Pasta-nalysis

Spathy is recovering slowly.

Meals in the new Habitat are a communal affair. There has been a very agreeable and as yet unspoken co-operation in matters culinary as to the variegated gastronomic responsibilities of our little triumvirate.

Tonight was my turn and I cooked, in 21 minutes, some penne with a sauce comprised of equal parts capers, spring onions, chilli peppers, garlic, the finest chorizo I could get my hands on, cabernet sauvignon and vine ripened tomatoes. The pasta was boiled in a decoction of salt, oil and water (just like the Mediterranean) and Tabasco. This shit had a kick like a half grown rhinoceros. Divine (I know, I know... prego, prego). We ate it in the living room listening to Billy Bragg.

The graphic artist is currently occupied by a fascination of that famous student of Freud, a certain Carl Gustav Jung. Her collection of his works and image has taken over a room of the Habitat which houses our collection of wine, scotch, chartreuse and absinthe (and the George Formby Grill, still in its' box. In exactly the same way as a 19th century music box, when you open it and put meat in it, it plays that inimitable classic: "When I'm cleaning windows". Fucking thing is completely unusable). I'm not really sure what function this room has any more. It is part library, part shrine and part smoking room. The disturbing thing is that Jung's eyes never leave you. There are three portraits on the walls, and his visage stares blearily from the covers of various treatises and biographies. I can imagine that it is actually dangerous for the mentally infirm to spend too long in there.

Our collective unconsciousness was served desert in here by the Artist. It was, in the tradition of Blue Peter, one she'd prepared earlier: a rumball each, the size of my head, and gloopiliy delicious.

Dinner tonight was sufficiently intense under Jung's gaze as to inspire me to want to sit in the dark in my room and re-read some Frank Herbert while listening to Tool (ah... Atreides and Aenima). After the rumball in the Jung Hall, it was time for the washing up. Yes, dear reader, the trouble in the paradise...

The IT-Bastard stood up, scratched his balls ostentatiously, lit a cigarette and disappeared to go drinking with some of his IT-Bastard mates. Leaving the two of us staring in dismay at the pile of wreckage in the kitchen. A Mexican standoff developed very quickly.

The logic:

1. I was disinclined to clean up, having executed a triumph of timing, getting the pasta al dente and the sauce perfetto coterminously. To be honest cooking con gusto is tiring, and I was entering the somnolent reaches of the evening nursing some scotch (I like my scotch like I like my women: 15 years old and called 'Johnny'). It would be uncivilised to jump up now and start packing the dishwasher.
2. The Artist was apparently unwilling, perhaps in the belief that a pound of chocolate and a bewildering quantity of rum is sufficient to buy-out of any such obligation.

We have a fucking dishwasher for fuck's sake. It's not difficult to load. It isn't secreted in some recondite cranny of the galley. The operation of the device is achieved by the depression of a single button. Even without this labour saving miracle the clean up operation would have taken less time and effort than the making of the mess.

Why me? I'd done the shopping, paid for it, carried it home, chopped it, stirred it and alchemically transformed it. Why is it so bloody difficult to arrange the cleaning up with the same unspoken facility as the cooking? Is it the endorphins? Is it that sinister foil of the ego; the shadow? Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of my flatmates?

I surrender! I'm considering the cowardly and disposable safety of Thai noodles delivered by motorcycle (the enterprise in question is called "Thai Fighter" and the delivery guy's helmet has a particular Sith-like quality, reminiscent of certain Lord Vader. Very droll indeed). Fuck you both, I'm taking my bat and my ball and my arrabiata con tutto and I'm going the fuck home!

Oh... wait...