Against The Grain

‘“MORE wild giraffe terrine with gold-leaf truffles, your Excellency? Very good, sir. But do leave room for the Ambassador’s chocolates. It’s Ferrero Rocher today!”

‘They’re a gift from the UN, your Excellency’

The life of a diplomat at one of the ambassador’s parties is extremely agreeable.

It’s very much like a dinner party in an anonymous Surrey town as guests put the world to rights over some decent grub and a couple of good bottles of red - only the ambassador’s napkins are made of real silk and Marks & Sparks didn’t do the catering.

But, as the Telegraph reports, guests of Tony Hall, the US ambassador to the United Nations’ food agencies in Rome, were offered a change from the usual fine dining.

Inviting his guests to draw raffle tickets from a hat, Hall then told them that each ticket placed them into a different category - one third would eat the usual rhino horn a la mode, a further third would dine on rice and beans, while the remainder were shown outside into the garden and given a few handfuls of cold rice.

Whether this rice was cooked or uncooked is left unsaid, but the point was made. The world’s many poor subsist on fewer calories than is needed for survival and Hall is on the verge of starting a war.

But thankfully, all was soon put right. The impoverished guests were soon invited into the grand house and treated to the customary feast.

And at once everything was right with the world…’

Posted: 26th, November 2004 | In: Uncategorized Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink