• About

My Grilling Life – Jani Allan

~ Sautéing and Satire. Blue Jasmine story about someone who was a household name in South Africa who becomes a waitress in New Jersey.

My Grilling Life – Jani Allan

Monthly Archives: May 2013

Fifty Shades of Grey – Laters

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by janiallan in Jani Allan, My Grilling Life

≈ 7 Comments

We first met our hero and heroine in 2012 when their bedroom exploits captivated the proletariat. Why, Mrs James, your egregious little Fifty Shades of Grey did for women’s abuse what Pretty Woman did for prostitution! It made it hip! It made it glam! You capsized everything Germaine Greer (that Ozzie with the towering intellect – ever heard of her?) fought for.

But thirty years have passed.

When Anastasia first met Christian it was in a steel and glass temple. His desk was so large the Windsors could have sat at it comfortably for high tea.

She remembered his parthenon of gleaming teeth, his copper mane (and matching bush). She remembered the way he made her inner goddess fist pump the air….and of course she remembered the Room of Pain. The paddles, whips, riding crops and feathery bits…

She was reluctant to rendezvous with him after all these years. But he was his insistent self. He tracked her down to the council house she was happy to call home.

Besides she had to know. She had spent the last thirty years agonizing about why she had let him demean her so thoroughly. Was it his looks? His civility? His wealth? His power? Was it the seductive way he said ‘Laters’?

She remembered the first time he had surprised her in the hardware store where she worked. Her mouth had popped open and she couldn’t locate her brain or her voice. Her legs felt like Jello….

She remembered how his sculptured, sensual lips were always curled in amusement, or nipped into a pinch or her favourite – and probably his – when they were pressed in a hard line.

Oh the way his eyebrows semaphored up and down! The way his pants hung off his hips! The sound of him ripping the cover off a condom!

How many times did she hear that….(and we have to read it).

She had to do it.

She put on her support stockings – the one’s that made her varicose veins hardly noticeable. She squeezed into her Spanx. The exertion made her a little breathless.
After feeding Tibbles the cat, she put on her night-driving glasses and eased herself gingerly into her Peanut Butter Cruiser – as she fondly called her PT Woody. Since the hip-replacement she had to be careful not to make any sudden moves.

The city was like a strange creature infested with electric lights. Funny how she used to think it exciting and mysterious. Now it was the habitat of vagrants with the stench of defeat heavy in the air.

She stepped into the diamond glass building, but there was no glossy blonde secretary to show her to the elevator. Instead a sullen woman in a dusty cardigan and thick specs said ”Mr Steel has been waiting for you. In here.”

“In Here” was a cubby-hole next to the boiler room.

Anastasia looked around the grubby office. A fly-spotted ceiling fan lazily stirred the humidity.

Her entrails rumbled ominously. She popped a Tums into her mouth. These days her stomach bothered her.

“Ana! Ana my dear! You look as marvellous as the first time I met you!’

The man shuffling towards her looked like an insect that had spent the last twenty years in formaldehyde. The copper mane? Anchovies on a boiled egg. The parthenon of porcelain were now toast points.

He placed a kiss on her mouth. It felt like an empty glass.

“What happened…why….you were so….rich?”

“Oh there was a spot of bother with the stock exchange, some bogus charges of embezzlement….nothing serious…More importantly you’re here!

“I can still make your inner goddess do the merengue…you’ll see!”

The stethoscope of her imagination allowed him to show her into a small, less opulent “Room of Pain.” It was more of a ticket booth, if the truth be told. Grey tottered after her on his Zimmerframe, his neck craned forward like those hundred year old tortoises in the Seychelles do when you offer them a cabbage leaf.

“Gladys! Bring my oxygen will you?” He quavered. His voice was like a dry cork twisting against an old bottle.

While he planted wet-liver kisses on her Pancake makeup, he attempted to do battle with her Spanx. His arthritic hands, which once were so deft at tying her up in metaphorical – and literal knots – were impotent. Lycra 1. Grey 0.

Slowly, like espresso seeping through a sugar cube, the realization began to emerge: he was creepy then and he was creepy now.

