In the metal box of cutlery were the usual assortments of battered institutional knives and forks, bent and twisted. Yet amongst these humble, proletarian items was a mutant fork, small, delicate and strangely thickened along one edge. It seemed familiar, a mute reminder of autre temps, a suggestion of a place and time when food wasn't a commodity to be shovelled down in obscene quantities before the 'taste' assaulted your senses, yet I couldn't place it.
The madeleine-moment struck once I was seated and attempting to enjoy my repast. This curious utensil was… a pastry fork. No, really. A lone survivor of the days in which different foods required customised tools, a distant relative of the fish fork and the grapefruit spoon.
How does such a nostalgic curio reach the canteen of a tired and abused institution like The Hegemon? Is there a secret dining club, a cabal of plump managers being fed dainties by bow-tied flunkies? I now dream of turning a corner in some obscure campus building and finding my senses assailed by the aroma of fresh pastries, meringue, tarte tatin and fine pain au chocolat. A kindly gentleman will relieve me of my marking and my paper cup of unconvincing peppermint tea ('not today, monsieur, not today') and guide me to a plush armchair with a side-table groaning with delicacies on fine Staffordshire china. As Debussy wafts gently from the quartet in the corner and the flunky offers me a choice of periodicals, my cares and waistband ease.
Oh well. A vole can dream.
(Anatole is the temperamental culinary genius of the Jeeves and Wooster novels, by the way).
