It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The weather though, has got into my bones,
and the cold and damp has been making me ache this week. We’re definitely on the road to Christmas
now, plodding down that long dark tunnel that began when the clocks went back
and will only end with the winter Solstice and the turn of the year. Hilare
Belloc once wrote somewhere to the effect that setting off on a long journey,
the first step is easy, it’s when you get to four or five hundred that it
begins to hit you what you’ve taken on, and that’s how it feels right now. Like
a marathon runner hitting “the wall”.
There have been some flashes of brilliant gold sunshine in
all the grim greyness, few and far between. Some days have started grey and
rainy then faired up a bit, some have gone in precisely the opposite
direction. Matilda has been taking
advantage of it when she can, although most of the time all she actually does
when she goes out these days is patrol to the end of the decking and then sit
there, scanning the garden for marauding neighbourhood moggies, or small
rodents rustling in the grass. She’s
learnt the hard way not to stray too far into the wilderness, in case it
suddenly starts banging down with cold, hard rain, so she keeps within
scuttling distance of the door. The seamless transition between being the
fearless guardian of all she surveys and being curled up on her jiffy bag on
the settee, steaming gently in the heat of the stove, has been narrowed down to
just a few seconds, and, as the weather worsens, no doubt she’ll even shave a
bit off that. One advantage of Matilda sleeping on her jiffy bag is that if
Debbie comes in and wants to get next to the fire, she just slides Matilda
along the settee to make room at the corner!
Weather is not something that figures on Misty’s radar much,
however. She’s more than happy to go out, up into the hills, whatever the
rain-gods are chucking at us, and she seems to like nothing more than to come
back splattered with mud, after having rolled in something disgusting en
route. Part of it is the collie dog
breeding, of course: she’s genetically hard-wired, programmed to be out on the
fells all day, working with sheep and covering mile after mile of rough
terrain. The remainder of it is,
however, pure stupidity and daft-dogness.
Still, at least the fireworks have abated slightly, though she’s still
having to spend most of her walks either on the lead or on a length of Dyneema
hitched to a karabiner which is then clipped through the loop of her harness
(the other end being a karabiner clipped to Debbie’s belt) The latter
arrangement does at least allow her a bit more freedom to snuffle on a longer
line (the dog, that is, not Debbie) though the downside is that if some
inconsiderate idiot does let off a firework and she hears it and takes off,
unless Debbie grabs the slack in the line quickly, she’s likely to be yanked
off her feet. Not one to be employed on
clifftop paths.
Anyway, until the police start properly enforcing the law on
fireworks and/or their sale and use is prohibited apart from in organised
displays, we’re stuck with it, and have to do the best we can. I was going to go on and say that the chances
of that happening are about as high as those of Kirklees College paying Debbie
for the work she has done between September and now, but finally this week,
that does, in fact, actually seem to have happened. There is corn in Egypt yet. So I
may have to choose my comparisons more wisely in future, if I want to use an
analogy for something which is as likely/unlikely to take place as the Devil
going past the window on a skateboard.
As for me, I’ve been plodding along, metaphorically putting
one foot in front of the other, while feeling tired, cold, ill and depressed.
For light relief, I have begun following Masterchef
on the BBC. I say “following”, but in truth it’s more often a case of
having it wittering on in the background while I am working. That’s probably a safe dosage, you wouldn’t
want to get any more deeply involved, because the BBC broadcasts it
continuously on a loop, and eventually I would start having disturbing dreams
where Greg Wallace is licking my head and saying “laaarvley!” over and over
again.
Still, even so, under their influence, so far this week, I
have produced a leek and potato pie, four Mediterranean vegetable parcels in
puff pastry, and an apple tart that ended up probably slightly more dense than
your average Black Hole. Oh, and a strange, mis-shapen sausage roll thing, the
runt of the litter, concocted from all of the left over scraps of the puff
pastry sheet. See what I mean about it being addictive?
When the BBC isn’t broadcasting Masterchef these days, its
output is almost entirely given over to unquestioning and adulatory reporting
of UKIP, who scored another victory for racism, bigotry and xenophobia this
week, in electing the latest Tory defector, Mark Reckless, in the Rochester and Strood
by-election. I struggled with an analogy for what Mr Reckless (crazy name,
crazy guy) has done, something along the lines of rats leaving sinking ships,
but given the destination of these Tory defectors, that analogy only works if
the rats in the analogy then swim to an even more rat-infested hulk, and swarm gleefully aboard. I am not doing
very well with my analogies.
Thousands of words have already been expended on why UKIP, a
party with no discernible policies, other than send the immigrants home,
withdraw from the EU, and possibly privatise the NHS, is so successful, even though it can’t actually
deliver on even those limited policies unless it at least holds the balance of
power after the next election. Policies don’t seem to be the issue,
though. As demonstrated by that painful
phone-in after the Clacton UKIP victory, people vote UKIP who have no idea what
their actual policies are.
