EITHER THOSE CURTAINS GO OR I DO - Oscar Wilde.
For years I've waited for a time when I could quote that and it would be apposite, and now the moment has come....and both are going, the curtains to charity and me to a new home.

READING:

One of the best things about books and reading, as all avid readers know, is how you can be transported to another place, another time, another world as you read. If your own life is humdrum, or chaotic, or unhappy, a book can be better than any drug for taking you away from everything for a while.

The book I’ve just finished, One Last Look by Susanna Moore, removed me from packing cases and household mayhem and set me down in India in the early years of the 19^th century.

This is the fictional diary of Lady Eleanor Oliphant, from 1836-43, when she and her younger sister Harriet travel out east with their brother Henry who is taking up his position in Calcutta as the new governor general of India.

Coming from an aristocratic family, Eleanor has an innate sense of her own social superiority, and many pre-conceptions of how life in India will be. When she first arrives she is both horrified and fascinated by the place and the people but she slowly adjusts to the extreme heat and extraordinary way of life. The diary entries give an wonderful sense of the place with all its sensual allure and hordes of servants, contrasting with the smells, the plagues of insects, lethal fevers which sweep through the colony, droughts, monsoons and the wretched poverty of most of the Indian populace. The sisters accompany their brother on a journey across Northern India to the Punjab to meet up with the Maharaja Ranjit Singh, a wily old warlord. The whole excursion is a massive event taking 2½ years.

"Why,'' Lady Eleanor asks, ''must we travel with scribes, equerries, victualers, cooks, officers with their wives and children and parrots and spaniels, tent pitchers, herdsmen, syces, grass cutters, musicians, dancing girls, water bearers, butchers, sweepers, tailors, valets, hairdressers, the Bombay Troop, the queen's 12th Regiment, the Irish guards and 2,000 native archers?''
It seems nothing in India can be done without involving vast numbers of people. On the other hand, most of the British, who are scattered so thinly throughout the vastness of the sub-continent, are half-mad with loneliness.

One of Henry’s objectives is to ensure that Afghanistan doesn’t fall under Russian influence, and he instigates a disastrously ill-fated incursion which comes to a horribly bloody end and as a result a new governor general is sent out from England and the Oliphants return to London.

The book has no real plot to speak of, but because it encompasses Eleanor’s time in India it does have a clear beginning, middle and end. Eleanor herself was not a character I liked, and the strong hints given by the author that she is in an incestuous relationship with her brother seemed rather pointless to me. None-the-less I was wholly absorbed in the book and it made me think hard about the early colonial adventures on which the British embarked.

Susanna Moore has drawn heavily on the diaries and letters of three real women: Fanny Parks, who was the wife of a colonial civil servant, and Emily and Fanny Eden who accompanied their brother George when he became governor general of India in 1835; in places she has actually used their words – however she has turned their writings into a fascinating tale of how the British were bewitched with India – as Eleanor says when they return to London “nothing will ever be the same”. If that was true for the Oliphants (Edens) it was doubly true for the peoples of India.

Rated 4*

RANTING:

Here’s a joke for you: ‘Father Murphy walks into a pub and asks a man: “Do you want to go to Heaven?” He says “I do” — and is told to stand by the wall. The priest asks a second man, who also says yes — and also waits by the wall. The priest then asks O’Toole, who says No. The astonished priest replies: “So when you die you don’t want to go to Heaven?” O’Toole says: “Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."

You may or may not think that is hilarious/mildly amusing/downright stupid, but I’ll take a bet that the one thing you didn’t think when you read it was that it was racist, I certainly didn’t.

However down in Devon that joke, and a few others in similar vein, has caused a furore which has culminated in Denis Lusby the editor and publisher of a monthly local community rag resigning after Ms Ginny Hamilton-White, the head of Cornwall County Council’s equality and diversity committee wrote to local schools complaining that the jokes breached the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000. Apparently she had previously taken exception to jokes about Essex girls for the same reason. You can read all about the brouhaha HERE.

As I am from Africa (Zambia, Malawi and South Africa) and having seen apartheid up close and personal, I have a well tuned ear for racism both overt and covert. And that joke doesn't even come close.
What really gets me is that a stupid, pompous, self-righteous individual is getting away with using a piece of serious legislation to stifle silly jokes.

