Author: aspinalllucy

Crypto – but not a currency

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Years, actually many years ago, I worked in the water ‘industry’ –  how can water, essential to life, be an industry? But that is for another rant.

Anyway, as a result, I have been warning anyone who would listen, that any bright terrorist/mad person could cause a lot of damage easily by ‘polluting’ a drinking water supply.

I have to say that ‘anyone’ in this case is currently only the Best Beloved, but in times past, it has been people in the House of Commons bar, on a Leeds bus, a group of 100 PhDs, two chief executives of Yorkshire Water, an Offwat executive, and people around for supper.

Well, I feel vindicated as an attempt to hack into a Florida water supply was stopped only by an eagle-eyed water company employee.

Right, dear reader, you are welcome to think at this point that I have made my point and you can get on with your life. 

What is more this might not be the time you want to hear more about ‘surprise’ diseases caused by something which started in an animal and causes all sorts of issues for humans.

Feel free to escape to your knitting.

This is not a story of water-terrrosim but it is about a water-borne issue.

So, I was at one stage in life ( quite a well paid stage, I have to say,) a consultant for Yorkshire Water – and there was a drought.

I, along with my smart friend and lunch companion, asked the CEO what would happen if it didn’t rain. ‘It will,’ he said. It didn’t.

After he lost his job, the new CEO, asked me about this conversation and I said they should do a little bit of planning for the worst and hoping for the best. Cryptospordium, for example.

I bet you are sitting up now, a little bit excited to know about Cryptosporidium. Well, breathless reader, I will tell you.

It is a microscopic parasite and it causes diarrhoea and, wouldn’t you know it, a persistent cough.

It gets into the water system from animal faeces – now you need to think of sheep grazing near Yorkshire reservoirs.

So, for most people it is unpleasant, but for some, it can be a killer.

And, significantly, it does not get killed by usual water treatment.

So, I set up a two day crisis planning event for the management of Yorkshire Water.

They sat, a little reluctantly I may say, around a table and we fed them information we had created.

We told them, it is 6pm, and you have just had an alert that crypto has been found in the water system.

What you have to do with crypto is tell everyone to boil their water.

For that to happen you have to alert them – put something out on the 10.30 regional news for example.

But, watching that will be the chief executives of all the regional breweries who use a lot of unboiled water, hairdressers, hospital managers, people who run pub kitchens, well you can imagine the list.

They will want to know what is going on.

And what about all the people who hadn’t watched the late news and didn’t know they should boil their water before they took a glass of it to bed.

There will be a lot of people who did watch the news and will call the Yorkshire Water helpline – but everyone there has gone home. And anyway they are used to dealing with bill queries and leaks – what information will you need to get together so they can answer the questions they will be getting?

Because of the drought, YW had re-engineered the water system to get supplies all over the place but no one now has a map of where water goes.

And, you tell the rather shifty looking management team, they only test for crypto once every three days – so you could have a bit of a lag on your hands but no one knows for sure.

As they set about making decisions, we brought in their own section chiefs to explain why this or that could or couldn’t happen – and they had to work through changing scenarios.

I could tell you a lot more details but I suspect your interest might just wane a bit.

As a result of that exercise YW re-vamped all sorts of plans and procedures over the next two weeks, and a couple of weeks later than that, crypto was found on another water company’s patch. 

YW’s chief executive rang them and told them he was sending a team to help with the newly minted plans. It worked.

It wasn’t a worldwide pandemic threat but did serve to remind that those people who will have to deal with crises, should be forced to sit through a proper planning exercise. Just saying, Boris.

Squid and Friends

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Apparently, hearing is the last sense to leave the body. Well, for me the last activity to leave the Covid lethargy, is cooking.

No surprise there then for anyone who knows me.

Meanwhile, it takes days to actually get round to cleaning the kitchen floor, I have been dithering and dathering about which Coursera course to sign up for – even though they are free and only require a minimum of concentration…..

All those things I did in April, have not been done since. 

I have no pictures of my culinary disaster so here are a few winter pictures.

So this, dear reader, if you are still with me and not off to do something more interesting, is a story of squid and friends.

Squid is cheap, and is best if you cook for a few seconds or a really long time, or both. ( I am sure there are other such ingredients but none spring to mind – mind you, not much ‘springs’ to mind these days.)

The Best Beloved was not a squid fan when he met me – mind you he was not a Labour voter, good at buying jewellery, hoovering, putting the washing on, enjoying long lunches with friends.

I converted him to squid stew with various adaptations of a Hugh Fearnley-Wittingtstall recipe.

You make a tomato sauce – a good one – fry the squid for seconds and put in the sauce and then both of them on a long slow cook. (Bottom of the Aga for those of us who live in Deepest Sussex).

