Thermal Underwear

This week I mostly been wearing...

So they smell a bit after a few days...


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Araucaria

The greatest of all crossword compilers, who is 90 years old soon, so we'd best enjoy him while we can.

I settled down with his Christmas Prize double crossword yesterday, and half an hour later I had just about managed to make sense of the rules. Three hours later I'd even solved some of them. Which made up for the lack of sport on TV, as I huddled round the log-burning stove, wishing I had some wood to put in it. The Crossword should see me through to about February at this rate.

Simon Hoggart shares his favourite Araucaria clue - a most incredible anagram:

"O hark the herald angels sing the boy's descent which lifted up the world." (5,9,7,5,6,2,5,3,6,2,3,6).




I like monkey-puzzle trees also.

Chocolate-covered Cocoa Beans

Dark chocolate for preference, a bitterness probably only appreciated by older palates, perfect with rioja or a late bottled vintage port, and if you're not careful, longer-lasting than a handful of pro plus...



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This morning's frost

Which is extraordinary. . This batch of snow hasn't been as pretty as last winter's for some reason - lack of sun maybe - but this morning's frost has more than made up for it. I realise I've been a city boy most my life, but I can't remember seeing anything like it before.

The views over to Kemberton reservoir were of a whiteness I'd never seen in the landscape before. The sun was trying to break through the fog and the whole landscape was an unearthly colour. Every tree was covered , every branch and twig with an inch deep covering of frost on top of it. Whatever green pigment that remains, was seeping though underneath, giving the trees an off-silver greenish glow. Stand alone oaks look like giant ice crystals. Even evergreeens have been consumed by the frost - there's thirty foot leylandi at the end of our road tucked up in it from head to toe.

I plainly don't have the words to describe this very well. If we're lucky the Wenlock Edge country diarist will have been out today and will treat us to his rendition shortly....

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Tapas

It was a toss-up between tapas, or Jamie Oliver, but for all his good deeds and essential decency I couldn't bring myself to do it. Plus his latest book "30 minutes" is the most preposterously optimistic title ever to decorate the spine of a book. We've done two meals from it so far and both have taken closer to 2 hours. I look forward to all cooks promoting their wares by saying the opposite of what they mean - especially Nigella's next series "Food without Fellatio".

Still, his tapas recipe worked out pretty well in the end. His simple dishes worked best - chorizo glazed in honey; manchego cheese with ham; anchovies with tomato. His tortilla wasn't so good and his Belem cakes were as risible as those at Nandos.

We had a wonderful evening in Madrid once, when visiting one of Anne's friends, as he took us on a strolling tour of the bars, a snack and a sherry in each one. What a jolly civilised way to spend time before dinner. We even had a decent spread in Calla Millor once, after we'd managed to persuade the waiter we didn't want chicken and chips in a basket.

This wasn't up there with those, but it's recommended for a simple Saturday night in dying a slow death in front of reality TV. Just start early.


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Kestrels

The very first thing I praised was buzzards. Which I love, and still feel privileged to enjoy - particularly the ones with a great billet in the copse up near the Kemberton reservoir, who use the contours of the field for their hunting, swooping down just above my head.

However, I've seen at least one buzzard on 350 or so of the 400 days since I wrote that praise. So I've come to take them a bit for granted. Plus I haven't felt entirely the same about them since Daryl told me the story of them attacking one of his friends.

A kestrel, on the other hand, is a rare treat. And one was in full hover this morning as I went for the paper, and on the way back. They particularly like the telephone lines that stretch across 'lamb-chop field' just down the lane, a perfect hunting roost. But I don't think they live long. I'll see one there for a week or so, and then not again for another six months. Unlike the buzzards, I certainly don't know where they nest. So, they're well worth stopping to watch and enjoy whilst the Shifnal commute/school-run dawdles along all around...


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John Crace

Guardian readers will be familiar with his "Digested Reads", where he takes a newly-released book, and parodies it to within an inch of its life, before leaving it broken-spined on the floor of literary ambition. I've linked to a parody of Jamie Oliver as an example, but he's even better taking on proper literature.

So his new book "Brideshead Abbreviated" is a must for bibliophiles everywhere. 100 books spanning the 20th century, all the usual suspects:

Here's some snippets:

"Why did you shoot him?" the magistrate asked me. "It was too hot." "Do you miss your mother?" "I'm not bovvered." "Do you believe in God?" "I said, I aint bovvered."




********************************

The boy with the fair hair wasn't in the least perturbed that the plane he'd been flying in had been shot down or that the adults had all been killed while all the boys had survived without a scratch. Instead he played contentedly on the golden beach in the Garden of Eden.




*********************************

"We still gonna get some lan' George?"
"We sure are Lennie"
"An' rabbits?"
"Lotsa rabbits" George said, putting his gun to the back of Lennie's neck and pulling the trigger.
"What's bin happenin' here?" Slim asked
"Ah've just killed the American Dream"
"But it aint such bad news for the rabbits."




**********************************

"You are going to have to learn DoubleThink" O'Brien observed kindly. as electrodes were fitted to Winston's body/ "The art of holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time."
"Ok, OK I believe this is both a ponderous and didactic political allegory and the most brilliant critique of Soviet Russia."




***********************************

Arthur went back to the pub to drink 2,764 pints and smoke 346 packets of woodbines. A car knocked him down on the way home. He swore loudly, pushed the car over a wall and reset his 17 broken bones. It was just a normal Saturday night.




***********************************

"This book has gone on way too long as it is" Fermina Daza told her children, explaining her decision to take a river cruise with Florentino Ariza. "If I don't give in now, we could be in for another three hundred pages."




*************************************

Make a lovely Christmas present for the right person....

Neil Diamond

I have no shame. Nor credibility.

I'm too old to care. The days when I appropriated unknown (still) acts like Patrik Fitzgerald and dalek i love you and crayoned them lovingly on my rucksack are long behind me. Indeed, whole decades of music have sidled past me when I wasn't looking.

But my love of Neil Diamond has withstood the vagaries of fashion and time. This sort of affection is often called a "guilty pleasure". This is, of course, a phrase cultural snobs use to allow themselves to listen to, watch and read things they secretly prefer to the things they openly laud. But I feel no need to admit such guilt.

'Love at the Greek' is the best live album ever made. Period. I won't bore you with any further catalogue of the man's greatness - the slew of hits he's written for other people; the way his lyrics modulate from the sublime to the ridiculous within the same chorus; the effortless and unembarrassed lack of cool stretching the history of popular music - instead I'll talk about his latest hit.

Currently you may have noticed supermarkets, soft radio stations, garage forecourts, hotel bars everywhere are playing his version of 'Midnight Train to Georgia' on perpetual loop. Now, this song, as done by Gladys Knight, is without question in my top 10 of all-time songs. A desert island choice for sure.

What Neil has done to this song, and as a 98 year old to boot, is take all the forward motion, all the funk, all the soul, all the swooping emotion of the vocals, all the gloriously camp backing of the Pips ("Superstar, but he didn't get far"), he's managed to take all that greatness, and discard it in favour of the slow, turgid, monochrome of a dying man's croak.

And it's really good.

Genius, folks, genius...


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Jonathan Duhamel

Who has just won the World Poker Championship, aged 23.

As Victoria Coren puts it: "He went bankrupt 2 years ago. he did not borrow to go chasing his lost bankroll. He stopped playing and got a job. He regrouped, studied and came back. And what a comeback"

Previous biggest win $40,000.
World Poker Championship winnings $8.9 million.


There's one very important lesson for everyone aged over 30 here.
Do not suddenly decide to take up the modern goldrush of on-line poker. You're too old. Young maths wizards, fast, hungry, tireless and fearless - they're gonna gun you down...



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Dylan Thomas

Mention of whom always reminds me of Lampeter evenings spent with Mervyn Williams, pleasantly stoned, listening to Richard Burton's mellifluous tones as Under Milk Wood washed slowly over us:

"Starless and bible black"

"Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she wasn't looking, but never kissed her again, though she was looking all the time"

not forgetting No Good Boyo's
"I don't know who's up there, and I don't care."

Last night there was a piece on him on 'The One Show', by the greatest exponent of the five minute interest film in the history of television - Giles Brandreth (seriously). It looked at his war propaganda films, which was news to me, because despite having studied both Dylan Thomas and Second World War propaganda films in some detail, I wasn't aware he had made any, (too busy looking at Lynn wossname's talking jeans I expect - teenage hormones never were the best learning lubricant).

Anyway, you know those youtube videos that viral round the world - the Hitler parodies from the film Downfall - where Hitler rants in sub-titles about anything from Newcastle being relegated to a very funny one about the Downfall meme itself, including Hitler's rueful complaint as to his legacy: "Whenever we google Hitler all we get is Downfall parodies".

Turns out Dylan Thomas had done exactly the same parody 67 years earlier, smack in the middle of the war, over-dubbing Hitler's speeches.
Which is quite interesting...

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Damages (series one)

I managed to lose track of this when it was first on, but have just finished it now. So, (hot off the press!) I can share that it's bloody brilliant. It's one of the best one-plot dramas I can remember seeing.

Glenn Close is suitably psychotic - indeed from early on she's shot/made-up/lit in such a way as her eyes appear completely black; Ted Danson steals the show; you get Peter Riegert ambling around the set; not to mention Zeljko Ivanek playing possibly the slowest drawling southern attorney ever placed on screen. Non-linear narrative to keep you trying to solve the jigsaw, and twists just about the right side of bonkers.

Can't vouch for the next two series, but I'm off to find out...


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Potato Ricers

Most my life I've hated mashed potato. I still have vestigial fear coursing through my veins even now when Anne suggests it. I think of primary school and those ice-cream scoops of cold potatoes with lumps. Embedded sick-inducing lipomas of ummash.

My nan, grammar school and Chris Burgess have served to give me dystopian Proustian flashbacks since that time. And Paula was once so determined not to give us lumpen mashed potato that she sweetly whipped the dickens out of a vat of tats and ended up serving us glue instead.

And all this time all anyone's really needed is a potato ricer...bish, bash, bosh, smooth and creamy, job done.

Should anyone out there feel like coming on and professing their deep-seated love of lumpy mash, you should know I had enough of you when you came on here getting all chuddy about custard-skin, you fricking perverts. I suggest you tootle off to www.sickofuckingfoodies.com, nothing to see here...


