Pear Shaped. Stella Newman
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I still have a great job, but I no longer have a great boss. No. I have Devron.
Devron used to work for a supermarket that was chewed up and spat out by a large American supermarket. He was regional manager for London South East, which is a Big Deal in Retail. Apparently he was very good at driving up and down motorways in his BMW.
His sole qualification for being head of my department seems to be that he is fat, ergo he ‘knows food’. Devron would be happy eating every meal from a service station on the M4. He thinks he’s an alpha male, he’s actually an aggressive little gamma.
The first thing Devron did when he joined was to make us all switch desks. Wanting to make his mark, and attempting to convey his profound creativity he decided to arrange us alphabetically. I used to sit with ‘Hot Puddings’, ‘Family Treats’ and ‘Patisserie’. Makes sense – we share the same buyers, technical advisers and packaging team. We liaise constantly about pastries, sugar prices, trends in the Treat market – all elements that are pudding specific.
But now, because I do Cold Desserts, I sit between Lisa, who does ‘Cocina’ – our fake-a Mexicana range of variety nachos, and Eddie: Curry. Devron says ‘we can learn a lot from talking to our colleagues’. True. I have learnt that Lisa, Eddie and I all agree: Devron is a nob.
The only thing more moronic than splitting us up from the people we need constant contact with, is Devron’s introduction of ‘cross-discipline platform solutions’. He has dumped a marketing wang on our bank of desks: Ton of Fun Tom.
Tom always wants to show me some great viral on YouTube featuring a gorilla or a dancing mouse. Tom’s knowledge of marketing is like my knowledge of Chechen history: he knows three random facts and feels guilty about not knowing more. However, I do not try to bullshit my livelihood as a Chechen historian.
Laura has come for lunch at the Fletchers’ canteen en route to do a voice-over for a car insurance website who want her husky Yorkshire accent to add ‘honest northern values’ to their shonky brand. Laura only has to do two voice-over sessions a month to pay her mortgage, and spends the rest of her time helping her boyfriend Dave run his eBay business selling vintage magazines.
This week’s canteen theme is ‘Pre-Valentine’s Value’ and we have the choice of heart-shaped pork bites or asparagus pasties. Sounds better than the falafel Eddie ordered last month, within which lurked a dog’s tooth.
‘James sounds keen,’ says Laura.
‘D’you think?’ If he was that keen, he wouldn’t wait two weeks to call me.
‘He wouldn’t let go of you the other night. You were dancing for ages.’
I love dancing. My ex, Nick, an introvert, danced with me once in five years: quarter-heartedly, for thirty-eight seconds, at his best friend’s wedding, and only after I’d threatened to embarrass him by dancing on my own if he didn’t.
‘Bet his friend wasn’t pleased,’ says Laura.
‘Rob’s an arse,’ I say. ‘That girl with them was Rob’s fiancée!’
‘She’s stood there while he chats you up?’ I nod. ‘You’re going to have some fun double dating …’ says Laura.
‘Early days, love. He might meet some sock model in China and never call again.’
My mother phones from California. She lives in an apartment in Newport Beach, OC heartland, with her second husband Lenny, a retired orthodontist and professional doormat.
‘Have you spoken to your brother?’ she asks, saving the pleasantries for another time.
‘Why?’
‘It’s Shellii.’ Or ‘the-scrawny-tramp-who-is-bleeding-your-brother-dry-with-her-spirituality-crystals-and-Lee-Strasberg-acting-classes’.
‘What now?’
‘She’s bloody pregnant.’
‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’ It means you won’t harangue me to have children for at least another two years.
A heavy silence on the other end.
‘Mum, she’s not that bad.’ Shellii’s so much worse than ‘that bad’, but I never agree with my mother on point of principle.
‘Huh. What’s news with you? How’s the flat?’
‘The flat’s fine. I’m fine.’
‘Job going well?’
‘I’m heading up cold puddings.’
‘Good, well eat some. Your grandmother said you’re looking very thin.’ My mother speaks to her ex-mother-in-law twice a year and it seems their sole remaining common ground is my weight.
I am currently slim and mostly toned but by no means ‘thin’. I will never be ‘thin’ – the Kleins are big boned. But since I split up with Nick last summer, I have lost a stone and a half through exercise and taking proper care of myself. For the first time since I was twelve, I’m almost happy with my body, save for a few inches around my bottom.
My mother takes my weight loss as a personal slight. A rejection of body fat is a direct rejection of what unites our family and everything she stands for. Food equals love, too much food equals Jewish love. At weddings, my genetically freakish thin cousin is the subject of whispered snipes about anorexia and suspect parentage. My mother feeds Lenny three large meals and half a cake every day. She will feed that man to an early grave and then overfeed everyone at the shiva (think full on Irish wake, but with egg-mayo sandwiches instead of whiskies).
‘Lenny’s just walked in, I’ve got to start lunch.’
Two weeks later James calls from Beijing airport. ‘Remember me?’
‘Clown school’s out for summer?’
‘You should see what I can do with three chopsticks and a scorpion.’
‘Sounds painful. Anyway, how can I help you?’
‘Tell me when you’re free for some spaghetti.’
My favourite. ‘A week on Wednesday.’
‘Too far away. I want to see you before then.’
Then you should have called me before now. ‘Sorry.’
‘Seriously, what are you doing between now and then?’
‘All sorts. Wednesday week, then?’
‘Okay. I’ll call you nearer the time with a plan. Got to go, they’re calling my flight.’
Is an average brownie better than none at all?
This is not the same as asking if a taste of honey is worse than none at all. When Smokey Robinson sang that, we can assume the ‘honey’ in question was just fine.
No, this question goes to the heart of what separates people like my old boss Maggie Bainbridge from most people on the planet who simply like cake.
When I went for the interview at Fletchers two years ago, I received an email from Maggie a week in advance:
Please bring:
1) A cake you’ve baked from a recipe book
2) A supermarket pudding you rate highly
It was like being asked to cook for Michel Roux Jr. on Masterchef. After agonising for days, I decided to keep it simple and make a Claudia Roden orange and almond cake that my mother makes at Passover. The texture is fantastic -totally squidgy yet light. The flesh and zest of the orange offset the sweetness and give the cake a fragrance that makes you think you’re in a Moroccan souk, rather than a fluorescent lit office block round the corner from the most toxic kebab shop on Oxford Street.
Maggie took a bite and her brow furrowed. My first thought: Christ, I hope she doesn’t have a nut allergy. But then she went over to her immense