Of Lambs, Scones and Blind Summits

Iona

          I spent last week in a place of sugar-white beaches and palm-trees, turquoise sea, all-surrounding bird-song, blue skies unmarked by any wisp of cloud, and air-shaking, tarmac-melting heat: the Highlands, Scotland’s west coast.

          We drove to Oban and caught the ferry to Mull. I love ferries, especially little everyday working ferries.  There was a Scottish Water van and a plumber in the queue, and I wondered whether, when they were given their work-sheets that morning, they thought: Oh great! I’m going to Mull! They probably did in this weather, Davy said.  But in January, not.

Iona's cathedral

          On Mull we drove the length of the island to catch the passenger-ferry to Iona.  It was so hot on the island, we were glad to go into the shade of the beautiful cathedral.  While walking through the fields we heard corncrakes – I recognised the call from my Dad’s description: ‘Like a stick being dragged across railings, or a football rattle being shook slowly.’  He used to hear them, as a boy, in the fields around his house, but those fields have long vanished.

          We stopped for a drink at the Argyll Hotel, which served the best scone and coffee of the whole trip.  We sat in a sunny garden, beside a richly scented rose-bush, looking at a white beach, blue sea, and the mountains of Mull beyond.

          I dropped a few crumbs, but they were cleared by an unusual waiter (right).

          We stayed the night at a B&B on Mull, where the landlord didn’t give us a key because, ‘we never lock anything up.’

          We crossed back to the mainland from Tobermory (or ‘Tobe’ as the locals seem to call it), and spent most of the next two days on the most beautiful beaches that could be imagined.

          Everywhere was what Davy called ‘great lumps of scenery’.  I’m not sure exactly what constitutes a great lump of scenery, but you won’t go far wrong if you include at least one loch, a dozen mountains, a quantity of boulders and burns and any amount of blue sky.  As a bonus, throw in a beach and a couple of deer.

A great lump of scenery

          There was so much beauty that, at the end of a day, I was exhausted, and longed to sit in a dark room, stuffing my face with pot-noodle and watching ‘X-Factor’ as a corrective. But after a night’s sleep, I was eager for more scenery lumps.

          But the roads! The signs say ‘single-track’ and they do not kid. They are so narrow there isn’t room for a car to pass a cyclist.

Passing-places are provided, on alternate sides.  If the nearest passing place is on your side, you pull into it, and wait for the other car to pass.  If it’s on the alternate side, you stop opposite it, and the other car uses it to pass you.

          At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work, and with locals, it works very well.  However, journeys are enlivened by foreign tourists, who don’t understand the system, or feel more comfortable driving on the left, and instinctively dive for it in an emergency.  A motorcyclist, for instance, shot across in front of us, into the passing-place Davy was just about to enter.

Another lump of scenery

          A huge camper van sat in a passing-place, watching us approach, and as soon as we were nearly level with him, pulled out, entirely blocking the road.

          Another couple made angry shooing motions at us, telling us to reverse, when the nearest passing-place was on their side, immediately behind them.  Our nearest was a considerable distance back along a winding, hilly, narrow road with a steep drop on our side.  Davy wasn’t budging, shoo as they liked, and it was they who reversed – having caused a minor queue. Not easy on roads so remote and quiet.

          The roads were so narrow, with so many blind hilltops, hairpin bends and deep dips that the road often vanished like a magic trick.  You reached the top of a rise, to see the last of it whisking round a lump of scenery, leaving nothing before you but moor. 

          Potholes had crumbled the road’s edges away, and there were drops and ditches at the sides… We had to develop a system where Davy, driving, kept his eyes on the road immediately in front of the car, while I watched as far ahead as possible (a glimpse of road sometimes reappeared in the distance) so I could forewarn him of approaching vehicles.

