Gradually Learning

My attempt to become vegan turned out to be predictably lame, and I have managed to put on even more weight.The good news is that I should be first in the queue when the gastric band ops are allocated. I haven't been good, but I haven't been all that bad either, so it's a bit baffling, and that's all I'm going to say, as it all seems a bit fucking pointless.

The world cup is far more interesting than my fat bastard self, and that has also left me baffled, and befuckingfuddled. The early stages gave us some decent games and some folk proclaimed it the best world cup ever. Well, people get excited, so you can forgive 'em, while wondering at their grasp of history.

Then the competition progressed, and the games got steadily worse and still, we were told, it is a remarkable competition, the best ever, and you began to suspect that some scoundrel had been doping the worlds water. Dire games would have a dramatic conclusion, and the previous 93 minutes of utter shit would be forgotten. Some useless berk of a striker would belt the ball as hard as he fucking could straight at a keepers head and the "save" would be hailed as miraculous. Bonkers. Capitalism gone mad.

There has been no outstanding player, no outstanding team, and no outstanding game in this competition. Nothing, apart from Suarez mistaking an Italian for a slice of mortadella, has made you rise up and proclaim that the Good Lord is riding a bicycle. The final is yet to come, it may be a classic, but it probably won't.

Never mind, it has provided some entertainment through the close season. I hate the close season. I love the cricket and the cycling, but they don't compensate. Blues have been busy, buying loads of players I have never heard of, but our chief scout reckons they are just what we need. Mind you, it turns out he has never heard of the fuckers either, so I'm not about to take his word for it.

It's likely to be a great season for those of us who have been around the block and can watch with wry amusement. All these new players to get to know, plus the thrill of watching the further development of Lee Clark. Lee hasn't really covered himself in glory, although he has provided at least two glorious moments of genuine lunacy, so we have to regard him as one of us. He seems to have developed a genuine liking for us, and he could have hopped it, saying it is an impossible job. It is an impossible job, but still, the daft Geordie get persists.

He's heading for Roger Hynd like legendary status. You just fucking well see if I'm not wrong.

Don't Go

As convinced as I am by the analysis of the Forks over Knives chaps,  their eating plan is practically impossible to stick to, it shouldn’t be, but it is. When you watch the film and you see people who were at deaths door 20 years ago and are now spry old codgers, and you consider your own lardy, unfit self, you should be shamed into sticking to it, but it’s not possible. I blame myself and my own lack of self control, but there is a major problem with the book. It leads you up the garden path and gives you false hope: it describes every recipe as delicious, or fantastic or amazing, and none of the recipes fit those descriptions. The best of them are no more than very nice, most of them are edible, but just OK and a few of them I’ll never know about because they are just plain weird. I think of it as medicine, rather than food.

The upshot is that you are inevitably disappointed. You are promised deliciousness and end up with school dinners. It could be that my culinary skills aren’t up to it, but I doubt it. Then there are the issues of time, cost and availability. These are not dishes that you can just knock up after a day at work, unless you have taken a vow of asceticism. They generate lots of chopping, you use lots of pans, and if you live in a small town in South East Wales, you have to plan well ahead, because none of the ingredients will be available at your local One Stop. I end up buying tons of stuff on the weekend, half of which won’t get used, as I can’t be arsed cooking it through the week.

The book makes no claims that you will lose weight, it is a regime purely designed to maintain or improve heart health, However, it does say that a happy side effect is that weight loss is inevitable. Well, excuse the fucking fuck out of me, but I have gained weight, and it has pissed me off. I admit, I haven’t given up using oil, and I haven’t totally given up cheese, but bloody hell, given everything else I’m doing, a couple of pounds off would be nice. Maybe I’ll have to try something other than porridge and rice.

It’s not all bad though. When I say “the book” I mean 3 different books, all of which are pretty interchangeable with each other and use Forks over Knives as a starting point, but I have loads of vegetarian books, more than normal books, in fact, and still pick up ideas off the telly and the newspapers. As I type this during my lunch break, I have just finished a black bean, sweet potato and shitake soup, favoured with cumin cinnamon, chilli and fuck know what else. I’ve read that sweet potato and shitake’s are especially good for you, and this soup really is delicious…………………it tastes a bit like Heinz oxtail, strangely. I’ve also had another variation on a quinoa burger, this time mixed up with beetroot and feta (whoops, dairy alert) and flavoured up with cumin, lime juice and fresh coriander, which is, I apologise for saying, delicious: even my eldest wolfed two of ‘em down, having been assured that there was absolutely no beetroot in it.  That was accompanied by a pile of wheatberries mixed up with caramelised onion and kale, which was OK.

