How My Wife Starved at a Gala Dinner

I’ve said before in this blog that the wilderness of the arctic north is my idea of a perfect place, where there is more risk of being eaten by a polar bear than there is of bumping in to someone who wants to chat. Most days, I’d happily take the former. But on this particular trip north, people abounded as Vanessa had accompanied me to a Winter Market in Lapland, which the indigenous people of the region have been holding for hundreds of years. Although not the same people, obviously.
The town has two hotels. We chose the one with a lake view, although, since the lake was buried beneath eight foot of snow, I am not convinced that should have been the deciding factor. Asking about dinner arrangements, we were informed that on the days of the market, there would be several Gala Dinners, with traditional food and entertainment. Sounded bearable, especially since the only other place you could get food – bar shooting something – was a dodgy Chinese takeaway called ‘Her Chop!’, situated in the town’s only bar.
There was also another complication. Some years ago, reasoning that it might be better for our health, Vanessa and I had become vegetarian. I lasted some five years before succumbing to eating meat again. My failure to last the distance was for two reasons. One, I was sick and tired of people, on finding out that I didn’t eat meat, saying ‘Oh but you eat chicken don’t you?’ and then having to explain that since chicken was neither a fruit or a vegetable, it therefore came under the heading of ‘animal’ and, for a vegetarian, that caused a problem with the entire not-eating-meat concept. Two, I became so emaciated that even my vegan friends were slipping piles of lard into my salads. The problem was that, with my Asperger mind, cutting out meat meant precisely that. I just ate meals with the meat removed. So I had no protein for five years and, by the end of it, I was clinically dead. Vanessa, on the other hand, stuck with it and, to this day, eats nothing that had either a face or a name. Except fish. But who ever named a fish? Except for Nemo and Vanessa isn’t about to eat him.
Anyway, the day before the first Gala Dinner, Vanessa suggested informing the hotel she was vegetarian and asking whether they would make sure there was something she could eat. ‘Nonsense’, I replied, ‘this is a Gala Dinner with Gala food. There’ll be loads of things you can eat. You’ll be fine’.
On the night of the Dinner, the dining room of the hotel was packed. Really packed. Vanessa again suggested speaking to the waiter about her being a vegetarian, but by this time, I was too stressed by the crowd. I quickly scurried to our allotted table only to receive another barrage of prattle from Vanessa about the food. ‘Look’, I said, pretending to care deeply about my wife’s nutrition when all I could think about was the heaving mass of people around me, ‘if it comes to it, just eat the vegetables. There’s bound to be bloody vegetables’. There were and they were served first.
From a pointlessly enormous platter, we each got a miniscule roll of mashed potato in breadcrumbs. It was the size of my little finger. I looked at the bite sized portion of vegetable and then at Vanessa. She scowled. ‘Don’t worry’ I said, ‘there’ll be more’.
There was. After a pre-recorded drum roll – they really knew how to crank up the atmosphere in that place – two men appeared, each carrying the end of a pole. Pierced upon the pole was an entire roasted reindeer. This was quickly followed by others. The crowd clapped enthusiastically. Vanessa blanched. And that was the meal. Piles and piles of reindeer meat and one tiny piece of mashed potato in breadcrumbs, which turned out to be undercooked.
I troughed away like it was the last meal I was ever going to eat, whereas Vanessa, in between glaring at me, pushed the piece of raw potato around her plate with barely concealed disgust. Realising I had made an error of judgement in not insisting that they provide at least one item of food for Vanessa that she could eat, I made amends by placing the uneaten half of my raw potato onto her plate.
Despite this magnanimous and entirely self-denying gesture, we did not go to any more Gala Dinners. In fact, the next night saw us at roll up at Her Chop! and order their meal for two. Of course, we had sensibly checked beforehand that they actually provided food Vanessa could eat, so at least we knew she wasn’t going to starve; but, as I commented to her as we ate our boiled rice, I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t done that before the Gala Dinner. It would have saved us both a lot of angst.