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A pub lunch with vegetables

Sunday, and some visiting relations on the island. Let's go for a pub lunch. Good idea. We were all running a little bit late - they enjoying their leisurely weekend by the sea, we recovering from SD#3's Dance School show the previous night.

It was just gone 2 pm when we showed up at the Dog and Pheasant, East Mersea, so one of us nipped in ahead to check that they were still serving lunches. Yes, they said, Sunday lunches were available up until 3 pm - though sometimes if they were very busy they ran out of roast beef before that time. Well, we were ready right now, so in we all trooped and bought a round of drinks and then I went to order eight Sunday Lunches. Oh, sorry, they said, actually we've run out of vegetables.

Vegetables! OK, so if the roast meat has all gone, it's all gone. A joint of beef can hardly be rustled up in ten minutes. But vegetables? Haven't they got a freezer for emergencies? There's a Co-op seven minutes' drive away with a whole aisle full of fresh veg. There's a Tesco Express eight minutes' drive away selling three-for-the-price-of-two ready-prepared bags of microwaveable vegetables. There's a pick-your-own farm with ready-picked veg two minutes down the road. Couldn't someone have nipped out while we chatted over Guinness and crisps? This isn't a five-star restaurant. This is a pub. We all know what a pub roast is like - it's well-done beef with a well-done Yorkshire pud and some well-done veg. We don't expect more than that. In fact we like it. It's comfort food. It reminds us of school and Sunday lunch at Grannie's. We're not expecting precision-fried ocra and chantenay carrots in cumin and coriander butter. We're thinking pub peas and a bit of pub cauliflower. All drenched in gravy, obviously.

Well, anyway, the D&P clearly didn't want our three-figure sum's worth of turnover. Or our goodwill. Perhaps they simply didn't like the look of us. Although it's not as if we were caked in mud or armed with musical instruments or attempting to smuggle the dog in.

We trundled to West Mersea and headed for the revamped Victory, which served us eight delicious Sunday lunches without any fuss but with plenteous veg, generous slabs of beef, lashings of horseradish and some excellent Yorkshire puds, all very nicely presented.

The Victory is definitely not the place to go for that traditional country pub ambiance. It's all very modern inside, with huge squishy sofas and no discernible horse-brasses. But you can see the sea and watch the boats bobbing around at high tide and life going generally by. Friendly service and superior loos, too. Our only cavil was the hideous muzak, which bordered on the intolerable at one point, when we were convinced that two separate and unrelated tracks were playing at the same time! I think we were just too close to the speakers for comfort.


Replete, I was faced with a difficult choice. Curl up with the Observer and fall immediately to sleep, or take the dog along the beach and enjoy the fabulous late afternoon light. I plumped for the latter. A good choice, I think. And plumply waddled off approximately 1% (or fewer) of the calories I'd just taken on board. Pics on the post below.

TBTE

East Mersea, with my elder daughter and the dog. Low tide - not a drop of sea in sight!





Back at West Mersea as the sun went down.

A heart. Up in the clouds.

A chilly evening after a windy day. Smell of woodsmoke wafting through the hollyhocks in the Lane. Halyards clanking. A piano playing in a tiny white cottage.

How richly glows the water's breast
Before us, tinged with evening hues,
While, facing thus the crimson west,
The boat her silent course pursues!
And see how dark the backward stream!
A little moment past so smiling!
And still, perhaps, with faithless gleam,
Some other loiterers beguiling.

Such views the youthful Bard allure;
But, heedless of the following gloom,
He deems their colours shall endure
Till peace go with him to the tomb.--
And let him nurse his fond deceit,
And what if he must die in sorrow!
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,
Though grief and pain may come to-morrow?

'Lines Written While Sailing In A Boat At Evening'
William Wordsworth

Hamfatter

Here's an East Anglian band worth looking out for - Hamfatter, from Cambridge.

This is their new video, all shot in the city, complete with punts and, it would seem, attempting to match Morse's Oxford with its body count:



Mr Musing's been working with them for a while (though no pics on his website yet for some reason - lack of time, probably). Anyway, now they're appearing on Monday night's Dragon's Den on BBC 2.