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Songs with British place names in the title, (or in the song)

Blimey this is harder - get your music caps on - much like America where there's loads of New York references, this is even harder excluding London...

Handsworth Revolution - Steel Pulse
Strange Town - the Jam (and Eton Rifles)
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty
Glasgow Star - Eddie Reader
Up the Junction - Squeeze
White Man in Hammersmith Palais - The Clash


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Songs with American place names in the title (or in the song)

It's amazing how many good songs reference places in America. I was able to hop from one to another for hours last night: - let's set up a group compilation - especially as all of mine are well old, for which I apologise!

Last night I particularly enjoyed:

California Dreamin' - Mamas and the Papas
Ode to Billie Joe - Bobbie Gentry
Do You Know the Way to San Jose - Dionne Warwick
Statue of Liberty - XTC
Only Living Boy In New York - Simon and Garfunkel
Movin' Out - Billy Joel
Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight
Fallen For You - Sheila Nicholls
Please Come to Boston - Joan Baez
Wichita Lineman - Glenn Campbell
High Sierra - Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris
America - from West Side Story
Anchorage - Michelle Shocked
First We Take Manahattan - Jennifer Warnes
An American Tune - Paul Simon

More please....


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Long-serving recipes

Anne has inked the date March 1983 into the front cover of her Delia Smith Complete Cookery Course, which is now sadly lacking a back cover, and which, without a shadow of a doubt, taught her how to cook.

The recipe in the book we've used most down the years is the one for Hungarian goulash, though, judging from her scrawl in the margins of the recipe, we very early on substituted the suggested steak for belly pork, and added mushrooms. Such flair more suited to the bish bash bosh of Jamie than the pedantry of Saint Delia, surely, but then Anne's always gone where the paprika's taken her.

Anyway it's been a very nice simple supper down the years.

What's your longest- serving recipe?

Trees (Autumn)

Although, as I walked down the drive for the paper this morning I appeared to be ankle-deep in leaves, and I hate clearing them up. (Last year's leaf pile is sporting some spectacular orange mushrooms, Catherine you're welcome to first dibs)

Still, autumn colours just about make it worthwhile. We went to Arley Arboretum on Sunday. A small, well-planned garden with a few acers and maples in full fall splendour. It reminded me very much of Canizaro Park (Wimbledon). The latter works better, being a slice of manicured countryside in London, whereas Arley seems a bit incongruous when the best viewpoint in the arboretum is of the part of the river Severn you've just walked 3 miles along to get to it.

And, of course, both pale into insignificance compared to a proper arboretum like Westonbirt. Which of course is as nothing compared to the full glory of leaf-peeping in Vermont of a Fall. Although, in truth such is the over-promotion of the Sunday supplements that I can assure those of you that haven't experienced it, that leaf-peeping in Vermont in the Fall, isn't even leaf-peeping in Vermont in the Fall.

When we did it, we decided that tree for tree we much preferred it up in Maine with the splendour of the pines, beaver, moose, and of course, lobster hot-dog rolls.

And much the same happened Sunday. The highlight of the arboretum wasn't a swath of acers in full iridescence. It was two fantastic Crimean pines, called "the organ pipes", (not very good) pictures below...


http://www.arley-arboretum.org.uk/the-arboretum/special-trees.html

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James Blunt

Not that I like his music much - that falsetto voice and dodgy lyrics.

Still, I've no idea what he's done to deserve all the opprobrium heaped on him by music snobs everywhere. He's written a catchy song. Get over yourselves.

No, the reason I feel like praising him is that I must have seen him on about 8 chat shows now, and every time he has been one of the most effortlessly funny people I've ever seen interviewed. Seriously.

Given the cognoscenti's distaste for him, he's joining my facebook list of things under-rated, that now reads: Hugh Grant, cheddar cheese, The One Show, mackerel, iceberg lettuce and James Blunt.


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Hamlet

Which is of course one of the most preposterous stories ever staged. You know all those thrillers - books and movies - that start off as compelling and end up in a frenzied vortex of entirely unlikely, mindless slaughter? Here's your template. The ending, with the dead bodies of all the main characters strewn over the stage, gets more farcical every time I watch.

Still, Shakey managed to invent the teenager a few years before Elvis and James Dean - there's never been such a shoe-staring, box-room rebel as dear old Hammy. The play is a part of me having studied it for A-Level, but watching it these days it spools over me as a set of my own favourite quotations...every year I become more and more like TS Eliot's notion of a collection of other people's fragments.

"The morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill."

"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world."
(Yes, Kevin, now clean up your room...)

"Frailty, thy name is woman"

"The funeral bak'd-meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."
(which I used on here just the other day)

"Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads."

"Give every man thine ear, but few thine voice."
(I think Polonius's advice to Laertes is the key to the staging of the play to be honest. Polonius is usually dismissed as an old fool throughout, but I think that's wrong. He's just old. And seen as a fool by Hamlet - and Laertes and Ophelia - ie by the "teenagers". Today, this speech remains great advice - to everyone but the young.)

"Neither a brorrower nor a lender be."

"To thine own self be true..."

"And to the manner born"

"It is a custom more honour'd in the breach than the observance"

"I do not set my life at a pin's fee"

"There is something rotten in the state of Denmark"

"Brevity is the soul of wit"
(unlike the play itself, and indeded this "in praise of"!)

"What a piece of work is man"
(though I usually say this cynically)

"There are more things in heaven and earth, blah, blah, blah"

"What's Hecuba to him , or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her?"

"Ay, there's the rub"

"Shuffle off this mortal coil"

"Conscience doth make cowards of us all"

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"
(Methinks, surely that's a modern word?)

"I must be cruel only to be kind"

"Good night ladies, good night sweet ladies; good night; good night"
(TS Eliot did a great cover version of this one)

"When sorrows come they come not single spies
But in battalions"
(The Flood years)

"Hoist with his own petard"

"The rest is silence"
(Thank fuck)

And, by the by, Tennant should have stuck to Doctor Who.


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Holiday Compatibility

Anne and I discussed the secret of our relationship the other day. After much silence we settled on the twin titans of fear and indolence. But, after due consideration, there is a third secret - holiday compatibility - which we seem to have in spades.

There's a great film (almost completely forgotten) called "Two for the Road". 1967, Albert Finney, Audrey Hepburn. The film follows them as a couple over a number of years, holidaying through Europe, charting their relationship from giddy first love to bitter, addled partners.

An early scene sees them looking at an old couple sat in a restaurant in silence:
"What sort of people don't talk to each other?"
"Married people"
You can guess the later scene.

Whatever else they may be, holidays are definitely a good stress-test of a relationship. One of my friends seems to have gone on holiday at least three times as a couple and come back single. And Anne and I have been witness to some extraordinary rows between couples when we've been on joint holidays. I'm not immune, one of you will remember my three day sulk in Skye many years ago.

Still, over the years we've negotiated all the UK, most of the US, a smorgasbord of European cities and islands, and thrown in the odd corner of Australia and the Far East, and through all the jet-lag, travelling, tiredness, language barriers, fear of the new, boredom, proximity, drink and hangover, we've hardly had an argument that couldn't be assuaged by something as simple as the balm of sex in a strange bed.

The only time we went truly helter-skelter was when a bike-hire vendor in Vancouver persuaded us to try a tandem. Anne took badly to the lack of control and I expect Stanley Park still echoes to the ghostly siren call of a woman's passive-aggressive silent-screaming.

Plainly, that's the secret, clearly-defined roles. Anne does the planning; I do the sunburn. Anne does the talking hopefully in pidgin-European to perplexed foreigners, I stand behind her giggling. Anne does the driving; I do the sitting like an armchair-jockey shouting instructions at Tony McCoy, even though he's never even sat on a horse, as I wonder out loud why, after around 20,000 attempts at it over her driving lifetime, why Anne is so fucking useless at parking. (Well, Ok, one argument then...)

In praise of....in praise of (part three)

And so, as I sew my completer/finisher badge on my sleeve, it's time for the acceptance speech thanks to those who came along for the ride, and left little comments so that I knew there was an audience. (Actually, this has never been a problem for me as anyone who followed my betting blog for over 7 years can testify!)

Still, here's some of my favourite comments from the year:

20. "Marina from Stingray, and then Nanette Newman when I was a teenager" (Phil, praising wildly inappropriate crushes).

19. "I've never noticed the farting. I hope that does not put me in the not nailed yet bracket." (Iain, finally realising my long-term crush on him).

18. Davida and Lyn - two old flames - who have never met each other, hi-jacking a serious posting in praise of organic farms in order to have a chat about their kid's/cousin's performances in various summer surfing contests. (Facebook can be a very surreal place.)

17. "A very small point of order, these days Playboy bunnies don't have a minge" (Eve). Golf takes a back-seat, as Eve updates me on the latest downstairs grooming fads. JJ suggests Eve's own knowledge needs updating. Iain, wisely, tries to get back to the golf.

16. "There's an auto body shop in Laguna called 'the hand job'. (Eileen) when I asked for funny signs. This just about pips Lyn's "Now is the winter of our discount tents" because as Anne will tell you, nothing trumps a knob-gag.

15. In a desperate (and unsuccessful) attempt to stop the Slitherins taking power, I tried to talk up Gordon Brown. This occasioned Wayne to agree - "I've always liked that Stranglers song too."

14. Mark - throughout the year adopting the role of Ezra Pound to my TS Eliot - thinks the predominance of food in my 'in praise ofs', should have led me to renaming them "The Waist Land".

13. "Apparently, Catherine has fully-set tresses" (JJ)
" He means trusses" (Catherine).
JJ - showing he knows more about Playboy bunnies' minges than he does about growing tomatoes. Which frankly is how the world should work.

12. "I expect Gordon Sumner kept a photo of Sting by his bed-side as well" - because it made me laugh, if no-one else.

11. "As your wife, I can tell you, you sound snobbish". (Karin), without whom's support (as with so many other things), I would have given up on several occasions over the year.

10. One of my pet-hates over the year was people inserting a comment on the "in praise of" before I'd even typed the narrative. The one time it actually improved the 'in praise of', however, was Susie's comment after I'd written "In praise of ....Coast":
"What, the woman's high-end boutique clothing-store. Who would have thought....."
Tim's later well-planned and executed "Do I insert the comment in here, Anne", isn't worthy of further comment.

