I’m a handy chap in the kitchen

I have always enjoyed cooking. I don’t just mean knocking up the odd meal of fish fingers and chips (although the time I did do that I was accused of burning the fish fingers). No, I mean the real thing.

The reason I probably enjoyed it can be pinned down to two things – I enjoyed the creativity of trying new recipes and I didn’t do it often enough to get bored.

It began with baking when I was about 10 or 11. I tried my hand at a sponge cake – you really can’t go wrong with a sponge cake.

It comes down to equal portions, whether you use one egg, for a single sponge cake to be iced, or two or three, depending on size, for a Victoria sandwich.

Flour to the weight of the eggs, same with butter or margarine and caster sugar. A dash of vanilla essence and Bob’s your uncle.

Once cooled, ice it and sprinkle on the sugar strands or vermicelli.

From there it led to butterfly cakes and then ginger biscuits.

Oddly enough I’m not keen on spicy foods, hot chilli and all that gubbins. I do like ginger in my biscuits though. Making my own meant I could up the ante on the ginger. I used to use two teaspoons instead of one, the ones I made last week had five teaspoons and I reckon one more for good measure wouldn’t do any harm.

It wasn’t long before I was trying out different recipes and getting quite daring.

Like most men I preferred cooking fancy meals rather than the daily dinners. I think it’s that male ego thing.

I did do a couple of weeks of proper cooking though. That was Christmas week 1978. My son was born on the 19th and Marion wasn’t allowed to do much more than get out of bed in the morning and rest on the sofa all day.

We were actually on strike at the time (now that definitely is another story) but my mother-in-law was there for when I had to be on picket duty and, as FoC, at strike HQ at the local Labour Club.

It was during that week I was accused of burning the fish fingers – my accusers were my daughters, aged six and four.

They certainly didn’t complain about any other meals that week, including a full-on Christmas dinner, my parents had helped out with food parcels.

Apart from that I did occasionally do a full meal but, as my wife has always pointed out, I tended to use enough pans to feed a battalion and spent hours with the preparation.

Some years later, when the children were grown up, I cooked a proper spaghetti with meat balls and my own reduced tomato sauce for it made from fresh tomatoes.

It was all done from scratch including making the meat balls and the sauce. They all agreed it tasted great but said there wasn’t enough sauce and asked for tomato ketchup.

I don’t know about prophets being without honour in their own land (John 4.44) but this chef was left without honour in his own kitchen.

Once we settled back into the UK in the late 80s I tailed off the cooking but did stick with the baking. For the last 30 years or so it has become a family tradition that I make and ice the Christmas cake and make the Christmas puddings.

For the last 20 years I have baked my own bread, although now I need a stand mixer with a dough hook for most of the kneading as my hands aren’t up to 20 minutes of kneading.

I tend to use the best ingredients from the flour to the sea salt and a good hemp oil in place of butter and bake at least once a week.

What I still cannot understand is why, within days of the lockdown, strong white bread flour was almost impossible to purchase.

Did all these people told to stay home suddenly take up baking bread? Or was it the mass impulse to stock up anything that might run out, even if you don’t need it.

Luckily I always keep in enough flour to last a couple of months and had stocked up just two weeks before the lockdown began.

One of my daughters was getting a weekly shop for us and every week I would put bread flour on the list and every week my daughter told me she couldn’t find any, no matter where she looked.

Have we turned into a nation of bakers? I doubt it.

I wonder how much of that flour will be pushed to the back of the cupboard and turn up in a few years’ time wriggling with weevils. They don’t add anything to the flavour you know.

Let’s hope we can get back to normal soon and those of us who have always enjoyed baking can buy the right ingredients.

I can’t even get chocolate drops in plain, milk and white, for my fabled triple chocolate chunk cookies.

White chocolate and milk chocolate buttons just don’t do the business.

