 Getting the most out of every ingredient. That's the mark of a maker. The KitchenAid Blender Collection. I'm Melissa Thompson and I am a guest co-director of the food season alongside Polly Russell, The Pounder and Curator and Angela Clutton, the other guest director. First of all, before I forget, a massive thank you to KitchenAid for sponsoring the food season. Yeah, without their support, who knows what might happen. Tonight we have this discussion, food and fiction. I'm very, very excited about this. We're the brilliant Kate Young and Sarah Winman. I'm going to introduce Kate and Kate will introduce Sarah. Kate is an award-winning writer and author of the Little Library Cookbook series. So you've got Little Library Cookbook, Little Library Year and Little Library Christmas and they're amazing to get them. And this is what Kate does. She writes about food, but also writes about food and fiction. I won't say too much about Sarah's book, Still Life, but it's just like after I read it, I made Tortellini. I was just very inspired and I want it to be in Florence. Anyway, I hope you enjoy and please ask questions. Please ask questions. If you're watching online, send them through and just think of questions. And yeah, like at the end, there'll be sort of like fancy microphone things and we'll try not to hit you in the head, but who knows. And enjoy and enjoy. Thank you. I'm going to introduce Sarah now. So Sarah Winman is an award-winning writer and author of Best Sellers when God was a rabbit, a year of Marvelous Ways and Tin Man, which I haven't fully recovered from reading. Her most recent Still Life was published in June 2021. In reviews for it, she has been described as a great narrator of hope with the book noted for its verve and charm, its tremendous heart for exhibiting an elevation of the ordinary and for acting as a tonic for wonderlust and a cure for loneliness. It was one of my favourite books last year. We are here today to talk about food in fiction, but I want first to ask you about the book and about where it started and your process for writing it and why this book and why now. Oh, that's... OK. Any questions? That was... First of all, thank you for the introduction. Thank you, Melissa, where have you gone? And thank you everyone for being here and those online. I had no intention of writing about Florence. I didn't know anything about Florence. I maybe had been there once, many, many... well, two decades before, so I had no sense of the place. It so happened that I was there in 2015 looking at some art by myself, and I was in a restaurant. It was the end of the meal. Nobody else was there, and I was looking at the walls, and I saw these photographs of the city underwater. And I'd never seen this kind of aspect before. I had no idea what was going on, so I spoke to the owner and he said it was the flood of 1966. OK, that was sort of interesting to me. Sort of. And then he started to talk about the predominantly young men and women who came to the city afterwards to help clean up, who became the mud angels, or known as mud angels, because for those who don't know too much about the flood, when the waters receded after 24 hours, a ton of mud was left behind for every citizen. So, that's unspathomable. And it's not mud, it was oil and it was sewage, and it was carcasses, it was rotting, and it stuck to everything. So it stuck to artworks and statues and livelihoods and shops and food. I mean, it decimated the city. So these young people came in to clean up, basically. And then I was like, then the story kind of got me. Because it was romantic. And I need to have a sense of love at those sort of seedling moments of a story in order to kind of carry through or something that I can really kind of fall in love with. And so that was the starting point, was going to be these mud angels and the flood. And then consequently, I pushed the story away for quite a while because I got very overwhelmed with writing about Florence. Like, does the world need another book on Florence? Many people had written about Florence. Knew a lot about the city and I knew nothing. And there's a very large expat community there. And I thought, how on earth am I going to write with a sleight of hand that would make them convinced that I know what I'm talking about? So everything came up. And then Brexit happened. And I thought, OK, you know what? I really need to write a pro-European novel here. Yeah. All my love of Europe needs to be in this novel, why I believe in Europe. And it needs to be joyous. And it needs to be entertaining because at that precise moment, I felt anything but. Yeah. That makes total sense. And you do feel the love of Europe in it. We are going to... We've got a few points that we hit today that are massive spoilers for the book. So I hope you've either read it or I'll, like, wave. And you'll have a moment where you can block your ears or something because we are going to be talking about still life and about sort of page 430. So we're going to get through most of it. My experience of reading still life was on a very long drive. I listened to you reading it. And then subsequently bought this and read it myself afterwards because I love food in books. That is what I do. It's what I always look for. And all of my books have this kind of... You can't see if you're more than a rowback, but every single page is folded here with little notes and corners folded over wherever I find a meal I want to have or a meal I want to be there for. And so my experience was listening to it. Listening to you read it and ending up feeling incredibly hungry. How aware are you of the meals you wanted to put into it? How aware are you of just how much food there is in it? Does it feel like a thing you think about a lot or does it just, when you're writing about people, you write about that? Yeah, no. It's a really good question. No, I'm not aware of the amount of food in it at all. And when we were talking earlier and you were going through it, I was like, yeah, that's food. It's okay. Oh, that meal. Okay. No, I wasn't aware. But I think we talked. I don't plot. I've never plotted a book. So I have the ending of a book, which is usually what I would term a cinematic ending. And I write redemptive novels. So I know the beginning will probably be the opposite to the end. And so I will have an arc and then I just dive in. And I suppose the whole idea of food or my consciousness about food within this book to start with was picking up my eastern family, picking up Ulysses, Crests, the kid, and bringing them into this city of relative plenty in relation to where they came from 1953, London that was still in a state of lack. And what that would do to people. I think that's the whole thing. We talked a little bit about food. And when I've written about food, I've usually written about food within an emotional landscape of a character. So in this particular moment, I would be writing about food as a first moment of tasting, which would then become a memory down the line, but that first moment when you taste something and what it will do sensually to your life and what will it do to your taste buds and how it will anchor you to that moment in time. And that's what I wanted with them when they go to the market, when they're travelling down and they're tasting these stone fruits that they never really had before because they've had how many years of lack? No, six years of wartime. And it wasn't really on the horizon that it was getting any better. And then if we mix that with oral testimony and written testimony of soldiers. So my grandfather was a working-class boy who did the Eighth Army journey from North Africa, Sicily up through Italy. What comes out? War is over here in the horror, but they're noticing grapevines and they're noticing the red of tomatoes and they're tasting different food, even though they've got their rations, which is pretty basic. And so that's what was really compelling for me at that moment. And then it just became... it became them embedding themselves in a way of life which had such a profound food culture that they couldn't ignore that and could not be part of that. Because most of the scenes, honestly, have somebody eating or somebody in a kitchen or somebody tasting something or remembering something they've eaten. It is threaded through it so richly and so deeply that it feels so much like you're tasting Florence with them, that you're going and you're experiencing all of these things as well. Well, I think you know... The epigraph. OK, so the epigraph is... and this is important. I'm just going to read a little bit of it. One of the primary objects of the enlightened traveller in Italy is usually to form some acquaintance with its treasures of art, even those whose usual avocations are of the most prosaic nature, unconsciously