TODAY IS THE START OF CHINESE NEW YEAR, THE YEAR OF THE OX.
I have been told that people born in the Year of the Ox are: responsible, dependable, honest, caring, honourable, intelligent, artistic, industrious and practical.
However, they are also: petty, inflexible, possessive, dogmatic, gullible, stubborn, critical, intolerant and materialistic.

If you were born between February and the following January in the years 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973,1985 or 1997 you're an Ox.

READING:

Last week I picked up a copy of A Poisoned Mind by Natasha Cooper from the new books shelf in Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution library. Even though I have a huge pile of books waiting to be read, something about this one made me get stuck in straight away, and I was immediately hooked.

On the cover there is a comment from a renowned crime writer describing the book as one of the best legal thrillers she’d ever read, and I would agree.

The story opens on a failing Northumberland farm, where a company called Clean World Waste Management have leased some land as a site for two chemical waste disposal tanks. The tanks blow up causing a conflagration in which the farmer is killed and the surrounding farmland is polluted.

Angie, the farmer’s widow, aided by members of an environmental pressure group, is taking the corporate giant to court in an attempt to get proper compensation.

Trish Maguire QC, whose sympathies lie with the widow, finds herself having to set aside personal feelings as she has to represent Clean World Waste Management. As the trial proceeds she begins to wonder what exactly has been going on, the eco-hippies who are supporting Angie may have a hidden agenda – not all do-gooders are truthful it would seem.

At the same time, Trish is coping with a troubling friendship between her teenage brother David (for whom she and her husband are responsible), and Jay, a schoolmate he keeps bringing home, who comes from a dysfunctional and abusive family.

Which situation is more poisonous, the chemical waste explosion, or the alcohol and drug fuelled lives of Jay’s family?

I had never come across Natasha Cooper’s books featuring Trish Maguire before, but joy of joys there are another eight for me to read – A Poisoned Mind is the latest – so I intend to read them in order so that I can follow Trish’s progression up the legal career ladder. She is a heroine I took to immediately, intelligent, feisty, professional and very real.

What a treat I have in store.

Rated: 4.5


RANTING:

If a colleague, friend, relative or loved one died in police custody, whilst serving in the armed forces, or when accidentally hit by an emergency vehicle you would probably want to attend the inquest to find out how and why they died, and who was responsible.

Citizens would be deprived of this right if this government has its way.

Last year the clause in the Counter-terrorism Act which would have allowed some inquests to be held in private was dropped, following fierce opposition from all sides. However the proposals have been included in the legislation covering Coroners Courts which has just been introduced to Parliament.

The plan is to have juries, families, and the press excluded from some inquests which would be held in secret with hand-picked coroners, on the grounds of – you guessed it – ‘national security’. I’ll bet that they will use it whenever some death might be going to be an embarrassment, or an inquest might point a finger at the failings of government departments

The whole idea of secrecy in trials or inquests makes my blood run cold – it smacks of Stalinist Russia, and of the old apartheid regime in South Africa.

Why is this Labour government so hell bent on getting this clause on to the statute books?

Yet again they are chopping away at hard won liberties which once kept this country a beacon of freedom and democracy. We must not let these rights be whittled away one by one.

RECIPE:

This dish is a hybrid, not quite a fritatta, not quite a Spanish omlette, a bit like a quiche without a pastry crust. It takes hardly any time to make and is a great meal served with a salad, stretching two salmon fillets to feed four people.

SALMON ‘n EGGS

Serves 4

8 large eggs

2 fillets salmon (300-400g)

Juice of half a lemon

8 spring onions

2 tablespoons chopped coriander

Salt & pepper

1 tablespoon (approx) butter

2 tablespoons corn oil

Pre-heat the grill.

Cut the salmon fillets into smallish dice.

Finely slice the spring onions.

Beat the eggs until slightly frothy, season sparingly with salt and pepper.

Heat the butter and oil in a medium sized frying pan, and when hot add the salmon pieces and drizzle the lemon juice over them. Stir over a gentle heat until the salmon has changed colour and is nearly cooked through, then tip in the eggs, the chopped coriander and the spring onions. Using a wooden spatula, gently mix everything together. Then let it cook for about a minute. Lift the edges gently with the spatula to let any runny egg seep downwards before placing the frying pan under the pre-heated grill for a couple of minutes to allow the eggs to firm up and brown very slightly on top.

Cut into four wedges and serve garnished with coriander leaves. A side salad of tomato, cucumber and lettuce with a tangy dressing is perfect with this dish.