You can add potatoes and fennel an hour or so in. 

I have made this, with variations, loads of times and so it counts as easy, familiar, comfort, not meat, cheap, flexible, appreciated – and most importantly to this story, whilst you are doing something else.

So, all was in hand when I realised I was approaching the time for a family call and went into the oven to check the stew.

Well the squid was nicely meltingly ready, but the fennel (always a tricky ingredient) was a bit hard.

(Dear reader, I know this is going on rather long, but there will be a nicely uplifting bit about friends soon-ish.)

So, I decided to take out the squid and put the rest back in the oven, though this time in the top (hot) oven of the Aga and get on with the call.

Call took longer than I thought and so it was the charred remains of a tomato sauce I pulled  out of the oven. Inedible, no I mean it, not possible to rescue.

I had squid, and a memory.

My lovely sis had returned from living in Milan.

She had spent time with staying with my ex-boyfriend, and various other people and then pitched up in Leeds to stay with me for a week. 

(She is still in Yorkshire – some many years later.)

If you are lucky, there are times in your life when you have a special group of friends. You spend time together, you do things together, you get along brilliantly –  you are caught up in a delightful web of friendship.

It has happened to me three times in my life, and I celebrate each of them.

This time was in Leeds and my sis was a pivotal part of it.

And, among many other things she brought us group of friends, a recipe.

Squid and peas and pasta.

In my memory it was summer and there were back doors open, our friends drinking wine and gossiping around the kitchen table whilst my sis cooked her meal.

So, here in winter, and lockdown, I looked at my cooked squid. Got some peas. Melted some butter and cooked the peas in it. Swirled them with the squid and the clinging bits of non-ruined tomato sauce and added them to some cooked spaghetti – using, of course, a splash of the spaghetti cooking liquid to meld the sauce.

I have to say at this point, this was not my sis’s way of making the dish but hey ho, I did what I could under the circumstances.

My BB duly appreciated supper – but I was back in a house in Leeds with my amazing friends, laughing, letting dogs run round the garden, swapping journalistic stuff, discussing politics, hearing stories of life in Millan, music on in the background.

There were BBQs, there were loves lost and gained, there was a sunny summer, and that was that very special time.

And no we are not all still in contact, but at the time I was pretty convinced I was living a very good life – and indeed, dear reader, I was.

The Art Of Conversation

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When we were allowed, and it was my Best Beloved’s birthday, six of us had lunch together.

So, good friends invited us and erected (without, so they say, any martial discord) a sturdy  gazebo so we could all sit outside, be safe.

And just talk.

Chat, cut across one another with an anecdote, digress, suggest a good book read, rail at politicians, tease, compliment on the lovely food, tell stories, just relax with people we know very well, and laugh, all of it for hours – no ‘lunch party’ just good friends.

It was such a highlight – and was rather giddily exhausting.

It has been a long time since we did that. 

In our house in this nearly a year of more or less lockdown, there are no-need-to-finish sentences, chats about the dog’s welfare (always a topic of conversation), who is doing the washing, discussion about what to watch on tv with the inevitable ‘wasn’t he in that thing we watched, you know the one set in Northumbria with that woman who was in ……..,’ endless half conversations about how awful the government are, and more about Trump.

And, which small projects have to be done today – or tomorrow, or the next day.

(Today, for me it was pickling red cabbage and doing the ironing. For the BB it is a gentle start to podcasting his book, a very gentle start I have to say, and reading the beginning of a friend’s book.)

And it is not just us. I was talking to a neighbour on my dog walk this morning and she said she was getting to the point of not wanting to ring friends because she had nothing much to say – minding children, cleaning the kitchen floor, dog walking….

And another acquaintance who said it was so nice to chat to someone she didn’t know that well because it meant she made a ‘chatty effort.’

We have a Zoom call tonight – and yes they have fallen by the wayside from the early days when we would have several a week – and it means I will spend some time in the next couple of hours thinking of something, anything, interesting I can say.

(Leave alone the fact my hair is a mess after walking in rain and wind and whether I will try and make it look presentable, or just not bother.)

( And likewise with the ironing – do I really need to bother? I ironed a white linen shirt bought on our September trip to Italy – I think I might have mentioned that before – worn last I can’t remember when or why, or when or why I might wear it again….)

I wear either dog walking boots, or slippers. And it is jeans, a t-shirt and a jumper. I would say 80 per cent of my wardrobe is hanging there doing nothing. ( I have this fantasy that they get up in the wee small hours and make all kinds of interesting outfit combinations and sneak out for Covid-free meet ups with other people’s unused wardrobes.)

