'HERE LIES JOHN BUNN, WHO WAS KILLED BY A GUN;

HIS NAME WAS NOT BUNN BUT WOOD,

BUT WOOD WOULD NOT RHYME WITH GUN

AND BUNN WOULD.'


British graveyards are full of fascinating, entertaining epitaphs - every month I shall put a new one up on the blog.

READING:

There were moments in my childhood where I felt so completely at odds with my parents that I was sure I must be adopted, and that somewhere in the world were two people who were my REAL parents and who would be charming, loving, and most of all, sympathetic and admiring of me. Of course this was not the case, I was the real child of my parents and merely suffering a typical bout of misunderstood youth. For the novelist A.M Homes whose memoir The Mistress’s Daughter I have just finished reading, such feelings were all too true. She WAS adopted as a newborn baby, and had always known the fact. She, like many other adoptees had always wondered about her biological parents, and had made some half-hearted attempts to trace them.

“In my dreams, my birth mother is a goddess, the queen of queens, the CEO, the CFO, and the COO. Movie-star beautiful, incredibly competent, she can take care of anyone and anything. She has made a fabulous life for her self, as ruler of the world, except for one missing link – me.”

However when, aged 31, her birth mother, Ellen, makes contact with her via the lawyer who had arranged the adoption, it comes as a complete surprise.
She discovers that Ellen was 22 when A.M. was born, and had been the mistress of Norman, an older married man, since she was 17 years old. Ellen has also contacted Norman to inform him she intends to trace their child, and so A.M. writes to both of them.

Almost immediately it becomes apparent that Ellen is a very difficult and needy woman. She never married, and has led a rather ramshackle life, both financially and emotionally. She considers herself sophisticated, but seems to be stuck in a time-warp of the early 60s. It is obvious that she has contacted A.M. because of her own needs rather than any desire to fill any needs of her daughter.

“Why won’t you see me?” she whines. “You’re torturing me. You take better care of your dog than you take of me.”
Am I supposed to be taking care of her? Is that what she’s come back for?
“You should adopt me – and take care of me”, she says.
“I can’t adopt you “, I say.

When A.M. first meets her birth father Norman in his lawyer’s office, the conversation is stilted and extremely odd.
“Tell me a little bit about you”, I say.
“I’m not circumcised. My grandmother was a strict Catholic, she had me baptised, I’m not circumcised”.

He also insists that they both undergo DNA testing to make sure she is his child, and when the results prove it to be the case he tells her that he will now introduce her to his family – he has four other children, all born before she was, and he is still married to his first wife. However, though he continues contact with A.M. for a while, he is reluctant to follow through with this promise, and eventually rejects her completely, even refusing to give her the DNA paperwork which proves his paternity.

Ellen dies unexpectedly a year or two after they have met, and A.M. is left even more painfully confused about who she is than she had been originally. Norman’s subsequent rejection, in effect abandoning her for a second time in her life, enrages her, and she embarks on a quest to discover everything she can about her ancestry.

Using all the tools of the electronic age she turns detective, following the tiniest clues and thanks to the wonders of the internet, and diligent fossiking in old archives, she builds up a picture of each of her parents and their antecedents, as well as the family history of her adopted parents who have remained solidly supportive whilst all this turmoil has been going on.
“The desire to know oneself and one’s history is not always equal to the pain the new information causes”.

Eventually she has a child of her own and at last becomes settled in a sense of self.
“I am my mother’s child and I am my mother’s child, I am my father’s child and I am my father’s child…
Did I choose to be found? No. Do I regret it? No. I couldn’t not know.”

Other people’s lives always seem more interesting than one’s own life, merely because their lives are unfamiliar. In this memoir A.M Homes has managed to distil what it is that people crave when they seek out their family backgrounds, a sense of belonging, a sense of place, and a sense of self. I found the book totally compelling.

Rated 5*

RANTING:

“Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

I have had enough of being ignored and today

I am going to play God. “

These are the opening lines of a poem entitled Education for Leisure* by Carol Ann Duffy, one of our most celebrated modern poets.

For the past 5 years, AQA one of the biggest exam boards in the UK, has included the poem together with others by the same poet, in an anthology of poetry used by students sitting English GCSE.

It is a challenging poem which gives much food for thought and I imagine it would generate some interesting comments during classroom discussions.

In all the years that the anthology has been included in AQA’s English syllabus, there have been three complaints about the poem. Two complaints about it both by the same person, referring to the narrator carrying a bread knife with the possible intention of hurting someone,

and one complaint about the line in the poem which refers to a goldfish being flushed down the loo.

