15 Comments
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Felicity Spector's avatar

Honestly when I wrote my book I was fortunate enough to be able to keep my energy going with the nicest food I could find. Not necessarily expensive but things I wanted. I spent around 5 months on unpaid leave in Ukraine and the rest I wrote around shifts at work. Again fortunately I was hanging out with chefs and bakers all the time - those guys are feeders! Even the soldiers. It’s the Ukrainian way.

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Jean's avatar

Thanks to Olivia for this delightful piece! I think we all have food we like when no one is watching, when we are just ourselves and our thoughts. This essay brought to mind my long-lost favourite corner shop sandwich of the 00s in London: grated cheese mixed with white onion and mayonnaise on claggy white bread. They usually cost 79p and I used to eat them in secret when I got hungry coming home late, from work or a pub, preoccupied. I thought they were so delicious but was embarrassed to tell anyone about them. If I was at a corner shop with a companion I’d ignore my cheese and onion sandwich, pretend we didn’t know each other. I guess there were other people eating them too, they couldn’t have ALL been just for me. But they felt that way!

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R Meager's avatar

This was fabulous. It reminds me of David Lynch interviews where he said he ate the same thing almost every day that he ate at home (when he went out to restaurants he ate whatever / wide variety). Obviously a different take, approach and set-up, but a related theme. As for me, I like to eat exciting food when I do very intense work because I feel that it matches my freak, if you will.

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Pamela Shields's avatar

A bit of a non sequiteur, sorry...but George Orwell was the same about clothes...

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Hazel Southwell's avatar

This feels like a rare mis-step from Vittles. As someone who's been a professional writer, even in time-pressured and specific environments (sports coverage) it is incredibly easy to feed yourself when no one will tell you off for eating. Where it is impossible to feed yourself is shift work, on your feet, up a building, doing heavy stuff - nowhere near as well-paid as in a writing job where you can afford sandwiches from the garage. If you have time to fly to frickin' Rome to write something you certainly have time to make lunch. Absolutely incomprehensible privilege.

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Vittles's avatar

Hi Hazel,

Thanks for your comment - we think it's completely fair to dislike an article and we agree with the general thrust of your comment (that, of course, eating while writing is completely different to eating during shift work). But also, we don't think that Olivia's essay was in any way about struggle, and there isn't anything in the text that compares it to shift work. It is a light-hearted piece about wanting to eat outside of your usual routines during a time of work - it should be judged on that and not on what it isn't.

Best wishes,

Jonathan

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Claire Ivins's avatar

Sorry, what? Why shouldn’t Vittles publish a piece about the peculiar demands of one writer’s routine? Is it not a broad enough church to cover a wide range of perspectives? I would be happy to read other pieces about the challenges of eating well in the situations you mention, but this piece didn’t need to do that job - it had its own peculiar and highly personal perspective which was just fine.

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Hazel Southwell's avatar

I think the particularly grating part is someone saying they are eating "badly" while describing eating really quite well in an incredibly privileged context. Honestly reads like the kind of piece I thought Vittles was set up to send up not commission - if you enjoyed it, however, that's absolutely fine.

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Pamela Shields's avatar

Did you not absolutely fall in love with her and her writing?

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Pamela Shields's avatar

Nothing to do with time

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Patrick Welch's avatar

Loved this! Just spent an hour trying to find it to send to a friend lol

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Jeremy Farr's avatar

This is lovely. It strikes a chord with me as I had to find ways to fuel my writing during my PhD. A place that sold Japanese curry and a mental map of different offerings from the university vending machines got me over the line. Such a prolonged project means I'm now trying to shift the weight I gained, pinned to a chair, 12 hours a day, feeding a very stressed, tired brain.

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Rachel Adams's avatar

Loved this. I think regularly about Phoebe Waller Bridges routine while writing - she writes from bed and eats whatever is in the kitchen . Same!! 🤓

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Pamela Shields's avatar

Such good writing I now want to read Ms Laing's books. Fantastic title for the piece. Felicitations!!

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Hazel Southwell's avatar

(also what is being described is eating WELL, not badly)

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