The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work - Alain De Botton [13]
The photographer and I crouch in wait behind a refrigerated cabinet, which feels vengefully cold after the torridity of the Maldives. Shoppers amble by, occasionally casting a distracted look at the cuts of the tuna’s flesh. To pass the time, I think back to people we have met along the way. I remember Aisha Azdah, whose job it is to source the tuna’s packaging material. She ordered the plastic trays from a manufacturer in Thailand. One afternoon, we photographed her in her one-room company flat next to the processing plant. On the wall is her wedding picture, featuring Mohamed Amir, a mechanic in charge of the tuna slicing machines made by the Scanvaegt corporation of Denmark. The interest of the photograph seems to hinge on the iron. This is an essay about people who depend on one another and yet have no thought of each other’s laundry. It may be one of the tasks of art in the age of advanced logistics to make sure that Aisha is introduced to Linda Drummond, for in the end, it is she who stops at the fish counter and picks up some tuna steaks for her family’s supper. The photographer and I stand up and explain our story. We tell her about our journey and about Karl Marx’s theory of alienation as defined his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. We ask if we might follow her home. She calls her husband for a second opinion.
Later that day, Linda’s son, eight-year-old Sam, is unfazed to find two strangers in his kitchen. He hates tuna, but not as much as he hates salmon. He hasn’t forgotten about the wonder of logistics. He knows a lot about lorries and planes. He is also an expert on the world’s oceans, and lectures us as to how the Indian Ocean is not an ideal habitat for fish, on account of its unusual warmth and stillness. He notes that the freezing North Sea supports infinitely more forms of life, as storms there constantly stir up the nutrient-laden aphotic layer which lies a thousand metres below the waves, and in which the gulper eel, the anglerfish and the vampire squid live. He also makes the ancillary suggestion, less often remarked upon by marine biologists, that our perpetual killing of fish has left the seas choked with an array of pallid oceanic ghosts who will one day gather together to exact terrible revenge on humanity for shortening their lives and transporting their corpses around the earth for supper in Bristol.
1.
I became interested in biscuits and one day found myself heading out to the west of London, past burnt-out shops and roped-off demolition sites, to the town of Hayes, the corporate home of United Biscuits, the number-one player in the British biscuit market and its second-largest producer of bagged nuts.
Through effort and subterfuge, I had secured an appointment with the Design Director at United Biscuits, a man named Laurence (rather than Lawrence, a distinction he repeatedly emphasised). To prepare for my encounter, I had immersed myself in the distinctive literature of biscuits and learnt a range of intriguing facts. I had discovered that the British spend £1.8 billion a year on biscuits, and that the market is technically divided into five categories: Everyday Biscuits, Everyday Treats, Seasonal Biscuits, Savoury Biscuits and Crackers & Crispbreads.
Everyday Biscuits, despite their lacklustre name, account for nearly a third of all sales and include Digestives, Rich Tea, Ginger Nuts and Hob Nobs. The Digestive, often dipped in tea for added moisture, is alone worth £34 million a year. For their part, Everyday Treats, evenly poised between