It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

Awwwwww!

A quick glimpse at my blog tells me what I always knew would happen, namely that my initial enthusiasm would wane and the frequency of posts would decrease accordingly.  Nevertheless, I’m not one to give up so easily, and what better subject to rekindle my desire to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) than the approach of Christmas?

God knows, I’m not a religious man (see what I did there?), but I like Christmas.  I do, I like the run up to it and I like the day itself.  I don’t much like Boxing Day (apart from the re-heated Christmas lunch which always tastes better second time round), and I can’t abide all the advertising which seems to start around September.  Have you noticed how some TV Christmas ads have become an event in themselves? What on earth is the world coming to? And I don’t like the forced bonhomie served up by the television, or by some of my work colleagues for that matter (you know, the ones who would happily stab you in the back at any other time of year and then want to exchange Christmas cards with you).

So what do I like about it? Well, memories I suppose.  I’m quite a nostalgic person.  There are some areas of my past I prefer to block out, but Christmas isn’t one of them.  When I was a child I loved the excitement of putting out a pillow case on Christmas eve. I knew it would contain as a minimum a white sugar mouse, a couple of tangerines (really!), sixpence in shiny new pennies (I’m sounding like my own grandfather now), a box of something like Matchmakers, and of  course the ‘main present’.

I hankered at one point for a Johnny Seven gun.  I’d seen them in the shops, I’d seen them on TV.  I even knew a boy who had one, the lucky bastard.  I never got one, but around that age I did get a train set so the disappointment didn’t last too long. Mind you, as every other gift from my relatives that year was a train set accessory, it’s just as well I was pleased with what I got.

In my late teens, Christmas was far more about the pubs staying open late on Christmas Eve and the ritual midnight snogging of every girl you fancied. I would generally sleep the next day until it was time to get up and pick at my lunch, being much too hungover to do it justice. Even at that age I was still slightly annoyed if lunch wasn’t over and done with before the hour long special edition of Top of the Pops came on the box, during which those appalling self-absorbed Radio One DJs would review the hits of the past year.  It seems sad now that the programme should have had such an importance, but this was in the days before MTV, and my record collection was pretty dismal. 

Years later I had the pleasure of seeing my own young children enjoying the tree decorating, putting out a mince pie and a glass of sherry for Santa (not forgetting a carrot for Rudolf), and the early morning excitement of opening their presents. And I got to appreciate the sentimentality of Christmas, mostly through reading Dickens who played no small part in making it a loving family occasion.  In the run up to Christmas each year I still get myself in the mood by reading an extract from ‘Pickwick Papers’, the first half of Chapter 28 to be precise: (link here) which contains the most marvellous and evocative description of a coach journey on a frozen Christmas Eve.

It’s a cliché, but to me Christmas is about family, by which I mean just me, my wife and sons. Those other family we care for we see during the year anyway, and those we don’t bother with at any other time are hardly likely to enhance our Christmas day. Now my boys are older it’s become one of the rare occasions in the calendar when we spend a few hours in each other’s company. And it’s worth it for that alone.

The Johnny Seven gun, which I coveted but never got. You have no idea how big a deal this was to a six year old.

Keep on the Grass

Insert joke about different shaped/sized balls here

A few weeks ago, when we were still enjoying what laughably passes for the summer in this country, I was taking a lunchtime walk to get out of a hot stuffy office, when I was suddenly hit by a very strong smell of newly cut grass.

It’s almost a cliché that aromas can transport your mind elsewhere, and particularly so with newly cut grass which many people cite as a favourite.  But for me it really did take me back, not to a specific moment, but to the period of my life spanning the ages of about 10 and 15.  In those days I spent most of my free time playing sports; football mostly but also some rugby, and on one or two scary occasions I dabbled in cricket.  Forget the sound of leather on willow, the sound of leather on shinbone brought tears to my eyes.

My mates and I seemed to spend every waking moment running about on various sports pitches (not always with permission), in parks or just in someone’s back garden.  A rare thing back then was to come across some actual goalposts (yes – we did use jumpers), but when you found some with nets attached, it was like striking gold.  In a haze of nostalgia most of these memories relate to glorious summer afternoons and evenings, although it’s hard to forget literally crying in pain as my frozen hands thawed out after a wintry rugby match, made even worse by having been steamrollered by a team of giants.

