Do you read at mealtimes? And if so, what?
The fact you’re looking at this blog in the first place leads me to believe you may be a fan of books. And while there is the odd person around who doesn’t like food, they are just that – odd. Surely most of us would agree with CS Lewis that ‘eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.’ In fact for many, having something to read when you’re eating alone is a necessity. Nothing worse than the old torture of being stuck at breakfast with only the cereal packet separating you from boredom. You try and manufacture some interest in the fact that Rice Krispies offer 740 kilojoules per 30g serving, but it’s just not happening.
Lewis was picky in his choice of mealtime reading. ‘It would be a kind of blasphemy,’ he said, ‘to read poetry at table. What one wants is a gossipy, formless book.’ The fact that he goes on to include in his examples Lang’s History of English Literature, a translation of Herodotus and The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton show that Lewis’s take on ‘gossipy’ might be rather different from yours and mine (pass the Russell Brand autobiography, would you?). But the point still holds: we need a bit of mental stimulation as we chow down.
The issue isn’t whether, it’s what. Lewis liked his books at dinner, but I’ve never managed to get to grips with them. Physically, I mean. Hardbacks are just too big to keep open by having something placed on them. A slim paperback might just respond to the ‘salt cellar on the lefthand page, pepper mill on the right’ trick, but even then there’s the problem of balance, and making sure you don’t obscure any of the text, and having to faff around lifting them both up every time you want to turn the page. Alternatives include the far edge of your plate across both pages, or one of those stands that cooks use to hold their recipe book. The latter might be rather fitting, but you can hardly cart one around to restaurants, can you?
The other option is to hold your book in one hand and eat with the other. Works for curries and Chinese, not so good in a steakhouse. (Unless you take the American option of cutting up your meat before you start. This, incidentally, was one of the things that earned the Monty Python team the ire of the hotelier on whom John Cleese based Basil Fawlty. Seeing Terry Gilliam tackle dinner in this fashion he came over and said ‘we don’t eat like that in this country.’) But holding even a paperback tires your hand after a while. Here, as in so many other ways, the e-reader (easily propped against a condiments tray) could revolutionise the way we consume books.
Finally there’s the question of manners – is it the done thing to read a book in a restaurant? (I’m still talking about dining alone, though the comedian Fred MacAulay says he and his wife have been together so long that when they go out for a meal now they each take a book.) No one’s going to object in Pizza Express, but what about the posh places? Something tells you it should appear a touch vulgar, or at least out of the ordinary, but then you realise that that’s only because eating on your own at all is less common in upmarket restaurants (sharing the treat being itself a part of the treat). One of the most stylish things I have ever seen was a man enjoying lunch on his own at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, pre-prandial G&T in one hand, paperback in the other. It exuded self-confidence, but in a quiet, understated way, not a ‘look at me, look how self-confident I am’ way. Sadly I can’t remember what the book was. Also I left before his food arrived, so I can’t tell you how he dealt with the ‘keeping the pages open’ problem. But by God he looked cool.
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