Westland Lysander August 2008

A day out at Lord's Cricket Ground

Many aspects concerning Lord’s Cricket Ground are both unique and very English. (Although many a Lord will have been a member of M.C.C., the name derives from a Thomas Lord, who originally owned the ground.)

There has just been a one-day final match there between the teams of Essex and Kent.

Lord’s, on such an occasion, is a microcosm of true Englishness. All ages, from all walks of life (on this occasion there would hardly have been a non-Englishman among them), are there to enjoy a day’s outing, cheering on their respective teams, lauding their heroes, and directing their wishes of ill fortune toward their opponents.

I am seldom partisan, going just to watch good cricket, and prone to agree with the catch phrase of the pundits, namely that “cricket is the winner”.

The ground, too, is a winner, with its lofty, almost tented Mound Stand (very cleverly expanded by resting a large tier of seats and boxes, held elegantly aloft above the original stand on six slender columns). There is its sedate, Victorian, red brick pavilion, peopled by gentlemen who have waited many years to become members (so they are inclined to be old – and some older still). Then there is the new grandstand, with its roof suspended beneath a length of steel latticework with wires attaching it high up to either side of a central flag pole. Finally, for me, there is a gentleman’s convenience at the so-called Nursery End of the ground. Why do I even mention such a place?

With the club’s new expansion plans, this gem may well be lost to not only those who want to let the beer flow through, but to people like me who see it as an Edwardian, porcelain, sculpture park. It consists of many rows of Shanks stalls with their chinaware cisterns above that rest on columns to supply flushing water. The stalls in the middle stand back to back (or face to face), so, when urinating, you might be looking eye to eye with someone close to and directly opposite with the same intent. I suppose they represent an age when personal privacy was considered less important than it is now. I not only hope that this “Gents” will be retained, but brought to the notice of those who plan, and would hopefully appreciate a treasure of architectural grandeur. Surely it should be a listed building.

Cricket on the day in question was a close enough contest to be interesting throughout. But in between the overs and intervals there were other fascinating sights on view.

To someone like me, to whom meteorology was a life-saving study when flying in the war, a constantly cloud-changing sky was on view. Patches of sunlight broke through a variety of clouds that moved swiftly overhead. Sometimes a thicker layer than most brought relative semi-darkness to the ground. But seen above, and throughout the day, were fine examples of alto stratus, alto cumulus (beautiful), fracto cumulus, straightforward cumulus, and even a lenticular cumulus (if I remember the names correctly).

And because the clouds were high and the air clean, aircraft flight patterns in and out of London’s Heathrow Airport were clear to see.

In the morning, aeroplanes took off in an easterly direction – roughly over Lord’s. After leaving the circuit and using our part of the sky, they could be seen to set course for northern Europe, Scandinavia, over the pole to California, or to the western side of America. Those on long haul, and heavy with passengers and fuel, struggled to gain altitude under full throttle.

Then, in mid-afternoon, aeroplanes took off and landed in the other direction – toward the west. So now they appeared from all directions to join the flight path, either directly into the airport or heading east to turn around and take their turn to join the final, westerly approach. These were quieter aeroplanes than those leaving heavily laden. Their engines were throttled back. Flaps and wheels had not yet been lowered.

Usually sitting among friends, after a day's play, spectators return home to their families exhausted. Those at home can not understand that sitting down for most of the day watching cricket is a very exhausting process. But it is. Concentration on every ball and the many aspects of this most complicated of games, results in sapping, mental strain - and, in my case, with the added concentration on clouds and aeroplanes.

That is the way of it. And it all goes to make up a lovely day.

A day at the horse races

I have never particularly liked horses. As a boy in the country I took them lightly (except for our cart horse), falling off and laughing, much to the annoyance of my sister, who felt that to ride and be fond of horses somehow raised the quality of one’s life to a higher plane.
I don’t like the smell of them, and they kick. Moreover, as they can not be house-trained, as it were, they leave their droppings where they feel like it.
As for catching a horse when it is loose in a field, I seem to remember that it was not easy. So we had to wait for the nag to pass water. Then one of us would dash toward it with a bridle (or some such) in hand, knowing that during this relieving process it would not move an inch.
My cousin, Fred, is a horsy/racing man, and is a member of that rather elite club, called Goodwood. And once a year he invites Margreet and me to the Goodwood races.
It is a lovely day out for us, but we have instructions to dress for the part. This means respectable – a jacket and tie for me, and something smart for Margreet.
This year we had the invitation to join him on Glorious Goodwood’s Ladies’ Day, which meant more dressing up than usual.
So off we set, with Margreet adorned in gold and amber colours, with a hat that wouldn’t blow off in the usual downland wind, long antique amber necklace, diaphanous long dress of warm colours, with woven golden shoes and matching handbag.
With my grey jacket, houndstooth pattern trousers (a bit like a chef), bright bow tie and suede shoes, we looked the part – a bit racing and a bit racy.
We were to transfer to Fred’s member-placarded car at the car park of a Chichester hotel.
On our arrival there it was clear what a different-from-usual day it was, when, in the car park there was a “limmo” that looked like half a dozen large shoe boxes glued together, with blacked out windows and wheels at either end. Behind it, at tables of drink, was a gaggle of gaudily-dressed and hatted young giggling ladies. Were they the "staff” of a London night club perhaps?
We transferred to Fred’s car and made our way slowly along the narrow roads toward the racecourse, with our genial host (late 80s) complaining of overtakers, large vehicles, and any hold-up for any reason. We were enjoying ourselves already.
With not only a member’s badge but an invalid driver’s badge as well, we were ushered into a field car park near to the winning post and important stands.
Then we were each lent a member’s badge. Badges are important in the world of horse racing. Ours allowed us to enter or pass through members’ enclosures. Stewards slightly dipped their heads as we passed. In the distance helicopters were landing (nine at my first count) to disgorge their cargoes of jockeys, potentates and owners.
Soon we were drinking Champagne and eating gravedlax and large prawns in a tented dining space. Toward the end of our meal a short cripple (a “character”, as many are at the races) came to sit at our table. He was a real racing man, having visited each racecourse in the United Kingdom. As there had recently been much publicity in newspapers and on television about the skulduggery involved in racing, (jockeys and their colleagues betting on dead-cert winners to lose), I asked him if he knew any of the crooks. “Two of them,” he replied. I had a feeling that he knew more.
Around us paraded a complete social mix of the elite and far-from-elite, dressed to the nines, Panama hatted, well bellied, short skirted, exposed bosomed, gaudily coloured and colourfully hatted – with no two outfits alike. It was strange that some of the shortest skirts barely covered some of the more formidable legs. We were told that in many cases the most outlandish costumes sported by the ladies were designed primarily to catch the eyes of television cameramen.
With the help of newspaper pundits, and before the racing had even started, Margreet and I placed our each-way Tote bets on the certain winners of each race.
Goodwood racecourse is considered by many to be the most beautiful of any. And I am sure it is. The view from every position is over rolling downland to where the start of every race, short or long, can be seen by all, and then followed, either through binoculars or on a large screen, until the finish.
The enormous fields within our panoramic vision were mostly yellow ochre in colour. Their grain was about to be harvested. Each field contained a patch of green maize as cover and food for pheasants, birds that would later be the targets for guns of winter shoots.
Below, and over the heads of a fascinating collection of animated colour, and the bright umbrellas above the bookies’ stands, I was delighted to see my choice for the first race romp past the winning post a clear winner. Such masterful equine selection was not to last, although I almost broke even on the day.
But win or lose, the results were immaterial when the occasion was the star reason for enjoying a lovely day at the races. Thank you, Fred.

