Come Dine With Me

Tags

Andrew Fairlie, Appellation Controlee, Come Dine with Me, Dexters, Gleneagles, Jamie Oliver, La Boheme, Lidl, Mr Bean, Nigella, Rachel Khoo, spatchcock, Swarovski

Another blast from past Suttonford Chronicles since I hadn’t many readers in 2012 when I first started writing as Candia…

Tristram spotted the advert in a shop window in Suttonford’s High Street.  It invited amateur chefs to apply to take part in the Channel 4 programme Come Dine With Me.

Tristram adored cooking, which was just as well, as his wife rarely participated in the activity.  However, he did not dare to contemplate reproducing any of his signature curries as, Clammie, his spouse, had been furious that the proprietor of Benares Balti had gazumped them in the bidding for their forever home.  A mere whiff of garam masala would send her into a vindaloo of a spleen-venting frenzy and so he would have to rely on his milder fusion cuisine.

He was apprehensive, but secretly delighted when his application was successful.  It wasn’t so much the winning of £1,000 that was important; it was national affirmation of his skills.  And it gave him the opportunity to re-visit his beloved Rachel Khoo programmes. (Why wouldn’t Clammie wear scarlet lipstick and fifties skirts?)

But who were the other contestants?

He discovered the answer soon enough, and, as usual, there was a potentially explosive mix:  Nigel Milford-Haven, an effete form teacher from St Birinus’ Middle School, who was an acolyte of Andrew Fairlie of Gleneagles fame; Gisela Boothroyd-Smythe, a parent of the legendary Suttonford delinquents, Juniper and John, and Melinda D’Oyly-Carter, an aromatherapist and masseuse who was committed to all things pink and fluffy.  She was very tactile, but tactless and preferred to be addressed as Mimi.

Tristram was of the Jamie Oliver Whack It In! school; Nigel, surprisingly, given his vocation, was not.  He favoured sourcing everything locally and his partner had a field of Dexters and a dubious connection to a pig farmer, who smoked his bacon regularly.  Gisela loved bondage cookery.

What is that? I hear you ask, Dear Reader.

It meant that since she could neither control her husband, nor her offspring, she trussed fowl, spatch-cocked chicken and game and tied up joints ruthlessly. All her wine choices were Appellation Controlee.

Melinda, or Mimi, on the other hand, used vats of lubricious olive oil- extra vergine– ; oysters in season and thick-lipped moules in summer.  She over-used Coquilles St Jacques and sighed pneumatically, a la Nigella, as she lingeringly licked the backs of spoons.

Clammie wasn’t keen on having these strange self-publicists in Nutwood Cottage, but Tristram re-assured her that they would be confined to the kitchen and dining room.  With the cameras, it was a bit of a crush, however.  Mimi didn’t mind getting up close and personal with the cameraman, though, and wobbled nearly as much as the champagne jellies she had served to the others the previous evening.  She had deliberately placed her rhinestone-encrusted spectacles in his camera bag as an excuse to keep in contact.

Gisela was angry because her son had told his form teacher, the very one who was appearing on the programme, that his mother had cheated by tarting up a dessert from Lidl.

Nigel went on to stuff a goose with a Cox’s Pippin in the manner of Mr Bean’s preparation of his Christmas turkey.  He took exception to Mimi leaning over him, looking straight into the camera lens and pronouncing:  Ooh, Mr Milford-Haven: is that a tanker in your estuary or are you just pleased to see me? He insisted that this should be cut as viewing was before the watershed and half of his form would be watching.  He was right.  They were.  However, they were hoping that he would well and truly have his goose cooked.  So much for house loyalty.

When the cameraman came indoors from filming the frosty garden, Mimi took his hand and commented that it was frozen.  Cue for a snatch of La Boheme as background muzak, which was mainly lost on the great viewing public. Those that did recognise it, cringed at the cliché.

