In praise of…

Downton Abbey – After a long, long wait while the Royal Mail got its post-festivity backside into gear, I finally sat down to the first three episodes of this highly lauded ITV show. My expectations were high, having enjoyed Gosford Park repeatedly and taken guilty pleasure in Past Imperfect and Snobs, and I wasn’t disappointed:  it was excellent. JF has hit upon a formula: in each episode, the eldest daughter of the house has a new suitor and her mamma (Elizabeth McGovern) and grandmamma (scene-stealing Maggie Smith) machinate to have the entail on the property removed, but fail. Around this basic weekly routine, Fellowes builds many other plots about the lives and hopes, identities and activities of the house’s inhabitants. As much as it bears something in common with early Star Trek episodes, where Kirk’s weekly love interest imperils the Enterprise and its crew, I think it’s quite a nifty device in this series as it means Fellowes can draw out other plot strands as subtly and lengthily as he likes without making the series seem ‘slow’. Add a few salacious details such as class-straddling gay affairs and young men dying suddenly during sex and it’s a great show. Add Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville and Penelope Wilton on top of that, and it’s gripping TV.

 The only jarring thing for me, really, is that they all sound so very common! In fact the ‘middle class’ cousin sounds a hell of a lot posher than his supposedly upper class girl-cousins who don’t even manage to do 21^st-Century upper class let alone Edwardian!  It is ITV, I suppose. Actually, it did occur to me that when the likes of Wendy Hiller and Peggy Ashcroft were available for hire, an actress sounding the way Maggie Smith does would only ever have got a role as a housekeeper. She’s bloody good as the scary grandmother, though – and her scenes with Penelope Wilton are pure gold.

Topshop nail polish – Sorry to go all girly on you and I’ve never liked Topshop, but this stuff is just fabulous. Great shades and my nails, which were painted on Sunday, have yet to chip, in spite of swimming and cooking and knitting – all activities which knacker weaker polishes.

The BFI – Not only is it London’s only decent rep cinema, but the pre-screening talks are a treat. Little did I know, when I turned up for a screening of Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby, that I would gain a new perspective on the film.  The showing was preceded by a UCL lecturer giving a talk about the movie and it was interesting to learn that the inception of the film – in which everyone except Cary Grant’s character is clearly bonkers and yet their logic prevails wherever he goes and think he is mad; where perceptions of ‘madness’ are down to individuals not being in complete possession of the facts – took place while the director’s wife was suffering a breakdown from which she never recovered. Somehow, that makes the combination of frustration, love and lunacy more understandable.

Pub Food at the Sir Richard Steele, NW3

Address:  97 Haverstock Hill NW3 4RL

Cost: £9.95 for a full roast

Rating: 4/5

At the point of ordering a pub roast, the diner has usually already resigned him- or herself to something cheap and substandard swimming in watered-down Bisto and is hoping only that the portions won’t be too stingy. And so, it’s always good to discover a pub that bucks against the stereotype and produces a meal generous enough and edible enough to make one wish they served desserts.

I usually take my occasional Sunday roasts at the Crown and Two Chairmen in Soho, but since happily discovering it during a wander up Haverstock Hill I have been installing myself at the Sir Richard Steele for drinks and knitting on Sunday afternoons. The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed; young trendies mix with families and Old Men. The music is usually rather good, too.

The pub usually serves Thai food, which is yummy, though the portions are more lunch-sized than dinner-worthy. For post-drinking hunger I’d advise nipping next door to Oliver’s chip shop or two doors down to the local Chinese takeaway.

My previous Sunday jaunt involved many pints and several portions of chunky chips. Yesterday, we decided to do it properly and order a roast.

The menu offers beef, chicken and nut, which disappointed one of my friends who was hoping for pork. I do wish pubs would stop trying to convince their customers that roast chicken is part of the tradition – any real food lover will insist on beef, pork or lamb, surely?

I ordered the nut roast, which was excellent – very moist with a variety of different nuts, plus puy lentils. The portions were generous, too and I definitely appreciated the homemade Yorkshire pudding, and decent gravy. The vegetables sat carefully on the delicate line between too crunchy and overcooked and there were plenty of them: carrots, parsnips, Brussels sprouts and savoy cabbage. Washed down with a pint of Rum Cask Cider, it was a very satisfactory meal, though not quite enough to turn my allegiance from Soho.  

Film Review: Burlesque (2010)

Rating: 3/5

Burlesque is not the sort of movie I generally expect to enjoy. The whole point of shooting it seems to have been to provide Christina Aguilera with a movie vehicle, and her music is not generally to my taste.