9. "My personal view is that no man who's goolies extend more than 50% the length of his thigh should wear shorts." (Catherine) who appears to have been traumatised by a goliath in her past life. Karin doesn't think they should wear shorts either...

8. "Fucking just north of Salzburg takes some beating" (Ian). This comment actually improves taken out of context. As does, "Strange, isn't it, how Numpnett Thrubwell beats Fucking?" (Mark)

7. "I measure out my life in restaurants I've visited - tastier than coffee-spoons" (Anne), who would have more comments in here, but I had to delete all the snitty ones. Besides, I still haven't forgiven her for the great mushroom practical joke - though karmic forces did see the mushrooms reap their revenge.

6. "Is it too late to send an invoice for those gooseberries?" (Tim) somewhat too late realises he's been partaking of dubious communistic practices and the gooseberries probably aren't even tax deductible.

5. I did an 'in praise of...meze', referencing an unfortunate dining experience I'd had with the CU boys some years ago. Simon remembered it well: "Since then I have had the unshakeable belief that dip is for girls. Normally fat ones."

4. "Toe-curdling, that's one of my favourite ever typos"
"You have to add the oil more slowly to avoid this." (Eve)

3. Early on I did an 'in praise of ...footballs in the stream" where Bobby and I came home along the river, singing songs.
"Has he a good singing voice, your Bobby?" (Karin)
"Well, he's no Kenny Rogers, that's for sure."

2. Mike's comment as a voyeur from afar "Rhythm not habit is man defined" was actually quite moving. It would be number one if I was a sensible person, but in a fight between humour and profundity my money's always on the clown holding the pie.

1. What do you do when clicking the "like" button isn't enough?
"I think you have to click the love button to feel any sort of satisfaction" suggested Sarah, who I haven't ever met, but who asked to be a friend because she'd read the posts on Anne's wall and wanted to join in.

Thanks all, and apologies to anyone feeling left out, or under-appreciated!


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In praise of...in praise of (part 2)

And so the shameless never-ending farewell world tour continues. Over the year I did find the creative juices flowing occasionally. I'll cobble together the best few and see if I can get them published somewhere.

Here's the countdown of my personal top twenty...

20. Cucumbers - (the one where Anne left me wanting in the carved-cucumber-basket department).

19. Experimental Novels (part 2) - (a not very well-received trilogy, but I enjoyed writing this one on Geoff Ryman's 253, not least because, as in the book, it was exactly 253 words long - not that anyone noticed!)

18. Fat Cooks - (the shortest of all in praise ofs, but which kick-started an interesting discussion on the merits of vegetarians, fat or thin, and presaged our decision to give up meat for the year).

17. The New Austerity - (a little bit of politics there, as Draco Malfoy's henchman prepares to arse-rape the public sector. I'm away on 20th October but feel free to rewind and play).

16. Growing things from seed - (the cost of grow-feed, slug-pellets, vitamins, homeopathic remedies, acupuncture etc that all good middle class seedlings need to survive according to the Guardian weekend gardening page £125)

15. Fields of rape - (where every village has a frigging Brigadier)

14. Killing Slugs - (which was actually a satire on that day's Israeli act of atrocity, but garnered only more advice on how to kill slugs...)

13. Playing Tennis - (the one where the yummy mummies of East Sheen are distracted by my top-spin lacking lobs and sheer athletic magnetism).

12./11. A Few Good Men/Spooks (we need them on that fence-line).

10. Wearing shorts all summer - (the one where I like to swing free, whilst old people wear enough gore-tex to get them to the south pole).

9. Striking up conversation with complete strangers - (the one where the slightly slutty shop mannequin is pleasingly soulless, but slightly aloof. Also headless.)

8. Watching my dog and cat play - (A Florentine analogy).

7. Growing Tomatoes - (Take that, Titchmarsh. Jog on, Monty Don).

6. Completer-finishers - (or congratulations on completing the Shifnal half-marathon).

5. Liberating Pickles - (a cautionary tale, pour encourager les autres).

4. Irrationally hating certain singers - (where Jennifer Rush and evafuckingcassidy get their comeuppances, with help from wikipedia).

3. Sir Woy Hodgson - (a sentimental tale of Fulham).

2. Being a regular - (the one where The Guardian is hidden away behind Fisting and Orgasm).

1. Bobby's love affair with my underwear - (where it's been my suspicion that for years female visitors have been sneaking upstairs and nicking my under-dungies).

Looking through them I also noticed that I gave you a total of six select gambling tips over the course of the year. Imperial Commander won the Gold Cup at 10/1 and I also gave out the 1,2 in the Oaks, a whopping 300/1 forecast (which Iain at least was prescient enough to take notice of). And I suggested we all jump on Chris Hollins's pink-sequinned high-stepping campervan of love at 6/1. How d'ya like them apples...


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A year of "In praise of" (part 1)

So, to the last three "in praise ofs" for this challenge.

All self-respecting American sitcoms and drama series, long after they've jumped the shark, like to pad out their season with entirely self-indulgent shows that are simply a collection of flashbacks and highlights, if you're lucky featuring Monica in a fat suit. Same here! Three shows celebrating a man with completer/finisher carved on his gravestone...

I did actually enjoy doing one of these every day, though it often didn't feel like it. The biggest problem was in not allowing myself repetition. I could have had a hundred happy moments in the day but still not something new to write about. Still, I did like:

a) The mind-trick of forcing oneself to be glass half-full at 9:30 every morning - it was much like having my own personal NLP-accredited soothsaying fuckwit whispering in my ear, and was a step up from the simple act of counting one's blessings in the shower.

b) Realising how much of my life is rhythmical, rather than just habitual. I was surprised how in tune I was with:
The four seasons; the weather; the night sky; migratory birds; the football season and the racing seasons; TV and film seasons; the veg growing season; the clothes my mannequin wears season, and of course seasoning.

c) The audience reaction and participation, worthy of its own in praise of on Friday, if only in thanks for the 10 or so friends who came along for the ride.

When I started I said it would be difficult because all I like is gambling and red wine. Well, my in-depth statistical analysis of the data suggests that is nearly right. 80% of postings cover 10 broad areas:

1. Television, film and radio 56 posts
2. Food and drink 50 posts
3. Sport 36 posts
4. Shifnal and Shropshire 34 posts (+ 5 for London)
5. Anne, friends, Bobby 28 posts
6. Books and writing 24 posts
7. Gambling 23 posts (top if combined with sport)
8. Vegetable gardening 22 posts
9. Wildlife - esp birds 19 posts
10. Travelling/memories 19 posts

Which hardly makes me a renaissance man...

Toast

I had just enjoyed my usual morning two slices of toast - home-made white loaf smothered with home-made blackberry and apple jelly, when Slim pinged me an e-mail asking if I'd read Nigel Slater's toast, which apparently has a scene set in Shifnal.

Such synchronicity highlighted an unfairly overlooked object of praise, considering breakfast is such a high point of my home-shirking life, and so I'll just get my praise of toast in under the wire.

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Mushroom Foraging

Or as I like to think of it - mushroom roulette.

Well, I was going to praise it, but Anne is off to Telford A&E this morning to check if she's got mushroom poisoning...

Richmond Park (deer)

Whilst Wimbledon Common is my favourite green space in London, adjoining Richmond Park runs it close, and it's nice to see Autumnwatch covering the deer rut there this year.

It's a great place for cycling, walking and running - indeed even I ran in a 10km race there back in the day - against Paula Radcliffe amongst others - honestly, she was so competitive - but most of that activity takes place around the outside of the park and it's pretty easy to get away from the crowds.

One winter's day we were walking through the morning mist up a secluded glade in the middle of the park when we all but tripped over the entire deer herd, who were sat down ruminating. We had walked right into the middle of them without even seeing them. I could have reached out and touched one the stags. They didn't seem much bothered.

A memorable brush with nature so close to the city...


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Iceberg Lettuce

I'm going to add it to my "in praise of" list of things under-rated, which as far as I can remember is: Cheddar cheese, The One Show, Hugh Grant and something else popular but sniffed at by some self-appointed cognoscenti somewhere on my list of facebook friends.

Nigella apologised for using it last night and Anne treats it as though it's the Madame Chalfonts of the devil himself. Which is silly, because it's crispy and iceberg-watery, and perfectly suited to loads of dishes, and in the absence of any home-grown lettuce of our own, I'd much rather eat it than some strawberry-imperialism bag of mixed salad leaves where the word mixed refers to the cocktail of chemicals they've preserved it in to keep it 'fresh'.


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Skipping

No, not the one with a rope - an activity shared (uniquely?) by boxers and pre-pubescent girls.

The skipping that lies somewhere between walking and running, and which I doubt I've done in over 25 years, (35 years if you don't count post-ironic, drunken, nostalgia-frenzy).

The church was having a service for the local primary schools this morning (harvest festival?), and whilst walking for the paper, I followed a number of mothers doing their best to make their kids get a move on. In trying to keep up, at least three of the kids skipped for a few paces.

This seems quite natural to them, and yet I was struggling in my own head to remember how to do it exactly. I'm not sure my body actually knows how to start any more. Which seems sad, because not only do I have vague and distant memories of it coming naturally, I also remember it as an expression of uncontrollable giddiness. (Bobby has a similar "funny five minutes" back-wheel spin thing that he does when overcome with excitement, which has always been a delight - excepting when he did it up and down the village hall at his first obedience class.)

No doubt somewhere down the line I was made to realise that skipping was childish, or girlish, or both, and by such constraints do we all proceed to look through the glass darkly.

So, I fully intend to have a go today. When I'm well away from any remote chance of being spotted obviously. Anne, if I'm not home later I'll be behind the sewage works somewhere, with a broken ankle...

Cormac McCarthy's The Road

Not many books have given me bad dreams seven straight nights in a row. Which is more of a warning than a recommendation...it could have been a life-changing sort of novel had I read it at 18, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...

Mark Schoen recommended it to me with the comment he had to get up in the middle of the night to finish reading it, and that quality seems to me the triumph of the book. I haven't read many books I've had a physical connection with. Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" had me checking for my internal organs every few pages, but that's about it.

This book, where the protagonists have to keep moving along the road, for no obvious reason, despite all the horrors along the way, is written in such a way that, for me and Mark at least, you have to keep on reading, for no obvious reason, despite all the horrors along the way.

Not to be taken on holiday...


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Being Warm and Dry

Having had bad dreams for the last week, as a direct result of reading Cormac Maccarthy's The Road, I may be more than usually appreciative of the basic things in life just now.

