Martin Fone's Blog, page 228
May 16, 2019
Gin O’Clock – Part Sixty Five
If nothing else the booming ginaissance has thrown the gauntlet down to enterprising distillers to come up with ever-more imaginative concoctions to tempt and titivate the taste buds of the gin aficionados.
I have tried a few gins which use a grape rather than neutral grain spirit as their base. To my taste this gives a rather sharp, if not astringent, complexion to the drink, not unpleasant but different and not one you would readily associate with a traditional gin. Inevitably, the next step is to concoct a gin and wine hybrid. A number of these drinks, I hesitate to call them gins, have emerged in the last few months in a concerted attempt to ensnare oenophiles into the world of gin. One such is Sorgin Gin which can be found on the shelves of your local Aldi supermarket.
This is the brainchild of French wine growers and vineyard owners, Sabine Jaren and Francois Lurton. The starting point is a distillate made from Sauvignon grapes from Gascony in the south-west of France. The name is rather clever, the first syllable tipping its chapeau to the variety of grape used, but, in fact, the disyllabic word is Basque for a sorceress or witch, proof positive, if you needed it, that you can improve your knowledge by drinking.
What will cause the hardened gin enthusiast to blanche, if not recoil in horror, is what is done to the juniper. It is not added in its pure form but as a distillate so that its notes do not overpower the subtler fragrances of the Sauvignon Blanc. But for me that is enough to discount it as a gin and to put it into the novelty drink category.
To complete the list of ingredients, there is to be found grapefruit zest, lemon, violets, gorse, lime zest, broom, and redcurrant buds.
The bottle is almost rectangular in shape with a neck leading up to a coppery-coloured screwcap. The witch astride her broomstick is embossed in a coppery colour at the front of the bottle. The use of green for the verbiage on the reverse of the bottle renders it almost illegible, at least when the bottle is full and when you need the information most. At least the rubric on the neck is easy to read and promises that “Sauvignon Blanc grapes and selected botanicals give Sorgin unique complexity and character.”
Despite there being so much wrong with this product on so many levels, it was a very pleasant drink. Removing the cap released an aroma where citrus, grape and juniper fought for prominence. None of them overpowered the others and hinted that the promise of a complex drink may be fulfilled. It was smooth to the taste with a pleasing blend of fruit, grape and more floral tones. The violet and juniper seemed to compliment each other and there was a long, lingering aftertaste.
Whether a wine drinker or a hardened gin drinker would be won over by its charms is difficult to tell. At 43% ABV and competitively priced, as Aldi gins are, it is worth a look at, one to bring out as a conversation piece to kick an evening’s drinking off. But to market it as a gin is a bit of a stretch and confirms the need for some long-overdue policing of what can be so described. I’m sure that the days of hybrids will be numbered but it is at least more pleasant to drink than some of the outlandish flavoured gins that continue to spring up.
May 15, 2019
Book Corner – May 2019 (3)
Phineas Redux – Anthony Trollope
At the risk of being accused of going all Julian Clary-like, there is nothing better in the long winter evenings than settling down with a Trollope. I’m working my way through the Palliser Series, of which Phineas Redux, published as a book in 1874 after being serialised in The Graphic, is the fourth of six and the sequel to the second of the series, Phineas Finn. Reading Trollope is no light undertaking, this book running to 80 chapters and a tad less than 700 pages. Thankfully, I read it as an ebook, otherwise I would have had a limp wrist.
One of the characteristics that marks out a classic is its universality, allowing the reader, however removed by time from the author, can find themes and topics which speak to them. In a time when the British parliamentary system is creaking at the seams, Phineas Redux resonates loud and clear. The Prime Minister introduces a controversial bill into Parliament, no not withdrawal from the EU but the disestablishment of the Church of England, which his own party is against and for which he has no majority. His motion, which is turned down by a thumping majority, leads to his resignation and the opposition, who intuitively support the motion, assuming power. It wouldn’t happen today, would it? Trollope’s narrative is a masterpiece on the venality and hypocrisy of politics and stands the test of time.