Laoutaris

It was an odd day that started with one man accusing another of racial abuse in public, and then with me buying a drawing.
Near to where I live is the home of an artist. He is moustached, walks rather like a panther about to pounce, and is of distinguished demeanour.
We have known each other for almost twenty years, buying our daily newspaper early each morning from a local Indian-run shop.
For a long time I was unable to discover what he did in life. Being of retirement age, he would, unpaid, help the ailing lady owner of the shop to move the heavy pile of papers each day. Even she was unaware of his profession. Then one day I discovered that he was an artist. So we could then talk about current exhibitions, about all of which he visited.
At one time he even told me his name – which I forgot – even though no forename was attached to it.
Refusing all invitations to come to my place for social drinks, he actually agreed to a visit, but only to look at my eclectic mix of pictures. This allowed me to go to his place to look at his works of art – only his, as he said that he had never had the money spare to buy other people’s work.
What I saw in his house was a most wondrous collection of 1950s drawings, and walls full of his abstract paintings – colourful, delicate and delightful. They were quite obviously of a highly professional standard.
I dearly wanted to acquire something of his – anything, for both friendship and artistic reasons. But, no.
The man was quite obviously a recluse, a hermit – creative hermit. And he was also quite obviously ill at ease with the company of fellow humans. He lived in an artistic envelope – sealed to the outside world.
Slowly I got to know a little of his past.
He mentioned that in the 1950s, when the angry young men of the theatre were much in vogue, a journalist on The Daily Telegraph dubbed him “the angry young artist”. So he must, at one time, have been well known.
He related that he had indeed been a contrary kind of person, an early attitude to life and art that he had come to regret. I learned more.
Offered a place at the Slade School of Art, he didn’t like his interviewers and declined to attend. They begged him to paint there, but to no avail.
Although exhibiting at the Zwemmer Gallery, The London Group, Gallery 1 and others, he declined to have a one-man show at the prestigious Rowland, Browse and Delbanco Gallery, in Cork Street. “Cold feet”, he said.
Now, in his 70s he wishes that he had not fought, but embraced the artistic establishment in his rebellious youth.
And at last I discovered his Greek name – LAOUTARIS. He was born in Egypt.
Well, we met once more at a Hammersmith bus stop, where the afore- mentioned abuse took place. We were unable to board the 27 bus as a passenger was blocking the entry and, on his mobile telephone, was trying to interest the police in taking action against the bus driver who had racially abused him. The interesting part of this contretemps was that both aggrieved passenger and driver were black.
So Laoutaris and I talked once more, the outcome being that he invited me into his house to choose a drawing. There were many framed drawings lining the walls of his staircase, one of which I could buy, but with his right of veto. I suggested one of three and he told which one I could have. Money changed hands and I made off with my prize.
I was delighted with the drawing and wanted, as is my custom for those who might acquire the work in years to come, to write on the back of the frame a little about the artist and his life. I roughed out something and put it through his door for amendment.
It had been a wonderful day for me, but that was not the end of it.
Margreet and I decided to hang the drawing where another was hanging close to a rack of wine bottles – one lying on top of the other. In unhooking the incumbent drawing in its frame, my elbow, or some part of me, nudged a bottle beneath others. The bottles, being of slightly different shapes began to slide. And down came one to smash on the tiled floor beneath, and then another – and so forth.
The floor beneath became awash with wine and covered with shards of broken glass. But both the old drawing and the new one by Laoutaris remained dry, safe, and with glass unbroken.
Laoutaris amended my little history of him and this was stuck to the back of the frame.
Now he had actually sold something and been paid for it. It was, in a way, just a little recognition. But surely much greater, and public, recognition should come his way in his lifetime. And what if he died unrecognised for his years of insular creation? His executors might have difficulty in dealing satisfactorily with his considerable artistic estate. He should be a part of the history of English (and Greek) 20th to 21st century art.
I put these ideas to Laoutaris. Reluctantly, I felt, he agreed, and I managed to get a Christie’s man to appraise the paintings. The expert on English 20th century art’s reaction was like mine, so he offered part of a Christie’s sale catalogue with history, description and paintings, or even one single painting for sale, to get his name known and on record.
But there was a snag. Laoutaris’s daughter refuses to allow her father to sell anything. She was furious that a drawing had been sold to me.
So that is where the matter rests.

latest artwork

a Summer/Winter Stew

This simple to make and quite delicious dish can be prepared with light summer ingredients or richer, fuller winter ones. It can also be cooked in the oven for an hour when all its parts are cut into smallish pieces. Or slow cooked in a slow cooker when the pieces can be larger. Buy whole olives and stone them. Those already without stones will have lost much of their taste. But you may find the stoning process (with some designs of garlic press) to be too tedious. Then buy stoned ones.

A SUMMER/WINTER STEW

You will need:
Olive oil
A red meat for winter or a white meat for summer
Onions
Garlic
Potatoes
Plenty of rosemary for winter, or less mint and/or thyme for summer
Black olives for winter or green ones for summer
Robust red wine for winter or white for summer.
Salt
Milled black pepper (plenty) for winter or white ground pepper for summer

Into a flat cooking pan place the meat on a wiping of olive oil - in one piece, small pieces or a piece per person.
Cover it with potatoes, onions, garlic, olives, the herb, pepper and salt.
Sprinkle wine over all.
Cook as mentioned above.

An old school friend in Paris, 2008

Our room was at the top of a hotel (6^th floor and the lift broke down), in the heart of Paris’s Latin Quarter. It was much beamed (real, and half-timbered, too), decorated in plum-coloured wallpaper depicting bucolic 18^th century scenes, spacious, quiet, with a small internal balcony with semicircular steps leading to it, and with a modern bathroom adorned with lovely light brick-coloured marble with thin white lines running through it.

We settled in, and had an aperitif at Conti, in the Place Buci, where crowds of the monde and demi-monde passed by. And then we ate at the Orestias, two doors from our hotel, for the princely sum of £28 (three courses and a bottle of Greek wine). Here the waiter could only speak at a shout, and had probably done so ever since I first ate there soon after the Second World War.

That is a way of Paris, and that is the way of this unchanging small part of the 6^th Arrondissement where the rue de Seine, rue de Buci, Mazarine, St André des Arts, Dauphine, Ancienne Comédie and Grégoire de Tours more or less converge. All are artistically and boutiquely inviting streets, holding many a bar and interesting restaurant.

The occupants of this quarter, shop at the market stalls, flower shop and supermarket, and rest from their exertions by taking a glass or cup of something while gaping at the goings-on in front of and around them.

A glamorous film star lady, with long legs and short skirt, was being followed by a director, 4 cameramen, 2 soundmen and other hangers-on. She wandered, entered cafés, and generally acted the part of a famous and much-fêted star.

Her lady companion was plainer by far.

Above a café opposite, the outside of which being much photographed, was a banner saying “Entrée des Joueurs”. She and her companion entered for a while. We imagined that she could have been the first prize, but not her companion.

The objectives of these film people was clearly to paint a background picture of Latin Quarter life for, later, we saw one of the photographers directing his lens at a local, characterful worthy. This ancient and bebobble-capped gentleman was bent over his pastis in contemplation, perhaps, of the current ideas of some French, left-wing philosopher.

There was an objective to our Paris visit. An American Taft School friend, from my early war years in that country before I was old enough to return to England to become an RAF pilot, was to be in Paris with his French wife of 60 years. We were to meet at last after several times of trying, and failing to co-ordinate a rendezvous in France. This was one reason why we had chosen to stay in the Latin Quarter (at the Grand Hotel de l’Univers, no less), an area frequented and enjoyed by both of us in the past.

One of the windows in our room overlooked an almost cubist depiction of roofs, chimneys and balconies – all zinc and cream surfaces.

As I was doing one of my postcard drawings of the scene (Paris is not as crumbly as it used to be), an animated little scene took place on an exposed and distant roof terrace. And who should the participants be but the girl and film crew seen from our seats in the café. And what were they doing on this exposed terrace?

Well, the cameramen and soundmen were now directing all of their attention to the prettier girl. Several times she rehearsed a scene where she had to prance (dance?) around, take off all of her clothes, and throw them to the floor in either anger or disgust. Between takes she wrapped herself in a white towel to keep warm, as the springtime Parisian late afternoon air was decidedly chilly.

We then dined at the Polidor restaurant, a favourite of old in the rue Monsieur le Prince, before walking off the effects of it and getting lost in an area that I should have known better. But we did pass a nice looking little eating place in the rue Jacob, where one of the first courses, written on the menu in English and displayed in the window, was - six nails.

My old school friend of 67 years ago, Ted Mason, and his wife, Ginny, take a small apartment each year near to the Eiffel Tower. We went to see them there, opening first, as so many people have to in Paris, those huge and formidable doors that lead from the street to accommodation beyond. Behind them was a quiet courtyard, in this case with the focal point of a large, potted olive tree, pruned to look like a Bonsai.

Our instructions were then to ring a certain doorbell, admitting us into a hallway from which we entered the smallest lift imaginable. Inside it there was room for two – just – or an adult and a dog.

On the 5^th floor, the third barrier door to unwanted entry (one thinks of the French Revolution) was their apartment door.

Once inside the apartment, decorated as if frozen in time, we were able to meet my old pal (being absolutely in demeanour the intelligence, policy-making Lieutenant Colonel he had become in the army) and his charming French wife, whose accent had retained a very strong affinity to her roots. It was a great occasion.

We lunched well at a local brasserie, and parted as the good friends he and I had once been, and now with them both as a devoted pair.

It is almost obligatory when visiting Paris to enter the Galleries Lafayette for, if nothing else, to marvel at the ornate interior of its enormous Belle Epoque dome of plaster, gilt, bronze and stained glass. And the shopping to be done on its seven floors around the dome is many a woman’s dream.

Not far, along Boulevard Haussman, by the Grands Boulevards Metro Station, is a street to the left, called rue du Faubourg Montmartre. Here, shortly on the left-hand side, at the far end of a small courtyard, is Chartier.

Here one eats in a vast, Victorian, working man’s restaurant. The menu can hardly have changed since the restaurant’s inception, and the food is served sometimes by waiters almost as old as the place itself.

Created in 1896 to serve traditional bouillon to customers at marble tables, hats (bowler or top) and coats are accommodated on brass racks and hooks above where you sit. You are put to share tables with strangers. The restaurant still retains numbered drawers for customers’ napkins.

Do not omit to finish your meal with a Mont Blanc (cream on top of a purée of chestnuts) – even if it is not on the menu.

To give an idea of this restaurant’s success, they serve over 1,200 meals a day. And excellent they are – reasonable, too.

So well will you have eaten that it is quite possible to leave and forget to take with you the bags of Lafayette shopping that you have placed on the racks above.

There was a Vlaminck exhibition on at the Musée du Luxembourg. Although one of my favourite artists, as with any large show of someone’s work, one tends to make comparisons, to see repetition, derivation and influences, whereas, just one single work (almost any in this case), if seen alone, would be quite enough to astound and please the senses.

We ended our stay in France’s capital city with a stroll on the gravelly sand of the Luxembourg Gardens. In sunshine, and in shade beneath trees, we passed many chess players, hunched over the park’s chess boards, either in solitary combat or beneath the admiring gaze of a ring of spectators.

