Horsemeat? processed food? forget it

Sea angling boats drawn up on the beach at Rock-a-Nore, Hastings

 

I don't know why anyone's surprised by the horseburger scandal.  As the old saying goes for builders - pay peanuts and you get monkeys.  What amazes me most is how anyone has been making anything out of the business at all.  In today's Guardian there was reference to no less than five middlemen before the product even reached Findus.  You'd have thought the transport costs alone would have obliterated the profit.

 

When we returned from France I was gobsmacked by the extent of processed food in Hastings supermarkets.  Any temptation to get a ready-made Beef Bourguignon for two was removed by a quick scan of the additives on the packet.  Now it looks as if it probably isn't even beef.  Last week I picked up a packet of what were described as "Venison Burgers" in the supermarket and discovered that they were 20% pork. 

 

In Hastings we have one colossal privilege: the availability of fresh fish, seven days a week.  Last week I was experimenting with some Nigella Lawson recipes, and was able to buy fresh squid and local scallops from one of the three fishmongers fifty yards away.  This week we had some cod fillet in a recipe we agreed was unnecessarily elaborate, since the fish was so good in its own right.  

 

Meat's expensive in the UK: prices at the excellent butcher we go to in Pett, just outside Hastings, are about 20% more than I would have paid in France.  But I know where it's come from, it's not pumped full of chemicals, and not packaged in cardboard and plastic.  We eat less of it.  Risottos, pasta, couscous and veggies are staple elements of our daily diet.  But local fish, in all its forms, is the star ingredient.

 

Antony Mair

Fat Tuesday in Hastings

Outside the Dragon Bar

 

 

After the rained-out Umbrella Parade on Sunday, it was at least dry for last night's Fat Tuesday festivities.  Hastings Old Town was packed with people: the event focussed on half a dozen hostelries who imported live bands.  The Dragon, which, it was rumoured, had brought in some well-known musicians at the last minute, spilled out into George Street, where the tide merged with the overflow from the Hastings Arms opposite.  The main pubs were impenetrable: when we walked up the High Street, Porters and the Jenny Lind were both crowded out.  We thought we'd try the so-called Filo - nothing to do with pastry, it's an abbreviation of the pub name First In Last Out.  On arrival they were allowing one person in for each one leaving.  I'd say that makes the evening a success.  I hope that the local charities set to benefit were pleased.

 

The Venetian mask business didn't seem to have taken off.  We'd had a bite to eat in the Black Pearl, where some heavyset chaps were sitting at the bar in surprisingly ornate masks - a curious mix of Don Giovanni and the Godfather.  But most people were interested in goodnatured drinking.  A lady shaking a collection box outside Porters allowed me to take her picture, though, just to show that some people made an effort.

Unable to get in anywhere, we went along to the Stag Inn in All Saints Street, which was not one of the official Fat Tuesday venues.  Now the Stag Inn is special.  It has regular folk music and shanty nights, and a loyal clientele drawn from the local population.  As newcomers we always feel slight outsiders, but that's more to do with our lack of facial hair than the welcome, which is invariably warm.  Last night there were about eight musicians sitting round a table playing a variety of instruments - clarinet, guitar, concertina, violin, flute and what looked like a couple of lutes.  It was brilliant diddly-dee stuff and we loved it.  The high spot was probably the lady who sang a sad shanty with a refrain that we all joined in to sing - "They won't let us go to sea any more".   When I asked if I could take her photo she insisted on displaying her Fat Tuesday T-shirt.  Her smile says it all.

 

Antony Mair

Mardi Gras - Hastings style

Gathering for the Umbrella Parade

 

 

Hastings has more than its fair share of festivals and celebrations.  I have never known people more fond of dressing up.  So I suppose the idea of Carnival, with all its implications of costume and general malarkey, was irresistible to the locals.  Think Venetian masks and gondolas, grotesque masks from Cologne's Faschingszeit, or the swaying floats of Rio.

