Strange and coincidental, that The Fishmonger and I can't exactly live together, what with him being in Norfolk, and me in France, but our two businesses snuggle up quite cosily together. Now he has an extractor fan it is a good deal better.
THE FISHMONGER
I did try to live with the Fishmonger in Norfolk. I tried for two years. He lives in a small cottage on a main coast road. The ceilings are hobbit height and he is very tall. He bought the house thirty five years ago with an inheritance from his great aunt.
His mother helped him choose the curtains....they are a pretty floral with squirrels and nut trees in a tight repeat. and still hang proudly in his bedroom. The kitchen has a beautiful green formica surface surrounded by tiles depicting badgers and field mice. He eats off plastic picnic plates and his vast selection of drinking glasses have been gathered, one feels, from forsaken cider orchards, or neglected beer gardens on sunday afternoon jaunts!
I spent one cosy winter snuggled up with the Fishmonger in this cottage. He has a very efficient fire. It burns everything he gathers and he is a very efficient gatherer. It is rare for the Fishmonger to buy fuel. He successfully acquires anything combustible from the beaches, the fields and the neighbour- hood skips. He chops these finds into tiny pieces (his fireplace being quite minute) and keeps them in a cupboard under his stairs where they dry next to the night storage heater.
This method ensured our warmth in the winter of 95 and apart from dodging the odd molten missile that launched itself resentfully at our contentment, we were as cosy as the multitude of little bugs in their rugs that lived under the wood pile, the sofas, and the hospitably moist Wilton wool carpet that was recycled from his fathers office in 1953, and now adorned the cottage floor.
I was truly in love.
That winter we discussed how I would be an asset to my Fishmonger. Long into the night we thought of a thousand ways a stylist could wave her magic wand and enhance the fish trade. We eventually came up with the idea of opening a small fish cafe above his shop in the nearby village of Burnham Market.
The fishmonger thought crab salads and sandwiches would be good fillers for the coach parties of old dears that descended on the village from spring to autumn each year. But I was ahead of him here.. Coming from Sydney where the ingredi- ents were fresh ( I think rural Britain still has a fifties concept of the word fresh...despite all the F words and School dinners!) and food was about camaraderie and sensuality.. I took the risk and stood my ground over endless foodie discussions huddled around the fire for the duration of a cruel East Anglian winter.
I wanted salads and, olive oils and sardines, soups, scallops and crepes. I wanted fish, pan fried, with lashings of garlic and lemon.
I have never understood the British obsession with fish in gooey batter, smothered in vinegar and soggy chips. Yuk! I wanted a plate to speak with colour and flavours, simple and tasty. An experience rather than a stop over and fill up!
One trip to the fish shop on Campbell Parade Bondi Beach could put a Pom in the picture about his national dish. Here you choose your fish and they grill it in front of you. You get half a lemon and a newspaper cone full of crispy chips.You sit at sunset in the empty band stand looking over the Pacific ocean watching the last of a few surfie stragglers swimming their boards to the shore,and the beefy lifeguards scratching their rumps and breaking a tinnie or two in mateship. Life's a beach. “Aint that the truth. “No wucking furries mate!”
I decorated the cafe in sea tones and covered it in shells inspired by a Greek ruin we had come across on a holiday to Lindos. Here we had hired a tiny green Corsa and the Fishmongers legs , being too long for the pedals, had ensured that we kangarooed around the island every day until, exhausted, we came to a stop back at our borrowed villa whereupon the Fishmonger lost himself among neighbouring vineyards and returned at dusk bloated and juice stained from gorging himself on the ripening grapes! and pomegranates!
I had a kitchen the size of an airing cupboard, and if someone was washing up and another was cooking at the same time, we had to stand bum to bum and some bums took up more space than others! I had no notion that I would be the one actually cooking in this space but after the dream came the reality and I quickly realised that every- thing was up to me and why not? The fishmonger was much better on the shop floor. He liked the repetitions of life. He needed to know he was safe.
“Would you like your head on or awf Madam”? he would enquire of his customers several hundred times a day and “Would you like a bag for that or not ?” Not one to be overgenerous with the plastic, and quite rightly.
We opened the cafe in the summer of 1996. We were packed from day one, Saturdays being our biggest day, the atmosphere at the tables was electric and as the space was so small people quickly became friends and brought friends and the mood was always alive and magnetic. There were exceptions however and a good cafe mood could be ru- ined by an unhappy marriage. I say this because you can kind of spot when a couple have run their marriage to the point of “sans issue.” These couples sit next to each other. Staring blankly ahead at the space that is sadly empty of their soul mates, they rarely converse except to comment on the food or complain about the service. Often they ask for the music to be changed or turned down and I am here to tell you they can kill a happy vibe as quick as you can say “Head on or awf.”
If all the remaining diners (All twenty four of them ) unanimously decided to rebel and keep the mood buoyant, then approximately three days later I would receive a letter of complaint in the post usually confirming my suspicions that I had ruined their entire weekend!