become admirers of poetry and art in Italy. Is food not poetry? How can that not be part of that kind of idea? And one of the things that I have written about in Tin Man in here is opportunity. What happens to people when you give them opportunity that they wouldn't have had at home? And this is the other thing, that you pick people up and you give them this opportunity and how can they thrive and can the very nature of buildings, the very nature of art, the very nature of food change somebody without them actually realise that they're going through that change. And one can think that possibly that aspiration is there, but it's an unconscious one and the grounding of what food stroke poetry can be at that moment in time. We had a talk outside about where you intend food to be and where you want it to land. I'm going to briefly get slightly nerdy about the research that I did. I did a talk for the British Library this day last year about food in crime fiction. So if you did watch that, this is going to be slightly rehashed because it is the thing that I sort of researched and investigated last year. I'm going to read it because I always forget which each study was, but there was a 2006 study published in Neuro Image to read words associated with smell. So they read words like lavender and coffee and rosemary and the parts of the brain that register sense and olfactory your olfactory senses lit up and had those neurons developed just by reading that word. In a 2012 study at Emory University there were responses in the sensory cortex when participants read sensory metaphors such as he had leathery hands. Their brain was registering that feeling rather than as a word. And at the laboratory of language dynamics in France a study demonstrated that participants showed brain activity in their motor senses when they read sentences like Pablo kicked a ball. So all of this to say that our brains don't really distinguish between the fictional readings of a sense memory and one that we actually create in real life. The same part of our brain ignites the same thing sets up and I think that is why food in books becomes particularly, I'm talking very personally here is somebody who thinks about it all the time but memories that you have food that you read about in childhood things you might not have even tasted things you might smell not for years after you read them ignite those same bits of our brain there's so much research that that's how memories are formed when you read as well as when you experience. And so it is such an extraordinary thing to travel with these characters to a place that so many of the people reading it might not have been to taste things that people haven't eaten before to do all of that. You have four things that food does for you in books. I came up with my own three that are different so I am going to do mine and then we're going to talk about yours because it's your book. So mine are so mine are three things that essentially all my reading over the years about books and about food says that either food tells you something about character so identifies a trait or something in somebody and how they interact with that food tells you something about them as a person or it places you in a world it places you in a place you've never been before or a place that's incredibly familiar and sets a scene for you or it moves plot along it does something comes in and something changes there's an action something happens you have four different things that you think that you are I think they cross over I think it's just a different kind of terminology because I don't think like that I think you're absolutely right about everything that you say I suppose when I've written about it it's been about memory it has been as I mentioned before the first time of having something and what that does as far as outlook it's about maintaining life food, maintaining life people coming together it is about an act of kindness you know love is an act of kindness I think they were the main four that I kind of came up with which for instance when I talk about emotional landscape offering something as an act of kindness means that you get an insight into the character because the way it's received is usually quite emotional so in a previous book I had a neighbor offering somebody a coffee and he realizes it's a good coffee and that was really important it was a good coffee the idea of being offered over the fence by somebody he didn't know a good coffee meant that this person had taken the care to make it that way and the reason it hit him so hard was that he didn't think he was worth it and that was the kind of interaction so that's the kind of play or something and then we later know that he feels like that and we realize that back in his cupboard he has a Bieletti small stove top coffee pot that he bought with his late wife in Venice so it's placing these little moments of kind of clues but usually I suppose it's my own idea of memory and food and where it comes from but that's kind of how I play with it Brilliant, we're going to dig into your own memory of food but I want first to read for you to read because you've got such a brilliant reading voice so this is actually completely tied into that because this is about giving food, this is about a character who is sharing and the feeling that all of that brings up So this is at the beginning of the book when Evelyn and Margaret, someone are having their tiff and Evelyn is remembering her first love and she is telling her about the night when the maid decided to make dinner Evelyn said Constance led me into the dining room Candles were on every surface and running down the centre of the tables were small tubs of palmer violets, so rare that early in the season and sprigs of rosemary and well the smell was intoxicating this was a room that had been thought about the effect it would have on those who entered and there was wine in large earthenware flagons and fiasci on the table bottles wrapped in straw and the young woman poured out the wine for me and bade me sit and the other guests followed and gasped at our moment of beauty of billets our night finally of Italian authenticity and grace she fed us a simple pappadelle with a ragu she probably used the boiled beef said Margaret and rabbit with white beans and bitter greens that she would have collected from the roadside in fiassole or setiniano which she cooked ripassati style with garlic and oil and when we were all served out she came from the kitchen and stood in the corner in the shadows and watched us eat our enjoyment being her enjoyment I couldn't take my eyes off her I was 21 when this moment was presented to me the gift was beyond my comprehension only later did I come to understand what she was offering oh in what was she offering a door into her world priceless beautiful thank you so much and it is we're going to do that every time you read something so it's really great it is beautiful it tells us so much instantly about these characters you're so right about the kindness and that offering and what it is to give of yourself when you're giving food to people when you're bringing them into a space that is yours and when you're putting food in front of them you know this you do this you do offer somebody into your world in a way that is that is so full of grace and magical in a way that's been my experience every time I've ever been cooked for and I've entered that space has been something that I'm hugely grateful for me too massively I think it becomes an interesting thing when you cook for a living that people don't really want to cook for you and assume that you don't want to come round to their house for dinner and assume that it's not going to be the closest friends I have really understand that all I want is somebody else to cook for me I don't care if you heat up big beans I'm like if you put food in front of me it's such a joy it's such a great thing to come into somebody else's house and be fed it's beautiful and that is a perfect encapsulation of it that I want to talk about in terms of what food does in this book is takes us to Florence and puts us in a place that maybe we've been maybe we haven't the food is so is so specific to a place and we're going to read something and then I want to talk to you about how it is so specific and how you manage to make it so fit Florence in these years and in this time but we're going to read first about carbonara because it's such a great little section well carbonara what I will say here would have been in Rome right and that's important because we will go on to talk about it cross regional Italian food was not happening at this point in time and I came to find that out later but anyway but anyway here we are so Dottie and Evelyn are travelling they've landed in Rome and they're heading to