The Weasel

Homepage content v2

2008-12-22T11:22:00+00:00

Is it me or are the Christmas lights slightly dimmer this year, the holly less berried, the carols less harmonious, the mincemeat less fortified, the turkey less stuffed, the crackers less explosive, the tinsel less glittery, the Christmas trees less piney?

Christmas 2008 is been played diminuendo. This is particularly so for readers of The Independent, who are deprived of the Weasel’s column

It would scarcely be surprising if these benighted souls did not follow the advice of Elizabeth David about Christmas. Musing on “the whole circus” in 1978, she wrote: “I stay in bed, making myself lunch on a tray. Smoked salmon, home-made bread, butter, lovely cold Alsace wine.”

To provide some solace which you are curled up under the duvet, below are some of the Weasel’s yuletide musings from previous years.

The Weasel website aims to provide a changing archive of past columns for readers old and new.

We would like to thank the many readers who are writing to this website and those who added comments to the last Weasel column on The Independent’s website. Their expressions of commiseration were reassuring and embarrassingly fulsome – though not too embarrassing for us to quote a few snippets here.

“I was so sad to see the demise of the Weasel… I’ve been a devoted reader for nine years.”

“I was heartbroken when I read the news.”

”Your disappearance marks the end of civilized society as we know and love it.”

”I was shocked and saddened to read the news on Saturday.”

”The demise of the Weasel has hit me harder than the credit crunch.”

”Oh please let the Weasel awaken from a coma, resurrect as an evil twin or have faked his own death!”

The Long Goodbye

2008-10-04T00:00:00+01:00

In their picturesque way, the French refer to orgasm as La Petite Mort. The same term could apply to the termination of a column, though the experience is not quite as pleasant. From an account of being snowed-in at Yorkshire, which appeared on 30 December 1995, to last week’s tale of being penalised by H.M. Customs & Excise for importing an anthology of ancient gospel music, the Weasel has been my outlet for 12½ years of vicissitudes. They ranged from a near-death experience in 2005 when a bunch of “arty boneheads” marched me at dead of night to the top of a Cumbian fell for a chat with Ken Russell (he had left by the time we arrived) to a terrifying ride on a breakneck Big Wheel in the Tuileries Gardens in 1997. “Whataniceview,” I repeated in an anguished mantra. “NotreDameLesInvalidesEiffelTower.” But Mrs W had her eyes tight shut.

The editors of this paper have (at least until now) put up with a series of strange obsessions in this space. Recurring themes included pigs, Keith Richards, books on minimalism (they now clog our house), the ingenious Christmas present ideas suggested in magazines (did anyone buy jump leads in Connolly leather for £500?), old telephone exchange names and Dracula. (I discovered these last two happily conjoined in a film called Transylvania 6-5000.) I reported three times from New Orleans, three times from hospital and 36 times from Filey, North Yorkshire. In Patagonia, I saw the fissured cliff of a glacier in mouthwash-blue that might have been designed by Frank Gehry. Two days later, I saw it collapse in a 12-hour live TV programme at Buenos Aires airport (I’d missed my plane).

My columnar campaigns produced mixed results. Though I repeatedly urged the scrapping of the walls round Buckingham Palace gardens, these barriers have been strengthened. For all my rants that Loyd Grossman’s Puttanesca Sauce diddles the public by its lack of capers, his product remains resolutely caper-free. It is, however, gratifying that others are now complaining about the bullying tactics of TV Licensing, an off-shoot of the BBC that cannot conceive how anyone can live sans telly.

Food was the one area where the Weasel came under pressure, at least when this column appeared in the main newspaper. “Can’t he write about anything else?” moaned a senior editor. But what else is so interesting, so universal, so funny? Which other column would have pointed out that a “special edition” of “Lover’s Marmite”, containing 0.75 grams of champagne at a mark-up of 87p per jar, stood to earn £522,000 for those “romantic soppies at Unilever” or explained how the cost of pitta bread could inflate from 4.16p to £1.70 per piece due to a combination of parking fine and green mould: “I flipped though the mouldy pittas like a medieval monk turning the vellum pages of the Book of Lamentations”? Still, La Stampa over-egged the pud when it described the Weasel as the “critico-gastronomico of Il Independente”. This happened when, for reasons I still find mysterious, I found myself awarding the Golden Truffle for the heaviest fungi (650 grams) at the Truffle Fair in Moncalvo, Piedmont.

One perk of the last 12 years has been my Thursday morning chats with Lucinda Rogers. Having my suggestions realised by a brilliant illustrator was like playing God. With remarkable regularity, they made me burst out laughing (The Weasel looking in the bathroom mirror and seeing John McCririck), but I adored her dazzling pastiches. Over the years, the protean Weasel was the slightly unlikely subject of Matisse, Monet, Blake (both William and Peter), Beardsley, Hogarth, Degas, Tenniel, Lowry, Scarfe, Hopper, Durer, Caravaggio, R.Crumb, Manet and Leo Baxendale (Bash Street Kids).

The astoundingly erudite letters to the Weasel were another bonus. “The poltergeist you describe [a mug that swung on its hook for no apparent reason] is almost certainly ground-based vibration at a critical frequency.” “What everyone remembers from the handcuffs-and-stockings sequence in Hitchcock’s 39 Steps is that Robert Donat’s hand glides down Madeleine Carroll’s leg holding a ham sandwich.” “It’s obvious that you’re not a seafaring Weasel. My stepfather was in the Royal Navy, so I’ve known from an early age that the term ‘Nelson’ for 111 derives from ‘one eye, one arm, one arsehole’.” “Mrs W was right not to drink gecko in wine. It’s a Chinese cure for impotence.”

However, Mrs W did sample Rick Stein’s stir-fried whelks (“I’m still chewing”), “aphrodisiac jam” from Paris (“Quite nice but not very arousing”), Nourishing Kidney Soup from Wing Yip supermarket (“Disgusting and horrible”) and the Provençal shellfish called violet (“Looks like doggy doo and tastes like TCP”). She once discovered a large tentacle of Portuguese salted octopus soaking in the sink (“Not what a girl wants to come home to on a dark night”) and was unimpressed by a Futurist dessert called Strawberry Breasts (“I rather hoped you were not going to do that”). In short, the dear girl has put up with a lot. My mail bag was universally sympathetic: “I like the sound of Mrs W.” Her real name is Alison.

For those suffering withdrawal symptoms, an archive of Rogers/Hirst material is now available at www.theweasel.co.uk. But before Lucinda and I bid our adieux, there’s just space for a farewell cocktail, a Weaselian invention, no less. Per person: 60ml vodka; 20ml undiluted elderflower cordial; a couple of splashes of Angostura bitters. Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Sorry, forgot to give you the name: Elders & Bitters. Chin-chin!

bq.

General Harrumphing

2008-10-02T20:14:00+01:00

“Could it be that the sole indication of my presence was a dent in a cushion, like the TV series of The Invisible Man?”

More hurrumphing to come.

The Garden

2008-10-02T20:10:00+01:00

“All round the country, the same dread words were spoken: ‘we have to do something about the garden’. When I write ‘we’, for once I am not using my words with my customary scrupulous care. Like every other male of my acquaintance, I can happily resist the lure of the urban savannah.’”

More garden lore to come.

The Good Old Days

2008-10-02T20:03:00+01:00

“As part of an ill-judged tour, the band was booked into the Locarno Ballroom, Coventry, an unlikely venue for ‘the sound of the underground’”.

Creature from the deep

2008-08-09T12:35:00+01:00

Though “sporty” is the least likely adjective that might ever be applied to the Weasel, my daily exercise draws comments from impressed observers. If you happened to be strolling on the promenade of a Yorkshire seaside resort around 9am in the past week, you would have seen the Weasel breasting the waves in stately fashion. Why I am (as a general rule) the only human over the age of about eight to engage in this activity at Filey is a mystery to me. In order to encourage others to take a dip, I present my diary of matutinal manoeuvres in the North Sea.

Day 1. Though invitingly blue from a distance, the sea at Filey is a discouraging grey/brown at close quarters. Since it was high tide, my attempt at gradual acclimatisation provided welcome entertainment for strollers on the promenade. While the North Sea has grown perceptibly warmer in recent years due to global warming, this morning it wasn’t. My digits felt like frozen fish fingers for the first 200 strokes (I tend to keep count). Mirroring my progress from the safety of the shore, Mrs W was quizzed by startled spectators. “How far has he come?” inquired a holidaymaker. “From the far end of the prom,” she replied, but “London” would have been equally accurate (and much more impressive).

Day 2. “Do you think you should go in?” inquired Mrs W. Despite the ragged, raging breakers, I insisted that the sea was fine. My customary snail-like entrance into the briny was accelerated by a large wave that delivered a haymaker to the side of my head – BOFF! – and I was in whether I liked it or not. Swimming in agitated seas is (touch wood) the only time in the course of a year that a peace-loving fellow gets roughed up. The churning, foamy mixture of air and water felt uncannily familiar. It was like swimming in cappuccino or a very large latte indeed.

Day 3. “You’re not going in at all today!” insisted Mrs W. The sea-fret or harr did indeed pose a problem. There was a distinct likelihood of heading for the Hook of Holland in the thick mist. But it lifted somewhat and the sun-lit haze endowed the coastline with an unlikely romance. Opalescent in the distance, Filey was visible as a blurred silhouette. It might have been Cap Ferrat or the Lido at Venice. Well, almost. The water was pleasingly tepid after a bracing moment at entry (however much the globe warms the North Sea is never going to be mistaken for the Caribbean). As I hauled through the calm sea, the fret separated into tall columns like striding ghosts and raced me along the beach. The spectres won.

Day 4. A grey sea met a grey sky at an indistinguishable horizon. The town was pale pastel, the only speck of brightness being the flashing orange light of a rubbish truck. As I trudged into the sea, breakers slammed into me. I felt like the Old Man of Hoy. Once again, my stately progress aroused curiosity among early morning strollers. “Is he all right?” a woman asked Mrs W, meaning, I suppose, in the head. After 1,000 strokes I returned to civilisation, though I use the term loosely, since the first figure I encountered ashore was an aging punk with a pink Mohican and a tee-shirt emblazoned “Alien Sex Fiend”.

Day 5. Today, the breakers were not in pugilistic mood. It was more like having your hair washed in a posh hairdressers by a particularly brusque trainee. Circling gulls came for a gander at the intruder in their manor. I didn’t take much notice of this inspection until I saw a report in the Scarborough Evening News about a bather getting pecked (that sort of thing is big news in these parts) so now I try to splash them if they get too near. Struggling to my feet after a mile or so, I thought that I cut an impressive nautical figure as I sploshed my way to the beach, but Mrs W deposed King Neptune. “You’ve got a mud moustache,” she pointed out.

Day 6. Astonishingly, I was joined at the mid-point of my swim by two couples in their twenties. The males of the party spent several minutes posing and flexing their muscles before running into the waves. The females screamed continuously during their brief immersion. I decided that I didn’t much like company at sea. “They whizzed about you like tug-boats round the Queen Mary,” reported Mrs W. At least I resemble one maritime monarch.

Opalescent in the distance, Filey might have been Cap Ferrat

Going Out for a Chinese

2008-05-10T21:16:00+01:00

Since the Weasel’s research budget for a special issue on China did not stretch to a business class return to Shanghai, I settled for Croydon. No. 544 Purley Way may seem an unlikely spot to plumb the mysteries of the Orient, but my friend Malcolm maintains that a visit here is “like a little holiday”. It’s not every address on the periphery of south London that boasts a massive pagoda-style entrance arch decorated with dragons in green porcelain. Inside, you find more quasi-Chinese architecture housing a number of Asian restaurants, but a utilitarian structure of corrugated aluminium just visible behind the pyramid of roofs was the real goal of our (very) short-haul journey.

In an atmosphere lightly perfumed with soy sauce, Mrs W and I surveyed the seemingly infinite cornucopia of Asian provender in the Wing Yip superstore, one of four around the UK. A swift exploration of the vast library of sauces endowed our trolley with bottles of Woh Hup Sesame Sauce (“Makes real exciting dishes”) and UFC Banana Sauce (“Excellent source of vitamin B6”). Lured by the Buddha-like figure on the logo, I urged the purchase of a 2-litre bottle of Healthy Boy Thin Soy Sauce, but Mrs W insisted this was slightly surplus to requirements so we settled for 500ml of Pearl River Bridge Golden Label Superior Light Soy Sauce (“authentic Chinese flavour enhancer”). My propensity to be seduced by odd labels caused a culinary faux pas a few years ago when I snapped up a mysterious tin from a Chinese supermarket that bore a logo of five chicks in a nest. When I opened the tin I found the corpses of five tiny birds inside sitting upright in congealed fat.

