A schpoon full of sugar helps...?

It’s Saturday night. The Boy and I are at our local pub, soothing the aches and pains of the day spent car-shopping with gin and ale. Not together obviously. We plan to have a quiet but delicious and unchallenging dinner at the small Vietnamese café round the corner, and then wend our way home for a port or two.

Drinks finished, we make to leave. A table sits reticently in the corner, festooned with all manner of magazines and newspapers. Being me, my eye immediately falls on a picture of a young red-haired girl, staring beatifically at a long strand of spaghetti that she has between her two hands, sucking it in from the middle through her small puckered lips. All Lady and The Tramp style.

Had her hair been curlier and brown, it could have been me. Pasta and I are the greatest of companions. We have been through a lot together, and I have always stuck by it – over-cooking, pesto, ‘bolgnese’, even the travesty that is ‘BBQ chicken’ pasta – all of which I have been made to endure either by UK restaurants or friends back when we were university students.

But, cooked correctly and served simply, it is a plate that will only ever elicit a very wide and very deep grin from me.

The Boy was arranging his effects (aka fannying), so I sauntered over to have a closer look at what the article related to. Within the first three lines The Eyebrow was up, where it would stay for a good while longer as I continued to read.

Some dietician had taken it upon herself to tell readers “five foods you must cut back on”. From the very title you get an idea of what tone the article will strike: imperatives, orders, proselytising as to what parents should and should not be feeding their young children. I am baffled and amazed at how she is able to know every child individually for what they and their body’s needs are.

These five demon-foods are refined carbohydrates, salt, sugar, processed meats and fat. And on the surface of that, I am with her – none of these food groups, taken in large amounts, is good for any body, young or old. However, the devil always lurks in the details.

With each paragraph, I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into the vapid yet offensively prominent ocean of modern-psycho-babble nonsense that accompanies having children. Endless statistics and percentages and grams of daily allowances of saturated or refined or processed or raw or organic somethings.

Focussing on salt, ‘The guidelines’ ordain that young ones ‘between 1 and 3 should have no more than 2g salt a day, four to six-year-olds need only 3g, rising to 5g for seven to ten-year-olds and 6g for anyone over 11. Two slices of toast with butter and Marmite gives you 2.1g of salt’. And help is here for fat too, which should constitute ‘35 per cent of your daily calorific intake, which works out as about 60g a day for a six-year-old girl and up to 100g a day for a growing teenage boy. Children do need a bit of saturated fat, but only 10 per cent of the total fat intake should be saturated.’

Got all of that? Wee snippets of information there, easily remembered when one child is in the process of rendering your wall something from Twombly’s studio, and the other has taken to plugging its sibling’s ear holes with plasticine. Of course one can remember and calculate the percentile representation of salt and saturated fats in the egg and soldiers you are about to battle down their mouths.

Oh and watch out for the ‘soldiers’ – apparently one slice of white bread is akin to four packets of sugar, direct into the bloodstream. And don’t reach for the pasta or rice, unless they’re brown, or potatoes – anything white is a no go. They represent a ‘big bowl of nothing’. And topping them up on fruit is also a no-no: fruit = sugar. Instead of an apple, present your young tot with a stick of celery.

I must be super-human then, as between the ages of 10 and 17, so arguably the most active years for bodily developments and growth, I ate pasta with oil and not much else (perhaps some tuna or peas or tomato) four or five times a week. That’s 64.29% of all dinners. Just in case you wanted another statistic there. And after every dinner, there was fruit, not just one piece, but maybe even two. And I would have had some fruit at lunch too, and at break time. Total grams of sugar in my day from fruit = I-don’t-give-a-gram.

Here’s another statistic: that on said heinous diet of white pasta and white rice too (my father is Anglo-Indian so if it wasn’t pasta it was curry, and my parents are not of the ‘brown rice generation’.), I managed to become a top under-18 GB rower who went on to represent the country at the Junior World Championships twice.