I’d consider that dinner to be quite healthy, full of fresh veg and herbs, all cooked and prepared by my own hands, but I deviated from The Plan. First I used oil. I used it to soften and sweat the veg for the soup and also for the burger, as well as the onion for the wheatberry doodah, and then there was the feta, not to mention frying the bastard burgers once they were prepared. Hmm, fried cheese……………….that could be where I’m going wrong. And that’s why I am finding this thing impossible to stick to. Just a little bit of oil. Just a little bit of cheese. Just a little bit of that, unfortunately, not much of the other. All the authors say you have to give up the oil and dairy cold turkey, just a little bit causes you to maintain your addiction, and I can see their point, but it’s a step too far for me.

I’ve tried cooking without oil, and it’s not all that hard, but you have to be bloody alert. Stick a bit of oil in a pan, throw in a couple of onions, put it on a low heat, come back in 40 minutes and you have beautifully caramelised, onions. Try and do it without oil and if you don’t give it your undivided attention, within 5 minutes you have  burnt onions and a wrecked pan. Fuck that for a game of tin soldiers. Roll on tea time. Fuck knows what I’ll have……cheese on toast, probably.

Red Beans and Rice

About a month ago, I watched a documentary on Netflix, Forks Over Knives and I found it compelling. It told us all about a couple of blokes in the U.S who claim to have reversed heart disease in patients who had been given a very grim prognosis and had survived for about 20 years by eating a plant based diet. I‘ve been a reluctant meat eater for about 30 years and have endured half hearted and brief periods of vegetarianism: from time to time I’ve cut down on red meat, cut out red meat altogether, cut down on white meat, tried to salve my conscience by only buying organic and worried and fussed about the ethics of eating flesh, or, as a bloke in the film put it, eating anything with a mom or a dad or a face.

I happened to see it while I was being a bit drama queeny about my health, and in particular the health of my heart…………….I have developed a bit of a tendency to over react to any minor ailment since my dramatic cardiac event a couple of years ago. So, this bloody film resonated.

I have kidded myself that I have been good since the heart attack. I would tell myself that I feel generally OK, that my diet is better than it was and I diligently take the tablets; but it’s obvious that I lie to myself. Every morning I have to walk up a hill, and it leaves me feeling near fucking death. Any walk over 15 minutes gives me severe pain in my calves; I have not lost an ounce of weight, and, if I was doing as well as I professed, I wouldn’t be going into a panic every time I got a bit of indigestion or a twingey pain in an arm. It was clear. Something had to be done.

I decided that the thing that needed to be done was that I should go vegan. What a lark. What a doomed to failure lark. What a superb example of the triumph of hope over experience. I got on Amazon and ordered the book of the film, complete with recipes, and a couple of other books that extol the virtues and efficacy of a plant based diet.

When they say eat nothing that has a mom or a dad or a face, you think, I can do that, I’m an ethical, compassionate being, for fucks sake! It can’t be that difficult.  Then you read that anything that has a mom or a dad or face includes milk and cheese and yoghurt. All meat fish and dairy is verboten. OK, you think, I was wrong, it can be that difficult. No Cheddar, not even if it’s strong enough to strip the roof off your mouth by way of punishment. No Brie. No Yarg. No Blacksticks Blue. And you think: Fuck Me. Then you read you can’t have any fat. Not just dripping or lard………………no olive oil, or walnut oil, no hazelnut oil, or toasted sesame oil, and you begin to despair, then you begin to rationalise, then you begin to chicken out.

Right, you think, all previous attempts at improving your health have failed. Going all Taliban on yourself is never going to work, one has to be reasonable. Moderation in all things…………………all that kind of bullshit. Knowing that you won’t be able to carry it off, you resolve to do the best that you can. And you rationalise that any change has to be an improvement. You feel a bit downhearted but you make a plan. Not a proper, well thought out, structured plan, more a notion that you will go and buy some stuff.

