May the spirit of Jennifer Paterson bless and keep me
Oh to be Jennifer Paterson, to bathe in her wisdom, her dismissal of modern health trends and traditions of aristocratic circles to which she nevertheless belonged on her own terms, her revelling in her own, what might be perceived as lack of success in life, and the frocks that she was fond of, primarily because the bulky pockets could hold a jar of her favourite tipple which left her hands free to light a cigarette. Gone are the days when I could make out a schedule for myself for the next day, usually stipulating I would be up at the ghastly hour of seven in the morning, and stick to it. Being poor makes me no more creative, though it is an incentive to sit in a room and write something, even if it means looking at the page for hours, or renouncing myself to watching videos on the internets to switch off the brain. And to revive spirits, Two Fat Ladies is just the thing.
I decided to stay in Edinburgh, if it’ll have me and if work can be obtained, primarily because it reminded me of Dublin, and because it has a jazz club AND a comedy club. Walking along Arthur’s seat just a fifteen-minute walk from my guest-house, it seemed you can get lost up in the hills and beside the sea, within very easy reach of a bustling metropolis below. I’ve left my camera somewhere down the crazy river, so I don’t have photo evidence, which is just as well. I’m sure the country will call soon, and I’ll be off, but until then, I’ll turn pale in urban squalor. The thrill of being poor and free, though the most uncivilized and greatest of conditions, will wane off soon, but in the meantime, I celebrate those who uphold the spirit of the condition.
Just as a side-note, another current obsession, besides Jennifer and Clarissa, and Dan Snow’s history of the locomotive, Sherlock Holmes has loomed large in my life, not least because of the BBC”s brilliant modern-day, though quite faithful to Doyle, adaptation. I only watched the series fully over the holiday season – that Cumberbatch has the leading role is, of course, quite all right with me. I can’t wait for the next train journey, that I can indulge in a copy of the whole Sherlock collection, and let my imagination get into all sorts of sticky situations. I took it far too seriously because I thought “Yes, better to be immune to emotions, so one can build that wonderful attic of the mind, and have the sensory receptors fully open.” However, Sherlock was perpetually in awe of something, and indulged his curiosity, sometimes at great personal expense, both of which are the most useful of emotions, without which life would be pointless.
I discovered Jennifer through Two Fat Ladies in a distraction-searching frenzy in university, and breathed a great sigh to discover that people like her and her partner-in-cooking, Clarissa Dickson-Wright existed, though Jennifer had perished by then. A friend of hers said in a documentary, that upon discovering she had cancer, the nurse assigned to look after her asked if she needed anything, to which she replied “Have you a cigarette?” In the programme, while mixing all sorts of ingredients with pink-manicured hands, she doesn’t speak instructions; she sings them, or recites an appropriate Shakespeare or Noel Coward verse to accompany each sentence. When referring to a group of society ridiculed by the fat ladies, she speaks of “those poor, little vegetarians.” She wanted to be the lady in the circus, jumping over horses, and discovered cooking in her twenties while strolling through markets in Benghazi, where she was assigned to look after a relative. Eventually this led to catering and cooking jobs, including for The Spectator luncheons, brilliant, boozy affairs by the sound of it. She was sacked numerous times because of her lack of deference to authority, but the fact that she knew most of the guests better than the host, and that she kept returning to the job the next day, made it difficult to continue sacking her. Only after she threw a set of crockery out the window at the funeral parlour across the street from the paper headquarters, was she finally let go. She returned next week to contribute a recipe column.
I’m not sure about her professed, enduring faith in God and loyalty to Catholicism. I suspect it had something to do with an idea of love Alain de Boton talked about, which is that loving someone spares us the need for anybody else. She was devoted to her religion, which freed her up from needing partners, or anybody really, and it allowed her to be her gregarious, mischievous self in all those parties by the Riviera, or in London high society. The only thing is she didn’t approve of the countryside, as far as I can tell from the programme, and preferred her motorbike to walking the winding paths. But she looked so stylish in her pretty machine, I can forgive her for it.
I’m hoping she’ll watch over me, in a brief lapse into religious spirituality, and over all those militaristic left-wingers, and lovely, sophisticated ladies out to lunch about to order a salad, and bakers about to use yoghurt instead of double cream. Success seekers, sea shanty singers, stock brokers, freedom narrators, time wasters all.
Picture sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/716608.stm http://www.tampabay.com/features/food/general/article744373.ece
peripathetica 