IF YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING NICE, ITS BETTER NOT TO SAY ANYTHING AT ALL - as someone's granny once said....

READING:

Last month a Canadian cousin of mine mentioned that she’d just finished Lullabies for Little Criminals by Canadian author Heather O’Neill and that she’d found it heart-wrenching. Always on the lookout for something new I got hold of a copy and it jumped straight to the top of my reading pile.

Baby – which she takes pains to explain is her real name – is the narrator, and is twelve years old when the book begins. She lives with her heroin addict father Jules in the red light district of Montreal. Jules was only 15 when Baby was born, and has taken sole care of her since her mother died when Baby was an infant. They lead a ramshackle life, moving from one crummy apartment to another whenever lack of money or Jules’ drug induced paranoia determines it. Dressed in a motley assortment of clothing from thrift shops, and items found in dumpsters, often dirty and smelly and underfed, Baby still manages to get to school every day, despite the chaotic life she and Jules lead. Every so often Baby comes to the attention of the social services, and she is taken into either foster care or sent to juvenile detention for a few months. These placements should offer her some respite from life with Jules, but they have their dangers too, both physical and emotional.

Baby has always told herself stories about things, her sharp intelligence and self-awareness have given her some advantages when it comes to grasping fleeting moments of happiness in a horrid life. Above all, Baby – like all children – just wants to be loved and looked after. This makes her vulnerable to anyone who shows her affection and understanding, and when Alphonse, a local pimp, sets his sights on her she has no realisation that he is grooming her for his own uses. She moves into an “adult” world even though her thoughts and emotions are still those of a child. Eventually Baby finds that she needs to escape from the mess in which she is living, and her feckless father manages to help her to find a way to make her way towards a new life.

There is a phrase you often hear quoted about someone’s childhood, “because of so-and-so happening, they grew up quickly”, but I am not sure that is ever true, children may appear to be grown up and behave as adults but in their heads they still think very much as children, and approach life from a child’s perspective.

In Family Court here in Britain I have come across cases of parents like Jules, and children not dissimilar to Baby, they are always difficult cases to resolve, and I often felt frustration at having to implement the least bad option rather than any positive option

Baby is such a strong character, and so real that there were moments when all I wanted to do was hug her and take her home with me. At other moments, as an adult, I could see what was coming and desperately wanted to warn her not to do certain things, or fend off some of the appalling people who treat her so badly.

I realise that this may not sound the most appealing book to read. It is certainly not warm and fuzzy. However I do recommend it very strongly, O’Neill’s imagery is beautiful and her writing often lifts the subject matter to poetic levels.

Rated 4.5*

RANTING:

Who would spend hard earned money on a tell-all memoir by Jordan, Britain’s most famous topless model? Not me that’s for sure. But neither will I be rushing out to buy a copy of the memoirs of Cherie Blair, Lord Levy or John Prescott. As far as I am concerned they are just as ghastly in concept as anything ghosted for Jordan.

These three individuals stood, for different reasons, close to the heart of government in Britain for several years: Cherie Blair as a celebrated QC and wife of the Prime Minister, Lord ‘Cashpoint’ Levy as a so-called ‘eminence gris’ and major fund-raiser for the Labour party in general and the Blairs in particular, and John ‘Two-Jags’ Prescott, the belligerent and bumbling Deputy Prime Minister.

In the past month all three have produced memoirs, extracts from which have been published, with much trumpeting, in the broadsheet papers.

And nasty, spiteful, self-serving stuff it has been too.

To be honest I have not read it all, but some of the things they’ve said in their books have been impossible to avoid as the media has seized on them with glee and reported and re-reported each one. So I have heard about Prezzer’s referral to Gordon Brown as a “little shit” and his bulimia…did I want or need to know this? Levy’s fury at being used to raise money and then dropped in the mire by Blair and the rest of the Labour party when things got smelly smacks of one long whine, and that never makes for enjoyable reading.

But the gold medal for bitchy score settling must go to Cherie Blair whose memoir leaves no personal detail untold. For a woman who ostentatiously guarded her family’s privacy to now give us the gory details of her contraceptive arrangements, her miscarriage and how her husband used it to deflect speculation about the situation in Iraq, her rows with Alistair Campbell and others, is breathtaking in it’s hypocrisy.
This is the kind of stuff that should be aired in a ranting blog, and not in a supposedly serious book.

We need politicians whether we like them or not, and this kind of back-biting, mud-slinging stuff damages the public perception of them, and increases the view that they are all absolute rotters to the core. It makes me shudder, thank god that I am not now, and nor have I ever been a member of the Labour party.

RECIPE:

This past 10 days the weather in London has been absolutely divine - hot and sunny, and we have been able to eat outside almost every evening. We've also been entertaining quite a bit, and as ever I like to prep as much as possible well before hand so I can sit and enjoy a drink with our guests before the meal. I love granadillas - or as the Brits call them 'passion fruit'; when I was a child in Africa I often ate one like a boiled egg, with the top cut off and a teaspoon. Combined with mangoes they make the most delicious mousse, and this is a really good dessert which can be made in advance.

MANGO & GRANADILLA MOUSSE

Serves 6-8

2 large ripe mangoes
5 granadillas (passion fruit)
3 egg whites
240ml double or whipping cream
1 sachet (10g) powdered gelatine
10ml tropical fruit juice (lemon or orange juice will do as well)
2 tablespoons caster sugar
Sprigs of mint for garnish

Put the fruit juice into a small non-metal bowl and sprinkle the gelatine over it, leave for 5 minutes to become spongy.

