| Welcome back to my blog about everything and nothing
He crossed the park walking briskly into the wind. It was too cold to dawdle. Passing the gate on to the road he remembered they’d moved the bus stop - but the shelter was still there. He slipped inside and squeezed himself up on the bench in the corner out of the wind. This shelter was one of his favourites. Built with its back to the wind and open to the afternoon sun, it was a shelter for all seasons. It would figure high in the ranking of shelters he intended to set up in his, soon to be published, “Guide to the Bus Shelters of Westminster and the City.” It had been “soon to be published” these last twenty years, since his retirement. At first he had hung back, dreading that his work would become the subject of derision. Once however, the “Guide to the Public Lavatories of London” had appeared to general acclaim, he took courage. “I’m bound to be a success,” he mused, “There is obviously a craving for guides, and my topic is a clean and decent one that should appeal to old and young.” Nevertheless, publication drew no nearer. Having spent several years filling notebooks and collating his notes he was determined to start composing his text in the New Year. Fate intervened, taking the form of a well meaning relative who gave him a digital camera for Christmas. There was a feeling of foreboding in the air as he pulled it out of its box. He’d never owned a camera let alone a digital one, whatever that was. It lay there black and shiny, its one eye behind a patch. He fancied he could hear it purring. A button marked ‘on’ lit the little screen up, but only a uniform grey. He pressed the ‘photo’ button. The screen responded with a polite text inviting him to remove the lens cap. He flushed, fortunately no one had noticed. The cap came off easily and dangled on a thin black string. Now the little screen showed the drawing room quite clearly, and in colour. He moved around until he had his pipe on the mantelpiece in the centre of the screen. He pressed the ‘photo’ button. Nothing! The screen paused momentarily then went on showing his room wherever he pointed it. No photo. There was a fat little book which said “Operating instructions” on the front cover in about ten languages. He found the English pages (he had been tempted to read the German but there was nobody watching to remark on his rare linguistic prowess). Halfway down the second page a paragraph ordered him to “Review your photographs”. There was a picture of a little button with a red arrow he had overlooked. Pressing it, he was delighted to find his pipe photo. He made another and there were two pipe photos. He tried various angles including one with the Swan Vestas in the picture to give a feeling of scale. He was about to stop when he noticed that the little screen was saying something. Across the top was printed “You have 960 pictures to take”. Nine hundred and sixty! That would take for ever. What on earth could he photo with these nine hundred and sixty pictures? Slowly he realised that the only things he had in his life in such large numbers, since he had sold his stamp collection, were his Bus Shelters. Of course, he had collected more than seven hundred. He could include a shot of each with a few shots left over for special features. This would put back publication until he had revisited them all, of course, but it would be worth it. No snide remarks from reviewers about arm chair collectors. The pictures would testify that he had personally inspected every site. And so it was that on that chilly afternoon in the corner of the bus shelter outside Green Park he was not alone. Nestled in his mac pocket was his new faithful friend and witness, his digital camera. He pulled it out and switched it on to review his photos. There it was, number one hundred and five, this very shelter. It was taken on a sunny day in spring from across the street with the park gate behind. What a setting! This one would definitely be in his top five favourites. | | |
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A favourite haunt of Browne and FitzGerald was ' The
Falcon ' at Bletsoe, a village eight miles north of the
town, to which they generally drove in a morning with
their fishing-rods.
FitzGerald, however, who never went
without his colour-box, painted more pictures than he
caught fish ; and wished nothing better than to lie at his
ease under some gnarled willow among the rich red spires
of loosestrife, and within view of the gently rocking water-
lilies.
Usually they fished for perch and pike. When
they went after the bream, they had to be at Bletsoe while
the dew was still heavy on the grass, and get their fishing
over, or the better part of it, by breakfast-time.
Bletsoe boasts a picturesque church and a ruined castle, but it
was the river rather than the antiquities that attracted
FitzGerald. 'The inn,' says he, 'is the cleanest, the
sweetest, the civillest, the quietest, the loveliest, and the
cheapest that ever was built or conducted. On one side
it has a garden, then the meadows through which winds
the Ouse : on the other, the public road, with its coaches.
