COUNTING YOUR CHICKENS

Easter has been and gone, but chickens are still on my mind. Last weekend I was in London, where the weather was appalling, but I enjoyed watching Channel 4 (can't get it here in Belgium) on my friends' super high definition flatscreen tellies, where everything looks sharper and better than in real life. I can't help thinking this is going to lead to an increase in depression. When people leave their homes they will be disappointed with reality.

Last Sunday evening I sat riveted during the extremely long but fascinating programme on chickens by the now rather fanciable old Etonian Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. He used to be a bit scruffy and slightly overweight, but has obviously been hanging out with Trinny and Susannah and has turned into a rather tasty bit of posh. Old Etonians often make me go "phwoarrr", and I have got a soft spot for Boris, although I wouldn't vote for him.

Anyway, inasmuch as I could concentrate between the several hundred commercial breaks, it was all about chickens and why you shouldn't succumb to Tesco's 2-for-a-fiver offers. A number of consumers claimed that they could not afford free-range chicken. Now I like a bargain as much as the next girl, but surely a few pounds extra to be sure that what you are putting in your mouth and stomach is (a) healthier, (b) tastier, (c) good for the environment, and (d) putting you one step further up that stairway to heaven, is a good investment?

Stairway to heaven

I had already seen a TV programme years ago about what is done to cheap chicken meat AFTER slaughter, which was horrific enough, but Hugh's Chicken Run showed that slaughter is a welcome release for these poor birds who are raised in the most appalling and unsanitary conditions, even in animal-loving UK. Consequently I shall be carefully checking the provenance of poultry products from now on, and I would urge my readers to do the same.

I am also supporting the River Cottage Chicken Out campaign for an improvement in welfare conditions in chicken farms. Unfortunately battery farming will still go on to supply the catering and frozen food markets, but I shall make the effort to avoid eating chicken in Indian and Chinese restaurants and go for prawns, until another celebrity chef decides to champion the happiness of the humble crustacean. I bet Krimo our very own blogging celebrity chef will not be able to resist dancing to the Funky Chicken (on my sidebar). Check out the Chicken Out logo too. Here endeth the lesson for today.

I might have a bit more of a problem with foie gras, mind you.




Some of my other favourite activities when in London are riding in black cabs, visits to very old traditional public houses, and visiting somewhere I've never been before despite being born and brought up in "The Smoke" as those delightful pearly Cockneys call it (although nowadays you could almost call it "The Smokeless"). I paid a visit to Tate Britain's permanent collection, free of charge, where I saw some delightful treasures such as Waterhouse's "The Lady of Shalott", based on Tennyson's poem of the same name, and was briefly transported back to my teenage years when the Pre-Raphaelite look was one I aspired to, and this picture graced my bedroom wall alongside David Cassidy and Georgie Best.

The Lady of Shallot, 1888 (John William Waterhouse)

BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT

Looking at my last two posts, I see that I got more comments for a one-liner with a picture of a nice doggie than for an essay over which I sweated for an hour. Which has taught me to sweat less, and use more cute pictures of animals. And anyway I'm off to Londinium on the Eurostar this evening so without further ado ...

Happy Easter everybody!

PADDY'S DAY

I can't believe I forgot to wear green today

PALM SPRINGS ETERNAL

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, when God-fearing Christian folk celebrate the triumphant entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem on a donkey, greeted by the crowds who laid down palm fronds on the ground to cushion his path. There is all manner of religious and political symbolism attached to the waving of foliage on momentous occasions, but I don't have time to go into all that. Look it up on Wikipedia.


The gentle movement of the palm tree in a tropical breeze is one of the more pleasurable sights in nature, especially if you happen to be viewing it from a pool bar with a large pina colada in hand. It is a sight that I hope to see from the window of my room when I am old and incapacitated, with only a muscular young Slovakian venture scout to help me into bed. The palm is also revered in tropical countries for its edible fruits, which can range from coconuts to dates and palm hearts, palm oil is a valuable commodity traded on the world's markets, and in West Africa they even make palm wine which is falling-over-juice of the first order.


