The Feast Problem (1)

I was woken at 6.30 one morning by a hammering on my back door. I quickly dressed and hurried downstairs to find Alun in an excited mood.

“It’s the porridge crew, Jed,” Alun said. “They’re here for their morning porridge.”

The porridge crew consists of residents from the various islands in our archipelago, all sick of the overly sweet breakfasts consumed on the mainland.

Each would take turn supplying the porridge. That morning it was the turn of Eric-the-not-a-Viking, from Danish Island.

“This is the plainest porridge ever,” Eric boasted. “The oats have no taste or texture, they’re filling and nutritious, but lacking in all distractions.”

“Baa,” said Steve, the sole resident of Sheep Island. “My porridge is much plainer than yours, it isn’t even filling or nutritious, it’s almost completely pointless to eat it.“

These rivalries were typical, an austere archipelago as we were, the islanders went out of their way out-austere each other.

They also took turns supplying the water. On this occasion it was the turn of Jeff, the sole resident of Jeffless Island, the only island in the archipelago to completely ban all people called Jeff (a law which Jeff, as sole judge and jury, refused to implement).

“This is the best water,” boasted Jeff. “It has no taste, no flavour, it’s just plain, cool water.”

“Tut,” said Kingtut, of Tutting Island.

“What?” said Jeff.

“Cool water. The water from my island is room temperature. The only distinctive feature of my water is that it’s wet.”

“Baa,” interjected Steve. “My water is barely wet, it’s fluid, but you’re still thirsty after drinking it. It has virtually no useful properties at all.”

These arguments were a daily feature of the merriment that was the Porridge Party.  The arrangements and arguments had remained unchanged for years.  Then, on afternoon, a woman had arrived on the afternoon boat from the mainland.  Alun had raced from the boat to wake me, from my afternoon nap.

“We have a refugee, Jed,” he said.

“A refugee?” I repeated, surprised. A refugee from where?”

“From the mainland, Jed. She’s just gotten fed up with all the nonsense from the politicians and media.”

“Goodness, if everyone thought like that we’d have 60 million refugees.”

I went down to the harbour to meet this refugee, a woman in her 30s.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Babette,” she replied.

“Where are you planning to live?” I said. “Only this island is already full, we have two residents.”

“I heard that there is an empty house. I could live there.”

“Well, it is empty most of the time,” I agreed, “but we do use it to host the morning porridge parties.”

“I don’t mind sharing the facilities, she said, “I just need somewhere to live.”

“This island is a self-dependent community,” Alun said. “We grow all our own food, make our own clothes.”

“Unless we want nice things,” I added. “In which case we just buy them from the mainland.”

“My point is,” Alun continued, “we all have a role. What would you do. Do you have a profession?”

“I’m a chef,” said Babette. “Well, I was. I was head chef at the hotel el posho in the mainland capital.”

“Well,” I said, “We could do with a chef. Nothing fancy mind, but it’s always a chore cooking for the daily porridge party. You could take on that role.”

“And the washing up,” Alun added. “That’s the hardest part, it sets like glue if you’re not careful.”

And so, Babette moved into the empty house, where she would prepare the porridge and water for our daily get togethers.  It didn’t test the full extent of her extensive culinary skills, but she never complained, and never sought to return to her old life. Indeed, her only connection with the mainland was the weekly lottery ticket she bought.

“You’re wasting your money playing the lottery,” I’d always say. “The chances of winning are negligible.”

“You never know,” she’d always reply. “One day my numbers may come up and it may prove to be an important plot device.”

Ten years passed in uneventful fashion.  Every day the morning boat would bring the porridge party to Happy Island, Babette would cook the porridge from whichever island’s turn it was that day, and everyone would sit around complaining and bickering.

Then one day something astonishing happened. Babette’s lottery numbers came up. She won the top prize of a million mainland pounds.

“I expect she’ll leave us now she has money,” Alun said. 

I was therefore unsurprised when Babette asked to speak to me privately.

“The hundredth Happy Island story is coming up soon,” she said.

“It is,” I agreed. “We’re planning a really special story, we’ve written to a range of celebrities asking for a guest visit to the island so that I could write about it. They’ve all turned us down, though.”

“I’d like to cook a special feast to mark the occasion.”

“What, you mean you’ll bring your own porridge?”

“No, I mean I’d like to cook a special meal, of the kind I’d cook at El Posho.  I would use my lottery winnings to buy the ingredients. A one-off event to mark the hundredth story. I’d like to invite the porridge party.”

