Poem Written On The Eve Of Richard Wagner’s Two-Hundredth Birthday

It’s funny how we celebrate
on blogs, Facebook
and other media
the things we love –
Bach, Beethoven,
the Beatles,
spaghetti bolognese,
Sancerre,
Dickens, Dostoyevsky
Delacroix – 
and hardly ever headline
what we hate.

Not that being positive
is wrong:
far from it.
Positive is good.
It’s good to praise
the things we love
which give us succour
and delight.

Nonetheless,
I think it does
no harm, occasionally,
to reveal
what gives us gyp,
the flip
side of the coin,
the dark
side of the moon,
admit our blind spots,
say what makes
our flesh creep,
makes us weep.

And so
instead of pro
here’s con:
I give you
Bill Bryson.

I’d never raise a bet
on saucisse andouillette.

Also can’t take a shine
to New World wine.

And cursed,
the very worst,
are Damien Hirst

and Wagner.

(Okay, I know tomorrow's the eve, but will have no time to write it tomorrow, as it's Carmen's birthday...)

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I am going to give up
Scotch whisky and the pursuit of knowledge,
sex, sour wine, peanut butter,
all beliefs, religions and philosophies,
arguments, Gardeners’ Question Time,
overindulging in oranges,

and I’ll throw off
my torn blue Levi’s and my poet’s hat,
do something so mad and different that
I’ll leave my old ideas and habits
in my wake like yesterday’s clothes,
and whoop, and hardly know myself.

Reasons To Walk The Camino: (1) The Slough Of Despond

This is the first piece in an occasional series I'm calling Reasons To Walk The Camino.

The name of the slough was Despond. JOHN BUNYAN The Pilgrim's Progress

It was another time and another place, and she was younger, but not that much younger. She was old enough to have suffered a little, and to have experienced melancholy, and to have survived this suffering and melancholy. She carried some scars, and some hurt, and some confusion, but she still had faith in the future, still saw the glass half full rather than half empty. Until one day, one quite ordinary and uneventful day, a pit opened up before her feet, and she fell right in.

She stayed there in the darkness for a week or two — or was it longer? Her thoughts were grim, and she tried to push away these negative thoughts. She was almost completely immobile during this dark time. Movement was an effort bordering on torment. Better to remain still, to breathe slowly and regularly, to breathe deeply and determinedly, in and out, in and out. She prayed the walls of the pit would keep straight, as they appeared to bulge, then deflate, and rock from side to side.

She must have eaten and drunk throughout this period, but she cannot remember what she ate or drank. In fact, she cannot remember eating or drinking at all. She did not seem to want to read, or even to be able to read. Noises reached her consciousness only intermittently: snatches of music, mainly Bach, Mozart and Brahms, and some pop songs from her past, Johnny Halliday, Françoise Hardy. There was no world outside the pit, outside her mind, outside her body (which was curled up in the foetal position for most of the time).

Then one day the fog cleared, and she tried to walk, which she did shakily, and she realised she was not in a real pit, but actually in the bedroom of her house, and it was a morning in early spring, and the sun was dripping like honey through the curtains, and the blackbirds were scolding each other and making alarm calls in the garden.

And she gave thanks to the bedroom, to the house, to the garden, to the sun, to the blackbirds — and probably to God and to the Infinite Spirit and to the whole universe too. She gave thanks that life was change and flux and a process of becoming, and that nothing lasted forever, even dark pits into which we might fall. She resolved to avoid these pits in future if she could, and if she could not, then at least she now knew they would eventually dissolve and disappear and change into something else: perhaps a warm room with a bed and a blanket and the sun filtering through the curtains, or even a wood or a forest or a green valley or a high hill or a rocky mountain. Or a path which wound through the wood or the forest or the valley, and up the hill, and over the mountain.

It was at that moment she decided to walk the Camino. And she has been walking the Camino ever since.    

The Day You Left The Cactus Was In Bloom

The day you left the cactus was in bloom.
I saw how objects stayed in the same place.
I met only myself in every room.

The day you left there was an empty space
In bed, at dining table, on settee.
No human form or ghost could I embrace

Now you were so unconscionably free,
The house dead as the plants I’d never tended,
Languishing in the conservatory,

My routine temporarily suspended
When you split the entity of you and me,
My gimcrack life so casually upended.