We all NEED jokes; life would be bloody dreary without them. Van de Merwe jokes, Irish jokes, Essex girl jokes, Aberdonian jokes, New York Jewish jokes, Polish jokes, Eskimo jokes, Mother-in-law jokes….you can probably think of half-a-dozen more categories. They all tend to be based on stereotypes but that doesn’t stop them being funny. Will people please stop complaining – they’re only JOKES. Ms G H-W in Cornwall needs to get a sense of proportion (it’s probably too late for her to get a sense of humour).

And now, just for my DH who is frae Aberdeen:

Donald called in to see his friend Alistair, to find he was stripping the wallpaper from the walls. Rather obviously he remarked “I see you’re decorating” to which Alistair replied “Och no, we’re moving house.”

Boom, boom! (it’s the way I tell ‘em!)

RECIPE:

Packing up the house ready for moving is taking its toll, boxes of stuff are being sent to charity shops, to the dump, to the recycling centre. Now I am working my way through kitchen supplies too. I have found half used packets of all sorts of stuff at the back of one cupboard, jars of exotic things like razor clams in chilli sauce. a box of chinese dried white fungus ( what was I thinking of, buying that??) and an impulse buy of a wholesale pack of 12 tins of corned beef.... Waste not, want not being my DH's creed, we are eating our way through the freezer and the kitchen shelves. Last Sunday I cooked a frozen leg of Australian lamb/mutton which my DDBF had stowed in the freezer a year ago. At the same time I used up an open packet of dried haricot beans, plus the tail end of a bottle of rerd wine which was lingering on the sideboard begging to be drunk.

This is a classic French recipe I remember my mum making, and I always loved it, I haven't had it for years. You do have to start prepping the beans the night before, but that apart it is very simple, and you can go off and pack more boxes whilst it is cooking. It is absolutely scrummy and very filling. (Health warning - does tend to induce flatulence!)

GIGOT AUX HARICOTS

Serves 6 hungry people generously

1 leg of lamb/mutton
thyme & rosemary
2 tbs olive oil
2 large onions
4 cloves garlic
2 oz butter
Juice of 1 lemon
1 large glass red wine
1 tbs flour
4 tbs tomato puree
dry breadcrumbs
1 lb haricot beans

Soak the haricot beans overnight. Rub the skin of the joint with salt, pour some olive oil and lemon juice over it, and leave for several hours or overnight.

The next day, drain the beans and then cook them in fresh water for about an hour and a half (until just tender) - keep the cooking water on one side when done.

Pre-heat the oven to 170C.
Put the meat in a large fireproof dish (not a roasting tin), pour over the oil and lemon juice in which it has been lying, add a little more oil, some thyme and rosemary, and the peeled garlic cloves. Start roasting in a moderate oven about an hour and a half before you want to eat it.

Meanwhile, cut the onions in half, slice them, and fry in bacon fat until they begin to brown. Sprinkle with flour and cook a bit longer, stirring so it doesn't stick too much. Add salt and the red wine and let it bubble and thicken, scraping the bottom of the pan. Stir in some of the bean water and the tomato puree, add the beans and simmer gently for as long as is convenient (10 minutes will do). Add more bean stock if it seems too thick. When the joint has roasted for an hour, pour the beans into the dish, distribute them round the lamb, and cover with breadcrumbs. Cook for a further half hour and sprinkle with parsley before serving.

You can prep the bean mix in advance of putting the lamb to roast if it is more convenient.

IT'S BEEN A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, AND I'VE BEEN WORKING LIKE A DOG.
IT'S BEEN A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, I SHOULD BE SLEEPING LIKE A LOG..

READING:

I have just finished a highly praised graphic memoir Epileptic by David B. lent to me by my daughter. It was originally published in France under the title ‘L’Asension du Haut-Mal’.