          After many miles of this, we passed a shiny new road sign: ‘Beware: Blind Summit.’  Workmen had been despatched from some distant depot to erect that sign.  Beyond it were miles and yet more miles of difficult, blind, narrow hairpin bends and blind summits, where sheep, cattle, motorcyclists and camper vans lurked unseen.  Why that particular blind summit deserved its own sign, we never discovered.
          But it was a great trip, and even on the morning of the day we returned, we brewed up on great slabs of rock by a waterfall, and enjoyed a coffee-break that no cafe or hotel could equal.

         I took many photos, but there were some sights I missed and wish I hadn’t…

         The enormous – HUGE – red, shaggy Highland cow standing at the roadside in a lowering glen (hey, embrace the cliché), its horizontal horns so wide that a single horn nearly spanned the narrow road.

         Two small lambs asleep on a moorside verge, their legs intertwined and wrapped around the pole of a ‘passing place’ sign.

To distract Madwippet from a mention of a cat.

         The ginger cat splayed on the pavement of Tobermory’s high street, abandoning itself utterly to the hottest sun it had probably ever known in its short life.

         But the lost photo I regret most is of the sweeps of bluebells spilling down to the loch sides.  So I tried to put the scene into words instead:

Brawling bluebells,

                       Vibrant, cobalt,

Run to the lochside,

                            Steel-blue, cobbled;

The mountain’s wall,

                Tawny, bony:

And the sky

                Lark-pierced,

                                                   Cerulean,

                                                                            Still

                                                                             Lonely.

And the palm-trees?  They do grow in the west of Scotland, where it's warmed by the Gulf stream.

A Two Hundred And Twenty-Second Anniversary

          Yesterday was my last day as an RLFF.  I’ve been an RLFF for three years, and I have revelled in it.

          Many people, I find, don’t know what an RLFF is.  I didn’t myself three years ago.  When I explain that it stands for ‘Royal Literary Fund Fellow’ they ask what the Royal Literary Fund is.  Again, I have to admit, I had never heard of it until a writer friend suggested I apply for a place.  Since then it’s seemed that almost every writer I know or meet either is, or has been, an RLFF.

           The Royal Literary Fund is A Very Good Thing, especially if you’re a writer.  It’s a charity which exists to support and encourage writers, and boy, does it!

           According to the RLF website, the idea of a fund to ‘relieve distressed writers’ had been on the mind of the Reverend David Williams for some time.  Then he heard that a writer, wonderfully named Floyer Sydenham, had – somewhat less wonderfully - died in debtors’ prison.  So on the 18^th May 1790, Reverend Williams held the first meeting of the RLF committee, and invited subscriptions.  As this blog goes up on Saturday May 19^th 2012, that means it took place almost exactly 222 years ago.  There should be celebrations of more two-hundredth and twenty-second anniversaries.

          The Rev sounds like an engaging character: a ‘dissenting minister’ who often quarrelled with his congregations, so it seems they were quite dissenting too.  He published, ‘Sermons: Chiefly Upon Religious Hypocrisy.’  I bet that got a bit of dissent going.  He strongly supported the French Revolution, corresponded with Voltaire and Frederick the Great, was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and Garrick, and one of the first to subscribe to the Fund was the Prince Regent, so it's clear Williams’ acquaintanceship was wide.

          To further demonstrate his good eggery, the grants made by the Fund were, from the beginning, never limited by nationality, sex, religion or politics.  A writer, Williams obviously felt, was a writer was a writer, whether wearing breeches or petticoats – which, I think, was quite unusual in his day.

          The Fund raised money from subscriptions, donations and legacies.  Understandably writers have been generous, with Rupert Brooke, G K Chesterton, Arthur Ransome, A A Milne and Somerset Maugham all contributing.

Coleridge

          The Fund has stepped in to help Coleridge and Chateubriand, Thomas Love Peacock, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ivy Compton-Burnett and Mervyn Peake, among others.  It also helped Robert Burns’ widow and James Boswell’s daughter.

