Cake Time

Following on from yesterday's delicious lunch description from Jane Gardam, here is tea, as promised:

"For tea ... we had small thick triangles of rye bread and butter, small thin triangles of white bread and butter. scones with butter and home-made strawberry jam in a glass dish with the strawberries hanging whole in the jelly, suspended like rubies. We had Sally Lunn and Sad Mary and sponge cake with jam in the middle and icing on top - plain white. We had fresh lemon-curd tarts and raspberry tarts, each the size of a fifty-pence piece and light as flakes. We had an English Swiss roll, not sticky and with bitter chocolate filling, not sickly black cherries. And - bother the boy, it had taken five hours - we had an old English Lenten Simnel cake soaking with soft marchpane, soft as honey, light as air ... 'You are of course mad,' said my husband, 'but at least there is now one Swiss in the world who won't forget that the English respect food.'"

Another Reading Feast

Having spent many years bewildered by the lack of publicity received by the writer Jane Gardam, I rather rashly offered to do a 1p review of something by her for the Dabbler the other day. As a result, I'm rereading her collection of short stories, Going into a House Darkly and I've just come across a great food passage that I really ought to have included in this post, had I remembered it.

It is part of a story about a woman who is trying to prepare a very bright young Swiss boy for a Common Entrance exam, which includes an imaginative essay element. They boy appears to have no imagination and the English relatives with whom he lives cook nothing but baked beans - usually burnt.  The teacher decides to invite him to lunch and give him really good food, in the hope that it may 'unlock one shred of his soul'.

This is what she gives him:

"We had ... little lemon soles, hot and curly and light and crisp, in breadcrumbs and with lemon juice. Then we had sirloin of Scotch beef, not en croute but just as juicy; and green vegetables and small carrots with parsley butter and chopped, uncooked onion. The potatoes ... I parboiled and then shoved far back in the top of the oven for seventeen minutes in hot olive oil ... [They] came out of the Aga like golden, crunchy, soft-centred flowers. Then we had redcurrant water ice, the redcurrants from Rusham Farm, and for the damson tart a jug of cream from Solley's Farm at Worth, thick and yellow. The cheeses were Cheddar - I'd spent a long time choosing the finest of five good ones - a local chevre and a perfect double Gloucester.

The pastry for the tart was the best I had ever made. I'd iced the knife as well as the water and the bowl. It was crisp but flaky. Almost transparent. The damsons sat darkly inside it basking in a congealing sticky lake of crimson juice and sprinkled with hard brown sugar. They looked comfortable as fat black ladies in a spa."

She also gives him tea, which I will save for tomorrow.

Love in a Time of Fizzy Drinks

Coming out of the shop just now, I noticed three kids sitting in a row on the brick bench outside, all wearing school uniform. There were two boys of about 12 or 13 and a very excitable girl, who I wouldn't have thought was much more than 10, maybe 11. They were sharing a bottle of one of those sweet yellow drinks - Tango, possibly, or Sprite? The girl seemed to be doing most of the drinking and possibly it was the yellow in the drink that had produced the wild look in her eye. Or maybe it was just a hot Friday afternoon at the end of a long school week.

Anyway, while I unlocked my bike, I overheard the three of them having this conversation:

First boy: Sinead is soooo ugly.
Girl: You asked her out, didn't you?
First boy: Yeah, and she said she'd go out with me, but then she wouldn't and she went out with Henry instead.
Girl: Yeah, and Sinead said she kissed Henry and then Henry kissed her, and Dimity said ...
Second boy, interrupting: No, no, that's not what happened. What happened was Sinead kissed Henry on the cheek and then Henry was like, 'WHAT WAS THAT?'
First boy: Sinead is soooo ugly.

We've come a long way, baby.

The Joy of Babel III

As I've mentioned before, while I enjoy learning languages, I'm not very good at it. Which is why I identified very much with this passage from Simon Winder's introduction to his book called Germania:

"...for many years I charged at language after language in the manner of someone running up against some massively barred and studded fortress door: Italian, Latin, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic (in a moment of lunatic lack of self-knowledge), German, Ancient Greek - a catalogue of complete pointlessness."

Winder goes on to explain that he did manage to master Arabic script but then:

"... there was an awful awakening - Arabic beyond the script was even worse than French ... There was an unhappy sequel to this. I still vividly remember wandering around the abbey of St-Denis, north of Paris, where all the French kings were buried, and vowing to improve my knowledge of medieval monarchs. I had the sequence down from 1550 or so (everyone's called Louis, in order, with a handful of easily remembered, vivid exceptions) - but the huge accumulation of earlier people called Louis or Charles was a tangle.

This was when I realised the limits of the human brain. I had always assumed I could indefinitely add stuff - battles, capital cities, dynasties. As I loaded up those Merovingian and Capetian kings I felt my brain, like some desperately rubbish, home-assembled bathroom shelf, lurch suddenly to one side, and all the Arabic alphabet fall off the other end. Shortly after that the whole thing came off the wall, taking the pointless Merovingians with it too."

I know that feeling. Oh dear yes, I know that feeling very, very well.

Yoof of All Ages

Sitting in my front window, like some latter day Miss Matty from Cranford - although, being latter day, rather than fiddling around trying to impress my neighbours with the numbers of candles I can afford to light, I am actually playing with my lap top while half watching the news - I am disturbed by the sound of drug addicts bellowing at each other on their way up to get their daily methadone.

But, hang on, it's quarter past seven in the evening. The chemist is closed. And, on cue, the bellowers appear in my field of vision, and they turn out to be 'young people', a boy on a bike and a boy and a girl with a backpack on the pavement.

But they sounded exactly like the morning chorus drug addicts. My brilliant conclusion - that the drug addicts are actually just stuck in permanent arrested development. No wonder they seek escape in oblivion. I shudder at the thought of being trapped forever as my silly teenage self.

Ford Madox Ford Meets Oz Commercial TV

I do wonder what the author of Parade's End would think about his narrative being interrupted by the Lotto draw. I also wonder how interested the Channel Nine audience will be in the adventures of Christopher Tietjens:

Sorry

I apologise to any commenters who find the word recognition thing annoying. I find the word recognition thing annoying too, but I've had to put it in thanks to a persistent pest called hajjundumrah who, despite the name, appears to deal entirely in epoxy coating, concreting et cetera, and operates in the Sydney area. I should avoid them at all costs. They must have too little to do if they are wasting their time trying to advertise on this blog.