Unexpected Expectorations



    The village of Faversham was a centre for the oyster trade, probably since the Roman era. Today, this activity has been transmogrified into its quintessentially urban variety. As I walk down the machine-cut cobbles of the town centre, large, glistening pavement oysters gleam throughout the streets. They are as fat and succulent as any to have graced the silver platters of a Praetorian prefect. Some of these grey-green gobbets rest as they have landed, all pristine and ovoid. Others have had their integrity interrupted by the rubber tip of the oldsters’ walking sticks so that snail-trails are swiped from the central mucoid mass. Still others have been mashed into the ground by an orthopaedic shoe or a chav’s trainer, so that several identical but gradually fading impressions of the original are Xeroxed along the pavement following the trajectory of the pedestrians’ perambulations. I have always had the utmost difficulty in suppressing the gag reflex when dining on oysters. Their pavement cousins produce the same reaction in me. Watch me retch and heave all the way to the supermarket.

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