Martin Fone's Blog, page 116

Restaurant Of The Week (4)

There is a restaurant, it seems, to suit all tastes and pockets these days, but seeking to make its own particular mark on the British culinary scene is Karen’s Diner, which originated in Australia but has branches in Sheffield and Prestwich, near Manchester. Its speciality, according to its publicity, is providing a certain ambience where the staff are purposely rude and the diners are encouraged to be rude back. What is described as “an interactive diner and an absurdly fun experience” where you can “complain to the cows come home because we literally don’t care”.

For the uninitiated, Karen is street argot for a type of rude, entitled woman who often can be heard demanding to speak to the manager as well as displaying all manner of objectionable behaviour. And it seems there is a lot to go full Karen about.

The basic Karen burger will set you back £20, though it was a wagyu beef patty, and the I Want to see the Manager Karen is priced at £26. If you want fries to accompany your meal, brisket fries will add £17 to your bill. Still, you can drown your sorrows by sipping cocktails wittily named The Music is too Loud, I’ve Been Waiting 10 minutes for some service, and You’ve just lost my business. Of course, you could just sit there moaning loudly about the prices and service but then who would give a four x?

It doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea but chacun à son gout as they say.

Climax Of The Week

Who would be a male bee? When drone bees experience extreme heat, such as we have experienced this week, they ejaculate out their internal penis-equivalent organ known as an endophallus that is around the size of their abdomen. To the untrained eye, they look as if they have exploded but, according to Dr Alison McAfee, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Michael Smith Laboratories, when they die of shock, they spontaneously ejaculate.

It was a phenomenon that she became aware of when British Columbia experienced a prolonged heatwave in 2021 and bees were exploding and dropping like flies. McAffee is now spending her time to identify ways to prevent bees from explosively ejaculating to their deaths. Putting a solution of sugar syrup near the hives and putting a Styrofoam lid on the hives seem to have had some effect.

Watch out for exploding bees. It could get messy.

Thirty-Six Of The Gang

According to James Ware in his Passing English of a Victorian Era, sapper was music hall slang for a gay, irresistible dog, derived from the chorus of a song popularised by Therese, a famous Parisian music hall cantatrice. It went, “rien est sacré pour un sssapeur”. She came over to appear on stage in London in 1866.

Is the language someone uses indicative of their social status? I raise the point in considering the terms used for safety matches. They were known as lucifers, but many regarded the term to be ludicrously pompous. The middle classes toned the description down by calling them lucifer matches, while the working classes just called them scratchers which described them to a tee. I shall go to my local fish and chip shop and ask for a bag of scaffold-poles and see what I get. It was London slang for the chips that accompanied fried fish, another example of nomenclature fitting the look of the object described.

I was familiar with the term of scrumping, taking fruit from a tree without the owner’s permission, but scrunging was a new one on me. It referred to the taking of unripe apples and pears, Ware opining that it was intended to replicate the sound made in attempting to eat these hard fruits. To be caught scrounging might have been second-hand sun, a term used to denote nothing to be proud of and derived from the poor unfortunates whose only daylight in their accommodation came courtesy of a reflection from a neighbouring wall.

Boatyard Double Gin

Readers, I use the plural optimistically, of my explorations of the ginaissance will have realised by now that my preference is for a gin which celebrates first and foremost the principal botanical of the spirit, juniper. Finding one that meets my brief, which should not be overly demanding, is a cause for celebration. Hail Boatyard Double Gin, then.

The brainchild of drinks industry heavyweight Joe McGirr, the gin takes its name from the boatyard that was converted into a distillery in 2016, located in Enniskillen on the banks of Lough Erne in north-west Ireland and is the first distillery to operate in Fermanagh, legally, that is, in 130 years. The mission is to produce a first-class spirit that is environmentally sustainable and showcases the best of the area and all aspects of its production are under their control. They also use an unusual production method which gives rise to the Double in the gin’s name.

