We travelled to Arbroath today so that ‘Tall Child’ could get his annual fix of the Red Arrows aerobatic display team. Once there we took time out before the main event to top up our caffeine levels and indulge in some homebakes in a local café … but Arbroath, I ask you, marmalade on a fruit scone! Really?
I have just re-read ‘Travels with Epicurus” in which the author, a 73-year-old Daniel Klein, travels to the Greek islands in his attempt to find the secret of growing old gracefully. Now, I’m not admitting to any self-interest as I think it may be more fun to grow old disgracefully rather than with grace alone (although if ‘Grace’ was of a like mind then that could be fun!).
Actually, I re-read only the first half because that was all I could cope with – I struggled with the second half on my original reading as it majored on philosophical bollocks and pretension at the expense of observation (and that, book club lovers, is my attempt at literary deconstruction). As an example of his pretension we find:
“Here in the Vlihos taverna, with people seated around me, I pull Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’ out of my shoulder bag …”
Now, as someone whose knowledge of Heidegger stems entirely from Bruce’s Philosophers Song (“Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table …“) I’m in no position to tilt at Klein’s philosophical windmills other than to note in passing that ‘deconstruction’ (Jacques Derrida’s school of literary criticism) as attempted above, actually drew on the work of Heidegger among others. See, I too can scribe pretentiously, but maybe I should stick with a Tom Sharpe quote that made me laugh:
“His had been an intellectual decision founded on his conviction that if a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, a lot was lethal.“
A hard bike ride yesterday saw me bail out and return defeated. I’d done about 10 miles of short, sharp hills; the sort where the road just shoots straight upwards without any pretence of contouring and you get no respite as the downhill bits pass by in a flash.
I retreated at that point because, without actually knowing the route, I thought I might get halfway around and then hit the wall, so the better part of valour was discretion and I turned back. I recce’d the full route as I drove home and realised that I’d actually done the hardest part and could probably have managed the remaining 30+ miles, so I’ll be back. Memo to self: recce routes in advance!
Despite failing with the ride it was a joy to pedal through the birch woodlands along the River Gairn – it was only when the woodland gave way to moorland that the climbs took their toll (I really do need to lose a few kilos).
A profusion of lichens explained why the silver bark of the birches looked anything but lustrous even in the sun. In truth their trunks were more like O’Rafferty’s Motor Car (in a good way – forty shades of green) and testament to the air quality of the Cairngorm National Park. It’s consoling to know that you’re breathing clean air when you’re gasping up a hill wishing you had lower gears.
And guess what? The trees don’t just provide a beguiling view. It seems they can give post-ride comfort for your average knackered cyclist in the form of Molton Brown’s Bracing Silver Birch Thermal Muscle Soak! Pricey (£19 from John Lewis for 300g!) but described as:
“A beautiful fragrance that leaves the body feeling clean and refreshed. A dedicated muscle therapy which will instantly enliven and uplift. The fresh, woody aroma of silverbirch, cedarwood, cumin and bergamot will lift the spirits and sooth the muscles”.
Sounds like bollocks to me but it gets five-star reviews all round on the John Lewis website with the following endorsement for bike riders:
“Bought as a gift for a keen cyclist. He found it very relaxing and it has a great fragrance”.
So, setting aside my usual disdain for (i) advertising copywriters, and (ii) male grooming products, consider it added to my Christmas prezzie suggestion list.
.… all of which serves as an excuse to post a pic that I took in the nearby Cambus o’ May birch woodland last autumn. It has a rather ethereal quality I think (and the sharp-eyed may recognise it as the photo from which this blog’s header image was derived).
I don’t think I could ever return south to live, but I do miss the English canal network. I can empathise with this quote from an Italian enthusiast in one of the ‘anorak’ magazines that I sometimes buy.
Francesca Morini: “I usually start walking along the canal carrying the weight of my slightly dull existence on my shoulders and end up with a head full of dreams”.
For those who don’t know, the title of this post comes from the following exchange between Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen:
Charlie Allnut: You know what would have happened if we would have come up against one of them rocks?
Rose Sayer: But we didn’t. I must say I’m filled with admiration for your skill, Mr. Allnut. Do you suppose I’ll try practice steering a bit that someday I might try? I can hardly wait… Now that I’ve had a taste of it. I don’t wonder you love boating, Mr. Allnut.
Sammy Cahn’s lyrics to a well-known Sinatra song let us know that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. Well. that’s as may be, but what really goes well together is a ride out on a road bike and decent cafe stop for coffee and cake. Unfortunately, for the modestly overweight recreational cyclist they sometime go together too well, especially if one is planning to lose a few kilos in preparation for an assault on the Bealach na Bà (Pass of the Cattle) in Wester Ross. I’m hoping to ride it later in the summer, but avoiding either of the sportives that include it in their routes.
