Runny Thoughts

Come back Australia, all is forgiven

A strange thing happened one morning a couple of weeks ago. Pale, sleep-deprived men staggered out into the streets, disbelieving grins on their faces. They smiled at random strangers and helped old ladies across the road. Some were even polite to traffic wardens.

Alan Sugar was nice to an Apprentice.

Yes, extraordinary circumstances prevailed: England had won a Test match in Australia during a live Ashes series (by which I mean an Ashes series that hadn't been won six months before it started by those dastardly Australians with their underhand trick of playing the game much much better than anyone had ever played it before).

From the prevailing mood of euphoria you'd've thought that the whole country had got laid simultaneously.

Which, in a funny kind of way, it had.

In the period between that Test match and the one that has just started, even stranger things happened.

England got confident. The country, that is. The cricket team was already confident.

Mockery of Australians became the norm. Pitying texts, tweets and status updates flew through cyberspace. Stranger still, Australians seemed resigned to their fate. In desperation, they selected a player called Beer, as if invoking the spirit of David Boon, whose record of 52 cans consumed on an Australia-England flight stands to this day. Hilarity ensued. Meanwhile, I got nervous, preemptively texting friends with doom-laden warnings like "it's still only 1-0, you know", "a long way to go yet", and "steady now".

And now we’ve had the first day of the Perth Test, and a couple of things have become clear:

Thing 1: even the most cautiously optimistic of England fans (guilty as charged) has realised that the series is England's to lose.

Thing 2: World Cricket, and especially Test Cricket, is in deep trouble.

A disclaimer on Thing 1: England may still lose the series, but, if they do, it will be the result of the biggest choke since Oxford United threw away a 7-0 lead with ten seconds of injury time left against the eight surviving members of Dagenham and Redbridge Under-12s (reserves) in the First Preliminary Round of the 1987 Watney's Red Barrel Consolation Cup.

Thing 2 is, for the England fan keenly anticipating a first Ashes victory down under since 1986, somewhat counter-intuitive (sorry, I hate that word, but sometimes only the hideous words will do). Much as England fans would enjoy a long-overdue retention of the oldest trophy in cricket, the sport needs Australia to be strong, and, unthinkable a concept as it may have been just a year ago, the signs for the future are not good.

Consider this: back in the day, when Aussie batsmen were lantern-jawed, box-girder-chewing, Pommie-munchers, it was commonly held that Australia’s second-best (and third, and fourth...) would make fine-grained, low-fat mincemeat of England’s first team. This was regularly proved by the insultingly easy victories for Australia A in the warm-up games at the beginning of England tours down under. It was as if they were the commis chefs in a Michelin-starred restaurant, passing the platter of diced Pom to a baggy-hatted, spongebag-trousered tantrum factory with a casual “there you go, chef, we’ve skinned, gutted and filleted them for you, and put them in a nice lemon and garlic marinade. I’m sure you can finish them off.” Batsmen of the calibre of Stuart Law (79 first class hundreds, average of 50), Darren Lehman (82 first class hundreds, average of 58 or so) and Michael Hussey (he could teach Prince Charles a thing or two about waiting your turn) were unable to establish themselves in the side.

But now, faced with injuries and loss of form, and the possibility of losing the Ashes at home after just three tests, the selectors turned to the next-in-line, and found the coming generation unready for the task.

Phillip Hughes may well develop into the most destructive batsman of his time, but at the moment, on all available evidence, he is as much a Test-class opener as I am a surprisingly spacious three-bedroomed house in Clapham’s fashionable Abbeville Village, situated within easy striking distance of all local amenities and travel links. His lack of anything approaching a defensive technique was cruelly exposed by Chris Tremlett, and England were up and running, able to exploit the lack of confidence in the Australian upper order with startling ease.

Soon enough they had the opportunity to bowl at Steven Smith, a talented young cricketer, albeit one batting at least a place too high, whose stated aim was to ‘come into the side and be fun’. This is a remarkable new slant on the role of the number 6 batsman, and one which prompted the ignoble thought that a more appropriate pick might have been Sir Les Patterson.