The base spirit is produced on-site, using organic floor malted wheat and Champagne yeast. Nothing is wasted – the spent wheat is either fed to the local cattle or returned to the ground as fertiliser. The liquid is then distilled in an alembic copper still, custom-made and known as Erainn, and then it goes through a separate juniper filtration system akin to those used by Dutch Genever makers. This additional process, the double, enhances the flavour of juniper, as McGirr is a self-proclaimed evangelist of juniper-forward gins.

After filtration, eight organic botanicals are added and left to macerate for eighteen hours. The line-up consists of grains of paradise, angelica, lemon, orris, liquorice root, coriander, juniper, and sweet gale aka bog myrtle, which is harvested from the nearby bog. The botanicals are then removed, pure water added to bring the spirit to a more than acceptable fighting weight of 46% ABV, before being left to mellow for two weeks. It is then bottled and labelled by hand.

The bottle itself is cylindrical with a rounded shoulder and short neck leading to a the now trendy fat lip and a wooden cap and a cork stopper. The fit is tight and I spent a few frustrating moments trying to wrestle the cork from the bottle’s vice-like grip first time round. The labelling makes impressive use of silver lettering on a dark blue background, and the nautical theme is continued by illustrations of various knots. For once the verbiage is an impressive combination of Irish lyricism, serving advice and hard facts. My bottle comes from batch 84.

We are told that the secrets of Fermanagh are “held in mirrored lakes, lonely islands, babbling streams and serene drumlins – rustling grasslands and boglands, nourished by soft rain, hard rain, sideways and bucketing rain. A botanist’s paradise”. Whilst I have always understood the commercial sensitivity around gin recipes, especially when certain price-competitive supermarket chains have a penchant for marketing products that closely mirror more expensive originals, I have long argued that if the consumer is expected to spend in excess of £30 for a gin which is often a speculative purchase they have a right to know what is in it or, at the very least, the flavour profile. Refreshingly, Boatyard not only list the botanicals but also the relative proportions. Good on ‘em. Juniper (86%) and cardamom (11.5%) make the most of the running.

After all that, it would have been tragic if the gin failed the taste test. Of course, that did not happen. The heady aroma of juniper with a touch of citrus and herbal notes assaults the sense when the stopper is (eventually) removed and in the mouth the clear liquid surprisingly opens with a burst of lemon before the earthier juniper takes centre stage. The citrus does not entirely disappear, softening and caressing the juniper to make a smooth, mouth-tingling drink which works well with a good tonic.

If you like gin with a heavy hit of juniper – and who doesn’t? – moor your boat to Boatyard. It is superb.

Until the next time, cheers!

The Sussex Cuckoo

A review of The Sussex Cuckoo by Brian Flynn

We live in a world of instant communication where a carefully targeted use of social media can whet the interest of your intended audience or solicit information from previously unknown sources. Almost a century ago, the only way to achieve the same end was to insert a personal notice in a newspaper and hope that the intended audience spots it. It is an anachronistic wonder that in detective fiction a carefully placed advertisement in a newspaper often not only produces the desired result but often within hours of the rag hitting the presses. Of course, adverts, at least in The Times, were on the front page and the reader had little else to compete for their attention, but it is a remarkable curiosity how effective they seemed to be.

In this, the seventeenth in Brian Flynn’s Anthony Bathurst series, originally published in 1935 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, such a notice catches the eye of the amateur sleuth as he peruses his copy of The Times before visiting the home of James Frith in Little Osney at the behest of Inspector MacMorran of the Yard. Frith has a rare collection of Jacobean antiquities which he has inherited and is about to sell them. He is concerned because he has been receiving anonymous and threatening letters and seeks the protection of Scotland Yard. They do one better and send Bathurst down to see him.

