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Frank
Frank was my great grandfather on my dad’s side.
I only met him a couple of times. One time, me and my brother were made to wear the most ridiculous and embarrassing outfits, and we just felt very uncomfortable and ill-at-ease meeting this very old man from another time.
He was born in the early 1901. So he must have been 80 or so when we met him. Not so old these days, but back then he really was like a dinosaur, or a fossil.
I remember a couple of stories about him. After the Great War, when he was a young man with a new wife and baby daughter (my grandmother), he had to walk twenty-five miles to work, where he would labour hard for sixteen hours before walking home again, only to be brutally murdered by his father before going to bed and getting up the next morning to do the same thing over and over again. Well, he certainly had to work hard, just to survive and raise a family.
Life was no doubt much harder then than any of us can really imagine, but you try and tell that to the young people of today. Would they believe you? No!
My great grandmother, Ellen, was committed to Lancaster Asylum some time after my grandmother Freda was born. I don’t know what the reason was, but it’s possible it was because she was suffering from what would now be recognised as post-natal depression.
In those days, it was a life sentence, not to mention the shame it brought upon the family.
Frank divorced Ellen and married “Auntie Florrie”. I don’t know if Florrie was actually Ellen’s sister, but it’s possible.
Freda never forgot her mum, and secretly visited her whenever she could.
When Frank got the cancer that would kill him, Freda took him in and looked after him in her bed until he died.
Horseshit parade
I visited the Palace of Westminster this week with my big kid on an educational school trip.
It was a very cold, wet and windy day, and we were patriotically under-dressed and sans brollies. We took a good lashing from Mother Nature.
The tour of the Houses of Parliament was cool, dry and stuffy, and the little radio headphones we were given so we could hear better were sub-optimal.
The House of Commons was closed to ordinary commoners like us, but the House of Lords was open as long as we refrained from parking our cold, wet and windy working class bums on our superiors' ‘holier than thou’ red leather benches. Police guards armed with sub-machine guns would forcibly remove any insubordinate eight or nine year olds, and presumably march them straight to the Tower of London (or shoot them dead if they looked like Jean Charles de Menezes.
The children asked a police officer why he carried a gun, and they learned it is to keep them safe. That may be true, but I didn’t feel safer, and there were no buses to flag down.
The children learned that murderous megalomaniac misogynist King Henry VIII is still held in very high regard in these parts, despite beheading two of his six wives, and creating a new religion and laws to divorce two more.
I asked the children how the chamber of the House of Lords made them feel.
Small.
We had lunch across the road outside Portcullis House where we could shelter a little from the wind and rain. Portcullis House is where elected Members of Parliament (MP) and their staff have offices. There were lots of posh-looking mostly white men going in and out and getting frisked inside by more armed guards. Out in the cold, we shared our lunch with toothless and homeless Len, who we found sleeping in the doorway next to us, and looking very wet and cold. Len told us he was “a midget, a dwarf from Burnley” and he’d come to London to sort his life out, but his marriage failed and here he was. He was very pleased to have a homemade tuna mayonnaise sandwich, a juice drink and a satsuma. My wife told me off when we got home, claiming that he will have sold or exchanged the sandwich for drugs.
We waited for our own MP Virendra Sharma to come and meet us as the teachers had arranged. No one knew what he looked like, so they asked me as my lad told them I had met him before (which is true). Then we played a game “Where’s Sharma?” until he appeared. Mr Sharma thanked the kids for coming to meet him, and asked them who wanted his job. His two assistants took photographs.
We ended the day by getting drenched walking up to see Downing Street and the Horse Guards Parade. Downing Street was, of course, guarded by more armed police and totally inaccessible to us ordinary folk, and the parade smelled of horse shit.
Strawberries for pigs?
Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.
Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.
We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!
Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of wind', and – quite possibly – privately blamed 'fucking moaners'. All the while racking up over £30,000 in declared gifts and hospitality from developers including Berkeley Group, who were digging up the gasworks land.