The palm is an iconic tree, bringing to mind beaches, warmth, indolence, ukelele music, luxury and luscious brown men with liquid eyes. It is to be found in all the most popular holiday destinations - Hawaii, Thailand, Morocco, Florida, Bournemouth. No doubt the reason why the sultan of Dubai thought it was a suitable motif for the - not one, but THREE! - man-made island complexes his construction company has built off the coast of his tacky little kingdom. Frankly, they look like Las Vegas On Sea, but those still hoping to make poverty history can have fun with this virtual visit where they can pick out which group of plutocrats' holiday homes they would like to blow up in this billionaire's Disneyland. Makes Neverland look quite shabby really. With poverty raging less than 1,000 miles away, this project is a shameless and frankly offensive insult to humanity. The sultan can try all he wants, but he won't get me to invest my hard-earned euros in it. Especially if there's the remotest chance of finding myself living next door to the Beckhams. I am sure that despite his penchant for palm trees, Keith Richards would not be seen dead or alive in this place.



Palm is also the name of a rather pleasant Belgian beer, of which I may partake tomorrow whilst praying for a tiny little tsunami in Dubai.

A TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE

Not my new apartment

House hunting over the internet is a bit like computer dating. I have had a brief dalliance with the latter, with disappointing results, and after a few distasteful experiences gave up. With properties, like men, the photographs are always deceptive, and you have to be even more picky with property, as once you have signed away a large part of your life and your savings, you can’t get out of it very easily.

After about 10 viewings, you start to lose heart. This is the dangerous stage. This is where you must still be prepared to suspend disbelief, and go to each viewing with hope in your heart and a ballpoint pen in your pocket, ready to sign on the dotted line before anyone else does. By this time you have come to terms with the fact that you can’t have everything. What you really want is the property equivalent of George Clooney.



Despite having been a home-owner twice before, I threw myself back into the lion's den. My ideal property would be a spacious 2-bedroom in a quiet leafy street near the park, five minutes from a metro or tram, and within walking distance of shops and some good restaurants, in a whimsical recently renovated art deco house with brand new kitchen and bathroom, large south facing terrace, high ceilings, original wooden floors, and still be within my budget with enough left over to buy new curtains.

I soon realized that this was the equivalent of expecting to bump into George Clooney down the local pub, have him notice only you, and find he’s a really nice guy and easy to live with and worships the ground you walk on. You can dream about it, but it’s not going to happen. You have to sacrifice something. So I had to draw up a list of priorities - location, distance from work, the charm factor, initial investment required, renovations, upkeep costs, accessibility to shopping and transport, size, view, condition, noise levels, etc. (on reflection, this is not a bad checklist to use when choosing a man, either) - and decide what I could live without. This was made easier for me by the arrival a couple of months ago of a young couple in the flat upstairs with a hyper-active and insomniac two-year old Olympic hurdler. The charm of the old art-deco house with original wooden floorboards started to fade. Oh well, looks aren't everything.


The majority of properties I saw were either the equivalent of Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances (affordable, but run-down and requiring me to do a lot of work) or Sean Connery (old and well-maintained, but way out of my league). In the past, as with men, I have settled reluctantly for the former whilst gazing wistfully at the latter. You could say I have good taste beyond my means. Rather than drop my standards I raised my budget to about as high as I could go without robbing a bank. Well you might as well invest in property as anything else, hang the pension fund.

You will say I am taking this analogy too far when I tell you that I found an apartment that 90% matched my checklist on ... Valentine's Day! It's not quite got the come-to-bed eyes of George Clooney, but it's got everything I want short of the turret and private chapel, and JUST about falls within my budget, although the curtains will have to be from Ikea. And it's nicer inside than outside, which is also a good selling point in a man.


It has the added multiple advantages of being right opposite a launderette, so not only will I have 10 washers and tumble dryers at my disposal and therefore no need to fork out on a washing machine, but I will have a living Edward Hopper painting to look at when there's nothing on TV of an evening. Not to mention the single young men doing their smalls.

SMUG TREES

Mother Nature (for it is She) is playing malicious games with us. This unseasonal good weather has brought the trees into bud much too early. I've been trying to encourage restraint in the local flowering cherries by hissing "not yet! get back in!" at them as I walk past, but one took it upon itself to burst into blossom the other day, and of course the whole neighbourhood followed suit. So of course last night it was cold, wet and blustery and the blossoms were being picked off the branches as soon as they'd emerged. If you listen carefully you can hear those few fruit trees who were a bit behind smirking and acting like the Wise Virgins. "More haste, less speed," they're simpering, "Slow and steady wins the race," and other trite cliches. I think a flowering cherry would simper, yes. An old oak has a deep authoritative bass baritone, rather like Brian Blessed. And a weeping willow sounds a bit like Joanna Lumley. I'm really looking forward to my new home close to the big park, I'll make lots of new friends.