Oddly, Mimi won first prize.  As entertainment she had given her guests a pre-prandial massage – all except Gisela, who had been feeling unwell because of the overwhelmingly pink décor of the love-booth of a living room.  (What a contrast to the evening she had hosted, when everyone had been bowled over by gun dogs and had been told where to sit in ramrod chairs whilst being presented with offal, which was promptly fed to the canines under the table, as soon as her back was turned.)

Tristram’s meal was received with polite gratitude, but the others felt that his food technology was a little twee, like the choice of his children’s names.  The pugs snapped at the guests’ ankles at the start of the evening and Gisela was not impressed by their toy-like dimensions.  She liked a real dog that could work.

Nigel had worn a co -ordinating waistcoat and tie which matched the hues of his starter.  His food was deemed too fussy and poncey-a word which Tristram had not heard for a very long time.  He tried to encourage the teacher by joking that his main course had been ambi-Dextrous, but that the steak had been a little too pink for his taste.  He scored him an 8, to be kind.

It was a relief when it was all over and Clammie could access her drive again, without having to squeeze past Gisela’s Volvo.  She and Tristram and Gisela sent commiseration cards to Nigel.  After all, he would be writing their children’s end-of term reports in the very near future.

Melinda, aka Mimi, spent her £1,000 on a new pair of Swarovski-encrusted spectacles and a designer clutch purse, as the cameraman never did return the pair she had placed so carefully in his camera bag.

 

Sin Tax

Tags

adjunct, affixation, bound morpheme, compound subject, conjunction, declension, grammar poem, imperative, main clause, marriage poem, subordination

Marriage was revered as a conjunction;

two main clauses fused by a word like and.

God-joined pairs could not, without compunction,

split an infinity forged by a band.

A compound subject was most’s intention,

instead of being the mere complement

of a life sentence (with much declension).

No male nor female, said the Testament:

the adjunct was as Christ loved the Church, so

husbands ought to love their wives as their own

bodies…but that was centuries ago:

things don’t change through imperatives alone.

Most wives still suffer subordination:

bound morphemes.  Eve’s sin tax?- affixation.

St Kilda

Tags

fulmar, prehensile toe, St Kilda, Stone Age sheep, Ultima Thule

Beyond the map, for months inaccessible,

except to nesting puffins on sheer stacks.

Once fearless, prehensile-toed men, able

to grasp guano-stained granite; to steal chicks,

abseiled, avoiding foul seagull spittle,

with straw ropes, to find food.  They fixed strong cleats

into bare rock, until the press prattle

brought voyeuristic tourist hordes in boats.

They wondered how men lived by sun and tide;

how those who’d never seen a rabbit, bee,

snake, apple, hard cash, earned their daily bread,

herding Stone Age sheep around the bleak bays,

anointing newborns’ umbilical cords

with vile, regurgitated fulmar oil,

which lit their candles.  They looked backwards

to William IV, before they set sail

for forest work (who’d never seen a tree).

Disease-rid, the surviving thirty-six

were taken from their archipelago

of Ultima Thule, to be shown like freaks

in geographical publications.

Now they wore tweed and lay in feather beds,

conformed to the Victorian fashion,

dictated by a different choice of needs.

But, in their souls they heard the clash of waves,

knowing they’d built their houses on the sand.

Whenever they were told that Jesus Saves,

their thoughts wandered to their Promised Land.

In the Bleak Midwinter

Tags

credit crunch, Gordon Brown, In the Bleak Midwinter, iPod, MFI, Richard Dawkins

Juniper’s mum reminded me that I had some old poems lurking in my filing cabinet.  I found this one from a couple of years ago.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much to update, except for trying to find a rhyme for Cameron or Osborne- more difficult than Brown!

In the Bleak Midwinter

 

In the bleak midwinter

Credit Crunch took hold.

People stole scrap iron;

lost their faith in gold.

Stocks had fallen, down and down,

down and down,

in the bleak midwinter of

Gordon Brown.

Cash no longer feeds us;

debt is not sustained.

All our baubles flee away;

Christmas cheer is feigned.

In the bleak midwinter,

our stable block won’t sell;

recession has zapped MFI-

“Woolies” gone as well.

Enough for those with bonuses,

pampered left and right.