Place the bowl in the microwave and heat for 1½ minutes until the gelatine has all dissolved (do not let it boil). Allow it to cool while you prepare the fruit.

Peel the mangoes and cut the flesh into chunks, retaining as much juice as you can.

Spoon the pulp (including pips) from 4 of the granadillas into a blender, add the mango chunks and caster sugar. Whiz everything into a purée.

Add the cool gelatine liquid to the puree, stir to mix together.

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

In a large bowl, whip the cream until very thick, and then add the mango puree and mix together gently.

Carefully fold the beaten egg whites into the mango/cream mixture.

Spoon into individual serving glasses or one large glass bowl and chill in the fridge for 3-4 hours.

Before serving, spoon a little of the pulp from the remaining granadilla on top of each mousse, and garnish with a sprig of mint.

THANK GOD FOR THE INTERNET, IT HAS MADE IT POSSIBLE TO STAY IN TOUCH WITH OLD FRIENDS EVEN WHEN WE ARE THOUSANDS OF MILES APART.


READING:

The old saw that you can't tell a book by it's cover is undoubtedly true, but I find that I am often drawn to a book merely because the cover appeals to me, and with few exceptions I have not been disappointed. Miss Webster and Cherif by Patricia Duncker is a case in point, the cover was intriguing which is why I picked it up, and within I found a delightful tale which I really enjoyed reading.

Miss Webster is a retired schoolmarm, very much in the Miss Jean Brodie mould, living in a quintessentially English village where she has not endeared herself to her fellow villages with her peppery tongue and dogmatic views on life. Approaching seventy, she feels she has been unjustly pushed out of teaching when she still had much to offer. With nothing much to fill her time she is angry and depressed and eventually has a severe nervous breakdown.

The consultant who treats her suggests she travels to somewhere very different from England as part of her recovery process so she sets off for a trip to Morocco. It is indeed very different, she sees the desert meets various locals and is on the fringe of a terrorist incident. The trip has had the result the consultant hoped for and she returns to the UK with a new vigour.

One evening, shortly after her return, her doorbell rings, and there on her front step is a very beautiful young Arab with a large suitcase. He announces himself as Chérif, the son of the woman who was manager at the hotel in Morocco at which Miss Webster had stayed. From his bag he produces gifts sent to her by his mother; Chérif has arrived in England to take up a college place in Oxford, and as he is unable to find suitable accommodation Miss Webster takes him in as her lodger.

The growing relationship between the elderly spinster and Chérif is delicately portrayed. For some reason Chérif believes that Miss Webster’s unmarried state is a result of her having been an English lady detective like Miss Marple, and together with his misapprehensions about England and the language - he cannot understand why on a motorway there are signs referring to the hard shoulder – this brings about some amusing cultural clashes. He very quickly acquires an English girlfriend and they become a surrogate family for Miss Webster.

After 9/11 Miss Webster finds that Chérif is regarded with suspicion by the locals, and also has attracted the attention of the security services. Is he really who he claims to be? In finding answers to this question Miss Webster shows her courage and her loyalty to her new friends.

Events reach a crisis point which takes them all back to Morocco for a surprising but satisfying dénouement.

In Miss Webster Patricia Duncker has created a memorable character whose bloody-minded attitude to life and to those in authority, manages to overcome xenophobia and convention, providing a hint of steel in what is a delicately charming tale.

Rated: 4*

RANTING:

I've just come back to Britain from South Africa, a country I know and love, a country with real problems and where life is often fragile and transitory. We in the UK live in what is, by comparison, a very safe country - but there are those who don't think so. It seems that here in Britain we have to manufacture dangers where none exist and the latest and nuttiest "danger" to be addressed is that of Unprotected Text.

Some nutter has decided that people who walk along composing or reading text messages on their mobile phones sometimes bump into lamp posts because they are not paying attention to where they are going, and they might hurt themselves. My word that is SO dangerous. What should be done??? Pad the lamp posts. I kid you not, pad the bl**dy lamp posts to prevent idiots hurting themselves. Brick Lane, a well known East London street is the site chosen for a trial study of padded lamp posts. The padding is being sponsored by 118 118 (the company which provides one of the recently privatised directory inquiry services). This is completely mad. If people are stupid enough not to look where they are going that is their problem. Grow up you morons. In the real world there are real dangers.

RECIPE:

Anyone who knows South Africa and South Africans knows that the braai (barbeque) is part of the culinary culture. A couple of weekends ago I was in Hermanus and a friend produced this absolutely delicious salad to accompany the braaied meats. It would go equally well with grilled chops and provided you can get mangoes, which are stocked in asian greengrocers pretty well all year round, it could be made at any time, even in winter.

JENNIE B'S GREEN MANGO SALAD

6 mint leaves,shredded

1.5 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1.5 tablespoons fish sauce

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 Thai red birdseye chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

3 green mangoes

2 tablespoons chopped dry roast peanuts

1 handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

1 lettuce, shredded - or a generous amount of rocket

To make the dressing, combine the mint, fish sauce, lime juice, chilli and caster sugar in a jar and shake well.

Peel and stone the mangoes and cut the flesh into even 2cm chunks. Cover a serving platter with the lettuce or rocket and put the mango chunks on top.
Just before serving pour the dressing over the mango and scatter the peanuts and coriander over the top.