May 5, 2008
One of my favourite sights in the whole world is seeing people pose with Graham Ibbeson’s statue of Eric Morecambe on Morecambe promenade. No one gets away with visiting my home town without me making them have their picture taken with Eric, left leg bent, right arm waving (or in the case of one of my less well co-ordinated visitors, right leg bent and left arm waving). I’ve done it countless times and it has never become boring. Which is slightly odd as I don’t think I’ve ever watched even one episode of Morecambe and Wise. I just like his funny face and am proud that something good came out of the place – in addition to dear old Thora Hird of course.
Morecambe has been down in the doldrums for sometime, thanks in part to Noel Bloody Edmonds deciding to turn a beloved local park into Blobby Land and making us the laughing stock of the nation. But with the restoration of the stunning art deco hotel The Midland, things are looking up, as this Observer article testifies.
May 4, 2008
I was reminded of my love for this modern day bible while driving along Morecambe promenade today, and remembering how, when I was about 8, I played a tiny part in the town’s attempt to make the world’s biggest ever poster. During one particularly soggy summer in the late 80s, every school child in the area was tasked with painting one A1 sheet of paper to make a tiny piece of the hopefully record-breaking big picture. I considered myself a rather good draw-er and painter and so was rather disappointed to be assigned a piece that was just plain blue. But it couldn’t be helped and I did my very best, making sure no white bits were showing and hoping my sister hadn’t been given a more exciting segment to do. My effort joined thousands of others on Morecambe bay beach one rainy Saturday at low tide. It was quite an event: the local TV station even hired a helicopter to hover above and document proceedings as the poster took shape.
What a waste of time. It was a stupid idea for the poster to be a diagram of a CAT Scanner, even if we were raising money for the local hospital. No one could tell what it was, and anyway, it wasn’t big enough: if I remember rightly, the Japanese had trumped our effort before the next edition of the Guinness Book of Records was even out. It was certainly nowhere near as big as the current record holder.
Despite this failure, I remained a huge fan of the BBC spin-off series Record Breakers. One happy day in 1995, I, and my best friend Amanda (whose uncle once held a tiddly-wink-related record), met Norris McWhirter CBE. McWhirter, as you surely remember, was the mad eyebrowed co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records who was on-hand at every televised record breaking attempt, invariably in a double breasted blazer and holding a stopwatch.
He is the only man who I have ever asked for an autograph:
Check out how thrilled Amanda looks here:
Here’s another GBoR claim to fame: when I got my Silver Duke of Edinburgh award, it was presented to me by Kris Akabusi, the Olympic athlete who took over presenting Record Breakers when poor old Roy Castle died. When I went up to collect my award, Akabusi let out a huge “awooooooga!” and I got the giggles so badly I couldn’t breathe. I must dig out the picture.
April 30, 2008
Do you like cake? Do you like crumble? Do you like rhubarb? Then you’ll love my squishy rhubarb crumble cake – a cunning sponge/crumble hybrid adapted a bit from the cake lover’s oracle, Leith’s Baking Bible. I’ve just baked it while watching the Apprentice and mmmmm it tastes good, even though it’s probably a bit late for cake really.
Here’s the recipe I used today:
For the crumble topping
- 75g cold butter, chopped up small
- 125g plain flour
- 45g sugar (any will do but soft brown sugar is nicest, I think)
For the spongey bit
- 125g softened butter (i just whizz it in the microwave for 15 seconds or so – just don’t let it melt)
- 125g sugar (granulated, caster, soft light brown sugar.. they all work so just use what you have)
- 3 medium eggs, beaten, not straight out of the fridge if you can help it
- 125g self raising flour
- Pinch of salt
For the filling
- About 600g rhubarb, chopped into inch chunks (though I’ve also used less rhubarb, as little as 350g and it’s all worked fine, so don’t worry about being too exact. You just don’t want any chunks to be on top of each other when you layer it all really)
- 1 tablespoon sugar (demerera is good but granulated is also fine)
1. Heat the oven to 190c. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin. Leith’s, who do everything properly, say you need a loose bottomed one, but I use an ordinary one and it’s fine, just a bit harder to turn out.
2. Make the crumble topping by rubbing in the butter and flour until it’s almost breadcrumby, then stir in the sugar. Set aside.
3. Make the spongey bit: cream the butter until pale and fluffy then add the sugar and cream until even paler and fluffier. Then gradually add the eggs. If it’s looking a bit curdled the eggs are too cold. Don’t worry, just add a bit of flour and it’ll all work out fine. Then, add in the flour and salt (sifted if you can be arsed, but my heroine Jane Asher thinks sieving is for losers and so do I – not least because washing up a sieve is a royal pain in the arse) and fold together.
4. Spoon the spongey mixture into the cake tin and spread out evenly. It will look a bit measly but don’t worry.
5. Add the rhubarb gently, forming a layer above the sponge, then sprinkle the crumble on top. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 45mins, until the top has set.
