Gawd Bless Yers Fairport Convention

I went to see Fairport Convention at The Borderline in London last night. I don’t go to gigs as much as I used to. Actually, these days, I hardly go at all and I went largely because my friend Don was kindness itself and bought me a ticket. Fairport aren’t a band of my generation. I only discovered them in the early eighties, second hand LPs languishing in the racks at Talisman Records in Tunbridge Wells where the perennially stoned but always lovely Fiona presided from behind the counter.

Having bought a copy of the Island Records sampler ‘Nice Enough To Eat’ I decided there was so much great music on there that I’d try to collect everything I could on the pink Island label. Some things stuck; Jethro Tull, Free, King Crimson, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Wynder K. Frog, while others like Mott the Hoople and Spooky Tooth somehow passed me by.

But I loved Fairport.

Then at university, in the days when housing benefit and unemployment benefit allowed students to stay on over the summer, we decided to head up the Cherwell to Cropredy for Fairport’s annual get together. It was 1987.

Even when it rains at Cropredy the sun is shining above the clouds. I remember those brief days in a golden haze, the Wadworths bar stretching into the endless distance, tall grasses, long Indian skirts, jigging and reeling to The Lark in the Morning and Dirty Linen, falling in love with some folk-cuckoo damsel who would inevitably waft by with every turn of my head.

Then after university a new set of friends made Cropredy an almost annual pilgrimage and most summers during the 90s, me living on a boat further down the Oxford Canal, we made our way there.  It was as much as part of my memory of that time as Sunday nights at the Falkland Arms and days spent playing guitar on the roof of the boat.

I missed the year when my mates Pyckwyll and Shw managed to have themselves photographed clanking tankards with Robert Plant. It’s a moment of folk-cuckoo legendariness.

But I do remember joining the BBC at Oxford in 1998 and either that year or 1999 heading up to Peggy’s place, in Barton St John if I remember right, and making a piece for the radio ahead of the festival. It was a crime report about the murder of Matty Groves and Lord Donald’s wife and the Fairports all participated as witnesses to the deed.

The band played it over the PA at the festival before they went on for their Saturday night set. Folk and roll.

I think last night was the first time I’d seen Fairport in thirteen or fourteen years.  Five years and some reporting in Malaysia took me out of that whole scene.

The set was really well chosen – Sir Patrick Spens, Doctor of Physick, The Wood and the Wire, Fotheringay, Cell Song, Banks of the Sweet Primroses, Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Matty Groves, Meet on the Ledge and a few others.

Even the banter was funny – well most of it. Ric Sanders, enough with the gags already.  I remember your jokes from the 80s.  Please think of the additional burden they place on the NHS.

But it wasn’t so much that Simon, Peggy and co. looked those years older as knowing that I did too. But if they’ve continued to grow into their skins so has the music. Seeing a bunch of sixty-somethings playing pop or rock is one thing. It’s sometimes a little sad. But Fairport’s music is timeless and they bring not a vain attempt to recapture youth but a mastery of the art that comes with age. I found it quite emotional. I was both reconnecting with and mourning my youth. But it was a fine youth and Fairport helped make it that – long may they fiddle and strum.

Leave Our Kids Alone

Today, together with my friend Rupert Read I launched a campaign to end advertising targetting young children.  It started with a letter to the Daily Telegraph (below).

It’s called Leave Our Kids Alone and we’ve started a petition.  Please sign and share.

You can follow on twitter @LeaveRKidsAlone and we have a Facebook page too.  Thanks for your support.

Dear Sir/Madam

We want to see an immediate end to all advertising aimed at children of primary school age and younger.

As a society we are broadly agreed that we should protect our children from the worst of the adult world.  Teachers, child minders and pretty much all those who wish to work with children are heavily vetted to ensure that they’re both safe and qualified to be trusted with their care.

Yet we have sleepwalked into a situation where the advertising industry, worth £12Bn a year in the UK alone, is allowed to turn techniques designed to manipulate adult emotions and desires onto children as young as two or three. It is iniquitous; it is plain wrong.

Almost all children under 11 depend on their parents for money.  So advertising makes heavy use of ‘pester power’ – enlisting children to make demands of their parents – because it is more effective than targeting parents directly.

Yet that is exactly what a civilised society should require advertisers to do – to sell to parents, not to little children.  When young children are learning about the cost of material things, and about managing small quantities of money, they should be free to do so without the pressures put on them by advertising.