And yesterday, after we walked Bobby up the Wrekin in a storm, it was particularly nice to get back indoors - shower; central heating; coffee; cake; golf, football and the Arc on the telly. And nothing to do with sporting endorphins, just the simple pleasures of life. (Which is all we'll have left once David Cameron's - or as I prefer to think of him, Draco Malfoy - henchman has finished speaking).

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Liking food you've always hated

I was a pretty fussy eater as a kid. And I say kid, but until I was in my twenties the only veg I would eat were raw carrots and sweetcorn. And chips obviously. Anne has since managed to put me on at least nodding terms with most of the green-based foodstuffs - just as well if we're going veggie for year.

There are still quite a lot of things I profess to dislike though, and won't eat. Brussel Sprouts, offal, greens, fried eggs, that sort of thing - all associated with some childhood horror no doubt.

However, I am finding myself increasingly warming to certain foods I've always maintained I detest. Either my palate is changing, or see how I'm growing.

Two in particular over the last couple of years:

Beetroot - roasted and served in salads (with goats cheese and red cabbage last night).

Black pudding - (particularly with seared scallops) but last night with roast chicken and a sweet wine sauce.

What food do you find yourself liking you never thought you would?


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Migratory Birds

Another posting occasioned by the rhythms of life.

Geese always remind me of that poster you often find in corporate life. It's one of that series of motivational arse-wipe posters, which is supposed to throw open the windows onto a newer, brighter, business vista, but manages instead to remind you of the soul-sucking pointlessness of your working life.

If I remember rightly its message is that you can achieve more through teamwork, (though my guess is that the geese fly like that to avoid flying into the pooh of the ones in front). Its appearance on any wall near you should be taken as an indication of impending redundancy.

Anyway, walking for the paper this morning, four skein of geese flew over, around forty birds in each one, in formation, honking away, in what I like to think of as celebration for a flight well made. Which is far more uplifting than an HR fuckwit with a bunch of posters and some blu-tack.

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Small independent shops

At the top of our street in Tooting there was a shop called "Jane's Trains" - which sold model trains. I can safely say the whole time we lived there I never saw anyone in the shop at all - including the owner. But there it stayed, year after year, for 12 years, presumably making money by mail order and on-line.

(Tooting of course also had a fantastic array of ethnic shops, including a Chinese apothecary which was great for window shopping, but which my acupuncturist assured me was a money laundering operation). Much more fun than the soul-sucking, identikit shopping malls of consumer England.

Shifnal's been doing well lately in the small shop stakes. The Deli has moved to bigger premises - now more than two customers can stand in the shop without having to play Twister to get their lunchtime baguette.

And we have a "specialist" shop opening down Church Street - moving into the Poodle Parlour that has also moved to bigger premises. It's called Lone Knight and specialises in clothing and accessories for all discerning mediaeval nobleman.

So, now, not only do I get to say hallo to my beloved shop mannequin each morning on my way for the paper, but I also get to nod good morning to a full suit of armour, and I don't suppose many people can say that...

The Ryder Cup

Though, in truth, the last three have been pretty dull. And this one could well be drowned in soft Welsh rain.

However, the ones in the late 80s and through the 90s were terrific sport. Indeed, and I swear this to be true, we actually only subscribed to Sky Sports originally because Anne wanted to watch the Ryder Cup.

All the pundits are saying Europe will win, and 75% of all bets being taken are for Europe. Accordingly, I can share with you that the USA are a terrific price at 15/8. Simple patriotic bias and hype are making the away side great value. Mind you, I thought exactly the same about Valencia last night. Or, to put it another way, you can't eat value.

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Woody Allen

With only a couple of weeks to fill, I should be able to get there simply by a self-indulgent list of any favourites I haven't hitherto mentioned.

Still my favourite film-maker, for all he hasn't made a good film this decade, and is regarded as a pervert by anyone under the age of 40.

6 of my top 30 films: (7 if you count When Harry Met Sally)
Broadway Danny Rose
Purple Rose of Cairo
Sleeper
Love and Death
Annie Hall
Manhattan Murder Mystery

not mentioning the extraordinary one-offs:
Zelig
Radio Days
Everyone Says I love You

Or the just damned good films:
Bananas
Play it again, Sam
Manhattan
Hannah and Her Sisters
Crimes and Misdemeanours
Bullets over Broadway
Small Time Crooks

The rhythms of racing

This is a big thing at the moment. Flat racing is suffering badly as a sport, not least because people aren't betting on it. The powers that be have decided that the reason for this is that it lacks a "narrative" in the way, say, a football season does.

But flat racing's problems have little to do with narrative. I'd say the problems lie more with:
a) far too many races, at least 5 meetings a day in summer, full of mediocre horses running in tight little handicaps, so that no-one can sensibly keep on top of all the form, and so stops bothering.
b) the old problem that the horses are sent off to stud too early, so that punters can't grow attached to them, unlike jumps racing.
c) persistent over-watering by clerks of courses, presumably done on purpose and to order, to make form entirely untrustworthy.
d) the on-going fall-out of having some of the most senior jockeys bent as two-bob notes.

In fact the "narrative" of flat racing is very strong once you get to know it. I certainly measure out my days by it, in the same way I measure out the winter months (which I've written about before).

The Lincoln to kick us off in March; Guineas trials; the mixed meeting at Sandown to hand jumps racing over to flat racing; the Guineas; the Derby/Oaks trials meetings - Epsom, Lingfield, Sandown, Newbury, Goodwood; the Derby/Oaks/Coronation Cup; then into June for Royal Ascot; then 3 year olds start meeting the older horses with the Eclipse at Sandown, and the King George at Ascot; onto Glorious Goodwood at the end of July; and York's Ebor meeting in August; a holiday lull before the last Classic, the St Leger; Ayr; and then October's curtain-closers The Cambridgeshire, Champion Stakes, and Cesarewitch.

And that's just top races in this country. Intertwine with the Irish and French classics, and the Breeders Cup and there's a "story" every week. This week sees the autumn equinox of the season with the Cambridgeshire and the Arc, segueing slowly over the coming weeks from the end of the flat to the beginning of the jumps. For most of our adult lives it's signalled the time Anne and I have gone on our annual holidays (also April - after the Grand National, before the Guineas).

Given that these racing seasons also match the real seasons, you have an even greater sense of the year's rhythms, (which, in doing these "in praise ofs", I've realised are very important to me).

It also means we've always been on holiday "out of season". We either arrive at places before they've opened for the summer - "oh, this place is dead before Memorial day", or after they've closed - "oh no, not since Labor day." But that too, has its charms...


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10 year old tawny port

Now, I can hardly claim to be a connoisseur (nor can I claim to be able to spell connoisseur). My dad once ordered the full range of ports in a restaurant off the Strand and Anne and I had to guess which was which, and which we liked best. We both got everything wrong.

It was like that fantastic skit Mel Brooks does on chat-shows where he does a blind wine-tasting, which starts with him saying "It's a Chateau Lafittes, premier cru 1953, no pardon, 1957, am I right? and culminates with him asking "Is it a red wine?"

Some years later we spent a lovely afternoon in Graham's port lodge in Porto, which taught us everything a bluffer could possibly want to know about port, but I was so pissed when I left all I remember was a liking for the 10 year old tawny stuff and that's been my adopted port of choice ever since.

Of course, you have to drink it once you've uncorked it, so today's traipse up the Long Mynd is going to seem a touch more challenging than normal...

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Pulled off at half-time

A small Saturday column in the Racing Post, a silly look at the week's sport, named after the alleged conversation between Rodney Marsh and Sir Alf Ramsey.

Alf: "Rodney, I'll be watching you for the first 45 minutes and if you don't work harder I'll pull you off at half-time"
Rodney: "Blimey Alf, all we usually get at City is tea and a slice of orange."

Anyway, it's hidden behind a pay-wall, so I'll share this week's with you as it made me smile over my toast this morning, and it's an attack on grumbling:

"I suppose it was inevitable the Commonwealth Games, one of the last vestiges of the British Empire should have turned into a festival of moaning. Moaning is among the most popular pursuits in Britain, along with whinging, complaining, grumbling and fly-fishing.

Several athletes have already pulled out of the Delhi games because of concerns about security and the state of the athletes' village. And, even more damagingly, the Russians, Americans and Chinese look set to boycott the Commonwealth Games yet again.

As an old India hand myself I can't help thinking that all these complaints about accommodation seem a bit precious. I've stayed in some pretty ropey digs on the subcontinent but life's what you make of it, you know?

If our high-maintenance hurdlers and prima donna pole-vaulters don't want to go to Delhi, let's send a team who will enjoy the experience - namely public-school educated gap-year kids.

They won't mind roughing it in the relay team with a couple of local beggars and some French hippie from the hostel who left his mind in Marrakesh in 1973.

'It's amazing here but the poverty is just unbelievable. You see those Nikes that Mungo Jossington-Smythe's wearing? They're not even limited edition. I know - I literally died of shock when I found out.' "

(James Milton)

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Snoozing in the conservatory

Or snoozing anywhere come to that. But the conservatory outside of summer, with its own micro climate, is the place to settle after a walk in the rain, curled up with the dog and cat, polishing off the crossword, gazing at the clouds sliding across the sky and gradually slipping into a half-asleep nod. Wake yourself up with a snort. And repeat.

Never has the allegory of the frog being slowly boiled in the saucepan seemed so apt. Even Anne, who I can attest has never napped in her life, has been known to close her eyes for a moment...


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Digging-up Potatoes

I lifted my main crop of pink fir apple potatoes yesterday - the last day of summer - and a mighty fine crop of knobbled, freak-show tatties did I muster.

All vegetable harvesting has that "mixing memory and desire", cycle of life thang going on, and of all vegetable gardening jobs, getting your fork under a bulging tuber of potatoes, and getting your hands into the enriched loamy earth to mine the little lost nuggets is by far the most life-affirming...


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Burping, scratching and farting

As I limp towards the finishing line of this challenge, I find myself having to cast around for the smaller, overlooked, glories of life.

In this instance, those glorious animal pleasures most sensible men keep to themselves when women they haven't already nailed are around.

"But you and I we've been through that and this is not our fate" as Dylan would have it, and the older wiser me doesn't even notice he's burping, is prone to involuntary farting, and often finds himself in polite company distractedly scratching his balls.

