The Last Supper By M.M.Wake
You would think that if you were asked to name your favourite meal, the best food you had ever tasted, that it would be an easy choice. Well let me tell you, it is not, not at all.
I have been asked the same thing and I struggled.
You see food is such a big part of our psyche; our core memories are full of the delicious smells and sights of food. Never mind Kennedy, I bet you can tell me when your pupils first dilated with the sheer bliss that is chocolate?
Am I right?
A whole life can be mapped against a supreme culinary backdrop. Forget the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, food is the Bread of Life. No pun intended.
So the question did get me thinking, took me back a few years I can tell you. My earliest memories are filled, like probably most, with the aromas and taste of my Mothers cooking. Mouth watering roasts slowly cooking on a Sunday, all that lovely gravy and mashed potatoes, then there were pies.
I think they deserve a capital.
Pies.
There, but that still doesn't do them the proper justice they deserve. That crisp golden flaky pastry, underneath which lay a rich and diverse number of fillings from beef and onion, to cheese and leek, oh and don't forget the apple. I never will.
Not that my childhood was idyllic. Against such a wholesome backdrop lurked my father. A hard and brutal man. He used to beat my mother. He used to beat me.
I remember but choose to forget such moments.It wasn't forever either and we soon escaped his clutches.
The food wasn't as good or as varied after that. But at least we were safe.
For a while.
Mother didn't cook much then. Well she didn’t have the time nor the energy. Not with working all the hours she could to support us both. I remember the fatty burgers and chips, the bits of unsubstantial meat in thick fried batter and hardly a vegetable in sight.
Not the best of times.
I remember the hours of waiting on the cold streets for her to come home. The smells of home and cooking coming from within the warm kitchens of others, drifting past me like a stranger.
One day she didn't come back.
And that's when my real trouble started. Care homes and fostering. Grim at the best of times, especially then.. The food was pretty awful, pale and lifeless, but mostly I recall the hunger, in both my stomach and my soul.
I remember one stark humid day being called into an off white room empty except for a table, a couple of chairs and a strip of yellowing fly paper hanging limply from the ceiling. I remember seeing this squat bluebottle caught up in the stickiness, a grim, slow and starving death awaiting.
My life changed that day. I was to be adopted by a couple moving to America. The good old U S of A.
We celebrated with a dry and brittle chocolate cake.
Things should have got better, a lot better, and they did in a way.
I never went hungry again, and that’s for sure.I mean all that food. Steaks and chips or should I say fries?
Hamburgers, shrimps and lobster, sweet potato, hot-dogs, cookies , well I could go on for ever.
If I had the time.
All well and good but there are balances to maintain in this universe and the dream didn't last. Instead, along with my new family and more food than you can imagine, there came sufferings much worse than hunger.
There was the abuse.
Eventually I turned to an entirely different source to feed my cravings.
Cocaine.
And that led to oblivion and the path I seemed destined for.
Well, here I am. Perhaps I should have chosen the route of bread and wine, but maybe it's even too late for that.
I didn’t mean to do it.
And then they ask me what I would like to eat. My favourite dish. Perhaps Steak or Lobster for this final meal, this Last Supper, maybe even the humble pie?
Yet the thought of all these culinary delights stick in my throat and I find for once in my life I cannot think about or even rejoice in all that is food.
All I can think of are the three words that keep going round and round in my head as I await for the morning light.
'Dead Man Walking'
*Photo: Photographer Henry Hargreaves has recreated the last meals of death-row inmates
Serial killer Ted Bundy declined a 'special meal', before he was executed, so he was given a 'traditional' - steak (medium rare), eggs (over easy), hash browns, toast with butter and jelly, milk and juice
Copyright M.M.Wake 2012
I have been asked the same thing and I struggled.
You see food is such a big part of our psyche; our core memories are full of the delicious smells and sights of food. Never mind Kennedy, I bet you can tell me when your pupils first dilated with the sheer bliss that is chocolate?
Am I right?
A whole life can be mapped against a supreme culinary backdrop. Forget the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, food is the Bread of Life. No pun intended.
So the question did get me thinking, took me back a few years I can tell you. My earliest memories are filled, like probably most, with the aromas and taste of my Mothers cooking. Mouth watering roasts slowly cooking on a Sunday, all that lovely gravy and mashed potatoes, then there were pies.
I think they deserve a capital.
Pies.
There, but that still doesn't do them the proper justice they deserve. That crisp golden flaky pastry, underneath which lay a rich and diverse number of fillings from beef and onion, to cheese and leek, oh and don't forget the apple. I never will.
Not that my childhood was idyllic. Against such a wholesome backdrop lurked my father. A hard and brutal man. He used to beat my mother. He used to beat me.
I remember but choose to forget such moments.It wasn't forever either and we soon escaped his clutches.
The food wasn't as good or as varied after that. But at least we were safe.
For a while.
Mother didn't cook much then. Well she didn’t have the time nor the energy. Not with working all the hours she could to support us both. I remember the fatty burgers and chips, the bits of unsubstantial meat in thick fried batter and hardly a vegetable in sight.
Not the best of times.
I remember the hours of waiting on the cold streets for her to come home. The smells of home and cooking coming from within the warm kitchens of others, drifting past me like a stranger.
One day she didn't come back.
And that's when my real trouble started. Care homes and fostering. Grim at the best of times, especially then.. The food was pretty awful, pale and lifeless, but mostly I recall the hunger, in both my stomach and my soul.
I remember one stark humid day being called into an off white room empty except for a table, a couple of chairs and a strip of yellowing fly paper hanging limply from the ceiling. I remember seeing this squat bluebottle caught up in the stickiness, a grim, slow and starving death awaiting.
My life changed that day. I was to be adopted by a couple moving to America. The good old U S of A.
We celebrated with a dry and brittle chocolate cake.
Things should have got better, a lot better, and they did in a way.
I never went hungry again, and that’s for sure.I mean all that food. Steaks and chips or should I say fries?
Hamburgers, shrimps and lobster, sweet potato, hot-dogs, cookies , well I could go on for ever.
If I had the time.
All well and good but there are balances to maintain in this universe and the dream didn't last. Instead, along with my new family and more food than you can imagine, there came sufferings much worse than hunger.
There was the abuse.
Eventually I turned to an entirely different source to feed my cravings.
Cocaine.
And that led to oblivion and the path I seemed destined for.
Well, here I am. Perhaps I should have chosen the route of bread and wine, but maybe it's even too late for that.
I didn’t mean to do it.
And then they ask me what I would like to eat. My favourite dish. Perhaps Steak or Lobster for this final meal, this Last Supper, maybe even the humble pie?
Yet the thought of all these culinary delights stick in my throat and I find for once in my life I cannot think about or even rejoice in all that is food.
All I can think of are the three words that keep going round and round in my head as I await for the morning light.
'Dead Man Walking'
*Photo: Photographer Henry Hargreaves has recreated the last meals of death-row inmates
Serial killer Ted Bundy declined a 'special meal', before he was executed, so he was given a 'traditional' - steak (medium rare), eggs (over easy), hash browns, toast with butter and jelly, milk and juice
Copyright M.M.Wake 2012