Around the pond behind the Palace, crowds of people were relaxing in the Saturday afternoon sunshine, picnicking, herding happy or fractious children, or running around the pond with sticks to re-direct their hired model sailing boats. And of course, being Paris, there were lovers, staring vacantly into each other’s eyes as lovers do.

It was a Seurat scene, one we had to leave, but will keep in the memory.

Another Dutch Wedding 2008

Simon J. Sluis is an 87 year old Dutchman about to marry a younger (72 years old) Lidy Klees (my wife’s cousin). We were invited to their wedding in Laren, a small and select township to the east of Amsterdam.
Simon (pronounced Seemon) is all that a prosperous Dutchman should be – with a name translated as sluice (plenty in Holland), of patrician stature, a plant and seedsman of world renown, and congenial.
He and I had spoken of plants several times before. I remember him telling me that most modern climbing French beans have Blue Lake in their ancestry. So I continue to plant Blue Lake in England, and with confidence (not buying his seeds – though perhaps so initially – but saving my own, as it is not an F1 Hybrid).
It has been our custom to either go by air or car to Holland. This time, we did not intend to return laden with foreign goodies, and chose to travel by rail – Eurostar from London to Brussels and then Thalys train on to Amsterdam.
The Singel Hotel, on a canal and fairly near to Amsterdam’s Central Station, has at times been a convenient base for us when visiting that magical city – one where only to turn one’s head never fails to reveal yet further architectural gems. But the hotel’s rooms have been a bit on the seedy side. Learning that these had now been refurbished, we chose to book in once more.
The contrasts on our rail trip to Amsterdam were considerable.
At Eurostar, St Pancras, we were funnelled into a large and light basement where we refreshed ourselves, sitting on comfortable chairs, surrounded by a plethora of Victorian cast iron columns that still continue to hold up the railway platforms above.
So clean and tidy was it that the hot chocolate that I bought to help while away the time was whisked from a table top by an over-enthusiastic cleaner when my back was turned.
With sunshine outside we made our way to the Eurostar platform above, where the fine span of the old St Pancras iron-arched covering was gleaming in its fresh coat of paint and cleaned glass.
To change trains in a rather dreary and rainy station in Brussels was not as easy to master. A café snack there took such an age to acquire that it was a close run thing to board the Thalys train to Amsterdam on time.
From the dirty carriage windows the flat and rainy landscape of Belgium led inexorably to the flat and wet landscape of Holland. The train, designed for speed but going at a normal train’s pace, passed through small townships and over countless level crossings. At least the seating, though shabby, gave us more legroom than Eurostar, and had the edge over the latter by having a water supply for basins and lavatories – which is more than could be said for Eurostar. For luggage space, Eurostar was the better.
The strange part about going to Holland is that although our two countries have much in common and with many historical ties, it is a very foreign place. Even Margreet, who had not lived there for some 40 years, finds it so each time she returns.
You can walk along a most respectable canal street in Amsterdam and suddenly see an almost naked lady sitting in a floodlit window hoping for custom.
There are plenty of cannabis shops, selling a selection of seeds and all the accoutrements necessary for ingesting the several parts of that plant. The perfume of pot pervades the pavement air.
One wonders at the speed of cyclists on their designated paths who ride like the clappers and never collide with pedestrians, or one another.
And then you might pass Coffeeshops to see youths, drugged up to the eyebrows, reclining languidly in the windows.
As for the food on offer, the Dutch grub is, by tradition, substantial, filling, warming and, let’s be plain about it – plain.
So, to provide sophisticated cuisine to the now sophisticated Dutch, the cuisine from foreign parts is used and adapted to the Dutch idea of food (satay, for instance is made with lumps of meat, and schnitzels are thick).
At a “Dutch” restaurant recommended to us, we were offered an Italian type first course and a Thai style one for the main course.
And then, in a café afterwards, we ate a brownie and ice cream, the brownie bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the kind invented by the Americans, but was semi-toffee-liquid, with walnuts and a smidgen of normal brownie mix. It was delicious, yet one wouldn’t want to eat it again too often. (“Brownies”, incidentally, are also eaten – not to assuage hunger - in coffeeshops.)
Our hotel room was also uniquely Dutch. It was situated at the very top of a typical 17th century canal-side house, and approached via the hotel’s lift and an outside alleyway between a wall and tiled roof. Situated directly beneath a roof of dark tiles, the room’s inside consisted of a plethora of angles and planes that twisted and rose and fell in all directions. It was a bit like being inside a small diamond on which a cack-handed Amsterdam apprentice diamond-cutter had been having instruction. A small window at the side allowed a bit of light and air to enter, but a dormer window on one side would have offered a fine view of the Singel canal. I imagine that stringent building regulations prevented it – and probably rightly so.
So “Dutch” was this room that one felt very much as Amsterdam people must have felt for over three or four hundred years in a city where space in their prosperous community has always been at a premium.
The Dutch Reformed church for the wedding in Laren was unadorned and without an alter.
We arrived in the nick of time as the café waitresses nearby, where we had ordered drinks three times and they had failed to produce the goods, forced us to cancel. Being only just in time at the church, and with all pews seemingly packed tight, we were directed to the few seats in the very front of the congregation – when we would rather have been at the back.
The service was a long one, with the “vicar” having a great deal to say, taking relish in both his voice and the words he used. Understanding nothing (a position with which I am accustomed in Holland) I tried to look interested throughout (a tiring business).
The order of service had the music to hymns printed with the text.
The elderly groom and his bride were obviously in love, holding hands when they were able, kneeling centre stage toward a raised pulpit (unused during the service but surrounded by a very local choir).
Then came the reception at the nearby Ateliercafé Mauve, named after a famous artist from Laren (where all this took place).
We drank (well, I did) copiously, and ate bitterballen, one of the most delicious of Dutch snack/delicacies, consisting of crisp and crunchy balls containing a palate-burning mixture of creamy meat (horse, thought to be one of the best, but veal the most common) and eaten dipped in mustard.
As we were waiting for dinner, we continued to drink whatever we chose from waiters’ trays, under the efficient command of Yvette, the bride’s daughter-in-law.
It was during this dormant period of drinks between the reception and dinner that something delightful (to me) took place.
On our table, beneath the trees outside on a balmy late afternoon, was a round, blue vase containing campanula plants. I noticed a honeybee taking nectar from its blue flowers. Never before had I seen honeybees enjoying flowers in a vase. Word clearly got back to the hive that the nectar from our campanulas was tasty. So the bee’s fellow workers joined in to take advantage of what was on offer.
It was almost as if this was a gesture of celebration on the part of the hive, as our groom had made his fortune in horticulture, where bees had been the vital instruments for his pollinations.
Besides the charm of an elderly bride and groom, and the stylishness of their many guests, the red wine at the dinner was a Château Rocher Calon, merlot, from Montagne Saint-Emillion, the very same hamlet in the Bordeaux region where we had so recently enjoyed another lovely wedding.
That a single grape variety should be produced in Saint-Emillion was quite new to me, and very successful it was.
Kind relations, Dick and Reina, escorted us to the Hilversum railway station where a train soon transported us back to Amsterdam Central Station, where we made our way by foot to the nearby Singel Hotel.
If you are of the opinion that the Dutch railways are always highly efficient, think again.
On the following day we needed once more to return to Amsterdam Central from Hilversum, the station and surrounds of which were in a state of reconstruction.
To obtain a ticket it was necessary to use a machine – needing a credit card and a local’s considerable computer expertise.
We knew that the train would leave from platform 5, needing a double descent of stairs and one to climb – difficult for Margreet with one foot in a temporary surgical boot.
Having descended, we found that our intended platform had been taped off, in the way that a murder scene is taped off. Margreet, by now, was quite willing to commit some violence that might well have warranted a taping-off.
As there had been no indication whatsoever, in a notice or official’s guidance, that trains would not be leaving for Amsterdam from Hilversum at that time, we had to retrace our steps. We then learned that passengers for Amsterdam would have to take a local, stopping bus to Weesp, a station nearer to our destination. We were obliged to take it.
So, a normal 20 minute journey took over an hour, and we had had to descend and climb countless stairs pointlessly in the course of it.
It had been a most upsetting experience for Margreet, with a stress fracture in her foot.
On the advice of Tobias at the Dutch Embassy in London, we made our way to the rear of the Central Station in Amsterdam to the de Ruijterkade where (free) ferries leave for the far side of the very wide IJ (pronounced eye) river.
The one to take is for the destination IJ plein. This name will be marked up on an electronic signboard and on the back of the ferry.
From the ferry dock at IJ plein, you turn right to walk along the IJ riverbank to the Wilhelmina-Dok (sic), which is also called Caffé Tazza d’Oro. Here, on a sunny day or warm evening, you can sit (almost on the river) to drink and eat.
It is a lovely experience there to watch the commercial and private shipping pass by from a table in the open or under giant orange umbrellas – umbrellas that stand out so clearly, from both sides of the river, amid a setting of fairly drab utilitarian buildings.
On our final day in Amsterdam, we bought three kinds of cheese (brokkel oud, young white goat cheese from a cartwheel, and komijne), all unique to Holland, and headed back to England with our food gifts and having enjoyed such a pleasant and interesting visit.