Despite taking Bathurst’s advice, Frith is (inevitably) found dead on the lawn, wearing his pyjamas, apparently having suffered from a fatal attack of tetanus. That evening he had interviewed each of the six potential purchasers and, curiously, had told each of them that he had decided to sell to a different person. What was his game? Why was no money or cheque found on the premises? Did Frith really suffer from a fatal attack of tetanus as his physician, who had made the disease his speciality asserted, or was it foul play? And if it was murder, why would a potential purchaser murder the man he was buying from? Surely, if he had murder in mind, he would kill the successful bidder.

There is a distinct change in tone and pace in this story from the previous couple that Flynn wrote. It is less of a thriller, more a contemplative analysis of a complex puzzle à la Sherlock Holmes. Bathurst operates on his own with little interaction with the police, not least because there is little direct evidence of foul play, only Bathurst’s suspicions, the oddity of the situation, and the eccentric behaviour of some of the characters.

It is also a masterpiece of misdirection with the reader only realising late on in the story that they have been led down a very long, complicated, intriguing, perplexing garden path and that there might be a simpler and more mundane explanation closer to home of Frith’s demise.

The old joke that if you borrow a crime novel from a library, always check that the last page is not missing has never been more apt than with this book. Flynn drops his big bombshell right at the last moment with very little explanation or notice, although the warning signs are there if you take the care to spot them. I reread the last quarter of the book to satisfy myself that Flynn had just not pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Flynn clearly had fun at his readers’ expense and this reader, at least, had fun in enjoying a well written, intriguing mystery, where almost nothing is as it seems.

Two And Two Make Twenty-Two

A review of Two and Two make Twenty-Two by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning

This is another fascinating murder mystery, originally published in 1932, that has been rescued from obscurity by Dean Street Press. The story is unashamedly American but exhibits many of the features that readers expect from a good old-fashioned British Golden Age detective yarn.

The first is the amateur sleuth, Daisy Dillingham, another in the line of eccentric female characters who disarm their suspects into revealing more than they should. Like Mitchell’s Mrs Bradley, who first appeared in 1932, she calls those younger than her “child” – an irritating trait but, perhaps, it was a common idiosyncrasy in those days – and instead of wielding knitting needles, bangs a cane. Indeed, canes play a vital role in the drama.

The setting is a variation on the cosy country house where guests are trapped by bad weather and one of their number is murdered. Here the setting is a luxurious island getaway off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, called, appropriately enough Paradise Island, where the well-heeled are feted in luxurious surroundings, whiling their time away relaxing, playing sports, and gambling. The proprietor, who is about to sell the place, is the mysterious Brett Allison, who is suspected of being involved in a drug running operation run from the island. Several of the characters are involved in the narcotics investigations and are anticipating making an arrest that evening.

A terrific storm hits the island and those guests who had not left before it broke are trapped there. One of the investigators, Linton Barclay, is found stabbed to death in his house and one of the guests, Eva Shale, is the last person known to have seem him alive and, just before his death, Barclay is heard mentioning her name. As communications with the mainland are down, Brett Allison is authorised to conduct initial investigations which he does with some assistance from Daisy.

Things look black for Eva but Daisy and her grandson, Andrew Dillingham, who has fallen for Eva’s charms, are not convinced and Allison is, curiously, reluctant to arrest her despite the overwhelming circumstantial evidence. Instead, he organises for each of the guests and members of the staff to disclose their whereabouts and alibis, a process that reveals that there are others who have motive enough to see the back of Barclay. An element of drama is added when the two ruffian members of Barclay’s boat crew interrupt proceedings.

Ultimately, as its title suggests, it is a story dressed up, you might say, to reveal that not everything is as it seems. There is quite a ferocious twist in the tale at the end. For the armchair sleuth, Bristow and Manning do not play quite as fairly as some writers of the genre and there is not enough direct evidence sprinkled within the text for the reader to be certain of the identity of the culprit or, indeed, their motivation. There are hints but it probably requires the deductive power of a Sherlock Holmes to get there before the big reveal.