Imagine that. All on white stuff.

And then there are our parents’ generations and all those before them, as well as nations like Italy and Spain, whom all have lived or continue to live without brown rice or pasta. In the 18 months I was in Italy, yes I saw brown pasta in the supermarket, but it was grouped with the gluten-free offerings, tucked away in the far corner of the aisles, gathering dust quietly. Not because Italians have anything against someone who cannot eat gluten (as in really cannot – body rejecting type ‘cannot’, not someone who blames their body shape on gluten and gluten only.), or who prefer brown pasta – it is because in Italy, the proportion of people with gluten ‘issues’ (or issues with gluten) or who believe that white pasta is bad, is gratifyingly small. They eat white pasta without fear, because their white pasta is good quality, and it is served with equally good quality home-made sauces, perhaps with a salad on the side, even, wait for it, with a piece of bread to ‘fare la scarpetta’ at the end…white on white. Sacrilegious heathens that they are.

My point is that ‘white’ does not equal obesity, just like ‘brown’ does not equal healthy, in the young or the old. It is quality that counts. Rather than obsessing over statistics, efforts should centre on finding the best quality of food that can be afforded, and on culturing a healthy relationship with food. Banning such universal foods such as white pasta or rice will only engender a fear of food . If there is something beneficial that they just will not eat, then devote energies to reinventing that hated item so that they start to reconsider their feud.

As for portions, little people are in the process of getting big, and they all do it at a different rate from the next, so who are you or any dietician to say how many grams they are allowed? I used to go for two or three weeks eating a mouthful at each meal, and then, out of the blue, I would rampage through meals like a deranged wildebeest, embarrassing my older brother with the amounts I would inhale each day.

And guess what? I am not obese. I am fit, healthy and happy.

I don’t have children, so these are all surmises based on observations of parents I know, and those I observe in my daily life. My reaction to this article (it had The Boy sweating that I would work myself up into such a tizz that I’d need to be taken home to have a tea-towel placed on my head, before our Vietnamese.) is so strong because I am both irritated and sad at the state of parenting nowadays. Professionals and experts spend their time banging on about theories and mechanisms through which one can ‘manage’ one’s child and their development, physical and psychological. Utilise them and your child will be perfect, ignore them and you will end up with…they shudder to think.

Pfft. Being a parent is at one and the same time the simplest and most complex thing we will ever do. Your child is precisely that, yours, so inside you lies an instinct that will guide you through the sticky bits. But then your child, whilst yours, is not you, so what works for you may not be right for them. But, at the end of it all, they are still humans. You don’t need a hand-book, you just need a pair of eyes to really absorb their being. The answer is always there, it’s just whether you’re looking in the right way.

If I am lucky enough to have children at some point I intend to parent them how I, and they, see fit, without statistic or percentage, and most definitely with pasta, in all its myriad colours.

Just have your cake and hush up

I’ve never really felt a part of Britain. I am in no way patriotic, but at the same time, I would hardly call myself a turncoat.

As far as I understand ‘Britishness’ (answers on the back of a postcard please), it does nothing for me. But ‘nothing’ works both ways: nothing in the sense that no switches have been flicked, no sparks have been sent flying. But also ‘nothing’ in the sense that, for all that Britishness is (or isn’t), it doesn’t bother me to be around it. And so I continue to live perfectly happily amongst the hubbub of Britishness. Perhaps muted, respectful, measured ‘murmur’ is more apt.

There are, however, some habits that completely bamboozle me.