"TO PRESERVE ONE'S HEALTH BY TOO STRICT A REGIME IS IN ITSELF A TEDIOUS MALADY" Duc de la Rochefoucauld - my view on diets and dieting in a nutshell!

READING:

Mark Gimenez is a former Dallas attorney who has just written his first book, The Colour of Law. As you might expect, given his background, it is a legal thriller very much in the John Grisham mould, and it’s a terrific debut. It opens with a bang and keeps up a cracking pace throughout.
The hero is one A.Scott Fenney, a young, good-looking, and extremely successful lawyer who is partner in one of the top firms in Dallas. Married, with a nine year old daughter on whom he dotes, he is living the good life with a mansion in one of Dallas’s most exclusive (all white) suburbs, drives a Ferrari, and is on trajectory to become president of the State Bar of Texas.
Everything goes horribly wrong when a Federal Judge appoints him as the pro-bono defender of a heroin addicted prostitute who is accused of murder; the victim is the son of a local Senator who is about to run for the US Presidency. Against the wishes of his senior partner, and Senator McCall, Fenney does not refuse to take on the case, even though he actually believes that Shawanda did kill Clark McCall. He discovers that Shawanda has a nine year old daughter of her own who has been left alone whilst her mother is in jail awaiting her trial. Fenney decides to take the little girl, Pajamae, home to live with his own daughter for the duration of proceedings. This act has enormous repercussions, but the two little girls become firm friends; their belief in Fenney’s ability to clear Pajamae’s mother from the crime of which she is accused influences his actions, even though his whole life starts to unravel very rapidly as a result, and he loses just about all the trappings of success which he has worked so hard to achieve.

Gimenez is at his best when he is describing the Dallas law scene, and the methods lawyers use to shore up powerful and wealthy clients. Some aspects of the plot were very unlikely, but none-the-less it had several intriguing twists and turns, and kept me turning the pages even though the final denouement was signalled early on in the book. Gimenez is obviously a huge fan of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, and refers to it many times and he makes several clumsy attempts to parallel his story with Lee’s seminal work. After Shawanda’s trial for murder is resolved, there is an epilogue telling what subsequently happened to the various characters, and this was schmaltzy and improbable to say the least.

Despite these failings, the book is a more than creditable first novel in this genre, and I suspect we will see further legal thrillers from Mark Gimenez before long.

Rated: 3*

RANTING:

As I may have mentioned previously, the DH* is a Scot (frae Aberdeen to be precise), and ever since he was a wee boy (boys are never small or young in Scotland, they are always wee – don’t ask me why, I’m from Africa) he has worn the kilt, at school, on high days, holidays and to all black-tie events. And with the kilt goes all the other paraphernalia, sporran, skean dhu, kilt pin…… you get the picture. Now he may have a problem.

The “wee pretendy parliament”, as Billy Connelly has dubbed the Scottish Legislature, has taken leave of its senses and passed legislation requiring sporran wearers to have a licence for the fur on their sporrans. I kid you not.

There will be a £5000 fine and six months in prison if you fall foul of the law and the sporran will be seized if no licence is produced when police demand to see it. Jings! What’s going to happen when HM the Queen is up in Scotland, all “her” Scottish regiments who provide guards of honour wear kilts and sporrans – will there be mass arrests? Will Taggart be after Sean Connery and David Steel ?

There is a good Scots word for this new regulation: ‘daft’.

Oh yes, and those who like fishing may have a problem too; the same piece of legislation covers fishing flies if they have been tied with scraps of hair or fur. Honest to god you couldn’t make this up.

What the f***k do these loonies at Holyrood think they are doing – surely there are more important things for them to consider.

*I think I should mention that this picture is NOT of my DH.

RECIPE:

Making salad the other evening I had a sudden craving for blue cheese dressing. It is wonderful stuff, and a million times better than anything you can buy in a bottle. With a few croutons thrown in, it elevates the ubiquitous Iceberg lettuce into something rather special, so next time you have the tail end of some blue cheese lurking in your fridge, give it a go.

BLUE CHEESE DRESSING

50g blue cheese, crumbled
2½ tablespoons salad oil (I use sunflower)
2½ tablespoons mayonnaise
1 large clove garlic (or 2 if you like your dressing garlicky)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon English mustard powder
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon Balsamic vinegar
1 carton (140ml) sour cream

Crush the garlic through a garlic press into a bowl, and mash it together with the salt. Add the mustard powder, vinegar and lemon juice and mix well together with the oil and the blue cheese. In another bowl mix the mayonnaise and sour cream together then stir them into the cheese dressing mixture. Whisk everything together until the dressing has a creamy consistency.