“I’ll have to check with the porridge party,” I said. I didn’t look forward to this, it took sixteen separate meetings to agree to use a different brand of salt. A fully pledged el-posho feast instead of porridge and cold water was going to be a hard sell.

“It’s Babette,” I announced at the next day’s porridge session. “She wants to cook a special feast to mark the occasion of the hundredth Happy Island story.

“What, she wants to bring her own porridge,” said Eric.  “But what if it’s tasty, nutritious porridge?”

“It’s not porridge,” I said. “She wants to cook a feast of the type she would cook at el Posho.”

“But that’s exactly the sort of capitalist excess that we’re against,” said Eric.

“I know. But Babette has worked hard for us since she’s been here. We don’t want to have to go back to cooking our own porridge.”

“And the washing up, Jed,” Alun said. “That’s the worse of it.”

“It sticks like glue,” said Jeff bleakly.

“Let’s allow her to cook her feast,” I suggested. “Let’s just eat the meal without comment.”

“You’re right Jed,” Alun said. “If we say nothing at all we won’t be betraying our austere principles, and it’s just one meal. We can have an especially austere porridge as our next meal to make up for it.

“Ooh, that would be mine,” said Jeff. “My porridge is easily the blandest in the archipelago.”

“Tut,” said Kingtut, “You know that my porridge is blander than any other.”

And so, the daily ‘whose porridge is blandest’ argument began, and lasted to lunchtime, when the ‘whose toast is blandest’ argument took its place.

Over the next few days, Babette was occupied with arrangements for the great feast.

“Can I borrow your lorry, Jed,” Babette said the next day.

“Yes of course. Do you need it to move provisions?”

“No, I need to run over some hedgehogs.”

“I see. And those original 70s chunky yorkie bars you’ve ordered, are they for the feast?”

“I need to be eating a yorkie bar when I run over a hedgehog, it’s to give it the authentic 70s roadkill flavour.”

The feast was beginning to look rather grand and rather unusual. The next morning boat brought a half dozen Belgian monks, a gang of schoolboys bearing catapults, a tank of fresh halibut, a cage of Antarctic pigeons (the ones with really thick white feathers) and four professional darts players (one of each gender for balance).

Babette never left her kitchen. The monks, schoolboys, halibuts and darts players all took up residence in the empty house.

The next mornings porridge party was full of long silences, where talk of the great feast would doubtless have taken place, were it not banned. Indeed, so long was the silence, the meal passed with neither boast, criticism nor argument of any kind. It was an uneasy peace.

I was woken early the next morning by a hammering on my back door. I rushed downstairs to find Alun standing next to a knnning. (In Happy Island the word ‘king’ is spelt with three additional silent ‘n’s as a sign of contempt for the position).

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s the mainland knnning, Jed,” Alun said. “He’s here doing a tour of his knnningdom.”

“I’m the mainland knnning,” the knnning repeated. “I’m doing a tour of my knnningdom. It’s important for me to understand the day to day life of my subjects.”

“You’ve timed it well,” I said. “We have a special feast today to mark the hundredth Happy Island story.

I rushed to the empty house to inform Babette.

“Can you cater for one more,” I said. “The mainland knnning is here.”

“What, old big ears,” she said. “He always did like my nosh. No worries, we’ve got stacks of food.”

The porridge party also arrived. It was agreed to pass on the mornings porridge to make room for the enormous once in a lifetime feast.

The 11.27 boat brought another visitor. “It’s Gaving Hestfuhrer, Jed,” Alun said, “The Gnnnuardian food critic. (In Happy Island ‘the Guardian’ is spelt with three additional silent ‘n’s as a sign of contempt). He’s writing a coffee table book about the day to day fare of the knnning’s subjects.

“That’s right,” Hestfuhrer said, “There’s no point my writing cookery books for the masses if I have no understanding of what the masses eat currently. I hear you have a daily porridge party?”

“Not today, I’m afraid,” I said. We’ve got a special feast to mark the hundredth Happy Island story.”

At this point Babette came out from the kitchen.

“Don’t just stand there,” she said. “I’m about to dish up.”

“This is Gaving Hest …” I started to say, but Babette interrupted me.

“I know very well who this is,” she said. “Trust a food critic to turn up for my first grand meal in a decade. Well, take your seats, the feast is about to begin.”