Born Pierre-Francois Beauchard, David B. grew up in a small town near Orleans. He was the middle son in a family of three children, and they all had a happy normal childhood until his older brother Jean-Christophe developed epilepsy at the age of eleven. . His brother’s condition had a profound effect on David and his whole family. In fact you could say that they were all suffering from epilepsy. The conventional medical treatments at the time failed to contain his brother’s illness, and desperate for a cure their parents dragged the children round France, from macrobiotic communes to acupuncturists, from Swedenborgian mediums to magnetic therapists. Each new ‘therapy’ was seized on with hope and a determination to follow it to the letter. The drawings are very dark, mysterious and sometimes violent. He depicts his brother’s illness as a Mayan-style dragon/snake which has him in its clutches and which must be fought to the death, and also as a mountain that Jean-Christophe has to climb He explores his family history and the profound effect the death of his grandfather had on himself and his mother. As the years go by and David grows up, he finds he cannot separate himself from his brother and his illness however hard he tries, and he starts really seeing the physical and mental toll that epilepsy has taken on Jean-Christophe, how he is now really intellectually damaged by the condition, bloated from medication, his body and head scarred from the numerous falls when he has seizures.

I found the whole book a disturbing read, and was often tempted to turn two or three pages at a time to avoid some of the images, if this were the first graphic novel I had read, I might well have been discouraged from reading any others as it is very dark and at times depressing. However it did make me think hard about how a whole family suffers when one member has a serious illness, and the way that siblings of a sick child are frequently sidelined by parents who are stretched to breaking point coping with the situation. The book also made me much more aware of the stigmatism of epilepsy, the lack of public awareness or understanding - attitudes which I suspect are much the same now as they were when David B. was growing up.

Critics of the "graphic novel" as a form of literature often imply that they are merely "comic books", a simplistic story with lots of pictures which just illustrate the words. In fact a true graphic novel (and there are many wonderful ones, Maus by Art Spiegelman and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi to name but two) does much more than that. The emotions and ideas of the writer/artist are often expressed visually and not in the text, so everything melds together melds together to provide something that is more complete than either the words or pictures could do on their own.

RANTING:

Salman Rushdie is not my favourite author. He is not even on my top ten list of favourite authors. I have read three of his books, and each time I felt as though I was eating too much very rich fruitcake. The patterns of words got in between me and the story he was telling. Nevertheless, I believe that all authors should be free to write what they want in their fiction however much some people may dislike it, and I think Britain was absolutely correct to protect him against the fatwa issued against him when his book “The Satanic Verses” was published back in 1989. Most of the ‘outraged’ Muslims who indulged in book-burning and frenzied rhetoric at the time had never even read the damn book in the first place.

Now the whole bloody brouhaha has erupted again because Rushdie has been given a knighthood in the recent Queen’s Birthday Honours. Pakistan’s politicians and mullahs have been particularly vociferous; the Pakistani parliament passed a unanimous resolution deploring the honour as an insult to Muslims. The religious affairs minister, Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq, went even further. He is quoted as saying said: "The West always wonders about the root cause of terrorism. Such actions are the root cause of it. If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammed, his act is justified." What an appalling statement. This is near as dammit an incitement to murder British citizens.

We Britons are giving Pakistan some £480 million in Development Aid over the next 3 years. If their government don’t like us honouring one of our own citizens, and threaten us with terrorist acts, perhaps they would like to send the money back? If not, they should just stop this dangerous posturing, they are biting the hand that feeds them.

RECIPE:

Yesterday I was reading something about ancient Rome and it got me thinking about what the Romans ate. After all, this was long before the discovery of the New World with all the fruits and vegetables that have come from there. So, no maize, no tomatoes, no potatoes....therefore no pizza toppings, tomato sauces, potato gnocci and probably no pasta either. What little I know of the Roman diet can be boiled down to half a dozen ingredients - spelt (grain and flour), honey, various herbs (mint being particularly popular), dormice(!!), and garum (a liquid made from fermenting fish heads and innards in water and vinegar).

I had de-frosted some lamb steaks for dinner and decided to experiment and attempt a dish that could have been eaten in Ancient Rome. Not having any garum, I decided that Thai Fish Sauce (Nam Pla) was probably the nearest modern equivalent. It was a great success, so without further ado Ladies and Gentlemen I give you:

CAESAR’S LAMB STEAKS

4 lamb steaks – or 4 thick meaty lamb chops
2 tablespoons clear honey
2 tablespoons of fresh mint, finely chopped
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
Freshly ground black pepper

Mix the honey, fish sauce and fresh mint together, season with a good grinding of pepper (I did not use any salt as the fish sauce is quite salty enough). Place the steaks side by side in a shallow oven proof dish and brush half the honey mix over them. Turn them over and brush the remainder of the honey mix over the other side. You can now leave the steaks in the fridge until you are ready to cook them.

