Éamonn Ó Catháin

*Interview with Éamonn Ó Catháin*

Around the beginning of this year when it became apparent just what the extent of the current financial crisis was. I noticed the changing attitudes in both selling –and buying. Not only that, I was hungry, didn’t have much money and employment was on the wane.

The fact that it was an opportunity for consumers to re-acquire long-lost cooking skills, embrace new ideas, themselves based on very old ideas, rethink their buying habits and especially seize the offers available in these impecunious times.

A lot of it is in my head already, as a long-suffering consumer. However, I would also read up on what’s happening in other countries via books, magazines and the internet and also be forced to take the odd ‘field trip’ abroad, just to see what’s happening in restaurants. You understand.

The writing. Sitting down to do it. The cold. The rain. With a book on cooking, the challenge is to find words other than ‘delicious’ and ‘sumptuous’ not to mention the very wonderful ‘wonderful’. This time, I think I managed to leave out ‘mind you’ at the start of most sentences. Actually, the most challenging aspect of a book like this, essentially a collection of recipes is the elaboration of same, then writing them up. That’s really what takes the time.

Reading back what I’d written in early drafts and realising that that neat little paragraph written at four a.m. was nonsense. It happened a few times.

Daytime. Warmth. Heat. Another person to look after to you and bring you regular meals. Broadband that you can rely on. Not spilling water on the keyboard of your MacBook. Pages instead of Microsoft Word.

Petrified! Writing is a bit like broadcasting, where your faults, shortcomings and tics are amplified to the nth degree. Fortunately, TV and radio are fleeting unlike writing where it can hang around for ever. A cave in Pakistan beckons.

I’ve finished another one, on technology. Unfortunately, technology changes every other day, so it’s a bit of an organic oeuvre. Should only be made available on download with service packs, every week.

I’d say truth and as my books have all been factual until now, accuracy.

Well, Colm Toibin who was once my editor on In Dublin magazine rang me up about some copy I’d left in and said it was wonderful. That felt good and you can hardly get higher praise than that. Of course, I’d taken care to write it as if I were Colm, so that probably helped (laughter).

Oh, I hate questions like this because it reveals your habits at home and can lead to accusations of pretention. Trouble is, I read mainly in French, which is the reason for my hesitation. Fortunately though, the last book I read in English was a book I picked up at a railway station, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Moshin Hamid, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2007. Prior to that it was “La Ritournelle de la Faim” by J.M.G. Le Clezio, which won the Booker Prize. I must be impressed by the Booker prize.

These days, I just pick up what attracts me for any one of a variety of reasons in stations, airports and shops. I devour magazines, internet forums and suchlike. If I see something that I like on an internet reseller, I just press the ‘buy’ button on impulse.

Clear a nice, quiet space for yourself and make sure it’s warm.

Light reading. Books on music or musicians that I like and books on languages. That’s what I like. Holidays? I remember those.