Food critics - and one or two in particular

An Easter holiday post from Wiggia

A good dining experience is about so much more than the food. There's a reason chefs always have a white cloth over their shoulder and cutlery is always polished before service begins, it's because presentation matters.

I lifted that opening statement from a recent restaurant review. What he says and goes on to embellish is true, to a point. What I really wanted to talk about was the review by Jay Rayner, son of the late Claire ! that has caused a bit of a furor and delight in different circles for different reasons, but I will return to that a bit later.

The role of food critics as with some wine critics has verged on going over the top in many cases for years and several of these reviews have indeed verged on the side of hyperbole, and even fantasy in the writing in an effort to simply make headlines and hopefully increase one’s salary pull.

None of this is new. I can well remember that the Daily Express had a motoring writer, whose name escapes me, who many years ago when given almost a whole page to review a car would confine the review to the last 25% of the article, starting with some anecdote about something else that somehow would become the lead in to the article. This went on for years yet at the time there were no obvious high profile equivalents.

Today is a very different world with often deliberate outrageous claims and statements being the meat and two veg of many articles in many genres. Of course if every critic simply said x is good y is bad it would be a very boring world and article, yet so much today as with everything else is almost another form of fake news. The likes of Rayner and his contemporary Giles Coren make a living out of this style of writing, though in neither case are qualifications of any sort deemed necessary for such a pleasurable route through life.

I'll explain. For years when abroad I used the Michelin guide for restaurants to book in countries like France Italy Spain and Portugal and others if I was holidaying there. A few good meals were part of the deal and the Michelin guide, if I was spending money or even not spending so much, was as reliable a tome as any. For years there was little else, hence its reputation.

Was it always right? The short answer is ‘no’, there is absolutely no way any publication can, with the sheer number of restaurants world wide in it’s guides that they can always be up to the minute accurate any more than personal taste will not always be catered for as described, owners change, chefs leave, standards go up and down in many cases overnight.

But overall, using it over many years, the accuracy was pretty good, though its British edition for reasons unknown has never been so reliable. All described in straightforward prose on the dishes and chefs’ specialities and the pricing and surroundings with a not so straight forward method of symbols and stars, but it worked in those pre-internet days and it carried on working despite increased competition from other publications and the printed word online and in the world of the restaurant critic.

But the world demands more than simple qualified information, so the critic reviewer resorts to ever more over the top techniques to grab the headline and make a name for himself whilst also promoting his subject at the same time.

What do I know about the subject? Well about wine quite a lot, with restaurants only those I have frequented over the years but enough to understand where the critic is coming from or not. Have I eaten in a Michelin 3* establishment? Yes on a few occasions, special occasions, and were they the best meals I have had? No, which brings me back to the opening line from the food critic. The overall experience at the top level is part of the experience, more so for someone not used to such places as against those who can afford to dine like that on a more frequent basis.

My first 3* dinner was at the Crillon in Paris a long time ago when it had three stars, the dining room is a version of Versailles hall of mirrors, quite stunning and to sit and eat at a place like that is an experience and one to be remembered, and a similar experience later at the Taillevent also in Paris when it too had 3*. Yet the best actual meals I have had were firstly in a 1* in the Alsace and others in the south of France and Italy and Spain that also never went above 1*, but none of them could provide that amazing feeling of an “event” that those top establishments gave, though they did give a wonderful glow of satisfaction.

So back to the review that caused all the furor the one by Jay Rayner in the Guardian. I only read it, proving that all publicity is good publicity, out of curiosity but could see where he was coming from. What I could also see was a writing style that was “adapted” in my view for his readership of the Guardian. The comments prove the point, his remarks about the enormous cost of eating in the Le Cinq were buffered by his statement that he nor the Guardian paid for the total sum.

That’s a new one on me as I never seen any reviewer say that before, but by doing that and implying he would never pay that sort of money for a meal, though I’m sure he has at similar places, he strikes a chord with all that readership allowing them to blast away in the comments in true Guardian readers’ fashion about “only capitalists” “who would?” “serves any one right” and on and on, so he certainly knows his readership.

What else he does in the piece is the more contentious, and in no way does this say he is wrong in his overall assessment of the Le Cinq. Firstly in the use of language that is used to justify his visit –

Irritated by reader complaints about the cost of eating out I decided to visit a classic Parisian gastro-palace, as a reality check.

And then by use of language to shock or show how right on he is, again with his captive audience with lines like this –

It is decorated in various shades of taupe, biscuit and fuck you.

Followed later by –

My companion winces. “It’s like eating a condom that’s been left lying about in a dusty greengrocer’s,” she says.

I find it difficult to believe anyone would trot out a line like that or if they did they have strange sexual preferences. The full review is here….

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/09/le-cinq-paris-restaurant-review-jay-rayner

He also makes a point about the photos of the meal supplied by the restaurant and compares them with those he took on his mobile. Now no table side photos with a mobile in available light are ever going to be the same as those taken by a food photographer in set conditions but he bangs on about this and produces the two sets of images……

http://www.jayrayner.co.uk/news/spot-the-difference-the-food-pics-supplied-to-the-observer-by-le-cinq-in-paris-as-against-mine/

But then goes on to say that the Guardian sends its own photographer to take similarly staged photos for the paper later after the critic has left, rather destroying his point.

For many this is all good fun, it’s Sunday paper in bed reading. It’s “did you see that restaurant article” at work on Monday and by Tuesday the article is in the waste bin. It really is not that important, except for one thing, the bending of facts may have been and is the trademark of numerous politicians political parties and various other factions of society these days, but does the same treatment of facts have to be included in all else? As with all there is a limit, perhaps it’s been reached.

The only thing I gleaned from the article was the pointed comment on a dish of lamb costing 95 euros and not being enough to fill a Big Mac, but you don’t have to go to Paris to get that on your plate. It has become almost universal in the “quality” restaurant trade and is one of the major reasons I do not eat out as much as I used to. The blood pressure that goes with receiving a plate of food consisting of more gel decoration than actual combustibles is not something I can cope with anymore.

The end of the pier show

From Wiggia

We are fortunate to live not far from the North Norfolk coast so short trips decided on the day and by the weather are a frequent event. Most of the coastal towns and villages from Hunstanton to Happisburg have been visited and many of the more inland destinations such as Holt Burnham and many others have also received our blessing !

The more obvious destinations such as Blakeney, Stiffkey, Cley next the Sea and Wells are all along with inland Walsingham and Castle Acre and the Broads villages to the south, have all been on the itinerary of many a trip. Which brings me to the one obvious place on this coast I have never, until now, visited at all, Cromer.

There are several practical reasons for this among st others, the main tourist area is centered round the pier is quite small and the main road goes through an area just behind that on a one way system and is a nightmare even out of season so is generally avoided. When I have been forced to suffer the one-way what one notices is that a large part of the town is run down and dirty. Shops seem to be of the charity variety or tatty gift shops, not all but enough to remind one of Great Yarmouth and what that has become. So no reason to stop, that is if you can find a place to park anyway.

So for no obvious reason other than a curious mind and a desire to see the one shining jewel that Cromer offers, its pier, I announced to a surprised and rather reticent wife we were going to Cromer as there was some sun promised and we could probably park easily as it is still out of season.

The initial impression started badly at the car park. It was market day and part of the main central car park is cordoned off for the weekly market. Don’t bother as with so many markets they seem to dwindle and slowly disappear and Cromer’s market is at that juncture. The fresh fish van summed it up with the owner so busy he was reading a newspaper and had his feet up. Lively it was not.

I could see the wife's face showing that “what are we doing here look” as we crossed the road making in a general direction towards the pier area. The short lanes leading to the pier area are all full of old Regency and early 19th century buildings. Most are listed and many are wonderful examples of the era when wealthy business people purchased seaside properties in what was then an easily reached by train fashionable seaside resort, but even many of these have not seen a paint tin for many a long year. Many are now flats and holiday lets, few seem to be owner occupied, certainly not in that part of town.

Cromer is unusual in that it has a shoreline with cliffs, not much seen north of here and it provides a view when you arrive at the pier from above. A relatively short pier with a theater at the end and then a rather state of the art lifeboat station with a “proper” lifeboat in situ, not one of those rubber versions. The visitor center built around the lifeboat is well worth a visit, with all the rescues since inception on the walls round the inside of the building and who and what they rescued inscribed there.