          The RLF’s Fellowship Scheme is slightly different.  It was set up in 1999, and was made possible by the sale, to Disney, of rights the Fund held in A A Milne’s work.

Compton-Burnett

          The scheme recruits writers ‘of literary merit’ and pays them to be on campus at UK Universities for two days a week.  Any student wishing to improve their writing skills can visit the RLFF, for advice and tuition.

          I love the RLF.  For a writer, the work is pure fun.  A constant stream of interesting people come to your door – you don’t even have to go out and find them.  They bring with them essays on all sorts of subjects, from Romeo and Juliet and the visual language of The Third Man, to solar heating engineering; from PhD work on art installations, or the conflict between the RAF and farmers during WWII, to the ethics of social work, Fuzzy Mathematics, how fashion in saris is diverging in the UK and India, Criminal Forensics and – especially interesting, this - the proper management of ‘artists’ who, it seems, don’t respond well to standard management techniques.  Who would have guessed?  But I didn’t know it was being studied.

          Still, there you are - the writer learns as much or more than they teach.

          The RLFF’s job is to help these interesting people solve the problem of how best to express their subject in words.  It’s great fun, even though it can be hard work.  (I often needed therapy after a session of Fuzzy Maths.)

          As an employer, the RLF is the most generous, understanding and respectful one I have ever known.  Its contract stipulates that the writer will spend a certain number of days on campus, seeing students; but the way that time is managed is entirely up to them.  And if no students come? - Well, the RLF stoutly maintains that this is in no way the writers' fault, and they are free to get on with their own work.

A distressed writer

          The Fund frequently reminds the writers that they are not employed by the host university, and the host cannot demand or dictate anything.  In any dispute, the RLF comes fiercely to the defence of the writer, with all the vim of a dissenting preacher sniffing hypocrisy.  David Williams would be proud.

          I am proud to have been an RLF Fellow; and I am proud to be, for the next year, an RLF Advisory Fellow.  I regret to say that, due to the recession, I think the scheme is fully booked for the time being – but I would recommend to any writer finding it hard to make ends meet to arm themselves with knowledge of the RLF – and to drink to the memory of David Williams, dissenting preacher and good egg.

          Blott solved it, eventually.  The answer is: hysilophodon.

Mr and Mrs Adam Price

          Here it is, folks, the wedding of the century (as far as I'm concerned.)  The photo above really doesn't do justice to how beautiful Pratibha (Patti) looked, as she entered the room where the ceremony took place.  She glittered and sparkled almost from head to foot, from the tiara to her beautifully sequined and gold embroidered slippers.  (Which she showed to everyone, later, on the lawn outside, by cocking up one leg, in case we missed them.  It's easy to see why her family affectionately call her 'Muni' or 'little girl'.)

          Nor does it do justice to how handsome and smart my two brothers looked in their dark suits and button-holes (Andrew was best man) or how smart Davy looked in his grey suit and shiny shoes.  (I looked a scruff as usual, and didn't even have the beflowered hat, as Andrew and Davy declared it OTT and I left it in the car.)

          After the ceremony, we went to another room, where an Aarti was held, a Hindu blessing, with Patti's grandmother and mother presiding.  A tray of lighted candles was held and moved in circles before figures of the gods Shiva, Derga and Ganesh, while the company sang, unaccompanied but most beautifully.  Anyone was welcome to go forward and hold the tray with Adam and Patti, and many guests did, whether Hindu or not.  Afterwards nuts were shared out among the guests, and we passed our hands over the flames before touching them to our eyes and smoothing them over our head.

          It was a lovely day and, as Adam and Patti first met and fell for each other twenty years ago, before parting, and then meeting again - it's about time!

          Here's the sonnet what I wrote, at Patti's request -

A Sonnet on the Marriage of Master Adam Price and Mistress Pratibha Garala

The Wise teach that for all that happens there is a 'Why' -

A lesson that must be learned, a debt that must be paid.

We may wish only to sit down and cry,

But we should listen and learn what the World has said.