I suppose in this day and age it’s almost fashionable to avoid such places in case it brings on hay fever or an asthma attack.  40 years ago I hardly knew anyone with asthma; now it seems to be all the rage, and indeed neither my wife nor my 2 sons are strangers to a Ventolin inhaler.  Perhaps back then it was just as prevalent and we simply didn’t know we had it.

I loved playing team sports.  I was never too good at competing on my own.  I used to row for my school (yes I know, but I’m really not that posh), and although I was hopeless and uninterested at single sculling, I became ultra competitive in fours or eights.  As part of a team I liked the camaraderie, the common purpose, and what Sky Sports pundits call the dressing room banter.  The latter was much more noticeable playing Sunday league football.  In later years (I didn’t hang up my football boots until I was 43), it was one of the few occasions when I could be laddish and immature in that special way that we men have without feeling any shame. Training with people instead of alone was far more enjoyable; so much easier to make yourself sprint up and down a frozen pitch if all your mates are suffering with you.

But the real reason for enjoying team sports, as I’m now prepared to admit, was the opportunity to be praised and validated by my peers.  Not that I was ever that good at anything, but I was proficient enough at most sports for the occasional contribution to be appreciated.  I enjoyed the feeling of winning together and I suppose it made the losing much easier to swallow too, and heaven knows I’ve seen plenty of that!

They left the nets up! We've struck gold!!

A Paella Recipe. Not 'the' recipe. Just 'a' recipe ...

This is not the sort of thing I usually post about, but there is something about cooking a paella that I really enjoy.

Have a couple of pints (at least) of hot vegetable and/or chicken stock ready. I use Knorr stock granules – easy!

Use a decent large sauté pan. Fry off a load of onions in olive oil, add chopped chorizo sausage, garlic puree and if you like it spicy a half teaspoon of lazy chilli.

Add a good teaspoon each of ground paprika and ground turmeric.

Add diced chicken (chunks of leftover cooked chicken works too) and fry off.

Add paella rice or Arborio risotto rice (Tesco sell their own brand of each) and stir for a couple of minutes to let it absorb some of the flavours.

Add about ½ to ¾ pint of stock and stir on a low heat. As the liquid is absorbed, gradually add more stock. Stir every now and then, but if you have a good pan you don’t need to stir all the time. But do keep an eye on it!

The rice will take 35-45 mins to cook depending on how much is in the pan, how roomy the pan is, etc. Towards the end of the cooking time you can throw in some veg. I’m lazy and use things like frozen peas, mushrooms or peppers.

Keep testing the rice to see how it is cooking. The trick is not to have loads of liquid left in the pan when it is done.

If you want to add raw fish you will need to do so about 10-15 mins before the end, depending on what it is and how big the pieces are. I tend to use something already cooked, like prawns or a Tesco bag of seafood mix which contains ready cooked prawns, mussels and squid. It only needs 3-4 minutes to warm through.

If it is still a bit sloppy, switch off the heat and cover the pan with a newspaper to absorb the steam. This tip was given to me by one of my best twitter mates, but to be honest I haven’t tried it. If you add the stock gradually it should be OK anyway. It’s always a good idea to let paella stand for a few minutes after cooking before you serve.

Enjoy!

An essential accompaniment

Tony takes his teutonic tonic

Happy days

I blogged here about my time at Tübingen University and some of the lovely people I met.  One of them was not so much lovely as interesting.  He was, at that time, about the poshest person I’d ever come across.  I won’t name him in full; I’ll just call him Tony.

Tony actually had 3 first names and a double-barrelled surname, was an ex Westminster public schoolboy, wore a signet ring, lived in a very desirable London postcode, was intelligent and articulate but totally lacking in common sense, and he was as street-unwise as they come.  You’ll find this hard to believe, but he would actually use words like ‘topping’, ‘ripping’ and ‘wizard’ without even a hint of irony (“She’s a wizard with pastry” he once said of a girl who had cooked him dinner).  He even referred to the Germans collectively as ‘Johnnie Kraut’ or ‘JK’ for short.  Sadly, as we suspected even then, and as he himself acknowledged many years later, he was an alcoholic.

We all drank a lot in those days, but within our circle Tony’s boozing was legendary, not so much for the quantity he consumed (he drank no more than we did), as for the behaviour which followed.  While we might get silly and giggly after scooping a few beers, Tony would become ever more manic.  We drank because we wanted to; Tony drank because he had to.  I have no idea what his demons were, but there was something in his home life that wasn’t quite right.  He certainly didn’t seem to think much of his father, who was or had been an army officer.

