Who is AA Gill?
Perhaps he is most well known as the Sunday Time's discerning food critic whose opinions are as sharp as his pencil. He travels extensively and also write about his adventures. Gill's observant, well informed and very funny travel stories are my favorites. He is the 'Monty Python' of food and travel writing. Most importantly he is a social commentator extraordinaire with such clear insights that makes me wish he were in politics. (I hear that the LibDems are in need of a good leader)
How did I get here from whining about food in British restaurants? (see previous entries)
AA Gill reviewed an Italian hosteria in London (I have a particular mistrust of those in the UK, mainly because I can usually cook better and wish I had instead) He said he "had curly pasta with sea bass and lemon sauce. It was grittily undercooked and tasted of warm Q-Tips poached in Sherbet Dib Dab" then went on to advise us "Never trust an Italian who says, "Trust me." You’ll end up either pregnant or eating minute fillets of turbot that look and taste like a leper'’s glove." - I think you agree that 'a' this is very funny and 'b' my critique is as mild compared to his as mustard is to wasabi.
AA Gill is undoubtedly one of the greatest contemporary writer/journalist in the UK. His immense imagination is perfectly matched by his vocabulary. Gill's favorite words seem to be such tongue twisters as syncopatic and insouciant.
He wrote that "One of the defining characteristics of being human seems to be the ability to read symbols and metaphors." - AA Gill is a master of both and it's well demonstrated by the way he describes the Roll's-Royce: "(for) a dyslexic boy who was told by the careers to seriously consider hairdressing, it's two heavy-metal fingers"
- This makes me add an other defining human characteristics to his list, namely humour, of which Gill seems to have an endless supply.
One of my favorites of his little quirks is calling small groups of people "crocodiles" as in the California travelogue he talks about London's "Carnaby Street, which is now populated by Scandinavian tourists and crocodiles of underage French shoplifters". Or in the The Thin Line about Milan's Galleria where "crocodile of tiny matt-black Japanese girls file past, questing labels like polite, smiley soldier ants" - The other is his insistence on calling his diner companion (partner presumably) The Blond as only he can, without a smidgen of contempt or disrespect.
He seems to have diner with Jeremy Clarkson (AA Gill of Car writing...Fifth Gear fame) an awfull lot, for which I am truly envious. Not just because I like cars but because I can imagine two of them together! There should be a weekly TV series called Gill and Clark's Night Out, in which they would drive to a restaurant while discusing the car and bitch about the food while they eat. The second series could be shot in Europe and the third in the best restaurants in the world. These would also allow the pair to air their views on different cultures and attitudes too, and there is no way they could resist that!
The show could feature The Blond in the person of Lauren Laverne the amusingly acerbic Xfm DJ. The three could pick a designated driver for the evening for drive home. There would be absolutely nothing funnier on this planet than to see Lauren herding the tipsy boys into Gill's old Roll's after an abominable meal at the Gay Hussar.
So what got me to blog a homage to AA Gill was his Travelogues published on www.travelintelligence.net. His article on Cuba was written in 1999, the same year I was there. We seem to have picked up on the same things about Havana. The difference between our travel stories though would be as great as our restaurant reviews. I am humbled by his greatness. Gill's travelogue brought back many memories of a city that made the biggest impression on me in the shortest period of time.
He wrote: " It's Che that really does it, really reminds you that this is the last un-tidied student bedroom in the world. "...."It is the country that Joni Mitchell, Timothy Leary and Bob Dylan would have designed if anyone had been foolish enough to give them a country to tinker with." - I couldn't have put it better if tried.
Here are a few more of his gems but I don't want to spoil the story for you. -
"If dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire, then Cuban salsa is sex in Braille."
"We stop and watch and listen to the silence and the clopping swish of the machetes and the sighs of the oxen, and suck a cool stalk of sugar and ponder that life-shortening, unremitting poverty and hardship so often have the sharp corollary of a fiercely magnificent aesthetic."
"Cigars. It is another irony that the most cliche'd symbol of paternalistic capitalism should be made in communist factories."
(All quotes from www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/articles/art_481.html)
Ps1: Hi Mr Gill and Mr Clarkson, if you feel like doing the show I mentioned, please tell me!
Ps2: Hi Mr Woodroffe (or anyone interested) if you fancy producing "Gill and Clarkson's Night Out", please let me know. I do so want to direct it!
www.vickynagy.com
No comments:
Post a Comment