Everyone loves to bash Health & Safety regulations - and I’m no different.

How could I forget the insane anarchy which was Jnr’s seventh birthday party at the local sports centre - twenty kids charged up on coca-cola and Haribo, screaming at the tops of their little voices whilst racing pedal cars around an echoing volleyball court like a hundred manic Mr MacHenrys, to the soundtrack of *Squirtle’s choice, Public Enemy - when we were gently advised not to play ‘musical chairs’, for reasons of health and safety. You don’t say.

I’m all in favour of protecting workers in the workplace, having grown up surrounded by tales of farmers gored and farm hands with arms torn off in agricultural machinery, but my jaw fell open when I was told that if I wanted the external walls of the house painted in spring, I could no longer rely on an odd-job bloke with a good ladder as previously but, because we have ‘raised gable ends’ (whatever they are) and the regulations have changed, I would have to hire scaffolding for a day; it’s health and safety.

Do you know how much scaffolding costs?  Somehow I think the place is destined to disappear under the slow accretion of green algae next year.

So, I was intrigued last week when Channel 4 screened Cutting Edge: The Fun Police, a programme about about health and safety inspectors. I watched idly, out of the corner of my eye (a dangerous place) at first, but a few minutes in and I was hooked; the inspectors were doing an experiment, on custard powder.

I’ve always been fascinated by custard powder, it’s **thixotropic - it runs, but you can snap it, it flows, but if you stab it with a spoon it goes rock hard - which is an interesting phenomenon to observe if making custard is the most exciting thing you’ve done all day - mmn, anyway - but I bet you didn’t know this: custard powder has coal flour in it, which is explosable.’

Fantastic. I watched as they duly exploded some under ‘controlled conditions’.

‘Did it work?’ the cameraman said.

‘There is no ‘work’, or ‘not work’,’ the dour Inspector replied, ‘there is only data.’

This programme was developing charm. I felt for Ed Friend, too, a health-and-safety consultant who seemed like a nice well-meaning chap, as he read from Richard Littlejohn’s Daily Mail rant against his profession. In one particularly sustained and vitriolic tirade, dear RLj describes the inspectors as akin to ‘Stasi’. Ed’s voice was full of wounded outrage.

So, the next day, when I listened to The Archers - okay, I confess, I do listen to The Archers from time to time - it may be deadly dull, but like hot water bottles, cocoa and cough medicine, it’s comforting; plus, I love to hate it - I had my health and safety head on.

Jill Archer got some ropey old outdoor lights from Mr Pullen at the recent swap sale. She’s donated them to brighten up the Village Hall for Christmas. Phil has checked them and claims they work, but they’ve already blown the fuse once and what with the Christmas panto coming up…

Commentators love to indulge in predictions at this time of year, so here is one of mine: Christmas Archers Special (look away now!) I predict - FIRE!

Imagine it: The string of Christmas lights flicker and fizz, sparks land on a bit of discarded crêpe paper and smoulder away whilst the panto cast are trying so hard to remember Linda’s instructions as well as their lines, and the audience are distracted by the scenery shaking in a strange way, that no-one notices the smell of smoke…

Clarrie the reluctant pantomime cow will be horribly scorched (’Oww, Eddie’); Brenda will be trapped inside and heroic Tom ‘meat products entrepreneur’ Archer will wade in courageously only to burst in the heat like one of his wretched boring sausages. Matt Crawford will stumble out like the sleazy coward he is, going up in a boozy haze like a purple flaming sambuca. The scenery will ignite and crash down to reveal - collective gasp - posh Alice Aldridge and Christopher Carter, the blacksmith, in a semi-naked stand-up clinch…

All that will be left will be Joe Grundy grunting at the smouldering heap which was to have been the Ambridge Christmas Panto, muttering in his lugubrious way,

‘Health and safety, see, I told ‘em, health and safety.’

Nah. It’ll never happen. Shame, though.

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* Squirtle: Jnr’s nickname when small. Squirtle is a Pokémon, a bipedal turtle with its most notable feature being the hard shell on its back. This shell forms and hardens on its back after birth. [Wikipedia] I.e. Cute, full of beans, but tough.