My dog walking friend called me today ( we haven’t met up since lockdown) and I suggested we talked and walked. We will each go on our own dog walk and we will talk on the phone as we do it.

(We will also arrange to swap her marmalade for my pickled red cabbage when I make one of my occasional trips to the ‘delights’ of Petersfield.)

So, please, dear reader, don’t tell me that you are discussing Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations with your re-ingnited group of university friends one of whom is now an interesting tech millionaire.

Or, you have set up a local poetry discussion group and you are exploring Blake’s oeuvre.

Or, you have surprised yourself by getting involved in an Instagram group advising on the best make-up for an older woman to make herself ‘feel good by looking good’.

Or, you find yourself soothed by chatting daily to your sourdough starter,

Please don’t.

Mind you Wittgenstein’s black swans stuff was always a good conversation starter at a party – my political philosophy degree must come in useful for something.

A Dilly Lockdown

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I am finding this lockdown a bit driech (splendid Scottish word for dull and gloomy ) and not least because there seemed to be a surprising number of people who apparently had essential journeys to undertake this week, and many of them seemed to be urgent given the speed at which they were driving.

So, life here in this house in Deepest Sussex has ground to a slow movement. A bedaggled (soiled by being dragged along wet ground) dog walk is essential, and so, it now appears, is an afternoon film.

We are not great cinema goers but now with the help of (thank god) technology we can bring the films into our sitting room on a daily basis.

And we have watched some very good films – so no game show trash for us – which means I can pretend that I have some virtue. (decency, merit, as well as piousness and snobbery.)

And, self-justification (I don’t think I need bother you with other words for that.)

I cook, the Best Beloved puts some jigsaw pieces in now and then, and writes history or commentaries current politics, whilst I sometime clean ( well, actually nip round with the vac, as my grandmother would say.)

Our days are anfractuous (winding or circuitous, in case you needed to know.)

Now and then a ‘spur’ hits and I am slowly (sluggishly, driftingly, dawdlingly, lazily, ineptly) re-decorating the downstairs loo. 

And as we speak the BB is out in the garage trying to sort out the winding mechanism to insert the leaf into an old oak table so we can sell it – don’t ask. (astrabilious, tetchy, irritated, acriasial….)

But, I am told that this is a time to be kind to yourself and so I am doing that on a daily basis. (tender, dilly – who’d have thought? but that is a word I can feel myself using again, good-hearted – nicely Buddhist, benign, self-generous – really?I would be out hugging trees with crystals, and that ain’t going to happen.) 

But really and truly that just means letting myself off from painting/cleaning the wood floors/sorting out the dog insurance/clearing out the pantry/re-upholstering four chairs/leave alone the learning of a new language, or an instrument, or skill, or indeed anything very much.

So, I am negligent (guilty, culpable, blameworthy, hangdog, reprehensible,) and also lazy (slothful, work-shy, languorous, distracted, listless.)

But I am going to be dilly (newly attractive word) to myself and know that there is a tagine in the oven, a well-walked dog, a fire to be lit, a good book waiting for bedtime, a film to be watched, no one I know has died of Covid, and tomorrow I will be more (assiduous, over diligent, hardworking, conscientious, dynamic, active, energised.)

I suspect this plan might be bambosh (deceptive nonsense), or blague ( pretentious nonsense).

But as we say in this house, tomorrow is another day, and maybe the BB will grace me with a basemain ( kiss on the hand) and we will wander, stroll, saunter, amble, dawdle, potter, ramble, meander, drift, digress through it.

And we will appreciate our luck and life, and that might well be enough.

And, as a PS and the principle that there is no new emotion under the sun, here is A E Houseman who my BB was reading as I wrote this post:

Yonder see the morning blink:

The sun is up, and up must I,

To wash and dress and eat and drink

And look at things and talk and think

And work, and God knows why.

Oh often have I washed and dressed

And what’s to show for all my pain?

Let me lie abed and rest:

Ten thousand times I’ve done my best

And all’s to do again.

Hommage to Heinz Tomato Soup

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Along with my battle between ‘why bother’ and ‘keeping up standards’, I am veering between comfort food and being clean and healthy.

Right this minute though, I am thinking of childhood comfort food.

Frey Bentos pies. I am not sure I would give one house room now, but then the idea you could use a can opener to take the lid off a raw pie and then cook and eat it within say half an hour seemed pretty impressive.

I think I might have mentioned before that butterscotch Angel Delight was a favourite and indeed was a favourite, I found out later in life, with Ethiopian refugees. ( By then it needed searching out and I am pretty sure you couldn’t find it in Waitrose Petersfield but an Ethiopian diaspora in London made it possible to locate – maybe still is for all I know.)

