It’s good to TalkTalk

Reading books affects our behaviour; gobbling up the written word is not always a passive experience.  A couple of months after finishing one of Michael Dibdin’s Italian detective novels I found myself cooking spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino, once a week on average.  Combining pasta with olive oil, chilli and garlic is something which once eaten strikes you as a very excellent thing, one of those much-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts conceits, but with my dullard’s mind it can’t have come to me from a place called Invention.  And indeed it hadn’t; reading another Dibdin novel some years later I was reminded that Aurelio Zen likes nothing more than to tuck into this confection.  Dibdin’s description of the dish is particularly alluring (if I had the time and inclination I’d find the quote) and it had obviously lodged semi-subconsciously in my mind.

Right now I’m reading Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy.  I’m currently in that zone which I always enter when reading Auster of thinking: “Why don’t I read more of this man?  He’s bloody good.”  Why do I try to wade through the likes of Life And Fate and absolutely anything by Anthony Trollope when there are Paul Auster novels I still haven’t clumb.  His tales of dead ends and conundrums, confusion allied with occasional glimpses of clarity have it seems lodged in my mind.  And as luck would have it I’ve been able to recreate this world where mirrors are distorted and language never quite enough to explain our meanings and impulses through the prism of TalkTalk, my internet / tv / phone provider.

Frankly, having TalkTalk is not a situation I’d choose but is of necessity due to my usage of a peculiar email address going back to the Internet dark ages of 1999.  You really don’t want to know.  Instead, I’d like to go with Virgin because not only would they provide me with a Coronation Street catch-up option which TalkTalk doesn’t but they regularly write to me to inform me that “there’s a world of entertainment” in my street.  Having lived in said street for thirteen years I wonder what they know that I don’t but they get in touch several times a year with this news so I assume they can’t be completely talking out of their arses.

A couple of weeks back my wifi router simply stopped working.  Dead.  Not a flicker.  I rather admired this.  It didn’t sputter out of use but instead one minute it worked, the next it didn’t.   It’s the way we’d all like to go.  TalkTalk’s technical help department in the form of a very nice Indian chap going by the name of Lancelot or Lionel (I can’t remember which) swung into action.  A new router would be dispatched and if I needed any help installing it I was to call back and he would also then calculate the days I’d been without a router and offer me a refund for loss of service. 

I’ve had sagas with TalkTalk before and been lost in the labyrinthine sewage system which they, with a good degree of wit and irony, insist on calling Customer Services.  But this time things seemed different.  Efficient, organsised, coherent. All the things I don’t pay TalkTalk to be and instead of being alarmed at this quality of service I was lulled into a trap of misplaced confidence.  It’s the sort of thing a Paul Auster character would never allow to happen.

The router arrived about a week later, was easy to install and connect to things and so I decided to make a call to Lancelot and see about the oodles of cash coming my way. Unfortunately Lionel wasn’t about but he did call me back pretty damn quick.  This time I was on the other line but feeling rather warmly to Lancelot for his commitment to helping me I called straight back.  I was about to make some amusingly chummy remark about playing phone tennis but aggravatingly in those few crucial moments he’d gone for the day.  I explained the situation to a colleague (Harold, I believe) who asked, “Do you have the case number you were assigned?”  I read him the 7-digit number Lionel had ensured I’d written down.  “Nothing showing up for that, I’m afraid,” he replied.  We tried again.  Still nothing.  So, I then had to explain to Harold what Lancelot / Lionel already knew and supposedly had made a note of but Harold listened attentively and explained at the end how TalkTalk would calculate my refund. 

“As you know your broadband is free…”
“I didn’t know that,” I cut in. 
“Yes, in fact you only pay for your tv and telephone and so as your tv was the only thing not able to work I will work out your refund on that basis.” 
“I don’t want to be awkward,” I rejoindered, “but it isn’t free, is it?  You might say it is but a chunk of my monthly direct debit goes towards my broadband and I didn’t have broadband for over a week.”
“It is entirely free.”  At this point, the merest shard of steel entered his tone as he ignored me and instead went on to declare that the share of my tv bill which would be reimbursed on my next statement would be just over two pounds. 
“Look,” I said, my voice beginning to go a bit queeny (it took that long, yes), “there is a man who occasionally sells geese he has shot or garrotted or whatever it is you do to geese to kill them but he doesn’t have a game licence so he gets round it by charging £10 for a carrier bag and each carrier bag comes with a free goose.  The goose isn’t actually free.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this,” said Harold, and frankly neither did I.  “If you are unhappy with the level of refund we are offering you I can put you through to someone who can help.  The Loyalty Department.”