At this time in the village was a neighbour who had taken a vehement dislike to the Fishmonger. This was partly due to the fact that he ran a twee little gift shop with his over fragrant and orange stained girlfriend. The shop was called “La Belle Vie” or some such elaborate nom de francais. The back door opened directly onto where the Fishmonger stored his delectable waste bins. This meant there was a
profound conflict of aromas. Personally I am of the opinion that though “Odour de Poisson “ is not entirely marketable in even itʼs freshest form, it is an honest smell and preferable to “Odour de Fraises synthetique” that bombarded our senses on a daily basis.
Now, if you are of Essex origin and by some ugly twist of fate have found yourself trading in a quintessentially British village the like of Burnham where the “Windsor Factor” holds itʼs discreet little flag close to itʼs puffy chest, it is beneficial for you not to make too much of your- self. It is not wise to clad yourself in Nike lycra nor to sport gold ingots and an immensity of chest hair burgeoning from your opened track jacket. One chap is never expected to threaten another chap with his briefs in the post over boundary issues. And one needs to be very certain of ones case before one takes any such action towards said Fishmonger because he will raise himself, when threatened, up to his full Old Etonian stature and plot revenge,and he will park you and your nasty flashy jaguar in for days with his secondary fish vehicle sodden with the leakage from his last load, and when asked impolitely to move it, he will stare down at you from a very great height and reply. “Not for a piece of insignificant excrement such as yourself. No.” And while you are dancing Rumplestiltskinesque around the Fishmonger, punching the air in an hirsute rage, the Stylist will notice that you have inadvertently left the door open to your flat and she will quickly lo- cate that special delicacy the chinese duck egg (A gift from a returning traveller purportedly said to be one hundred years old.) and with the stealth and precision attributed to her trade she will secrete it under your stair carpet , stamp on it and quickly beat a retreat. Some weeks later you will find that not even the industrial cleaners are able to locate or remove the offending smell. One weekend we will find you gone. Your shop empty and your briefs un-posted.
It is true that The Fishmonger lamented the loss of his valuable,ancient duck egg for many weeks. What was he keeping it for? Would it one day accidentally end up in an omelette as a cafe delicacy? Best not to take that chance. So it was with smug satisfaction I revelled in its un- timely and infantile demise.
One saturday morning while setting out my wares on the miniscule cafe counter, a local and much celebrated hotelier rushed up the stairs to announce the arrival of an important food critic. It seemed that Jonathan Meades was a guest at The Hoste Arms and our good neighbour had recommended he eat lunch at our establishment.
Panic ensued. I was not prepared. I had written the Plat du Jour and placed it outside the fish shop. All the usuals were there, Cafe Salads, Scallops with parmesan, Seafood pancakes< Thai fishcakes.....and an interesting but unpractised dish I had concocted that very morning with salted cod.
I had bought the salted cod the day before in Portobello. I have long been addicted to foraging the friday junk markets under the flyover. I had already bought a floral bedspread and a couple of 1930s silk nighties when the thought occured....”Oh some salt cod would be excellent!!”
I had never cooked it before, nor had I any notion how to cook it...but I picked up the gauntlet.. I soaked the cod overnight (not long enough as it transpired.) and the next morning, very early I cooked it with chilli and chick peas, lashings of fish sauce and perhaps some coriander, cumin and pickled lemons.
After receiving news of the impending visit, I was naturally anxious to erase the above dish from the specials board . I wiped the excess fish guts, from a bass I had been filleting, off my hands and flew the length of the stairs to obliterate the risky item. Too late...Mr Meades was already first footing the bottom of the stairs. In order not to knock him off his axis and paralyse as well as potentially poison him, I braked excessively and pretended to be intent on polish- ing the banister with my eraser rag. He looked alarmed but fairly un- fazed as he continued on and up into the cafe.
He settled himself into a cosy corner and proceeded to study the menu. I tried not to focus on the salt cod. I repeated a mantra of “Choose the Thai fish cakes” over and over in my head. “I”ll have the salt cod”. he said “Sounds interesting”. That's it! There it was. I was done for, gutted, like the surrendering bass that was already judging me a fraud. Resigned to my inevitable fate, I served him up a healthy portion and waited for the choking........ It didnʼt come. Instead I heard the spoon scrape the bowl a number of times, then a polite request for seconds! The following weekend the Sunday Times ran an article by Mr Meades on the culinary delights of Burnham Market. It featured a rather fetching cartoon depicting the fishmonger and the hotelier and described my dish as an interesting “piri piri” oddity! I think I got off lightly and The Fishmonger having polished off the re- mains of the dish, dined out on the story for months. I was however rapidly realising that fish was not my forte. Love had driven me to embrace things beyond my nature.
Why is it that we women always look to developing the potential in our men? I had clearly decided that my Fishmonger needed to develop, he needed more colour, he needed me and my limitless imagination to put the sparkle into his life. To create the star of Fishmongers. What I clearly neglected to understand was that here was a man who still walked the worn path of his fathers Wilton. . This man was content with his life. Every Sunday he set off with his shrimp net and waders and on Monday he stocked his shop with the mussels and shrimp he gathered on at the weekend. This he had done for over thirty years and over that time hundreds of women had swooned at the very mention of his potted shrimp! He was a national treasure . A beautiful, eccentric, simple man with no expecta- tions to be anything other than he already was. I t was me who had to work a way to change. I had to discover how to be content with him the way he was and also have a life . Clearly the answer meant I needed to be on a long piece of elastic from Norfolk.