From, The life of Edward FitzGerald (Volume 1) by Thomas Wright | | |
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The Murdock empire (at least the print part) in final decline? The Sun's internal investigation passes a list of suspected baddies to the police who immediately arrest them.
This procedure seems a bit dodgy, no? Some on the list are no longer employed by the Sun.
Would we be sad to see it go? Probably not in general although, as with the News of the World, what would replace it? A bigger and nastier Daily Mail? | | |
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Rions is just up the road from Barsac after Cadillac. A good place to eat is the Auberge de l'Ancienne Post at the back of the village overlooking the Garonne valley. Squeeze through the old gateway and the mediaeval alleys to the square (La Poste is signposted) and park on the terrace if you're loaded with wine and need to watch it.   The cheapest menu is the best at lunch time. Eat on the terrace in summer (they will set up a table for you with no fuss event if you eat alone). Wine is fairly priced and the service is excellent. Eat inside with the locals when it gets chilly. Rions beats Cadillac where you must park outside the town walls, with no opportunity to watch your vehicle, and fight your way through tourists to some mediocre eateries. | | |
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It seems the players are going down like ninepins in the Murdock saga. The old sea shanty, "Becky's gone so we'll go too",must be echoing around the halls of News Corp.
None of this is having much impact in Portugal. In politics, Portugal is another planet. Most people will have heard of Brown , Cameron and Clegg but with only the vaguest idea of their roles, stretching, in many cases, to doubts as to whether they be alive or dead. As for Murdock, this particular cobber is completely unknown.
The Commons Select Committee hearings should be a hoot. I wonder if they can eventually call Brown, Cameron and Clegg? (BCC)Cameron is certainly turning out not to be oil of the first pressing as advertised. More like chip shop residue. Brown seems determined to self destruct, but if he plans to knock down Miliband in the explosion, I don't think he has enough TNT left for that.Speculation about the Sunday successor. Some millions of copies less will be sold this weekend. Will it be a Sunday Sun or just bigger print runs for the remaining Sabbath rags?
Voices are raised suggesting that the 7 million deprived News of the World followers (2.5 million purchasers and the other 4.5 million hitch hiking readers) will simply give up.The burning thirst for news of which chicks are being used by footballers to park their pricks will fade or be slaked by the Internet's Twittering tide.
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Chose lunch at Rapa Tacho (scratch the pot) with a good table inside out of the wind. Started early because it fills up with the locals about one.
A typical Nazaréna restaurant with good house wine in a jug. We splashed out on tiny sautéed squid (olive oil garlic and black pepper), cockles, grilled sardines, a lemon sole, two pork bitocks, a "hambourger" (minced beef patty) a carne alentejano (pork with clams and sautéed potatoes) six soft drinks, two bottles of mineral water a jug of vin tinto and two coffees. All in, 78 Euro for six!
Talk of food over lunch brought up the ginger chicken in rice recipe, once a weekly treat, now sadly fallen into disuse.A memory check on the internet only brought up the usual mass of North American postings with ingredients, utensils and cooking methods unheard of in Europe (not to mention Asia).
So here goes with the authentic recipe:
Chop your chicken (pullets are better than roasting chicken) in eight or more pieces (depending on size) Skin them and sauté in sesame and ground nut oil until browned all over. Soften chopped garlic, onions and finely chopped fresh ginger in the same oil until golden brown, use plenty of ginger, (this is after all ginger chicken!) Mix in the chicken pieces until coated all over. Mix in about 250 grammes of Basmati rice you have soaked for 15 minutes and drained. Add a bit of salt ( a small pile in the palm of your hand) Stir vigorously intill rice is oily. Add same quantity of water ( fill up your measuring jug to the 250 grammes rice mark) and bring to the boil without stirring. Immediately it boils, drop the heat to the lowest possible, seal the pot with aluminium foil under the lid and cook without opening the pot for 20 minutes. Open the pot, scatter some blobs of ghee on the rice and mix in without breaking the grains.