6. Don’t attempt to cut or move until it’s cooled down.
7. Cut into squishy squares and eat – tastes especially yummy with ice cream or creme fraiche. Nom nom nom.
April 28, 2008
My friends refer to my hair as “the mane” (and not in a good way). The mane is not thick – there is simply a lot of it, usually tangled as I hate brushing and swim quite a lot. It does my head in, and so is most certainly not anything I love. What I do love, however, especially on boys, is a great shock of hair. Like that belonging to the Guardian’s science correspondent Alok Jha, for example. Alok is the only member of the science desk without a PhD, but he has by far the best, and bounciest, hair. This picture doesn’t really convey the full glory, but you should get the idea.
April 26, 2008
Today’s the day!
April 24, 2008
Some people say eggs don’t belong on pizzas. To these people I say: are you mental? And have you ever had the Pizza Express Fiorentina? Sure, they seem to have got a lot smaller over the years and all too often I do end up waking up with an ever so dry mouth afterwards, but man they’re good. Second only to the eponymous house special at Il Bacio near me, which will inevitably turn up in a future entry.
April 24, 2008
The best thing about the Observer magazine, Mariella is the only agony aunt I’ve ever considered writing to. Nevermind that her advice is almost always a variation on the “get over yourself” theme, I trust her implicitly. She never minces her words, rarely recommends therapy, never directs anyone to stupid phone lines from which she herself profits, and two weeks out of three just tells advice seekers to stop being so narcissistic, or selfish, or often simply so bloody silly. But the other week, when a lady wrote in to sheepishly admit that even though she knew she was being a want-it-all plonker, she was desperate for her “amazing, funny, respectful and gorgeous” but marriage-shy longterm boyfriend to make an honest woman of her, Mariella’s answer was so unexpected and revealing that I loved her even more than usual.
“Only a person who’s experienced similarly absurd pangs could empathise with your obsession,” she said, before confessing, “I am that person.” She totally understood, she said, also being one of those daft women who couldn’t be happy until she had a ring on her finger. Apparently, our heroine spent a good six months begging her second husband to marry her before he finally caved in.
What I don’t love: Mariella’s new full length photo, not pictured here, now that they have moved her to prime position at the back of the mag. Somehow it looks as though her head and body couldn’t turn up to the same photoshoot, so they have photoshopped the two together afterwards and got the dimensions wrong, making her head look twice as big as her tiny little body. Also, I hope they never make her column into a podcast. I think I would find her sexy, gravely voice very off-putting.
April 24, 2008
Being a predictably woolly liberal, I am not into war all that much. But I love the Imperial War Museum in south London. A lot of people are put off by the name, envisaging a hall full of dusty old tanks and planes, display cases full of boring old medals and far too much breast-beating nationalism, but I would urge you to give it a go. While it’s true that the main hall is indeed full of tanks and planes and random bits of ammunition celebrating our sometimes dubious victories, there is much to recommend.
Usually I skip past the Lancaster bombers and Sherman tanks and hop straight up to the Holocaust section or the Secret War exhibition, which is all about MI5 and MI6. I love all things spy-related, and particularly antiquated, slightly rubbish spy gadgets, like the very obvious cameras hidden in flower pots you can see at the old Stasi HQ in Berlin. But the other Sunday I was with my war-mad friend, Hans, who loves battles so much he actually has a Favourite War – though to be fair so do I, but it’s the Cold War, and so doesn’t really count.
Anyway, I humoured him and we spent the first hour looking at all the sort of things I never normally give the time of day, and it was unexpectedly riveting. Sometimes I am very easily infected with the enthusiasm of others, and so it was that I enjoyed prodding the dainty British tank to see how measly it was compared with the monolithic German Jagdpanther (essentially the difference between the protection offered by a pack-a-mac and a suit of arms), imagining the Weeeeeeeeeeeee of the Doodlebug and wondering how the hell we ever won the second world war. There wasn’t time on this occasion to live through London’s glory days in the Blitz Experience (again), or to hide in a First World War trench (again), but we did manage to go in the submarine, visit the Steve McQueen installation AND have a slice of first class Victoria Sponge in the cafe.
April 12, 2008
Soooooooo satisfying. My dad, who is great, used to score my oranges “like a flower” for my lunchbox every day so that I could peel them easily with my podgy kiddie fingers. To this day, I always, always, always try to get the peel off in one (apart from the bit at the top I cut off automatically). If you manage, as I did this morning in the above picture, you can eat the orange, then carefully close up the flower again and try to trick your sister into thinking there is still fruit in there. See also: bananas.
April 10, 2008
I am not a philatelist – I just like stamping stuff. I bought this set of letters from Toronto recently, to the despair of my shopping companion who felt I didn’t need more bits and bobs to play with for a few days before I forgot about them and let them clutter up my flat. But three weeks on, I’m still stamp-stamp-stamping. I’ve always been a fan of stamps, especially the ones you could get in the olden days that smelt of strawberry shortcake. I like the satisfaction of pressing the stamps into the ink and onto the paper, though I have yet to master the art of stamping in a straight line (see above). Plus I all too often misjudge the amount of space each letter takes and find myself having to finish words off on the next line, which isn’t very elegant.
Being far too sensible to get a tattoo, I also derive great pleasure from stamping myself, sometimes even in German.