So why do people vote for them, then? Well, since 2010, the ruling Junta, the
Blight Brigade, has made sure to keep immigration high on the political agenda,
with a combination of talking tough, and scapegoating immigrants (amongst
others) for the chaos which their misguided “austerity” was causing in the
economy. No money? That’s because Labour gave it all to immigrants as benefits.
Local hospital overcrowded/underfunded? – again, all those pesky immigrants. No
council housing available? - Yep, the immigrants have got them all. Schools
full to bursting, can’t get your child the place you want at the school you
want? – It’s those pesky kids of those pesky immigrants. And so on, and so on.
None of this is true, of course, not in any meaningful sense
as you or I would understand the term. Each of these statements can, in fact,
be carefully picked apart and rebutted. But a careful, measured rebuttal that
explains that immigrants are more likely to enter the private rented sector
than council housing, and the reason that there is pressure on resources is as
much due to under-supply of council houses, schools and hospitals (many of which
rely on immigrants for their staff) as to over-demand, falls on deaf ears.
The government has created this genie, hoping it would serve
them well in the next election. In fact, it has gone further: it’s deliberately
encouraged, in the minds of the public, the erroneous conflation of economic
migrants, illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, and Muslims, into one homogenous
mass, of which there are “too many of them over here”. There are always useful idiots in the media
who can be relied upon to regurgitate this stuff at every opportunity, leavened
with the occasional anti EU piece about straight bananas.
The genie worked well for The Blight Brigade while it seemed
that they were the only potential master of it. Then along came UKIP, promising
to out-Kipper the other parties on all these issues surrounding immigration,
and because they are given totally uncritical media coverage, and because their
leader (despite being a millionaire former stockbroker) appears to come across
as a man of the people, with a fag and a pint of beer in his hand, who never
answers any question put to him, the genie is out of the bottle, and will never
be put back. The sad fact is that, apparently, there are 16,867 people (42.10%
of the electorate) in Rochester
and Strood who are bigoted and stupid enough to vote for a party with virtually
no policies, because they have swallowed
lies pumped out by the party in alleged government, about immigrants.
So, what are the mainstream parties doing about this drift
to the fascist right? Well, discounting the Liberal Democrats (as ever) who
polled a massive 349 votes, almost twice as many as the Official Monster Raving
Loony Party, the main reaction of the Tories and the Labour Party seems to be
to er, join the drift, and try and out-Kipper the Kippers. In Cameron’s case,
this consists of banging on about his in/out referendum while Theresa May gets
busy deporting key NHS workers, people on stretchers, and family breadwinners,
leavened with a sprinkling of people suffering from learning difficulties
and/or terminal diseases.
Labour’s reaction has been to “toughen up” its own stance on
immigration, after having previously apologised for immigration failures that
weren’t actually its fault, and sack an MP who “tweeted” a picture of a house
in Rochester with a white van parked outside and the windows festooned with the
flag of St George, for reasons that still aren’t exactly clear to me.
Personally, I have no problem with saying that UKIP are a strange collection of
borderline fascist closet racist xenophobic fruitcakes who think being gay
causes localised flooding, disabled children should be killed at birth, and women
who don’t clean behind the fridge are sluts. I don’t know why everyone seems to
have a problem saying it, and keeps pussyfooting around this, especially not
Labour, who should be taking the fight to UKIP, not kow-towing to their
misguided premises.
It’s not been a good week for Ed Miliband, but when is it
ever? The Labour “leader” was also taken to task by Myleene Klass, no less, on
some mid-morning TV programme somewhere or other, over his proposed
implementation of the Mansion Tax.
Instead of telling her that one of the key principles of taxation in a
democracy is that fairness demands that those who can bear more of the burden,
do so, and drawing the analogy with the Bedroom Tax, which has done much more
damage, and to much poorer people, than Myleene bloody Klass, he hemmed, and
havered, and possibly quavered. I would
love to see Myleene Klass try the same shit on Denis Skinner.
I must admit, I had to Google Myleene Klass, to remind
myself that she is famous for once being in a girl band, for having a shower
while wearing a white bikini in I’m A
Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, and for advertising Littlewoods. As a
struggling single mum with a fortune of £11,000,000, clearly she is a most
deserving case, and I wonder what will happen to the country in the unlikely
event of Miliband ever being able to put his tax into operation. On that day, we will lose (by emigration)
Myleene Klass, Sol Campbell, and Griff Rhys-Jones, and I have to say that will
be a triple whammy so grievous I find myself pondering if the UK will be able
to survive at all without these prodigiously talented and useful members of
society.