Florence and we are in the flood aren't we they're heading that's right so where should we start right so they've spotted Giuseppe Verdi's an Italian equivalent of a transport calf and they're hungry and as soon as Evelyn opened her mouth she became an Italian again her charm offensive she opened the door of a surly waiter behind which was a host of homemade specials none of which were chalked on the board eventually both Evelyn and Dottie agreed on the spaghetti alla carbonara bread and a carafe of house wine white Evelyn looked about and sighed you're home said Dottie we're home all those years we spent we were rather naughty said Dottie do you think she knew of course she knew she told me as much Angrazie said Evelyn as the wine arrived told me as much before she died she said I pray you find the right one she used the feminine for the right one oh classy Maria said Dottie and she poured out the wine here and the women raised their glasses to find in eulises they said the wine was crisp and reviving the carbonara delicious wholly authentic said Evelyn in what way said Dottie no cream whatsoever no cream but it's so creamy the creaminess said Evelyn is purely yoke with the faintest hint of egg white with the addition of cheese both parmesan and pecorino said Dottie and is the bacon bacon or another sleight of hand not bacon my darling but guanciale pig jowl guanciale repeated Dottie how I've missed Italy a delet crunch and then your mouth floods with an oily saltiness the only seasoning said Evelyn is a grind perhaps that the ensemble brought together with a soup sawn of pasta water well I never thank you I did think about this when I was planning this event but I have to get on a train after this and I don't have time to go for dinner and it's the biggest disappointment to sit here for the next however long we're still here for talking about food and not be able to go and eat afterwards but it's beautiful to me about where that came from why you wanted to include that carbonara the carbonara scene came from Telly which was Locker Telly and who was it? Andrew we didn't decide thank you and I think there was a conversation very similar and it was like oh my goodness I'm going to take that so that's where it came from but as we were saying when I first wrote the book or the various drafts I put in a lot of food that I like because I thought Italian food is Italian food you know it's been around for ages and figures and I was quite happy with that I know somebody in Florence Niko Davis she's a cook and a cookbook writer and I got in touch with her once I finished the final draft and I wondered whether I could employ her to go through the manuscript to make sure the food was okay and also to make sure that I had written about Florentines fairly with dignity because that's another thing this book is not about Florentines it's really about these people and so the rest you want it to be right you just don't want it to be just want it to give people dignity so I wanted her to just go through some stuff anyway she was brilliant and she came back with lots of notes so Prosecco was not around in 1953 that was the start and I think that was on page 2 so at the time it was Spumante or Flizzantino so what we're talking about was very regional cuisine so I think there's 20 regions I'm not totally sure in Italy it was the end of the 1800s where it was a country that was brought together but people weren't travelling so there was no tiramisu tiramisu came in the 1960s there were no aubergines and peppers until the 1970s or 80s in Tuscan cuisine because this all came from Puglia unless you had somebody who was Puglia in your country and so it went on until most of if we're talking about a pasta dish most of that in Florentine cooking tomatoes and tomatoes so my extravagant of cime di rappe with anchovies and no it's all wet but I mean it was fascinating and I was saying there's so many ice cream shops there wasn't in 1953 there was two there was Perche non and Vivoli and there was only two flavours of ice cream so there was crema and cioccolata so thank goodness that I did ask her to do this and she was quite brilliant but I will read you I had this is a little bit of the notes that I had from her and it's quite lovely so there was one I've just opened it up that Cress was baking fish with tarragon emico this is near impossible to find in Florence even now maybe sage or thyme the kid page 34 clocked up 152 words of Italian and she tried pizza for the first time and declared it was her second best day ever emico the first pizzeria arrived in Florence in 1955 il notino so unlikely may I suggest scacciata crunchy oily salty topped focaccia or coccoli balls of deep bread though I went for that the kid Julia made the kid cannoli no she said no cannoli unless she's Sicilian she's Sicilian first Christmas they had prosecco well I've already dealt with that they had sprimante and panettone no panettone arrived later in the decade from Lombardy maybe panforte panforte it was a really rather lovely one and I was getting my seasons mixed up and so I had and it was April I think April May that was when I think Evelyn was travelling and she went and brought mandarins and emico yet maybe not in spring they're a Christmas thing something you might like there's a wonderful old lady in the market in Santo Spirito that sells heirloom florentine apples from her own trees and they are tiny and the size of mandarins they're called Francesca apples after the Via Francicena they're ancient and have a strong delicious perfume so they used to be stored with the linens all season to perfume I mean you know and she's brilliant because this is what she does she lambs the history of food and then just lastly Cress learnt how to make Erecchiette simple really he said semola and water and a nimble use of the fingers emico no, Erecchiette would have been unknown unless you had a Pugliese grandmother around to teach you how about something from Artusi gnocchi for example just change semola and water to potatoes and flour and you can still keep the nimble use of fingers she's extraordinary so the first time I read the book I flicked to the acknowledgments I couldn't believe that it would be so good it's so rich and so detailed I'm sure it could be with other writers I'm sure it was fantastic to begin with I'm not judging fiction at all but there was part of me that went you know a cook in Florence you must know a cook in Florence the food is so good and so specific and so clear and every time somebody cooks every detail of them cooking the way their hands work the way that they're engaging in the kitchen you can feel it and it feels real and I flicked to the back and I know emico and so I emailed her immediately and was like you must tell me you must tell me about this because this book is extraordinary and all the food's amazing and I've been writing a book at the moment that's going to come out in October and it's about parties and literature so it's about wedding parties and I have a three course menu from different parts of still life in that and I wrote to emico and said tell me about this dish I've never heard of it before I don't know what it is and we went back and forth with all of her knowledge of Florence she's just fantastic so she has four cookbooks first Florentine then Aquaforte which is so beautiful and then Ultolini in Midnight in Midnight and then she has a new one called Cinnamon and Salt which is about Venice but if you are interested it is quite fascinating how these stories come into being and I think there's a story about her again about the Parmigiana that it just didn't exist and it came from her husband's side of the family and she her mother-in-law took this dish of Parmigiana to a gathering or a picnic with some school colleagues and nobody had ever seen it before and nobody tried it and it stayed there this gorgeous Parmigiana but nobody had seen it but I wanted to get it right because it's part of it and it's part of honouring it and I felt very clear about honouring the city as I said and that was my own insecurity about writing about somewhere that I didn't know that I needed to find people and I met a lot of people who did know and a lot of people who lived there and that was my way in really Did you go back when you decided that this was the book you were going to write I did, I needed to live there for a little period of time and that was what was really important so I got a small grant from Arts Council England that enabled me to do about this at various times and then the main thing that I needed to do was I stayed there for a month on the square and so it was January 2019 and I just needed to know what that felt like because basically I was doing for a very short period of time was what I was making my characters do and it was the best thing