**Thixsotropic: the property exhibited by certain gels of becoming fluid when stirred or shaken and returning to the semisolid state upon standing. [Dictionary.com]

The day before Halloween the organic vegetable box arrived.  ‘What’s in the box?’ I wondered, hoping there’d be a pumpkin (and no curly kale).

I pounced on the leaflet. At this time of year there’s usually an abundance of seasonal squashes and the box company make an effort to be festive. Yep. Pumpkin was listed.

So I unpacked and put away the produce, item by item: leeks, carrots, potatoes, expecting to come upon the pumpkin. Nothing. Oh well. It happens sometimes, you have to go with the flow, but - damn - now I’d have to go out and buy one from the supermarket.

Tradition! It must be upheld! There would be a Halloween pumpkin lantern and pumpkin soup in this house.

But wait - right at the bottom of the box, under the purple sprouting brocoli - my hand touched a small spherical shape. I pulled it out. Ahhh! A little warty gourd - orange, yes - but surely not a pumpkin?

Pumpkin it was. No bigger than an apple. The littlest pumpkin I’ve ever seen.

‘Come and see!’ I said.

‘What’s that?’ said Jnr, ‘Do we have to eat it?’

‘Technically, it looks like a pumpkin,’ said J.

‘I think it is. But it’s too small,’ I said.

‘What a shame,’ they said together.

‘You’ll never be able to carve a face in that,’ said Jnr.

‘Or make soup,’ said J.

J and Jnr exchanged a glance.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ they said, and left the room.

‘ I will,’ I said, ‘Just you wait and see.’

So I found my smallest, meanest-looking kitchen knife and set about sharpening the point on a carborundum stone. Swish, swish. Swish, swish.  Yes. We’ll see about that, I thought.

I lifted the littlest pumpkin out of the box. What a sorry little thing it was, clinging to its clods of earth, all stunted and warty. It made me sad, seeing it so teenyweeny and balanced on the palm of my hand but I washed it and scrubbed it and rubbed it all dry. It was so cute and shiny, I hardly liked to cut it.

I eyed it up. Squinted. A face became manifest. My blade glinted. Ha! Off with the top of its head!

There was no stopping me now. Stab, scoop, scrape, sculpt. All its little innards scooted in the bowl.  Not even enough for a spicy thai papaya/pumpkin salad.  Sob.

Outside an owl hooted. It sounded like a scream…

(Yes, that is an egg cup.)

And that’s what became of the littlest pumpkin.

The End.

But what about the pumpkin soup?

Never fear, dear reader. What are freezers and microwaves for?

‘J! Jnr! Supper’s ready!’

And here’s some I prepared earlier…

[Demonic laughter.]

Start the week with a biblical riddle - why not? It’s Monday, the weather is grim, The Today Programme reckons we’re all doomed, where better to turn for solace than the Bible?

I turned to the bottle, a bottle of Tate & Lyle golden syrup, that is, with pancakes, for breakfast, and as I was eating, staring out to sea, my eye lit upon the famous Lyle logo.

I’ve seen this image so many times usually it barely registers, but for some reason this morning - a need for escapism perhaps - I was transported .

What a bizarre picture it is. A dead lion and a swarm of bees above a ponderous line from the Old Testament, ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’.

This is one of the oldest surviving examples of branding, having barely altered since 1885, yet, if you consider the associations - death, decay, the mighty fallen, the danger of beestings, the sheer weird, implausible notion that bees would build a honeycomb inside a rotting carcass - it would never get past a marketing department today.

When I was a child I would stare at that logo. It fired my imagation on lots of levels. Sweet things weren’t exactly rationed, but my parents generation had experienced rationing and parsimony was a habit with them. Sweet things were not denied - sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey was a hit - but they were stored high up, regarded as faintly decadent and meted out with a mixed message of wonderment - such abundance in this new age! - combined with slight resentment - we never had such things when we were young - and the vague implication that we Apollo babies should somehow be grateful.

Golden syrup seemed to encompass all this. It was heavy with associations, valuable, like gold. Twisting a slow spoonful of syrup and watching it drain, forever, into my porridge… the trails were the Rivers of Babylon, melting across a lunar landscape of milk and honey. [Don't play with your food!]

