Art and food and language!

We have been watching “Rome Unpacked”: Andrew Graham-Dixon (art expert) and Giorgio Locatelli (chef), finally visiting the Italian capital after a fair few other bits of Italy they have “unpacked”. I like the format: Andrew Graham-Dixon reveals art stuff to Giorgio Locatelli who reveals culinary stuff to Andre Graham Dixon.

In Rome, among other things they went below ground under the Basilica San Clemente. At one level they found an ancient, 4th century church, complete with fading frescos. Going a stage deeper they found what was probably a temple to Mithras and a room that might have been a schoolroom dedicated to that religion, with a fairly recently discovered painting on the wall of someone who might have been the schoolmaster. Amazingly he looked remarkably like some of the ordinary folk used as models by Caravaggio, some of whose paintings were also admired. Just another Roman you might come across on any street today!

How fascinating to find something ancient and beautiful under all the buildings of your city!

Both Andrew and Giorgio must have had a lot of fun making the programmes. I have to say, however, that by the time they got around to unpacking Rome, both of them looked a little raddled, not to say debauched. In this latest series we don’t see them drinking much - eating and appreciating food, yes - but in previous series, they did seem to down a fair bit of wine. Of course, like the rest of us, they are not getting any younger.

Giorgio Locatelli has a very good command of usually idiomatic English. He has still not learnt to pronounce the name of his friend though, always referring to him as Endrew. The letter h defeats him. He omits it almost everywhere except on words that begin with vowels! And in one of his cooking demonstrations he talked about cooking something on a slow fire, a fairly literal translation from the Italian, instead of telling us to cook it on a low light. I could listen to him all day!

But then, I am a self-confessed language geek. I find myself collecting words which sound as if they should have a related opposite but are, in fact, stand-alone words. This morning’s word was “incongruous” - nothing is ever “congruous”. You can be “ruthless” but never “ruthful”, although you can do things “ruefully” and you can “rue the day” that you started to think about these crazy words!