Ken Graham, my colleague on The People had a head apparently whittled from balsa wood. Superficially craggy but wont to crumble under pressure.
Graham was always under pressure. His supreme creative act was throwing the “future features” box through the news room window and into the Manchester Ship Canal. He survived that to be sent to expose a massage parlour. He was instructed to accept the ministrations to a certain point and then to sit up and say “ I am from the People and this is a disgusting exhibition” which would be photographed by Dennis Hutchinson, unkindly known as "the Poison Dwarf ".
Three times he struggled from a recumbent posture, only to fall back under the mesmeric fingers of the masseuse for a moment more of pleasure.
At last he struggled to a sitting position, cried “ Bugger the People” and abandoned himself to hedonism.
He was The Great Complainer . He stopped going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous when a fellow alcoholic failed to buy his round of lemonade. When I organised trips to Sweden for a pal who was a director of Tor Line. Graham was my first choice. His reaction to any given siuation was always a joyful surprise
At Immingham we were shown in to a board room, handed G and Ts the size of crystal fire buckets and invited to make free of a lavish buffet
“It should have been my day off to-day” Graham said mournfully.
In his hotel room in Gothenburg he took an apple from a fruit bowl that was doing its best to be a Harvest Festival. An hour later when he returned to the room he rang reception to complain it had not been replaced.
On the voyage home the ship’s chef assembled a smorgasbord which had the Swedish passengers gasping with joy. I watched Graham , shovelling away at the dishes on offer in a lucullun buffet, like an under nourished JCB. As he staggered back to our table under the weight of his plate I said to the girl with whom I was lunching “ Bet you when he comes back his first words are a complaint”
She said; “ He couldn’t. That is a Christmas Smorgasbord. It has everything”
Graham did not disappoint.
“Trouble with these meals,” he told the table aggrievedly “You are spoilt for bloody choice”
I must not give the wrong impression. It ws impossible not to be fond of him. He had a terrible time living up to his craggy face and a voice that rasped with a thousand woodbines. Underneath his bluster, he was a gentle drunk and I would not have been at all surprised to find him talking to a six foot rabbit that only he could see.
A person so innocent was a natural butt for our news editor Mike Gabbert . Gabbert was to complex practical jokes what Cecil B. de Mille was to Hollywood spectaculars. His hoaxes had casts of thousands and we were all, at one time or another, grist to his malevolent mill.
Like the day he put Ken Graham down in the diary for a wholly mythical parachute jump
Graham went white when he read the entry, but did his best not to show it. Not even when a man from accounts rang and asked if his insurance was up to date and did it cover him for sudden death on the job.? Because,if not the paper would insure him for £50,000.
An Air Minstry PRO was the next one to call . He wanted to know if Graham enjoyed good health and sound limbs. Especially, he added darkly, limbs.
I thought Graham took it well. He was less successful when the picture desk rang from London to say they were putting a special helmet in the Manchester despatch box, The helmet had a camera in the front and a cable which went into the mouth. Graham was to grip it and jerk his head when he left the aircraft, and continue to do so during the fall, so that the paper would have a sequence of thrilling photographs.
I for one thought he was bound to break when Neville Stack who was news editing our sister paper the Daily Herald rang and said he had heard Graham was going to do a parachute jump. Stack said he wouldn’t do anything like that, not for a gold clock. But, he said, the daily was anxious to commemorate the event, so would it be OK if they photographed Graham as he landed ?
Graham said in a very small voice that it would..
“There is just one thing,” said Stack “ I gather you are jumping in a stick. How will we know which one is you?”
Graham said helpfully that he would wave, but Stack said he wouldn’t advise that. Graham would need both hands to pull on the parachute harness, or he would break his leg in landing.
“ I’ll tell you what “ said Stack. “We will strap a loud hailer to your chest and just as you are about to land you can shout through it ' I am Ken Graham from the People.' ”
Stack said “If you could add 'Over Here' it would be helpful”
At this point I think Graham’s nerve must have broke. He said to Mike was it alright if he took an early break . It ws only 11 am but he was over the road ,breasting the bar in the Chicken Grill, before Mike had time to answer.
I have always thought the ex-paratrooper at the bar was a plant by Gabbert.
