testing times

Thursday 28th January 2010 9:53 PM

After the scintillating clarity of the recent snow and ice, I've found this last week's dullness rather testing, and after much examination have decided to award all the grey days grade A's. I was going to give them B+'s, but I felt that the sheer consistency of the sickly pallor of the joy-sucked fields, lying flat and listless under a tamazepan sky, merits full marks.

Yesterday afternoon, me and the birds, or the birds and I, the first sounds vulgar, the second pretentious, had a small ceremony in the garden to mark their achievements, a sort of grade A grey day graduation day. With a 2HB, or not 2HB, (that is the pun), I wrote 'nothing' on a rizla paper and put it on the bird-table, and while we waited for it to absorb the gift of damp, some of the finches chucked sunflower seeds over it. After a few minutes, when the rizla paper and seeds had become one, the long-tailed tits ate them and took them as offerings to the land of the weather gods, far away in the north, beyond the veil of darkness, somewhere near Easingwold.

That this dank marriage of seed and rizla should be consummated in the belly of a long-tailed tit should not surprise anyone familiar with bird-lore, nor that the bird was elected as our messenger, for the long-tailed tit is famously much more discreet than it's close relative the tell-tale tit, whose mother can't knit and whose father walks with a walking stick.

An hour or so after the ceremony, maybe in a fit of blushing pride, the sky became vaguely opalescent for a few minutes, and this morning it seems as though the grey days have declared a public holiday, because after five days of being really slack in the headwear department, the sun has finally put his hat on, and because it's the end of term, he's come out to play. Hip hip hip hooray!

Posted 9:53 PM | 161 Comments | Permalink

cheep winter food

Friday 22nd January 2010 11:34 PM

A couple of weeks ago, in light of the recent freeze-up, I decided to re-open the bird restaurant in the front garden, and to give it a more continental feel, I've re-named it 'Wazzo's'. I want it to be modern without being trendy and I've tried to give it a raffish, aristocratic air, so that it gets a good review in the Guardian. I've introduced some ambient willow, which provides atmosphere and extra seating, and hopefully, eventually, catkins, and as well as the usual two dangling feeders, one with sunflower seeds and the other with a millet, peanut and linseed melange, I've also introduced a daringly innovative yet reassuringly traditional table menu for the bigger birds. Today's 'spécialité du jour' is 'bread-maker-malfunction seed loaf' with a 'fruit and berry suet treat' served in a rat-proof cage.

Like the weather, business has been extremely brisk, and although this is partly due to a lack of competition, with many of the nature-based food outlets, like worms, being completely snowed under, I like to think that it's also due to the thrilling cuisine and the stimulating yet relaxed atmosphere that I'm told is unique to Wazzo's.

My newly extended customer-profile, besides having the common cor! great tits! now includes the less exclamatory and more genteel goldfinch, bullfinch and blackbird, and since I've been serving them beetles in with the mealworms, one of them, rather predictably, has taken to singing in the dead of night. The messy eating habits of the sparrows and chaffinches has created a very lively 'sous-table' scene, and even though the various diners include chickens, rats and shrews, thus far there's been no trouble.

Obviously, I enjoy the kudos and glamour of running a successful bird restaurant, who wouldn't, but the cut-throat world of avian cuisine is very demanding, and being sole proprietor of Wazzo's has entailed an immense amount of sheer hard graft, and, since feeding the blackbirds beetles, a lot of interrupted nights.

Creating dishes for our feathered friends is in many ways more onerous than cooking for humans, and requires a delicacy of touch that I suspect would be beyond most of our celebrity chefs. After watching Gordon Ramsey on Channel 4 this week, swanning around India, swearing at the locals, I was surprised at how unusually insensitive he was for a gay man.

As for Jamie Oliver, I'd worry that the delicate feet of some of the smaller birds might get gummed up in the tacky trap of his oleaginous faux mockney charm, while Heston Blumenthal would simply frighten the customers away. Yes, I feel that even the fiery, fearless, red breast of a plucky robin would pale at the thought of those foul and perverted recipes which writhe and twist through the dank tunnels of his tortured mind and are hell-born beneath the electro-chromed serving dish of his ghastly domed skull. Madhur Jaffrey could possibly make a go of it, but only if she went easy on the chillies.

Since the general thaw a few days ago, I'm relieved to say that Wazzo's has been much quieter, and I've been able to spend more quality time on crosswords and pottering. I'll miss the stark, exquisite beauty of the bold black, red and yellow of the blackbird and robin, that was so clear and true against the crisp, white snow, but it's good to be getting on with things again, and of course, even though it's still damp, it's good to touch the green, green grass of home.

Posted 11:34 PM | 153 Comments | Permalink

cold soft and blobby

Friday 8th January 2010 1:45 AM

Me, my Mum, herself and I, being amongst those six that walk seven abreast, decided that this year, instead of having a New Year, we'd get a second-hand one. New ones are so expensive that you have to pay in instalments, with interest, and you end up living on borrowed time, so me and my Mum, in the interests of interest, which we think is boring, decided to go for cheap and cheerful.

We saw one from the late sixties on e-bay, and except for a few missing days in the summer, it seemed pretty swinging, fab, gear, and we've got love. We can always buy the odd precious second from a charity shop, and you often see wasted moments from the late sixties at car-boot sales.

And what a snowy second-hand year it is too! The textorama-maker in me says that snow is a snake saying 'now', while the pacifist in me admires its organisation and soft persuasion. If you meet snowflakes on their own, they're often gentle and playful, and sometimes, if you stand in the right place, they'll fall onto the end of your nose, and kiss it. However, when they get together and organise they can get quite serious, and do stuff like close down the M3 and freeze your toilet, and then those semi-erotic moments of melting bliss soon fade, and you realise that the individuated, delicate, dancing dream of geometry that you gave your heart to, was, in fact, just a frozen drop of water in a party dress.

Dear reader, let it be said that as I write this, I am warm, as I hope you are when you read it. While the new white hair-do-on-everything makes my car look like a clipped poodle, it looks really distinguished on the caravan, and also provides good insulation. I've recently learned that if you use a certain brand of shampoo, you can have lusciously 'voluminised' hair that seems to defy gravity, and I suspect that's what's going on here.

My wood-burning stove, a Morso squirrel, is now a large, black faithful dog, cos I'm like an Inuit, innit, and after a hard day on the tundra, herding the reindeer of my mind, I like to curl up next to it for warmth. Anthracite makes its farts smelly, so I feed it seasoned beech enriched with firm, chunky morsels of tasty oak, and it's really well-behaved and loyal. I don't take it for walks, because it's heavy and cumbersome, and after all, a metaphor is just for Christmas, not for life.

Posted 1:45 AM | 153 Comments | Permalink