Free David Mitchell: Back Story by David Mitchell Page B

you’re probably screaming at the page by now. I’m sorry. You’re right. Above all, this was a bad day for the lobster. I accept that intellectually. I just couldn’t feel sorry for it at the time – it looked too alien and terrifying, too nasty. I was too frightened to feel mercy. Also, I ate meat. I always have and I suspect I always will. As incidents where you’re brought face to face with the reality of that go, the demise of a heavily armoured, dark, eyeless, snapping creature is a lot less likely to make you reach for the nut roast than seeing a bewildered and affectionate lamb gambol past a mint sauce factory towards some rotor blades.

    But I’m getting ahead of myself. You don’t know what happened yet. The lobster might win. So, the lobster’s in the pan, my father’s at the stove, my mother hovering by his side, I’m in the sitting area, moaning about this whole ill-conceived plan, and the Calor has just been ignited under the crustacean’s new home. This is the calm before the storm, the phoney war.
    The spell is broken by the lobster. It has begun to smell a rat. My parents had added one for flavour. Not really, I’m speaking metaphorically. The lobster is starting to suspect that the apparent improvement in its fortunes was no more than a dead cat bounce. (It’s massively into animal metaphors.) It has noticed that the water has begun to get warmer.
    I don’t remember the details of the next few minutes. I assume my dad held on to the pan as the lobster inside moved around in an inquisitive, then concerned, then agitated and finally enraged and panicked fashion. I only remember the last stage. The pan is now full of very hot water and the lobster is throwing everything into a dramatic bid for escape. The phoney war is well and truly over. My mother breaks like the Maginot line and runs out of the caravan.
    I would gladly follow her, but my father, struggling with a boiling hot pan containing an enraged mini-monster, stands in my path. I make a few hesitant steps towards him, and a furious and steaming claw flails from under the saucepan lid sending searing splashes everywhere. A droplet lands on my knee. I know, with all my heart, with a terrible, chilling certainty, that the creature wants me dead. There will be no appeasing it if it escapes.
    I refuse to eat any of the lobster. I think I’m making a point, but I imagine my parents were happy enough to polish it off themselves.

- 7 -
    Civis Britannicus Sum
    Now I come to think of it, almost half of the memories I have from family holidays come from that trip to France. I remember the children’s roundabout outside the hypermarket, where, if you were lucky enough to be in one of the helicopters, there was a lever you could pull that would make it rise AS IF YOU WERE REALLY FLYING A HELICOPTER – I still feel this ride is the crowning achievement of French culture.
    I remember the doctor who gave me a series of injections in my arse because, with a child’s unerring instinct for inconveniencing his parents, I’d developed the first symptoms of asthma while we were on holiday (and the French will inject you in the arse on pretty much any occasion when a British doctor would go for the shoulder; the arse is apparently the better place for it and the French believe, quite wrongly, that optimising health is more important than avoiding embarrassment).
    I remember the ferry trip there and back which, in my view, was more enjoyable than any other single part of the fortnight.
    But one of the few things I don’t remember from that holiday is arriving home again – that feeling of being glad to be back in Britain, which I remember from all my other trips abroad.
    In general, you don’t see Britain at its best when you re-enter it after a holiday. Places such as Heathrow airport and the docks at Portsmouth are fairly unpleasant. One worries what it looks like to foreigners and wants to make excuses for it. It’s like you’ve just introduced an