1) The inability to omit the weather as a topic of conversation with all and sundry.
2) The quasi-religious ardour with which queues are formed, yet, by and large, the inability to emotionally compute foreigners’ disregard for queuing.
3) The displeasure and grumbling that accompanies having to pay for an art exhibition.
4) The ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ Tourettes syndrome.
5) The apology given by a purchaser when pointing out to a seller that their product is faulty.
6) That stale bread soaked in milk with peppercorns and an onion constitutes a ‘sauce’ worthy of the largest, more celebrated meal in the calendar.
7) That the largest, most celebrated meal in the calendar is a roast, a meal which many households partake of every Sunday.
8) That ‘gastropubs’ have hoodwinked the nation into believing that their food is of a high enough standard that warrants the grossly inflated prices attached to their menus.
9) That, if we are to believe their proclamations, Costa is the nation’s favourite coffee shop.

I could go on, but I shall get to the point of this blog. A habit that bamboozles me more than JLS’s fame:

Dunking biscuits in tea.

Don’t recoil in horror. It’s odd. Not me being bamboozled, but you (whoever you dunkers are) intentionally making something that was once crunchy soggy. Why would you do that to anything?

A very British biscuit: understated and controlled but undeniably enjoyable.

Take the humble Custard Cream. Whilst it has more pizazz than a Rich Tea, it doesn’t flaunt it with gaudy packaging, an outrageously sized product or an over-embellished taste: there is a modest quantity of plain biscuit and a smathering of vanilla ‘buttercream’. (I think I just coined a new word there. A cross between ‘slathering’ and ‘smear’. Just call me Will.). This buttercream is no love child of The Hummingbird’s tooth-decayingly rich hell-paste. It is a buttercream from decades ago, somewhat artificial, but not so much as to make you fear for your heart after eating it. There is a crunch, crumble and smooth, all in one bite.

The very picture of peaceful harmony.

And now take a cup of tea – be it Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Green, Peppermint, Fennel, or Jasmine – whatever gets your bud blooming. Within your cup lie the Powers of Restoration, perhaps girdling your loins against an onslaught from Excel, or maybe soothing the toothache caused by an inimitably unproductive meeting - sup and thou shalt feel its balm. It is warming, it is hydrating, it is smooth.

Death by dunking.
R.I.P. Custard.

And now, pray tell, what madman decided that asphyxiating our poor Custard Cream beneath the hot swathes of tea was a beneficial idea for all parties involved: me, the C-C and the tea?!!?!

1) It renders the previously crumbly, crunchy and biscuity biscuit soggy, flaccid and decayed. There is a reason that we often use the adjective ‘biscuity’ to describe something crumbly and nibbly. (I think I made up another word there, didn’t I? Work with me here.)
2) It renders the tea all murky and funny-tasting. Who wants wet, pappy bits of biscuit floating in your tea, or, worse still, lurking at the bottom for when you sup in those precious last dregs and THWACK – crumbs have gone the wrong way down your throat and now you’re choking like a seal at your desk. Ideal.

I have yet to see someone submerge with glee a Tuc biscuit, handful of cereal flakes or lump of cake in their tea, so why on earth do they feel the need to drown biscuits?

Innards dribbling and oozing, a biscuit waning and crying "why?? WHYYYYY???"

I will fully admit that I am overly addicted to crunch – I don’t crave specific food items, I crave textures and colours. Red and green are favourites, and, 80% of the time it is a need for crunch, 20% of the time a need for pap, when I have red-carded the world.

That being said, however, I would never voluntarily make something pappy that was once crunchy. Nor would I attempt to make something ‘textured’ that was once lustrous. No, no, no. It would be like making a piece of toast or taking a beautiful flaky, crisp tart and leaving them in a sea of milk. Or intentionally boiling a crème anglaise until it curdles.

WRONG. Effort (to a greater or lesser extent) has gone in to making those items crunchy and crispy, or smooth and flowing. If you wanted a soft piece of toast, just eat bread, and if you fancied a soggy-bottomed tart, order one in Patisserie Valerie. They could probably provide you with the lumpy crème anglaise too. And, if you really wanted an uncrunchy biscuit, have some cake.

Feeding the mind's eye

Letters. Words. Sentences. Stories. Poems. Articles. Speeches. Songs. Essays. Investigations. Studies. Theses. Blogs.

