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The taste of pure pretention

Just looking at an excerpt in The Observer from food writer Nigel Slater's latest book. He talks about the lists he keeps in notebooks and the backs of envelopes. Some refer to 'books to read or read again', while others cover 'plants to secure for the garden'. One that he thankfully hasn't yet committed to paper is his list of favourite smells. This includes old books, a 'freshly snapped runner bean' and 'a fleeting whiff of white narcissi on a freezing winter's day'.

Personally, I couldn't read a page of this self-indulgent stuff without a fleeting whiff of one of my least favourite smells: the contents of my stomach freshly regurgitated into the nearest wastepaper basket.

Comments

  1. fiona Lawrie9:50 AM

    I couldn't agree with you more. For a long time I have loathed this idiot's fatuous, flatulent, bloody terrible prose. He shares a surname with the least classy family on Eastenders, yet acts as if he's just fluttered in on a light spring breeze.

    And doesn't he realise that no-one uses th e word whiff' other than to describe a bad smell. Like your aforementioned stomach contents, Phil.

    ReplyDelete

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