I wondered about that line from the Bible, too.

‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness.’ What can it mean?

The tin was robust, I knew that because I’d dropped it a couple of times trying to reach it down from the cupboard. Or perhaps Mr stern Presbyterian Lyle was telling his employees that he might be strict, but inside he was really a sweetie.

Now I’m older, I know there are different kinds of ’strong’, and they can each be deceptive.

There’s the obvious one, physically strong: a genetic propensity to build muscle or to have stamina, being, by fate, one of life’s physical lions.

There’s emotionally strong: this can be innate, too, or can come from the weathering of experience. It’s a kind of strength which enables people to survive difficulty - and can turn them to leather. Sadly, this kind often brings forth not sweetness, but its opposite. Perhaps the line from the Book of Judges is there to encourage us to resist bitterness?

‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’ could mean something akin to ‘in every cloud there is a surprise, a potential silver lining’.

Or it could mean ‘be generous in victory’, just a simple exhortation to use advantage well/with sweetness.

Sweetness itself can be a form of strength; it might mean that.

Who knows? I guess that’s the problem with texts, even a simple line with a picture…

Say anything often enough and it begins to lose its meaning and mess with your head. One thing’s for sure, though, it’s all a bit too allegorical for me this rainy Monday.

I was delighted yesterday to read an item on the BBC website vindicating the famous English custom of drinking tea.

Tea drinking is not, as was thought, a dehydrating, excessively caffeinated and bad-for-you experience, staining your teeth, your guts and your character, but (dare I say it?) a healthy habit full of potentially beneficial side-effects.

Flavonoids - what a lovely word - I think when they burst upon the tongue, they must look something (little perforations!) like this:

Tea - healthy - as good as water? Yes - the BBC says so!

As a two-cups-before-I-get-outta-bed kinda girl, my heart swells. Tea - that simple brown beverage made from old dry leafs* and boiling water - how I love thee. (Made just the way I like it, of course. Or it goes back.)

Whenever I travel anywhere, up the road to vist a friend (vegan/camomile/soyamilk friend), camping in Dorset, over the ocean to far-flung continents,  I’ve always popped some teabags in the old handbag. So frisk me, Officer, but, ‘Noooo! - please - don’t take my teeeeeeee!’

America? You call that tea?  Dude. You can keep your miserable tepid, tethered-to-a-string-like-a-tampon teabag, dipped in an inadequate cupful of lukewarm milky water.  Australia - iced is nice - on the beach - in the hot weather - ahyeah - but…

As for the rest of the world? Coffee can be good, too, but it’s… well, not tea.

Gone too far? Doctor’s orders. Flat coke and boiled white rice. But on day three, the spirit rallies. By crikey.

‘Bring me [whispered gasp, fumbles in ** handbag], please - [shaky hand passes carer a small brown parcel accompanied by a desperate smile] a nice cup of - ‘TEA!’

Historically, I’ve had no compunction about explaining in broken French/German/Spanish that,

‘I’d like a cup of boiling water, please. Yes, just boiling water. For [holding aloft a teabag] this…’

A teabag?

Or marching into the hotel kitchen, even. Beside a big, angry American on the verge of nutritional faint - who is, after all, asking for an entire second serving of food (when there clearly is no more chicken to be had because it’s Ramadan) because his plate was too small - a bit of hot water seems… almost humble.

Oh yes. Memorable times happen over tea.

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Sex

[Rainy day. Man and woman. Meeting. Tea shop. Flowers. Eyelashes lowered over the brew.]

‘Is the pot empty?’

‘Yes.’ [They both look up, startled.]

‘Shall we…?’

‘Go?’

‘Yes. Why not. Yes…’

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Death

[Rainy day. Bunch of friends and family. Front room of a house. Flowers. Eyes lowered.]

‘Terrible.’

‘Yes.’

‘Too soon.’

‘Yes.’ [Pause]

‘Shall we? - ‘

‘- put the kettle on?’

‘Yes. It’s what he would’ve wanted. Yes…’

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But - oh dear - the BBC*** also says,

‘Tea drinking is most common in older people, the 40 plus age range.’

