Man’s world

In which our Southern man adopts a new way of eating that demands he abandon his vegetable garden – all the more time to devote to the vineyard perhaps?

Joe Bennett adopts a whole new way of eating – or so he says.

Call me Purity,” I tell them. “My body is a temple.”

“Oh, well done,” they say, “but if it’s not too rude, what are you talking about?”

“My body,” I say. “I shall defile it no more. I am cleansed. I have adopted the keto diet.”

“Is that,” they say, “the diet that all but forbids the consumption of carbohydrates? And if so, golly gosh, bravo and all good luck to you, but do you not miss those carbohydrate pleasures?”

“I do not,” I say. “I am made new.” “But what about the things you grow that you so loved to boast about in your less virtuous days, before your body became, as you put it, a temple, and was more of, well, a council dump? Do you not miss those homegrown pleasures?”

“I do not. I repeat that I am made new.”

“What? Even those plump and sweet ‘Initial’ apples that around this time of year bend low the branches of the tree you planted as a sprig and tended with a mother’s care and trained, espaliered and pruned as one might train, espalier and prune a first-born child, until it put forth globes of reddened sweetness that…”

“The possums got the lot this year,” I say, and smile the sort of smile that seraphs favour.

“And the pears that fall in such abundance from the tree above your house?”

“I no longer notice them, and I’m sure the birds enjoy them.”

“And carrots, of course, are full of carbohydrates. Don’t you miss those fresh young carrots pulled straight from soil to saucepan, steamed and buttered, salted and peppered and perhaps a sprinkle of…”

“I am unmoved by former gross indulgences.”

“What was the name of that spud you grew in quantities each year, and insisted was the paragon of new potatoes, the apex tuber?”

“The ‘Annabelle’?”

“The ‘Annabelle’, that’s it. Is there not still a part of you that…” “… craves an ‘Annabelle’? That craves a bowlful of those yellow pearls pulled early in the season when they’ve yet to reach the size of golf balls, and rinsed under the tap then boiled for 15 minutes – not steamed; somehow the magic does not come with steam – then drenched in butter, salt and pepper and more butter and left a minute or two to cool, then sprinkled with, conventionally, a little mint though connoisseurs are of the mind that fine chopped parsley is superior, a tad more butter and then tipped out to form a meal complete unto themselves, a meal of waxen loveliness – is there a part of me that craves all that, that salivates at the thought, is that what you are asking?” “Yes.”

“The answer’s no.”

“Well that’s remarkable,” they say. “Bravo bravo bravissimo. But what about the wine? Wine’s awash with carbohydrates. It must have been hard to give up wine.” “There is no need to be fanatical about these things,” I say.

“So how much actual weight have you lost?”

“The weather has been lovely, don’t you think,” I say.