Well, I finished Dan Brown’s Deception Point this morning. Frightful drivel! Still, he did finally discover the word ‘indignation’ late in the text, having malapropped ‘indignity’ passim until the last knockings. But that didn’t stop him using ‘pissed’ for the same emotion pretty liberally through the text. But I devoured it nevertheless, latterly out of curiosity as to what miracle would rescue the hero and heroine from certain death this time – under attack from special forces while sinking in a leaking mini-submarine in shark-infested waters above an about-to-erupt magma dome: get the picture? Needless to say, they survive for the yarn to end with a shag in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House. You hadn’t read it yet? Oh, sorry.
Talking of matters reproductive, another three New Guineas are in pots, and the seed pans in the front window are showing promising signs of germination – the antirrhinums are starting, as are Mr Unwin’s annual Rustic rudbeckias and the yellow achilleas. Still waiting for signs of life from the perennial Goldsturm rudbeckias and the lobelias. And did I remember to label the antirrhinums ‘tall’ and ‘dwarf’? Did I hell as like.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
Books lately
I have spells when I read voraciously, and when every idle moment finds me with my nose in a book. The other model is spells when I don't read books for a month or so. Just lately, it has been unusual: I've become totally bogged down in Howard Jacobson's Kalooki Nights, and rather think it will find its way part-read to the charity shop. Since then I've picked up Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, which is altogether a better bet. I've learned a lot from it, but it's one of those rather dry texts that let the mind wander, so that you get to the foot of the page and realise that you haven't taken in a single word. Someone left a copy of Dan Brown's Deception Point either here or in Lagrasse - or maybe I bought it for a few pennies so as not to feel I was using the charity shop exclusively as a dumping ground. God, it's awful writing. Lousy with clichés: 'rugged good looks'; malapropisms: 'ephemeral' where he means 'ethereal'; 'mannerism' when he means 'manner'. Product plugs galore, eg a brand of hiking boots affected by a US president, and gobbledegook when he couldn't get a manufacturer to pay for a plug, eg 'Lockheed 345 engines', when Pratt & Whitney wouldn't come up with the ackers. So why is my bookmark currently at page 208 the day after I picked the wretched book up? Probably the same reason as I devoured the egregious Da Vinci Code: for all its dreadfulness. it's quite a compeeling read - and the alternative is to finish Kalooki Nights. I have a William Boyd lined up next - hope it's one of his better ones.
Monday, 21 February 2011
A time to sow...
Until last week it was all about cuttings from Jane's New Guineas, which are doing well. We have potted up a dozen happy-looking plants, and another three are getting used to being in compost. A few more are rooting in water, and I took another half-dozen yesterday. That'll probably be the last cuttings: I've recycled two of the remaining three parent plants, but the remaining one may surprise us yet.
A few weeks back I dug out my box of seeds, some bought, some saved. Did four pans of various rudbeckias, but only one is looking promising. One other has a single seedling. But the seed is pretty old, and I'd saved it in recycled envelopes. Yesterday's weather was just about fit to go out in, so I filled a few more pans, and have started lobelia, antirrhinum (dwarf and tall) and some more rudbeckias from new packets. This year's are from Unwins: Suttons' were generally disappointing last year. That's all for the moment: the next batch goes in in April. Thunbergia, dimorphotheca, aquilegia and a lot more. We probably won't start the seed potatoes until a bit later this year - we don't want them drying out while we're in furrin parts.
The garden, meanwhile, is pretty dreich. True, we have snowdrops and crocuses, and the polyanthus and primroses are struggling personfully. But the grass remains a quagmire, as is usual this time of the year, and with all the rain we've had, the pond is close to overflowing. But Martyn reminds me that we moved in here in mid-April, after which we had warm sunny weather for a good six weeks.
A few weeks back I dug out my box of seeds, some bought, some saved. Did four pans of various rudbeckias, but only one is looking promising. One other has a single seedling. But the seed is pretty old, and I'd saved it in recycled envelopes. Yesterday's weather was just about fit to go out in, so I filled a few more pans, and have started lobelia, antirrhinum (dwarf and tall) and some more rudbeckias from new packets. This year's are from Unwins: Suttons' were generally disappointing last year. That's all for the moment: the next batch goes in in April. Thunbergia, dimorphotheca, aquilegia and a lot more. We probably won't start the seed potatoes until a bit later this year - we don't want them drying out while we're in furrin parts.
The garden, meanwhile, is pretty dreich. True, we have snowdrops and crocuses, and the polyanthus and primroses are struggling personfully. But the grass remains a quagmire, as is usual this time of the year, and with all the rain we've had, the pond is close to overflowing. But Martyn reminds me that we moved in here in mid-April, after which we had warm sunny weather for a good six weeks.
Friday, 18 February 2011
Points, paints and punters
Richard Farley's exhibition A Life in Dance runs for another couple of weeks at Gallery 16 in Henrietta Street, near the Covent Garden market. Richard was a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, and in the course of his career took lots of photographs of his colleagues both performing and at leisure. Though I'm not up in the ballet, his show is a wonderful document of his career, and there's stuff in it for the likes of me as well as for the dance fans. Informal shots of the company on the train to a provincial show and in digs; Bussell climbing up the shelves to retrieve a pair of ballet shoes; Fonteyn doing running repairs on hers. For me, it was well worth the trip to the Smoke.