Heaven and Earth are moved for them:

Might is always Right!

Enough for those connected

to people at the top-

celebrities and braying fools-

all who live to shop.

Richard Dawkins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Angels and archangels

gather round the crib.

Richard Dawkins tries to say

that it’s all a fib.

Kids crave animation,

inheritances cashed.

The baby’s been aborted

and the Wise Men trashed.

What can we offer,

poor as we are?

If fuel prices rocket,

we’ll sacrifice our car.

Taliban and terrorist

could give up their creed,

If Westerners renounced their pride

and their mordant greed.

In the bleak midwinter,

frosty wind made moan.

Someone left a message-

not on an ansafone.

It wasn’t on an iPod

and had a strange typeface:

it spoke of His investment

in the human race.

Max Gate

Tags

Emma Hardy, Florence Hardy, Keats' grave, Max Gate, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Thomas Hardy

Juniper’s mum remembered that she had written a poem about Thomas Hardy some years ago.  Her daughter’s literary outburst and foray into lit crit from the previous day provoked her into looking for her old exercise book from the 1990s, in which she had scribbled some thoughts to keep her sane when Juniper and John were evil toddlers.  She found it in the desk drawer, re-read it and thought that she might share it shyly with me.  Over a coffee in Costamuchamoulah she brought it out of her designer handbag and asked me what I thought of it.  I said that it would interest some of my followers, so could I share it with you?  Here it is:

Emma’s hands sweep over ivory keys,

mimicking ill winds from Conquer Barrow.

He fiddles while Mrs Patrick Campbell

zephyrs in muslin through the drawing room,

admired by Virginia Woolf, Sassoon,

yet creating one more annoying draught.

Curtains twitch as if Snowdove will appear

miraculously from the railway line.

Florence sighs, surrounded by those dark pines.

She clears her throat with some difficulty.

Upstairs the little old wood table creaks

and the calendar is set: 7^th March-

the date Emma came riding towards him.

Violets from Keats’ grave fade behind the glass

of his pillbox. Wessex whines in the hall

as the Prince of Wales throws his waistcoat down.

Nut Walk’s carpet of wood anenomes

is curiously flattened in places.

The maid says truthfully, He’s not at home,

as the door in the wall noiselessly shuts.

A Book By Its Covers

Tags

Apocalypse, Blind Date, Bowdlerise, Derren Brown, G Wilson Knight, John Carey, Midsummer Night's Dream, paintball, rude mechanicals

Juniper came home and threw her school satchel onto the kitchen floor.  She had been behaving a little better since her mother had sent her and her younger brother to Salisbury Plain for a Derren Brown-type Apocalypse experience where they were hypnotised and had to learn altruism instead of going paint-balling as they had thought.

However, her mischievous nature resurfaced as she complained:

Mum, we’re reading a book in school about

bottoms; a woman who bonks a donkey.

They all take drugs, swap partners, sleep.. I shout,

Trendy ideology..a junkie

English teacher!  I’m going to complain

about giving teenagers such obscene

reading matter. I’m glad that I refrain;

it dawns on me that Midsummer Night’s Dream

is what she’s referring to.  They just lay

on a floral bank, I elucidate,

and fell asleep.

Well, that’s what they all say!

she retorts.  She thinks of it as Blind Date

with Bestiality.  Maybe her view

of rude mechanicals-(geddit?)-fairies,

is right and critically overdue;

should rank with G Wilson Knight’s, John Carey’s.

This is worse than any poppering pear.

Pyramus, Thisbe should be X-rated.

Bowdlerise Arden, lest it prove a snare.

How can Shakespeare be exonerated?

I turn around; cooly say, Whatever.

I suppose you thought that very clever.