Just a second, there seem to be some men in white coats at the door, I'll just see what they want.

American fashion designer and florist Smokin' Squaw McGraw paid me a visit last weekend, on her Grand Tour of (the bars of) Europe. Smokin' Squaw is of mixed race - Scottish and Comanche - and she certainly lives up to her name, puffing away constantly at a hand-rolled cigar. I expect she is communicating with her ancestors.

Smokin' Squaw and I go back a long way. I once modelled her award-winning "satin bananas" hat in Paris, in hommage to Josephine Baker, sadly the photographic record was lost in my recent peregrinations. After many years studying fashion in Paris from the vantage point of a bar stool somewhere in the 20th arrondissement, she has now returned to her ancestral teepee in Taos, New Mexico, on the banks of the Rio Grande, sometime home to D.H.Lawrence, Pueblo Indians and Donald Rumsfeld, where she is known to the locals as "Madame Chapeau". Her professional name, Katy George, does not sufficiently convey her exotic heritage. Check out her creations on her website here.


I picked her up from Murphy's Law, the Irish bar at the Gare du Midi, where she had already started her sampling of Belgian beers. I asked which one she had chosen. "Watney's" she replied happily. She drew many an admiring look in her synthetic leopardskin coat ("Hundreds of acrylics died to make this, honey!") and outsize fake D&G white sunglasses. The locals called out "Regardez! C'est la soeur jumelle de Michel Polnareff!". She flashed her new ceramic teeth like a movie star at the Oscars and waved her Corona in acknowledgment.


Belgian trains are half price at weekends so on Saturday we headed up to Antwerp, fashion capital of Belgium, where we strolled around the boutiques. My goodness it's frightfully cutting edge up there, and there are some fab designer homewares stores which I will be back to visit as soon as I am settled in the new Wayne-Bough Towers. Where else would one find lime-green or tomato-red toilet roll? We took a break in a pleasant cafe on the Grote Markt called Ultimatum for some mid-afternoon refreshment, where I tried a local ale called Bolleke Koninck. Just for the name really.


On Sunday I took my creative friend for a rummage around the flea market at Place du Jeu de Balle in Brussels, and then around the furniture and antique shops of the Marolles. Of course we had to visit my favourite furniture shop, Fins de Siecles, which is full of 1900-1920 restored and reproduction pieces. We lounged around on the art deco sofas like Dorothy Parker and Lillian Gish. We lunched at Brasserie Ploegmans, which is a charming olde-worlde typically Bruxellois little restaurant, serving basic Belgian fare such as "meat cake" and stoemp, before wandering on to finger fabrics, frills and furbelows at New De Wolf.

After a restorative libation at a terrasse on Les Sablons, where I tried to explain to my companion the ongoing Belgian political impasse, we went for a stroll around the old town and watched some Native American pan pipe musicians in the Full Wigwam. Smokin' Squaw looked daggers at them. "Navajo scum", she snarled. When one of them came around with the hat, he scuttled past her with a scared look. I pointed out to her that it was illegal to wave tomahawks around in Brussels unless you worked at NATO. She had no trouble understanding the Belgian dilemma, and suggested a pow-wow in Amsterdam with a pipe of peace, preferably filled with some home-grown, might help them sort out their differences. The alternative was to be invaded and decimated by a foreign power, and it had to be said, Belgians did pull together during the war.

Smokin' Squaw headed off on Monday back to Paris, enjoying a last Grimbergen in the smoking bar at the Gare du Midi. I was worried she might miss her train when she slithered off her bar stool, but she then knelt down on the floor and put her ear to the ground. "About five minutes," she pronounced, "Enough time for one more." She left me with a unique Katy George original piece, which has already been much admired, and a promise to send me a new fruit basket hat.



And finally, as Trevor Macdonald would say, it is unusual for me to race through a novel in 24 hours, even rarer a detective story, but Nicholas Royle's "Antwerp" is such a gem that I even missed Thursday night's episode of East Enders to finish it. Unlike some we could mention (Dan Brown hang your head in shame) Mr Royle really has done his homework, there is some useful background information about Belgium and his descriptions of Antwerp and Brussels are absolutely spot-on. "Antwerp" is in fact a sequel to "The Director's Cut" which should be read first, if you can get hold of it -- but it's out of stock at Amazon -- and both books will appeal to the Ffyllum-Boughs (distant relatives of my late husband).