TRAVELISTA

As I get older, travel becomes more of a chore. I don't enjoy long-haul flights, and after a week or so away I usually want to come home. Which kind of puts the mockers on Australia. Airports are such a bore. Security, luggage restrictions, waiting around .... and that's before you've even got on the plane. Unless you can get where you're going on a decent carrier, it's cattle class all the way. I always manage to get either a screaming baby right behind, or a big fat bloke right in front who puts his seat back as soon as he sits down, allowing me about six inches of space between my face and the back of his seat. Hardly room to open out my copy of How to Spend It. A sinus condition means that I need to get half a dozen Nurofen down me two hours before landing or else I get off the plane looking like Munck's "The Scream". For the same reason I do not drink alcohol while flying, and the food is usually inedible, if you get any at all.

Arrivals lounge

If you don't fly, and don't own a car, your options are considerably reduced. I am developing an expensive habit of pranging hire cars, and really only the train is a suitable and safe mode of perambulation. For me and everyone else. Luckily, from Brussels you can take a train and be in London, Paris, Amsterdam or Cologne within a couple of hours.

The best thing about Brussels

Then there's the accommodation. I need a degree of comfort these days, my own bathroom and to be able to lock my door and have some me-time. I recently experimented with one of the so-called four-star campsites in France, but frankly, no. The walls were thin, the nights were cold, and the caravans (or "mobil'omes" as the French inexplicably call them, as they are up on bricks and far from mobile) were much too close together. McChe summed it up: "It's a plastic hoose, the noo!". Four stars nothing.

Trailer park trash

I'm afraid I'm getting to the stage in my life when only a four or five star hotel will do, whatever the cost. I don't need a swimming pool - unless I have exclusive use of it - and I'm not bothered about a spa or a fitness centre, but I do require a spacious bathroom, a good breakfast buffet, air conditioning and room to swing a cat.

Swinging cat

Then there are the destinations. I have seen most of Europe. I have seen the East and West coasts of the USA, Las Vegas and New Mexico, and that will probably see me through to the end of my days. Do I need to see Missouri? I don't think so. I have many relatives in Australia but am put off by the distance and the fact that of the ten most deadly species of animal on the planet, nine of them live in Australia (my family not included). My cousin Bonzer should know, he recently got bitten on the foot by an Eastern brown snake and nearly died. Luckily there was a kangaroo nearby who understood English and fetched an ambulance.

Don't just stand there Skip!

I don't enjoy great heat, great humidity or mosquitoes, who, perversely, love me. I have a delicate Hibernian complexion and burn in the sun. I did a couple of stints in West Africa with Harold, and I would rather stick hatpins in my eyes than return there. I have a soft spot for North Africa - Morocco, particularly - and may well consider a winter break in a riad. You can keep the rest of the Arab world, including Dubai, which looks like Las Vegas with minarets. A large part of the planet is taken up by Russia, which does not grab me in the least. India is not worth the trouble either - full of flies and disease and poverty, and you can get the music, culture and food by visiting Leicester or Birmingham, or watching an episode of EastEnders.

Birmingham, home of the balti

Which leaves the Far East. Now there's somewhere I wouldn't mind visiting, if I could withstand the long-haul flight. Not Japan -- I must agree with a friend of mine who once said watching a Japanese film was like watching people from Mars. But China fascinates me. Echoes of decadent Shanghai in the 1920's, the Tiger Lilies in their cheong-sams, and the food is to die for. I could eat my way round Hong Kong. Moving south, Thailand, Cambodia and particularly Vietnam are even more tempting.


I grew up with the Vietnam War. The names Da Nang, Hue, Saigon, Khe Sanh, My Lai, Ho Chi Minh, Marshal Ky, Le Duc Tho, and General Giap were tripping off my tongue by age 15. My parents were still banging on about the Second World War which had been over for 25 years, but this was my generation's war, the first rock 'n' roll war. Helicopters, jungles, napalm, Grosvenor Square 1969 - why the hell were we Brits protesting? We weren't even there. I remember watching on telly the last helicopter picking somebody off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon hours before the Viet Cong rolled victoriously into the city. At 18 I could have passed an A-level on the Vietnam War. In the aftermath I lapped up every book and film about it: William Shawcross's "Sideshow", Michael Herr's "Despatches", "Apocalypse Now", "The Deer Hunter", "Full Metal Jacket", "Band of Brothers", you name it, I couldn't get enough of 'Nam.