Do you rejoice now you're forever free
From moving objects from place to place
And watering plants in the conservatory?

I need something to fill this empty space.
I need something to fill this empty tomb.
For even of your ghost there is no trace,

Only my ghost and I in every room,
Dead plants, unmoving objects, even though
The day you left the cactus was in bloom.

Spring Suddenly

after long weeks of waiting,
of dead lambs in the snow,
green daffodils, all stalk
and no trumpet, a single
brimstone’s drunken flight,
the silence of owls –
                       
spring happens
in a flash, a cymbal crash
of colours –
forsythia yellow, maythorn white
and cherry pink – zing zing zing –
all mad and new –
the sky a bluebell blue,
tulips shouting red,
bursting eggs and buds and mouths
flinging open to the sun –

an orchestra of birds –
the skylark’s piccolo,
cacophony of rooks,
loud guttural
fanfare of pheasants,
a cockerel’s brassy cry,
crescendo of swifts
screaming like demented violins –

then, gradually –
sweet measured grace notes of the warbler,
wood pigeon’s sleepy sostenuto,
the fading of those first outrageous blooms –

muted, we sigh and settle
contentedly into summer.

Salutation To The Dawn

Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of beauty.

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today, well-lived, makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day!
Such is the Salutation to the Dawn.

Kalidasa (Indian poet c. 4th century AD)

Tartiflette

eager to please you bubble and fret

hot on the tongue sloppy and wet

my bold coquette you charm seduce

tickle my taste buds fast and loose 

a saucy smile and a cheesy grin

a melting mouth and a dripping chin

delicious sin indulgent treat 

great on the eye so good to eat

salty and sweet creamy confection

slips down my throat food perfection

shallots potatoes fried lardons

garlic wine and reblechon

your flavour’s better than foie gras

the star dish of the haute-savoie

The Priest And The Cook

In a recent post on her blog Big Fun In A Tiny Pueblo, Rebekah Scott — writer and hospitalera from Moratinos — mentions meeting up with Don Blas, the legendary Camino enthusiast and priest of Fuenterroble, a parish midway along the Spanish Vía de la Plata. I wrote this about my own encounter with Don Blas in February 2010.

I stumbled into the pueblo late one afternoon. It was cold and had just started raining. It had been a hard day through puddles and mud. I entered one of the pueblo's two bars and put my jacket to dry on a chair in front of the radiator. The architect was already there with a drink and cigarettes. He looked angelic with his curly hair and soulful eyes. I ordered a beer. He told me to go to the priest's house just across the street. 'How will I recognize it?' I asked.

'You can't miss it. There's a bloody great cross outside. But don't sleep in the albergue behind the house. Put your stuff in the little room above the kitchen. There are a couple of bunk beds in there, and it's a bit warmer.'

So this I did.

Then I didn't know what to do. Outside it was cold, wet and windy. Nothing was happening on the streets. Except paper bags blowing around and the big cross shaking slightly in the wind. Inside it was warmer. But not that much. So I burrowed into my sleeping bag and had a lie-down. 'This is ridiculous!' I said to myself. 'In your sleeping bag at 6 o'clock?' So I had a shower, read a book, and tried to write a poem. The priest had invited me to dinner at 9. The minutes seemed to crawl by. Finally at 9.30 the teacher knocked at my door. 'Dinner!'

The priest and the cook.

I joined them all at table in the priest's cosy living/dining room: the architect, the priest, the teacher — and now the cook. A fire blazed in a huge open fireplace in one corner. On the table was a platter of beetroot and asparagus, some freshly-made fried eggs, a big bowl of home-made chips, a bottle of wine and a jug of water. 'Help yourself! Tuck in!' All men together. Arms on the table. Smoking between courses. Smoking between mouthfuls! The architect, the priest, the teacher and the cook. And now the pilgrim. Sounds like that Peter Greenaway film. What was it called? The Cook, The Thief, The Wife And Her Lover? But no wives here. Tonight this was an exclusively male preserve.

The cook was wild and extraordinary. He reminded me of a younger version of Father Jack Hackett from the TV comedy series, Father Ted. We spoke in a weird hybrid of Spanish, English, French and German. The cook had spent 20 years as a barman serving drinks to tourists on the Costa Brava. 'Never again!' he barked, spitting into the fire. He fetched some huge chunks of pig meat, which the priest threw onto the grill above the hot embers. It was soon ready. We gorged on the succulent pork and gnawed on the bones. Later we drank bitter, black coffee, and the priest disappeared — to reappear with a strong, colourless alcohol in a plastic Coke bottle. We drank. A great evening. A memorable evening. And so to bed...