As we prowled the toothsome aisles, Mrs W waged a valiant battle against my unquenchable desire for gastronomic adventure. Though I pointed out that a kilo of frozen duck tongues was a snip at £3.45, likewise a kilo of frog legs for £6.20, she was unswayed. When I produced 400gms of frozen pig uterus (£1.05), her thumbs-down was notably swift. Here, Mrs W might have had a point. Even that dauntless omnivore Fergus Henderson of St John restaurant eschews this delicacy in his book Nose to Tail Eating. An American website notes that porcine uterus is “not a pretty sight” when raw and looks “even more horrible” when cooked. However, Mrs W agreed to 1.2 kilos of squid “fingers” (a kind of fish cake) for £4.95 and a gleaming, brown, pointy-looking item from an oriental kitchen in France described as “oreille de porc laquée” (£2.05).

For those with sufficient appetite, there are bargains aplenty at Wing Yip. Who could resist chicken feet at £1.80 per kilo, Lucky Brand bamboo shoots at £1.95 for 1.8 kilos or 3 kilos of bicarbonate of soda at £1.98? You can get 500gms of skewered baby barracuda for £2.15 and 400gms of frozen pig fat for £1.20. Considering the modest cost of most items, it came as a surprise to discover that we had run up a bill of £74.58. Still, a feast worthy of a Tang Emperor was in store on the following evening. Or, rather, several feasts. The mixed dim sum we had for supper proved to be a piquant nibble and the shark’s fin dumpling (the name refers to the shape rather than the content) of pork and prawn was a most harmonious gastronomic marriage. The sesame sauce drew applause from Mrs W, unlike Wing Yip’s Mushroom Sauce (containing a parsimonious 0.3 per cent of dried mushroom): “Coo, that’s salty.”

Our slightly unusual breakfast of the volcano-shaped dumplings known as pau, erupting with a dark-red stuffing of spicy pork, was a highlight. “Fantastically light, melt-in-the-mouth dough,” declared Mrs W. Tasting somewhat of lychees, guyabano nectar (from the prickly green fruit we know as soursop) was tart and refreshing. A tin of roast coconut juice, rich in juicy lumps, was equally acceptable. Sadly, our lunch did not maintain this high standard. Though attractively packaged, Nourishing Kidney Soup (since the dried contents were vegetarian, the name apparently refers to its medical property) tasted like sweet, weak tea. “That is disgusting and horrible,” said Mrs W, not a tea lover. “I may be sick if I eat it.” Tinned won-ton soup was little better. “Very salty. Not nice.” Though edible, the squid fingers were not an experience I would be eager to repeat. There might have been a distant tinge of cephalopod but they were more like cushion foam. We’d bought 80 squid fingers when two would have been more than ample.

Our haul from Wing Yip produced dishes of very variable quality. Many merited a detour to Croydon. I’d happily re-visit Purley Way for dim-sum (£2.95), pork pau (£1.85), shark’s fin dumplings (£1.75), wine-infused sausages (£5.25) and fresh, tasty Chinese greens (£2.60). There was also a bewilderingly vast choice of crustaceans, frozen, fresh and, in some cases, alive. But other items were reminiscent of the gruesome Fifties foods, such as Heinz Sandwich Spread and Sainsbury’s Salmon and Shrimp Paste, that I recently sampled for this magazine’s nostalgia issue. From different ends of the planet, such over-salted, highly-processed fare emerged from an era of austerity when a little protein had to go a long way. It is hard to imagine the new Chinese bourgeoisie eating squid fingers or tinned won-ton soup unless they have the urge for a meal of nostalgic awfulness. Talking of which, you don’t happen to know anyone who’s looking for a lacquered pig’s ear?

“There was also a bewilderingly vast choice of crustaceans, frozen, fresh and, in some cases, alive.”

Papa’s Got A Brand-New Bag - Keith Richards & Louis Vuitton

2008-03-22T21:04:00+00:00

Fashion is all about newness. That tissue-shrouded gewgaw you are proudly swinging in a logo-embossed carrier bag is a new you. How strange, therefore, to discover that items of considerable antiquity are attracting more attention to one outlet on New Bond Street than all the other high-gloss shops on this swanky boulevard. The bags on display in the window of the Louis Vuitton shop come from a spanking new range, but the jokes printed on them are old as the hills. A cutting-edge reticule called Heartbreaker (£1,300) is emblazoned with this rib-tickler: “My wife went to the beauty shop and got a mud pack. For two days she looked beautiful. Then the mud fell off.”

I’m sure these whiskery gags will have the bright young things chortling fit to bust at the nite spots where Vuitton accessories are de rigueur, but, like so much in the fashion world, this literally risible gambit is not what it looks. The jokes come from art-works by Richard Prince, the eclectic American master. Vast canvases bearing these Borscht Belt gags featured in his big retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, which I caught in New York last September. It was a strange experience to see a 15ft by 15ft painting of “I’ve been married 30 years and I’m still in love with the same woman. If my wife ever finds out she’ll kill me.” In an essay on Prince, art critic Rosetta Brooks explains: “Prince’s ‘Jokes’ aim to disabuse the viewer of [the] prevailing belief that comedy represents a form of transcendence… Far from being light-hearted, these ‘jokes’ harbour bitterness and alienation.” Even reduced to handbag size, they are no laughing matter.

But it is another jokey antique that makes Vuitton’s store the cynosure of all eyes. Everyone strolling New Bond Street takes a gander at the massive poster of this column’s favourite celeb. From matchstick legs to diamond-pinned head scarf, the brooding figure of Keith Richards is spread over three storeys outside a new extension to the shop. Pensively strumming his guitar in a hotel suite, the Rolling Stone is the latest addition to the company’s “Core Values” advertising campaign, which has previously featured Mikhail Gorbachev and Catherine Deneuve. Parked next to Mr Richards on the bed is a Vuitton guitar case, which acts as table for a cup of tea, an open book and a magnifying glass. (Well, none of us are getting any younger.) The crevassed face of the rock icon gazes across the luxurious accommodation decked out to his idiosyncratic tastes. Draped over one of the table lamps, a scarf bearing a skull motif complements the trademark skull rings on Mr Richards’s fingers. A pile of books supports a curved dagger, a telescope (useful for pirate impressions) and a human skull that appears to have been converted in a stash box. (This invaluable item of luggage does not appear in the Vuitton catalogue.) Accompanying the image of the minstrel strumming a few chords on the lonely road is the evocative tagline: “Some journeys cannot be put into words.”

But this one can. The legendary axeman has moved 55 miles from his mansion in Weston, Connecticut, to a posh hotel in Manhattan. The scene in the advert is not quite as it looks. A video clip on the Fashionphile website reveals that, far from being alone, Mr Richards was accompanied by ace snapper Annie Leibovitz and her extensive entourage. Nor was he staying in the room where the picture was taken. We see him arriving. “Whoa – just like home,” Mr Richards remarks about the familiar fixtures and fittings. Though a Vuitton press release describes the scene as “New York. 3am. Blues in C”, daylight can clearly be seen in the video. “Just show me where to hump my carcass,” remarks our hero. Ms Leibovitz tries him on the bed, in a chair, then back on the bed again, where she tells him to cut out the rock star act. “You don’t have to pose. When you play the guitar, it’s the best stuff.”

Reaction to the advert has been generally favourable in the fashion world. “Louis Vuitton is bringing out its grungy side,” declared The Cut, New York magazine’s fashion blog. “Filth can be fabulous too.” But rock critics have been less impressed. ”It’s battered, leathery and overpriced – and so’s the suitcase,” scoffed The Guardian’s music blog. “One of the hardest rocking rockers who ever did rock has chosen to sell his soul to a luxury French designer company that makes handbags.” This seems a little hard. Mr Richards is donating his fee to Al Gore’s Climate Project. Moreover, Ms Leibovitz has ensured that his instrument features more prominently than its fancy case. “This guitar is so beautiful,” she sighs. You can buy a Gibson Memphis ES-355 with 22-fret ebony keyboard, mother-of-pearl block inlay and Bigsby vibrato in the US for $3,699, which, you can safely bet, is considerably less than the cost of a custom-made guitar case from Vuitton. A portable wardrobe on display in the Vuitton store costs £16,500.

Obviously, Mr Richards is not short of ego, but at least it comes with a spoonful of irony. At the end of the photo session, he is shown the chosen image on a video screen. “Oh, yes, baby,” he remarks to his portraitist, who is also chief photographer for Vanity Fair. “The Rembrandt issue.” And, yes, he’s spot on. Keith Richards (64) by Leibovitz bears a distinct similarity to Painting of the Artist as an Old Man (63) by Rembrandt.

“My wife went to the beauty shop and got a mud pack. For two days she looked beautiful. Then the mud fell off.”

Futurist Cuisine

2008-03-15T20:41:00+00:00

We’ve eaten some pretty weird stuff at Weasel Villas, but this was the first time that our dining table was laden with food that exalted “the geometric splendour of speed” and “the aesthetics of the machine”. First to appear was my version of the Cubist Vegetable Patch (a demanding arrangement of fried carrots, fried celery, pickled silverskin onions and cold boiled peas). Then followed Mrs W’s interpretation of the Bombardment of Adrianopolis (deep-fried rice balls, each containing half an anchovy, three capers, a slice of mozzarella and two olives). The dessert course was my pièce de résistance. “Oh,” said Mrs W when she caught her first glimpse. “I was hoping you were not going to do that ridiculous sexist pud.” It was a disappointing reaction. The two impressive mounds of Campari-tinged ricotta, each with a strawberry peeping through at the summit, were, in my opinion, a most persuasive rendition of the dish called Strawberry Breasts.

“We artists don’t care a fig for bourgeois sensibilities,” I retorted. Anyway, it could have been worse. It could have been the Excited Pig (“a whole skinned salami served upright on a dish containing some very hot coffee mixed with a good deal of eau de cologne”), Simultaneous Ice-Cream (“dairy cream and little squares of raw onion frozen together”) or Sicilian Headland (a paste of tuna, apples, olives and nuts spread on cold jam omelette). These daunting dishes all come from Filippo Marinetti’s famous but rarely utilised Futurist Cookbook (1932). I was prompted to try some of the less-challenging inclusions by an event associated with the British Library exhibition Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937. On Tuesday evening, 120 people of adventurous spirit and cast-iron digestions will, for £75 apiece, tackle a Futurist meal prepared by Giorgio Locatelli. Normally, I would not be tempted to compete with the great Giorgio, but La Cucina Futurista is different. It is food as manifesto.

Marinetti, the leader and mouthpiece of the Futurists, was very fond of manifestoes. The first Futurist Manifesto of 1909 was inspired when he crashed his car. Much like Mr Toad’s transformative collision in The Wind in the Willows (“Poop poop”), Marinetti was intoxicated by the experience: “When I came up – torn, filthy and stinking – from under the capsized car, I felt the white-hot iron of joy deliciously pass through my heart!” Repulsed by the tourist’s Italy that we all still seek, the Futurists wished to “sing of the vibrant nightly fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons…” The finest artwork produced by a Futurist was Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), a semi-abstract bronze of a figure in fluid motion, but this dynamic movement lost impetus after the First World War. Marinetti’s urgent pronunciamentos about various aspects of Italian life – the Futurist Manifesto of the Italian Hat advocated headwear made of cork, glass, sponge and neon tubing – were increasingly ignored until he turned to the topic of food.

The Futurists wanted to abolish cutlery, but it was their repudiation of pasta – “it ties today’s Italians with its tangled threads to Penelope’s slow looms” – that prompted headlines around the world. Italian housewives marched against the proposed abolition. In San Francisco, the staff of two Italian restaurants fought a pitched battle over macaroni. Oddly, considering his insistence that pasta caused “weight, big bellies and obesity”, Marinetti recommended risotto. Possibly this was not unconnected with the fact that he lived in Milan near the paddy fields of the Po Valley, but we should not look for logic in Futurist cuisine. Lesley Chamberlain’s introduction to the first English translation of the Futurist Cookbook (1989) points out that this “serious joke… overturned with ribald laughter everything that ‘food’ and ‘cookbooks’ held sacred.” Such irreverence towards the likes of Gordon, Marco and Jamie is needed now more than ever. The only trouble is that Marinetti was nuts. He was not only in love with modernity but violence (the cookbook includes a photograph of him fighting a duel in 1924). An anarchic egoist and relentless poseur, he flirted on and off (usually on) with Fascism. With typical bravado, he volunteered for the Russian front in 1942 at the age of 66.