On a visit to Berlin, we all wrote postcards home.  Not for Tony the traditional ‘Wish you were here’. Instead he wrote his father an incredibly vicious note outlining the alcohol, the drugs and the prostitutes he was enjoying (the latter two being figments of his imagination), and some general accusations about his father having made him an evil person.  We managed to persuade him to tear up the postcard rather than send it.  He did so and then literally sobbed into his beer.

Tony once locked us all in a friend’s room, himself included.  He was feeling lonely and at one in the morning he didn’t want the party to break up.  So he locked the door and threw the key out of the 2nd floor window into the darkness below.  There were no mobile phones in those days, so we had to shout through the window for someone to knock on the caretaker’s door and get us out.  A few nights later he attempted to do it again but this time we physically restrained him.

Look out below!

I’m not sure why we put up with him.  He was difficult to shake off, like a drunken puppy following us around.  But we rather warmed to him over time and eventually he was just accepted as part of the ‘gang’.  We even became protective towards him, which once meant getting involved in a stand off with a bunch of angry Tunisians whom Tony had upset over a game of pool.

Perhaps we stuck with him because he was at times hugely entertaining without even meaning to be.  We were in a friend’s room one night.  Unusually for student accommodation the friend had an en suite shower.  Tony decided we should all have a shower together (mostly because he was very keen on one of the girls in our group). “Great idea Tony” we said, “you get in there and get the water warmed up”.  Off came his clothes and into the shower he went.  Out of the window went his clothes, and we ran off giggling to someone else’s room, which was high up a tower block on the other side of the ‘student village’.  An hour later we were joined by Tony, wearing nothing but a very short bomber jacket tied around his waist.  It hadn’t occurred to him to borrow a pair of trousers and a shirt from the room we’d left him in.  Instead he’d walked around the student village virtually naked until he found us.  “Didn’t anyone see you like that Tony?” “Only a couple of JK in the lift”, he replied, looking hurt.  “I just nodded and said ‘Guten Abend’, but they didn’t do me the courtesy of a reply”.

I lost touch with Tony after Tübingen, but he contacted me out of the blue a couple of years ago.  He’s been living in America since I last saw him, was married but is now divorced and he has a daughter. Best of all he’s been dry for several years.  I hope his demons have left him forever.

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

Having a ball (or the unkindest cut of all)

Seedless!

There often comes a time when a man is called upon by his wife to do something for her which, left to his own devices, he would much prefer not to do.  Usually this is little more unpleasant than putting out the bins in the rain, or fetching something from the loft, or keeping her company during some horrendous reality TV programme.  But every now and then a man’s mettle is tested to the core, and when it happened to me I’m proud to say I rose to the challenge and was not found wanting. Bruised, battered and sore perhaps, but I pulled through.

Many years ago when our youngest son was still a toddler, we had agreed that our two children were quite sufficient, and although we loved them very much we didn’t want any more.  After some discussion there seemed to be no alternative (or at least not one acceptable to my dear wife) other than a vasectomy for yours truly.  At the time we were living in Germany where I was a MOD civil servant attached to the British Forces, and so the operation was to be conducted by a military surgeon.

Before they would book me in, we were required to have ‘counselling’ by an army doctor.  This was little more than a 5 minute interview in which he pointed out that in the event of us divorcing or losing one of our kids in a traffic accident, I wouldn't be able to start afresh in the baby making department, because the snip was as good as irreversible.

The operation to turn me into what Del Boy Trotter famously called a ‘Jaffa’  was scheduled for a Friday.  This was the usual day for vasectomies, considerately chosen in order to give military personnel two days sick leave over the weekend and have them back in work on Monday. The army is very caring like that!

On the appointed day I presented myself (quite literally as it turned out) at RAF Hospital Wegberg.  Within moments I was undressed and changed into a rather fetching surgical gown which did little to cover up my bare bum.  I was handed a battery operated razor and sent to a cubicle just off the ward for a strategic shave.  The razor echoed loudly and made a hell of a clatter when I accidentally dropped it, buzzing around the tiled floor like some demented giant hornet, so what was already a nervy sort of day felt even worse when I emerged to the curious stares of all the other patients.

