Covey

My backyard view
grew one, then two
grey partridge.
Pick and peck
some grainy speck,
some tasty smidge.
Three, and four,
five, six or more
plump, slate ridge-
patterned, seethed
around the floor
like woodlice when
you lift a stone.
Eight, nine or ten?
I lost count. One
saw the dog. Two
ran. All flew. Gone.

Cueing up

David W Robinson remarked on his Facebook page yesterday that the BBC's subtitles "aren’t perfect, but every time the commentator mentioned Gabriel Agbonlahor, the subs translated it as "Gabriel upon the whore"."

After considering the possibilities of "Jose Olazabal"--"Josie Holes the Ball" being the cleanest I could come up with--I remembered the utter filth perpetrated for weeks on end by the BBC's snooker commentators. A few years ago I cobbled together (pun intended) this little effort: First published by Lighten up Online, December 2010

Cueing Up

he's going for a colour
got a bit of a kick
after that double kiss
it's a touching ball

waggles lead to
a good wrist cock
and follow through
oh that was a snatch

it's very tight
on the bottom cushion
he's trying one leg on the bed
should play a deep screw

he can't quite keep that foot on the floor
he'll need the extension
and after all that
he'll have to go for a long rest

Christmas Gateau Recipe

Ok - having been asked, here is -ta-da- my family's Christmas Chestnut Gateau recipe. My mum first made it for my grandparents' Golden Wedding in (I think) 1957 - and she got it off a BBC TV cookery programme. We've made it every year since. 

No, it's got nothing to do with Mary Berry or the Hairy Bikers. I *think* it's Austrian. No baking required!

1 tin of plain chestnut puree, about 1lb / 450grams (not the sweetened kind)
8oz butter / 250g
4oz icing sugar / 120g
(The original recipe suggested equal quantities of all three, but I find that too sweet. It also had a raw egg yolk in it, which I don't use.)
2 packs of "boudoir" sponge finger biscuits (ie, 40-50 of them; buy more rather than less because you can always use them up!)
10fl. oz strong black coffee / 0.5 pint, 250g (ish)
1 tablespoon of plain cocoa
1 tablespoon of brandy

1/2 pint of Double cream / 250g (ish)
 
Warm and whip the butter, beating in the icing sugar, chestnut puree, brandy and cocoa, and a tablespoon of the strong coffee. You should have a stiffish but spreadable mixture.

Line an 8 inch diameter loose based / spring case baking tin with cling-flim, enough to cover the base, come up the sides and lap over to the opposite side.

Pour black coffee into a 6 inch diameter or so shallow dish or plate. Dip the sponge fingers individually, quickly in and out, wetting both sides, and lay them closely side by side, in the tin, all pointing in the same direction. Set the sugary side upward. If you start with the first ones pointing at the join in the tin you'll have a reference point for the direction of the next layer. When the layer is complete, use 1/3 of the chestnut mix to make a filled layer, level it and turn the tin through 90 degrees so the next layer of sponge fingers runs across the first rather than the same way.

Repeat till you have 3 layers of filling and 4 of sponge fingers, putting the last layer of sponge fingers sugary side down.

Complete wrapping the gateau, using the cling film that's been hanging outside the tin. Put a shallow plate on top and press down gently to consolidate the cake.

At this point you can freeze and store the cake for a month or more; but you can use it after a few hours in the fridge.

To finish:  about 1/2 pint of Double cream, and a little of the icing sugar, strong coffee, and cocoa
 
Unwrap the top of the cake, set a serving plate on top, upside down, then invert both so the cake ends up on the plate, then remove the cling film entirely. 

Whip the double cream with a spoonful of the coffee and a teaspoonful of icing sugar to soft peaks (not stiff, because the sponge layers will absorb some of the moisture). Coat the cake with it. If you've got sponge fingers left over, halve them and press them against the outer edge of the cake so they stand upright like a fence (they help with measuring serving portions!) Dust the top lightly with sifted cocoa.

Servings -  approx 12 2-finger segments or fewer if you're greedy like us!

*** NOTE 1 - the original recipe used a pound of chestnuts rather than a tin of puree - you boil the chestnuts, peel and skin them, then blitz them and push them through a sieve. The texture is fluffier, dryer and not so solid as the tinned puree.