The rest of the news was equally depressing/bizarre. The Royal Mail is considering having to ditch
the universal delivery obligation, whereby they have to deliver to every house
in the UK
every day, all for one single price. This is the inevitable consequence of
Royal Mail privatisation, and I pointed out at the time that this would happen.
It’s the fault of various people, including Menzies Campbell, Vince Cable, and George Osborne, so when it
costs you £4.95 to send a birthday card by DHL to your auntie in Aberdeen, as opposed to
62p for a first class stamp, please do remember who it is you should be giving
a kicking at the next election.
That was the depressing. The bizarre was that apparently the
Royal Bank of Scotland (which is 80% owned by us and has done very little to
pay anything back) is going to be fined a massive amount – the figure escapes
me, but its several millions of pounds – by us, for a series of computer
problems that prevented us accessing our money. I’m still boggling at this.
Every so often, I think I’ve got it,
then, ooops, it’s gone again. They owe
us 80% of the value of the bank, which they can’t pay back. So we charge them
more money for preventing us getting at our money, which will delay them paying
back our money even longer. Or something. I don’t know. It’s like repossessing the rags of a beggar.
It’s like having an argument with your own leg. Well, I suppose the Bible does
say “if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out”, but I don’t see how that will
help them see their way to keeping up the repayments.
And there appears to have been a conference held somewhere
or other in the UK
this week to answer the crucial question of “How do Muslims get radicalised”. I gather next week’s conference is on ursine
defecatory habits in mixed woodland environments, or possibly the likelihood of
smelling incense in the Vatican. Just in case anyone wonders, this is how it
happens. If anyone wants to invite me to
the next conference, feel free, as long as it’s got disabled access.
There are some people who, though nominally Muslim, have, in
fact, a rather extreme view of what their religion demands of them. They are to Islam what the Westboro Baptist
Church is to
Christianity. Before 2001, there were about twelve of these people, scratching
their backsides in a cave in Tora Bora and concentrating on growing a beard
like ZZ Top. All that changed after 9/11. The west’s response in Afghanistan
could, I suppose, at a pinch, be sort of justified by the need to capture Osama
Bin Laden, assuming he was actually guilty, and even though there was no
intention of ever putting him on trial.
But the misguided invasion of Iraq, which as I said at the
time was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, has been followed
by a string of equally ill-starred interventions, Libya, Egypt, Syria, which
have had the effect of recruiting hundreds of thousands of would-be Jihadis,
all of whom believe in some sort of Universal Caliphate under Sharia Law and
all of whom believe that an attack on one Muslim is an attack on all Muslims,
and they have a duty to fight back. In
this country, the media has given these people (or rather, the Imams and other
would-be commentators behind them, who wind them up and send them out to kill)
a disproportionate voice. Thus, someone
like Anjem Choudary is always popping up commentating on terrorism and similar
matters, as though he actually had some mandate to speak for all Muslims. The voices of moderate Muslims get stifled in
the crush. The government is busily
scapegoating Muslims and keeping the “terror alert” level high, and the thing
just feeds on itself. The fact that the
Jihadis believe this warped version
of things is what matters. You can argue ad
nauseam that it’s completely barmy, bonkers and well off the bus route, and
it is. Sadly, however, that is what
they believe, and that is what needs
countering, dispelling, taking apart, brick by painful brick, retracing our
steps, rather than blundering on further into the Valley of Death.
Depressed by the stupidity of the news, I have been taking
consolation in small things today. At long last, I trimmed my beard, and not
before time. It had grown to the extent that I could actually see it out of the
corner of my eye. I thought briefly
about cultivating it to the exact width of my body, so I could use it to judge
whether or not I would be able to get through doors, like cats do with their
whiskers, but, at the end of the day, I have a wheelchair for that, so the
beard had to go. It was either that, or become a minor Old Testament prophet.
For the technically-minded amongst you, it took an electric trimmer, two
disposable plastic razors, a generous amount of shaving foam/mousse, and a
small pair of nail scissors, but it was worth the effort, as I now look, ooh, all
of eighteen months younger.
This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday
before Advent, but it is known more colloquially, especially to fans of The
Archers, as “Stir-Up Sunday”. Yes, folks, depressing as it may seem, traditionally, today
is the day when you prepare and stir your Christmas pudding. The tradition of the whole family gathering
together to prepare the festive duff, with each one taking a turn and making a
wish as they stir, is said, like many of our best-known Christmas traditions,
to have been introduced by the Victorians, specifically Prince Albert. If this
is true, at least this is one of Price Albert’s inventions that we can talk about in mixed company,
unlike some of the others.
The link with the church arises because the Collect for
today in the Book of Common Prayer begins:
Stir up, we beseech
thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing
forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The idea being, apparently, that because, by dint of rubric,
this collect is always used on the last Sunday before Advent, your servants,
cooks and domestics would all be in church that morning, hear the opening lines
of the Collect, and then think…Oooh, yes! Time to stir the Christmas pudding.