Another major theme running through the book relates to the deficiencies and inefficiencies of the English legal system, highlighted by the trial of Phineas Finn, the hero of the tale, for the murder of fellow parliamentarian, Mr Bonteen. Finn is on trial for his life and much of the evidence brought against him is circumstantial at best. His eventual triumph is more to do with the determination of his female friends to prove his innocence than the wheels of justice. Finn emerges from the horrors of the trial a changed man and turns down the political office he was desperate to secure in the early part of the book. The book is really the story of his transformation from a shallow careerist, dazzled by the glamour of society and the cut and thrust of politics to one who sees the world as it really is,
To the modern reader, what is astonishing is how reliant Finn is upon his female friends and admirers. They implicitly believe in his innocence and between Madame Max Goesler and Lady Glencora Palliser, she becomes the new Duchess of Omnium during the course of the book, his defence is constructed. There is love interest too. Lady Laura Kennedy has the hots for Finn but is trapped in a loveless marriage with a husband whom, I think unfairly, is described as mad. He probably had just cause to feel aggrieved as his wife upped and left him but, anyway, he conveniently dies leaving Laura on the market.
Madame Max Goesler also has eyes on Finn and she has the advantage of being unencumbered with the need to spend the appropriate period of time mourning a dead husband and having pots of money. In a moment akin to the famous Mrs Merton/Debbie McGee exchange, the near-penniless Finn throws up his ministerial career to marry Goesler. Apart from her millions, what did he see in her?
There are some fine comedic episodes, not least the on-off love affair involving Adelaid Palliser and her ne’er do well lover, Gerard Maule, and Mr Spooner. One of the book’s leitmotifs is the dispute between Lord Chiltern and the Duke of Omnium over foxes which is funnier than it might seem, there is a lot of fox hunting in the book. I also enjoyed Mr Quintus Slide who represents all that is bad in journalism and who has a major role to play in Finn’s downfall.
In summary, I found the book an enjoyable read, a good story with a few twists and turns and one which deals with themes that resonate to this day.
May 14, 2019
Meal Of The Week
I may be lagging behind Frank Buckland but I do like to try the meat of as many different animals as I can. I’ve made a mental note, though, to avoid the raw kidney of a marmot, a large squirrel-like rodent.
A couple in Nogoonnuur soum, in the west of Mongolia, decided to tuck into a plateful of uncooked marmot organs, I suppose it made a change from yak steak, anticipating that they would benefit from its supposed health properties. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they soon felt a bit unwell and then went downhill fast, exhibiting fever-like symptoms and vomiting blood, before finally meeting their maker.
The post-mortem examination showed that they had died of a form of bubonic plague, the plague germ, Yersinia pestis being present in the innards of the animal. This triggered a six-day quarantine in the province of Bayan-Ulgii, inconveniencing the locals and stranding nine tourists who happened to be in the area.
It’s not an uncommon event. Authorities state that at least one Mongolian a year, a different one obviously, dies after eating raw marmot. I guess the health benefits aren’t all they are cracked up to be, then.
May 13, 2019
The Streets Of London – Part Eighty Eight
Cardinal’s Cap Alley, SE1
Towards the western end of Bankside and to the west of the Globe Theatre is to be found the quaintly named Cardinal’s Cap Alley, which then joins Skinmarket Place. When I went to take a look at it, it was gated off but never mind. It sheds a fascinating light on the seamier side of the area’s history.
Bankside, as the southern side of the Thames was called, was outside the jurisdiction of the City of London and was notorious for activities that were frowned upon in the City, not least public theatres, bull and bear baiting pits and its stews, as the brothels were called. Each stew had the name of the establishment painted on the wall facing the Thames, as a form of advertisement or, perhaps, as a two-fingered gesture to the prudes on the other side of the river.
Up to twelve brothels operated under licence from Henry VII but in 1546 Henry VIII thought enough was enough and decided to “extinguish such abominable license.” With great ceremony the brothels were proclaimed by “sound of trumpet, no more to be priuleged, and vsed as a common Bordell,” but you cannot keep a good man down. Brothels, albeit unlicensed, continued to ply their dubious trade.
One such brothel was called the Cardinal’s Cap or Hat, which almost certainly stood at the site occupied by No 49, Bankside and which is the entrance to the modern-day alley. It is possible that an establishment stood there from at least 1360 but even allowing for the vagaries of royal licence, it seems to have had a precarious existence. John Skelton, in his poem Why come ye not to court from 1522, noted, “but at the naked stewes. I vnderstande how that/ the syne of the Cardynall hat/ that Inne is now shyt vp/ with gup, whore, gup, now, gup.”