It was the glitter of money and fast cars and expensive presents that had made it irresistible…that made it fodder for talk at restaurant tables…

She had to extricate herself. Eradicate the memory. Expunge it. Delete it.

Ecstasy must be paid for. Its inevitable price is that it always comes to an end. Good ecstasy and bad ecstasy. The Grey episode in her life, she now knew was bad ecstasy.

For too long sex had played its moonshine tune across the great divide between them.

It used to be said that America has passed from barbarism to decadence without ever becoming civilised.

It is my contention that readers of the SOG series yank readers from innocence to debauchery and thence deep perversion without ever knowing romance. The soul doesn’t have a chance.

As someone once said: Love doesn’t seek to dominate. It seeks to cultivate.

The Long Goodbye

23 Thursday May 2013

Posted by janiallan in Jani Allan, My Grilling Life

≈ 8 Comments

Knowing when to exit is the mark of a social aristocrat.

Whether it be your rented apartment, a relationship, a visit with friends. Or a restaurant.

The Germans have an expression torschlusspanik – the direct translation is door-shutting panic. This is the panic that accompanies the sound of the park gates clanging shut leaving you trapped inside.

But there are other reasons for not exiting when you should.

A few years ago I moved into an apartment on the river. Actually it wasn’t an apartment as much as a couple of rooms in a big house. The bossy landlady told me many times how God had blessed her with a country estate and a Bentley.

The word on the street was that it was a hefty injury claim that she had been blessed with, but that is neither here nor there.

Ms. Bossy would barge into my bedsit several times a day on the flimsiest of pretexts.
I didn’t have the bottle to ask her not to, since I was worn down by various circumstances. Besides, I liked the river view.

When the river was about to break its banks she summoned a couple of nuns to pray fervently that God wouldn’t let the house be flooded – as it had been twice before. Just to be safe, she recruited all able bodied in the neighbourhood to move her furniture, while she reclined on the couch like an odalisque issuing instructions. “Take that UP. Not, not that one THAT ONE! Be careful! That vase belonged to my granny!”

By noon the next day the house was under six feet of water. It took an act of God to make me leave.

I know half a dozen women who are in toxic relationships yet they don’t leave. It is as though they are in a lukewarm bath. Even if it’s lukewarm it’s better than getting out.

Bertold Brecht said it better. ”Love is like a coconut which is good while it is fresh, but you have to spit it out when the juice is gone…what is left tastes bitter. ”

In an entirely more perfidious category are those that Douglas Adams calls cluns – people who just won’t go.

These are the people who, after a dinner party in Islington have the host call a black cab and then plant themselves in the hallway going on and on about “have you seen old so and so” while the cabbie waits with its meter running.

These are the people who, after a barbecue in Bantry Bay, stand about chin-wagging until the apricot sun has slid into the sea. The leftover koeksusters have been put in Tupperware and goodbyes have been said. Arrangements have been made ”We’ll see you in Mauritius in September. Orssimm!”

But no one actually gets into their cars. Well, not until they hear a distant sound of what sounds like a shot going off.

In the restaurant business we also have cluns.

Emblematic of their MO is that they arrive an hour late. The kitchen is about to close. There are no remaining guests in the restaurant.

When I go over and tell them about the oysters and so on they look as though they have swallowed a bee.

“Oh we’d like a little time before we order!” says Mr. Über Clun.

“Decant the wine,” he orders. Then he turns to his guests.

“I hope you don’t mind such a BIG wine…” all oleaginous charm.

There the trio sit, eating as slowly as arthritic tortoises.

The gabfest goes on two and half hours. I will check, but I’ll swear there are no donkeys with hindlegs left in New Joisey.

Did you know Anthony Weiner is running for Mayor or New York…you know the one that tweeted pictures of his crown jewels….yes! And what about the Governor of New Jersey’s lap-band surgery…

The Mexicans in the kitchen are playing on their iPhones. Three servers plus the blonde hostess. That makes seven people whose lives have been put on hold while they talk fluent drivel.

The grill has been scrubbed and the charcoal’s embers are glowing. The kitchen is pristine. The kitchen staff have long gone to commence drinking tequila shots at the local dives.