I could do because I felt the fear away from writing about these people who were landing in this city because they were me and I was them and all I did was to bring the same rituals and the same habits from London to Florence there was no difference it wasn't like I had this great revelation I'm in Florence, I'm going to cook a different way no, I cooked exactly the same as I did in London because until I got grounded then I would move about but that gave the confidence of oh no, no that's what people do they find their cafe that you go to you find your bar, you find your place and it resonates and you anchor yourself and that's how you get to know the rest of the city from those little compass points and once I had that then I felt a lot more confident writing about what these people would have done gradually so my week in my mind became their year and then it just became a fantasy that they would settle and live the life that they went on to yes, it's fantastic I want to do so the final one that is my sort of idea of what food does is about driving the plot and about changing something and so often in literature I think when this is a thing when it's about the plot it's about the lack of food it's about a seeking for something that you don't have because there are so many lovely moments of scene setting with abundance and with so much food and with plenty that when it becomes part of the plot like it does in Oliver Twist so many novels it's about a lack and there's a moment in the flood when it's about the lack of it about the food arriving and so if we can read when Ulysses woke up and the first trucks are coming so the flood is happening the flood has happened the city is decimated there's mud everywhere Kid, Alice and Cress are somewhere in Rome, he doesn't know where they are and everyone's just trying to dazed and trying to clean up and yes, there's a kind of a sense of emptiness and a pool over the city so Ulysses woke to a day of firsts first trucks brought water into the city for cleaning and not for drinking but that was something and the first wave of young people gathered outside the Biblioteca and formed a human chain to clear mud from the entrance and the first of the telegrams started to get through and Ulysses received one from Rome he'd been sent the day before and was handed to him as he was shoveling mud out of the Cortile roads impassable, we'll try again tomorrow home soon, love you the tears came then he turned away from the group because he couldn't stop that afternoon having kept close behind a bus chartered by the Grotta Ferrata monks Betsy rolled into Santo Spiritus Square mudded and worse for wear Alice, close to the windscreen tried to absorb the broken lives in front of her Ulysses saw them first and oh, the look on his face the look on hers, click forever he'd been standing outside the café with Michaele and Julia and the elderly Contessa who said about time, I hope they've bought food of course they had wine, water too and it would be the first time in days that anyone would eat eggs or bread or drink milk Alice climbed out of the van and Ulysses went towards her arms around him, she said if anything had happened to you what's that troop boss doing over there Michaele, said Chris you bring it in from the cold and I'll have it cleaned up and fixed in no time Julia said can you do the same for my heart seeing your Chris beautiful, thank you but I think I think it's right about the flood I think one of the things that was was clashing, everything that I read during the flood was so it wasn't just Florence give it some context there had been a weather front that had pretty much settled over the Mediterranean so most of sort of middle or just above Rome and the rest of Italy was flooded so the whole of Tuscany Pisa and Venice too and so it was pretty difficult to just get any the infrastructure to get any food anywhere but it was very contentious because the authorities were so worried about the artworks and so it was sort of the Communist Party and the Casa del Popolo who were trying to feed the people and the first bread that came into the city actually came from the bakers in Fiesole so as soon as they heard because of course they were unaffected from the moment it happened because there were no bakers in Florence it wasn't happening because all the wheat was spoiled there was no food at all most of it was spoiled maybe yeah jars you could get some passata or something but there was just nothing available so it was all coming from the hills and it was such a very sour kind of bone of contention that the money and the interest that was coming in especially from American money was coming in at that point in order to help save artworks and nobody was really concerned with the people and who was feeding the people and who was getting medicines to the people and who was getting water to the people so you know it's yeah I had my people doing the food run for that reason and then there's of course the one man band of everything did exactly that you mentioned before about food in your memory and food how you want your characters to have these memories of food there's a bit at the end so when Evelyn is 21 and coming of age and in Italy for the first time and discovering everything that is good about the world she the last bit of her with Livia before she leaves is not that bit that was going to be really smooth and in fact it just wasn't instead it was, it was smooth I read the absolute wrong bit and so 340, I'm really sorry guys 430 this last part of them being together before they separate at the train the tram stop I don't know and this is I think a really this is what I want to get on to now is so much of this is food so much of this final day of everything they do together of this memory of this final day is about the food and I wonder if you could read that and then we can have a chat about food and memory yep thank you so it's from, they walked through they walked through okay so this is the 1901 section so Livia and Evelyn they walked down through the olive groves and fig trees through tall grasses where they held hands and picked up prickly casings under an unexpected stretch of nut trees they bought gelato from a cart and walked a path down to the Roman amphitheater where they sat and fed one another the sweet chocolate and because it was quiet and they were alone they kissed one another's lips warm their pockets full of chestnuts on the air was the faint smell of rosemary and thyme Evelyn stood up and walked to the middle of the stage area and there recited one of Constance's poems it was about discovery and astonishment and forgiveness and all the while Livia watched smiled and applauded and then it rained but there was still sun and they both eagerly looked about for a rainbow but that would have been too perfect too unreal for a last day of love they talked freely about what the taste of a pastry, this woman, that man such unremarkable, trivial everyday things thank you I wanted to talk about food in your memory how tangible are your memories of food do you think about it is it as conscious as it feels for me reading that or am I extrapolating because of my brain I don't, I think it's really, really true now I think first of all I think it's a good point to say that as a kid I was a particular eater so I wasn't that interested in it but also I think it's very important for what follows is that we always had enough to eat I came from a family who did so we're incredibly fortunate so everything was built from that point yes young adulthood that was what it is I think it's about love and sexuality and freedom and travel for me and sort of being a young gay person that back in the 80s I suppose we kind of found our freedom in this country and that has happened I suppose I felt that every time I was researching this book with the poets and Forster himself a young gay man that there were conventions in this country that kept people in a certain role that maybe they didn't have a chance to step out of and and I think this is one of the things that came about was that you go to other countries especially or I'm talking about maybe Mediterranean countries and you get a sense of the possibility of your own life and who you are as a person away from these shores away from the kind of lack of food culture in this country because we don't or the one food culture we had or have very lucky that it came in from people who decided to settle here and how grateful are we that our food culture has been bought by them because ours was not happening we had a chance after the Second World War we had an absolute chance and we didn't follow it so my memories are about that my memories are about being sunkissed and slightly grubby on a beach and trying to hammer in some, you know, the cork in a bottle of wine and the