Pre-heat the oven to190°C. put the uncovered dish into the hot oven and cook for 10-15 minutes. Open the oven and turn the steaks then continue to cook for a further 10-15 mins. Remove from oven and serve on hot plates with vegetables of your choice, or with a mixed salad. (Last night we had these with fine green beans mixed with fresh broad beans, and some Jersey Royal new potatoes.)

.

THAT MONEY TALKS, I CAN'T DENY,
I HEARD IT ONCE, IT SAID 'GOODBYE'
And that was before it had even reached my bank account...


READING:
‘A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl's best friend’ sang Marilyn Monroe in the movie adaptation of Anita Loos’ immortal classic ‘Gentlemen prefer blondes’. I have to confess I have never been much of a one for diamonds but show me a fire opal – ah ha, now we’re talking, and if my arm were really twisted I might just be forced to accept a large square-cut tanzanite set in yellow gold.
There can’t be a woman in the world who isn’t interested in small, beautifully crafted, shiny, sparkly items that can be worn on a finger, on earlobes, round neck, wrist or ankle, and nowadays in navels and nostrils as well. So I can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t find this book absolutely fascinating.
Buried Treasure: Travels Through the Jewel Box by Victoria Finlay is about the jewels that have been prized throughout history. She uncovers their histories, the stories and legends attached to them, and visits the places where they originate. Using the scale devised in the early 1800s by a young German mineralogist called Friedrich Mohs, the author starts with the softest mineral and ends with the hardest; in ascending order these are Amber, Jet, Pearl, Opal, Peridot, Emerald, Sapphire, Ruby, and Diamond. Her travels take her from Whitby on the Yorkshire coast, which has been producing jet jewellery since Roman times, to the famous Big Hole at Kimberly in South Africa and in between she visits underground mining towns in the Australian Outback noodling for opals, military controlled Ruby mines in Burma (or as we are now supposed to call it Myanmar) and a hick town called Peridot in the Apache reserve in western Arizona. Exotic tales of Helen of Troy and her sapphires, Cleopatra’s emerald mines, and the fabulous red opal which Napoleon gave to Josephine, are juxtaposed with lurid tales of diamond scams, fake amber, murder, war and corruption. The whole book is stuffed with illustrations and nuggets of information from how synthetic gems are now so good that they may undercut the traditional market prices for precious stones, to a miscellany of useful facts and figures, including this list of birthstones:
January – garnet; February – amethyst; March – aquamarine; April – diamond; May – emerald; June – pearl/moonstone; July – ruby; August – peridot; September – sapphire; October – opal/tourmaline; November – topaz/citrine; December – turquoise.
I leave you with a quote from a Burmese taxi driver “There is something mad about valuing little stones so highly, you can’t eat them, you can’t read them, you can’t shelter under them…”


RANTING:
Ranting at myself for sheer idiotic stupidity - last night we went to a show put on by a whole lot of folk in the publishing industry to raise money for two charities. A dear friend of ours was acting in it and so a whole group of us got together to go and support him and support a good cause at one and the same time. Nothing idiotic about all that.
BUT, on Friday evening I had a phone call from a newish friend who said she was phoning to remind me we were due to have dinner with her last night. YIKES, what had I done?
And this is where my idiocy kicks in. Some weeks ago at a mutual friend's 50th birthday party she had asked us for dinner and I had said yes. However I had obviously had one (or two) too many glasses of champagne and completely forgot about the invitation. So when she phoned (once I had picked myself off the floor where I had collapsed with embarrassment) I had to eat huge helpings of humble pie, apologise profusely, and admit I had made a complete cock-up. DH is very, very annoyed with me for making this bugger's muddle. I should learn from this, but what is it I should learn? never accept an invitation given at a party when I don't have my diary with me? or never to have too much champagne?

RECIPE:

At the moment the whole of England is basking in the most glorious weather, simply perfect for lazing about in the garden, reading the Sunday Papers, and slapping a piece of meat on the braai when a meal is required. Years ago we did a house-swap with a family from Santa Cruz in California, and whilst over there I was given this marinade for lamb which has become my all-time favourite. Next time you are going to braai (barbeque) some lamb do give it a try, I predict you will love it too.