Like the transvestite lorry driver he introduced to Mike Kiddy, without telling Kiddy about the transvestite bit. Causing Kiddy to make a very embarrassing discovery on a bomb site at the back of the office.
Anyway this “paratroop” got into conversation and when Graham told him about the parachute jump he pursed his lips and made the sucking sound that workmen make when you show them work done by any other workmen
“ Have you practised landing ?” he asked, and when Graham admitted he had not the “paratroop” said, “We had to practise for a fortnight rolling off the back of a lorry .Absolutely vital” the “paratroop” said
“But the jump is to-morrow” wailed Graham
“Well try falling and rolling here,” the “paratroop” suggested. I would have thought the joke had gone far enough with Graham falling and rolling on the floor of the Chicken Inn.
Not so.
By the time we got over, Graham was jumping off a table, bending his knees and rolling along the floor.
It was at that point Mike Gabbert said “Oh by the way Ken, the jump is off. The Air Ministry won’t wear it “
“ Oh Hell,” said Graham with a lack of conviction that fooled no-one “ I was looking forward to it”
My fall was simpler. I was happily night news editing the Sunday Mirror at the time and resisted Gabbert’s repeated urgings to move over to The People desk.
In the end I agreed to a contest. I would join The People if he could out drink me.
The day I joined The People he presented me with a brass plaque which still stands on my desk. It reads;
“In hazy memory of March 20 1963 when Ian Skidmore and Michael Gabbert drank 12 and a half bottles of Chianti and a bottle of brandy at the Chicken Inn, Manchester. Because they were very thirsty”
Looking back I think he cheated. I have never left half a bottle of anything in my life and that night I was in sparkling mid season form . Driving home to Chester I stopped off at the Farmers Arms in Huxley and had four pints of bitter with Curly Beard.
ends
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
Wednesday, 22 August 2007
Birds, bees and wayward blackcurrant bushes
Broadly speaking I am in favour of sex education. Things were managed differently when I was a lad. I was told I had come off a blackcurrant bush.
Not very nice going through life thinking you were adopted and your real mother was a shrub.
No whittling wood on the doorsteps of my childhood. I might have been cutting up a cousin. As autumn approached each year I waited in dread for my hair to turn gold and fall at my feet. In the gardens of my youth pruning time was an agony.
In the same way no-one has been able to convince me there are no fairies, so I have never been able to shed - if you will forgive the arboreal expression - a feeling that I am part twig, though I reject with vigour allegations that I am a chip off the old block.
When I got older I was introduced to the more conventional forms of procreation but to be frank with you I think there is more gravitas in the blackcurrant method. I had been conditioned by my horticulturally obsessed mother to accept
the most bizarre explanations. No-one warned me that in real life the position was absurd and the method improbable. Not only did that it not always work. Though in all honesty it worked more often than blackberrying,an activity which had very sinister connotations in my childhood. I was always surprised when two people went out to pick soft fruit, three did not come back.
My own efforts to provide myself with a brother were a gloomy failure. I would select this fine bouncing bud and place it in a matchbox lined with cotton wool. But alas, nothing came of it.
It was a pity. When the conventional method was used the end product was never as well designed.
If a human being was a house, it would never get planning permission. The waste disposal arrangements are at best rudimentary. Look where the nose is. Right over the mouth. Would you buy a house where the drainpipe is above the front door?.
And would it have been so difficult to make the arms retractable? Have you ever met anyone who knows what to do with his hands when not in use?. True,in Western dress there are pockets, or you can stick them out of the way by clasping hands behind your back. But have you noticed? If they don't hold tight to one another they come sneaking round the front again, first chance they get.
And the feet. I ask you Is there anything in the whole of nature that looks as silly as a foot? With toes hanging on the end like a fringe? And another thing. They only bend one way. Sheer waste. If you could turn them over you could
walk twice as far on them.
Only think how much easier sleep would be if you could stack your arms and legs under the bed. Entwining bedclothes would be a thing of the past.
Why legs at all? Wheels would have been much more convenient.
As to other functions I will only say the blackcurrant bush has much to commend it. No mouth, therefore no toothache. Eats through the feet and the leaves. None of those tiring strolls to work up an appetite for lunch.