sun is setting and I'm young and at that point you think you have your whole life ahead of you and it goes very quick but you do and I was staying I'd managed to secure a flat it was the first time I'd travelled and it was such I don't even know how it happened a flat on this beach in the south of France and it wasn't terribly expensive but there was no computers it was all done by a phone call and by writing and by typing and I met people on the beach and they had nowhere to stay so they came and stayed with me and we had this system going and there was no money changing hands but if you were staying the bread for the breakfast and you would bring in the fruit for the lunch and you would do this and it was it seemed so far away from my life here and I suppose it's those moments and there's such tangible moments of freedom and possibility and taste and how your senses become so alive at that moment that informs many of the characters because I want to give them that opportunity you know my grandparents we came from a working class background and so the things that became on offer were quite rare I didn't travel until quite late and one said that grandparents didn't travel at all so it wasn't something that there was easy access to and yet my parents who as I said, one said of grandparents had a greengrocer shop and the other had worked in a car factory my parents decided to travel down to the south of France in 1958 on a Vespa it is well because you just didn't and they were traveling from the grey of Cowley and I can only imagine what that journey would have been and so I do give my characters that journey because I know what it did to me and how it changed me and and of course I sit here and I'm middle aged and I have a very nostalgic view and I framed these pictures in a way and we know as soon as we frame something we exclude the other we exclude the fact that we are really starving as a young adult because we run out of money and it was like miserable at times but it was those, you know, the first moment of actually tasting a real coffee I didn't probably had coffee before then but, you know, anyone knows tea in France is awful, so you had to and then getting understanding it and I think that's it when these foods are in season and they've been blessed by the sun, especially in fruit and that sugar comes out you kind of relax into it there's an organic kind of symbiotic relationship that happens between you and the earth and the moment and the place and it sort of comes together in that way, I think I think so too. It's also my experience, although the place that was magic for me was here Right. So I left Australia at 21 and moved here, moved to London in 2009 which felt very rich in great food and in things I'd never tasted before and in cuisines I'd never had before and in this sort of community of extraordinary places and things to eat and new things that were in season differently because I grew up in a tropical climate and suddenly was somewhere with seasons and so apples tasted differently and everything that I was sort of familiar with, these delicious foods were extraordinary here and so I think it is that thing of landing somewhere new and just with a new experience of it and wherever the new place is having that sort of life changing amazing awareness of things that you've not had before completely and it's if you're lucky enough to be able to experience it's a very necessary thing and just going on from that so coffee not a big coffee drink but I had the my first coffee there and then I used to go to Bar Italia right from when I was about 22-23 pretty much you could set your watch when I would be there so about 30 years but when I had come back from drama school and I was going off to do rep it was early 80s it would have been and there just weren't coffee shops that there are now it was really difficult to get a really good coffee so I was used to Bar Italia coffee their coffee roaster Angelucci was next door and they supplied the beans for them so I worked out that when I was staying in Diggs I missed this coffee so much if I took my coffee pot with me and I knew how to make the froth because I would do it the old style way you had your pan and you would have your milk and you would whisk and I still do it today doesn't matter that's how I make it and so I would phone Angelucci they would send me an invoice I would write a check send it back to them and they would grind the coffee for the Bieletti and they would send it to me and I knew when it had arrived because I would walk in through the stage door and it smelt perfect and so everywhere you were in Diggs around England you could get oh she's here coffee week but if we refer to this moment of the expectation of when we travel we can have something slightly different this is one of the things that so the thread of a room with a view runs through this book so the fictional pensioni Bertolini that Forster writes about did actually exist and it was the pensioni Simi he writes about this in his letters which you can get you can come and read them in the British Library in the Furbang edited volume 1 and there's a little section of his year long trip he took with his mother as soon as he left Cambridge a year I mean amazing he did keep having accidents he would break his wrist or his arm and he was very forgetful but he's incredibly charming and very self-effacing but so the pensioni Simi would come by this cockney landlady she did exist, she was real and in his letters he's writing back to his friends going we're having boiled beef and or another time he would go to his friend Edward Carminter prunes for breakfast yep so these travellers part of a very sort of the poor grand tour they were still expecting Italian authenticity there was a world outside and they had that so there was there was still these moments of disappointment that you were expecting something although I have to say about Forster he was a little bit wary with the food and he did actually write markets did make him nervous because there were a lot of beggars there and they just didn't know how to handle it and he did voice I mean most of the 1901 section were taken actually from his letters and what he said and what he was really excited about was beetroot that's bizarre as somebody who has done a very close reading of A Room with a View to try and find every possible mention of food because I was asked to host a supper club on A Room with a View I will tell you there is so little Italian food in it there's hardly any it is almost none, it is just a vibe so I just had to make it up I just had to go I'm just going to give it to it and that's in the book and it is not and the moment where I normally would stand up in a supper club and read out a bit from the book I was just like it's just the vibe guys it's there in the subtext other people are eating it not the people in the book but other people outside every time you say the vibe it reminds me of Dennis De Nuto in the castle that's why I say vibe all the time it's a perfect film I wanted to I didn't bring a phone up here and I'm aware that we do have a time limit I've got a couple more things before you do we have time for that or are we? great, perfect I wanted to talk to you about the domestic kitchen so there's this beautiful part here that we spoke about before that comes from an essay and I wonder whether you could speak a little about the essay and then we can read this and then talk about kitchens definitely it ties up with the title of the book Still Life which wasn't the working title and I happened to read Patsy bought it, Patsy is my partner she's a food photographer she bought this book of essays into my life it's a man called Norman Brynson he's an art historian and he wrote a book called Looking at the Overlooked for essays on still life painting and it was the last essay I think it was Still Life and the Feminine Space and it's a fascinating essay because so if you go back over the history of still life paintings interior scenes inanimate objects carcasses, food, drink rotting flowers, food transience, mortality, all of that and it was always looked down upon of the artistic, the white predominantly male, gaze of the time looked down on this form of writing two reasons, one it wasn't figurative and the second because it was domestic there's no power in the domestic I mean women of all that period of time it was basically a life of subjugation anyway so who's interested in this scene and he argues in this or he puts forward rather this notion that the power of still life paintings lies absolutely in the domesticity of the scene i.e. the feminine space meaning that it is the space where women pretty much only are that men can enter that space but they don't work there but it's the place where women only work and he says that and I