I adore words. Dictionaries and thesauruses for me are entertainment enough for any rainy day. Actually, any day at all. I’ll show you why. Let’s look up the word 'sumpsimus':

1. Adherence to or persistence in using a strictly correct term, holding to a precise practice, etc., as a rejection of an erroneous but more common form (opposed to mumpsimus).
2. A person who is obstinate or zealous about such strict correctness (opposed to mumpsimus).

And there, waving at you amidst the linguistic cipher to 'sumpsimus' , is another strange looking word: 'mumpsimus'. Off we go again:

1. Adherence to or persistence in an erroneous use of language, memorization, practice, belief, etc., out of habit or obstinacy.
2. A person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice.

And, depending on what words you know, perhaps you may look up 'erroneous' or 'obstinacy'. I don’t need to as I am never erroneous, and, as you can see, am not in the least obstinate. Am I???

For me, words are colour. I would always prefer to read a book before I see the film adaptation. That way I am able to direct and produce my own mental film adaptation, not sullied by any irritatingly cardboard Hollywood A-listers cast as the lead roles, nor damaged by seemingly inexplicable alterations or omissions from the original text. (Nobody mention the war. The Trojan War that is.)

The rise of blogging, in some ways, proves that modern society embraces and enjoys words as much as any other. But in other ways it shows a shift to the contrary. Even in the few blogs that I have written, the best received pieces are those with photos. A screen full of words is not what many people feel up to reading in their lunch hour or en route home.

I’m not saying it’s because people dislike words (the fact that adult novels or non-fiction books are generally un-illustrated proves an acceptance of words) but photographs or visual stimuli seem to help get the creative juices flowing. They oil the cerebral clogs that grind and crunch the text to spit out the other side a mental image.

It was an article on the Guardian website that got me thinking about the interaction between words, images and our minds. Seemingly some restaurants have taken it upon themselves to ban photography so voracious is the plague of bloggers nowadays, armed with smartphones and cameras, drooling over the thought of their next blog.

The idea of taking photographs whilst (or before) eating in a public place is something that makes me twitch, both with nervousness for fear of remonstrating waiters or restaurant managers, and with unease at the incongruence of the action and the occasion. It breaks the mood of the meal, whatever that mood may be, by whipping out a phone or camera and snapping, swivelling the plate, prodding the food, lighting the scene with another electronic device then snapping again.

Eating out should be about, wait for it, eating. And if the experience is one that blows you away, for good or bad reasons, then record it mentally and express it verbally. Endlessly photographing your food is like visiting a foreign country and watching it through the lens of your camera or i-pad. More and more I see tourists wandering around looking at where they are going through their i-pad. And for reasons that won’t fit into this blog, I find it utterly depressing.

Snapping before or whilst eating at home, however, is another matter – it’s your home, or perhaps a friend’s home, and the food has probably either been made by you or made for you by somebody you know, so go nuts.

Perhaps that’s the root of it – that when I eat out, even in a café, I am eating something that someone has made for me, someone I don’t know, and for that I feel a certain amount of respect or appreciation is due. It’s for the same reason that I don’t take phone calls whilst in public eating places (coffee shops don’t count), and the same reason I don’t belch, parp, swear (loudly), pick my spots, lick my knife or have an argument or raucously shriek with delight with my companions.

Go ahead, call me a prude.

As the article points out, before people got obsessed with blogging about food (the reason this ban has come into effect), restaurants banned what was the problem of that time: using or talking on mobile phones. It is not uncommon, nor is it something people get uppity about anymore, to see a sign asking for phones not to be used in restaurants. We accept it now, but maybe when it first came out it provoked a hullabaloo from outraged diners.

Those polite requests for guests not to use their mobile phones are, in fact, something I spot with delight – “joy upon joy!”, I think, a meal during which the sounds permeating my ears will be the bibble-babble of chatter; chinks and tings of moving glasses and plates; the odd spontaneous explosion of laughter from a happy table; my own munching; perhaps also my companion’s delighted grunting or crunching – and absolutely no tings, bings, or rings from polyphonic hand-held mobile communicative devices.