As things stand we are in danger of turning out generation after generation of young consumers rather than young citizens, people who define themselves more by what they buy and the objects they display rather than by what they can contribute to the society in which they live.

Rather than raise children obsessed with stuff let’s free them to channel their energies into forming friendships, discovering their talents, exploring our extraordinary world and unleashing their imaginations; things that cost little but whose value is immeasurable.

Bans on advertising aimed at young children are already working in places such as Sweden, Quebec and Greece. It’s time for a similar ban here.

Yours faithfully

Jonathan Kent, writer, broadcaster, co-Founder ‘Leave Our Kids Alone’

Rupert Read, Chair of Green House, co-Founder ‘Leave Our Kids Alone’

Bel Mooney, writer and Daily Mail columnist

Susie Orbach, author

George Monbiot, author, journalist and campaigner

Oliver James, Psychologist, author

Martin Kirk, Global Campaigns Director, The Rules

Natalie Bennett, Leader, Green Party of England and Wales

Caroline Lucas MP

Dr Ian Gibson, former MP

John Hilary, Executive Director of WAR ON WANT

Tony Juniper, sustainability advisor and writer

Ed Gillespie, Co-Director, Futerra

George Marshall, Climate Outreach and Information Network

Neal Lawson, Chair of Compass

Linda Jack, Chair of Liberal Left.

Baroness Ruth Lister, Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University

Tom Crompton, author, ‘Common Cause’

Adrian Ramsay, Green Party Home Affairs spokesman

Dr Richard House, Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies, Uni of Winchester

Professor Michael M. Patte, Bloomsburg University

Dr. David Whitebread, University of Cambridge

Dr Teresa Belton, Uni of East Anglia School of Education & Lifelong Learning

Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood

Professor Andrew Samuels, Essex University

Professor Guy Claxton, author and educationalist

Susanna Abse, CEO, Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships

Tanith Carey, author, Where Has My Little Girl Gone? How to Protect Your Daughter From Growing Up Too Soon.

Dr Jennifer Gidley, President, World Futures Studies Federation

Professor Kevin J. Brehony, Froebel Professor of Early Childhood Studies,
Froebel College, Roehampton University

Rev Paul Nicolson, Taxpayers Against Poverty

Dr Lindsay Peer CBE, Psychologist

Claude Knights FRSA, Director of Kidscape
Sue Gerhardt, author and psychotherapist

Greg Brooks, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield

Fiona Danks, co-author of Going Wild books

Patrick Holford, author and founder of Food for the Brain Foundation

Paul Cooper, National Projects Director, National Children’s Football Alliance

Fiona Carnie, educationalist and writer

Linda Pound, early years consultant

Dr Maria Robinson, Educational Consultant

Dr Gillian Proctor, Clinical Psychologist and author

Prof. Iain McGilchrist, author, The Master and his emissary

Dr Robert Snell, psychotherapist & Kim Crewe, Head of Therapeutic Services, The Dialogue Centre

Sami Timimi, Director of Medical Education, Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation NHS Trust

Dr. Maria Robinson, early years adviser

Dr. Lindsay Peer, CBE

Sir Tim Brighouse, former Schools Commissioner for London

Pippa Smith, Co Chairman, Safermedia

Miranda Suit, Co Chairman, Safermedia

Colin Richards, Emeritus Professor, University of Cumbria

Prof Del Loewenthal, University of Roehampton

Saci Lloyd, author of The Carbon Diaries and Momentum

Dr Bronwen Rees, Director of Centre for Transformational Management Practice, Anglia Ruskin University

Martin Large, author, lecturer, Stroud Common Wealth

Christopher Clouder, International Director, Alliance for Childhood

The Best Fish and Chips in England

I eat fish and chips more than I should – more than I should because often as not they’re a bit disappointing.

However I’d gladly eat them a good deal less often if whenever I did eat them it was at Maggie’s.

Maggie’s is an institution, hidden behind the huts of Hastings beach, down the Old Town / Rock-a-nore end, behind the fish stalls, above the miniature railway.  I can’t swear that Maggie makes the best fish and chips in England but they’re definitely the best I’ve had – and what’s more in all the times I’ve eaten there I’ve never been disappointed. They’re always good.

Fish and chips remains the quintessentially English dish.  I know we’re told periodically that it’s been displaced by chicken tikka masala or balti, burgers or spag bog, but fashion sweeps contenders away, fish and chips are eternal.