The little theater has a bar and cafe that was open so we had a coffee and watched the world go by for a while. It is obvious the pier is the only reason that Cromer staggers on. The end of the pier show brings in the punters and many must come not from Cromer but the enormous caravan parks just up the road at East Runton, a form of holiday that is still very popular but whose attraction bypasses me.

The pier has survived a couple of serious fires and severe storm damage not that long ago but to their credit the town’s main attraction has been restored back to its pristine state each time with care and haste so as to be ready for the season. Whilst having coffee I noticed the posters for forthcoming events, the one-nighters and noticed Marty Wilde for the beginning of April and a month later the Searchers none of whom I believed to be still alive !

The whole raison d’etre of this piece however is to highlight the fact that several of these places that were jewels in the Victorian time for rest and recuperation, first for the upper classes and with the coming of rail the working class are in steep decline. Looking back up to Cromer from the pier there is the Hotel de Paris built in 1820 for Lord Suffield. It was turned into a grand hotel in 1830 and closer inspection now shows a very faded lady with mismatched curtains and cheap furniture in the lounge and dining areas, so what has happened ?

The answer is all around you. Whilst on the pier having coffee people watching revealed maybe not all but a large part of the problem. It was a street photographers dream, the endless passing of strange characters, large ladies with small dogs being towed by same and small ladies dragging old infirm dogs with twenty foot expanding leads that wanted to stay at home. Mobility scooters abound, people in wheelchairs abound, down and out young couples abound, elderly people who look as though they are waiting to die abound, non-working punk couples loiter and so on.

The place is decaying with its population and one of the contributing factors that I know is fact because a friend of mine had a daughter sent there when times went into reverse for her and her husband, is that councils farm out benefit recipients of all colours to places like Cromer because they can get cheap lodgings for them. It has become an industry on its own.

Very little of this shows in the summer as the crowds they get swamp the unfortunates described to a large degree, but what a sad world we live in when people can be all lumped together like that, all knowing that the person they just met on the pier is there for the same reasons, and it takes no time standing on that pier to see exactly that happening.

Will Cromer ever get back some of its former glory? It has the buildings to make the change and it clings on to its one wonderful asset and cossets it, the pier, but it will take a different mindset for those who run the town to achieve that and maybe they are happy with it to trundle on into downmarket obscurity. Maybe it is simply the fact that people’s tastes have changed, but not really as Cromer has exactly the same frontage as many other resorts that are still successful and blooming.

As we left on the long uphill run out of the town, we passed a gentleman of the road trudging up the same hill with all his worldly possessions in various plastic sacks about his person and puffing on a cigarette butt. He had even obtained a zimmer frame for the most difficult areas of the climb but what was significant is that he was leaving. Not a good sign. All quite sad really.

Anecdotes from a spent youth

From Wiggia

Going back in time is not always easy as our interpretation of what remains in the old memory banks is not always as was, in the same way that images you remember can be seen in a different light colour and clarity by others and therefore the interpretation in the mind can be counter to one's own but not incorrect.

The reason I stated that was I was going to write a small piece on my motor racing days, but I was not minded to regale anyone with my fraught and very expensive time endeavoring to go fast. Sometimes I went fairly fast and most other times it was a case of retiring to the pits or worse, so we will gloss over that.

Delving back did give me cause to think about those varied forms of road transport I had after that period. Nothing before of note as all were various battered vans put to slogging round the country towing a trailer and causing small villages to be enveloped in smoke from an elderly engine driven too hard for too long.

My first car after the “debacle” was and still is my favourite. This was all at a time of empty roads and no speed limits, not that much could go above the limits to any degree when they came in.

Once I had sold all the car bits and devolved myself from the association I had with another race car and driver, a 50/50 partnership which was too late as I had almost run out of money, I decided to buy something nippy. Being still young at heart I fancied something a bit above a Cortina GT and after a bit of thought I went to Young’s Garage in Ilford.

Living in East London and having Essex connections, anything Ford was an obvious route as I knew the engines and could obtain various parts to go faster or improve Fords from a variety of sources, some it has to be said not legal. In fact at that time in motor racing the amount of illegal parts floating around from various manufacturers was quite astounding.

Young's was the home to the fastest of the Ford Anglias that were racing at that time. Mike Young drove a bored out 1500 Essex-engined, ( some selected engine blocks could be bored to around 1700cc), Anglia that was the most normal looking on the circuits but hid some serious work under the skin. I knew he sold already fitted big-engined Anglias for the road in various tunes and stages, but when I wanted one little was available other than a bog standard one with a new 1500GT engine. The price was right so I purchased that and started to further modify the car myself.

By that time I could take one of these relatively simple engines apart in my sleep, so the head came off and I polished ports and changed the profile of combustion chambers, copying a Cosworth template and valves and springs, put in another slightly more peaky cam and when reassembled, retuned the Weber carb and ran the car on a dyno to get it right settings wise.

I was tempted to go the twin sidedraught Weber route but whilst getting more power they drank petrol. The standard 1500 GT engine produced 78bhp but by the time this went on the dyno it was producing near to 90. A full race version had in the region in a Cosworth version 115, so a decent return for those days and 90bhp in a very small and light car was relatively potent for that era.

Next was the suspension - new lowered McPherson struts from Ford's rally program! With front discs to replace the drum brakes and wide wheels, 4 and a half inch fronts and 5 and a half rears, larger fronts required body modification and I did not want that obvious racer look, well wide for those days, and then the hunt for suitable tires. I originally got hold of some early Goodyear Blue Streaks a racing tire, but after spinning in the wet a few times and getting away with it on London streets, they were lethal within sight of any moisture, I reverted to Dunlops and all was well.

At the time a vinyl roof was de rigueur on certain cars and a friend who was an upholsterer suggested he did the Anglia roof as an advert for a sideline in these roofs he wanted to try, so I had the first and possibly the only vinyl roofed Anglia ever !

The interior was deliberately left as almost standard just a rev counter beneath the dash and an oil temperature gauge to go with the fitted oil cooler, and that was it for a time apart from some rejigging the beefed up rear suspension, and a new exhaust, not one that was obviously “race bred” but adapted from another Ford sports car that I have now forgotten the name of.

This car went to France and on the long auto routes going south its one prevailing limitation showed in spades. At home it didn’t matter that much but on those roads the car ran out of revs. It needed a different differential. Many a DS Citroen would come steaming up behind me to be left distant in the mirror on acceleration only to keep going and pass as I was at maximum revs at just over a hundred mph. The deed was done on return along with a Corsair gearbox and I had many happy months of driving in that car.

As a road car it was quicker than a Cooper S, a car that was the go-to at the time for a quick sporty road vehicle, but I always hated the bloody awful driving position, unless you were a dwarf, it had the room it was just the way you had to sit, and anyway they were two a penny at the time.

Problems - just two. In France I broke a front stud on undulating roads with the stiffened suspension and the car ate starter motors that continually vibrated loose, only fixed by wiring the nuts. Even Loctite didn’t work. The rest never missed a beat, that Ford 105E – 115E engine was probably the most successfully tuned engine in history, with later crossflow versions including twin cams as in the Lotus Cortina and my botched shared race car, dominated endless classes of motor racing for years and all from the humble Ford Anglia and the Cortina.

The car also took me to my wedding and then on honeymoon when my new wife decided something more Captain Sensible was required and so the worst car I ever owned was purchased, but that is another story and the beginning of a few years of an eclectic car ownership.

That Anglia was also the last time apart from a bit of restoration I ever got under a bonnet to do anything other than check the oil and I have never felt the urge to get my hands dirty again. Not because I didn’t enjoy the project at the time but it was simply another phase in my life that was done and dusted.

Was this retrospective assessment seen through eyes that still see the past with some sort of affection filtering out the downsides of the period perhaps? The good moments, whilst not the total of our memories of the past do tend to dominate, but that is not a bad thing. Leaving the dross sadness and disappointment in a dark recess is necessary for a positive way forward.

Now where are those old string-back driving gloves?

An Afternoon in Diss

By Wiggia

Before our last house move, Diss was our nearest town for shopping, banking etc, so a weekly trip to this old market town was the order of the day during that period. A true market town with as mixed a population as one could find, no group nor class dominating, basically a Tory safe seat it none the less was for Brexit and that fits in with the area in general.