Pay attention!  Learn that lesson fast! -

For Time moves swifter than an eyelid's flutter,

And in that blink of darkness two decades have passed

And twenty summers died, while we had other

Cares.  So when a twist

Of the path bring two lost ones home,

When eyes again meet and, as so much wished,

Hands once more clasp, and loneliness is done -

Then we should celebrate and loudly praise the Wise,

For if a debt has here been paid, Pratibha is the dearest Price!

Rough Winds Do Shake...

          A brief blog this week - the Blott brother gets married tomorrow, and I have to sort out a wedding outfit, sew flowers on me hat, rehearse the sonnet I shall be reading, that sort of thing...
           Looking at the weather, I think we'd be better kitting ourselves out in wetsuits, or possibly arctic gear, but I'm sure neither Adam nor Patti will let it bother them a bit.
          So, to my brother and my new sister: here's wishing you the very best, for Sunday and for the future!


          But Adam still managed to draw a Blott: -

Brother Blott

          The older brother who does the artwork for my covers was introduced here, at Authors Electric a few days ago.

Brother Adam, at the PriceClan Xmas do

     The brother who does the Blott cartoons is Adam, the younger brother, who is left-handed and, virtually from the time he could sit up, showed a strong abiiity to create in 3D.

     As a toddler he was never without a lump of soft plasticene, and astonished me one day, when he was about 4, by showing me a model he'd made of our budgie. It could have served as a silhouette for a book on identifying birds: it was unmistakeably a budgie and nothing else.

Art work: Adam Price

     He wasn't much older when, strongly impressed by an afternoon screening of 'Jaws', he took up his little blunt-ended scissors (which also rarely left his side) and cut, free-hand, a perfect silhouette of a Great White. I was 15 years older, and fancied myself observant, but I couldn't have drawn such a perfectly observed shark, right down to the ventral fins, gills and tail-flukes.

     He'd take the left-over bits of plastic from the airfix planes he used to make, and construct odd, imaginative little robots, with engine-cowlings for heads, bits of fuselage for breast-plates, and long lances of sprue.

     He is still drawing, painting, carving and writing, but I interrupted him to ask, rather superfluously,  How did you become such an accomplished artist?

Samurai and mouse by Adam Price

      Adam: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? - Practice, and being open to absolutely everything you see, being a visual magpie. So if I see a piece of graffitti art that I like I copy it - not the image itself but its way of expressing its ideas. I studied American Indian art and Mayan art and Hindu art and stole little pieces of their method of expression, the way they draw a hand or the fold of a cloth.
      S: How did you get your cartoons published?
      A: It was absolute blind luck. I've since read all kinds of dire statements about how impossible it is to get a cartoon published in today’s market - but I just blithely went ahead, developed a strip based around the pair of armadillos on Noah’s Ark, and sent it round to people. Of course everyone turned it down, but one local paper in Devon said 'We're looking for something with a more local flavour,' so a week later I presented all the same jokes but between two rabbits on Dartmoor! Sold!

     (Adam doesn't mention that a cartoon appeared every weekday, but on Saturdays there was a large spread featuring the bunnies in a rather fine drawing of a local beauty-spot.) 

      S: How did you get the idea for Blot?

Wentworth, by Adam Price

      A: Some time ago I was working on a strip based around a kind of gangly stray cat called Wentworth. Wentworth lives rough and loves music - the bongos being his favourite instrument - and is haunted by the ghost of one of the many mice he has eaten in his lifetime. Periodically Wentworth would be drawn to a particular house where he would spend all night singing (and playing the bongos) to the woman who lives there. When asked by the mouse why he did this, Wentworth would say 'I have to – she’s my mews'. This rather weak pun was where Blot originated and his blank stare and smooth shape was developed from the ghost mouse.  
      S: How do you produce the cartoons?
      A: I've tried a number of ways. I have used a graphic tablet, and various high-tech bits and bobs but I find it’s quicker and more
intuitive to draw Blot on paper in black ink. He then gets scanned and cleaned up, then I colour him on the computer before his lettering gets added.

