In Preparation For The Apocalypse

09/03/09

I’m suddenly acutely aware that I have no skills which would be useful in the event of the Apocalypse.

800px-sahara_satellite_hires When the whole damn map looks like this, I will be utterly useless. Who needs a novelist when your primary interest is in locating water?

I thought maybe I should learn to bake. I’m a decent cook, so I thought, well, bread would be a sure-fire thing. I quite like the notion of being Harkaway The Baker in the village at the end of the universe…

Hm.

So it turns out that these irritating artisan bakeries are less ludicrous than I had thought. I have so far made:

Flat bread (by which I mean that I made bread and it came out flat. It was actually a reasonably useful object. You could use it as a tray, or a shield, or even as a frisbee to kill game. It was not, however, edible.)

Explody bread (this was not useful at all. It exploded. I had to clean the oven. Twice.)

Eeeebil world-dominaty alien bread (I thought it would be a good idea to leave the dough to prove a bit longer. I did. It did. And then it went beyond proof into hyperbole and theories of bread supremacy and tried to take over my kitchen with its tentacled ickiness. Clare says I left it slightly too long and it became infected with some non-yeast organism. I say it was an invasion.)

Soufflé bread (which appeared initially to be successful, then to be explody, and finally turned out to be flat bread).

And finally, Schrödinger’s bread (which I put into the oven and which has mysteriously vanished; I maintain this was because the wave-form collapsed and it turned out I imagined the bread, but Clare says it caught fire and burned away to nothing because I got distracted by page two hundred and eighty of my second novel. Granted, I got distracted for about thirty hours or so, and granted also there does appear to be a fine layer of carbon on the baking tray, but I feel her explanation has a slightly accusatory tone and I have decided to ignore it.)

I may have to fall back on my secondary post-Apocalypse career: charismatic cult leader.

I’d really rather make bread, though.

14 Comments to “In Preparation For The Apocalypse”

Justin Bellinger said on March 9th, 2009:

I bake, often, and never have these problems.

I don’t, however, write books. So I think that’s your problem.

If you *really* want to do well in baking, give up writing.

I like your work, however, so perhaps we can compromise, and one day, I’ll bake you some bread. Come the Apocalypse, I’ll make bread, you document it.

Deal? :)

J.
Celia Bredenbeck said on March 9th, 2009:

Thanks for the laughs on a time-distorted Monday. (They tell us we saved daylight time. Well, and here it is, a whole hour of it, ugly, wet and grey. Now what the hell are we supposed to do with it?)

My empathy is with Clare. I will not let my husband into the kitchen save to eat or feed the cats. Our children are young adults now and still traumatized by his attempts at “macaroni and cheese”. The hot dogs really didn’t belong in there. We still hear about it.

Perhaps you could take up carpentry instead?

No, no. Keep writing the book. If the world ends, be it with any combination of bangs and whimpers, we are going to need something good to read.
Nick Harkaway said on March 9th, 2009:

Justin – but will you save me from the rampaging hordes of starving marketing executives?

Celia – the thing is, no kidding: I actually cook pretty well. She’s very happy to let me make dinner and such. It’s just this present obsession with bread which is causing trouble. To be fair, bread and toffee have always been where my skills found natural borders. Baked bream, roast beef, ice cream, cake, soufflé, salad, chicken in honey & soy, even fresh pasta and pastry… fine. But bread – even pizza dough – not so good.

Ahhhh, go figure :)
MikeCamel said on March 9th, 2009:

I make stews and casseroles. I believe this to be both useful and appropriately manly. They are also easy, and if you come to visit me, Harkaway, I will share my Secrets[tm].

I will be happy to cook any gazelle-like creatures that you stun with your combat bread.
Celia Bredenbeck said on March 9th, 2009:

Well, you have a point there. I am, by others’ accounts (which is all that counts!) an excellent cook. But bread is not my thing.

I have finally made an uneasy peace with yeast-laden dough masses after some thirty years of cooking (yes, been at it since I was in my high chair), and can actually turn out a passable pizza crust (though Pizza Hut isn’t exactly resorting to corporate espionage yet). Hoowever, I have never been the one tapped for any gathering to bring my fabulous brioches, my to-die-for braided challah or my amazing seven-grain rolls.

(It has been remarked that my braided challah may in fact have been an occasion of mortality, but I don’t believe they meant this in a good way. And the truly amazing thing about my seven-grain rolls is that I have found a reliable local bakery.)