As late as the mid 17th century the Cardinal’s Hat was associated with prostitution, as this rather bawdy couplet from the anonymous play, Vanity of Vanities, from 1660, shows: “they talk’t of his having a Cardinalls Hat, / they’d send him as soon an Old Nun’s Twat.”
Given its proximity to the Globe Theatre it is tempting to think that the Bard of Stratford popped in for a refreshing drink and to take in the rather picaresque atmosphere. In King Henry VI, Part 1, he makes an allusion to prostitution and the headwear of a cardinal, the Duke of Gloucester warning the Bishop of Winchester thus; “thou that giv’st whores indulgences to sin,/ I’ll canvas thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat/ if thou proceed in this thy insolence.”
Why cardinal’s cap or hat?
There were a number of establishments in and around London through the ages with that name. Samuel Pepys popped into one in Lombard Street for a drink on June 23, 1660. So it may just have been a common pub name with no specific associations with the area. Others, though, think it may be a reference to the fact that Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who was appointed a cardinal, once owned it or that it is an ironic allusion to the similarity between a cardinal’s hat and the tip of a penis. I suspect there is no specific allusion in the name but who knows for certain?
After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Sir Christopher Wren based himself in Bankside while supervising the reconstruction of the city. It affords a superb view of St Paul’s, his crowning glory. There is even a plaque on No 49, Bankside which states “here lived Sir Christopher Wren during the building of St Pauls Cathedral. Here also, in 1502, Catherine, Infanta of Castille & Aragon, afterwards the first Queen of Henry VIII, took shelter on her first landing in London.”
Modern research suggests that this was not where Wren was based but rather somewhere slightly to the east, behind what is now the Founders Arms. The then owner, Malcolm Munthe, rescued the plaque from the Wren house when it was about to be demolished and put it on his house, No 49. Nevertheless, this false attribution has helped the preservation of a splendid house, the present incarnation of which was built in 1710, from the predations of so-called developers.
And finally, before we leave this fascinating area of London, we should note that it was much nearer the banks of the Thames. In the 1970s the Greater London Council, in their wisdom, altered the waterline to construct the pedestrianised area that exists today.
May 12, 2019
Toilet Of The Week (21)
I’ve gone about my business on many a loo, some comfortable, some rather less salubrious, but never an 18-carat gold carsey. So, there is a golden opportunity to fulfil this particular ambition this autumn at the stately pile that is Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
The toilet, the brain child of artist, Maurizio Cattelan, is being lent to the house by New York’s Guggenheim Museum and will be on display, and available for public use, from 12th September until 27th October. Details of how the public can get to use it are still a little vague; will you have to book a slot or just hope that the queues aren’t too long and how long will you be allowed on the throne? Doubtless, all will be revealed in due course.
In some ways, the installation will be the yin to the yang of recent exhibitions at the palace featuring the works of Ai Weiwei and Michelangelo Pistoletto.
As an aside, the Museum did offer the toilet to Donald Trump in lieu of the Van Gogh he wanted but he refused the gift. After all, it is only 18-carat and, anyway, another one would smack of ostentation.
May 11, 2019
Bean Counter Of The Week
What do you do when your wife goes out and leaves you on your own for the afternoon?
Well, if you are John Stitch from Blackburn in Lancashire, obviously, you reach for a couple of cans of Heinz Five Beanz and count and classify their contents.
Reassuringly, Stitch found that there really were five types of bean in the can: haricot, kidney, pinto, cannellini and borlotti. Whilst in each of the cans, there were more haricot beans than any other, in the first can borlotti beans were the heaviest of the five, pinto beans in the second. The number of beans varied in each can, 163 in the first, 176 in the second.
John even had time to classify his results in a rather fetching pair of pie charts, perhaps they should have been bean charts, and, inevitably, posted the results on social media.
I haven’t been able to confirm that Stitch is an accountant by profession but his sense of curiosity and attention to detail is laudable. The world is a better place for knowing this, I feel. .
May 10, 2019
What Is The Origin Of (230)?…
Purple patch
Regular readers of this blog will know by now that you will have to search long and hard for anything that might resemble a purple patch. Indeed, many critics contend that a purple patch is something to avoid in any literary endeavour as it denotes an over-written passage in which the writer has strained too hard to achieve their effect. It is something out of the ordinary in comparison with the rest of the writer’s output. Its usage these days has been extended to indicate a period of success or outstanding achievement, particularly in a sporting context.
