Eating Dangerously
The thrills and spills of streetfood
What you miss, if you’re not a paid subscriber, is my reading of Eating Dangerously (posted below), a confessional and I hope funny hymn of praise to the food you eat in the street off a paper plate and spill down your front. I say ‘you eat’ but in fact it’s my own excitement whenever I see a food stall selling Vietnamese spring rolls or German bratwurst I’m describing, and my inability to eat such delicacies without looking as though I’ve just come off the grill, or out of the deep-fryer, myself. Sometimes I wonder whether this is deliberate. Is there a rebellious joy in spillage? Do I spill to prove I am a free man?
A word to my subscribers all. As we approach four weeks walking the city together, I thought it might be fun to read this piece aloud. Perhaps you might hear in my voice the pleasure I take drowning in the oils and spices of food consumed on the street.
Though I am new to publishing my words in this form, I am not new to the pleasures of reading them aloud. I regularly contribute to A Point of View on BBC Radio 4, a series in which writers who enjoy talking get the chance to do so on any subject of their choice, high or low. During Covid, when it was not possible to go into the BBC studios, I had to record my talks at home. But the sound quality was poor. Too tinny, they told me. Fortunately, my wife was once a radio producer and advised me that to get rid of the tinniness I would need to record underneath a duvet - better still, under two duvets - and then pack any gaps around with pillows. This I did, hot and hampered as I felt, unable to see without shining a torch on the words I was reading, unable to breathe, my mouth dry, my mind confused, fearing suffocation, and conscious of the ridiculous spectacle I must have presented, like some giant fish gasping in a net of linen. The laughter of my wife, I have to say, did not improve the way I felt. But it must have improved the sound quality because the BBC was delighted with what I sent them and suggested that in future I should record all my pieces that way.
I declined but offered them my bed as a BBC studio the next time there was an epidemic.
I have not recorded this under a duvet. But I am still struggling with the nuts and bolts of Substack, not sure which microphone to speak into, or what the difference is between ‘download’ and ‘upload’, or ‘audio', ‘video' and ‘podcast’ (could I be that techno-illiterate? yes) and so present a picture of incompetence hardly less ridiculous.
Laugh if you will. Indeed I hope you will. I shall take it as a sign that we are getting to know one another.
Now after all that, here’s your recording.