THE BDELLOID ROTIFER IS A TINY ANIMAL THAT HAS SURVIVED IN PONDS FOR 80 MILLION YEARS WITHOUT SEX. Not a lot of people know that.. As Sir Michael Caine would say

READING:

Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones was one of the books shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year, and I am really disappointed that it didn’t win as it is an amazing book. It would have been particularly appropriate if it had won, as it’s underlying theme is of how important books, and sometimes one book in particular, can be in someone’s life.

The book is set in a small fishing community on the Pacific island of Bouganville, which is part of Papua New Guinea, It is in the early 1990s and there is a bloody civil war going on. At the start of the book this war is but a low murmur on the horizon but gradually it grows closer and then the entire community are caught between the rebels and the government military.

The narrator is a young girl on the verge of puberty, Matilda, who lives with her mother, her father having departed a few years previously to try and find work in Australia. There is still one white man left living in the village, an eccentric elderly chap called Mr Watts, who is known to the village kids as Pop-Eye. Mr Watts came to the island with his wife who was a local woman, and has stayed on after all the other white residents of the island had left.

As the war advances towards them, all modern amenities close down one by one, and life becomes increasingly unpredictable. The village school, which was the lynch pin of Matilda’s life, has been closed down for 86 days at the start of the book, when, to everyone’s surprise, Mr Watts steps in and re-opens it and on the first day tells the children that he will be introducing them to Mr Dickens. They all think that this will be another foreigner, so when it turns out to be a copy of ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens they are bemused and disappointed. And yet, with just the one book at his disposal Mr Watts succeeds in enthralling them all.

Later in her life Matilda says¨I point to the one book that supplied me with another world at a time when it was desperately needed. It gave me a friend in Pip. It taught me you can slip under the skin of another just as easily as your own, even when that skin is white and belongs to a boy alive in Dickens’ England. Now if that isn’t an act of magic I don’t know what is.”

Eventually the whole village is overwhelmed by the violence of the war and like Pip, Matilda’s life changes irrevocably.

I loved this book and recommend it wholeheartedly.

Rated 5*

RANTING:

Once upon a time I thought I knew what the word obese meant. But in the past couple of years it has been hijacked by all and sundry and applied to anyone who is over the approved BMI for their height. By this reckoning most of both the English and South African rugby teams are obese, most of the gold-medal winning British rowing team are obese…I could go on and on.
Personally I think its all just the latest Government obsession and an excuse for trying to control how people live by those who think they know better than the rest of us.

The nanny state has seized on the concept and decided that the British Isles is likely to sink under the North Sea with the combined weight of all its obese citizens, and therefore we must be MADE to slim down. They going to bring in legislation to stop us eating and drinking as we choose.

We must agree to all this, as we are told it is a health crisis and people are going to die of obesity. Well I’m sure one or two will, ‘twas ever thus.

Primary school children are obese, shriek the tabloids, and health experts tell us that they will become obeser (is there such a word?).

I see playgrounds of primary school kids rushing about in the usual way, and apart from one or two, they look pretty much as they ever did to me.

I look at old family wedding photos from the early 1900s and there are some stout parties of both sexes proudly wearing their best hats, and some very Rubenesque young women who bear no resemblance to the slim girls I see everywhere today. Sure there are some families who live on Big Macs, fries, and takeaway kebabs, not to mention fish and chips – but by no means all of us do.

Governments get bees in their bonnets from time to time; in the early 70s it was that by the year 2000 the population would have increased astronomically – they got that very wrong. Never trust government predictions for the future, that’s my view.

As a nation we are living longer and are healthier and wealthier than we have ever been.

And remember : I’m plump, you’re fat, but they are obese!

RECIPE:

We eat a lot of soup, and with a slice or two of crusty bread it makes an excellent meal, but it is nice to ring the changes from time to time. I found this recipe in a magazine recently, can't remember which one, and thought it sounded perfect for having with soup. Last night I made it and the DH and I really enjoyed it. It is not like bread, having more of a muffin consistency and because of the courgettes it's quite moist. The salt you mix with the grated courgettes seasons it perfectly, but next time I might add a little black pepper. This morning I had a piece with sliced tomato on it, and it was just as good cold as warm.