The statistics are impressive for a hill climb in the UK, a 626 metre ascent over 9.1 kilometres with an average gradient of 7% and a maximum of 20% (did I say lose “a few” kilos; make that many!). The route is about 45 miles in all, so maybe it is best to ‘do’ the hill early on. I’m hoping to get some hill-climbing miles in my legs by training on our own local climb on the Cairn o’ Mount road near Banchory. The Cairn route from the Banchory side is slightly longer than the Bealach na Bà, and some think that it is just as testing, so I will see how it goes and whether I need to invest in a more forgiving set of gear ratios!
The problem with training over the Cairn o’ Mount (apart from the obvious one of it comprising a long, steep hill) is that the downhill return leads you into Banchory and its coffee shops; less than helpful to a chap’s weight loss regimen. One in particular caters well for the cyclist: Tease even has its own Strava group to keep tabs on its members’ biking efforts. I’m not a member or a Strava-naut and although the coffee and cakes are a tad expensive they are rather fine.
I have yet to visit Tease this year, but have something of a confession to make. On a recent visit to the family’s matriarch in Kendal I was determined (and I mean absolutely determined) not to visit nearby Grasmere. I really don’t like the Lake District honey-pot towns of which Grasmere is one, but two things keeps drawing me back (by car, not bike). The first is the ludicrously-named Faeryland tea shack by the waterside, set in an implausibly-beautiful location and, at its best, capable of producing one of the finest cups of tea in old Albion; the second is the opportunity to stock up on gingerbread at Sarah Nelson’s Grasmere Gingerbread shop.
Well, my determination to give it a miss failed and the lure of tea and gingerbread won. On this occasion the tea wasn’t so good, but despite the best of intentions to lose a few kilos I took consolation in a couple of packs of gingerbread and, do you know what, it’s gone already; shared of course with friends and colleagues (well, some of it was)!
Not a quote, really, but Katherine Ryan retelling the funniest joke she’s ever heard:
Remember when your parents would say, “I’ll give you something to cry about” and you thought they were going to hit you but really, they were destroying the housing market?
And a perceptive description of Boris Johnson from Hadley Freeman in the Guardian:
Johnson is so calculating he has an abacus for a heart.
In a diatribe seemingly aimed at a former technical director at British Cycling, Marina Hyde writing in the Guardian appears to conflate the concept of the aggregate effects of marginal gains (in sporting performance) with the bullying and harassment of a number of female and disabled cyclists. I think she is wrong to do so because a bully is a bully and that is quite distinct from the marginal gains philosophy. One is not prerequisite to the other.
Despite her apparent confusion on the issue she does come up with a cracking quote (perhaps her ‘confusion’ was a deliberate ploy to enable her to frame the quote nicely):
“The real sadness, in the meantime, is that we have yet to see a long think-piece in which someone quantifies the ‘marginal gains’ of working for an obvious a**ehole”.
Experience from a period early in my career when I was managed by a complete sphincter tells me, in fact, there are no such gains in those circumstances.
It seems that I was wrong to suggest that the winning entrant to our recent ‘Geordie Traybake of the Month’ competition (Newcastle Brown Ale brownies) had been illegally aided by his partner’s suggestion that his oven temperature was too high (275°C instead of 275°F – see posts passim). Seemingly, no such help was given as at that time our victorious baker was highly stressed and, as his partner casually put it: “… not really receptive to any suggestions!” (what a great line; I think we know what it means😄).
After the event the ‘leftover’ winning brownies were clearly coveted by the victor’s partner who returned them to their home only to lose them to the low cunning of their family dog who, apparently, tucked into them clingfilm and all. Her observation that it was an interesting experience as it passed through their pet’s system did, however, make me think. Just imagine if separate portions of dog food and clingfilm could be consumed and gastrically engineered in such a way that, on passing through its innards, the clingfilm enveloped any waste to be pooped out pre-wrapped for disposal in a doggy bin. Classic!
Finally, it should not have been a surprise for their pet to think the brownies were hers and hers alone. The English northeast vernacular for a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale (the essential ingredient in these brownies) is a ‘bottle of dog’. So, really, they were not Newcastle Brown Ale brownies at all, but dog brownies. Clever of the mutt to realise that!
Not actually a quote, but a question asked of Jo Brand by the author Kerry Hudson in a Guardian Q&A. It’s clear I have something in common with Ms Hudson. ☺
“After a hard day I favour cake and swearing, but what’s your recipe for days when life kicks you in the a**e?“
Incompetence: ɪnˈkɒmpɪt(ə)ns
Noun: inability to do something successfully
Synonyms: ineptitude, ineptness, inability, lack of ability, incapability, incapacity, lack of skill, lack of proficiency, amateurishness, inexpertness, clumsiness, ineffectiveness, inadequacy, deficiency, inefficiency, ineffectuality, ineffectualness, insufficiency.
