First timers

My blogmate John was looking back at all the memorable "first times" in his life, so I thought I would shamelessly plagiarise him with my own list of unfor-gettable "firsties":

• Going vegetarian. Two gay vegetarian friends persuaded me to go veggie in 1975. I've often considered going vegan but I'm just too fond of cheese.
• Passing my driving test. I was absurdly nervous as I took my final driving lesson, but come the test I was mysteriously super-cool and passed easily.
• Meeting Jenny. We were both working in a central London bookshop at the time, and we clicked instantly. Thirty four years later we still love each other to bits.
• Flight in a light aircraft. A school friend's mum owned a light aircraft and took me up for a flight. It was both scary and exciting.
• Seeing a corpse. At a mortuary when I was a local newspaper reporter. It was a young woman who had killed herself. A very strange sight.
• Having sex. Aged 22 with a beautiful woman who loved Janis Joplin, cannabis, long floaty dresses and everything about the sixties counter-culture.
• The debut Beatles record. "Love Me Do". The start of an incredible musical phenomenon. I was always desperate for their next release.
• The Isle of Wight Music Festival in 1969. Waiting impatiently for Bob Dylan and queuing endlessly for everything amid the chaos of tents and rubbish.
• My first day at work. In 1965 smoking in offices was normal and I virtually suffocated from the thick fug of tobacco smoke. Alarmingly, I soon got used to it.
• My first pay packet. In those days you got an envelope stuffed with cash. I couldn't quite believe I was being paid for rustling up news stories.
• Arriving in Australia. Drinking in every detail of the scenery as the taxi took us from the airport over the Tasman Bridge to our apartment in Hobart, Tasmania.
• First visit to Venice with Jenny*. More scenery-drinking as a water taxi took us along the canals and past the amazing old palazzos and churches to our hotel.
• Arriving in Belfast. My first holiday in Northern Ireland (Jenny was there as a child), and I loved the people and the scenery. We moved there in 2000.

* I went there as a child with my parents and sister

Bug alert

American cheese lovers are incensed that a rather tasty French cheese, mimolette, has been banned by the US government on the grounds that the cheese mites that give it such a tangy flavour could cause allergic reactions.

The French are also pretty cheesed off that 1.5 tonnes of the distinctive cheese, first made when Louis XIV wanted a domestic version of the Dutch cheese Edam, are rotting away in a warehouse and can’t be eaten.

The manufacturers claim that nobody has ever become ill from eating mimolette, that the cheese mites are essential for the taste, and just can’t understand the fuss. They say the cheese has been imported into the States for around 20 years with no previous problems.

After all, many foods that could cause allergic reactions – like peanuts and wheat - are on sale without any objection. Allergy-prone individuals are expected simply to avoid the offending items.

I’ve never tried any mimolette myself so I’ve no idea whether the special taste is worth fighting for or not. In fact until today I’d never heard of mimolette or for that matter milbenkäse, another cheese that uses cheese mites.

Cheese lovers are protesting vigorously, especially on a “Save The Mimolette” Facebook page, whose slogan is “No to the Mimolette ban in the US! Let us eat stinky cheese!” The right to nibble freely is being stoutly upheld.

I imagine the only real hazard of eating mimolette, like cheese generally, would be a few extra pounds on the scales. But US food inspectors seem to have got it in for the poor defenceless cheese mites. What miserable killjoys!

Pic: not mimolette but something reassuringly mite-free....

Small mouse

Another triumph for Tanzi Twitch, the renowned conceptual artist, who has again won the Scunthorpe Award for International Art with her startling new work "The Small Mouse Is Slightly Confused But Nevertheless Finds The Cheese Number 23."

Art connoisseur Sophie Slingback asked her about the controversial painting, which has been heavily attacked by critics and the general public alike.

SS: Critics have pointed out that the title seems to bear no relation to the painting, which depicts a dusty room empty of everything except a tin of baked beans. There is no visible mouse or cheese or mousetrap. Is this discrepancy saying something about confusion?

TT: The critics all hate me. They hate that I'm rich and famous and beautiful while they're ugly nonentities living in seedy basement flats. That's why they're attacking my painting. It's all just spite and malice.

SS: They have a point though, don't they? I mean, there's no mouse to be seen anywhere in the painting. Neither a confused mouse or a clear-headed mouse. Neither a small mouse or a large mouse. The mouse has gone missing, whereabouts unknown.

TT: The critics are all parasites leeching off the artistic estate. They wouldn't know a masterpiece if it bit them on the arse. They wouldn't know genius if they had it for lunch. Their opinions are worthless, only fit for toilet paper.

SS: The critics also suggest that the anonymity of the mouse, the lack of an identifiable name, is insulting and demousifying and recalls Nazism at its worst.

TT: The mouse prefers to remain anonymous. She finds names confusing. She might forget if her name was Mirabelle or Goldilocks. Or Tinkerbelle or Anastasia. She would be running around all day in a panic, terrified she might be called Sharon.

SS: There are persistent rumours that the mouse was brutally disposed of when the painting was complete. It was chopped into pieces and dumped at dead of night in remote woodland. There are witnesses.

TT: Another grotesque lie. The mouse is alive and well in a mouse retirement home in Budleigh Salterton. She spends her days knitting and playing sudoku. She is blissfully happy and proud of her unique contribution to the global artistic heritage.

SS: Brilliant! Sheer genius! A talent to be reckoned with.

TT: Christ, I could do with a fag.

Picture of Tanzi Twitch courtesy of the Plunkett Gallery, Cork Street, London 

Say cheese

You'd think that someone who ate virtually nothing but cheese would be really unhealthy. How could you possibly get all the nutrients you need? And wouldn't you be begging for a heart attack?

But it seems that Vicki Zukiewicz is quite healthy on just such a diet. The only things she can stomach apart from cheese are the odd potato, hunk of bread or slice of pizza (with cheese topping). Yet she's alive and well.

She says the texture or taste or smell of anything else turns her right off. No matter what delicious meal her husband is eating, she won't touch it. Try as she might, she can't overcome her engrained aversion.

It creates huge problems when she's socialising. In fact she avoids any social occasions involving food and usually eats at home, where at least her phobia is understood and allowed for.

Naturally everyone tries to psychoanalyse her, asking her what childhood experience brought this on, and diagnosing all sorts of fancy conditions. But she pooh-poohs them and says that's just the way she is and there's no rhyme or reason for it.

I do wonder how healthy she really is, though. Does she have regular medical checks to confirm her physical fitness? Is she a normally energetic, alert 32 year old? Or is she storing up trouble for the future?

I've heard of people with similarly limited diets before - and they were surprisingly healthy too. There was a boy who ate only marmite sandwiches and apparently came to no harm.

It seems awfully sad though that she finds so many tasty foods utterly repugnant. I can't imagine going without the fantastic flavours and aromas of all my favourite dishes. I would feel bereft, diminished, shorn of an essential everyday pleasure.

And much as I like cheese, eating it non-stop would smother its appeal pretty quickly.

Photo: Vicki Zukiewicz

PS: Cheese has more nutrients than you might think, including calcium, phosphorus, protein, amino acids, vitamin A, the B vitamins, iodine, magnesium, zinc, sodium, aluminium, nickel and selenium.