COURGETTE & CHEESE LOAF

75g butter cut into small bits
475g courgettes, coarsely grated (approx 5 courgettes)
2 teaspoons salt
450g Self Raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
25g chopped parsley
2 large eggs
400ml milk
75g strong Cheddar, coarsely grated

Pre-heat oven to 190°C.

Grease and line a large loaf tin (approx 20x13x9cm)
Mix the grated courgettes with the salt and put into a sieve, leave them to drip over a bowl for 10 minutes, then squeeze them dry.
Combine the flower, B.P., parsley and butter – add the courgette.
In a separate bowl whisk the eggs and milk together, then add the grated cheese. Pour the milk mix into the flour and courgette mix and using a knife stir them together until a sticky batter forms. There should be no dry pockets of flour but take care not to over mix.
Tip the mixture into the lined loaf tin and level off.
Bake for 25 minutes until the top is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.
Turn off the oven but leave the loaf in it for a further 10 minutes.
Cool in the tin on a wire rack for five minutes before turning the loaf out.
Let it cool slightly before serving; use a serrated knife to slice the loaf.
Delicious spread with cream cheese.

A DOOR IS WHAT A DOG IS PERPETUALLY ON THE WRONG SIDE OF.
Ogden Nash

READING:

Robert Harris’s last two books have been set in Ancient Rome but his latest work The Ghost is set very much in the here and now, and mainly located in Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod on the US eastern seaboard.

This book is a very slick political thriller, and a gripping read. The story is of a professional ghost-writer who is hired by a big publishing house to take on the memoirs of a British Prime Minister who has recently left office having become unstuck as a result of his policies in the Middle East. These have embroiled Britain – together with the USA - in a War on Terror, not to mention a real conflict in Iraq. Now, does that remind you of anyone in particular?

The ghost writer is flown out to Martha’s Vineyard where Adam Lang, the ex-PM, and his entourage are holed up on the isolated estate owned by the chairman of the publishing firm who have paid a £10 million advance for the memoirs. He takes over the rough manuscript of the memoirs produced by a former aide of the PM who has died recently, and tries to get to grips with the character and thinking of Lang, but as he says “I realised I had a fundamental problem with our former prime minister. He was not a psychologically credible character. In the flesh, playing the part of a statesman, he seemed to have a strong personality. But somehow, when one sat down to think about him, he vanished.”...hmmm, that strikes a chord doesn't it?

Lang’s wife, Ruth, is a strong character, “everyone had said she was smarter than her husband, and that she’d loved their life at the top even more than he had. If there was an official visit to some foreign country, she usually went with him: she refused to be left at home. You only had to watch them on TV together to see how she bathed in his success.”

A set of events ensues which makes The Ghost realise he is swimming in deeper, murkier waters than he had anticipated, and after many clever twists the book ends with a stunning revelation. It would be rotten of me to reveal anything more of the plot, but suffice to say, anyone who is even slightly interested in British politics over the past ten years will find this a delicious, malicious tale, and a real page-turner. It has best-seller written all over it, and no doubt a film or TV version will follow ere long.

Rated 4.5*

RANTING:

The point of an inquest is to determine how an individual died, but in the case of the late Princess Diana we know how she died, in a car crash in Paris when the vehicle she was travelling in was going too fast, she was not wearing a seat belt, and the driver was –according to the French Police who conducted an inquiry – well over the legal drink-drive limit.

So what is this inquest, 10 years after her death, for? It seems to be to squash, once and for all, the claim that she was murdered as Mohammed Al Fayed, father of her lover Dodi Fayed who also died in the crash, has stated to anyone and everyone who will listen - particularly if they have a TV camera with them.

The whole thing strikes me as a completely unnecessary charade, and a charade that is costing us taxpayers a hell of a lot of money (estimates run from £10 million upwards). I, and probably thousands of others, am utterly fed up with the whole business, and god knows what Diana's sons must think about it.

It seems grubby and prurient for people to be poking through aspects of her life that should be private – every tabloid announcing that she was on the pill and therefore couldn’t be pregnant; jurors, lawyers and court officials being shown paparazzi photos taken of her when she lay dying; speculation that a ring ordered by Dodi meant she was engaged to be married to him (even if she was, it seems bloody far fetched to decide to kill both of them).