Some of us I regret are built even more oddly than most. I was, until a recent enforced diet, literally an all round reporter. I was as broad as I was long. The last TV series I made was a source of great embarrassment. Not to beat about
the bush - and how that phrase strikes at the heart- where other people go in at the waist, I went out for quite a distance.
One of the things that made me take up my present rigid diet was the way people doubted the reality of my body.
On radio you get used to the size phenomenon. The way listeners invariably tell you in a disappointed tone;" You are much taller on the radio". But what am I to do about the lady who came up, patted me familiarly on the belt buckle
and asked; " Is that real or are you just wearing it on tele?".
END.
Not very nice going through life thinking you were adopted and your real mother was a shrub.
No whittling wood on the doorsteps of my childhood. I might have been cutting up a cousin. As autumn approached each year I waited in dread for my hair to turn gold and fall at my feet. In the gardens of my youth pruning time was an agony.
In the same way no-one has been able to convince me there are no fairies, so I have never been able to shed - if you will forgive the arboreal expression - a feeling that I am part twig, though I reject with vigour allegations that I am a chip off the old block.
When I got older I was introduced to the more conventional forms of procreation but to be frank with you I think there is more gravitas in the blackcurrant method. I had been conditioned by my horticulturally obsessed mother to accept
the most bizarre explanations. No-one warned me that in real life the position was absurd and the method improbable. Not only did that it not always work. Though in all honesty it worked more often than blackberrying,an activity which had very sinister connotations in my childhood. I was always surprised when two people went out to pick soft fruit, three did not come back.
My own efforts to provide myself with a brother were a gloomy failure. I would select this fine bouncing bud and place it in a matchbox lined with cotton wool. But alas, nothing came of it.
It was a pity. When the conventional method was used the end product was never as well designed.
If a human being was a house, it would never get planning permission. The waste disposal arrangements are at best rudimentary. Look where the nose is. Right over the mouth. Would you buy a house where the drainpipe is above the front door?.
And would it have been so difficult to make the arms retractable? Have you ever met anyone who knows what to do with his hands when not in use?. True,in Western dress there are pockets, or you can stick them out of the way by clasping hands behind your back. But have you noticed? If they don't hold tight to one another they come sneaking round the front again, first chance they get.
And the feet. I ask you Is there anything in the whole of nature that looks as silly as a foot? With toes hanging on the end like a fringe? And another thing. They only bend one way. Sheer waste. If you could turn them over you could
walk twice as far on them.
Only think how much easier sleep would be if you could stack your arms and legs under the bed. Entwining bedclothes would be a thing of the past.
Why legs at all? Wheels would have been much more convenient.
As to other functions I will only say the blackcurrant bush has much to commend it. No mouth, therefore no toothache. Eats through the feet and the leaves. None of those tiring strolls to work up an appetite for lunch.
Some of us I regret are built even more oddly than most. I was, until a recent enforced diet, literally an all round reporter. I was as broad as I was long. The last TV series I made was a source of great embarrassment. Not to beat about
the bush - and how that phrase strikes at the heart- where other people go in at the waist, I went out for quite a distance.
One of the things that made me take up my present rigid diet was the way people doubted the reality of my body.
On radio you get used to the size phenomenon. The way listeners invariably tell you in a disappointed tone;" You are much taller on the radio". But what am I to do about the lady who came up, patted me familiarly on the belt buckle
and asked; " Is that real or are you just wearing it on tele?".
END.
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Thursday, 16 August 2007
CLASS WELFARE
None of us is middle class. That ended when the peasants took over the universities. Until then the essential qualifications were public school and university, an income of a thousand a year which enabled you to keep a maid, lunch in the middle of the day, tennis on your own court, preferring animals and referring to “one” rather than “I”.
I am an authority on class. My ancestors include St David and the Welsh Princes, a Norman knight, two Tudor courtiers, an ambassador to Paris and according to a Welsh genealogy Jesus’ auntie. My name is the Welsh form of Scudamore ,my ancestors owned most of Herefordshire and starred in the most celebrated divorce case in the 18th century.
My father was a police constable and the descendant of three hundred years of ever diminishing landowners who became both bottle blowers and even more enthusiastic emptiers.