      S: Is Blott going to be published?

      A: I've toyed with the idea of producing a self-published collection - but I'm so busy with other things.

       One of those things is marriage, in May, to his longstanding partner, Patti, who we all love - hi, little sis! - and we're all looking forward to dancing at the wedding!

No Blott this week - but something different...

A Sterkarm Pud

          If you're like me, you only eat the meal so you can get to the pud.

           Oh, stop pretending – you know very well that you’ve chosen your pudding before your starter – a simple task for me, as it’s just a matter of deciding what has the most chocolate in it.

          In The Sterkarm Handshake, the pudding is a great disappointment to Windsor, as it’s simply a repetititon of the creamy, buttery ‘grewts’ the meal began with, but served with honey and berries instead of raw meat.

          The Sterkarms could probably have honestly claimed to ‘not have a sweet tooth’ since they would rarely, if ever, have eaten anything sweeter than honey and fruit – and their fruit would have been closer to the wild varieties, seasonal, and much less sweet than the kinds we have today.

Honeycombe

          Honey was seasonal, and although stored for use throughout the year, was relatively scarce and valuable and wouldn’t have been used with the carelessness that we use sugar.  Poorer Sterkarms, unless they had the time and skill to keep bees, would have counted themselves lucky to taste it on ‘high days and holidays.’

         Sugar was available, but in the early 16^th Century was only just beginning to be produced in bulk, and it was still, like other spices, extremely expensive.  The soft sassenachs might have been going mad with it down in London until every tooth in their head was black, but I doubt if the fashion for it, or much of the stuff itself, was yet to be found on the Borders.

         So, for this Sterkarm dessert, you can either serve groats again, with honey, small wild strawberries, raspberries and bilberries – or may I suggest something a little different, that very ancient British pud, frumenty?

Doesn't that look tempting?

          I’ve no doubt the Sterkarms enjoyed frumenty on many another day.  Perhaps they thought it too good for Windsor.  (Isobel didn’t want to waste her spices on him.)

          You take 140g of cracked wheat, or bulgar wheat, or semolina.

          Half a litre of ale.

          Two eggs

          A couple of handfuls of raisins.

          Half a teaspoon, or a large pinch, of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

          Three to four tablespoons of single cream.

          Honey or sugar, some water to top up and – if you’re feeling really extravagant – a pinch of saffron.

          Soak the wheat overnight in the ale.  Most of the liquid will be absorbed.

          Put the wheat in a pan over heat, and add a little more ale, or water.  Add the spices and boil until the wheat is soft.  The smell is pretty wonderful.

          Remove from the heat and allow to cool a little, then add the raisins and stir them in.

          Then add the cream and two beaten eggs.  Don’t add them while the mixture is too hot, or the eggs will cook like scrambled egg.

          Return to a low heat and cook.  Add sugar or honey to taste – and the saffron if  you’re using it.

Expensive foreign almonds! Not for the Sterkarms.

          You can add nuts, or berries when you serve it.

          This also used to be served with meat, such as venison or pork, as well as being a sweet dessert.

          For the Sterkarms, this would have been a real luxury, celebratory dish, something only for special occasions, such as Hogmanay, weddings, christenings and such.  Eggs, cream, fruit and honey were all seasonal - something we tend to forget - and therefore prized.  The spices and raisins would have been extremely expensive.  About the only thing that was common-place was the ale, which was drunk instead of water – and even though ale would have been brewed every week, and was served at every meal, it still represented hours of work.

          FREE BOOKS! - On the 23rd and 24th of this month, to mark Shakespeare's birthday, those crazy Authors Electric are giving away e-books for free.  For details of what books, and how to find them, go to http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/ on the 23rd April.