The shots played by Hughes (cross-bat to a full straight one) and Smith (indeterminate post-lunch prod) may have had the desired effect: ‘Test opener and number 6? Don’t make me laugh!’

The point is not that these two are untalented - on the contrary, they are almost certain to develop into high class Test cricketers, given time. But when the Ashes are about to be lost, Australia should be able to whistle up cricketers who can offer more than a season's batting average of 22 (Hughes) and some bits-and-pieces middle-order biffing and occasional, eminently hittable leg spin (Smith).

Before you say anything, I am well aware that by even thinking those words, I am inviting run-a-ball double centuries from both players in the second innings, backed up by an unplayable and series-turning spell of spitting leggies from Smith and g azelle-like wonder-catches in the gulley from Hughes.

They were going to happen anyway. Not my fault.

Looking further down the order, the spin-bowling cupboard, post-Warne, is distressingly bare. X-man Xavier Doherty lasted just two Tests, poor chap, and it seems that the selectors are blind to the Ashley-Giles-esque qualities of Nathan Hauritz. He may never play Test cricket again, and it would be to Australia's detriment.

As for the fast bowling, the selection policy is in confusion, but the overwhelming impression is that this is all they have. There are no young thrusters waiting to burst into the squad. The standard of cricket being played in the Sheffield Shield, which used to be held up to all other countries as the example to which they should aspire, is, according to those who know, lower than ever before.

Now, it is very un-Australian even to consider the possibility of them not being at, or at least very near, the top of any sporting tree, and particularly crucket. But they’ve been doing some terribly un-Australian things recently.

The worst-case scenario is that the dip in quality in Australia's domestic scene persists, young athletes look to other sports (notably Australian Rules Football) and Australia become, medium-to-long term, a mediocre team, thus further denuding the pool of competitive Test-playing nations.

Unthinkable? That's what they would have said about The West Indies in the 1980s.

Snow Balls

If you're anything like me, which you're not, unless you're a forty-five-year-old Anglo-Armenian conductor/writer and father-of-one whose current extreme sleep deprivation owes much to the Australians' stubborn insistence that The Ashes be played once every four years in the antipodal hemisphere instead of, as any civilised person knows, its proper home, by which I mean the green and pleasant land that I call the nation of my birth and that you probably call England, although of course you all know that I just put that bit in to annoy Australians, of whom I am actually very fond, especially those of them to whom I am related, which is something I don't admit to very often, but there you go, there's no accounting for the things that come out at times like this, then you probably don't shop for clothes much.

That sentence does make sense, but it got a bit rambly in the middle. Rambly to the tune of an extended nested construction of 134 words, which, unless you are James Joyce, which you aren’t, is probably a bit... I'll start again.

I don't shop for clothes much.

I did yesterday though. I found myself, through a complicated concatenation of circumstances, at Clapham Junction early in the morning, trying to find my way home, having spent the night before at the bedside of my ailing mother (she's fine, thanks. I merely put that bit in to garner the sympathy of the reader).

There’s been a curious dual climate thing going on in London for the last couple of days. At least half of the capital has been looking around wondering where the famous snow that we've all been hearing about has got to, while those of us who live in the South-East have been perfecting our Captain Oates impersonations every time we step outside to buy a bottle of Vimto. As my mum lives in the non-Oatesy portion, and I in the heart of Titus-land, the journey home was, shall we say, interrupted.

Getting to Clapham was easy enough, but there I ground to a halt. There were so few trains going south, it was as if they were suddenly being driven by cabbies.

The departure boards weren't much help. "0633 to Sutton - on time", they declared, ignoring the inconvenient truth that 0633 was a dim and distant memory and that Sutton was for the moment as inaccessible and wondrous a concept as Narnia.

Displaying admirable (and, for me, rare) sangfroid, I opted out of the inevitable chunterfest that a prolonged spell on platform 15 would have entailed and decided to do some shopping. Trousers, I thought. Winter coat. Condensed milk. (Obviously.)

Coat first. Stick to the essentials.

