Apple Chutney

Look, I don’t want to seem obsessed or anything, but I’ve still got apples in mind.  Before I plunge into the fruity part of the blog, though, I had an email from Jane Finnis, part of which read:

I’ve actually managed to add a comment to your blog. The trick seems to be, don’t click on Add a Comment (I mean why would you, it’s only what you want to do!) Instead click on Reply...that is if it’s really succeeded! I can’t quite believe it yet.

The only thing is, I can’t find the comment.  Maybe it’s under the sofa or the cat’s run off with it, but I can’t see it anywhere.  Sad times.  However, I do know what it was about. 

A couple of weeks ago, me, Jane and Rebecca Jenkins gave a talk in the wonderful old Portico Library in Manchester about writing murder mysteries. It was an ace evening, with a terrific audience.  The next day, as Becca and Jane departed, I pressed upon them a pot of my home-made chutney.  Jane thought it was the nicest chutney she’d ever had, and asked me for the recipe.  It comes from an ancient old cook book that belonged to my mother, so here it is. 

3lbs apples, peeled, cored and sliced (Get an apple corer!)

3ils onions (Peel them in a basin of water otherwise  your eyes will sting like blazes)

1lb sultanas or raisins

2 lemons

Fresh ginger root, peeled and chopped

1 and a half lbs of Demerara sugar

1 pint of malt vinegar

A large pan.

Grate the lemon rind and put the grated rind and the juice into the pan together with the other ingredients. 

Bring it to the boil, reduce the heat to very low and let it simmer until its nice and thick.  This will take an hour or so.  You know when its done when you can make a channel across the top of the chutney without it immediately filling with liquid. 

Pot and cover.

This will make about 4lbs of chutney.

I sterilize the jam jars in the microwave, by putting a tidgy bit of water in the jars and giving them about a minute and a half in batches of four jars at a time.  I tighten the lids whilst wearing a rubber glove, which gives a bit more power as you twist the lids on.

The other discovery was that the apple syrup - the result of my unsuccessful attempt to make apple jelly – tastes dropdead gorgeous in an apple suet pudding.    Wow.

Apples....

We’ve got apples.  Oh my days. as the youngest, Jenny, would say, do we have apples.  I suppose, if you plant apple trees, that’s what you can expect.  The thing is, we’ve only got two trees, a Worcester Pearmain and a Granny Smiths, and neither tree is that old, so I wasn’t really ready for the influx of apples the other week.

Even if you were as devoted to apples as Steve Jobs, you’d have a job to munch your way through this much of nature’s bounty.  Indeed, I don’t think it could be done.  So, obviously, I had to make something out of them.  Faced with pounds of the things, I bought an apple peeler, slicer and corer.  I got it from Amazon and it’s the most amazing gadget ever. (For dealing with apples, I mean; if you want to make a quilt or play the violin, it wouldn’t do you much good.)

Put the apple on the prongs on one end, turn the handle, and bingo!  One perfectly peeled apple with no core.  The apple itself is in a sort of spiral which looks really attractive.  Now, what I really wanted to make was apple jam, but, judging from the fact I couldn’t find any recipes, I don’t think apples jam very well.  (It sounds as if they’re failed jazz musicians, but you know what I mean.)

Chutney, yes; we now have pots of it in the cellar. Dried apples; yep.  Apple sauce?  Fine.  That’s in the freezer.  Hunting round the internet I came across something called apple butter, which is a sort of concentrated apple sauce that you can spread on toast;  fine.  Got it.  But apple jam?  No.  However, in an old cook book, I came across apple and rosemary jelly.  Now that sounded really nice, so it was out with the apple slicer and off we went.

You know when things just won’t work?  Why this lovingly slaved over substance wouldn’t turn into jelly, despite being boiled and adding pectin, I just don’t know.  It remained stubbornly as apple syrup.  But, as it turns out, apple syrup is rather nice.  So that’s a good few pots of apple syrup, then.

I was just congratulating myself on having dealt with the Gordon-Smith apple mountain, when I bumped into Jez, the caretaker at the local school.  He was lugging an immense bin bag.  What have you got there? I innocently asked.    Apples, he said.  The kids had sorted through the apple trees on the school grounds and chosen the best.  What was left – about forty pounds of Cox’s Orange Pippins – was going in the bin.

I couldn’t let him do it.  The apples were fine.  Yes, they might not have been supermarket standard, but their failings were definitely skin deep.  So it was out with the trusty slicer and off we went again.

And, d’you know, I’d just finished turning all the poor little reject Coxs into jars of stuff, when my pal, Jane Finnis rang.  She was coming to stay, but they had a bumper harvest of guess what.  And would I like a bag?  I must be mental, but, with the thought of the apple slicer in the cupboard, what could I say? 

Thirty Years!

Thirty years is a long time to be married.  Ask me.  I know.  When we celebrated our twenty-ninth wedding anniversary, Jessica declared that steps must be taken for our thirtieth.  Helen demurred.  No one, she said, celebrates their thirtieth.  Forty, yes.  Jessica disagreed.  After all, she said, by the time Mum and Dad get to their fortieth, they’ll be too old to enjoy it.  Yeah, right.  Watch this space, is all I can say!