The procedure was to be performed under a local anaesthetic.  It’s not much fun lying back with your freshly shaved wedding tackle on display, being injected in a place no needle should ever enter.  The surgeon explained in detail what he was going to do.  Naturally I made a lame joke about the operation making a ‘vas deferens’ to my sex life, but he’d clearly heard them all before. I made one further inane attempt at conversation, asking “is it all shaved OK?”, which to be fair was probably not an easy one for him to answer without sounding a bit weird.

The experience would have been more bearable but for a small group of trainee medics popping in to observe the procedure.  The surgeon asked if I objected to them joining us.  I did actually, but as they'd already walked in to be greeted by the sight of my closely shaven and now numb genitalia, it seemed churlish to refuse.

The snip itself can best be described as stomach churningly uncomfortable but not actually painful. When it was all over I spent the next couple of days lying on my bed back home.  To her credit my wife fussed around me and fetched me food and drinks.  Friends and neighbours all seemed to know at least one person who’d had it done but unlike me, had been out and about playing football with their kids the same day.  All I can say is, they must have had balls of steel.

Years later I took my dog to be neutered.  When I collected him from the vets afterwards, he looked at me with such hurt and disappointment in his eyes.  “I know pooch, I know” I said, “but it’s for the best”.

This might sting a bit, try to relax ...

Hitch Cricket

Tuebingen. Far too pretty a town for a scruffy Herbert like me.

When studying for my German degree I was required to spend a year in Germany in order to become more fluent in the language, and also to immerse myself in German culture and so on.  Most of my fellow students were able to land well paid jobs in German schools as English Language Assistants, but no such luck for me; instead I attended the University of Tübingen about 30 miles from Stuttgart.

Tübingen was very much a university town, where students easily outnumbered the locals.  There were students from all over the world and in time I got to know Tunisians, Venezuelans, Koreans, Americans and of course Germans.  There was plenty of time for socialising, especially once I realised there was no actual requirement to attend lectures, and I decided I could just as easily become fluent in German and get to know the country by hanging out with friends and travelling around Germany, Austria and Switzerland on the cheap.

This makes me sound lazy doesn’t it? Well I was, I admit it, and I had a great time.  I knocked about with some fantastic people and although a couple of them owned cars, our usual method of transport was thumbing a lift.  Hitchhikers were a far more common sight in the early 1980s.  Many of the university buildings were situated in the town, but the majority of students lived in a ‘student village’ on a hill a couple of miles away.  There were plenty of buses but they cost money, so with typical German efficiency, the students had years before created a ‘Tremperstelle’ or hitchhikers’ bus stop.  You simply joined the queue and a succession of cars would pull over, fill up with complete strangers and give you a lift home.  You didn’t even have to stick your thumb out.

We travelled quite some distances too.  If a group of us were going to Munich for example, we’d divide into groups of 2 and arrange to meet up in a bar as and when we made it.  I always felt reasonably safe, but I did find myself on more Autobahn slip roads than I care to remember.  The German police really don’t like you hitching there, but if that’s where you get dropped off there’s not much you can do about it.

A friend and I invented a game of ‘Hitch Cricket’ in which the winning team was not the one that got to the rendezvous first, but the one which covered the greatest number of kilometres with the fewest lifts, thus allowing for variations in routes taken by the different hitching teams.  So, kilometres were runs and lifts were wickets.  We’d ask our driver to tell us how far they’d taken us and compare our scores later at the rendezvous: 150 for 9 was a rubbish score, 170 for 3 was much better.

We went all over the place and often slept rough just to save money.  We went to Munich for a Rolling Stones gig (sleeping in the ‘English Gardens’ that night with the police wandering around with torches looking for vagrants), then on to Salzburg in Austria for a bit of sightseeing (and a proper night’s sleep in a small hotel).  We also did Zurich just for the hell of it (sleeping in yet another park) and variously went to Bonn, Frankfurt and Karlsruhe, where, just in case you ever need to know, the police do not allow you to sleep in the waiting room at the railway station; “but we’re waiting for a train, officer!”

One place we couldn’t hitch to was West Berlin, at that time an island of neon and concrete in the middle of East Germany and accessible on land only by driving along the Berlin Corridor.  This road was crawling with East German police who were forever leaping out of the bushes to photograph your vehicle.  Car drivers were understandably reluctant to take complete strangers across the border with them, so instead we went on an organised coach trip over the Easter period.