Our soon-to-be local ward councillor and (ex-)Head of Planning Peter Mason knew all about the dangers (he tells us on Twitter) from the contaminated land back in 2009 when he campaigned against its development along with our MP Virendra Sharma (who said the development would be 'a disaster environmentally').
Yet no one told people living nearby to expect to be gassed in our own homes and gardens during the three month heatwave that was shortly to arrive.
In fact, Ealing Council announced on Twitter that the odours, while 'unpleasant', were 'not harmful to health' would be 'gone in a few days'.
I later discovered that there is scientific evidence that some people with Asian and African heritages are genetically more vulnerable to very serious and sometimes fatal health conditions from inhaling naphthalene, a fact acknowledged (although later denied, despite the published evidence) by Public Health England at a packed public meeting in July 2019.
No one told us.
Ealing Council, despite being fully aware of the potential dangers to health (and to the environment) failed to carry out any kind of Equalities Impact Assessment, and only helped Berkeley Group to rush through the decontamination process to maximise their profit from Crossrail in Southall.
Profit over people. Labour Council. Our lives didn't matter to them.
Now, we are being asked to believe that our MP (who has begun making the right noises two years too late – what happened to the nearly 1,000 signature petition I gave you in 2018 Mr Sharma?) cares and is on our side, and that our local ward councillor cares and always has done. Only Bell is – unusually for him – honest enough not to suddenly pretend he gives a shit about anyone but himself and looking after his own family.
At the packed public meeting in 2019, which our local ward councillor chaired, he and Bell refused to declare their financial interests with Berkeley Group, refused to let me speak with the microphone so that people couldn't hear that the Council, Berkeley Group, the Environment Agency and Public Health England had all colluded to cover up the real level of toxic and carcinogenic air pollution – that it was consistently above legal limits and rising – by manipulating, removing, and presenting the air quality data in such a way as to make it look like it was mostly within legal limits.
At the same meeting, our MP arrived late, mostly unseen, sat silently at the back of the room, and left early, mostly unseen. At the same meeting, a strangely truthful Bell admitted that he had 'known about the nuisance, the BAD nuisance, for two and a half years'! Yet nothing could be done.
Now Peter Mason, free from his constraints as Head of Planning after resigning following his failed coup attempt to take the leadership from Bell last year, is telling us that something could and should have been done, yet all of them remained silent and did nothing for years.
Unbelievable!
How I caught covid
I tested positive for coronavirus yesterday.
I started to feel unwell – like I had flu – on Sunday afternoon. After a night felling too hot and too cold, Monday morning I had a temperature of 38.3°C.
I went to my local walk-through testing clinic later that afternoon.
It was a self-test. If I'd known, I would have ordered a test-at-home kit, although I wouldn't have got my result as quick.
I couldn't do the throat swab as it made me want to throw up. The nasal swab was faintly pleasurable.
• • •
The walk-through experience was generally quite anxiety-provoking. I can't wear my glasses or hearing aid while wearing a mask, so found it stressful trying to follow instructions. The testing marquee itself, for all the hand gel, seems like as good a place as any to catch covid.
In eleven months, I've been out to the supermarket maybe three times, the pharmacy the same, to the park occasionally. During the summer, we visited my mother-in-law after she had recovered from covid.
I took my six year old to and from school every day up until the Christmas holidays, and that is the last direct contact any of us as a family have had with other human beings.
• • •
So, it's a bit of a mystery how I caught the infection. The most likely source I can think of is our communal stairwell to our flat, which we share with our next door neighbours and their visitors, posties, delivery drivers.
When the pandemic began, we always used to wear a mask to go out, but we stopped doing that (and got out of the habit) in the summer when infection rates were low. I had still been wearing a mask to bring our grocery deliveries in, but not when I put the rubbish out....
Southall Under Siege: The Neighbours From Hell
‘A lack of scrutiny,’ says John Freeman, Regulatory Services Officer at Ealing Council.
He’s talking about lessons to be learned from the council’s response to the new asphalt plant built in neighbouring Hillingdon borough in 2014.
