Martin Fone's Blog, page 22

Wurst Of The Week

I do not often read the financial pages as devoutly as I used to but this curious fact tickled my tastebuds. The German car manufacturer Volkswagen, the Tesla of the 1930s, sold 5.2 million VW-branded cars last year (2024), a performance that was outstripped by the 8.5 million units of component number 199 398 500 A they flogged.

And what is their best-selling item?  Astonishingly, an old banger or rather their very own currywurst, a sausage topped with ketchup and curry poweder and served with chips. It is made by the group’s own in-house butcher in their headquarters in Wolfsburg and has been a staple of the menus in its in-house canteens since 1973 and sells for €3.44.

But not all the wursts are sold in-house. They have proved so popular that they are now on sale in selected supermarkets around the state of Lower Saxony and business is booming.

However, it has not all been plain sailing. In 2021 one VWW canteen announced it was dropping the currywurst, an announcement that met with such vigorous opposition that they had to quickly backtrack.

Cars not so good but sausages -delicious!

Pizza Of The Week (5)

If the concept of a pizza with pineapple as a topping divides the pizza eaters and forces some purists to take drastic action, then surely the latest abomination from Australia will split those who like exotic fruits on their pizzas.

A chain of restaurants in Victoria in Australia, Bubba Pizza, has launched a pizza with a topping of smoked ham, fresh orange chunks, and mozerella, a novel twist on the controversial Hawaiian. Launched in December as a summer special in December, it is still available according to their website, setting you back a cool AUD 16. In appearance it is decidedly orange and is said to be a tad sweet. Needless to say, it has divided opinion which, I suppose, was the objective of the exercise.

Of course, tomato, a staple topping ingredient for pizzas is a fruit, but there is a developing trend for introducing exotic fruits into toppings. In China, for examole, pizza topped with the smelly durian fruit accounts for one in every four pizza sold by Pizza Hut. It shows the versatility of the pizza, of course, but surely there must be an end to this madness.

Error Of The Moon

A review of Error of the Moon by Sara Woods – 250211

“It is the very error of the moon; she comes more near the earth than she was wont, and makes men mad”, wrote Shakespeare in Othello (Act V, Scene II) and Sara Woods’ tale, originally published in 1963 and reissued by the rejuvenated Dean Street Press, is one of a series of events that leads to madness. As much a thriller as a murder mystery, Woods has rung the changes, lifting her sleuth, Antony Maitland, from the serenity of the ivory towers of the Temple into the muck and brass of industrial espionage.

As a consequence we lose his mental sparring with his larger than life uncle, Sir Nicholas, but by way of compensation we have the opportunity to spend more time with Antony’s wife, Jenny, who accompanies him on his assignment to give some credibility to his guise as a newly appointed Assistant Secretary of the General Aircraft Company (GAC). Those of us who have been following the series will already be familiar with Antony and Jenny’s war service, the injuries and mental scars they both bear, and it is because of Antony’s stint in wartime intelligence and his success in tracking down Nazi collaborators in The Third Encounter that he is commissioned to investigate a leak of highly sensitive information from the research area of the factory.

Jenny is a character that I am warming to, dependable, supportive of her husband but neither a wet blanket of a wife nor a key component of the investigation. She uses her own observational qualities to provide useful background information and does not shy away from plating an active part when the need arises her, putting herself in considerable danger as the story reaches its breathless conclusion.

I found the book difficult to get into at first, as I felt I was being overwhelmed by characters and having difficulty in placing each in their roles and whom to keep an eye on. As the story progresses, the main characters come into sharper focus and rather like the Grand National, four murders rather clears the field somewhat. What Antony finds is that there are two strands to the goings-on at the GAC, good old-fashioned blackmail and a plot to deliver the secrets of the Full Moon Project, an anti-missile missile, to enemy agents. He is put on to the right track by some acute observations from the only suspect with a foreign name into the ambitions and motivations of their colleagues.

By modern standards, the revelation of the truth by Antony is rather brutal, forcing a youth of tender years, not old enough to be considered an adult but too old for kid glove treatment to hear some uncomfortable truths. He also ensures that the microfilm is consigned to the flames.

