Tom Stoppard on living in the moment

Early this morning, I came across this speech from Tom Stoppard's trilogy The Coast of Utopia (which I have neither seen nor read). Herzen is talking about the death of his son:

His life was what it was. Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced?

A couple of hours later, I read a moving piece in the Guardian about Jane Wilson-Howarth's decision to spare her seriously sick infant son the agonies of a medicalised life. Instead she and her husband took him to Nepal, where they were working, so that David could enjoy the life that he had. And he did - the piece was full of baby laughter and smiles, a world away from his traumatised terror whilst in hospital. He died aged three, and is buried in the British cemetery in Kathmandu among 19th-century diplomats, surgeon majors, babies taken by smallpox and Gurkhas. His five-year-old older brother Alex decided David would be reincarnated as crown prince to Shiva, the god of destruction and recreation; he imagined him with a new body and laughing as always, flying around the heavens in a celestial chariot. Here we could savour our times with David, talk about him and even think of our bereavement as a period of good grief - a time that strengthened our family bonds through all the highs and lows we had experienced together.


I profoundly hope that I never have to make such a life-or-death decision. I know from the experience of a close friend how appallingly difficult it is, how much unnecessary guilt there is in the mixture. Some of this is addressed in Stephen Venables' book about his autistic son Ollie, who died of leukaemia. The thought of Ollie's funeral, still brings tears to my eyes - it was a cold, bleak autumn day, the only glimmer of hope coming from the distant sound of children's laughter which echoed round the hillside as the beautiful wooden coffin was lowered into the ground.

How clever of Tom Stoppard to have articulated this simple yet profound truth:

Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late.

Some thoughts on pizza and authenticity

The idea of authenticity in cookery has become powerful, courtesy of research-heavy recipe books ... Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson etc. The writer visits archive / goes abroad, finds a recipe, preferably a peasant recipe, and sets it in stone. It becomes the grail to which the rest of us must aspire. This is followed by a trip to the supermarket for far-flung ingredients - a couple of decades ago, this was fraught with difficulty (you needed a back-up plan, because it was likely that even the biggest and best supermarkets didn't stock, say, Puy lentils, or coarsely-ground polenta). These days authenticity is less work, as we (in the west) expect to be able to buy what we want when we want, regardless of geography or nature.

The problem with authenticity is that life isn't like that. The peasant will make the dish with whatever comes to hand (or not make it because it is no longer possible/seasonal). It will change subtly over the course of a season: the ingredients are local because they are not flown in from the other side of the world, or trucked in from the other side of the continent. And when the recipe moves to another locality, it is altered to fit in with the new circumstances, sometimes resulting in a completely new dish. This approach is now, in the West at least, history (although there are plenty of people who think it's going to be forced on us soon by an energy crisis).

All this by way of introduction to a passage about pizza in Majorca: the pizza can be traced back to the Etruscans; at the Pizza Museum in Italy, historical research based on archaeological excatavtions refers specifically to the portada, a round savoury tart identical to (Majorcan) coca de verdures. What we have (in Majorca) is the authentic pizza which the Romans taught us to make when they settled on the island; we've carried on making it in exactly the same way. There are more than 400 recognized ways of making pizza, and 1,000 variants of each recipe; everyone has added his own particular stamp."

Two thoughts: authenticity here is understood to be a method rather than a recipe. And I bet the 400,000 recipes don't include pizza with ham and pineapple, or with vindaloo. Each - mystifyingly - much loved in their countries of origin (both far from the Mediterranean).


This post is prompted by Tomas Graves's book, Bread and Oil, Majorcan Culture's Last Stand. Too early to say exactly what I think of it, as I'm only on page 46, but so far it's interesting, if a little fierce.

The photograph is of a potato pizza I made recently. It seems such an odd combination, but it is one which works well (so long as you ignore the health police, who seem to have it in for potatoes, but that's a whole 'nother story for another day). Mine wasn't good enough to pass on the recipe, but if you're interested in making one, you should consult Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups.


Related links

White pizza with fennel seeds
Pizza bianca with rosemary
Pissaladière
Pizza for lunch
River Cafe pizza dough


Links to pizza on other blogs

Susan at Farmgirl Fare is a great baker, setting up her own bakery, and knows a thing or two about pizza ... there are lots on her site
Lemon pizza from the Wednesday Chef .. yes, I'm not sure about that one, either ;)
Gluten-free pizza from Karina's Kitchen

A little righteous indignation ... sorry!

The BBC's got a lot to answer for. Last night, half-watching cookery programmes while fiddling around in the kitchen, I heard John Torrode on Masterchef say that parsnip and cherry made a really good sauce. Really???? How can that be? SO decadent, destructive even. We really have to get out of the habit of flying ingredients around just so's we can have an interesting sauce on our plates.

This morning, same scenario, another cookery presenter, James Martin, was explaining salade nicoise. He gave a list of correct ingredients, then: you don't have to use those, it's just a salad, you can use anything you'd usually put in a salad. Huh??? Why would it still be a salade nicoise, with different ingredients.

That's the joy of having the house to myself: tv cookery programmes with added righteous indignation - only possible on my own ... and the joy's already wearing off.

Thank you to everyone who's sent good wishes to Lucius - I've been really touched by all your concern. He's doing well after a slight problem with his drugs, and is hoping to be allowed to get out of bed today. I'm just off to see him now.