Based on a back of the envelope calculation using GCSE numbers given on the OFQUAL website (Office of Qualifications & Examinations Register), I estimate somewhere in the region of ¾ million 16 year olds have written AQA’s GCSE English exam in the past 6 years

So – over several years and ¾ million students only THREE complaints. AQA say they have bowed to these complaints, given the current media publicity about knife crime, and have instructed schools to remove the poem and/or the anthology.

Why not do away with Romeo and Juliet? surely it is not an appropriate play for young people to study in Britain today; it features stabbings, gang warfare, the teenage protagonists are bunking out to have pre-marital sex and it climaxes with a double suicide. And as for The Merchant of Venice....

In fact, why doesn't AQA go the whole hog and just remove anything by W. Shakespeare from the curriculum, his plays are just far too violent and in the current climate of panic over knife crime it would be better that teenagers were not exposed to such influences.

Sorry if I seem snarky, but really AQA has been ridiculously weak - they should have had the guts to tell Pat Schofield - the complainant - that it is a POEM, not an instruction book. Removing that poem won’t stop knife crime – hells bells, the poem won’t have caused any knife crime in the first place.

What will they feel they should censor next ?

*Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

I have had enough of being ignored and today

I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,

a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.

We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in

another language and now the fly is in another language.

I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half

the chance. But today I am going to change the world.

Something's world. The cat avoids me. The cat

knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.

I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.

Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town

For signing on. They don't appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio

and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.

He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.

The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

RECIPE:

Way back in 1975 Shirley Conran wrote a bestselling book entitled 'Superwoman' in which she came up with the line "Life is too short to stuff a mushroom", and for many years I agreed with her. But then the delicious large open brown mushrooms known in the UK as Portobello mushrooms became widely available and I revised my ideas. These are wonderful as a side dish, as the vegetarian option on a braai/barbeque, or on their own as a light supper. The foul weather we have been enduring in Britain this summer has meant that these have had to be baked in the oven each time I've made them - too wet for braaing these past few weeks.

STUFFED MUSHROOMS

6 large flat mushrooms – Portobello or similar
3 spring onions, finely chopped
120 g white breadcrumbs
2 cloves garlic
1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped parsley
Salt & pepper
Olive oil

Optional extras:
A slice of cheese placed on top of each mushroom prior to baking.
A fried egg placed on top of each baked mushroom.

Pre-heat oven to 200°C

Remove the stalks from the mushrooms and chop finely.
Heat a little olive oil in a sauté pan and gently fry the spring onions and chopped mushroom stalks until onion is soft but not brown.
Put the breadcrumbs, chopped parsley, minced garlic, spring onions etc into a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Mix together, add a dash or two of olive oil if needed to make the stuffing slightly moist.
Divide the stuffing between the mushrooms and press it in carefully.
Drizzle a little more olive oil over each one.

Place the mushrooms on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 15-20 minutes until the mushroom is soft.

Alternatively, the mushrooms do well on a braai (use tongs to lift them), place round the sides of the grid when the braai is ready for cooking.

I'M FINDING IT DIFFICULT to convey the tone of voice I want in this blog, particularly when I am ranting, I can't seem to just let rip. I've been studying other rants in the blogosphere to see if I can gain some insights, and I 've stumbled across some real scorchers - try THIS to get an idea of what I mean - not that I want to emulate that particular style mind you, and it's not a subject I really have any strong views on either, but that is a rant in every sense of the word. Oh well, you'll just have to put up with me stumbling along until I find my true voice.

READING:

Ten years ago I read and enjoyed John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, so when I found a copy of his long awaited second book on my bedside when staying up in Fife last week I was really delighted; and fromthe moment I started reading The City of Falling Angels I was hooked. It was all I could do to stop myself booking a plane ticket and departing for Venice there and then. Many, many books have been written about Venice (or are set in Venice), travelogues, serious tomes on Venitian art and architecture, history, as well as crime, romantic and literary fiction. Berendt has written about Venice from a very different perspective. He writes -with a light, slightly gossipy style- about the Venetians, and through them the reader gets a wonderful portrait of this magical city at the beginning of the 21stC. He has used the burning of La Fenice , Venice's famous opera theatre, the criminal investigations which followed the fire, the convoluted machinations between various groups to get the theatre rebuilt, and the rebuilding itself, as the backbone of his book. Woven around that strand are encounters with an amazing cast of characters, The Rat Man, Count Volpi, Olga Rudge (Ezra Pound's widow, the feuding brothers, and any number of Contessas and Marcheses, not to mention the various English and American expats who have made Venice their home. His descriptions are so vivid that you can smell the damp, the hot chocolate at Florians, the seafood and the sewers. You can see the hoards of tourists who are the life-blood of the Venetian economy and paradoxically are destroying the city by their very numbers. You watch with amazed amusement as the various "Save" Venice organisations jockey for pre-eminance and prestige. This is a wonderful book, and I had to keep reminding myself that it is Non-Fiction, and that ALL the characters are real people and use their real names. If you are going to visit Venice for the first time, read this book; if you already know and love Venice, read this book; if you are an armchair traveller, read this book. You WILL enjoy it!