While struggling to construct the Bombardment of Adrianopolis, Mrs W said that many Futurist dishes were the kind of thing a child might make if allowed free range in the kitchen: “They’re like recipes from the Funny Face Cookbook.” This certainly seems to be the case with Steel Chicken, which is cold roast chicken filled with “200gms of silver hundreds and thousands”. The nearest I could find was a cake decoration called Pink ‘n’ Pretty Sparkles, which was scarcely in keeping with the “courage, audacity and revolt” of Futurism.

And our Futurist meal? Marinetti’s Inventina cocktail – stir together equal parts asti spumante, pineapple liqueur (I used a mixture of pineapple juice and gin) and orange juice – went down rather well with Mrs W. “Like Buck’s Fizz, but quite a bit nicer.” The Cubist Vegetable Patch, based on a geometric design in the cookbook, was appealing to both eye (“like Clarice Cliff pottery”) and palate: “Quite interesting. Heinz Russian Salad without the mayonnaise.” Akin to arancini rice balls, the Bombardment of Adrianopolis was a most acceptable antipasto. Mrs W even came round to Strawberry Breasts: “Er, quite nice, though I prefer my Campari in Campari & soda.” The Futurist Cookbook proved surprisingly palatable. Next step: Simultaneous Ice-Cream. Buon appetito – and long live steel!

“I was hoping you were not going to do that ridiculous sexist pud.” It was a disappointing reaction.

Lover’s Marmite

2008-02-16T20:35:00+00:00

Sadly, Mrs W was disappointed by her St Valentine’s Day champagne. “Urgh. It’s not at all nice. Sort of apple-y. Unpleasantly sweet.” In case this sends shock waves through the grandes marques of Reims and Epernay, I should explain that her reaction was not prompted by a bottle of celebratory fizz but a champagne-flavoured version of a more quotidian pleasure. For this “limited edition” aimed at the gooey St Valentine’s market, the product name MARMITE has been replaced by a less-than-subtle I LOVE YOU, but it cut no ice with Mrs W. “Well, I don’t love it. It’s horrible.” This reaction was a little surprising since my wife is normally rather fond of the yeasty spread and extremely fond of champagne, which appears in large print on the front of the jar.

In a considerably smaller typeface on the back label, we are informed that it contains 0.3 per cent champagne. Three parts per thousand in a 250-gram jar amounts to 0.75 grams. The “limited edition” is not exactly effervescent. By my calculation, one bottle of champagne will suffice to provide minuscule nips for 1,000 jars of Marmite. Since the “special edition” costs £2.99 compared to £2.12 for the bog standard, this means a mark-up of 87p on each jar or £870 on a thousand jars. Unilever, the manufacturer of Marmite, could add Krug ’95 at £150 a bottle and still make a handsome profit but I bet it doesn’t. A press release for this unlikely aphrodisiac reveals: “With only 600,000 jars being created, Lovers’ Marmite is set to fly off the shelves.” Curiously, it omits to point out that those romantic soppies at Unilever will also benefit to the tune of £522,000.

A few molecules of bubbly are unlikely to add the “subtle champagne scent and flavour” claimed by Unilever. It seems much more probable that this is due to something called “wine flavouring”. The suggestions in the press release of “spreading it on to heart-shaped toasts for an unforgettable breakfast in bed” or (brace yourself) “treat your lover to Marmite kisses and experience a new way to enjoy the unique taste of limited edition Lovers’ Marmite” did not appeal to my Marmite lover. “I think it would show more taste to chuck it in the bin,” huffed Mrs W. “Why do they have to muck around with it? They had Guinness-flavoured Marmite, then there was that revolting slimy version in the tube. I wish they would leave it alone.” The reason that I do not entirely share her irritation at these exercises in brand extension is that I do not entirely share her fondness for the standard version. I’ll eat it occasionally – contrary to the brand’s marketing thrust, it is possible to be lukewarm about Marmite – but only if we have run out of Bovril, which also happens to be made by Unilever.

Along with male/female, young/old, driver/pedestrian, Yorkshire/Lancashire, the preference for Marmite or Bovril on toast is one of the great divisions of humanity. Personally, I cannot imagine why anyone would want the strange beery smell and sharp, one-dimensional, acrid taste of Marmite rather than the rich, satisfying beefiness of Bovril. Anyone in their right mind would prefer concentrated beef stock to treated sludge from the brewing industry. (That’s why Marmite is made at Burton-on-Trent.) How often do you hear of people eating roast yeast for Sunday lunch? Bovril is a food for grown-ups with a distinguished advertising lineage: the pyjama-clad shipwreck survivor cheerfully bobbing on a giant jar at sea (“Prevents that sinking feeling”); the bull sadly regarding a jar (“Alas, my poor brother”). Marmite is essentially a food for immature palates. Look at the ads: “My mate Marmite.” You wouldn’t get Lover’s Bovril or Bovril kisses.

Yet, the more I looked into Bovril, the more I realised that it wasn’t all it appeared. By peering at the small print on the label, you learn that it is only 43 per cent beef stock with an extra 1.3 per cent dehydrated beef. No less than 24 per cent is yeast extract, as consumed by immature palates. Worse still, I discovered via a few taps at Google that during the BSE scare Bovril didn’t contain any beef at all. From two years from 2004, Bovril was yeast extract bolstered, as it still is, by the delicious-sounding waxy maize starch and flavour enhancer (disodium 5’-ribonucleotides). Yet I’d eaten it on spread on buttered toast throughout that period and hadn’t noticed a thing.

A phone call to Unilever revealed that even my mode of consumption was mistaken. “There is a difference between the two products,” a PR person loftily announced. “Marmite is a spread. Bovril is a drink.” “And a spread,” I chipped in. She repeated the party line with emphasis.
“So did I do something illegal this morning by having it on toast?”
“Not many of our consumers put Bovril on toast.”
For some unfathomable reason, possibly to due with brand differentiation, Unilever doesn’t want people to regard Bovril as a spread. The label refers to it as “a great hearty drink”. There is even a puff of steam coming from the logo. According to Unilever’s website, it is much consumed at football matches, which explains the inane footballing facts also on the label. Since I’ve always been heartily bored by football and I’ve drunk maybe three mugs of hot Bovril in my entire life, I wonder if my devotion has been misplaced. People tell me that Vegemite is very good.

“Along with male/female, young/old, Yorkshire/Lancashire, the preference for Marmite or Bovril is one of the great divisions of humanity.”

La Danse on Piccadilly

2008-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

It may seem that the Weasel is laying himself open to charges of being a slowcoach, lie-a-bed and Johnny-come-lately in only now offering an appreciation of Matisse’s exultant masterpiece La Danse, the centrepiece of the Royal Academy’s From Russia exhibition, sometime after the rest of the press pack has come, prognosticated and moved on to pastures new. But it ain’t so. Far from being inappropriately dilatory about this astonishing whirligig of energy, colour and passion, I was one of the first to describe the work when it emerged from long isolation in St Petersburg.

Back in 2000, Mrs W and I were fortunate enough to see La Danse when it appeared in Rome as part of an exhibition entitled 100 Masterpieces from the Hermitage. For perhaps five minutes, I was the sole proprietor of Matisse’s exuberant quintet. It was a damn close run thing that we caught it. A week later, André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud, grandson of the Russian art collector Sergei Shcukin who commissioned the work in 1909, applied to Rome magistrates for the work to be impounded. In the wink of an eye, the Hermitage whirled La Danse back to St Petersburg. That’s why the UK law was changed to ensure that similar legal shenanigans did not occur when, after prolonged negotiations, the painting made a second appearance in the West.

Matisse spent most of the summer of 1910 in an intense struggle to get his vision down in oils. Though he had previously completed the full-scale sketch that can now be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the artist “painted intuitively, without thought or premeditation, like a dancer or an athlete”, according to his acclaimed biographer Hilary Spurling. To sustain the rhythm of the design, he hummed dance-hall tunes. Spurling reports the observation of his studio assistant Hans Purrmann that the alteration of one line could upset the balance of the whole composition: “He kept rearranging the limbs of the four figures… and manipulated the entire group as if it were one single figure with eight arms and eight legs.” Perhaps Purrmann was swept up in Matisse’s creative delirium since there are five figures in La Danse with a total limb count of 20.

Mind you, I had to check and make sure. It is the most kinetic of all canvases, not only in its tendency to disappear at the whiff of a writ. More than any other work I’ve ever known, La Danse seems to move before your eyes. The curvetting circle of dancers appears to be constantly in rotation. Oddly, this illusion put me in mind of the supernatural print described in M.R.James’ short story of 1904, The Mezzotint: “It was indubitable – rankly impossible, no doubt, but absolutely certain. In the middle of the lawn in front of the unknown house there was a figure where no figure had been at five o’clock that afternoon.”

It may seem a fanciful response, but the overwrought Matisse experienced the same eerie perception in his studio. It happened when he heard that Shcukin had cold feet about purchasing La Danse and its companion piece Music. With a scarcely conceivable generosity, Matisse allowed his studio to be used to display a work by the now forgotten Puvis de Chavannes, who was also much admired by Shcukin. According to Spurling, the artist had a bizarre reaction while removing his own artworks: “Matisse sprang back in panic when the figures on the two huge canvases laid out on the studio floor suddenly seemed to heave and stir beneath the baleful gaze of Puvis’s muses.” When Shcukin declared his preference for the Puvis, La Danse very nearly didn’t go to Russia. It was only two days later that Shcukin, while on the train to Moscow, retrenched to his original choice. Matisse departed for Spain, where, according to Spurling, he suffered “almost complete physical and emotional breakdown”.

But what dance is being performed in La Danse? The vigorous knees-ups observed by Matisse in Montmartre dance halls were one source of inspiration, but the whirling circle came from Collioure, the Mediterranean fishing village where the painter spent periods in the five years before beginning the painting. A few years ago, while trudging its back streets, well away from the tourist throng, we came across locals engaged in the fluid, rather sedate Catalan ronde known as the sardane. Though similar, this did not correspond to the rotating surge, described by one contemporary as “pagan and Dionysian”, on Matisse’s vast canvas. Reminiscing about painting La Danse, Matisse said that “he found himself crouching, ready to leap as he had done… one night on the beach at Collioure, in a round of Catalan fishermen far more violent in movement and appearance than the sardane.” Catalan fishermen are far too cool to dance together these days. The only fish-related violence we saw in Collioure involved the filleting of anchovies. Sadly, this topic did not inspire the town’s best-known visitor.

“More than any other art work I’ve known, “La Danse” seems to move before your eyes.”

39 Steps for Birthday Delight

2008-01-19T21:18:00+00:00

When I asked how she would like to celebrate her birthday, Mrs W expressed the desire to spend a couple of hours in the company of a devilishly handsome adventurer equipped with a pencil moustache, a smouldering briar clamped between his jaws and a heather-mixture tweed suit of the type that stands up by itself when removed by the wearer. Of course, this could have been the Weasel, a chap who has knocked about the world a bit and is universally regarded as a cool customer, a dead-shot and a fine judge of horseflesh. Unfortunately it wasn’t.

The tweedy cove with whom Mrs W wished to spend her birthday night was Simon Paisley Day, who plays Richard Hannay in an adaptation of John Buchan’s The 39 Steps that has been playing to packed houses at the Criterion Theatre for the past 18 months. To be more precise, it is an adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s highly-regarded film of 1935, which bears only a passing resemblance to Buchan’s cliffhanger. Descending to the subterranean auditorium of the Criterion, which coincidentally involved a journey of what seemed like 39 steps, I was not sure what to expect.

The poster for the play featured our hero clinging on to a train as it roars over the Firth of Forth rail bridge while another train hurtles towards him on the other track. Now, I’m not saying that I expected the stage to be filled with roaring locos and a full-scale replica of the bridge. I mean what kind of out-of-town rube would really expect that in a London theatre? “Isn’t it brilliant?” chortled Mrs W as Richard Hannay, pursued by two members of the Scottish constabulary, dangled from a ladder standing in for the 8,256-ft bridge.