Where does it come from and why purple?
The starting point in our survey is Ars Poetica, written by the Roman poet, Horace to give him his Anglicised name, in around 20 BCE. In the opening passages to his work he compares and contrasts his style of writing with those of his contemporaries. He notes “weighty openings and grand declarations often/ have one or two purple patches tacked on, that gleam/ far and wide…There’s no place for them here.” This is the earliest reference to a purple patch, or purpureus pannus as Horace wrote it, in a literary context.
In Roman times, purple was the colour associated with those in power, adopted by emperors and magistrates. The dye to create the colour came from the mucus secreted by the spiny dye-murex snail and was highly prized and expensive. To associate a piece of writing with this rare colour was to indicate that it was out of the ordinary, exceptional, special.
The survival of pagan Roman literature through the periods of Christian ascendancy was a hit and miss affair until their value as works of art was rediscovered during the Renaissance. Ars Poetica was one that made it through the dark centuries in reasonably good shape and formed part of the required reading matter of an educated chap and the occasional chapess. Unusually for the 16th century, Ann Boleyn insisted that he daughter, Elizabeth, obtained “knowledge of all tounges, as Hebrue, Greeke, Latyne, Italian, Spanishe, Frenche.” Indeed, Queen Bess, as she became, developed into a noted Latin scholar.
What better way to keep your Latin up to scratch after you have dealt with the affairs of state than to translate one of the classical masterpieces into English? In 1598 she turned her hand to the Ars Poetica, rendering our passage thus; “oft to beginnings graue and shewes of great is sowed a purple pace, one or more for vewe.” This is the earliest example of the phrase to have survived in English but given the translator it may be a reflection of her status rather than being the first genuine usage.
The early 18th century was a disputatious period when wits and political rivals would pen furious pamphlets to either attack their opponents or to promote their cause. One such was Dr Charles Davenant, a cousin of Jonathan Swift, who invented a character called Tom Double to espouse anti-Whig sentiment. But then, to the dismay of Swift and his chums, Devanant had a political volte-face, prompting his friends to publish, in 1704, The True Tom Double.
Within its pages is a discussion of literary styles. The prevailing taste was for a style which was even, rather than one which had the occasional splash of literary brilliance. “All a man writes should be proportion’d Even and of a piece; and one Part of the Work should not so far outshine, as to Obscure and Darken the Other. The Purple Patches he claps upon his Course Style, make it seem much Courser than it is.”
It seems that the use of purple patch in a context other than literary was a much later phenomenon, perhaps around the turn of the 20th century. The Westminster Budget used it, in October 1900, to denote something exceptional or truly noteworthy; “true, it is hardly to be counted a purple patch of history…”
May 9, 2019
It’s The Way I Tell ‘Em (36)
“Centaurs shop at Topman. And Bottomhorse.” Dan Antopolski (2017)
“Oregon leads America in both marital infidelity and clinical depression. What a sad state of affairs.” Paul Savage (2017)
“I’m very conflicted by eye tests. I want to get the answers right but I really want to win the glasses.” Caroline Mabey (2017)
“I took out a loan to pay for an exorcism. If I don’t pay it back, I’m going to get repossessed.” Olaf Falafel (2018)
“I’m entering the worlds tightest hat competition. Just hope I can pull it off.” William Andrews (2018)
“Words can’t express how much I hate World Emoji Day.” Christian Talbot (2018)
“When I found out the amusement park was taking photos of me on their rides without my permission I was fluming.” Olaf Falafel (2018)
“Thing is, we all just want to belong. But some of us are short.” Lou Sanders (2018)
“I had a survey done on my house. Eight out of 10 people said they really rather liked it.”– Jimmy Carr
“Hard to tell if people are interested in joining my Sarcastic Club or not…” – Milton Jones
“‘Son, I don’t think you’re cut out to be a mime.’ ‘Was it something I said?’ asks the son. ‘Yes.’” – Damien Slash
“I was thinking of running a marathon, but I think it might be too difficult getting all the roads closed and providing enough water for everyone.” – Jordan Brookes
“I’m going to donate my body to science, and keep my Dad happy – he always wanted me to go to medical school.” – Lee Mack
“A sandwich walks into a bar. The barman says, ‘Sorry we don’t serve food in here.’” – Peter Kay
“I went to a restaurant that serves breakfast at any time. So I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.” – Steven Wright
“I’d like to start with the chimney jokes – I’ve got a stack of them. The first one is on the house.” – Tim Vine
“The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how much I play, I’ll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall once. They’re relentless.” – Mitch Hedberg
“I rang up British Telecom and said: ‘I want to report a nuisance caller.’ He said: ‘Not you again.’” – Tim Vine
“It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.” – Jerry Seinfeld
“I was in my car driving back from work. A police officer pulled me over and knocked on my window. I said, ‘One minute I’m on the phone.’” – Alan Carr
May 8, 2019
Book Corner – May 2019 (2)
Changing Places – David Lodge
I seem to be on a bit of a trilogy kick at the moment. Changing Places, published in 1975, is the first volume of what became known as his Campus Trilogy. It was published in the same year as Malcolm Bradbury’s History Man, both of which helped create a literary sub-genre, campus lit.