I don’t eat either of those any more but there is one comfort food which has stayed.

Heinz tomato soup.

That, with Dairylea sandwiches was what I ate when recovering from anything from measles to a bad cold.

And there is a tin always in my cupboard.

I was delighted to find that also some proper cook had it as her comfort food in an article at the back of some foodie magazine which I seem to have thrown out or I would credit her.

So, imagine my gasp of horror when the Best Beloved found, unusually I have to say, he was out of homemade soup took it and drank/ate it….

I had it to recover from pneumonia a couple of years ago, and I am very much hoping I won’t have to have it recovering from Covid.

( I have found a recipe to re-create the essence of Heinz and given that this lockdown won’t be over by a week on Tuesday, I might give it a try.)

Meanwhile, and I am rather hoping it isn’t a meanwhile, I am thinking of the chip sandwiches my mother brought my sister and I when she came home late from work and we were in bed.

Yes, white bread but from a ‘proper’ loaf, home cooked chips, salt and vinegar – all made by indefatigable grandmother.

These days I have dal as comfort food, cottage/shepherd’s pie ( and I have to say I make a decent lentil version which can be attested to by local neighbours) with homemade pickled red cabbage, posh mushrooms on toast, risotto, aubergine pie, a fish finger sandwich, cheese and jalapeño quesadillas, squid stew – but I am just showing off.

And there is always a tin of Smash in the larder. Remember that? Advertised by aliens? These days only for secret midnight feasts or on the better days of a recovery. No cornflakes from the packet for me.

Can I just point out, these are not to be used in place of proper mashed potatoes – Smash will not work well on the top of a cottage pie.

You need to rootle around the in the fridge and find something to sauté and add in – onions, chillis, sesame oil, tomatoes with oregano, always with a sprinkling of Marigold Bullion … or just butter.

That’s what living in Deepest Sussex does for you, sorry.

Snobbery and Frugality

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Dear reader, this is a post which comes with one of those warnings – this is a blog that contains food snobbery in quite large quantities.

There are some recipes I avoid every time I see them – especially anything titled ‘pasta bake’ or ‘vegetable curry’.

Personally, I can’t imagine the day when I am going to look forward to making or, indeed and especially, eating a tuna and broccoli pasta bake even if it ‘comes bubbling from the oven to the table.’

Broccoli is not a suitable partner for pasta. There, that is it, I said it.

(Now I do realise, I am not having to try to get fish and vegetables into resistant children who will, however, eat anything with pasta. 

Either sell your children, or give them fish fingers, peas and spaghetti hoops.)

Chicken and pasta bake – not really. Chicken and pasta don’t go together and certainly not baked in the oven with cheese.

And the idea of brussel sprouts and pumpkin pasta bake makes me want to weep.

I do realise that lasagne and cannelloni are pasta bakes but not as we know the term and tell me, hand on heart, when did you eat a really delicious lasagne outside of Italy – or even in it, for that matter.

The exception I will make is macaroni cheese – up there with cauliflower cheese as one of the very, very good comfort foods.

The pastas I prefer are long strips of varying width – spaghetti, tagliatelle, pappardelle etc – which don’t lend themselves to baking as far as I know.

A recipe for four cheese baked spaghetti is not convincing me that I am wrong, but in case you differ: https://www.foodandwine.com/pasta-noodles/baked-pasta/baked-pasta-dishes?slide=c079c521-8907-4786-a70e-e9fbc1b88b99#c079c521-8907-4786-a70e-e9fbc1b88b99

The long pastas remind me much more of good Italian meals and I am very prepared to spend time thinking of how to ‘dress’ them – crab and lemon zest, artichokes and olives (both from cans I have to say), squid, peas and tomato sauce ( actually very cheap to make), I could go on….

My sister’s friend’s sister apparently makes the most delicious pasta sauces from all sorts of simple ingredients and I always like hearing the stories of what they ate whilst on holiday – mind you any stories of holidays and good food are at a premium these strange days. 

I salute that woman’s cooking but am pretty sure a pasta bake was not included.

Wondering whether the Italians would also sneer at a pasta bake, I Googled about and found indeed there are all sorts of pasta bakes but they are not called that.

It is all a question of language…….but a closer look does not fill me with delight, pasta bakes with a posher name.

Meanwhile, likewise with anything described as a vegetable curry gets a stiff ignoring from me, as the Best Beloved would say.

This is not because I don’t eat or make them – sag aloo is a delight, dal with crispy fried onions, cauliflower masala, mushroom and pea keema ( thank you Meera Sodha for that and other lovely recipes)……

It is because all those recipes you come across have carrots in them, and I am not a big fan of a carrot – and other root vegetables. (Honourable exceptions include potatoes, of course, fennel and the occasional turnip but never found in any of my ‘curries’.)

