'DUSTY BIBLES - DIRTY THOUGHTS'
Billboard seen in America.


READING:

I’ve just finished reading Storyteller – the many lives of Laurens van der Post by J.D.F. Jones, and it has given me much food for thought.

When I was a child growing up in central Africa we spent several months living in Nyasaland (now Malawi) and it was there that I first heard the name Laurens van der Post. It seemed that who ever he was he had done something that made the grown ups very cross with him. When at school in Cape Town we had to read his book Venture to the Interior, I discovered what it was that had made everyone so angry, as my parents told me that he had twisted the truth about someone and exaggerated things he had done in Nyasaland when he wrote the book. I thought no more about it. In the intervening years, Laurens van der Post’s public profile grew and grew as he became internationally famous, as an expert on the Bushmen, friend of Maggie Thatcher and Prince Charles, knighted by the Queen, and then in old age, one of Prince William’s godfathers.

A conversation about LvdP that I had with a friend in South Africa earlier this year spurred me into getting hold of a copy of the only authorised biography of the man, and reading it has left me aghast. LvdP was the 12^th child in an Afrikaans family and grew up in a small rural town in the Orange Free State. He started working as a reporter on a newspaper in South Africa, a job which amongst other things gave him the opportunity to visit Japan for two weeks or so. Eventually he left South Africa for England. During WW2 he was captured by the Japanese and was a prisoner of war on the island of Java for several years. He wrote extensively about the experience when the war was over, and was considered to be a real hero. Then in the early ‘50s he wrote Venture to the Interior which brought him fame and fortune, and this was followed by books about the Bushmen in the Kalahari, and other subjects. It would be tedious to recount his entire life here, suffice to say that it was a long life, and certainly an interesting one.

Most of the books he wrote were non-fiction and supposedly autobiographical and it is through his books that he came to be revered as an exceptional man, a teacher of moral and spiritual values, a great thinker who was a Jungian in his concepts of life. What is truly shocking to the reader of this biography is that, after extensive research and detailed analysis of all the letters, diaries, memories and official papers he could lay his hands on, the biographer has to tell us that at best Laurens was a fantasist and at worst a down-right liar about every aspect of his life. He twisted and embellished everything to make himself the hero, often at the expense of other people’s reputations. His supposed first hand knowledge of the Bushmen and their myths and legends was gathered in substantial part from the work of anthropologists who had published books about them towards the end of the 19^th century, so a little plagiarism didn’t worry him too much either.

It seems LvdP also had a very cavalier attitude to women, and when married to his second wife he had a long term mistress to whom he was also being unfaithful with other women. What I found truly horrendous was that, when he was 46 years old he was travelling by sea from Cape Town to UK and friends of his asked if he would act in loco parentis to their 14 year old daughter who was going to ballet school in London. He agrees to do so, but on the voyage he seduced the girl and got her pregnant. Once he realised she was to have a child he sent her packing straight back to South Africa, and refused to acknowledge her child when it was born. Subsequent to his death, the whole sorry story came out, and has been admitted by his surviving family.

It is not uncommon for writers to re-invent their own histories, Patrick O’Brian did so, as did Laurie Lee, Bruce Chatwin and Richard Llewellyn, not to mention Jeffrey Archer, but they never set themselves up as moral guardians, what they wrote was fiction or fictionalised and they did not promote it as literal fact for their own aggrandisement.

What amazes me is that LvdP managed to get away with all this deception. A combination of luck and charm I guess, and the fact that he compartmentalised his friends and acquaintances. As many of the people who were interviewed for the biography said, he was the most charming man they ever met. Africa and the Bushmen were far away from most people, and most of his friends, readers and followers knew nothing of them anyway so would not be able to judge whether what he said was true or not. Every so often someone would challenge him on one point or another, but he would respond so angrily and threateningly that they would back away.

As a reader what do I expect from an author? Not necessarily truth, but I do not like deliberate deception which is quite another thing. Does it matter that LvdP's books contain so much fantasy about himself? It does to me, because in his writings he sets himself up as some sort of moral authority - and lying and moral authority are mutually exclusive.

I have also asked myself what I expect from a biographer. I expect to know a bit about the life of the subject when I have finished reading the biography, I expect the information they have gathered is true, whatever interpretation they then place on such information, and that they have not ducked thorny issues in the life of the subject.

J.D.F Jones has ducked nothing, in fact he has been almost boringly relentless in his determination to uncover every aspect of LvdPs life, and parts of the book are almost tedious in their detail, I suppose he felt that debunking such a "great" man meant he must be super careful to give chapter and verse; none the less, it is a fascinating read, especially for anyone from South Africa who has grown up on the legend of the man.

Rated 4*

RANTING:

I’m sure that all the psychics and fortune tellers had foretold this new piece of Consumer Protection Legislation, but the rest of us probably didn’t. Most of us think that being protected from dodgy financial advisors is a good thing, but being protected from the lady who asks you to cross her palm with silver at the local fun-fair is hardly high up the list of my major anxieties. Since last Monday, under the new legislation, all fortune tellers, psychics, mediums and spiritualist healers have now got to publish or display a disclaimer stating that their services are for “entertainment purposes only”. Well whoopee doo… we all thought that Madame Arcarti’s musings would accurately chart the rest of our lives.