The next morning I breakfasted alone with the priest. Melon, oranges, a meat pasty, yoghurt, café con leche. He gave me some fruit and the rest of the meat pasty for my packed lunch. He enquired if I wanted, perhaps, to return later that year as a voluntary hospitalero. He asked for no money. It was free to stay there — but I left 12 euros in the donation box. He showed me the rest of the house, the renovations, the old wooden cart which was being restored and repainted. He was a kind man, a good man. A very good man. And an intellectual man. His shelves were full of religious books, historical books, books about Don Quixote. Then I stepped outside into the damp, foggy air, and set off once more along the Camino.

It had been yet another unrepeatable, unforgettable night on the Vía de la Plata.

Ragù Alla Bolognese: The Real Thing

This is the ultimate authentic recipe for spaghetti bolognese or, as we have now learnt to call it, ragù alla bolognese. It's based on America's Test Kitchens' recipe via Cook's Illustrated (thanks, Ruth!) and also on Antonio Caluccio's classic recipe. First, transform your kitchen into cool monochrome (optional)...

Then assemble from left to right some pancetta (I used English streaky bacon), some minced pork and beef, some tomato paste (I used tomato purée), some chicken stock (I happened to have some real, homemade chicken stock — yum!), a mirepoix of finely chopped carrot, celery and onion, salt and pepper, some fresh egg tagliatelle, a glass of red wine, some butter and a wedge of Parmesan cheese (I know Romano and Grana Padano are less expensive, but you can't beat the salty depth of Parmigiano in this dish).

Gently fry the pancetta, carrot, celery and onion in butter for 10 min, then added the minced meats and fry for a further 10 min. Add the wine, reduce, stir in some stock and the tomato paste. Simmer for 1 and a half hours, adding more stock when the mixture becomes dry. Season if necessary (I found it needed hardly any seasoning). Remember: no garlic, no herbs, no canned tomatoes! Cook the tagliatelle for a few minutes in boiling water until al dente, drain and combine with the sauce. Sprinkle liberally with Parmesan.

Enjoy with a glass of red wine, preferably Italian. You'll find the tagliatelle winds easily round a fork so no spoon necessary! This is a fabulous, utterly satisfying dish, of a rich, deep flavour. It kept me happy all evening.

Obsessed With Food? What, Me?

Tagine

Lately I've been writing a lot about food on this blog. I don't think I'm obsessed with it (though my wife may disagree!), but I do think it's an important and interesting subject. Much of the world can't get the food it wants and needs, but I find it miraculous that, given half a chance, people will still find a way to produce nutritious and tasty food from limited resources.

We in the indulgent West are spoilt for choice, of course. Yet it never fails to amaze me how we (I'm talking now of the UK) are prepared to put up with such a low gastronomic standard. Naturally, I'm generalising — but I think it's evident that good food here is a much more hit-and-miss affair than it is, say, in France, Spain or Italy. Although cuisine has improved in this country compared with 20 or 30 years ago, there's still a long way to go, and it's a fact that continental Europeans think that British food is a joke. And can you blame them?

Let's take pubs and restaurants. Pub food, despite a superficial, glossy makeover, is still irredeemably awful in the main. It's usually corporate chain fare: insipid steaks; inauthentic 'hand-cut' fries; sickly burgers; undressed, unimaginative salads; and a hundred and one other ready-prepared, microwaved nightmare items listed on laminated, greasy-fingered menus. No thanks.

Sadly, many of the old, traditional pubs are closing, which is a tragedy, as some of these did use to produce proper, homemade food: such as the White Hart in Northend, Bucks, set among the fabulous Chiltern hills and beech woods. I regularly visited this welcoming, old-fashioned, oak-beamed country inn once a fortnight when I worked as a mobile librarian. The landlord's wife used to produce a cracking steak and kidney pudding fresh out of the oven. (I've just tried to trace this pub on the internet and found it was turned into a private house long ago.) Next door to the pub lived the lonely and eccentric author Alan Hull Walton, translator of Baudelaire, who used to jump aboard the mobile library for a chat and to reserve some very weird books. He invited me into his house once, which stank of mildew and urine. But I digress...