Here’s the first problem, buying stuff. This stuff is expensive. Nut or other alternative milks are expensive (not supposed to have nut milk, but fuck it), things like date syrup and other strange condiments are expensive, as well as very hard to find, and you still have to buy all the normal stuff for the normal people in the house. And there’s another problem, once you’ve bought all this stuff, you have to find somewhere to store it. You may surmise, I wasn’t going into this with whole hearted commitment, although I did buy a decent mandolin.

Reading the book reinforced the message in the film and I felt encouraged to give it a proper good go, although I wasn’t kidding myself I could stick religiously to it. I’ll probably go on about the different things I tried and all my emotions and shit another time, but today I’ll just bang on about 2 biggish, fairly normal changes……………………..milk and porridge.

I gave up the milk of a cow. By that, I don’t mean that I started lactating, I mean I stopped drinking it. Mindful of the strictures against nut milk I compromised between almond milk and something called Koko, which I think is made from coconut anyway, so, in fact, I didn’t compromise at all. My face is red now, typing that. Both of them are OK in different ways.

I’ve been bringing a huge bowl of raw porridge into work to sustain me through the morning, and, quite frankly, it’s delicious. I pour a load of oats into a bowl, add some ground flax seed and grape nuts, along with some slivered almonds, some sultanas, some goji berries, some coconut, a bit of vanilla and a squirt of maple syrup (date syrup sometimes, but it takes a bit of getting used to). I top it all up with almond milk and by the time I get to work it’s softened up and is nice enough to have kept me away from bacon. More or less. Sometimes I add a bit of raw cacao powder. Have you seen the price of that stuff? The whole thing looks a bit disgusting,  and it elicits comments from passers by, but, fuck ‘em, it tastes nice and is good for the soul.

So, there is a use for almond milk that works really well. The Koko thingy  also works well with it and gives a slightly lighter, fresher feel on the old palate. Where the Koko works really well is with hot chocolate, made with raw cacao. Both of the milks are horrible in tea or coffee. Truly disgusting. I hardly drink any of those brews but I do have a splash of cows milk with em and feel guilty, which is progress, of a sort, I suppose.  

wheatberries with greens and butternut, quinoa burgers and tomato sauce

Gloomy Sunday

Watching Tom Kerridge on the telly, you can see how he got to be the size he is, but it is refreshing to see a telly chef who still clearly loves his grub, and also loves sharing his love with the rest of us. Too many cooks on the telly now are jaded and repetitive from having been on for donkeys years, or aren't really cooks at all. I love the way Rick Stein goes to far flung places and tells us that this is what he loves, cheap grub, prepared in a shack by a peasant with a camping stove and battered tin can. You won't find his love of simplicity in any of his Padstow establishments, not when the bill arrives, anyway. Old Tom tells us he loves simplicity as well, but he doesn't really, and he certainly doesn't favour frugality, but he doesn't pretend that he does, so that's OK.

I'm attempting a bit of frugality myself, and I'm not being very successful. Last weekend I did Tom's duck, which has left me feeling a bit ambivalent. The duck was expensive, there wasn't much meat on it and it was a bit of a faff at the end, but was probably worth it, coz it was nice, and I did manage to stretch it out to two meals, more than that, actually, thinking about it. I haven't had much experience cooking duck due to the expense and lack of meat on the bleeder, and it has never been very successful......it's impossible to carve the bastard, for a start. On this occasion, I followed Toms instructions and then looked at a video on how to successfully carve it, and it was OK……I managed to get the breasts off in one piece and then carve those nicely, so, for once, it actually looked edible. It tasted, really, really nice, but I was still left with some doubts about it. The problem I had was that I can feed 5 of us and still have leftovers with a chicken, or a lump of red meat; this dear duck only fed the two of us.

Thinking about it though, it ended up good value. Me and the Mrs only had the breasts, which was enough. There wasn't much meat on the legs, but what there was, I stripped and chopped and turned into a stir fry, albeit a stir fry heavy on the veg and noodles, for the kids. I also followed Tom's recipes for potato pancakes and braised lettuce to go with the duck. The pancakes turned out really well, and there were loads of 'em, and the letuce was nothing short of a fucking revelation. I also knocked up some saffron spuds that I had seen Rick Stein do on Saturday Kitchen and they were also a bit special.............so, I had loads of leftover pancakes, loads of leftover spuds, and loads and loads of delicious duck fat. I had pancakes with poached eggs on Sunday for breakfast, then fried a couple more up for a snack before bed, then, the other night, I had lamb chops, accompanied by the last of the pancakes and the leftover spuds, fried very gently, for a very long time, in a load of duck fat. I also stuck a load of green veg on, just for appearances sake, and it was bloody belting. So, although the duck was dead, and there wasn't much meat on it, I managed. from the one meal I cooked on Saturday, to make 3 other biggish meals, a breakfast, and some snacks. Hat's off to Tom.