Until now such practitioners have been regulated by the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, and in the last 20 years there have only been one or two cases where someone has been prosecuted.

Do the Government not have better things to do than to criminalise ladies with multi-coloured scarves round their heads, who sit in draughty tents on fair grounds burbling on about tall dark strangers and crossing water to find our destinies?

One of my grandmothers, a respectable teacher of Latin and Greek, was much in demand at local fêtes where she read tea leaves for all and sundry and helped raise fund for various worthy causes. Most of the people who visited her to have their fortunes told were local and knew damned well she was making it up as she went along. Those that didn’t know her and believed what she had to say were naïve to say the least, and no harm was done by whatever she predicted.

I know that mediums cannot prove that what they say will come to pass, but neither can any of the established religions prove that heaven or hell actually exist, let alone whether we will go there.

We are not fools, the government doesn’t need to protect us from imagined futures.

RECIPE:

Way back in March I joined a blog challenge called 'Soups On'. The idea is that you choose five cookbooks and write a review of each one, having made one of the recipes from the book, and then publish it on your own blog. So here goes with my first choice. OTTOLENGHI THE COOKBOOK is very recently published here in the UK by Ebury Press, and is written by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. I'm mad about this book, the recipes are wonderful, and here is one which I have already made three times, to great acclaim. It is great for a cold buffet, but last week I served it with roast duck breast and new potatoes and it complemented them perfectly.

FRENCH BEANS & MANGETOUTS WITH HAZELNUT & ORANGE

Serves 6

400g French beans
400g mangetout
70g unskinned hazelnuts
1 orange
20g chives, roughly chopped
3 Tablespns olive oil
2 Tablespns hazelnut oil
Coarse sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Pre-heat oven to 180°C

Trim the stalk ends of the french beans and the mangetouts, but keep the two vegetables separate.

Bring a large pot of unsalted water to boil. When boiling blanch the French beans in the water for 4 minutes, then drain into a colander and run them under plenty of tap water until cold. Leave to drain and dry.

Repeat with the mangetouts, but only blanch them for 1 minute.

Whilst the beans are cooking, scatter the hazelnuts over a baking tray and roast in the oven for about 10 minutes. Leave until cool enough to handle, then place them in a clean tea-towel and gently rub them to get rid of most of the skin. Chop the nuts with a sharp knife. They should be quite rough, some can even stay whole.

Using a vegetable peeler, remove the zest from the orange in strips, being careful to avoid the bitter white pith. Slice each piece of zest into very thin strips (if you have a citrus zester you could do the whole job with that).

To assemble the dish, mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, toss gently, then taste and adjust the seasoning/

Serve at room temperature.

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I'm off to a wedding in Morocco tomorrow and won't be back for a week or two, so there may be a blogging hiatus. Toodle pip folks!

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IF YOUR FACE IS UGLY, YOU SHOULD LEARN TO SING.

(African Proverb)

READING:

After months, nay, years on my “want to read” list, I finally got hold of a copy of Minaret by Leila Aboulela. I am intrigued by the new genre of fiction that seems to have sprung up, all rreflecting young Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu lives in modern Britain; and this, Aboulela’s 2^nd novel,
falls squarely into that category.

Minaret is the story of Najwa, twin daughter of a senior government official in Sudan. Her home life is luxurious in the extreme, however there is some dubiety about her father’s business dealings and his relationship with the corrupt post colonial government. Whilst studying at Khartoum university in the 1970s she meets a very wild and radical young socialist, Anwar, and feels a definite spark of interest grow between them.

Without any warning signs to the politically naïve Najwa, there is a coup d’etat in Sudan; and she, her twin brother Omar, and their mother flee the country and end up in London. Her father is tried and then executed by the new regime. London, instead of being a temporary place of refuge, becomes all in all to Leila and her family. Omar, her twin, and an incredibly spoilt young man, continues to indulge his drug habit and ends up jailed for four years on a charge of drug dealing; and then her mother falls ill and dies. Out of the blue Anwar appears in London, he too is now a political refugee. Leila helps him with money, clothing, a computer, and more importantly by editing his political articles and translating them into good English. She and Anwar start having an affair as she fully believes they will soon be married, and so she is devastated when he discards her and embarks on an arranged marriage with a very conventional Muslim girl. Desperate to get out of the house, Najwar takes a job with the wife of an old family friend; then, when that friend moves to the coast, she finds a position working for a young Arab couple primarily as the nanny/ maid where she starts to fall in love with the younger brother of her employer who is considerably. Alone again, and now with her capital severely diminished Najwa is slowly sliding down the socio-economic scale. From loneliness, and from a genuine interest in her own religion, she joins a women’s group at the Regent’s Park mosque, and adopts the hijab and style of dress of a devout Muslim woman.

This complex book has a delicate, almost dreamlike quality and, and Najwa’s yearning for a sense of who she is follows a journey from prosperity and pride to humility and eventually a sense of peace.