‘We didn’t expect there to be so much odour from a new building, or so many complaints.’
Moving swiftly on.
Oppressive odour
The highly contaminated old gasworks site in Southall has been kicking up a stink, too.
Carcinogenic benzene and naphthalene, among a cocktail of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and particulates large and small, are in the air.
‘The odour is oppressive,’ says Damian Leydon.
There are twenty or thirty people in the room.
No one bats an eyelid.
Upset residents
Damian is the Operations Director at 'Southall Waterside', as the gasworks site is being marketed.
It's wedged between the grand union canal, Yeading Brook and Minet Park to the north-west of the site, and two of the twenty percent most economically deprived council wards in England. Southall Green to the south, and Southall Broadway to the north and north-east.
‘The last thing we want to do is upset residents,’ says Damian.
It’s a bit late for that.
Please stop
Damian previously worked as the Construction Manager on Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset, and the Athletes Village at the 2012 London Olympics.
Presumably, there were no carcinogenic leaks, oppressed, or upset residents there.
Three times I ask Damian, ‘How many residents are you prepared to upset before you will stop?’
No answers
As for almost every question that night, at Ealing Council’s Air Quality Scrutiny Panel meeting in September 2018, there is no answer.
The meeting concludes, and later the ‘minutes’ are published, but such minutiae do not make the cut.
Was I at a different meeting?
The final report of the ‘scrutiny’ panel, six months later, reads as if the problem is in the past, finished, with yet more ‘lessons to be learned’ (and immediately forgotten).
Friends with benefits
As I leave the meeting, I see Damian having a cosy-looking chat in the corridor (of power) outside the meeting room with Julian Bell, Ealing Council's Leader.
Councillor Bell sat through the two hour meeting in silence.
I ask Julian if he’s booking his holiday in Cannes?
The south of France resort hosts the annual MIPIM property developers’ ‘booze and hookerfest’ (as Private Eye magazine calls it).
Julian is a regular attendee, all expenses paid for by Damian’s employer Berkeley Group, despite claiming to be teetotal. Peter Mason, my ward councillor, is a new attendee. He is not teetotal.
‘If my son gets cancer because of this, you better not stand so close to me,’ I say to Leydon.
He rolls his eyes.
‘David, don’t let’s make this personal,’ says Bell.
We can't breathe!
For two and a half years, my family, my neighbours and friends, have been harassed, attacked, and gassed in our own homes and gardens.
Our children have been forced to breathe ‘stinky’, poisonous air in their school playgrounds, and in our public parks.
We have been laid under siege through three hot summers, including last year’s extended heatwave.
Despite many repeated requests to stop, Damian’s uncovered, unenclosed cesspit of decontamination of a hundred years of toxic waste continues unabated.
Good neighbours
‘Be a good and respectful neighbour,’ says Councillor Mason, at the ward forum.
‘It’s unpleasant’ we are told. ‘It will clear in days, and it’s not harmful to health,’ Ealing Council namelessly tweeted. In June 2017.
Round and round we go.
Is this corrupt?
‘It’s the wrong kind of wind,’ claims Bell.
‘It’s not our responsibility, it’s the Environment Agency.’
‘It’s not us, it’s Public Health England.’
‘I’ll phone Julian and get him to put a councillor on it for you,’ Tony Pidgley, founder and chair of Berkeley Group tells us.
“Cash. Always cash.” (Tony Pidgley)
We started a campaign. Clean Air for Southall and Hayes. CASH for short.
‘I DO NOT TAKE CASH! I DO NOT TAKE CASH!’ is our MP Virendra Sharma’s frankly bizarre opening statement, shouted at us when we go to meet him.
What’s going on?
When is remediation NOT remediation?
Back to the future with John Freeman.
I email John to ask him when remediation of the soil (the cleaning of the contaminated land) is due to be completed. It’s the excavation, the turning, the moving of the toxic waste that has laid at rest for fifty years or more that we’re told is likely to be the main source of the odour nuisance and air pollution.