For a start there’s something amazingly sympathetic about the combination of fish and potatoes.  You’d be forgiven for thinking that the potato was a sea vegetable.  Perhaps it is.  They originate from the Andes, and the Andes, relatively recently in geological time, were under the sea.

‘Pah’, you say and you’re probably right.

One of the things that Maggie’s gets right is that it’s generous with its portions.  Luca didn’t want a child’s portion of haddock and chips so I got him a small adult cod and chips.  The cod, small though it supposedly was, was the size of a battleship.  Unfortunately for Luca that battleship was the Bismarck and he was the HMS Hood. He was sunk.  Couldn’t finish it at all.  But it wasn’t for want of trying.

Maggie herself meanwhile is the ideal chatelaine. She gives the impression that all she wants is to do what she does, and do it well. Surely there’s no higher calling than to take pride in your endeavours and to want to excel.

We live in a world where people’s worth is increasingly measured in pounds, shillings and pence. Maggie’s is a world where somethings worth is measured not by how much customers are charged (at £6.50 her cod is a bargain and I’ve paid twice as much for something half as good far too many times), or by how much she makes, but by the pleasure she brings and the respect she and her staff have earned for it.

Maggie told me she’d been approached by a TV company that wanted to bring in a telly chef to show how fish and chips should be made. They couldn’t have chosen a better place and Maggie couldn’t have given them a better answer; ‘no thank you’.

I like Hastings and Maggie’s is one of the best things about it.  The rest of the seafront however is a good deal less generous, from the arcades that take your money with games that never pay out, to the crazy golf course that treats all children over 5 as adults and charges them £6.50 per round.  It was just above freezing and there was a bitter wind blowing in straight off the sea.  I think I’d have rather paid thirteen quid to have had my toenails pulled out than to have coughed up to stand in that wind and trolled round an overpriced crazy golf course.

Life’s Little Luxuries

‘Luxury’, ‘deluxe’ and ‘exclusive’ must be amongst the most debased words in the English language.  For heaven’s sakes, even Lidl labels some of its food products ‘luxury’.

What’s worse we’ve been encouraged to expect ‘luxury as standard’, whatever that means. It’s all part of the general trend towards getting us to consume, constantly, whether we want stuff or not.

If you need a good illustration of what over-consumption means you only need to stop to consider the obesity epidemic.  But that’s simply the most arresting visual image of a trend that has populated the car parks of our villages with huge ‘off road’ vehicles (that spend their entire lives on our roads), over-shopping for consumer goods, houses that are too large, energy we waste by leaving on the lights or heating the house to tropical temperatures, the one third of food we buy that the government estimates we simply throw out.

But reducing the amount of stuff we consume doesn’t mean we can’t have any nice things.  Perhaps we simply need to think about stuff differently and replace quantity with quality.  Human ingenuity and creativity aren’t finite resources.  We can take a piece of wood and burn it or we can take that piece of wood and carve it.  The more time, effort and skill are invested in it the more precious that piece of wood becomes.

Our ancestors understood something of this.  The ancients were buried with a few of their most treasured posessions, the things they carried with them through life and which gave them pleasure.

I like the things I use every day to give me pleasure.  They can be pretty inconsequential; a decent shaving brush and good shaving soap for instance.  They can become valued beyond any intrinsic value they may have to anyone else – I’ve had the same mugs for twenty years.  I use them daily.  They’re familiar, constant, comforting.  At the time they seemed a bit of an indulgence – they were six or seven quid each, or looked at another way, about 30p per year of pleasure I’ve had from them.

I like decent shoes.  I simply don’t want a cupboard full of them, just enough so I can give a pair a rest for a while so their leather can recover.  I bought a pair of Cheaney seconds at a market in London about 15 years ago and while I was in Malaysia I wore them to death.  They took a lot of punishment even though they weren’t looked after.

So lately I bought another couple of pairs, from the Cheaney factory shop, and this time got some shoe trees. I reckon I’ll get 10-15 years out of a pair of decent English shoes if they’re looked after.  It’s simple maths.  A pair of shoes from Camper costs between £75 and £110 and I’d expect them to last 3-4 years.  A pair of Cheaneys cost about double that.

And it’s not always the big things. I was running low on shaving soap. The previous bar had lasted me about 3 years and it’s something I use often. A new refil from George Trumper in St. James was £11 but that’ll be less than £5 per year. People spend way more than that on tins of chemical foam and this stuff is lovely. It’s a modest luxury but quite enough to create the semblance of indulgence.