Well, that pretty much sums up our attempts to deliver a longstanding colleague into a splendid retirement by providing him with some home-baked memories of his youth; a competitive bake-off that was themed on his Geordie roots. We had borrowed the idea from an earlier attempt to broaden the social horizons within our workplace. The highlight of our previous gatherings was a ‘Traybake of the Month’ competition in which anyone could offer-up their version of a particular pastry which was then tasted and judged by all. The entries were usually terrific with only an occasional misfire, but that was then.
This is now …
Boss: “We could have a Geordie-themed bake-off before his retirement lunch. And he can be the judge!”
So that was that, a one-off ‘Geordie Traybake of the Month’ competition was conceived. We hit an immediate barrier. Despite trawling the internet and contacting various Geordie’s that we knew, we could only come up with two non-savoury home-bakes that were specifically linked to England’s northeast: Stottie cake (a kind of loaf) and singin’ hinnies (a sort of griddle scone). I ‘bagged’ the singin’ hinnies for my entry and left the others to their own devices and what ingenuity they showed.
The Hairy Bikers’ chocolate cake was a half-good idea, but only half-good insofar as one of the biker duo actually hails from England’s northwest (Cumbria in fact, like me) and couldn’t possibly be considered a Geordie. I thought about submitting a protest and seeking the cake’s disqualification as ‘not entirely Newcastle’, but suspected that it would be in vain as my boss was cunning enough to present only half the cake anyway, and she could always argue that she had brought along the Newcastle fraction and not the Cumbrian bit which she considered worthy only to be trashed. In truth, the cake had apparently self-destructed after being filled with a poorly conceived butter icing and only half could be salvaged.
The next entry was a straightforward iced sponge cake; its northeast credentials satisfied by a customised rice-paper photograph of Cheryl Cole as a topping. I thought a trick was missed by using the topper to make a Geordie cake; representing it as a Geordie tart would have been funnier, but the cake certainly had more taste than the muse that inspired its decoration. Nevertheless, it also had its problems. That the topper wished its recipient ‘Happy Birthday’ rather than ‘Happy Retirement’ could be overlooked, but the teensiest issue remained – it was not baked by one of us, but by a ‘ringer’; a surrogate maître pâtissier. If it had won then a protest would have been inevitable.
An engaging bit of lateral thinking led to the third competitor’s entry. Nixed by the lack of native Geordie traybakes, he had discovered a chocolate brownie recipe that included Newcastle Brown Ale as an ingredient. Inspirational stuff! Nevertheless, if one considers a published and tested recipe to comprise a sort of standard operating procedure to produce traybakes, then, as the experienced and professional quality assurance expert that he is, how could he confuse degrees Fahrenheit with degrees Celsius and bake his brownies at 275°C? And why did they not burn to a cinder? It turns out that his day may have been saved by his partner’s suggestion that his oven temperature was a tad high. So, I ask myself, where is the fairness in our traybake competition when someone making chocolate brownies gets outside help, and not just any outside help, but assistance from a person that coincidentally just happens to be a chocolate brownie expert herself? Sadly for my hopes of victory they tasted particularly fine and included a dob of caramel within them; sweet and gooey is always a winning combination.
Finally, my singin’ hinnies. Twenty minutes to prepare and twenty minutes to cook. I could make double the dough and use half of it for a practice run and the other half to knock out a dozen expertly-crafted Geordie-based griddle scones to secure a sweet victory. If only. Several hours later my singing hinnies comprised a soloist not a choir. A single, solitary artiste. The rest had been under-cooked, over-cooked, unevenly cooked or simply crumbled to nothing on the griddle. (I’m still struggling to understand what kind of recipe includes lard as half of the fat in the dough and then calls for the heated griddle to be smeared with even more lard to cook the damn things). At the tasting, ‘Boss’ thought the flavour of my sole surviving hinny evoked bubble and squeak, an easy mistake to make as ‘bubble’ is fried in pure lard and my hinny tasted of nothing else either. (I should add a mea culpa – when the first of my hinnies crumbled on the griddle, I thought it wise to add a bit more lard to the remaining dough to make it bind better!). Clearly I was not going to be a contender, but if a chap is going to fail, he may as well fail magnificently.
The Brown Ale Brownies won and rightly so, but I like to think the hilarity invoked by the taste of my singing hinny and the story-telling of the ineptitude of all our bakers was the real prize and one that was shared across the board. Self-detonating chocolate cakes, surrogate bakers, appalling quality control and lard. Oh god, the lard!
Postscript: Singin’ hinnies are so named because of the squealing sound that they are supposed to make when being cooked on the griddle. None of mine ‘sang’ which should have set the alarm bells ringing, but the experience did inspire a limerick which will be added to my ‘Little Book of Bollocks’, so not all was lost:
I was hoping I’d be able to bring
A traybake that was fit for a king.
‘Cos it’s not every day
That a chum goes away,
But my hinnies? They just wouldn’t sing!