Older people?

Tea drinker I may be, but I can also say, ‘Recession? Three million unemployed?’ Been there.

Forget Starbucks, and Costa, and Cafe Nero. Tea! It’s cheap. It’s good for you. It cheers you up.

Bring back The War.

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* leafs - affected typo

** Sadly, Youtube have removed the five second clip link from The Importance of Being Earnest where Dame Edith Evans says, ‘A handbag?’ (violation of terms of use??)

*** No, not biased at all. ‘The Tea Council provided funding for the work.’

Yesterday, a recipe book recalled the phrase ‘bruised fruit’ - the colours of summer are the colours of bruises - redcurrant, aubergine, cherry, brambleberry, grape - subtle, soft colours. In high summer, they blacken quickly and ferment fast.

I discovered these recently. See if you like the sound of them:

1. ‘Cosse Violette’ beans.

They caught my eye in the vegetable shop. Gothic vegetables. As the name suggests, this variety of broad bean has a violet-black hue. I was hoping they would stay that way when I cooked them, but sadly the application of steam turned them green.

2. Amaranth** and quinoa rye bread.

‘Amaranth is an old cultivated crop originating on the American continent. The Aztecs, Incas and Mayas considered amaranth as their staple food together with maize and beans.’

(Delicious for open sandwiches.)

3. Früli - Belgian strawberry beer.

This is not an alcopop, it tastes too sharp and beery; the ingredients are spring water, malt, wheat, hops, yeast, pure strawberry and spices.

Yeast is an amazing organism, a kind of pagan sacrament. The Anglo-Saxons had a phrase for the foamy barm from fermenting yeast liquors - godesgoode*** - god is good - to give us this?

Here’s a summer bouquet for you. According to Victorian floriography:

Buddleia = the butterfly bush.

Hydrangea = friendhip, understanding, devotion.

Rose = love, of course.

Vase = Habitat

(Looks like a Rorschach ink-blot.)

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* The ‘Cosse Violette’ beans are in the foreground of the photo (that’s my kitchen drainer) followed by radishes, cherries and grapes.

** Amaranth = a flower and a foodstuff, the “one that does not wither”, or the never-fading flower.

*** godesgoode is also a Googlewhack, which means it’s a word which has only one return in a Google search. Try it if you don’t believe me, although this blog entry may fix that in time…

Hey! Anyone know any other Googlewhacks? I’d be interested. Submit here.

I’m a bit of a collector on the quiet. It started when I was small, with Dinky cars and butterflies. Girls often grow out of collecting when they encounter secondary school peer pressure, but I continued with small animal bones and minerals, all the sparkly pastels from agate to zinc. By adolescence, I’d worked out that it was wise to keep these in a drawer, and my bedroom window sill displayed instead a rainbow of Biba eyeshadows and jewel-coloured nail varnishes, all strictly lined up like little soldiers in the sex war. Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain. For a while I collected boys.

Historically, my collections needed to be portable, but these days I can think bigger. William Morris said, ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,’ and I delude myself that I follow the line. I love frosted Art Deco glass vases, dishes shaped like leaves, Crown Devon ceramics, Shelley china and Shorter fish plates, jugs, crumb trays, things with odd handles… As you can imagine, I also have a collection of glass-fronted junk shop display cabinets.

I’m not quite sure when it started - maybe after I read an article in the paper about the cost to South West Water of being called out to unblock drains clogged with animal fats - but, a while back, every time we had a roast or something grilled, I would pour the fat into a spare jar, meaning to dispose of it later. How, though? The trouble was, I’d kept the jars for the glass recycling, but I’d already disposed of the lids… I put off the decision and before long I realised… I had a new collection.

No-one agrees with me, but I think they’re rather lovely. Every time I add to a jar, the whole melts a little and changes, the heavy fats sink to the bottom forming an evil-looking sediment. I experiment with them. Each folded layer has a geology all of its own, tinged with traces of different coloured spices, like paprika or dark soy sauce. Sometimes I half expect to see a homunculus or some prehistoric specimen in there. Or an alien.

When the light shines through them the oils which rise to the top take on a murky translucence.

