IT ALL comes of reading the guide book. There it was, under the heading "general rules", a clear admonition to obey local customs in order not to give offence. Now to any true-born Englishman, and many a true-born Kiwi come to that, the giving of offence is anathema; so a rule of that sort is as sacred as if it had been inscribed as an 11th commandment upon the tablets of stone. There must be limits of course. The visitor to a lost tribe is hardly expected to cook members of neighbouring tribes alive and eat their brains out of their skulls with a dash of paprika and a squeeze of lemon just because that is what is done locally. Nor is it de rigueur to sing in Wales or dress as a Zulu warrior when in Natal. Still, extremes of that sort to one side, one should fit in if one can and in Southeast Asia that means eating with chopsticks.
In theory chopsticks are a good thing. They are more difficult to use than knives and forks and the need to manipulate them has contributed to oriental dexterity just as surely as the use of pounds, shillings and pence used to enhance the British public's capacity for mental arithmetic. In fact it may well be that the use of chopsticks underlies the delicacy of eastern calligraphy. After all, think of the science. Clumsy with chopsticks means you cannot compete effectively for food. So either you always eat alone, in which case you are unlikely to get the opportunity to pass on your genes, or you starve. Apply the rules of natural selection and "hey-presto" the clumsy die out and the nimble calligrapher types thrive. It's obvious really when you think about it!
The trouble is that all this theory takes you nowhere if you are sitting in a restaurant, as I was, faced with a plate of meat and wondering whether to ask for a fork. On the face of it picking up the chopsticks would seem less likely to give offence but chopsticks in the hands of the unskilled have the potential for major embarrassment.
Many years ago, indeed so long ago that you could smoke in English restaurants, I was having lunch with a friend who enjoyed a pipe. It had been a good meal and he decided that a pipe with his coffee would neatly round it off. But there was a problem. Those readers who are pipe smokers will know that with frequent use the air channel to the bottom of the bowl gets blocked up - a little like the arteries of the smoker, as a matter of fact. Anyway, when that happens the answer is to blow sharply to loosen the blockage and then to tap it out into the ashtray leaving the airway clear. Well, my friend tried to use this technique but unfortunately he blew too hard. The result was a bit like the launching of a missile from a submarine. Up arced a large wet plug of mixed tobacco and ash and for a moment it seemed to hang suspended above the next table; then it plunged down into the steak and kidney pie of a rather large man who was looking away. We both held our breaths. If the large man simply ate it the problem was solved. After all, why spoil his meal by drawing his attention to this sordid incident. The tension mounted. He had it on his fork. A child sitting opposite him had noticed but said nothing - doubtless planning to tell him once he had eaten the mouthful. Then he looked down, stopped eating and sniffed at it, so my friend had to go over and say, with toe-curling embarrassment: "Excuse me. I'm most awfully sorry, but I think you've got my tobacco in your pie."
It cost him the price of a replacement steak and kidney pie but it scarred me for life and I have never taken up smoking a pipe as a result.