There has already been an independent UK inquiry held by Lord Stevens, which took 3 years to complete and cost the taxpayers £3.69 million, but Mohammed Al Fayed wasn’t happy with the conclusion which said that there was no conspiracy and it was just a ghastly accident.

Unless the coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker announces at the end of the inquest that the Royal Family are personally responsible, and the police rush to arrest the Duke of Edinburgh, Al Fayed still won’t be happy. He is an angry and embittered man whose ambitious plans for his much loved son ended when the couple were killed, and he has spent a fortune trying to convince everyone who will listen of his paranoid theories.

As with Kennedy’s assassination, there will always be people who have far fetched views that she was eliminated. Let them have them. The poor woman is dead and buried. Can we please move on. I can't stand the thought that tomorrow morning this whole ghastly business will be all over the media again, and again, and again , until next weekend; and its estimated that the inquest will continue for six months. Aaagh!

RECIPE:

The other evening I had two extra for supper rather unexpectedly, and though it was easy enough to stretch the pasta which the DH and I were going to have, the meal seemed a little insubstantial. In such situations what I try to do is rustle up a starter course (not something I would normally bother with for just the two of us). This Tuscan recipe is one of my favourite standby starters, as I nearly always have the ingredients to hand in the kitchen store cupboard. It goes down equally well in winter or summer, and is super simple.

TONNO E FAGIOLI (Tuna and bean salad)

Serves 4

2x 400g tins Borlotti beans
1 tin good quality tuna in olive oil,
1 medium red onion
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil,
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley

Drain the tins of beans, tip them into a sieve and rinse briefly under cold water, shake off excess water and allow to drip dry.

Open and drain the tin of tuna, and flake the tuna into a bowl.

Peel the red onion and cut it in half lengthwise. Finely slice each half, and separate the rings.

Tip the beans into a bowl, season with salt and pepper and the lemon juice and a good glug of olive oil to dress the beans. Mix gently.

Divide the beans between four serving plates and then divide the tuna flakes and onion between the plates, spooning them carefully over the beans, garnish with the chopped parsley.

Serve with crusty warm Ciabatta bread.

THINGS I DISCOVERED WHEN MOVING HOUSE:
We seem to have the definitive collection of late 20th Century plastic shoe horns. I'm thinking of offering them to the V&A Museum for a special exhibition.

READING:

I’ve no idea why I picked up The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty, apart from the fact I quite liked the cover design, which is an entirely frivolous method of book selection but a method I must confess I use rather often. Anyway, I’m very glad I did because the hero, Smithson ‘Smithy’ Ide, is one of the most interesting and engaging characters I’ve ever encountered.

The book begins with the death of Smithy’s parents in an automobile accident, and this obese, virtually alcoholic, 40 year old has to sort out their affairs. Whilst in the process of doing that, a letter arrives for his father to say that a body being held in a morgue in California has been identified as that of his long missing older sister Bethany. Smithy, whose family lives in Providence, Rhode Island is not sure quite what to do. He gets on his old boyhood bike, and wearing just the clothes he stands up in and carrying virtually no money he goes out for a ride – and he doesn’t stop. The ride turns into an amazing journey as he cycles right across the USA to retrieve his sister’s remains. In the course of the journey with all it’s highs and lows, its moments of danger and of joy, he reveals his memories of his life, his family, his sister’s very challenging mental illness, and his time in Vietnam. The journey heals him, changes him and reveals true love to him. In many ways Smithy is the archetypal innocent abroad in society, and I really, really wanted him to find happiness at the end.

Some of the descriptions of the American landscape are truly beautiful, and the reader gets a real feeling for the immensity and variety of the country, and the diversity of the people who live there.

I guess I’d sum the book up as having been an unexpected pleasure – and despite the title, there is nothing about running in the book at all !