When I sit in the conservatory I'm akin to a gorilla in the zoo...

I'm sure I hear Bobby tutting sometimes. He's so middle England.


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My favourite buildings

There was a couple of people climbing the Clifton Suspension Bridge on TV last night and I got all nostalgic about one of my favourite places.

The views were terrific, and I remembered the very early sunny morning when I was new to Bristol, and Mick and I cycled to the then nascent balloon festival, and got to the bridge in time to see a couple of balloons dare each other to fly under it (a manoeuvre banned ever after).

Then, at the end of the TV show they said they were off to St Pancras, which is my favourite building in London. Anne and I once went round the old hotel on one of those Open Day things and I desperately hope they do as good a job on restoring that as they have done on putting the railway station together.

Which got me thinking about my other favourite buildings, and once I'd got half of New York out of my head I came up with:

The Circle - long before the south bank of the Thames became a playground for rich bankers, and strolling tourists, it was a complete shit-hole. Anne used to walk down Tooley Street to work, and all it consisted of was cafes and tramps. The Circle was one of the first footprints towards the pleasant Saturday afternoon experience visitors can enjoy these days, and still seems to me the best fancy development of them all.

The Severn Bridge. The old one. I realise the new one is much more pleasing on the eye but this one is redolent of much that has been good in my life. A little known biographical fact is that I actually lived in a caravan on that island/spit on the Welsh side, whilst my dad built the thing. No wonder I felt linked to it through the Lampeter years - every journey stuck at Aust, either as part of the 10 hour National Express ride, or stood there for nearly that long with my thumb out.

Similarly, I've always loved the other end of the line - the elevated section of the M4. Lucozade bottle, touching distance from halfway up green-glassed office blocks, Brentford wastelands stretching away beneath you, and the feeling of going/coming home whichever way we approached it, first Bristol, then London.

What's your favourite memory-laden building?

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Roast boiled ham

If we do give up meat for a year there's quite a lot of meat I won't miss at all:

Offal
McDonalds/KFC etc
Pepperoni and other tasteless versions of preserved pig, often found on pizzas

and plenty I can't imagine missing:

Venison
Pheasant
Pigeon

and I would have included gammon on that second list. What's the point in a thick, rubberised piece of bacon, only made palatable by a tinned pineapple ring?

However, last night Anne boiled up a ham, put something sweet and sticky on the fat and then roasted it off. Served with unctuous parsley sauce, butternut squash in a cream and tomato sauce, cheesy-baked courgettes and red onions, and a very sticky pommes coq d'or. Sticky to
the pan that is.

And now I fear I may miss it all next year...


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Wearing shorts all summer

I notice some of you are holding off until October 1st before putting the the heating on. Similarly, since April, on my daily walks, I have been wearing shorts and T-shirt, in a combo that makes me look not dissimilar to Marlon Brando in his Apocalypse Eating Now years. But this morning it feels as though I may have reached the endgame.

Strangely, all the other walkers I pass seem to be ridiculously over-dressed, considering I'm the soft southerner. This is never more obvious than when I bump into one of the rambling groups for the elderly of Shropshire. I say "I bump into", but of course I really mean Bobby, who likes a good long run-up before barrelling through any group, back legs skittering and tail helicoptering furiously, before he backs up and comes back through for a second go, trying to land his spare. This usually leads to much middle england consternation and tutting, at least until Anne's mum recognises her son-in-law.

It's a lovely summer's day, and these people are invariably dressed accordingly. Winter walking boots, hat, waterproof leggings, spats, and enough gore-tex to get them to the south pole. To be fair they do walk too slowly to get a sweat up - when 20 of them encounter a stile, the first two over set up forward camp and settle down to wait for the rest.

Anyway, I take a more minimal approach. I'm a free spirit. I go where the sun takes me. I like the feel of the wind wafting through my parts as I swing through the nettles. And as a result, here, at the dog days' end, I have a deeply wrinkled redneck and brown forearms and shins that would win me the best farmer-tan of the year award at the Iowa State Fair.

In short, in shorts, I look a right twat...

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Experimental Novels (part 3)

Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker 1980

"Looking at the smoak coming up in the dead town and my mynd still running on the dogs. There ben the dead towns all them years. Ram out poasts in 1 part of them and dogs hoalt up in other parts. And all them years you heard storys of dog peopl. Peopl with dogs heads and dogs with peopls heads. Some said come Ful of the Moon they all run to gether in the Black Pack. Dogs and dog peopl to gether. The Ram dint allow no 1 in the dead towns but when I ben littl we use to sly in when ever we got the chance and kids a nuff for crowd. Trying if we cud see dog peopl. Fork Stoan it ben befor we livet near Bernt Arse. We never seen nothing only the hevvys and they all wways seen us off qwick. We heard things tho some times. Singing or howling or crying, or larfing you cudnt qwite say what it wer or what it wernt."

Many ful of the moons in futr. After Littl Shining Man wert pult apart by Eusa in the 1 Big 1 Riddley livt in darkness. Irn was got from olt machines. Dogs have turnt agin peopl but Riddley is dog frendy, and so not trusty. No won livt in towns no more, but he livt near Fork Stoan and talks alt threw like a Kentish retard. Soon he makes pilgrim to Cambry.

You havt to read it real slow in accent. For 220 pages.

Experimental Novels (part 2)

A book that follows a tube train from Embankment to Elephant and Castle. 252 passengers and the driver, all sat down. Each of the 253 people has a page describing them and what they are thinking in 253 words exactly.

This book was originally (1996) released on-line and is still there. The on-line version has hyperlinks throughout so that you can jump through the carriages, from person to person, following their connectedness in a god-like way.

In or around 1996 I had the thought that I'd better write the first e-mail novel, before everyone else did. Naturally, I started out with verve and gusto and no doubt the first chapter of brilliance is festering a box upstairs somewhere. Remarkably, as far as I'm aware, the world is still awaiting the great e-mail novel . This is a much more ambitious idea. I didn't like it much when I first found it on-line. However, the book is brilliant. On the internet the tricks get in the way.

On paper the repetition has rhythm and the pen portraits are terrific. After all, who doesn't sit on the tube thinking about the other people around them. In fact if I was going to criticise him it would be for the astonishing range of his portraits. I've done the relevant studies and using regression analysis on the data I can assure you that at any single time on any given tube train 100% of the men are thinking about sex 110% of the time.

Experimental Novels (part 1)

I have a trio to share with you over the next few days, unless something more interesting happens!

It's strange how art went completely whacky after Picasso et al blew painting to pieces, but the novel never really changed post Joyce. And Tristram Shandy and Gulliver's Travels still seem more avant garde than virtually anything I ever come across.

Here's an exception though.

Mark Dunn's "ella minnow pea" (you need to say that out loud quickly). Published 2001.

It's epistolary in format, but the letters start running out of letters. As the blurb has it:

"The letter 'z' has fallen from the statue of Nevin Nollop, revered author of the sentence 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' - and the island's rulers interpret this as a sign of divine displeasure and ban its use in any form. In a novel composed of correspondence, the loss of 'z' is inconvenient; but far worse is to come as more letters fall, and more are banned, until only 'l, m, n, o, p' remain...."

Which makes it a fascinating afternoon's read for its own sake. How it also manages to be a damned fine allegory about censorship and totalitarianism is something of a marvel.

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My favourite supper

Now, I bet if asked you all to name my favourite dish, you'd say, oh for fuck's sake Gary, who gives a shit. But then to humour me, you'd plump for chinese belly pork, or crispy duck, or Kastoori curries, or salt and pepper squid, or napoleon beef, or crab plucked out of the Puget Sound, or lobster hot-dog rolls in Maine, or red curry and pad thai, or anything with truffles, or cheesey peas...and indeed all of them would rank in the top 100 of my top 10 dishes.

But my softest of soft spots is saved for last night's supper:
Pork chop, sliced roast potatoes, leeks in white sauce.

We're seriously considering giving up meat for the year in 2011. I'd best make the most of it...

Malcolm Gladwell

When I lived in London, every December I would trek up to Hamleys, ostensibly to buy presents. Really, though, I was there to watch the bloke who throws the planes. If you haven't experienced this for yourself - the ground floor of Hamleys is a massive space, full of thronging shoppers and, adding to the market-place atmosphere people selling all the usual tacky toys that make up Christmas - the dogs that walk and do back-flips; whoopee cushions; soap bubble launchers and so on.

In the middle of all this, standing on box is a student - throwing a kit-made airplane into the air. The plane makes a complete lazy circle of the great hall, over the heads of the throng, before gliding gently into land in the hand of the bored student, who sends him off again. It's a thing of great beauty and magic. I become completely caught up in the moment, and naturally buy a pack for some nephew or other.

Come Christmas Day, we invariably break one of the planes in the drunken making of it, smash another one to pieces on its maiden flight into the twin towers of living-room door, and no doubt this year Bobby would do for the final plane what he did to that poor pheasant last week.

Reading Malcolm Gladwell is very similar. He writes for the New Yorker and has penned a series of books that have all been number one bestsellers in the states. His approach is to hit you with some gob-smacking statistic, (eg, you have virtually no chance of being a professional ice-hockey player in Canada if you were born in the last 6 months of the year) and then take you on a journey round the world, picking up a pocketful of analogies along the way, before delivering you back home, breathless and verbally fulfilled. Some trick.

Before you know it, you're at some dinner-party or pub, and you bring up something he's said, except you only half remember it, and miss out an important step of the trick, and suddenly what seemed genius seems either a bit silly, or a bit obvious, to both you and the people suffering your groping drivel.

The collection of his New Yorker articles is his best book by far: "What The Dog Saw".

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Owls

Or wols, if you prefer.

Since I've been up here I have occasionally seen a barn owl trying to fly into the car late at night, but otherwise they've been pretty absent.

Which is a shame as I'm rather fond of them. We went to Leeds Castle a few years back and spent a day with the bloke who looks after the birds of prey there. This included feeding two tiny fluffy balls of baby owls pieces of rat until they were full. I said "how will we know when they are full". The bloke said "they'll fall over, fast asleep". And they did.

We then took a small friendly owl, Ozzy, for a walk - he would follow behind, bell jangling, much like my cat currently, and then swoop up onto our arms for his food, hop off, and so on, all around the castle grounds.