A slimmer, younger me in front of the Berlin Wall, Easter 1982

West Berlin was fascinating. You hear a lot of old tosh about cities being vibrant or exciting, but this place really did have a unique atmosphere.  We did all the usual touristy things, like posing for photos in front of the Wall, but the real interest for me lay in crossing the border for a mooch around East Berlin.  We did this twice; the first time was on an organised coach trip through Checkpoint Charlie, and it was basically just a bus tour with an East German guide trying to explain away the queues outside all the shops with their empty shelves.  Far more interesting was going across unescorted on foot, which we did the following day and it gave us a glimpse of what the tour guide didn’t show us.

A lot of East Berlin still looked much as it must have done in 1945, with quite a few bomb damaged buildings still waiting to be bulldozed and redeveloped.  The ubiquitous smoky Trabant and the occasional ancient Mercedes were a far cry from the swish cars being driven around the other half of the city, and somehow everything seemed a little grey.  The underground trains were rickety old museum pieces with slatted wooden seats (I got told off by a policeman for taking a photo of one of the carriages – filming the public transport system was ‘verboten’ apparently), and the whole experience was like stepping back in time.

Checkpoint Charlie

Every now and then some shady character would sidle over and offer to buy Western currency from us. We’d been warned about such approaches; it was reputedly a favourite method for the secret police or ‘Stasi’ to entrap Westerners so they could impose heavy fines on them, although this now seems a little far fetched.  We weren’t however tempted to break the law in this way; we already had all the East Marks we could possibly use.  On entering the country you were required to exchange 25 Deutschmarks for 25 East Marks, and you weren’t allowed to take any back with you.  So we spent it on books, coffee, beer (no smoking allowed in many of the bars over there by the way, even 30 years ago) and stale sandwiches, and I even got a horrendous pair of bright red pumps from an incongruous looking department store which only seemed to have foreign shoppers in it.

My lazy approach to my year in Germany seemed to work out OK. I achieved a reasonable fluency in the language and back in the UK the following year I got my degree.  I didn’t return to Germany for nearly a decade, when my job required me to live there for a few happy years.  I was a husband and father by this time, and more to the point, a car owner.  There were fewer hitchhikers by then and to be honest I never stopped for those I did see.  The car was generally full of family and baby paraphernalia, although in truth I was probably just too selfish to pick them up.  Even so, I did sometimes wondered if these youngsters had ever heard of Hitch Cricket, and if they viewed my car speeding past them like a dropped catch.

At tea he was 127 for 6

Learning the hard way

Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff

I mentioned a while back Linky Linky about starting a degree course at Leicester University as a 19 year old.  It was done in a bit of a rush because I’d very recently been thrown out of a different college. Thrown out is perhaps a little dramatic. I’d taken some exams at the end of my first year, failed them spectacularly, and then failed the re-sits later that Summer.

I’d begun a German course at Bangor in North Wales the previous October.  In hindsight I was far too immature to be given so much freedom all of a sudden.  It was only a few weeks after my 18^th birthday and there were a few things going on in my home life which had not put me in a very happy place.  So here I was with a maintenance grant, nobody to nag me for getting drunk and coming in late, and tutors who didn’t seem to care much whether you attended their lectures or not, just so long as you got your assignments in on time.

I was fine with the German.  I’d always been good at it and I liked it.  It was the secondary subjects which I messed up.  I wasn’t uninterested in ‘Linguistics’ or in ‘Education’ (a sort of first year course for people wanting to become teachers), but I just couldn’t motivate myself to make any effort.  I did the bare minimum and when the exams came round I was found out. And then at the re-sits I was found out again because I’d assumed that a miniscule amount of revision back home would see me through.

My parents weren’t too pleased and I can’t say I blame them. They hadn’t enjoyed the same opportunities for a higher education, so they’d always put a big expectation on me and my brothers to go to university.  My Mum had been clever and studious at school but she was made to leave at the earliest opportunity by her parents who needed an extra wage.  For the same reason my Dad left at 14 to work on the railways as a ticket clerk.  He went on to better things later in life, but he did it the hard way.

My oldest brother Steve avoided university by deliberately failing his A levels. My other brother Dave was far more conscientious, a bit of a swot actually, and he sailed through it all.  I wanted to go to university, but unfortunately I just couldn’t get the balance right between doing enough work to get by and going out with all my new mates.

