05.09.2008

I remember the first time I ate an artichocke, and how it seemed, in front of my first boyfriend's parents, like running some sort of class gauntlet: another thing to add to my inadequacies, along with mnot speaking french or playing tennis, ever having been inside an Italian church, or more than a handful of times inside a theatre. It was also a revelation, a first falling in vegetable love, and every time I remember it I want to go to a market straight away and buy an artichocke big as a fist and go home and eat it in private, oil and vinegar smeared all over my face and a growing pile of leaves around me like a halo.