The managing director of GAC is Sir Thomas Overbury and when he hears that, Antony makes a sharp observation, “Comment perhaps, is not in order? I was intrigued enough to look up who Overbury was, an English poet who came to a sticky end on September 14, 1613 and one of those convicted of his murder bears the name of another of Woods’ suspects who, in a case of an author turning the tables, himself comes to a sticky end.

The rural setting of the story allows Woods to exercise her descriptive powers, emphasizing the remoteness, the wildness of the terrain and the all too frequent mists, a perfect cover for murder most foul. While not quite on a par with The Third Encounter, it was an engaging and intriguing story, one that kept me guessing who the murderers and the industrial spy were. Woods kept the mystery alive until the end when there was only one realistic suspect and that is all one can ask for.

Gin Veuve Goudoulin

Veuve Goudoulin is best known for its superb and superbly expensive Armagnacs. The distillery was founded in the département of Gers near Toulouse by Mme Jeanne Goudoulin in 1935. The brandies were stored in 400 to 450 litre locally-produced oak barrels, giving them their fine amber colour and their complex aromas.  

In 2009 the Goudoulin distillery was bought by Michel Miclo, owner of the Alsace-based G. Miclo Distillery with the intention of developing the brand’s geographical reach and reputation whilst maintaining the traditional character and quality of its products. One of the innovations the new ownership brought was the decision to distill a gin, Gin Veuve Goudoulin.

Eight botanicals go into the mix – juniper, coriander root, iris root, angelica root, cardamom, grain of paradise, calamus (a plant with a spicy fragrance and lemony overtones on its leaves), and orange zest. The base spirit is neutral alcohol and the botanicals go through a double distillation process, each pass taking approximately eight hours to complete. The distillate is then laid to rest in Armagnac barrels which gives the spirit its distinctive blonde colouring. The final ABV is 43.2%.

On the nose it is remarkably complex, revealing juniper and orange as its main drivers but with hints of lemon, pepper, and a slight touch of an almost medicinal scent. In the glass it is smooth with the spices coming to the fore, counterbalanced by the sweetness of the citrus and the inescapable presence of Armagnac flavours. It has a rather sweet and spicy aftertaste. I find cask-aged gins intriguing, perhaps a stage too far for many, but when they are well done, as this one is, the ageing process does enhance the flavour profile to give a distinctive and memorable drink.

My bottle, supplied by the excellent Drinkfinder, came in a distinctive presentation box, one which is unashamedly French and makes no concessions to its international clientele. To read the label you need either a reasonable command of French or have Google translate at hand (other translation apps are available). The bottle itself is made of clear, rounded glass with a bell-like shoulder and a small, narrow neck which leads to a wooden top with a synthetic stopper. The labelling is rather old-fashioned in feel and look, almost like wallpaper.

A distinctive gin which makes no bones about being French, it is one that any gin shelf with pretensions of representing the wide spectrum of the gin world should find space for.

Michelin Man

One day in 1889 it took the Michelin brothers, Édouard and André, over three hours to remove a flat pneumatic tyre which had been glued to the rim of a bicycle, as was the fashion then, and after being left to dry overnight and refitted again, it failed once more. Driven by a desire to improve the lot of the cyclist, the pair designed and patented a removable pneumatic tyre, which was used by Charles Terront when he won the world’s first long-distance cycle race in 1891, from Paris to Brest and back.

By then the brothers had incorporated their company, Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin SCA, better known as Michelin, in Clermont-Ferrand and went on to invent the first practical tyre for cars (1895), the first tyre capable of handling speeds in excess of 100 kilometres per hour, the first removeable rim, and the run-flat tyre which ran on a special foam lining if punctured (1934).

Today Michelin is the world’s largest tyre manufacturer with operations in over 12o locations in twenty-six countries. Revolutionary as their work was in introducing a wide range of robust and practical tyres, the Michelin brothers owed their success as much to their marketing genius. Think Michelin, think Michelin man.