Later, in Paris. I discovered the delights of Vietnamese cuisine and learnt about the pre-war history of the country, Dien Bien Phu and all that. Other wars came and went: the Falklands, Lebanon, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq .... but none of them had the sheer rock 'n' rollness of Vietnam. Later, I heard Vietnam had abandoned a centralized economy and was thriving again, even opening up to tourism. I have been looking at photographs and have been seduced by the beauty of the place. It's like watching a derelict garden come back to life. If I have to sit on a plane for 14 hours, a boat trip on Ha Long Bay could make me feel better quite quickly.

EASY LISTENING, HARDER REMEMBERING THE WORDS

Have you been following BBC4's Easy Listening season? What a treat for us oldies! Bert is, as you might imagine, a big fan of James Last, and I simply swoon at the sight of Herb Alpert, with or without his Tijuana Brass. Sexiest man on the planet, bar none, circa 1968. My only complaint is that it was on a bit late in the evening and some of us had trouble staying awake. Thank God for modern technology and the hard disk.

Miles Davis eat your heart out

Herb Alpert's "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" was the soundtrack of my childhood, spent freewheeling along the leafy lanes of deepest Berkshire with my cousin Vera Slapp on our bikes. But real class does not date. Mike Flowers Pops were always cool. Vera recently told me how she accompanied her youngest to a JLS concert or somesuch, and before the show photos of teenage heartthrobs were flashed up on the screen, to enthusiastic response from the assembled teenyboppers. Brad Pitt (yay!), Johnny Depp (scream!), Keanu Reeves (whooo!), Steve McQueen (one solitary "phwoarr!" and a lot of puzzled little faces staring at an overexcited Vera).




The sight on my TV of a sea of umbrellas or a crowd sporting plastic burkas tells me it's that time again: Wimbledon and Glasto coincide this year, which can mean only one thing: rain. I wonder who'll get the "cheesy" slot on Sunday. It'll take a lot to top our Shirl in her evening gown and wellies. The line-up alone takes an hour to read, but I did note that Arthur Smith was appearing last night in the cabaret tent. So nice of them to include the old people.

Even before I learned to love the Rolling Stones, the old codger's old codgers, I leaned towards cheesy music. I was considered "different" by my schoolmates, when they were listening to Pink Floyd I was doing pointy dancing to Sacha Distel, Jose Feliciano and the short-lived Trio Athenee, who, following an appearance on New Faces, released one single called "Au Revoir Paris" and then disappeared without trace. Thankfully, because if anyone dug out the clip on YouTube I would have to go and book myself into Dignitas.

Babs, Teddy and, er, the other one

I cannot claim to have inherited any musical taste, having been brought up on a diet of Petula Clark and Liberace, Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson, Ronnie Carroll, Matt Monro and the Beverley Sisters, thanks to my elderly parents, but I am cheered to see that some of my favourites have been revived under the "Easy Listening" rubric and are even appreciated by the younger listener. When The Jammed, The Cured and The Dam (have I got this right?) are consigned to the dustbin of musical history, I will be bopping around the old people's home to Neil Diamond and Glenn Campbell. Which is dangerously close to Max Bygraves, but let's draw a line somewhere.

Wakey, wayyyyyy .....KEY!!!!
What was all that about, eh?

I remember the joys of Billy Cotton's Band Show, Sunday Night at the London Palladium and the Black and White Minstrel Show. Everything was in black and white in those days, except the food which was grey. Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball, Alma Cogan, Frankie Vaughan, Val Doonican .... how is this possible, I hear you ask, when I am but a slip of a girl? Well between you and me, I have a lot to thank Estée Lauder for.

Of course it's difficult to know where "Easy Listening" ends and "Timeless classic" begins. The Carpenters, for example. Some of the legends are no longer with us - Karen Carpenter, Dusty, Some of those that are not quite dribbling in their commodes have found a way of making a comeback thanks to the interest in inter-generational collaboration. As you know I have always been a fan of the May to December syndrome, and young artistes are now waking up to the career benefits of the duet with an old trouper, it improves the images of both parties. Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Carlos Santana and others have prolonged their careers by working with younger collaborators. A spot on stage with a legend is worth ten X-factor wins, as Snoop Diddly Dogg will attest - after Willie Nelson took him under his wing, his career took off. An oldie's take on new material can sometimes add a whole new dimension: witness Johnny Cash's stunning version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", or (in a different register) Peter Kay's version of Tony Christie's "Amarillo".


Sometimes a collaboration between two generations can produce magic:

FOOD PROPAGANDA

Foreign muck

I love cookery books, although I don't use them much, preferring to navigate by sense of smell in the kitchen. I retain the rough idea of a recipe, and occasionally dip into the book for cooking times, dosage, etc., but on the whole prefer to wing it. But I have a growing collection of cookery books, starting with a 1961 first English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique, which has pride of place in my kitchen, although I've had to do a repair job on the binding.




