"The interesting thing about this recording," he said. "Is that no tape machine, digital sampling or technical jiggery-pokery was used. The microphones, and there were only two of them, were wired, via the mixing desk to control the overall volume, directly to the lathe which was cutting the grooves into the master disk; the only reason that they wanted to control the volume was to prevent the lathe running out of vinyl before the end of the music, louder sounds make wider grooves. If that hadn't been necessary, they would have wired the microphones directly to the cutting lathe. As recordings go, you don't get much more live and direct than this!"
It was strange to see him take the inner liner from the gate-fold cover and carefully remove the disc from its paper sleeve, it was as though she had stepped back in time to the 1970s; flared jeans and cheesecloth shirts, Mary Quant make-up and Biba clothes, hair by Vidal Sasson in person and curling tongs, platform shoes and Sunday afternoons at the 'Roundhouse' getting high. As he lowered the tone arm onto the vinyl and the music started, with only a very faint 'snap, crackle and pop', she was immediately drawn into the performance, its vibrancy, somehow alive, although she did not recognise the piece musically at first. She did however recognise the 'Dance of the Knights', although she nearly jumped from the sofa at the first snare drum roll; the instruments themselves were once again quite clearly in the same room and being played with a vengeance!
At the end of the first side of the disc, he got up, turned it over and made as if to leave the room.
"Listen to the second half, while I start dinner," he said and placed the tone arm back onto the disc; he then walked out.
He was chopping the last of the odd shaped shallots when she entered the kitchen at the end of her musical interlude. The chopping board had neat piles of garlic and shallot, the now defrosted crayfish tails, some tiger prawns and the tails of four langoustines were resting on absorbent kitchen paper to soak up the last of the water that inevitably comes in copious quantities from defrosted frozen seafood. He had been surprised to find the prawns, both the tiger and the Dublin Bay, believing that he had used the last of them at Christmas. A sieve full of small clams, shells firmly shut, the vongole, was perched, draining, on the small sink, set into the island. A tall cylindrical glass jar, three quarters full of rice grains was perched alongside the salt and pepper mills and a small glass of water in which saffron threads were soaking. She sat down on her usual stool and drained the last of her gin and tonic.
"Want another?" He asked. "Or would you prefer a glass of white? I need to open a bottle of Pinot Grigio for the risotto but will only need a glass or so. I do so not enjoy twenty-four hour old, opened white wine, which is what it will be when I get to finish the bottle, if at all!"
"Yes, why not, although I fear that you are spoiling me with good music, food, well-cooked and now, fine wine. Be careful, I am already seriously thinking of staying and just moving in! I can always wear your clothes; I always used to." She laughed.
He turned around and opened a door to what appeared to be a small fridge; it was filled with bottles of wine and a few examples of the distinctive cork shape which betrayed the presence of sparkling wine or champagne.
"I thought that you said that you did not drink a lot," she said.
"I don't," he replied. "Left to my own devices, that stock might last six months before I needed to replenish it; it's mainly for people who may visit, not that it happens often but it does happen, just like today." He smiled. "Besides, I wait for the special offers in the supermarket, half price or three for two and lay in a case or two. It's probably best that I don't show you the cellar; I've been laying wine down there for well over 15 years; it's amazing the prices you can get on Bordeaux, Amarone or Barolo if you're only prepared to wait five years or more before you open them! It's nice to be able to open a really nice bottle of red wine, perhaps for a special occasion, without needing to get a mortgage on your house to buy it."
Moving slowly behind her, he took a wine-waiter's corkscrew from the wall and two glasses from the cupboard. He returned to his usual place, uncorked the wine, levering the cork up with a satisfying 'plop' and poured two measures of the straw-coloured liquid into both glasses.
"D'us a fav'r, guv," he said, in an accent so redolent with the London where they had used to live; an accent so unlike their own. "Reach out behind you and put the bottle into the fridge door, please. I really did get this all wrong this morning. I should have had you sit on this side. Just about all that I've needed today has been on your side of the island! Well, no matter, I'm not going to change things around now!"
As if to reinforce his last comment, he moved once more to her side of the kitchen and from a cupboard, pulled a small paella pan of cast iron. Carrying the pan with one hand, he opened the fridge door and removed the butter. On the way back to his station, he removed the now defrosted and cool container of stock which he made in batches of two or three gallons in a huge jam-making pot, which his most recent 'ex', Penny, had bought many years ago; the batches were stored in the large chest freezer in the cellar and transferred periodically in threes or fours to the kitchen freezers. The pot has been bought by Penny with the express intention of using any surplus soft fruit in the summer months to make jam; needless to say, she was always too busy with work to spare much time for honing her skills in the making of strawberry or raspberry preserve.
Since becoming largely vegetarian some years ago, replacing animal protein with fish or fungal protein and pulses, he had become adept at risotto and paella. While potatoes were still a staple carbohydrate, they were tedious to prepare, especially when home grown, and simply messed up another pan. He had long ago appreciated the wisdom of 'Eintopfsonntag' (as the Nazis had called it), 'one pot Sunday', which could just as easily be a recipe for every other day of the week. He had therefore taken to risotto and paella as the true, quick and simple, one pot meal. He prepared great batches of lentils in rich vegetable stock; beans, lentils, chickpeas with Indian spices and more stock; Italian sugo with or without onions but always with garlic; pulses in chicken or beef stock made with bones from the butcher who visited the village in his van every Thursday and were collected by Ania for delivery on 'housekeeping Friday'. He froze them in single meal portions. At the beginning of the day, all that was required was to choose your choice of vegetables and liquid from what was available in the freezer and tip it into the pot when defrosted, add any vegetables not conducive to freezing or fungal protein, stir in brown rice and simmer for thirty minutes; a complete and balanced meal with the minimum of fuss, on the day, and effort. He had even been known to eat the dish straight from the pan to save dirtying a plate. Of course, the kitchen resembled the aftermath of a nuclear explosion or a riot at the end of a batch, or batches, but it was a small price to pay, he thought; one day of chaos and twenty nine or thirty days of heaven. He often wondered why it had taken him so long to hit upon this idea when he first became single and unattached again; it was so very painfully obvious and attractive.
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