There is no doubt that this area of South Norfolk, known locally as “indian country” does have a leaning towards being a backdrop for the League of Gentlemen and in many of the retail outlets being asked “are you local” would not come as a surprise.

The town also has some interesting areas such as the Mere a large six acre lake in the middle of the town that when the council feel they have enough money has a spectacular (for Diss) water fountain in operation in the middle of the lake. It also has a comprehensive Tourist office, slightly puzzling as Diss is hardly the gateway to the east but they do get bonus points for trying.

It does have some fine buildings mostly with a Georgian or Edwardian facade and a 16th century oak beamed property on the town square called Dolphin House, formerly a rich wool merchants house then a pub and now home to several small businesses one being an Indian restaurant that was raided recently and several illegal employees arrested. That probably accounts for the extreme range of reviews on TripAdvisor the food quality depending on which staff they have managed to retain at any given moment in time. No one can call Diss dull !

Or maybe you could. The town joined Cittaslow in 2006, an Italian inspired movement based on the Slow Food movement to promote in the case of Cittaslow a better environment, alas obviously did not think it needed any international cooperation in that field and left shortly afterwards. The slow food movement might have been a better bet having so few decent eateries means there would have been little to argue about, but a slow town that is already operating at snail’s pace is rather pointless.

It has a railway station on the London – Norwich line and a main road through the town that is the standard bearer for the worst that town planners can inflict on their long suffering tax payers. Always an appalling bottleneck during rush hours, they managed to make it worse by allowing endless estate building on it, a supermarket with its own roundabout and several other businesses all of which mean that anyone arriving by train in Diss during the evening rush hour will take anything up to thirty minutes to exit the station car park and travel the hundred yards to join this road.

British Rail have also managed to make getting from one platform to the other an army field test, as there is no way to access the up line platform from outside. All passengers to and from Diss have to use the bridge over the tracks. When my 90+ old mum visited some years back that would have been a big problem getting over that bridge, but as the train was running late it did not stop long enough for her to alight (we did wonder where she had got to) so when a telephone call from Norwich from my sister who was accompanying her was received it was a blessing in disguise as traveling back from Norwich meant the train actually stopped this time so she could alight without the drama of the bridge crossing.

Ninety minutes late of course but at least we did not have to carry her over the bridge or alternatively she could have stayed on platform two for a short break, or even traveled the London – Norwich line ad infinitum on the non stop train. Despite public cries to remedy this obvious flaw, the bridge years later remains seemingly a test to the traveller’s speed and endurance capabilities, winter and icy steps bringing an extra frisson to the occasion.

There is also a museum on the market square. Bijou is the word that comes to mind, but at least they have one though as the opening hours are rather/very limited perhaps that is a moot point.

To the south of the log jam that dissects Diss east to west is a rather fine green, one of those very large spaces that abound in this part of Norfolk and Suffolk, and next to the pub on the green a little gem of a restaurant that we found some time ago by mistake. A bit sixties inside , unless they have updated, it actually serves real food at reasonable prices, almost extinct in this day and age and equally good cafe and fish restaurant opposite, no relation. A little gem in what is generally a culinary wasteland

Update the restaurant owner has purchased the pub next door and incorporated the restaurant. Ah well it was good while it lasted, but not having revisited it may still be good.

Leaving the town past the green one comes to the Redgrave and Lopham fens and some beautiful country houses, much is a public park and it is spectacular for colour in spring, a quite unique landscape with multi coloured lichen forming mounds among the gorse, and a little further out Bressingham Gardens created by the horticulturist the late Alan Bloom who in modern day gardening invented the use of island beds for use in the gardening world with this beautiful display garden that is still there alongside his extensive steam collection.

On open days Alan Bloom in later life could be seen taking various locomotives round his extensive circuit round the gardens, proving that when it comes to things that really matter gardens and steam trains are still a sanctuary from the world’s ills.

Back in the centre the Corn Exchange with its Doric columns has been saved from collapse and is now in full use again after several years of doom floating over it, and to the west of the town center is T W Gazes auction rooms, probably the most well known business in the town and an institution. I could never get over the sheer amount of auctions they have every week. Four is not uncommon and always the place is packed, it is also now a regular on the TV antique show circuit.

Famous people, not that I could find any, the sitting MP is Richard Bacon, an increasingly rotund figure. Sitting is probably what he does best as the likelihood of him losing his seat is on par with being struck by lightning. I suppose Rick Wakeman who lives just outside the town is the nearest claim to fame. I know he features in various local openings and the like though I am not sure if he has been asked to turn on the Christmas lights yet. Best not ask as they are the worst lights I and most of the inhabitants of Diss have seen anywhere. Mean doesn’t come into it and there has been a total failure to get local business to cough up for anything better. Spread thinly is the byword for the lights in Diss, even the decent Christmas tree plays spot the lights. Oh well !

Why I can imagine you asking are you writing about just another English market town? Well the truth is I quite like Diss, don’t really know why, just do. It’s quirky as only Norfolk can do, the solicitors in the main street in a rather splendid Georgian building has some rather colourful show chickens and roosters in its gardens that have to be circumnavigated to reach the front door. That’s pretty quirky.

But it all came flooding back when I visited a couple of weeks ago to go to the optician for my annual eye test. I only go back there because he is a very good optician and it makes a change to see that part of the world again. The optician is on the market square opposite the rather grand and large Post Office that flies the Union flag and not one of Palestine, which makes a change. Not that anyone here would know where Palestine is as a very large percentage have never left the confines of Diss never mind the county. Only local people would understand that ! So whilst my wife was having the first eye test I had a good half hour or so people watching.

Now this is where Diss comes into its own, the mix of the population, circa 9000 all goes through the town square at some time during the day or so it seems. Also sitting for a long period watching throws up certain demographics. Like most places these days single mums seem to be on the rise. The slightly bohemian element is still there in abundance, you know what I mean older men with pony tails and colourful jumpers. I saw Bob Flowerdew last year who fits that description to a tee plus he looked organic ?, Still don’t believe that is his birth name.

Lots of puffa jacketed matronly types, and two special classes that only Diss can supply in football fan quantities. The mobility scooter reigns supreme in this town only the rising population of perambulators can compete with them for pavement space. The pedestrianised main shopping street is a cross between a drag race for these silent marauders and an obstacle course with the pedestrian being the obstacle. Never stand still.

Flocks of them on occasion come swooping down the slight incline that leads from the market square into the main shopping street. They often congregate around the open area that leads to the Mere a sort of mobility scooter rallying center similar to the flocks of crows so prevalent in this area. They are especially active crossing the main road and then holding up the traffic by traversing the entrance road to Morrisons on the Zebra crossing. I’m pretty sure that some of them spend all day just crossing and recrossing with ever increasing frequency just to prove they can.

There is a central reservation on that crossing and I swear having got to the center certain scooter drivers wait for another car to appear before edging out and stopping the car. They then slowly cross waving their walking sticks or crutches or both, look no hands, in appreciation of having held up another car or by the time they have crossed a convoy. And in the mobility scooter parking area next to the store entrance where they can transfer seamlessly from their own scooters to those provided for shopping ! can be seen state of the art scooters with personal number plates. Some even have tassles on the handlebars like kids bikes ! FU2 has nothing on this lot.

The number of outlets in and around Diss selling mobility scooters reinforces my belief that Diss is the UK capital for this form of transport. My optician when I raised the subject disagreed and with a meaningful sigh he said Clacton was far worse after his observations on a visit there a short time ago. difficult to believe after today's showing but he knows better having been to Clacton and I take his word for it.

The other delight is one I have boggled at before. The optician is also opposite car parking that is sideways on to the road. There are only just over six spaces but they are directly in front of the shop so great delight can be taken in the utter failure of people to be able to park there without either having umpteen goes and thereby holding up everyone from both directions, or having to have the partner wave arms about as directions usually to no avail as the driver on most occasions from what I observed makes such a hash of it that they have to start again.

This went on for the duration of my wait with the pièce de résistance being a mother with a people carrier having the luxury of two empty bays to park in still taking in the region of seven to eight goes and making such a hash of it that she ended up with about six inches to spare on her side and couldn't get out. She then decided to exit on the passenger side and having achieved that realised her child in its carry cot was also on the wrong side and could not be retrieved, so she got in and started all again, I then got the call for my eye test so have no idea if she made it or drove off and found somewhere else to park that was less challenging. All this of course is NFN.

