The Twelve Days of Christmas or the dangers of online shopping

December 13th

Darling!  What a wonderful and truly unusual present!  Admittedly, the ground’s a bit frozen at the moment for planting pear trees and housing the partridge is a bit of a struggle, as it won’t fit inside the budgie’s cage.  Still, we’ll find a way.

Your True Love xxx

December 14th

Darling!  Two turtle doves!  How sweet – but the budgie’s cage really isn’t that big and I’m not sure they and the partridge get on all that well. The cat’s enjoying having them in the house though.  Er... what exactly am I meant to do with them?  Also, I think you should check your Amazon account as you seem to have repeated the order for the pear tree and the partridge.

Your True Love xx

December 15th

Darling, I really think we need to talk.  Three French hens are a very unusual present, and I suppose the eggs will come in useful – or would do, if the poor creatures weren’t worried by the partridges. There really isn’t room in the flat for them all and the feathers are making me sneeze. The budgie is now deceased.

The window is now beginning to look very crowded with all the pear trees on the balcony outside.

 Please check your Amazon account!

Your True Love x

December 16th

Look, what’s with all the damn birds for Pete’s sake!  I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but the hens, the doves and the bloody partridges are enough to be going on with without four calling birds!  And more hens, doves and partridges.  And another ruddy tree!  Did I ever tell you I wanted to live in an aviary? Or a forest?  The cat’s given up and left home, the kitchen is full of feathers and the furniture is ruined – simply ruined with all the bird poop!  Stop it. Have a word with Amazon, will you?  Something must have gone wrong with your account.

Your True Love

December 17th

Okay, five gold rings are nice.  Thank you for those.  But enough with the birds! I couldn’t believe it when the postman delivered another batch of hens, doves, partridges and calling birds.  The noise is deafening and the neighbours are complaining.  The tree is on the balcony with the others. The balcony can’t take much more. Oh, and check your ruddy Amazon account!

 Your Love.

December 18^th

Are you having a laugh?  Six geese.  Six geese!  I can’t stop them laying eggs and who wants goose eggs?  Don’t you know that geese are lousy mothers?  They just drop their eggs anywhere, so the kitchen is a mass of egg-shells. 

The balcony has now collapsed.

Your former Love.

December 19th

I went to have a bath and what did I find?  Seven swans swimming.  Look, mate, you seem to be intent on driving me to a nervous breakdown, but you might at least let me have a bath in peace.  The bloody swans ate the soap and swallowed the loofah, then hurled all over the bathroom floor – which I can hardly see anymore because of all the feathers and egg-shells – and didn’t you know that swans have lousy tempers.  I know I loved my little budgie and was always fond of birds, but enough is enough. 

I see you’ve thoughtfully included yet another pear tree with your order.  It’s planted in the car-park.  Any more birds and I’ll bury you underneath it.

I can’t believe I was ever your True Love.  I must have been mental.

December 20^th

Arrggh!!!!  More birds and yet another tree!!  And – this is the weirdest thing yet – eight milkmaids, complete with cows, arrived and said you’d sent them.  They’re outside, by the collapsed balcony.  I will not have eight cows in the flat.

December 21^st

Did you think I needed cheering up?  Because you’ve got a funny way of letting me know.  Along with yet more birds, another tree and yet more milkmaids and cows, I’ve had a disco invasion.  Nine ladies – I use the term loosely -  with skyscraper heels and skirts so short you could hardly see them, barged in, turned the ipod to max, hung up a disco ball and danced all night, complaining all the time about the lack of talent. No blokes.  I suppose your next bright idea is to send a load of guys to keep the ladies company.  That’s a joke, by the way.

December 22^nd

OK, enough.  Ten Lords!!! And the usual consignment of birds, trees and milkmaids.

December 23^rd

Pipers??? Who asked for pipers? And where did you get the idea that bagpipes should be played indoors?  All I can really say is that with all the geese squawking and hens clucking and doves everywhere, I can hardly hear the pipers.  You are seriously weird.

December 24^th

Dear Mr Truelove,

Our client, your former fiancée, has contacted us with regard to the harassment caused by your so called “gifts”. When twelve drummers arrived she retired to a Home For The Bewildered and instructed us to send you the keys to the flat. 

