I waited for half an hour after passing the friend I was supposed to meet on time in the street (we didn’t see each other the first time). She had with her another extended friend in the burgeoning summer hazy heat. I had sweaty feet. We finally did meet half an hour later. We then walked to their Thai restaurant; we had not booked a table. They gave us a table for four for the three of us to sit at. But they gave us a time scale there to decipher order wait drink eat pay and leave. We had around an hour – so we were quick to it. We also had an hour to fit in all of the chat we had in us and to talk of things happening and things to happen… but how do you do this whilst munching away on over priced precious parcels of food depository?
I ordered a soup with things swimming in it. We were especially vermicelli and delicious and I couldn’t use shops sticks for shit, so had to use the tips of my tired fingers to pluck noodles out of the broth. These noodles were then transferred to my mouth – these movements, these eating habits reflected my mind field of thoughts: thoughts that were digested in to words helped out by the accentuating veins managing the movement of my twiddling thumbs. The other two, they were used to their chops-tick action and had mastered the talking and eating effortlessly at the same time sort of thing.
I sat observant of this and ready to learn.
Chop/then/stick/then/MOUTH/and hand and ‘cover’ […]whilst chewing whilst speaking – a dichotomy of acts well placed to put an idea here and there across the table using the side plate and ceramic spoon for transport. This all happened at once with wonderful red lanterns glistening in eyeball soups alongside dishes and salads and cucumber shavings. Next came the carrots and the bean sprouts and chillies – all tangled together to save from cacophony, wrapped in a suitcase for safe depositing in destination mouth.
It then became an interview whilst I copied their melodious napkin movements, an interview in table etiquette with good healthy side plated conversational interludes. An orchestra of vegetables, the odd bit of meat… who eats what and why and when and how – and how – how do words work alongside one other rather public function of the mouth?
“Chop then stick then mouth and hand and ‘cover’…” That’s how.