Put You Through.  The three words no one wants to hear from the likes of Harold but he explained that these new people would be only ones who could look into a refund on top of the amount he’d come up with.  Put through I was.  And anyway The Loyalty Department sounded very Auster-esque and I was intrigued.  This time I spoke to Shiva.  His name is obviously a made-up one and friends and family no doubt know him as Peregrine or Bobby.  Shiva listened to my story, a story I was getting a little bored of retelling and so was beginning to embelish with lurid details of Grindr-withdrawal and an online whist tournament I had been denied participation in. It is a cardinal rule in these situations that the person to whom you have been put through is NEVER EVER EVER the right one and Shiva was no exception.  It’s like going on a date with someone you immediately know isn’t the one for you.  You’d like to get up from the table there and then but somehow it just can’t be done and the whole gruesome process has to be seen through to the bitter end.  Shiva couldn’t help me, he couldn’t explain why Harold might ever think he was the right person to speak to but he was “grateful for the opportunity” to speak with me. It was probably at the point I was distracted by a pan of milk which might boil over at any moment that he told me about his ex-boyfriend and how he still loves him a bit.  When it came to splitting the bill I didn’t like to point out that he’d drunk three glasses of Chablis while I’d been on water and was just grateful that we wouldn’t have to meet again.  I kissed him on the cheek and said I hoped it would all work out for him. 

“Would I like to be put back through to Customer Services?” Shiva asked.  Yes, if he could reconnect me with Harold.  He couldn’t guarantee that.  “Don’t worry then,” I replied and we quite cordially ended our conversation.  Sincerely, I really do hope it all works out for him.  Really I do.

Twitter has its many uses.  Not least as it affords the opportunity to look at Hipstamatic photographs of cups of coffees on otherwise bare tables in Stockholm or Seattle which people have bothered to upload; but it is also a quite useful loudhailer with which to shout at multinationals, local councils, privatised rail companies and their ilk and from time to time this approach gets you somewhere much more quickly than phoning them would have done.  However, Twitter has been around for a while now and these organisations have obviously become inured to the medium thereby developing the technique of stalling inefficiency honed to perfection on their premium rate phone numbers but with the added hurdle of a 140 character cut-off point.

Having shouted at something called @talktalkcare I embarked on a fairly lengthy tweet exchange with someone who might or might not have been called #ttdebbie.  I asked if she had an email address I could write to explain the situation to.  That wouldn’t be possible it transpired.  In the end her solution was to suggest I phone Customer Services.  Really queenily by now, I tweeted the following:

At last!  This it seemed spurred #ttdebbie on to provide a link whereby I could complete an online form called @TalkTalkCare Twitter Contact Form.  My heart proceeded to sink a little further but on looking at the form it turned out to be quite short and only required details of my account etc.  I filled it in.

Great excitement – an actual real email arrived from someone called Emma on talktalkcare@talktalkplc.com .  This must be the lady, I thought.  Emma can cut through the crap and sort out this really quite elementary problem (which actually by now I’d sort of forgotten).  Before those sunny uplands might be reached however, Emma noted that a detail on my form didn’t match the information they held for me.  Could I correct said detail and reply by email?  She didn’t say what this detail was.  On scanning my answers the only one I thought might be different was my email address.  I replied with another one. 

No, the email address wasn’t the problem.  Or rather she couldn’t say if it was or wasn’t the problem.  All she could say was that “the information sent does not match your account”.  Could she, I asked by return of yet another email, be less mysterious and tell me what specific detail was incorrect?  No, she couldn’t, she explained.  Yet again, she could only tell me that the information I’d provided didn’t match the account.