I found myself torn. Groovy sheepskin-lined flying jacket, as sported by those dashing chaps from the Boden catalogue? Or functional-but-determinedly-ungroovy thermal walking jacket, as sported by those not-exactly-dashing-but-doing-their-best blokes looking wistfully into the middle distance at Black's?

I know my limits.

The boy in Black's was very polite. He allowed me a full five seconds of perusal before offering his opening gambit.

"How are you, Sir?"

Hard sell. Bastard.

"Assailed by existential angst," I replied. "Grappling with the futility of our brief sojourn on this earth, weighed down with the enormity and complexity of the myriad problems facing mankind, and staring the inevitability of our eventual demise full in the face with the haunted mien of one who has looked into the abyss too long."

"Oh."

“But, on the other hand,” I continued, before he had a chance to refute my Sartrean world view, “quite excited about the cricket. Now tell me, my good man, this garment, this '3-in-1' all weather jacket: is said Trinity as holy as the manufacturers would have us believe? Does the garment divide efficiently and seamlessly into three separate pieces?"

"Well, Sir..."

"Because it seems to me that there are only two portions: the inner and the outer.

“Yes, Sir, but..."

"Ah, I see now. You are about to tell me that when I combine the two vestments the third, and most thermally efficient, manifestation will make itself magically apparent to me, and in this you are not wrong. I like your thinking and withdraw my complaint forthwith. This is the all-weather jacket for me. It will be my lifelong companion. We will be very happy together."

"This other one’s very nice," he said feebly, gesturing towards one that appeared, from the price, to have been hand-yarned from the navel lint of Andean vicuñas. "Very warm."

"It is also one hundred pounds more expensive."

He yielded on the point, worn down by the relentlessness of my logic, and retreated, looking rather pale.

Funny, I seem to have that effect on shopkeepers. But at least I am now equipped with the toastiest coat in town.

Bring on the heatwave.

Australia's X-Factor Not Enough. Or is it?

I can restrain myself no longer. It seems that everyone is doing it. I think I even heard the Pope talking about it the other day. Or maybe that was something else.

Yes, it’s time for an Ashes preview.

If you are the kind of person who would rather go on a date with Gillian McKeith while being serenaded by Wagner (the X-Factor one, not the composer of Test-match-length operas) and danced at by Ann Widdecombe (see how topical I am!) than read about cricket, then I do urge you not to lose interest at this point. As I showed in the last, albeit rather long, and actually full of nested clauses (and parentheses) sentence, I do like to popularise these blogs of specialist interest just to keep the laypeople reading.

In the recent past, Ashes encounters in Australia have resembled a quadratic equation in which the unknown ‘X’ (as we will discover later, a crucial letter in this context) has been replaced by the words ‘Australia win' and all the other elements have also been replaced by 'Australia win'. On occasions the contest has been more uneven than the contents of Mr. Bumpy's Bumper Bag of Big Bumps. Australians would have you believe that the most recent meeting between the two teams Down Under occurred in 2006-2007 and resulted in a 5-0 trouncing for Australia over the Poms. It’s funny, but I can remember everything about that series up until the moment when the great English bowler Steve Harmison stood poised at the end of his run-up, ready to unleash his particular brand of hell on the unsuspecting and hapless Australian batsmen. As far as I know, the series stopped there and the next time the teams met was in England last year, when we thrashed them 2-1.

So visiting teams fare badly in Australia. On this occasion, however, England fans can allow themselves the merest hint of optimism. Why? Well, let’s compare the two teams in a completely even-handed, unbiased and utterly accurate and truthful point-by-point list:

POINT ONE - PREPARATION

Magnificent England’s preparation for this series has been thorough, professional and seamless - an object lesson in how to acclimatise, build momentum and send the right signals to both yourselves and the opposition. Under the inspiring leadership of Honorary Englishman and Great Cricketing Hero Andy Flower they come to Australia not having lost a Test series in the last 5 and having won 12 of their last 19 Tests. All of those wins have been so facile as to make stealing candy from a child look like a daring and sophisticated art heist as portrayed in The Thomas Crown Affair.