“Er, yes,” I concurred. Though disappointed by the lack of LNER rolling stock, I was rather impressed that Mr Paisley Day kept his pipe firmly in place throughout this ordeal. A detail of the poster should have warned me that the scene was an artistic invention intended to lure the credulous. While Hannay hangs on to the exterior of a carriage, a gloved hand extends through an open window and offers him a beaker of whisky on the rocks. Any pukka hero from the genre that Alan Bennett termed “snobbery with violence” would sooner plunge into the Forth than consume a dram adulterated with ice cubes.

Since there are only four in the cast, a considerable amount of quick-change is required from all except the dashing Mr Paisley Day – and even he occasionally has to remove the pipe from his mouth – as the action moves from Hannay’s Portland Place apartment and the London Palladium (we in the audience play the audience) via a shaky railway compartment stiff with ladies’ underwear salesmen to the highlands of Scotland, where one of the actors is obliged to impersonate a hillock. Hannay’s pursuit by both the police and a ruthless gang of villains is conveyed by some vigorous running on the spot, while his desperate escape from spotter planes utilises shadow puppetry in a somewhat more convincing way than Hitchcock’s model aircraft. Finally, the yarn whizzes back to the London Palladium for the dramatic shooting of Mr Memory as he spills the beans: “The 39 Steps is an organisation of spies…”

Hitchcock worked up the Mr Memory business from a single sentence at the start of Buchan’s original story. “I turned into a music hall,” Hannay tells us. “It was a silly show, all capering women and monkey-faced men.” A memory act may seem an unlikely repository for stolen military secrets (“It was a big job to learn it – the biggest job I ever tackled. The first feature of the new engine is its greatly increased ratio of compression represented by R minus over R to the power of gamma… Am I right, Sir?”), but Buchan’s original is equally rich in implausibility, particularly when Hannay happens to find a stock of explosives in the room where he is held prisoner: “I hadn’t been a mining engineer for nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it. With one of these bricks I could blow the house to smithereens.” Buchan generously acknowledged that the movie version had the edge on his own. For some reason it did not occur to him to include a scene that involved Hannay with a cool blonde, a pair of handcuffs and the removal of some wet stockings.

“Phew! I feel worn out,” said the birthday girl, as we hauled our way up from the stalls of the Criterion. “I’ve never known a show with more action. Maybe it’s best to know the story first – those Japanese tourists in front of us looked a bit puzzled – but it’s a jolly good evening out.” If this paper ever needs a drama critic to provide astute assessments of cutting-edge productions on the London stage, I know just the woman to call.

“Hitchcock worked up the “Mr Memory” business from one sentence in Buchan’s original story.”

Beardsley at Dulwich

2008-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

The panto season is the perfect time for Dulwich Picture Gallery to mount The Age of Enchantment, an exhibition about illustration around 1900. Like pantomime, the works from this aesthetic cusp are concerned with transporting the viewer to somewhere exotic and magical. But anyone who visits Dulwich anticipating a prolonged wallow in the charming innocence of late Victorian and Edwardian children’s book illustrations – an expectation fostered by the show poster, which features Edmund Dulac’s gorgeous watercolour of an ice maiden flanked by polar bears – is in for a shock. The first room is devoted to the seductive but disturbing work of Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), whose dark, precocious influence resonates throughout the show.

Populated by beautiful creatures of indeterminate gender, bosomy grotesques, sooty-eyed femmes fatales and haughty dandies, Beardsley’s drawings, still mostly in private hands, are a grown-up, sexually-charged version of panto. His bare-breasted “Lady with the Monkey” (1896), originally intended to illustrated Ben Jonson’s Volpone, and his angry, décolleté heroine from The Rape of the Lock (1896), so much more vigorous and assertive than the shrinking, prissy males in the same picture, are astoundingly unVictorian. His frontispiece for a collection by the forgotten playwright John Davidson (1894) includes caricatures of Oscar Wilde as Bacchus in vinous bondage and his sister Mabel Beardsley completely naked.

So utterly is Beardsley not of his time that it comes as a surprise to see that that his beaky-nosed photograph, with chin cupped in hands like a Notre Dame gargoyle, was the work of the “Swan Electric Engraving Co”. Similarly, it is slightly dismaying to discover that his work table, also included in the exhibition, is not embellished with improper carvings of caryatids, hermaphrodites and succubi. Though it comes with both the description (“wood, painted black”) and provenance (“Aubrey Beardsley 1894-95…”) customarily attached to artworks, it is a bog-standard Victorian kitchen table, very similar to the one currently creaking under weight of books in the Weaselian loft.

I can recall the terrific impact of the big Beardsley exhibition at the V&A in 1966 that revived interest in his work. It was sexy, naughty, stylish, corrupt and very much in tune with the Sixties. His monochrome swirls were suddenly ubiquitous in underground imagery. Dead at 25 from consumption, he was forever young. Beardsley’s long-haired figures set a template for rock stars that continues to this day. Dress his “Venus between Terminal Gods” (1895) in jeans and white shirt and you have Mapplethorpe’s portrait of Patti Smith from Horses (1975). His preposterous poseur The Abbe (1896) is a young Freddie Mercury. Considering that the stylish corruption of his fantasies continues to entice viewers a century after his death, his potent influence on contemporaries is unsurprising.

The dark peril that is an essential part of panto is found in the work of Harry Clarke (1889-1931), described in the catalogue as transforming “Beardsley’s high Gothic line into new depths of depravity”. His deeply eerie illustration for The Pit and the Pendulum is a perfect match for Poe’s fervid imaginings: “Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate the keen, glistening axe upon my bosom.” More fish than human, The Mermaid by Sidney Sime (1867-1941) is a scary siren with mad eyes and mouth open in a silent scream. The most dedicated of Beardsley’s disciples was a German artist known as Alastair (1887-1969), cheerily described in the exhibition catalogue as “obsessed with decadence and transvestism”. His drawing of a high-heeled dancer from 1922 is reminiscent of Victoria Beckham in the figure-hugging gold outfit that grabbed the most column inches in coverage of the return of the Spice Girls. His 1928 drawing Passionate Embrace, in which an expiring woman is hauled from a floor-length floral dress by her besotted lover, is an unbuttoned version of Nichole Kidman’s Chanel advert. Arthur Rackham’s giggling, unclad Rhine-Maidens, their hair swirling in art nouveau curves, from an “adult-themed volume” of 1910 published by Heinemann is even more racy. Not only did sex exist well before the ending of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP but also the graphic novel.

Not having experienced his richly enjoyable illustrations in my youth, my greatest discovery at the exhibition was the French-born artist Edmund Dulac. I was particularly taken with his Arabian Nights watercolour from 1914: “The room of fruits prepared for Abu-l-Hasan”. In case this suggests that I am more interested in food than sex these days, I should explain that the bananas, oranges and coconuts are offered by seven equally delicious females. The exquisite detail and glowing colour of Dulac is a transporting feast for the eyes. After the mesmerising enchantments on the walls of Dulwich Picture Gallery, you emerge blinking into the suburban streets with the slight feeling that you have been booted out of paradise – or at least the best panto in town.

“Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings are a sexually-charged version of panto.”

Tasty narratives

2007-12-22T11:37:00+00:00

Normally we eat The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle on Christmas Day, but since we’re going to friends for the feast this year, I suspect it may be A Christmas Carol with all the trimmings. Jumping the gun a bit, we’ve already tucked into The Mayor of Casterbridge and jolly filling it was too. As devotees of Victorian literature may have guessed, I refer respectively to goose, turkey and the proto Christmas pud known as frumenty. For most of us, the choice of Yuletide belt-strainer depends on habit, tastiness or affordability, but this does not apply to novelists. Their preference is dictated by narrative potential.

A turkey acts as dénouement of A Christmas Carol, written by Dickens in 1843, due to the prodigious size that these fowls can attain. The prize example sent to the Cratchit family by the transformed Scrooge – “He could never have stood upon his legs that bird. He would have snapped them off short in a minute, like sticks of sealing wax” – is reminiscent of the gargantuan bird recently “pardoned” by President Bush in the annual bit of hokum on the White House lawn. Scrooge’s purchase took place on the morning of 25 December, when the poulterer was still open. Then as now, the really big turkeys were the last to be sold.

In first half of the 19th century, roast beef and goose remained favourite Christmas fare, but the turkey was catching up fast. Until the coming of the railways, flocks equipped with little leather boots were herded from East Anglia (geese had their feet dipped in tar), though Scrooge’s monster could not have made the trek. The generosity of his gesture is underlined by Mrs Beeton (1860): “The turkey is one of the most difficult birds to rear.” Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced by Scrooge’s metamorphosis. The cookery advice of the unreformed miser sounds more plausible, if less festive: “Every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding.”

In The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (1892), Conan Doyle’s plot hinges on a goose’s crop (a pouch in the gullet where food is stored). At 4am on Christmas Day, a passer-by picks up a goose dropped during an assault on Tottenham Court Road. At home, he finds a jewel in its crop, which he brings to Sherlock Holmes. The detective instantly recognises the gem: “There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide and several robberies brought about for the sake of this 40-grain weight of crystallised carbon.” Holmes ingeniously tracks the goose to a Bloomsbury pub, thence to a stallholder in Covent Garden Market and finally to a flock raised at 117 Brixton Road (which must have been a bit noisy for the neighbours). The miscreant turns out to be the smallholder’s felonious brother, who, in a moment of panic, utilised the live goose as a hiding place for the stolen gem.

A brilliant piece of detection, except, as Leslie S.Klinger, editor of the Annotated Sherlock Holmes, points out: a) Covent Garden was a vegetable market; b) The only gem composed of crystallised carbon is diamond; c) The goose does not have a crop. Despite these slips, it is the perfect Christmas yarn concluding with seasonal forgiveness (Holmes releases the perpetrator) and a feast in 221B Baker Street: “Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which a bird will also be the chief feature.”

Frumenty, a dish of cracked wheat boiled in milk, is described in Steve Roud’s folklore guide The English Year as “made for everyday use and festive occasions (especially Christmas)”. It initiates the tragic chain of events in Thomas Hardy’s gloomy yarn The Mayor of Casterbridge when a hay-trusser called Michael Henchard sells his wife after eating four basins. If this sounds an extreme reaction, it should be explained that his frumenty was laced with rum.

At my request, Mrs W bravely prepared this wheat porridge, which is still eaten at Christmas Eve in parts of North Yorkshire. Once so common that the recipe was scarcely ever written down, you can find it on a few websites. A luxury version – tinged with nutmeg, sweetened with honey and gemmed with swollen raisins – eventually became Christmas pudding. “Not bad, but it’s hard to see what’s so festive about it,” I said. Promising Mrs W that she would not come under the hammer, I reached for a bottle of Havana Club rum. Though the super-charged frumenty was a distinct improvement, it proved to be hefty fare. How Michael Henchard managed to get through four basins of the stuff is a mystery. If he had, it is more likely that he would fall asleep than become “brilliantly quarrelsome”.

“Well, I’m not sold on it,” drolly quipped Mrs W. She was much more taken with my alternative suggestion for a literary tipple at Christmas: Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale (the Vesper cocktail) shaken with Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World (ice).

The miscreant, in a moment of panic, utilised the live goose as a hiding place for the stolen gem.

The Titanic Truffle of Piedmont

2007-11-03T21:11:00+00:00

The story of how the bemused features of the Weasel came to be spread across the pages of the Italian press from La Stampa to Corriere della Serra, begins in Scarborough. Last year, I reported on a fragrant visit I made to the town’s fish market with Giorgio Alessio, chef-proprietor of Scarborough’s top restaurant, the much-lauded La Lanterna. In the course of a transporting supper at his establishment early this year, Giorgio suggested another gastronomic adventure that some might see as slightly more appealing. Would I be interested in visiting the truffle fair in his Piedmontese birthplace? The self-proclaimed “capital of the white truffle” sprang to mind. “Is that Alba?” I inquired.