I have spent my life clawing my way back upmarket by consistently marrying above myself. There have been humiliations. My first wife was a rich Jewess to whose mother I was “ council house scum”. Despite her wealth she was not middle class. She pronounced cognac with a hard g.
I was once publicly derided in the Kingston Rowing Club for pronouncing bath with a short “a”. An otherwise delightful chum, a general’s son, was horrified by the way I held my knife.
I discovered the middle class when I was briefly an officer cadet and found I got on much better with the aristocracy. They had nothing to gain by erecting barriers, I had nothing to lose and they shared my obsession with girls
There were limits, as a cavalry officer once explained;
“One would go to one’s troopers’ weddings, but not necessarily invite them to one's”
Now that I have married into the Upper Middle class, things are much easier. I know not to wear a matching tie and silk handkerchief, indeed not to wear a silk handkerchief at all with a business suit. At dinner parties I talk to the partner on my left side during the first course, turn to the partner on my right during the second course and only talk across the table after pudding has been served. My wife puts out napkins even when we eat “a deux” in the kitchen. Probably does when she is on her own. Baths a lot and is always recognised by her own kind. I come as a surprise, but they don’t show it
It was unnerving at first when she trooped me round her family like a tattered colour. At the Bath manor house of a knighted uncle my place at luncheon was decorated with so much table silver it looked like Mappin and Webb's window. Fortunately I knew the rules –work from the outside in.
One occurrence during that hair raising lunch no book of etiquette warned about.
Uncle Sydney’s pet pigeon had the freedom of the house, which it exercised by sitting on my head and crapping down my neck as I raised a fork –always work from the outside in.
“Must be alright if the bird likes you,” he said and we were close friends until his death.
That night as I prepared for bed he pulled me on one side.
"You know how in Wodehouse books the guest always hunts in vain for a drink in the night?
Well in this house its kept in that cupboard under the stairs"
I have just taken part in a family genetic “trace” and discovered I am entitled to a crest; “ a unicorn’s head erased sable plate “ and a blazon of arms “Gules, three stirrups, leathers and buckles or”.
I wonder what my late mother in law and the Kingston Rowing Club would make of that. But I do know it would have looked great on the door of my Lada. I am almost sorry I no longer drive
Ends
I am an authority on class. My ancestors include St David and the Welsh Princes, a Norman knight, two Tudor courtiers, an ambassador to Paris and according to a Welsh genealogy Jesus’ auntie. My name is the Welsh form of Scudamore ,my ancestors owned most of Herefordshire and starred in the most celebrated divorce case in the 18th century.
My father was a police constable and the descendant of three hundred years of ever diminishing landowners who became both bottle blowers and even more enthusiastic emptiers.
I have spent my life clawing my way back upmarket by consistently marrying above myself. There have been humiliations. My first wife was a rich Jewess to whose mother I was “ council house scum”. Despite her wealth she was not middle class. She pronounced cognac with a hard g.
I was once publicly derided in the Kingston Rowing Club for pronouncing bath with a short “a”. An otherwise delightful chum, a general’s son, was horrified by the way I held my knife.
I discovered the middle class when I was briefly an officer cadet and found I got on much better with the aristocracy. They had nothing to gain by erecting barriers, I had nothing to lose and they shared my obsession with girls
There were limits, as a cavalry officer once explained;
“One would go to one’s troopers’ weddings, but not necessarily invite them to one's”
Now that I have married into the Upper Middle class, things are much easier. I know not to wear a matching tie and silk handkerchief, indeed not to wear a silk handkerchief at all with a business suit. At dinner parties I talk to the partner on my left side during the first course, turn to the partner on my right during the second course and only talk across the table after pudding has been served. My wife puts out napkins even when we eat “a deux” in the kitchen. Probably does when she is on her own. Baths a lot and is always recognised by her own kind. I come as a surprise, but they don’t show it
It was unnerving at first when she trooped me round her family like a tattered colour. At the Bath manor house of a knighted uncle my place at luncheon was decorated with so much table silver it looked like Mappin and Webb's window. Fortunately I knew the rules –work from the outside in.
One occurrence during that hair raising lunch no book of etiquette warned about.
Uncle Sydney’s pet pigeon had the freedom of the house, which it exercised by sitting on my head and crapping down my neck as I raised a fork –always work from the outside in.