We then flew a kookaburra, vulture, eagle and god knows what else, before going hunting in the afternoon with a harris hawk (which caught a pheasant). The whole day was remarkably cheap, considering it was just the two of us with the birdman, and I heartily recommend it..

Anyway we have a tawny owl, or possibly two, in the trees down our lane - with the proper twit twoo thing going on, which is a good way to usher in autumn and the on-coming winter night sky.


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People pissing about on the X Factor Auditions

Svengali's stage management of this show reaches preposterous levels of pre-planned drama and audience manipulation, including what appears to be a fair few actors sprinkled in amongst the auditions.

However, am I the only who has sensed a few select soul rebels seeking to take the piss out of the show. Not to be mistaken for the usual array of saddoes, mingers and nutters.

For example, I'm talking about last night's trio of girls - "Bun 'N' Cheese". They looked like the gaggle of black girls you'll find at the back of any bus in South London who can perfectly harmonise every Destiny's Child song, saying to each other:- "So, we'll go on right, and they'll think we look just like a gaggle of black girls you might find on any bus in South London who can harmonise any Destiny's Child song, and that's what we'll do to get through the screening audition, and then, like, when we're on stage we'll just stand there and not sing, innit."

It's not quite hanging bankers from every lamp-post from Canary Wharf to Bank, but I'm sure I caught a glimmer of subversion there....

Although I think Bun N Cheese may well be submitting last night's video as their A Level Drama project..


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Playing Tennis

I think the highlight of my brief sojourn was the late addition to our usual annual routine, a surprisingly competitive game of tennis in East Sheen Park.

Lack of fitness, ill-fitting training shoes, rustiness, an inability to serve, and a backhand somewhat akin to Anne throwing a cricket ball, all couldn't disguise the fact that there's a really very mediocre tennis player half-digested inside me barking out orders that my body can't follow...

My eye was also taken off the ball when I was serving from the end where you could see the yummy mummies doing combat training. They of course were being similarly distracted by my top-spin lacking lobs, and sheer athletic magnetism...


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Anne

Without meaning to be sentimental on a semi-public forum, she does get taken for granted by pretty much everyone around her, particularly me.

By my reckoning it's been three years since she last left me a little note on the kitchen table telling me I'm a fat twatting loser, when I'm fairly sure I've been a fat twatting loser all of that time, which shows remarkable fortitude on her part, I know you all agree.

Anyway, I'm off to get drunk for a couple of days...


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Scottish Football

Always been a pleasure over the years, and last night the wee country flexed its muscles with a stunning giant-killing act.

I managed to catch the last half an hour and the cheers that greeted their winner in the 7th minute of 5 minutes stoppage time truly reverberated round the world.

Afterwards their talismanic centre half - 97 year old David Weir - spoke for the nation when he said they'd "felt leggy in the 3rd set and had nothing left to give but a few sulks in the 4th set, but he always believed that when the chips were down, deep-seated chippiness would see them through".

Scotland 2 Liechtenstein 1
Attendance: 37200

Population of Liechtenstein: 35000


Sorry Iain...

The Adrian Mole Diaries

Which were supposed to end due to Sue Townsend's ill-health, but are still going strong as Adrian Mole enters his "Prostrate" years.

I think I must have read them all, though looking through the list there are a couple I don't remember. They slip through so easily, I'm not surprised they've left no trace. That does them a dis-service though.

I bet read back-to-back they'd paint a pretty accurate picture of the social-political backdrop of my entire adult life, and she's actually better at pricking New Labour than she was at attacking Thatcher.

The best running gag - that Adrian Mole fervently believes in his diaries things we already know to be untrue (eg weapons of mass destruction) - extends this time to his feeling reassured that no matter what happens in life there'll always be a Woolworths on every high street, and that the best place for his savings is an Icelandic Bank. Pandora meanwhile is busy fiddling her MP expenses...

Perfect for commuters...

Chicken Balti Pies

We bought a lot of stuff from the food festival the other day, and I have to say a lot of it was very disappointing - a distinctly mediocre feta and olive flan, and a crab pasty better called a fish-paste pasty were particular lowlights.

Which leaves me pinning my hopes on the chicken balti pie we picked up. It's fair to say I fell in love with this concoction during my Craven Cottage season-ticket years. An evening match wouldn't have been the same without a molten orange lava pie with chicken-ish bits. When Tim joined me he'd insist on seconds.

Of course, as is only right, the chicken balti pie is a West Midlands invention, so I'm hoping it will taste even better in its home environment. I fear though, that this "home-made" ponced up version may lack the right balance of lard, gristle, mechanically recovered chicken and curry paste. I fear Anne may even like it.


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Food Festivals

We went to the Welsh Food Festival at Glansevern Hall Gardens near Welshpool yesterday.

It was somewhat grandly titled considering they already have the much bigger Abergavenny Food Festival, not to mention the biggest Welsh Food Festival of them all. The one at Ludlow.

It was very pleasant though, all the usual sights and sounds - stalls, free tastings, burgers, ice-cream, and watching Anne shop. I usually spend most my time thinking about my Shropshire Curry Company 'gap in the market', and chicken pakoras would have gone down very well there yesterday, but I do have to report two curry companies have now moved into and rather overflowed my "gap". Never fear though, "pots of deliciousness" seem to have disappeared and we spent a pleasant half an hour imagining what could fill that gap and came up with a similar dessert-based concept, reassuringly monickered "Tubsters".

We also spent some time remembering festivals and markets we've enjoyed around the world. I'll hold over the markets for the future, but with thanks to Anne's holiday diaries I can share with you the best Food Festival we've ever attended.

Lyre Bird Hill Winery, Australia, the Prom County Slow Food Summer Festival, which was twenty people in a barn for supper and wine tasting, a mix of visitors from Melbourne, farmer-tanned locals and their fat wives, and us. Sparkling rose to kick-off; smoked trout and damper, served with four generous tasting-glasses of chardonnays; smoked chicken caesar salad with four more; platter of local smoked meats and couscous with four more; panna cotta with four dessert wines; and then stickies with chocolates and coffee.

And some people would rather listen to crap music in a muddy field...


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Stealing stories

You may have noticed that nothing new of interest has happened to me this week. So, I'll have to stoop to one of my oldest tricks and just nick someone else's story. However, I'll refrain from representing it as my own, fully embellished. See how I've grown.

Anyway, Anne was at WI the other night - plainly not much new of interest in her week either. She had to give a talk on her day at the annual National WI Conference. Apparently this went down very well. No-one fell asleep, or died even, and most managed through the whole speech without having to nip outside and top-up their HRT patch. Afterwards several people congratulated her on talk.

One of them said: "Oh, Anne, that was an excellent speech. I heard nearly all of it."





Dinner Parties, My Wife, and Me

For many a year my wife has been wit-wary;
Since that joke about her and Sharlene Spiteri.

At dinner parties in the nineties I used to tell tales;
Tall stories, shaggy ones, ones as big as my head.
Ones I'd robbed and given a shine;
Added knobs and made out were mine.
But she began to cut in halfway through,
And cruelly take the wind from my sails:
“Not again, dear, we've heard that one before.”
Or “That's an old one darling, and not even yours.”
Or “He's not funny, don't encourage him,
Unless it's to get a proper job, and earn some money.”

All well aimed blows to the solar plexus, just because
Of some joke about her and a girl from Texas.



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Taking the cat for a walk.

Our new cat is settling in nicely. He finally has a name that's stuck. Teasel. (See what I did there?)

He's quite a change from all the other cats we've had. And not just in his never-ending mission to eradicate Shifnal of mice and sparrows. He's a tiny cat, but his territory seems to extend the whole length of the lane to the Manor - about half a mile - and god knows how wide. In the past our cats have been very unadventurous, and we've actually had two who never ever left our garden.

Anyway, Teasel likes to follow me and Bobby when we go off on our walks. About 15 yards behind us, little bell jangling as he flits in and out of the hedgerow, with occasional sprints past me and up to Bobby. Bobby and I have had to take to sneaking out the house for our long daily walk as I just don't know how far he'd come with us.

So, he's started getting his own walk later in the day, which is very confusing for all the dog walkers and cars we encounter down the lane. Bobby, for his part, takes all this for granted. In fact it's the only part of Teasel's behaviour that seems normal to him.

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The following one line poem...

Which I wish I had written, but is actually written by David Musgrave and published in The New Yorker, entitled:


‎"On the inevitable decline into mediocrity of the popular musician who attains a comfortable middle age."


'Oh Sting, where is thy death?'



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Wimbledon Common

I half-thought of praising 'Vexed', but apart from being a silly title, it veers rather maddeningly between being likeably bonkers and irredeemably crap. The acting likewise.

On the plus side, the last episode spent a lot of time on Wimbledon Common, which was nice and nostalgic, as we spent many happy years running round the place. Bobby would have loved it there. Though it's rather lacking in pheasants, and my boy made his first kill on Saturday and now has a taste for them..

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The Great British Plum Glut

I know some of you have been enjoying the August weather in your tents and vans - and what a great month you had for it. Indeed it's been the last leg of a perfect spring and summer. For plums.

It's been a perfect growing storm for them. Anne's parents have branches hanging down to the ground groaning with fruit. Their damsons have joined in.

And not to be left out I harvested my own tree yesterday. Succulent, sweet plums. All seven of them...


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Robert Perry

Birmingham may have scrubbed itself up over the last twenty years, but I still struggled to find much to do on a wander round there the other day.

I did spend quite a long time counting up all the places there are to eat and drink in the centre. Man, no wonder we is fat. Remember when all you could hope for on a high street was a Wimpy?

By the time I'd re-visited Queen Victoria's Willy twice it had begun to rain so I took refuge in the Museum and Art Gallery, and stumbled across the painting "Nightfall in the Black Country" by Robert Perry, which is terrific. The picture link doesn't do it any justice - not least in size and texture - so if you find yourself bored in Birmingham the gallery is just a spit away from Queen Vic's cock...

Mumford & Sons

A particularly fine South London Removals Firm, who apparently also play a few folksy tunes. Barefoot. Nice.

From my perusal of digital coverage of the various festivals they seem to be the stars of the summer. Confirmed by being the music for every BBC trailer that isn't Florence and the Machine.

I feel a bit sorry for all the bona fide folk festivals around the country though, as the first maintsream crossover folk band since Fairground Attraction have chosen to ply their trade at corporate Glastonbury and football-crowd Reading leaving the patchouli-stained fields of Shrewsbury, Cambridge and Sidmouth with their usual collection of Panamanian nose flutes, one-legged kicking contests, and dreadlocked twelve string bores.