Serve in a hot pot with puris. (They can be prepared while the rice is cooking if you make the dough an hour or two before you start and keep it in a plastic bag with spoonful of sesame oil)
The whole thing shouldn't take more that 45 minutes. Make a lot, it's even better the next day reheated in a skillet (not a microwave)
So there we are without recourse to dried garlic, rice cookers, microwaves etc.. . | | |
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Murdock is still clinging to Becky despite the fact that she presided over the biggest scandal in the history of the News of the World without hearing, seeing or saying anything. Her's not to reason why. Her's to let others do and die. There must be something with her that only Murdock knows about.
The best is still to come she says. We are not to be surprised the lid's off and the maggots will crawl out. Even the USA is getting jittery about the possible tapping of the 'phones of the victims of the 11 September atrocity. Cloth eared Clegg has at last heard the screams of disgust emanating from his Parliamentary Party and is murmuring about supporting Labour if they bring the BSkyB thing to a vote in the Commons. Were Cameron to lose such a vote the deal would be off and Britain would be spared the experience of the channel becoming another right wing, foaming at the mouth, Fox News. Meanwhile Gordon Brown has come out with a good sober piece in the International Herald Tribune analysing the financial and deficit crisis in Europe. Shame he's no longer Chancellor. He makes the Tory front bench look like a bunch of poorly educated amateurs. Which of course they are. Since when could Eton and Oxford prepare one to run an economy? Osborne, with his smarmy "I know it all" manner, would be better suited to the Church of England. Cameron that great judge of men of integrity and ability could improve on Coulson by appointing the members of the Supreme Court, the House of Lords and all Police Commissioners. | | |
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Talk about unravelling fast. Two arrested and more to come. Murdock flies in to pour money on the scandal. Can he save Becky? Why is he trying?
The Cameron man is lying low hoping that nobody will ask any more questions about Coulson. Clegg has disappeared, even disaster prone Vince has for once kept his mouth shut.
Who are the police officers that Becky paid to pass information to her? Who are the so called "journalists" that did her bidding? My Becky right or wrong.
With Merseyside buy the Sun on Sunday? Very unlikely according to my survey.
The Tories are dancing on a pin head with respect to the hand over of BSkyB to the Murdock machine when everybody from Fleet street to Downing Street knows that the country won't stand for it.
Why is it that successive Tory governments always succeed in rousing the Englishman's sense of fair play and outrage without really trying?
It must be their educational system. | | |
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A cold day on the Atlantic sea board in Portugal.
Morning fog gave way to a brief baking spell at lunch time. But far out to the west the front hung menacing the afternoon beach goers with their sunshades, flip flops and families.
Refuge in a restaurant, basking in a menu redolent of old fisher folk. Sea bass, squid, crab, clams, and for those with deep country roots, steak, pork scallops, and carne alentejana to bridge the gap with cockles and pork.
A half of Borba, deep coloured and satisfying. Evening whipped up the wind cooling the high serra. Huddled in the tightly built fisher house with a good leg of lamb artfully prepared to roast evenly with the potatoes from the windswept heights behind the sea beach. Cheese from the upland sheep and goats, sweet rice pudding and fruit. What more could even the Gods desire?