Rated: 4.5*

RANTING:

My local corner shop is owned and run by a Muslim family, it sells newspapers and magazines, bus passes, milk, a small range of groceries, wine, beer and fizzy drinks, and the best vegetable samoosas in north London. There are thousands of these little shops all over the UK. We get our papers there everyday, and other items from time to time. Although they are muslims and don’t drink it themselves, they choose to stock and sell alcohol. They don’t need to do so, as there is an off-licence just down the road, but they do it because the majority of Britons do drink alcohol therefore it is good business and it is legal.

So what the hell is this ridiculous nonsense with some Muslim employees in Sainsbury’s objecting to handling bottles or cans of alcoholic drink at the checkout tills, or on the shelves on the grounds that it is against their religion? Sainsbury’s is a huge supermarket chain with hundreds of branches, stocking thousands of lines of products. It seems total madness to allow some employees to pick and choose what they will or will not handle. Apparently the management have said that if a Muslim checkout person comes across alcohol in the shopper’s goods, they can raise a hand, and another – presumably non-Muslim – member of staff will come and pass the item over the laser scanner, after which the Muslim member of staff can resume checking out the goods. What a stupid, time wasting idea.

You can just imagine it can’t you; it’s 6.30pm on a Friday evening, you have a full trolley load of food, drink and household necessities, the checkout queues are horrendous, there are children crying, harassed shoppers anxious to get home asap, everyone is tired and stressed after a busy week. Your checkout is manned by a lady wearing the hijab, in every trolley of the four people ahead of you in the queue there is alcohol of some variety. The same is true of almost all the trolleys in all the queues. Every time the checkout lady raises her hand for someone else to come and scan the demon drink, there is a long wait as there are not enough staff available.
Customer satisfaction will be at an all time low. And why? Is it because Sainsbury’s think they are practicing religious tolerance? If a staff member says they cannot ever do a Sunday shift because they are Christian, are special arrangements made for them? I’d take a bet they’d either not be employed in the first place or be given their P45 pdq.

Sainsbury’s should be telling all prospective and current employees that either they handle all the goods that the company sells when required to do so, or seek a job elsewhere.

Over zealous, mistaken interpretations of religious prohibitions just lead the religion in question into disrepute.

RECIPE:

We've only been in our new abode for six nights and as friends have brought meals round or we've nipped out for a quick bite after hours of unpacking boxes, moving furniture around and so on, I haven't really got to grips with cooking on the new stove. Today I thought it was time to get back to normality and decided to make a quick fish supper for the DH and myself before he set off for a meeting and I flopped in front of the telly.
We are now living in Muswell Hill which boasts one of London's best fishmongers, Walter Purkis & Sons, so I bought some haddock from them and cooked it like this:

BAKED FISH SUPPER
Serves 2 (just increase the number of fillets etc to feed more people).

2 good sized haddock fillets
300-400g each
150g chestnut (brown) mushrooms sliced
5 tablespoons crème fraiche
2 tablespoons butter
Salt and Pepper

Heat the butter in a small frying pan and sauté the sliced mushrooms in it until cooked and beginning to colour. Remove from heat. Grease an oven proof dish and lay the haddock fillets in it. Season them with salt and pepper.
Spoon the sautéd mushrooms with their buttery juices over the fish and then splodge the crème fraiche over everything as evenly as possible. Bake in a pre-heated oven, 180 C, for about 20-25 minutes until bubbling and beginning to brown.
Serve with steamed new potatoes and a green salad.

MY OLD MAN SAID "FOLLOW THE VAN,
AND DON'T DILLY DALLY ON THE WAY"
Off went the van wiv' my 'ome packed in it,
I followed on wiv' our old cock linnet
But I dillied, I dallied, I dallied and I dillied,
Lost me way and don't know where to roam.
I just stopped off for the odd half-quartern*
Now I can't find my way 'ome.

* old time measure of Gin - I won't be stopping for any when I follow the removal van, I'll take it with me!

READING:

The narrator of When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale is a eight/nine year old boy called Lawrence. His father and mother are divorced, the father remaining in Scotland whilst Lawrence, his younger sister Jemima and his mother Hannah now live in a cottage in England. His mother is very frightened that her ex-husband is stalking the family and will do them harm. On a sudden whim she decides that they should flee to Rome where she had lived and worked before her children were born, and where she thinks they will be safely out of his reach. Within hours of her decision they have packed the car with as much as it will hold, including Lawrence’s hamster in its cage, and set off for Italy.