While exhibiting at a fair in Lyon, the Michelin brothers, it is said, realized that a pile of tyres looked rather like a torso and that the addition of arms and legs would make a rather genial character. With the assistance of a caricaturist and borrowing heavily from a character in an advertisement for a German brewer, the Michelin man was born, making his debut in 1898. It helped, of course, that tyres were white in the early days and that the main sellers were bicycle tyres, hence the thin strips that make up his body.

Over the years the Michelin man has morphed from a rotund bon vivant puffing a cigar to a slimmer, albeit well-padded, version. He quickly became Michelin’s brand ambassador, paying people to dress up in Michelin Man costumes to hand out models in the form of dolls. They became much sought after.  

At some point enthusiastic Michelin customers even attached promotional Michelin Man mascots on the roofs of their vehicles, especially lorries, as a sort of guardian angel watching over driver and vehicle. Recognising a great promotional opportunity when they saw one, in the 1950s Michelin developed a higher quality, weather-resistant three-dimensional mascot, specifically designed to be fitted on to the roofs of lorries. A new craze amongst truckers was born.

Michelin Man does have a name but not many realise it. It is Bibendum, taken from the Latin motto for “Now is the time to drink”, betraying the fact that he was based on a German beer advertisement. Early posters made the best of the transition with a strap line claiming that the company’s tyres had the capability to “swallow the bumps in the road”. Although it would now be considered infra-dig to associate a motoring product with alcohol, Bibendum’s connection with refreshments did presage Michelin’s next and equally enduring contribution to world culture.

British Soap Operas

While soap operas were meat and drink to American commercial broadcasters, the situation in Britain was very different. There was only one broadcaster, initially producing programmes for the radio and later the television, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), whose mission, as laid down by John Reith in 1922, was to “inform, educate, and entertain” and very much in that order.

As a consequence, the BBC was a late adopter of the soap opera, its first foray into the genre being Front Line Family, which first aired in April 1941. It featured the trials and tribulations of the Robinsons during the war and its plots ran story lines about rationing, the Blitz, and family members going missing in action. What was unusual about the programme was that it was not available to a British audience, aired initially on the BBC’s North American short wave service and later on its worldwide service.

Its mission was to entertain, as the rather patronizing instructions to the programme’s writers revealed: “this material appeal to an audience of relatively limited mentality, an audience who believes in thrilleresque, is not squeamish, and is almost completely credulous”. However, there was a much more serious reason for airing it, to encourage America to enter the war to assist Britain in its fight against the Nazis. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour proved more effective, though.

Nevertheless, Front Line Family proved wildly popular, being bought under licence by many commercial station in the United States. Eventually, British audiences were finally able to hear what all the fuss was about when it appeared on the Light Programme schedules as The Robinson Family on July 30, 1945. The radio soap had finally reached Britain.

When it was finally taken off the schedules, to protests, in late 1947, it was replaced on January 5, 1948 by Mrs Dale’s Diary, a tale of a suburban doctor and his wife, living at Virginia Lodge in Packwood Hill. Each episode, broadcast every weekday afternoon and then repeated the following morning, began with a short introductory narrative, spoken by Mrs Dale as if she were writing a diary. It ran until April 25,1969, changing its name to The Dales in 1962, and even counted the then Queen Mother amongst its fans. She reportedly said that it was the only way to find out what went on in a middle class family.

The template introduced by Mrs Dale’s Diary and the propaganda mission of Front Line Family were combined to produce what was to become the world’s longest running radio soap, The Archers, first broadcast as a pilot series of five episodes on May 29, 1950 on the BBC Midlands Home Service and then nationally from New Year’s Day 1951. It was used to promote modern farming methods, taking advice from the Ministry of Agriculture, it was for a time 60 per cent entertainment, 30% information, and 10% education. The dramatic episode in which Grace Archer was killed in a fire was even timed to spike the guns of the launch of Britain’s first commercial television station, dominating newspaper coverage the next day.

It was only a matter of time, though, before soap operas gravitated to the increasingly popular medium of television.

