed: Mel Gibson, or whoever.

Show the card casually to the table attendant with the comment, ‘Mel is a very dear person.'

It will help reduce the pity.

Make sure Mel isn't in the restaurant.

Why pornography is not appropriate

If you must read and do not wish to carry out either the Official Binder or the False Gift stratagems, we have only one other word of advice.

It is unacceptable to read pornography in a restaurant for a number of reasons, and not only on Christmas Day.

If the pornography is in any way efficacious, the lone diner will find themselves aroused in a situation where relief of that arousal is not readily at hand, so to speak.

Combined with the loosening effects of alcohol, it can lead to advances being made to diners at other tables by the sending of importuning notes, flowers (purloined from the table decoration), business cards, or by gestures and antics which will surely be regretted the next morning.

Likewise, it can lead to Servant Love (for a fuller discussion of this subject see
Loose Living
by Frank Moorhouse).

Falling in love with servants, the seeking of affection from among service people – flight attendants, bank
clerks, bar staff, doctors, dentists, nurses and so on – is socially acceptable if safeguarded by strategic and judicious consideration.

There are unique disillusionments in such encounters.

We are reminded of the film
Wrestling Ernest Hemingway
where Walter, a diner, falls in love with Elaine, his waitress.

He finally visits her in her home and meets her for the first time out of her waitress uniform.

He says, with disappointment, that she looks ‘different'.

‘I'm not in that dreadful uniform,' she says.

‘Oh,' says Walter, regretfully, ‘it wasn't
so
bad.'

But the life rule is that one should take and give fondness, or anything resembling fondness, wherever you find it in life.

A further reason for not reading pornography while dining alone in a restaurant is that it could inflame the passions of the table attendants who inevitably have a glance at what you are reading, and they will not be able to carry out their work calmly.

They will become fixated on your table and neglect other tables.

They will visibly tremble when delivering dishes to your table.

They will become flushed and their conversation will be breathless.

Their dress will become dishevelled and their conduct increasingly lewd.

We remarked earlier that all forays into Servant Love
require judicious and sensitive assessments both of feelings and the methods for showing those feelings. The displaying of dirty pictures on the restaurant table is not considered to be sufficiently prudent or circumspect.

On being traced by a relative

If, on Christmas Day, relatives come looking for you and manage to trace you to the restaurant, the only response is to say:

Adding, sotto voce, ‘Bacchus, you may stay'.

This will usually work.

Your relatives will wish you well in the coming years, shake your hand, and back away out of the restaurant, giving you one last glance and a nervous wave.

You may never see them again.

On abundance and its converse

Lone dining permits you to order idiosyncratically.

Consequently, you do not have to follow the tradi
tional Christmas menu although restaurants often find this annoying, if not sacrilegious.

You may, for example, order three or four entrées (presumably, without requiring a main course) or two or three main courses, in entrée size; or, you may leave some of each dish uneaten.

Or you may order two or three desserts. Or you may challenge tradition by choosing to begin the meal with dessert.

While abundance and idiosyncrasy may be the whimsical freedoms of eating alone, paradoxically, it also allows for delicacy of pleasure; it invites minute attention to the art of eating.

Hence, one of the pleasures of solitary eating is that you can painstakingly and deliberately ‘assemble' a forkful of food.

Whereas, when one is eating in company, conversation and other matters distract our attention from the making of a forkful and it tends to be done habitually, without thought.

However, be careful that you do not take
too long
over the construction of the forkfuls and in contemplation of them.

Studied attention to a forkful of food will eventually attract worried attention. Even clinical attention.

On knowing the path of intoxication

Do not have more than two pre-dinner drinks.

This is a snare called Drinking for Two which is a disorder which comes from imagining that you have
a companion, or, that you
are
the companion.

It can only lead to early garrulousness which, in the absence of company, will very likely be vented on the table attendant.

Or it will lead to talking to oneself. Or to the imaginary companion.

Nor should you drink the house wine by the glass.

This is an indication of gastronomic apathy. Buy a half bottle of excellent wine or better still, buy the Whole Damn Bottle.

The buying of a whole bottle
does not require that you drink the whole bottle
. Mother's Rule of eating everything on your plate does not apply to alcohol. It means that you can have as much of it as you feel like, when you like, without having to be forever waving your empty glass at the distant table attendant who is practising avoidance technique.

The wine which is left at the end of the evening can be a gift to another lone diner, or to a merry table there in the restaurant, or even to the staff.

Or you could carry it out with you, swinging it by the neck.

Knowing the Path of Intoxication: There is a very old saying that the first drink is to revive (that is, to revive the mind and body from the ordeals of the day), the second glass is for merriment, the third is for temptation, the fourth is for folly.

The drink to revive
requires no comment, except that it sometimes requires more than one drink to take the sting out of the day.
Merriment
– merriment can be inward and
does not demand company; one can silently recall merry times, strange things, or allow the mind to play. This, too, may require more than one drink.

The third drink –
for temptation
– also sometimes requires an accompanying drink for this tantalising state to be reached. The state of temptation does not have to be satisfied immediately upon the conceiving of the temptation.

The temptation may be savoured and reflected upon and contrived, and plotted. All of these aspects of temptation can be enjoyed fully when alone.

Temptation is, though, best acted upon that night while the temptation and the night are lush, and while one is momentarily freed of the restraints of decorum.

The final part of the old saying – the fourth drink is
for folly
– is rather ambiguous. Does it mean that this drink is the golden key to delightful foolishness or is it a caution? We have never been able to determine this.

The fulfilment of the temptation may in retrospect be seen as folly. But it is a happy fact that being alone in one's intoxication does not offer much possibility for
excruciating
folly.

Both temptation and folly, though, should be satisfied
away from the restaurant.

Weeping and inaudible sobbing

It is always permissible to weep when dining alone at Christmas. Or, for that matter, on any other lone-dining occasion.

One does not, of course, weep in front of staff unless
it is an honest revealing of self during a Servant Love courtship.

But to weep during a meal in a public place, unhampered by a solicitous companion, can relieve the soul mightily. It allows for pure and immoderate self-pity.

One can shield the face with the napkin or by turning away or by using the ‘jolly' paper hat which was given you when you arrived (be careful, the dye from the hat will run. You may look like Dirk Bogarde in
Death in Venice
except that your hair will be orange or pink).