Feeble Australia, by contrast, have lost 12 of their last 18 international games, and were so scaredy-cat about losing two of the others that they arranged for them to be wiped out by mysterious and entirely uncharacteristic-of-the-country-they-were-in rainstorms.

Pathetic.

POINT TWO - SELECTION CONSISTENCY

Indomitable England have a settled squad.

Wobbly Australia were so uncertain about the make-up of their squad that they could only narrow it down to 17 with two weeks to go to the first Test. When they finally got round to naming an appropriately-sized squad they included Xavier Doherty, an uncapped spinner who boasts a first-class bowling average of 48.26. So, having introduced Mr. Doherty, it’s time for:

Killer Stat Number One
Teams selecting players whose name begins with ‘X’ have an appalling recent record. Of the last 11 games played by sides picking a player whose first name begins with ‘X’, only one has been won. Xenophon Constantine Balaskas may have had a groovy name, but he was unable to prevent South Africa from three consecutive innings defeats against Australia in 1936. More recently, Xavier Marshall’s only success in Tests came when the West Indies beat England in 2009, but as this was the last time that England resembled a ragtag collection of five-year-olds who had never played cricket before, and they have since evolved into a fearsome squad of lantern-jawed Aussie-munchers, that result is irrelevant.

This is closely followed by:

Killer Stat Number Two
www.babynames.com lists no fewer than 28 boy’s names beginning with ‘X’. The fact that only two of those names (Xavier and Xenophon) have made it to Test Match Player status shows you just how flaky the letter is when it comes to top level sporting achievement. No side could possibly succeed with a name like that in its ranks.

POINT THREE - FORM

England have improved throughout their three warm-up games, in which all the batsmen have spent time at the crease, all the bowlers have taken wickets (including the second string) and tactical plans have been executed clinically. Most recently, they completed an easy victory over Australia A, in a fixture normally notable for the way it highlights the embarrassing gulf between the two nations. In days gone by, most of Australia second-best would have walked into the England side - nowadays they'd have as much chance of a game as I have of becoming manager of Liverpool’s all-powerful European Cup-winning side of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

As an indicator of the confidence running through this squad, suffice it to say that Monty Panesar took a one-handed wonder catch off a full-blooded pull shot.

Monty.

Not Jonty. Monty.

As for form between the two sides, how about:

Killer Stat Number Three
Jonathan Trott, England’s very-English-oh-yes middle-order batsman, has never ever lost a Test Match against Australia.

And how have Australia fared recently? Well, let’s wheel out:

Killer Stat Number Four
Baby-faced Aussie-muncher Ian Bell (192) scored more runs in his most recent innings than Ponting, Watson, Katich, Haddin and North cumulatively managed in their last game (169). So this pattern is bound to repeat itself in all five Tests. Obviously.

POINT FOUR - NICKNAMES

English players’ nicknames are a mark of the togetherness of the squad. Finny, Swanny, Cooky, Belly, Straussy. Just add -y to the surname and Boby’s your uncley.

Australian players’ nicknames are all over the place: Pup, Midge, Kat, Eagle. Make your minds up, guys - cricket team or menagerie? Of the others, Steven Smith is so undistinguished that, according to Cricinfo, he doesn’t even have a nickname.

Amateur hour.

That’s it. England are bound to win. It’s all going so smoothly.

Too smoothly. The last time England won the Ashes in Australia, they were so feeble in their warm-up games that they were famously slated by Martin Johnson in the ‘can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field’ article. This time they can patently do all of these things quite well.

So I’ve come to the uncomfortable conclusion that they’re bound to lose.

Bugger.

Sweet Charity

Charity has changed over the years. It was so simple back in the day. Well-meaning people rattling tins on the street corner; a plastic dog with a slot in its head; the occasional raffle, with a family tin of Cadbury’s Roses as the third prize; a single Oxfam shop on the high street, selling your old shoes and a Val Doonican LP.

