Suppose it were Friday lv: then how shall you measure all things?

All those armchair hours with

Liebling and Root, Fisher and

David, Olney and Lulu, Keller

and Boulud .. until, as is al-

ways the case, your last sweet-

heart supposes a Viking is all

you need, to bring you out -

and surprises you, Christmas

morning, with your very own

equivalent of a Bentley Con-

tinental for the kitchen. Yet,

still, all you've really done,

is boil water in your Alessi

kettle, missing now its whist-
ling fuchsia wings in flight.

And so, Gérard, the grand reck-

oning is not about the morning's

reconnoitre of the strand, it's

about that gratin, that daube 

from A Room with a View, which 

fell to the cutting room floor 

because cinema couldn't hunger
for more than one thing at a
time. Even former sweethearts

can be right: there is tragedy
in abandoning hunger, and more
in being satisfied.

The coquilles St Jacques, from

your college days in Witherspoon

Street, are simply not done any-

more, and you've been wondering,

why not. Investigate. Invente,

découvre .. enivrez-vous, Le Cor-

busier calls, from your litho of

his Modulor. Find, revise, reform,

re-father, reconfigure, reclaim. 
The system of alimentation is al-

ready perfection, incarnate. But 
it does seek birth. Doesn't it, 
Gérard?

"Is there any coffee here?"

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret,
Le Corbusier
Lithograph, ca 1950