RANTING:

Oh hell. I’ve been tagged. And after months of avoiding such things. The evil tagger is aberdeenquinie whose blog Chez Teuchter is always worth reading. What I have to do now is list 8 random facts about myself that you may not know. How boring is that??
Well, sez she grumpily, I better get it over with:

1. I don’t like avocado pears – this dislike sprang from being served them mashed up between two slices of commercial white bread as sandwiches at boarding school. Yuck.

2. I broke my right ankle twice in the past four years – don’t ask, it was a long and sorry story, but I managed not to spill a drop of my G&T the first time, and the second time I drove home very, very slowly and only using the handbrake, letting out a scream every time I had to put my foot down. The orthopaedic surgeon was not amused.

3. I have the same colour and style of hair as my Cairn terrier, ie dirty blonde; only mine is from a bottle.

4. My husband is from Aberdeen, need I say more?

5. I love Country & Western music, the cheesier the better (my family call it Cry & Die music).

6. I hate emptying the dishwasher – I don’t mind stacking it though.

7. I prefer wearing trousers to skirts – in fact I haven’t worn a skirt for about 6 years. Note to self: do I HAVE any skirts now?? Must check wardrobe.

8. I have had a driving license for nearly 40 years, and until I did 48mph on a 40mph stretch of the A40 which is 3 lanes wide, I’d never had any points on it; now I have 3, boo hoo. Bloody speed cameras.

Riiight, here is where I get my own back, I tag ash, and Around My Kitchen Table

RECIPE:

It's May; like the swallows, the first visitors from Southern Africa appear (in our spare bedroom). In this case it is one who shall henceforth be known as BFCT (my Best Friend in Cape Town) and who I am absolutely thrilled to see. Today we went to the Chelsea Flower Show, and tomorrow we will sit around doing a great deal of chatting and drinking white wine spritzers. To ensure we are not completely legless, I am getting up early to make something that can be dipped into whilst we put the world to rights. It is from somewhere in the Middle East,(I believe at least 3 countries lay claim to it) and is utterly delicious. My recipe comes from a small book of recipes by Claudia Roden the famous writer on Middle Eastern cooking; the book is one of a series produced for Sainsbury's in the 1980s. What can I say, this recipe is foolproof. Give it a go, you won't regret it!

BABA GHANOUSH

Serves 4

1 large aubergine
Juice of 2 lemons
3 Tablespns tahini
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Salt
2 Tablespns cold water

A few sprigs of parsley, chopped finely, to garnish.

Roast the aubergine under the grill, turning it a few times until the skin is black and blistered and the flesh feels very soft when you press it. Peel the aubergine, and using your hands (which you have washed!!) squeeze out the juice. Place the flesh in a blender or food processor with the lemon juice, tahini, garlic, salt to taste and the 2 tablespns of water and purée until smooth.

Put the Baba Ghanoush into a small, shallow dish and sprinkle with the parsley.

Serve with hot pitta bread or vegetable crudités.

SEE THE HAPPY MORON, HE DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN.
I WISH I WERE THAT MORON,
MY GOD, PERHAPS I AM.

READING:

“I’m promiscuous when it comes to bookstores.” is the first sentence of one chapter of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee, and that sentence describes me, and no doubt thousands of other incurable readers. This is a wonderful little book, a memoir of Buzbee’s life as a reader, and of his career in the independent book trade; and a fascinating history of bookshops, publishing and the book itself, from ancient times up to the present day with online book selling and downloadable e-books.

It is beautifully produced, a small hardback, printed on good paper in a comfortable-to-read typeface (something that matters more and more to me as I get older and my eyes take the strain). It is full of snippets of information one of which is that if you start reading a book a week from the age of five, and continue doing so until you are 80, you will only have read a total of 3900 books. As there are close to 200,000 new books published each year in the UK alone, even a voracious reader will be scarcely scratching the surface.

When he writes about browsing bookstores on holidays, on business trips, in airports and anywhere else he goes, I kept thinking “ but that’s me! that’s me!”. My daughter used to dread going on shopping trips with me, as if we passed a bookshop I would gravitate towards it as though pulled by a magnet whilst she tried to tug me away; and if I crossed the threshold the rest of the shopping trip would be lost.

One of the quotes Buzbee gives in the book is from Italo Calvino’s book “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller” which perfectly sums up how many books there are for the committed reader to choose from in a good bookshop:

Books You Haven’t Read…the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written…the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered…the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too.

This is a book that all bibliomaniacs would enjoy; and I can't think of a better gift to give a book loving friend.

Rated 4.5*

RANTING:
In theory the United Nations is a good idea, in practice it just lurches from one failing initiative to another. A talking shop that has achieved very little over the years, it has soaked up squillions of dollars from all the member countries and acted as a soap-box for tin-pot dictators of banana republics to strut their stuff.