The idea that you can curry chunks of carrot and parsnips and sweet potatoes is not getting a toe over my threshold.

I am not saying this is not a good vegetable curry for the people who like that sort of thing, but this is not happening in this part of Deepest Sussex, along with, and I am sorry if I offend anyone, beetroot and aubergine curry. I may rest my case at this point.

I am sure that there is an Indian cook out there who could make me sit and eat a meal with carrots in it which I would then describe as delicious. But that cook is not me.

And, finally on this, ‘curry’ is just too a generic term – it signals to me that the recipe is not going to be great.

( I did warn you about snobbery……)

So, I can happily ignore recipes for vegetable curry and flick past them, but as for pasta bakes the search is on.

We have a lot of none strip pasta. 

This is not as a result of panic buying in March or November or now ( the year marked by panic buying outbreaks, who would have thought?) but because too much pasta was brought into the Free Shop and some ‘shoppers’ suggested I could make some pasta bakes for following week – they apparently had a soft spot for a pasta bake.

You can imagine my delight.

As it happens, I am not volunteering there any more so not cooking for it, but am left with a lot of pasta. (Don’t worry, I have not deprived people of pasta, the Free Shop gets more pasta than it can shake a hat at.)

My plan is to find something I can call something other than ‘pasta bake ‘ and which tastes good but is nevertheless baked in the oven. 

There is already the aubergine pie recipe ( see a previous blog) but there must be more out there which will convert me.

I am not falling for Pasta Al Forno which is basically a bolognese sauce baked with pasta. Come on, there must be something better than that…….

So, in yet another lockdown with weather not conducive to gardening, temperament not conducive to nothing more than necessary when it comes to cleaning, upholstery on hold, dog walking not taking up all of the day, BB working on his great thoughts about the Bexit deal, news of record numbers of Coronavirus cases, my project may well be to find/create a ‘decent’ pasta bake.

Standards

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I went delivering Christmas cards the other day – not something I usually do but it was combined with a dog walk, and that is something I have to do, come rain or shine.

This was rain.

I dropped one off at a friend’s.

Jess and I were what could charitably be described as more than bedraggled. ‘Look like you have been pulled through a wet hedge backwards,’ as my grandmother would have said.

My friend however answered the door in a glamorous black jumper, nicely made up, hair looking good, jewellery properly accessorised.

‘Well it is Christmas and it’s worth making an effort,’ she said.

Likewise, I got reprimanded by another friend for having no, not one, Christmas decoration in the house – at least not one visible from the outside ( and, dear reader, there was indeed not one inside.)

So I went up in the loft, went into the garden and got a bit of ivy, and scattered it along with a carrier bag’s worth of decorations around the house.

( Usually, the reprimanding friend decorates our house for our annual Winter Lunch but not this year….)

But, I can’t say that I went home and blowed dried my hair or put on anything glam – brushing the mud off my jeans was as far as that went.

This lockdown, unlike the previous two, has come as a bit of a depressing surprise. 

For those of us with charmed and easy lives (and I do know that is not true of many people), the first lockdown was all gardening, chatting with neighbours over the fence, organising NHS headband-makers, cooking for the village, and zooms.

November was predicted, and to be honest, didn’t feel much like a lockdown as the traffic was ‘roaring’ round the lanes as people nipped into Waitrose for an ‘essential’ or two, fewer zooms, not as scary, not as sociable……

This one has dark mornings and evenings, bad weather, a threat of a more contagious virus, and it is seriously muddy underfoot.

And there is the battle between ‘why bother’ and ‘keeping up some standards’.

As I spent part of this morning doing the ironing, there was a bit of me thinking why do I need an ironed white shirt when I get up every morning put on those (sometimes brushed) jeans, a t-shirt and a jumper to walk the dog. 

Somehow, I can’t bring myself to wear the white shirt, have to wash and iron it again – indeed there are a lot of clothes in my wardrobe that haven’t, and aren’t likely to, be worn in the foreseeable future.

But being an Aspinall, genetic heritage from my mother and grandmother, cooking carries on.

So, to Christmas lunch.

I asked a shooting villager for a brace of pheasants and in return made him and his family and steak and kidney pie.

In the end he gave me a brace of partridge which I failed to cook properly.

So, we had a (nearly) vegetarian Christmas lunch but ,I would like to point out, sauté potatoes, creamed spinach with nutmeg, sprouts with bacon, cider gravy – so some standards don’t slip in this household.