Hoping they won’t say yes, I show them the dessert tray. They say yes.

The dessert is untouched for 15 minutes while they argue about whether the Holland Tunnel is better than the Lincoln to get to Long Island.

Finally, when I deliver the check, Mr. Über Clun examines it as though he were a customs inspector.

The music has been turned off, the lights turned up and the candles blown out, and yet they are reluctant to get up to go.

“We must do this again!”

The men traipse out without glancing at us.

The woman makes shanti signs with her hands.

“I’m sorry…we really kept you for so long….” she says.

You think?

All I can manage is a small smile, tight as a pickle jar lid.

These are the people who must surely earn themselves a little pied a terre in Dante’s Inferno – the ones who subject people like us to their long goodbyes.

Bling on Steroids – The Great Gatsby Revisited

17 Friday May 2013

Posted by janiallan in Jani Allan, My Grilling Life, The Great Gatsby

≈ 4 Comments

Far be it from me to posture as a movie critic. As far as I know there is one movie critic in South Africa, viz Barry Ronge. But since this little blog is about my current grilling life, it would be remiss of me not to tell about my adventure of going to the movie theatre this week.

The buffet of entertainment in New York is, these days, above my means. Recently a friend went to see the Rolling Stones. The tickets were $300.

The only way you don’t spend money in the US is if you stay in bed. Going to New York or even Philadelphia involves mucho dinero.

I long ago resolved only to go and see people who are likely to shuffle off this mortal coil sooner rather than later. (Note to self: must save up for tickets for Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.)

But last night, by happy chance, a chum and I were able to go to see The Great Gatsby.

The cocktail sherpa and the food porter.

He came to collect me in Miss Ross, as we call his car. We were anxious not to be late, but we needn’t have bothered. There were the obligatory seventeen forthcoming attractions. We sat in a near deserted cinema while our fellow movie-goers were tucking into boxes of popcorn the size of telephone booths.”We could have had an appetizer”, groaned Tom aggrievedly. Later “We could have had an entree!”

And still later “We could have had dessert!”

Finally the extravaganza commenced. I winced immediately. Are movies these days made for the hearing impaired? Why, when Daisy ripped off her necklace the sound of the pearls rolling over the parquet were like ballbearings on a bathroom floor.

For what my budgie-seed opinion is worth, Luhrmann’s interpretation of this great story set in the Jazz Age with its Shakespearean themes – impossible love, incorruptible dreams etc etc – was reduced to a brash 100% singing 100% dancing extravaganza in a heaving sea of champagne.

Tennis courts of Tiffany, tons of dazzle, a giddy torrent of feathers and flim-flam, but with all the depth and charisma as the enamel on a tin tray.

I am rather keen on Scott Fitzgerald and didn’t care for the liberties Luhrmann takes with the book.

Even the fact that Nick Carraway is supposed to be a poor cousin, but somehow can afford several servants and expensive psychotherapy annoyed me. But then maybe that’s just me being Miss Crankypants.

Why, we had to wait for half an hour before DiCaprio even made an appearance – and how exaggeratedly theatrical it was. Strings swelling to Rhapsody in Blue…blinking harbour lights in the distance and so forth.

Like all movies that are jammed with special effects – the 3D made me feel slightly bilious. As endless as Gotterdammerung, it was the kind of spectacle that almost made your eyes want to throw up.

Baz Lurhrmann needed someone to tell him ‘Enough! STOP already!’. Being cool is sometimes as effective as being hysterical but it’s less noisy.

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D…JZ…Mr Beyoncé….(sic).

What happened to being authentic to the time period?

What’s next? Schindler’s List with a rap music soundtrack.

Listen here Adolf…whattcha gonna do….here’s an idea baby…World War 2!

When Mia Farrow played Daisy, in the 1974 version, Robert Redford’s enchantment/fixation with her seemed more plausible. Miss Mulligan I am afraid, has a pretty face but all the acting skills of a wet sock. She’s not capable of igniting a cigarette, let alone a life-long passion.

(Actually it was more a desire for another possession, rather than love, if you ask me, but maybe I’ve just been watching too much Dr Phil.)