In my mind’s eye Emma was morphing from an efficient young woman keen to utilise everything at her disposal to assist her customers to someone the old East German passport office would have been proud to have on-board.  “How do we proceed from here?” I asked.  Her reply has just arrived: “If you’re unable to provide correct details as per your account we would need to advise you to use an alternative support method.”  Maybe she means Customer Services. 

Mr Auster, you can have this one.

Tip tip hooray

Apparently, the story goes like this: after lunch with friends at The Ivy, the late, great Peter Cook asked for the bill.  He signed the credit card slip and handed it back to the maître d’.  Upon checking the total sum, the old boy leaned forward and whispered in Peter Cook’s ear, “I think you’ll find that service wasn’t included, sir.”  Possessing a swiftness of mind at which the rest of us can merely marvel Peter snapped back, “Yes.  I noticed.” 

Regardless of the shonkiness of service we might receive on going out to eat most of us grin and politely bear the extra “discretionary” fee.  A sum we are charged for the privilege of not only having had the food cooked for us but not having to go and collect it from the kitchens ourselves.  A genuinely voluntary tip in cash could bypass the tax man but incorporated into the overall bill I am lost at the logic of such charges.  Years ago, when as a rule our economy was far less service-orientated than it is now, all manner of people would get tips.  Tips for the dustman and the milkman seemed a crucial part of the Christmas routine.  My family rarely stayed in hotels but watching television it seemed nigh on impossible to do anything in such a place without slipping a few coins to someone or other who assisted you on your way.   

As I grew older I still didn’t understand the reasoning behind it all.  Without a tip, what little extra would my hairdresser not have rendered?  The tales of her mother’s diabetes or her boyfriend’s low sperm count, perhaps?  The prospect of a couple of extra quid at the end of a taxi ride never seems to deter the average cabbie from sharing his views on immigration, unworthy customers, or the good old days.  And why exactly were we still charged for a waiter to deposit a scalding heap of gratin dauphinoise in my lap rather than on my plate in a Richard Corrigan restaurant some years back? 

No doubt, the argument in favour of a service charge is something to do with boosting the pay of traditionally low-paid workers and that is something I wholeheartedly support but surely it would be more straightforward to combine food and service costs and reflect these on the menu?  Otherwise, why shouldn’t shops introduce the idea, too? 

In a declaration of honesty I should recount that a tip of the very best kind was afforded me once by my friend Neil.  A much more experienced driver than me he was sitting calmly in the passenger seat of my first car, an old Mini, as I was driving us somewhat erratically along a dual carriageway in Worcestershire.  Doing about fifty and doing it in fourth gear I decided that the lorry in front of us was hindering our progress.   I would overtake. 

Diligently I checked the mirrors and ensuring the road was clear I pulled out and put my foot down to get past the lorry.  Surprisingly, said lorry then seemed to accelerate also.  Pushing my foot down a bit further, I noticed that my speed seemed to alter not a jot but instead my car’s engine started to make a pleading, blubbing noise.  The lorry driver start flashing his lights and sounding his horn.  There we were neck and neck – a juggernaut and a tiny mite of a bright red Mini.  In a race.  At this moment, Neil asked me if I’d seen the sign indicating that the road was about to become single-lane?  Of course, I hadn’t – I’d been too busy checking my mirrors.  In a tone more harsh than is normal for him he ordered me to slow down.  I released my right foot, the lorry driver sounded a long toot of victory, and just before I slipped back into my rightful place behind him a fat, tattooed hand emerged from the driver’s window and gave me the finger.  “If you are going to overtake a lorry ten times the size of you when you are doing fifty miles an hour you won’t get very far in fourth gear,” Neil instructed me.  He could also have noted, but generously didn’t, not to overtake when there isn’t a road in which to do it.  As a friend, Neil is not in the habit of charging me for his company.  On that occasion I feel he’d have been perfectly within his rights to do so.

Through my crumbling fangs….

There is little I like to do more than devour a bag of Haribo of Rowntrees Fruit Gums particularly when driving back from a gig. 