‘March 2019. It’s finished already.’
‘But it still stinks.’
‘Did you leave the cooker on?’
‘But I’ve seen the planning documents where it says remediation is scheduled to be completed in 2038.’
John consults his colleague, James Potter, Ealing’s Contaminated Land Officer, whose post was initially funded by none other than Berkeley Group.
A very simple explanation as it turns out.
‘The remediation for the next nineteen years is, in a sense, NOT remediation.’
Berkeley bribes?
Then there is the fact, confirmed (and denied) by Public Health England, that the majority Asian and African population of Southall, due to genetic factors, have an increased risk from exposure to naphthalene.
And then there’s Berkeley Group's track record of paying off their former finance director to keep quiet about allegations of bribery and corruption at the top of the company.
Understandably, we doubt the veracity of their own reports of the air quality monitoring data recorded by their business partner, data which they refuse to share with us.
Enough is enough.
Stop the work at the gasworks site while it is made safe.
Stop poisoning Southall.
Please donate to our legal campaign for justice: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/cleanairforsouthallandhayes/
Taking the Piss
Last night I arranged to meet a beautiful young woman and we spent an hour together alone in a dingy bedsit.
Two weeks ago, I reported a crime. A broken window in an empty first floor flat, a couple of empty cans of Stella Artois in a small black plastic carrier bag, and a toilet bowlful of urine – the water tank had been drained and capped weeks ago, so there was no running water with which to flush away the evidence, or remove the stench. I know this because I work for the landlord.
Yesterday, after several answerphone messages, crossed wires and missed opportunities in the previous fortnight, Sam from forensics called me and asked me to meet her at the scene in ten minutes.
Half an hour later, in the freezing cold, she arrived, alone, in a small van and armed only with a large suitcase. I wondered about offering to carry it for her, as she was quite small, but thought better of it.
I took Sam up the flight of steps to the disused bedsit, and apologised for the diligence and speed with which our Caretaking and Repairs teams had disturbed the scene of the crime and replaced the broken window without telling me. I had deliberately not reported the broken window to avoid such a scenario.
Sam opened her case and spread out on the floor her clipboard, forms, torch, evidence bags, swabs and other items of detection. She began writing and soon filled up half a page of notes. I apologised for generating so much paperwork for her and joked that she appeared to have even more to do than me. Finally, Sam got down to the nitty gritty. She put on her gloves and took the two empty cans of Stella Artois from the small, black plastic carrier bag and placed them strategically on the floor, several inches apart. She took out a carefully wrapped cotton bud swab, squeezed out some special liquid from a small bottle on to the bud and began rubbing the bud all around the top of the can, paying special attention to the opening and inside the hole. She then placed the swab inside a fresh evidence bag, sealed and signed it. More note taking. I wanted to ask what she was doing, just to break the intense silence, but thought better of it.
Sam wrote another page of notes before examining the now repaired window. She asked me to hold the net curtains up as she couldn't reach, while she dusted the pane for prints. 'Just rub a little bit of washing up liquid on to it to get it off,' she said.
'Thanks. I think I'll leave the washing up until later, though. So what are the chances of finding whodunnit?'
'We'll probably find out who it was. But whether they'll be charged with anything is another matter. They've not done any damage. Probably just looking for somewhere to sleep.'
'Yes. I was kind of hoping you wouldn't find anyone. I feel quite sorry for them. Only two cans of Stella. Although it's premium beer. Quality over quantity, I suppose. It's a shame there are so many empty properties here.'
'Yes, that's the real crime. It makes me really angry. I just wish we had some politicians who listened and did something. But I don't have much hope that anything will ever change.'
Sam gathered up her things and put them back into her suitcase, which she'd been using as a small bench to sit on.' Right, I'm done,' she said, and switched off her torch.
In the gloom, I noticed a square of material on the dirty floor. 'Is this yours?' I turned it over. It was some kind of advertising leaflet. 'Candlelit Dinner For Two,' I heard myself say out loud.
As we left, I thought about asking Sam why she didn't take a sample of the urine, but thought better of it.