It wasn’t all drinking and late nights.  I joined a ‘Community Action’ group which did worthy things in Bangor; this included the writing and performing of a pantomime based on the song ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’, which we set on the island of Anglesey.  It was full of pirates, witches, corny gags and slapstick silliness, and we took it around hospital children’s wards, a home for young adults with learning difficulties and other such places.

When I went to Leicester the following year things didn’t get off to a great start when my brother was killed in a motorcycle accident.  That made me a little more serious about things, but I was already more aware of what was needed to avoid a repetition of what had happened before.  I wasn’t keen to fail again; even I drew the line at being sent down from two universities.

So while I still partied pretty hard, I at least had the nous to make sure I also did enough work to pass my exams.  I was not exactly a fully mature adult when I eventually got my degree, but I had at least grown up a bit.  Who says students don’t learn anything?

I got there in the end

'Urry up 'Arry



A thing of beauty

The other week I was having lunch in a pub with some work colleagues, when the landlady came over to check that the music wasn’t too loud and that it wasn’t interfering with our conversation.  It wasn’t; indeed I had barely registered that any music was playing at all, but I was nevertheless impressed that she was thoughtful enough to check.  I’d never been asked this before, although I am sufficiently stroppy to have asked in restaurants for music to be turned down.

It got me thinking about pubs generally.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time in them over the years, although my visits are now much less frequent, partly because of pub prices and partly because, frankly, I’ve become something of a couch potato.  I'm usually to be found of an evening in my living room with a glass of wine in my hand, the laptop on my knee and the TV on in the corner.  Ironically I thought I would go to the pub more often since the smoking ban but I haven’t.  Like most ex-smokers I am disgustingly self righteous about the evil weed (except for the odd very drunken occasion when I crave a quick drag), and yet I have hypocritically fond memories of cosy smoke filled pubs.  I’m sure this can be traced to a moment in my very early childhood when I was sent into the bar of a bowling club to fetch a neighbour.  I mentioned it in an earlier blog post Linky Linky

Pubs don’t seem to have juke boxes any more; well I certainly haven’t noticed any in the pubs I occasionally visit.  I suppose they’re quite an expensive way to enjoy a song when you’re already spending over £3 for a pint, and in any case ‘real’ juke boxes rely on vinyl.  In my youth, putting money in a juke box in an unfamiliar pub could have unpleasant consequences.  When I was at university in Leicester I knew of a student who just about escaped with his life when one drunken December evening he selected ‘White Christmas’; this was in a pub packed to the rafters with Rastafarians, although knowing him I'm certain it was in no way intended maliciously.

Perhaps another reason juke boxes have all but disappeared is that we are awash with music nowadays, what with MTV, MP3, greater choice of radio stations and so on, so to pay to hear a single record in a pub must seem ludicrous (although maybe not as ludicrous as ‘Dial-a-Disc’ on the telephone if any of you can remember that!)

Another rarely seen thing in pubs nowadays is the quiz machine. These were all the rage in the 80s and 90s and a useful source of income for me.  The earlier machines had a fairly limited range of multiple choice questions.  They weren’t that difficult in the first place but it didn’t take long for a small group of us to memorise most of the correct answers.  Then it was just a question of emptying the machine before moving on to an identical machine in a pub up the road.  It was never going to make us millionaires but it was enough to buy a few pints and a kebab.

Quiz machines have been replaced by quiz nights.  I like them because they give me a chance to dredge up all the completely useless information I carry about with me.  I once used to ‘play’ for my local pub in a quiz league.  It was a fun way to spend a Sunday evening and gave me an excuse, not that I really needed one, to go to pubs I’d never been in before.  Quizzes can be horribly competitive at the best of times, but the quiz league took this to another level.  There is something quite unsavoury about two middle aged men nearly coming to blows over the spelling of an obscure TV ‘soap’ actor’s name.

All this talk of pubs has made me quite nostalgic. And thirsty. Fancy a pint? We should just about make last orders.

"Put another dime in the jukebox baby ..."

Tying the knot

There was a time in my 20s when I seemed to be forever going to weddings.  I suppose that’s pretty standard for many of us.  At that age one or other of your friends is always getting hitched.  After that you hit a spate of christenings, and without wanting to be morose I dare say the next thing will be attending funerals, but, as the government keeps telling us, we’re all living longer these days so there’s still plenty of time!

