Food and Wine (haphazard, meandering recollection in two parts)

 Part 1

Cooking for wife and children to fit in with the other facets of my life, has dictated that my dishes are of a simple kind - "throw in this or that" and, if the results do not always look like magazine photographs, the taste would be fine. So the French style of simple café and peasant cooking (small, plain, separate and unadorned) has been my theme at home and in both of my cookbooks.

This was exemplified when, looking after a recuperating friend of a friend, he announced at a meal: "This is peasant cooking." He was right.

As a child in the country, cooking was done for me. When even during those times of depression we were able to breed, harvest and preserve much of what we ate. Our chicken farm provided birds and eggs, and I was allowed to shoot or snare rabbits and decoy pigeons. Food was nourishing and plain with neither of my parents taking much of an interest in it. Wine was sparingly drunk by my parents. My father drank  "Tolly" beer, and we children were surprisingly allowed to drink cider - which must have given me a lifelong interest in alcoholic drinks.

I knew how to paunch, skin and cut up a rabbit and was astounded when my very grand grandmother, who came to stay, rolled up her city sleeves and did the same. I had the feeling then that handling meat might be in my genes. We never did find out about her Irish origins, wondering if she might, among other things, have been a butcher's daughter.

I was not inspired by school food, except for sausages. So, when I was living on my own during school holidays, I mainly ate fried food (eggs especially) cooked in butter over a gas ring. Oil was never used.

Food in America (where I learned to fly in the war) seemed wonderful and plentiful after UK rationing, but it palled after a while, through its blandness. I think that much of it came out of tins opened in the airfield's kitchen.

Back in peacetime England we were allowed out of the country with £20. And it was with that modest amount of money for hotel room and food that I could escape rationing and come to know and really enjoy the simple, if repetitive menus of French cafés.

A salade tomates was always a delicious way to start a meal. Then came steak (tough skirt as a rule), pommes frites, pork chop, tête de veau, boudin noir (always cooked in a tomato and onion sauce), fish, simply served, casseroles and a limited but excellent choice of main dishes. Vegetables and plain lettuce salads were always serves separately, which to me make sense. Plain salad with cheese, eaten with knife and fork, and Roquefort beurre, when one minced the two together on the plate to eat with bread, I offer to this day. And Mont Blanc (chestnut purée topped with sour cream) made a fitting end to many a meal. The house red was the only one ordered. This was either the cheapest plonk or a wine with which the patron was well acquainted with and proud of.

Eating out was special, but most food was consumed either in the room or in the Jardin des Plantes nearby. It was baguette bread, saucisson sec and red wine.

The hotel that I favoured in which to stay, usually with a current girl friend, was situated opposite a school. Carved into its wall in large capitals was: LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE, DEFENCE D'URINER. 

The hotel, although without restaurant, did have a connection with food. A man kept his mistress there, and each Friday on his returning home he would stop off for his liaison. His mistress, beforehand, would well fry an egg and pin it to her blouse. He would appear, take a levered fountain pen from his pocket,  aim it at the egg and squirt the ink at it.  The pen would be returned to his pocket and he departed. 

Acting

 I could never be an actor, firstly because I would be unable to remember my lines, and secondly because I could not spend my life being other people. And yet, I have been a "professional" actor twice.

The first time was having been at Art School, the Old Vic School, and painted scenery at The Royal Opera House, I took my first job as set designer at High Wycombe Repertory Theater. Being weekly rep, I would have to read a play three weeks in advance, draw up a ground plan and model of the set for the producer, select and paint flats, and later, as prop master, before each Monday's "curtain up", assemble and decorate the scene(s) with rented or borrowed artefacts. As you may imagine, for one person to do all this was quite a job.

For a particular play the company was short of an actor. So I volunteered, and even had my name in the programme. I was "second ambulance man". If not exactly Oscar material, at least I didn't drop my end of the stretcher.

The second time I was an actor was on much grander scale in a Peter Greenaway film.

As I was at that time writing a weekly wine column for a newspaper, and knowing that the scene I was to be involved in was eating and drinking, I thought it might be of interest to my readers to know what film stars actually drank on set.

All that was required of me was to dress in a dinner jacket and appear at a certain location, there to be transported with other extras to studios in North London. No payment was to be offered.

For the part I was to play, the requirement was to sit at a dinner table with a few others and pretend (act) to eat, drink and talk. As we did so, the famous principal actors argued over their meal and came to blows with one piercing the other's cheeks with a knife, or perhaps it was a fork.