So The Party was organised.  Jessica took charge and did a brilliant job, booking the hall, sending out the invitations, arranging the buffet, organising the DJ (our old mate, Keith) and his pal, Archie and keeping me and Peter firmly away from any knowledge whatsoever of the party, apart from telling us when we had to turn up.

And it was wonderful.  There were balloons and cakes and dancing and, best of all, lots and lots of friends who turned up for a really brilliant evening.  Elspeth did a fantastic presentation summing up what you can actually achieve in thirty years – watch it here on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyTaQJ2A0lk&feature=youtu.be

The title is "Dolores and Peter - This is your life!" and it was great to see what a warm reaction it got.

It was one of those evenings where you truly felt that it couldn’t have been better.  So, if you were there on Saturday – didn’t we have a good time!  And if you weren’t – well, I wish you’d been there.

Weirdly Great

Writing is a sedentary occupation.  That, in a way, is one of its chief attractions.  So why, when Jessica, my beloved eldest and very sporty daughter said, “Mum!  You need to come running!” I didn’t promptly run in the opposite direction, I don’t know. 

She took me running.

It was awful.

My legs hurt, my knees hurt and I breathed like a leaky bellows.

“It’ll be better next time!” said Jessica brightly. 

OMG, next time????

Now one of my shiny new toys this year was an iphone.  “Perfect!” said Jessica, taking the phone from my nerveless fingers.  “You can download a running app.”

From Couch to 5K.  Okay....

It starts off all right, I suppose, and is full of pleasantly affirmative messages, but to someone who thought that lycra was something that other people wore, it’s all very odd.

“You need,” said Jessica brightly, “a goal,” and promptly signed me and her poor father up for a 5K run.

And so last Sunday I walked, ran and walked some more round Heaton Park.  I’ve got a medal that says I’ve done a 5K and – weirdly – it feels great. 

“Now,” said Jessica, “let’s do a mud run....”

 

Caring about Agatha Christie

There was quite a lot of excitement generated on the internet this week by the news that mystery write Sophie Hannah has been commissioned to  write a new Agatha Christie novel, starring the incomparable Hercule Poirot.  Here’s a link to the story which appeared the Independent.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/whodunnit-new-author-to-bring-agatha-christies-poirot-out-of-retirement-8797050.html

For the Harry Potter lovers amongst us, my friend, John Granger, made some interesting points about this news in his blog,

http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/rowling-inc-to-follow-christie-estate-lead-and-commission-harry-potter-fan-fiction-under-its-own-trademark-brand/

All I really hope is that the new novel comes off properly.  There’s a real atmosphere about an Agatha Christie novel, an atmosphere as distinctive as Conan Doyle, Jane Austen or PG Wodehouse.  Like those authors, Agatha Christie’s style is easily parodied but, like those parodies, its very rare indeed that the genuine feel of the original is captured. 

So what’s so special about Agatha Christie?  The puzzles, of course.  First and foremost, the stories are clever.  The plots tie up, the loose ends are neatly knotted and the whole experience of reading the book gives a sense of completeness.  It can be (rather harshly) compared to a crossword puzzle but I think a far better comparison is a really good meal, where all the elements, from the table settings to the food, along with the perfectly picked wine, the right lighting and the warmth of the room, come together with great company to make a memorable, satisfying whole.  Whether that meal is round your own kitchen table with your family or in the Ritz hotel is fairly immaterial; a great meal is a great experience.

Couldn’t an Agatha Christie book be compared to a game of Cluedo? Not really; in Cluedo (Or, if you’re in America, Clue) three cards, the victim, the weapon, the location, are taken at random from the pack and put in a envelope.  It’s genuinely arbitrary.  This is not how AC works, and the reason she doesn’t work like that is her characters and her scene-setting.

Ah yes, her characters and scenes.  It’s a village, right?  And sort of stereotyped.  Well, only to a point.  There’s certainly a village feel to the books, as in it’s a place where people know who their neighbours are, even if the books aren’t set in an actual village.  We know enough about the characters to recognise them, to fill in the details for ourselves from our own experience.  And, when we get to the end and find out the murderer was X, we always feel that we should’ve known it was X all along.  Why? Because X’s character fits that of the murderer.  Right triumphs, evil is defeated, and along with it all, our curiosity has been slated. Our love of order, certainty and rationality is satisfied and, perhaps best of all, she’s never remotely pretentious.

    

What's in a name?

Editing a book, as I have been all week, is one of the really fun bits of writing. Actually making the stuff up is hard, but this part of the process is a lot easier.  It isn’t finished yet but (keep those fingers crossed) the end is in sight.  Editing is where you can add the finishing touches, fill up the pot holes, smooth everything out and make sure that it all hangs together. 