Good for you, cooking, though. I wish my husband *could* cook; I’d be delighted to let him.
thorrad said on March 9th, 2009:

I learned a long time ago that one should never drink and bake. It leads to all manner of unpleasantness. I know that you were writing and not drinking. (Not that the two are mutually exclusive, I mean, look at Dashel Hammett for crissakes!) but I am a believer that writing is an opiate of some people and takes attention away from the baking in much the same way that drink does. (or possibly like inhaling oven cleaner, but whatever…)

The thing is that bread needs attention. Lots of it. It is not content to just be left alone to prove and bake. It needs you like a clingy insecure lover. I am much inclined to Justin’s way of thinking but I would say that rather than giving up the whole writing thing you may want to give up the bread thing. I mean who will write the stories and songs of all of the heroes of the soon to be post-apocalyptic yore if not for you? I know that there will be some great warlords who will need to have a story-teller to aggrandize themselves properly. You just need a good marketing guy and you’re off to the races!

Good luck on the apocalypse. I think you’ve really got something going for you there.
Christine said on March 9th, 2009:

Try a bread machine till you learn what the dough is supposed to look like, and you get used to the timing. Bread machine bread is not great, but it’s better than store-bought. The New York rye turns out pretty well, actually. Let me know if you want the recipe. :)

I hear you on the apocalypse thing. I have a “go bag” now. There’s a place in New Jersey where you can take survival courses. I’m dying to do one. Do they have them over there?
Nick Harkaway said on March 9th, 2009:

Well, they do, sort of but the Great British Survival Course is a bit more, erm…

Marshall Holbright-Fiskit’s Dozen Things To Remember In A Crisis

1. Now, then, what’s all this? Are you panicking? That’s very un-British. Stop it at once! Make some tea instead.

2. Other countries, such as America and France, are liable to get silly in times of crisis. Britain, of course, is never silly, and in being sensible, we will naturally rise to the to of the post-Apocalyptic tree.

3. Always be presentable in your dress, especially at times of stress. It lends you an air of natural authority which eludes colonials and foreigners (see 2)

4. It almost certainly won’t happen here, because God was born in Surrey.

5. Remember: when the going gets tough, the best thing to do is keep going and make self-effacing jokes about it.

6. Under no circumstances arm yourself. That sort of thing leads to the end of civilisation, to women going about the place without corsets, and to indigestion.

7. Form an orderly queue.

8. It’s all someone else’s fault, of course, but that’s no reason not to be jolly nice about it. Stock up on baked beans, but remember to leave some space in your shelter for life’s little luxuries.

9. In the final analysis, we live on a well-defended island in a temporal zone which will at worst become tropical. Act natural, look busy, and the Apocalypse will happen elsewhere.

10. If confronted by an angry mob, zombies, werewolves, asylum seekers, or the French, adopt an assertive tone.

11. Is the tea ready yet?

12. We shall survive this, chaps, and the reason is, we’re British. That’s what we do.

Alarmingly, this sort of attitude won us an empire and may even work twice…
Christine said on March 9th, 2009:

Great list. I always forget the God is from Surrey.

Mr. Holbright-Fiskit’s list might work again, but aren’t you guys scheduled to be covered by a massive glacier once we lose the gulf stream? You might have to break out some hats and scarves in that case. Tea will be even nicer, though.

Good luck with all that. Maybe Finland has a snow survival course.
Annie Chapman said on March 9th, 2009:

I reckon the interchangeable Dailies Mail and Express would be with Marshall Holbright-Fiskit on this one, which is, of course, utterly reassuring…

you best get working on that bread- I’m off to check out my inderstairs cupboard
Nick Harkaway said on March 9th, 2009:

A little cold never hurt anyone! Bah! A quick run before showering, then a meal of kidneys and tripe, then off to play some cricket in the snow!

Perhaps more importantly, unless the Apocalypse is preceded by a flurry of scientific endeavour in which we develop longevity treatments, I think the glaciation period is rather remote for most of us…
dave hutchinson said on March 9th, 2009:

I thought about this years ago after reading Niven and Pournelle’s `Lucifer’s Hammer,’ and I came to the conclusion that it might be kinder if I just died in the first few seconds of the Apocalypse.
Christine said on March 9th, 2009:

Let’s hope so. You certainly can’t wear your whites to play cricket in the snow.
Nick Harkaway said on March 10th, 2009:

Of course you can. It’s camouflage, so the polar bears and snow tigers can’t see you when you’re fielding.