Then you have the nationwide chain restaurants: your Nandos, your Bella Italias, your Wetherspoons, your Harvesters. The occasional one is very good (Wagamama), but most are dire (Frankie & Benny's).

You are left with the private, individually-run restaurants — some no-frills, others more up-market, fine-dining concerns — and even these vary enormously. Just read the late Michael Winner's columns in The Sunday Times to see how, even in some of London's supposedly top restaurants, the service, and the quality of the food, can't always be relied on. All you can rely on is the over-inflated price of the meal.

Of course, there are many exceptions. One exception not far from here is La Parisienne, a café-restaurant in Southwell, which specialises in French-Moroccan food. It's cramped; it's friendly; it serves brochettes and tagines and cassoulets and tartiflettes at very reasonable prices, and an incredibly drinkable house red. What more could one want? But my real point remains: eating out in Britain is an unreliable business at best, and pity the poor continental visitor who comes to these shores and takes pot luck. He or she will almost certainly be disappointed.

To set the seal on it, let's take fish and chips, our national staple. Yes, I've occasionally eaten takeaway fish and chips in places — Scotland and the East Anglian coast come to mind — where it's been a hugely memorable experience. But your average fish and chip shop in your average English town or village is just that — very average indeed, and I've stopped going to them.

Let's now compare with France, Spain, Italy. I'll give just one example. A couple of years ago I was walking the pilgrim route from Geneva to Le Puy, and slept one night in a dilapidated caravan on a camp site in Frangy, one of the less salubrious towns en route. By evening I was starving, but it was a Sunday, and there didn't seem to be many places open in the centre of town. The gap-toothed old crone of a campsite owner directed me to an industrial estate half a mile away. 'You can eat there,' she cackled. I followed a main road past rows and rows of prefab units and parked-up lorries. It didn't look very promising. Then, unexpectedly, right at the end of this edge-of-town development, a modest, unpretentious little restaurant came into view. And I ate and drank there like a king — some of the best food and wine I've ever had in my life — and was served with such exquisite friendliness, hospitality and expertise that the memory of it warms my heart still.    

Fish and chips

(All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Quinterview 21

As soon as we read the first stanza of Annette Volfing's poem Run, we knew we wanted to publish her in The Passionate Transitory: 'She had hoped for a hare. / Just one, something fast and mad / ripping the moon-damp fields, / a thumper like herself . . .' She sees the world with a delightfully fresh eye, and her poems capture moments with imagistic precision. We love her description of a garden 'creaking' under the snow in her poem Whiteout, and her image of muntjacs stepping out of a cloud in Run has visionary power. 

Annette Volfing

Spaghetti Bolognese

Spaghetti Bolognese (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

One of the endlessly fascinating things about cookery is how difficult it can be to get even the simplest dishes right. Of course, we're often in such a rush, we haven't time to check the recipe, we think we know what we're doing. And I'm sure most of you brilliant cooks and chefs out there do know what you're doing. But, speaking for myself, I must admit that if I hurry and guess and estimate, the result can sometimes be mediocre, if not plain inedible.

What I'm really saying is this: respect for those of us who can cook standard dishes brilliantly, whether it's a Sunday roast dinner, a full English breakfast, a loaf of bread, a vegetable curry, a beef casserole, a cottage pie (got this one cracked— the best recipe in the world has got to be Delia Smith's cottage pie, which includes swede as well as carrot, a surprising half-teaspoonful of cinnamon, fresh thyme and parsley, and cheese-encrusted leeks on top) or a simple poached egg.

To reinforce my point: how often have you eaten any of these dishes, whether at the house of a friend or a family member, or even at a restaurant, and thought: this is legendary! Not often, I bet. (I don't want to sound mean here. Naturally, we're very forgiving of and generous to friends and family!) To rest my case: during my mammoth South West Coast Path walk, when I stayed in B & Bs most nights, only one breakfast in ten showed all three attributes of love, care and skill.

All of which is a roundabout way of introducing a thought which came to me this afternoon. Spaghetti bolognese! Yes, an ordinary, classic dish, beloved of adults and children alike. We've probably consumed many in our time. Yet how do you get it perfect? There are hundreds of recipes out there in cookery books — and many more to be found on the internet (and the internet can be a minefield for recipes). I must have cooked this dish a million times, yet it's often just adequate rather than sensational.