When I mentioned all this to the wife on our return trip, a return trip that showed large placards still in place stating LEAVE that might have a different connotation after all this time, she gave me that strange look one begins to appreciate as an indication you are not quite the ticket, and said ‘you are drawn to Diss for some reason aren’t you? You are becoming one of them.’ Quite what she was implying I am still not sure but I have a pretty good idea. Royston Vasey anyone !

The Dilemma of Downsizing

From Wiggia

Along with many couples of a certain age my wife and I are wanting to downsize. All well and good and in the current climate it could be seen as a worthy contribution to the country’s housing woes regarding a lack of larger houses for larger families. This is the lead on an article about the governments intentions…….

Pensioners with large family homes will be given incentives to downsize in a drive to solve the housing crisis.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4194526/Elderly-big-houses-incentives-downsize.html#ixzz4Y6loK3Yo

If only it were that easy. Firstly from an entirely selfish point of view I don’t give a stuff about other people’s housing problems. Having spent all my working life reaching a position where I can live in some sort of comfort all at my expense and effort, I am not inclined to want to “help” others who are not prepared to make the same sacrifices we did to achieve our end goal. And today they don’t. Nobody said it was easy and there certainly are more problems re expense than in our day but you have to help yourself and that for many today is not in their vocabulary. Help from others yes, help yourself - err maybe.

But I digress. The government’s proposal is a classic spin operation, the “help” they are promoting is getting older people to give up their “large” homes and move into sheltered accommodation. The help apart from paying moving costs is a bit vague though the use of a paint brush is offered. And the ceiling for helping with a stamp duty free move is 250k not a lot of big houses below that figure anywhere in the country, so in fact they are offering bugger all, and in fairness why should home owners be offered incentives to move with more tax payers money? Not of course that any real incentive is being offered or even spoken about. Give me a million and I will happily move on. So I think we can safely say not much will change from that source anyway.

The real dilemma for all those facing downsizing or wanting to, apart from those as my Australian friend says are “wanting to move to the waiting room” is simply finding an adequate property in the first place. Before we moved to our current property four years ago we were wanting to downsize from the last one, it became an impossible search. There were several reasons and most would apply to anyone wanting to take the plunge.

Firstly most people having had their pensions robbed by Gordon Brown are seeking to release equity from their homes to supplement lifestyle by downsizing, but the costs of moving and legal and estate agents fees have to be factored in as the likelihood of spending on the new property either in improvements, new kitchen and the like plus the inevitable redecorating. Many older people are past the DIY stage and will have to pay someone to do it.

All of this further reduces if a cash profit is part of the aim in moving to a property further down the chain than first envisaged, and once you start actually looking using that criterion you realise it not only reduces the cash available for purchase but also inevitably means you will be looking in areas that you thought you had left behind years ago. Nothing snobbish in not wanting that. I was raised in a prefab post war and was living with my parents until I married in a council flat in London's east end. Why would anyone want to go back to anywhere like that having managed to crawl out of there years before?

I exaggerate to make a point, but not totally as it depends on the money you get for the house you’re selling. For many people at the lower end of the housing market it makes no sense to move at all so they stay put until such time as “Gods waiting room” beckons. Small incentives from the govt to move there are not going to cut it with most older people who can still survive on their own and are happy in that environment rather than moving to one where they are living with others in the same late stages of life and spend a lot of time wondering which of their neighbours is next. “Sod that”, is a phrase that comes to mind.

For others like myself we simply could not find a place that came anywhere near the criteria we had set, and we are very flexible as to where we could go, having few family ties. If a house was found in a suitable area it needed far too much spent on it or had miniature rooms. We don’t want the same number of rooms but would like the main ones to be bigger than the “you can’t swing a cat” variety and as soon as you start looking at downsizing these are some of the problems that arise.

One item I can happily? forego is a large garden. It is something I have always cherished and always had and my business that I had and my love of having that space to do as like with is not easy to give up but advancing years mean that is now not a problem. A case of been there done that, and whilst an acre that we currently have is by no means the largest plot it is still quite daunting when you realise that you simply might not be in a position to do it justice, a position I found myself in last year when hospitalised.

As I said we could not find anything and our current property came up and despite needing a lot of updating, a last hurrah for me, it turned out well, but of course did not solve the problem, a problem now more urgent to solve because of the four further years of advance.

Naturally the preferred solution for the government would be to force all old people to emigrate releasing all those large houses for the millions they have imported over the last 15 years or so with their large dependent families. And as the older generation are the reason for almost all ills, an easier option for the blame game than to ever admit they have made and are still making a catastrophic mistake themselves. It suits the narrative to a tee. That of course is not going to happen and perhaps the withdrawing or curtailing of NHS services will do the job for them , a path that appears to currently in favour, with older people finding that getting to see a doctor is less likely than winning the lottery the effect of that must be felt soon.

I also read somewhere about a scheme where current suburbs could be bulldozed and high density housing put in its place, a solution that works well as Heinrich Himmler proved some years back.

On top of all these material problems is the whole saga of moving in itself, said by many to be more stressful than a divorce. I cannot vouch for that yet the culmination of a dozen or more moves has not made the process any easier. I really could write the book on the perils of moving. Far too long and tedious to relate to here, but as a flavour of what I might have revealed in full, a first move where the exchange of contracts took place and the lady ! who we were buying from changed her mind an hour later. This was ‘75 and the signed contracts were posted. Her solicitor was a family friend and when she phoned to say she had changed her mind he told her they had not yet posted her contract and didn’t. Ours had gone, no redress and a lot of expense. It was legal to do that in those days though rare as an event.

After that it was all downhill , you name it we have suffered it, and not once has anything we have done been reason or effect. Mindblowing. Throw in two incompetent solicitors in the mix who had to be sued for failing to do their job properly and I think you may get an inkling of what I think of a system that has never been overhauled to help make the process less stressful and fairer on the innocent parties when things go wrong. The book is in the offing, and actually some years back when I was telling the tale to someone who was working for a publishing house at the time did suggest it could be worthwhile. Mind you the time taken in writing a book on a subject that takes all my time anyhow is a non starter - or maybe not ?

I repeat when you get older all this is a very good reason for not moving. I cannot imagine how an older couple would react to any of our sagas especially if they have never moved or not for many years. On the other hand it might just be God’s will that I should shoulder the wrongs of the system on behalf of all humanity. A sort of sacrificial house mover. At times I have believed it so.

Another snippet from my life as a professional house mover - the viewer. We have certainly had some wrong ‘uns over the years, but there is always room for one more category, and at our last property we had a viewer turn up in a people carrier with mother in tow. Not especially unique but never wanted as they try to enforce their view on the whole process whilst not actually buying anything. All was normal until we finished showing them round. As I looked back returning to the house I saw mother get out of the vehicle having just got in and spread a blanket on our lawn. I went back and was about to say what is going on when the husband/son asked if they could have lunch there.

Now I am an easy going sort of person normally and if he had asked and they had traveled a long way I may have said OK, but we were going out and I asked him to leave, nicely. With that he then told me they go house hunting on a regular basis, with no intention of ever actually buying anything. They are house voyeurs. To be honest I could not believe he had actually said that to my face and had to remove myself before I splattered him all over the herbaceous perennials. They then left in their own good time and no doubt we have had the same type before. It would be difficult to tell, and I am told it is an increasing leisure pastime, but to actually admit with no sign of any guilt to wasting everyone's time was a first.

So the quest to downsize continues, we will make it eventually, yet as before the pitfalls await no doubt in some new untried by us form, never the less downwards on onwards. 

Wiggia on Wine

Château Pichon Longueville

A post from Wiggia

Normally at the end of the year I write a piece on wine giving my opinions on wines tasted and consumed and recommendations for those who having read the piece believe what I have written has any value and might act on it or simply just enjoy their own choice of wine anyway. I will never know.

Last year that did not happen for two simple reasons. Firstly I was on a diet, much needed and overdue, and my consumption was curtailed to assist that end goal, and then in August/September I was hospitalised and drinking was verboten for a period. All adding up to a situation that meant I simply had not drunk or tasted enough wine during the year to be able to write an article about the merits of x against y.

Going back a little the previous year I had made a conscious decision to drink less, something my wife thought I couldn’t do! and drink better but less often. So really I have had two years of the same for different reasons. What all that has done is to give myself an opportunity to look at wine in the way I first did all those years ago when I first became fascinated with the whole process of wine as an agricultural product and what ends up in a bottle.