“Bloomin’ ‘eck, no,” replied Giorgio, whose two decades on the Yorkshire littoral have left their mark. “I come from Moncalvo. It’s miles better.” This explains why, on a weekend in late October, Mrs W and I found ourselves in this delightful town (pop. 3,500), an hour south-west of Turin. The view from our room in a stylish B&B was one of surpassing richness; a rolling countryside of small, neatly-combed vineyards, fields of crops and stands of oak and poplar punctuated by gentle eminences charmingly known as colline dolci (sweet hills). Looming out of the haze, the jagged white peaks of the Alps, 100 miles away, provided a mirage-like backdrop.

But the most notable asset of this heavenly corner was hidden from view. Described in the Oxford Companion to Food as “the most expensive, subtle and mysterious of the foods known to man”, the beige bulbs of Tuber magnatum are occasionally found on tree roots in this region. At least, they should be. Giorgio greeted us with the news that this year’s white truffle season, which runs from September to January, was well below par. “Very disappointing,” said Giorgio. “The blinkin’ weather was all wrong.” My visions of a truffle feast began to evaporate.

But I’d overlooked the fact that there are around 2,900 licensed trufflers and at least an equal number of truffle dogs, mainly mongrels (bastardi), on dawn patrol around the hedgerows of Piedmonte. Truffles were available – at a price. Last year’s mind-boggling tariff of 350 euros (£235) per etto (100 grams) was a snip compared to year’s price of 500 euros (£335) per etto.

When we took Saturday lunch at Moncalvo’s exemplary Ristorante Centrale, a plate of tagliolini with white truffle was available for 40 euros (£27). The hyperinflation afflicting this plutocratic fungus was indicated by the menu, where a previous price of 35 euros had been scratched out. Decked with paper-thin curls of truffle, the pasta announced its arrival with a pungent waft. The taste was simultaneously earthy and heavenly, potent and evanescent. (It is hard not to sound a mite pretentious when writing about white truffle.) I could say that it had an atavistic appeal that spoke to the depths of my soul, but I’ll settle for delicious beyond words

I felt obliged, due to the stringent demands of in-depth journalistic research, to try truffle with fondue, truffle with raw, chopped veal and truffle with fried egg and polenta. Those who claim that the diner can easily be overfaced by an excess of white truffle are, in my view, mistaken. Giorgio joined me for a pudding of poached pears and chestnut ice-cream covered with a light snow of truffle shavings. “That worked extremely well,” said Giorgio. “Every truffle dish has its own story. It’s very different in every dish.” Personally, I tended towards the truffle with fondue as my favourite. “I did that for David Hockney,” recalled Giorgio. “That’s why he did a drawing for me.”

On the following day, when Moncalvo held its truffle fair, I discovered that there is no such thing as a free lunch, especially one rich in truffles. Though my quid pro quo was not onerous, it came as a surprise. The highlight of the fair, which includes scores of stalls selling truffle-related items ranging from truffle-imbued grappa to cani de tartufo (truffle dogs), was an awards ceremony for the top truffles. Quite why the town’s charming mayor asked me to step into the prize-giving area remained a mystery until the time arrived for the presentation of the Tartufo d’Oro for the heaviest truffle, a 650-gram monster of knee-weakening aroma that had been bought for 5,000 euros (£3,350). As the report in La Stampa subsequently announced, the trophy was presented by the “critico gastronomico del londinese The Independent”.

For a few flashbulb-illuminated minutes, the Weasel became the story. Even Giorgio was surprised. “I can never forgive ‘im,” he gasped. “After five minutes in my blinkin’ town, ‘e becomes the star of the show.” Possibly because my mind was turned by this brush with fame, I took the plunge and bought a 25-gm truffle from a recommended supplier. A minute or two later, the realisation struck home. “My God! I’ve just spent 100 euros on a toadstool.” It’s not just the whiff of truffles that is knee-weakening.

“Due to the demands of in-depth research, I was obliged to try a large number of truffle dishes.”

Germany on our doorstep

2007-10-31T12:38:00+00:00

Visitors rarely display unrestrained envy when they discover we have a Lidl for a neighbour. “But it’s a supermarket for poor people!” exclaimed our friend Pete, who rapidly emerged after popping in for a bottle of wine to accompany Sunday lunch at Weasel Villas. Such was his shock that he was unable to make a purchase. Though his view is commonplace, it is erroneous. Lidl is an absolutely run-of-the-mill supermarket. At least, this is the view in Lidl’s German homeland. “Lidl is quite well regarded at home,” says Ernest, Mrs W’s German florist. “We just don’t see the point in spending a lot of money on food.”

After hanging back in a diffident middle-class way, we eventually took the plunge and now patronise Lidl, particularly for fruit and vegetables. Though limited in range (don’t go there hoping for salsify or cavolo nero), these are of fairly good quality and extremely cheap. We punt heavily on vine tomatoes, rocket, avocadoes, fennel and pink grapefruit. Mineral water and parmesan are other unmissable bargains. The main drawback about Lidl is the checkout queue, which can be something of a roulette. Since the chain’s economies are mainly achieved by keeping staff levels to a minimum, you can be in for a long wait. Moreover, customers tend to purchase in Christmas quantities all year round. At Christmas, the place is a madhouse.

In one respect, Lidl’s offering is unmatched by any other rival. I doubt if there is another UK supermarket chain where it is possible to buy both a cauliflower and a unicycle. The latter (“the ultimate one-wheeled fun”) is currently on sale for £24.99 as part of a bicycle promotion in the leisure goods section of the store. Last week, there was a sale of equestrian equipment, including a lunging rein (£5.99), hoof bandages (pack of four for £5.99) and a numnah coat (“to protect against pressure to the withers”) for £14.99. Since very few horses have clopped the streets in this area of south-east London after 1913, there was not much demand for such equine accoutrements. One curious exception was schooling whips, which sold out at £2.99 apiece.

Male shoppers are particularly drawn by Lidl’s hardware. You see them in pensive contemplation, torn between the urge to acquire an irresistible snip and the niggling thought that if they might not really need a motorcycle intercom set (£4.99), a “quality putter” (£12.99) or a “large greenhouse” (£49.99). Recently, my own interests in Lidl have taken a carnivorous direction. Since fortune had installed a corner of the Fatherland on my doorstep, it provided an excellent opportunity to explore a fundamental area of German cuisine, viz. the Wurst or sausage.

My interest was kindled when I came across a volume called A Culinary Voyage Through Germany by the late Hannelore Kohl, wife of the former German Chancellor Helmet Kohl. A section entitled “Sausages – Everyone’s Favourite” begins with the following ineffable exchange. Hannelore Kohl: “As I was doing some research, I discovered that the German word for sausage ‘Wurst’, is one of the oldest words in the German language. It stems from the Old High German werram and means ‘To turn, muddle or mix up’.” Master chef Alfons Schuhbeck: “I didn’t know that. But I do know that Germany is a sausage-lover’s paradise. We make over 1,500 varieties.”

Could the Teutonic banger become a regular part of our culinary intake at Weasel Villas, along with such welcome continental additions as cassoulet au confit de canard or spaghettini alla puttinesca? There was only one way to find out. Mrs W, who handles queues better than I do, was despatched to Lidl. I was surprised when her sausage bill came to the wrong side of £15 (normally, it’s hard going to spend a tenner in Lidl), but she’s never one to do things by halves. Her haul included a kilo of Bockwurst bearing the daunting recommendation “crunchy fresh”. Mrs W admitted that a large, bright-orange, porky halo going by the unpersuasive name “Gourmet Sausage” had been “hard to pick up”. What treats lay in store for us!

For our introductory dish, we plumped for Bratwurst, since the fat white fingers bore some resemblance to the illustration of “Sausages with Apples” in Mrs Kohl’s cookbook. Grilling these pallid parabolas, Mrs W expressed doubts: “Look a bit cadaverous, don’t they?” Though the sautéed apples were sweet and appealing, a single flavour dominated the sausages. “God, they’re salty, aren’t they?” I said to Mrs W. She responded with a gesture I have come to recognise as an indication of profound regret after consumption. With mouth glumly downcast, she drew a corresponding sausage shape on her stomach. “Not very nice at all.” Though we have another seven varieties of Lidl sausages palely loitering in the fridge, I’d lay heavy odds against Germany joining France and Italy as most favoured cuisines in Weasel Villas. Incidentally, the English word “sausage” derives from the mediaeval Latin salsicia meaning “salted”.

Is there another supermarket where you can buy a cauliflower and a unicycle?

The strange world beneath the stairs

2007-02-24T12:32:00+00:00

By some quirk of physics, Newton’s Third Law of Motion, you know, the gag about every action having an equal and opposite reaction, has a particular tenacity in Weasel Villas. You only need Mrs W to make the dread announcement “I’ve been thinking…” and the result is a chain reaction of unstoppable force. This is because her pensées customarily concern household improvements, as in ”I’ve been thinking about the bathroom…”

As a result, the bath was ripped out and a shower installed. Unfortunately, the bathroom suppliers used Cowboy Plumbing of Tombstone (though their accents suggested Tooting). In consequence, the shower was ripped out and a new one installed. By some weird coincidence, the second shower was fitted by more dubious dudes from the Wild West (Ealing), so that too was taken out and a third one was installed. The cycle of fitting and removal might have continued infinitely, but Mrs W, somewhat grudgingly, acquiesced to No.3 and the house returned to its customary state of quiet decay.

Towards the end of last year, there came the familiar call: “Darling, I’ve been thinking…” The outside decoration was apparently in urgent need of restoration. Miraculously, the job passed without repercussions except for our painter pointing out the shortcomings of previous tradesmen (“That flashing is diabolical”). I was about to bid him a fond adieu when Mrs W helpfully suggested that the job should be extended indoors to the hall and stairs. “Would help no end if that stair carpet came up,” said Mr Matt Finish. “Yes, I’ve been thinking that myself,” volunteered Mrs W. “It has seen better days.”

Keen to derail this train of thought, I pointed out that the stair carpet was reaching its prime after 20-odd years. A few threadbare patches imparted a blasé distinction. You’re always seeing well-worn carpets in posh country houses, where it doesn’t do for anything to look too new. “This carpet is just fine. Not a hint of nouveau riche vulgarity,” I spluttered. “It’s like a duke’s suit being worn in by the butler.” Mrs W and M. Finish looked at each other. What a loony.

No more than three seconds later, Mrs W was in Sloane Square applying her lorgnette to the shagpiles on the Fourth Floor of Peter Jones. Radnor Twist Supreme in Flint Grey @ £19.50 per sq. m. did not measure up to madame’s requirements. Similarly, Summer Garden Supreme in Grey Dagger @ £21.00 per sq. m. was not adequate for the grand escalier of Weasel Villas. Only when she came across Ulster Velvet in Duck Egg @ £49.00 per sq. m. did contentment blossom. Personally, I would have settled for Shabby But Serviceable in Slightly Faded Green @ £00.00 per sq. m. (no underlay required).

Most people would think their outgoings were at an ending after coughing up for the carpet, underlay and fitting, but as usual, Newton’s Third Law had more in store. Until you have your carpet taken up, you never know what a strange world is hidden underneath. It’s like the network of sewers below the streets of Vienna in The Third Man. The stairs that seemed so solid when shrouded in Axminster turned out to be ravaged by cracks, fissures and gaping crevasses. Gripper rods gnashed menacingly, transforming each step into a miniature iron maiden. On one stair, the riser had caved in, revealing a black hole of Miltonic intensity. “No light but rather darkness visible.” “Blimey!” agreed the estimator from Peter Jones. “You need to get Floors & Doors in.” Whistling cheerily, the representative of F&D duly patched up this portal into a stygian Hades. In a style that has recently become de rigueur among craftsmen, he provided a blow-by-blow commentary on the progress of his work. “I’m just tightening up your stairs, but hardboard is your best bet for the cracks on the landing.” Soon after, the carpet arrived plus a trio of carpetlayers. At last, the end of the job that began with a lick of Dulux on brickwork was in sight. But then came the inevitable knock-on. “Er, Mr Weasel,” said the head tacksman. “Have you got a moment?”

Heart filling with dread, I staggered up to the landing. “Thing is,” he said, “the doors won’t fit when the carpet is down because of the hardboard. You can have the doors screwed back but they won’t close. Or we can leave the doors off and you can have a bit shaved off the bottom.” Since a door that doesn’t close isn’t really a door in my understanding of the term, I chose the second option. At present, I’m summoning up the courage to have the doors planed, but I just know something else will go wrong. Warping? Woodworm? I can hardly wait. Meanwhile, Mrs W has “been thinking” again. “Have you noticed that the shower is leaking? I think we need to do the bathroom again.” My equal and opposite reaction is to have a stiff drink.