There are so many variable factors. I mean, do you add white wine or red wine — or no wine at all? Do you make it with a mirepoix of onion, carrot and celery, or some other combination? Fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes? And if canned tomatoes, what sort? How do you avoid the sauce turning bitter? And how long do you cook the sauce for? (Recipes vary from 20 minutes to 3 hours!) Which pasta do you use (spaghetti, linguine, tagliatelle or some other kind)? And do you include either chicken livers or streaky bacon with the minced beef? And is the mince top-quality butcher's steak or fatty, supermarket mince of dubious origin? And what do you use for stock? Which herbs do you favour, and are they fresh or dried? And why does Italian food always taste much better in Italy than if you try to replicate it elsewhere? (The Italian ragù alla bolognese is rather different from UK and US versions.) And how do you eat the spaghetti — with a fork, or with a fork and spoon? And is there an elegant way to eat it, or doesn't it matter? You see, there are endless variables. You could spend your life debating the ins and outs. If you hadn't anything better to do.

My challenge to you is this. Let's discover the perfect spaghetti bolognese! If you have a wonderful tried-and-tested formula, do post it in my comment box. If you want to take part, and experiment with different cookery book or internet recipes, please report on the result. If you want to join me in trying out any suggested recipes from mutual blog friends, do this too. No rush — we can do this over a period of months!

(Apologies to vegetarian readers — but any contributions, suggestions and ideas about tomato-based sauces would be very welcome.)                  

Rokia Traoré

The sensational Rokia Traoré from Mali. (She appeared on Jools Holland's Later tonight.) If you like this, try a YouTube video of her full-length concert at La Cigale, Paris, in 2004.

Beef And Orange Casserole With Wine

A rather rustically arranged plate of beef and orange casserole.

There are certain food marriages made in heaven: chicken and thyme, pork and apple, lamb and mint sauce (don't tell the French, they'll think you're mad), venison and blackberry sauce, liver and onions, duck and orange. But have you tried beef and orange? I've had a couple of beef-with-orange dishes before, but not this simple casserole, which I made today, and found richly flavoursome. (Yes, we're still cooking winter casseroles here in Solitarywalkerville, and we're not ashamed to be regressive either: the weather still feels like winter, the central heating's on, and there are hailstorms outside.) You can't beat a casserole for a warm and comforting glow. Here's what I did:

I fried a sliced onion, a large diced carrot, a diced parsnip (turnip would also be good) and 2 diced celery stalks in a mixture of olive oil and butter for 5 minutes. Half way through I added 2 chopped garlic cloves. After removing the veg from the casserole, I added more oil and browned 500 gm cubed braising/stewing steak, which I then coated in seasoned flour. Returning the veg to the casserole, I mixed in about 300 ml of beef stock and 150 ml of red wine (enough to cover) plus a good dollop of tomato purée, a bay leaf, a few drops of Tabasco sauce, a few strips of orange zest, and the juice of an orange. I put on the lid and cooked it in the oven for 2 hours at a low temperature (150 deg C/gas mark 2). I took the lid off for the last half hour after stirring (keep an eye on it in case it needs a touch more liquid). Finally I sprinkled chopped parsley over the top and served with mashed potato (creamed with with butter and horseradish sauce) and fresh greens (dwarf beans and mangetout). There should be enough for 4 servings here.

Evolution Of The English Breakfast

it seems quite crazy that —

after the Big Bang
the scatterballing of the planets
billions of years
of fire and ice and precious
little hospitality
the piling up of continents
pooling of oceans
the deep-sea hydrothermal vents
farting the first bubbles of life
the first fish gulping air
the first bird flaunting feathers
the slow plod of Galapagos
tortoises, the subtle finches
the first ape playing hopscotch —

we come to this banal
morning, epitome of eons
sum of the centuries:

a lipsticked coffee cup
a tear-stained paper towel
two shattered plates
smeared with the carnage
of scrambled eggs, the cooked flesh
of streaky bacon, a pudding
of dried blood, burnt holes
in blackened toast, and fruit
juice dripping on the floor
a kicked-in door
a ‘fuck you’ voicemail message

for God’s sake
let’s move on, evolve
if only to please Darwin