Today I learnt that the UN Committee on Sustainable Development is to be chaired by Zimbabwe’s Environment Minister Francis Nheme.
Says everything there is to say about what is wrong with the UN doesn’t it?
Zimbabwe! god in heaven, what is the UN thinking of? Certainly not sustainable development. Zimbabwe is now in such a parlous state that it has started rationing electricity, inflation is over 2000% and people are starving. What do they know of sustainable development ?? – nothing, zip, zero; what the Zimbabwean government (aka Robert Mugabe and henchmen) do know is how to bring a wealthy country with everything going for it to its knees. Maybe that is the message the new Chairperson of the UN Committee is keen to promulgate. The UN is now a complete joke. Let’s stop supporting it until it grows up and gets its head straight.

RECIPE:

Of all the recipes I have been asked for over the years, this one has been consistantly in the top five. Strange really as it is for a "side" dish to accompany other things, and it is a vegetable that is not always popular. However even very, very picky four year olds who normally refuse to let anything green cross their lips have been known to eat second helpings of this. It freezes well, which is also a bonus. To turn it into a quick supper or lunch dish, take a shallow gratin dish of this puree, heat it in the oven or microwave, and then make a couple of depressions in it with a spoon, break an egg into each depression before returning the dish to the oven and bake until the egg is cooked.

PUREÉD BROCCOLI WITH CRÈME FRAICHE & PARMESAN

Serves 6

1 kg broccoli (approx 4 ‘heads’), trimmed and cut into florets, including stems.
¾ cup crème fraiche
¾ cup freshly grated Parmesan
A generous grating of nutmeg – equal to ½ teaspoon
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Salt to taste
Butter

Prepare the broccoli, and then drop into a large pan of boiling salted water. Cook until just tender, approx 8 minutes. Drain well.
Transfer the broccoli to a food processor. Add the crème fraiche, and pureè thoroughly.

Pre-heat oven to 180°C.

Transfer the broccoli pureè into a bowl and stir in the Parmesan, nutmeg, pepper and salt to taste. Mix well.
Mound the pureè in an ovenproof serving dish, dot with butter and bake in the pre-heated oven for 25 minutes until steaming hot.

You can prepare this all in advance until the point where it goes in the oven, then you can either freeze it, or just cover with cling-film and pop it in the fridge until you are ready to bake it.

"O WAD SOME POWER THE GIFTIE GIE US,to see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us and foolish notion . . ."
'To a Louse' by Robert Burns



READING:

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

I picked this book of a shelf in the library because I was intrigued by the title, and when I glanced at the first page this sentence hooked me, and I had to borrow it: ‘Half our family, the better-looking half, is missing.’

Nomi Nickel is a sixteen year old Canadian Mennonite girl living with her father in a Mennonite community in Manitoba. Three years previously her older sister left the community and some months later so did Nomi’s mother, neither have been heard of since. Told as a quirky first-person narrative the book has echoes of Holden Caulfield in Catcher In the Rye. Nomi is something of a misfit, full of teenage angst compounded by the demands and expectations of the Mennonite community which is lead by her self-righteous uncle who she calls “The Mouth”.

Written as a stream of memories of her mother and sister and of family life before they disappeared, but woven through with her difficulties in day-to-day living, having a boyfriend, school, and a dead end future working in a chicken processing plant, Nomi endeared herself to me with her often hilarious take on life. She, and other Mennonite teens drink and smoke dope illicitly, they listen to pop music (which is banned) and they dance (which is totally forbidden).

At the same time the author has managed to convey the hypocritical religious zealotry which exists in such communities. The
Mennonites are Anabaptists, closely linked to the Amish and the Hutterites, and their chief mantra for life is “in the world but not of the world”. Until I read this book I knew next to nothing about them and how they live, but as you read, you are slowly introduced to their ideas, prejudices and practices. It is a very controlled way of living, everything is predicated on getting to heaven, either by dying a good Mennonite, or being ready for The Rapture – the moment when all humans will be either swept up to heaven simultaneously or left behind to burn in hell. Those who fail to keep to the rules will be Shunned, a form of living excommunication where you continue to live within the community but no-one will look at you, speak to you, touch you, eat with you, sleep with you, even husband to wife, brother to sister, or parent to child. A truly traumatic, psychological, living torture. Nomi is torn between a wanting a normal life, despising the hypocrisy she sees around her, and loving her father who is a good man dedicated to his community. Finally she comes to understand what happened to her sister and mother, and why she too will have to decide where and how to live her life.

RANTING:

I love markets, the hustle and bustle, the noise, the colours, the smells, the people and the variety of goods you get at different markets. People always go on about wonderful markets in France and Italy, and other parts of the world, but we have some excellent markets right here in London. There are two London markets I use regularly, the flower and plant market at Columbia Road in the East End, and Borough Market, which sells fruit, vegetables, meat, breads and all kinds of delicious foods from all over the country, and from all over the world.

For those of you who don’t know it, Borough Market is the oldest market in London, there has been a market on this site selling food and produce to Londoners since the Roman occupation, 2000 years ago. It is a covered market, and recently the whole structure was comprehensively refurbished.

Over the years I have bought food for family meals there, food for Christmas there, food for dinner parties there; I have often taken foreign visitors to spend a morning there, and the market is well known abroad thanks to Jamie Oliver who has featured the market in his cookery series for TV several times. Indeed tour guides and London guide books recommend it as part of the whole London experience.