It’s like the network of sewers below Vienna in The Third Man

Time travel with Hogarth

2007-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

This is a magical month for those of us who harbour a secret desire to be whizzed back in time to the 18th century (as long as that era was provisioned with modern dentistry, anaesthetics, antibiotics, refrigeration, the 60-watt bulb, the cocktail shaker etc.). As I remarked a couple of weeks ago, the Canaletto in England exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is a glittering tour d’horizon of London in the Age of Enlightenment. And now the vast accumulation of Hogarths at Tate Britain shows us the same period in less flattering, but immensely entertaining close-up. The curators are keen we should see this most English of painters as much more than a satirist. His portraits of the robust, red-faced bourgeoisie are splendidly vivacious, but it is Hogarth’s humour that makes him irresistible.

It is hard to imagine Sir Joshua Reynolds accepting a commission to paint a portrait of a toff lying in bed and being sick (with some vigour) into a chamber pot. Apparently the wife of Francis Matthew Schutz requested this unusual work in order to put her husband off drink. Their genteel Victorian descendents replaced his energetic stream of vomit and its receptacle with a painting of a newspaper (they resisted the temptation to call it The Daily Spews), which has only recently been erased. Hogarth had a fondness for embarrassing flows of liquid. Characters in his oeuvre are drenched with a) gravy from a roast chicken, b) oil from a street lamp and c) the contents of a large pie.

For all his ambition as an artist, Hogarth could not resist a joke. In this, he enjoyed one advantage over present-day humorists. He lived in an era of wigs. Innately ludicrous (look at any judge), these adornments are variously ignited by a drunk’s clay pipe, worn by a naval captain’s dog, wonkily perched on the incapably soused and chucked out of a coffee house window.

Wigs aside, many of Hogarth’s canvases and etchings might be of London in 2007. This is spectacularly true of the eight scenes that make up the Rake’s Progress (1734) Spendthrift metropolitans of today may feel an uncomfortable kinship with Tom Rakewell, whose expensive entourage includes a fencing master (read “personal trainer”), a landscape gardener (read “bespoke garden designer”) and a thuggish bodyguard (read “thuggish bodyguard”). Tom’s sedan chair (read “Mercedes SLR”) is halted by bailiffs on a very familiar-looking St James’s Street. Addicted to sex and gambling, the rake’s progress ends in Bedlam (read “The Priory”).

We constantly encounter familiar details in the course of the show. The “fricasey of snails” offered to nouveau-riche diners in Taste in High Life (1742) bears a strong resemblance to the snail porridge served by chef-genius Heston Blumenthal on his “tasting menu” (£115 plus 12.5 per cent service) to well-heeled patrons at the Fat Duck in Bray. At midnight on Fridays, the modern Leicester Square (where Hogarth lived) combines the hellish drunkenness of Gin Lane and the cheery tipsiness of Beer Street (both 1751). But one of the least changed aspects of English life concerns seafood. Today we insanely allow much of our maritime treasure trove to be exported and apparently the same indifference to fish applied in 1748. In his celebrated painting of the Gate of Calais, Hogarth depicted the emaciated French having to survive on skate, dabs and mackerel while a massive joint of sirloin is carried to an inn catering for English visitors.

But other appetites also propel Hogarth’s superbly realised comedies. No other artist derived so much humour from sex. His astonishing paintings Before and After depict ardent blandishments in the former and enervated lugging-up of the breeches in the latter. As the spent man stares blankly and his dishevelled partner pleads for discretion, a book of Aristotle on the floor reads: “Omne Animal Post Coitum Triste” (every animal is sad after sex). But this does not appear to be the case with the faithless young wife seen taking a languid breakfast in Marriage A la Mode. The implications of her straddle-legged stance and pert smile are genteelly described in the catalogue: “Her sly look and satisfied stretch suggest that she, too, has had a sexual dalliance.” Cruder phrases might apply, but a friend who teaches at university says the current description among young females is “loved up”.

Most people touring this unmissable exhibition will view the first canvas “Morning” in The Four Times of Day as being very much a scene set in 1738. Two young blades snog a pair of market girls under the portico of St Paul’s in Covent Garden, while a group of beggars huddle round a fire flickering among the vegetables. But I can remember seeing this. I worked in the Covent Garden area before the market closed in 1976 and, at least in the cold months, down-and-outs were always gathered round a small blaze at this very spot. In my memory, however, carrots were more common than canoodling.

“At midnight on Fridays, the modern Leicester Square resembles the hellishness of Gin Lane.”

At war with machines

2006-11-11T12:50:00+00:00

Though as mindless a film as you could wish to see, Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette offers one profound insight into the subject that dominates this issue of the Independent Magazine. It is to be found in the character of the Dauphin, whom Marie has been despatched from Austria to marry. Instead of tending to the connubial requirements of his lovely teenage wife, this royal blockhead spends his time obsessively tinkering with locks and keys. According to the OED, the word “gadget” probably derives from the French gachette meaning “lock mechanism”. Plus ça change…

The Dauphin’s compulsion has reached epidemic proportions these days. Whether with mobile, i-Pod or zapper, it is fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, wherever you look. No lover is more relentlessly attentive than a techie engaged with his gadget. If you ever watch a sound engineer at a concert, the manipulation of the vast array of knobs and faders is relentless. Hands dart unceasingly across the board performing a tweak here, a quarter-turn there. Of course, it makes not the slightest discernable difference to the sound quality, but a bank of twiddle-able controls is irresistible.

It’s best not to look at this foreplay without climax. Observation of self-absorbed fidgeting can be deleterious to mental health as I discovered on a press trip to South America a little while ago. It was not so much the relentless snapping of the two photographers in our party that got my goat – though when they shot 40 or 50 images of the constituent elements of an afternoon tea, I felt obliged to point out that sandwiches are not entirely unknown in Britain. It was the endless burnishing, caressing, scrutinising and adjusting of their cameras when not engaged in photography that almost caused me to do a mad war-dance on expensive shards of Nikon and Leica.

If you deduce from this venting of mental steam that the Weasel is not the greatest devotee of leisure instrumentation, you would not be a million gigabytes away from the truth. The annoyingly abbreviated names of the items – the Wi-Fi phone, the Blu-Ray media centre, the Mio hand-held Sat-Nav – in the annoyingly abbreviated gadgets magazine T3 (what the hell does it mean?) induce a frenzy of indifference in this reader. Incredible as it may appear, I am less than agog to try out the impending Nintendo Wii, even though its “Trauma Centre” game offers surgical thrills for all the family: “Careful! The smallest mistake could cost the patient his life!”

Not that I’m against all gadgets. Quite the reverse. I’m as obsessed as any teenage nerd, but the devices that set my heart palpitating with desire are not to be found in T3. If you care to look in our large kitchen drawer – that’s if you can get it open in the first place – you’ll find five oyster knives, a prawn de-veiner, a clam knife, lobster shears, langoustine shears, fish-bone pliers, four lobster-claw crackers, a fish scaler… and that’s just the seafood section. Glancing through an American cookery catalogue, Mrs W asked: “Do we want a chestnutter, ‘the tool that takes the peril out of scoring chestnuts’, for $24.95?” “Are you mad?” I blurted. “Of course we do.”

No lover is more attentive than a techie engaged with his gadget

Inflating Pitta Bread

2006-08-12T21:07:00+01:00

On the brink of departure for our annual summer sojourn in the north, we gathered vital food supplies. This is not because food shops are thin on the ground in North Yorkshire. If anything, the reverse is true. However, Turkish supermarkets, plentiful in our patch of south London, are a bit of a rarity in the Filey Bay area. Over the past few years, we have become addicted to their vegetables and fruit, so excellent and cheap compared to the humdrum, sappy greenery flogged by Tesco and Sainsbury.

In our local Turkish shop, Mrs W snaps up fat bunches of coriander, mint and parsley, deliberates over the three different types of courgette (round, light green and bog-standard) and three different types of aubergine (small, stripy and torpedo). Her priority is the harvesting of vine tomatoes, which are red, ripe and affordable all year round. We combine them with the shop’s crunchy little cucumbers, Kalamata olives and fresh sheep’s cheese in a Greek, sorry, Turkish salad, one of the world’s great gastronomic marriages. But my citrus acquisitions – eight huge lemons for a quid, same for six limes – are even more elevating, at least when served in the form of a White Lady or Margarita.

We acquired stocks of all these for our month in the north, along with Turkish yogurt (actually made in Germany, a spin-off of the Gastarbeiter phenomenon), Greek thyme honey, plump pistachios from Iran and Al Nakhil tahini from Beirut. (Sadly, supplies of this excellent sesame paste may be interrupted.) I was lured by a huge catering tin of stuffed vine leaves at the irresistible price of £3.59, though its appeal would possibly have palled at the halfway stage.

Another product demanded a special visit to the shop on the afternoon of departure. My latest obsession in this storehouse of culinary delights is pitta bread. Yes, I know you can get it anywhere, but the shop’s version, made by Sofra Bakery of Tottenham, is particularly good. It is light, tasty and marbled with carbonised striations. After being sprinkled with water, the pittas puff up on the grill or barbecue like miniature dirigibles. You half expect them to take off and whirl round your head, emitting gasps of steam. These edible Zeppelins have another advantage, particularly for the Turkophile Yorkshireman. At £1 for four packets of six, they work out at 4.16p per pitta.

Or, at least, they should. While musing in the shop over Mrs W’s reaction if I were to succumb to temptation and purchase a hubble-bubble, an assistant started shouting at me. “Sir, sir, your car! A parking warden!” Dumping my pile of pittas, I dashed. At first, it looked as if I was in the nick of time. The warden was issuing a ticket to another poor blighter. But I’d forgotten that in South London, they hunt in packs. Five minutes on a single yellow set me back £40, thus pushing the cost per pitta to an astronomic £1.70.

When we reached North Yorkshire, the world’s most expensive pitta breads were utilised in a number of culturally appropriate methods. We used them for dipping into homemade hummus (that’s where the Al Nakhil tahini went). They were also filled with the Levantine cold omelette dish known as eggah for lunchtime snacks on the beach. Then, about halfway through my expensive hoard, we switched to the Yorkshire leavened equivalent of pitta bread, known as breadcakes. (Somehow, it didn’t seem right to eat boiled ham in Turkish pitta bread.) Breadcakes are circular in form, about 4inches in diameter and an inch high. More flying saucers than airships, they were a staple of my childhood. Overcoming the hesitation of the outsider, the Surbiton-born Mrs W has become a convert of sorts. “A bit like a squashed roll,” she says. At 18p a time, they are considerably more expensive than pitta bread, but this price is not subject to sudden inflation since parking wardens are unknown in our village.

After lunching on breadcakes with a culturally appropriate filling for North Yorkshire (first ham and Colman’s, then roast beef and horseradish) for a couple of days, I returned to the pitta bread. But when I opened the two remaining packs, I experienced an anguish almost as severe as that inflicted on me by the parking warden. The first pitta was mottled with an archipelago of green and yellow patches of mould. I morosely flipped through all 12 like a medieval monk turning the vellum pages of the Book of Lamentations. Each leaf bore the same unappetising illumination. This second calamity upped the price to £3.40 per pitta. Not good news for a Yorkshireman. It’s quite put me off the stuff.

(A note from Mrs W: “I would like to point out that, though he moaned for three days, it was me who paid for both the pitta bread and the fine, so it cost the Yorkshire person, as he would say, ‘Nowt’.”)

“Sprinkled with water, the pittas puff up like edible Zeppelins.”

Pick of the Prezzies

2005-12-22T11:50:00+00:00

“Argh! Not again!” Mrs W expostulated, though she was talking about much-anticipated feature of Christmas.
“Yes, I owe it to my public,” I replied, like an aging diva being roped into her stays. “They need, nay, demand my annual guide to the best gift ideas from the cream of British journals. The Weasel’s Pick of the Prezzies is with us again.”
“But aren’t you a bit late this year? Do you know what day it is?”
“Why, there’s still plenty of time. As a matter of fact, I still need to get…” Anticipating my admission, she huffed off, like Stevenson’s Rocket on a particularly steep gradient. But she’s right on one point. The clock on the wall is ticking. Let’s hit the shops.