Ground Control to Major Tom

Tags

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Brassica, Brian Cox, Castor and Pollux, Celestrion Neximage, Ground Control to Major Tom, Pan's People, planisphere watch, Red Giants, Red Letter Days, Richard Branson, Sarah Brightman, SpaceShipTwo, Theo Paphitis, Tiffany Multi Drop pendant, White Dwarves, Yellow Cafe Van Gogh

Brassica had peeked.  She knew that she shouldn’t ought to have, but she had.  And now she would need to pretend that everything was a surprise on Xmas morning.  She felt ashamed that she had doubted Cosmo.  All right, he was limited in his imagination re/ most of the presents he had hidden in the observatory, but when she had sneaked a look in one little box which he had not yet wrapped, she saw a Tiffany Multi-Drop Diamond Stars pendant in platinum, which she knew was earmarked for her.

She was also humbled by the realisation that all those mystery boxes had contained copies of a book that he had written- From Red Giants to White Dwarves , by Cosmo Willoughby.  There was a dedication to his darling and infinitely patient wife, Brassica and to his heavenly twins, Castor and Pollux, without whose support all of this would not have been possible.

(She was glad that I had dissuaded her from bidding for a diamond ring at the auction, she told me later.  All things come to those who wait.)  Some of us just have to wait longer than others, I mused, philosophically.

Rummaging around a little more she found presents for the twins: a Celestion Skyscout Personal Planetarium; DVDs of Prof Brian Cox’s The Wonders of the Solar System; Laser Stars which would project stars and floating blue clouds onto any room through holographic technology; an Oregon Full Function Weather Station WM R80, which included  monitoring of moon phases;  3 Celestrion Neximage Telescope Camera watches for residents of the Northern Hemisphere only, presumably to track what constellations were available for watching; Starry Night Software from www.starrynightstore.com/stniso.html.  There was also a lovely framed Van Gogh print of the yellow cafe with the stars overhead and a retro CD of Vincent.

Oh dear!  What was she going to get him?  Maybe she could look into a promissory note to send him off as one of the first space tourists?  She had better Google Richard Branson and SpaceShipTwo. Oh yes, wasn’t Sarah Brightman down to go on one of these trips?  She would check her out too.  But Andrew Lloyd Webber’s divorce settlement may have helped the erstwhile member of Pan’s People to stump up the $200,000, or more, fee.  And, she had heard that there was a queue of 80,000 people waiting to leave Planet Earth.  So, maybe she would just organise a zero gravity Red Letter Experience for him, if they did an astronaut one, or if the business was still extant.  She seemed to remember that somebody had mentioned that the company was now owned jointly by Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones.

Heavens above!  She had better get a move on.

Carefully replacing every piece of packaging, she crept out of the observatory and carefully padlocked the door.  Then she went into the kitchen cupboard, found a duster and went back and wiped the doorhandle.

Che sera, sera

Tags

Alan Bennett, dwarf planet, Ginevra, Gregory's Girl, linguine, porcini, psi field, Sandy Island, Stone tape theory, Tiger-Lily

In the kitchen, Tiger-Lily was rummaging in a box of old photos while her mother was tossing some dried porcini into a pasta sauce.

Mum, how did you meet Dad?

Oh, it’s a long story.

Tell me anyway.  I need to know the details for my combined History and Increased Self-Awareness project.

Carissima sighed.  Well, in 1990 I was eighteen and I met your father that Autumn in Leeds, when I was looking for student accommodation.  He was my landlord.  He was working for a brewery. His father had left him some property and so he took in students.

Tiger stared hard at a coloured wedding photo which was fading.  Hah! Look at Dad’s hair.  He had a lot more then.   Hey! He was wearing a kilt!

She stared at the image. They must have married in rainy Glasgow, as mum’s bridesmaid, Aunt Victoria, was holding an umbrella over her and the bride was wearing white wellies!

Did Grandma Morag mind you going out with an older man?  He must have been only about ten years younger than she was.

Carrie’s glasses were steaming up as she stirred the linguine.  No, remember that she had known Grandma Brewer-Mead since she and Great-Grandma had worked together in Glasgow in the ice cream parlours and fish and chip shops.  Ginevra- I mean Grandma Brewer-Mead- had even looked after Grandma Morag when she was little and the shops had been busy.  They’d all kept in touch with Christmas cards and so on ever since, so dad and I meeting was a bit of a coincidence, but a happy one.  He was a known quantity, so to speak.