Rather like Mrs Bradley, Daisy Dillingham has her own, slightly warped, sense of justice and engineers a resolution which may satisfy those with a sentimental heart but does not follow the letter of the law.

Where this book differed radically from Gladys Mitchell was in its style. It is written in a very straightforward manner, with enough in the way of characterisation to make the protagonists come to life, a dash of humour and with no pretensions to be anything other than a light piece of entertainment. In that respect, two and two really does make four.

The First Commercial Passenger Jet Flight

The development of the jet engine revolutionised air travel, an advance driven by the prospect of war and the desire to gain an advantage over the potential enemy rather than commercial forces. As with commercial air travel, Germany was quickest off the mark, Hans von Ohein building the first experimental jet plane, a Heinkel He 178, which made its maiden flight on August 27, 1939. Anselm Franz improved upon the design to create an engine suitable for use in a jet fighter. A Messerschmitt Me 262, flown by Alfred Schreiber, was the first jet fighter to be used in active combat, attacking an RAF de Havilland Mosquito on July 26, 1944, but failing to shoot it down.

Due to its high fuel consumption, the German jet spent much of its time on the airfield, making it an easy target for Allied air raids. Meanwhile, in England Frank Whittle had independently invented a jet engine, a version of which was used to propel the Gloster Meteor. Used primarily for defensive purposes due to its lack of speed, the Gloster scored the world’s first jet on jet aerial victory when Flying Officer Dean shot down a V-1 flying bomb on August 4, 1944.

Curiously, though, once war had ended commercial airlines were slow to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the jet engine. There were several reasons, some of which presaged the troubles that dogged early commercial jet planes. Although jet engines were simpler than piston engines, they needed to operate at considerably higher temperatures, which meant that more expensive metal alloys had to be used, which at the time were notoriously unreliable. Heavy fuel consumption increased operating costs and the jet’s lower take-off speeds meant that runways had to be extended.

Someone had to grasp the nettle and it fell to aviation veteran, Sir Geoffrey de Havilland to make the first move. Inspired by the Wright brothers, he had made and piloted his first aeroplane in 1910, established the company which bore his name in 1920, and during the Second World War designed several fighter planes, for which he was knighted in 1944. Once the war had ended, he turned his attention to jets, designing the Comet and the Ghost engine, the first de Haviland Comet making its inaugural test flight on July 27, 1949.

It took almost three more years of testing before the aeroplane was deemed to be ready to make its first commercial flight. On May 2, 1952, the third Comet ever built, registered as G-ALYP, took off with forty-four passengers on a British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) scheduled flight from London to Johannesburg. The route was carefully chosen, allowing the plane to make stops at Rome, Beirut, Khartoum, Entebbe, and Livingstone, near Victoria Falls and fly mainly over land.

It was declared a success, passengers noting that the aeroplane was quieter and did not vibrate as much as planes propelled by piston-engines. With a cruising speed of 480 miles per hour, it was more than two and a half times faster than the most well-known piston-engine aircraft, the DC-3. The age of commercial jet travel had arrived.

Problems, though, dogged the Comet. The pioneering G-ALYP was one of the first commercial jet airliners to be lost when on January 10, 1954, after taking off from Rome on the last leg of BOAC’s scheduled flight from Singapore to Heathrow, there was an explosion. The plane crashed into the Mediterranean near Elba. killing all twenty-nine passengers, ten of whom were children, and its six crew members. Their fatal injuries of fractured skulls and ruptured lungs were consistent with the investigators’ findings that the plane had suffered metal fatigue caused by repeatedly pressuring and de-pressurising the cabin.

After another fatal crash, the Comet was grounded and it took a further four years before a modified version satisfied the regulators that it was safe to operate commercially, by which time American airline manufacturers, Boeing and Douglas, had cornered the market with their more efficient jets.