The Sunday Times proposes a nostalgic item “for her” in the form of a vintage acrylic phone (it’s the GPO one you used to have in the hall) at £120 and a double bed with carved cherubs at £10,990. Stocking fillers “for him” (who sounds a bit of a lush) include a Krug drinks trunk at £29,000, a litre of Kauffman vodka at £599 (it’s got a gold top), a leather ice bucket at £145 and an embossed leather hip flask at £95. For the nippers, there’s a Noah’s Ark at £350 with gold plate or sterling silver animals from £50 per pair. The 12 pairs shown will set you back at least £600 (more in the case of the hippos). For yourself, pre-war aluminium binoculars are a snip at £4,500. As for your silver-haired old granny, what could be nicer than a vintage tea-cup (“50p from a junk shop without their saucers”)?

Those cool hipsters at Time Out suggest a nostril grooming kit at £125 and Diptyque Tuberose-scented room fragrance at £48.50, though the paper’s caption “Keep her smelling of roses” suggests that its urbanite staff don’t know that tuberoses are not roses. The mag also proposes a teenager’s bag in the shape of a cartoon owl (£158) and another hip-flask (£39). Turning to The Guardian, what could be more practical than a £60 box of soap (“not for using – they’re purely bathroom decorations”), more tasteful than Vivienne Westwood’s phallic cufflinks (£70), more generous than a £5 pair of earrings (“less than the cost of a couple of magazines”) or more original than Diptyque’s tuberose fragrance?

Combining thrift with practicality, the Evening Standard suggests a Connolly car tool kit for £1,600, a vintage Rolex for £18,000 and a silver yo-yo for £90. And, yes, there’s a Harrods’ hipflask (£155). You’d think the whole male population was constantly taking nips. Among the modest stocking-fillers proposed by the FT are a Dunhill pen at £50,000, a Lange & Sohne watch (white or pink for £19,100) and diamond cufflinks in the shape of revolvers (£4,470). How classy.

In time-honoured style, we’ll conclude with the nigh-on mandatory suggestions of The Independent Magazine. Who could resist the “Paddington” handbag that comes with a huge padlock (£759), a remote-control flying saucer (£119.95) or a personalised wooden seedbox (£49 for six)? It is in the Indy that I’ve finally found Mrs W’s Christmas present. I look forward to seeing her incandescent joy when she opens a parcel to find a doorknob (from £1.50). Or should I go for a loo roll (“quite cheap”)? Suggested as a gift for pet lovers, it promises “hours of fun for any dog or cat”. Decisions, decisions.

The mysterious case of the Weasel’s Christmas pudding made headlines in Press Gazette last week. The journalism weekly revealed that a “luxury Christmas pudding” intended for the Weasel had disappeared from the office of Denise Thompson, secretary to editor-in-chief Simon Kellner. Well, yes, I can confirm this indeed was the case. It is a Christmas mystery ranking alongside Sherlock Holmes’s Case of the Blue Carbuncle. First I got an e-mail from Denise asking when the pud could be delivered to me? As a result, joy was unconfined in Weasel Villas. Then a second e-mail arrived saying that our pud had been nicked. Vanished. Not a Christmas crumb remained. Gloom and misery descended.

But Denise took up her cudgels in the form of a round robin e-mail to all staff. Could whoever had accidentally borrowed it, kindly return the pudding pronto, no questions asked? And, mirabile dictu, the pud magically reappeared. Once again, the Weasel house was transformed into something like Mr Fezziwig’s ball. The Weasel table will be graced with the steaming presence of this curiously mobile dessert tomorrow. Though I doubt if it will contain “a scintillating blue jewel” like the recovered goose in The Case of the Blue Carbuncle, it does include 6 per cent brandy. It is indeed a luxury pudding from Harrods. Intended to support the homeless charity Crisis, it costs £30, which will be winging its way to this inestimable organisation (www.crisis.org.uk). You can get one yourself from Harrods, but you’ll have to get your skates on.

I look forward to seeing Mrs W’s incandescent joy when she opens a parcel to find a doorknob…or should I go for a loo roll?

Drinking in Degas

2005-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

There are upwards of 100 works in Tate Britain’s autumn blockbuster Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London & Paris 1870-1910, but the show is dominated by a single image. L’Absinthe, painted in 1876 by Edgar Degas, appears on the exhibition poster, recurs in the catalogue and has a room to itself in the centre of the exhibition. Obviously, the Tate knows that absinthe sells. Degas’s masterpiece is a curiously modern vision of disenchantment and ennui. It portrays two customers in a Parisian café – a rough-looking fellow puffing on a pipe and a frowsy woman, probably a prostitute, staring woozily over her green, eye-catching drink. This is absinthe, la fée verte, the immensely potent drink that was banned by the France government in 1915. Our journey in pursuit of this dangerous verdant elixir will take us to the glamorous American Bar of the Savoy Hotel and the somewhat less glamorous suburb of Catford in south-east London.

Unfortunately, La Nouvelle Athenes, the café that provides the setting for L’Absinthe, no longer exists at 9 Place Pigalle in Paris. Aside from the absinthe, almost everything in the painting is not as it appears. The disreputable man was actually an artist called Marcellin Desboutin. He is not drinking absinthe but black coffee. The model for the woman was an actress called Ellen Andrée, who was not best pleased at her likeness. “We look like two idiots,” she recalled 40 years later. “I didn’t look bad at the time. I had chic. But Degas – didn’t he slaughter me!” The work wasn’t even called L’Absinthe until 1893 (Degas’s title was In a Café), when both name and subject caused a furore in a London gallery. The Tate catalogue notes that “British galley-goers of the 1890s would have viewed anyone who was partial to absinthe rather as a crack addict is viewed today.”

Degas did not drink absinthe. In fact, relatively few people did at the time of the painting. Consumption in France rocketed from 70,000 litres a year in 1870 to 36 million litres in 1910. As Phil Baker notes in his excellent cultural history The Dedalus Book of Absinthe, cases of insanity tripled during this period and it was thought that nine out of 10 cases were due to absinthe poisoning. The drink became known as “the Charenton Omnibus” (Charenton was a large mental hospital). The problem with absinthe is that it is extremely potent (around 60-70 per cent alcohol by volume) and its dominant flavouring wormwood is rich in an aromatic substance called thujone that acts on the brain as a stimulant. Also found in Vicks Vapor Rub, thujone may cause muscular contractions, seizure and death if consumed in large quantities. In its killjoy way, the EU has limited the thujone content of absinthe to 10 parts in 1 million.

At this stage, it’s time to take a drop of absinthe, despite the risk of “murder, madness and despair”. The Savoy’s American Bar has come up with a “Degas” cocktail of flamed absinthe to celebrate the Tate show. The ritual, which involves dripping La Fée absinthe (68 per cent alcohol) through a sugar-cube on a pierced spoon and igniting the result, is not without its druggy overtones, though the flames burn off a good chunk of the alcohol. Diluted with a spot of water, the result is surprisingly enjoyable in an aniseedy sort of way. There is not the slightest suggestion of Vicks Vapor Rub. Though this seductive initiation into decadence costs a mere £13, I limited my intake to just the one.

The Savoy also offers a less potent “Toulouse-Lautrec” cocktail consisting of gin, maraschino liqueur and pineapple juice (£11). This is ironic since, unlike Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec was an ardent devotee of absinthe. He carried an emergency supply in a hollow walking stick (it contained half a litre) and favoured an absinthe and brandy cocktail called tremblement de terre (earthquake). Towards the end of his life he believed himself to be pursued by dogs, policemen and an elephant. He died aged 36.

On this side of the Channel, the main adherent of absinthe was the poet Ernest Dowson, still known for several famous lines: “gone with the wind”, “stranger in a strange land”, “I’ve been faithful to thee in my fashion” and “the days of wine and roses”. A man of considerable charm and urbanity when sober, Dowson was rendered “almost literally insane” by absinthe. He picked fights with guardsmen and was repeatedly hauled before the magistrates (“What, you here again Mr Dowson?”). When his health collapsed after a protracted binge in Paris, Dowson was cared for by friends who happened to live in Catford. He died there aged 32 on 23 February 1900. Since it is not far from Weasel Villas, Mrs W and I made a pilgrimage to his last lodging, a terrace house at 159 Sangley Road, but there was scant sign of the great poet of absinthe. No blue plaque, still less a green one.

“Degas’s masterpiece portrays a rough-looking fellow and a frowsy woman.”

In Cumbria with a bunch of boneheads

2005-10-08T21:13:00+01:00

It promised to be terrific fun. Instead, I found myself howling obscenities on top of a Cumbrian fell in the middle of the night. I’d been invited to spend a weekend at the Coniston Water Festival, a revival of an ancient celebration in this dramatically gorgeous corner of the Lake District. It proved to be a bizarrely footling exercise paid for out of the public purse. My view of the event may have been tainted by the fact that I was damn near killed off by the organisers, an outfit called Grizedale Arts that was described by its deputy director as “a cutting-edge r&d facility for the arts”. God knows what this drivel means, but I have come to the conclusion that there is an echoing gulf between the specious language of Grizedale Arts and the piffling reality.

After a six-hour journey from London to the festival, just one art event took place during my time there. This was a “Boat Dressing” competition, in which five Coniston Water rowing boats were decked out in various ways. One boat, festooned in black ribbons, was being bailed out by the director of Grizedale Arts, who managed to puff on a fag despite wearing a full-head mask made of tree burrs. The winner was a boat carrying a wind-up gramophone and towing a tiny floating castle. Apparently, it was a tribute to the Werner Herzog film Fitzcarraldo.

Viewing this soggy parade were two dozen mystified locals and Ken Russell. The film director was taking part in an event on the following afternoon, after I was due to depart. He was going to impersonate a cave-dwelling local called Millican Dalton (1867-1947) in a parade and seminar about the Kibbo Kift, a long-defunct quasi-Fascist scouting organisation. “I lived near Dalton’s cave for 15 years. Then I got divorced,” the auteur explained. “Dalton encouraged office workers to enter dangerous situations and climb impossible heights.”

We were, I learned, due to see more of Mr Russell later that night. He was going to be present at a party in Grizedale Arts’ grandly-titled “Centre for Imagined Studies”, located in an isolated house called Low Parkamoor, The organisation’s PR person, who had accompanied me from London, explained we could either take a steep 20-minute walk to the house or I could be driven. Since I was dressed in my London clothes and have an antipathy to climbing Lakeland fells at night, I expressed a preference for the latter. After a hefty pub dinner, the PR person collected me in her hire car and we followed a mini-bus driven by the deputy director of Grizedale Arts, who was taking a party of young artists to the house. We drove round Coniston Water and parked in a murky spot.

After walking for 10 minutes in the pitch black (a few torches were provided) along a forest track, it became evident that the house was not as near as I’d hoped. The path became extremely steep. I crossed a stream in my new shoes. As the climb went on and on, I asked the deputy director what the hell was going on? “Sorry, there’s been a breakdown in communications,” he said. “We’re walking up there.” Having passed the point of no return, there was no alternative but to press on. I felt to be in the hands of a mad Millican Nesbit. Twenty years older than everyone else doing the climb, I was soon gasping for breath. I thought of Robin Cook. Towards the end of this insane trek – which took 45 minutes rather than 20 – I fell in a stream.

Later, I discovered that we had ascended through 18 contours on the OS Explorer Map: a 180-metre climb. One of the five streams we trudged through was large enough to be marked on the map. When we finally reached Low Parkamoor, the deputy director revealed that Ken Russell had already left. (He had been driven up and down in a 4×4.) After entering the “Centre for Imagined Studies”, I could why his stay was so brief. Lacking electricity, it was a dark, dank, derelict dump. When the deputy director said we would have to walk down again, I expressed my feelings forcibly. One of the artists lodged in this decaying squat kindly gave me a lift back to Coniston in his 4×4. “I wouldn’t recommend walking here in the dark,” he said.

In its literature, Grizedale Arts says that the Coniston Water Festival is “the central event for our 2005 programme”. Along with the Kibbo Kift parade, the boat dressing and the “Centre for Imagined Futures”, the festival comprised a version of “It’s a Knock-Out” and a performance on a slate xylophone. Last year, the arty boneheads of Grisedale received £98,592 from the Arts Council and more from local authorities. The Grisedale Arts web-site boasts that its director (the man in the burr mask) “has recently been researching in Japan”. I doubt if he walked there.

