Lucinda O'Sullivan's Ireland

Wednesday 06 January 2010

When I got the email from Life Magazine Editor Brendan O’Connor saying, ‘tongue in cheek’ you understand, that I had been chosen as one of the Sunday Indo’s “star writers” to share with the Nation my New Year Resolutions/Revolutions, I thought at first it was one of those emails saying “I am Chief Wazzi Wazzi Wumba and you have won ONE HUNDRED MILLION in the Northern Bangassoun Lottery” but no it was the Nation’s favourite ‘Apprentice’ Analyst asking me to bare my breast to the nation as it were about my thoughts and aspirations for 2010.

If it was a couple of years ago I would be telling you all that I was going to lose 5 stone in three weeks so nobody would ever say to me again – “are you Dawn French”. However, having watched a couple of my friends lose weight following major operations and ensuing chemotherapy, not to mention my own good Brendan falling down the stairs last May, spending a very long time on the flat of his back in a plaster cast, and left hopping around with a stick like Gregory House, somehow my spare tyre, and trying to look like an ad for the Atkins diet, doesn’t rate very highly on my richter scale anymore. Its very true what my mother used say “your health is your wealth” – it is the most important blessing of all.

It did cross my mind to become a vegetarian in 2010 – but then I suppose I could give up restaurant reviewing as people would be sick of hearing about the finer qualities of the aubergine and carrot - so I have resolved instead to give up carrageen moss! I have decided though that I won’t eat or propogate the consumption of anything that I am aware is reared through particularly cruel methods. So, in future there will be no contention with my dining guests when out reviewing as to who has the prized foie gras or the milk fed veal. It won’t be me! I have never quite forgotten Linda MacCartney saying she “would never eat anything with a face again”. It is perfectly possible to have ethically slow reared natural foie gras from Spain, or rose veal which gives a calf some chance of life, and I would like to see more of both on Irish menus. I know that some foodies will twitch their noses at my decision but the production of foie gras by the force-feeding “ a la gavage” method is forbidden in many countries as cruel, and it is time we stopped eating it. However, in mitigation, those with a sweet tooth, whom I have very often neglected in the past as I don’t have a sweet tooth, will be glad to know that I resolve to eat a dessert each time I go out in 2010!

You might be surprised to know for a restaurant critic, the biggest love in my life is not food but animals – my husband and others! I greatly envy anyone working with animals. I have a real mad passion for cats of all sizes and if, like Dolores O’Riordan, I won the European Lottery, I would open my own Animal Sanctuary. I love watching the dotty old Marquis of Bath at Longleat with his Animal Park, not to mention animal rescue programmes. At one stage we had five Siamese cats and two rescued moggies, one whom I found in a very frail state when driving home from a restaurant on a Friday night, so we called her Friday! Friday must have been a very beautiful girl and loved at one time but the vet said she had been living rough for a while and needed loving. She reminded me of the song “Memory” from the Lloyd Weber musical Cats –“Memory, all alone in the moonlight, I can smile at the old days, I was beautiful then” - I guess we all get a bit bashed around the edges as we get older. We tried to find her owner but no luck. She ended up as one of the household and rewarded us by pooing in the kitchen every morning which the long suffering Brendan cleaned up dilligently and lovingly. You are either a cat person or not! When I was 10 my aunt gave me a present of an old picture book she had found called “Princess Elizabeth’s Siamese Kitten”. I pestered my mother for one and I have had them in my life ever since. They are the most extraordinarily devoted and funny talkative little animals who love to sit on your shoulder or gaze down at you from the highest picture rail or cornice. You will have read over the years the great curmudgeonly writings of the late Hugh Leonard on the Pooka and his other feline friends, which is why I didn’t steal his thunder with my menagerie. Currently I have Bobby Dazzler and Bruno, who are the Leslie Howard and Clark Gable of the Siamese Cat world – Bobby Dazzler being refined and elegant, and Bruno being dark and swarthy, like the characters they played in Gone With the Wind. Hugh Leonard had a reputation for being a bit conceited, nay difficult, but I always felt the love he displayed in his writings for his four legged furry friends showed a really vulnerable and perhaps lonely character. In 2010 I would really like to see people being kinder to animals. I think all children should have a pet as it teaches them to be kind to creatures and, in turn, perhaps kinder to people too when they grow up. We might have less aggression.

I am also going to make time in 2010 to go to art classes and to fly again! My friend Rena and I always promised ourselves that in due course we would go to Italy or France on painting holidays, but somehow the years go by and there never seems to be time. I resolve to make time and to get into an aeroplane in 2010 – I am terrified!

I am also resolving too to pray for Dun Laoghaire Corporation, all sitting in their good pensionable jobs and forgetting about those who are not. Every time they cut off the water when working in our area, we cannot get it back throughout the house. They go around the Borough with a cavalier disregard for mere mortals. Not so long ago, after five days without water upstairs, I begged and besieged them. “Have you not got a plumber who could fix the problem YOU have created?” “Well there might be a plumber in the Housing Department but he would only work on Corporation Houses” I was told. “Get a private plumber – our responsibility ends at the stopcock” – a rude and dismissive senior engineer told me as I progressed up the line. I would like to see people in the public sector having a bit more humanity and humility in their dealings across the board with the general public and consider how they would feel if treated as dismissively as they treat their “subjects” in this day and age when money is not as flush as it was.

I am also going to endeavour at all times to buy Irish produced products when doing my weekend shopping. Years ago something from abroad was immediately considered exotic and different. That no longer applies, our produce is top quality and we all have to do our bit to keep people in jobs.

I promise also to forgive food critics who, having agreed to a format of judging off camera, steal your lines and opinion word for word when on camera! Shows how unsure and insecure they are.

I also resolve to be extra nice to “the hapless Brendan” - as Brendan O’Connor calls him!

As to Politics – I have resolved not to give out and complain about the Government - well until next week anyway!
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON 3RD JANUARY 2010.