My mother never got over her disappointment with marrons glacés. She didn’t reckon smoked salmon was anything to get excited about either. I recently had a similar feeling about lobster mayonnaise – I’d seen it mentioned in novels, as something wonderful and divine – and it turns out it’s cold lobster with mayonnaise. That’s it. I mean, lobster’s quite nice, and so is mayonnaise, but… Maybe together they exceed the sum of their parts.
I once stayed in a bed and breakfast where the landlady seemed to be constantly boiling lobsters. The smell was dreadful. I’m not sure I want to eat something that has to be boiled alive anyway – seems to be overdoing the nature red in tooth and claw bit – which of course the lobster is, once it’s been boiled. Before that it’s blue in tooth and claw. Assuming it has any teeth. Question for homework – do lobsters have teeth?
In case anyone hasn’t noticed, My short story collection, Music in the Bone and other stories, is out now from Alchemy Press. Available from me or from other booksellers. You know you want one! There aren’t any lobsters in it though. Excuse me while I go and sugar my hair.
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I love lobster and marrons glacés – I’m even coming back to smoked salmon (I went off it for a while). I have received a copy of your excellent ‘Music in the Bone’ – I’m sure I wouldn’t swap it for a lobster.
Of course you could take the lobster for a walk, like Gerard de Nerval – you can’t do that with a book.
I once had the perfect opportunity to quote ‘Tis the voice of the lobster’, when my English teacher had slathered my face in 5 and 9 for a school play, and was about to put talc in my hair (I was playing an old man, as usual – it was a girls’ school). As she reached for the talc I remarked, ‘Tis the voice of the lobster, I heard him declare “You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair”‘. A moment of triumph.
How wonderful! Like the time one of my mother’s colleagues was being berated for cleaning something with meths, and said defensively, “It was the best meths,” and my mother responded, “Yes, but you put it in with the breadknife, and some crumbs must have got in.”