In accordance with the new rules for An Irishman's Diary, agreed upon by my esteemed life assurance assessors, Weasel, Smallprint, Welsh & Loophole Ltd, we no longer deal with contentious issues in this space. Instead, this column shall henceforth revert to what it traditionally was - a haven of affable peace amid a sea of turmoil and torment, strife and bitterness.
This is a liberation. Not merely does it reduce the chances of its author being reduced to molecules by terrori- - sorry, forgetting myself already, I mean genuine patriots who love their country - it also allows us to touch upon subjects which are dear to many people's hearts.
Take cheese. In recent years, for example, we have begun to copy the French habit of eating cheese between the savoury course and the dessert (pudding if you're trying to be gentry). Why is this? Why should we ape the French in this matter? They're not always right, you know. We wouldn't drink the execrable wash that they call thΘ, apparently made from nuns' shared bathwater: the mother superior gets it fresh and piping hot, and two hours later the meek little postulant from Orleans who has been slaving in the kitchens all day slips into a grey vichysoisse, from which the beverage is concocted the next morning, and needless to say, without the further addition of tea-leaves of any kind.
Irish sausage
Nor is it just a question of tea. A world without the Irish sausage - especially from Nolan's of Kilcullen - is a world in which I am no longer interested in living. To be sure, the French sausage, in all its many forms, is a worthy reptile, often a noble one, indeed sometimes even worth canonising - St Saucisson de Seine, say - but it is not an Irish Nolan sausage, nor is their white pudding our white pudding, nor their bacon - a paltry beast - our rasher.
(The word count at this point is about 350, murmurs Weasel of Weasel, Smallprint, Welsh & Loophole in relief. They sigh; for they are grateful that nothing I have said so far in this column will expose them to any risk of payment on their life coverage of me).
Is it possible to live an entire life without a regular Irish fry, necessarily including fried potatoes, fried eggs, and bread and butter, all washed down by lashings of hot tea? I would maintain that it is not. I would go further. I would say that the deficiencies in French civilisation - beaten in rapid succession by the Germans, the Australians (you didn't know about that, did you?) the Algerians and the Vietnamese; I wonder why we didn't help ourselves to a small slice of the C⌠te d'Azur, and possibly given them the Leitrim coastline in exchange - are almost all explained by the lack of a good fry in their lives.
Culinary truths
To be sure, I adore French cuisine. But there are some culinary truths which I think the French have forgotten, as the fry will testify. And so back to the nub of the matter, something we once got right, and the Brits did too, of eating cheese at the end of the meal. But now we don't. And to tell you the truth, I believe this business of aping the French way of eating the cheese after the savoury and before the sweet - oh swivel in your graves, Mitford word-snobs! - originated in Britain. So we're not just aping La Grande France, mais La perfide Albion aussi.
(Now here. Go easy on the French, urges Mr Lethal Smallprint. The Foreign Legion can cut up something shocking betimes, he says, adding that my policy is void if I needlessly provoke my own murder. Point taken, Mr Smallprint).
Yet it is one of the joys of civilisation to sit with cheeseboard and wine or port for hours and hours and hours. You can't do that with a profiterole or a flan; you can't engage in the companionable business of passing the board, the port and the crackers - which, by the way, are a better means of taking cheese into the system than by baguette.
(What's the word-count? asks Obadiah Weasel. About 720, replies Uriah Welsh. Are we safe?, whispers Ubiquitous Loophole. We're always safe, sniggers Lethal Smallprint. That's true, they purr together. Anyway, about 200 to go, murmurs Ubiquitous Loophole).
Yet I have seen people airily dismiss the dessert when it is brought on before the cheese, little supercilious smiles playing about their faces, their slyly twinkling little eyes declaring about their hosts: Quels paysans.
Fanny Craddock
All right, so what is the argument in favour of savoury-cheese-dessert? That you can't have a sweet dish between two savouries? When did you learn about cuisine? From Fanny Craddock in 1958? It's normal to mix sweet with savoury: lamb with red currant, pork with apple, curry with chutney, kraut with wurst.
Thus the popularity of sweet vegetables - carrots, sweet potatoes, sugar-snap peas - with savoury foods. Even the most conservative French restaurant will serve a sweet sorbet between two savoury dishes.
(He's motoring well, chortles Weasel. Looks as if we won't have to wriggle out of this one. Only a few words to go).
So why this silly snobbish affected aversion to cheese at the end of the meal, when in fact it should be the triumphantly lingering conclusion? Moreover, where we would serve up Cashel Blue on a Carr's water biscuit, Sinn FΘin-IRA would serve mature Semtex on Boland's Mill? A right cracker, so it is.
AAAAAaaahhhhh.