After driving for two days through France and northern Italy they arrive in Rome where Hannah contacts some of her old friends who still live there. With little money and no fixed accommodation available to them they stay with one friend after another, eventually exhausting their hospitality and causing anxiety as Hannah gives increasingly strange reasons for why they have fled from Britain.

From early on in the book you are aware that Hannah is suffering from depression. Lawrence, who does not understand that his mother has mental problems, seems to be taking responsibility for his mother and and only sees his mum as either happy or sad; he is desperate to keep her happy and functioning on a more-or-less even keel. He is on tenterhooks all the time, continually trying to assess her moods and divert her from extreme depression to some semblance of normality.

Hannah’s mental state, and her rising paranoia about her ex-husband made me feel extremely anxious for the two children – of course mental illness is not infectious, but it can have a very powerful effect on people exposed to it, and their mother’s behaviour is taking its toll on Lawrence and Jemima.

Lawrence has two great interests, outer space particularly black holes, and the Roman Emperors – particularly the mad ones such as Nero and Caligula – having been given one of the Horrible Histories books on this subject by one of his mother’s friends. Lawrence’s thoughts on these subjects have been seamlessly woven into his account of the increasingly surreal life he is living. Matthew Kneale has used the voice of a child to great effect, and the book is written with the wonky grammar and bad spelling that a lad of that age might well use, but half-way through the book this really started to irritate me.

At first this book reminded me of Mark Haddon's book ,The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but actually the resemblance is very superficial, maybe it is the faux naivite of the language, When We Were Romans is a much darker book in every way.

Rated: 4*

RANTING:

What the hell are Police Community Support Officers FOR? I see pairs of them wandering around our local shopping areas, but I really don’t know what they are doing. I do know what they are NOT doing: they are not making arrests, they are not busting drug dealers, they are not catching truanting schoolchildren and returning them to school, at least not in this neck of the woods. On the BBC this morning I discover another thing they are not doing, they are not rescuing a drowning 10 year old boy, merely assessing the situation and radioing for police assistance, standing by for five minutes, so that when he was hauled out of the pond he could not be resuscitated.

I feel quite strongly about this for personal reasons. Many years ago my DH happened to be on Westminster Bridge one frosty morning in early January. A tourist called his attention to a woman who had fallen in the Thames, and who was crying for help. The DH shouted at other passers-by to get assistance (remember this was in pre mobile phone days), and then stripped off his coat, scarf, suit, shoes etc, and dived into the river. As he said afterwards, it was bloody cold, and the current was stronger than he had expected, however he managed to get hold of the woman, and hold her up whilst the river swept them under the bridge and he finally got her to the bank at the spot where the London Eye is now. By now there were people waiting to help drag them ashore, and they were hustled off to St Thomas’s Hospital to be warmed up and check they were ok. That woman would have drowned if DH had not acted as he did, and she was very grateful to him and I was immensely proud of him. In fact about six months later the children and I went to see him being presented with the Royal Humane Society’s Gallantry Award.

Apart from tooting his trumpet for him, the point I am trying to make is that going to help another human being who is in trouble is natural to our species, and is particularly so when the individual in trouble is a child.

Those Community Support Officers who stood and waited for someone else to come along, because they were not “trained” were not behaving in the way our society would expect adults to do in the circumstances, let alone people who have been taken on to act as quasi police. Let’s get rid of these pointless and expensive Blunkett Bobbies, and spend the money on real policemen and women.

RECIPE:

I do love a good party, which is just as well as we seem to hold rather a lot of them. Any excuse will do, and at the moment moving house is an ideal reason. Tonight my DH and I are having a farewell thrash at the house we've lived in for 20 years - we're expecting about 50 of our nearest and dearest friends but I have not done much in the way of cooking as everyone is bringing a plate of something for the buffet and this morning I went and bought a tray of baklava from the Turkish bakers in Green Lanes. Last weekend my adult kids had 20+ friends of theirs for a farewell braai prior to them moving out finally and permanently. Obviously given their ages they left some years ago, but like homing pigeons they kept returning for days or months at a time. My contribution to the braai was a dish which is so commonplace out in South Africa that you can buy it ready made in cans, and I'm told there is a restaurant with the same name in Putney; It is great with braaied meats as a side dish but is also often served as a relish. Can be served hot or cold.