Striking up conversation with perfect strangers

In her excellent book “Watching the English”, Kate Fox suggests two places where men can innocently start conversations with women. The first is when queuing for drinks at a bar, and the second when looking at horses parading at a racecourse. (I offer this snippet to any single men out there who want cover for their rutting ruses).

I'm betting Kate isn't a dog owner, because dog walking is a much more obvious situation, and even I am able to chat to complete strangers when out with the dog. Bobby, of course, ignores all etiquette and just gets stuck in (it's much like being back at college with Mick Bass).

Striking up conversations with strangers is something I've never done before. Seriously. Well, once on the last tube home I did connect telepathically with a young Glaswegian trainee pensions actuary in such a familiar way that she could only have been my love in a parallel universe, but who left me at Clapham South in this one, and who led me to ponder for years on the existence of 'soul circles', at least until I finally managed to transfer my affections onto a slightly slutty dress-shop mannequin, who is pleasingly soulless, but slightly aloof. And headless.

Anyway, I was walking the dog the other day and fell into step with the owner of a labradoodle, and found that she was from Kemberton. Wondering whether she knew Anne I asked if she went to Kemberton WI. For the next mile she regaled me with her disregard for the people of Kemberton in general, and its WI in particular. It was a pleasing tirade, and I laughed out loud several times, whilst encouraging her to tell me more. Twenty minutes in, she stopped, took a breath, looked at me and said: “Oh, your wife's a member isn't she?”.

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Fantasy Fuckwit Football

www.fantasyfwit.com

I've never bothered with Fantasy Football - never found any need what with the gambling and the betleague.

But this has tickled my fancy. You get points for the failure of your team's players - be it losing, missing penalties, getting sent off, or shagging a granny.

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Grandma's House

Don't have time to do the one I was going to do, so this will do.

It seemed to find its feet in the third episode - there's been a sad lack of North London Jewish life on telly since the great Jack Rosenthal died - and for all the supposed similarities to Curb Your Enthusiasm and post, post modern sitcom comedy, it still seems pleasingly old fashioned to me, not that Jack would have put these words into the mouth of a thirteen year old.

"I didn't have sex wiv her. I wanked into her purse."

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Effort Inflation

In 1983 I went for a job, working the night shift at Dennys on a strip in the Seattle suburbs. Minimum wage, 10pm to 8am, clearing tables and stuff. No tips. No opportunity. No future.

I was interviewed by a besuited self-important twat all of a year older than me, who asked me his key question: "If I employ you, out of ten, how much effort are you gonna give me?" I considered this question seriously for a while, added a few marks to make myself look keen, and said "About 7 out of 10".

Kids, you may want to find a better mentor when it comes to passing interviews, but it did at least maintain my dignity, and saved myself from a lifetime of pancakes and eggs sunnyfuckingsideup.

Of course, those were simpler times, and England had yet to catch the American passion for over-inflated effort. And when it did drift across the Atlantic, we would all raise our eyebrows in contempt, or use our quotient of effort ironically.

But somewhere along the way, 110% became the minimum effort any sportsman could give, and frankly if that's all you've got to offer you might as well haul your sorry ass over to an all-day breakfast emporium and tuck in..

And much like with football transfer fees once we broke the million pound ceiling, once 110% was no longer sufficient things began to spiral out of control. I look back with nostalgia on the first time I heard someone giving it a 1000% per cent. What a piss-poor effort that seems today.

So, it's lucky we still have Simon Cowell, our last great pioneer, a frontiersman capable of breaking through the effort barrier. On Saturday he gave it a million percent. Now I don't know these days if that is even enough to work the graveyard shift at Denny's, but it's leaving me looking pretty unemployable at 7 out of 10.

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The Premiership

OK, so it's a bloated, all-consuming, entirely mercenary and uncaring money laundering business for some of the most unsavoury glory hunters of the world, peopled by some of the most overpaid, self-regarding, fuck-wits ever to pull on a shirt...

I still would have liked to have been at The Cottage yesterday - that was a great game of football:- The little ground heaving in the sun; the game flowing from end to end; over 30 shots on goal; penalty appeals turned down; a Paul Scholes' masterclass; desperate late own goal; missed penalty; and last-gasp redemption.

Also, certainly, the first time Fulham can be said to have had better centre-backs than Man Utd.

I watched the game again later on Match of the Day 2, and to say that they failed to give any idea as to quite what a terrific game it was, is a massive understatement. I'm with Andy Gray's "I watched every game of the World Cup, and not one came close to this one".

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Anchorman; The Legend of Ron Burgundy

I've been at a pretty low ebb all week and was flicking through channels last night trying to find something to make me laugh of a Saturday night, when I stumbled upon this.

I don't go to the cinema much any more, and stopped reading reviews years ago - at least until after I've seen the film (I am currently reading Pauline Kael's film reviews 1965 to 1967, but I digress). This means that I can come across some films many years old as though they've only just been released.

Anyway, I'd never heard of this before. And I barely know Will Farrell or anyone else in it, though I see one of them is on the front page of the Observer Magazine this morning!

If you have similarly been living in monastic conditions vis-a-vis oddball American movies of the noughties, I should tell you this is absolutely bonkers, in an Airplane kind of way, and cheered me up considerably...

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Sporting Victory Celebrations

I have touched on this before, but there was a particularly good one at York races this week that seems to have escaped general notice.

Personally, I prefer the celebrations to be natural rather than pre-planned. I don't much care for those choreographed shows of which footballers are so fond. I don't mind the ones where they are answering to the media in some way - Gascoigne's dentist chair; Robbie Fowler snorting the touchline; Bellamy swinging the golf club, and Jimmy Bullard lecturing the players on the pitch - but save me from Romario and Lampard and their family messages; Cahill's flag-punching, not to mention Robbie Keane's ridiculous roly poly. I also can't stand the goal celebrations that started off as natural but become trademark - I'm thinking Alan Shearer's arm, and before him Stuart Pearson's clenched fist, and throw in Frankie Dettori's flying dismount.

Tennis players are useless at them. I can't remember a good cricket one since the days when Botham et al would run down and grab a stump before being engulfed by an onrushing crowd. Athletes are better, not that I can think of any great ones.

Anyway, my top three.
3. Ruby Walsh winning the Betfair Chase on Kauto Star. He actually does nothing extravagant. What he does is smile. And such a smile it is that you can read into it exactly what Ruby was thinking - which was "Oh my god - this horse is good. he's gonna win me a couple of Gold Cups a few King Georges and a whole sideboard of Group 1s".

2. Ballesteros winning the Open at St Andrews and giving it the full childlike fist-pump, before getting the crowd to join in. God, we miss you Sevvy - to update the great lyric: "Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you".

1. Unequivocally, Marco Tardelli scoring effectively the winner in the 1982 World Cup Final. Now, it is true that it was the camera that made this great, but even so, the camera manages to catch something akin to the opposite of Munch's Scream - the suppuration of tension and explosion of fulfilment, which at that moment would have been mirrored by an entire nation.

Somewhat more mundanely Jamie Spencer rode the winner of the Ebor on Wednesday and as he passed the post stood up in his stirrups and gave a great big punch in the air. Jockeys don't do this often - The Cheltenham Festival aside - and it showed here, as Jamie very successfully managed to punch himself plum in the face...

"Way to go Paula..."

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Fucking up your A-Levels

If today is your day of destiny - a still moment in time that crystallises your life's dreams up to this moment; that distills every conceivable destination board of your future onto one piece of paper: I say to you with the benefit of wisdom beyond my weight: Don't worry. Be happy.

It was thirty years ago today that I opened my envelope and cried an ululation I've only been able to repeat twice since. Once when saying goodbye to my dad and once when the most perfect cat I'll ever own died.

The cause of my tears? A "C" and two "E"s. (Do such humble grades even exist any more?) Or more accurately, two years of congenital laziness, thinking staring at my shoes, bunking off lessons, and devouring the NME would somehow compensate for not being able to place the English Civil War in the right century.

A place on a prestigious course at Warwick was now closed to me, and even my second choice was beyond me - at Essex of all places - proof if ever it was needed that 18 year olds set their hearts on getting to places they haven't a fucking clue about.

Like it mattered a shit. Of my two closest friends, one went to Notttingham, as was his burning ambition, and dropped out two years later, before becoming a squillionaire Ad Man. The other turned his back on education and successfully pursued a musical life instead.

And my own failure proved a serendipitous one, as I hitch-hiked my sad-assed soul into a much better life in deepest Wales, a three year pupation from child to adult which, if nothing else, gave me a deeper appreciation of the construct called luck.

I've looked at life from all sides now, and I can safely say, no matter what sliding doors I'd have chosen, the odds are I'd still be a fat, alcoholic, failed gambler. Them's the cards, folks, play 'em as they lie.

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Fat Cooks

The first commandment in my book:
Thou shalt never trust a thin cook.

Anne's Tea-Loaf

There's usually some Soreen Malt Loaf hanging around the place - whenever it's three for 99p down the Co-Op I pick up some. It says it keeps for a month on the packet, but as it's actually half a hockey puck it's good for a year or so.

Anne's always been a fan. She thinks of it as a healthy snack, which I suppose it is, compared to profiteroles say, though she slathers half a pack of butter on each slice to make up for it. Personally, I like the way it sticks to your teeth so that you can enjoy picking it out for the next couple of hours.

Anyway, Anne's tea loaf is nothing like Soreen malt loaf. It's light, non sticky, packed with fruit, and not even made of malt. And it only lasts a couple of days in the larder...

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Ferries

I was on the Hampton Loade ferry yesterday, looking for the all-day cafeteria and amusement arcade, and I was reminded of how much I like ferries. And although I prefer the ones that exist for local use I don't mind the tourist ones either.

When we go to a new city one of the first things we do is find the waterfront and get on a boat. It comes right after finding a tower to look at the view and get our bearings. And, much like when we go to a dog-track or racecourse, we're not interested in staying indoors, we want to get out into the weather, elemental and connected, although, to be fair, this didn't last long on the way to Skye.