I don't generally watch DD, but I'm assured this is the first time that a band has been up in front of the Dragons persuading them to invest, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

A Romance on Three Legs - Prize Draw result

Time for the smallest prize draw in the history of prize draws!

Four names rattling around in the bottom of my grandma's Fairyland Lustre bowl, which sits atop the piano (though not usually balanced precariously on the keyboard, as here).

Who will win a review copy of A Romance on Three Legs?

This is particularly nerve-wracking, since all four entrants are good blogging cyber-chums of mine . . .

But a winner there must be, and the name is . . .

DIANE!

Congratulations, D. The book will be in the post to you tomorrow and I look forward to reading your verdict once it reaches the top of the TBR pile.

Commiserations to the non-winners (though since two of you are Devon Bloggers, then maybe you'll be able to persuade D to lend it to you at one of your get-togethers once she's read it!)

TBTA

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Age-banding update

The children's books age-banding debate rages on.

The Society of Authors has added an extra session at their Cambridge Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference, 29-31 August, to include a discussion on age guidance. They are keen to air all views.

The session will be chaired by R4’s Libby Purves and will include Philip Pullman and Anne Fine, prime movers behind the No to Age Banding appeal, Graham Marks from Publishing News and Becky Stradwick UKHQ Children’s Buyer from Borders. Publishers have also been invited to take part. Other conference speakers include Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, Hollywood scriptwriter William Nicholson, multi-award winner Anthony Browne and rising star of illustration, Polly Dunbar.

For further details about the conference, click here.

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Just before TBTE

When I was a girl - long, long ago - there were two ways to mend the telly when it went wrong (which was often). You could twiddle the knobs for ages, trying to find one or other of the two available channels. Or you could administer a hefty thump. Usually, the latter worked wonders when the former, more technical, approach had failed.

These days, household gadgetry is far more sensitive. Thumping is usually fatal. Shaking can be quite good, but what I find works best is sulking.

So when my camera wouldn't work last week, I shook it. And when that didn't do the trick, I sulked. I shouted at it briefly, had a little weep, then shut it in a drawer and walked away. I didn't look back, and I didn't take a peek for days and days. But I hadn't forgotten, far less forgiven.

Today, just as I was leaving for a celebratory fish supper on the beach, I opened the drawer and I said, 'Right, camera: you've had a week to think about this. I'm prepared to give you another chance to work because I really really want us to get back to how things were before. You, my trusty camera; me the pointy, clicky boss. So I'm going to give you some more batteries, point you at this pile of washing-up and click. The rest is up to you.'

I pointed. I clicked. Nothing happened.

I shook it one last time.

I pointed. I clicked. It took a picture for me! And then another, to prove it was in earnest.

I took it to the beach. We had a very happy time together.

The results will be appearing here shortly.

The Bookbinder's Apprentice

Congratulations to Martin Edwards, who has won the Crime Writers' Association Short Story Award for 'The Bookbinder's Apprentice'.


Set in Venice, 'The Bookbinder's Apprentice' is a hugely atmospheric tale, full of underlying menace and with a chilling ending. Having read it, I fear I'll never look at certain things in quite the same light ever again!

On a smaller scale than Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now or Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers, 'The Bookbinder's Apprentice' is nevertheless a worthy and unsettling addition to the canon of Venetian horror. There's just something about that place, isn't there?

Probably best read from the comfort of home rather than at the airport en route to a holiday in the watery city . . .

'The Bookbinder's Apprentice' is published in The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries. (For a list of the other stories in the anthology, click here and scroll down.)

You can read Martin's account of the awards ceremony at the Four Seasons Hotel in Park Lane - and see some photos - on his blog.

Romance on Three Legs - free prize draw for bloggers

Those very nice people at Bloomsbury in New York have sent me an extra review copy of A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano by New York Times journalist Katie Hafner.