So this is not a buy now listing, but a look at the way wine has progressed as a product, or not, during my lifetime. One thing is for sure wine has progressed beyond anything one could imagine since the sixties where unless you lived next to the likes of Berry Bros & Rudd  or could afford one of few select restaurants, you would offered claret, hock, Bulls Blood or the then trendy Mateus Rosé. There really was little else other than the ubiquitous cream sherry.

But all started to change in the seventies with Bordeaux  beginning to use science in the wine making process and then combined with the string of good vintages in the eighties the climb in quality spread beyond those few top chateaux and spread elsewhere. And with global warming/climate change/hotter summers making its contribution in the Northern Hemisphere, even vintages that would or should have been written off became largely tamed by man and very acceptable wine has been produced in all but the very worst years, Germany being a shining example. Being so northern its vineyards rely on good long summers for Riesling to ripen, yet since 2000 there has hardly been a bad vintage. Which for me being a lover of good Riesling and its low comparative price for such outstanding wines because they are out of favour has been a positive boon, but I digress.

Bordeaux of course deserves a whole article or book on its own and there are many in circulation so I will not dwell there for this short piece.

What was happening on the other side of the world at the same time also had a profound effect on Europe, all those vineyards where quality was a by-product were jolted into action by the arrival of first Australian wines, a country that had no history of any premium products apart from Grange, being the producer of bulk “jug” wines. Science and technology were introduced big time and wines arrived here at the lower price end that eclipsed what the majority of Europe had been selling us. It was what Europe had needed, a proverbial kick up the bum. All the cheap blending wines from the Italian south and southern France for instance were no longer wanted. The wine lakes shriveled and disappeared and the surviving vineyards had to change or grub up their vines. Many did the latter but the remainder bit the bullet in the way they made wine and joined the technical revolution, in many cases calling in oenologists from Australia and New Zealand to help. The “flying wine makers” of the time.

All that is now history and the same principles have now been applied to other wine producing countries, in particular the Americas. Wines from California and other states join those from Chile and Argentina among others on the supermarket shelves, for it is the supermarkets that now dominate wine sales.

The supermarket phenomenon was initially a godsend for those who just wanted to take a bottle of Chardonnay from a shelf without having to become too cerebral about it all. The supermarkets in those heady early days of non-stop expansion in the area all tried to outdo each other and employed Masters of Wine in their buying teams alongside other experts to give them an edge over the opposition. Poaching staff to retain that edge was not unknown.

Sadly supermarkets having attained the position of total dominance began to jettison their early lofty ideals. In many cases the sheer volume that they shifted of any given wine meant that only the bigger producers and conglomerates could supply that volume, so that what you see today for sale in supermarkets means they mirror many of the major brands to a large extent. Thereby, despite  having aisles of bottles for sale actually reducing the choice to the public

That in no way means there is nothing of value to buy in supermarkets. There are plenty of good everyday drinking wines of all hues on those shelves, it is just evermore difficult to find those genuinely cheap winners. The driving down of prices by the same supermarkets is making it ever more difficult. Occasionally one can find wine that punches above its weight - buy again and you may wonder if you have purchased  something else. The vineyard in order to satisfy supermarket demand has had to bring in or use inferior grapes to make up that difference.

There was even one well known case that was brought before trading standards years ago when Sainsbury's award winning champagne subsequently lost its fizz in later batches. Someone complained this was not the same wine that won this award and investigation showed that the producer had indeed substituted an inferior wine as he had run out of the good stuff. For reasons no one was able to fathom the complaint was rejected and the champagne was allowed to carry on using its award sticker on the inferior bottles.  ??

The upshot of that is it is almost certain the same thing has happened since as a loophole was discovered and it is perfectly legal to present wine in this way. I have on several occasions had wines that have changed dramatically for the worse in later bottles but funnily enough never the other way round.

Which brings me to the tricky area of wine awards. Much revered by all and sundry when they started up as an easy indication of whether a wine had any merit and a good way to get lesser known names and grapes purchased by the general public.

Over the years the wine awards, the two biggest being the International Wine Challenge and the Decanter awards have grown into the behemoths of the wine awards business world wide. Huge numbers of wines are entered and all pay to have their wines appraised by the bottle. So this along with the labels for the successful entries that are also paid for is now a very profitable business for the organizers. Oh and just remember that when you see a wine bottle without an award it doesn’t mean it is a worthless drain-cleaning fluid but was almost certainly never entered for any competition in the first place. It is not obligatory.

There is no question about cheating as all wines are tasted blind by teams of experts and wine trade buyers etc, but what has happened is that the categories have become bloated with awards for everything and the sheer number of wines winning awards dilutes the value of those that do. A commended wine for instance - the lowest rated award in reality means it is drinkable, no more no less. Plenty of wines not entered into competition are drinkable so the commendation is on a dubious footing as to public value and thousands of wines receive this label - and indeed the higher value ones.

Is the wine awards concept a racket? Good question. Various wine writers and critics give opposing opinions. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but having to pay to attend the dinner where the awards are handed out at £250 a go smells of organisers’ greed and throws a dark light on the true reason for these competitions.

As far as I am concerned the only label worth pursuing is a Gold Medal, though because there are now so many of those they introduced a new Platinum award on top of which are trophies for best of all of everything. All to much methinks and certainly far too much for the general public to take in or want to take in. As an example I purchased a wine I had no knowledge of, a Spanish Tempranillo, the grape used in Rioja, with good reviews and a Silver medal. How this wine (there was nothing corked or faulty about it) won any award I have no idea, half went down the sink, and as before this is not isolated in its  occurrence.

Though to be fair that sort of sink moment is much much rarer now than twenty thirty years ago. Screw tops have made a big difference to keeping wines fresh and free from the ravages of air and oxidization. Corked wines are no longer the worry they were, the pros and cons of cork versus screw top and compound corks goes on unabated. All methods have merit in different situations, so there is no reason to bid one against the other and the demand for cork has lessened meaning the problems created by using under-age cork have now been eliminated to a large degree.

Along with the screw top the other plus for the occasional buyer was the grape/grapes variety on the label. Europe never has and still largely doesn’t do this with the noble exception of Germany, whose labels despite legislation some time ago to simplify them have become ever more indecipherable, proving if nothing else the Germans can’t do simple! Mind you, some of their Gothic script labels are the finest of all wine labels to view.

Trends and styles as with any consumable in this day and age are in constant change, not always for the better but at least it means wine is no longer stuck in a time warp of tastes and choice as it was to a degree in the past

In reds the New World has brought us fruit dominated wines, mainly because ripening grapes is not as difficult in say Australia as in northern Europe. Yet when the American wine writer and critic Robert M Parker started his influential magazine The Wine Advocate and became the most influential wine critic in the world, his preference especially for up-front fruit laden wines changed even the Bordeaux Chateaux direction especially in the right bank communes of Pomerol and surrounds because Parker points sold wines often at inflated prices, and who wasn’t going to have some of that?

Parker having stepped down from his tasting duties has meant that in 2015 the last great vintage being released there is an obvious though slow swing back to less fruit driven high alcohol wines and whilst many of these “fruit bombs” were exceptional in their own right many were not. Too much of everything made them unbalanced and so some good has come of Mr Parker leaving the scene whilst on the other hand he had a big part in raising standards as he was not afraid to slate bad wine, something the Chateaux were fully aware of hence bending their product to his tastes even if only marginally.

In everyday wines the move to introduce new wines and grape varieties has slowed along with supermarket profits. In red wines the only significant new additions in quantity are from South America with Malbecs from Argentina and Carmenere from Chile appearing in greater numbers. Malbecs in particular are great value for quality and value and the more expensive ones are every bit as good as anything else in the wine world at their price points. Carmenere is still not so easy to find but the better ones again are well worth seeking out. Other grapes from these countries will follow and especially Pinot Noir the red Burgundy grape, so difficult to grow. It is the reason why small growers and limited supply have made this wine so expensive in its native homeland Burgundy.

New Zealand now has large plantings of this grape and many are on sale in Europe, but in my experience the majority of the cheaper ones suffer from unripe fruit and are not worth the purchase. For the real thing you are looking at the 20 pound bracket and up which is why Chile could be the supplier of cheaper drinkable Pinot Noir. I have sampled many and apart from a couple of duds at least you know you are drinking that grape as the fruit is ripe, it should only improve from that source.

