Menus

Little by little, the wedding planning steals my sanity (what little of it remains). The venue hunt is still ongoing. One thing I'm really enjoying, though, is getting sample menus from caterers, especially ones we can't afford- it would appear that the more expensive the food, the more ridiculous the names they give it.

My favourite example from a French caterer:

Hérisson de magret de canard fourré au pruneau: prune-stuffed hedgehog of duck breast

There are a couple of good bread ones, too- it can come as a trilogie (yes, that really is trilogy in English) or a farandole, which presumably means the bread is enchanted and dances for you before you eat it.

The worst culprits on the stupid name front, however, are English. The hedgehog thing is pretty daft, admittedly, but you can see where they're coming from. I sent an enquiry to a hotel near home just to see what kind of things they had on offer, and it was worth the effort for the pure comedy value of the menu they sent me. They seem to have a problem with the word "with", you see. Instead, we have:

• Presented Upon
• Accompanied By
• Set in (as in "Medallion of Seabass set in a Warm Vinaigrette")
• Complemented by (cue mental image of a blackberry coulis making pleasant comments to a mango cheescake- "my, my, you look fruity!" and the like)

And my absolute all-time favourite:

• "Pork Presented on a Plinth of Roast Apples".

A PLINTH?

Really, hotel people? A PLINTH?

Books and Prejudice

(AKA Book of the Fortnight, No. 4)

To understand the following, you must realise that, in my lifetime, I have met three people I really, very strongly, dislike. This isn't just dislike, this is just-being-in-the-same-room-as-them-makes-me-shake-with-anger. These are the people I have nightmares about.

(Incidentally, if you're reading this, fear not, you're not one of them).

The book I read last week is the favourite book of one of those people. It's quite a well-known book, and the kind of thing I would almost certainly have read before without this connection. You see, book preferences are such a personal thing, I was certain I wouldn't like it. Then, just last week, I came across this book (OK, OK, I'll get on and break the suspense, but in a minute, d'accord?) in the library, and I thought I'd give it a go. Well, I'm unemployed, and finding something worth reading amongst the Mills and Boon style dross that constitutes 90% of our local library's stock is always hard work.

You know what?

No, I can't say as I've ever met him.

Sorry.

Where was I?

Ah, yes. Well. I LOVED the book. It's been a long time since I've been able to get into something like that. Two days was all it took me, and it's not particularly short.

I might even tell you what the book's called, now.

It's The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

Moral of the story: I should lose some of my prejudices- who knows what else they've made me miss?

Best of British No. 3: The Coffee Morning

Last Saturday, my mother, youngest sister and I went to a coffee morning. It's been a while since I went to one, and, being somewhat out of the habit of coffee morning attendance, I was able to observe it with, as it were, new eyes. Not really new eyes, you understand- I'm still myope comme une taupe, or blind as a bat, depending on which small mammal you want me to be. But yes. Anyway.

I'm not sure coffee mornings even exist outside the UK, so I'd probably better explain. The principle is that individuals, often but not exclusively women of a certain age, gather to drink coffee and eat biscuits in the name of charity. You pay for entry, which entitles you to the said drink-and-a-biscuit. In actual fact, it's more or less an institutionalised form of elevenses (see previous Best of British post).

Then, there is the raffle. There is always, always a raffle. It is rare for anyone to enter a raffle because they actually want to win one of the prizes. Coffee morning raffle prizes are notorious for being re-donated to the next coffee morning raffle, so the same things go round again and again and again, until some small child wins one of the prizes and gives it to a great aunt for Christmas, at which point the prize may be displaced geographically and enter onto another town's coffee morning circuit. People buy tickets because, well, it's vaguely fun in a soft-gambling sort of way, and it's another way of supporting the charity.

On top of the raffle, there's always a cake stall and a tombola, which works along the same lines as the raffle, a bric-a-brac stall or two, and a book stall if you're lucky.

Then- and this is what I really wanted to talk about- there are the games.

Saturday's coffee morning was the district Brownie and Guide one. This species of coffee morning is notorious on a number of counts. First, you don't go for the coffee: the leaders see these occasions as the ideal opportunity for Brownies to pass their Hostess badge, so you get half a cup of lukewarm coffee served by a seven-year-old who will, more likely than not, manage to get the remaining contents of the cup all over the table. Secondly, the cake stall is presided over by the Trefoil Guild (retired guiders who often bear more than a passing resemblance to Miss Trunchbull in Matilda) who charge ridiculous prices and refuse to smile. Thirdly, they make the Guides come up with new games each time. This Saturday's was a classic, possibly the worst I've ever seen.

Dropping two-pence pieces onto five-pence pieces in a bucket full of water.

No kidding.

£1 for five goes, and if you managed to cover the 5p with your 2p, then you won a penny sweet.

Seriously. And then they wonder why the Guide stalls never make any money.

Girl vs. Wild

The neighbours have had their front garden done. It's very nice, in a minimalist and low-maintenance sort of way- gravel, small bushes, lovely slate path, that kind of thing. It's also very, very tidy.