The Golden Hour

Photographers and cameramen love dawn light.  The hour around dawn is often referred to as ‘the golden hour’, similarly the hour around sunset.   However of the two I tend to find dawn more powerful.  Partly this is because, these days, we often miss dawn being fast in our beds, behind drawn curtains.  So the dawn light catches the landscape in a way that is both magical and unfamiliar.

When I was reporting in South East Asia I’d often get up to shoot at dawn as with the opening shots of this video (the screen goes to black so that London could drop in library footage of the 2002 Bali Bombings).

The thing with dawn and evening skies is that when you see them you need your camera in your hand.  Take five minutes to dig out your kit and the chances are that the mesmerising sunset will have faded and you capture something rather more pedestrian than you originally saw.  Every minute counts.

The Secret of Great Fried Rice

I have to confess that I used to find fried rice difficult.  That seems silly.  What’s so hard about frying a bit of rice?

The thing is, I’d end up with a stodgy, soggy mess that was almost, but not quite, completely unlike anything I’d ever eat in a restaurant or, frankly, anything cooked by someone who knew what they were doing with fried rice.

Luckily I have a fried rice sifu to put me right.  The secret is quite simple – use overnight rice.

Basically your rice needs to have the right texture.  So here are the three things to remember:

1. Don’t wash your rice before cooking.  For boiled or steamed rice it’s good to wash the rice by rinsing it in a pot, changing the water and rinsing until the water stays clear.  For fried rice don’t wash it.  Put it in the water unwashed.  Boil it until it is just, and only just, cooked.  Don’t overdo it.  It won’t fry well.  You could pour a kettle full of water over it afterwards – but go easy.  I’ve taken to running cold water through it briefly as that stop the rice cooking.
2. Fluff your rice and put it in the fridge overnight.  This is critical.  It allows the rice to dry out slightly.  You can put it in the oven on a very low temperature for an hour or so but I only do that in an emergency.  The best thing about using overnight is that it’s a great way of doing half your cooking the night before.  All you have to do the next day is chop the veg and add everything to the rice.
3. Use a hot wok.  When we used to eat out in Malaysia my sifu would listen for a sound like the afterburner of a jet engine coming from the kitchen.  A really big fire and a hot wok was a pretty reliable indication that the food would be good.

A few other thoughts;

Chop your garlic, don’t crush it.  Sounds silly but East Asian chefs tend to chop their garlic very fine.  They don’t use a garlic press.

If you like South East Asian fried rice get a block of belacan  (pronounced belachan) which is dried prawn paste.  A little adds a certain something (dried prawn paste innit).  I tend to add it in with the oil.

If you’re going to use egg best to beat it and fry it first like an omelette, shred it and add it at the end.

If using seafood again fry it off first, put it to the side and add it back in when the rice is done.  With vegetables; start with the veg and keep it in there adding the rice.

Of course fried rice isn’t purely an East Asian speciality.  There’s also that Anglo-Indian classic kedgeree.  So here’s my kedgeree recipe.  It’s one of those joyous things where there’s no one right way (albeit there are a few wrong ways).

So here you go.  You’ll need:

75g uncooked rice (preferably basmati) per person.

1tbs neutrally flavoured oil – sunflower, rapeseed are fine, palm oil is not (for very many reasons)

1 medium onion (chopped fairly fine)

1 kipper per two people or 60g smoked haddock per person.

sweetcorn and peas (don’t be ashamed to use frozen)

1 tbs good quality curry paste (heat and quantity to taste)

ground turmeric

fresh coriander chopped

1 hard boiled egg per person (quartered)

Cook the rice as described above and leave in the fridge overnight.  Hard boil the eggs and put aside.

If you’re using kippers stick them in a jug, top up with boiling water and leave for 100 minutes.  If you’re using smoked haddock poach it in milk for ten minutes adding a couple of cardamoms, a clove, a chilli and a bay leaf.  Drain, flake (or in the case of the kippers probably chop) and put to one side while getting on with everything else.

Chop the onion, fry it fairly gently in a wok (a wok works for kedgeree even though it’s not a Chinese dish.)  Add the curry paste.   Cooking curry spices with the onion at the outset seems to help ‘seal’ them into the dish.  Add the turmeric.

Add the vegetables, stir though for a few second and then add the rice.  I like to raise the heat a little at this point but some people don’t like their kitchens getting smelly.  Add the fish and stir until everything is cooked through and garnish with fresh chopped coriander and quarters of hard boiled egg.

