Six maybe seven evenings ago, at the end of a long day, I was finishing the bowl of sausage stew and mashed potato that I had taken to the sofa, knowingly choosing the cushioned promise of support for legs, back and bottom at the compromised expense of a stomach squashed into my diaphragm and the inevitable poor digestion of that night’s dinner. I had served the food into a bowl rather than a plate, so that it might be easier to sit and eat while slumped and flaccid. I took just a fork with me so that eating could be achieved without a table, using just left and right hand – the former to nurse the bowl, the latter to wield the fork. That fork would act as skewer, as shovel, as knife. Mere minutes later, I clipped the fork underneath the supporting finger at the base of the bowl and, with my right hand now free, ran a hooked finger around the inside of the bowl to mop and then cradle the remaining potato and gravy into my mouth. Seven- or eight-year-old me did the same thing a hundred times, with ice cream, custard, cake mix. My wife had been sat watching at the other end of the sofa. ‘Could you not do that, please?’ Chided, and a pause. Time to consider my posture, my fork, my eating etiquette. My near-complete satiation, alas, was now suspended irrevocably. I observed and mourned the remaining dregs of my dinner, to be left forever uneaten. I traded a little good mash for a few good manners; the peace of a polite hour in my wife’s company for the peas remaining at the base of my ceramic bowl. And then contemplated that had I arrived at the sofa with a spoon, not a fork, there would have been no assumed behavioural transgression – that utensil, as Bee Wilson once explained so very well,1 that is versatile enough to serve, measure, convey, stir, skim, lift, ladle, and scrape and collect.
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Bee Wilson’s brilliant 2012 book, Consider The Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat
Brilliantly done, Matt. In our early days in Bulgaria, when going to a village 'do', our neighbour came to collect us holding a bowl and spoon. 'Should we take our own bowl and spoon, too?' I asked (or thereabouts, my Bulgarian language skills being unprepared for this sort of social encounter). He looked at me like I was barking mad. 'Of course'.
It's the only way to eat, obviously.
…to sit and eat while slumped and flaccid
Such illumination! 😆