Sunday Sonnet

One of the most thought-provoking views on the planet.

O valiant hearts who to your glory came
through dust of conflict and through battle flame;
tranquil you lie, your knightly virtue proved,
your memory hallowed in the land you loved.

Proudly you gathered, rank on rank, to war
as who had heard God's message from afar;
all you had hoped for, all you had, you gave,
to save mankind - yourselves you scorned to save.

Splendid you passed, the great surrender made;
into the light that nevermore shall fade;
deep your contentment in that blest abode,
who wait the last clear trumpet-call of God.

John Stanhope Arkwright, 1919

I'm impressed by anyone who can sing to the third verse of this without a huge lump in their throat. Not as impressed as I am, of course, by the men and women, then and now, in whose memory we sing it; my children and I remember you today with pride, admiration, respect and profound gratitude.

"And he commanded the multitude to sit down"

It wasn't the teeniest tiniest bit like this today.

So Freddie's class delivered Assembly this morning; full Junior School attendance, plus parents perched on a row of titchy chairs at the back of the hall. Brilliantly, it is us naughty grown-ups that fidget and whisper the most, pathetically regressing to a time when we ourselves sat cross-legged, shiny-shoed and navy-blazered in serried ranks on the floor.

I think they did the parable of the loaves and fishes, but there was a lot of mumbling from the readers so I could have got that wrong. They have a shiny-arsed new drama teacher this year, who is about sixteen and was wearing very tight trousers. The Daddies listened with unheard-of attention as she explained this was going to be a special assembly and that we were all going to be moving around. There's nowhere to hide when you're one of the parents, so we had to smile in delight rather than sink further down in English silence. There's nothing more guaranteed to clear a room than the mention of God to a Protestant Englishman. You could feel the fear. 'Oh no.' 'Please, don't make me stand up.' 'Bloody hell, if there's any shaking or speaking in tongues, I'm off.' Brilliant. Even the Head looked horrified, though I think that was more on grounds of Potential Untidiness than fear of spiritual choirs and kissing.

A gaggle of them then charged through the swing doors into the hall, dressed in stripy shepherd get-ups and Miss Drama shouted at everyone to 'FOLLOW JESUS!' The parents remained, rictus grins, glued to the tiny chairs; the teachers shuffled blushingly about in arm-folded groups and two hundred seven- to eleven-year-olds, eyes shining in feral glee, bombed about the parquet, boys intent on pushing each other over, girls squealing and spinning about. I think one of the stripy ones was supposed to be Jesus, but it was impossible to tell. It was complete carnage, the stripy ones chucking paper fishes and loaves about hysterically, a complete scrum free-for-all from the blazered ones. We were laughing our heads off at the back, NOT very helpful.

Eventually, the shout went up 'Sit DOWN, School!' and the Head hastily thanked Year Five for a very illuminating and special assembly and moved quickly on to Hymn 362.

Bloody marvellous start to my day, especially as I then drove to work past Starbucks. I landed in the office with three large skinny lattes and two almond croissants. My very own modern-day parable.

"Slightly filthy with erotic mystery, I saw the dreamer in her"

Gorgeous, sophisticated, talented.

Despised, broken, desperate.

When I was a student, I occasionally stumbled across earnest late-night discussions about that nutter's nutter, Sylvia Plath. I say occasionally, not because the subject wasn't popular, but because usually I was embroiled in far more shallow pursuits - drinking, essay crises, unrequited crushes, laughing till I cried and more drinking, high jinking and larks. I never really got the whole Bell Jar phenomena. That was the preserve of some rather pale types who chewed the ends of their sleeves, pushed salad forlornly about in the dining room and were forever putting on pained expressions so we all knew that they were Fragile or Damaged or some other attention-seeking bollocks.

I am assuming my fabulous readers are all familiar with the story of Sylvia's stormy marriage to the man who then became Poet Laureate, and her suicide in Belsize Park, North London one winter night in 1963. The idea of killing yourself as your two small children slept next door, poignant little glasses of milk carefully left for when they woke, motherless, stirs all kinds of emotion in a parent's heart.

I am afraid I have a grudging sympathy for Ted Hughes. I know he was cruel and unfaithful. I also know that he was a player well before he married Plath, and she was of a suicidal bent long before she met him. I therefore have little patience with those strident man-haters who have defaced Sylvia's grave, attempting to remove Hughes' name and frankly appointing her as a mascot without a single thought for her children or their father attempting to live in the shadow of a ghastly act.

There are several great books on this subject, and one fantastic film, Sylvia, in which Gwyneth Paltrow was superbly cast, if you want to really wallow in her mind.