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The German beansprouter has been joined by one or more as yet unidentified in the Bordeaux region. French authorities are pointing to a British seed exporter in Ipswich. En plus, there are dodgy frozen beef patties in the Nord-Pas-Calais region. Eating these, half cooked in the usual French style, has put quite a few in hospital. Where they come from has not been revealed, but they have admitted that the beef comes from a mixture of sources and a patty may be composed from several animals. So much for traceability. Hurry up garden and produce some eatables. Only two cucumbers, a dozen tomatoes and a handfull of beans so far. But the glut is coming. We shall probably miss it, being away in Portugal for the whole of July, but the produce will feed our friends and, I hope, give them a taste of "real" food for a time. Walking round the supermarket trying to pinpoint things you can eat with confidence is becoming a very time consuming occupation. This week we are treated to pears from South Africa, more melons from Morocco, the usual Argentine garlic and tunny from the Seychelles, among other delights. The fish people are doing us proud with "bio" prawns farmed in Madagascar (I'm not making this up!), mountains of farmed smoked salmon (I did locate two packets of Alaskan line fished among the debris) and farmed sea bass. Small shops don't help much either. Their "provenances" are a bit imaginary in some cases. We do however have a fishmonger who buys only from the Oleron fleet. There's a fishing fleet at La Rochelle, a pale shadow of what it once was. What happens to their catch is a mystery. It's probably iced down and trucked up to Paris where prices are higher and the public will, by reputation, not ask any questions. The up side of all this is that enrolment for Geography degrees is vastly increased recently. | | |
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The market for cucumbers and bean sprouts has been destroyed by the press reporting irresponsibly on the source of the E-coli outbreak. One cannot sell anything green from Spain for love nor money. Local traders are rubbing their hands, and so they should be if they can get supermarkets to carry their produce, The outlook for that is not so rosy. The low end stores like Le Clerc, Intermarché, Leader Price and Carrefour are stuffed with low priced imports from anywhere but Europe and carry precious little produced in France let alone locally, Carrefour has garlic from Argentina only. Le Clerc and the others are groaning under dubious tins of Tunny from Africa and the Seychelles - all tricked out to look French. Only one local producer of free range eggs has found his way onto the shelves at Le Clerc - the remaining ten or fifteen brands are national chains whose eggs are not sourced. Same for olive oil, one French brand only, no Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese. Where the "French" brand get their oil from is a question you don't want to have answered. Laws about marking the source have helped but they are applied with calculated deception. The worst being marking food products with the F mark for France only to find after microscopic examination the legend "processed in France". Some deception is probably uderstandable, who would mark their products Romania or Bulgaria if they could possibly avoid it? As for Turkey - that's a blessing still to come. Pasta if another swampy zone - every packed blazons itself with "genuine Italian" but hush, read the small print, and you find tucked away, often under the price sticker, the F mark for France. Let's not talk about Pizze today. Genuine Italian Mozzarella made with cows' milk is another French gourmet speciality. Even the Italian food empires are marketing it. The famous Charentais Melons are fresh in from Morocco. Customers here buy them rather than wait for the local crop which is only weeks away, but then they also use Morocco as a holiday destination and even for retirement despite it's illiberal regime and religion. Tackled on the melon issue, the intellectuals reply that it is our, not their, "duty" to support African producers (francophone ones of course) - they don't want to know that the African producers are all French capitalists operating in Morocco for the cheap labour and the absence of social security payments. The Spanish are unfortunate that the Germans fingered them and not the Dutch who are in the same business of mass producing out of season tasteless vegetables. The only difference being that in Spain one has to provide water to the growing farms because they are conveniently located in the most arid regions where land is cheap, whereas in gloomy Holland (in the Maasland) they have to provide light and heat. Fly into Schipol on a winter evening and see the wonderful illuminations - they beat the Belgian motorways for sheer "in your face" energy profligacy.
And as for the innocent beansprouter of Uelzen, he's lucky he's not been torn limb from limb by irate bio munchers.
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Well, start with the royal wedding, honeymoon put off due to risk of terrorist attack (we don't know but they might have been planning something stupid such as Jordan or Morocco), murder in Marrakesh, and finally Bin Laden killed. No, not finally, finally today is my birthday.
Just incidentally, the black boxes from the Air France crash were fished out of the Atlantic. Seeing them lying on the sea bed made we wonder why they weren't built to float. They had been thrown out of their holding frame so nothing would have stopped them bobbing up to the surface.
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And not far from a Royal Wedding. The UK media are squeezing this for the last penny. Somebody, we don't know who, is questioning the succession. Cameron, always keen to look like he's on board with the chattering classes, muses about changing the law to permit primo geneture to operate in the case of a first born Princess.
The French media, ignorant as always of all things not French, but keen to turn a penny also, are reporting that Charles might be "skipped" in favour of William (that's him with the teeth). The British public prefer him to Charles. This is presumably the same British public that went doolally over his dubious mother.
The guest list is an indication of things to come. Beckham has been invited. The British public should wait as many years as possible before passing the future of the monarchy into the hands of this couple.
In the meantime things are happening that might have more bearing on the equanimity of the British public. Qaddafi rages on and not all our huffing and puffing can blow him away. Stooges from the African Union have crept in to comfort him and crept away having been given the bird by his opponents. Events in Tunis, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Morocco and Algeria are demonstrating the utter failure and incompetence of Arab states.
