A Life Well Wasted

I don’t know whatever exactly happened to dreams of being a pilot and a fireman? Nobody really wants to be a money-making machine as a kid; oh no, our dreams are way more colourful as children.

But I do recall having an adolescent dream that involved food and experimentation. And that is perhaps what mostly has fuelled my quest for gastronomy and is responsible for my undying temptations to try and tackle the un-tasted, not to mention my expanding girth and ever-widening shadow.

Food is a satisfying pursuit: It refreshes, rejuvenates and relaxes. If you manage to eat the right kind, it also nourishes. Wine is something that makes food whole, that gives food meaning, form and definition.

Without wine, food is rather lacking in dimension and depth. If you wanted visuals it would be much like that scene from Jerry McGuire when Tom Cruise goes back to reclaim his relationship.

You can almost imagine a luscious lamb chop telling a muscled magnum of a Bordeaux, “Shut up, you had me at hello…” Yes, I need to get out more.

So, to add to my initial thought, the biggest thing I have done so far is to dream, and eat and drink.

I have had food brought to life (PETA, please excuse the sad and incidental pun) at the hands of some of the best names in the culinary world, I have tasted wines and whiskies and beers made in remote corners of the planet by people who just don’t care about Louis Vuitton or the people who flaunt them and then I have seen things that always bring a smile to my face whenever my entire life flashes before my eyes.

That last one is not always good because it means that I have effectively smiled through earthquakes and minefields.

But, put like that, it doesn’t sound like much of a waste of a life, even though it might sound like one food-rich and alcohol-soaked “wasted” life.

I can live with that. My grand-children may not enjoy the stories as much but just narrating them would rekindle the tastes that I would have enjoyed and they would perhaps still make me drool.

To recount and reminisce about all someone could do and did do for a one square meal, five times a day!

Maybe I could tell them then how I always consider my greatest failure to be my inability to have found someone smarter than me. I may begin to sound batty then but don’t I already? And better yet, I could always claim senility as an excuse then.

But I am not done yet. My fork and knife are far from placed in that parallel position that symbolises the end of a meal.

Other people live their lives like the chapters of a book; mine would be more akin to the various courses of a meal. And I am far from dishing up mains.

So enjoy the starters while you ponder me this, “Are manners and etiquettes free-flow natural form for humans or just an attempt at moralistic suppression of our primal instincts?”