Soggy Sausage Saturday
When I think romantically about feasts, I imagine lost kings, tribesmen and the people of the tundra. I see their celebratory fires and wild dancing and a beast above the flames. I picture them as primordial affairs; there’s tearing and fat and music and drinking. There’s communal, convivial, unpretentious food that draws people together, that connects families and friends from near and far. Bonds are made at feasts, deals are struck, grievances righted, thirsts quenched, hungers staved, and long into the night, there is smoke and revelry. But, in reality, we can call any sort of coming together a feast, as long as there’s plenty of good food on the table and people to share it with. A feast can take place indoors, but sharing food together outside is, I think, one of the happiest ways to eat. Even if the weather’s wild, it still feels special.
We had a party on the beach a few years ago. Lots of us hadn’t seen each other for ages, so like all great reunions, it felt important to mark it with wonderful things to eat – after all, food and friendship bring us together. There were dozens of kids hopping around on the rocks, wielding driftwood swords or making smooth, round cakes out of fistfuls of soft black clay they’d dug out of the slip. Dogs were being tumbled about on the shingle by the murky waves and fires for cooking were beginning to burn. The weather was lazy and unpredictable.
We’d all brought a few nice things along that day. Some of us had made salads, others bread; there were peppery pork sausages, cuts of dark, fatty lamb and a carrier bag of blue sparkly mackerel two of the boys had caught on the pier the previous afternoon. We all cooked together, and eventually hot, smoky, delicious things began to appear from the fire. Crispy, oily fish, salty charred chops and split, blistered bangers were set down on big, flat stones next to dressed potato salads and thickly sliced tomatoes in vinegar. Children came scrabbling up the beach with clay in their hair, clutching bones and shells, which we exchanged for sausages wrapped in buttered bread and tin plates of salad.
I can’t remember whether it was September or October, but I’ll never forget looking out across the water while we ate, and seeing the clouds on the skyline. They seemed to pull together into a wall of black matter that began to barrel its way south across the surface of the ocean. The squall sucked the light out of the sky and absorbed sound from the air. As we all turned to stare, it felt like time had come to an end. The silence lasted for a couple of seconds, then imploded like a fading white star, and then, it just exploded, dramatically, into a fierce, seething maelstrom. The sea was drawn up under the darkness and raged like wraiths on black horses. The land bowed under the weight of the clouds, then it began to rain. It came in hard, like stair rods before the wind, as if the torrents themselves were fleeing the fury of the screaming gale. It was raining so much it became difficult to see each other, and there was no shelter, so we all just stood where we were, holding our plates of food. We looked up into the downpour and began to laugh. Sausage sandwiches disintegrated in our hands and children began to dance and call out to the sky, like a soaked pack of dogs. The fire hissed in defiance then cried itself out. Bowls and cups were overflowing with rain, and then, as quickly as it arrived, the storm was gone.
I’ve been at sea in squalls where our boat has been laid down to her gunwales, but I’d never seen weather like that before, and I’m not sure I will again. It was an intense, wonderful, sobering experience that we got to share together. Some of the kids gave that day a name – Soggy Sausage Saturday – and they still talk about it now. The feast and the storm are burned into their minds; they are memories that won’t be washed away.
