Back Home, Time to Cook!

Greetings all,

I meant to post yesterday but didn't get round to it. It was the day on which I turned 42. It never ceases to amaze me how fast time goes when we get older. I had a good birthday. Had a Chinese lunch with parents and a couple of friends then had a couple of beers with my friend Tom in the evening. It was great to see him in the light of his recent family tragedy.

I have a few days left of my holiday. Hoping to get on the with the new book and am going to meet my friend Tory for a picnic in London on Friday-weather permitting of course.

I'm keeping the food simple tonight. A Carbonnade of Beef courtesy of Rick Stein. My sister gave me a signed copy of his latest book on Spain so I guess I had better try it out before I go back.

Nothing to report on the mad front so I will leave you all. See you in September!

I Heard a Voice.

Tapas in the Rain.

It was quite late in my culinary career that I discovered North African and Middle Eastern food. I'd always been slightly put off by the propensity to mix meat with fruit-never been a fan of that. But my tastes are changing and I'm discovering what I had been missing.

So this morning I set off to Canterbury with the express idea of going to my favourite cafe, Cafe Mauresque in Butchery Lane. Check out the website if you are ever in these parts http://www.cafemauresque.com/ . It is well worth a trip.

As the rain hurtled down outside I indulged in tapas that was very good. I mused on the idea of whether it really was right to call it tapas-should it really have been mezze? Or is that just if it is Turkish? There are few things better than merguez sausages and tabbouleh to go with flatbread and hummus and finally a nice aubergine and feta stew.

Not sure of the authenticy but I did enjoy it. Suspect I had a rather better day than my friends who went to the St Lawrence ground today to see Kent versus India-no play before 5 pm. I was thinking of them as I went past the gorund in the bus.

I'm in Kent until Wednesday-my birthday on Tuesday. Hope the weather picks up and I can make it to the beach. And there are plans for a BBQ on Sunday so hope the sun comes out.

I Heard a Voice.

Escape from Hell!

Well I'm down in not so sunny Kent for a few days. Actually it has been much sunnier here than in Hertfordshire-I drove down through torrential rain.

The nightmares of this week's invasion were compounded last night by my flat door jamming and being locked in all night. So I was calling a locksmith at 8 am and having somehow clambered through the window he finally managed to open an escape route and fix a temporary lock 3 hours later. Sometimes I wish I had never moved to Hertfordshire-both flats have been a disaster. I wonder if my dubious landlord will fork out for his responsibilities-on past experience I doubt it!

Hopefully now I'm away I can enjoy my holiday. Have a birthday BBQ to go to on Sunday-I guess I had better think up some kebabs to cook.

I Heard a Voice.

Heady Days

Just a very quick post today. After my bad day last week I am feeling much better. My holiday has started and despite the light rain outside that is also hanging on over the Oval things are looking up.

I've just written chapter 4 of the new book and all is looking good. Am tempted to get on with chapter 5-it is already in my head-but will have to pause as I'm waiting for my friend to come round for tea. So killing time now and wishing the cricket would get started again but Wales vs Argentina will have to suffice in the meantime.

Beef Bourguignon is marinading in the fridge so am looking forward to a feast later.

Here's to holidays!

I Heard a Voice.

Not the Best Week

It has been a very wet and dreary day here. A bit like my mood. I had intended to try to forge ahead with the new book this week but it hasn't worked out that way.

A series of domestic problems have derailed me somewhat and now my mood is beginning to sink a little. Sometimes I think this flat is cursed. In fact there have been endless domestic problems ever since I moved here 4 years ago. My first landlord was great. My present one has a curious habit of charging me way over the odds but not actually living up to his responsibilities. So it is that if anything goes wrong I end up having to pay for it.

This was not what I expected in the lead up to my holiday. One more day of work then two weeks off. I do hope my mood lifts soon and I can get on. Tomorrow brings me packing up my office for the second time in a year and moving. So it's all looking rather forlorn.

The good news is my friend Anthony is coming to visit on Sunday-hopefully that will provide a boost. I've not seen him for ages-we trained as teachers together in Cambridge.

Until next time.

I Heard a Voice.

A Change of Plan.

This weekend was intended to be devoted to cooking and watching cricket. Great plan except England demolished India by tea time yesterday. So I had to come up with another plan.

It was not very exciting, just domestic things like washing and cleaning. All very boring  although strangely enough of all the domestic tasks our lives give us I actually quite enjoy mopping the floor-how weird is that?

The cooking part stayed with slow cooked ribs with sherry and rosemary-not my greatest success-and slow roast shoulder of lamb today. That was excellent along with the rioja I am now consuming.

But it was not all boring stuff. Am very pleased to have forged further ahead with the new book. Now have the prologue and chapters 1-3 completed and I'm very pleased with it so far. Chapter 4 is fairly straight forward; gets a bit harder after that though.

Back to work tomorrow for one last week before my holiday. Part of it will be spent packing up my office-yes for the second time a year I'm being forced to move. But I will cast all that aside when I'm off. Recharge the batteries before the expected onslaught of the end of September.