Personal favourites:
The last ferry from Manley into Sydney, where you get to see the bay in all its glory under a great Southern sky.
The Seattle/Ballard Locks circle, where you can see how Seattle nestles into almost complete wilderness.
The New York Circle Line (purists would probably prefer the Staten Island ferry)
Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge - preferably with a cheesey mockney cockney guide.
The ferry to The Orkneys which is only a few miles but may as well be to a different continent.
The Traghetti in Venice, which are gondolas that work as ferries across the city, which only cost about 50p - saving you a fortune if losing you romantic credibility, and you can pretend to be Venetian and stand up for the entire 3 minute journey.
The ferry from Stromboli to Lippari late at night where you can see the volcanic eruptions, and then the millions of jellyfish illuminated in the waves, and where I had an epiphany that my life wouldn't get any better than this, (and it hasn't!).
And, of course, my personal favourite, The Star Ferry, Kowloon to Hong Kong, which is the world's greatest monument to efficiency.

Hampton Loade may be just a piece of wood, tied to a wire, crossing the River Severn, but it's not entirely out of place on that list. On the other hand I've never been on any of the others with a dog that's just rolled in fox pooh...


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Rectangular Straw Bales

Since we've been up here it's been huge circular straw-bales, or as I prefer to think of them, combine harvester pooh.

But this year for some reason all the farmers have gone for satisfyingly rectangular bales, stacked on top of each other to make pleasing towers around the fields. They're not the smaller rectangular bales of my childhood memories, but ones big enough to sail to America on - still, it's a nice improvement.

Bonus thought for the day:
Jonathan Raban is obsessed with the different attitudes English and Americans have towards history and landscape. We like to think we are looking out over an unchanged landscape, and the Americans are in love with our supposed history, and yet in reality everything we see is man-made. Whereas the Americans think of their history as stretching back only a few centuries, when in reality huge swathes of their landscape remain essentially untouched by man.

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Lisa Faulkner

If you haven't fallen in love with Lisa Faulkner over the last few weeks you presumably have more interesting things to do with your life than watch Celebrity Masterchef. Then again, you find the time to waste on Facebook so we all know that can't be true.

The rest of us may well only have one more day to enjoy her charms, if her lemon meringue pie is anything to go by. I know I'm not alone in this, as all the usual internet forums I frequent looking for betting information have found time to praise her charms. Which makes a change from the afternoon rush to praise whatever short skirt Carole Vorderman's replacement is wearing on Countdown.

It's only a shame it's not a betting event, with a public vote. With the best chef (Neil Stukes) probably bottom of any public vote, and the worst chef at the top, we'd be in Darren Gough, Strictly Come Dancing, betting-heaven.

Of course, what's all the more extraordinary about Lisa's "journey" is that it's only a few years ago she had that horrific accident. That one where she lost her face in the deep-fat fryer. Must take real guts to make her comeback in a kitchen environment...


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Shropshire Fidget Pie

Here's a story I've always liked. When supermarkets introduced loyalty cards they couldn't wait to get all the data and work out what types of people bought what and when. On first sight, something really puzzled them. The reward card data showed the stores were selling hardly any pork pies, whereas the stores themselves reported normal sales of gazillions every week.

On investigating this, they decided as follows. Normally, it's women who are the keepers of the loyalty card, and doers of the weekly shop, and they appear to avoid those perfect little cupcakes of lard and gristle in favour of things more wholesome. Chocolate presumably. Whereas it seems working men spend their lunchtimes popping into Tesco, cash-purchasing half a dozen Melton Mowbray mini pork pies, and scoffing the lot in their cars, vans and offices before patting their tummies, burping contentedly and hiding the evidence.

This has seemed even more realistic to me since leaving the guacamole south for the mushy peas north. The butchers around here groan with pies. Hardly a customer leaves without half a round of poachers pie in their bag. Pork is king. Lunchtimes people queue out of the door of the butchers in Shifnal for roast pork baps - with stuffing, crackling and gravy. If you want a business idea I suggest you open sandwich shops in Holborn, The City, and Canary Wharf, specialising in pork products, fat and gristle, and I guarantee you success beyond your wildest dreams. Name them "Porkers". The shops that is, not the customers.

Anyway, after our solitary ramble over Wenlock Edge the other day we stopped off at the Craven Arms specialist butcher/slaughterhouse and picked up a couple of Shopshire's very own contribution to cancer and obesity - miniature "Fidget" pies. Like a mini pork pie, but the filling is more bacony, (ie - it actually looks like it may have come from an animal), and instead of a pastry-top there's some wholesome slices of apple. Frankly, they were bloody fantastic. I suggest, as the new proprietors of Porkers, you get a barrel-load in, and offer them as the healthy option.


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Shropshire Tourist Board

No doubt some of you have been off enjoying the summer - headed off somewhere nice for a quiet break from it all - and have since spent your time variously stuck in traffic; herded through airport security like lambs to the slaughter; fighting the Germans for pool-side beds; listening to the campers next door farting (and worse); searching for the last square foot of beach in which to hammer your windbreak; tramping up somewhere like Skiddaw in a never-ending, jabbering crocodile of anoraks; and surrounded everywhere by bored teenagers texting each other about how bored they are. Money well spent to get away from it all, I'm sure you'll agree.

We went walking on Wenlock Edge yesterday. Four hours. Didn't see another person. Not a single soul. Shropshire Tourist Board working its magic as ever.

My cat watching my dog at play

We spent Christmas in a posh hotel in Florence about ten years ago. Our fellow guests were either our age or older, mature, successful very middle-class couples. A small group of us bonded as the drinkers of the assemblage and would gather post-prandially in the small hotel bar for a glass or two of brandy and prosecco.

One night we returned to find what appeared to be an Italian "singles" night in full flow, complete with cheesey keyboard player and tiny dance-floor. The Italians were all turned out as you'd imagine; the men strutting around in smart suits, the women sat elegant in their fineries. If they actually had a drink it sat on the table in front of them, untouched. And the men and the women were separate from each other, much like at the start of the early teenage parties of my childhood, before the cheap cider and hormones kicked in. It was like a beautiful but entirely dead tableau.

Into this decorous scene spilled ten unfailingly polite and well-behaved, but entirely drunk bunch of Brits - joshing with the barman, calling out for some Abba, laughing and teasing, joking and smiling, and taking over the dance-floor for some bad dad dancing. The Italian women looked on. I think I would describe their look as being 95% undisguised disgust. However, if you looked closely enough, you could also catch occasional glimpses of something else - glimmers of envy - for our fun, our enjoyment, our unbuttonedness.

I've been reminded of this lately, ever since Bobby has had to share his house with our cat. I've never seen a dog and cat live together before and I've found it fascinating. In particular whenever the dog is playing ball or frisbee, or tag round the kitchen island, or mock fight or anything else that gets him besides himself with excitement I notice the cat looking on.

Sat there, quite beautifully, quite still, looking at Bobby with exactly the same look as those Italian women. Utter contempt mixed with a well-hidden and deeply suppressed desire to join in.

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Special little moments in songs

Where the lyric seems to hit the music at just the right angle with the voice stretched into an emotion far grander than the actual lyric itself requires. In fact, the lyric is often nothing at all - as the previously mentioned "I'm going to Wichita...." proves.

I was thinking of this last night,and jumped onto Spotify to have a rummage whilst running in my new £20 speakers (it's important to splash out on state-of-the-art technology in these troubled times). So here's some examples that pleased me yesterday.

"You give me road rage" - Catatonia (all Welsh)
"There's a black cat lying in the shadow of a gate-post" - Hothouse Flowers (all Irish)
"The closest thing to heaven is rock and roll" - Aztec Camera (all Scottish)
"Just a thin clean layer of Mr Sheen looking back at me" - The Jam (all suburban angst)
"Anyone who had a heart would love me too" - Cilla Black (all Scouse)
"Leroy says send a picture, Leroy says hallo, Leroy says..." - Michelle Shocked (all jilted lesbian)
"Lily had already taken all of the dye out of her hair" - Dylan
(all, um, Dylan - Blood on the Tracks has about 30 such moments)
"When I go, I'm going like Elsie" Liza Minnelli - (all pink-sequinned campervan)

Obviously I was blotto by the time I was searching through old musicals.

More please...


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Bruschetta

Italy is the only place I've ever been where I've gone "Oh my god, so that's what a tomato is supposed to taste like".

So, it's obviously an over-priced disaster ever to order bruschetta in this country - say in a Pizza Express, or worse - where you'll get a couple of under-ripe hydroponic excuses for tomatoes mashed up on some leftover scrag-end of baguette for £5.95.

And don't get me started on heirloom tomatoes, suffice to say Anne coughed-up a snob's tithe for a small tray of multi-coloured cherry tomatoes at the Newport Show the other week, and a glass of water had more taste.

However, last night, home-made bread; home-grown cherry tomatoes; home-grown garlic; home-grown basil; a slug of olive oil, and arriverderci Shifnal, buon giorno Firenze...

Prego.


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American Place Names

This was going to be on Jonathan Raban, but I'll keep him in reserve.

I've always loved place names. The shipping forecast, train station announcements, little snatches of songs - "I'm going to Wichita" and so on.

WH Auden talks of names as being proto-poetry, and it's an insight worth tracking down and reading. He's talking about peoples' names, but I think it applies equally to place names. And thanks to Jonathan Raban for reminding me of the great names of America.

(And I'm glad it was Jonathan Raban, because he belongs on my list of writers whom I admire greatly but don't mention very often because I don't know how to pronounce their name. Primo Levi is another. This all started when I first discovered L'Etranger, aged 16, and went to school bubbling with enthusiasm for existentialism and one AlberT CamuS. Andrew Sullivan, an annoying little twot, fully two years younger than me - a dead ringer in looks and views to the twelve year old William Hague - put me in my place, not just on how to pronounce Albert but also threw in a pretty impressive deconstruction of the absurdist position - well, at least he did before I hit him. He is now apparently the "foremost political blogger in the States" - and seemingly still a twat - but I digress.)

I like British names - Potter Heigham; Bracklesham Bay; Newport Pagnell; Cader Idris; Fife four, Forfar five. But I truly love American place names. The frontier names. The ones (as Raban points out) that sound like they come from Pilgrim's Progress. The ones that describe what they see. The ones that are ice-box not refrigerator.

Damnation Peak; Mount Despair; Lucky Canyon; Starvation Point; Big Rock; Little Rock; Thunder Gulch; Golgotha Butte; Sand Ridge; Poverty Ridge; Sage; Dead Canyon; Bend; Lonetree Pine; Long Beach.

What's your favourite place name?