A Sterkarm Dinner-Party: The Main

A soay sheep posing as a Sterkarm sheep      Now for the main course of the Sterkarm dinner party.      It’s a delicious meat pudding.  In The Sterkarm Handshake, Per Sterkarm went out especially to catch a deer for it, and the deer was hung for several days - but if you can’t put your hands on a deer, fallow or red, you can use a sheep, goat, or even a cow, though  obviously, the size of your pudding will vary, and the amount of other ingredients will have to be adjusted.        The recipe below assumes you are using a sheep.        Take the stomach, liver, heart and lungs.        You’ll also need three onions, 250 grams of beef lard, 150 grams of the inevitable oatmeal, salt, and about 150 mls of stock.         Also some of that expensive spice, pepper – the little dried berries of a vine, picked and dried half a world away.  Their price reflects the distance they’ve travelled.           Start preparing this dish at least a day before you need it because first you must clean the stomach well, emptying it of what the animal was last keeping in it, and washing it out.  Soak it overnight (in a wooden bowl or tub, probably).           In the morning, turn the stomach inside out, and boil it for one and a half hours in good stock.  (There would always be a stock-pot full of bones and bits boiling in the Sterkarm kitchen.)  Make sure that the weasand – that it, the windpipe – hangs over the edge of the pot, to allow drainage – though drainage of what I’d rather not ask, if you don’t mind.           While the belly-bag is boiling, slap the heart and lungs on a table-top or large chopping board, and mince them with a big knife.           Get hold of the liver and chop up half of it.  (The other half isn’t needed for the pudding, so Per Sterkarm probably had it as a treat, and a reward for catching the deer.)           Keep chopping! –chop  up the onions and the beef lard.           In a large crock or tub, mix together the chopped heart, lungs, liver, lard, onions and oatmeal.  Season well with salt.           Then the peppercorns need to be ground.  If you are the lady of the tower, Isobel, then obviously you can use your own pepper as you like.  If you’re a mere cook, you will need to ask for the peppercorns, as they are so valuable they will kept locked away.  Grind them in a pestle and mortar, and add to the mix.           Add sage, thyme and parsley, if liked.  They will have been grown by Isobel, or gathered wild, and may be either fresh or dried.           Take some of the water the belly was boiled in, and add enough to the mixture to make it a little watery.           Now take the belly-bag and put it in another bowl, to support it, with the opening at the top.  Fill it with the mixture of oatmeal and offal until it’s half-full.           Squeeze out the air, and sew it up with thread.           Put it back into the boiling stock, top up with water, and boil for three hours, without a lid.  Don’t let it boil dry, and  if the stomach starts blowing up, prick it with a needle.           When it’s done, bring to table and cut into steaming slices.  Serve with its own gravy and boiled neeps – that is, turnips.  Some turnip greens, would also be good, if  in season, as would carrots – which, in the Sterkarm’s time, the early 16th Century, would be purple, not orange.  (They would never have called their redheads ‘carrot-top.')           No potatoes. The plant hadn’t yet been introduced to Britain.           They would expect you to tuck in enthusiastically, and Isobel Sterkarm would be beside herself with disappointment and shame if you didn’t.  After all, she and her maids had worked long and hard in a stifling kitchen to offer you their very best.           The offal was far more nutritious, juicy and tasty than the tough, dry, lean muscle meat from their hardy little beasts – and they’d put expensive pepper in it, just for you!           Isobel would press second and third helpings on you, because it was a terrible slight to be called mean, or for anyone to say that they left your table hungry.  It would be a matter of pride, too, to show that they didn’t need to care about saving food. And, of course, the more you ate, the more Isobel could pride herself as a hostess.           However politely you refused, she would heap your plate anyway.  She wouldn’t be able to help herself.         Toorkild and Per Sterkarm would probably make sure the pudding was finished but if, somehow, there was any pudding left over, it would turn up at breakfast, fried.  And, because you were a guest, the envious Sterkarm men would be denied it, and it would land on your plate.  With a clonk.  Good appetite!