I always liked going to weddings back then.  I don’t mean for sentimental reasons, and certainly not through any interest in what the bride was wearing.  I just liked the whole ritual of meeting up with your mates and their families, catching up on their news (I’m talking pre-interweb here), and necking a couple of stiff G&Ts before the service (pints of beer are far too bladder filling; I still associate drinking gin with weddings).  I even liked the singing in church, not through any love of hymns but because out of tune singing always makes me laugh.  Most of all I enjoyed the wedding reception.

For many of us, when we were in our 20s and still single or without kids, the reception was the mother of all piss ups.   With the occasional free bar and perhaps an undercurrent of inter-family rivalry, there was also untold opportunity for a memorable or embarrassing incident.  I once saw a very posh, rotund Hyacinth Bouquet-like character who, having enjoyed several glasses of champagne, was being sick on the dance floor.  I know there should be nothing in the least bit funny about that, but I nearly wet myself to see her on her hands and knees in a voluminous floral frock and an enormous hat hanging from the back of her head, coughing and retching  like a dog.  I bet I’m not the only guest who remembers that particular day for no other reason.  Similarly, when my old school friend Francis married Billie, I remember the occasion not for the quaintness of the church, nor for the splendour of the bridal gown, but for the speech given by the bride’s father.

You may have seen an old sketch in which Rowan Atkinson stands up at a reception and assassinates the character of his new son in law.  Francis’s new father in law did something similar.  The cutting sarcasm was not quite in Atkinson’s league, but from an entertainment perspective this had the advantage of being totally authentic, and what’s more the guy was completely sober, so it was a deliberate, pre-meditated act.

Obviously I’m paraphrasing here after so many years, but he started off with a lengthy summary of Billie’s academic achievements, telling us how gifted a musician she was and about their lofty expectations for her future, before saying “So you can imagine our disappointment when she announced she was going to marry Francis”.  Up to this point most people had adopted the traditional approach of pretending to listen to the speech but allowing their minds to wander towards eying up the bridesmaids or whatever, but now everyone sat up and took notice. “We had hoped she would marry a man with a proper profession, someone who could at least hold down a job.  Not a teacher who is giving up his employment, apparently to start some sort of farm.  How does he intend to support her?  The whole thing is doomed to failure.  Well, don’t expect me to put my hand in my pocket”.

Francis had indeed just left his teaching job and bought a plot of land with a vague idea of starting a smallholding.  To be fair, we who knew him well were also pretty certain it was doomed to failure, but that’s not really the point.  Francis attempted to defend himself when his turn came to speak, but it just turned into the presentation of a fairly lame business plan, even less convincing than the ones which feature on ‘The Apprentice’.  This all rather diverted attention from his father in law’s spectacular lack of manners and finesse.  The happy couple got divorced a couple of years later.  I don’t think the reception speech had anything to do with it, although it can’t have helped much.  No doubt her father will have felt justified.

My own wedding 24 years ago went pretty much without a hitch, although I did quite literally shout my own speech through sheer nerves.  My only regret is that shortly before the big day I had allowed myself to be talked into getting the world’s worst haircut.  This fact can be forgiven but never forgotten; it haunts me to this day, and all those wedding photos are a constant reminder.  Still, I suppose it could have been worse.  I could have been married in the 1970s which would presumably have involved disastrous permed hair as well as flared trousers, huge jacket lapels and shirt collars, and possibly quite a lot of beige.  I must learn to count my blessings.

Me on my wedding day. If you think the hair wasn't so very bad, trust me it really really was.

What's in a name?

Today, much of the world is sniggering about the Beckhams naming their baby daughter Harper Seven.  I’m not terribly surprised.  The inflicting of such horrible pretentious names on innocent children has long been a source of irritation to me.  I know it’s really none of my business what other people call their kids, but sometimes it just gets my back up.  It’s not only the Beckhams who do this of course, and there have been plenty of column inches dedicated to the subject.  If you want to see some of the more bizarre ones, just check out this 2007 article from The Times: Linky Linky

However, whether it’s my business or not, it still exasperates me.  There seems to be an element of celebrities throwing their pretentious twaddle in your face, and you can’t help wonder how much of it is driven by a constant desire for publicity.  I get annoyed partly because they’re basically saying “We’re too special to give our child a normal name like you mere mortals”, but mostly I loathe their complete absence of forethought.  I mean, if you call your child Blue Angel, as U2’s ‘The Edge’ did (and of course his stage name isn’t in the least bit pretentious), what on earth is that child going to have to put up with, not just in their youth but all through their adult life?  And what may now seem a sweet, whimsical name becomes even more ridiculous with the passing of time.  How is Paula Yates’s daughter Fifi Trixibelle going to sound when she’s someone’s wrinkly old granny?  About as ridiculous as her three grey haired sisters Peaches, Pixie and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily I suppose.