“Must be alright if the bird likes you,” he said and we were close friends until his death.
That night as I prepared for bed he pulled me on one side.
"You know how in Wodehouse books the guest always hunts in vain for a drink in the night?
Well in this house its kept in that cupboard under the stairs"
I have just taken part in a family genetic “trace” and discovered I am entitled to a crest; “ a unicorn’s head erased sable plate “ and a blazon of arms “Gules, three stirrups, leathers and buckles or”.
I wonder what my late mother in law and the Kingston Rowing Club would make of that. But I do know it would have looked great on the door of my Lada. I am almost sorry I no longer drive
Ends
Friday, 10 August 2007
A Welsh Priest forsees his death
I wrote,recently, about the death of a friend, the Rev Peter Gledhill. In my commonplace book I came across this prophetic poem he wrote.
Soon to come – that final move of house.
But what will it be like to live in Heaven?
Will it be No. 1 or No. 7?
Will I praise God? Or will I moan and grouse
For ever? As happens when a new house is bought,
I live in ignorance, I cannot tell;
Pray God I do not move to seventh Hell.
I hope to go where Welsh is spoke and taught –
Heaven’s language, that takes eternity to learn!
How a propos, how comme il faut, how fit
That I should spend for ever learning it!
A priest for ever, though I’m dead, I’ll yearn
For more long meetings of the clergy staff
In Gaerwen Little Chef, having a laugh
And gossiping about the Church in Wales.
Eternity’s required to tell the tales
Of all the mystic Celtic goings on
Amidst the ancient groves of Ynys Mon.
I hope to sing to Jesus wild Welsh lays
And learn from Morgan what the Bible says,
To chant the psalms will be another joy –
My “retirement job” – a most worthwhile employ!
The angels will perform – not Elgar, I hope!
Hoddinnott and Mathias give more scope.
And thus I dream! But now the time draws near,
And suddenly I’m overcome with fear!
Suppose it’s boring England that’s up there!
Pop music, fish and chips, and stocks and shares!
English T.V., and superstores galore,
And hiraeth to go down to Wales once more!
Peter Gledhill
Soon to come – that final move of house.
But what will it be like to live in Heaven?
Will it be No. 1 or No. 7?
Will I praise God? Or will I moan and grouse
For ever? As happens when a new house is bought,
I live in ignorance, I cannot tell;
Pray God I do not move to seventh Hell.
I hope to go where Welsh is spoke and taught –
Heaven’s language, that takes eternity to learn!
How a propos, how comme il faut, how fit
That I should spend for ever learning it!
A priest for ever, though I’m dead, I’ll yearn
For more long meetings of the clergy staff
In Gaerwen Little Chef, having a laugh
And gossiping about the Church in Wales.
Eternity’s required to tell the tales
Of all the mystic Celtic goings on
Amidst the ancient groves of Ynys Mon.
I hope to sing to Jesus wild Welsh lays
And learn from Morgan what the Bible says,
To chant the psalms will be another joy –
My “retirement job” – a most worthwhile employ!
The angels will perform – not Elgar, I hope!
Hoddinnott and Mathias give more scope.
And thus I dream! But now the time draws near,
And suddenly I’m overcome with fear!
Suppose it’s boring England that’s up there!
Pop music, fish and chips, and stocks and shares!
English T.V., and superstores galore,
And hiraeth to go down to Wales once more!
Peter Gledhill
Thursday, 9 August 2007
My life has been a constant pursuit of the nineteenth century. I
think of myself as being attached to the twentieth century solely for
the purpose of rations and accommodation. Real life is billeted
elsewhere and, as like as not, reading a page of that promising young
writer, Charles Dickens. It was in his company that I found my way
into that best of all times. We met, Dickens and I, on a bookstall
in the Hen Market in Shudehill, Manchester, where it was the
nineteenth century right through to 1959 and the dreadful dawn of
denim.
Manchester,in those days ,contained as many Dickensian characters as Nicholas
Nickleby itself. The original Cheerybles were two Mancunian brothers
whose warehouse was only a hundred yards away from the Hen Market.