The cheapest meal I have had in ages was on Sunday: an Ottolenghi,which is a bit surprising because there was no faff involved and it was frugal, neither of which you would associate with him. A couple of boxes of free range chicken portions, a load of spuds,and several onions into a big pot and then a load of soy sauce, pomegranate mollases, mango chutney, ginger, and a couple of other bits and pieces. That was it, all in a pot and into the oven for 2 hours. Bloody delicious.

All this marvelous duck fat reminded me that I am defined as a man with a chronic illness (although I don't feel like a man with a chronic illness) and I am also obese (although only just!) so I should be a bit more mindful about the shit I scarf down. All through the summer I had been really good, or, more accurately, less bad than usual. I invented a cold porridge concotion that I had for breakfast every day, in place of my usual bacon butty, which gets wolfed down in the car en route to my labours. I can't pretend it was delicious, but it was edible, and very cheap, and, possibly, healthy; but it took a bit of getting through, and you most definitely can't eat it while driving.

The last few weeks have seen me revert to the bacon butty in the car, much quicker, much nicer as well, to be honest. This is bad, I have to acknowledge that. Next time I keel over, I will deserve no sympathy. I keep telling myself that I shall go back to the cold porridge, and I will, one day.

In The Neighbourhood

When I was a lad, we knew what we would be having for tea, day by day, week by week, year by year; it never varied. There was a time when I could have remembered in minute detail, but those days are long gone. On Mondays we would always have stew, stew ala Lou, as me and me brother came to know it. It was delicious and was a dish of rare delicacy, consisting of a tin of stewing meat, a tin of mixed veg, a pint of water and an oxo cube. I’m surprised it never became the national dish. 

Tuesday would be lamb chop, boiled spuds and peas; can’t remember what Wednesday would have been, possibly pork chop, boiled spuds and peas, Thursday would be fish fingers, mash and peas, Friday would be chips from the chippy, with whatever we wanted, saveloy and peas for me usually, or a scallop, or roe, tinned, not fresh, never fresh.  Saturday would be egg and chips, Sunday would be a Sunday dinner and a Sunday tea, consisting of tinned salmon, lettuce, bread and butter, spring onions, a tin of mandarins, some jelly, and evaporated milk. Oh, and a chocolate log. Being a weak and frail child, I never got an end of that bastard cake. Maybe I should write a misery memoir. Rather than say grace, eldest brother would signify that we could start eating by hilariously flicking water into an innocent and unprepared face from a lettuce leaf.

It wasn’t Gordon Blue cookery, but we knew where the fuck we were, and we ate together.

It’s all a bit more haphazard now. We never know what we are having from one day to the next, we rarely eat the same meal, and we rarely eat en famille . I blame the telly cooks. We would starve without the telly cooks to guide us. I’m always doing something that I have recently seen on the telly. Most of it ends up in the bin.

I had my longish affair with Jamie, and now I’m flirting coquettishly with Gino DiCampo and Tom Kerridge. I tried Toms lamb shoulder, which was shit, and I bought all the stuff for his dripping salad but was too scared to try it, and this week I saw him arse about with a duck, which I shall try on the weekend. I love the way he states that simplicity is his watchword then tells you to spend 3 days making a dressing, and several hours cooking a duck, not just sitting there and leaving it, but paying it loving attention.

Gino is the man for me at the moment. I’m skyplussing his programme and skimming through it……………..when he says a recipe is simple, it usually is. I did his pasta with broccoli garlic and chilli, which was delicious, and cheap, as well as being a piece of piss to make. Last week his lamb chops in a honey sauce looked rather good and I shall be giving them a whirl before too long.

For some reason, our local Asda has started selling enormous pork bellys, this is a good thing, I hate those little bastards, no bigger than a chop that supermarkets usually sell. I followed (more or less) a Rick Stein recipe, turned out delicious, made a hell of a mess of the roasting tin though

I haven’t given up on Jamie; his book has gone back, but he’s still on the telly, if becoming increasingly hard to swallow. He did a squash thing in rolled up pasta this week which looked easy enough, and will be tried at the weekend.