CHAKALAKA

Serves 8

250 ml sunflower or corn oil

30 g fresh chopped ginger

30 g fresh chopped garlic

20 g chopped chillis (choose your type according to how much heat you like!)

3 onions, roughly chopped

500 g tomatoes, skinned and roughly chopped - or equivalent of tinned chopped tomatoes

1 large green pepper de-seeded and roughly chopped

1 large red pepper de-seeded and roughly chopped

1-2 tablespoons curry powder of your choice

250 g coarsely grated carrot

1 large tin baked beans, undrained (450g tin)

3-4 tablespoons fresh chopped coriander

Fry ginger,garlic,chillis,onions in the oil. Add the curry powder of your choice and mix. Add the tomatoes and cook for 10 mins. Add peppers and carrots and cook for 10 minutes. Add baked beans and cook until the mixture reduces and thickens slightly. You can get away with cooking for only 5-10 minutes at this stage, but the longer you simmer it, the more complex and melded the flavours will be. Remove from heat and add coriander. Check seasoning and add salt and pepper if necessary.

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.

HAVE NOTHING IN YOUR HOME THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW TO BE USEFUL OR BELIEVE TO BE BEAUTIFUL. So said William Morris, and I am trying desperately to apply his wise words to my decluttering/packing programme....but it's easier said than done.

READING:

Can there be anyone in the English speaking world who hasn’t heard of “Just William”, the archetypal mischievous small boy whose life and adventures have entertained generations of readers for over 85 years? His creator was Richmal Crompton, and until a year or so ago I thought that the only things she had written were the William books, and was surprised to find out that she wrote 41 novels for adults, most of which are now forgotten and out of print. Thank goodness for Persephone Books who are rescuing women’s novels from obscurity by reprinting them; it was their edition of Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton that I have just finished reading.

Published in 1948, Family Roundabout is the story of two families, linked by marriage, each family has at its head a widowed matriarch. Set in an English country town during the 1920s and 1930s, the families represent two strands of the middle-classes. Mrs Fowler is fading gentility, verging on upper class, whereas Mrs Willoughby is well-to-do “trade”. Each woman has a very different approach to parenting (or as it would have been called in those days – ‘mothering’) and each of them disapprove of the other and their ways. In the end, it really makes no matter as their children grow up and behave in ways they couldn’t have imagined, and then begin parenting their own children in their own ways.

Family Roundabout is a clever title as it exactly describes how families go round and round through the generations, and at the same time individual members of the family go up and down as their fortunes wax and wane, just like the horses on a carousel.

The book contains some very acute observations about life, love, and what makes a good mother, and at the same time is a really meaty family saga.

All in all it is a most enjoyable, comfortable, book, just what I needed to read at the moment, and I recommend it wholeheartedly

Rated: 5*

RANTING:

I have lived in the London Borough of Islington for nearly thirty years, and I am feeling quite unsettled by the fact that in less than a month’s time we are moving elsewhere.

When we first moved here, Islington had a well deserved reputation for having a “Loony Left” Labour Council, flying the Red Flag above the town hall, crummy services for local folk, and rampant cronyism. Finally, and to great rejoicing from me and many others, after running the council for 40 years they were turfed out by the Lib Dems, and within months everything started to improve, from educational standards to rubbish collection.

This inner London borough has some of the poorest housing estates in the country, and they are cheek by jowl with some of the most expensive property in the country, property which is owned by some of the most influential people in the country. One of the biggest problems across the borough is the dearth of affordable housing, Islington is not alone in this I realise, many other boroughs have a similar problem. Our nurses, teachers, firemen, and other key workers all need places to live and the prices in Islington are very, very high. The council has been working hard to try and improve the situation by increasing the availability of affordable places.

It seems however that their efforts are being ignored/undermined by one of Islington’s own MPs. The borough is made up of two parliamentary constituencies, which have returned Labour MPs since the dawn of time. The latest incumbent to that role in Islington South, is Emily Thornberry MP who has a majority of just 484 votes. Just last month she was photographed at the Town Hall protesting that there are still 13000 people on the waiting list for housing in Islington.