I was very taken with this rather unexpectedly fascinating musical detective story, as you will gather from the various mentions I've given it on this blog. It's a real one-off kind of a book, which will appeal to all sorts of readers - you certainly don't need to be a Glenn Gould devotee, or a pianist, or even a classical music aficionado to appreciate it. It's a rattling good read and I can guarantee you will learn things about pianos and about the nature of genius that you didn't know before.

If you are interested in having a chance to read and review this book (which isn't yet published in the UK), then simply leave a comment here and I'll put the names into the dish on top of my piano at the end of next week and draw the lucky winner. The only proviso for entering is that you have a vaguely bookish or musical blog and will undertake to post your thoughts about the book in due course.

The Perpetual Botwana Conundrum

Apologies (but only very perfunctory ones) for two McCall Smith posts in a row, but ...

A recent review of the first book in the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series on Vulpes Libris has highlighted yet again the undeniable fact that it is for ever more going to be necessary to qualify any positive views about these books with some kind of disclaimer, acknowledging the fact that 'some people' have found them 'patronising' and/or 'racist'.

I let rip with a lengthy rant on this topic a while ago, by which I still stand, so I won't unleash another one here now, but the constant background hum of these accusations just isn't going to go away. If one genuinely loves these books, does that mean that one is, at some deep-down level, and despite one's very best intentions and self-examinations, complicit in perpetuating a white imperialist view of Africa and Africans?

Unlike Susan Hill, I don't feel that something has been 'stolen from me' when I read attacks on McCall Smith's Botswana novels, though I agree with her that 'once you know a thing you can never un-know it, though you may forget it'. But the effect of researching the negative criticism was to make me read the most recent book in the series with all my political correctness sensors turned up to full whack and constantly to review my own responses to the characters and plotlines as I went along.

And I still don't see what's complained of; I really don't.

What does this tell me about myself? That I am right? Or simply that I'm white?

Or that I still haven't delved deeply enough into my cultural conditioning to see clearly enough that I have been hoodwinked?

I guess that for as long as McCall Smith writes these books and millions read them, I and the rest of those millions will either feel a faint underlying unease, or will simply get on and enjoy them regardless.

The issue was complicated by Anthony Minghella's film version, screened on TV earlier this year. A scathing attack on its general niceness, gentleness and leisurely pace by Sam Wollaston in the Guardian ("it's such a pity, when there aren't enough black people on British television, that so many should end up in this saccharine gloop") drew a barrage of favourable comments in its defence, while, more seriously, complaints by some of the extras appearing the film tarnished the books by association.

There's an interesting discussion here, with some well argued views by a black British writer who does find the books patronising bordering on racist.

On the other hand, the review and comments on the film version on Mshairi (poet and administrator of KenyaUnlimited and the African Women's Blog and thus, one might suppose, a reasonably credible source of African women's viewpoints) are much more encouraging:

"I truly enjoyed the movie, especially after the poor offerings from TV land lately. I laughed and cried (etc). Oh the language, the manners, the leisurely pace, the laughter, the beauty and pain. Now that is a good movie. Wasn’t it great to see the real Africa? Not poor, deprived, dying, begging continent. No starving and naked children, but the reality of our lives in Africa."

I'd love this last comment to be enough to allow me to relax and feel OK about my own response to the books, and indeed the film (and its forthcoming sequels). I shall try to let it be. But no doubt the background hum will continue, and come to the fore again from time to time. Sad but true.

But . . . perhaps, ultimately, no bad thing.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

Opening this, the fifth title Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street series, I resolved to keep my wits about me. Surely he could not have pulled it off again? Would there not be some sign that a long-running novel - published in daily parts in The Scotsman - couldn't possibly go on forever? Could a writer really sustain interest and invention using such a restricted palette without becoming formulaic or blasé?

Might not the scones be, in short, a little . . . stale?

Determined not to sink immediately into its warm depths and wallow as if in a delicious bubbly bath, I managed to keep a cool distance for at least five pages. And then, inevitably, I fell headlong.

He has, indeed, done it again. It's just as good as its predecessors. If anything, McCall Smith's observations of life in Edinburgh's New Town are sharper, more piquant than ever. I became as willingly entangled in the lives of his delightful cast of characters as in the previous instalments. And of course, like every hopeless addict - I just can't wait for more.