But Dickens would have been just as proud to have created the publican in the
Sugar Loaf who never gave florins in change; he hoarded them for their
silver content, on which he planned to retire to Bispham. Or the
editor of 'Two Worlds', the spiritualist trade magazine which
published my first column even before I became 'Chiel Amang Ye' in The
Hairdressers, Wigmakers and Parfumiers Gazette. The spiritualist editor was a closet Calvinist, a dour Ulsterman who invented illustrated conversation. The walls of his office were covered with framed photographs of the famous and his conversation was peppered
with their names. As he spoke one, so he would scurry across to stand
under the appropriate face on the wall, at which he pointed
dramatically.
In time, the nineteenth century and I abandoned Manchester to the
dissonant drum and the guitar. We bumped into each other again in
Stockport, which in those days was the Florence of Cheshire. Both were
built on precipitous hills and in Stockport, as in the Florence of
the renaissance bankers, the population lived by borrowing from each other.
I only worked briefly for a news agency there before I was dismissed after
catching a train for Wilmslow and being taken on to Crewe. The same thing happened to a porter in a Victorian comic song but my employer,
like that Queen, was not amused at the cost of repatriating me to my
home in Whalley Range by Express Bus.
Jobless, I retired to the Cheshire countryside to consider my position.
In the 1950's it was still a landscape Alken would have recognised,
inhabited by people who had dropped from the nib of Dickens' great
predecessor, Surtees. They were to be found in a hundred Cheshire
inns, which were mostly run by retired officers of unparallelled rudeness,
awesome pretension and intelligence so limited that to empty ashtrays and
simultaneously speak was a feat beyond their powers. It was also the
Mecca of foxhunting, an activity so firmly rooted in the nourishing
soil of the 1800's that I would have gone to any lengths to take part.
And did. When subsequently I worked nights on the anti-hunting Daily
Mirror, rather than miss even a Cubbing Meet, I would change into
'Ratcatcher' in the lavatory at the end of a shift and, too poor to buy
a car, catch an all-night bus to Altrincham, bowlered, breeched and
booted; deaf to the ribaldry of homegoing printers. From Altrincham
to the Meet I was given a lift in a horsebox by one of the few
paralysingly rude ex-officers who was not running a pub. So close did
he sail into the financial wind it was said he would not eat an egg
unless it were poached. He wore faded pink and the collar of an
unregistered and obscure Hunt, of which he claimed to have been Master.
Only I knew that it was a Scottish Drag, which he founded, supported
virtually single-handed, hunted the hounds, served as kennelman and
closed just by moving South. So aggressive was he, so terrifying in
his white rages, that once when the wheel of the horsebox caught fire
as we left Altrincham, we had reached Dunham Hill before I found the
courage to tell him. I used to hire his horses until I was given one
of my own through the kind offices of that most princely of twentieth
century Victorians, the late, bitterly lamented, permanent tenant of my
heart, the champion show jumper "Curly Beard", of the Rookery,
Tattenhall..
But he is another story, indeed several stories more.......................
think of myself as being attached to the twentieth century solely for
the purpose of rations and accommodation. Real life is billeted
elsewhere and, as like as not, reading a page of that promising young
writer, Charles Dickens. It was in his company that I found my way
into that best of all times. We met, Dickens and I, on a bookstall
in the Hen Market in Shudehill, Manchester, where it was the
nineteenth century right through to 1959 and the dreadful dawn of
denim.
Manchester,in those days ,contained as many Dickensian characters as Nicholas
Nickleby itself. The original Cheerybles were two Mancunian brothers
whose warehouse was only a hundred yards away from the Hen Market.
But Dickens would have been just as proud to have created the publican in the
Sugar Loaf who never gave florins in change; he hoarded them for their
silver content, on which he planned to retire to Bispham. Or the
editor of 'Two Worlds', the spiritualist trade magazine which
published my first column even before I became 'Chiel Amang Ye' in The
Hairdressers, Wigmakers and Parfumiers Gazette. The spiritualist editor was a closet Calvinist, a dour Ulsterman who invented illustrated conversation. The walls of his office were covered with framed photographs of the famous and his conversation was peppered
with their names. As he spoke one, so he would scurry across to stand
under the appropriate face on the wall, at which he pointed
dramatically.