Natural tonic

I think you know I am long. I’m sure I told you that. The Boy gleefully told me about ‘The Ape Index’.

I score 1.10, or 19cm…I’m more apeish than Michael Phelps. What an accolade.

Anyway, I’m long and not at all a “well made man” according to Vitruvius or Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

But I can live with that.

Perhaps because of my lengthy qualities, I feel an affinity to other long things, and enjoy residing in their elongated presence. Trees are one of my most preferred companions on a wondering wander.

See? Long.

They are large and long and 100% trees. There is no malice or devious intent to trick anyone into believing they are a flower or bush or bird. Nor do they dislike themselves and wish they were something other than a tree (well, in my head they don’t). They are simply a tree. And they do being a tree tree-mendously. (Yes, feel free to spit at your computer screen. That was terrible, I know).

Peace, tranquillity and trees.

There is the obviously crucial role they play in purifying the environment and providing oxygen for us respiratory beings to breathe in, as well as the habitat they provide so many organisms across the globe, from birds, squirrels, children and the occasional stranded cat, to tiny insects and reptiles that scuttle up, in, down and around their transcendental form.

Another marvellous aspect of trees is their reliability – I can always rely on the huge, sprawling, august trees in Green Park to be there. Ok, so, they may lose and grow leaves throughout the year, but their structure remains. They are there, whatever the weather, being a tree, and being a tree very adroitly.

I remember when 2008 rolled around and the economic maelstrom we still find ourselves in started. I was one of the unlucky ones (or was it lucky, freeing my up for all that followed after. That’s a whole other blog right there).

I remember each morning, nearing the end of my job and not having found another job, I walked through Green Park, along the paths nestled beneath the protective limbs of the trees, looking up wondering what on earth would come of that particular day, imagining responses to applications or invitations to interview, each thought less certain and concrete than the previous and none providing any amount of solace. Nothing was coming right at any end, and despite countless calls to positivity from loved ones, my future was looking excessively bleak and foggy.

And then it struck me – what it is to be a tree. Trees don’t have any concerns about jobs. Nor do they worry about the future and what it holds. They know what their future holds, and they are fine with that (again, in my head they are) – it holds being a tree, just like they are being now, and just they have been before now. There are no pained cries for something different, bigger, or better. They do their job better than anything else on the earth, and they are resolutely contented with that.

The trees also made me put my worries and concerns in perspective. Despite being long myself, I am nowhere near as long as those trees are – I am small. And, in comparison to the life span of some trees, my life span, even if it’s long like me, won’t be as long as theirs. Again, I (my life) am small in comparison. And then I looked at what was troubling me – employment, finding a job, making a way for myself, doing as well as I possibly could – and whilst these are all still concerns I very firmly believe are helpful and positive in a way, and continue to think about, the extent to which I was worrying was put into perspective by the trees. They don’t have such concerns. Their lives are stripped down to one aspect: being a tree. And this minimalistic life has resulted in them perfecting this aspect, down to a T(ree). (Awful, I know.)

It set off a whole motion of thoughts that quelled the waves crashing against my mind – Nature is immutable. We operate in, around and amongst Nature, and are but players on its stage. But rather than being like an evil puppeteer, Nature is secure enough in itself to continue being itself in the background, without demands for attention or praise from its guests (us). The constancy and sureness of Nature is something I take great comfort in, and by the same fact, trees, spread high above my head, cloaking me in their vein-like masses, give me the greatest feeling of certainty in my life: they are being a tree, and I am being a human beneath a tree. And for the rest, there’s not much anyone can do except continue to be. And that’s just fine, because, to steal a phrase from the unutterably sound Dr Seuss:

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer that You.

A natural cloak against the elements of life.