Careers Advice
“When I grow up, I want to play football for Manchester United!”
For an eight year old boy growing up in rural Lincolnshire in the 1970s it seemed like an honest and rational response to an impossible question. No one else at my school wanted to play football for Manchester United. Leeds, maybe. Liverpool, definitely. Other kids said they wanted to be firemen, soldiers, doctors, and nurses. More of that later. Maybe their parents were firemen? Or maybe not. I didn’t know what my parents were. My dad went out before I got up every morning, and came home after I went to bed. At weekends, he told me stories about George Best, Denis Law (his favourite), Bobby Charlton, and the Busby Babes. About Manchester United and how they had the best team and had the best players. Not any more. That was all before my time. I was born in the year United had won the League for the last time, the year before they went on to win the European Cup. The Glory Days. Now, in my time, United were in Division Two (although I didn’t understand what that meant at the time). What I did understand was that I got to see highlights on Yorkshire TV occasionally, with a young and annoying Martin Tyler commentating on matches against the likes of ‘local’ teams Hull City, Sheffield Wednesday and York City. United were good that season. Stuart Pearson was my favourite then. Stocky and powerful, he played with the passion that I came to expect from United players. He was never the best, but he scored goals and looked like he meant it. I meant it when I said I wanted to be a footballer.
“Think of something realistic,” I was told.
“You’ll never make it.”
“Concentrate on your studies.”
I couldn’t wait to prove them wrong.
I got in to the school team. In games lessons and playtime, I was a stocky and powerful centre forward who scored goals. Our first proper match was against another village school.
Five years later, in big school, I’d had my chips pissed on, but I still wanted to make it. I wrote to East Stirlingshire Football Club (just before a young Alex Ferguson took charge) offering my services. I got a polite rejection letter back.
No one ever told me why. I was too upset to ask.
Later, in Art class, I put together a morbid collage of war and that terrible question in cut-out newspaper headline letters:
“Why?”
“Don’t be so childish!” the teacher scolded me when he woke from his alcoholic stupor.
Well, pardon me. I was a child. Surely I was allowed to ask, and expect an adult answer?
So instead, I told them I wanted to join the Army. Not because I wanted to, but because that seemed to keep them happy.
Later still, when approaching school leaving age, after filling in countless forms asking me what I liked doing and what I was good at, I was told by a ‘careers advisor’ to study chemical or electrical engineering at university. I didn’t know what they were or why they’d been chosen for me. I resolved to go on the dole.
(Has careers guidance gone off the rails?. Was it ever on the rails?)
Abducted by aliens
Abstract: Anally probed with a four metre long tube. Tags: alien, abduction, colonoscopy, humour, personal
Last week I was abducted by aliens.
I was woken at dawn by my alarm clock to find a bright light shining in through the window. As if in a trance, I found myself drawn towards the light and compulsively (as I do every morning) drew the curtains.
I felt a presence in the room.
‘Turn your alarm off, for God’s sake!’ said my wife.
I felt a non-human presence in the room.
‘Miaow’ said the cat.
I found myself getting washed and dressed and heading out the door, as if I had an appointment to be somewhere. After a brisk twenty minute walk, I found myself right inside the massive, shiny metallic spacecraft, which appeared to have landed slap bang in the middle of a car park. I felt no fear, although I was a little apprehensive. I entered the craft and was transported up into its upper level via some kind of elevator.
I have blogged before about my experiences of abduction and how aliens harvested my organs and tortured me, so this was nothing new. I felt a familiar apprehension as I caught sight of one of my abductors, a short woman in a green uniform.
‘Would you like an enema before we start?’ she asked. ‘A glass of water would be nice,’ I replied. ‘Do you need to go?’ she asked me rather sternly this time. ‘Well, I’d like to be back in time for the football.’ Now in something of a huff, she handed me a green paper gown to wear, which appeared to have been designed for tailed creatures. I followed her through to what looked like an operating theatre where I was surrounded by three little green men with surgical implements and machines which went ‘BLEEP!’.