One of her constituents , a tenant in flat owned by the Ujima Housing Association, which specialises in providing housing for black and Asian families, was told that he and his family had to move out; the property was to be sold because Ujima couldn 't afford the renovations that were needed. Extremely worried, as were the other tenants living in the property, he went to see his MP, as one does, and asked her to help. She said she would speak to Ujima, look into the matter and let him know what was going on. So far, so predictable. None-the-less, the property did get sold, and her constituent was forced to move. Ah well, that’s life you might say. But hold on a minute, who has bought the property, for just over half a million pounds? and has now let the flats out to Labour party pals? None other than the husband of Emily Thornberry MP. I don’t think she wrote back to her constituent and said ‘tough luck chum, my hubby is rich and he’s bought the place so you’ve got to hop it’.

What appalling brass-faced hypocrisy. This kind of behaviour really stinks. No wonder the populace have such a low opinion of politicians.

I will be living in a neighbouring borough by the time of the next election, but I sincerely hope the voters of Islington will get rid of Ms Thornberry

RECIPE:

Last week I went to a dinner party given for an old college friend of one of my dearest girlfriends. The old college friend now lives in downtown New York and is one of THE classy caterers in aforementioned city. Anyhow - my friend turned out a dinner to die for, and this was one of the dessert options. After two rich and quite elaborate courses, the cool spicy pineapple was a really refreshing finish. This is going to be a real favourite of mine.
As so many other friends are on diets - including BFCT - I thought they would like this recipe as it is low(no) fat, and incredibly delicious:

CATHIE'S CARPACCIO OF SPICED PINEAPPLE

Serves 6

1 medium pineapple
6 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons water
1 thumb-sized piece fresh ginger
1 red chili
Juice of one lime

De-seed the chilli and chop into very, very small dice
Peel the ginger and chop finely
Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to the boil, add the finely chopped chilli and ginger, continue boiling until the liquid is reduced by half and becoming syrupy. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Peel the pineapple and cut in half-lengthwise, de-core each half and then slice the pineapple wafer thin. Lay the slices in overlapping circles on a large shallow serving plate.
Gently spoon the cooled chili/ginger syrup over the pineapple slices, and then squeeze the lime juice over them.
Cover with cling film and chill in the fridge until time to serve.

A PINCH AND A PUNCH FOR THE FIRST OF THE MONTH, AND NO RETURNS.

Last week Mark at The Book Depository was offering ten bloggers books to review, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the ten. I haven't received the book yet, but of course,when I do I will post my views here too . Head over to the Book Depository because Mark is going to be making other offers over the next weeks, and there is nothing a reader likes better than to get their hands on a new book

READING:

I’ve only ever read one novel by Douglas Kennedy and wasn’t that impressed but so many people told me that they had really enjoyed his books that I felt I should try another, so I picked up his most recently published work The Woman in the Fifth,

Narrated by Harry Ricks, a Professor of Film Studies at a Midwestern college who has just lost his wife, daughter, job and money, it all takes place in Paris. In fact the book could have just as easily been entitled ‘Naïve American Down and Out in Paris’. Harry arrives in the city in the bleak days after Christmas, running away from the scandal caused by his affair with a student – something that is totally taboo in the politically correct USA, and when he arrives in France he continues to make really bad decisions. Within hours of his arrival a chain of unfortunate events begins and he is left with little money to fulfil his original plan of going to the cinema as often as possible whilst writing a novel based on his angst ridden childhood. He stumbles from one disastrous situation to another, renting a disgusting chambre de bonne in a houseful of immigrants in the quartier du Turc, and taking an illegal job as a night-watchman, working for shady employers who do not permit him to know what they are doing, but whatever it is is almost certainly criminal. Every euro he earns has to be carefully eked out, and the reader gets to know the detailed economics of his situation--- 38 euros for the treatment of a STD he has picked up, and then 2 euros for a packet of condoms (which he never uses) not to mention the costs of croissants, coffees, the weight of the fish , cheese and fruit he buys at the market etc.