So I was spitting blood when I heard from my daughter that there are plans afoot for Network Rail to increase their tracks by destroying many of the beautiful old buildings on the edges of the market. Apparently they have already been granted planning permission and are now awaiting funding. 23 market buildings would go, and it would change the ambiance of the market for ever. How could the powers-that-be (ie The Secretary of State) be so bloody stupid and short-sighted; this market should be preserved not threatened with desecration. Any town or city can have rail tracks, few can have a market as excellent and as ancient as Borough. Please, if you feel as strongly as I do, sign the on-line petition to try and prevent this horrible plan going ahead.

RECIPE:

FAIR FA' YOUR HONEST, SONSIE FACE,
Great Chieftan o' the Puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy of a grace
As lang's my arm.
To A Haggis by Robert Burns

Tonight is Burns Night, so we will be having a Haggis. Traditionally it is served with Bashed Neeps and Tatties – which is mashed swede (turnip) and mashed potato, and with it you serve a dram or two of Scotch whiskey which you sip between mouthfuls! I actually prefer another version of neeps and tatties, so I will be serving

CLAPSHOT*

700g potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
700g swede, peeled and cut into chunks
75g butter
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
Salt and Pepper

Boil the potatoes and the Swedes separately and then mash them. Combine the two mashes and mix together with the butter and the chives. Season well. Put the mixture into a serving dish and keep warm until ready to serve the haggis.

*this is also good as an accompaniment to sausages or grilled chops.

A dessert I often serve on Burns Night is:

CALEDONIAN CREAM

2 cups (generous) soft cream cheese (its not very Scottish, but I use Mascarpone)
2 heaped tablespoons Marmalade
2 tablespoons caster sugar
3 tablespoons whiskey
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Put all ingredients into a mixing bowl and whisk together. Spoon into six ramekins and chill in the freezer. Remove from freezer 10 minutes before serving.

A shortbread biscuit goes well with this.

HAPPY NEW YEAR - MAY 2007 BE A FABULOUS YEAR FOR US ALL!
I haven't posted on the blog for sooooo long - 16 whole days ...
What can I say, this has been a very busy time, and I am looking forward to long peaceful weeks of nothing much happening! To compensate for the long silence I have decided to offer, free, gratis and for nothing, an extra R. So today this is not The 3 Rs, it is The 4 Rs.
Reading, RAVING, Ranting and Recipes.

READING:

Over the past fortnight my reading has been patchy to say the least, too much going on to really settle down and have a comfortably serious read. But of course I have been reading because I am incapable of not doing so, reading is as important as food and drink to me.
Here is a quick waltz through some of the books I have gobbled up in between visiting friends and family, entertaining and being entertained, and general jollification:

One Stop Short of Barking – uncovering the London Underground by Mecca Ibrahim
This was on my Amazon wish list, so I was really pleased to be given it as a Christmas gift. This little book is both hilarious and informative and should be compulsory reading for all the 3 million people who use the Tube every day.It is lavishly illustrated – the photo of Tony Blair pole hanging in a carriage while reading a Government White Paper and pretending to be an ordinary bloke is absolutely killing, who thought up that little wheeze I wonder? There is a selection of some of the funniest driver announcements: “ I am the captain of your train and we will be departing shortly. We will be cruising at an altitude of approximately zero feet and our scheduled arrival time in Morden is 3.15pm. The temperature in Morden is approximately 15 degrees Celsius and Morden is in the same time zone as Mill Hill East so there’s no need to adjust your watches.” Listing all the wildlife to be found underground from rats and pigeons to drunks and backpacking tourists, the author also gives details of the rules for buskers and the most popular and frequently busked song titles.

This is a great addition to my growing collection of books about London, and is a great gift for anyone who knows this city – especially for those middle-aged men in your life who are so difficult to buy for!

Nigella Lawson – the unauthorised biography by Gilly Smith
I snatched this off a shelf in the local library just a week before Christmas when you couldn’t switch on the TV without seeing the Domestic Goddess thrusting her cleavage at you and licking her fingers provocatively whilst she made and fried crab cakes DURING a drinks party – yeah right.

Anyway, the book gives you all the information available as to her family background, her marriage to the late John Diamond and subsequent marriage to Charles Saatchi, and how her career has progressed. The author is not doing a hatchet job on Nigella by any means, but the reader certainly gets a picture of quite a determined woman who will use anything and anyone to achieve what she wants, but –as Kenny Everett would have said – in the nicest possible way. I must admit I found it ironic that a Jewish woman was presenting a television series on how to cook and prepare to celebrate Christmas, which is a Christian festival after all, and using foods and ingredients which are specifically prohibited in the Jewish faith. Would Delia Smith have been allowed to get away with telling viewers how to prepare food for the Passover seder? I doubt it, well not unless she bought herself a crimson satin negligee to wear whilst cooking on screen!