Collecting is a slippery slope. I must get rid of them.

Now, if we had a bonfire, they’d make an excellent accelerant…

The waiter was very friendly when we arrived. He smiled at me for an unusually long time and took my coat. He was new. Heavy accent. Probably not long in the UK.

So, when we were choosing, I said to J, shall we have a naan? We could share it? And he said, sure, what sort? So I said, how about a keema naan, you like those? And he said, I do, but I don’t mind.

I said, okay, keema naan it is, but you’ll have to eat most of it. Why? he said. Because they’re filling, I said, and more calories, all that meat and stuffing. So he said, well, choose something else, then. So, when the waiter came over I said, excuse me, where are the naans on the menu, what sort of naans do you have? And he listed them out and I said garlic and coriander sounds good, let’s have one of those and smiled at the waiter. He smiled back and wrote it down.

I said to J, whilst the waiter was there, sure you don’t want a keema naan? And the waiter said, keema naan very good. Yes, I like them, I said, but J shook his head and said, no, it’s okay, we’ll have the garlic and coriander. And the waiter went away.

We sat there for a bit, and J said, I do like keema naan, though.

You drive me crazy, I said. What? he said. You should’ve had the keema naan, I said. And he said, I didn’t think you wanted it. I would have been happy with some of it, I said.

The waiter walked past. Excuse me, I said, do you think we could change the garlic and coriander naan for a keema naan? And he smiled at me and said, you like keema naan, I put on for you, but no charge.

No, no. No, I said. If it’s a problem to swap we’ll leave it as it is. No, no. No, he said. No problem.

So I said to J, he thinks I wanted a keema naan and you wouldn’t let me have it.

What? said J. Why did you have to make a fuss? I wanted you to have what you wanted, I said. I wanted you to have what you wanted, he said. Never mind, I said, now we’ve over-ordered, we’ll never eat it all.

naan,

When the food came it was another waiter who brought it. Keema naan? he said. That’s me, said J. The waiter put the garlic and coriander next to my plate and J and I started to eat.

A bit later, when we were well underway, our waiter swooped by. He stopped at our table, smiled at me and glanced proprietorially at the naan breads. He frowned slightly and scrutinized the plates. Oh no. (I meant to swap them over, once we’d both taken a piece of naan, but I forgot.) He looked disappointed. He pointed. That keema naan, he said.

Oh, I said, yes. We’re sharing.

What? said J. But… I kicked him gently under the table. What? he said.

So I hissed, sssh…

What now? he said.

I thought that would happen, I said. Now the waiter thinks we don’t know the difference between the sorts of naan breads and he feels a fool for having offered to add the keema naan onto the order. So now we have to make a show of swapping the plates over.

What? said J.

Now. He’s looking. Here, pass me your naan plate, I said.

So we swapped the naan bread back and forth a couple of times and made sure the waiter saw.

Why do you do stuff like this? said J.

I don’t know, I said. I didn’t want to hurt the waiter’s feelings.

At the end, when we were paying, the waiter smiled at me and put his finger on a line at the foot of the bill.

No charge for keema nan, he said, and smiled again.

And everybody went away happy. Sort of.

How banal was that?

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figtart,
originally uploaded by biteykins.

I love the colour, texture and taste of fresh figs.

Yesterday, I made this fig tart in celebration.

I’m ridiculously pleased with it - hence the picture.

And here is a link to the famous poem, ‘Figs’, by DH Lawrence.

Fig memory: The pub where J and I had our shoe-string wedding reception had a walled garden. It was a sunny day, the fig trees against the walls made the scene look a bit like someplace in Tuscany (I’ve always had a vivid imagination) except, we’d hired a bouncy castle for the kids and in front of the dry stone walls, every time you looked, there would be a blurry brightly coloured child, bouncing, frozen in that freefall moment just before gravity bites.

And, J’s mad little sister, out on day release, had somehow made it to the right place at the right time, in her shiny, pretty, improbably high platform shoes, and was busy, in the lower left hand corner of the frame, ignored by everybody, in the way that people are only at weddings, stomping with determined absorption on all the half-ripe fallen figs.

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