Whilst Paris is the centre of all our attentions right now, I am about to start my very own olympics. Twenty five people will arrive to the town of Ollomont, a thirty minute ascending helter skelter away from Aosta. They will set up their ateliers, writing desks and music studios as part of the Altiduni Insoliti residency. I am responsible for feeding these hungry artists, which is starting to become a very real prospect. Like every true olympian, the lead up to my event is all about the training. I don’t squat, I don’t lift, I certainly do not run - but I do cook.
For eighteen days we will live in the former hut of the Ollomont scout brigade, fully equipped with a long wooden table, bunk beds and a serious stove. In the meantime I’ve been living with Marta and her family, lying in her hammock and cooking in her grandmas kitchen, which was kept in storage for years before being installed into the house. The past week has entailed pickling and fermentation, grocery shopping and cheese grating. In an attempt to garner inspiration for my menu I have indulged in preparing large quantities of bright pink beetroot hummus, braised butter beans and, my sister’s favourite, a tomato and parmesan risotto. I’ve now entered the rest period, tonight’s dinner is tortellini for one.
Accompanied by the cooking, the symphony of the kitchen, is the setting of the table. There are people out there who have made entire careers out of laying tables and demonstrate their artistry through flower arrangements, crockery assembly and folding napkins into swans. This, for me, is the exciting bit about preparing a meal, it’s the foghorn we all hear that signals the final 100m of the race. It’s the one thing we offer our chef in return for their labour, the equaliser in any relationship where one cooks and the other sets. Culinary preferences and traditions differ between cultures just as much as setting the table, in this part of the world setting the table is the preparation for the hours of conversation ahead. You can expect to be at the table long into the night, after the initial rush into the meal there comes the picking and nibbling at its crumbs. I’ve suddenly gone from eating dinner at six o’clock to eating dinner at nine o’clock and if I want to demonstrate my high calibre as a guest I don’t really end up going to bed until midnight. I’ve not gone to bed at midnight since new year’s eve.
Steadily I’ve been introduced to the extended family, people drop bye with a ceremonial ‘Ciao!’ and stay for dinner. Occasionally, anecdotes or gossip are translated for my benefit but for the most part no special dispensation has been made for me at this linguistic buffet. By virtue of Aosta being on the border with Switzerland and France, the two main tongues here are French and Italian. There are new arrivals everyday, sometimes the house feels like an airport terminal. Yet, the dinner and conversation continues, this time in the style of a UN council meeting. For a moment it did feel isolating and I’ve felt this exact way before given that studying abroad in the Netherlands was how Marta and I met. Both my parents are English so I never benefitted from having a language passed down to me, I had to acquire one myself. The one I acquired is Dutch, which has gotten me nowhere this week. As a soon to be English teacher (god willing) it has also made me think hard about the liberties native English speakers take when we are abroad and that our school system doesn’t really encourage us to think about the gesture of attempting to speak in another language. It can mean the world, even if you only try and fall at the first ‘Vorrei un cappuccino’.
After a brief moment of feeling a little lost at the table, a place where I usually feel very confident, I saw my opportunity. My Italian is as good as my French which are both as good as long periods of silence spent finding the strength. However, I’ve made a pastime out of reading faces, I’m a pretty anxious person and often misinterpret when someone is mad at me from their facial expression. I’m a person who also talks a lot with my hands, at least that’s what all my teachers told me after a class presentation. I’m no stranger to laughing just because other’s are even though I’ve not understood the joke - or out of pity if the joke wasn’t that funny. I’m lucky to be surrounded by artists, mainly actors, who speak with an abundance of expression. Interpreting conversations by tuning into their articulation and cadence, their facial expressions and responses, has enhanced my limited understanding of which order the words go in. Then there is the lifejacket of the gathering, the food itself. That is a language we all share.