They made me lie on a table and paralysed me by injecting something into my hand. One of the aliens stuck his finger up my back passage and said, ‘This might hurt a little bit.’ Then they made me pass out by gassing me. I awoke sometime later to find the aliens withdrawing a four metre long tube from my rear end. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I didn’t feel a thing.’ I was as high as a kite. They handed me back to my wife on a piece of string and told her, ‘Don’t let go of him.’
Somewhat bizarrely, they also gave me a piece of paper describing the contents of my colon - nothing at all in there save a few pesky piles.
What a bloody relief!
No onions, but plenty of fireworks with bier
Abstract: Gertcha by the wiener. Tags: fireworks, photos, video, bier, Chas ‘n’ Dave, hot dogs
Last night, eight of us from Enfield Clubhouse went to Alexandra Palace to see London’s largest and most popular fireworks display. Here’s a video I took. The fireworks were pretty and spectacular - worth seeing, if you like that kind of thing!
After the fireworks, we climbed up the hill to the Palace itself and queued to get into the German Bier Festival. To call it a Festival is really a big overstatement. It’s a few years since I went to a beer festival and it was most likely Up North in deepest, darkest Bury, Lancashire, or somewhere like that. Maybe they do them differently Down South, but this was a bit of a let down. One tiny little bar, like you might find in a marquee at a modern marketed music festival. One brand of German Bier - Paulaner - and only two varieties: Munich and Weiss. The Weiss was off by the time I had been pushed and shoved forward by the ten deep bar queue. If you didn’t fancy Paulaner Munich, you could have that old Bavarian favourite, Foster’s. And they insisted on calling it Bier, which makes me wonder how authentic it really was. Not that authenticity seemed to be high on the agenda as it was all served in the obligatory health and safety plastic beakers.
So, we all got beer and seats in the Great Hall by which time a bunch of Cockney Irish fiddlers and banjoists started murdering Pogues' classics, much to the delight of the mostly student audience who I’m sure were out of their minds by now. Not that it stopped one of the thieving little tykes nicking my beer when I laid it down to rest and turned my back for five minutes.
What followed is a little hazy - maybe the bier was real, after all.
I fear that I may have danced to Chas But Not Dave or Chas And His Band or whatever Chas ‘n’ Dave are now known as. I was a little disturbed by the large, bald bass player, especially when he kept repeating ‘Gertcha!’ like an overly loud belch, totally drowning out scrawny-looking Chas on vocals.
To make matters worse, on leaving, I stopped for a Hot Dog.
‘Sorry, no onions’ said the serving assistant.
‘Oh, that’s a shame. I like onions on my Hot Dog. So. They are £3.00 with onions, right?’
‘That’s right, sir, but we don’t have any onions left.’
‘No, you don’t. So, if it’s £3.00 with onions… how much is it for a Hot Dog without onions?’
‘It’s £3.00, sir. With or without onions.’
By this time I was already in full Basil Fawlty mode.
‘I’d like a discount, please. If it’s £3.00 for a Hot Dog with onions, then I’d like 20% off for a Hot Dog without onions.’
‘It’s £3.00, sir. With or without onions.’
‘How can it be the same price, with or without onions?’
‘It’s £3.00, sir. With or without onions.’
‘So, can I have a discount, then or not? I’m willing to pay £2.40 for a Hot Dog without onions. If only you’d removed the empty onion trays and not told me you had no onions I’d never have known. Or you could scrape up the remaining slivers and let me have those….’
Now, I felt like Yossarian in Catch-22 trying to get out of the Air Force by being crazy, but being told that he couldn’t be crazy because he wanted to leave. And only a sane man would want to leave.
‘I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t give a discount. I just work here. It’s £3.00, sir. With or without onions.’
‘You could give me a discount if you wanted to. I’m sure you could.’
The guy (no pun intended) behind me piped up, offering to call the Office Of Fair Trading. I suggested that they might want to consult the Sale Of Consumer Goods Act.