Bulgarian Wine

I used to write about wine (4 books and about 700 articles) specialising in the lower market sector. So I knew more or less what I was about – especially as I was tasting about 2,000 wines each year. Now I am just an ordinary punter.
Because I have been both wine writer and publisher, a kind invitation comes my way each year to visit the London International Wine Fair, now held at ExCeL, in London’s dockland, and organised by Brintex. I generally decline to go, no longer having a column in which to pass on helpful information on wine. But this year I accepted.
In the 1970s and early 1980s Bulgarian wine was generally available. And excellent, reliable wine it was - reasonably priced as well. Bulgaria, bless it, was introducing the British public to the pleasures of drinking good red wine. After all, they had been making the stuff since at least the 5th and 4th century BC. So they should know what they were about. And they made masses of it (mainly Cabernet Sauvignon), swilled down with much pleasure by generations of appreciative Britons.
In 1986, when most supermarkets were selling their Cabernet Sauvignon for under £2 a bottle, I wrote that Bulgaria could become the next great wine- producing country, flooding the world with their products – a view later confirmed during a private visit to that country when I saw what ideal conditions prevailed there. Progress was such that they were even using helicopters to spray the vast vineyards.
But this has not happened. So I tried to piece together the story of decline.
I was told that their government in 1944 turned a fragmented, small-holding operation into a modern, far-sighted, co-operative industry. But in the latter part of the 1980s, because of their close ties to Communist Russia, they did as they were told in a crusade against alcohol consumption and grubbed up vines in many of the best areas. They have yet to recover. One voice predicted that it would take another ten years. The overall picture was gloomy. Some of the trouble lay, so one person almost whispered in my ear, was due to politics, Mafia, graft and social upheaval. About which, I am glad to record, I know almost nothing.
But wine is still made in considerable quantity, and small, boutique wineries are beginning to flourish.
I tried to promote the idea that good and low priced wines should once again be marketed in the UK – if only to get the public to think of Bulgarian wine as a sound choice once more – starting at the bottom end of the market.
That they can make fine wine there is no doubt. I tried several at ExCeL, some of which have not yet found an outlet in England.
One particularly fine blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Mavrud and Rubin, made by Vinza–Assenovgrad, and called Ententa, is available at Vinopolis at around £25. Only about 7,000 litres of it are made each year. There are also other of this company’s wines available at Vinopolis. Another red to seek out is Enira. This is made by Frenchmen, who are trying to change the image of Bulgarian wine in the Bessa Valley. Waitrose sell this excellent 2006 blend of Merlot 60%, Syrah 15%, Petit Verdot 15% and Cabernet Sauvignon 10% for £8.99.
I had a chance to taste only some of Bulgaria’s upper-market wines. But there must be more reasonably priced wines around in the market place, and more on their way for sure.
It made me very sad to see the declining fortunes of one of Great Britain’s favourite suppliers of good table wine.
So let us hope that they will get their act together again and start flooding our wine shelves with the wine that they once made and marketed so well.
And let us also hope that this will take place well within that predicted 10 year time scale.

THE VIABILITY OF VEGETABLE SEEDS

In preparation for sowing seeds in flowerpots, with a view to growing more vegetables in the small, paved garden in London, I opened my ancient toffee tin of garden seeds to see what was inside.
Some used packets had been bought recently, like climbing French beans, broad beans and parsley. Other seeds, taken from the previous year’s crop, like tomatoes, clung to the kitchen paper on which they were dried. Others were tied in plastic freezer bags, like rocket and chillies.
But there were seeds there of unknown age and origin, some loose - all later to be cast haphazardly in open urban ground.
In looking through a 1962 diary, where I have, since then, recorded the rotation of crops, arrival of house martins, first cuckoo notes and other observations of nature, I found my list of seed viability.
Now, by nature, my life is made up of experiments. This manifests itself, especially in the kitchen, where nearly every dish is contrived differently from that cooked previously, and in the garden.
In gardening, like cooking, we are inclined to believe what we are told by “experts”, or have learned from, and believed, the printed word. When some sage has pronounced (perhaps erroneously) on a subject, and, right or wrong this has since been perpetuated, we believe it.
So when I wrote an unpublished work on vegetable gardening, a proposed section was to be the viability of seeds with some original input.
It struck me that merchants might possibly suggest that their seeds did not remain viable for as long as they actually did (quite untrue, I’m sure), and that “Packed in the year ….” did not necessarily mean the year harvested. And I had noticed that some packets of seeds sold in foreign countries suggested longer viability than those sold at home.
So, with a combination of discovering packets with the longest seed viability recommended at home and abroad, and my own experiments over many years, I drew up a list. It has been very popular among my gardening friends.
One point to note is than when compiling it many years ago, there were few, if any, F1 Hybrid seeds on the market. These do not necessarily produce a good crop from saved seed. So my list is for non-F1 Hybrid seeds – old-fashioned, normal seeds.
Another point is that the following viability list depends on seed gathered and dried by your self, with the following year for planting being recorded as year one.
As a note of interest, it is not always necessary to dry tomato seeds – though I usually do, especially to keep two excellent unknown strains going. Once, when eating a splendid salade tomates in France in springtime, I extracted some tomato seeds from the vinaigrette dressing and planted them on my return to England. I was eating those very same tomatoes that summer. This year I have grown plants successfully from the fresh seeds of two kinds of mini tomatoes.
A final point is that the seeds in the following list may well last for longer – some much longer – than here recommended (we learn quite often that seeds from ancient civilisations have been germinated successfully).

Here they are, with the years of their viability, all in a line to save space, and in the original order from my book:-

CUCUMBER 6, CELERY 6, PARSNIP 2, MARROW (AND PRESUMABLY COURGETTE) 6, CABBAGE 5, RADISH 5, LETTUCE 5, SPINACH 2, CHARD 5, CARROTS 3, LEEKS 3, ONIONS 3, TURNIPS 2, PEAS 2, BEANS 2, TOMATOES 5, PARSLEY 3, CELERIAC 4, BEETS 5, KOHL RABI 4, SALSIFY 2, SWEDE (RUTABAGA) 2, AND PEPPERS (UNRECORDED).

Pistachio and pepper paté

I may cook certain dishes quite often, but seldom in the same way. I devise new ones, or alter familiar recipes to either simplify or improve them. When this happens, and I am pleased, the recipe, alterations, or perhaps timings, get written down on any old piece of paper that’s handy. This one for a paté I made and took to a party in Bruges was good but a bit bland. So it was re-made from reading my original rough and barely legible notes and here altered and recorded properly.

PISTACHIO AND PEPPER PATE

You will need:

Whole grain or granary bread (three slices)

Pistachio nut kernels (3 tablespoons)

Green peppercorns (1 teaspoon)

White wine and Calvados (or another spirit – containing aniseed if you like it)

Pepper and salt

Parsley, chives and mint (any or all)

Minced pork (300 grams and a bit fatty)

Butter

Cut off the crusts from three slices of whole grain or granary bread and, with the fingers. Work them into breadcrumbs in a large bowl.

Pour off any surplus liquid left from the 24 hour plus marinating of the pistachio kernels and peppercorns in white wine. Liquid will be absorbed, so add more to keep them covered.

Add the drained kernels and peppercorns, salt and plenty of milled black pepper to the breadcrumbs.

Chop up fresh herbs, like parsley, or chives, or mint, or all.

Having buttered your paté dish with a large lump, cut the remainder into the smallest possible pieces and add these.

Now put in the 300 grams of minced pork and, with the fingers (like making the breadcrumbs) work it all together for an even blend. The mixture will be slightly tacky.

Finally, using a wooden spoon, stir in a beaten egg to which you have added a good slosh of Calvados.

Put all this into the buttered paté dish (my favourite takes the form of a green duck with yellow beak, bought in the 1950s in Rouen with duck paté inside).

Put the lidded paté dish in a baking tray and surround it with boiling water to about half way up the pot (a bain-marie), and give it 1½ hours in a medium oven, taking the lid off for the last 15 minutes or so to dry out the upper surface. Check during the cooking that the water has not evaporated, topping up with boiling water if necessary.

Allow the paté to cool before eating it with crusty bread.

Note: Omitting the peppercorns and Calvados will make a mild paté, more to the taste, possibly, of children.

Bolivian Begonia

Readers of this blog will know that it is not a gossip blog, but one about art, travel, cooking and nature.

A plant, to me, is as important in the scheme of things as a person. It is just because we can think that makes us believe we are more important than plants, trees or animals. We are not.

And when we come to the end of our lives the process and end result is much the same as anything else coming to the end of its time on earth.

This is a blog about a plant.

I think it must have been when my wife, Margreet, was recovering from an operation to her foot that she was presented with a Bolivian begonia (B. boliviensis “Firecracker” to be exact) as a get-well present from her Embassy.

It was a truly magnificent plant of long, arching, well-branched stems, festooned with bright orange, pendant flowers.

Our newly acquired treasure, now thriving in a blue glazed pot, had pride of place, holding sway over all other colourful flowers in the centre of a peninsular of other pots in the centre of our flagstone-paved London garden.

I was not sure which kind of begonia it happened to be – fibrous rooted or corm (tuberous).

In late autumn at the onset of its first winter with us, a large corm became visible as its few fleshy stems withered and then finally fell away from the corm base.

I read that begonia corms should be dried up then and packed away in sand for the winter – which I did.

The display throughout the following year was just as spectacular, after having had the pleasure of seeing small shoots springing out of the dried and dead-looking tuber.

For last winter I decided to dispense with the previous year’s storing procedure and left it in its pot, but well insulated from the frost in bubblewrap. It was a disastrous decision. Beneath its insulation, the corm, damp and unseen, rotted away. It had to go to the compost heap, along with its soil, which was thickly matted with fine roots.