All very Downtown Abbey. Those of us who don’t have domestic help, have to do it for
ourselves, of course. If you are
interested in preparing a Christmas pudding from scratch, you will need:
8 oz. raisins
8 oz. sultanas
8 oz. currants
2 to 3 oz. mixed candied peel
2 to 3 oz. of chopped glace cherries
8 oz. plain flour
4. oz. breadcrumbs
4 to 5 oz. brown sugar
6 to 8 oz. suet (vegetable suet will do just as well)
A glass of brandy (for the pudding mix. You may wish to add
other, further glasses for your own consumption while making the pudding)
Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Allspice, Salt (to taste)
The rind (grated) and the juice (juiced) of an orange and a
lemon.
You can mix with milk, soya milk, or water. You also need three eggs, or for the vegan
version you will have to make up and mix in an equivalent quantity of egg
replacer. You can also adjust the proportions of the fruits to each other
according to your personal taste.
Mix all the dry stuff in a huge bowl, add the eggs or egg
replacer, folding and beating it in to the mixture, then the orange juice,
lemon juice and brandy, then mix and stir in the milk/whatever until it’s all
thick and aertex-y.
Spoon the mixture into a large pudding basin (metal) which
you have previously greased with butter or marge. Cover the top with a layer of
greaseproof paper, which you have also greased on the underneath, then wrap the
whole thing in cooking foil and steam it in a huge pan like a bain-marie for six or seven hours. You
have to do this on a day when you are going to be able to watch over it,
because you need to keep topping it up or it will boil dry. Then let it cool when it’s cooked and put it
away somewhere cool and dry until Christmas dinner, when you’ll have to
re-steam it using the same rigmarole for another hour or two to heat it
through, before serving up! Laaarvely!
Or you could just buy one from Sainsbury’s* (*other
supermarkets are available, your soufflés can go down as well as up) as
apparently over two-thirds of people recently surveyed said they did. I must
admit, when I read that statistic, what really surprised me was that the
proportion of people still cooking their own Christmas pud from scratch was
still as high as a third.
There is something strangely satisfying about making your
own food, though. I thought that the other night, when we were all sitting here
in the kitchen, Deb by the stove, Misty in the armchair, and Matilda on her
jiffy bag, and I had just taken the pies out of the oven and they were on top
of the stove cooling. I found myself giving thanks to Big G, though I doubt he
was listening. I think he’s tuning me out, these days. Basically, despite everything, how lucky we are to have food and warmth and
a roof over our heads. If I’m really cold, I can fill a hot water bottle. Our
animals are warm and well, and not cast out of doors or in the shelters. True,
any or all of these could be snatched away from us suddenly, by unforeseen
events – life is a dangerous business, eat the apple pie first. God willing,
though, we’ll have our usual quiet, unobtrusive, low-key Christmas, if we’re
all spared, and we’re a lot better off,
several nautical miles better off than many, who are out there in the
cold tonight, trying to survive, while I sit here in the warm typing this. There
but for fortune, go you and I.
There needs to be something done about it. I do not know
how, or when, but I do know why, as indeed anyone does who thinks about
it. If we’re going to do any stirring,
as well as our Christmas puddings, we maybe need to be stirring up the feeble
and apathetic excuses for politicians, in government and in opposition, to do
something to reverse the growing numbers of homeless, and provide more social
housing. Obviously that’s not going to happen by Christmas, but the fact that
it’s going to take a long while to accomplish shouldn’t deter us. In fact, it
means we haven’t got a moment to lose.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Whether or not you observe Christmas, or indeed Christ
(which can often be two different things, these days!) the basic needs of food,
warmth and shelter are common to all humanity. Is it too much to ask of our
politicians that by, say, next
Christmas, someone, somewhere, should have a serious attempt at sorting the
problem out?
In the meantime, I am going to start work on a Christmas
pudding of my own. While I can, I still
want to be able to cook, and feed my family, though the animals won’t be
allowed any, as sultanas and similar are bad for both dogs and cats. I might
have a go at making them something different though, something extra, a bit
nearer the day.
Next week is looking pretty similar to last week, but then that,
too, is pretty much par for the course, these days. At some point, soon, I need to have a
discussion with Deb and take a decision one way or another whether to stand as
an independent for the constituency of Colne Valley
at the next election. Apart from
anything else, it would probably add yet more strain to our lives, financial
and otherwise, and of course I would have to find twelve electors to nominate
me in the first place. But that’s next
week’s problem, because right now, I am off to look for the lucky sixpence, to
put in the pudding mix. Failing that, I
think I still have a three penny bit somewhere. Laaarvely.
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