For five years Maria Elia came onto Good Food Live. She fused and combined all sorts of crazy ingredients; served up everything from prawn and watermelon curry to artichoke ice-cream; turned our heads with her humour and perspicacity and impressed us with her feisty food, which is just like her.
For five years Maria Elia has nagged me incessantly to go to her restaurant so that she could cook for me.
For five years I had said I would go. Tonight, with no more excuses left, the table was booked for 9.00 and made ready for three.
It’s a bloomin’ good job I did go this evening because after five years of stupendous cooking, tonight was the final night of Maria strutting her stuff at ‘Delfina’.
She’s off to pastures new. She’s done her bit in Bermondsey and is now taking her culinary witchery elsewhere. Jim was doing his bit at the Globe and intended to meet us there later.
Jeni Barnett
5768
Happy New Year.
It is now, according to the Jewish calender, Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty Eight.
The year, 5768, is calculated by adding up the ages of certain people in the Bible back to the time of Creation. God knows who did the sums.
Now, since there is no mention of the birth of the Cosmos in the Bible one man’s Creation is another man’s Big Bang – but as there’s no mention of the Big Bang in the Bible I’m assuming that our ever expanding universe, and the resulting matter that’s been hurled in all directions by that catacylsmic explosion, is merely the figment of a Boffin’s imagination, either way, it’s all ended up in my daughter’s bedroom.
I am Jewish by mirth, which means my knowledge of Judaism could be written on the back of a matzo ball, although I’m told my inflection is a dead give away.
On Saturday night, Yom Kippur, a listener called up LBC and indignantly complained that I was on radio and why wasn’t I atoning for my sins in a Synagogue somewhere near me?
In true Rabbinical tradition I argued she shouldn’t have been listening to me in the first place but rather should be atoning for her sins in a Synagogue somewhere near her .
Either way I’m sure both our sins have been absolved.
Afternoon Tea-vee
September 2007 is nearly over and along with millions of others I’m SAD. We’ve not even had an Indian summer to speak of. I’m afraid you find me watching telly on a Thursday afternoon as the charcoal grey clouds over the Thames threaten rain and Joseph Cotton, who also looks a little Seasonally Affected to me, chases off marauding Sioux Indians in glorious Technicolour. Watching mid week tv in the afternoon has to be one of the most depressing experiences since doing a voice-over in a damp basement in Baker Street with an engineer called Karl who’se at the end of a telephone line in Norwich.
I had the notion, earlier, to go to a tea-dance at the Waldorf Hotel but I’m expecting an old chum at 4.00 so they’ll be no waltzing for me although I shall serve up a passable cup of Silver Tip Darjeeling with a custard tart. By which time Mr.Cotton, as Mr.Custard, will have stood his last stand with the be-feathered hoards. I must admit though, that ever since I helped Beth write her Native American project 14 years ago,I cannot watch a Cowie without my blood boiling at the re-inventing of American history even if they are well shot.
Talking of which…..
Pinky and Perksy
There are definite advantages to doing a foodie programme.
The organic box company sent me a box of organic fruit and a bag of organic potatoes. I unpacked them, gave two punnets of pink strawberries, 6 peaches and a kettle of kiwis to the daughter. I then placed the excess 4 tons of fruit in a gigantic bowl, topping off the still-life with three big hands of yellow bananas.
The organic box company sent me a box of organic fruit and a bag of organic potatoes – AGAIN! I unpacked them, threw away the pink strawberries which were covered in a white furry mould, hunted for some more bowls to accomodate so much produce then ate a handful of bananas to make space in the living room. The flat still looks like a plantation in Baranquilla with more bananas than the monkey house in London Zoo whilst my assortment of plums will shortly become my raisin d’etre.
The middle apple tree in my garden, has a broken branch as the apples are so huge and heavy. So I brought 9 apples back to the flat. They are so big I can only hold one pomme in my hand at a time. Since I have no more receptacles to display me fruit in, I have stuck the grapes in the fridge put the nectarines on top of the plums and the pears on top of the apples.
I am the only one in the flat who eats fruit; the offspring, in Camberwell, is only interested in her new sound system whilst the husband, who is coming to the end of his Global run, has very little time for a fruity pear. All in all me perks are going a pinky brown. But I’m not complaining. These are the kind of perks I like. I mean what could I bring home if I worked for Dyna Rod?
Do you want to know a secret?
Listen,ooh ooh ooh, Do you want to know a secret?, ooh ooh ooo. Do you promise not to tell whoawhoaeeeh….well that wasn’t an option for Dr.John DeMartini who was diagnosed with learning disabilities when he was 7. At 14 he was on the road to naughtidom and at 17 left his home in Huston, Texas and headed off to California. After imbibing on something or other he nearly died of strychnine poisoning but as Lady Luck would have it he met a geezer, some kind of mentor, and before you could say, “Pass me my smelling salts I think I am having one of my turns”, Dr.DeMartini was one of the most sort after inspirational teachers this and that side of the pond, so talking about ‘The Secret’, telling everybody everything he could about ‘The Secret’ and promising not to tell was never an option for Dr.John.
I interviewed him this morning on LBC. I was nervous. I was wearing my dalmation dungarees; he, a blue suit and fancy shirt and tie. His demeanour was that of a sensitive business manager. He fixes you with his camel eyes and only smiles when HE wants to. He wore two rings that American Boys give to their girlfriends in teen flicks and he spoke eloquently and articulately about how we think, how we need to balance our lives and about THE SECRET, a book compiled and written by Rhonda Byrne. The DVD was given to me last Christmas.