The character I have long been interested by is Assia Wevill, the woman Ted was having an affair with when Sylvia killed herself, and last Christmas I took to my bed for a whole day devouring a fascinating biography of her: A Lover of Unreason. I couldn't imagine how she must have felt when Sylvia committed the ultimate 'fuck you,' catapulting Assia from glamorous mistress to stepmother of two and keeper of Hughes' sanity. Oh, and the most hated woman in the world for many people. The book describes a free spirit, a cosmopolitan woman who married more as a career move than for love. Her first husband took her away from a stifling life in Tel Aviv; her second, a Canadian economist, gave her an entree into an intellectual world she loved. She met her third husband, David Wevill, on the boat from Canada to England; a 21-year old English poet.

She is reputed to have boasted to colleagues at her advertising agency in London that she intended to have Hughes; she and David were renting the Hughes' London flat while Ted and Sylvia moved to the country. There are several accounts of the weekend they stayed at the Hughes' country house - did she seduce Ted by sharing her dreams? Did she claim love of the myths, lore and landscape he adored? What is certain is that she was utterly stunning, confident and passionate and cared not a fig for convention. Sylvia, introspective, high maintenance, and turned into a shadow after having two children, didn't stand a chance.

However, Sylvia, as it turned out, had played a blinder. Assia moved in with Hughes and looked after the two little ones. Ted was of course wracked with guilt and the spirit of his dead wife consumed them both - he editing her poems, destroying her diaries; she suffocated by the legacy of Sylvia's domestic intimacy. Sylvia used to decorate her houses by painting enamel hearts, twining them around the doors of the children's bedrooms and about her kitchen. Imagine cooking in that. Ted wrote her two pages of domestic instruction ensuring Sylvia's spirit lived on (experiment with cooking! teach the children German!). They slept together in the marital bed.

Ted continued to work; he prevaricated about marrying Assia, worrying about upsetting Sylvia's family and fans. Assia, having already aborted one of his babies, gave birth to their daughter in 1965. Ted continued to leave her to the wolves, gaining at least two more mistresses. It must have been a complete nightmare for the woman who initially saw him as a feather in her cultural cap. She killed herself and her four year old daughter, in a macabre reconstruction of Sylvia's suicide in 1969.

Could you make it up? Isn't it a fascinating and tragic tale? I do love the poetry of Ted, his glorious, granite-like tales of unforgiving Yorkshire landscapes, his fantastical works for children, his bone-deep reverence for nature and all her beauty and cruelty.

For a while when I lived in London, I used to walk to the tube past the flat where Sylvia killed herself, imagining her desperation; the treks to the phone box to call her mother in America, wheeling a pram through the February snow. The frantic writing as she attempted to rediscover her soul, her identity through poetry, her love sonnets to her husband, father and children.  I gave scant thought to the woman who dealt with (and yes, caused) the consequences.

It's been a dark old day. No shit. But I still get to kiss my bots goodnight. And tomorrow we will laugh; high jinks and larks.

Soup to Give You Roots

Heda, Willem Claesz. (1594–c1680). The Colonel approved of this one.

Stilleven met oesters, een citroen, een roemer, een gebroken glas en een omgevallen tazza

Still-life with oysters, lemon, a roemer, a broken glass and fallen tazza.

There are several disadvantages to starting almost every September at a new school, in a new country and often on a new continent. One of the obvious ones is that the only people who will befriend you are the losers and weirdoes. Anyone half-way well-adjusted will be happily catching up with their equally well-adjusted mates and it will be well into October before you get a look-in.

Another is that it becomes all too easy to forget one's traditions, heritage, roots. I recently worked out that, in my early forties, I have had over 30 addresses. That's a lot of moving. Before this sounds like a whingefest, I have of course had some amazing adventures and incredible experiences, but the older I get, the more I feel a visceral need to belong, to have a home, to know that each September that rolls around will bring tradition, the comfort of familiarity, the same old thing. Food is a very good way to instantly capture and establish tradition, especially for a greedy Taurean like me. 'We always have salmon on Christmas Eve,' 'I always bake lemon drizzle cake for birthdays' are boasts that make me feel very centred.