Empty Suitcases

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We, like the rest of the world it seems, loved The Queen’s Gambit but there is a small, but oh so significant in our house, caveat.

Why would Beth would arrive back from one of her many chess triumphs (during which, especially in Paris,) she was wearing some amazing outfits, was she carrying small – and more importantly – empty suitcases.

Inside the House From Netflix's "The Queen's Gambit"

She is not alone, I have to say.

There are empty suitcases being carried by actors in hundreds of films – indeed we rarely watch a film without the Best Beloved harrumphing at a clearly empty suitcase.

Recently, on a wet afternoon diverted from gardening to binge film watching, Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson played about with empty suitcases in As Good As It Gets.

Previously, in To Catch A Thief when a youthful Leonardo di Caprio, who surely could manage to carry a suitcase with a little bit of stuff in it, swung an empty case as he strode along.

And that is to name but two.

(So, our film watching is punctuated by a combination of who can spot the empty suitcase first and name that actor.

‘Oh, that’s the woman who ran the antiques shop in Three Billboards, isn’t it?’

‘He was in that thing we watched, you know that thing with what’s her name from that thing based on JK Rowling’s book, Strike, that’s what it was – what was she called?’ )

It turns out we are not the only people to note empty suitcases – mentioning this to my good friend on a dog walk this morning, she was, well I can only say, enthused, that the BB was the other sensible soul in the universe who got outraged at an empty suitcase.

So, why when film makers expend a great deal of time, energy, effort, thought and money on making something look so real, do they fail to manage to get even a few clothes in a suitcase?

I stated to google about and looked up the role of continuity. I am no film expert but I would have thought this issue might fall into that bag (or case.)

Apparently, I was wrong and if you want to wade through some of the more arcane/academic explanations of continuity you could go here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3208769/ where you can find sentences like this: 

‘These camera shots are often filmed at different times and locations and may have little feature overlap, and as such, flow of information across shots often bears little resemblance to the perceptual flow of information as we interact in the real world.‘

But just in case you don’t, here is a short version, ‘Continuity in filmmaking is the practice of ensuring that details in a shot are consistent from shot to shot within a film scene. When there is continuity between shots, then audiences have a greater suspension of disbelief and will be more engaged in the film.’

Now, the problem with blaming continuity, is that you don’t get a shot with a proper heavy suitcase and the next time you see it, it is as light as a feather – they are always like that.

Presumably can’t be props as they must just supply the suitcases….

So, who knows who is responsible?

I googled ‘empty suitcases in films.’

It turns out I am not alone in trying to find an answer:

From The Guardian in 2013 in a section described as

‘Readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts’

John Benseman, from Auckland, New Zealand asked,

‘Given all the care that film-makers take to make things realistic, why do they never seem to put any weight in the bags and suitcases that actors carry?’

I am really hoping that John Benseman got his answer eventually because no one, not one reader answered his question on The Guardian’s site. 

(And I am tempted to ask him as I found him on Google too but that, dear reader may be going a step too far….)

Likewise Mavieen Rows asked on her blog ,where she described herself as a spending life watching movies,

‘This drives me crazy.  What is so hard about actually putting clothes in them?  Hell, even putting pillows in them would give an extra dimension of “full” that doesn’t exist in a sides-caving-in typical Hollywood suitcase.  I want answers!’

As far as I know, she didn’t.

The rest of that google page search is full of references to a film called Empty Suitcases by Bette Gordon and should you need a review:

The “empty” suitcases can be inferred as letting go of all the unnecessary thoughts and feelings of a person’s past. After the film was over Bette Gordon talked about her desire to work with the empty spaces of the frame and put in items outside of the frame of view.

Mmmm, well it will have to be a very long wet Sunday afternoon before I pick that over a re-run of The Railway Children.

So, dear reader I would love to be able to answer the question of empty suitcases but I have found out nothing.

But here is a nice ending:

Apparently, it is a tradition in Colombia to carry around an empty suitcase on New Year’s Eve in the hope that the next year is full of travel and excitement and that over the year those cases will be filled with precious memories…….

Dilemmas and Bread and Butter Pudding

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There weren’t many moral dilemmas when I was at the Oxfam bookshop. Once you got over the difficulty of throwing away books – and you had to – it all fell into place.

Sell books, make money for a good cause, go home.

The Free Shop turns out to be a minefield of such dilemmas, and Christmas is bringing more and more of them.

The Free Shop was initiated, planned, and runs as an anti-food waste project. So, we get leftover food from local supermarkets, allotment growers, those with too many apples, and we offer them for free to anyone who wants them.

We are not a food bank and we do not ask for anyone to prove they are in need. 