So what is The SECRET, known by all the great thinkers and philosophers of our time? Well it is THE way. According to all the teachers, philosophers and mystics who swear by it, The Secret is simple. It is The Law of Attraction.
It’s still SEPTEMBER
Dear Nit pickers, yes of course I meant to write September not December on my last blog, but the way the time is going it might just as well be Christmas.
The weekend has been absolutely manic, none of my doing I may add; it’s all the old mans fault. On Friday night he embarked on a spot of composition for a production of The Tempest, directed by his friend, which commanded the time honoured fee of committment and an invite to Yeats’s Wine Lodge. He arrived at the keyboard at 11.30 p.m and made musical statements until the following morning. When I woke up he was standing in the same place, his roll-up stuck to his lip, pressing buttons and creating sounds of the sea..
On Saturday afternoon he went and did his bit at the Globe then drove directly down to the cottage to complete his opus in the studio.
I did my LBC stint with allotment gurus, organic box purveyers, sausage makers and bee keepers. Good fun it was and I left Latimer Road looking forward to a restorative time by the river. Whilst in a traffic jam at Earls Court my mobile telephone rung. Twas the music man from miles away saying that due to his lack of sleep he had left the most important silver case by the window in the sitting room, could I find it in my heart to bring it to him in the cottage.
I heaved a sigh, clenched my teeth, girded my loins and cocked a snoot.
I arrived home by 10.45.
Bearing in mind that I had been up from sparrows fart, done a show and was still feeling the effects from a 5.30 jog on Friday, it was not surprising that I was a just a little schizoid.
September
It’s only 9.o’clock but it’s as black as Newgates Knocker outside. I’ve had to turn up the heating, put on a grey fleece, close the windows and drink a mug of something warm.
It’s 14 and a bit weeks until Christmas and I am not the only one who thinks we’ve been robbed of a summer. I can’t blame the weather so I’m going to blame David Cameron – why? Because I can.
I am sorry for the silence but my lovely blog publisher has been up to his neck in it, and even though I’ve only been away 4 days, it does feel like I’ve been away four months.
Before we left Sussex Jim and I walked the dog round the houses, we nibbled on the blackberries, which are huge this year, kicked over the acorns and collected up a fistful of conkers, all shiny, new and brown. The first conkers of 2007. I brought four back to London. They are sitting on my desk staring at me looking good enough to eat. It’s a pity they’re inedible but conkers are poisonous, they contain an alkaloid called saponin.
So I then wondered what IS the purpose of a conker?
Is it their lot to be boiled in vinegar, strung up on a string only to have their heads banged together. Does anybody know? Does anybody care? Does anybody play at conkers any more? or have the health and safety police banned that too? .
A Moth in my Pocket
I walked over Battersea bridge today smiling. Two reasons, the first being that my face in repose, with its down-turned mouth, has the look of a depressed camel – ever since I saw myself in a shop window and wondered who the miserable mare was staring back at me, I decided to smile even when there was nothing to smile about. Not inanely, you understand, because I could be mistaken for a wayward lunatic, but gently with just a hint of a smile playing on the lips.
A smile ‘playing’ on the lips. As phrases go, a particularly ridiculous one, don’t you think? Playing what exactly? A round of poker? A game of Tiddlywinks? A card of Bingo? Anyway, I always try to remember to effect a smile just in case there’s a hidden camera in the hedge or somebody is watching from the top deck of a bus.
The second reason for having a hint of a grin was the weather. It wasn’t sunny, to be sure, (Sorry to sound Irish. It just slipped out) but it wasn’t cold either. The grey clouds were only thinly veiling a rather delicious blue sky, and the boats moored on the Chelsea side of the river had the look of Amsterdam about them. The water was high, as were my spirits. I dug my hands deep into the pockets of my dalmatian dungarees from ‘The Inn at Little Washington’ (I believe I have already told you about that particular establishment), that wee smile gamboling on my gob, when before I could say ‘pass me the camphor balls’, a moth flew out of my pocket. A little silvery grey moth, or ‘merth’, if you’re talking Clouseau-ese. I thought Peter Sellers would have said ‘A merth has flown out of my poche’ which made the smile play just a little bit harder.
The world’s my oyster
I didn’t have a lot of sleep, owing to the old man’s birthday bash last night. But I was called this morning, at 8.24 precisely, by Radio Kent for my opinions on whether women were happier and more content than men. Apparently the ‘Keep Britain Tidy’ Campaign did a survey and discovered what is blindingly obvious – that we all want clean neighbourhoods, nice friends, good health and money. Did they need to survey that, I wonder?
Anyway, they called me from their studios in Tunbridge Wells. I struggled into my dressing gown, slumped on the settee and bleary-eyed, gave a less than sparkling interview. Five minutes later they hung up.
I crawled back into bed. The old man was out for the count so I meditated, after which I got trainered up and had a jolly good run along the river bank. At 11.00 I headed off to the West End.
Birthday bash
Having Jackson in the flat is a real alarm call. I wake at 7.00 (although this morning it was 8.00) and walk down the hall into the living room. Jackson has taken up residence under the table, next to the settee half-on, half-off the old red rug from the cottage.
He lounges over his big tartan bed and his toweling throw (just in case he gets really wet when we go out for a walk) and it’s quite clear that he really feels at home. It takes him slightly longer to get up because his hips are so arthritic but he’s so bouncy now that he’s having a proper breakfast.
I don’t wash, or put on my glasses. I just jump into my pj’s, pull on a t-shirt then dress Jackson. There is a little red dustbin full of biodegradable bags which is attached to his hand-woven rope lead which is attached to his green collar. I swing the ribbon with door keys over my head and off we go. I’m now prepared, just like a scout, for anything.