Simple Pleasures

There's a terrific book by Richard Klein called 'Cigarettes are Sublime' - I lent it to a friend years ago and it was so good they never gave it back, (you can take a person's hospitality, money, friendship for granted but borrow a book and not return it? Phht - how to lose friends and irritate people). Amazon says: 'Klein's survey of the history of cigarettes and their gestalt of ritual, seduction, contemplation, and danger is fruitful and often surprising. For Native Americans, tobacco was a minor divinity, and smoke a prayer. For writers and artists, smoking has often been part of the creative process. The sharing of cigarettes has long been a gesture of courtship and sensuality, an expression of rebelliousness and bravado, and a balm for the terrors and tragedy of war and other intolerable circumstances.'

There's all sorts of tosh written about artists and writers - not all are 'mad, bad and dangerous to know ...' The majority of us hold down responsible jobs, run households (and several of us regularly write late into the night only to be woken up at 5am by bouncy toddlers). As Wendy Cope said, with poets there's rather more brown corduroy than Byronic passion - and very few of the successful writers I've met conform to the romantic ideal of half god/addict. I know that Hemingway used to leave his cat babysitting his infant son, but would you?

So where are you on the corduroy/Byron scale of writerly excess? Let's not talk about lapsed new year's resolutions - I even managed to ressurect an old bad habit ('intolerable circumstances'). I gave up smoking over ten years ago - but it's amazing how quickly it comes back to you. This time round it was only ever going to be a temporary fling, but I still love everything about smoking except the end result and how anti-social it has become. All the things Klein talks about - ritual, seduction, contemplation - the meditative solitude, the silver cigarette case and heavy old lighter, I love. Did you ever see the scene in Frasier where Bebe his agent performs a brilliant soliloquy on the pleasures of smoking? I remember sitting writing in a cafe about twenty years ago smoking Gauloises. A middle aged woman (hah - she was probably about my age now), came over and said 'Oh, Gauloises ... I thought I recognised the scent.' She smiled sadly as she told her story. Turned out she had once lived in Paris and the love of her life had smoked Gauloises.

Still, here we are minty fresh and bright eyed if not bushy tailed, giving up again. Have any of you stuck with your new year's resolutions? Periodically, it's good to embark on a self improvement jag - for me this normally involves a bulk order of MBS books from Amazon. Do you find it's a cyclical process with you - or are you more balanced? Yoga, pilates, tai chi, transcendental meditation - tried most things. What works for you? Over the years I've read a lot of MBS books - and cherrypicked a system that works for me - most of the time. Lately you'd have found me meditating with a Marlboro - but hey, we're all human. I may have the same psych profile as Gandhi/Oprah according to the former headhunter/pilot but I'm some way off their saintly status. Some MBS books are better than others (Deepak Chopra, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, John O'Donohue, 'Creative Visualisation' by Shakti Gawain, for example, good). Which are the best you've come across? There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there, aren't there? Perhaps it's a Brit thing - I want mental/spiritual rigour and physical results not vague self indulgence.

I stuck with 'Eat, Pray, Love' (mainly because it felt like it was annoying me for a reason and the the quality of the writing outweighed the 'fling it across the room' reaction provoked by the self-indulgence). One of the better passages was this: 'In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.' Certainly in Bali and India where the latter stages of the book are set, precious food is a real spiritual and scarce physical currency. Meanwhile in the west we've certainly got disorder, disaster and fraud all around us - where our work can come in is countering this with beauty, excellence, and simple pleasures.

TODAY'S PROMPT: 'The meal is the only currency that is real'. Writing about food in your work provides an immediate sensory, pleasurable link with your readers. Which books have made your mouth water? 'The Lives of Pippa Lee' by Rebecca Miller recently luxuriated over roast lamb and creme brulee. Or what about dear old Prufrock speculating whether he dared to eat a peach? Think about chopping vegetables for soup, or slicing a lemon. Why not try writing about it? Caring for a hungry, growing family on a budget you learn to be inventive with food, (101 things to do with a potato?) but what was the best meal you ever had? Who did you share it with? I remember shucking oysters in Paris ... eating fresh pizza on a snowy sidestreet in the shadows of Durham Cathedral ... boiled lobster on a beach in Cape Cod. Do you live to eat or eat to live? When was the last time you took a walk through your local market? Forget cellophaned supermarkets - take a wander through the luscious fruit stalls, check out the gleaming fish and pungent cheeses. Food is one of the simplest pleasures we can all share - beautiful, sensual, sociable. Enjoy - eat that peach, and let your readers share your pleasure.