Romance.

I think food and romance are totally linked.

From oysters, to strawberries and cream, to the spaghetti scene in Lady & the Tramp, the lusty feast in Tom Jones.

I think we, we express love through food.

The best dinner I ever had was made with such tenderness and love for me and that, that is really, it’s such a simple expression of love but such a powerful one.

The first stage of romance is that dizzy head spinning teenage bit. You tend to eat not very much at all. It tends to be the sort of food that you can pick a bit at, leave and come back to. I suppose its all to do with that sort of decadent feeling of being in love, where it feels that the world will wait for you.

I think that old book shops ooze with romance. I think the history of books, of where they came from and who had them and loved them, is part of their magic.

You know, finding the first edition of a old postcard, in the back of that book that someone’s forgotten about. The romance can be found in the dedications.

“To Jane: Blue beetles, strawberries, poplars, orioles and a ford.” - the most obliquely romantic thing ever.

“He loved 3 things alone:
White peacocks, even song, old maps of america.
He hated children crying, and raspberry jam with his tea, and womanly hysteria.
And he had married me.”

I think train stations are historically romantic.
You have Brief Encounter, you have the old sort of 30’s & 40’s images of the Orient Express. It sums up everything.

And that whole notion of seeing a stranger through a train window or across the platform. Catching their eye, and they’re gone.