Something un-English

WE HAVE OUR last-Monday-of-month dinner at one of our local hostelries; I play safe and order soup for starters, and then fish and chips and mushy peas.

And oh, dear me, what a mistake the latter dish turns out to be!

The fish resembles nothing that I can identify - it's unpleasant in flavour, tough and rather stringy.

"Is everything all right for you?" the waitress asks.

And of course I'm far too English and polite to complain. In any case I don't like to make a fuss in front of our friends and maybe become an embarrassment to them.

"Fine," I say with a tight smile. Well, at least the mushy peas taste okay.

Compare this with Mr P's attitude.

He too is dining out the other evening with his wife - not at the same pub, but a nearby one.

He too is eating fish and chips.

"Is everything all right for you?" asks his waitress.

"No, it's not!" says Mr P, bluntly. He points out that the fish is badly over-cooked, while the batter is actually soggy. Moreover, the tartare sauce tastes vaguely of disinfectant. "And where's the salad that's supposed to come with it?" he demands.

The waitress doesn't know what to do - she's completely at a loss. She mutters something about nobody else complaining...

"I don't care," says Mr P, politely but firmly, brooking no nonsense of this kind. "I'm complaining!"

The young woman scuttles off, and he hears no more about it until he comes to pay.

"Did you tell the chef what I said?" Mr P asks.

"Yes," says the girl, weakly. "He just said, 'Oh'."

"'Oh'? Is that all? 'Oh'?" Mr P is becoming a indignant. He points to the bill. "I will pay this," he says, in his strictest, schoolmasterish tone, "but it's the last time I'm coming here. And I'm going to warn everybody about how I've been treated. So it's not just my custom you've lost, but a lot of my friends won't come either."

And it's at this stage that the girl burst into tears...

"She was totally thrown by this situation," says Mr P to us, relating the story. "Clearly she hadn't been trained to deal with it. She's in tears and now I don't know what to do. I can't cope either... We just came out for what we hoped would be a pleasant evening meal - and now this!"

I remark that complaining is a very un-English thing to do, and it's no wonder that the girl didn't know how to cope.

"Well, maybe we should start becoming a bit more un-English," says Mr P.

I have to say I do rather agree with him. Without complaining nothing is likely to improve, ever. Things will just drift along.

All the same, though, I'm not sure whether politeness - or maybe it's cowardice - will still prevail with me; maybe I'm just too English!

Ringo's seat

I'M SITTING IN Ringo's seat. I know it's his because there's a gold plaque behind me with his name engraved on it.

Next to me is George's place, then Paul's, and in the corner, John's.

We're in the back room of the White Star pub on Liverpool's Button Street, just around the corner from the old Cavern Club - the original entrance of which is still there.

From the memorabilia on the wall, I gather this room was where the lads used to escape to when they'd had enough of their fans.

You can't visit this city without encountering Beatles nostalgia - love 'em or hate 'em, they are here, part of the warp and weave of the place.

And somehow this nostalgia gives our visit here an extra and unexpected dimension.

It's not that I was ever a screaming fan of the Fab Four, but I did grow up with them, with their music.

I was still at school when their early hits came out and I'd been at work for three years by the time the group broke up - they provided the some of the songs that formed the background to my teenage years.

Of the lads themselves, I was always fond of their easy charm and disarming humour - which I now realise, of course, are very characteristic traits of Scousers generally.

So yes, I did enjoy our short visit to Liverpool - leaving aside other cultural wonders of the Albert Dock and the Tate gallery - if for no other reason than because I sat in Ringo's seat.

Gamut of moods

WATCHING Wallander (BBC 1) this evening, I'm gripped by a kind of fascinating existential dread; I mean you just know that things are going to end badly.

The other thing that strikes me is that the programme seems to be an extended advert for Volvo cars.

I'm not sure just how much I enjoy this detective series - indeed at times I'm quite bored with it - nevertheless somehow I can't look away, I have to keep watching.

Anyhow, this highlight of the evening apart, I have to say I feel somewhat restless tonight; My Good Lady decides on an early night - very early, she's in bed by eight o'clock, aching and tired as she is...

I do my evening chores - a tidy-up in the kitchen, my Sunday evening shower before the central heating kicks itself off, then I read for a bit before coming on here.

While listening to Sounds of the Sixties in the BBC iPlayer I search the net for, and print out a copy of, a route planner for our coming trip to Liverpool this week, complete with maps.

Still restless, I listen to Ken Clarke's Jazz Greats, this week about the wonderful Humphrey Lyttleton who, I know, played in Morecambe many times.

And somehow, the story of this man's life makes my mood pick up.

And I reflect that I've experienced quite a gamut of emotions this evening - from the edgy gloom brought on by a moody Swedish cop to the life-affirming cheeriness of a brilliant jazzman.

On the whole I think I know which one I prefer.

A little more Olio

I HAVE SPOKEN ABOUT the Olio Cookery Book before (please see my posting for 25 December below), and the fun we've derived from some of the recipes in it.

My Good Lady brought the following soup recipe to my attention, and I suspect one would need a very hearty appetite indeed to tackle it!