RAVING:
I am in love with the present my DH gave me for Christmas - a Rolser shopping trolly. My son was absolutely horrified with the idea of me being given this..he thought I should have a blue rinse to match it. But this is in another league, it was featured in Vogue (Paris edition) nogal. Three years ago I broke my right ankle, in 2005 by horrible happenstance I broke it again; now I have a limp and I am nervous of falling and breaking it again. Consequently I am slow when I go shopping and have to carry bags full of things I've purchased, I trek back and forth loading stuff into the car which is parked as near as possible. But now my life has been revolutionised, I have my trolley. It holds a huge amount of stuff, library books, all my groceries, a huge pack of things from the chemist's, and 4 loaves of Dunnary bread and 6 Cornish Pasties from one of the best bakers in the entire world, Dunn's of Crouch End.
Now come on, admit you'd love a shopping trolley like mine.

RANTING:

Just before Christmas an undercover journalist from the Guardian posed as a member of the BNP in order to write a tabloid style exposé of this rather nasty little party; when his article was published, he listed some of the people who are paid-up party members, and Simone Clarke, one of the leading dancers with the English National Ballet, was one of them. This started a media frenzy and the dancer, who had never sought to publicise her political views, gave an interview with a rival paper explaining why she had joined the BNP. Many self-righteous folk have been clamouring for the ENB to sack Miss Clarke because of her BNP membership.

I am absolutely appalled at this, indeed I find this kind of witchhunt extremely worrying. It is Macarthyism in reverse. As anyone who knows me will testify, I am an old-fashionedly woolly liberal libitarian – to the point of being moth-eaten – and personally I have nothing but distaste for the BNP and loathe it’s aims and intentions. Never-the-less, it is a bona fide political party and there is absolutely nothing illegal about joining it as a member and Miss Clarke has every right to be aggrieved that she is being painted as some kind of criminal. To suggest she should loose her job because of it is just plain wrong. For the life of me I cannot see how her dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker is in anyway affected by her political affiliations. People who say that they wouldn’t be able to stand watching her dance now that they know what she votes are just plain silly. Should every programme come with an attached list giving information about the private lives of members of the cast? So that the public can boycott any performance where the background and views of the performers don’t coincided with their own high moral standards? So-and-so cheats on his wife and has a record for shoplifting, Ms XYZ lies about her age and drives an un-taxed car….for heaven’s sake where would it all end? Let dancers dance, musicians play, actors act and to hell with what stupid ideas they espouse -personally I always thought some of Vanessa Redgrave’s political ravings were quite bonkers, but I also thought she was a fantastic actress and would not have missed seeing her in film or on stage because of them.

We are not some country where the tiny new shoots of democracy have just poked through the soil and require protecting whilst they grow, we are an ancient nation with a long and robust political tradition and we can certainly accommodate dissenting views – even if we consider them repugnant.

RECIPE:

After all the rich foods during Christmas and New Year we are back to some rather homely family meals, not to mention some much needed belt-tightening (in both senses). So for Sunday night supper it is to be Cauliflower Cheese with a few additions to gussy it up and make it a little more substantial, and with crusty bread or a baked potato on the side it is an excellent main course.

CAULIFLOWER CHEESE A LA MODE

1 medium-large cauliflower
250g bacon lardons or streaky bacon cut into bits
½ medium onion, finely chopped
1 small can sweetcorn.
1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

For the cheese sauce:

30g butter
30g plain flour
250ml milk + water mixed (use the cauliflower water)
Salt + freshly ground black pepper
125g grated cheese

For topping:
50g grated cheese
50g toasted breadcrumbs

Fry the bacon lardons and when browning add the finely chopped onion and continue cooking until translucent. Set aside.
Trim the cauliflower and break into medium-sized sprigs. Cook in boiling salted water until tender – approx 8 mins. Drain and reserve some of the cooking liquid for the cheese sauce. Arrange the cooked cauliflower sprigs in a well-buttered ovenproof dish and keep warm. Now sprinkle the cooked bacon, onion and sweetcorn over the cauliflower, making sure they are under, over and around every sprig.

Melt the butter for the sauce stir in the flour to make a roux. Cook gently for a minute or so, and then gradually stir in the hot reserved cauliflower liquor and then the milk. Bring up to the boil, stirring all the time to make a smooth sauce. Allow to simmer for 1-2 minutes then season to taste. Add the grated cheese and stir over a low heat until the cheese has melted and amalgamated with the sauce. Stir in the chopped parsley.
Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower, bacon, onion and sweetcorn, making sure it goes round everything.

Sprinkle with the toasted breadcrumbs and the remaining cheese.

Put in the oven for 20mins at 180°C or pass under the grill until brown and bubbling.

HOW COME THERE ARE ONLY 24 HOURS in a day, right at the moment I could use an extra 5 or 6. At least we should have the option, don't you think?


READING:

The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell

The six Mitford sisters were born into an aristocratic English family between 1904 and 1920. They had an unconventional, some might say eccentric, childhood and adolescence with no formal education of any kind but all grew up to be well known as individuals. Nancy, the eldest, was a highly regarded biographer of Madame de Pompadour and Louis IVX, who spent the later half of her life living in Paris; she also wrote wonderfully sharp and witty novels and articles on English manners and mores, and coined the phrase "U and Non-U".