I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to names.  They come and go in fashion like everything else, but there’s always a pool of good solid names.  Nobody nowadays seems to call their kids Herbert or Arthur or Cedric and maybe that’s not a bad thing, although I can’t quite imagine someone called Herbert ever doing anything very wicked!  I dare say these names will return when their time comes again, like flared trousers or floral wallpaper.  This tendency for some names to drift in and out of fashion can occasionally give you a clue about someone’s age.  A Deirdre in my experience is likely to be at least middle aged, and there are loads of Darrens in their mid 30s to early 40s, but not so many under the age of 20.  Some names of course defy fashionable trends: David and Michael will probably be around forever.

As for myself I was christened Andrew Nicholas, but I’ve never used the former except when completing official forms, so when I’m being called in the doctor’s waiting room I don’t immediately realise it’s me they want.  This wasn’t my choice; my older brothers refused to call me Andrew from the moment I was born.  They insisted I looked like a Nicky, so Nicky I was called until one day I demanded that it was to be shortened to Nick, having decided that the suffix made me sound too babyish.

Some names (though not mine) run in families.  My grandfather and father were both Tom, my oldest brother’s second name was Tom, and my own son is Tom.  I wonder whether Frank Zappa’s kids Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Muffin have continued in a similar vein with their children?

A right Herbert ...

Out of the frying pan

Choose your weapon ...

I do most of the cooking in our house but I’m not complaining.  For starters (see what I did there?) I like doing it, and on a more practical level I nearly always get in from work before my wife, which means either I do the cooking or else we have to wait until late in the evening before we can eat.  Since I walk around like a bear with a sore head if I’m the slightest bit hungry, the decision is easy.

I have a shelf full of cookery books written by all the usual suspects: Nigella, Jamie, Delia (notice how we know them by their first names?), but while I have been known to follow one or two of their recipes to the letter, what puts me off is that they invariably call for some crucial ingredient like lemon grass or Mongolian yak’s blood which I haven’t got in stock.  Even so, I like to look at their books and drool over the pictures; I’m drawn in much the same way to cookery programmes on TV.  I know I shouldn’t watch them quite so avidly and that this sort of thing is what’s killing off ‘proper’ television, but I’m a pseudo-foodie who can’t help himself.

Despite all the reading and TV watching my repertoire in the kitchen is remarkably and depressingly limited.  A lot of my dishes for example involve just a variation on the same sauce.  So the tomato sauce that is the basis for my spaghetti bolognese is not a million miles away from the one I use for curry, chilli, lasagne and occasionally shepherd’s pie.  It’s just a question of adjusting the flavour by adding or removing different herbs and spices.  I do a pretty good paella (it’s not exactly how I’ve had it in Spain, but if I can be immodest for a minute I do prefer mine), a passable stir fry (heavy on the ginger and soy sauce) and a half decent Sunday roast. The rest is often just convenience food.

I have my favourite pans and my favourite kitchen knives, and if they get scratched or damaged a day of national mourning is declared.  I’ve been known when out shopping to leer at woks and garlic crushers.  I almost cried with joy when my wife brought home some egg poaching pods which work brilliantly and have solved my own singular incompetence at poaching an egg.  They now stay in one piece with a lovely runny yolk.

On the down side I’m a bit rubbish at cooking any fish other than the most basic, like salmon fillets.  Actually I can cook it OK, but it’s all the preparation that trips me up.  I’ve tried gutting, cleaning and filleting mackerel, etc., but the result was not pretty.  I know a fishmonger would do it for me but I really ought to master these things for myself.  I never make puddings and pastries or bake cakes; I probably could but I’ve never really tried.  For all my love of food, I don’t really get excited about puddings.  I like them well enough and I’ll eat them if they’re put in front of me, but apart from pancakes I’ve never felt the urge to make one.

After all that bragging about my prowess, you may be wondering what we had for dinner tonight.  The answer is egg, chips and peas with white bread and butter and a cup of tea.  I bet Nigella likes a chip buttie now and then.

Can you imagine a world without chip butties?