 

But this is Hastings, and it's February.  Venice somehow manages to make its winter fogs and mists romantic at Carnival time, when masked figures slip down picturesque alleyways.  In Hastings the wind is howling off the sea and the rain edging into sleet.

 

A great part of Hastings' charm is that it doesn't try to be other than itself.  Mardi Gras would be a bit posh, so the festival here has been renamed Fat Tuesday.  A not entirely felicitous title, since it implies lardies wobbling from pub to fish and chip shop rather than svelte figures glittering with sequins.  But tasselled bosoms and scanty clothes would have laid participants out with pneumonia today if they'd tried it for the so-called Umbrella Parade. "All you need is an umbrella or parasol" the website said.  Actually, you needed a full set of waterproofs over your long johns as well.

 

Your humble servant got the timing wrong, alas, so went down for the gathering at 11 a.m. but had failed to note that the procession was scheduled to set off an hour later.  The cold and rain drove me away  before things got going.  However, I noticed that the small crowd was Blue Peter meets Hammer House of Horror: decorated parasols flourished by children in colourful wellies beside people in reinterpreted Victorian costume, out of the pages of Edgar Allan Poe.  I went and had a cup of coffee and on my return noticed that some of the black-coated Goth types were slipping into a local hostelry to fortify themselves for the off.  I suppose that's what Carnival's about, really: dressing up and drinking oneself senseless. Just like Rio.

 

Antony Mair        

 

 

More poetry coming up...

I know, I find it pretty surprising too.  Fortunately, I've heard of hype before, so am not too carried away by the description, hoping instead that anyone turning up on the 20th February is not going to be disappointed by the performance.  In reality, Robin Houghton and Joanna Grigg write so well that it's worth coming along to listen to them, let alone the rest of us.  After the scary experience of Brighton, which was the first occasion on which I'd read my little poems in public, I feel better equipped to stand at the microphone in front of all those upturned faces with their expectant look.

I have just started an online course with the Poetry School, which seemed a good idea at the time.  It involves submitting poems over a period of five weeks to the scrutiny of a wellknown poet-tutor (in the present case Catherine Smith) and one's fellow-students.  The course starts with people introducing themselves online.  This has revealed the eclectic mix characteristic of the poetry world, including a woman in Canada who was given the course as a Christmas present by her son, another woman who lives miles from anywhere in the Highlands, a couple of people who have already published collections or pamphlets and a singer-songwriter in his thirties who has turned to poetry from composing lyrics.  We're in the process of uploading poems onto the site this week, and then the comments come in next week.  I am preparing myself for amiable brickbats.

Just like other interests, writing poetry is like mountain-climbing.  You get up to the top of a hill and there's a higher one ahead.  Put another way, "Un train peut en cacher un autre".  I'm still in the foothills, or in front of the level crossing, as the case may be.  We'll see what lies ahead.

Antony Mair

 

The end of builders is in sight...

Newly painted front doors at the Shoebox and the Matchbox

 

Yes, the end of this refurbishment project is in sight.  With the repainting of the front doors and the finishing of paintwork round the windows (needless to say, there has been a last-minute discovery of some hitherto undetected rot in a sill) we shall be in a position by the end of the week to ask for the scaffolders to come along and remove the structure that has covered the façade of both houses for over three months.  Phew.

 

Not that that spells the end of everything: the new bathroom in No. 7 is in the process of being installed, and bookshelves constructed for my study; after which floors have to be sanded and oiled and the new bathroom redecorated; then carpets go down on halls and stairs - and then - wonder of wonders - we shall be able to move back in.  It looks like the end of February.  After all this time it is difficult to believe it is going to fall into place: but my optimism is such that I've even been looking at some lastminute.com offers for a city break in March.  We've not been out of the UK since the end of May last year, and haven't been away from Hastings much either, so need a break, however short.

 

The trouble with building work is that it is totally absorbing: we have been living in what I describe as "builders' warp", in the sense that nothing seems to have any importance or relevance other than the immediate task, combined with keeping builders happy with tea and coffee etc. and at the same time trying to keep track of costs.  Every now and again an important event in the outside world breaks through, but generally we live in a capsule apart.  The sooner we manage to enlarge our horizons the better.