Che sera sera, sang Tiger. It was the only Italian that she knew, unfortunately- a bit like Gregory in the film Gregory’s Girl, who said that he knew a couple of words in Italian and, when his teacher asked him to demonstrate his knowledge, he had sheepishly said bella and eh…bella.  Maybe she could take it up as a supplementary AS?

The only thing that Grandma Pomodoro insisted on was that I should finish my degree.  We were married in 1995, in Glasgow, and then we moved to Weetwood.

That’s a funny name.

Oh, it was very close to where Alan Bennett- you know the man who wrote those monologues you have been studying in Theatre Studies- lived when he was a boy.

Our teacher said his father had owned a butcher’s shop.  Tiger was good at remembering details.

Yes, it had been close to Weetwood Lane, in Far Headingley, but we had moved to Suttonford by the time you arrived. Grandma Brewer-Mead, Ginevra, moved to be with us, as Grandpa Brewer-Mead had left her on her own.

Did he run away from her?  Tiger thought it might have been a good idea and she might have done so in his position.

No, he died in 1996, so she was lonely.  When Aunt Victoria moved to France, she only had your father.

I suppose that’s when she started drinking all that gin.

Carrie gave her daughter a warning look.

Where did you go on honeymoon, mum?

Tiger!  This sauce is going to be overcooked if you ask any more questions.  She turned the gas down to what would be described as a peep in Glasgow..

We went to Lucca, to see the village that the Pomodoros had originated from, but there was nothing left.  It was a bit like that island which was on the news- Sandy Island- it was on the map but it did not exist.

But it had existed at one time, whereas Sandy Island had never existed, corrected Tiger.  There was no getting away from it: the girl was smart.  Have you heard of Stone Tape theory, mum?  Places and objects absorb energy forces. Sonia told me all about it.  A psi field can have memories attached to it and people can pick up on the auras and if they hallucinate, they might think they have seen a ghost.

Did Sonia tell you that last part?

No, I worked it out.  So, it was just like a dwarf planet?

Carrie was now draining the linguine.  A dwarf planet? What are you on about?

Oh, Cosmo says they have no atmosphere.

Right!  Go and call your father and brothers to the table, Tiger, or this meal is going to be cold.

Tiger ran into the hall.  Her project was going to be an A* for definite- especially if she scanned in the photo of her dad in a kilt.  It was going to be-like-a-ma-zing! She was sure to get a higher grade than Scheherezade Percival!  Che sera sera!

 

 

 

Diamonds- a Girl’s Best Friend?

Tags

cupcake, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Hope Diamond, Marilyn Monroe, Rihanna, Shirley Bassey, Yahoo

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Brassica pestered me to go and view some jewellery at Foyle’s Auction House’s forthcoming sale.  She knew that Cosmo had off-loaded some secret Chrissie prezzies in the garden observatory, but she had really wanted a rock on her finger to heal the experience of suspicion and jealousy that she had put herself through- unnecessarily as it had turned out.  For Magda, Mrs Brewer-Mead’s carer, had simply been helping him to transport  boxes and to store them and had not been making up to her husband.

She felt insecure and considered that an outward symbol of fidelity was called for.  Around the house she had been singing Rihanna’s new release:

Shine bright like a diamond x2

You’re a shooting star I see

A vision of ecstasy

As we moonshine and molly…

Who’s Molly? Cosmo had asked, not picking up on the sublime message she intended.

Oh, it’s just the latest song about diamonds, she explained in a matter-of-fact tone.

Doesn’t make sense to me, said Cosmo.  I like the bit about the shooting stars, though.

You would, thought Brassie.

Castor stopped glueing something on the kitchen table and said:

It’s about drugs.

What? They were concerned immediately.

Yes, molly is ecstasy- the drug.

Are you sure?  How do you know that? 

John explained it to us in the school yard.  He got the download.

So, that hint had gone down badly.  She played Shirley Bassey a few times, Lucy in the Sky with Aforementioned Minerals and a track with Marilyn Monroe from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but then decided to be more proactive since her strategy seemed to be failing.  Hence the auction view.