CALIFORNIAN MARINADE FOR LAMB

¼ cup soy sauce
½ cup red wine
¼ cup brandy
Juice of one orange
Juice of one lemon
2 Tablespns honey
1 teaspn dry mustard
1 large tomato cut in pieces
3 medium cloves garlic, crushed
10 grinds black pepper

Put all the above ingredients into a blender and whiz together to make the marinade. Pour into a large plastic bag, Butterfly a boneless leg of lamb (approximately 2.5 Kg), and put it into the plastic bag with the marinade and seal the top tightly. Give the bag a good sloosh* about so all the meat gets covered with the marinade and put it in the fridge. Every time you open the fridge give the bag another sloosh about. Do this for between 3- 24 hours prior to cooking.

Remove meat from marinade (which you reserve), and cook it on the braai for about 15 minutes each side. Let it rest before carving. Also works well under a domestic oven grill.

If you want a gravy, pour the reserved marinade into a smallish saucepan, boil down to about half its original volume, and stir in a cup of chicken stock. Bring to the boil again, and reduce by half.

*sloosh is a very useful culinary term in my kind of cooking.

FEELING SHATTERED HAVING STAYED UP TOO LATE watching the results of the US Mid-term election results - Woo Hoo, Americans have woken up and given Bush a bloody nose at long last...and that foul man Rumsfeld has gone! Hooray! Mind you, he patronised everybody to the bitter end, in his valedictory speech he said that the war in Iraq was too complex for most people to understand - so he understands it but we don't eh?

READING:

I bought The Thirteenth Tale because I had read in the press that it had sold barely 600 copies in the UK but over 70,000 in the USA, and I was curious about it.
From the very first chapter I was totally engrossed in this beautifully written book. The author Diane Setterfield, whose debut novel this is, has written a mesmerizing gothic mystery which explores themes of love, loss, and obsession. The book is structured like novels from an earlier time, with a clear beginning middle and end; and yet...the story loops round on itself, twists and turns and comes back to where it began whilst simultaneously carrying the reader forward towards the end. In brief, it is the story of a famous but reclusive writer, Vida Winter, who contacts the writer of the book, a young woman by the name of Margaret Lea, daughter of an antiquarian bookseller, and invites her to visit and start writing Miss Winter's official biography. Miss Winter tells her story of the twins Adeline and Emmeline to Margaret in an episodic fashion and Margaret is not always sure if she is being told the truth about Miss Winter's life, or just more of her fiction.
Diane Setterfield pays homage to previous great writers with subtle references to Bronte's Jane Eyre, Collins' The Woman in White, Du Maurier's Rebecca, and James' Turn of the Screw all of which have echoes in this book.
Above all for me, the author articulates what it means to be an avid reader in words that exactly mirror my own experience and feelings:" I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books."
With this book, Diane Setterfield has given me back some of that childhood lost pleasure.

RANTING:

"Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat where have you been?

I've been up to London to look at the Queen.
Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair."

Well pussy cat, you can’t do that again, you probably wouldn’t be allowed into Buck House, and you are certainly not allowed into the Houses of Parliament. Not if those twits at the Health & Safety Executive have anything to do with it.

Some years ago, MPs began to notice that the House of Commons seemed to be infested with mice. Mice are often a problem in old buildings. The thing about mice is, despite what the huggy-bunny brigade may think, they are not sweet little Beatrix Potter creatures - they are incontinent, disease-carrying vermin. They usually contaminate foodstuffs with urine, droppings, and hair. One mouse can excrete up to 100 fecal pellets per day, as well as deposit hundreds of small droplets of urine during its travels.

In 2002 some Lib Dem MPs asked if a couple of cats could be brought in to sort out the problem. They seem to have been blanked by those who organise the housekeeping of the HoC/HoL although a few old fashioned mousetraps were put down. Recently the mouse situation has become much, much worse. To the extent that they are often seen running about – one even crossed the floor of the Chamber during a debate. The Houses of Parliament have several cafeterias/restaurants/bars all serving food to a greater or lesser extent. In addition, many MPs work through the lunch hour, taking sandwiches and rolls to eat at their desks. Obviously there are crumbs, and their waste paper baskets have the remanents of anything they haven’t consumed. All in all the whole Palace of Westminster is vermin heaven. Why would they bother with traps baited with manky bits of bread and cheese saturated with poison, when there are much better gourmet pickings to be had? Anne McIntosh, a Conservative who represents the Vale of York in Parliament, told the Daily Telegraph that she requested a cat after seeing a mouse in the Commons Tea Room.