A Calvinist in Love

by Jack Clemo

I will not kiss you, country fashion,

By hedgesides where

Weasel and hare

Claim kinship with our passion.

I care no more for fickle moonlight:

Would rather see

Your face touch me

Under a claywork dune-light.

I want no scent or softness round us

When we embrace;

We could not trace

Therein what beauties bound us.

This bare clay-pit is truest setting

For love like ours:

No bed of flowers

But sand-ledge for our petting.

The Spring is not our mating season:

The lift of sap

Would but entrap

Our souls and lead to treason.

This truculent gale, this pang of winter

Awake our joy,

For they employ

Moods that made Calvary splinter.

We need no vague and dreamy fancies:

Care not to sight

The Infinite

In transient necromancies.

No poetry on earth can fasten

Its vampire mouth

Upon our youth:

We know the sly assassin.

We cannot fuse with fallen Nature’s

Our rhythmic tide:

It is allied

With laws beyond the creatures.

Nowhere to Nowhere

by BJ Omanson

When they sold off the farm she took the child

and took a bus out of town — as for him,

with everyone gone, with everything grim;

he opened a pint of bourbon, piled

pictures, letters and clothes in the yard,

doused them with kerosene, struck a match

and watched as they burnt to ashes, watched

and worked on his whiskey, working hard.

The next morning he caught an outbound freight

heading god-knows-where and he didn’t care —

he was down to nothing, a gypsy’s fare —

down to a rusty tin cup and a plate,

dice and a bible, a bedroll and fate,

down to a bone-jarring ride on a train

through country dying and desperate for rain,

running nowhere to nowhere and running late.

Hair and gone with a quick snip

This afternoon I feel like Samson, not when he slew the lion with the jawbone of an ass but as he was after Delilah gave him a swift back and sides and robbed him of all his strength.

Yes, I have had my first haircut since lockdown began. I didn’t even have to leave the house and risk the dreaded Covid19.

As she has done for years, my darling wife Marion sat me in the kitchen and with scissors, comb and a hand sprayer she took great joy in letting my curly locks fall to the floor.

I could have had it cut at any time. Marion would normally say: “Isn’t it about time you had a haircut?” and I would find an excuse to put it off to the next day. After a week she would get her way and my collar length hair would be trimmed.

It’s not that I don’t like having a haircut. For over a decade we used the same barber’s in Bedford Street, in Rhyl, just up the road from Dad’s shop and our home.

As a five-year-old I would be popped onto the child’s seat which was rested on the arms of the barber’s chair and then I would get the standard short back and sides.

In my teens the gaps between the haircuts got longer and now I would say: “Just above the collar and off the ears but leave the thickness.”

Then came the time when I was working and just let it grow for a while taking me from this:

to this:

The second picture was taken when I played Danny, the charming but psychotic young killer at the centre of Emlyn Williams’ play Night Must Fall.

As you might notice the thick dark curls of hair fell down well past my collar and the sideburns could have made Noddy Holder jealous.

I kept the length, with just an occasional trim, until I was about 19 and then I just got bored and had it cut back to the “just off the collar” again.

Just as well I suppose because in 1969 there was another change in my career and a more “ordinary” style of haircut and fashion became desirable. More on that at a later date.

Meanwhile back to the hair.

I had never been that bothered about fashion in clothes or hair. Very much like my attitude to cars which I have always seen as a means to an end.

I suppose I did go through a hippy phase but it did have to be mixed with more conservative clothing when I was working. After all the magistrates might not have appreciated a “wild child”, with flowery shirts and a bandana, sitting in the press box.

Maybe this was all part of my general attitude to life and my belief you should not judge people on their first appearance. Also a “normal” hairstyle and style of dress meant I was just another “ordinary bloke” when it came to interviewing people.

That can often put them at their ease if you have an interview which might put the person you are talking to on edge.

My accent seems to blend in as well. In the north I was always taken as being from “down South” and southerners pinned me down as “a bit north”.