In time, the nineteenth century and I abandoned Manchester to the
dissonant drum and the guitar. We bumped into each other again in
Stockport, which in those days was the Florence of Cheshire. Both were
built on precipitous hills and in Stockport, as in the Florence of
the renaissance bankers, the population lived by borrowing from each other.
I only worked briefly for a news agency there before I was dismissed after
catching a train for Wilmslow and being taken on to Crewe. The same thing happened to a porter in a Victorian comic song but my employer,
like that Queen, was not amused at the cost of repatriating me to my
home in Whalley Range by Express Bus.
Jobless, I retired to the Cheshire countryside to consider my position.
In the 1950's it was still a landscape Alken would have recognised,
inhabited by people who had dropped from the nib of Dickens' great
predecessor, Surtees. They were to be found in a hundred Cheshire
inns, which were mostly run by retired officers of unparallelled rudeness,
awesome pretension and intelligence so limited that to empty ashtrays and
simultaneously speak was a feat beyond their powers. It was also the
Mecca of foxhunting, an activity so firmly rooted in the nourishing
soil of the 1800's that I would have gone to any lengths to take part.
And did. When subsequently I worked nights on the anti-hunting Daily
Mirror, rather than miss even a Cubbing Meet, I would change into
'Ratcatcher' in the lavatory at the end of a shift and, too poor to buy
a car, catch an all-night bus to Altrincham, bowlered, breeched and
booted; deaf to the ribaldry of homegoing printers. From Altrincham
to the Meet I was given a lift in a horsebox by one of the few
paralysingly rude ex-officers who was not running a pub. So close did
he sail into the financial wind it was said he would not eat an egg
unless it were poached. He wore faded pink and the collar of an
unregistered and obscure Hunt, of which he claimed to have been Master.
Only I knew that it was a Scottish Drag, which he founded, supported
virtually single-handed, hunted the hounds, served as kennelman and
closed just by moving South. So aggressive was he, so terrifying in
his white rages, that once when the wheel of the horsebox caught fire
as we left Altrincham, we had reached Dunham Hill before I found the
courage to tell him. I used to hire his horses until I was given one
of my own through the kind offices of that most princely of twentieth
century Victorians, the late, bitterly lamented, permanent tenant of my
heart, the champion show jumper "Curly Beard", of the Rookery,
Tattenhall..
But he is another story, indeed several stories more.......................
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
If you can't carve it, it's not Sunday dinner. I say
this with all the gloomy force of a man who last week
sat down to a Sunday dinner of Shepherd's Pie.
Chief among the pleasures modest affluence brings is Sunday dinner,
in which the starring role is taken by a comestible which is
at ease in the presence of Yorkshire pudding, onion - or apple - sauce.
Nothing that can't be carved is at ease in that company.
Needn't be grand, mark you. Shoulder of lamb, nice
piece of belly pork, poultry or brisket. I ask no more of
life. And Sunday dinner, whenever you eat it. Sunday lunch
was always cold in gentleman's houses so that the servants
could go to church. We have it in the evening and call it
supper. A consequence of marrying above myself.
To a lady whose devotion to Shepherd's Pie is a sign of that deprived background common
to the upper middle classes.
Also bread-and-butter pudding. Of which I prefer not to think. I'm convinced that it was
the enervating effect on the ruling classes of generations of bread-and-butter pudding consumption which led us into the grave error of giving up the Empire.
I'm not by any means an insular eater, you understand.
I can eat Coq au Vin till it's Coq au Vanquished. And I
wish I had a pfennig for every apfel I have struddelled.
My teeth have travelled the world. But never on
Sundays. Sunday is silent and shady. Made for snoozing and long
safaris through the Sunday papers. For martyred dog walking
and home in time to lead the singing in Hymns of Praise on the tele.
It is not the time for Shepherd's Pie.
Tuesday is irrevocably linked to Sunday. In well regulated
working class homes it was always rissoles on Tuesday, made
from the left overs of the joint, memorable chiefly as the
consort of the mushy pea. What Romeo was to Juliet, Eloise to
Abelard, port to stilton, egg to bacon the rissole is to the
mushy pea.
A culinary consort.
In fairness nothing exceeds the mushy pea in affability. A deux or in a menage a trois with fish and chips it is the ultimate gastronomic gladhander.A Tuesday
treat even on days when the joint had all been eaten by
visiting uncles.