And not only the Arabs, our lot are floundering between goody-goody intentions and the desperate need to see some sort of order to protect our oil supply.
Sarkozy has rolled out his biggest hat to date from which he is producing rabbits at an alarming rate. Recognize a Palestinian State ('public don't know what he is talking about), shut the frontier to Italy to keep out the unfortunate Tunisians and what not who had the money to get to Italy (overwhelming public support for this), toughen up immigration laws a la Cameron (overwhelming support), suspend Schengen (obviously suggested by Cameron's swivel eyed supporters and very popular here) - not a lot of consistency but who cares, it's only politics.
The military thing, although popular when it seemed that chucking a few cruise missiles and laser guided bombs would do the trick, is now down played.
The world has probably noticed that, of the 27 nations in NATO, only the British, the French and the Americans are in the shooting war. Now the Americans have pulled back (just in case Qaddafi turns out to be a good guy after all) the sum total effort seems to be four or five ground attack aircraft from the UK and a similar number from France. Of course there are about ten others who have supplied or promised 'planes but the boldest are cruising about at extreme altitude in the no fly-zone daring the redoubtable Libyan air force to come up and attack them. The remainder are parked on Italian air fields
Should the British public recover it"s wits in time after the "wedding" they will have the opportunity to clobber Cleg by rejecting the Alternative Vote proposal and booting out Lib-Dem councellors wherever found.
The coming of Ragnarok for the Lib-Dems raises one question to which we seek and answer, How did this lot of affluent wafflers get elected in the first place?
Cameron keeps mum, ready to dump Osborn as soon as his shallow brutality shines through to the voters and hoping against hope that the Young Pretender Milliband will fudge the Labour Party into un-electability. Meanwhile he, the Milliband, is having a nose job to remove his curiously continental nasal delivery when addressing his dwindling supporters. | | |
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I often get to wondering why I'm here these days. It usually comes over me when I find myself in the cellar gazing at the wine bottles. I wait, stalled, until the wife calls down with something like "Got that bottle of Morgon yet?" Then all is clear, I'm back in the groove and the music can play. My brother reports the same problem except that he finds himself in the Charity shop in Tavistock not knowing if he came to deliver or buy. He haunts charity shops to feed his book selling business which he runs on the internet. Turns a bob or two says he. Someone mentions homosexual fashion designers, (a bit redundant as a description, like drunken Russians or miserly Scotsmen) but it leads me to inform you that, thanks to the Bullinger's club cabinet, toppers are coming back. Marks and Sparks are doing a £25 line this winter. Might grab one next time I'm in Norwich just to show my English class what true decadence is. I write a lot of stuff for my English pupils. Interesting teaching material is hard to come by and, more often than not, these days, it's American. A lot of pieces are drawn from life (my life), others are historical in a light hearted sort of way. They love medievalism's. I even had a piece about Agincourt which they liked, despite themselves. This week I'm doing the two princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, daughters of Henry VIII. I can work in bits about France (Camp de Drap d'Or, Calais etc) which give them something to hook onto. They need it, all being well over sixty and none to sharp in the memory department.
There are worse though. Next to my class is one for "brain training" (completely useless but excellent psychology). I have fun every week standing at my class room door waiting for the "memory" crowd to ask me which room they're in. It's the same room every week, it's written on the chalk board downstairs, but by the time they have inched their way up to the second floor they've forgotten it again. Even the dear lady teaching the class has the habit of gripping me by the lapel and staring into my eyes with fierce concentration, "Young man, I've seen you somewhere before". She's not too bright with the optics either.
Ana has a paying job in a school for what I think one would call "Beauticians" in England. The school is "Bac plus three". That's a three year course after the baccalaureate, equivalent to a degree. English is compulsory in this profession. They have all done A level English at school but Ana has a hard struggle because they can't speak a word and the main Exam (worth 40 points out of a hundred,) is oral. Never mind, they're a very good looking bunch, well dressed, polite and very obedient. Teacher gets a lot of respect. This, plus the fact that Ana is a natural with children and young people, makes the whole thing quite enjoyable.