Very occasionally, because people take offence if you go over the top, I might lapse into an accent similar to the person I am talking to.

Acting experience can come in very useful at times.

Meanwhile we’ll just have to see how the hair grows this time. It certainly won’t be as soft and wavy as the pictures above and I doubt it’ll get long enough to keep my shoulders warm.

Still it’s cooler for this hot weather.

Still I Rise

by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies.

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and just like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got goldmines

Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

A Death Song

by William Morris

What cometh here from east to west awending?

And who are these, the marchers stern and slow?

We bear the message that the rich are sending

Aback to those who bade them wake or know.

Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,

But one and all if they must dusk the day.

We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,

They bade us bide our leisure for our bread;

We craved to speak to tell our woeful learning;

We come back speechless, bearing back our dead.

Not one, not one, but thousands must they slay,

But one and all if they must dusk the day.

They will not learn; they have no ears to hearken.

They turn their faces from the eyes of fate;

Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken.

But, lo! this dead man knocking at the gate.

Not one, not one, but thousands must they slay,

But one and all if they must dusk the day.

Here lies the sign that we shall break our prison;

Amidst the storm he won a prisoner’s rest;

But in the cloudy dawn the sun arisen

Brings us our day of work to win the rest.

Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,

But one and all if they would dusk the day.

From Moggies to Jags and more

I have always liked cars. Note well the terminology – “liked” NOT “loved” because I am not a petrol head seeking to gain an image through the vehicle I use to get around.

Cars are a useful means of getting around. Faster and safer than a pushbike. Faster and safer than a motor scooter (not open top sports cars when we talk about safety). Maybe not faster but definitely safer than a motor bike.

When I graduated from a pushbike, actually a drop-handled Viking with a front frame clip for my hockey stick, to my scooter (which I did sell and buy a sort of moped-style machine which had belonged to footballer Mike England’s father) I was still just waiting to pass my test and swap two wheels for four (five if you count the steering wheel and six if you include the spare wheel).

I had been transported in cars before I could drive myself, ranging from the Bullnose Morris my parents had when I was very young to a Vauxhall Viva then a Vauxhall Vector.

My scooter and moped were a beginning to my independence. With them I did not need to wait for someone to give me a lift or use public transport.

As I have already told you my first car was a green Morris Minor, 1955 vintage, which I bought from my sister for £50 and when I wanted something different sold on to a friend for £50.

It did me good service, especially when I was driving to work in Holywell.

In the summer of 1968 my mate Roger Steele and I used to drive out to the villages for a drink as our favourite pubs in Rhyl used to be crammed full of holidaymakers.

We used to take it in turns to drive, not because of any drink/drive worries (nobody really bothered about that at the time, unless someone was so drunk they could hardly walk) but just to make a change.

My mate Roger – gone but not forgotten.

We would vary the pubs we went to depending on whether we wanted drink and darts; drink and snooker; or drink and dominoes. What an exciting time in the swinging sixties up in North Wales.

One night we had been out in my car and came back by a different route to usual. We were on a country lane and I suddenly realised that straight ahead was just a muddy lane as the road took a hard right turn.

Instead of slowing down, stopping and reversing I tried to take the corner at the last moment and skidded on a pile of leaves ending up with the rear nearside wheel stuck in the ditch.

We both got out, Roger had to slide over to my side as the passenger door was right by the ditch, and studied the situation.

Cars from the 50s were solid and even a Morris Minor was a heavyweight. With the rear passenger wheel in the ditch and the front one on the edge there was little chance of the two of us shifting it.

Then we noticed a car coming up the muddy lane and we flagged the driver down.

It was a young couple in the car and the man got out and had a look, using a torch. In looking around he came close to both of us and eventually shone his torch on us.

There was instant recognition as he said: “You’re Nigel’s young brother. I’ll tell you what, as you clearly haven’t been drinking I’ll give you a lift home and you can arrange for someone to pick the car up tomorrow.”

