I HEAR THE final session of the outgoing European Parliament in Strasbourg ended earlier this month without the traditional Asparagus party: normally held every May among the gingerbread houses and restaurants of the nearby town of Hoerdt.
The annual outing for MEPs, parliament staff, and journalists was cancelled, apparently, amid fears that there would be negative media coverage of Eurocrats feasting in a recession.
If you’ve never been to the asparagus party in Hoerdt, you might think this was an overreaction. You might even think that the term “asparagus party” is an oxymoron, except for easily amused vegetarians. But since my one and only visit to the European Parliament was in May, about 15 years ago, I know otherwise.
The eponymous vegetable does play a central role in the party, served with ham (and nothing else) as the main course, followed by dessert of actual gingerbread, which is part of the local cuisine as well as architecture.
The other element of the meal, however, is Vin d’Alsace: free and in copious amounts. The night I was there, it was like the Rhine in spate. It just kept coming.
So I can easily imagine how a Eurosceptic press photographer could make the party look like a scene from Caligula’s Rome.
That said, some of the EU’s most ardent critics would have been distracted this year by the epic Westminster expenses scandal: in which the story of the “moat clearance” has now been outdone by the “Swedish duck house” and the “28 tons of manure”. I suspect that, on this occasion at least, the MEPs would have been left to their asparagus.
The asparagus is excellent, by the way; and I remember just enough about it to understand why Hoerdt is reputed to have Europe’s best. It’s not your common-or-garden green asparagus. It’s the white version, produced by burying the stalks in soil as they grow, depriving them of light and hence chlorophyll.
The result is a sweeter, more tender vegetable; which I presume – my recollection is vague on this point – has the same powers as the green version to improve the smell of urine. Excuse my indelicacy in mentioning this; but I’m in good company.
Here is Proust making the same point (at some length, as is his wont) in Swann's Way.
“. . . my greatest pleasure was the asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and rosy pink which ran from the stalks’ heads, delicately stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of imperceptible changes, to their white feet – still stained a little by the soil of their garden bed – a rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world. It seemed to me that these celestial nuances indicated the presence of exquisite creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form, and who, through the disguise of their firm, edible flesh, allowed me to discern in this radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue evening shades, that precious essence I would recognise again when, all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played (lyrical and coarse in their jesting as Shakespeare’s fairy stories), at transforming my chamber pot into a vase of aromatic perfume.”
I struggle to recall quite that level of detail from my night in Hoerdt. Good as it was, the asparagus clearly did not make as deep an impression on me as it did Proust. To tell the truth, my most vivid memory of the party now is the hangover I woke up with next morning.
READERS WILL doubtless be aware that today, May 23rd, marks the 391st anniversary of the Second Defenestration of Prague.
As the name implies, defenestration – throwing people out of windows – is something of a Czech tradition; although the First Defenestration of Prague was more-or-less spontaneous, when religious reformers stormed the town hall in 1419 and ejected several councillors onto the street below, where their falls were in some cases broken by pikes.
The second defenestration was deliberate homage to that event. But apart from starting the Thirty Years War, it differed from the earlier – and later – defenestrations by being non-fatal. The symbolism was nonetheless powerful. This time Protestant nobles entered Hradcany Castle and threw the Catholic governors out of a high window into the dry moat below.
Explanations of the men’s survival differed along denominational lines. The Catholic version was that the Virgin Mary spread her mantle to catch them. Indeed, a contemporary painting depicts the defenestratees floating gracefully down to earth, holding votive candles. Whereas the Protestant version is that their fall was broken by a “dunghill”. Historians tend to agree with the Protestants.
Moats. Manure. Angry mobs. Yes, the resonance with the Westminster expenses scandal is undeniable. And as UK taxpayers seek an outlet for their anger, rather than mere deselection of candidates, it would be understandable if they saw the Second Defenestration of Prague as the model for suitably dramatic protest.
But in case any impressionable British citizens read this, I would urge them to exercise maximum caution. Ensure that any drop is not excessive; that the manure heap is a sufficiently large target; and that it is deep enough to provide the necessary shock absorption, no matter how well the MP has been eating for years at your expense. Also, take care to check that there are no sharp objects below. We wouldn’t want anyone being impaled on pikes; or worse still, on the spires of Swedish duck-houses.