Right, enough introspective bollocks. The point of all this is that as soon as there is a proper chill in the air, I am reminded of that central heating in a bowl, Snert, Dutch pea soup. I have warmed my hands on this since I lived in Antwerp over 25 years ago, a comfort to my adolescent angst, chain-smoking Gauloise Blondes in the shadow of that City's magnificent Cathedral. I made a meatless version of it as an impoverished student in the shadow of another Cathedral in the North of England. I have slurped bowls and bowls of the stuff in my time, in my greed, burning my tongue on its tobacco-coloured silky depths. It was a stunning punctuation to a hilarious afternoon many years ago, which I spent taking the Colonel ('Modern ART? ART? God Almighty, give me a pot of paint and two bloody housebricks...') round the Mauritshuis Museum in the Hague (he adored the still life stuff, hated the nudes because their arses were too big, wouldn't even go into the temporary Bacon exhibit). We sat for hours afterwards in a smoky old dark-panelled cafe; slurping this delicious soup, sipping red wine, talking rubbish and watching the winter afternoon descend beyond the candles of our red-checked table.

I have had some feedback on the general sloppiness of my recipes so far, so for those of you with an anally retentive bent, here are some proper quantities and precise methods. It is worth putting aside an afternoon to make this, and do make heaps of it - it is truly delicious, a meal in a bowl, tastes even more sublime the next day and just think: you can now say "I always make Snert in November."

510g (1lb 2oz) yellow split peas
510g (1lb 2oz) pork ribs
2 litres (3½ pints) water and 2 litres ham stock – feel no shame about using cubes; I boiled a pig’s foot once. Blech.
a smoked sausage in a big horseshoe shape or six of those little Polish kabanos
2 large onions
2 leeks
1 whole medium celeriac - this is non-negotiable, it is essential for depth and sweetness of flavour
2 potatoes
1 head of celery including leaves
sea salt and peppercorns

Rinse the split peas well. Place in a large saucepan with water and pork ribs. Bring slowly to the boil and skim off any scum, drain and rinse. Return to the saucepan with the stock. Bring the boil and reduce to a simmer. Peel and dice the potatoes and celeriac , wash and chop the leeks and add to the saucepan. Cook for 1½-2 hours, (until the peas are tender and breaking up), skimming if needed. Twenty minutes before the end of cooking, remove the ribs, cut off any rind and de-bone, cut in small pieces. Don’t grumble, it’s a pain but it will mean you can eat your soup so much quicker. Chop the celery and leaves. Add the meat, celery and sausage to the saucepan.Slice the sausage, stir in until warmed through and sprinkle with celery leaves or flat parsley to serve. Adjust the seasoning before serving.

For the full experience, eat with candles, Old Masters, dark beer and pumpernickel bread.

I had a fright in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills

Baroness Blixen's farm - go if you can, it's full of her spirit.
Down to her jodhpurs thrown on the bed and her boots at the foot of it.

See Out of Africa but don't bother with the rather turgid book.

A few winters ago, when my life was out-of-control chaotic, I was delighted to accept a kind invitation to go to Nairobi and spend a week hiding out at the home of a friend who works out there. I could say all sorts of things about the amazing and selfless work he does fighting malaria, but this is all about me I won't.

One of the reasons I was so keen to go was that he and I have long shared an obsession with the (officially still unsolved) murder of Lord Erroll, a scion of the Happy Valley crowd in 1930s Kenya. Watch White Mischief for the full story (and some great shots of Charles Dance in the buff) or read the book which is just as gripping. Dr Mosquito and his lovely wife wheeled out heaps of Old Kenya Hands for me to quiz on their first-hand knowledge, memories and local folklore about all the protagonists in this classically Colonial murder. All the ingredients are there - sex, booze, money, scandal, screamingly mad eccentrics and an unexpected insight into the Colonial justice system. It's also a fascinating peep into the mindset of those crazy brave souls who took off across the sea to make new lives in strange lands. I just love those long-ago attitudes - harvest ruined by lack of rain? Buck up and start an affair with a neighbour's wife. Husband given you syphilis? Buck up, plant coffee, adopt a deer and ride for days alone round the perimeter of your lands. Lost your entire inheritance in a bet? Stiff drink, buck up and shuffle the cards again. Lover unfaithful? Buck up, follow him to Paris and shoot him in the balls (read up on this wonderful nutter, Alice de Janze. They simply don't make them like that any more.)

I had a lovely time and spent several happy afternoons drifting about the Muthaiga Club which looks exactly as it does in the film. To this day, cameras are banned in case members are snapped with someone they shouldn't be with. No money changes hands - everything is signed for on a chit and accounts are settled depending on the harvests. I shamelessly eavesdropped on a classic exchange between two old boys in the foyer. One covered in red dust, just driven into town, the other in pressed khaki, grasping a large gin, waiting for him.

"Super to see you. How's the wife?"
"Bloody cancer. Doc's not too hopeful."
"Rotten luck, old chap. Kick her up the arse from me."
"Will do. Drink?"