We were too surprised to say much and accepted the lift.

My brother and some friends were out by the back gates when we rolled up and Nigel greeted our rescuer – and his companion.

He drove off and Nigel said he and his friends would come out now to get the car. Nigel, Roger, myself and three or four others got into two cars and headed off.

On the way Nigel asked if I knew who our Good Samaritan was and I told him about the inspection of the vehicle and the recognition of me as his brother.

I also told him that the car came up to the road from the lane and the driver had said he was only going to help because we hadn’t been drinking.

Nigel laughed and said: “More likely he didn’t want you to take too much notice of his companion and where they had been.

“That was NOT his girlfriend and he has recently completed his training for the police force. If he thought you hadn’t been drinking he would be too stupid even for the police force.”

With the whole gang of us we managed to get the car out of the ditch then Nigel’s friends “escorted” us home.

I only had one other minor accident with the Moggie and that was one Friday night at the yacht club. I was reversing and caught the rear light cluster on an empty beer barrel.

It was raining and the lights were fused. Roger did a running repair, taping over the broken cluster and jerry rigging the lights into the ignition.

I was driving down that night to Oxford with a couple of others for the wedding of a friend the next day.

The jerry-rigged system worked well. At dawn I stopped in a lay-by and disconnected the lights, before heading back on the Saturday night I reconnected it.

The following week I sold the car to a friend who was aware of the broken light.

Cambridge A50 built like a tank.

I then bought a black 1955 Austin Cambridge A50 for £50 and was back on the road without a break.

If the Moggie was a solid vehicle then the Cambridge was more along the lines of a Centurion tank. It certainly proved its worth one winter’s day in 1968.

I was driving to Holywell on the top road. It was icy and it had been snowing earlier in the morning.

The car caught on a patch of ice and slid across the road, over the icy grass verge and hit the iron fence around a field. It was one of those fences made up of flat iron uprights with solid iron rods going through.

There was a shallow, narrow ditch and one wheel was in it. The front bumper had hit one of the flat iron uprights.

I couldn’t reverse out because it was too icy but luckily for me there was a council depot opposite where they stored heavy duty vehicles for snow clearance, gritting, diggers etc.

There were men working there and they dragged me out with a pick-up truck and didn’t even expect a reward.

The car was fine, one of the over riders on the bumper had a minor dent and was fractionally out of position.

As I said – built like a tank.

It was also a comfortable ride inside with a leather bench seat in the front as well as the back. The gear change was on the wheel and the handbrake under the dash. This made for a cosy front seat when parked and saying goodnight to a girlfriend.

I had an accident on ice again a couple of years later but that was on a mountain pass in Austria with a straight drop over the side of about 500 feet.

Which is another story.

The A50 came with a car radio but I swapped that for a radio-cassette player which meant I could play the music I wanted and when I was driving on my own that was quite often classical.

There were many more cars to come over the future, Toyotas, another Austin, Volvos, Renaults and more.

While I was working in Oman I used to test drive cars every couple of weeks including wadi-bashing in a LandCruiser and in a top of the range Range Rover.

That’s all in the future, however.

My dream car would be a 1960 Mk II Jaguar or a 1950s Moggie. I wonder what that says about me.

Advice to the Grub Street Verse-writers

by Jonathan Swift

Ye poets ragged and forlorn,

Down from your garret haste;

Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born,

Not yet consign’d to paste;

I know a trick to make you thrive;

O, ’tis a quaint device;

Your still-born poems shall revive,

And scorn to wrap up spice.

Get all your verses printed fair,

Then let them well be dried;

And Curll must have a special care

To leave the margin wide.

Lend these to paper-sparing Pope;

And when he sets to write,

No letter with an envelope

Could give him more delight.

When Pope has fill’d the margins round,

Why then recall your loan;

Sell them to Curll for fifty pound,

And swear they are your own.