The which I did in a typically odd way. I took our little country railway to Croydon, then took a bus [Aye: free!] over the hill to the edge of Brixton, where I picked up another train. At points on the route, the views towards the City of London are impressive - not quite like the view of Paris on the swoop down to the Pont de Sèvres, but striking all the same. The Shard building site, however, looks like a taller, thinner version of the Chernobyl sarcophagus. But Croydon seems quite exotic - bet that wasn't the first adjective that comes to most readers' minds! Fancy trams swishing past, eavesdropped conversations in languages I didn't know. But from there northwards for a few miles, the area is desperately run down.
Art yesterday: Miss is trying to get us to revisit drawing, so I battled away with two bananas, half a red pepper and a green eggbox. It might have worked had I started by working out the proportions of the eggbox, but I suppose it was a good exercise. I approached it with watercolour pencils, which for me are the most treacherous of media, though they can be very rewarding. The difficulty is in remembering how each pigment reacts to water: some are very strong, some hardly diffuse at all. But I guess it's no different from other media - you always treat cadmium red with great respect, else it dominates the mix. That kind of learning is one of the advantages of being taught to mix all colours from the three primaries: alizarin crimson is a more forgiving pigment, though a much colder colour.
My latest court sitting was awful. It had been two months since my last sitting, and I did not cover myself in glory. We did justice, but not crisply. Well, we had to send down a couple of sad cases, both of them young people destroyed by chronic alcoholism. One had offended so many times that a bench had issued an ASBO, and we were dealing with two breaches (by being drunk in a public place) plus a public order offence. Defendant took it on the chin, and we'll at least have given one liver a brief holiday. Next up was a familiar face, released on licence from prison the day before: assaulted two acquaintances in town and spent the night in the nick. Back to prison for the rest of the sentence, plus a bit more for each of the assaults.
The which I did in a typically odd way. I took our little country railway to Croydon, then took a bus [Aye: free!] over the hill to the edge of Brixton, where I picked up another train. At points on the route, the views towards the City of London are impressive - not quite like the view of Paris on the swoop down to the Pont de Sèvres, but striking all the same. The Shard building site, however, looks like a taller, thinner version of the Chernobyl sarcophagus. But Croydon seems quite exotic - bet that wasn't the first adjective that comes to most readers' minds! Fancy trams swishing past, eavesdropped conversations in languages I didn't know. But from there northwards for a few miles, the area is desperately run down.
Art yesterday: Miss is trying to get us to revisit drawing, so I battled away with two bananas, half a red pepper and a green eggbox. It might have worked had I started by working out the proportions of the eggbox, but I suppose it was a good exercise. I approached it with watercolour pencils, which for me are the most treacherous of media, though they can be very rewarding. The difficulty is in remembering how each pigment reacts to water: some are very strong, some hardly diffuse at all. But I guess it's no different from other media - you always treat cadmium red with great respect, else it dominates the mix. That kind of learning is one of the advantages of being taught to mix all colours from the three primaries: alizarin crimson is a more forgiving pigment, though a much colder colour.
My latest court sitting was awful. It had been two months since my last sitting, and I did not cover myself in glory. We did justice, but not crisply. Well, we had to send down a couple of sad cases, both of them young people destroyed by chronic alcoholism. One had offended so many times that a bench had issued an ASBO, and we were dealing with two breaches (by being drunk in a public place) plus a public order offence. Defendant took it on the chin, and we'll at least have given one liver a brief holiday. Next up was a familiar face, released on licence from prison the day before: assaulted two acquaintances in town and spent the night in the nick. Back to prison for the rest of the sentence, plus a bit more for each of the assaults.
Sunday, 13 February 2011
A recipe from the past
Suddenly had a notion the other day that I'd fancy some beef olives, aka paupiettes de boeuf or Alouettes sans tête. We used to have them at home quite often. Beef olives bought from the butcher ready-made tended to be beef wrapped round a sausage of stuffing or sausage meat, but Mother's approach excelled by rolling up the beef and stuffing together in a sort of swiss roll. This should make a dozen, which will serve four.
Ingredients
Couple of slices of rump, cut thin by the butcher.
For the stuffing, mix together:
1 Onion, finely chopped and softened in vegetable oil
The crusts from your last loaf, grated
An egg
1T chopped fresh sage
seasoning
For the sauce:
1 courgette, slice thickly
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1 carrot, sliced
Whatever else is knocking about in the fridge that you think might work.
1 can chopped tomatoes
A glug and a half of Minervois
1 red pepper, seeded and chopped
Seasoning
Crème fraîche
Method
Bash the beef out thinner with a rolling pin. Cut into pieces about 5" x 3", saving the offcuts. Spread each piece of meat with a teaspoonful of stuffing (breadcrumbs, softened onion, chopped fresh sage, an egg, seasoning), leaving about half an inch without stuffing. Roll up into sausage shapes starting at the end that has stuffing all the way to the edge, distributing the offcuts of beef among the olives. Fasten lengthwise with a cocktail stick. Heat the oil in the casserole over a high flame, adding a little more oil if need be. Brown the olives and put them to one side.