I should point out, that if this were a commercial catering outlet anywhere else in the country they would be shut down before you could say gnat’s crochet, and quite rightly too. But because this is the HoC it just carries on as if nothing had happened, despite umpteen complaints.

To be fair, Pest Exterminators have been brought in, but they have concluded that because of the age, complexity and layout of the HoC, it is not a situation they could control.

So a cat or two (or even three or four) would seem to be a Good Idea. After all, what do cats do? They catch mice, indeed you could say that that is their raison d’etre. They are clean animals, they do not run about dribbling urine for a start. They are low cost, work anti-social hours, do not require employment contracts, and will not add to global warming or the balance of payments. But those good old Health & Safety gauleiters who seem to have disproportionate power these days said NO (nix, niet, nein, non).

Anne McIntosh was told that a cat would not be permitted as “it might get near food” – so mice can wee and poo all over the tea rooms, that’s ok, but a cat is potentially unhealthy.

Who are the nutters who make these decisions? I despair.

RECIPE:

This week I had intended to have a pot roast for Sunday lunch, but when I got to the butcher's he had no brisket left. So I opted for a shoulder of lamb instead, and asked him to bone it out for me. I have boned a shoulder myself in the past, but it took forever to do and was quite fiddly, a butcher can do it in two shakes of a lamb's tail! Shoulder is cheaper than leg of lamb, but much fattier, and a stuffing soaks some of that up, and makes the meat go further. This is a stuffing I used to make years ago - so it was time to revive it. It has a sort of north African influence, with the apricots and cumin, and is really delicious and different with lamb. Do be sure to season well with salt and pepper though, or the balance of flavours won't be as good.

SHOULDER OF LAMB WITH GREEN PEPPER, APRICOT & PINENUT STUFFING

One large boned shoulder of lamb

4 slices of good quality brown bread, crusts removed
½ medium sized onion, finely chopped
½ green pepper, cored, seeded and finely chopped
1 tablespoon sunflower oil.
2 tablespoons pine nuts
8 dried apricots, finely chopped
¾ teaspoon ground cumin
Salt and pepper
1 large egg

½ wineglass medium sherry mixed with ½ glass water

1 ball of string

Tear the bread into pieces and whiz into crumbs in a food processor. Tip into a bowl.
Brown the pine nuts in a dry frying pan, stirring constantly, it only takes a few moments. Add to the breadcrumbs.
Add the oil to the frying pan and gently sauté the chopped onion and green pepper for 3 or 4 minutes until translucent and soft. Add to the breadcrumbs, along with the chopped apricot, ground cumin, salt and pepper. Mix all together with a wooden spoon.
Lightly beat the egg with a fork and add it to the mixture, stirring well to bind it all together.
Lay the boned shoulder of lamb on the work surface “skin” side down. Carefully remove any excess fat you can see. Season the surface of the meat with salt and pepper, then spread the stuffing over it evenly, making sure it is in all the pockets in the meat, and that you do not spread it right to the edges.
Roll up the meat carefully, pressing the stuffing in if it bulges out. Cut several pieces of string long enough to go round the rolled lamb, then tie the lamb firmly with string in 3 or 4 places around the roll to hold it together whilst cooking. This is not as difficult as it sounds, but if you haven’t done it before, you may find it easier with someone to help you.

At this point you can set the lamb aside until you are ready to roast it; it can be prepared the day before, and kept overnight in the fridge.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Place the lamb, joined side down, in a roasting tin (one of those old-fashioned ones with a lid is idea, but you can just cover the tin with cooking foil), and pour the sherry and water over the lamb.
Cover the roasting tin and cook in the oven for 1½ hours.
Remove the cover and return to the oven for a further ½ hour. Remove lamb from the roasting tin strain off any excess fat, and use the juices to make gravy.

Let the lamb rest for 5-10 minutes out of the oven before serving.