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adequately most of the time anyway. He has a certain romantic (childish) fixation on me—Sad-Eyed Lady of the Slowlands, mother/lover or something, pale and sadly beautiful, magic sea sprite, and when that’s gone it’ll be vapor.
    I’m just another tin soldier in his battle but I could change sides. Not that he’s shown me his fist—just impatience, which I ignore. I don’t really care if it all falls through as long as I have somewhere to live by then. I saw Lanie, who asked affectionately after you. She took most of the evening to recover from finding me up here. All the damaged ladies in retreat from Melbourne. She’s going to Malaysia next month with a chinese girlfriend.
    A great slavering alsatian dog has just come to visit me, a docile animal.
    Please, please find somewhere to live soon, you’ll go out of your senses in that place.
    all my fondest love
    Caroline
    1975: eat your heart out
    “Fantastic, Jean-Pierre,” Grant tells the camera. “Lemon crushed with just a little sugar and frozen. Fabulous. You’re watching Le Bon Chat , a program devoted to proving that the two fine arts of good eating and good talk have not perished, and today I’ll be conversing with two of the smartest blokes in the country—if you place any faith in I.Q. tests.”
    Ray regards him bleakly.
    “Dr. Ray Finlay is a computer scientist specializing in the simulation of artificial intelligence, and Joe Williams is a science journalist. An important vocation in an age dominated by technology.”
    “You’d think so. Right now I’m a Commonwealth statistic.”
    After the merest flicker, Moore says, “On the dole, eh? Many people would wonder if that was proof of remarkable intelligence.”
    “It’s not. It’s proof of how shithouse society is.”
    “Without the naughty words, you dumb fuck.” Moore grins with infectious manly zest, winking.
    “It’s not. It’s proof of society’s intellectual impoverishment.”
    “You think the world owes you a living?”
    “I think the world, if by that you mean the economic distributive system, owes everyone a living. In return, everyone has a duty to contribute in some relevant way to sustaining the economic or spiritual well-being of the community.”
    “You could work in a factory.”
    “I doubt it. Terminal boredom tends to interfere with productivity. Besides, it’d be a criminal waste of fairly rare human resources to send someone like me off to a production line when I could be…Oh shit, this is…If I could—”
    Grant waves his hand reassuringly. “Ease off, Joe, we can edit. The menu for this luncheon is something new, something straight from the great gastronomes of Europe. You’ve heard of La Nouvelle Cuisine , invented ten years ago by Chef Paul Bocuse at his magnificent three-star Restaurant de la Pyramide in Vienne, near Lyon.” A young woman in white peasant blouse and dark skirt clears away their sorbet glasses. “The custodians of La Grande Cuisine were outraged, because Bocuse simplified and clarified a whole way of life when he began experimenting with Escoffier’s famous formulas. For their pains, Bocuse and his followers were dubbed the ‘gastronomic Mafia’.”
    Ray stares with growing incredulity at Joseph during this peroration. The camera is fixed on Grant Moore, who runs a short thick finger across the nail-brush of his upper lip. Jean-Pierre himself steps into view, bearing plates of aspic, all shot through with the hues of simple vegetables: celery, olive slices, shavings of carrot, herbs, capsicum, tomatoes. “It looks stunning, Jean-Pierre. Can you tell us about it?”
    “I have adapted it from Roger Vergé’s gibelotte de lapin de Provence ,” the chef tells them happily.
    “And this is La Nouvelle Cuisine? Or is it La Cuisine Minceur , the brainchild of Michel Guérand at his Paris bistro Le Pot au Feu?”
    The young man looks baffled, and swallows hard. “Well, it’s neither, really. Guérand’s recipes are actually designed