With East Asian fried rice there seem to be two main schools – Cantonese and Indon/Malay.  I have a deep affection for Malaysia, not so much a nation state, more a federation of restaurants and their customers.

Sitting outside of an evening in the heat and the dark, soaking up the atmosphere at a mamak or a warung with a plate of nasi goreng kampung (takmau ayam boss, makanan laut okey mah) is one of many states of bliss I discovered in SE Asia. That and teh ais kurang manis, a straw and the heat of the night or the first sip of cold beer after a sweltering day.

If only Malaysian politics were as good as Malaysian food…

Hot Cuisine From a Moominland Midwinter

I don’t know about you but I’ve generally had my fill of snow after two or three days.  Luca and I don’t agree on this one.  He thinks snow is the best thing in the entire calendar.  So we’ve been sledging and we’ve made a snowman and ticked most of his snow boxes, perhaps for the year.

However I’d had enough and decided to escape…to Helsinki.

I jest.  I was actually in Helsinki but, no, it wasn’t about escaping the snow.  Perhaps unsurprisingly however the snow intrudes rather less in Helsinki because although there’s rather a lot of it Finns do snow rather better than the English.

For instance when it snows in Finland they sweep it off airport runways because they find it then makes it easier for planes to land, whereas at Heathrow ground crew simply see an opportunity for building snowmen in the middle of the runway.

In Finland it may be cold outside but they’ve worked out that by insulating buildings it’s possible to keep them warm inside.  Sheer genius.  We prefer to keep the gas companies in profit by letting the heat escape in drafts and through inadequate windows.

Another piece of sheer genius were the blinis I ate at in Helsinki.  I’d never really seen the point of blinis before – sort of small rubbery pancakey things that were a bit like drop scones but without the charm or bulk.  Blinis, I thought, were cast offs from the washer section of the plumbing suppliers masquerading as food.

However my friend and colleague Marika took me out to a restaurant called ‘Rafla’ on Uudenmaankatu and there I discovered that blinis can be sublime.

I must apologise for the picture, grabbed with my iPhone.  They were so delicious that it didn’t occur to me that I should photograph them until I’d very nearly demolished the lot.  So this is quite a rude picture of the remains of my blinis.  They were served with sour cream, finely chopped red onion, vendace roe and small medallions of salmon (or gravlax).  To get the blinis this fine they are fried in oodles of butter.

The main course was grilled white fish on pumpkin, peppers and pine nuts was really good – if not quite such a revelation as the blinis. Marika explained that it’s a typical lake dwelling species that always tasted better when her father caught it than when she buys it from a shop.

People, let me put it this way; I didn’t feel the need to order pudding (yes you heard right) and I didn’t feel cheated for being puddingless.

Rafla’s chef, Alexander ja Hanna Gullichsen, seems to have had something of a hit with a recipe for pasta with avocado, lime, basil and parsley.  It wasn’t on the menu when we ate at Rafla and frankly I’m not sure I’d have chosen to eat pasta in Helsinki when there are so many things to choose from that use Finnish ingredients to excellent effect.

Helsinki may not be the most obvious food destination but with luck, research or simply with the help of Finnish friends you can certainly eat well.

So, just to encourage you, here’s a blini recipe from Finland

450ml semi-skimmed milk
3/4 sachet of dried yeast
300ml buckwheat flour
3 egg yolks
150 ml beer
75ml rye flour
150ml wheat flour
½ tbs salt
freshly ground white pepper
2 tbs full fat creme fraiche (or proper smetana – Eastern European soured cream – if you can get it)
3 beaten egg whites

Warm the milk to just over blood temperature (around 41-43 degrees C), add the dried yeast, give it half an hour in a warm place to start to develop before adding the buckwheat, covering and leaving to stand overnight to create a leaven.

Mix in the remaining ingredients ending by gently folding in the beaten egg whites.  Ideally use a blini pan (made of heavy cast iron with little blini sized indentations) and fry the blinis in clarified butter until crispy.

Serve (as per above) with smetana, chopped onion and vendace roe.

(Addendum)  The site on which I found this recipe states that “This recipe is owned by The Art Foundation Merita”.

Sorry, but the idea that you can own a recipe is pretty questionable.  You cannot copyright a list of ingredients.  I’ve added a link back out of politeness but where a recipe is traditional, as are blinis, saying you own it is about as sensible as saying you own a recipe for pancakes.  All the above ingredients are used in blini recipes by all sorts of people.