But those days of innocence are long gone, and I'm not sure we're any the better for it. Chariddee has become big business. Go to Oxfam nowadays and you could easily mistake it for a ‘boutique’ with its quality merchandise and prices to match. The trip to the charity shop to get rid of (or buy) worn out jeans and that corduroy jacket that has got just that little bit too threadbare is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. No more offloading all those Barbara Dan Jeffrey Taylor Brown Archer Bradfords that have sullied your shelves for so long (but which, let’s face it, you rather enjoyed, or you wouldn’t have had so many of them). Nowadays you’re more likely to go shopping in an Oxfam to pick up an Alexander McQueen outfit or a signed copy of Nigel Slater’s latest.

When it comes to raising money yourself, just going on a sponsored walk, as was the case when I were a lad (it were all fields round ‘ere, an’ all) simply isn’t enough. Nowadays it’s all about the eccentricity or extremity of the act. If you're not prepared to dress up as a kangaroo and roller skate up Mount Kilimanjaro to raise £1000 for Muscular Dystrophy, or run the marathon backwards while playing The Brotherhood Of Man’s greatest hits on a euphonium in aid of Cancer Research then you might as well not bother.

As for regular ‘giving’, it's not possible to walk down the road any more without being assaulted by nauseatingly cheerful young people with clipboards, whose blondness and affability are carefully designed to make you feel guilty for wanting to push them in front of a bus. You see the telltale red bib fifty yards off and start veering to the left. They see you seeing them and dance a cheerful little “give it up, little man, I have you in my sights” dance. You see them seeing you seeing them, and execute the five-second mime that tries to say “I’m so sorry I really don’t have time for this I actually do give quite a lot to charity I mean there’s the fiver a month to Age Concern and of course I gave fifty quid to the Pakistani flood victims and don’t forget the Bolivian child I’m sponsoring and that wonderful African AIDS charity ooh is that the time my train leaves in six minutes I must dash so sorry”.

But you know it is futile.

“Hi, do you have a minute for Save/Help/Patronise The Children/Aged/Disadvantaged (delete as appropriate)?”

“Move aside, blond(e) person,” you reply, “or I will render that clipboard unusable in a novel and painful way.”

This merely serves to amplify the wattage of their grin.

“No problem! Have a good life!”

You give in, as you both knew you would. Your Steely Resolve is no match for their particularly sadistic brand of geniality and niceness. There goes yet another £5 a month.

And then they send you a biro for no discernible reason other than to make you feel guilty when you throw it away.

Guilt at every turn.

Please don't misunderstand me - I’ve done my share of quasi-pointless fundraising activity (you think I conducted all the Tchaikovsky symphonies in a day for fun?) and know that dozens of you have raised serious money for many genuinely worthwhile charities.

But with over 180,000 charities in England and Wales, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for any of the smaller ones to make themselves noticed, and likewise very hard for the well-meaning but ill-informed individual (that’s me!) to sort it all out. Donation fatigue doesn’t help. Nor does the apparent perception of some charities as ‘sexier’ than others. And is it just me, or are some of the larger charities now spending so much money on advertising and other overheads that it is difficult to know exactly how much money actually gets to the intended recipient?

It is beyond the scope of this blog to give detailed information on the complexities of modern-day giving. It’s a massively complex subject and I am, as I think I mentioned, well-meaning but ill-informed.

But let’s go easy on the kangaroo suits, shall we?

I Say Old Bean

DISCLAIMER: Despite the unpromising beginning, this post is NOT about football. Keep going. You’ll get to the bit about food soon enough. If, on the other hand, you prefer football to food, you might want to read the opening paragraph and stop there.

So. Hats off to the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea on a feisty defeat to Brazil in their World Cup opener last night. Funny how the countries that are keenest to show off their democratic credentials in the name of their country are the ones least qualified to do so.

Still, they played as if their lives depended on it.

In fact, come to think of it...

Anyway, their performance was in stark contrast to Spain’s. They seemed to think that if they just kept passing the ball eventually one of the passes would go into the net.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about vegetables.

And before you jump to the inevitable conclusion, I have indeed steered the subject away from football and am not referring to the England team.

Ba-boom-ching. Thangyouveddymudge.

There’s been a certain amount of self-sufficiency in the Runny household of late. Why, only last night, the Flame-Haired Temptress and I partook of our own radishes, dipped in someone else’s salt; followed by our own potatoes, chives and spinach, paired with someone else’s butter, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts and raisins.