‘I can’t give a discount, sir. It’s £3.00, with or without onions.’
‘OK, I give in. I’ll have a Hot Dog without onions for £3.00.’
‘You have to pay first, sir.’
‘What?! But you just gave him one! He hasn’t paid yet!’
‘I’m sorry, sir. You have to pay first and then I’ll give you the Hot Dog.’
A young American woman approached me.
‘Please stop harassing my staff, sir.’
‘What?! Harassing your staff?! You’ve got to be joking?!’
‘No, sir. You’re harassing my staff. Now, please stop it or I will have to call Security to come and remove you.’
‘All I want is a Hot Dog with onions for £3.00 as advertised. If you don’t have onions, then fine, I’ll buy a bareback Hot Dog for £2.40.’
‘Sir, you can buy a Hot Dog without onions for £3.00 or go without.’
‘Why can’t you give me a discount?’
‘I only work here, sir. I can’t give you a discount.’
‘Hang on. I thought you were in charge? Surely you can use your discretion and keep your customers happy? I just spent plenty of money tonight on donating to the cost of the fireworks display and buying beer for me and my friends.’
‘What’s your problem, mate?’ asked a student grumpily and who looked like he had dyed his original wiry ginger hair black. ‘It says Hot Dogs £3.00. Doesn’t say anything about onions.’
‘No, I know it doesn’t say anything about onions. That’s a very good point. And that’s why I’m not going to engage you in any further conversation. Enjoy your Hot Dog! Thank you all and goodnight.’
Thanks also, to Lee, Gemma, Michael, Atul, Dan, Raheem and Angelina for making it a fun night out. And my apologies for any offence caused to the Hot Dog stand workers.
Bonfire of the potatoes
Abstract: Everyone needs good neighbours. Tags: Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes, neighbours
On Saturday night, I shared a bonfire - in honour of the last person to enter the UK Parliament with honest intentions - with three Bolivians (all of whom have jobs, and at least one of whom has a cat), a Pole, a Catalan, an Irishman, several English people (one of Asian extraction and one born in Africa), a Roman candle or two, a Chinese lantern, twelve Lincolnshire sausages, some French’s American mustard, a large bag of pomme de terres of Peruvian ancestry, and a guy that looked like Frank Sidebottom.
Oh, and - long-time readers of my blog who have not yet required a psychotherapeutic intervention will be pleased to note - some onions.
The onions went down particularly well. I fried them myself. They were so good, people asked me ‘How did you make them?’. ‘I fried them,’ I said. Did I sweat them, or cook them slowly? Not deliberately. There was a lot of them. No, I have never made French onion soup.
I also cooked the sausages. All I did was put them under the grill and turn them over occasionally, in between supping hot mulled wine in our neighbours’ garden and nipping back across the close to knock back some warm English ale and make sure our house wasn’t on fire. Unfortunately, that’s also when they burned FrankGuy. So, sorry, no pics. (I also conducted a thought experiment about making a vegetarian alternative to sausages.)
One of the Bolivians wrapped the pomme de terres in tin foil and buried them in the burning embers of the bonfire to cook while a committee of English people tried to work out how to set the Chinese lantern alight. The token environmental activist present complained that setting a Chinese lantern alight wasn’t very environmentally friendly, and to be honest, I had some sympathy with her. Still, we were getting drunk, and this Chinese lantern was going up, one way or another. And up it went.
Perhaps the launching committee might have considered the location of the launchpad - well, actually, they did. ‘There’s a park five minutes walk from here,’ I said. ‘We’re not going there,’ they said. So, finally, we lit and launched the lantern in the close, and it rose up and up. Up and straight into the tree. Where it stayed, burning away in amongst the damp Autumn leaves. It’s still there now.
We burned some more pallets on the fire and then dug out the apples of the earth with a spade. The foil came off some of them in the process, to reveal glowing red potato coals within. Someone expertly cut the spuds in half and applied butter to the hot flesh, and passed them around with napkins and spoons. It was the best tasting potato I’ve ever had.