But when I turn up on a Saturday morning with some soup I have made from some of the (rather surprisingly) 20 celeriacs we had donated last week, to find 15 people queuing up in the pouring rain half an hour before we open, you know they are not there to polish their eco credentials.

One of the local pubs, shut obviously, has turned its kitchen over to making food and I have to tell you it looks a whole lot more professional than the savoury bread and butter pudding I have made this week. (But more of that later.)

I am in the shop on a Wednesday afternoon.

Ostensibly, we are open from 2 to 3.30 but often my lovely colleague and I, have ‘sold’ out by 2.45.

So, back to the dilemmas.

If you are anti food waste, can you/should you ration what someone takes?

Do you make judgements about the person who comes in with two really big carrier bags and literally sweeps food into them? 

What do you think of the man who walks three miles to get to us along the main and rather dangerous road? Well, you get the best beloved to print off an ordnance survey map and highlight how to walk off road. When the man says it will be muddy and points to his loafers and you ask what size feet he has so that you can ‘source’ some wellies, and he says he wouldn’t be seen dead in wellies and by the way do you still not have any decent green tea available? Do you laugh and save him the only packet of green tea we get that week. Well that is what I did.

When you have five packs of cornflakes donated one week, and one person takes four of them, do you ask her to just take one as there are other people with kids in the queue, well I did.

Do you get just a bit cynical when people say they are ‘shopping’ for their neighbour as well as themselves. I do. If every person who said that in our ‘shop’ was actually doing that, then there are a lot of well fed neighbours.

Yes, I am not proud of those reactions and I know that I, as an extremely privileged person, can know nothing of what it is like to try and make very thin and far away ends meet.

I am just explaining that, for me, it is very hard not to make judgements.

So, Christmas.

I was charged with making a Christmas happen in the ‘shop.’ 

Being me, I flapped my hands and asked for help and contacted my sewing group ( the people who made a sterling amount of headbands and scrub bags during lockdown – I didn’t sew I need to make clear.)

I asked for those gifts that people have given you and they are perfectly good quality but you are not going to use them.

Anything they fancied making.

I was clear that everything had to be good quality – just because you are poor or you have found yourselves falling from ‘just managing’ to not, or you both worked in hospitality on a zero hours contract and those not longer exit, you shouldn’t be expected to be grateful for a half empty bottle of body lotion.

As ever, I have been so impressed by what I have received. 

Handmade stockings and puddings and teddy bears, a chess set, endless good quality ‘smellies’, candles akimbo, there is Christmas bunting on the way, lavender bags, a pristine Paddington, and so on.

One of ‘my’ sewing group said although she did sew, she was really a potter and would make some porcelain tea light holders. And she has.

And there is more to come.

My dilemma is how to sell/distribute these lovely things.

This is not anti-waste. This is re-distribution of wealth and luck.

Do we ration? Yes. 

How – not sure. 

Should you be interested, I will let you know what we do.

Meanwhile, one thing we are never short of is bread. The local Tesco in particular, is rubbish at the bread baking and ordering so there is always lots and lots and lots.

What can you do with stale bread.

Well you can make savoury bread and butter puddings which seem to be popular and when I do them, they fly off the shelves – all so very gratifying.

So, take some stale bread. Make some garlic butter. Cook some mushrooms, chopped and cook in oil and a knob of butter for quite a long time ( say half an hour).

Add some defrosted spinach or fresh spinach cooked down you fancy it.

Either make a ‘sandwich’ of bread and butter and mushrooms ( spinach maybe) and top with tomatoes. Or do them in upright triangles with mushrooms and tomatoes scattered.

Of course you can add ham, or whatever you fancy.

Mix some milk and eggs together and pour over. Scatter with grated cheese and put in the oven ( 180 degrees) until cheese is bubbling.

Yes I know it is not a proper recipe but for me, it is not full of moral dilemmas.

Pink Priests

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I don’t want to harp on about my holiday in Italy and visiting churches, but hey ho you need to know about the pink priests.

A warning though, the pink priests come at the end.

As I mentioned before, I do like visiting a church.

So, on a recent trip to Italy, (I may have mentioned that before too) there was one church which had a lot of confessional booths. 

When I say a lot, I don’t mean a few, I mean about 20.

Yes really. 

The comedian Zoe Lyons recently said of confession, ‘ You were locked in a wardrobe with a priest, and then you had to tell him what you had done wrong. The irony.’ 

Well, the people of Lucca had clearly got a lot to talk about and they didn’t have the privacy of a locked in wardrobe. No, you had to kneel so that everyone else could see you.

Mind you, you did have a choice of venue booths, as it were.

That same church had a lot of plaques on the ground (I am sure there is a technical church term for them) which had once shown the likeness of the dead person but had been worn smooth.