Pamela the most domesticated of them all, was the sister with whom John Betjeman fell in love. Diana was the elegant beauty, who first married a member of the Guiness family, and then fell in love with and married Sir Oswald Mosley M.P., leader of the British Union of Fascists, she became a figure of hate, imprisoned during WWII for supporting the BUF. The middle daughter, Unity, an unstable young woman who went to Germany in the 1930s, was in love with Hitler and totally obsessed with Nazism. When war was declared she shot herself in the head and survived handicapped for several years. Next in line was Jessica - always known as Decca - who eloped at 19 and went off to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War where her husband was killed. She then married an American,

became a member of the Communist Party and was active in the Civil Rights movement in the USA; she too, like her sister Nancy, became a writer of some reknown. Finally there was the beautiful Deborah who married the Duke of Devonshire and became chatelaine of Chatsworth, one of the greatest houses in England.

Now widowed, she lives in an old Rectory and is famous for keeping hens amongst other things.

Their lives have been covered partially and individually several times by other writers, but Mary Lovell has managed to write about them in the context of their sisterhood, yet gives a clear picture of each of these rather extraordinary women. An absolutely fascinating read about a fascinating family of women.


RANTING:

What is the problem with the British Transport Police? they seem to have had collective common-sense failure, or maybe they are just being badly trained. Of course it could be that some members of BTP are right little dictators and love the power rush they get from officiously hassling people.
A few weeks ago the Director of the Institute of Engineers,Tom Foulkes -a former Brigadier who used to work at the Ministry of Defence, was arrested when bording Eurostar en route to a business meeting in Paris. His crime? at the bottom of his briefcase was a Swiss Army Card*.

He was charged with carrying an offensive weapon.

Today, a lawyer who plays cricket as a hobby, was stopped at Belsize Park tube station by a member of the BTP. His crime, carrying an offensive weapon. What offensive weapon was that? a cricket ball. A CRICKET BALL - for crying in a bucket. Apparently a spokesman for British Transport Police said: "What if the ball was dropped and hit an old lady further down the escalator? “We would advise passengers to be careful, both for themselves and other people at this busy time."

Now I carry a lot of heavy stuff. My handbag, which seems to contain everything bar the kitchen sink, is a prime example. What if I dropped it on the escalator and hit an old lady,

or, scary thought, what if I took leave of my senses and used it as a cosh and smashed some cretin of a BTP officer over the head? My handbag obviously falls within their definition of an offensive weapon - I await my arrest.

* Just in case Santa is reading this blog rant, here's a wee hint - I wouldn't mind one of these in my stocking this year, it would be so useful and I believe it is available in a variety of fashionable colours.

RECIPE:

Friends coming for supper tomorrow evening and I have a busy day, so I'm making the starter tonight; as I know them quite well I know they will all eat mushrooms, this is not a recipe to make for non-fungi eaters! When my darling daughter was little she wouldn't touch them, I think the texture put her off; now she has become a real foodie and eats absolutely everything. This is a dish I love, in fact, left to my own devices I could scoff the whole lot! The recipe comes from a famous Jewish cookery writer, the late Evelyn Rose, via her eldest son with whom my DH and I shared a house many years ago.

MUSHROOMS A LA GRECQUE

Serves 6-8

750g mushrooms – choose medium/small closed-cap
3 Tablespoons olive oil
3 Tablespoons sunflower oil
6 Tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Tablespoons wine vinegar, white or red
2 teaspoons tomato purée
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 large Bay leaf
15-20 coriander seeds, roughly crushed
12-15 peppercorns, roughly crushed
10 grinds of black pepper
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves or a large pinch of dried thyme

Wipe the mushrooms clean, if very small leave them whole, cut in half if medium sized, and quarter if bigger.

Put all other ingredients into a saucepan, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Uncover, put all the mushrooms into the pan and spoon the liquid over them, cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes. The mushrooms will shrink in size and produce a lot of liquid.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the mushrooms from the sauce and place in a serving dish.

Bring the liquid up to the boil over a high heat and cook until it is reduced by ¾ and has become quite thick and syrupy. Pour over the mushrooms and leave overnight to marinate.

Serve as a starter with warm Pitta bread, or as part of a salad buffet.

MY BLOG TRACKER THINGIE has 25 different flags on it. I know it's childish but I get so excited when I see a new country listed; I only expect my blog to be read by one man/woman and a dog, and in the main I suspect that is a pretty accurate analysis of my readership....but....dear blog reader from Peru, welcome! I'm so delighted to see you here, thank you for popping in.

READING:

I keep trying to plug the gaps in my reading experience, catching up with books that are so famous that it is assumed that absolutely everyone has read them - and yet some how you never have. One such book is Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, which was written exactly 50 years ago. Because I was too young to read it when it was first published, and because I grew up in central Africa and had no TV and little access to cinema, I have never seen the film nor the TV series which sprang from the book, so I thought it was just a salacious American best seller of little literary merit. Earlier this year I heard an extract read on Radio 4, and decided that the time had come that I should read it for myself. To my surprise it turned out to be a much better book than I had expected, and a very absorbing read.

