Our food may be a mess, but to me it’s a success

IT’S quite dark by five o’clock these days, making the trip to the book club a tricky operation.

Driver Pauline, who gives me a lift (for which many thanks) has to negotiate a tight right turn on a blind bend almost at the summit on the Pennine road.

It’s just a hole in the stone wall, with no signpost down to the venue, a farmhouse at the bottom of a fold in the hills.

Accidents galore happen here. One of the farmers makes a good living from claims against reckless motorists who crash the stonework. Or so I’m told.

But I digress. We’re here to discuss the November choice: Chewing the Fat, by food critic Jay Rayner.

It’s a collection of his columns for The Observer, for which I once worked. That was before his time, but he reads like a man with whom I could share a hearty meal and a glass of some rough red plonk.

Rayner likes straightforward grub, and plenty of it. He can’t stand waiters who constantly refill your glass, and food served in tiny amounts on big plates. I’m with him there.

On the whole, the book got a good reception. He’s a very funny writer, with a wry sense of humour.

“So much of our very best food,” he writes “is a bloody mess. It lies on the plate or in the bowl, looking like something requiring the attention of the emergency services or a swift burial.

“And yet, it tastes marvellous.

“I’d go further, and say that mess food rules. Messy food is where the satisfying stuff is.”

He must be thinking of my spaghetti bolognaise, which looks as though it’s just been hit by a Russian missile. But the taste is magic and it’s filling.