And yet…I did enjoy it. The exuberance and spectacle of the musical numbers carries the audience along; the story is so light you can’t really be annoyed by it; the characters are so familiar they don’t interest anyone and the upside of that is they don’t annoy anyone, either.

Christina Aguilera may be the *star* but it’s Cher who gives the only thing resembling an acting performance as club spiky club owner Tess. In fact, it’s also Cher who has the most memorable song and dance number – the club opener, Welcome to Burlesque.

Aguilera is the weak link in the film: the woman cannot act, and neither can her love interest, Cam Gigandet. Their scenes together are especially painful: Gigandet grimaces through his lines and whenever Aguilera feels the scene requires more than simply delivering her lines, she alternates between pouting, pushing her sizeable bosom at the camera or swinging her backside. It’s excruciating…but somehow manages to be hilariously campy more than anything else. How the crew members kept straight faces is beyond me.

At Burlesque, the audience learns, every dancer needs a  gay friend she can rely on to pick up the pieces when things get rough. Cher has promiscuous Sean, played by Stanley Tucci, the club’s dresser who can’t remember the names of the men he goes home with, presumably because all his sensitivity and mental energy  is spent on providing Tess with unlimited support and sharp quips. Ali initially thinks Jack (Cam Gigandet) will perform the same role for her. But, lo! He turns out to be straight so instead of using him for free accommodation she starts paying rent and falls in love with him. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this portrayal of gay men or male/female friendships. But this is not a movie to which one goes looking for truth or profundity.  

Other familiar faces making brief contributions are Peter Gallagher (suitable seedy as Tess’s loser ex, Vince) and Alan Cumming who has little more than a cameo as the club’s doorman. He also has a routine, a filthy homage to Cabaret’s Two Ladies. Kristen Bell is also fun as Ali’s ubiquitous bitchy rival.

As a musical fan, I enjoyed all the song and dance, especially towards the start of the film. Aguilera also acted in a music production role on the film and her influence is to the detriment of the movie’s second half – once Ali becomes the club’s star, fun, rousing numbers and dance routines give way to songs which bear far to much resemblance to hits like Dirrty and Candy Man. This seemed a bit foolish to me, since she presumably took on the movie role in an attempt to show some breadth of talent. Also, whoever thought it was a good idea to put the word ‘burlesque’ into the title of every single song needs a sound beating.

As for the script…while admittedly cheesy it has at least been written by someone with above average literacy. I rather liked the line ‘Liberated perhaps. Libated, definitely.’

In short, a guilty pleasure, to be enjoyed with popcorn, marshmallows and low expectations.  The sort of film you don’t buy on DVD, but watch whenever it comes on TV.

New Year’s Bake

My friend Gareth gave me a truly awesome gift a couple of weeks ago: The Great British Book of Baking

It’s perfect, not only because I like to bake things, but also because it really focuses on the kind of old, traditional recipes I’ve always wanted to master. Above all the recipes are very ‘social’ – the kind of things that are wonderful to make when friends are coming for afternoon tea. I recommend it!

Anyway, when he gave me the book, Gareth confessed that he’d been dying to try some of them himself, so we decided to meet up over the New Year weekend to make some goodies.

The first stage of this meet was brunch. I baked an apple scone round from the book and a loaf of my favourite yoghurt soda bread to go with kippers, scrambled eggs and pork and spring onion sausages. I halved the amount of sugar in the scone recipe and used light Muscovado instead of Demerara to make it more suitable for eating with cheese – the book’s recommended serving suggestion. I served all these goodies with some lovely coffee which another friend brought me from Betty’s in York.

After brunch, the baking!

Coffee and Walnut cake

Admittedly, my friend made most of this – I measured the ingredients and made the icing. The great thing about this recipe is that it comes out light without the flour needing to be sifted, which is great if you’re me and don’t have a sieve. I used ‘real’ coffee leftover from the brunch to give the cake a delicate flavour, but beefed it up with a small amount of instant for the icing. My housemate was delighted when she came home and spied one of her favourite cakes waiting.

Ham and Egg Pie

No, not a quiche! Basically, you line a pie dish with puff pastry, and fill it with chopped gammon, whole eggs and egg-and-chive custard before covering it with more puff pastry, glazing with egg and baking for 45 minutes. The whole eggs are put in raw, gently slipped into wells you make in the gammon. Ever so slightly fiddly, but really impressive once done. I have to admit it was a bit too salty for me, but my friend loved it and when I took the remaining half of the pie to my parents’ the next day, it only survived about fifteen minutes.