***NOTE 2 - Boudoir sponge fingers are also, I think, known as ladyfingers. However, I've made this recipe successfully with a couple of home-made fatless sponge cakes, split into half inch thick layers, and with commercial "flan" cases.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sue's historical/humorous/horsey novels and other books are available on http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk/ 

Bumble Bees

A queen mistook the dimness of our house,
but rescued with a glass and cardboard
she nested in the kitchen steps
where we passed by a dozen times a day,
and her furry children zigzagged out
to the bean rows in the garden,
the peas and plums and brambles,
the wild strawberry cascading down the wall.
Black sisters, fumbling white clovers in the pasture
or the purple heather on the moor,
they droned home bulked with pollen,
unloaded, flew another mission,
though the cat lay in wait to bat them,
and the swallows swooped on them,
and our grandchild tried to stroke them
when we barged through their busy airways.
They never stung. At the summer’s end
they just fell, all spent, leaving
one queen to autumn, winter, spring.
Yes, we might still have had a harvest
without their peaceful help; but only of a sort.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sue Millard's poetry collection, Ash Tree, is available from Prole Books and her novels can be found via her web site, Jackdaw E Books.

On the first day of Advent my true love gave to me

He's been working towards this for the last three weeks.

It started with comments over the small ads in the local paper.

"That big CRT TV's still for sale."

"What make was the one we put in the holiday cottage?"

"He's dropped the price."

"Looks like he hasn't had any offers."

Well, maybe it was four weeks.

Anyway, when I came back from choir rehearsal yesterday the paper was folded inside out to the small ads for TV and Radio, and this morning he pootled off in the car and came back looking rather chuffed.

I know that face.

I started wiping down the cabinet on which our present small flat-screen TV stands.

"You needn't rush," he said. "I'll ask Chris to give me a lift with it when he comes to look the sheep tomorrow." (note: housekeeping is not one of my skills. I just have a nose for jobs that are better done around electronics which I can move by myself, than around those that need two fit men).

OK. Replaced small TV and cables. Returning to kitchen with damp cloth, walked past mother in law's display cabinet. Thought it ooked a bit dusty. Wiped all shelves and objets d' - well, not quite Art, but you know, too shiny to give away to the charity shop. Some tiny toys and coloured pebbles that belonged to Naomi, some vases with nice lines, a couple of ceramic birds, a set of Concordabilia including a model of the plane.

Opened the centre cupboard, just out of curiosity. Who knows what might be inside your mother in law's drawers--no, don't answer that. We inherited the cabinet when she moved to the care home. The centre bit is a booze cupboard, glass shelves, mirror back. Empty. I turned the damp cloth around and gave it a consolatory wipe, just so it didn't feel left out. And I thought: that's a useful space. And more convenient than the sideboard.

G actually keeps his wine in the larder, which is a nice steady temperature, but there are odd bottles of spirits lurking in the sideboard. I thought: I'll shift them to the cabinet--thus perhaps removing the need to lock the sideboard against small grandson's curiosity.

So I found the keys of the sideboard and did some exploring.

Well, I recognised G's trio of unopened Christmas-present malt whiskies, but who knew there were so many bottles of gin in there?  A brand, moreover, that isn't sold locally? Or sherry, that I only buy for the elderly? Or brandy, that G doesn't drink on account of sickening himself with it when he developed a tooth abscess on a Friday and the dentist couldn't see him till Monday?

Like I said, who knows what's in your mother in law's--whatnot. To be fair, his brother and brother's partner were big gin drinkers.

I moved the spirits to the display cabinet. There still seemed to be a lot of room to spare, including a glass shelf.

I attacked the sideboard again and clinked out all the glasses. A majority of MiL's collection have gone already to charity shops and there are possibly a few out in the shed, their future role as yet unassigned, but in the sideboard there was one heavy glass decanter I'd never seen before and another beautifully engraved with the west front of Westminster Abbey.  And then--who ever drank anything from glasses two inches tall that you can't get your nose into? Apart from medicine? I found five of those, smoky brown thimbles, very 1970s. And two titchy Cristal d'Arques pots that I'm sure were designed for hairgrips and stuff on your dressing table rather than for drinking out of.