Therefore we would take it as a sign of your good intent if you could immediately remove the following items, viz:

twelve partridges, twenty two turtle doves, thirty hens, thirty six calling birds, forty two geese and forty two swans, a total of a hundred and eighty four birds.

We also insist that you persuade the forty maids with their forty cows, the thirty six dancers, the thirty Lords, the twenty two pipers and the twelve drummers to remove themselves to more suitable accommodation forthwith. 

The twelve pear trees need to be uprooted and removed from the car park.

The forty gold rings will be retained against the expenses of renovating the flat.

We wish you the compliments of the season,

Yours,

Ms Carol Christmas (lawyer)

Curtain

So Poirot finally breathed his last in Curtain, an outstanding performance by David Suchet, added and abetted by Hugh Frazer. 

To tell the truth, it’s not my favourite book.  I’ve read it, of course, but it’s painful to see the jaunty, confident Poirot old and ill and – finally – dead.  I hate the hero dying!  I remember how traumatic it was when, at the age of eleven or thereabouts, I first read The Final Problem where Sherlock takes a dive off the Richenbach Falls.  I didn’t know what was coming and I remember my sense of absolute shock, made the more intense by the fact there wasn’t anyone who could understand how upsetting it was.  I mean, when The Final Problem was published, there was an outbreak of shocked grief, but I was about eighty years too late for the funeral.  Ho hum.  Sherlock sprang back from his watery grave but there’s no return for Poirot.

Apart from HP’s departure though, there’s other reasons why Curtain misses the bus.  Agatha Christie wrote it in the Second World War, together with Miss Marple’s final outing, Sleeping Murder, but neither book was published until the 1970’s.  Of the two books, Sleeping Murder, with its genuinely creepy, claustrophobic opening, as Gwenda, the heroine, finds the house she’s brought by chance becomes eerily familiar, is the most successful.  There may be odd anachronisms in the book, but they don’t hit you in the eye as they do in Curtain, where the action staggers uneasily between the late 30’s and the 1970’s.  Apart from anything else, how old is Captain Hastings?  Granted that he was wounded on the Somme in 1916, he must be at least ninety and, even if we turn a blind eye to the question of age, I just can’t see him wanting to poison Allerton, however protective he felt of his daughter, Judith.  It’s just not dans son character, as Poirot said on numerous occasions in other circumstances.  The Hastings we know – decent, impetuous and with a bit of a temper – would have wanted to knock Allerton’s block off, not poison him.   And Poirot as a murderer?  After having been assured, many times, that he “Does not approve of murder” I can’t help feeling that’s not dans son character either. 

I think the truth of the matter is that Agatha Christie was fonder of Miss Marple than Poirot.  In her autobiography she testifies to the importance of two elderly ladies, her Granny and her “Aunty Granny” as she was called in her upbringing.  There’s also a letter she wrote, on finding some carefully stored household goods – linen and pins and so on – saying, “You can see where Miss Marple comes from.” 

Poirot, on the other hand, she often found exasperating.  This feeling is turned to great comic effect when she has her alter-ego, Ariadne Oliver, go off on one about her detective, Sven Hjerson, in the brilliant Mrs McGinty’s Dead.

“How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man?  I must have been mad!  Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland?  Why a vegetarian? Why all these idiotic mannerisms he’s got?  These things just happen. You try something – and people seem to like it – and then you go on – and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life.  And people write and say how fond you must be of him.  Fond of him?  If I ever met that bony, gangling  vegetable-eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any I’ve ever invented.”

Robin Upward, to whom these remarks are confided, stares at her in reverence.  He suggests that it would be a marvellous idea to have a real Sven Hjerson murdered by Ariadne.  He suggests (watch out for the Curtain reference!) that she could make a Swan Song book of it, to be published after her death, to which Ariadne stoutly replies, “No fear! What about the money?  Any money to be made out of murders, I want now.”

The truth of the matter is that Curtain is a very good idea, but (even the best of writers have weak spots) Agatha Christie wasn’t the right author to make it live.  And I don’t like Poirot dying. Sad times.

    

  

    

 

                    

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.