I’d just like to say at this point that they may have been worn smooth as much by tourists as penitents but when I was there, I was one of the few visitors. ( Yes, I know I shouldn’t have boasted.)

But hey ho.

Anyway, so what was there about the people of Lucca which was so reprehensible that they need so many confessionals?

Well, I don’t know, but I did Google ‘Lucca scandals’ to find out if there had been anything which would have swept the populace into the confessional and came up with something on the Daily Mail online (of course).

“The Italian city of Lucca was today accused of ‘culinary racism’ after it banned new foreign eateries from opening in its historic centre.”

Further ( much further) down the article, there was this comment from the town’s authorities

“A spokesman for Lucca’s town hall defended the new rules, saying they were meant to safeguard the city’s traditional and cultural identity and that it also applied to sex shops, fast food restaurants and take-away pizza parlours.

‘The ban targets McDonald’s as much as kebab restaurants,’ he said.

The town council is also urging foreign restaurants to include on their menus at least one course typical of Lucca, prepared exclusively with local ingredients.”

I am not sure if the confessionals need to be used by people who are not offering sex with a traditional Luccan menu, but you never know.

Looking further back, (courtesy of Wikipedia) it turns out that Lucca had a busy time in history and within that plenty of scope for people to do things they might later regret:

‘In 1408, Lucca hosted the convocation intended to end the schism in the papacy. Occupied by the troops of Louis of Bavaria, the city was sold to a rich Genoese, Gherardino Spinola, then seized by John, king of Bohemia. Pawned to the Rossi of Parma, by them it was ceded to Mastino II della Scala of Verona, sold to the Florentines, surrendered to the Pisans, and then nominally liberated by the emperor Charles IV and governed by his vicar. Lucca managed, at first as a democracy, and after 1628 as an oligarchy, to maintain its independence alongside of Venice and Genoa, and painted the word Libertas on its banner until the French Revolution in 1789.’

Now, you could confess to being one of the people who sold your city to the Genoese, helping John of Bohemia to seize it, being involved in pawning it, selling it to the Florentines and as I am not sure of the dates of all this, your family could have done all of the above.

If you surrendered to the Pisans, you might feel a bit guilty, and if you helped Charles IV you might feel you needed to show to his vicar that you were someone who knew their way into a confessional.

So, who knows why there are so many confessionals but leaving aside food racism and everything from selling your city to wresting it from democracy to oligarchy, there must have been a few adultery, theft, gluttony, sloth, pride ‘issues’ to bring along – and maybe that was just the priests.

Talking of priests,  we have finally dear reader, got to the pink ones.

So, yet another church but this time acting as a gallery for photographic images of the Volto Santo procession.

(The Holy Face of Lucca (Volto Santo di Lucca) is an eight-foot-tall (2.4 m), ancient wooden carving of Christ crucified in Lucca.)

According to medieval legend, Nicodemus, a figure often referred to as a Pharisee and is rumoured have met with Christ, carved from memory the face of Jesus. However, he hesitated to complete his carving for fear of not doing it justice. Exhausted from the work, he fell asleep.  When he awoke, he found the face was finished and claimed it to be the work of an angel. The story then tells us that the Crucifix of the “Holy Face” was buried in a cave for safekeeping, where it remained for centuries. So you may be wondering if it was buried in a cave then how did it get to Lucca?

It was rediscovered by Bishop Gualfredo, who was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land when its location was revealed to him in a dream. To allow God to decide where the Crucifix should be kept, the bishop set it adrift on an unmanned boat in the Mediterranean Sea. The Volto Santo arrived on the shores of northern Italy, where the Bishop of Lucca, also prompted by a dream, put it into a wagon with no driver to determine its final location. The two oxen pulling the wagon stopped of their own accord at Lucca in 782.

The story doesn’t stop there, it is also said that the Volto Santo was placed in the Church of San Frediano, but the next morning, it was found  miraculously in another church, that of San Martino. Therefore, San Martino was designated the cathedral of Lucca and the wooden statue was left in a special chapel within the church.) Wikipedia.

So, that is the background story, and the festival is all about people from their districts of Lucca and their priests walking to the meeting point with the populace watching, and there are lots of candles and people crossing themselves and celebrations etc etc.

Now, just before I show you a photo of one ‘set’ of priests setting out on their walk with the Volto Santo, and you might think pink and lace on men might just, just, be thought a little bit gay, and you might want to ponder on the Catechism of the Catholic Church which says:

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity (Cf. Genesis 19:1-29; Romans 1:24-27; 1 Corinthians 6:10; 1 Timothy 1:10), tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona humana, 8). They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.