She either looked vaguely agonised or vaguely….well vague. Tobey Maguire, as the narrator, had the fresh unspoiled look of a slightly inebriated undergraduate, most of the time. It was his job to carry the movie. Even he looked exhausted by the end of it.

Leonardo diCaprio was predictably delicious in a series of ice-cream coloured suits, but it seemed to me that he was trying desperately hard to play Gatsby like Robert Reford playing Gatsby. He used the term ‘old sport’ at least a hundred times. Each time was more cringe-worthy than the last.

Auld Spaut. Erld Spert. Owl Spowt…etc etc.

As for the casting of Meyer Wolfsheim as a sinister Gupta – sorry I really can’t keep up – what is the politically correct term?- was downright offensive and if anything, another form of racial stereotyping.

Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s thuggish husband, had curious triangular shaped eyes and bulging cheeks -possibly too much Perlane?

He looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.

His mistress Myrtle wasn’t intriguing enough and his passion for her not believable. I recalled Karen Black playing a smouldering Myrtle and how when she said ‘he makes me feel as though tiny fishes are swimming in my veins’ you tingled right along with her.

In the end Gatsby is a novel about the excesses of an era, the last fling of the dragon’s tail.

While I deeply admired the hurricane of Tiffany jewels, the mansions (large enough to house the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir) the Birnam Wood of peonies, and the intricate topiary in those endless emerald gardens, I left the theatre feeling as though I had overdosed on sequins and Moet.

Perhaps I have finally turned the corner.

I could hardly wait to get home and steam mop the kitchen floor – the new normal for me.

My Gay Life

09 Thursday May 2013

Posted by janiallan in Jani Allan, My Grilling Life

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

gay, jewish, Karl Lagerfeld, Michaelangelo

Jani Allan celebrates gay and Jewish identities in this  satirical piece. Allan has long been considered a gay icon for her style and witty Sunday Times columns. She has been well versed in Jewish life having spent most of her life in Sandton and for her marriage to Gordon Schachat. 


The tragedy of my life – well one of them – is that I wasn’t born gay or Jewish.

Both are clubs with desirable benefits.

Ever seen a Jewish person down-and-out? My point precisely. Being Jewish means that you are part of a global family that takes care of their own. If you find yourself in a foreign country (assuming you are Jewish) there will be someone’s darling Auntie Bertha who will ask you over for Shabbas.

“Are you messhuga? We won’t hear of you staying in your hotel room!”

Are you the marrying kind? Mrs Levy will arrange a social introduction and the next thing you are married to a plastic surgeon, driving an SLK and ordering your chef to making matzo balls for Friday night.

Any old Tom, Dick or Harriet can join Match.com to find a partner. The only qualifier is that you should have a pulse.

Jewish dating: Jani Allan and her husband, Gordon Schachat.

Jewish dating: Jani Allan and her husband, Gordon Schachat.

Jewish people have a far more rigorous quality control process. Try and join J-Dating and you will see what I mean.

Jewish people are achievers. They always know someone who can ‘hook you up’ whether it’s with a part for your BMW, tickets for the Rolling Stones or a timeshare apartment in the Bahamas.

Gay people have a similar support system. If you have the slightest talent (assuming you are gay), you will be ‘hooked up’ with a dance teacher, modelling agent or interior designer. By next Tuesday Nate Berkus will give you a make-over on his show. You will get free facials forever (or as long as you live) you will be asked to co-host ‘The View’ with Barbara Wawa.

I rest my Louis Vuitton.

I live in a area gayer than Fire Island and from what I witness in the resto, being gay is the pink passport to a life of glamour and devotion.

(Actually, It remains a deep mystery to me why gay people are so keen to get married. Courtship is to marriage what a witty introduction is to a dull volume. But that’s another topic for another Mcblog.)

I can’t say that I have investigated this with the thoroughness of a burglar twisting the dial of a safe, listening for the locks to click and reveal the combination, but it seems to me that when gay people commit themselves to a relationship they Commit.

I have seen gay couples grow together and stay together. I could give you the names of five gay couples who are joined at the hip. And, at least from my ringside seat, appear to be happily so.

