Writing For Anna

A little request to share something I had written spun me quickly into a state of panic. I waded knee deep in papers and fossicked out my old diary. I flicked page after page, not being able to concentrate at all on anything I had written until I came to the last entry. Those words took an order, gave an order. Words better written by someone else in a few short lines that summed up all my pages of shameful, self-indulgent verbosity.


The Last Diary Entry 1994

everyone secretly prefers an arbitrary and cruel order which leaves him no choice, to the horrors of a liberal one in which he knows not what he wants but is forced to recognise that he knows not what he wants.

- Baudillard in TWILIGHT OF THE REAL Neville Wakefield


I had staged, about that time, a Dinner Party which quickly evolved into The Dinner Party From Hell. Despite good food made with love -the evening was a disaster and wound down into bitter squabbles. Did anyone notice the beautiful meal I created? Did anyone salute and toast the chef? I was as unappreciated as Babette and her feast. Any pleasure was suppressed by tensions of which I remained largely oblivious to its source. A sour mood prevailed that could render even La Tour d'Artgen and it's 25 million euro cellar to pig swill.



I recall what I cooked more clearly than the tangle of human involvements. We ate a good quality spinach tagliatelle with a sauce of gorgonzola cooked in marscapone,leek and chili served with salad- my trademark seduction recipe. I soaked figs in whisky and stuffed them with a ganache of alcohol soaked apricots and roasted pinenuts and walnuts and coated in dark French chocolate served with an ice cream of Cointreau and chocolate coated almonds, fresh raspberries and King Island double cream. The desert was really great, though given the events I never felt an urge to recreate it.

I learned one thing, however. Never serve your seduction recipe to an entire group of hormonal, lovestruck, EMO lesbians. it was Days of Our Lives chaos by the end of the evening and in the days following.