A veritable feast.

Peas are on their way, too. And we’ve got more herbs than the annual meeting of the Tijuana Brass Appreciation Society.

All of this has appeared from nowhere, it would seem, lovingly nurtured by the soothing hand of the F-HT.

It was different back in the day. When we first started growing veg, I was the instigator.

Our garden wasn’t big. Nor was it accessible, as we occupied a first-floor flat.

So starting a veg garden was not an undertaking to be embarked on without serious consideration.

I sourced, ordered and bought raised beds, compost and seeds, not making much of a fuss about how clever I was being.

And then, with a great deal of huffing and puffing, I planted and nurtured them.

There came the time for thinning out, the process whereby dozens of healthy pre-pubescent radishettes would be sacrificed to the merciless God of Waste in order that the fittest of the species be given a little Lebensraum.

It’s not for the faint of heart.

After several weeks’ consultation with the sage of all things horticultural, Dr. D.G.Hessayon, I took a deep breath, armed myself with tweezers and set about my grisly business.

The procedure was executed with surgeon-like delicacy and accuracy.

For about five minutes.

Then I got fed up and just ripped the buggers out willy-nilly.

Or left them where they were.

Surely, I thought, they can sort it out for themselves? It can’t make that much difference.

You live and learn.

Time passed and vegetables (some of them, at least) grew.

Then, disaster.

Slugs and snails appeared. Puppy dog tails probably weren’t far behind.

The best thing to do, I was assured, was to nail them at night.

Manfully, and again with the minimum of fuss, I donned waders and sou’westers (it was a wet spring) and strode into the fray. Eschewing all offers of sustenance, and protected only by the trusty torch of truth and the kitchen scissors of slug-murder, I dispatched them to all four corners of our small plot.

It only encouraged them.

If you’re not a gardener you may not appreciate the determination and downright evil exhibited by the average group of guzzling gastropods.

Think Simon Cowell crossed with Genghis Khan.

Still, eventually, we had a crop of sorts.

Modestly accepting the loving applause of an admiring throng, I made a very small meal of some very small potatoes with a couple of very small leaves of spinach on the side.

The slugs opened an ‘all you can eat’ buffet round the corner.

The next year we were moving, so the garden went by the wayside.

Now, established in the new place, where the garden is more accessible, we have enough room for the following:

A shed.

A dried-up pond (large enough for frogs to breed, but not large enough for them to hide from Felis Catus).

A vine.

A faux palm tree (Felis Catus likes to think he can climb it. When he is halfway up, he thinks again).

A couple of raised beds.

It is in these raised beds that we are nurturing the stuff of food fads.

You know how it goes. Every couple of years the foodie community rejoices in a new, painfully chic, fashion ingredient.

Never mind that said ingredient has been in plentiful supply and gone unnoticed for years. This year it is the thing.

Delia started it years ago with those blessed cranberries. One moment you couldn’t buy cranberries because nobody stocked them; the next you couldn’t get them because they were sold out.

Pomegranates, blueberries, Alfonso mangoes, rocket, chard, butternut squash, Jersey Royals, asparagus, artichokes, salsify, polenta, pea shoots, carnaroli rice, argan oil, etc etc. They’ve all had their moment in the sun, leading to some truly horrendous culinary disasters as amateur cooks chuck them willy-nilly into everything they cook, based purely on the fact that Nigel did a feature on them in The Observer last Sunday.
Pomegranate risotto anyone?

Thought not.

You’d have thought that we’d exhausted them all.

I beg to differ.

Broad bean leaves.

Rip them off, wash off the black fly (for black fly there will be), and wilt them in oil with garlic.

They look a bit like baby spinach, but taste like broad beans, which is a little disturbing.

But they are worth a go. At the very least they are more plentiful and require less patience than broad beans themselves, which always look so promising in their plump pods, but which invariably yield a crop barely big enough to coat the bottom of an eggcup.

All I ask is this: if broad bean leaves turn into the next superfood fashion, just remember where you read it first.