Reduce the heat and sweat the onion, courgette, carrot, red pepper and whatever till the onion is well softened. Arrange the olives on top of the veggies. Pour on the tomatoes, rinse the can with the wine and add to the the casserole (the wine, not the can), ensuring that the meat is covered. Simmer over the lowest possible flame for 50 minutes. Lift out the olives and arrange them in a serving casserole.
Stir a heaped tablespoonful of crème fraîche into the sauce in the cooking casserole, reduce to the desired thickness, adjust seasoning. Pour over the meat in the serving casserole and put it in the oven at about 120° so that it barely comes to a simmer while you prepare the potatoes or whatever.
We had it with a 'mishmash' - potatoes, carrots and a bit of swede boiled together and mashed with a little crème fraîche. I think Mother's recipe involved beef dripping rather than oil, and bisto rather than a ratatouille-style sauce, but I prefer the one-pot approach to veggies!
Ingredients
Couple of slices of rump, cut thin by the butcher.
For the stuffing, mix together:
1 Onion, finely chopped and softened in vegetable oil
The crusts from your last loaf, grated
An egg
1T chopped fresh sage
seasoning
For the sauce:
1 courgette, slice thickly
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1 carrot, sliced
Whatever else is knocking about in the fridge that you think might work.
1 can chopped tomatoes
A glug and a half of Minervois
1 red pepper, seeded and chopped
Seasoning
Crème fraîche
Method
Bash the beef out thinner with a rolling pin. Cut into pieces about 5" x 3", saving the offcuts. Spread each piece of meat with a teaspoonful of stuffing (breadcrumbs, softened onion, chopped fresh sage, an egg, seasoning), leaving about half an inch without stuffing. Roll up into sausage shapes starting at the end that has stuffing all the way to the edge, distributing the offcuts of beef among the olives. Fasten lengthwise with a cocktail stick. Heat the oil in the casserole over a high flame, adding a little more oil if need be. Brown the olives and put them to one side.
Reduce the heat and sweat the onion, courgette, carrot, red pepper and whatever till the onion is well softened. Arrange the olives on top of the veggies. Pour on the tomatoes, rinse the can with the wine and add to the the casserole (the wine, not the can), ensuring that the meat is covered. Simmer over the lowest possible flame for 50 minutes. Lift out the olives and arrange them in a serving casserole.
Stir a heaped tablespoonful of crème fraîche into the sauce in the cooking casserole, reduce to the desired thickness, adjust seasoning. Pour over the meat in the serving casserole and put it in the oven at about 120° so that it barely comes to a simmer while you prepare the potatoes or whatever.
We had it with a 'mishmash' - potatoes, carrots and a bit of swede boiled together and mashed with a little crème fraîche. I think Mother's recipe involved beef dripping rather than oil, and bisto rather than a ratatouille-style sauce, but I prefer the one-pot approach to veggies!
Sunday, 6 February 2011
Hobbies and pastimes
It’s a bit soon to be talking of spring, but a friend was telling me earlier that a lupin she’d had from us last year was sprouting. That was enough to get me out on a tour of inspection. Sure enough, some of ours are pushing up timid little leaves, and so are the aquilegias. Achilleas are also coming back to life, though with the rotten selection of colours we got from last year’s seeds, they may not make it into a third season. (I have some of the big yellow ones to sow this year.) A couple of the hydrangeas are budding well: the lacy one is always later, but I’m sure it too will be showing buds soon. Next garden job is to get someone in to trim the hedges before the birds get too interested in nesting.
Martyn is working away in the attic again: where the layout used to end, it did so in a mountainside. Now that it has extended beyond that point, there was a sort of volcanic plug. That has now been dismantled, without recourse to nuclear ordinance, so he can see the sidings and the airport from his control panel. I think it’s a case of perpetual work in progress.
As for the more creative of my hobbies, Miss cancelled last week’s class because she was unwell, so I expect it’ll be another drawing day this coming Thursday. I’m starting to want to splash paint around with a big brush. But I need some inspiration: back to the Languedoc photos, I guess. And as for my other hobby, there are only ten days to go before I get to sit in a Magistrates’ Court again. If it isn’t cancelled in the meantime.
Martyn is working away in the attic again: where the layout used to end, it did so in a mountainside. Now that it has extended beyond that point, there was a sort of volcanic plug. That has now been dismantled, without recourse to nuclear ordinance, so he can see the sidings and the airport from his control panel. I think it’s a case of perpetual work in progress.
As for the more creative of my hobbies, Miss cancelled last week’s class because she was unwell, so I expect it’ll be another drawing day this coming Thursday. I’m starting to want to splash paint around with a big brush. But I need some inspiration: back to the Languedoc photos, I guess. And as for my other hobby, there are only ten days to go before I get to sit in a Magistrates’ Court again. If it isn’t cancelled in the meantime.
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