Peyton Place is the name of a small (fictitious) New England town in the years just before the Second World War It is a town which looks like the quintessential American community, as wholesome as apple pie, a town like thousands of others all over the USA. Metalious strips away the veneers of respectability to expose the secrets and lies of the inhabitants of Peyton Place.
The story of teenager Allison McKenzie and her mother Constance provide the framework of the book. Constance has built a life based on a lie; everyone, including her daughter, thinks she is a young widow bringing up her daughter on her own. In reality, Allison is illegitimate and Constance is terrified of the reaction of others if they knew the truth, she is obsessive about protecting her daughter from making the same mistake as she made, and her controlling behaviour is driving a wedge between them. Surrounding Constance and Allison are the other characters who live in the town, and the reader is drawn in to their lives and stories. There is Kenny, the town drunk who goes on a massive six week bender and nearly kills himself; Selena, a girl of Allison’s age but from the wrong side of the tracks, who has been sexually abused and raped by her stepfather – eventually resulting in her pregnancy and an illegal abortion; Rodney Harrison, the spoilt son of the richest man in town who dies when he crashes the sports car given to him by his doting father; the local doctor, Dr Swain who manages to force Selena’s stepfather to leave Peyton Place by threatening to reveal his behaviour to the community. All the various strands are woven together to give the reader a sense of small-town prurience, predjudice and hypocrisy.

When it was first published in 1956, the book became an instant best seller; it touched a nerve in the American reading public, and sold 60,000 copies in the first ten days following publication, eclipsing Gone with the Wind. Peyton Place became a defining book, apart from the follow up novel written by Metalious herself (Return to Peyton Place), various other “sequels” have been written by other people, there was a Hollywood movie, and then a long running TV series. The blockbuster TV series of recent years, Desperate Housewives and Sex in the City are very much descendents of Peyton Place. Sadly, after the book was published Grace Metalious and her family were reviled by her neighbours and fellow citizens in the New England town where they lived. The stress caused by their continual shunning of her turned her to drink, and she died aged 39 of cirrhosis of the liver.

RANTING:

Yesterday Tony Blair made a statement of regret about the practice of slavery, which Britain abolished 200 years ago. Some black pressure groups felt that he should have apologised on behalf of the British people for the fact that slavery had taken place at all. What a load of rubbish, this is gesture politics at its most cynical.

If we all start apologising to one another for wrongs done by our ancestors there will be no end to it. The only person who can genuinely apologise for something, is the person who did the wrong. The people who initiated, enabled, or profited from slavery are long dead, we are living in different times. I am not responsible for slavery, I loathe the idea of slavery - I certainly have nothing to apologise for, and I resent the idea that our Prime Minister should even consider apologising on my behalf and that of my fellow citizens.

There seems to be a deep-seated belief within some sectors of the black population here and in the USA that any current troubles they may have are as a result of slavery hundreds of years ago, and they want financial compensation to be paid to the descendents of slaves. A distorted myth has grown up, which bears no relation to the true facts about slavery. Slavery was a horrible business, and it is a sad fact that the British engaged in it, but apologising will do nothing for anyone, we can’t go back in time. History marches on.

Slavery has existed for thousands of years, and in virtually every culture of humankind. The Chinese, Egyptian, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Goths, Arabs, and Ottomans have all bought, sold and used slaves. Ancient Britons were taken as slaves by Romans, and owned slaves in their turn. Slavery existed in Africa long before the British or other western nations went to Africa, and it is still going on today, albeit illegally. Some in Africa are still engaged in selling men, women and children into other societies. In South East Asia women and children are kept as virtual slaves to the sex trade. Young girls in Afghanistan and other central Asian countries are sold by their fathers to be “wives” to old men, and they then live lives that are tantamount to slavery. Rather than apologising we should all be doing our best to ensure that a stop is put to slavery as practiced in the world today.

RECIPE:

BUTTERNUT, BACON & FETA PASTA

Serves 4

1 Butternut Squash
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
200g Feta, drained and cubed
1 clove garlic, crushed
50g Pine Nuts, toasted
1 teaspoon dried Oregano
8 rashers of smoked back bacon
350g Farfalle or Penne Pasta

Pre-heat oven to 200° C, Gas Mark 6.

Cut the Butternut in half, scoop out and discard the seeds.

Peel the squash and then cut the flesh into bite-sized chunks and place in a roasting tin.
Drizzle with the olive oil, stir in the garlic and oregano and season with freshly ground black pepper. Roast for 20-25 mins, stirring occasionally, until the squash is golden and tender when pierced with the tip of a sharp knife.

Pre-heat the grill to high, and cook the bacon for 4-5 mins until crisp, then cut into bite-sized pieces. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a large pan of boiling water until al dente in the usual way, drain well and keep warm in the pan with a lid on.

Add the bacon and feta to the roasted squash and return to the oven for 2-3 mins until the cheese is beginning to soften and melt. Remove from the oven and stir in the drained pasta.

Serve immediately seasoned with freshly ground pepper and the toasted pine nuts scattered over the top.