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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: December 2014

Four Christmases: I still have the brooch

23 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by janiallan in Jani Allan

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

christianity, christmas, Clifton, England, Italy, New Jersey, relationships, religion, South Africa

rsz_janiallannormancatherine

Jani Allan recounts spending Christmas in Italy, England, South Africa and the United States. 


Parma, Italy

I once spent Christmas with a family in Parma, the city where Verdi was born. I still have a rosary of strung-together memories of that trip.

Parma is an ancient city, the origins of which date back to the Bronze Age. (The present-day Piazza Duomo is built on the necropolis constructed around 1500 BC.) It is thought that the city was most probably founded and named by the Etruscans.

As a History of Art student, I knew the Romanesque Parma Cathedral with its 16th century fresco masterpiece by Antonio da Correggio. I knew, from pictures in my Janson History of Art, Giotto’s frescos in the Arena Chapel. I had analyzed and studied the composition of Da Vinci’s L’Ultima Cena. I knew the architecture of St Peter’s.

But nothing prepared me for the experience of actually seeing these marvels.

The profound richness and nobility of the human spirit is embodied in these churches, cathedrals, baptisteries and monuments

Why, to stand before Milano Cathedral or in St Peter’s is a spiritual in itself.

My boyfriend Mauro did not share my interest in Fine Art. He grew impatient with me as I stood speechlessly gazing at Giotto’s pale, quiet fresco cycle.

‘Che faccia! How much longer you-a want-a to look?” he demanded to know. Vieni qua! Let’s go! When-a you going to be feeneeshed to look?”

Italy was experiencing the lowest temperatures and record snowfalls in a century. Mauro bought me cashmere long-johns and sweaters and a Moncler hooded parka with real fur trimming. (I was pre-animal activist.) He bought me Italian leather boots and a doctor’s bag.

We drove to Milano in his Porsche. The snow fell like soft boulders.

Mauro started rolling a joint. He was expert at steering with his knees.  As he turned to offer a toke to his friend in the back seat, the car in front slammed on its brakes.

We smashed into the car in front of us and the car behind us smashed into us…the chain reaction caused a sixty car pile up.

“Che faccia! Now look what you made me do!” Mauro shouted at me.

**

Still, I was enchanted with Italy. Even the autogrills – the equivalent of corner cafes, is a gourmand’s paradise. There are shoulder-high pyramids of Baci chocolates, yard long bars of nut-studded chewy nougat, candelabras of salamis and hams, wagon-wheel sized cheese and barrels of fuschia-pink pistachios.

At twilight the streets wear their twinkling lights like bijou necklaces. Students in fruit-drop coloured anoraks gather in the piazza. Exquisitely-dressed women bicycle wearing full-length sables and post-box red borsalinos.

Italian families are the warmest and most caring in the world. The Italian mama lives to serve her family.

‘Have you remembered your gloves? Are you wearing rubber-soled boots? The pavements are slippery. Is that all you are going to eat?’

Those Christmastide mealtimes lasted for hours.

Parma is famous for its food and rich gastronomical tradition: Parmigiano Reggiano cheeses, stuffed pasta dishes like “tortelli d’erbetta” and “anolini in brodo”.

Mauro’s mother’s speciality was pasta with Fragno black truffle: black pearls from the Appenninis. Dom Perignon Champagne flowed. Endless jokes and stories were told. ‘Ti ricordi quando….e ti ricordi anche…”

“Do you remember when….do you remember when…?”

I laughed until I cried. I made a mental note to write in my diary ‘Laughter is the sound you hear most often in Italy.

On Christmas day Mauro’s mother gave me a gold brooch. It had been given to her by a family friend. The friend was Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia.  She showed me a photograph of Mauro sitting on his lap.

I still have the brooch.

**

Surrey, United Kingdom

Perhaps my most meaningful Christmas was when I was in the UK. I had joined a bible-study group and had become that most annoying of things – a reborn Christian. Reborn Christians frown at people as they stroll into the pub.

Don’t they know they should be filled with the Spirit, not spirits?

I had made firm friends with a handful of American women.  We met twice a week and studied Kay Arthur’s Precept Bible Study Courses.

The Names of God. Covenant. Revelation.

That year all the Christmas cards I sent were magnificent and biblical.

Wilton Diptych

Wilton Diptych

The One of my favourite cards was a reproduction of the Wilton Diptych. I had seen the original in the National Gallery.

The small portable diptych of two hinged panels is an extremely rare survival of late Medieval religious panel painting. It was painted for King Richard II.

I sent these Christmas cards with tasteful little stickers saying “Jesus is the reason for the season.”

I made bobotie for the bible-study class.  (A Christmas miracle in itself, since I don’t cook. As someone once said, if God meant you to cook he would have given you aluminium hands.)