Candia, what are the four qualities I should be looking for? Carat, colour, cut and…?

Cost, I said, sarcastically.

No, I’ve just remembered: it’s clarity.

Hah! I said.  I remember a woman asking her friend if she was wearing a zircon and it didn’t go down too well, but it just goes to show that most people couldn’t distinguish paste from The Hope Diamond.

I didn’t want to try any rings on as I had been planting some winter pansies earlier that afternoon and hadn’t had time to repair my chipped nail varnish.  Brassie, however, was asking the woman to take all sorts of jewellery out of the cabinet.

By the time you reach your Diamond Wedding Anniversary, you won’t have any free fingers left for Cosmo to decorate, I said.  I wonder what Prince Philip gave the Queen for their celebration? I added.

Diamante collars for the corgis?  she replied, struggling to push an H fitting ring on her J finger.  They’d look cute on Pooh-bah, Algy and Humbug.

The pugs don’t need any of that bijouterie, I advised.  Remember, you still have to pay University fees for two in the future.

Candia.

Yes?

I can’t get this off.  My hands are too warm now.

The embarrassment. The woman had to get a bowl of cold water and some liquid soap and, after a lot of wrangling, the ring eventually slid off, leaving a red mark.

Maybe diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend, she said soberly, as she got into the car and put the catalogue in the glove compartment.

(No, people like me are.)  I only thought it.

Let’s go and have a coffee at Costamuchamoulah, I suggested, and I’ll tell you all about the Yahoos and their obsession with grubbing up bits of carbon.

If it’s to do with computers I won’t understand it, she said.

No, it’s a different kind of Yahoo.

Ooh, you are clever, Candia. How do you know all that stuff?

I read, Brassica.  It’s as simple as that.  Come on.  What kind of lavendarial cake do you want, or is it a stupid question?

Emm, the cupcake, please.

Surprise. Surprise.

 

 

 

 

Watts’ Mortuary Chapel (Compton, Surrey)

Tags

Compton Mortuary Chapel, Ellen Terry, G F Watts, Mary Watts

O house of Israel, cannot I do an even more wonderful work with you?

November and blazing beeches burnish

Budburrow Hill.  My birthday was this month

and it was on the twentieth we wed.

I did not mind Signor was sixty nine.

He was wary of making the mistake

of marrying a much younger girl-

though I was no virgin Ellen Terry,

but a determined lassie from Loch Ness,

who’d taught clay modelling to tough shoeblacks.

I told him : giving ourselves is the one

necessary gift. So, he acquiesced.

We came to Limnersleave and there he said,

We must build something…I rose with the sun

on the day of consecration and

picked a bunch of white poppies; stood inside.

He puffed up the path, past the Irish yews

into our thoughts, embodied in this form,

through the oak and chestnut door created

by Compton joiners, with Tau cross hinges:

Passover symbols forged by local smiths.

He marvelled at the moulded angel faces

manufactured by the village children.

The bell in the campanile struck a C:

Be my voice neither feared nor forgotten

was its inscription. Walls’ surface shadows

pointed the sorrows and dark side of life.

Perhaps I foreknew that the lachrymals

would contain the oil of joy for mourning

when I placed his ashes in my casket,

here, before the arcuated frontal,

lit by my terracotta candlesticks:

the intimate alongside the sublime.

My glorious prismatic tapestries,

golden corbels and feathered seraphim

revealed all creation as God’s garment.

Butterflies emerge from their chrysalis

and a phoenix rises from its embers.

The circle of life is intersected

by the cross of redeeming love.  A vine

coils everywhere and we are its branches.

I tried to capture Growth/ Decay; Flow/ Ebb,

to leave a memorial to all those

who perished in The Great War.

Those peacocks did not stand for earthly pride,

But for the hope of Immortality.

And now, three hundred yards from the A3,

the tabernacle of the Lord stands firm:

His treasure was in an earthen vessel.

He was the Potter and I was the clay.

See what came from the fiery furnace.