Memories of Parsley Manor

3 December 2006
Besford

This is my first full day out of the hospital – Parsley Manor Leg Care. I’m trying to think about what I miss the most. There was, of course, the food; truly indescribable, mostly inedible, a discredit to the ‘cook’ (how I hurt to use that term for this psychopath!) but, saving grace (??!!), completely unforgettable. I will remember the meals at the hospital long after I’ve forgotten culinary gems at bistros in London, country pubs with ambitious, creative but rationale young chefs and even ready-made, heat in the oven meals from Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. There is something about one bad recommendation only being equalled by ten good ones (or, more crudely, ten ‘atta boys’ required to counterbalance one ‘oh shit’).

Eventually I sorted things out and had porridge for breakfast – that English for oatmeal – an omelette for lunch and, for variety, an omelette for dinner. The vegetables were so overcooked that I remain convinced they actually sucked food value out of your body rather than put any in so my steadfast refusal to ingest any of them was fully justified.

I dreaded the thought of coffee at Parsley Manor, a most substantial memorial to a Britain before fusion cooking. The British consume more total instant coffee than any other nation on earth. That’s not on a per capita basis, that’s ‘total’. There are now something over 300 million Americans, many with no judgement at all but even a country whose taste buds are so completely jaded as the US cannot match the brown swilling efforts of 50 million or so island dwellers here in the North Sea! You can imagine how I cringed every time one of the pleasant tea trolley ladies asked me if I wanted a coffee, love?

There is a slightly positive codicil to the coffee story, the last day I couldn’t stand it anymore. My desperate efforts to secure a cup of strong black coffee had even been thwarted by my wife. She’d promised me a Starbucks; we have the beans, grinder and advanced, pricey, button-girded machinery to produce a thick, rich, aromatic cup of caffeine strong enough for me to imitate Fred Astaire dancing on the walls without the fancy camera work! So I awoke in eager anticipation, hours before she was due to arrive, my first cup of coffee since surgery, something like 3 days!

Come the moment (picture it!), the wife comes in, a thermos tucked under her arm and smiling comfortingly, a glance filled with matrimonial love. She pours me a cup and hands it over, I sip gently, wanting to truly savour the first taste. But, what is this? Something is wrong! This stuff tastes both mealy and watery, it’s horrible! My beloved smiles at me, ‘I forgot to put in a filter but the grounds seem to have settled so I thought why bother doing another pot, it would just be a waste.’

Caffeine addiction is a strong and dangerous habit. It is best not to try to thwart the caffeine addict when he needs that morning fix or the late afternoon recharger. To do so is to risk a severe and completely unreasonable tongue lashing. My wife had probably chosen the one moment in our life that she could fail to feed my addiction without serious danger to herself and because I depended on her for the papers, books and a link to a world beyond the corridors of Parsley Manor Leg Care Hospital, I managed a grimace that she innocently or, this may be more likely as she knows me well, deviously chose to interpret as a grin of gratitude.

But that last morning the young nurse on the night shift went and pressed the espresso button three times on the coffee machine, bringing me a cup of bitter, brown, treacly stuff that kept me from violence and allowed me to get safely home to my beloved coffee maker.

This whole coffee thing has so distracted me from talking about what I miss most from Parsley Manor that I will have to recline a while, sip a cup of Starbucks best Italian Roast and see if I can put together my scattered and random thoughts into something coherent. For now, this sad tale of coffee callousness will have to do.