Day Thirty Three : Bon Vivant - Desert Island Discs

Bon Vivant

Definition

: a sociable person who has cultivated and refined tastes especially with respect to food and
drink

Fans of fine French wine and cuisine won't be surprised to hear that the French language
gave us a number of words for those who enjoy good living and good eating. Gourmet,
gourmand, and gastronome come from French, as does bon vivant. In the late 17th century,
English-speakers borrowed this French phrase, which literally means "good liver," as in
"one who lives (in a specified way)"—in this case, "one who lives well."

My companion squinted at the tin and he wrestled with the pull tab. “Caviar? Really?”

“What’s wrong with caviar?” I asked. 

“Well, for a start, it’s raw fish eggs and therefore disgusting and also, we’re trapped on an island.
Literally the only meat we have is either the fish we can catch or if one of those damn birds just
dies of old age and its corpse falls somewhere we can get it.”

“I am sure my slingshot aim will improve soonish?” I offered. 

They just looked at me, the purplish bruise on their forehead from where my enthusiastically thrown
rock had missed the bird entirely, ricocheted off the tree behind and whacked them in the head, now
ever so slowly fading to green.

“Well, maybe not so very soonish.” I muttered ungraciously. 

“So,as i was saying.” he continued on. “No meat. Just fish. And yet…”

“You know, we could still try eating the lizards.” I interjected. 

“We’re not eating the lizards.”

“But I’m sure we’re fast enough to catch them.”

“I don’t care.” He said pleasantly. “How could you look at their darling little green faces and ever even
think of eating them. You’d have to be a complete monster.”

“Fish have faces, you eat fish without complaining.”

“Because fish are evil, everyone knows that. They’re still holding a grudge about the whole legs thing.
One of these days they’re just going to rise up from the ocean, reclaim the land and slaughter the lot
of us. Best to eat as many as we can in the meantime to decrease their armies.” 

“....uh-huh.” A sudden thought occurred to me. “But you won’t eat caviar.”

“Eating babies? Even if fish are evil, seems a bit below the pale to me. Plus it’s disgusting.”

I decided to give up on this line of conversation. I studied the can of caviar. Not a top brand, but not a
cheap one either. Certainly not something you could buy in bulk at Costco. 

It was also not something you would usually think to send to two people currently stranded on a
deserted island - one that had been cut off from the surrounding ocean by a blazing inferno caused by
the tankers oil reserves leaking, being set on fire by the engine exploding and then being swept along
by the island’s currents until a giant wall of fire had surrounded the entire tiny island. 

How we had survived the explosion, i don’t know. I think i was finally coming around to my mother’s
firm belief that our family was watching over us from the heavens.

Especially, as luck would have it, that the explosion had occurred seconds after  i had radioed my
colleagues at the newspaper with a daring expose on the criminal activities of said tanker (having
joined the crew of the tanker purely as an undercover agent for the newspaper) along with the exact
coordinates of our current location so they could swoop in and catch them in the act. 

Which meant that when the news helicopter swept overhead, filming the wreckage of the tanker and
the ensuing fire wall, they actually spotted us and so knew that a, we were alive and b, where we were.
The only thing they couldn’t do, sadly, was rescue us. 

The flame wall was impenetrable and along a helicopter could fly overhead, there was nowhere for
them to land, the little island being its own sort of ecosystem with a densely populated forest thing that
left on the barest meter of sand at any edge. 

They had managed to throw down a radio, so at least we could communicate and keep abreast of the
situation. The current situation being; you’re going to have to wait until the fire goes out before
someone can come and get you.  

I stared glumly out to see. The fire was still burning as ferociously as it had when it was first unleashed.
If I was someone who thought to see signs in everything, I'd almost think the fire was giving us the
finger. 

Ha. Almost. It definitely was. 

I shook my head and attempted to regain my sanity. 

At least we didn’t have to worry about food or water. Once the owners of my newspaper caught wind
of our plight, they thought it a wonderful story for the front page (a real people pleaser) and soon other
publications also picked it up. My companion and I became a complete cause celebre - some wanting
to rescue us straight away, some saying we should just be left on the island to rot after taking part in
such a heinous pollution of the environment (although these died off a little once it was explained that
the reason I'd been on the ship in the first place was to expose their pollution crimes. Then some
people blamed me for blowing up the ship. Of course, because clearly the plan was to strand myself
on an uninhabited island surrounded by a wall of flame, polluting the ocean with the very oil i’d strived
to save it from. Totally plausible.) The end result of this being that the famous, rich and dodgy now saw
us a chance to improve their image and regularly dropped care packages from the sky for us. Quite
regularly we saw little parachute parcels being dropped from the sky like modern day manna from
heaven (or so the senders probably thought).

It became rapidly clear that none of the senders had ever been stranded on an uninhabited island - nor
did they have even the most basic grasp of the necessities needed in ‘the wild outdoors’. 

In no particular order, here was an example of the kind of things we had been sent:

An inflatable flamingo, peaches, a margarita shaker (with nothing to make the margaritas with),
coconuts, a portable TV that needed to be plugged into an electrical socket (apparently the word
‘portable’ fooled them), a kindle that was great until the battery ran out, bottles of rum, inflatable lilos
(so we could peacefully drift off into the wall of flame i assumed), microwavable ready meals, artisan
cheese, ice cream (great until it melted) and many, many other things that required other ingredients,
a working microwave, a fridge or at the very least electricity to be able to be used. 

Thank god the army regularly dropped actual food items off for us. They might be disgusting and
repetitively boring but at least we wouldn’t starve to death.

To be fair, had our lives not been on the line, I would have argued that it was the thought that counts.
And i was getting quite used to drinking the fizzy Perrier water. 

Maybe caviar wouldn’t be as bad as my companion made out. I tried some. Well, at least we still had
some leftover spam. 

“Told you it was foul.” my companion said smugly. He then shrugged and leaned back on the
comfortable, slightly singed deck chairs that had come with last week’s delivery (i think they were
heavier than they had planned for and had dipped dangerously low to the burning fire)  “But look on the
bright side! Here we are, on a tropical island, drinks in hand (we’d eventually caved in and started on
the rum, breaking the coconuts up so we could use them as impromptu cocktail glasses), the sun is
shining, the wind is warm!”

“Because it’s being blown through the raging inferno first.” I said snippily.

He carried on, ignoring me, “People would pay millions for this! And the fancy caviar, although God
knows why, the fools. We’re basically living the dream.”

“Some of us have lives to go back to you know.”

“Don’t we all. But there’s nothing you can do, there’s nothing your boss, or your family or your country
can do, everyone knows that no one has control of the situation and so there’s nothing you can be
blamed for, in fact i’m pretty sure you’re actually earning  your company more money just be sitting
here than you’d ever be just sitting at your desk. The flames will go out at some point and real life will
surely come crashing back in. But at the moment, we have sun, booze, moderately good food and no
responsibilities, so you might as well just enjoy it.”

He held out a rum filled coconut.

I took it. “Fine.” I said and leaned back in my deck chair, the sun warm against my skin. I couldn’t argue
that the thought of  being stuck at my tiny desk, eating a supermarket sandwich while the rain lashed
down outside filled me with a massive wave of homesickness. Quite the opposite in fact.

We watched the flames crackle in the distance.

“What do you think they’ll bring today?” I asked, not really fussed.

“Anything but caviar I hope.” he proclaimed

They sent crab.