Strictly for the birds

Yesterday, one eye on the weather (that’s a quarter of an eye each, as there were four of us), we visited a miracle.

This is where I get evangelical and stuff.

You must visit the London Wetland Centre.

It doesn’t matter where you live or what your level of interest in wildlife is: go there.

Birdwatcher living in Barnes? It’s on your doorstep. Go there.

From Fremantle, Western Australia and don’t do outdoorsy stuff or nature of any description? Go there.

Live on the moon and enjoy hunting birds until they’re extinct? Go there. But don’t bring your gun.

Seriously, that a place such as this should exist anywhere is good enough, and proof that amidst all the earth-plundering insanity that overwhelms modern life there are people who are quietly doing the right thing in an unpreachy kind of way. But the true miracle is that it’s right slap bang in the middle (ish) of London. A short bus ride from Hammersmith tube and you’re immersed in forty-two (Douglas Adams would be so happy) hectares of twitching paradise. Eider ducks threaten to trip you up as they take the kids for a walk; red-breasted geese honk en masse as if to compensate for their weird anatomical-drawing like appearance; tufted ducks dive obligingly for between twenty and thirty seconds, just like what it says on the laminated sheet. And much more besides.

If you’re not interested in the minutiae, it’s just a brilliant walk with a convenient shop and cafe to anticipate.

But if ornithological trivia is (should be ‘are’, really, because trivia are plural) your thang, I have news.

Apparently there was an American Golden Plover on site yesterday.

Now although I was once a junior twitcher of almost unparalleled spoddiness, I wouldn’t know an American Golden Plover from a speck of volcanic ash on my binoculars, which is generally what birds look like in real life. I know what a regular (or, as I discover, Eurasian) Golden Plover looks like. Or at least I do as long as it’s sitting on my desk with a big sign saying ‘I am a Golden Plover’ round its neck. But put me in the wild and I am reduced to ridiculous and ever-more-fanciful guesswork.

“Cranes,” I murmur, as a pair of suitably-wide-winged birds take off half a mile away on the other side of the lake. I say it just loudly enough for my family to be impressed, but too quietly for the bona fide twitchers standing two yards away from me to hear. For if they do, I am undone, the gossamer fabric of my expertise unravelled like an Andrex roll fleeing an overexcited puppy.

Tactical game, birdwatching.

I came over a touch Fotherington-Thomas as we walked round, marvelling at nature in the raw, at one with the awesome delicacy and beauty of the planet, and as near as dammit wept when I saw a mother coot with its two fluffy chicks doggy-paddling (cooty-paddling?) into the reeds. How wonderful, I thought, that in stark contrast to the general mood of things these days, there are people who really value nature, devoting themselves to the preservation of habitat and cherishing the lives of the birds as they might their own children.

How inspiring, I thought.

We nipped into a hide, to shelter from one of the brief but violent showers that are the hallmark of any self-respecting Bank Holiday Monday. Scanning the horizon, binoculars glued to my eyes, I fielded questions from both sides, as my family tried to ascertain firstly what that brown bird bobbing up and down on the water was, and secondly what sandwich or tortilla wrap I would prefer for lunch.

I blanched a little as I realised the answer to both questions was ‘duck’.

I like my hypocrisy with hoisin sauce.

The Rewards of Culinary Incompetence

We’ve all done it. Don’t pretend you haven’t.

In a fit of brazen chutzpah (is there any other kind?) you imagine you know better than the recipe. A professional food writer has shared the knowledge and experience garnered over decades of hard work, but you look at their offering and think ‘pah! What do you know, Simon/Hugh/Delia/Nigella/Jamie/Albert/Marco Pierre/Heston (delete as appropriate)? I can do this standing on my head. Where you say butter, I will use sunflower oil. Where you say fifteen minutes, I know very well you mean thirty-five. Where you ask for the juice of half a lemon...well I’ve got all these lemons in the basket and they’re going to go off soon - I’ll chuck three in.’

For this recipe you will require:

Fillet of salmon. For eight. Three of whom are ill and have cancelled.