 

"How are the dogs coping?" some people ask.  As you can see from the picture below, Oscar for one is overcome by stress.

 

Antony Mair

 

The wheels of justice

Bones found beneath a Leicester carpark: Photographs by University of Leicester and Jeff Overs.

 

Last night we watched the DVD of "The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest", the third part of Stieg Larsson's trilogy about abuse and high-level corruption in Sweden.  Seeing Lisbet Salander acquitted and the villains arrested gave us the usual satisfaction of a happy ending to a cops-and-robbers type movie. 

 

An ending that, in these days of conspiracy theories and socalled investigative journalism, always seems to be postponed in real life, when the baddies appear to be winning.  Today, however, has produced a couple of satisfactory outcomes that lift the spirits in the same way as the goodies' triumphing at the end of a movie. 

 

First, the politician Chris Huhne has found himself obliged to enter a guilty plea to the charge of perverting the course of justice, following his lying to the police about who was driving his car when speeding.  I have heard stories in both France and the UK about people pulling strings (i.e. dropping names of friends in the police or gendarmerie) when caught speeding.  It gives me some satisfaction to see justice being strictly applied.  A custodial sentence seems likely, which is a mighty fall for an ex-Government minister.

 

The second event is in some ways more satisfying: the probable reinstatement of Richard III's good name, following the discovery of his skeleton beneath a carpark in Leicester.  Famously portrayed as the darkest villain in Shakespeare's chilling history play, he has been for most of us the incarnation of wickedness.  The possibility that he may have been the victim of Tudor propaganda has been around for decades - I remember reading Josephine Tey's book "The Daughter of Time" fifty years ago, and finding its arguments convincing.  It would have been exciting enough to find that the bones were those of the dead king; but to be able to deduce certain facts from them that could re-establish his reputation is a triumph of justice that warms the heart - particularly since we are talking about real life and not a Stieg Larsson fiction.  The wheels of justice may move at a very slow pace, but it's nice to think that, sooner or later, they arrive at the right place.  

 

Antony Mair

 

Mist, murk and wind

Cliffs to the east of Hastings

 

We're having more than our fair share of weather at the moment.  Living in a house that faces out to sea is wonderful in sunshine - but there's a downside in the winter, particularly at night.  Yesterday a gale started up in the late evening and was howling by the evening.  It roared down our chimneys and buffeted the windows.  Tackleway, our street, is a funnel for the wind as it comes off the sea, and you feel its force as soon as you open the door.  Last night there was rain as well, and in spite of the recent draught-proofing of the windows in No. 7 rain was finding its way between glass and wood frame as it was hurled against the panes at a speed of around sixty miles an hour. 

 

The Wuthering Heights effect was enhanced by a piece of plastic sheeting that had got caught up from somewhere and landed up tangled in the telephone wires on the hillside opposite.  It flapped frantically in the wind.  Then, around 7 pm, as I was reading in the front room of the Matchbox, I heard voices and a walkie-talkie outside.  At first I thought it was a cab.  Then, looking out, I saw that there were chequered cars and policemen.  When I opened the door to see what was happening there were half a dozen police and a couple sitting wretchedly at the bottom of the steps opposite, which lead up to East Hill.  The rain was driving against them all, and the wind keeping up its usual howl.  It appeared that the woman, who was being consoled by the man, had been brought down from the top of the cliff.  They refused the invitation to come into the warmth, saying an ambulance was on its way.  

 

It's in this kind of weather that the plight of the homeless hits one hardest.  There are two or three people sleeping rough in our part of Hastings, who beg on the street during the day.  I have got to know one of them, who has now been given a place to sleep by the Council.  But he has to be out after nine in the morning and is not allowed back in before the evening.  He is meant to have cooking facilities, and a fridge, but they have not been provided.  He is a diabetic, recovering drug addict and gradually mastering a drink problem.  I am overwhelmed by his courage.  If I am hoping for better weather, I'm sure he is, with far better cause.

 

Antony Mair