On Christmas Eve, I took Communion – for the first time as a Bible-believing Christian in a little church in Kingston Upon Thames.

The next morning I drove up to Holy Trinity Brompton.

I loved the worship band.

“I walk by faith

Each step by faith

To live by faith I put my trust in You.”

I especially liked the bit about “No weapon formed against me shall prosper. If my God is for me who can be against me”

After the service, we ate delicious little mince pies and said Merry Christmas a lot.

I was walking with the Lord. I was happy.

**

Clifton, Cape Town, South Africa

2000.

I have never been a fan of Christmas. It’s the time that I traditionally molt and refuse my food. It’s family time and since I don’t have a family (well, a human one), it’s difficult to become excited about stuffing a turkey.

There is something especially trieste about Christmas in Clifton.

The fake holly and faux snow in the shop windows at the Waterfront are depressing. So is the brain-numbingly ghastly music in the supermarkets (“Baby its cold outside”? No it’s not!)

Even Christmas cards depress me.

All those cards of reindeer dancing in the snow with ‘Wishing you and yours a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year” and an illegible scrawl across the bottom.

“Looks like Glue Rowen? Geraldien Owen? Do I even know a Glue?”

Christmas is consumerism on steroids. ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry while stocks lasts. Order your genuine imitation leather saddle-stitched wallet and get two free! Special, never to be repeated offer. Please rush me your digital watch with thirty functions including an egg-times and billiard ball counter etc. etc.

Even the fashion magazines are annoying. Do people really wear those chryselephantine gowns?

What about those party-hearty revelers who claim to be whooping it up in St Tropez with Serge (Gainsbourg) or is it Plett?

Do they really?

I very much suspect that come Christmas morning they wake up in Woodstock suffering from a gigantic hangover from drinking too much Asti Spumanti.

Christmas should be cancelled in Clifton.

Victoria Road is like a parking lot. You can’t get in or out of your apartment. The beaches are jammed with foreigners (Gauteng) and the alcohol is kept in cages just when you need it most.

**

Lambertville, New Jersey, USA

We don’t talk about Christmas here. There’s a lot of Happy Holidaying. Children are brought up to believe in the cult of Santa.

When I decorated the restaurant I didn’t dare include anything that might offend the atheists.

The local Catholic Church put up a charming nativity scene last week.

Someone stole the baby Jesus.

Diary of a Christmas Decorator

12 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by janiallan in My Grilling Life

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

christmas, decorating, my grilling life, restaurant

For those who think that Christmas decorations are a matter of lassoing a few strands of lights around a tree and fixing a plastic wreath with a red bow on the front door, don’t bother to read further.

***

Jim Hamilton used to be a Broadway set designer. These days he focuses more on architectural design – shopping centers, interiors of restaurants and homes of the scions of society – but for Jim, The Look is everything.

Some say he even hired a manager once because he liked his look – that of a funeral undertaker. I firmly believe he hired me because he liked my (then) look. At least, at the time, he told me that I looked like a fashion plate. (That was years ago. These days I have of course gone to seed with a vengeance. The bloom has long gone from the rose.)

It was in the middle of November that I bumped into him in the lane that leads to the restaurant.

He asked me if I would do the holiday decorating at his restaurant.

“Erm. Yesnaby” I said, undecidedly.

I was flattered that he would entrust me with such a gargantuan task, but I dreaded that I would displease him.

“I want them up by Thanksgiving,” he said fixing me with a rheumy eye.

I stuttered idiotically. Greatness has this effect on me. crisdec

***

Monday 24th November

A summit of decorators has been scheduled.

There is Pat, an elegant woman and lifelong friend of Jim’s who decorated the restaurant for years until it became toomuch.com.

Then there is a dishwasher who has come in from Trenton, a Vietnam vet who is a local character and a server who is seeking to make additional funds to finance the petrol for her trip to Tennessee for her daughter’s graduation.

The decorations have been stored in black bin liners in the Executive Chef’s garage.

Like so many sheathed dead bodies, they have to be lugged to his truck, transported to the restaurant and then hoisted off the truck and stored in the downstairs area of the office.

There are huge – eight foot tall – arches, wreaths, swaths and more arches – all wrapped in black plastic. There are countless boxes of faux foliage, holly, baubles and berries.  And there are tangles –  lianas – of Christmas lights.

While the dishwasher and the Vietnam vet position the arches in the Gallery, Cindy unravels the lights, ninety-nine percent of which don’t work.

Pat and I set out to find the amber light strands that Jim wants. We are unsuccessful. After considerable deliberation we settle on mixed cream and amber strings. Some $250 worth.

Six hour day.

Tuesday 25th November

Vietnam vet is the electrical guy. He is also the guy with a transistor radio which he almost-tunes to a station that is playing heavy metal. There is lots of ACDC.

