Loose Living by Frank Moorhouse Read Free Book Online Page A

abundance of the world. The dependency of humans on animals for warmth, for various services such as that of guards, simple companionship, and also for nourishment, was itself a deep, primeval relationship to the animal kingdom.
    It was the eating of plant matter that has always seemed to me to be somewhat unnatural. If they thought about it they could see why.
    I could see they were thinking about it too hard. I looked up at them and smiled. ‘Just teasing,’ I said.
    I went on to tell them that the important change in our life since the Middle Ages is the way that meat is served.
    The animal or large parts were once brought whole to the table. Whole fish, whole birds with their feathers still attached, lambs and pigs.
    The Sunday joint is a relic of these grand days. From this comes the idea that a gentleman should be able to carve meat at the table.
    As Erasmus said in 1530, ‘ Discenda a primis statim annis secandi ratio. ’ (In reply to a question about whatcourse of studies I would advise for a young film-maker, I advised the learning of Latin and Greek.)
    I loosely translated this for them as meaning that the correct way to carve should be taught to the child from the early years. I explained to them that the carver should avoid dramatic movements and useless and foolish ceremony. He or she must never be nervous. Deftness and fine judgement in the distribution of the choice parts was the secret of good carving and good film-making.
    I could see that they found this fascinating and that it was the first time that anyone had spoken sensibly and openly to them about eating and carving of meat and that I was rising in their estimation.
    We finished the evening with silent films of First World War trench vermin—footage which the Queen of Commas’ boyfriend enjoys excessively: his maniacal giggling can be heard far into the night after the screening is over.
    I have been gratified that a few of the young film-makers, upon returning home, took the trouble to write to me saying how much they appreciated the talk, the ox, the Mouton-Rothschild, the films and the medieval orgy which followed.
    Quite a few said that it was the latest they had ever stayed up.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Our HERO recovers after his
Monumental
B REAKDOWN and sees LIFE
more clearly but not
more SURELY

    M Y L ACANIAN analyst said that I was simply suffering the Crisis of Western Man combined with the Crisis of the White Privileged Male together with Post-Colonial Guilt and a touch of Post-Modern Confusion.
    Much to her surprise, the De-centring of the Author had not affected me at all.
    She feels I am handling International Fame very well and that loose living was the appropriate strategy.
    She wouldn’t agree that I was just ‘ineffably sad’.
    To nurse my breakdown, I went into deep contemplation in the wilds of the Jura mountains, on the border of France and Switzerland, where the anarchist movement began which, it was suggested, could be the source of my inner chaos.
    There, I was able to lie in my sleeping bag at night under the stars, well away from the fast lane, away from the night life of the capitals of Europe, and where, deep in the bosom of nature, I could watch the silent slipstreams of the airline traffic of the whole world pass overhead.
    The long white lines of the aircraft created an illustration which showed me that I was at the very crossroads of the world, maybe the crossroads of life.
    Or at least at the crossroads of the world’s airlines. Up above me passed Boris Yeltsin, there went YasserArafat, Gough and Margaret Whitlam, there went Lady Di, Olympic champions.
    All passing overhead as I lay in my camp in the Jura mountains.
    I felt I was being personally intersected, the silent slip streams mapping my place in the universe.
    As something of a bushman, I know that every country has its secret insect, unspoken of to foreigners.
    France, as well as having the moustiques , with which we are all