My Primal Taste Buds

Like everyone (except ladies) I am a man of man of many parts, which strategically arranged, form the organism that is me. (Ladies are made of special lady-parts which Mother Nature picks out of a different box.)

Some of the parts that collectively result in the sentient being that I am, include slender wrists and ankles, myopic eyes, a bit of a chinny-chin and the occasional mole. Thus assembled, I stand alongside three-and-a-half billion or so other chaps as a sophisticated product of millennia of evolution and genetic splicing.

The least sophisticated part of me however is my palate which has a Neanderthal, one-dimensional quality. It knows what it likes and it likes what it knows. Posh nosh like caviar and quail’s eggs isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I’ll cheerfully push aside most good-quality food to get to a plate of cheesy pasta. My favourite meals are to gastronomy what Robson Green is to Shakespeare.

I was pondering this as I sipped warm Moet from a plastic flute in the middle of a nightclub recently, wincing like a girl at every mouthful due to its foul taste. (For clarity, my good lady wife and I are not in the habit of quaffing bubbly, or even venturing into nightclubs, but it was a post-wedding bash and the little man buying the champagne was trying, and subsequently failing, to impress my sister-in-law by flashing a rather large wallet and dancing in what can only be described as a very “European” manner.)

I’m not a philistine, I’ve been in fancy restaurants and nibbled at artistically arranged plates of nouvelle cuisine, but I’m not a bon viveur. I’m not even a mechant viveur (hooray for English/French online dictionaries). Give me a generously pepperoni’d pizza or a bowl of Super Noodles any day though, and I’m as happy as a sandboy. I’m sure my ancient ancestors felt the same.