So I searched and found a nursery that would supply me with a replacement. I paid for it by post and awaited its arrival with happy anticipation.

When the cardboard box arrived from the nursery, the exterior dimensions were smaller by far than the whole of my original corm.

On prising open the cardboard I found only shredded paper as packing – but no Bolivian begonia.

About to contact the nursery in question, my fingers touched something very small among the packing. It was my new corm – so minute in size in its cellophane tube that I had very nearly thrown it away into the recycling bin with its wrapping.

Looking pathetically small, it has now been planted in the old pot with fresh, composty soil.

How many years, I wonder, will I have to wait and cosset this tiny stem with its few drooping leaves before, once again, I have a plant to fill my summer garden with colour?

I know that gardeners need patience. I will certainly need some for the begonia.

Dieppe, March 2008

Why don’t we do our weekend shopping in Dieppe? What a nice idea.
We would drive to Newhaven, take the car ferry to Dieppe, eat a lovely dinner, sleep in our accustomed room at the Aguado Hotel, do our shopping, lunch well, and be home by the evening. Perfect.
But, of course, we had not reckoned with the vagaries of this most pleasant crossing of the Channel.
Seldom in the past has the ship left or arrived on time. On occasion we have been re-directed to other ports, The engines have under-performed and we have travelled slowly at sea. The sea has occasionally been too rough for a crossing. And once we were telephoned before departure to be told that they had read the tides incorrectly and there would be a delay.
But off we set. And this time we half expected that there would be some form of trouble as two violent storms had just passed through and there was a strike at Dover – causing many trucks to converge on alternative Channel ports.
So it was no great surprise to be told on arrival at Newhaven that we would be going to Le Havre instead. Apparently, the car loading ramp at Dieppe had failed.
So we arrived in Le Havre on a dark and rainy evening without map or direction. But Dieppe was to be our unalterable destination (we had ordered wine to be collected there) and there was a motorway for much of the way.
Now, either we are very dense, French sign posting is dreadful (especially around road works) or the locals already know the way and, for foreigners, hard luck.
So instead of finding the motorway we found ourselves amid road works and on a country route – a pleasant one, no doubt, on a fine summer’s day with time to enjoy the countryside and coastal scenery.
Any sign posting in the countryside was difficult to see in the dark and rain. And without a good road map (I had torn out a cursory one from a ferry brochure on gardens of note in Normandy) made accurate direction a bit of a lottery.
But late in the evening, after a harrowing 100 kilometres, we arrived in Dieppe – somewhat shattered.
Even the restaurant of our choice was, for some reason, closed.
So we selected a new restaurant to us, one that had plenty of diners still eating there at the late hour. It was Le New Haven.
The meal and wine were exemplary, the pan-fried scallops the largest and tenderest encountered.
At last our projected sojourn of pleasure was taking shape. But it took much of the meal for us to unwind.
And we slept like logs.
Shopping the following day proceeded as planned – French, Spanish, Chilean wine from two supermarkets (the “foreign” wine having somewhat dusty bottles as the French do not think that anyone else can make it properly, so don’t buy it), garlic sausage, top class beef (probably chewy but tasty, being French) smoked chickens, bouillon cubes, Normandy cider, olive oil (mostly from Spain), Neufchâtel and goats’ cheese, Pont l’Evèque and Roquefort, paper handkerchiefs, sliced raw ham, leeks, apples and avocados, trinket presents and I’m sure other things, many unique to France or much cheaper than in England.
After an excellent lunch at the Bistrot du Pollet (I ate calf’s head) we drove (this time the 100 kilometres on the motorway) to Le Havre (one hour in the dry as opposed to three on country roads in the wet).
We had expected to have to wait a long time for our ship’s departure, but a large ferry was shortly due to leave for Portsmouth. So, thanks to a kind lady at LD Lines who arranged for us to transfer, we were on our way, and were at home when our arranged ship was still at sea.
Because of the inconvenience suffered, we were given a free return trip at some time in the future.
I think that we might do our weekend shopping in France again, and expect both pleasure and strife, as we always do on our crossings to Dieppe by ferry from Newhaven.

Chicken- Chicken on Swede

Here is a cheap, simple and peasant-like dish, elevated to dinner party status by a spirited addition. This dish is almost invariably a huge success.

CHICKEN- CHICKEN ON SWEDE

You will need:
Swede (rutabaga)
Stock (optional)
Butter
Pepper and salt
Ouzo, Pernod or another aniseed spirit. Or star aniseed. Or other liqueur or spirit.
Boned chicken thighs (or legs)
Olive oil
Milled pepper

Pare away the outer skin of a swede or two, or more. Cut the flesh into smallish cubes Cover them with water or stock and boil for 20 to 30 minutes - or until soft. If you are using star aniseed instead of an aniseed spirit as the flavouring for the swede, add three stars to the water in which you are boiling the swede. Discard them when the swede has been boiled.
Pour off the cooking water for the start of a later-to-be-enjoyed soup.
Mash the swede with butter, pepper and salt.
Now stir in a measure (say, a dessertspoon) of Ouzo, Pernod, Ricard, or other aniseed spirit. Or you may have imparted enough aniseed taste from the star aniseeds used when boiling the swede.
Cover the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the mashed swede.
Take chicken thighs (better than legs) from which you have extracted the single, central bone (if you have done this earlier, tie together and put the bones in with the swede when you are boiling it to obtain extra flavour). Keep the skin on the thigh pieces and roll them into bundles before arranging them (one large or two small per person) on top of the mashed swede. If boning chicken legs, also discard the sharp bone lying close to the leg bone and use kitchen scissors to trim away the little white ends of tendon. Wrap in their skin, as with thighs.
When the thighs are in position, and just pressed down a little into the mashed swede, dribble or brush a little olive oil over each. Add salt, and give them a good milling of black pepper from the pepper mill.
If it is more convenient, the preparation can be done well before the dish is ready for the oven. Give it about an hour and a half at a medium setting (longer seems to make little difference, so it is an excellent dish might you be late or very late to eat). Anyhow, after the chicken skin has become crisp and golden, the dish will be ready for the table.
That's it. And it's a stunner. Serve on its own, or with baked or mashed potato, or beans, or a salad, or...
Perhaps you do not like the taste of aniseed. Then don’t add any. It will be almost as good. It is also possible to use any spirit or liqueur for this excellent dish. Use your favourite, or any at hand. Grand Marnier, for instance, is excellent.
I have also made this dish with slightly liquid mashed potato instead of swede, and it was excellent. I flavoured the mash with pressed garlic and de-seeded red chillies, finely chopped.
But start with swede, star aniseed and chicken thighs.

*****

Beef - beef and orange

This delicious beef dish is best made when blood oranges are in season. But it is not necessary. It is a very special beef stew – ideal for a cold winter’s evening when served either with mashed potato or baked potatoes.

BEEF – BEEF AND ORANGE

You will need:
Stewing beef, like shin
Onions
Garlic
Oil
Flour
Oranges
Red wine
Stock cube
Pepper and salt
Gravy browning (optional)

In an iron casserole put oil, chopped onions and chopped garlic. Just brown them.
Now add cubes of shin of beef and brown them. Sprinkle some flour over it all and stir.
As this has been going on, take six medium-size oranges (possibly blood oranges) and, using a sharp knife with a thin blade, pare the zest off three of them. Chop this rind into very small pieces. Squeeze all the oranges and place the juice and the chopped skin in a bowl. To this bowl add red wine measuring half the volume of its orange juice contents.
Add this liquid to the casserole. Add pepper and salt, a crumbled stock cube, and a little gravy browning should you want the final result to look more appetising.
Cook the stew on a very low heat for about an hour and a half – or even more. Test the meat to see if it has become tender, and add a little water as it is cooking if you think the sauce is too thick or beginning to catch.
Serve with mashed or baked potato.

Feral Pigeons and Walnuts

I am a bird lover (and I love my wife, too).
On the top floor of our house is a small room that incorporates our spare bed (on which I paint from a kneeling position), my wife’s modern computer, and my own computer, which is really a sophisticated word-processor and unconnected to the net.
We are very cramped in this room, but it is our joint den, and very cosy.
Outside old inward-opening windows (a real curse, needing drainage channels and a tube to a bucket to deal with wind-blown rainwater) is a wide sill.
Above this sill I suspend a contraption for feeding birds with sunflower seeds.
Beside the normal run of blue tits and great tits came feral pigeons that ate both the dropped seeds and even their husks. They made a noise and a mess, were plain greedy, and deterred the other birds from enjoying a share.
So I constructed a frame of 1 ½” x 1 ½” woodwork on which I attached rows of spikes – used to keep pigeons away from the perching places on public buildings and monuments.
After adjustments and filling gaps with yet more spikes, the feral pigeons tried for seed and failed.
But the husks fell, started to fill the frame, and began to congeal and rot.
So I scraped and vacuumed to keep the sill hygienically clean. This was a painfully spiky and nuisance job.
It then occurred to me that if I lifted the gutter side of the frame, rainwater would run beneath it and wash the detritus into the gutter and then away.
I was eating a walnut when thinking of a simple method to raise the woodwork with something rot-proof and sightly that would be impervious to the elements. So I used broken walnut shell to do the job.
Walnut shells seem to be indestructible, and easy on the eye. So the broken shells were replaced with intact half shells.
Now the rainwater washes away the husks from the front of the raised frame, and it looks nice, too.
With this success I have hung a Niger seed dispenser above the sunflower seed one.
So now goldfinches have joined the tit crowd, the sill is clean, and there is neither the sight nor sound of a feral pigeon.