I should add that I reached a count of eight before I found a pair among anything that belonged to us. I discarded the cheap, the unmatched and the impractical (the smoky brown thimbles). I was going to chuck the solo brandy balloon too but when I flicked it with a fingernail it sang such a beautiful note that I instantly re-adopted it. Thereafter I also got rid of the glasses that didn't try to sing.

Hot water with vinegar, and a glass-cloth, reduced the remainder to roughly the same variety of clean.

Among other things (as above) I've kept:

...seven half-pint highballs,
six vine-etched glasses, 
five tumbler things, 
four Jennings mugs,
three crystals,
two pint pots,
and a shot-glass for Famous Grouse.

The display cabinet is clean. The sideboard, sort of (it's still locked--not all the malt whisky boxes fitted in the cabinet.)

The TV is still outside. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sue Millard's books wander around humour, history and horses. They can be found on her web site, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk

Her poetry pamphlet "Ash Tree" was published in August 2013 by Prole Books.  

Dear Diary - Confessions of an old student

A friend recently put me in touch with an alumna of the college from which we graduated, who was asking for reminiscences of student life. Well, I still have four large hardbacked notebooks dating from 1 January 1972 to October 1973, so in reaction to her prompt I’ve been sitting here plumbing the depths of late adolescence.

I was still working out the dynamics of living cheek by jowl with other people, and particularly with BOYS. The sexual revolution of the 1960s may well have been fresh in everyone’s minds, but I’d spent the previous 8 years at an all girls’ school and I really didn’t know how to deal with flirtation, dating and all that jazz. Of course I learned rapidly… but the diary reveals that there were a lot of inward cries of pain. I think now that the diary’s cast of thousands probably spent a good deal of time rolling their eyes and throwing their hands heavenward and muttering, “What is this girl DOING?” At least one of them said frankly, “I have pity for you, but no sympathy!”

I noted rumours in the diary about which of the lecturers (or lecherers) were said to be having affairs with other lecturers' wives, or with students. For some reason, although both female and male friends mentioned lecturers making passes at them, I don’t recall any homophobia, nor any scandal being publicised, or any disciplinary action being taken. Maybe if it was taken, it was taken discreetly and the student body didn’t get to know about it. There was far more fuss when the Students’ Guild proposed that there should be a machine on campus to sell condoms. That didn’t go down well with the authorities at all!

One of the delights of student life was talking – unravelling the world and rebuilding it to our own preferences. Students, including me, commonly used to drop in on lecturers in their studies or in their lodgings on campus;  on occasion I even became a confidante, being told far too much by lecturers about their home lives and extra-marital affairs. I remember one of these extra-marital lecturers asserting that "all really passionate music is a series of climaxes" and I blithely said, "Of course!" - not having a clue what he was on about. 

Instead, my diary records the giggles as we struggled to straighten an iron bed frame after seven people had been sitting on it; or when we had been rehearsing dance moves on an upper floor of a male student hostel, having to placate the people on the floor below whose lights had been dancing along with us.

The nearest I got to scandal was this: “I sat with the Opera Group secretary watching other principals and chorus rehearsing act 1 of  “The Sorcerer”, with Emlyn Roberts playing the piano and Alan Bownas directing. In one of the pauses for stage work Emlyn came over and looking very worried, touched my arm and said, “You haven’t got a safety pin, have you? It’s not for me, it’s for a friend.” I said, “I can go back to the hostel and get one if you’re desperate.” He put a hand on his jacket above his trouser waistband and admitted, “Yes, I am!” So I got him a pin, and saved, if not his life, at least his reputation.”

On far more occasions there were long gossipy mini-rehearsals of dramatic productions, and appreciations of vintage recordings of same. I remember us sweeping line-abreast with linked arms down into the city (and back) laughing and talking and singing and dancing to the dismay of other pedestrians, but we really liked to have LP players and tape recorders available, to play music, or performances by famous singers or actors, on which to base our arguments.

Whether we met in hostel rooms or in lecturers’ lodgings, the discussions of music, literature, history and philosophy went on into the small hours. Yes, there was an official lock-up time at which females were supposed to depart from male accommodation, and vice versa, but in practice so long as you didn’t annoy the neighbours, and you let the “offenders” out quietly, nobody really made any fuss. Those of us in off-campus accommodation would have missed the last bus and faced a long walk “home”, and my diary reminds me how my male friends gallantly offered to walk girls back to their lodgings when these late nights broke up; it also records my disappointment that the offers were all platonic.   