I confess I was a little surprised to see this book described on the cover as 'hilarious'. Hilarity is far too unsubtle a word for the humour found within its pages. Yes, there are occasional laugh-out-loud moments - usually when McCall Smith nudges over the line from 'wry' to 'wicked' (but, of course, only very gently so). How to judge whether one has married 'beneath' oneself, with reference to taste in paintings, for example. Or the 'correct' pronunciation of the place-name Gullane (and what those who say it differently might be revealing about themselves). Generally, however, the humour is of the warm rosy glow variety, rather than offering chortle a minute.

Since it is the myriad small incidents and deft observations which make The Unbearable Lightness of Scones such a joy to read, to quote even the briefest of passages would be a 'spoiling' exercise. Suffice to say that if you've enjoyed the previous four, then you will find here plenty to recognise and even more to surprise, including a wedding, a sudden unexpected death, further episodes in the saga of the blue Spode teacup, an illustration of the cathartic properties of men's moisturiser, a major discovery in the world of Art, and Cyril - the dog with the gold tooth - finally succumbing to a long-resisted temptation. There's also a guest appearance by a famous crime novelist, who solves a mystery, signs a form and goes on his way.

The usual suspects are all here, together with some interesting new characters, including a troubled antipodean psychiatrist and a Porsche-driving photographer. There are, naturally, some unresolved issues to whet our appetites for the next volume - among them precise fate of six puppies and the outcome of a precipitous proposal of marriage.

If you haven't yet encountered 44 Scotland Street, but have discovered the life-affirming characteristics of the author's Botswana novels, then you will find much to enjoy in this series too. It isn't strictly necessary to read them in chronological order, but I think that to do so would enhance the experience.

Incommunicado

I have mentioned recently the sad demise of my trusty little pocket Canon Powershot, which has meant that I've been using my mobile phone to take photos this past week.

Today I nipped out to buy a few bits and pieces in the nearest shop, and on impulse picked up a bottle of red wine as well. I packed everything into my nice 'no-plastic-carriers-for-me-thanks' hessian shopping bag, which I placed carefully on the floor while I paid. It toppled over in slow motion and the bottle hit the floor - not with any great force, but it nevertheless cracked clean in two and wine started gushing from the bottom of the bag. Apart from making a very big mess all over the place and causing rather a tailback at the till, no real damage seemed to have been done. The nice lady in the shop let me take a replacement bottle at no charge; she wiped and re-packed all my shopping in plastic carriers and gave me another in which to take home my dripping bag.

And guess what was at the bottom of the sodden bag all the while? Yep, mobile phone! By the time I reached home and realised this, it was making a curious hissing noise. I haven't had it very long and I couldn't even remember how to take the battery out! Needless to say, it is not feeling up to very much at the moment. I dropped one its predecessors in the bath once and, after 48 hours drying out, it was fine. So I'm hoping that this one will be feeling well enough to get back to work soon, once the hangover has worn off.

In the meantime, I am not only without my phone, but without my camera, my alarm clock, my phonebook and my calendar!

How dependent we are on gadgetry these days . . .

Race for Life 'training update'

I've been reminded by email that I promised to post regular updates on my 'training' for Race for Life at the end of the month.

The fact that I have put the word training in quotes might give a clue to my 'progress' (oh look! more quotes!) . . .

I fear I shall never be one of those lithe creatures who can lope effortlessly round a five-mile course with no alteration in breathing patterns or heart-rate, however hard I try.

This running malarkey does not come naturally to me, I have to say. I can walk for miles and miles - all day long when the opportunity arises or demands - without a qualm or [m]any consequential aches and pains. I can even cycle, ditto. But running bloody well hurts! And I'm sure this is mainly an age-related thing (although even at school I was a sprinter rather than a long-distance slogger).

My cardiovascular system, despite being uncompromised by tobacco or cholesterol, nevertheless protests, quite strenuously, at the demands I am making on it every evening these days. 'No, actually, thankyouverymuch', gasp my lungs, 'we will continue no longer: you will walk for a couple of minutes before we will resume this nonsense, on that we insist'.

