Free at last!

I THINK TODAY is the first day I feel completely clear of stomach upset since contracting that nasty bout of food poisoning last week. And what a relief it is!

I was fearing that I’d be going off on our holidays next week with a lingering queasiness and a vague sense of nausea.

Previous encounters with bad food have sometimes affected me for months.

(Memo to myself: Avoid the shellfish whilst in France!)

It’s springtime - the time of year when an old man’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of roast lamb. Unfortunately, it’s still a little early for that.

My Good Lady tells me we have some salt marsh lamb in the freezer – last year’s of course – which she’s happy to do for me for my big six-oh birthday on Wednesday; but on the whole I think I’d rather stay with plan A and go for the salmon en papillote.

By way of consolation, then, this evening, on our last-Monday-of-the-month meal, I opt for the usually excellent lamb henry at our local village hostelry, washed down with a good, honest pint of Lancaster Bomber bitter. Excellent!

(Memo to myself: Look out for agneau henri whilst in France!)

And it’s wonderful to feel I can enjoy my meal without the dreaded churned up sensation in the stomach that’s been my lot for the last week.

Free at last!

Feelin' queasy

IT’S AN ODD thing, food poisoning.

I mean you know pretty well when you’ve got it, but not necessarily what’s caused it.

My Good Lady and I both seem to have gone down with it – she rather worse off than me.

With me it’s more like a gippy tum; it started on Friday just as we sat down to our evening meal – a Singapore-style oyster omelette – and all weekend I’ve been feeling vaguely unsettled and slightly nauseous.

It hasn’t affected my appetite, though, nor my sense of taste.

Sadly, this is not the case with MGL; she’s gone down with it today (Sunday), suddenly feeling uncomfortable just as she came back from church.

She complains of feeling seriously nauseous, so much so that she even has to go for an afternoon lie down.

She manages little of her dinner, one of my kipper and egg kedgerees, which she usually enjoys. She complains that all she can taste is salt, while the wine, a rather good Sancerre, is just overpoweringly gooseberry-ish. She manages little of either.

And immediately after dinner she goes to bed.

But that’s not the worst, a little later she has to go to the bathroom and there she’s rather violently sick.

I put her back to bed, and she seems settled for the moment.

The question is, though, what’s caused all this. Most of the meals we’ve had in the last few days have seemed innocent enough. The shellfish in the omelette might have been just a little off, but I was already feeling a bit queasy before I ate that.

The only suspect meal we’ve had was the stir-fry I made us last Monday – a fragrant beef with peppers thing, in which I overdid the soy sauces – but that’s nearly a week ago…

Anyhow, if we’re no better in a day or two I think we’re going to have to see the doctor. A serious bout of food poisoning – if indeed that’s what it is – can sometimes last for weeks.

Morecambe

AS IT’S SUCH a fine spring day, My Good Lady asks me, as a little birthday treat, to take her along for a stroll along Morecambe promenade and especially to see the area around the old Midland Hotel and the stone jetty out to the old lighthouse.

They’ve done it up rather nicely, I must say.

The celebrated hotel has been completely restored, and we’re due to attend a wedding reception here next year.

The Art Deco building in fact looks a bit like a giant folly – a piece of whimsy on the part of its builders – a white concrete ship moored permanently at the edge of Morecambe sands.

Local papers have described the place as Morecambe’s great white hope – the beginning of the old seaside town’s modernisation and renovation.

Morecambe certainly needs it; compared to other such north-west towns like Blackpool and Southport, it really is in a sad pass.

This is a great pity, because Morecambe’s location, overlooking the wide expanse of the bay and the distant views of the Lakeland fells beyond, is really quite wonderful.

They’ve made a good start with the Midland and the stone jetty behind it, but there’s still much to be done with the rest of the town if it’s ever to compete with other English holiday destinations.

I just hope someone’s has the vision – and the money – to pull it off.

Memories of '68

I HAVE TO SAY, Les Misérables certainly made an impact on me; all week I've been humming tunes from the show and turning the story over in my mind.

I'm there again, in the theatre, reliving the fight on the barricades along with the students, and so real is it, I'm almost ducking the bullets and feeling both grief and rage at the sight of my comrades falling.

I was in Paris in 1968, an accidental tourist in the aftermath of the student uprising; I was a student then myself, and I couldn't help but be swept up in some of their idealism and passion.

In the university cafeteria, in cafés and in pokey little bedsits, drinking cheap wine out of bottles and in the fug of smoke from foul-smelling, but intoxicating, Gauloise cigarettes, we discussed - everything. Politics, art, sex - everything was up for debate.

It was a cleaner, fairer, better world we were aspiring too - naively, perhaps, but with faith and hope in our hearts.

And I too had my brushes with the authorities - if you were young, you were hassled by the cops, les flics, almost at every turn.

So you can understand how I can identify with the students on the barricades in Les Miz - and how that whole story has brought back memories of '68.

And I'm left wondering, where do I stand now?

Certainly, I'm not a rebel - I was never comfortable in that role, even back then; I was happy to debate and argue, but I'm afraid it was always the blood of others that was shed in the demonstations.

Maybe it was lack of conviction on my part. Maybe simple cowardice. I don't know.

I console myself, now, with something Dr Martin Luther King once said: "The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice."

That's my prayer and I offer it for all those who have died on barricades, the world over ...

Oh yes, Les Miz is so much more that just a show!