The mystery of porridge

wall paper paste?

In this momentous year for Scotland and the Scots, I am making an urgent appeal. The substance of my quest is: when and why did Scottish porridge become like wallpaper paste both in looks and taste? Porridge in my infancy and youth was an unctuous substance akin to junket; it congealed to a rubbery consistency, pale blue at the edges. Why oh why is porridge so different today? Mine looks like the illustration above, but it is wrong. Porridge should be smooth as a millpond, not rucked up. And made with water and plenty of salt, of course. Solutions invited. By the way, I use value porridge oats  from the Co-op but I see no reason why such a simple classic ingredient as milled oats should be to blame for the wrong result. It must be the preparation. And, yes, I do soak the oats overnight.

Elizabeth Jane Howard

Elizabeth Jane Howard

I have never read anything by Elizabeth Jane Howard, news of whose death aged 90 was announced today - but will do now. I am off next week on holiday for a fortnight to a place where there is blissfully nothing to do and no-one to see, so I have downloaded all five of EJH's Cazalet Chronicles onto my Kindle, as well as her memoir 'Slipstream'. For good measure, I have also ordered Margaret Drabble's 'The Garrick Year' and Anthony Russell's memoir about growing up at Leeds Castle. My ex and I attended a retirement course at Leeds Castle 20 years ago, made memorable mainly for the information dinned in to us - a group of senior managers plus a 'plant' learning the trade of such courses - by a wild-haired boffin from the Department of Health and Social Security. The news from the man from the ministry (let me remind you that this was 1993)  was that we need not worry about making arrangements for our estates. 'You will all probably live into your nineties, and will have nothing left to leave your children', he told us bluntly. He explained that if one survived into one's sixties, one was statistically likely to go on for another thirty years. Travelling had to be done in one's sixties and seventies. Thereafter, in one's eighties, one became less energetic and for a while one's expenditure decreased along with relative mobility . Then, alas, the last few years would become astronomically expensive. 'Care' etc would swallow up what was left of one's wherewithal. EJH was living towards the end of her life in Bungay, the town in Norfolk where I was evacuated towards the end of WWII, when the V2's began to fall on our bit of northeast Kent. R.I.P.

A Christmas shelfie

Scrambled eggs and a good book

Breakfast next to a bookshelf - how civilized is that?  After The Great Storm of Christmas Eve 2014, in the idyllic surroundings of MyHotel, Chelsea. Normal blogging service will be resumed after Christmas.

Notice of Moffat Book Events AGM

Notice to Moffat Book Events members:
The MBE AGM will be held on Monday January 13th at 7pm at The Annandale Arms Hotel in Moffat.
Further information available from Jim Hurren (jim@forestrypurposes.com)

Memories of Mandela- era South Africa

Benjamin Pogrund a hero of the anti-apartheid movement

Now that Nelson Mandela has been laid to rest, here is my memory of South Africa in the days of apartheid.

In 1969, I was visiting my father in Johannesburg, where, having businesses in southern Africa, he had a house and lived for part of the year.  I had recently joined the London Sunday Times as a reporter and feature writer, and , before I left London, I had asked the news desk for the telephone number of a contact in case anything came up while I was there. The man whose name they gave me was Benjamin Pogrund, then of the Rand Daily Mail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Pogrund

On arrival, I rang the number I had been given, and left a message for Ben to ring me. When he rang me back, my father asked me who this 'Benjamin Pogrund'  was. When I explained that he had won press awards for his reporting on events in the black townships, police brutality and the Sharpeville shootings and had been to prison, my father exploded with rage. 'Don't you realise where we are?' he fumed. He was not a man given to fear but he was not only angry but frightened. He explained that he assumed that his phone was already  bugged. I was astonished. Having already started, as a student of Russian, to visit the then Soviet Union, I had thought that South Africa was the antithesis of a police state. But it turned out that they were two sides of the same coin. Food for thought.

UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014 - Sneak preview

Torn paper portrait of Chekhov by Liudmila Semyatitskaya

Part of the programme of events planned for Moffat to mark the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014 will be an exhibition of torn paper art works by Moscow artist Liudmila Semyatitskaya.

Portrait of Yesenin with his muse

Mandelstam

Fyodor Tyutchev

We're looking forward to the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014

We're on our way!

MBE/UK-Russia Year of Culture: update

We  have applied for funding to Annandale and Eskdale Area Committee Dumfries & Galloway, to enable MBE to employ an professional organiser for our 2014 planned programme of events . This funding, along with the commission to MBE for seeing through a book by reforming economist Yegor Gaidar gaidarfund.ru to publication by a UK publisher, will be in place at the earliest by March/April 2014.   Over the past fourteen months we have approached other appropriate groups with a view to active co-operation both in Moffat (Moffat Town Hall Trust, Moffat Academy and  Old Well Theatre Trust), regionally (Carolyn Yates, our Literature Development officer and Adrian Turpin, director Wigtown Book Festival; Boswell Book Festival) and nationally (British Council; Scottish Government; Scotland-Russian Forum; Scottish Poetry Library; EWM).