Our front garden, untidy at the best of times, is currently attempting to revert to nature. It's a mess, and we can't do very much with it. It's north-facing and the soil is rubbish (literally- we keep finding lumps of polystyrene in it). There's a good-sized budleia and a hydrangea, both of which keep attempting to attack each other and, worse, passers-by. Apart from that, though, the whole thing is covered in ivy and brambles and other plants which are clearly on the verge of becoming carnivorous. This morning, I dug out six buckets full of dead plant matter (the kind of activity that makes my parents ask who I am, and what I've done with their eldest daughter), but it doesn't seem to have made any difference. If it gets any worse, we're going to need rescuing.

Any knights with shining secateurs out there?

Chouette Patate

Après les carottes, une patate.

Et après la patate...

...une chouette-patate!

C'est fou ce qu'on peut faire avec le même patron.

Bon, ok, c'est un hibou, mais il aurait fallu plus de force d'ésprit que je n'ai pour résister au jeu de mots.

J'ai fait le hibou pour offrir à ma grand-mère (demain, c'est la fête des mères ici). Au moins, elle pensera que c'est un hibou. Mais nous, on saura que ce n'est qu'une patate avec des ailes.

Inevitable

It had to happen some time.

As you may have noticed, I'm quite big on the whole anthropomorphisation of food thing, especially where vegetables are concerned.

As you may also have noticed, I'm currently unemployed and have quite a bit of time on my hands.

Bear with me, I am going somewhere with this. I am, no less, going into three dimensions...


Oh yes. I made a cuddly carrot.

Well, strictly speaking that's not true.

I made three.


Carrot no. 2 is magnetic. Carrot no. 3 is a keyring. I tried a different expression on carrot no. 3- it was meant to look worried, but I think it's come out looking a bit shifty. Ah well. We all need a shifty-looking carrot in our lives.

I'm thinking of calling the big one Betty. Betty-Carotene, you see.

Just to bring things round full circle, my first ever stuffed penguin, and one of only two permanently saved from the biannual penguin cull, is called Carrot.

"It's a good job she didn't give me a nose, I bet you really stink of fish!"

Be warned, this is just the start. There's more.

Back to the cupboard now to root out some more googly eyes.

Magic Roundabout

Carousel is over now, and I have a better idea of what actually happens in it. If anyone's interested, there's a plot summary on Wikipedia- it helped me a lot in understanding what was going on (you can't see much from an orchestra pit, it being, well, a pit, and all that).

This nearly ended up being a Best of British post on amateur dramatics, but I think the Americans do a pretty good line in that too. Ah well. If this was in French, I could call it a phenomène anglo-saxon, but the last two words have different connotations in English, where an "anglo-saxon phenomenon" could only really be something to do with pre-1066 British history. Not that that would be an odd thing to find on this blog, but still, y'know...

Anyway. Yes. The production was very good indeed. It displayed a number of classic features of small-town amateur dramatics, to whit:

-one of the male leads was pushing seventy and clearly at least twice the age of his female counterpart (Mr Snow and Carrie, for those who're following

-the second female lead (Carrie) was visibly pregnant, in spite of the best efforts of the costume department to hide it

-a pretty spectacular range of accents- various forms of american (the story is based in Maine), generic northern, and one notable example of full-on Cumbrian: " 'e works ont' carousels..."

-most of the acting was really good, which made the two or three really bad actors really stand out, to great comic effect

-REALLY DODGY sound effects from a tape played over the PA system

-Overenthusiastic tech blokes with dry ice. Oh good grief, the dry ice. Cold smoke coming over the edge of the stage sinks. What's just below the stage? The orchestra pit, that's what. *Coughs, splutters, and the like*

Though some of this may sound critical, it's actually not. You see, these are the things that make amateur dramatics so wonderful. Everyone joins in, everyone gives what they can, and the audience goes along with it. There were teary eyes at the end of You'll Never Walk Alone, and they clapped along to June is Bustin' Out All Over. (Actually, my mother- no great fan of musicals- has a new set of lyrics to that one, involving the word "bra" and a nice rhyme of "jiggly" with "wiggly"- I'll let you work the rest out for yourselves).

So, yes. That, as they say, is that. The week is over. I'm going to miss it- well, once I've got the music out of my head I will- it aint 'alf tenacious.

Book of the Fortnight, No. 3

I'm a few days behind, yet again (EDIT: nearly a fortnight behind, because the internets ate this post and I hadn't realised it wasn't published). One of the problems with unemployment, actually, is that you lose track of what day it is, what week it is and the like, and so your perception of weeks, fortnights and the like becomes more flexible.



Then again, maybe I'm just lazy and/or forgetful and should stop making excuses. Bad Dobby.



This fortnight's book was nearly another history one, but I've decided to spare you a post on methodology and the interdisciplinary approach for now. Instead, I re-read (yes, re-reading counts, as long as the book merits it) The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, an autobiographical account of the author's experiences sheltering Jews in occupied Holland, for which she was eventually arrested and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp.



The most startling aspect of the book is the remarkable faith demonstrated by Corrie and her sisters, devout Christians who based their decisions on prayer and reading the Bible. The tone of the book is perhaps a little too evangelistic for some tastes, almost bodering on hagiography when ten Boom talks of her sister, Betsie, who died in Ravensbruck, but the overwhelming impression is one of sincerity and true conviction. The book issues an unspoken challenge to believers to truly put their trust in God; so many of Corrie's actions appear courageous to the point of recklessness, but the strength of her faith meant she was certain that everything would work out for the best.



Amazon informs me that there is both a prequel and a sequel to this book available these days. I'll have to see if the library has them.