“I’ve seen these guys! I’ve seen them!” he bawls above the din. “They came out on stage like animals escaping a cage.”

I yearn for ‘Oh little town of Bethlehem,’ but I don’t want to annoy the Vet. He is temperamental and is likely to walk off the job.

Six hour day.

Wednesday 26th November

Vietnam walks off the job. threearches

He has taken three days to complete the wiring on three arches.

Cindy and I resolved to finish the job ourselves.

It starts snowing. Not the charming filigree flakes but the large wet ones that cause the windscreen wipers of my little bug to jam.

I drive to Living Earth, a nursery and holiday accessory store that is filled with mind-wateringly beautiful stuff to make sure yours is a Christmas filled with rampant consumerism.

Plants, flowers, wreaths, poinsettias the size of dinner plates. I am in search of antique ribbons which they will make up into bows before your eyes.

When I pay the bill I understand why the locals call it

Living Wallet.

Jim’s exhortation to finish the decorating by Thanksgiving is not possible. There are five rooms and I am one person. Fiddling with fir will cut your fingertips. My thumbs are so cracked I can’t take my contacts out of my eyes.

Sunday 30th November 

I have persuaded Abigail to help me with the holly garlands. While she is on the ladder the new manager comes and informs her that he is a fashion designer and interior decorator and that he has done these things himself.

We are in the presence of greatness

It is day six of decorating. My crew has lost interest. Besides they have lives to attend to.

My Pomeranians are neglected as latchkey children and my editor’s emails go unanswered.

Friday 5th December 

Jim delivers the coup de main. He comes into the restaurant on Friday night and demands to see me.

He doesn’t like the white and amber lights! He wanted all amber! I explain to him that I couldn’t find amber lights in any local stores,

“If I find amber lights you’re in trouble,” he tells me.

My apartment has been bombed. I have been held up at gunpoint. Who knew that amber lights would be my coup de grâce?

Saturday 6th December

Jim calls me at the crack of nine to summon me to the restaurant to instruct me further on how to realize his vision.

I jot down frantic notes as we go from room to room.

More lights. Advent wreaths. Window boxes. A Christmas tree outside that has to be lit…janidecorator

He makes quick drawings of The Look of the window boxes and The Look of the topiary that needs to be planted in the urns outside the front door.

People’s lives are going on but I am in stasis with the decorating saga. Like writing a book, it started out as an adventure, and then became a mistress and finally is a card-carrying tyrant.

Every morning another box from Amazon.com thuds on my doorstep. Every day I shuttled to and from Finkles Hardware store buying extension cords, staple guns (to disguise the extension cords), hammers and nails.

On Wednesday morning I go to Jim’s atelier to meet with Charles Tiffany who will install a chandelier in the resto Delaware Room.

“Do you want ribbons or garlands on the chandelier” I ask.

“Both!”

I am tasked to buy another Christmas tree for the Garden Room.

I started this project as optimistic as someone who starts a crossword puzzle with a fountain pen. Now I am faltering. I ask Jim if his phone can receive pictures. I don’t want to make a mistake and buy the wrong tree.

He waves me aside impatiently.

“Go and buy a fu!@#ng tree! How hard can it be?”

I drive to Flemington. It is perilous driving a car that has the horse power of a perambulator. As each SUV and Hummer roars past me, my little bug feels as though it is about to wobble off the road.

There are no suitable trees at Michaels or Home Depot or any of the other three places that I try.

I have to call in a favour from my mortgage broker friend. He comes to fetch me in his wife’s Audi SUV. I (again) go to Bountiful Acres. It’s like an FAO Schwartz for Christmas decorators. Fake trees run at about $300.

“Get a real one,” Tim urges me.

I have never understood the annual American ritual of tree slaughtering, but in the interests of the man whose taste I admire above all, we join the puffy-jacketed throng milling around in the dark looking for an appropriately sized and shaped tree.

We drag the tree into the restaurant. I text waiter Steven saying “Please put the tree in water or the blood will be on your apron.”

Steven texts back:

“I won’t become part of your Christmas nightmare.”

Next day Jim looks at the tree.

“Let’s forget about the tree. I’ll take this one down to the shore.”

(He has a house at the shore.)

Finally on Sunday morning,  Pearl Harbor Day, Jed and Kevin, my two Christmas elves, taking pity on my solitary muling, come and perch on ladders and rewire the arches so that they have only amber lighting. They also lasso lights on the Christmas tree.

(Another helper had started putting the lights on the tree from the bottom up. “Brain dead,” explains Jim.)

Blackpool comes to Lambertville.

My futile search for meaning, unity and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world, devoid of God and eternal truths or value continues…

Jani Allan

Jani Allan
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