The Wintringham Mystery

A review of The Wintringham Mystery by Anthony Berkeley – 250209

One of the delights of reading crime fiction is that it gives the reader the opportunity to play the part of the armchair sleuth and there is an immense sense of satisfaction to be had in cracking a case ahead of the author’s detective. There is nothing new in this and newspapers in the mid-1920s and 1930s sought to capitalize upon this yearning by serializing stories and offering significant cash prizes to anyone who came up with the correct solution including motivation.

The Wintringham Mystery, also known as Cicely Disappears, was a case in point, serialized by the Daily Mirror in 1926 before being published, complete with solution, in book form a year later. No one came up with the correct solution, although several entries were deemed good enough to warrant a consolation prize, including that of one Agatha Christie.

As a consequence the story is full of teasers with several shoals of red herrings, one death which ostensibly looked as if it might have been murder, the theft of Lady Susan Carey’s jewels, a séance in which Ciceley disappears, secret passages, clandestine marriages and even enough time for the hero, Stephen Munro, to rescue Pauline Mainwaring from an unsuitable engagement and sweep her off her feet.

Despite all the goings-on at Wintringham Hall including the disappearance of her favourite niece and menacing demands for £500, Lady Susan is reluctant to call in the police – the death, it is the butler, after all, is swept under the carpet and deemed to be accidental – and the burden of the investigation falls upon Munro and Pauline. Rather like Berkeley’s later creation, Roger Sheringham, Munro is a bumbling detective, prone to fanciful theories and wild goose chases, but often more by luck than judgment he does stumble upon the truth. The solution he eventually reveals, given all the potential of the set-up, seems a little lame and it is easy to see why no one got the right answer.

The storyline, though, does have some good ideas, not least the events that leads up to Munro making an appearance at Wintringham Hall. He is a man of independent means, so independent that they have sprouted wings and left him. The financial crisis requires him to sack his valet, the stoical Bridger, with whom he had seen action in the First World War, both with distinction, and he announces that he has taken a position as a footman at Wintringham Hall. The servant grapevine is such that Bridger was already aware of his impending dismissal and had already, conveniently, secured employment as an under gardener at Lady Sarah’s gaff.

There is something very much akin to the relationship between Jeeves and Wooster in the Bridger/Munro relationship and, of course, it is Bridger who provides the vital clue to unearthing the whereabouts of Ciceley. If Wodehouse had turned his hand to writing detective fiction you could imagine something like this, a story that is full of humour and sharp observation. The idea of a man of leisure having to soil his hands by becoming a member of the servile class opens up the question of how Munro’s peers will react to him in straitened circumstances and the reactions are surprising.

Totally unsuited to the role and having rubbed several guests and the butler, Martin, up the wrong way, Munro is sacked, only to immediately be invited to stay as a house guest, turning the tables completely. It helps that he went to school with Lady Susan’s nephew, Freddie Venables, and he is able to restore his fortunes by using information gleaned during his investigations to good effect.

It is tempting to think that Agatha Christie, when exercising her little grey cells to crack the solution, saw the possibilities offered by a séance, which she was to use, for example, in The Sittaford Mystery. The book is a great read, full of fun, some clever ideas but, perhaps, just misses the mark as a satisfying mystery.          

Art Critic Of The Week (11)

Chilean-born artist, Marco Evaristti, opened an exhibition recently in Copenhagen entitled And Now You Care, designed, he says, to raise awareness of the suffering caused to animals by mass meat production. A centrepiece was an “installation” consisting of three piglets, Lucia, Simon, and Benjamin, in a makeshift cage made from shopping trolleys.

Not to everyone’s taste and might stretch the boundaries of people’s perception of what art is but the real rub was that it was the artist’s intention to deprive the piglets of food and water so that they would eventually starve to death. His point allegedly was that modern breeding techniques often produce litters of twenty and with only fourteen teats the sow would not be able to feed them all and some of the piglets would be lost along the way.

However, Evaristti’s friend, Caspar Stefferson, prompted by his ten-year old daughter’s pleas to save the pigs, let a group of animal rights activists into the gallery and they promptly removed the installation.

Evaristti rang the police to report the theft but after a few hours of reflection, while ruing the treachery of his friend, concluded that the animals deserved a happy life. The exhibition, now minus its star attraction, has closed down.