Other reds that have appeared are Italian Aglianico, the good ones are great the rest mediocre, and Mencia from Spain very trendy at the moment but little around to form much of an opinion. Though Spain’s other areas outside Rioja are appearing more readily and are top quality, especially Ribera del Douro and old vine Grenache wines from Priorat, and from Portugal Touriga Nacional the main red grape of the country is also making some very good wines.

None of these grapes and areas are “new” they are either resurgent areas that became in many cases forgotten backwaters or in the case of the grapes that went out of fashion revived. No doubt that trend will continue and with white wines there is no greater example than Chardonnay. The grape is one of the great white wine grapes responsible for white Burgundy, yet because it is relatively easy to grow was planted everywhere in the new world resulting in Chardonnay overload and the cliche “anything but Chardonnay”. Its place as number one white selling grape is Sauvignon Blanc providing everything from sublime to bland and the grape that made New Zealand the wine nation it is.

But if you fancy SB don’t forget that the Loire with its Sancerre and Pouilly Fume still makes lovely SB European style, not so fruity but, crisper more tangy and better with food in many cases. It’s a style that many have forgotten in the rush to purchase the fruit driven NZ Sauvignons. Pinot Grigio is another white that sells in large quantities. God knows why. Most is without any merit yet still it fills the shelves.

There is more obvious grape variety on offer in white wines on sale, many especially the Italian ones don't merit bothering with and the superior versions of wines like Soave are priced way above what they are worth. If you want to try something a bit different in white wine without breaking the bank, Spanish Godello, very trendy but worth sampling. Picpoul de Pinet from the South of France, and the better Verdicchios from Italy along with Greco de Tuffo and Arneis a wonderful grape in the right hands and a poor one elsewhere. There are literally hundreds of grape varieties that are used in blends  and remote areas and some can make very good wines in their own right, but most unless you know your stuff are indistinguishable to a large degree and not worth bothering with. The Italians again are very good at promoting wines in this category.

Italy by the way is still the biggest producer of wine in the world, a claim that can have good and negative connotations. Variety both red and white is Italy's strength but getting the quality out into the real world is another matter. I love Italian wines and their variety but balk at some of the rubbish they export. It is improving but still too slowly. Even their fine wine areas, Piedmont and Tuscany get away with overpriced mediocrity. I know I have purchased it. Sad, as a great Barolo is up there with any other of the world’s top wines.

Rosé has really taken off in its own right in wine terms those few odd bottles of “girly” wine found in the corner of off-licenses in the past have now grown to whole sections of display shelves, and the styles range from sweet to dry as in the red wine they are mostly based on it is only grape skin pigment that gives the colour and this can be adjusted by the method either of pressing the grapes straight away or leaving them for awhile and running the juice off early. It is still very much a fashion statement but no harm in that, and its current popularity is shown by the fact that vineyards throughout the world are now producing it.

And further proof of quality elsewhere is the Austrian Gruner Veltliners in the shops. Not long ago I would not have touched any Austrian wine on principle after their ethanol scandal, but these old vineyards are giving us some very good bottles of something a bit different. Along with Gewurztraminer from the Alsace, these are among the few new trends in supermarket wines. In overall terms the supermarkets are moribund, the bottom line dictating all.

Yet for all that the wine scene has never been rosier. Japanese wine has appeared on our shores. China is planting huge acreage with vines. Mexico, Brazil, India and here in England vines are increasingly being planted. We are restricted mainly to sparkling wine aka Champagne but the results have been staggeringly good with many giving Champagne a real run for its money. The proof of the quality being that several French Champagne house are either buying land in the South Downs or are making deals with British vineyards.

In fact Champagne with its total grip on the market is under pressure with Italian Prosecco  having for the first time overtaken Champagne sales in this country. A cheaper product and at the bottom end a worthy rival and better value than Champagne. Champagne has a problem, the cheap versions taste mainly very uninspiring and are not in monetary terms exactly cheap, Champagne has done a very good job of selling as a luxury product when much of it isn’t.

Will we grow other grapes successfully here? The Romans did and temperature rises if they happen will ensure other worthwhile grape varieties will be planted. Most of what is currently planted struggles to make anything you can’t buy better and cheaper from elsewhere, yet with well over a thousand vineyards up and running here and growing by the year in the long run why not? Add to that the Eastern European countries that have a long tradition in wine production.

The Crimea was the supplier of wines to the Czars, and you have another area, a sleeping giant where money is being invested and the results are being awaited. This a fascinating glimpse of the vineyards in the Crimea, the video is from the NYT.

Crimean Vineyards of Last Czar Withstand Time and Tumult

My own trip last year in May was to the Rhone valley, one of the oldest wine regions in France and even more revered than Bordeaux at one time and more expensive to buy. Everyone recognises the names Cote Du Rhone and Chateauneuf du Pape yet there is a lot more to Rhone wines than that. The latter have never been cheap and the great Northern Rhone wines like Hermitage ditto, but the southern Rhone in places like Gigondas and Vacqueyras supply increasingly good quality and sensible prices. The region is on the rise, the Cotes de Ventoux being a treasure trove of bargain wines with rising quality and I did my bit by bringing back a couple ! of cases.

Just a final note. Despite the situation with the supermarkets with the possible exception of Waitrose, all is not lost as the internet is supplying evermore more online retailers and even the high street has at least got Majestic plus a lot more independent wine merchants reappearing. The reality being the choice has never been better.

And whatever reviews experts awards tell you - only use them as a general guide. Never are they sacrosanct. Buy what you enjoy, enjoy what you buy. By all means go out of your comfort zone now and again - you will be pleasantly surprised. Remember wine was created to go with food to be shared at the table with friends and family as well as enjoyed for its own sake. Enjoy.

Stuck at the checkout

More on Sainsbury's from Wiggia

Yesterday I took my wife to Sainsbury's. The checkout queue was long, an area Sainbury's for some reason never make an effort to improve. Self check?. But I digress, nothing seemed to move and there was a lot of activity in the till area so it didn't make sense.

A few minutes later still no movement but I could see the elderly couple loading their trolley at the front and thought Christ they must have purchased a lot as they were filling two trolleys. This made me look more closely and I realised they were shopping for the street. Several dividers on the belt were shopping that was all theirs or was all for their friends.

I am not sure how many separate lots there were as I was late to realise but certainly four and as I watched the progress, the last two involved not just separate payment but vouchers as well that all had to be validated. We jumped ship at that point as they belatedly opened another cashpoint but I watched across the aisle as they plodded on filling filling filling. 

Then a voice of despair from the back of the queue, "whats going on, get on with it."

They really should have a warning notice they can flash on checkpoints that have shoppers buying for everyone in the street, something like avoid, flashing in large red capital letters, or alternatively make them go to the back of the queue for each separate load.

An Annual Feast

From regular commenter Wiggia

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With a certainty that little will change as the annual stuff fest approaches, I am again chided into driving Miss Daisy to Waitrose to purchase the “bits not attainable elsewhere”. To be honest I don’t mind to much as it gives me the opportunity to get some decent cheese for the festive period, something sadly lacking in the other supermarkets. Plus the only cheese / creamerie shop in town is so difficult to get to I can’t be bothered.

We went a week earlier this year for a dummy run, as She Who Never Forgets found advancing years meant she actually did forget an item and the journey was justified on  the grounds of “they will be sold out by next week”.

 Upon arrival I homed in on the cheese counter and found it unoccupied giving me time to evaluate that on offer and discuss with the suitably rotund cheese serving lady what were the best buys this year, thereby saving me time when on my “official” visit next week. Information garnered I was at a lose end as No1 had managed to vanish, something that still astounds me after all these years as to how she achieves becoming invisible within seconds of saying "I am just going to have a look at x." It’s not really a problem as I am usually found again perusing the wine shelves.

This year though I was taken aback on my pootling through the store by the sheer number of ready made meals dishes and accompaniments  on the burgeoning shelves. It seemed the whole store was ready to cook or ready to go, no niche market was left out, everything could be purchased needing no more than heating unwrapping or carving, from red cabbage to dry hung beef joints! It was there to be consumed with no or little cooking effort involved.

I picked up the Waitrose festive catalogue of Christmas goodies. All ready to cook, natch. It was split into festive season and everyday, an even larger section with prices of up to £190 for a large beef joint. I saved the full read until returning home for as mysteriously as she had disappeared No1 reappeared needing help to retrieve a high shelf item.