I sat up late into the night with coffee and sympathy when friends, male or female, were suffering from rejected love; I knew that the girl in the next room had gone away quietly to have an abortion; I knew that one of my mates was panicking because his girlfriend’s period was late. But none of it seemed to happen to me. Not till I started my summer job up here in the Lake District. 

And that's a whole other story!

Castles, Customs and Kings

I'm delighted to introduce M.M. Bennetts on the subject of ...


History. It seems to be everywhere these days.  (And I'm not being facetious...)

There are history programmes on all channels as well as the ever popular costume dramas--covering every period of our past from the Wars of the Roses to World War I.  But what I love about the history as it's being examined today is that it's not just a dry-as-the-dust-in-the-attic recitation of names and dates.  It's putting the people back into the story.

And, because I'm biased obviously, I believe that the authors of historical fiction excel at this kind of thing, chiefly because it's not enough for them to write that General Jelly-Belly Fustylugs walloped Marshall Buckteeth-Warthog at the Battle of Molehill Valley, they want to take you there, make you a part of the story, allow you to smell the cordite, hear the clash of steel, and invite you to feel and to live in the period for the duration of their book...

All of which requires a different kind of research than perhaps has been done before.   It demands not just a knowledge of historical personages, but also a fascination with and a tenacious determination to understand what they ate, how things smelled, what the modes of transport were likely to be and how uncomfortable were they, how did they heat or light their houses, what did they read in their newsheets, ...everything in fact that contributes to what I'd call 'the fabric of daily life.'

But I'll be honest--quite often it's a case of reading 10,000 words or even an entire history book to write one paragraph of description in the novel.  Which might seem a bit of a waste...until now.

The English Historical Fiction Authors blog was the brainchild of one Debra Brown, who conceived of the idea of having a number of contributing historical authors writing a daily blog or essay covering some small aspect of their research--the bits which fascinated them, which they uncovered, all those tasty crumbs of history that get left out, maybe swept aside as historical trivia, but absolutely fascinating and delicious nonetheless.

Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales from English Historical Fiction Authors is a compilation of the 'best of' all these essays from the first year's worth of English Historical Fiction Authors blogs.

And because it's the combined efforts of 55 different authors (including some of the best-selling novelists in the field), all engaged in studying and writing about different eras and from different angles, it's an anthology literally with something for everyone.  Whether you're entranced by mediaeval knighthood during the Wars of the Roses or a night at the theatre in Jane Austen's day, from Boadicea to Brummell, Druidic slaughter to silk dancing breeches, this lovely volume has it covered.

It's possible I'm biased when I say that I think it's a cornucopia of fascinating facts.  I am, after all, one of the editors and a contributing author.

But, I have to say, even after all the editing, all the re-reading and re-reading and re-reading, I'm still fired up by the essays about the mediaeval bestiary, about when envelopes were invented and why, what a mediaeval field looked like (they ploughed in circles--how cool is that?), what happened to all those nuns dispossessed by Henry VIII's seizure of monastic lands and coffers, what it was like to be one of Elizabeth I's ladies-in-waiting...the list goes on.

These authors--including Anne O'Brien, Sandra Byrd, Nancy Bilyeau and Barbara Kyle--all love their subjects.  And it's contagious.  It lights each and every page.

Castles, Customs, and Kings. 

To my mind, the perfect compendium for anyone who's missing The White Queen (or who didn't like it and wants to know more about the period), longing for Cranford or wondering what were the turnpike roads like when Jane Austen was writing Pride & Prejudice...a book that puts the people and how they lived and who they were front and centre, and all in bite-size, easily digestible essays.  And which, I believe, often give a greater sense of an age than the name-and-date version of history that's too frequently trotted out as our island story.

Any questions?  Oh, yes, it's available in paperback (and it's really nice quality--it weighs well in the hand, which is what I like) or for Kindle from Amazon.

Slainte!  And happy reading!

--

M.M. Bennetts

mmbennetts@fastmail.fm

http://www.mmbennetts.com/