Friends 1

Robert and me have been friends since 1896.

We've been on so many adventures in so many places across the world together & all involving exploring local food and drink. 

Sometimes, it's work. Like finding ourselves at a Mayoral banquet with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Kazakhstan. Eating questionable offal. On another occasion we've been enjoying a glass of local Gamay up a Swiss Alp interviewing a pianist who's about to paraglide off a mountain. There was a time when we both nodded off during a chamber music concert in Bordeaux without loosening the grip on our glasses of red wine.

Sometimes, it's holidays. Enjoying the best spaghetti with garlic in olive oil in Italy or devouring fiery, spitting, oiled prawns in the Canaries.

Sometimes, it's holidays at home. A most splendid mixed cold meat & cheese board at a pub in Fife one lunchtime or a full on fry up breakfast by the seaside in Kent. There have been many fish feasts, too. A favourite haunt is in Essex where, for a farthing, you can have an enormous & delicious platter of crab claws , smoked peppered mackerel, rollmops, cockles, mussels, (alive, alive, oh), crevettes & smoked salmon. You can bring your own bread and wine but the rule of the place is you are not allowed to bring SALAD. No one has yet quite worked out why this is.

Another delight of this place - the local, creamy, slightly salty oysters.

Photo © Anne-Marie Minhall

Robert thinks the bivalves are the work of the devil.

I do not. They are heaven's work.

I think it's the only food that we disagree upon.

Still, I wouldn't be without him. Friendship. The best.

He's wrong about oysters though.

AMM