It was so much fun, I have decided to throw an afternoon tea party once a month to work my way through the recipes and spread baked cheer among all my friends.  

Geneva Diary Part 4

This morning it occurred to me that I have taken no photos! And yet, we didn’t really visit anywhere worth photographing today. Oh well.

Today was for shopping.

First stop was Manor, a department store along the lines of Paris’s BHV, with a large food hall on the ground floor. I bought gifts: ten bars of chocolate, a stolen and a bottle of olive oil which I later realised I wouldn’t be able to take back because it is over the draconian 100ml limit – bah!

Compared to London (and even more so the rest of Europe) prices here are quite high and some of the weirdest things are ridiculously expensive. Food probably balances out in the sense that some things which are expensive in the UK are cheaper here and vice versa, but I was shocked to see a packet of J-cloths going for more than 12F (about £8). Souvenir items are also extremely expensive despite being worse tat that you’d find elsewhere.

In the afternoon we visited Rue de Paquis in search of more exciting shops, but the area turned out to only have African food shops, brothels and hookers marching about the streets in search of trade.  

I insisted on visiting a charity shop we passed. It was full of shoes, knitwear and underwear – thermals I’m guessing. Amongst the small selection of books I found both volumes of Les mandarins and flipping through discovered a love note left there by some previous owner.

Geneva Diary Part 3

Day three in Geneva. I spent the morning trying desperately (and perhaps pointlessly) trying to rescue the lace shawl I’m knitting and then we walked to the park, one of those large, manicured affairs of which they are fond on the continent. The park is home to one of Geneva’s most prestigious restaurants, in front of which is an ice skating rink. I was amused to see children skating with the help of small plastic zimmer-frame constructions – and even more so to see an adult slipping around with one. The park also features a huge and elaborate monument to religious and political freedom commemorating events such as the translation of the Bible into English, the sailing of the Mayflower, Magna Carta…all events with which the people of Geneva apparently feel a kinship due to the city’s 1602 victory against the Duke of Savoy, which allowed it to preserve its political and religious independence.

From the park, we wandered on to Plainpalais, which is a huge, flat, concreted area which is presently home to a fun fair and a rather bedraggled market. Most of the stalls held cheese, greengrocery and overpriced market stall clothing, but the one that caught my eye was a Lebanese stall where a gentleman was baking rouch flatbreads on what looked like an upturned wok. The breads, made of dough which is either spiced or flavoured with olives, are rolled out flat, cooked, and then spread with any combination of houmous, spicy spinach, baba ghannouj and ‘lebanese spices’. Absolutely delicious and a great way to warm up on a cold day! I wish I could remember what they called them.

Next stop was Café Remor, which I loved, it was so delightfully eccentric and olde-worlde-y. They keep the cakes and pastries in a hollowed out piano and serve homemade ice creams in fascinating flavours. I tried saffron flavour, which came with a delicate lemon wafer. Definitely somewhere I intend to visit again!
Our ultimate destination was a chess open. I had never visited one before. It was held in a really retro building, with a mass of tables laid out. The players were of all ages – but overwhelmingly male. I was amazed to see pre-teen boys pitting themselves against adults. At the head of the room was a platform with just two tables – the big players, one of them, I learnt, a Grand Master.

Of more interest to me was the nearby synagogue, which is so large and famous that the road on which it sits is called ‘Rue de la synagogue’. Geneva is not particularly diverse, so I’m guessing this one building accommodates all the city’s Jewry.

Home, dinner, more Toy Story :)

Music review: Christmas Concert at Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, Geneva (25 December 2010)

• Saint-Pierre-Fusterie Orchestra
• Jean-Claude Picard, conductor
• Zéphyrin Rey-Bellet, cello

Programme

1. Beethoven – Overture to Coriolanus
2. Tchaikovsky – Variations on a rococo theme op. 33
3. Cherubini – Symphony in D major

I have a real issue with people who open concerts with Beethoven. They seem not to realise the power of his sounds!! Beethoven’s music is so impressive, it sticks so firmly in one’s mind and ears, that I feel I always need at least an interval before I can take in any other music. In this case, the Overture to Coriolanus was so intensely superb, so rousing, so moving that by the time I’d ‘come down’ from the experience, the orchestra was already into the second movement of the Tchaikovsky variations, which were so pretty that I was immediately sad to have missed the first one.

The Cherubini more or less washed over me: it had a few interesting crescendos but nothing thrilling when compared all that went before it. It was just ‘ok’ and I could easily have left, happy, after the variations.
Four stars for the orchestra, three for the programme planning, five for the Beethoven, four for Tchaikovsky, three for Cherubini…a 3.8 overall.