I was given a generous book token for my birthday and went shopping for a nice coffee-table tome. I was seduced by another Larousse publication, Le Larousse des Cuisines du Monde. Weld cuisine, like weld music, appeals to my eclectic, some might even say indiscriminate, taste. Even as a teenager back in the 1970s I was leaning towards foreign muck such as spaghetti bolognese and chips from the Turkish Cypriots in the village. My tastes in music (to be discussed next week) and food were two early indicators of the later travelista that was to become Daphne Wayne-Bough.




The first chapter starts closest to home: the British Isles! It is a revelation. First of all they give an overview of the cuisine of perfidious Albion:

"Holidays: From the simple party, which happens at the end of a working day at around 6 p.m., to the Christmas dinner, the holiday meal is the occasion, from a culinary point of view, to revive ancient customs. The "party" is a sort of cold buffet which lasts one or two hours and where sandwiches and whisky are served, or sometimes cheese and wine. A holiday dinner is obviously more consistent."

This had me turning back to the flyleaf to see when this book was first published. 1993. Present edition 2009. Hmm. I read on.

"Major Holidays :
"Christmas - turkey, Christmas pudding, mulled wine."
So far so accurate, if a little unimaginative.

"New Year - Scotland: shortbread, haggis"
Haggis, according to Larousse, is not exported, I made a note to inform Stonemanor, who stock it on a regular basis. It is, apparently, served on New Year's Day.

"Shrove Tuesday - pancakes, spread with cranberry jelly and fresh cream, piled on top of each other and cut like a cake".
We always had them with just lemon juice and sugar, but this could be a new American-inspired take on pancake day.

"St Michael's Day - 29 September. The day when leases on rented homes were often paid as well as annual farm rents. This is the date when geese grow to maturity, fattened by the harvest cuttings. Roast goose is still served on this day."
As we all know. The famous Michaelmas goose. I wondered if they had not misread a Marks & Spencer label?


"Halloween: The night before All Saints, when children scoop out Jack o'Lanterns from pumpkins. The pumpkin flesh is mixed with onions, cubes of fried bread, salt, pepper and nutmeg to make the ritual Halloween soup. In Ireland barm brack is served - a cake made with milk, dried fruit, orange and lemon peel, cinnamon and nutmeg, where a ring is hidden inside promising marriage within the year to the person who finds it."

Obviously, "Britain" being a largely Protestant country, we don't celebrate Easter. Despite their poverty, the Irish can make a cake with no flour or fat. I started to suspect the British section of this cookery book dated from around the same time as my Larousse Gastronomique, if not before. I felt I was learning about a strange new country.




Everyday living was summed up by Le Breakfast. Les Anglais (which to a Frenchman means any denizen of the British Isles from Cork to Aberdeen) start every day with bacon & eggs, cereal or porridge, or grilled kidneys, fried sausages, boiled kippers or filet of haddock fried in butter, finishing off with toast garnished with marmalade or scrambled eggs, the lot washed down with copious amounts of TEA.

The other meal we eat is dinner, also known as high tea, which we eat around 7 p.m., or if it is a high day or holiday, we might also have supper at 9 p.m. This consists of a starter, a main course, a dessert and cheese (note the order - this would make a Frenchman shudder in disgust). "A claret usually accompanies the main course, although a port would more often be served with cheese." The British, as is well known, are so uncouth they will drink red wine with fish. Barbarians!


Tea: a long paragraph on our notorious tea-drinking habit. Everyone drinks Lapsang Souchong, Orange Pekoe, or Assam. No mention of Le Ty-Phoo or Le Tetleys. Or le Nescafé, come to that.

Marmalades: what makes them (plural) special is not Seville oranges, which don't even merit a mention, but molasses, which as any fule no, forms the base of the jam. Also known as "bitter jams". Quite an education.


Cheese: "England does not have many cheeses". Well compared to France, perhaps not. "Less than ten". Now WAIT A MINUTE !!!! Only Cheshire, Stilton and Cheddar merit a mention. In that order. Cheddar is often served at breakfast. "English cheeses are served with ginger biscuits or shortbread and a glass of port".