“Towards the end of this insane Lakeland trek I fell in a stream.”

Swinish aristos

2005-05-07T12:48:00+01:00

Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey! In more reflective moments, I occasionally ponder on the P.G.Wodehouse story of this name. I am not alone in this respect. The Wodehousian devotee Stephen Fry once told me that Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey! was one of his favourite works from the Master’s oeuvre. As you will doubtless recall, the title is an phrase that, if expressed with sufficient brio, can be used to call pigs anywhere in the world. In the yarn, a porcine expert informs Lord Emsworth: “This magic combination of syllables… is to the pig world what the Masonic grip is to the human.”

I’d always believed this to be a fictional device, an invention by the most fertile comic brain of all time. But during a visit to south-west Spain last week, I discovered that it was the literal truth. This is how Julio, a pigman from western Andalucia, called his herd: “Hooo-Waaaay! Hooo-Waaaay!” Sure enough, he was soon trailed by maybe 40 or 50 Iberian porkers, who sauntered after him like chatting peers on their way to the House of Lords. Smallish compared to customary pig dimensions, they are browny-black in colour, which gives them an unfortunate resemblance to black puddings. They trot on surprisingly slender legs equipped with black hooves, the pata negra that gives its name to the glorious hams produced by the breed.

If I were ever to become a pig, a metamorphosis that Mrs Weasel occasionally suggests that I am close to achieving, this is the pig I’d want to be. A swinish aristo, it is descended from the indigenous wild boar of the region. Iberian pigs spend their lives in idyllic uplands of oak-sprinkled meadows near the Portuguese border. For seven months of the year, the porkers dine off a variety of acorns, though in summer they switch to mushrooms, grass, aromatic herbs and the odd snake. Acorns are best, however, particularly ones from the holm oak. The older pigs don’t let the younger ones get near these sweet delicacies. They enjoy this cornucopia for up to two years until they achieve a weight of 170 kilos. At this stage, the porcine life rapidly loses its appeal for me.

This area of Spain is impressive in its single-minded devotion to pigs and the products thereof. Every village contains two or three producers advertising “Jambones”, but the town of Jabugo consists of nothing else. It is Hamville. Here is the bodega (cave) of a company called 5J (Cinco Jotas in Spanish), which owns 85 per cent of Spain’s Iberian pig population. Around 25,000 acorn-imbued hams, with 25,000 black hooves still attached, dangle from the ceiling. After hanging around for two and a half years, the ham loses 35 per cent of its weight. The result is claimed to be the best ham in the world. Due to the acorns, the fat that marbles the ham has remarkable health properties, being rich in Omega-3 and chemically more akin to olive oil than ordinary lard.

The only slight drawback is that 5J ham costs £14.99 per 100 grams from Harrods, the sole UK importer. “But 100 grams will serve four to five people as a starter,” a Harrods person insisted, rather optimistically in my view. But how does it taste? At a buffet lunch in 5J’s bodega, a professorial carver sliced a ham into paper-thin ribbons. I inserted a fragment. It dissolved virtually without chewing. My whole being was suffused with an intense hammy sweetness. After absorbing just five or six platefuls, I was replete. Then my hosts from 5J asked: “Would you like to come through for the meal?” I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, but I still managed to find room for ham and eggs.

If I were ever to become a pig, this is the pig I’d want to be

A spot of Hanki-Panki

2003-11-15T12:29:00+00:00

By way of adding gravitas to this seasonal food & drink special, the Weasel is contributing an important piece of historical research. The volume that prompted this exercise is a Jazz Age classic that ranks alongside The Great Gatsby, Fiesta and Vile Bodies. It is the Savoy Cocktail Book, written in 1930 by Harry Craddock, who presided over the hotel’s American Bar during the Prohibition years. In charge of the technical side of my research project was the Savoy’s current head barman Salim Khoury.

After 35 years behind the bar, this man of infinite charm has a circulatory shaker-action like the connecting rods of a steam loco. We started with a cocktail that predates the Cocktail Age. The Hanky-Panky, comprising equal parts red Martini and gin with two dashes of Fernet-Branca, was grungy brown in colour, but profoundly refreshing for the soul. Mr Khoury was impressed: “I must revive it.”

We followed with a Craddock invention that has become a cocktail standard. The White Lady consists of three parts gin, two parts Cointreau, one part lemon juice and a dash of egg white. “We still sell maybe 15 a day,” said Mr Khoury, as his shaker whirled in the air. Sharp and invigorating, the result bears comparison with the all-conquering margarita. Our next contender was the Gene Tunney: one part Noilly Prat to two parts gin, with dashes of lemon and orange juice. Despite being inspired by a heavyweight champ (1926-1928), it was decidedly unbutch and seductive.

Next out of the shaker was the Third Rail, which celebrated the electrification of the Southern Region. “Better than 11,000 volts,” claimed the cocktail book. “I think this is quite strong,” warned Mr Khoury, as he mixed equal parts of rum, calvados and brandy with a dash of absinthe. It was also quite terrible. I had political qualms about the Strike’s Off cocktail created by Harry Craddock on 12 May 1926 to celebrate the end of the General Strike, but it tasted fine. The main drawback is that, along with gin and lime juice, it contains something called Swedish punch. “This is the only one in London,” said Mr Khoury, pulling an antique bottle of sticky stuff from a fridge. “A customer comes in for it once a year.”

I’d like to tell you about the Savoy Tango Cocktail (equal parts of sloe gin and calvados), but by this stage my critical faculties were on the ebb. My tasting notes read: “Not extremely…” and that’s all. Fortunately, I was resurrected by the arrival in the American Bar of the Savoy’s first writer-in-residence. The novelist Kathy Lette, a woman for whom the word “vivacious” is a prodigious understatement, has been installed in the hotel for a three-month stint. “Better than winning the Booker,” she breathed in my ear.

Mr Khoury has created the Kathytini in her honour: frambois, creme de cassis, cognac, lemon juice and passion fruit juice mixed in the glass, then topped with champagne. Ms Lette insisted it should come in male and female versions. “The male version has more lemon in it and it’s slightly stronger,” said Mr Khoury, as he handed me a glass.
“So I can have my way with you,” purred the flame-haired temptress, thus reversing the customary convention in the cocktail dept. Mr Khoury then shook up another of his inventions, the Savoy dot com. A mixture of equal parts of absinthe, Cointreau, and lime juice is added to a drop of grenadine (“That’s the dot”) in a martini glass. It was by some distance the most palatable absinthe drink I’ve ever had. “Do you want to come to a pyjama party in my room?” said Ms Lette. “You’ll have to satisfy me in bed. You know what a women really wants in bed? Breakfast!”

At that stage, it seemed a good idea to have another Hanky Panky. Ms Lette adored both name and taste (“Yummy!”), but voiced concern at the prospect of her Savoy sojourn coming to an end: “How on earth do I get back to real life?” Slipping back among the crowds on the Stand, I felt exactly the same.

I’d tell you about the Tango cocktail, but my critical faculties were on the ebb

Starter motors and Shangri-La

2003-01-18T11:55:00+00:00

Do you know what a clutch release bearing is? I don’t either – but I imagine it as being small and spherical, somewhere between a cherry tomato and a Brussels sprout, though probably made of metal. This teensy widget has an impact quite disproportionate to its dimensions. It has, for example, forced a certain Mr Weasel to extend his post-Christmas break in a North Yorkshire village by an extra eight days. Last week, I revealed how my clutch release bearing went pfft! before New Year’s Eve and how I called out the AA, which in turn broke down, prompting the AA to call out the AA.

Despite the street being filled with an impressive number of yellow AA vehicles, the Weaselmobile did not move an inch. This situation did not change for the next week, during which time Mrs W departed for London. When everyone woke up after the New Year, the AA lugged my ailing 4×4 to a specialist repairer in Hull that the patrolman recommended. Later that day, I rang this whizzo outfit hoping for good news. “Won’t be today, sir,” declared the mechanical genius at the other end. “Had a bit of trouble getting the box out.” So I rang on the next day, which happened to be a Saturday, feeling sure I’d be heading down the A1 in a few hours. “Your car’s a bit of a bugger, sir. Had a hell of a time getting the starter motor out,” bellowed Hull’s answer to Enzo Ferrari. “May be ready Monday afternoon.”

“Hang on,” I yelped. “Have you never repaired a four-wheel-drive like mine before?”
“We’ve done loads like it – but they were all diesel. Never done a petrol one before.” This may possibly be 100 per cent baloney, but at least the protracted delay has given me a rich opportunity to enjoy village life in the cosy days around the turning of the year. For the first six days, it rained virtually incessantly, then it snowed, then it began raining again.

At first, I responded energetically to my predicament. I squelched out into the back garden to hack away at an overgrown apple tree. Three hours snipping and sawing had no discernible effect on the look of the thing, but left me with a massive pile of branches. I filled our wheelie bin with pencil-sized twigs, but this had no discernible effect on my timber pile. Fed up with my flirtation with the lumberjack business, I crammed on one of Mrs W’s woolly hats and trudged off through the drizzle to the village shops.

This proved unexpectedly entertaining since you had to perform a sort of hopscotch in order to negotiate the prodigious number of dog turds lying in wait on the pavement. My progress along the high street was similarly stuttering, but this was because of the number of acquaintances I encountered. Unlike London, where you can happily count on seeing no-one you know, here I knew everybody. “Bet it’s a relief to be up from the Smoke,” people would say in the Co-op, the newsagents, the chemist’s shop… My answer, cheerily affirmative, was not entirely true. Seeking out a spot of healthy vegetation in the greengrocers, I found that the salad selection was limited to two bunches of elderly, stalky watercress. For that matter, I couldn’t get my usual toothpaste or the right coffee or decent orange juice. I dreamed of Waitrose, as distant and unattainable as Shangri-La.

On the plus side, the village butcher was selling plump pheasants at £6 per brace. Why the populace of North Yorkshire doesn’t dine on exclusively on game from October to March is a mystery. This is not the only gastronomic treat available in the village. The bakery specialises in yard-long lengths of rather fine Battenburg cake. Six inches will cost cost you about a quid. Accompanied by a cup of tea, a couple of slices of this confection, like miniature Ruritanian flags on your plate, instantly whiz you back to the Fifties. This pleasing illusion was enhanced by Channel 4’s Ealing Comedy season. “Look, Sydney Tafler as the bookie,” I’d announce to no-one at all. “And Charles Hawtrey as the pub pot-man!”

Live entertainment (of a sort) was also available in the village. I doubt if there are many places other than Yorkshire where the following notice, outside the village pub, would be considered an irresistible lure: “Friday – Hilda, Queen of Karaoke”. Sadly, it was Saturday. Desperate for diversion, I struggled through the snow in order to survey the village church (11th Cent). “Whachadooin’?” cried a young girl of perhaps eight, chomping a packet of crisps. “Areyernoo ‘ere?” Fearless, curious and amiably intrusive, she was a type of infant quite extinct in London. Accompanying me up to the church door, she disdainfully viewed my fruitless wrestling with the handle. “Betja someone’s in there,” she bellowed, her breath delicately perfumed with cheese and onion. To my horror, she started banging on the door with surprising volume. Thankfully, no irritated verger responded to this fusillade. It seemed a good moment to curtain my cultural exploration, so I bid farewell to my new friend and scuttled back to The Lavender Hill Mob. On the way home, it started snowing heavily, making the canine hopscotch even more dicey.

By Monday morning, the symptoms of stir-craziness were clearly evident (I found myself making a pork-pie sandwich), so I rang the garage in some desperation. “Sorry, sir, doubt if it’ll be today,” said my tormentor. “The inlet manifold took us hours to get out.” This prompted one of my rare but impressive eruptions. Announcing that I cared not a fig for inlet or even outlet manifolds, I yelled, hectored, jabbered, wheedled, even pleaded. “Give us a ring late afternoon,” conceded this Torquemada of the torque-wrench. “Might just be ready.”

By the following night, I was back with Mrs W, toasting my toes in front of the TV. A tempting, glossy advert came on for a stunning part of Britain – wonderful countryside, grand stately homes, exciting nightlife, superb resorts. Yep, that’s Yorkshire all right, but I’d steer clear in January.

By Monday morning, the symptoms of stir-craziness were clearly evident.