Читать книгу A Long and Messy Business - Rowley Leigh - Страница 6

Introduction

I have been doing this sort of thing for quite a

while now. When I first started, I tried too hard.

I wanted to show off and I wanted to be

authoritative. If I was writing about Jerusalem

artichokes I would explain that Jerusalem was

a corruption of girasole, a sunflower, that the

French hated them because they had to eat them

instead of potatoes during the war, that they are

a rhizome and not a tuber, then make discreet

reference to farting issues and, finally, I would

give a few recipes. I would have run out of space

in no time.

My first editor, Matthew Fort, whom may God

preserve, gave me a piece of advice from his

days in advertising: ‘tell ’em what you are going

to say, say it, and then tell them what you just

said.’ That sort of helped but it was just a Mad

Men way of describing a school essay or

the form of the classical sonata – exposition,

development, recapitulation. I actually had more

help from Lord Sugar. In those early days I

bashed out my copy – one-finger typing, which

I have not improved upon – on an Amstrad,

a primitive early computer manufactured by

Sugar and in very common use at the time.

Once I discovered the copy and paste buttons,

I was liberated. I realised that I didn’t necessarily

need to decide what I was going to say. I could

just start writing and then move it around later.

That breakthrough led, when I was on form, to

a more discursive style. I just picked up the ball

and ran with it. The actual essay expected was

usually only a five-hundred-word introduction,

and I became adept at starting at point A then

meandering back and appearing as though I

had meant to all along. There were troughs and

peaks but I became well programmed to produce

the weekly ‘piece’, a feat I never achieved at

school or university, and I suspect that my

industry has been a sort of penance for my

former indolence.

However, I was in a bit of a trough by 2010, when

I had been writing for the Financial Times for

five years and writing a weekly column for

fifteen. I was running out of material and too

busy running my restaurant to do much new

or creative cooking. So, when the FT launched a

colour magazine, my heart filled with dread. I

didn’t do pictures. Previously, the FT had given

up trying to produce pictures of food on pink

newsprint paper and my recipes were elegantly

illustrated by little pen drawings by Rebecca

Rose. It suited me: pictures meant a great deal

more work and I became rather proud of being

one of the few food writers who had to rely on

words alone.

On other newspapers I had never cooked the

food in the pictures either. As a working chef,

I never thought I had time. The recipes went out

to a home economist and photographer and they

performed nobly but it was never quite my food.

I decided this time that I couldn’t get away with

that again. I agreed to do the pictures myself,

met a photographer and attempted to negotiate

a rise for the extra work. I didn’t get it.

I had not heard of Andy Sewell. I had put out

some feelers and suggested somebody else

but I liked Andy well enough. It soon became

clear that he had an original turn of mind and

intellectual curiosity. He reads, and can even get

to the end of those interminable essays in the

London Review of Books. We can talk about

opera and classical music. However, he can be

10