Scottish specialities (no Welsh or Irish specialities deserve a section of their own): Only shortbread and haggis merit a mention. No smoked salmon, no Angus beef, no Irn Bru, although the section on Scotch whisky was extremely detailed and accurate, listing no less than 14 single malts by name. The gin section went on at great length about William of Orange. I started to detect a hidden agenda. Elsewhere in the "Drinks" section, they explain, helpfully, that beer is an ancestral drink made from hops. They obviously don't have it in France then. As well as mild and bitter ("an amber, reddish colour"), they talked of pale ale and stout, which as we all know are popular in today's pubs. They pointed out that the English and Irish drink their beer at room temperature. Just so you don't make a fool of yourself by asking for a cold beer in a pub. We also fond of cherry brandy and Drambuie.


The list of recipes starts with porridge, which they obviously couldn't categorize. Next came the starters:

Soupe écossaise: this involved 750g of haddock, 12 slices of toast, and a litre of milk, but no potatoes. An interesting twist on Cullen Skink.

Le Welsh Rarebit: made with Chester cheese, and lager.

Le Cocktail de langoustines: made with fresh "langoustines", not "gambas" or even "crevettes".

Le chutney de pommes et de tomates: (that's apple AND tomato chutney) "chutney is served with mutton or pork chops. English chutney resembles jam, and is quite different from chutneys made in India, from which it derives."

Mint sauce: made with fresh mint leaves, brown sugar and, er, veal stock. Right .....

Apple sauce: traditionally served with the St Michael's goose, doncha know!

Cumberland sauce: this was a new one on me. I checked the recipe - fairly accurate. According to Wikipedia, it is "ubiquitous in Cumbria". If there is anyone from Cumbria reading this, please confirm.



Then we got to the main courses.

Kedgeree. Chicken pie. Haddock à l'anglaise (cooked in milk); le curry de mouton (just 2 soupspoonfuls of non-specific curry powder, a pinch of ginger, a pinch of Cayenne pepper and a hint of saffron); St Michael's goose, accompanied by a delightful photo taken circa 1970; le Irish stew; potée de chou irlandaise (Irish cabbage stew); spiced beef; stuffed roll of pork "grillades";

Le Yorkshire pudding (when the lard is sizzling in the pan, take it out of the oven and pour in 2 soup spoons of concentrated beef stock and the batter. Cook at gas mark 7 for 30 minutes); Le gumbo végétarien - very popular in the deep south of Cornwall I believe; Stuffed cabbage leaves (stuffing includes salted peanuts and soy sauce); Broccoli quiche; vegetable cake with sunflower seeds - yes, you remember, we all used to love those! Steak and kidney pie; herrings in oatmeal - another favourite; Toad in the Hole - to be served accompanied by potatoes or peas. They specify: "In England, people eat mostly frozen peas, to which one can add a knob of butter and sometimes a little fresh mint leaf." And lastly, Le Lancashire Hotpot. Fry the meat and vegetables first, cover with water and a splash of Worcestershire sauce and cook in oven for 30 mins, add sliced potatoes, cook for a further hour and a half. Mmm.




I could hardly bring myself to go on the desserts section, but I'd started, so I'd finish. Apple crumble, apple pie (just use "pommes", doesn't matter which kind, Golden Delicious probably best), apricot blancmange (er, what?), Dundee cake, trifle, lemon meringue, and the famous Barm Brack (150g of Smyrna raisins and 150g of Corinth raisins - I always wondered how you distinguish raisins from sultanas in French, although don't ask me which is which); orange pudding; bread & butter pudding; Irish coffee; Le Christmas Pudding! avec le brandy butter, bien sur. "Christmas pudding can be cooked for days on end".




It wasn't over yet. Ginger pudding; Scotch pancakes; sponge cake; lemon curd; syllabub; green fruit salad. And lastly "La boulangerie": soda bread; "buns" - "during Lent it is traditional to add a little cinnamon and ginger to the dough. Then carve a cross into the top of the buns before putting into the oven, thus making Hot Cross Buns" (ah so they do have Catholics in Britain); muffins; scones; white soda scones (Ireland).


Good grief. No wonder the French still think British cooking is awful. They are using Robert Carrier as a reference! This propaganda must stop immediately. Have they never heard of Gary Rhodes, Heston Blumenthal, or les Motards Poilus?

I am writing a Stiff Letter to Monsieur Larousse to complain that he left out le Jelly, le Custard, la Semolina, le Kendal Mint Cake, les fish fingers, la crème de salade, le Gateau de la Foret Noire, les Alphabetti Spaghetti, le spam, le corned beef, les baked beans on toast, la Spotted Dick, les Turkey Twizzleurs, le poulet à la Coronation Street, le Heinz Tomato Soupe, le Doner Kebab, le Babycham, la "Boule de neige" - fameux cocktail à base d'advokaat et limonade, and of course le grand chef-d'oeuvre écossais, le deep-fried Mars Bar.