The Latest Painting

Having started to paint (in pastel to be exact) again after a 27 year break for writing (14 books and some 700 articles), I have now amassed, since June 2006, 28 A1s (19 ¾” x 15 ¾”) (50 cm x 40 cm) and countless “working” A4s (11 ½” x 8 ¼”) (29.5 cm x 21 cm).
So although “Jim’s Paintings” – reached through LINKS beside my blog (www.webpageroberts.blogspot.com) – displays examples of my work over a 75 year period, I thought it might be of interest for viewers to see the latest A1 completed.
As I use my own computer solely for writing, it is my wife Margreet, exercising her skills on a more modern machine, who now enables those interested to see the most recent work.
All my paintings are for sale. It is, however, my 1950s and 1960s paintings that are at present popular with both private collectors and sale room buyers of 20th century art
So, the way I look at it is that in around another 50 years time these new works (which I call my second childhood paintings) will be just as popular as the earlier ones are now. Or, it could happen much earlier.

A Cat Fight

It had been an excellent Saturday before Christmas.
The painting on which I had been working made good progress.
With friends coming for mid-day drinks I made tasty “bites” by frying small squares of my home-made bread in olive oil, turning them over, adding slices of goats’ cheese, milled pepper, salt, a pinch of paprika, and then frying the other side after adding a little more oil. The result is a crisp base with slightly melting cheese on the top. The paprika is for looks. They are very popular.
The guests came and went. Then a wine merchant friend appeared for a while.
As he was leaving through the front door, Fusker, a local cat, owned by a TV motoring personality and debunker of wine snobbery, dashed in to the house and ran up the stairs.
He had done this before. And it was fun to find him, catch him and put him out.
At last I had him in a place where I could bend down to pick him up. But on this occasion he suddenly attacked me viciously with teeth and claws. If an animal chooses to pick a fight with me, and on my territory, I fight back, and fight to win.
And this fight was a considerable one, accompanied by those very loud shrieking noises made by cats when fighting at night.
It took a while to subdue the wild creature, before chastising him with words and actions before ejecting him from the door through which he had entered.
We took stock of my wounds.
The gore was mopped up, and disinfectant put on nine cuts, some superficial, some deep - with two deep ones perilously close to veins.
As we waited for the blood to dry, we both thought that perhaps it might be wise for me to seek an anti-tetanus injection. So we took a mini cab to the Accident and Emergency Department of our local Charing Cross Hospital.
After a short wait, a doctor cleaned each of the nine wounds, and sprayed them with iodine from a spray can (how nice to still be using a substance that was put on to our cuts and grazes as children over 80 years ago). He then dressed them with iodine- impregnated gauze plasters. The anti-tetanus injection followed, and a course of antibiotics started. How wonderful is our National Health Service.
We were wise to seek help, learning that cat bites and scratches were more dangerous to the human body than those of dogs. And we were told that at the slightest sign of infection I was to go back to a hospital immediately.
I intend to die in my own time, but to have “MAULED BY A CAT” as my epitaph would be ignominious in the extreme.

Postscript

James May is a friend and neighbour.
Seeing him one day we said that he should Google “Fusker the cat” or read our blog concerning the above confrontation.
What would you do if a cat savaged a friend and neighbour, probably returning to your house with that neighbour’s blood on tooth and claw?
Would you ignore it? Would you dispatch the cat? Would you apologise? Or would you send him a case of wine in recognition of the pain caused, blood let, taxi fares to and from hospital taken into account, and creative and family time wasted?
He chose the first option - to ignore it. Would you do the same?
James is probably right. For, as my Dutch wife, Margreet, says: The English consider animals to be more important than people.

Sardines and Onions

It was in Venice that a mixed seafood hors d'oeuvre contained the following combination. And excellent it is as a dish on its own as an hors d’oeuvre or light main course. And it is one of the nicest ways of serving canned sardines. Later experiments (see below) were also a great success.
With onion and a can of sardines often at hand, this start to a meal is an ideal choice when you are not sure what to have. And it is cheap, simple, and quick to prepare as well.

SARDINES AND ONION

You will need:
Onions
Olive oil
Pepper and salt
Vinegar
Canned sardines

Fry finely chopped onions in plenty of olive oil. Add pepper, salt and just a little vinegar. Put a lid on the pan. When the onions are transparent, cooked, and not yet turning brown, take off the lid and allow any vapour to escape. They are ready. Allow them to become cold.
Serve canned sardines on top of the onions, arranging the decoration of the dish as artistically as you are able. A sprinkling of paprika over all looks nice, as does chopped parsley. A few olives enhance the look of these “fish on an onion sea”.
An alternative way of presenting the canned sardines is to mash them up with chilli sauce. Put a pile of this mixture on top of the onion.
As a test experiment I once added a teaspoon of curry powder to the oil and onion before cooking it. So successful was the result that we now often eat the dish in this form, with whole, canned sardines lying on the pile of curried onion. Now I add the curry powder just before the onions have cooked through.
Once, when I wanted to make this dish and found that I was out of sardines, I used crumbled tuna instead. This turned out to be inspired chance.
Another such fortuitous move was to add the juice of half a lime to the cold onion. The result was sensational.
To make a more substantial dish, you can add potato to the onion, but put a lid on the pan and cook the mixture slowly until the potato is soft.
A pinch of chilli powder or a shake or two of Tabasco added to the onion before cooking it adds a little kick to the overall taste.
I have noticed that when a can of sardines has just been opened, the smell may be on the strong and unpleasant side. So open the can and allow the sardines to “breathe” some time before they are wanted. Then all will be well.
This dish is an absolute winner.

Rashes

I write this for any sufferer in the hope that my experience of rashes, derived from a specific source, might apply to them and be cured.
There are clearly many and varied causes for rash. Thought, and advice from a lay source, cured my particular kind.
For no apparent reason I started to itch and scratch – outside of thighs, at the bend and outside of arms, upper chest, neck and back of scalp.
I applied several over-the-counter creams, which sometimes soothed the skin but did nothing to cure the condition.
I grow a rather fine Aloe Vera plant on my kitchen windowsill. The juice from cutting off a small piece from its fleshy frond/leaves is supposed to cure many an ailment. It certainly had a soothing effect on my rashes but failed to cure the condition. So I took professional medical advice.
A creamy solution and sticky ointment helped – but failed. Another variety of cream did no better.
Was the trouble a dietary one – an allergy, perhaps?
I gave up eating certain foods and drinking certain liquids. There was no change. The itching, rash and rawness continued.
I spoke of the ailment with my sister, June, who had also suffered in much the same way. She recommended a change of soap (a solution for the rashes suffered by a friend’s children), an oily addition to the bath water, and a change of clothes-washing powder or liquid.
About this time I had come to the conclusion that the rashes were occurring where either my clothes rubbed on flesh or where bedclothes and bed linen rubbed on or were pressed against skin.
I asked my wife, Margreet, if by any chance she had changed clothes-washing liquid around the time my rashes had started.
She had. About that time she had added lumps of some substance that advertisers had recommended for making clothes cleaner or whiter (an admission on their part of failure to produce a satisfactory product in the first place).
So I asked her to stop it and, for good measure, change the liquid used from biological to one considered to be more natural. This she did.
The change was almost immediate. The itching became progressively less. The rashes diminished. The raw bits disappeared.
It took a week or two for the afflicted parts to return to normal.
Now I occasionally have a nice scratch, to no ill effect. Don’t we all?

CODGERS

We meet at a hotel in the outskirts of London for a Christmas lunch each year.
We are old. And as we die off, our numbers naturally decline.
But we get resurrected as well. When, soon after the war, some of my fellow Codgers went to lodgings I had in London, they were told by the landlady that I had “gone”. As they knew I had contracted TB at the end of the war, it was presumed that I was dead – there being no cure for TB in those days.
It was not until much later that one of them saw my second BBC 2 Gardeners’ World programme. Word got around that I was alive. So I became a Codger.
The meeting is a reunion of RAF pilots – or rather, those of us who obtained our wings in Oklahoma at the end of the war.
I think that we had all done a little operational flying as part of our training to be pilots. Mine was 20 hours in Coastal Command, flying from Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall, out over the Bay of Biscay looking for baled-out aircrew. We flew Vickers-Armstrong Warwick aircraft, with a specially moulded, wooden lifeboat strapped beneath. These lifesaving boats would be released to descend to the briny, suspended beneath vast parachutes.
One of the great benefits to all who took part in the 1939-1945 war was that men and women from all walks of life were thrown together. Both Lords and paupers found out that our desires and aspirations were all much the same. So it is with Codgers.
None of us, I believe, took up permanent employment in the RAF. One became an airline pilot, one a country vicar, another a Bishop and so on. Many of us had left our schooling to fly. As we were released slowly into a peacetime world we had to decide on a career. It was easier for those with pre-war jobs to return to. For myself, I became a medical student at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.
Skip sixty or more years and there we were, or what’s left of us, eating turkey and Christmas pudding, and drinking wine in each others’ delightful company – Codgers all, with the exception of our seemingly younger and more sprightly wives.
I hear much the same stories each year, mainly about how I crashed an aircraft into small pieces right in front of many of our company, and how, in hospital after it, a drunken orderly amused himself by playing Russian Roulette, spinning the chamber of a revolver, while pointing the weapon at my head. It was an incident that I cannot recall (possibly because of concussion) and, anyhow, would rather not.
But there was something new this time. One of our number told me that I had probably saved his life.
It came about like this. When flying from an auxiliary grass field in wet and freezing conditions in Oklahoma, the controls of my aeroplane (PT 19, Cornell) started to stiffen up. I landed, found my instructor, with his feet up in a warm shed, and reported the matter. “Carry on if you feel like it,” he said.
In the constant quest to accumulate flying hours, I took off from a slushy field into the freezing air again, only, this time, to have the controls go completely solid – iced up. I was too low to jump out with my parachute, so did my best to crash back into the ground as advantageously as possible.
My fellow Codger told me that at the time of my crash he was experiencing exactly the same freezing-up trouble with his aeroplane.
After I had splattered bits of my aircraft about the place, flying was abandoned for the day.
So, unknown to me, I probably, and inadvertently, did save his life.
It was nice to hear, after so many years, that at least some good came from what we might then have called “a wizard prang”.

