Notes & Queries response: "Are there any foods that have not at some time been considered harmful in a study?"
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| image generated by Craiyon |
This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website, on the 18th September, 2022
The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site.
I am replying here instead because it is too good a writing exercise to give up: How quickly can you go from a prompt, a blank mind, and a blank page to a finished piece? And how good can you make it?
This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use.
Time has caught up with both of us, and has laid down a few clauses that we must adhere to, if there is to be continuance. For Wiggins that entails “no longer being on the temple payroll.” I have my own cross to carry around and must manage this figurative burden on a handful of literal oats.
We were staying at Arthur Dumore's place in Lythbrook – an isolated stone cottage set upon a dark continental mass of aubergine-coloured heather that stretched to the horizon on all sides. There was no access from the narrow, pale grey road that had brought us to this desolate spot. Wiggins was rightly convinced that no amount of prayer would prevent his Peugeot from ending up helplessly marooned if we attempted an approach by vehicle across country.
We parked in an isolated lay-by and decanted what we thought we might need from our cases into some carrier bags. During the half-mile walk across the moor to the cottage, we both frequently lost our balance, only to be saved by the same springy tangle of branches underfoot that had sent us off kilter.
During our last night in the cottage, the car was broken into – the boot crowbarred open and the cases stolen along with their contents.
I recall Wiggins shifting his attention away from the scratched red welt in the lip of the bodywork, that was preventing him from closing the boot. He starred down from the brow of the low hill and across the undulating flats of heather – each one a sympathetic mirror of a grey leviathan cloud making stately headway inland.
The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site.
I am replying here instead because it is too good a writing exercise to give up: How quickly can you go from a prompt, a blank mind, and a blank page to a finished piece? And how good can you make it?
This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use.
~
Are there any foods that have not at some time been considered harmful in a study?
This happened back when Wiggins was still serving God in a professional capacity and I was still capable of washing down the red meat with red wine, without risking jaundice and/or a sudden floor-bound collapse from ensuing abdominal pain.Time has caught up with both of us, and has laid down a few clauses that we must adhere to, if there is to be continuance. For Wiggins that entails “no longer being on the temple payroll.” I have my own cross to carry around and must manage this figurative burden on a handful of literal oats.
We were staying at Arthur Dumore's place in Lythbrook – an isolated stone cottage set upon a dark continental mass of aubergine-coloured heather that stretched to the horizon on all sides. There was no access from the narrow, pale grey road that had brought us to this desolate spot. Wiggins was rightly convinced that no amount of prayer would prevent his Peugeot from ending up helplessly marooned if we attempted an approach by vehicle across country.
We parked in an isolated lay-by and decanted what we thought we might need from our cases into some carrier bags. During the half-mile walk across the moor to the cottage, we both frequently lost our balance, only to be saved by the same springy tangle of branches underfoot that had sent us off kilter.
During our last night in the cottage, the car was broken into – the boot crowbarred open and the cases stolen along with their contents.
I recall Wiggins shifting his attention away from the scratched red welt in the lip of the bodywork, that was preventing him from closing the boot. He starred down from the brow of the low hill and across the undulating flats of heather – each one a sympathetic mirror of a grey leviathan cloud making stately headway inland.
“I am amazed somebody would come all the way up here just to steal a few clothes,” he said.
Later, he lamented the loss of the cufflinks that had been given to him as a gift by his congregation.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
In the morning following our first night, I emerged from my unfamiliar bedroom, then down the narrow stairs and into the room directly below where Wiggins was attempting to conjure some heat from the cold ashes in the fireplace. The stove perplexed us. It was not until the evening that one of us noticed a pinch-point valve near the base and we were able to get it working.
“I had a dream that you were furious with me because I had deafened your horse,” I croaked.
“Well you were deep into the dark side of a Sharnicks cloven malt,” reported Wiggins, stirring a few traumatic memories of the previous evening.