The expansion of the university system in the 60s, a grant system which meant that higher education was relatively cost-free for its recipients and the fact that degrees were more valued by employers than they are now meant that more and more students went there. More were familiar with the strange world of academia. And universities at the time became a cynosure for all the prevailing political and societal tensions, hotbeds of student revolutionary movements, sit-ins and changing sexual mores. No wonder the campus proved fertile ground for novelists wanting to put their finger on what was gong on in the late 1960s.
Lodge’s take is a clever and amusing portrayal of student and academic life at the time. Subtitled A Tale of Two Campuses, its Dickensian ring is, presumably, intended to make us think of revolution or, at least, dramatic change. The two campuses around d which the tale is based are the University of Rummidge, somewhere in the industrial Midlands, not too difficult to work out where, and Euphoric State University on the west coast of America. Two academics, the British low-achieving Philip Swallow and the American whizz-kid, Morris Zapp, swap jobs on a six-month exchange programme.
Swallow’s time in Euphoric is one of sexual and political liberation whilst Zapp, who is delaying an inevitable divorce from his wife, galvanises the sleepy British university which is beginning to catch up with the radicalisation of university politics. Perhaps somewhat improbably, the two academics go the whole hog in their immersion into the other’s life, living in each other’s homes, driving their cars and sleeping with their wives. It all adds to the comedic possibilities of the plot line as their infidelities and indiscretions are revealed.
What is astonishing to the modern reader, it seems odd writing that phrase given the book is only forty or years old, but it does show its age, is how lyrical Lodge is on the subject of air travel. For most in the late 60s, even for high-flying academics, air travel was a relatively new experience and, on the whole, certainly in those halcyon pre-9/11 days, pleasant. There was truly a sense of adventure in boarding a plane, a feeling lost for many of us these days who just see planes as another form of transport and pretty unpleasant, uncomfortable and depressing at that. Lodge captures perfectly that early sense of excitement and wonder, together with that frisson of anxiety that still pertains to this day.
Stylistically, the book is quite experimental. It starts out as a conventional third person narrative but then changes pace and style with an epistolary section, followed by a chapter made up exclusively of cuttings from newspapers, manifestos and student literature and then the denouement of the book, where the two couples meet in a New York hotel to sort out their futures, is written as a film script. The ending is messy and open ended, perhaps to be resolved in the other two books that form the trilogy, although Lodge didn’t get around to writing the second book until 1984.
I hadn’t read any Lodge before and enjoyed what was a light and easy read. I’m encouraged to finish off the trilogy.
May 7, 2019
Parrot Of The Week (2)
Who’d be a parrot?
A turquoise-fronted Amazon parrot has had more than enough adventures to last a life time. Called Freddy Kreuger after part of its face was shot off and blinded in a gun battle between the gang of its drug baron owner and the police four years ago, it was transferred to what was thought to have been the safe haven of the zoo in the city of Cascavel in southern Brazil.
But in April he was bitten on the leg by a snake, fortunately one of the non-venomous types. Then, a few days later, thieves broke into his cage and stole him together with a companion and a cylinder of gas.
Amazingly, Freddy found his way back to the zoo and was found by keepers at the foot of a pine tree near his cage. It may be that there isn’t much of a market for blind parrots although spots of blood found nearby may suggest that he put up a fight.
Neither the other parrot nor the gas cylinder have been recovered.