The Friends of Dorothy who come into the restaurant bring expensive champagne and tip generously.

They are meticulously groomed. They wax, exfoliate, pluck and moisturize far more than I do. Their faces are clean as china plates.

Jani Allan had a cross-dressing part in Pieter-Dirk Uys’ movie ‘Going Down Gorgeous.’

Jani Allan had a cross-dressing part in Pieter-Dirk Uys’ movie ‘Going Down Gorgeous.’

They appear interested in each other. Either that or they are listening to accounts of the misfortunes of others at which the hearer is permitted to laugh. (Nothing shortens a dinner date like the aforementioned.) Gay men text internationally in the middle of the night to discuss Kim Kardashian’s flowered frock and whether Tisci was too outre…or not outre enough.

Gay people have a sense of occasion. Every anniversary is marked by some show of devotion. Both partners invariably wear matching Tiffany rings and/or bangles. They have a Shi Tzu (or three) and speak to them on the telephone when they’re away from home. (Haven’t you seen ‘Best in Show?’)

To be a lesbian is even more desirable. It is having all the benefits of being a gay man, without the stress of having to maintain a ripped body and a beach to cancer tan.
I have seen lesbians who are heavy as boarding house dumplings gaze with adoration at each other, proving that if not blind, love is at least slightly myopic.

I know gay couples who have nursed each other through lazik surgery and chemotherapy. I know a gay couple who have remodelled a marvellous historic farmhouse, restoring it to its authentic beauty.

See what happens when a straight couple just has the builder in to pave the pool area…one partner invariably leaves to take up residence at a hotel for the duration.

In the restaurant you can tell who is heterosexual: the straights are always consulting their iPhones or looking at the door as if Katy Perry were expected to walk through any minute. (Or as they like, ungrammatically, to say here ‘momentarily.’)

Of course she has had the mandatory (in the Yooessay) boob enhancement and so much botox that her eyebrows are like those of a startled Kabuki dancer. But she is a nurtured woman. She is the embodiment of her husband’s success. Who cares if the relationship is more or less – more more than less – platonic. She is, as Germaine Greer wrote all that time ago, the dead heart of the family, spending her husband’s earnings on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps and watches the television.

Then there is the issue of creativity. More often than not, the gay gene is twinned with the artistic one. If Michaelangelo were straight the Sistine Chapel ceiling would have been painted a serviceable grey and done with a Renaissance roller.

If Karl Lagerfeld were straight…well lets not go there.

Gay people have their own language (cf Friends of Dorothy)….Jewish people lapse into Yiddish. Straight people just have “amazing.”

Perhaps, as Dotty Parker said ‘Heterosexuality is not normal it’s just common.

Disclaimer: The opinions in this piece are not necessarily those of the management.

Warning: Only Pet Lovers Should Read This

02 Thursday May 2013

Posted by janiallan in Jani Allan, My Grilling Life

≈ 24 Comments

The flight from Cape Town’s DF Malan Airport – or whatever its current name is – to Dulles Airport, Washington DC was 28 hours.

My companion and only friend as I embraced the unknown, was a three pound Pomeranian called Tinytot Miss Tiggywinkle.

She was named for the hedgehog in the Beatrix Potter series. In order to have Tiggyangel with me in the cabin I had to fly business class.

Tinytot Miss Tiggywinkle

Tinytot Miss Tiggywinkle

I was leaving a life. And a loft apartment on First Beach Clifton (elevator access to the beach).

“Theeza eeza your last chanz to re-inventa yourselfa,’ said the Italian-American who had insisted I leave the country.

The mighty plane took off and soon Table Mountain and the fairest Cape were a faded tapestry.

Loneliness surrounded me like a high dark hedge. But my pocket-sized travelling companion, seemed to sense that I needed comforting. From time to time she would push her tiny black nose under my wrist.

“Pet me mummy! Pet me!”

When we landed I allowed Miss Tiggy to stretch her leg and explore while I attempted to find my luggage – a trunk with a Cape Times poster ‘Jani Allan Does It Again’ plastered on the top. She enthusiastically kissed the noses of the huge drug-sniffing Alsations.

