Utter Ballocks
A couple of issues ago, the editor of Time Out Mumbai, Mr Fernandes, received the following letter from a reader about my column, Ballocks:
Obviously, this letter raises a number of serious questions. Firstly, on the issue of whether or not I have known a dull moment, I distinctly remember a tedious half-hour in 1978 spent waiting for my mother to choose a Marks & Spencer's bra. I hope that clears that up.
Less contentiously, Ms Ghosh seems to suggest with the phrase "cooked-up fodder" that I merely invent the content of my columns from the comfort of my armchair, or other convenient seating arrangement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Each Ballocks column is painstakingly hammered out from true-life experiences, moulded into a pleasing 500-word length, then airbrushed with puns, choice exaggeration, subtle embellishment and a smidgen of out-and-out bullshit. By the time it is printed, each column is guaranteed to be only 10 per cent fact-free, or your money back.
As for Ms Ghosh's professed love of my column, I can only, humbly reply: "I love you too, baby. Don't you go changing."
Anyway. For those of you who missed the pimp one, here it is (that means you, random blog-hopper).
Your columnist Iain Ball has never known a dull moment it seems. In a previous issue he wrote about getting punched in the face for requesting a light. Then there was the time he met a lunatic on the local train. In the latest one he's written about being solicited by a pimp. I love his column and never miss reading it but I have to wonder whether these things have actually happened to him or whether it's all cooked-up fodder.
Bandana Ghosh
Obviously, this letter raises a number of serious questions. Firstly, on the issue of whether or not I have known a dull moment, I distinctly remember a tedious half-hour in 1978 spent waiting for my mother to choose a Marks & Spencer's bra. I hope that clears that up.
Less contentiously, Ms Ghosh seems to suggest with the phrase "cooked-up fodder" that I merely invent the content of my columns from the comfort of my armchair, or other convenient seating arrangement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Each Ballocks column is painstakingly hammered out from true-life experiences, moulded into a pleasing 500-word length, then airbrushed with puns, choice exaggeration, subtle embellishment and a smidgen of out-and-out bullshit. By the time it is printed, each column is guaranteed to be only 10 per cent fact-free, or your money back.
As for Ms Ghosh's professed love of my column, I can only, humbly reply: "I love you too, baby. Don't you go changing."
Anyway. For those of you who missed the pimp one, here it is (that means you, random blog-hopper).
“We’ve got Thai, Indonesian, Spanish, Chinese…” the woman was saying. I ignored her and started off up the road to my hotel. The road seemed steeper that it usually did, with a tendency to undulate in a disconcerting manner. And something was holding me back. It was my arm. I looked at my arm. It was in the hands of a short black woman who was saying, “…Italian, Japanese, Korean…” Some sort of menu. “Thanks, but I’ve just eaten,” I mumbled. It was true. In fact, I had just had some fabulous seabass grilled with rosemary, three glasses of white wine and two gin-and-absinthe cocktails, the last of which I was pretty sure had something to do with the ground’s new-found flexibility. I smiled vaguely at her and waited for my arm back. She laughed. “No,” she said. “Girls, darling, not food. Forty pounds for half an hour.” I explained that I’d just eaten and I really wasn’t in the mood. “Not in the mood?!” she gaped, and, just to make sure, gave my crotch a hearty squeeze.
It is a truth universally acknowledged by features editors with pages to fill that sex and food are just two ends of the same banana. Food can be sensual and exciting; so can sex. Sex can be soulless and messy; so is a McDonald’s Happy Meal. That’s a thousand-word story, easily. In fact, you could write a book about it, as indeed have hundreds of ex-features editors, with titles such as Food as Foreplay, Cooking to Hook Up, A Taste for Love, Win Her With Dinner, Cooking in the Nude (with a chapter on salads entitled “Love ’Em and Leaf ’Em”) and my favourite: Intercourses. The common message of these books is that a tasty, lovingly prepared meal in the right setting will leave you gasping for a good bonk. The tendency of London pimps to accost people coming out of restaurants leads me to think that they have been reading these kinds of books. I think it should be the other way around, but I suppose 101 Great Post-Coital Dinners just wouldn’t sell.
These books are for the coffee table rather than the kitchen table, but you’re unlikely to find them on any table in Mumbai. These US-published titles aren’t available, and seeing as you clearly have nothing better to do, I’ll tell you why. Mumbaikars already about the sex-and-food thing. They know all too well, and don’t want to be put off their dinners by a lot of randy sex talk. We all know that meat makes you horny – why else would non-vegetarians have so many kids? Same goes for garlic. And if you give a man a couple of beers he’ll turn into a rampaging sex beast. Everyone knows that. Mumbaikars don’t need books telling them how to spice up their love lives – that’s for sex-obsessed Westerners. What Mumbaikars need are books telling them how to spice them down, with titles like Food for Frigidity, Moral Mealtimes, Cooking Fully Dressed, Chaste Chaat and Celibacy Delicacies, each packed with recipes crafted to curb your unhealthy enthusiasm for sexual intimacy. Sadly, none of these books is currently available. But in the meantime, there’s always McDonald’s. Bon appetit!
Comments