I went to a leaving party a couple of weeks back. Leaving parties are usually
round-robin collections of resentment signed by the whole office. Either
somebody has just lost a job, or they’ve got a better one with a competitor,
or they’ve finally been slapped with the incontrovertible fact that, as far
as the economy is concerned, they’re worn out and obsolete.
Leaving parties are where one person finally gets to see the laughable hill of
beans that his earthly toil has realised. It is a straitening truth that all
lives finish in spluttering nemesis, that we will all end with a whimper.
Your sum total is a canapé compared to the banquet that was left unmade.
Expectation always defeats achievement. Grasp scrabbles behind reach. And
it’s the shortfall that rankles like crumbs in the sheets.
Imagine Tony Blair’s leaving do: “Okay, hush a minute. I’m not going to make a
speech, I just want to say a couple of words. It’s a well-earned rest for
Tony, then. Chance to spend more time with the family and Cliff Richard’s
soft furnishings; to take up a hobby — international diplomacy, perhaps, or
peace studies. We just wanted to say what a fantastic eight years it’s been.
Greatest expectations of any Labour leader. Unprecedented three elections.
Huge majority. And what achievements. What achievements.” Embarrassed coughs
and clink of glasses. A bleeper beeps. “Well done, Tone. Good luck with the
golf. Don’t be a stranger.”
Leaving parties give those who are left a glimpse of their own end as potent
fiscal players. We all come to our Brando moment on the waterfront, sniffing
with abject self-pity that we could have been contenders. Everyone, that is,
except Martin Brendell. It was his leaving do. You won’t have heard of him,
and his anonymity is part of his transcendent glory. Martin is one of the
most unassuming, inspiring men I’ve met.
The party was at the Natural History Museum. Museums attract singular people
who sympathetically grow to look like their artefacts, so the Nat Hist
appears to have been organised by Disney & Darwin party planners. Martin
joined the museum 44 years ago, and has worked in the same department ever
since. There were awkward speeches saying kind and clumsy things, gauche
jokes and real fondness. He is the most modest man, and he replied that,
every day for 44 years, he had woken with a mission and the knowledge that
he had been deeply privileged.
Martin ran and organised the coleoptera collection, leaving it the finest in
the world. Coleoptera are beetles. At 16, Martin was confronted by thousands
and thousands of bugs on pins and a strong smell of camphor. He took off his
tweed elytra, cocked his head on one side and went to work. It doesn’t
matter that you don’t like beetles, or couldn’t care less what they’re
called or how they’re arranged. It’s enough to know that someone does.
Taxonomy, the naming and organising of things, is fundamental to everything
we do and everything we are.
Martin’s calling was in direct descent from Adam via Aristotle, and he has
done it with a blushing, bearded brilliance. As a leaving present, his
fellow buggers gave him an album of beetles that had been named for him.
Being museum types, it was a crappy plastic file with photocopies, but as a
memorial to achievement, it meant more than the Garter or a peerage or a
letterhead of doctorates. There are 53 taxa named brendelli. That’s
seven more than are named for Darwin. The scientific rule is that you cannot
name a living thing for yourself. These are all the respect of his peers.
Martin’s beetles remind me of the salutary truth that you must be careful what
you give your name to. Thomas Crapper was a proud man, as was Mr Gatling.
So, too, were Mrs Bloomer, Master Condom and young Connie Lingus. How sad to
be called Bernard Matthews and have everyone go “Bootiful” at you.
Food is the cheap, no-sweat, low-achievement route to immortality: Melba
toast, Caesar salad, tournedos Rossini, Lea & Perrins. Marco Pierre
White once named a dish after me: steak with snails. But it would be tough
to be a chef called Colin Sanders or Ronald McDonald. And it’s an obvious
handicap, worse than botulism, for any dish to be called Spanish. “Pleeth,”
the tortilla and gazpacho scream. “Call uth Balearic or Latino — or Bathque,
at a pinch. But not Spanith.”
Spain is the home of hideous holiday catering. I once found myself in a
restaurant outside Ronda. Not understanding a word on the medieval menu, I
pointed to a dish and said “Moo”, with a question mark. Then baa, then oink,
then cluck. “Aha,” said Manuel, with a glimmer of recognition. Putting down
his tray, he let out a series of strangulated, guttural screams and jerked
his arms in a chilling imitation of an auto-da-fé. I had no idea what it was
until I put it in my mouth and let out a series of strangulated, guttural
screams.
Virtually the only exception to the “never eat Spanish” rule is restaurants
outside Spain — unless they’re in Mexico, in which case they’re twice as
bad. The two best in London are Moro, in Clerkenwell, and Cambio de Tercio,
in South Kensington, which has just opened a tapas-ish sibling on the other
side of the Old Brompton Road. It’s called Tendido Cero, which probably
means: “I claim all this land for almighty God. Come here and get measles.
Haven’t you seen a horse before? Where have you buried the gold?”
The room is a hugger-mugger of tables with a bar, and pictures of Iberians in
pink knickerbockers doing painful things to ungulates. The menu is split
into hot and cold tapas. Nothing costs more than £8. Most dishes are about a
fiver. We took Matthew Donaldson, the snapper, who’s about to give his name
to a bird, Nick Allott and Christa D’Souza, who writes the social philosophy
column at the front of this magazine. It was all fine, and as much fun as
you’ll find. Good ham and tortillas. Béchamel croquettes. Prawns cooked in
garlic. Octopus and potatoes. Soft cheese with honey. At the weekend, they
make big paellas for lunch. It’s a friendly, warmly noisy local restaurant.
I’m particularly glad because I have a great deal of admiration and fondness
for Abel, who started Cambio de Tercio, despite his mother naming him after
a victim, and who works as hard and as diligently as anyone in this
all-consuming business. I should say here that despite whatever I threaten
him with, he refuses to let me pay a bill, and you must bear that in mind as
you read this.
The night we went, the place was bursting with tables of young folk. I looked
up and down the room, and realised that ours was the only one that was
speaking English as a first language. If you’re passing — whatever you call
it, and whatever you’re called — this is a good place.
TENDIDO CERO
174 Old Brompton Road, SW5; 020 7370 3685
Lunch, noon-4pm; dinner, 7pm-11pm