However, the perennial problem of titles is now upon me.  You’d think, wouldn’t you, that after the  effort of writing an entire book, to think of three or, at the most five, words would be easy-peasy.  Yes, but those few words have got to do so much; attract a reader, tell them something about the book and – just as importantly – not mislead them about what sort of book it is.

It’s amazing how hard it can be to come up with the right title.  It has to be pithy, memorable, relevant. A few words – maybe one word - that will jump out at the reader from the bookshop shelf and inspire them to part with hard-earned cash. Geez.

 Names are often a good bet and carry their own baggage of expectation. You don’t pick up Emma, for instance thinking she’s going to turn into Dracula. (Which would be confusing but fun.) Or it may reflect the book’s theme:  Pride and Prejudice or Death on the Nile.

In the heyday of the gothic novel, you could get away with titles such as Geralda, The Demon Nun, which could still be – just about – be used today. Joanna Polenipper, Female Horse Stealer, Foot-Pad, Smuggler, Prison Breaker and Murderer is probably too wordy for modern tastes but you’d be wrong in thinking that Joanna came to a bad end. At the end of the book, “Joanna was transported for her crimes, retrieved her character in Australia, married a rich settler and lived for many years respected and beloved by all who knew her.”

 If you found Joanna’s unexpected embrace of virtue unsettling, you’d probably be better sticking to another novel of the 1830’s, Lovel Castle, where the anxious author told his readers exactly what they were getting:  Lovel Castle, or The Rightful Heir Restored, a Gothic Tale Narrating how a Young Man, the supposed son of a Peasant, by a train of Unparalleled Circumstances, not only discovered who were his Real Parents, but that they came to Untimely Deaths; with his Adventures in the Haunted Apartment, Discovery of the Fatal Closet, and the Appearance of the Ghost of his murdered Father; relating also how the Murderer was brought to Justice, with his Confession and the restoration to the Injured Orphan of his title and estates.

They don’t write them like that any more.

The Cuckoo's Flown

Well, I’ve finished  The Cuckoo’s Calling and so, by now, have a great many other people, judging by the number of reviews on Amazon.  I’m surprised how many reviewers - crime fiction fans by their own account – praise the “unexpected twist” in the ending.  I don’t want to be a big spoil-sport, but the ending is hardly original.  Honestly.  I mean, it actually appears in the jokey lists drawn up in the heyday of Detective (as opposed to Crime) fiction as one of the things Not To Do, along with gems such as “Don’t have your villain one of a pair of identical twins” a nix on secret passages and putting the blame on that tired old stock figure, the sinister Chinaman. 

Another thing that various reviewers have been awed by is the occasional use of Latin and other quotations, pointing this up as evidence of great erudition.  Again, hold on.  Yes, yes,yes,yes, yes, of course JK Rowling is incredibly well read, but it’s also very well known that one of her favourite authors is Dorothy L Sayers and Dorothy L always has quotes in her chapter headings and throughout the books. To keep up with the amount of literature that Lord Peter has at his fingertips would require a medium-sized library.  It’s a hat-tip or homage and good fun. 

What is slightly more problematic for many reviewers is the band language.  It you took out all the F and C words, then it’d slim the book down by about 200 pages or thereabouts, but the characters in the story would undoubtedly talk like that in real life, so I’m not sure what the answer to that one is.   Offensive?  Not after the first few times particularly, as constant repetition dulls the shock value, but it’s a bit tedious to read, like any other frequently repeated word or phrase. 

One reviewer was worried about “Robert Galbraith” and his false biography, as an ex-soldier.  This, they pointed out, was a lie.  Well, so it is, but what surprised me was how many people evidently believed it before the truth came out.  There’s very little military detail in the book and (thank goodness) no graphic horror of mutilation, despite the hero, Comoran, having lost a leg in Afghanistan, or angst about  life under fire, but shedloads about life in the goldfish bowl of celebrity living.  Paparazzi are present like wasps at an August picnic and about as welcome.  Everyone is hounded wherever they go and the idea of privacy for the famous is a joke.  That sounds really unpleasant and very realistic.  All I know about life as a model comes from programmes such as Gok’s Fashion Fix, America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway but the world of fashion portrayed in the book sounds real enough.

There’s plenty of clues there, no we do know who the author is, as who wrote it;  Comoran is a non-magical Hagrid in size, strength and kindness, although he’s a lot sharper.  Familiar phrases, such as tears “leaking” crop up and death threats are sent on writing paper embellished with pictures of cute kittens, as if Dolores Umbridge had retired from the Ministry of Magic and set up a Writing Bureau (Threats R Us, perhaps?)

However, one thing – one massive thing – is missing; and that’s the gigantic, outrageous sense of sheer daftness and fun that pervaded the magical world.  There’s no Arthur Weasley collecting plugs, pink umbrellas, or tents that are bigger on the inside than the outside and furnished like a 1950’s flat with antimacassars and smelling of cats into the bargain.   Pity, really.  Because that sort of unique goofiness that JK Rowling made so believable and genuinely all her own, the thing she can do better than anyone else, probably is the magic that endeared Harry Potter to so many millions of readers.