Good call; I've always been a bit annoyed at the obligation to eat, and a bit disgusted by most food. (I also notice, with some embarrassment, that Hisae is washing the dishes right now.)

But it also has to be said that food in the UK in 1991 was a lot worse than it is in the UK now, and food in the UK isn't as good as food in Germany or Japan, in general (just about everywhere around me here in Neukolln serves really excellent food, which wouldn't be the case if I lived in Fulham, I don't think -- though it would certainly be more expensive to eat out there).

Though I don't say it explicitly in the diary entries, wherever you read the word Ragam I'm having an excellent food experience. This was our local south Indian restaurant on Cleveland Street, the place we got takeaways from. I almost always got Keema Peas. In fact, last time I was in London I went there with Suzy. It was still pretty good -- much better than any Indian cuisine available in Berlin.

For someone so attuned to the sensual pleasures of life, you've never had much interest in food, have you?

I'd add that recording an album is a really intense working time, when the clock is ticking and every second costs money. You don't really stop that to banquet. I was eating better (and having more sex!) at other times of the year.

But it's true there's a part of me that just wants to buy some tinned chick peas and kidney beans and fling them in a pot and have done with my hunger. I can't be bothered with cooking, though I admire people who can. I see them as possessors of some great wisdom, the keys to happiness. It's just not for me, somehow.

I was living in London in 1991, and while I grant the food scene was not what it is now, I never, ever ate MacFish burgers and the like, I'd rather go hungry. There has always been great ethnic food of all descriptions in London. Indian, Arab, Italian and Greek delis, etc. I think it must be the Protestant element in you that is annoyed at having to eat and wants just to be "done with it". I can't imagine a Latin person every thinking that way.

. I think it must be the Protestant element in you that is annoyed at having to eat and wants just to be "done with it".

Oh, it is.