Regina's Rants

Oooh, that’s Stanley Tucci.  Of The Devil Wears Prada’s fame.  Of several cookery books sprinkled with aromatic reflections.  And there he is, hobnobbing with his fellow ambassadors for The Prince’s Trust at Buckingham Palace.  Another day and he’s modelling an elegant top hat and morning coat when he attends Royal Ascot as a guest of His Majesty the King;   gracing, with his wife, the number five at the yearly Social Power Index from Tatler magazine;  starring, with grace and almost-genuine curiosity, in his Tucci in Italy programme, now in its second series, where he eats just about anything that rests on a plate, and does not swallow before he utters a muffled “Oh my god!-Oh wow!-I’ve never eaten anything like this!-Incredible-Oh my god!” not necessarily in that order.  There’s celebrity Stanley, likely to be made, one day, a sir or a dame or a baron by the king, and there’s Stanley talking with his mouth stuffed, spewing debris like Mount Vesuvius gearing up for a grand eruption.    

Yes, I call him Stanley.  Because after witnessing him speaking with his full mouth, I feel I know the man intimately.  I bet Stanley’s mamma (who’s of Italian descent) would be appalled at him talking with his mouth full. With such an international public, the family reputation was endangered worldwide.  Maybe she’s given up teaching him good manners.  Or, like a true mamma, she thinks Stanley can do no wrong.

I suppose speaking with a full mouth  is part of avid consumption. Veneration of a dish is such that communication between brain and mouth is at odds.  There’s no time to swallow before uttering, “Bonissimo!-Oh my God!-Oh wow!”  I know viewers worldwide will copycat Stanley and justify their lack of good manners with a shrug and “Chill! Stanley does it and he hangs out with royalty.”

I wonder how many luncheon, tea, and dinner parties were ruined by people speaking with their mouths bursting with the wonderful food they shared.   Say, someone opens his mouth to utter a life changing philosophical sentence, but instead every guest around him sees the destruction his molars inflicted on the beef Wellington.   There’s a lull in the conversation that reflects each person’s panic, “Is that what I look like when I speak with my stuffed gob?”  They shake their heads and decide they could not possibly look like that, “He’s so crass.”  Whether Crass Person plans it or not, wishes it or not, he is going to spit out more than specks and morsels of wisdom onto someone else’s plate, sleeve or face. I don’t know a single person who enjoys being on the receiving end of that.   

Sometimes out squirts a shower of quiche, or roast duck, or cream cheese.  This last one is the worst, because it dissolves quickly amidst saliva, and, combined with the breath of strong ideas it becomes a whitish spray that ruins clothing and the little fondness one had for the sprayer.   And with all that splattering, it looks like the splattered one is doing the foulmouthed spraying.

Once I watched a table companion at a posh event shovel three forkfuls of rice mixture into his muzzle, swallow some of it and splutter on how kids nowadays are uncivil and disrespectful of their elders.  Well, I used to hang out with the wrong crowd.

Experience doesn’t always pay. I usually take a step back when a known sprayer approaches me.  Invariably, he steps forward, and I step backwards again, and we sort of twirl around each other, a bit like two paradise birds on a weird, mismatched dance.  I move my body sideways as I slip a hand over my glass of wine. I greet someone, real or imagined, at a distance. As I move away, I hope no saliva reaches my face.  Vain hope.

There’s someone else in my milieu who is famous for his stale beer breath and salivary sprays, which, in my book,  is a double no-no.  Double Sprayer makes me stop breathing and consider how the life options I have chosen so far have led me to such a pongy abyss.  His mouth seems motorised like a tennis ball throwing machine, so what goes in comes out as petards of assorted sizes aimed at all sides.  Nobody is immune. I think of my alternatives:  stay and be splattered, or run and never explain.  Once I  devised an urgent visit to the loo;  when I came out, Double Sprayer was waiting for me, “You’re not getting away that easily!”  Another case of the wrong crowd.

