The Times Magazine 59the whole sordid process. He pretends he
doesn’t understand the Deliveroo app and
has a moment of selective hearing when
the doorbell goes. I get out the cutlery and
plates and explain to him what everything
is. Then, 9,000 calories later, I tidy up the
mess because it makes him sad and angry
to look at it.
But I need takeaway in my life. When
we can’t dial up a babysitter and do a runner
to a restaurant, takeaway is my escape hatch;
it’s the red emergency cord; it’s the smash-
this-in-an-emergency alarm. I will defend
it to the death for its emancipatory symbolism;
it’s shopping and cooking and planning
and thinking that I haven’t had to do. I love
takeaway the way that housewives have loved
the refrigerator, the twin tub, the microwave
or Ocado. To misquote Captain Jack Sparrow:
takeaway isn’t just dinner. What takeaway is,
is freedom. ncreeping cooking ennui I had pre-lockdown
was turned into a full-on psychological
aversion by the barbaric catering requirements
of those months. Simply cooking food is easy
- the fundamental ease of cooking is why
chefs have to go out and get all those tattoos,
to make themselves look exploited and
desperate – but domestic cooking, on the
other hand, is a Sisyphean task.
Domestic cooking never ends. There is no
respite. It’s the back-breaking hinterland of
mental labour that kills you. It’s not just the
chopping and the mixing and the boiling
and the baking; it’s the thinking about what
to cook that you haven’t cooked 300 times
already in the past week, that most of the
family will agree to eat, then remembering all
the ingredients while you’re at the shop, and
switching off Judge Rinder in time to have it
on the table by the time people are hungry.
Sure, Giles cooks, but he usually asks
me what I would like him to make. I give
him a sour look that I hope says “Don’t you
understand that deciding what to cook is
the whole problem?”, and I say out loud,
“I don’t care.”
Because I really don’t care. Give me cheese
and crackers. Give me a boiled egg. Just don’t
make me think about it. Last night, Giles was
out working and I had two Old Fashioneds
and some Hula Hoops for dinner. That’s how
little I care about food.
In last lockdown, I was, I think, heroically
restrained about hitting the takeaway button.
Every Friday we all had burgers from Five
Guys, and it was the one bright point in
a week that was otherwise a Hieronymus
Bosch hell painting. Other than that, it was
probably once a month, and even then the
business of doing it fell to me because Giles
is weird and ambivalent about takeaway and
slightly sniffily wants to distance himself from