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."




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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.




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"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."




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"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."




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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.




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"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."




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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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