{"id":1164,"date":"2009-04-28T15:14:58","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T14:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2009-04-28T15:19:17","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T14:19:17","slug":"the-marmite-ambassador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/the-marmite-ambassador\/","title":{"rendered":"The Marmite Ambassador"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday &#8211; to High Tea in Highgate to be interviewed by an Italian fashion mag lady (for being a Modern Dandy), over the shop&#8217;s home made cakes and pots of tea. And eventually, scones. Turns out Ms Nunzia has never encountered the concept of Afternoon Tea or cream teas before. So I do my ambassadorial bit and order some, which she enjoys. I also explain to her what Marmite is, which she saw in her hotel and which absolutely fascinates her: the consistency, the taste. Given London is rapt to Italian food and drink everywhere you go &#8211; types of coffee, types of sandwich, types of cheese to put in the sandwich &#8211; it&#8217;s nice there&#8217;s a few less glamourous, flat-named items on the table that hold an unlikely sense of the exotic and mysterious to visitors from other lands.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re meant to either love or hate Marmite, but I actually don&#8217;t feel strongly about the stuff either way.\u00c2\u00a0 Don&#8217;t really mind it, I suppose. S&#8217;all right. There&#8217;s my slogan.<\/p>\n<p>==<\/p>\n<p>Monday night at the night shift goes on forever, as we have to deal with all the stories about swine flu. More work, while there&#8217;s new people to train and others off sick. I&#8217;m there till 7.15 in the morning, trying hard not to fall asleep at the desk.<\/p>\n<p>A slovenly-dressed man standing near me on the tube home is sneezing in a loud and ostentatious way. I keep my distance. Not just paranoia after reading 150 articles about swine flu, I tell myself. He IS shoving his hand down the front of his tracksuit bottoms repeatedly, as well as keeping up the thunderously liquid sniffing, and having a fiddle down there. Uncaring &#8211; or perhaps oblivious\u00c2\u00a0 &#8211; of others in the carriage, here at half past seven a.m. on the Northern Line. You swine, I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday &#8211; to High Tea in Highgate to be interviewed by an Italian fashion mag lady (for being a Modern Dandy), over the shop&#8217;s home made cakes and pots of tea. And eventually, scones. Turns out Ms Nunzia has never encountered the concept of Afternoon Tea or cream teas before. So I do my ambassadorial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,165],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-high-tea","tag-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1166,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}