Everyone I met had a pragmatic, almost casual attitude to death. They all had first or second-hand experience of carjacking, shooting, attacks by animals, theft, crazed hippos charging, rape. Mrs MD and I drove her 4x4 up to Lake Naivasha one day to get as close as we could to the Djinn Palace, the notorious setting for several of the parties you see in the film. We hired a boat, took heaps of photos, had lunch at the country club and drove home. That day, two American women were shot dead on the same road we had driven and their 4x4 was stolen.

On my last day, my host had arranged to borrow two horses and hired a guide to take us on a riding safari in the Ngong Hills. (Everyone I know has seen Out of Africa, and if you haven't, do so immediately. You'll love it.) I was very excited, Karen Blixen being a personal heroine and here I was, about to quite literally ride in her footsteps. My horse was bloody gigantic. I am not. She definitely had racehorse blood. Our safari was supposed to take an hour. It ended up closer to four. There was rather more razor wire than I remember from the film. The guide got completely lost as the recent rains had caused sudden growth of the bush, so all the paths had disappeared. My horse jumped a gorge and left my host and guide on the other side as we galloped uncontrollably away, crashing through spiky undergrowth, caught by trailing thorns. My host speaks Swahili. The guide had a gun. I wasn't even carrying a lipgloss, much less a mobile phone. It turned out I was not made of the stern frontier-smashing stuff I once was. Somewhere along the way I had become a small, scared mummy on a sodding great horse who really, really wanted to go home.

It didn't take that long to find me, covered in scratches and sunburnt.  When I finally dismounted in the yard, my knees buckled with either shock or relief and to my shame, I burst into tears. Dr M stuck a filthy great drink in my hand and they all looked the other way while I Bloody Well Bucked Up.

Spooky. But not what you're thinking.

Yes yes yes, I know he got blown up last series.

But really, if you got home and this was waiting on your doorstep...

Are you listening, Santa?

I am hopeless at watching telly. Part of the reason is that I'm bone idle and the effort involved (go to drawing room, argue the toss with whichever incumbent has staked a claim to either sports or Disney, find two TV controls, remember which is which, remove dog from sofa, remember number of channel, name of programme, reason for being on this earth etc) is far too much. The other reason is that I am too easily distracted, and lose focus. One of the Colonel's terribly amusing set pieces whenever we have guests is an impression of me reading, drinking, staring into space while all around me Rome burns. Or at least, supper does. Bots remain unbathed, Important Things are forgotten, including stuff I am supposed to be watching on TV. It's annoying but true.

Anyway. I have discovered Box Sets. Fanbloodytastic. No pesky TV schedules, no waiting until next week for the next episode, portable and perfect. I have smuggled DVDs into conferences and under bedclothes.

The only downside is that such a concentrated surfeit of another world has an effect on my reality, such as it is. Life on Mars had me longing for Phil Glenister to throw me roughly on his sheepskin coat and chuck me a tube of Spangles after. The West Wing? Once Sam was gone, Josh Lyman filled my thoughts and made me daydream constantly about interning for him and influencing US Foreign Policy from the inside. My current crush, Mad Men, reminds me of my bullshit-filled past life as a copywriter and the long-gone days of casually sparking up a fag in the office. In a lift. In the Ladies.

But it was Spooks that really captured me. Based on the work of M15, it is a thrilling rollercoaster of intelligent writing, credible characters and stunning location shots. Of course, the Colonel keeps up a running bark on the authenticity of the storyline, but I can tune that out. Especially if the scene involves Rupert Penry-Jones. Especially without a shirt.

However, this series I have to watch to the BBC's schedule - starting this Wednesday at 9pm, picking up where we left off with Harry-Head-of-M15 tied up in the back of a Russian car. If you're in the UK, make sure you clear all children, supper, PTO activity from your schedule and park yourself down to watch. If not, order the full series from here and live out your latent spy fantasies. You know they're in there somewhere.

Sunday Sonnet

Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,
But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon my back,
Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret,
Still, my hope is all before me; for I cannot play it yet.

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e'er let fall,
In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;
Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,
Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.

Not as mine, my soul's annointed, not as mine the rude and light
Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight;
Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar,
Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.

But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once,
Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.
But I will not fear to match them - no by God, I will not fear,
I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.

The Strange Music, GK Chesterton (1874 - 1936).
 

Isn't this gorgeous? I was once sent it by a man on the very cusp of a love affair; I was smitten. The poet was a giant of a man - literally and in terms of literary output, sparring with Shaw, Wilde, Belloc and other luminaries on religion, philosophy and the occult. His poetry is less well known than his books, essays and plays, but are well worth an hour or so's reading out of your life.