I didn’t understand then – and still don’t – the American aversion to pets/pet hair/pet dander/pet breath etc in public places. Why, the shops of Knightsbridge are densely thicketed with Cavalier King Charles spaniels. Once I saw one in the Perfume Hall in Horrids.

In those first few months in Washington DC Tiggy and I were barred from all the Museums. When the cherry blossoms covered the banks of the Potomac we walked in Arlington Cemetery. At the Iwo Jima Memorial she did circuits and bumps to the delight of the Americans.

“My what a tiny lil DAWG!” they would say. And for those few moments I had human contact.

Back in my throat lozenge sized apartment it was insufferably hot. Tiggy and I would lie next to each other and I would stroke her tiny paws with an ice-cube.

When a job opportunity presented itself in New Hope, we struck camp and set off.

At Union Station, soon after boarding the train several inspectors and a large gentleman who could have been the mayor of Washington boiled up to me.

‘Ma’am you ain’t got permission to have a dawg on the train! There ain’t been a dawg on the train since ninteen fiddy something.”

In desperation I pretended I was both deaf and rather dumb.

“Thith ith a hearing dog…”

“Show us the papers!”

I took out her vaccination papers. There was a lot of scowling and tutting. Tiggy was quiet as a foxglove in her little traveller.

Finally ‘We have reason to believe you ain’t been too truthful to us, but this time we gonna let you go.”

I heaved a sigh of relief.

“Nice one,” said Martin Sheen, who happened to be sitting opposite me.

Tiggy and I had grand adventures. I remember the time we were on the top of a New York bus. It was as cold as a plate glass negative. I tried to keep her warm by tucking her inside my puffer jacket. We went to Broadway shows together, with her discreet in her traveller.

There were many times her auburn fur was damp with my tears.

When her tiny kneecaps starting giving her trouble I took her to an animal acupuncturist. Then an animal physiotherapist.

I took her in her perambulator to visit my friend Jeff’s kindergarten class. Her fan base at the restaurant grew. She was given tiny pink Ralph Lauren cashmere sweaters and once a houndstooth cape.

When the snow was as high as my VW’s roof, her body shrank to the size of a tiny bird.

But she lost none of her gumption. When I tried to dress her she made a noise like a little scooter.

She faded before my eyes. Her once luxurious coat was gone. Her huge tail now mouse-sized.

She entered into immortality in the early hours of April 16 2012.

I had hoped that after one year the grief I feel at her loss would be manageable. It is not. She left me when the magnolias were unfurling and the blossoms carpeted the streets like soft seashells…as they are now.

So I write this piece for you Tiggyangel, the little girl who travelled so many miles with me and negotiated the emotional topography of my life with me…

You were a heartbeat at my heart.

Jani Allan

Jani Allan
Follow My Grilling Life – Jani Allan on WordPress.com

Follow Jani Allan on Twitter

My Tweets

Blog Stats

  • 1,043,154 hits

Recent Posts

  • Crimes and Misdemeanors
  • The Freedoms that Come with Age
  • Calorific waves and a botanic feast in Philadelphia
  • The Soundtrack of my Life
  • Four Christmases: I still have the brooch

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Comments

Ingrid on Crimes and Misdemeanors
Chisenga on Jani writes to Melissa Ba…
failong on The Soundtrack of my Life
failong on Crimes and Misdemeanors
Adam on Jani writes to Melissa Ba…

Archives

  • August 2016
  • December 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • September 2014
  • November 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013

Categories

  • Age
  • Charles Saatchi
  • Charlton Heston
  • Death
  • Easter
  • Friendship
  • Jani Allan
  • Margaret Thatcher
  • Melissa Bachman
  • My Grilling Life
  • Paula Deen
  • Table manners
  • The Great Gatsby
  • Youth

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Goodreads

Buy Jani’s memoir, Jani Confidential

http://www.amazon.com/Jani-Confidential-A-Memoir-Allan/dp/1431420212

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • My Grilling Life - Jani Allan
    • Join 214 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • My Grilling Life - Jani Allan
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...