Some traditions adhere more solidly than others. Rumour has it that it was key members of the unMo beta that brought it about. Apparently the floor plans as supplied by the ancient local ‘Mimers’ support this theory. The first unMoaners lived their life on two levels. The sleeping floor: airier, first-heated, presumably better lit was perched above the more cavernous lower floor where distinct recollections of the eating process in the form of memories of Open Dinner arrangements are reported by several sources…
UnMoaners everywhere mark the beginning of their famous food feasts with an inevitable uvular whooping sound that heralds their sacred mealtimes. It is speculated that this ‘call to plate’ was implemented to permeate the thick rock of their earliest dwellings. Bouncing off the adjacent wall of Tony’s neighbouring Bed & Breakfast to rattle the window glass of the unMembers who hadn’t yet joined in on the dining room Dance of the Circling Vultures.
Little is left of their precise dining practice, searching their midden heap provides remarkable few signs of life and surprisingly little waste for an operation of their purported proportion. It has been therefore hypothesised that a zero waste policy was rigorously enacted already from the first settlement. However, one contradictory piece of evidence to this theory are the heavy finds of seemingly contemporary glass shards on the adjacent stone veranda. This could also indicate that exercising demonstrative fury was not foreign to the unMonasterian mealtime celebrations. It may therefore be worth speculating on what might bring such a conceptually gentle social organ to suffer routine inharmonious mealtimes. The literature supplies no record of a liturgical contribution. Some preserved lists indicate that even with a reduced population of as low as six residents, two people were proscribed the task of cooking pranza and cena in an apparently random arrangement of paired names. Signs of injudicious distribution of duties and of what seem spontaneous task-swapping arrangements make it harder to trace the culture of their Art of Dining. It should however be taken for granted that dine they did.
An alternative theory that at least partially supports the disharmony interpretation of the fine glass chips littered across the terrace has it that the unMo pioneers had a difficult and hypocritical attitude to their own consumption of alcohol. Paradoxical snippets of ‘unRules’ indicate that while hospitality was considered a key virtue and a cornerstone of interface strategies, it was also noted that many itinerant souls brought with them nasty degrees of chemical dependency; thus, the high degree of glass finds may indicate an attempt to hide an early-stage unDignified consumption of bottled beverages.* The tradition of high volume whooping may have somehow been used to mask the sound of exploding wine bottles.
- Into this debate may be factored the obscure possibility that an infamous discotheque could have easily been situated in an adjoining building complex sharing the same terrace, and that nothing would materially hinder local youth from engaging in unRuly practices of their own design in the same territory.