like to move this on but it's not a gendered it's about we're talking about an energy now so the feminine space and all that that gives most of that is about cherishing and nurturing and the maintaining of life and that's what he argues happens in that space that that it is a space where for instance utensils pictures, oyster knives cups, plates they're objects that have been unchanged for centuries and if they're unchanged then they're perfect and these things are handed down throughout families and so there is this sense of continuity there's a sense of continuity there is a sense of memory he argues that again is the power the bringing of people together the feasting that is the feminine space and I was like that is my book that that's why it's called still life because what I have done is I've moved the men into the kitchen and I've moved the men to bring up the child because one of the things that I do believe in this world of ours is that for women for feminism to move on for women's equality for their freedom to move on we need good men to come on board and to enter our space and this is what I'm doing with Ulysses and Crass they're good men and they're taking over kind of why not they're entering this space and they're nurturing and if you like they are mothering so the whole idea of motherhood with pay becomes this sort of social construct and actually what we're looking at is purely to mother and that is very far reaching through both genders absolutely do you want to read this bit so this is my version but this is not my idea and I have to say it's Norman Bryson's idea so Evelyn she's writing what will be the beginning of a lecture about still life and the feminine space so life of the spirit versus that of the physical she wrote sacred versus the profane the educated versus the not a world where the outer and inner is in constant opposition the world of the domestic kitchen is a female world she underlined this it is a world of routine of body bodily function a world of blood and carcass and guts and servitude men may enter but they do not work there and yet work is all that women do there occasionally in such paintings male items may appear on the table pipes, watches, maps often in the most ludicrous composition and yet they succeed in what they intend to do revoke the feminine space male triumph over the triviality of the scene she drank from her glass she continued to write and yet the power of still life lies precisely in this triviality because it is a world of reliability of mutuality between objects that are there and the people that are not paused time in ghostly absence who was it who prepared the food who gutted the fish who scrubbed the kitchen these are the actions that maintain life objects representing ordinary life reside in this space plates, bowls, jars, oyster knives and the shape of these objects has remained unchanged as has their function they have become fixed and unremarkable in this world of habit and we have taken them for granted and yet within these forms something powerful is retained continuity and memory thank you I think that's throughout the book there are these images that we freeze on these moments and we hear what happens to characters after those moments happen but really we're focused on these moments so many of them are at the end of a meal so many of those images are the wreck of a meal on a table the things that are left, the things that remain as people are sort of gathered around it do you like having people over do you like having people for dinner is there a wreck of a meal in your head that you want to recreate in those because it is so vivid and lovely that end of the night image that recurs over and over I do I mean I I don't tend to have two people over I like it but I don't have dinner parties I mean a little bit because of what you said earlier about many people we know cook kind of chefs and I do my generally you know my on a loop of seven dishes that I do sometimes cut corners and Patsy is so grateful and we eat and it's lovely so I'm probably a little bit nervous but the sitting around of a table I love I love the feasting I love the being going out and it doesn't have to be grand it doesn't have to be grand give me a plate of chips we all have that it's the fact that we're all there and there is something about eating and gathering I don't know if it's the distraction of eating and doing that that conversation comes in a way that maybe it doesn't if you're just sitting in the domestic tableau or inside I think many couples I've heard of if you just go out for coffee or you go and do something something changes so I do I mean you know so many the the the coal and the crest kind of situations of dinner so we grew up with another family out in Redbridge an eastern suburb of London so it was kind of the second family because Sylvie my mum and Sylvie were in hospital together having their first their boys together and so that's what we did and we holidayed together and my parents as I said before were both from east Oxford and Sylvie was from Hockston so Sylvie was an east London and the conversations between Cress and Cole are very much the rhythm of what I hear of Sylvie and my dad and my dad is a little bit Cole Sylvie would sort of repeat there was the repetition of jokes to make sure everyone really got it for the repetition of her name it's like I know but that was there and they were messy they were messy but they were just and we did it every year for you know while we were growing up for about 10 years and you knew what you would talk about and you knew the games that you would play afterwards and yet there was reliability in that and so I do like that and I've had many memorable times with friends and and long may it continue you know and I many times I one of the times Pats and I I hadn't been published at this point and so I was in the cusp between acting and I wasn't earning living acting and I wasn't earning living as a writer so money was really really tight Patsy I'm not sure she'd got her cookbooks I'm not sure she was but she was starting to photograph the restaurants at that point so money was really tight basically and that's fine we were doing what we wanted but I'm just setting the scene here so what the restaurants used to do because not often a lot of cash flow with restaurants they would pay her in meals so she would do websites and then she would invoice for like meal for four or if it was a club one particular time there was a club and it was like I don't know meal for eight and so this is how we used to eat so we really a bit not quite poor but you know we were struggling a bit and yet we would go out to these most amazing restaurants we would take a couple of friends who were in the same position as us and we would eat like kings and they were such brilliant times and they would provide wine as well and there was no one there was no wine way to hovering you know just sort of I'll bring you the house house red they would sort of go their finger would go generously halfway down you know the wine list so you'd get a nice one yeah middle of the list so I do I do have many of these memories of that I mean do you? Yes massively and I think that's I do think that's what has been personally I've had a very lucky past couple of years in that nobody I'm you know desperately close to has passed away from COVID it's not you know but the thing that I miss the most is sitting around a table with people right and staying somewhere a long time and not worrying about how long you've been there and how much contact you're having with people and all of those things that are kind of somewhere in the back of my head now that so many of my best nights and best times and best things I've ever done in London are extraordinarily long nights with friends where you just end up around the wreck of the dinner table for hours after dinner finishes and there is something don't you think about as you call it the wreck of a dinner table that is so satisfying really satisfying satisfying if you're a guest satisfying if you've cooked it all of it just this sense of like we did this together this thing was food before we arrived and now it's not you know a mess and we've spilled we've got exactly stuff gone on the table it's all a mess and the kind of the different levels of wine where people have just given up yeah it's like not that one for me I mean it's new glass and new this and lipstick everywhere and people's serviettes that are sort of torn up because somebody's a bit nervous and all of that detail around that table is so beautiful and extraordinary there is poetry there and you can feel it in all of this all of those meals you can really feel I'm going to give people a chance to ask questions I'm taking a punt I have no idea what time it is so I am taking magic I was