Today, air travel is the safest mode of travel with just 0.07 deaths per billion passenger miles, a statistic which seventy years ago was just a pipe dream. Air travel has certainly come a long way since then. 

Text Book Of The Week

Who would have thought it? There was me thinking that the Gradgrindian chore of learning lists of vocabulary, the declensions of nouns and to parse verbs, taking the care to select the correct tense and mood. was to gather sufficient tools to unlock the treasure house of Latin literature without too many unnecessary forays into the pages of Lewis and Short. However, what I should have been doing along the way was to ponder what the prescribed texts that reinforced my tenuous grasp of the rudiments of the language were telling me about the role of women and slaves in Roman society, a particularly curious concept for someone whose educational career was spent in an all-boy school and an all-male college.

If only I had been using the Cambridge Latin Course which, in its recently launched fifth edition, has been revamped to include more prominent female characters and to better reflect the diversity of the Roman Empire. It strikes me that there is a danger in the misguided attempt to be inclusive and to impose 21st century values and perspectives on a society where such concepts were barely recognised if they existed at all. Someone who has been brought up on a diet of inclusive text books is heading for a rude surprise if they graduate to dipping into the pages of a Cicero, Juvenal, Horace, or Tacitus.

Roman (and Greek) literature, thought, art, architecture, language are the cornerstones of much that we value in European culture and to lose sight of that would be a grave mistake. Rightly, classical learning should be disassociated from imperialistic thought, but we need to recognise that for all the many benefits that came with Rome and its empire, it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a society or culture we would have been comfortable living with. Any attempt to sugar coat this uncomfortable truth is likely to cause more problems than it solves.

Retreat Of The Week

In a sport famed for its use of the term “love” in its scoring system, for excessive grunting on the courts, and a former champion lost all after a quick bunk up in a cupboard in a London restaurant, it is perhaps not surprising that officials at the All-England Championships aka Wimbledon found they were courting trouble when they opened a new facility in the Southern Village. Described as a space designated for “retreating for a moment of peaceful meditation, prayer, or introspection”, the series of quiet rooms each have two armchairs, a foldaway table, and changing facilities.

Sadly, instead of contemplating their own navels, some users have been gazing on their partners, or worse. Reports emerged during the tournament of “sheepish looking couples” emerging from the facilities, while others were reported to have left with big grins on their faces.   

Next year, perhaps they should make life easier and include a bed. At least there were no calls for new balls.

Thirty-Five Of The Gang

According to James Ware in his Passing English of a Victorian Era, St Lubbock was slang for an orgy or drunken riot. It owed its origin to the tendency of drunken holidaymakers to run amok on the August Bank Holiday that was introduced as a result of a bill proposed by Sir John Lubbock in 1871. It confirmed Easter Monday, Whit Monday, and Boxing Day as bank holidays and introduced the first Monday of August as a new one. Collectively, the four Bank Holidays were known colloquially as the Feasts of St Lubbock.

Many would use these days off to visit some attraction or other. Admission was invariably a shilling, which was so commonplace a tariff that it was abbreviated to Same o b (same old bob). The level of wages was pretty standardised too. Most workmen were paid the princely sum of three shillings and four pennies a day which, for six days work, amounted to £1 a week. The day rate was known as the same old 3 and 4.

James Ware almost waxes lyrical when he defines sandwich-men. They are, he states, “the doleful, broken-down men employed at one shilling a day to carry pairs of advertisement boards, tabard fashion, one on the unambitious chest, the other on the broken back”. While we are still familiar with the concept of sandwich-men, sadly, the term sandwich board was new to me. It was slang to describe a stretcher which the police used to carry drunkards on. Perhaps it was a mode of transport more salubrious than the sardine-box, the term used to describe a police van into which the prisoners were crammed like, well, sardines.

I normally do not include Americanisms in these reviews, but I could not resist Sapheadism. When the sap rises, the bark of a tree softens so, naturally, someone exhibiting Sapheadism is weak-headed.