Before I venture any further, nobody is claiming that any cloven malt is harmless. The whiskey is divided at the root-distillation stage into a pair of distinct beverages. The light malt, which Dunmore describes as “a soft drink,” though the alcohol by volume content is around 6%, is floral and pleasant tasting. The dark malt, which is pushed past the maturing point at what counts for breakneck speed in whisky production, is what I imagine crudely-refined petrol might taste like. It is accompanied by an acrid vapour that jars in the sinuses. The experience is akin to being slapped across the face by the flat of the devil's pitchfork.
“A sorehead oyster washed down with honeystar tea will put you back on the right track,” counselled Wiggins.
I pulled up a chair next to the wooden slab of the cold table and waited for these miracle cure-alls to make their appearance. Meanwhile, Wiggins was in the porch pulling on his boots.
“Out there,” he said, pointing towards the moor
My hangover rose with me as I staggered to my wretched feet and went in search of my coat.
The ashy ruins of the Tannerstone Bailey were we being carried away downhill, one particle at a time, by the network of streams that flowed beneath the heather.
Wiggins had to raise his voice to be heard above the buffeting winds:
“Dunmore told me, in the summer, when it's dry, you sometimes see the stags stamping their back legs and raising up dark columns of ash. He says that its quite a thing to see from the window - these pillars of smoke all around. It's funny to think that all of this dust was once a castle and now it's... well I suppose, occasionally, a castle of smoke, and whoever can make the biggest cloud gets all the girls.”
He had been leaving a trail of deer mints in our wake. They contain vitamins along with vaccine stems for the animals, who sniff them out. Dunmore had asked him to do it.
“They'll also help to fray any hunts that come through here,” he said. “Put them off the scent and give old Reynard his fair due. Dunmore grants them hard asylum up at his place. Been known to fire a shotgun into the air if he spies the dog pack on his land.”
We walked for an hour; maybe more. I was unconvinced by Wiggins' chirpy insistence that the pilgrimage is the better part of the cure. What is more, I think, if he had been in my position, he might have agreed with me.
Finally, we arrived at a break in the heather: A meadow dappled with what appeared to be snowflakes, riven with winding streamlets, none more than a few inches in breadth. I knelt down to study the flowers. They were tiny, with spiky, well-defined petals. Wiggins was trawling the cold streams for the soft shelled moor oysters that formed the savoury part of his cure. Contrary to what the name implies, they are actually a species of snail. I was somewhat glad when his search yielded nothing; his bare arm emerged from its primitive baptism encircled by a smudgy ring of dissolved castle ash and, above that, the wet, rolled-up sleeve of his shirt.
As instructed, I had picked a handful of the flowers. Wiggins poured out a cup of hot water from his flask. I scattered my harvest across the surface, losing a good amount of it to a chance gust of wind. Immediately the flowers turned to face upward, contracting yet still retaining their crisp definition. Adrift among the faint grey nebulae of steam, they resembled a wavering constellation. The mellow aroma of honey filled the air around us.
“Honeystar,” said Wiggins. “Known to foreshorten any common ailment. A plant of considerable antiquity, fathered by the ores of dead elemental metals that had come and gone long before the age of man. The backward search for those lost ingots of native rock has been enough to turn some geologists into botanists. There is a story – a legend – that bees first produced honey from honeystar flowers. That's where they got the recipe hardwired in their DNA."
I took a deep sip and then another. The tea was sweet-tasting and I did feel somewhat revived afterwards.
Later, he lamented the loss of the cufflinks that had been given to him as a gift by his congregation.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
In the morning following our first night, I emerged from my unfamiliar bedroom, then down the narrow stairs and into the room directly below where Wiggins was attempting to conjure some heat from the cold ashes in the fireplace. The stove perplexed us. It was not until the evening that one of us noticed a pinch-point valve near the base and we were able to get it working.
“I had a dream that you were furious with me because I had deafened your horse,” I croaked.
“Well you were deep into the dark side of a Sharnicks cloven malt,” reported Wiggins, stirring a few traumatic memories of the previous evening.
