This Food Thing: Backstory [Part One]

This Food Thing Podcast was born out of three conversations. I can’t remember all the details but the first, with my husband, took place in our local sometime late 2020. 

Earlier that day a mutual friend had suggested during a FaceTime chat - my husband was ironing, I wasn’t – we record ourselves like a double act (what was he thinking?) we are neither funny or entertaining enough but later that night we lobbed ideas over the bar planned dates, a venue and ordered another round. 

The following morning we said, “what were we thinking!?” and carried on with our lives. 

For the record I never, ever iron.

The second conversation - a phone call with an old friend (he must be at least 150) unraveled after we’d put the world to rights, well, you do when you’re ancient - it’s either that or what’s for dinner – when he mentioned he’d found his Mum in a Tupperware box. 

I laughed hard and nearly fell off the bottom stair. What? You mean you didn’t know you’d lost her (in a manner of speaking) I asked. 

I wasn’t laughing in a disrespectful way. His Mum had passed some years ago, really, this much I knew, but his casual ashes in plastic reference tickled me.  

I had a moment of clarity. Here was someone funny and entertaining enough. 

The final conversation, the one that buoyed the others took place outside The French House in daytime Soho, with another friend (yes, I have two) a couple of days later. 

We were talking podcasts; him a self-confessed podcast hound, me, not much, other than the odd one in the car. As time passed I sensed an idea forming in that liminal mind space where tumbleweed, normally, blows. 

“Do you think arguing addiction as a waste of time would work on a podcast?” I said out loud.

My friend raised an eyebrow but not in a good way. 

What was I talking about? I had a job. Why was I suddenly entertaining thoughts about hosting a podcast? And anyway what could I talk about? I know a little about a lot, I’m an expert in all manner of inconsequential things like pretend ballet or waving at someone I know on the street but nothing major... 

Still, I scrolled, silently, through a mental list.

To be continued in part two…