At a salon held by another American ex-pat, he meets Margit Kadar, a sultry, mysterious Hungarian in her early fifties, with whom he embarks on a passionate affair -the raunchy sex scenes leaving little to the imagination. From the start Margit is in charge, and she will only see him at her apartment in the 5^th arrondissement at exactly 5pm twice a week.. Once Harry has met Margit, strange things begin to happen. Anyone who has ever treated him badly gets their comeuppance in a series of apparent accidents, dead bodies pile up and Harry is detained by the Police on several occasions. His life becomes threatened, and dangers swirl round him as he manages to antagonise a Turkish bar-owner, his nefarious employers, and his extremely nasty landlord in turn.

The plot becomes more and more surreal and Kafkaesqe; is Margit meant to be his avenging guardian angel? or a succubus who will not let him go?

I read right to the end of the book, hoping the author would eventually make sense of it all, but alas no such luck. The question I was left wondering is: Can you have sex with a ghost? I don't think so.

Rated 2*

RANTING:

Year in, year out, millions of us pay our premiums to insurance companies trusting that when and if trouble comes our way we will be covered financially. But all too often these days we hear that the insurance companies try their best to weasel out of paying the monies owed. Yesterday I heard of a case that made my blood boil.

A 29 year old married woman, mother of a two year old daughter, was killed when a suicidal motorist deliberately crashed into their family car. Her distraught husband, an electrician, now a loan parent, tried to make a claim for the death of his wife against their joint life insurance policy with Legal & General. After all, he was going to need to pay for child care amongst other things. To his surprise and distress, L&G refused to pay up, stating that his wife had withheld important information from them. What could that be?

The couple took out the insurance policy when she was pregnant with their daughter. She had given up smoking to become pregnant, and was no longer a smoker. So, on the insurance application form when they asked if she had smoked in the past 12 months, she answered, truthfully, ‘no’. Her husband who was still smoking at the time answered ‘yes’.

After her death L & G obtained her health records from the maternity unit and noted that someone had ticked the box marked ‘smoker’. Who knows what that meant - was it in the context that she had previously been a smoker? Did she know that whoever it was had ticked the box, so she could have refuted it?

So when she died in a car crash caused by a stranger, L& G refused to pay out. Because, they claimed, she was a smoker.

What kind of cheap trick is that? Smoking didn’t have anything to do with her death; it is morally reprehensible that they behaved like this, forcing her husband to go to court, and then at the last minute – 2½ years later- offering an out of court settlement of £100,000. I wonder what Tim Breedon, CEO of Legal & General, would think of such shoddy, despicable behaviour if he were the grieving husband.

The moral of the story is that Insurance companies will happily take your money for years, but they won’t pay out if they can possibly help it. B**tards.

RECIPE:

As I may have said, Monday night is always pasta night chez nous - I can hear my everloving first-born saying “for god’s sake Mum, you’re beginning to repeat yourself” - but we do eat pasta on other nights too, if the fancy takes me. Recently I made this for a Friday evening, and jolly good it was too.

SUPER SALMON PASTA
Serves four

4 skinless salmon fillets
4 Tablespoons Noilly Prat (or other dry Vermouth)
4 Tablespoons crème fraiche
6 Spring onions, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon chopped Dill
1 Tablespoon chopped Parsley
Sunflower oil for frying
Salt & Pepper

500 g pasta of your choice – farfalle, fusilli, penne or similar.

Put a pan of water to boil for the pasta. When boiling cook the pasta in the usual way.

Heat a splash of oil in a frying pan – just enough to stop the salmon from sticking – and when hot, place the salmon fillets to fry gently for about 2-3 minutes before turning them over and cooking the other side; it doesn’t matter if they go slightly brown, but try to keep them as lightly coloured as possible. Then add the spring onions and the Noilly Prat which will bubble up. With a wooden fork break the cooked salmon into large flakes, add the chopped dill and parsley and the crème fraiche. Cook for a few more minutes stirring gently so the NP, crème fraiche and herbs make a sauce.

Drain the cooked pasta, leaving a small amount of the cooking water in the pan, stir the salmon mixture through it and serve with extra parsley sprinkled on top if you want to garnish it.