Beans.
A funny topic with which to start the new year, inspired (as it is)
by 2018's Christmas dinner, so not even what you can call current,
just recent history. The idea for – the dinner and this piece -
given by a painting; a painting Alexander McCall Smith described,
almost to perfection, in one of his standalone novels. The painting
as well as the setting of that novel led to my very unconventional
Italian Christmas supper, though it was not in the end a stew, but
Tuscan-style beans with penne pasta.
Why
write of it? Why is that so very remarkable? It's not; just different
because other writers will be penning articles on new year's
resolutions, on sales and holidays in the sun, on the many ways to
lose some pounds and beat the bulge through diet and exercise. That,
in my view, is so predictable, too boring, and none of the
information they spurt out is new, just recycled and repeated,
which, if you give it some thought, is a perfect system with very
little cost.
Ah
cynicism, my old friend. Well, it is January. And I don't know about
other countries, but here – the UK- January tends to be grey in
tone and mood. It's only just
January!, I hear you exclaim, yes, but Christmas was a long time
coming, in that shops stock items earlier and earlier, and that, I
find, is a little taxing to the spirit, unless of course you live for
this time of year. Some people do, you know. I'm obviously not one of
them. I'm not sure that if you did as a child the same feeling
continues once grown. You may have exhausted it...perhaps if you
didn't have it as a child, you develop it when adult? A late onset
childlike excitability over forthcoming birthdays and Christmases
and parties. Or perhaps you've always been naturally inclined that
way, akin to a dog excited by walks. Wag, wag, wag, where's my
collar? There's my collar! Put it on me. Now for my coat and fetch my
lead while I bounce and bounce and jump at and all over your feet and
woof. There are a few adults like that... I just haven't, as of yet,
found them infectious.
Other
things, viruses and the like, are though. The Tuscan bean supper
accompanied a very poor end to the year and a rather pathetic
beginning to the next of that ilk, until I convinced myself I would,
as Humpty Dumpty recommends to Alice (in Wonderland), have an
un-birthday, and possibly an un-Christmas too. I cannot tell you
whether I did or didn't because well, I'm not in that time-frame of
having decided whether I will or won't.
Eh?
I won't explain if you don't mind, it would take too long. But you
have time! Do I? Who are you to say? Perhaps it's already run out.
And time, the keeping to it and the passing of it, is tricky in the
winter months.
Oh
dear, oh dear, time is running, running, as the White Rabbit would
also be if he were here, and I've barely touched on the beans of the
painting. Or the painting itself.
Would
you think it insufficient if all I told you was the man portrayed in
it – the bean eater – seems to be enjoying his beans? You need
more... well, he has a hungry look in his eyes and a spoon of them
are poised to go into his mouth. I think he would have gone more
wolfishly about them, had not the artist, Annibale Carracci, been
there to catch that pose. Was he there though? Or was it a Blue Peter
moment: an image he'd seen earlier and captured in his mind to later
release on canvas? No, I haven't done the legwork, that research,
that any good writer should do.
I've
never once said I was good, have I? In any sense, I don't think,
writing or otherwise. And so you can't, to be fair, expect that of
me. This is a need, not a profession. I couldn't stop if I was asked
to or if I, myself, wanted to. Maybe for Lent. No, I couldn't. Beans,
then? You can't live on nothing, though there are some people who
would refute that. Air, they say, air. Does that apply to polluted
air though? Research required there too, but I'm not the person to do
it.
I
did, however, spend a few minutes closely studying the painting to
see if I could work out exactly what type of bean the eater is
eating. And my conclusion, though you may disagree and even argue
with me, is black-eyed.
Book recommendation: My Italian Bulldozer, Alexander McCall Smith.
Picture credit: The Bean Eater, 1590, Annibale Carracci.
All posts published this year were penned in 2019.