In that section were an awful lot of “celebrity chef” items in jars and tins and display boxes. All of this was still milling round in my mind when we returned home when a rather obvious fact presented itself to me. Waitrose is the go-to supermarket for the middle classes, a large part of the clientele even showing their loyalty by wearing matching green fleeces scarves anoraks hunter boots etc and carrying Waitrose ‘for life’ bags as a badge of honour.

These are the people that all the cooking and baking programs that fill endless hours on our tv screens are aimed at. The same people that buy AGAs Heston Blumenthal foamers Gaggia coffee machines and Japanese multi layered steel kitchen knives at £200 a pop and thousands of glossy cook books. Yet apparently, going by the shelves of their favored store none of them actually cook. It’s all a mirage. The kitchens of these people are stuffed full of must-have items. Lakeland catalogue anyone? Costing a kings ransom and purely ornamental, a fact expounded by a kitchen designer who gave the game away when he said that after fitting the must-have 10k AGA you really need to fit a conventional oven and microwave to cook with!

As AK  related to in his article on mince pies (ready made) we have passed the generation that actually cooked - our parents. No more Christmas puds from my late mum who supplied the whole family every year with various versions of the said pud and if you were lucky got a matured one. The vision of my mum struggling with the Christmas cake mix in March so much so I had to lend a hand. The same sadly missed lady caught wearing my motorcycle helmet and googles to help prevent crying whilst peeling onions. None of this is likely to observed in a Waitrose customer's kitchen these days.

With the most used room in the house, the kitchen is becoming redundant for its original purpose, cooking. Perhaps someone will explain why we need to spend according to House&Garden 30k and upwards sans appliances like steam ovens and boiling taps on a room that is becoming increasingly a talking point over the water cooler, your own that is, and yet it sees very little actual cooking in situ.

I had a very good example of this modern phenomenon a few years back when a very good friend of mine, a property developer, was finishing his own house and I designed and built his garden. He was showing me around and explaining how he saved thousands having the granite worktops imported from Spain and where he purchased the units, bespoke of course, when I casually remarked that I hoped his new wife, younger dimmer but not my problem would appreciate all this. "Don’t be silly," he said, "she can’t cook - we eat out." I rest my case.

The money tree

 Back in 2014 thecollegefix ran a story about a strange and extremely expensive tree move.

ANN ARBOR – The University of Michigan has begun the process of relocating one 200-year-old oak tree in the way of a campus renovation project – a pricey, green-friendly effort expected to cost the university as much as $400,000 on a campus that is already home to an estimated 16,000 trees.

Regular commenter Wiggia knows about moving trees professionally. He takes up the story -

There is somewhere a group of people who have access to the till of life who spend all their time looking for projects with no benefit to anyone but in their strange world worthy of throwing other peoples money at, plus as usual for those sitting in committee rooms their sense of value is blunted by the soft cosy seats they occupy.

What I found astounding is not that what they were doing was pointless or the fact that they may have been spending within a set period à la public arena, but the sheer cost, I know how much that sort of tree moving costs as I made my living from designing and building gardens and mature tree stock etc was something I engaged in. 3 to 4 hundred thousand even dollars for that is so exaggerated it would have surely raised questions, apparently no.
This gives a rough guide to costs.

http://www.bigga.org.uk/about-us/magazine/back-issues/08-2009/tree-moving/01053.html

Not as big as the one in the article, which would involve root pruning a year before encasement and lifting, but even at that size with crane low loader etc I would say no more than 20-25 k and for less than that you can get a mature tree put in place which would be cheaper. Ridiculous quote for a stupid project.

Dodging The Grim Reaper

More on personal NHS experiences from regular commenter Wiggia.

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Little did I realise after my shortish piece on the current state of the NHS that shortly afterwards I would become a victim of the best and worst that the NHS has to offer. I don't want to dwell on my personal problems within this story but a short resume of the events leading up to my hospitalisation will be no shock to many who have had to go through similar trauma, if that is not too strong a word for what transpired.

Dodging The Grim Reaper

About six weeks ago I started to get a shortness of breath. As an asthmatic this is not unusual at certain times of the year depending on pollen and other agitators, but this soon went further and breathing after any exercise as simple as walking created a problem. After about four weeks and my wife telling me to make a doctor’s appointment it magically subsided and I put it all down to a severe asthma effect, not an attack but very uncomfortable.

After a couple of weeks the symptoms returned and got steadily worse, I was reluctant to contact the surgery as getting an appointment like so many others is a nightmare, but the situation developed to the point of no choice.

The initial call resulted in the usual nothing available for three weeks despite my pushing the issue, so I struggled on in increasing trouble, then phoned again, still no joy even when explaining in full what was going on and believing an asthma attack was imminent, the best they could offer was to turn up on Monday morning and try for an appointment that day. A rubbish solution but needs must, the problem being it was Friday so a couple of days to go.

In a worsening state I got up on Monday washed and started to feel unwell sat on the edge of the bed struggling to breath and feeling awful I then briefly passed out, my wife called the surgery, not the ambulance as we should have not wanting to load the A&E up with another patient. The locum diagnosed well, it was nothing to do with the asthma and got me into the acute ward post with, and the end of all the tests, x-rays and a scan it transpired I had large blood clots in both lungs and the arteries, without admittance the consultant openly admitted any more delay and I could have easily been dead.

A Lot To Be Thankful For

All is now I hope going well and my hospital treatment and the people involved at all levels were top class despite the pressures they are under, so I have a lot to be thankful for. With that out of the way I can relate the marked differences that are now the norm in the NHS. The old GP surgery where you could walk in on the day or phone and turn up is almost completely gone. Three to four weeks for an appointment is considered normal and even in urgent situations unless you make a big fuss in person little is different. It is a total failure at the first line of health defence and with other factors puts ever more pressure on hospitals to take up the slack.

Overloaded GP Surgeries

Even my old surgery that was excellent has fallen to the new low level as my adjacent patient in the ward who uses it related. 1500 new houses gone up there and no extra doctors, all the old ones retired or gone elsewhere and evermore female doctors with families, working part time, a story repeated throughout the country.

My current surgery has an extra two housing estates being completed over the road from it and is still taking new patients despite no increase in doctors to cope, so soon three week appointments will be four weeks, or perhaps next year who knows any more. It would be easy to fill pages with anecdotal stories like mine from almost everywhere and it has been done to death, we are all aware of the shortcomings.

More Openness In Hospitals

What I found different when in hospital on this occasion was the attitude of staff at all levels to these problems. Not many years back getting anyone to agree with an opinion about the NHS that was not congratulatory was met with a blank, it could not be criticised. That from this short stay is something that dramatically changed; staff at all levels were prepared to talk about the problems in a constructive manner and roundly condemned what was happening at GP surgeries.

From the moment I was put in the ambulance and an ECG was instigated, the crew after asking what had happened openly told me to ignore my GP surgery in cases like this and simply phone for an ambulance. They themselves had surgeries where appointments could not be had in similar circumstances. A senior nurse in charge of a hospital unit readily revealed she had had enough of her surgery and was at that moment about to change, though she admitted she was lucky that she had somewhere to change to and that the change would not guarantee all would stay well in the future.

Everyone will have their own vision of how the NHS should move forward, and reams could be filled with all the suggestions, but what did emerge was a consensus from the small sample of professionals for change in certain areas.

The NHS - A Very Different Animal

As with all things in this consumer based society money is at the heart of the problem, we spend less on health care in GDP than our contemporaries, the NHS is a very different animal to that started in '47 and expectations as to what it should provide have soared along with the bill to do so. From what I gathered another level of funding in the form of insurance as in France Australia and many other countries is inevitable, whatever form it takes. But all governments have for the simple reason of votes to stay in power put off ever doing anything meaningful in that area for fear of the backlash, but they and us can't have it both ways. It needs the courage to instigate change at the earliest opportunity in a new parliament so that the mud-slinging and recriminations can be weathered and the change accepted by the public and the vested interests can be held at bay,

PFI has been a disaster yet is still being used under the guise of a new deal. When money is at an all time low in borrowing terms there is no excuse for PFI simply to keep debt off government books. “Never again”, should be the mantra there.

Despite "official" pronouncements that health tourism is not a major drain on NHS resources it is none the less a bigger drain than admitted. It is difficult to believe official figures when there is a refusal to collect data on this at the coal face. The same goes for the non contributors who arrive here knowing they will be treated without even being asked for their details.

