What's good about this is somebody airing his private eccentricities - these are (if honest) always interesting to me: self-justifying.
It may help (in explaining some references) to know that this chap was a Gaelic Football journalist and commentator by profession.
Could do with one of those now.
ReplyDeleteNext, how to make a cup of tea to be drunk with green biscuits. Or from a green cup. Or while ... ag caitheamh stocaí glasa.
ReplyDeleteThat was very pleasant to watch. It reminds me of the George Orwell classic.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm
No, no, no, the lettuce must NOT protrude from the sandwich!
ReplyDeleteVery charming and much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThere is something beautiful about these sorts of things, but I don't really know why. I think of a passage that I read in Lewis when I was a youth -- I have no idea where -- but Lewis was writing about his initial dismissal of Dickens . . . that he was a bore, dealing with lowly people and circumstances rather than epic or sublime objects . . . something of that sort. Then, he wrote that he or a friend became ill or was injured (maybe in the war -- I don't remember), and as a result, he spent a good deal of time in the hospital, where he read Dickens (or was read Dickens). Anyway, He came to appreciate Dickens, and the experience revealed to him something about the beauty of the world revealed in domestic, simple life.
At the risk of making a metaphysics out of meatloaf, maybe something as simple as contemplating (and working toward) the perfection of a sandwich allows someone -- a normal personal rather than a desert father or towering philosopher -- an intimate encounter with beings as beings, which thereby manifest being as such, which ultimately (here we probably differ) is a meeting with God through his creation. There is something sacramental about petty, everyday actions when we remove our blinders, stop, and pay attention -- when we consider the motions of our life from a non-practical angle. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
So he's all particular about what goes into his sandwich, except he doesn't care what type of butter or margarine is used - the latter being a cheap and flavourless blend of soy/canola oil. Lost me right there. That man shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a kitchen.
ReplyDelete@Mex A - You have completely missed the point of the whole thing! He was Not telling people that *this* was how everybody ought to make sandwiches. He was telling us just exactly how He liked sandwiches.
ReplyDelete@Joseph A - Excellent comment. That's it.