The artist is not done yet and is looking to revive the exhibition, using the corpses of piglets that have died of starvation acquired from meat processing plants and filling a transparent refrigerator to the gunwales with their bodies. He has the refrigerator which is a start, I suppose.

I will look out for what he does next with horrified interest. Modern art, eh?

Mountain Of The Week (2)

Here’s one for those who have a tendency to spot something in a natural formation.

A mountain in the Yichang Zigui county in the Hubei province of central China has recently become a social media sensation and a destination for dedicated cynophiles because of its uncanny resemblance to a dog.

It looks very much like a dog’s head resting on the ground next to the Yangtze River, with its snout perched in the water. It could be taking a drink of water or, perhaps, looking at the fish or protecting the river.

It has now been dubbed Xiaogoushan which is Chinese for puppy mountain.

An interesting example of pareidolia for sure.

Signed, Picpus

A review of Signed, Picpus by Georges Simenon – 250206

It is about five years since I last read a Maigret novel and so it was high time that I dipped into another. Signed, Picpus, which also goes under the titles of To Any Lengths and Maigret and the Fortune Teller, was originally published in 1944. It was, however, written in 1941 and serialized in thirty-four instalments between December 11, 1941 and January 21, 1942. Simenon then decided to auction off the manuscript in 1943 to benefit prisoners of war.

The twenty-third in Simenon’s series has now been reissued by Penguin Books as part of their project to reignite interest in the Belgian author, using a new translation by David Coward which is both sympathetic and highly readable. It is a mystery within a mystery and one of the intriguing parts of the book for me is that Maigret is taken by and spends an enormous amount of his physical and mental effort in solving what is a subplot to the whole.

Maigret is investigating the murder of a clairvoyant, which has been foretold by a message signed by Picpus, an impression of which was found on a blotter by Mascouvin in a café. When he arrives at the murder scene, he finds an old man in a confused state who has been locked in the kitchen adjacent. Does he know something about the murder or was he, indeed, the murderer. Mascouvin then attempts to commit suicide by jumping over a bridge, claiming that he stole money from his work place, something that his firm claim was impossible to do.

As his investigations develop Maigret discovers that the clairvoyant, Mademoiselle Jeanne whose real name is Marie Picard, and Mascouvin are involved in a shady scheme controlled by a Monsieur Blaise and enforced by a man who drives a flash green car and whom a young dairy maid, Emma, who has just moved to Paris from Rouen has been taken with. Murder is what happens when the worm turns.

Maigret, though, is more fascinated by the old man whose trail leads to the Le Cloaguen family who, thanks to the medical expertise of the head of the family, Octave, are the beneficiaries of an annual stipend of 200,000 francs a year from a grateful (and rich) Argentinian family. The old man purports to by Octave who has now gone into a mental decline. The truth, though, is starker and more disturbing.

In order to maintain the legacy even after Oscar’s death, Madame Le Cloaguen and her daughter are using the old man as a substitute, ill-treating him and keeping him as a virtual captive along the way. Maigret is appalled by the situation and determines that the Le Cloaguens should pay for their crimes. However, he is ultimately thwarted by the insouciance of an Argentinian heiress with more money than sense who views the scheme to defraud her as all a bit of a hoot. While the old man appears to be ancillary to the murder, there is a deeper and more tragic link to the fate of the clairvoyant.

This is a short book, almost novella rather than novel, with short, staccato-like sentences, mostly in the present tense. We follow Maigret, share his thoughts, his actions, his frustrations, his highs and lows, his need for a drink, and admire his dogged determination. He gets to the answer by acute observation, and while, by the standards of the genre, the puzzle is not complicated, it is engaging enough. The identity of Picpus, though, did make me smile.

What I found particularly fascinating was that given when it was written and what was happening at the time, there is a certain wistfulness and sympathetic longing for the way of Parisian life that Simenon is portraying, one then lost under the Nazi jackboot. There is very much a sense of timelessness about the story which no doubt enhanced its popularity at a time when the death of a clairvoyant was pretty small beer.