Some potatoes - neither the same amount nor variety as in the recipe.

Purple sprouting broccoli.

Those lemons.

Garlic. Plenty.

Fat of some kind. Whatever you have.

A chisel.

1. Check the recipes. Salmon wrapped in foil with lemon juice - piece of cake. Grated Golden Wonder potato cake - no problem. Steamed purple sprouting with garlic and anchovies - duh.
2. Put the books back on the shelf. You won’t need them again.
3. Peel and grate the potatoes. Some of them go a bit brown. That’s ok, they’ll be brown once they’re cooked anyway. Add the cloves of garlic, crushed, to the potato gratings.


4. Lay the salmon fillet on oiled foil.


5. Squeeze the lemon(s) over the salmon.


6. Pick the lemon pips out of the salmon.


7. Wrap the salmon parcels.


8. Foil torn. Start again.


9. Once that’s done, turn your attention to the potatoes.


10. They really have gone quite brown, haven’t they? And you haven’t started cooking them yet.


11. Heat the fat and add the potato/garlic mixture.


12. So far so good. Relax and watch a bit of cricket.


13. Shot!


14. What’s that smell?


15. Ah.


16. This is why you need the chisel. Hack the potato from the bottom of the pan. Remove burnt-but-not-actually-inedlble crust and set aside. Put the rest of it back in the pan and return to the heat.


17. Back to the cricket.


18. Got him!


19. Bugger. Fish.


20. Oh God when should I put the broccoli on?


21. Not now.


22. Idiot. You’ll regret that.


23. Potato doing nicely, fish ok.


24. Consider making broccoli puree instead.


25. Realise that success of dish depends on people being at table at the right time. People sadly not in evidence.


26. The potato is burning again. Never mind. Crunchy bits are good.


27. Assemble plates, cutlery, food, wine, people.

It was all so simple. And, despite your best efforts, absolutely delicious. Pat yourself on the back and thumb nose at food writers. Consciously or not, you knew better all along.

iNdecision

So the dudes at CERN have finally done it and now the particles are crashing into each other like demented but absolutely teensy dodgem cars. And we’re all still here.

So far.

Prof Brian Cox, previously mentioned here, has been tweeting up a storm, excitedly comparing the LHC to a cup of milky coffee (apparently there is more energy in the latter, making it much more of a threat to the planet than the former - I think he’s been reading me). He also threatened to chin the next person to say ‘black hole’ to him. How refreshing to see a public figure take a stand on the issues that really matter.

No sign yet, unfortunately, of the elusive Higgs Boson. It’s bound to be in the last place they look.

But even if we had been sucked into a black hole, it would have been as nothing when compared to the fathomless vortex of desire into which I am being inexorably dragged.
Bit by bit, day by day, they’re coming to get me. Clad in spotless (they obviously don’t have cats) black polo necks, and chanting strange mantras like ‘pinch to zoom’ and ‘let’s go for sushi!’, they resemble little more than the sinister beings who took over the world in The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

Ok, so the fashion is a bit different, but you get the idea. Soon, if you’re found not in possession of an iPhone, you will be exposed as ’the uncool’ by expressionless zombies pointing at you and shrieking like my coffee machine whipping up a manchiato.

I speak as someone who has owned two iPhones, both purchased on the first day of availability. My body was snatched a long time ago.

And now there’s the iPad.

We’ve known about it for a couple of months now, and reactions have varied from ‘it’s a big iPhone. What’s the fuss?’ to ‘it’s a big iPhone that is going to change the world and I am so excited I think my head’s about to fall off’.

I have one foot in each camp, which is odd, because I could never do the splits.

On the one hand, I already have an iPhone and I already have a computer. The iPad is neither one thing nor the other and won’t replace either of them. I don’t need one.

On the other hand...drool. And slobber. And drool again. I want one.

On the third hand, there is the possibility that it will actually change the world. And if there’s any world-changing gonna be happening that involves fiddling around with gadgets instead of armed uprising or particle beams, I want to be part of it.

So it’s a dilemma. What do you think? Should I get one? My decision will be based very nearly entirely on what you say.

No pressure.