How wise are the Maoris who say " Eat Up Guests May Arrive."
On such Tuesdays we had a sheet of bacon ribs, sinews stiffened by mushy peas and just a hint of brussel sprout.
Apart from champagne and brown bread,only the mushy pea was
completely at home with the kipper., another Tuesday favourite.
I am never entirely sure why Wednesday should be the best
day for eating Chinese food.
But it is.
I suspect, because there is nothing quite so celebratory as Chinese
food. It is the only cuisine at which wine is not missed and thus a consolation to teetotallers. To those unhappy few, it is not the wine cup that cheers, but the chopstick.
Only the chip butty shares Chinese gastronomic principles.
Soft bread,cold butter,crisp chip batter and the melting
inner heat of the potato, chime precisely with the principles
of hot and cold, hard and soft at which the classic Chinese
chefs aimed.
It may be all in a name,of course.
Bubble and Squeak and Toad in the Hole may be delicious;
but they lose something in the telling against
Lucky Smiling Ball,batter baked to produce a wide smile
and Autumn Mooncake, which is an oriental Scotch egg
this with all the gloomy force of a man who last week
sat down to a Sunday dinner of Shepherd's Pie.
Chief among the pleasures modest affluence brings is Sunday dinner,
in which the starring role is taken by a comestible which is
at ease in the presence of Yorkshire pudding, onion - or apple - sauce.
Nothing that can't be carved is at ease in that company.
Needn't be grand, mark you. Shoulder of lamb, nice
piece of belly pork, poultry or brisket. I ask no more of
life. And Sunday dinner, whenever you eat it. Sunday lunch
was always cold in gentleman's houses so that the servants
could go to church. We have it in the evening and call it
supper. A consequence of marrying above myself.
To a lady whose devotion to Shepherd's Pie is a sign of that deprived background common
to the upper middle classes.
Also bread-and-butter pudding. Of which I prefer not to think. I'm convinced that it was
the enervating effect on the ruling classes of generations of bread-and-butter pudding consumption which led us into the grave error of giving up the Empire.
I'm not by any means an insular eater, you understand.
I can eat Coq au Vin till it's Coq au Vanquished. And I
wish I had a pfennig for every apfel I have struddelled.
My teeth have travelled the world. But never on
Sundays. Sunday is silent and shady. Made for snoozing and long
safaris through the Sunday papers. For martyred dog walking
and home in time to lead the singing in Hymns of Praise on the tele.
It is not the time for Shepherd's Pie.
Tuesday is irrevocably linked to Sunday. In well regulated
working class homes it was always rissoles on Tuesday, made
from the left overs of the joint, memorable chiefly as the
consort of the mushy pea. What Romeo was to Juliet, Eloise to
Abelard, port to stilton, egg to bacon the rissole is to the
mushy pea.
A culinary consort.
In fairness nothing exceeds the mushy pea in affability. A deux or in a menage a trois with fish and chips it is the ultimate gastronomic gladhander.A Tuesday
treat even on days when the joint had all been eaten by
visiting uncles.
How wise are the Maoris who say " Eat Up Guests May Arrive."
On such Tuesdays we had a sheet of bacon ribs, sinews stiffened by mushy peas and just a hint of brussel sprout.
Apart from champagne and brown bread,only the mushy pea was
completely at home with the kipper., another Tuesday favourite.
I am never entirely sure why Wednesday should be the best
day for eating Chinese food.
But it is.
I suspect, because there is nothing quite so celebratory as Chinese
food. It is the only cuisine at which wine is not missed and thus a consolation to teetotallers. To those unhappy few, it is not the wine cup that cheers, but the chopstick.
Only the chip butty shares Chinese gastronomic principles.
Soft bread,cold butter,crisp chip batter and the melting
inner heat of the potato, chime precisely with the principles
of hot and cold, hard and soft at which the classic Chinese
chefs aimed.
It may be all in a name,of course.
Bubble and Squeak and Toad in the Hole may be delicious;
but they lose something in the telling against
Lucky Smiling Ball,batter baked to produce a wide smile
and Autumn Mooncake, which is an oriental Scotch egg
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