Take 7 lbs of beef and 6 lbs of veal, and cut them into small pieces, lay side by side in a deep pan, and upon this a thin layer of sliced suet, and on top of that 4 onions cut in slices.

Over the whole is poured just 1 pint of water.

The pan is placed in the oven, and allowed to stand for 2 hours.

Then the pan is half filled with water, and allowed to boil gently, the scum being taken off continually.

After 2 hours more, add half a leg of mutton, half a hare or rabbit, 2 old chickens, 2 old partridges, all cut up, besides celery, parsley roots, cabbage, turnips and carrots, also cut in slices.

Then the pan is filled to the brim with water, and is allowed to boil for 5 hours.

The soup is then finished.

It is put aside to cool, so that all the fat forming a crust on the top can be taken off.

The soup is then poured through a fine wet napkin, and can be kept for days until it is used, provided that no salt has been added.

There is no mention of how many servings this Olio soup is meant to provide but it's reassuring to see that it can be kept for a few days!

A blessing in disguise?

WE HAVE A RARE FLUTTER on the National Lottery this weekend and win the grand sum of £10. Not exactly a life-changing amount, but as they say, better than a smack in the face with a wet kipper. And it will at least buy a couple rounds of drinks at the Pub.

Thing is, though, I sometimes wonder about this getting rich business - you know, winning the £7 million jackpot - and what sort of effect it might have.

I have to confess to a certain ambivalence about it.

Oh yes, undoubtedly having a little money tucked away for a rainy day would certainly keep financial insecurity from one's door.

But at the same time, having too much money - and coming upon it suddenly, as in a big lottery win - might have a detrimental effect on one's health.

I was talking to Steve R about it one day - he's a Friday regular in the Geriatrics' Corner, and as a successful roofer he's not short of a bob or two himself. I mean, just look at the £75,000 Jaguar he drives...

Anyhow, Steve reckons that people who aren't used to wealth go a little crazy when it lands on them like that. Oh yes, no doubt great at first - all their dreams can come true: the little cottage in the country, the foreign holidays, something for the kids, nice car, expensive clothes, the food and the wine...

But then Steve says the novelty wears off. City dwellers rarely transplant successfully to country cottages - not for any length of time, anyway. Rural living isn't all it's cracked up to being.

As for holidays, well how many can you take without suffering from permanent jet lag?

The kids end up spoilt and lazy - after all, why should they work when they know they'll inherit a fortune?

As for the rest, well how many cars can you drive, how many clothes do you need, how many meals can you eat in a day?

And bit by bit the dream turns sour. You have all this money but it's bringing you no joy at all.

"So you end up turning to drink, like I did," says Steve, "You pour the money down your throat - and end up needing a liver transplant, like me."

Steve is sworn off the booze now - has to be.

"At least you've got a nice car," I point out to him.

"It's just a magnet for thieves," he answers.

Reflecting on this conversation, maybe I should regard winning only £10 a blessing in disguise!

Reading food

I'VE BEEN SOMEWHAT indisposed lately with my annual cold.

Even now, you find me crouched before the laptop with a blanket over my shoulders, a tissue in my sleeve and a hot lemon tea by my side.

Still, no complaints; as colds go this is definitely on mild side. I even manage to do this evening's dinner of sea bass en papillote - quite nice, although the fennel bed somewhat overpowered the delicacy of the fish flavours.

Moreover, the cold hasn't stopped me from enjoying my book, a collection of journalistic pieces by that doyenne of modern cookery writers, Elizabeth David.

(It's been said if you want to learn about cookery just read her French Provincial Cooking and all your questions will be answered.)

The volume* I'm reading at present, though, is her views on a whole range of subjects, from the hazards of eating out in provincial France and Italy to recipes on how best to create the perfect omelette, and includes reviews of books by the likes of Marcel Boulestin and Edouard de Pomiane - hugely influential writers both.

The thing I love about Elizabeth David, though, is that she teaches without lecturing; her sheer love of food in all its diversity carries you along; she makes it fun.

She's happy to prick the balloon of pomposity of many of the cooks of her day - she was writing mainly in the 1960s and 70s - and much of what she says could be applied to some celebrity TV chefs of today.

Anyhow, this is my reading for a cold. Some people like thrillers, or detective mysteries or adventure stories... Me, I like reading about food and cooking.

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* An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (Penguin Books, 1986)

The New Year begins...

ON TELLY, WE WATCH THE New Year's fireworks from around the world - the ones on Sydney Harbour Bridge and in London being two of the most impressive.

And yes, to be honest, it's with a sigh of relief that we feel 2009 slipping away into the past. Others of our friends have had a much worse year than we, but even so we've become a little punch drunk at the seer number of shocks and bad news that we've received in this last year.

Moreover, we're pleased, too, to be putting the last of festive season behind us and hopefully getting back to some kind of normality.

As for 2010, we've much to look forward to: sometime in January we hope to go to Liverpool for a couple of days and to see the Mark Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern; then in May we've got our holiday on the French Riviera and maybe a little later in the summer we'll be doing something special to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.

Meanwhile, we've got lots of tasty new recipes to try courtesy of our new Raymond Blanc cook book - a mutual Christmas present.

Yes, lets hope that 2010 will be a great year for us all.