So back to rioja. More soon.

I Heard a Voice.

Burnin' and Lootin' Tonight.

During the my year in Cambridge doing my PGCE I did many things other than teaching. One of those was to collect all the Bob Marley albums on CD. I'd never had a CD player before then-I couldn't afford one. But during the years of my madness Marley's music played an important background for me. I have never been to the streets of Kingston Jamaica, least of all during the political carnage of the 1970s. But if one is mad, judged, rejected and stigmatised as the mentally ill are it is easy to feel opprssed in one's life. We were the dispossessed, rejected by a more modern society.

The greatness of Bob Marley is still debated 30 years after his untimely death. Some ignorant people blame the cancer that killed him on the copious amounts of cannabis he smoked. In fact he died from a skin cancer virtually unknown in African Caribbean people courtesy of this white Scottish father. To many the iconic album is "Catch a Fire". But my tastes differ great though that album is. The one I like is "Burnin'". That eery title song, the music of the oppressed.

As I watched the carnage unfold in London last night and the streets burning I could not help but think of that song.

I don't know what the fall out will be of the last few days. Undoubtedly many people suffer a great deal in these difficult financial times. But are we, in 21st century Britain really that oppressed? Would it be different with a different government? Somehow I doubt it. Who have we become of people can unleash such ferocity on London's streets? Many I know who live there are now living in fear. I am glad I live in peaceful Hertfordshire. Let's hope we stay immune here.

Bit sombre that I know but felt I had to comment. More soon.

I Heard a Voice.

A New Venture.

So, to another Sunday. As you can tell by reading this blog I do on the whole like Sundays as a day of rest. A day for cooking, reading, and relaxing. There was a chance some friends were going to visit today but they didn't make it. Perhaps they will come another time. So I switched to plan B.

Cooking went fairly well, a Puglian dish of peas, bacon (couldn't get any pancetta) and shallots for lunch, then a slow roast belly pork for dinner. The latter was rather better than the former. I read the Sunday Times whilst listening to the "Messiah". And then I got on with my new venture.

The reponse to "A Pillar of Impotence" has been so overwhelming and so many people have said what happens next that I decided to write a sequel.

The working title is "Beyond the Boundaries" and I spent much of Wednesday evening writing the prologue. Today I turned to the body of the book and by 5.30 pm had a very satisfying chapter 1. I actually have the first 3 chapters written in my head and I'm pretty sure about chapter 4. It will take time though. The excitement of the beginning will wear off when I'm struggling with where to go next but I will do it.

If you have read my previous work you may remember the care I took in choosing my chapter titles. The Bible and Latin produced some of the more interesting ones. So far on the new work I have done Latin, the Bible, and Gilbert and Sullivan!

Hoping to get more done in the week. Now for a beer and watching the rest of "Revenge of the Sith" that I started last night.

I Heard a Voice.

A Plan Gone Awry.

My friend Mailk got married yesterday. I've known him for 12 years having trained as teachers together in Cambridge. So it should have been a marvellous day but somewhere along the line things did not go to plan.

I got the train down to Bromley and my friend Katherine drove from there. But if you follow the news you will have seen that there was a dreadful accident on the M25 and they closed the road. Result? Utter chaos. We ended up all the way down at Gatwick and trying to find our way back the exhaust pipe fell off just south of Reigate.

For someone who struggles to adapt when things you worng, a stange thing happened. I stayed completely calm. Katherine was extremely distressed but thanks to a the AA we did eventually get back to Bromley-despite the stress she got us back in one piece. So a 7 hour road trip to nowhere. Did manage a partial rescue by a very nice chicken doner when we got back.

But I guess in the light of my last post, who cares? There are far more serious things than getting stuck in traffic.

Home now having wasted £40 I can barely spare. But I have the rugby on, Assam tea made and am planning to cook the legendary Chinese dish "The Ants Climbing the Tree" later.

I Heard a Voice.

Thunder Clouds Gathering.

Contrary to what it says at the bottom of this post it is actually 9.05 pm UK time. It has been a hot and humid day. The darkness of night is coming and outside my window black thunder clouds are gathering. A storm to break the heat and clear the air.

Having lived in or around the world of mental illness for 21 years very little shakes or shocks me. I have been through the deaths of so many friends; 9 of those have been to suicide. Some think it is strange that someone like me at the age of 41 has been to so many funerals. But that is part of the territory for the mentally ill.

But yesterday I was shaken. At 10.14 am I had a text from a friend. It announced another death. But this one was a different, it was the  tragic death of a child. For once in my life I was completely lost. I thought of leaving work early but decided being busy was a better option.

When I got home at 5.30 pm I cooked then stared blankly at the TV, numbed by circumstance. For a day I felt enveloped by a blackness. But it was not the blackness of depression but that of shock and despair. If there is a God I ask him why?

My despair will pass but the event will forever change the lives of my friends. So my thoughts are with them now.

As I wait for the gathering storm to clear the air I know that tomorrow the sun will rise again. I will see it as will my friends but I doubt they will notice.

I Heard a Voice.