Dieppe Artists 2007

I often seem to be writing about Dieppe. It is simply because we go there three or four times a year for a break, a change, but mainly to re-stock out shelves with wine, which is so much cheaper than it is in England, where such items of civilised life are so highly taxed.
France, although near, is, to me, still a very foreign place. So all the differences between England and “abroad” are of great interest, be it food, manners, plumbing, the rituals of life, art connections, and all the rest. And to witness change (progress?) is also of great interest, for I have seen many changes since I first went there soon after the war – some 50 years ago.
Take the Pollet, for instance.
The Pollet is a small fishermen’s quarter that takes the form of almost an island between the main import dock (now virtually unused, but once a busy dock for imported tropical fruit) and the very active dock for trawlers.
In years gone by the Pollet was rough. It was appropriate that a cider factory there produced very rough cider. It has gone. But what made this small area such an interesting place were the many smoking chimneys, beneath which, fish, mainly herrings, were cured and smoked over smouldering wooden fish boxes. So the Pollet had its own smell, imparting character to the place.
Perhaps fishwive’s children are still fathered by artists there, as has happened in the past. The fishwives are still to be seen nearby, but selling from their stalls on the quayside near to the centrally placed Information Centre. The fish offered by them is so fresh that plaice may still be alive and flapping on the slab.
Artists of the past found much to portray on the Pollet “island”. From the days of sail and then to steam, the work by sailors and dock workers was hard and poorly paid. But for the artist it was real life – life in the raw. Portrayals by present-day artists seem to be more of picturesque cliffs and yachts, colourful and bland – seaside art.
There were several bars on the Pollet island where fishermen and dock hands could quench their thirst, though the bars with girls offered their services by the then railway station across the harbour. But the girls, I think, were more for the use of visiting sailors than artists and locals.
Some ten years ago there was a sudden change in the fortunes of the Pollet. A smart restaurant opened there, called Bistrot du Pollet. Right away it became crowded with discerning clientele, unknown to eat in the district theretofore.
The restaurant has changed hands, but Florence, the charming waitress has been serving satisfied clients for the last eight of those ten years.
Discerning artists, sculptors and musicians still frequent Dieppe, and the Bistrot in particular. If Sickert took a more physical approach to matters on the Pollet, then, nowadays, Anthony Stevens, singer and songwriter, with Caroline, and Graham Gould of The What, eat at the Bistrot (where you might hear in the background a recording of Anthony Stevens singing with Count Basie, for instance).
One eats well at the Bistrot, where the set lunch may introduce you to three courses of food you might not normally choose. So, without choice, there is an element of pleasant surprise at hand. And, being in the heart of the fishermen’s quarter in a fishing port, whatever aquatic delicacy features on the menu is as fresh as it comes, and sure to please.
The success of Bistrot du Pollet has encouraged the existing cafés around it to upgrade. And now another restaurant/café (o’DkLé) (sic) has opened on the quayside nearby, supplying good food that is at about the halfway mark between standard restaurant/café and Michelin mentioned cuisine.
All this is symptomatic of the rise in Dieppe’s status from a smoky fishing port to the present clean and smart marina town.
Dieppe has two hub centres, joined by the Grande Rue, a pedestrian-only street of smart shoe and fashion shops, interspersed with those selling charcuterie, cheese, bakery, and fruit and vegetables – the last (Royal Fruits) offering wonderful value and freshness. For the Saturday market, the street and those leading from it, are coated with stalls, run by both professionals and farmer amateurs (though no live rabbits, chickens or ducks may be sold any more).
At the “town” end of this street stands the Café des Tribunaux, a large and well-run establishment, catering for customers who like to drink, read and talk outside in warm weather, and indoors when the seaside air is cold and windy. It has always been the place for a drink, and the haunt of artists, locals, and tourists alike. Wilde and Beardsley are reputed to have been clients. In such an old established café it is right that, in France, waiters are employed – and stay. For instance, a waiter there, asked how my sons were doing. He had encountered them as children thirty years beforehand.
The other end of the Grande Rue (the port end) is the jumping-off place for restaurants and cafés. And one of these, the Café Suisse, right on the corner, opposite where once stood the circular fish market (now an almost flat fountain), has always been the favoured venue of painters. Albert Lebourg may have frequented it, and others certainly did, like Camille Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Eugéne Boudin, Frank Martin and Edward Burra.
I am indebted to the writers of an exhibition catalogue for paintings of Dieppe, held in Brighton’s Museum and Art Gallery in 1992, for the following information on artists of note who have drawn inspiration from Dieppe. Aubrey Beardsley, with his two black beauty spots, thought that Dieppe was “Really quite sweet”. Arthur Symons said of Dieppe that he had enjoyed a most amusing and irresponsible holiday there. Picasso remarked that “Dieppe seems to be most of France”. Bonnington loved the cliffs. Braque, who lived much of his life in Dieppe and Varengeville nearby, carved sculptures out of their chalk. Condor loved the place, saying: “The whole front of the sea is simply magnificent.” Daubigny painted the harbour. Delacroix could hardly bear to tear himself away from the “watery landscape”. John Duncan Fergusson painted a Dieppe firework display with S. J. Peploe in the foreground. Gaugin, who painted four pictures of Dieppe, may have met Whistler there. Harold Gilman painted a picture of Dieppe’s troglodytes, and miserable they looked, too. Charles Ginner depicted the quayside in bright sunlight. Spencer Gore was a friend of Sickert and painted much in Dieppe. Sylvia Gosse was Sickert’s pupil, and loved Dieppe as much as her master. Gerald Kelly painted several views of the port, as did Thérèse Lessore. Miro stayed at Verangeville next door, passing through Dieppe on his way. Ben Nicholson, William’s son, painted a picture of the now lost and lamented Sole Dieppoise Restaurant. William Nicholson spent summer holidays in Dieppe, painting streets and the harbour. Camille Pissarro, described as “sweet and patriarchal” toward the end of his life, liked painting the fish market, harbour and Pollet “in rain, sun and smoke”. His painting of a Dieppe Fair in the Place Nationale, depicts a scene almost identical to a market day now. Renoir favoured the region. Matthew Smith painted several works in Dieppe, favouring the harbour and ships. Turner sketched in the town, painting the magnificent Château d’Arques nearby in 1834. Félix Vollotton painted in Dieppe, and when Bonnard came to visit him in nearby Varengeville, he said he’d bring some paints “in case the contagion infects me”. Whistler stayed with Sickert in Dieppe and painted many pictures there, and lectured as well. Christopher Wood said that: “Dieppe was a complete happiness. I have not known it before”. The fact that these artists found such an affinity to Dieppe, shows how splendid and inspirational the place is, and will continue to be.
The Café Suisse has modernised considerably since the heyday of the previously mentioned painters. And at one time, with new owners, it had red plastic seats, so uncomfortable, that we declined to frequent the place. Now that the seating is better, it is a good venue for lunch (closed for food in the evening).
Dieppe is the great port for scallop (Coquille St Jacques) boats. So, when in season, it is the dish over which to linger and relish. And because this shellfish is so plentiful there, the amount served is on a very generous scale. In fact, after a few dishes of those tasty morsels (often served with potato in a Normandy cream sauce), we had had enough and found ourselves choosing other items from the menu.
The old ferries from Newhaven would sometimes opt out of crossing the Channel when the weather was rough. The two new ferries have efficient stabilisers fitted, and are more manoeuvrable. This means that the crossing (often, in the past, somewhat of a lottery) is now far more reliable – though our latest winter crossing back did rather shake and stir the insides.I often seem to be writing about Dieppe. It is simply because we go there three or four times a year for a break, a change, but mainly to re-stock out shelves with wine, which is so much cheaper than it is in England, where such items of civilised life are so highly taxed.
France, although near, is, to me, still a very foreign place. So all the differences between England and “abroad” are of great interest, be it food, manners, plumbing, the rituals of life, art connections, and all the rest. And to witness change (progress?) is also of great interest, for I have seen many changes since I first went there soon after the war – some 50 years ago.
Take the Pollet, for instance.
The Pollet is a small fishermen’s quarter that takes the form of almost an island between the main import dock (now virtually unused, but once a busy dock for imported tropical fruit) and the very active dock for trawlers.
In years gone by the Pollet was rough. It was appropriate that a cider factory there produced very rough cider. It has gone. But what made this small area such an interesting place were the many smoking chimneys, beneath which, fish, mainly herrings, were cured and smoked over smouldering wooden fish boxes. So the Pollet had its own smell, imparting character to the place.
Perhaps fishwives children are still fathered by artists there, as has happened in the past. The fishwives are still to be seen nearby, but selling from their stalls on the quayside near to the centrally placed Information Centre. The fish offered by them is so fresh that plaice may still be alive and flapping on the slab.
Artists of the past found much to portray on the Pollet “island”. From the days of sail and then to steam, the work by sailors and dock workers was hard and poorly paid. But for the artist it was real life – life in the raw. Portrayals by present-day artists seem to be more of picturesque cliffs and yachts, colourful and bland – seaside art.
There were several bars on the Pollet island where fishermen and dock hands could quench their thirst, though the bars with girls offered their services by the then railway station across the harbour. But the girls, I think, were more for the use of visiting sailors than artists and locals.
Some ten years ago there was a sudden change in the fortunes of the Pollet. A smart restaurant opened there, called Bistrot du Pollet. Right away it became crowded with discerning clientele, unknown to eat in the district theretofore.
The restaurant has changed hands, but Florence, the charming waitress has been serving satisfied clients for the last eight of those ten years.
Discerning artists, sculptors and musicians still frequent Dieppe, and the Bistrot in particular. If Sickert took a more physical approach to matters on the Pollet, then, nowadays, Anthony Stevens, singer and songwriter, with Caroline, and Graham Gould of The What, eat at the Bistrot (where you might hear in the background a recording of Anthony Stevens singing with Count Basie, for instance).
One eats well at the Bistrot, where the set lunch may introduce you to three courses of food you might not normally choose. So, without choice, there is an element of pleasant surprise at hand. And, being in the heart of the fishermen’s quarter in a fishing port, whatever aquatic delicacy features on the menu is as fresh as it comes, and sure to please.
The success of Bistrot du Pollet has encouraged the existing cafés around it to upgrade. And now another restaurant/café (o’DkLé) (sic) has opened on the quayside nearby, supplying good food that is at about the halfway mark between standard restaurant/café and Michelin mentioned cuisine.
All this is symptomatic of the rise in Dieppe’s status from a smoky fishing port to the present clean and smart marina town.
Dieppe has two hub centres, joined by the Grande Rue, a pedestrian-only street of smart shoe and fashion shops, interspersed with those selling charcuterie, cheese, bakery, and fruit and vegetables – the last (Royal Fruits) offering wonderful value and freshness. For the Saturday market, the street and those leading from it, are coated with stalls, run by both professionals and farmer amateurs (though no live rabbits, chickens or ducks may be sold any more).
At the “town” end of this street stands the Café des Tribunaux, a large and well-run establishment, catering for customers who like to drink, read and talk outside in warm weather, and indoors when the seaside air is cold and windy. It has always been the place for a drink, and the haunt of artists, locals, and tourists alike. Wilde and Beardsley are reputed to have been clients. In such an old established café it is right that, in France, waiters are employed – and stay. For instance, a waiter there, asked how my sons were doing. He had encountered them as children thirty years beforehand.
The other end of the Grande Rue (the port end) is the jumping-off place for restaurants and cafés. And one of these, the Café Suisse, right on the corner, opposite where once stood the circular fish market (now an almost flat fountain), has always been the favoured venue of painters. Albert Lebourg may have frequented it, and others certainly did, like Camille Pissarro, Walter Sickert, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Eva Gonzalès (the lady Impressionist), Eugéne Boudin, Frank Martin and Edward Burra. Other artists have certainly enjoyed the pleasures and sights of Dieppe. Names such as Cotman, Turner, Delacroix, Renoir, Degas, Whistler and Matthew Smith are recorded as having stayed there.
The Café Suisse has modernised considerably since the heyday of the previously mentioned artists. And at one time, with new owners, it had red plastic seats, so uncomfortable that we declined to frequent the place. Now that the seating is more comfortable, it is a good venue for lunch (closed for food in the evening).
Dieppe is the great port for scallop (Coquille St Jacques) boats. So, when in season, it is the dish over which to linger and relish. And because this shellfish is so plentiful there, the amount served is on a very generous scale. In fact, after a few dishes of those tasty morsels (often served with potato in a Normandy cream sauce), we had had enough and found ourselves choosing other items from the menu.
The old ferries from Newhaven would sometimes opt out of crossing the Channel when the weather was rough. The two new ferries have efficient stabilisers fitted, and are more manoeuvrable. This means that the crossing (often, in the past, somewhat of a lottery) is now far more reliable – though our latest winter crossing back did rather shake and stir the insides.