supposed to finish 20 minutes before half past eight it's ten past eight I'm amazing does anyone in here have any questions we've got people online as well so if you are watching online do type your question into the zoom and the list is paying attention and we'll pick up your questions anyone who has a question for Sarah in here oh yes yes it's not a question it's a thanks because I love the book and I kind of emerged from it and thought I've got to drink a BC plate so I looked at the recipe and my family have been drinking them all over each other's system my answers are magic they're quite strong right actually Emiko said there were no beachy cletters and I said yeah I know but this is a peep thing right so they would have brought it in there but I'm really glad that you're on the bike for everybody else in the room how do you make one pino grigio, campari soda water and garnish with orange slices a bit of a recipe to take home delicious the St John beachy cletta leaves out the soda water which is similarly in americano in the south does the same so you have it with soda or not with soda one from online and then we'll move sorry so it's a question from Debbie loved your description of why Still Life became your title what the working title was yeah the working title the working title that was on the grant form for arts counselling was the restoration of Ulysses temper that was a very delicious sound from everybody in the audience it was just a very nice little moment there but it wasn't so much about him it became very much even though he has a lion's share or he becomes the catalyst for other people changing their lives Evelyn became so prominent that it couldn't just be about him it became something else there's a gentleman there you couldn't just call the Ulysses I don't think that's been used before so that, yeah I thought about that I mean google would have a nightmare what's saying that Still Life there's three there are three Still Lives there was so somebody was complaining that they said she said I sent my husband out to buy Still Life and it was the wrong one it was the crime one she was still good but not what she was looking for there was another hand up around there somewhere yes so it's more of a technical writing question this writing is about abundance there's a lyricism in that and yet you speak about when we move the when we use food to move the plot forward that's about lack of but I have I'm writing at the moment and it's set against the backdrop of abundant food and massively traumatic conversations that go around their table and how would you bring in that sense of abundance and the the deliciousness of their food against this backdrop of people destroying one another what a question so Kate so I mean I brought in the lack so I apologize for that because that wasn't you at all talking about the lack in the plot and things but yes that's a very good question I mean I don't I don't know I mean it's a hard one isn't it because you know the answer to that you will know the answer to your to that dilemma you know and by asking the question you will find it I mean okay a scene of great abundance there's an extraordinary meal in the middle in the middle of such a fun age which came out a couple of years ago and it's a oh my goodness yes there is such a sense of Thanksgiving in the beginning of this scene there is that you can smell the cinnamon you can smell the oranges it's all beautiful it's all been sort of curated perfectly and then people arrive for dinner and it's awful because there is so much going on character wise the characters are all hiding things there are so many secrets there are things that people know and don't know and are about to find out and things are about to fall apart there are loads of beautiful scenes like that where people are there's so much attention underlying everything and people are hating each other and feeling complicated about the other people in the room and the food is still extraordinary but it almost amplifies everything because you then think every year that somebody has a pumpkin pie from now on they're going to think of that horrible Thanksgiving where everything fell apart and that's I think that scenes particularly around sort of holidays there's loads of films that do that as well that sit everyone around and the meal that they all know really well that they've had in years every Christmas they come and have this meal and of course the year we are with them the year we visit them it's a terrible time because that's drama that's one of the ways in which you make something interesting is to light a fuse in the middle of a meal and see what comes out that's brilliant that's a brilliant answer I think you're playing with the juxtaposition of course, yeah so what's the opposite of abundance you know and you mentioned lack before but it might not be lack of food yeah, that kind of thing good luck with it another question here sorry Melissa I'll remember as well we'll come back to you next if you've got another one this can be a question for both of you what would be your last meal and why not in a morbid way sure, the last meal in a good way I think it's the same yeah, it is I know, we mentioned that it's vongole spaghetti vongole good choice it's such a perfect combination of all of the things that I love it is salty, it's sharp it tastes bright and fresh but it's also bucket loads of carbs and so it's just it has that lift and brightness that makes it a just perfect thing to eat I don't think there's a better dish I've never eaten anything that I love as much as I love it it's also extraordinarily easy to make and so you can make it and feel very very good about it without spending two days doing it is that no that's brilliant, I've never made it yet I'll send you a recipe okay, yeah because it's just it's one of those delicious sort of salty sea taste with a little bit of sweetness thrown in and it's I find it just so satisfying everything that you have just said if I was pushed another way a very simple dish I would say tortellini and brodo you know it's Vongole number one and that so it's all very quite simple, I mean if I was allowed both you are, it's your final meal you can have both, that's true you can start with one and follow so one I would probably have a very nice pressed white yeah I mean it would have to be setting that complete scene if that was it but I think that would be rather lovely I think I could go out on that I think that sounds great I think as well I wouldn't be cheated no, no no, I mean I've had it so many times in so many places because it's always a sort of thing that I will end up ordering as well as a thing that because I live on my own it feels like a real when I couldn't really justify expensive ingredients now I write about food I kind of pretend to justify and just do it but when I was working theatre and earning very little money and living in East London I essentially would cook it for myself at the start of the month as soon as I got paid it was my thing that I would go out and buy clams and I would come home and I would make it because it's a perfect, beautiful dish and when the clams are from a different place, they always taste different, you can really taste them because it's such a focus on that sometimes I'll put chili in it, sometimes I won't sometimes I'll make it with vermouth, sometimes with wine it always tastes good it's just a great thing we could talk about Vongole for the next 15 minutes and if you really want to get nerdy and I don't but you will know this the different types of clams that you can get and certainly in Italy and certainly around Venice, oh my goodness is there another online question that we should run? that's lovely anybody else there were another hand up gentlemen there I just wanted to pick up on the the question about wonderful food and sort of as a background to awful events because when I was coming here this afternoon I picked up the book that I found years ago most exciting as a fiction book about food which is John Lanchester's A Debt to Pleasure which is full of the most wonderful food yeah and it's centered in a story of really quite unmitigated evil yes but the food is just gorgeous another one to definitely read we've got somebody at the back yeah I just wanted to hello but I think the main thing that always comes through in your books is a very clear distinct voice and I'm kind of wondering if you constantly walk around with like a million voices in your head of different characters and the main question is if there's any new characters that have crept in so I know what you're thinking if you have any characters kind of in your head at the moment no question but I don't have lots of characters I think we've talked about it I don't have lots of ideas for books yeah yeah because I suppose