Before I venture any further, nobody is claiming that any cloven malt is harmless. The whiskey is divided at the root-distillation stage into a pair of distinct beverages. The light malt, which Dunmore describes as “a soft drink,” though the alcohol by volume content is around 6%, is floral and pleasant tasting. The dark malt, which is pushed past the maturing point at what counts for breakneck speed in whisky production, is what I imagine crudely-refined petrol might taste like. It is accompanied by an acrid vapour that jars in the sinuses. The experience is akin to being slapped across the face by the flat of the devil's pitchfork.
“A sorehead oyster washed down with honeystar tea will put you back on the right track,” counselled Wiggins.
I pulled up a chair next to the wooden slab of the cold table and waited for these miracle cure-alls to make their appearance. Meanwhile, Wiggins was in the porch pulling on his boots.
“Out there,” he said, pointing towards the moor
My hangover rose with me as I staggered to my wretched feet and went in search of my coat.
~
The ashy ruins of the Tannerstone Bailey were we being carried away downhill, one particle at a time, by the network of streams that flowed beneath the heather.
Wiggins had to raise his voice to be heard above the buffeting winds:
“Dunmore told me, in the summer, when it's dry, you sometimes see the stags stamping their back legs and raising up dark columns of ash. He says that its quite a thing to see from the window - these pillars of smoke all around. It's funny to think that all of this dust was once a castle and now it's... well I suppose, occasionally, a castle of smoke, and whoever can make the biggest cloud gets all the girls.”
He had been leaving a trail of deer mints in our wake. They contain vitamins along with vaccine stems for the animals, who sniff them out. Dunmore had asked him to do it.
“They'll also help to fray any hunts that come through here,” he said. “Put them off the scent and give old Reynard his fair due. Dunmore grants them hard asylum up at his place. Been known to fire a shotgun into the air if he spies the dog pack on his land.”
We walked for an hour; maybe more. I was unconvinced by Wiggins' chirpy insistence that the pilgrimage is the better part of the cure. What is more, I think, if he had been in my position, he might have agreed with me.
Finally, we arrived at a break in the heather: A meadow dappled with what appeared to be snowflakes, riven with winding streamlets, none more than a few inches in breadth. I knelt down to study the flowers. They were tiny, with spiky, well-defined petals. Wiggins was trawling the cold streams for the soft shelled moor oysters that formed the savoury part of his cure. Contrary to what the name implies, they are actually a species of snail. I was somewhat glad when his search yielded nothing; his bare arm emerged from its primitive baptism encircled by a smudgy ring of dissolved castle ash and, above that, the wet, rolled-up sleeve of his shirt.
As instructed, I had picked a handful of the flowers. Wiggins poured out a cup of hot water from his flask. I scattered my harvest across the surface, losing a good amount of it to a chance gust of wind. Immediately the flowers turned to face upward, contracting yet still retaining their crisp definition. Adrift among the faint grey nebulae of steam, they resembled a wavering constellation. The mellow aroma of honey filled the air around us.
“Honeystar,” said Wiggins. “Known to foreshorten any common ailment. A plant of considerable antiquity, fathered by the ores of dead elemental metals that had come and gone long before the age of man. The backward search for those lost ingots of native rock has been enough to turn some geologists into botanists. There is a story – a legend – that bees first produced honey from honeystar flowers. That's where they got the recipe hardwired in their DNA."
I took a deep sip and then another. The tea was sweet-tasting and I did feel somewhat revived afterwards.
“They used to sell bags of it outside hospitals in the seventeen, eighteen-hundreds,” said Wiggins.
That was the last time that I touched a cloven malt, but not the last time I drank honeystar tea. I keep a box of it in my kitchen cupboard, though these days I drink it for pleasure, rather than as a remedy.
I hope this is of help.
That was the last time that I touched a cloven malt, but not the last time I drank honeystar tea. I keep a box of it in my kitchen cupboard, though these days I drink it for pleasure, rather than as a remedy.
I hope this is of help.
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| Image generated by Craiyon |
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