Again the government and the NHS themselves refuse to admit the scale that this activity has on resources and how much extra money the taxpayer is footing the bill. Going by figures released from countries not so coy on releasing these statistics the figure no doubt is enormous, with illegal migrants getting into the country at over 100k a year, all of whom can simply walk into a hospital and get care for nothing whatever their problem.

This has to be a major drain on resources especially in places like London. As someone said not long ago - "you can have unlimited immigration but you can't have welfare" as it will become unsustainable. Those who come here are fully aware of our NHS hierarchy’s opinion that all the world should be accommodated at the taxpayer’s expense and will continue to arrive ad infinitum, Whilst this attitude prevails, some drastic curtailing of moral principles at other peoples expense is called for.

At a lower level the usage of the NHS for trivia should be charged for. An example is the Friday Saturday night drunk fest. I was told this activity has reached the stage where those to pissed to get home now phone for an ambulance so that they can sleep it off in the comfort of a hospital bed, and that this is not an isolated practice. This and other similar wastes of public money should be charged for. Nowhere else can you get that sort of treatment, it simply is not available. Insurance could of course cover such activities, but opinion again is divided on whether or what insurance should cover.

The question of imported staff is another area of a short cut that is a Ponzi scheme, attracting nursing staff and doctors from third world countries. It is not difficult as the money they can earn here far outstrips what they could earn back home, yet many of these people trained here to be able to go home and make a difference. Morally the bribing of them to return here to fill vacancies we should be filling from our own people is not only wrong but a cheapskate solution. The cutting of training funds is one of the seriously stupid decisions made by any government and the recent announcement of more funding in that area will not scratch the surface as a solution to the shortfall.

Accountability, waste in the public arena is legend, other people’s money, and the ability to waste it is an art form for some individuals and organisations. I had a classic example shown to me during my visit. This it must be remembered is in a hospital that because of PFI is losing money at the rate of around 30 million a year. A new bar code portable scanner is being used that simply doesn't work properly, the old laser scanner was I am told quick efficient and always worked, but someone decided a new form of scanner was needed. A trial under perfect conditions was run and hey presto £800,000 is spent on something not needed and that doesn't work in a day to day environment. Next ! is all you will hear about it.

The drugs bill is stratospheric. Seeing what is dished out in hospital these days is mind blowing , yet despite never ending cases of the NHS trusts being ripped off for millions nobody is ever held to account and the same companies continue to supply. One cannot help but believe that as in football management and council contracts brown envelopes are involved. Our money once again fills the boots of the recipients.

A Lighter Side Of Hospital

But enough of the doom and gloom, what I have written here has been in various forms been written before with little effect, change will come but will probably be a forced change. Hospital is a world in a ward, the constant ebb and flow of humanity is and can be an eye opener, especially if you have not had the "pleasure" of being interned lately.

I was at first put in the acute ward, most stay only up to 24hrs for assessment before being moved to a more specific ward but I was there for two nights plus most of the next day so had a constant change of scenery. The staff on this ward were noticeably different, the variety of health problems and injuries etc attracts those who need more variety in their day to day work.

On the only full day I was there my companions consisted of a young chef who had not eaten for four days after ingesting something in Germany that made him vomit continuously, a thirty stone night club owner who had become ill with the same problem as myself and was also a diabetic, a young lad who was waiting for a liver transplant and was in the process of setting up a private ambulance business!, an old neighbour of mine from my last house that I never met who said very little but in the silence that occasionally broke out in the night would loudly say FO in his sleep? and a man who told jokes but one could never understand a word he said because of the awful rasping chest condition he had. One just laughed anyway and nodded, he seemed happy with that, bit like Dickens 'aged parent'.

Our main topic of conversation apart from the obvious what are you here for was the food. For reasons I have not fathomed the food in the acute ward was terrible compared with half decent in the rest of the hospital. Dishes such as sausage and mash should be and were avoided, the sausages I named Colditz sausages, ersatz is the German word that best describes them. 90% sawdust, no sign that a pig had ever been involved in the making.

The next up was anything with vegetables, all were stewed to an in inch of their life, and the petite carrots as my night club friend called them were obviously the minute thinnings from a carrot harvest. This awful vegetable pottage that it had almost become permeated with its smell everything near. The apple pie I had as dessert was the first I have ever had that smelt and tasted of broccoli. This was only surpassed by the rice pudding that was best described by someone else as "interesting".

On duty on the full day and later whilst in the acute ward was a wonderful Jamaican nursing assistant called Godfrey who got into the swing of things straight, in these PC days it is not on to describe him as a perfect stand in for Jack Benny’s butler but he was. The meal ordering followed a Michelin star restaurant mode when he came around with the 'menu' with requests for a half bottle of Chianti with the shepherd’s pie and 'can I see the à la carte' becoming the norm. He also had a little admirer which we cottoned onto, but all was taken with a laugh and good spirit.

Our very large night club owner had no night clothes as none would fit so went to the bathroom in his designer underpants and a towel that covered little. When half jokingly stopped by a nurse saying he couldn't go out like that he replied he had no choice and was only going out to get a quote for materials anyway, time flew in that ward and it was soon time to be moved after my scan upstairs.

But not before the first of several good doppelgangers appeared, the first being my consultant, an elegant in style Frenchman who was a slightly younger version of Sir Ian McKellan, he even spoke like him. So at 11 in the evening I was moved upstairs to cheering from those left behind.

The ward I was moved to was for chest cases. Not a lot funny in there at first as the patient beside me was not going anywhere but further upstairs soon and his neighbour had the misfortune to contract asbestosis when as an engineer pipe lagging was removed on a job he was working on years ago. No one should have to suffer like that on a continuous basis. His relief in hospital was marginal and he would be back soon and forever as the cure does not exist.

On the opposite side were two patients with respiratory problems whom I got to know quite well and the resident loony for whom no bed could be found elsewhere, apart from standing at the bottom of the beds with eyes like Jack Nicholson in the Shining and going walk about with his frame. He was harmless though not so sure about the one we had barnstorming the acute ward earlier. He burst through the closed doors in a surgical gown all beard and mad eyes with half of a roll up hanging from his lips. After a couple of circuits looking like he had escaped from the set of The Life of Brian he tried to open the window at the far end, I presume looking for another exit. Cries from my unsympathetic companions of ‘open the window’ (we were two floors up) went unheeded and he was ushered away by several nurses handlers and security men. Never a dull moment on that ward.

The forced visit finished with another couple of doppelgangers. The male doctor who came round with the consultant was George Chakiris. I fully expected a rendition of Everyone's Come To America to be burst into at any moment, and a nurse who was the spitting image from all angles of Suranne Jones the ex Coronation St actress, but the piece de resistance of the visit was the Nigerian nurse who looked like a black roly poly and sang for a large part of the time. I questioned her about her singing and she said she is a member of the Pentecostal church and during a rare lull in proceedings gave us a full of Don't Worry be Happy  with all the moves down the centre of the ward to much applause. She said she believed in the power of prayer, who was I to argue otherwise? When she had such an uplifting effect on all around her, perhaps, just perhaps that is the answer.

What the hell is going on at GP level?

That should have been it, but this morning I returned to the hospital for a blood test. Whilst there the senior nurse phoned my surgery to arrange the next tests to be done there. Having no hotline she had to wait as everyone else does for the phone to be answered, an appalling waste of very busy peoples’ time. Once through the receptionist had no idea what she was talking about and said we are not equipped, for a single finger prick, she then passed someone else to the phone who after being told what was required said that I could not be accommodated. My nurse replied that she the answer unacceptable, that it was appalling and she had never heard anything like it before and would be complaining to the appropriate authority. A minute later the appointment was made. What the hell is going on at GP level?

I don't believe this snapshot of my stay is anything out of the ordinary. The fact it is now almost normal re GPs is more than worrying it is scandalous that the first line of defence for peoples’ health is now almost certainly killing people.

Miranda Hart

Just as an aside - when I went back to the hospital I saw the senior nurse who is changing her doctor again as she is head of the coagulation unit, lovely lady in the true sense. What I failed to mention was that she was the spitting image of Miranda Hart. I can't help myself with doubles they fascinate me and in so many cases the physical similarities obviously have an effect on the voice which often follows in its similarity with the original. Keeps me amused.