It is a relatively rare occurrence when I find myself thinking about a book I am reading quite as obsessively as it is happening now with Nigel Slater’s A Thousand Feasts. This may seem like a thoroughly odd admission from someone whose life is so intertwined with books that every time I think of the potential of being evicted from my home, I do not so much stress about homelessness per se but rather I immediately ask myself how I will take all of these books with me, and take them where anyway?
Fiction in general often merges into one, and a lot of it gets very nearly forgotten. I have found that it is true our brains can only hold so much information all at once and whilst I have witnessed my own brain’s ability to recall on command once jogged, no, I could not tell you right now who did it in Why Didn’t They ask Evans? because I don’t remember it off the top of my head.
But this book, this A Thousand Feasts, gives me reasons to ponder above and beyond its very content. I finally managed to sit down with it today and immediately read the section about the home, which I have often felt Slater is an absolute master at. His light touch in relation to the mundane and the everyday has always been an impossibly pleasing read to indulge oneself in. What he says in opening though is what struck me as most interesting; a desire to recall the good and happy things.
Oh if it were that easy, I told myself as I read that sentence. Then I immediately thought of this online diary which, as many a respectful diary is a blend of the everyday, the happy, the ridiculous, and the sad. Then I thought some more about it. I thought that there are more gripes in here than happy things and that is rooted not simply in this year not having been exactly spectacular [has any year been spectacular for me? If it has, I’ve forgotten which one it was] but also in my desire to talk about the unpleasant things of life, to excavate the gritty details, to skip the small talk and dive straight into the uncomfortable stuff. I am a Virgo you see and I am one through and through; I am an absolute champion at overanalysing and at keeping myself to myself, and yet I am completely comfortable at poking the uncomfortable stuff with strangers on the interwebs.
Maybe I should take a proverbial leaf out of Slater’s A Thousand Feasts. Maybe I should turn this online diary into a collation of happy moments. I cannot lie on this one though… I am quite terrified there will be almost nothing to write about.