Her attraction for children is one of those mysteries scientist pall at. She only has to enter a department store when some mite slides it's sticky hand into hers and says "I've lost my Maman." Screaming babies stop and smile at her from perambulators and push chairs. Deranged mothers scowl ferociously at her, half suspecting she slipped the kiddo a line of coke or something. Well I'm rambling and night has fallen. Time to activate myself into the kitchen. Ana can't cook, she strained her right wrist, so I to the fore with my famous fondue Bourguignon which, fortunately for all concerned, is a "cook it yourself" dish. All I have to do is plug in the thingo that heats the oil of raisins and chop up the fillet.
Don't let me forget the wine - no danger of stalling in the cellar tonight. I popped down this morning when the sun was shining and clarity held sway to promote a bottle of Chiroubles to the kitchen table where it has been warming itself nicely all day. | | |
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Our son Edward (now living in Norwich) is becoming addicted to Sainsbury's. He says it's cheaper than Tesco and a lot cheaper than the market (which is very "up market" in my opinion). The big Ford Torero sounds like a lot of fun. The sort of car where you can spend a day packing and unpacking without needing to actually go anywhere.
We have the dedicated "walker" type here but only in organized hordes. One such horde is organized by a chap at the University where I teach. I see him copying maps on a Thursday afternoon. His gang are all over 70. I often wonder how he gets them all back to base. Seems it would take more than a map. We don't have the horsey brigade in the Charente Maritime. Horses are quite rare, perhaps because a sizeable chunk of the population eat them. The Perigord, however, is infested with riding types. Stables everywhere. But that's because there are more English down there than French. We also lack historic Land Rovers. Only Range Rovers are to be seen. They're mainly run by inhabitants of the Isle de Ré who unwrap them when they come down from Paris in the summer. They are reputed to be matchless when it comes to pushing cyclists off the road into water filled ditches. I heard that an old friend is living in Lynne. I wondered about Lynne. It's got a bit of history, a stretch of the Ouse bank, a disused port, a dying fishing fleet and some historic buildings. Probably do the whole lot in a weekend and then off, and don't come back for twenty years, by which time the trees will have grown a bit. He probably got down there through the Farmers Weekly because he was, I believe, once their special correspondent for East Anglia. (Our man in Lowestoft).
He was, always will be, able to mix with the sons of the soil and the riders of horses, the perfect fake gentleman farmer. He used to spend hours leaning on fences contemplating fields of mangolds just to slow down to the average mental rhythm of the countryman. He has a another house near Cromer, that nexus of the pulsating beach culture of the north Norfolk coast. He is cleaning it up prior to letting for income. I wonder where he will find the masochist who wants to rent a house near Cromer? Now for Piri-piri. The Portuguese having discovered Brazil through a feat of rotten navigation (they were bound for the Spice islands at the time) cast about for something they could turn a bob with. Chili peppers were a bit different and so they took some home and tried to palm them off on the nobility. En rout to a commercial disaster they came across some who had been to India who let on that the food there was atrocious. Everything being cooked in milk and cream which, considering the meats and fishes would go off on your plate before you could shake a chapatti at them left, a lot to be desired tastewise. Nothing that a good dose of Piri-piri wouldn't cure though. So the Maharajahs got sold on hot curries and never looked back. Of course every bit of piri-piri in the subcontinent had to be dragged laboriously from Brazil to Goa in ships. The Portuguese made importing seeds punishable by death, and did very well thank you with dried chili peppers priced in gold. Of course it had to come unstuck. Some bounder filled a hollow walking stick with seeds, sold them to a Rajah for the price of a luxury villa on the Riviera, and disappeared. Although the market collapsed overnight, the Portuguese simply moved on east to Malacca, Java, Bangkok, Vietnam, Macaõ and Japan pulling the same chili scam until it was time to move on. They tried the same thing in North America but found, to their consternation, that the Americans actually like eating what passes for food Stateside the way it is and objected to anyone messing with it. I'm having sauerkraut tonight and Ana is having langoustines. That's what you call compatibility. | | |
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farcalled's journal