RANTING:

What is the latest and most desirable fashion accessory for women who must have it all?

A Birkin handbag by Hermes (a mere snip at $50,000)? Or a whopping big diamond ring?

No - it is a cute little black baby from an impoverished African country.

Conspicuous compassion is all the rage, Angelina Jolie does it, and now Madonna has just picked up a toddler from Malawi – from 12 little boys from around the country who were brought together so she could make her selection. Not unlike choosing a handbag, or a puppy.

Malawi has a law preventing out of country adoption of children, but faced with the opportunity of having a wealthy western pop star giving a large amount of money to an orphanage in the country they have speedily changed things so that she can adopt this baby boy. Of course if you or I were to go to Malawi and attempt to adopt a child, the situation would be quite, quite different. Why is that? because we wouldn’t have that sort of money. In effect, Madonna is buying this child, like buying a handbag, or a puppy.

Let’s think about the orphanage she is having built, will it be run by the Malawians according to their cultural beliefs and norms? or by one of the many NGOs who have laboured long and hard against poverty, disease and deprivation in central Africa? No, it will be run in accordance with Kabbalah beliefs and thinking with staff selected, appointed and paid by them. The same whacky group of Kabbalah adherents that Madonna has joined in recent years. Yes folks, the same group of believers who got her lobbying our government to clean up nuclear waste by using Kabbalah water - you don’t believe me? This article from The Sunday Times will explain all.

As far as this particular child is concerned, yes, Madonna and her husband are wealthy enough to support him; they may also be emotionally determined to love him, warts and all, for the rest of his life. All well and good, but why do it at all – she has no links to Malawi, she already has children, she has not stumbled on a child in immenant danger of death and saved him; she has decided to make a gesture, and the spin off is she will look caring and compassionate – ahh.

However that may not necessarily be what is best for this child. He will be with a family who are racially, culturally and economically far removed from his own. Where will he feel he belongs? He will never fit back in to his own community in Malawi again, nor will he ever be totally grounded in which ever country Madonna decides to keep him – rootless for ever. When in Family Court, a plan for the care of a child is being considered, we have to work through a welfare checklist and take account of many, many factors to determine what may be in the child’s best interests. It is not easy to get right, and very easy to get wrong. To whisk in to a foreign country accompanied by a huge entourage, spend 10 days there, and whisk out again with a baby tucked under the arm is terrible. This is a human being for god’s sake, not a handbag or a puppy.

RECIPE:
I am not a particularly frugal person, in fact my DH is always yelling at me to switch lights off, but I do hate to waste food in the kitchen. So what do you do when you have some bananas which have all become over-ripe simultaneously? (silly me, I put them in a fruit bowl with apples) I like my bananas verging on the greenish side, so the only way to use them up before they become totally vrot is to make something with them. This recipe was originally from The Times Calendar Cookbook by Katie Stewart, and when the kids were at primary school and took packed lunches, I used to make it regularly. In fact, like many of my family recipes, I used to make a double or treble quantity and freeze the extra loaf. [BTW a treble quantity will fill 2x medium (20x12x8cm) loaf tins.]

BANANA NUT LOAF

Pre-heat oven to 180°C

Grease and base line a small (18x10x5cm) loaf tin

175g self-raising flour

½ level teaspoon salt

1 level teaspoon mixed spice

100g castor sugar

50g chopped walnuts

2 medium sized ripe bananas

1 large egg

25g melted butter

Sift flour, salt, and mixed spice into a bowl. Stir in the sugar and walnuts. Peel the bananas and mash to a purée with a fork. Add to the dry ingredients along with the egg and melted butter. Using a wooden spoon stir to blend the ingredients and then beat thoroughly to mix.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared loaf tin. Spread the mixture evenly – make a slight indentation in the center to compensate for the rising process. Place the tin in the center of the pre-heated moderate oven and bake for 1 hour. Turn out on to a rack and leave until cold. Keeps well for several days in an airtight container. Freezes well.

Serve sliced and buttered.