that's an acting thing that it's inhabiting it and once I start to get it's about their physicality it's about the shape of their mouth and how they might speak due to dentures or no dentures or older ones certainly and then you just start to feel the weight and then once you start having one voice you start to be able to delineate and then so I'll always read out dialogue out loud always and then especially with sort of the dinner scenes then you can it's about music and it's about rhythm so each one will have a slightly different voice and a different speed at which they speak and it's like I suppose putting them together and to make sure that it works these ones in other books but this was to be light and it's about you know it's about that banter and it's about who says what and something comes in over here so that's sort of when I'm in it when I was working on it yeah I did have them around a lot I don't really have them around I have one of them around at the moment and I don't know whether I'm supposed to go go on a little trip together or whether you're just she's visiting me to say goodbye I haven't worked that out yet I don't know we'll have to see are there questions in this yes we've got under so if you carry on from that with the characters you create you said you don't plot or you plot in a few ways because you get to know them so well or when you're going to kill someone for example because we've come so close to them you've come more close to them is it a worrying thing because it might be brilliant no matter who you are that's a really interesting question so this book was the first time so I think I said that the tone was going to be joy and entertainment and that was a huge that's a commitment happens on the opening pages so tone is different to voice tone you're telling your reader this is going to be a certain way you're throwing clues down and they can see in those first pages hopefully it's going to be a bit light you're playing around there's a bit of dark humour but you're having a joyous time that is going to continue so I can say this no it wasn't I was coming to the end of a final draft and my mate is here and she was reading it and we were away and I had to deliver in five days and the pandemic so we're getting into July August so we were allowed out and it was quite a lot so about almost 17,000 words were cut in the end, in the edit and and I had a kind of ending so the ending is never locked down but often it is the ending but this one I kind of roughly knew where I was going and she came in and she said you can't kill Evelyn and it was the first time that I thought about that and I thought about the act of trust and the contract that I had with the reader at that point because there was one it wouldn't have happened with Tin Man it wouldn't have happened with the others but it had to happen with this one because that was how it was going to be and that was in my mind and I was like okay I won't kill her I will sort this one out and and so no I let her be I think there I think that yes the loss that is in this book was natural and there had to be some in order to allow the others to live because that's what death does it is the great enhancer it shows us what we have to do and what we've been given so I think there had to be a death in this right but again it wasn't using it as a plot point and I think that's the whole point with this book that it was very much influenced by a film called Boyhood which was shot I think over about 12 years but in real time so the character of the young man aged from I think 8 or 10 to early adulthood and actually nothing happens in this film except the moments of life and that's really what I wanted so death was going to be a moment of life and I wasn't going to use it as an end point it was just going to be part of a journey but I did I thought about it a lot more in this book and what I owed the reader and that that there were often I would use these little tricks especially in the crossing over of Evelyn and Ulysses because I thought it could get tedious after a while and there was a moment where I said they would laugh about it one day so what I'm trying to do is to reassure the reader constantly that the outcome of this book will be good and you can trust it because I felt that that was necessary that this was not going to be a book that was going to you know trick you really I did prepare myself for her death though I did spend the last hundred pages going if it comes it'll be fine she's had such a good life it's going to be okay I was really ready for it she's had a good life it's fine you said something in that about the way in which you you set up a contract with the reader in the book and I want to read you the first line because the first line is a meal the first line is somewhere in the Tuscan hills two English spinsters Evelyn Skinner and a Margaret someone were eating a late lunch on the terrace and that is you're setting it up you are inviting people in and saying these people are going to live and they're going to eat and they're going to be in the sun it's going to be beautiful I didn't thought about that you're absolutely right that's exactly it totally it and why not throw in this ghastly word spinster indeed which can only have comedic value yes do we have any other questions from anybody or from anybody in your A20s when you went travelling is there a meal that you remember that really blew your mind that was completely unfamiliar I think there were a couple there were oysters having no idea never had one never been anywhere near them and the supposed sophistication that's around a bivalve you know and of course it's nonsense but all of that it was from a kid who was brought up in the eastern suburbs it was like oh my god wow what do you do with it it's quite nice it's alright and also the days of acting you know actors days actors feasts and I don't remember the actual meal itself I think it would probably have been it would have been a pasta dish down in Soho somewhere but it was the moment of being with like people and what I do remember was that we all probably haven't worked and we all put our hands in our pockets and put our money on the table and that's we were going to eat that amount and that was it brilliant anybody else yeah good question so I occasionally have written for a blog called Spiddlefield's Life and one of the stories that the gentle author wrote about a man called Peter Bellaby and Peter Bellaby was longing to give his dad this was years ago probably about 10 maybe more 12, 13, 14 years ago wanted to give his dad an 80th present of a handmade globe and he couldn't find one and so he decided to make it himself and he knew that it would be I think he could get the plaster of Paris Globe I think he did or did he make it he may have made it himself with a mold I can't totally remember the story the whole idea of gauze of course it could be done on the computer and it could be printed out but he went through the whole process himself of what paper to print the gore on and what glue he'd never done it before how to paint it and it was so successful people saw his dad his dad I think had to wait 4 years for it his 80th present but apparently it was pretty beautiful and then people saw it and they said would you make me one would you make me one and now he employs many, many people in a workshop in Stoke Newington it's a multi-million pound business because it's all handmade from little globes like this to massive globes he also makes globes of the moon as well they're beautiful it's called Bellaby & Co and so I went and I always loved it I thought it was really romantic and I needed Ulysses to have a job that I felt would resonate in Florence and that he could do in Florence so half these times what you're thinking about is how can I how can I give somebody a job who doesn't speak Italian how can I give them work how can I get them useful so that's why he was a globe maker because he wouldn't have to interact with anyone to do it by himself but it was fascinating so I was in Bellaby & Co watching how they did it and then Peter went through probably how they would have done it or one version of how they would have done it in the 1950s which my goodness with the etching and that was pretty tricky but it was fascinating and one of the things he said he said do you know how to age a globe I went no I googled how to age a globe and it's fascinating because it's about the changes of the names of countries and borders and it's really fascinating to see and you can pretty much work out what globe you have here by what the countries are called and when that change happened or when it didn't happen Fantastic I think we need to wrap up but thank you all so much for coming and thank you to Sarah and thank you to you Thank you all very much