THE EYES FOLLOW YOU ROUND THE ROOM

I've never been a great one for mooching around museums, and the first painting that really grabbed me was Waterhouse's "The Lady of Shalott" when I was 14 - mainly because I wanted to look like her.



I then did a module on German Expressionist Art (no, really!) at university and was exposed to the work of die Bruecke and Blaue Reiter movements. I was mistakenly perceived as having a good eye for Expressionism when, during a particularly long-winded analysis of Franz Marc's "Mandrill" I muttered sotto voce (but obviously not sotto enough) "It's a big con isn't it?". The elderly lecturer was a bit deaf, and homed in on me. "What's that, Miss Harridan? A bit cold, you say? Yes, yes, I can see what you mean."

Franz Marc's cold mandrill

I was not remotely tuned in to non-figurative imagery. At the time my idea of art was an Athena poster stuck to my wall with Blu-Tac. I think I had the Vietnamese girl one. Although I might have got it from Boots Art Department. I do recall I was rather fond of Salvador Dali and Roger Dean's album covers.



Then I moved to Paris where one cannot avoid coming into contact with real art. I was a great fan of the old Jeu de Paume museum which had a reasonable-sized collection of turn of the century masterpieces over two floors, just enough, which was later absorbed by the huge Musee d'Orsay, which to this day I have never been inside, never having two hours to spare to stand in a queue. Manet, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Renoir, Gauguin, Cezanne, Delaunay, Picasso, Degas, Pissarro ..... I used to fantasize about being a midinette in turn-of-the-century Montmartre, drinking absinthe and dancing the can-can.


As I grew older my taste matured, but I still did not 'get' abstract art. I collected pictures by friends, and landscapes of places that meant something. I came to appreciate photography, film posters and vintage advertising. But Tate Modern left me cold. My father dabbled in the abstract art world for a short while, acquiring a work which turned out to have been robbed from a bonded warehouse in Germany, so his career as a patron of the arts was short-lived and he was lucky to get off with a caution. Hockney was henceforth a dirty word in the Harridan household.

Marrying Harold didn't help my appreciation of painting - he was a total Philistine when it came to art. I thought he'd had an epiphany the time I took him to the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow and left him in front of one of the only three Leonardo da Vinci paintings on public display, to find him still staring at it ten minutes later. I tentatively tried to find out what he was thinking.

"Umm, do you like it?" I ventured, hesitantly.

"Nope." he replied. "But the alarm system is bloody first rate."

Can you spot the sensors?

In the lobby of FOBiAs* European headquarters there is an exhibition of artwork for sale changed on a monthly basis, and, after walking past one particular piece several times, I stopped and looked at it properly. I thought it had enormous energy and movement. I always thought that was the sort of thing art critics said when they didn't understand a painting, but I could see straight away what it was, which was confirmed when I checked the title of the work. It's by a Dutch artist called Irene Van den Bos. Since the economic crisis my savings seem to have gone on strike and are earning diddly squat. So I decided to sink some money into something that might increase in value, as well as bringing me great pleasure and bought it as a birthday present to myself.

Have you guessed what it is yet?

*Federation of Brass Instrument Aficionados

WE'RE IN EXTRA TIME

It's a long weekend in Belgium and other parts of the Christian world. Ascension, or Assumption, or Aspersion, or something of that ilk. I know it's not Whitsun, that's on 12th-13th June this year. The calendar is all gone to pot - the weather came early, the holidays are late. How on earth is a gel supposed to keep track of her social diary?

No, I've just checked and it's Ascension, to commemorate Our Lord being taken up to Heaven. If anyone was going to be Raptured, it should have been today. Those Family Radio people should read their Bible more attentively.

On 21st May McChe and I sat there in our best clothes, he even put on his kilt for the occasion. God help anyone who was ascending after him. They'd have got a vision of Hell on their way to Heaven. I wore my pearls. Pearls look smart with anything. But six o'clock came and went. We had our tea. We waited. By the time EastEnders came on we had to conclude we were not among the Chosen. Him, I can understand, being poor in spirit he will inherit the earth and can go looting all the houses of the Raptured. But me - saint that I am! There's no justice. I am going to write a Stiff Letter.

Now it appears they got the date wrong. It's 21st October, not 21st May, when God will make his selection and destroy the rest of the world. Too bad for the looting. Apparently this was just a rehearsal. Great inconvenience. I'll have to renegotiate the mortgage, reconnect the electricity, and uncancel my subscription to Private Eye. Honestly, you'd think Christians would be more considerate.

Meanwhile, I've got time to find a suitable song to play as I'm ascending. I thought this would set the right tone.