A November Bumblebee

It was on an early November day that I looked out of the window to see a large bumblebee (female for sure) stumbling around on the pavement in a distressed condition. She was lethargic, resting for spells to regain strength, and unsure of direction.
So I went out to collect her in a small tumbler, and took her through the house to the garden behind.
Was she dying of old age? Had she been hit and stunned by a passing car? Or was she just winding down from her summer endeavours and looking for a warm spot where she could hibernate for the winter out of the cold and wet?
Bumblebees have always been my friends. I still love them, even having been stung by one as a youth. An uncle, high up in the church, told me that it was perfectly all right to pick up an angry bumblebee that was trying to escape through the window glass at his fine 18th century vicarage. The sting I got in the finger for my coming to its aid was a slight prick that drew just a little blood. Then, slowly, my hand and then arm suffered from a form of paralysis. Fortunately the condition stopped at my shoulder. I still loved bumblebees but it put me off religion for good.
Bumblebees of the size I had recovered are females. As I understand it, they emerge from hibernation in March each year to find a home (usually in a woodpile or mouse hole) to raise a family.
They do far more good at pollinating flowers than the same number of honeybees, as they will fly around in the rain when honeybees wont.
Inside Dutch greenhouses are little nest boxes for bumblebees. These insects are reliable pollinators and much treasured.
Because of my fondness for this delightful creature, I have built 4 potential winter homes for them, one being based on the Dutch design. I have had no luck to date and do not really expect to be successful as bumblebees have minds of their own and seldom do what we want them to do.
So I introduced my new found friend (I love the way they crawl on the hand) to each one of my boxes, putting her head into the holes provided, and giving her a gentle push from behind as encouragement. She did not like any of them.
So I introduced her to the rather inviting holes in the occhielloni (hypocaust design bricks). No luck.
I put her in a corner of the garden where there are dark crannies and dried leaves near to flowerpots. She walked out into the open.
I was pleased when she crawled (very slowly) beneath the shed/summer house. But by the following morning she was out once more. With her aimless sense of direction she might walk in circles and fall into cracks between the flagstones, often ending upside down. But she was able to right herself and climb out.
By now I had noticed deterioration in her condition – increasing slowness, more resting, and possibly diminished size.
So I told her that she could winter in our shed. I put her in a snug corner. She came out immediately and started to climb – anything. So, thinking that she might want to hibernate at altitude, I found a warm, wooden shelf for her, high up. She fell down right away, and made off in the general direction of the door.
I now took a large flowerpot and filled it with dried leaves and sticks – making it look and feel as near to a woodpile as I could. This I laid on its side, wedged between a bucket of soil and a brick wall.
I’m afraid that I rather pushed her into a cavity of my “woodpile” and added some dried leaves after her to block out the light.
She did not come out, nor did I see her anywhere the following day.
Is she well? Is she happy? Is she asleep for the winter? Or is she dead? I really don’t know. But I care – very much.

Chicken and Swede

Here is a cheap, simple and peasant-like dish, elevated to dinner party status by a spirited addition. This dish is almost invariably a huge success.

CHICKEN- CHICKEN ON SWEDE

You will need:
Swede (rutabaga)
Stock (optional)
Butter
Pepper and salt
Ouzo, Pernod or another aniseed spirit. Or star aniseed. Or other liqueur or spirit.
Boned chicken thighs (or legs)
Olive oil
Milled pepper

Pare away the outer skin of a swede or two, or more. Cut the flesh into smallish cubes Cover them with water or stock and boil for 20 to 30 minutes - or until soft. If you are using star aniseed instead of an aniseed spirit, add three stars to the water in which you are boiling the swede. Discard them when the swede has been boiled.
Pour off the cooking water for later-to-be-enjoyed soup.
Mash the swede with butter, pepper and salt.
Now stir in a measure (say, a dessertspoon) of Ouzo, Pernod, Ricard, or other aniseed spirit.
Cover the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the mashed swede.
Take chicken thighs (better than legs) from which you have extracted the single, central bone (if you have done this earlier, put the bones in with the swede when you are boiling it to obtain extra flavour). Keep the skin on the thigh pieces and roll them into bundles before arranging them (one large or two small per person) on top of the mashed swede. If boning chicken legs, also discard the sharp bone lying close to the leg bone and use kitchen scissors to trim away the little white ends of tendon. Wrap in their skin, as with thighs.
When they are in position, dribble or brush a little olive oil over each. Add salt, and give them a good milling of black pepper from the pepper mill.
If it is more convenient, the preparation can be done well before the dish is ready for the oven. Give it about an hour and a half at a medium setting (longer seems to make little difference, so it is an excellent dish might you be late or very late to eat). Anyhow, after the chicken skin has become crisp and golden, the dish will be ready for the table.
That's it. And it's a stunner. Serve on its own, or with baked or mashed potato, or beans, or a salad, or...
Perhaps you do not like the taste of aniseed. It is possible to use any spirit or liqueur for this excellent dish. Use your favourite, or any at hand. Grand Marnier, for instance, is excellent.
I have also made this dish with mashed potato instead of swede, and it was excellent. I flavoured the mash with pressed garlic and de-seeded red chillies finely chopped.