Saturday morning's individual task was rather like a bizarre performance art installation - the balking toxes, as V put in with one of her little roonerspisms. We switched on to find all the housemates chattering away from inside cardboard boxes with their photo pasted on the outside and embarked on an endurance test that was to last almost 27 hours.
The prize was a luxury three course meal for three successive nights. Self-manufactured toff Derek Laud Haw Haw cynically tempted Craig out of his box by reminding him that he'd cited "toast and jam" as his favourite food on the forms they had to complete before entering the house!
"I've never had a problem with my own company...I bet it's a damn sight more comfortable than where they found Saddam Hussein" Derek preached from inside his new gaff.
When it was all over both he and Roberto both claimed to prefer it inside the box than outside where interactions with other people's company and the constant scrutiny of the cameras are unavoidable. I preferred Del Boy inside his box too. V says he reminds her of my mother!
Meanwhile she hates Maxwell with a passion as he typifies the complacency, selfishness and vulgarity of the English everyman: the "I'm just here to enjoy myself" approach to life. It particularly irks her in the context of her own experience of middle-order life in Guatemala. A good proportion of the middle-class Westerners that flock to Guatemala appear to be seeking their own lost authenticity in the routines of its rural poor. (The urban equivalents are generally more scary.) But in a country where extremes of wealth and poverty are stable and lasting, the real front line is occupied by the chronically unstable middle-classes.
PE Teacher and former paratrooper Roberto Conte has been at the centre of all the mealtime bickering. He certainly seems to share V's perspective that food is the basis of all civisilised manners. (Amongst the many human divides the BB format exposes is that between people for whom 'food' consists primarily of versatile staples and those who like to scribble "biscuits" at the top of their shopping lists.) She can't comprehend why the other housemates fail to realise that in this context the Italian is like an alien being that they could learn from.
Other than Roberto, V has warmed to Anthony aka Chico Importante who she regards as a true innocent that rarely seems to be harbouring cynical thoughts. He has many good qualities, but the sad thing is that he almost certainly won't build on them, she says.
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