I posit that these people have never learned table manners.  It’s not their fault.  Maybe they never grew out of their teenage years, and their rebelliousness still weighs heavily on their lower jaws.  

What had I done to deserve all that splattering?

Perhaps I’m paying now for persecuting my children and drilling them on how to eat properly as we moved to different countries.  Mind you, it happened gradually, as we perceived that not all good manners can or should be exported.  Neither of us was a conqueror trying to convince the local population that our way was the right way, so we learned new habits and added them to our repertoire.   

Some rules of good manners may coincide from country to country, but pitfalls abound and slide between the tines of a fork.  In England, it’s the case of turning your fork down and using the knife to squash and pile the food on inverted tines and trying to take it all to the mouth without spillage.   In much of the rest of the world, a polite fork is allowed to point up, but the knife is never used to push food onto it.  In Brazil, for instance, it’s very, very bad manners to use your knife to push food onto your fork (whether it’s up or down), or to move the contents of your plate.  I used to tell my kids,  “Don’t you ever do that in front of my, and your, Brazilian relatives.”  

In Indonesia, it was acceptable to play around with your fork and spoon, because there’s no knife at traditional table settings, as dishes are made with diced meats and vegetables.  You use the fork to push the food onto the spoon, and eat from the spoon, even if it’s not a soup.  I bet the custom is linked to not stabbing  a neighbouring guest when he speaks with his mouth full, but hey, you can stab him with a fork, too.

The American way of eating with your right hand and keeping your left arm parallel to your torso while your left hand rests on your lap, didn’t find favour among my kids.  I was told that the custom of keeping the left hand out of sight came from the time of the wild west, when men  sat down to eat and had to keep a gun at the ready under the table.  I can’t imagine that being true.

Most importantly, I used to tell my children to never speak with their mouth full.  It’s not right anywhere. Except during a life threatening event, in which case they should think twice.  And if they thought twice, they’d have time to swallow the food.  Easy.

I also instructed them not to cover their bulging chops with their hand to disguise their uncouthness as they tried to say something captivating and intelligent.  It becomes neither.  In the end, I hope they understood that I was the only person in the world to say to them “I don’t want to see what’s in your mouth!” and “I love you” in the same breath.  And I reminded them, ever so often, that only a dentist would gladly say, “Open your mouth!” (In the interest of disclosure:  one of my son’s engaged to a dentist.)

Associated with the splattering mouth event is the correct use of napkins, serviettes or whatever you call them in different cultures.  Hint to my kids:  napkins are not used to hide your mouth distilling gravy while you dazzle your companions with an address on the latest football match.  A dab of the napkin suffices to elevate the user to the pantheon of half-polite people.

If they  wished to remain on that pantheon and climb higher (obviously there was no pressure for them to do so), I told them, “Do not lick your knife.  It’s not only impolite, but it’s also dangerous.”

“Who makes all these stupid rules?”

Asked me my eldest son one day. 

I grew up with stringent  table manners rules, and I never questioned them.  When the time came, I updated and passed the rules on to my kids.  Admittedly, I didn’t live in different societies like they did.  Compared to them, I had it easy.   

But part of my job as a mother was to imbue my children with good manners as a way of respecting themselves and others.  These days, as a grandmother,  it’s rewarding to witness them teaching their children good manners.

Am I too judgmental of splatterers I barely know?  Yes.  I refuse to receive saliva and other organic matter from people I barely know.

Have I ever splattered some dear or not so dear people during my halcyon days? I didn’t notice anything. Besides, there are no photos.

Should I spend my old age contemplating those issues and feeling guilty for flecking someone with Molotof, that Portuguese meringue pudding I’m sure Stanley would love?   Oh wow, wow, definitely not, it never happened. There are no witnesses left.

Maybe King Charles III speaks with his mouth full, for he hasn’t got to account his deeds to anybody. Perhaps that’s where Stanley picked up the habit.  But if Stanley carries on speaking with his mouth full in his new Italy series, I’ll be forced to change the channel.  After watching the last episode.