So I humour them.


Despite the exhortations of my personal trainers (SDs#1&2) to keep on going. The Boy, particularly - a successful inter-schools cross-country competitor - has little conception that our 37-year age differential means that I can't sprint full-out for miles and miles like he can!

Luckily, Race for Life isn't really a 'race' at all. It's a big, warm, all-women fund-raising festival for a cause close to the hearts of everyone involved.

At least half the participants walk the course (or indeed are pushed in wheelchairs) rather than running it, and a lot of the 'runners' - I noted with relief last year - were, like me, somewhat challenged by the uphill, tussocky, woodland portions of the designated route at Essex University and took the opportunity to catch their breath for few minutes while hidden from the gaze of our friends and families.

Anyway, my so-called training has been somewhat sporadic these last weeks. It was right off the agenda for a while, after I walked at some speed into a solid immovable item of garden furniture and made a surprisingly deep dent in my lower shin. I had no feeling in my left foot for a couple of days! And it's still exquisitely painful to touch. So while I was back running again after a half a week, I have to be extra-careful when putting on my socks!


Tonight, returning after dark from a brisk two-hour march along the beach with the dog, on a warm but very wet evening, I accidentally crunched so many snails underfoot with my boots, and only narrowly avoided three or four small frogs, that I just couldn't bring myself to run in such conditions. The thought of skidding on a frog was more than I could bear to contemplate! Ugh!

As for 'training photos', I'm afraid that not a single one has been taken. But, mindful of the fact that some of my promised sponsorship apparently depends on such revelations (!), I did take this one while putting my feet up after yesterday's slog. Will that do? I hope so. Since I only venture out in my unbecoming lycra ensemble under cover of darkness, this is as good as it's going to get, I'm afraid:

Someone I used to look after when she was a baby had a mastectomy last week. She has three young children.

An old friend lost her 10-year-old son to cancer two years ago.

And regular readers will know that my lovely sister was married last year in the middle of chemo for breast cancer. She's subsequently had surgery and is doing fantastically well (and has been on stage all this week in a production of Verdi's A Masked Ball, for which she also made the masks and painted some of the scenery!).

Cancer touches us all.

Cancer Research UK is making the most enormous contribution to establishing the causes of different types of cancer and investigating treatments and cures. In addition to their clinical centres and research institutes, of course, a look at the organisation's homepage gives an indication of the diverse range of support and care that is offered to those with cancer and their families. Cancer Help UK offers free telephone advice, discussion forums and masses of vital online advice.

My very small contribution to this cause - which I'm running both in thanksgiving and also, sadly, in memoriam - is on 27th July. So not long to go now. If you can spare a few £££ to support the essential, life-saving work of Cancer Research UK, then please do so now, either by visiting my fundraising page, or by sending me a fiver (or more!) in an envelope, or by writing a cheque to Cancer Research UK.

Every Race for Life event around the country has a Donation Station, where you can leave unwanted clothes, books, CDs and other items, which will be sold in Cancer Research shops to raise yet more funds. Last year, in Colchester alone, over £14,500-worth of items were collected at Donation Stations, to be distributed to CRUK shops in the area. So I shall be turning out my wardrobe and bookshelves before the 27th. If you have anything you'd like to see recycled in aid of Cancer Research UK, then check out your nearest RfL here, or your nearest shop here and take some stuff along.

A huge thank you to those who have already sponsored me. It really does mean more than I can say - especially knowing the stories behind some of the donations. Many donations thus far have come from my generous, lovely, online friends, whom I've never met in real life but have grown to know in varying degrees over the past year of blogging. You know who you are. Thank you so much. (And special thanks to one donor whom I do not know at all, even online - I'm honoured that you have made your donation via my fundraising page.)


I promise that, regardless of dented shins, congenital lack of sporting prowess and even the sacrifice of innocent snails, I shall get round that course a fortnight on Sunday somehow, come rain or shine, and do everyone proud. And hopefully raise £500 for Cancer Research UK.

Thanks for listening.


Juliet xxxxxxxxxx

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