The food I was supposed to be eating was a single freshwater crayfish, looking rather small on my plate and which smelled pretty horrible when we started filming. It gave off the most dread smell by the end of the day's "takes".

Filming over, and five minutes of actual film accomplished, I discovered that the liquid offered as wine to the famous actors was apple juice for white and Ribena for red - which was not much inside information for my readers.

Then we were all given fish and chips in paper bags and thanked for our contribution. We would be invited to a preview of the film. Was stardom beckoning? 

When the film was screened some months later, I think I saw the back of my head  - well, I'm not sure it was my head. 

And I can still smell that rotting crayfish.

Acting is not for me.

New mail

These Times (a very limited, fragmented, personal and idiosyncratic view)

 I often wonder what defines the period in which we live.

Obviously, as I write, the Covid-19 virus that almost instantaneously surfaced around the globe defines this particular period of time. The virus lasts, and probably mutates because no one knows much about it or how to combat it. Even if inoculation and vaccination work, it has a head start on us. It manifests itself even in the bodies of people who hope that by keeping distances apart, washing hands and wearing masks will be of help in avoiding it. At least these prophylactic measures are things we can all actually do.

With the virus has come the demise in the use of paper currency and coinage, and with it the reliance on internet banking with all its pitfalls - like scamming theft. 

At this time, computers and mobile telephones have become even more important in business and at home. We no longer wonder why people seem to be talking to themselves in the street, or suddenly stopping mid-pavement to concentrate on a telephone conversation.

With this reliance on the computer comes awareness that we are in the hands of powerful forces about which or whom we know little, except that in dealing with the internet we play into their greedy hands. Their gadgets cause much unhappiness, time-wasting and frustration. The electronic items seem to fail too often, with the users needing assistance, consuming yet more time. And when at home or office there are all those connecting wires to sort out and deal with. 

More and more the "takeaway" takes over from proper home cooking. Pizza reigns. At least there are few  short cuts when consuming alcoholic drinks, some of which contain elements that are clearly beneficial to health.

The art world continues to be run by the power of the salesroom, gallery owners, promoters, critics, and often gullible customers. Thus, some second rate artists are boosted far beyond their real worth.  But the buyer is wise - until coming to sell the objects bought. Sculptors shine, certainly in the form of work by Gormley and Kapoor. But large does not alway mean good.

Architecture prospers more in countries that are willing to take a chance in the lust for progress. Except in London for Renzo's Chard, it must be committees of old codgers that turned down the building of Libeskind's V & A extension yet allowed the monstrous National Gallery extension to go ahead. For imaginative architecture one must look abroad. I still like the I.M. Pei Bank of China Tower building in Hong Kong for its simplicity and power.

It is fashionable at this present time for young men to sport beards. They may think that they look more distinctive with one, but they are beginning to all look  rather alike.

As for women's fashion, originality is essential in their world, but most women only keep an eye on high fashion, buying clothes, with a nod to fashion, that suit them personally. Most must be glad that there is not an overwhelming style to almost have to follow - like "the new look" was in its time.

Fossil fuel is becoming a dirty word, with renewable energy sources and non-polluting methods of power and heat much to the forefront. Wind farms and windmills, natural gas, solar panels, pollution-free wood burning stoves, heat pumps and hydrogen are all promoted. Electricity suffers from difficult storage and heavy batteries. I favour hydrogen power from water to make electricity, and using geothermal heat when right below us is an endless source of power if we could only tap it economically. But the two inventions that would surely make the world a better place are: extracting hydrogen from water easily and economically, and creating compact, lightweight, and easily produced storage for quantities of electricity. 

Air, sea and land travel will continue to lure business people and holidaymakers toward foreign lands and customs, despite there being conflicts of one kind or another throughout the world. But plagues, like the present virus one, will make people more aware of the pleasures to be gained from their own countries and be only too pleased to have an excuse for avoiding the palaver of airports, customs, handling luggage, currency, mosquitoes, unpleasant creatures, and diseases that are rife elsewhere. 

When overburdened with the cares that surround us at every turn during this period of civilisation, I believe that it is essential to completely relax once in a while. This means sitting or lying still and eliminating all thoughts from your brain and, at the same time relaxing every muscle in your body. We might call it total relaxation or mindfulness. The Dutch call it 'Niksen'.