This less than ideal post-show diet has a downside, believe it or not, not least the work it demands of my poor old gnashers.  Ever the optimist, however, there is an upside…

I write words and then I write them again

This week my column on London Confidential, I can quite honestly say, has quite a chunk about food in it.  In fact, one of my favourite food topics – fish and chips.  Specifically my blather is of The Fryer’s Delight in Holborn.  Anyway, you’ve practically read it now but if you fancied it in the full unexpurgated form here it is.

Ps.  I have some chicken hearts I’m going to be cooking at a friend’s place tonight.  If anybody has a nice suggestion for something I could do with them please let me know.  Right now, they’re sulking in the fridge without a purpose in life. 

They seek him here, they seek him there…

In my column for London Confidential this week there is a tangential connection to food but I can’t really say what it is.  Look at me and my man of mystery ways.

Companionship and the consolations of eating stomach lining

First things first: here is a link to my weekly London Confidential column.  If it was a pie chart it would be 1/10th advertising, 3/10ths looking for a boyfriend, 2/10ths not quite settling for a dog, and 4/10ths Battersea Dogs Home. 

And now for something completely different.

This being a food blog of sorts, I’m cheek-reddeningly aware that food doesn’t actually make much of an appearance.  To make amends for that here is a picture of last night’s supper: tripe with coriander, chilli and spring onion.  I’d be telling a porkie if I said I’d be upset in a Meryl-Streep-being-kicked-out-of-Downing-Street sort of way if I never ate tripe again.  It’s not quite up there with roast chicken or something porkie, say, but it is intensely pleasing to me.  For several reasons: its frugality, its ability to carry other flavours, the alien and mysterious textures it offers up, but above all its deep, unexpected and most satisfactory meatiness. 

Cooking tripe is something I’ve only done half a dozen times and cooking is really what the stuff needs.  Hours and hours of it.  Anything other than very soft is most unappealing.  Or so I thought until Henry Harris – my erstwhile partner on the Christmas Day edition of The Food Quiz on Radio 4 and more importantly resident wizard-in-chief at the wondrous Racine on Brompton Road – explained his tripe yearning to me on Twitter.

Someone, somewhere described Henry as the greatest French chef in London (or something equally swishy) but it interests me he wants to do something Asian with the stomach at his disposal.  With the exception of Spanish dishes, the most enjoyable tripe I’ve eaten has always been from beyond Europe – most memorably in a soup in one of those Vietnamese places around Hoxton.  For a while I was unable to pinpoint the ineffably delicious tiny frilly bits bobbing about the depths.  Was it a type of mushroom?  Some veg with which I was unacquainted?  A delicious mistake?  No, it was tripe.  It being frilly is one of the reasons a lot of people don’t like the stuff.  Well, not just frilly but its texture and look generally.  The one I cooked yesterday had been sold to me by a butcher in Peckham and was, apparently, ‘lady’ tripe.  It came in compressed layers which once separated had the curious look and spongy feel of fake grass and that I realise is something a lot of people might find off-putting.  Meat should, many feel, be fibrous in one way or another, and flesh that doesn’t tick that particular box isn’t quite the thing.  Well, what a lot of very nice treats those people are missing out on. 

But is tripe gay?  There’s no mention of tripe or indeed any other offal in Oliver Thring‘s Guardian piece about what constitutes gay food but I’d really like to know.  Frankly there are other things you can put in your mouth which might give the game away more definitively but I may start to campaign for the consumption of variety meats to be the twenty-first century’s equivalent of the green carnation. 

I may, but then again this time last year I thought I’d get myself a dog and that never came to anything either. 

Here be some links…

May post-holiday normality be resumed and in an act of gratuitous plugging I point you here and here,

The first is a link to the downloadable podcasts of the two editions of The Food Quiz I took part in, recorded at the Abergavenny Food Festival back in September.  Produced by Dan Saladino of BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, the show was hosted by Tim Hayward and I was lucky enough to share a stage with far more professional types than me: Allegra McEvedy, Richard Johnson, Gizzi Erskine and my old chum, Tom Blythe (he’s a “restaurant insider, don’t you know).

Secondly, you can read my current column in London Confidential.  Anyone who knows me at all well will be aware of how I always look on the bright side of things.  And 2012 is no exception.