I just read “Red Road” by Denise Mina. I liked it. When I was a very young man, and first got into crime fiction, courtesy of Birmingham Library, I was reading classic American noir, by the likes of Dashiell Hammet, James M Cain, Jim Thompson, et al. I liked that these authors tried to shine a light onto the murkier corners of the soul and society. They were not much concerned with middle class angst, and, although set in a distant place, a long time ago, the words connected with me in a much more profound way than the words of Kinglsey Amis or David Lodge did, as much as I enjoyed the words they wrote. It is crime fictions willingness to address the shit that the working stiff has to put up with, the obstacles put in the way of the little guy, and to expose the hypocrisy and smug sense of entitlement of the elites that attracted me and has kept me reading it.

In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult, but not impossible, to find really interesting, insightful, nuanced crime fiction. Pelecanos remains highly readable but has become almost a parody of himself, Lee Burke’s villains continue to be possessed of downright heroic levels of depravity, the Scandinavians have all gone fucking mad and, with very few exceptions, British crime fiction is as shit as it has always been, and even the good ones end up writing the same book over and over again.

Reading "Red Road" was like returning to a gentler, more sensible time. No savage violence. No villains with powers so great that they are impossible to kill off, no warped moral relativism in which it is bad for the bad guys to kill,  but OK for the good guys to mete out lethal vigilante justice. What the book gives us first and foremost is brilliant writing, and a sad, wistful humour. It recognises that the world is mostly shit, that justice for the poor is a different beast to justice for the rich; it doesn’t portray the wrongdoers as simply evil, and the good doers as simply good; it doesn’t ratchet up the violence, but it lets us know the devastating effects that violence has upon the victims, and it keeps us turning the pages, right up until the final brilliant sentence.

It is probably pertinent that Mina is a Scot: Scotland and Ireland have been producing fantastic crime fiction for about 10 years now, you’d probably need a degree in research methods to find most of it though. The American South and the Rust Belt has also been producing great, edgy fiction. Dark tales from the margins of marginalised regions are telling us great truths about this beautiful capitalist world we live in, but it’s only dopes like me who seem interested……still, at least I can be entertained while the system slowly chokes the life out of those it doesn't need anymore.

Welding Burns

The king is dead,long live the king. Jamie has gone, to be replaced by Tom. I saw Tom Kerridge on the telly last week in a new lifestyle porn  cookery series. He always comes across a hearty and genial sort of guy, but you don't get the acclaim  that he has won by being simple, and I doubted if any of his recipes would suit my simple skills or lack of patience. True enough, he made a veg pickle that no sane person would attempt in their own kitchen, but then he did a lamb shoulder and spuds that was simplicity itself. I made it. It was shit. Probably my fault.

Looking at this blog, you would think we were carnivores of the most rapacious kind, forever having a bloody piece of flesh within our grasp, but, as a rule, we eat hardly any meat at all. A chicken dinner every Sunday, the odd bacon sarnie, the occasional meaty stew,  a bit of chorizo or pancetta added to pasta or rice dishes and that is about it. The kids have an aversion to red meat of all kinds unless it comes out a box, bearing no resemblance to actual flesh .

After the meat feast of Jamie's recipes, and Tom's shit shoulder, without even thinking about it, I started cooking some of my old standbys, and bugger me, no meat was involved, and bugger me sideways, they cost next to nothing. And nobody died.

First off, I made a huge pot of minestrone. No one needs to be told how to make a minestrone, you just bung whatever veg you have to hand into a pot, sweat it for 15 minutes, cover it with stock and boil the bugger up for 15 minutes. On this occasion the stuff that went into the pot was onion, garlic, celery, sage, rosemary, thyme, carrot, spud, spinach, kale, tomatoes, butter beans, broken up bits of spaghetti, and a couple of pints of veg stock. Total cost: no idea, probably about 3 quid. It was delicious with a sprinkling of parmesan and a bit of walnut bread and there is loads left, enough for at least two dinners at work, or, if you strain a bit of the stock off, or add another tin of beans, it would be just the job with a pile of chillied up polenta. I have a recipe for polenta that is unbelievable. I might share it one day.

Despite my aversion to faffing about, the second thing I did was a helluva of a faff; took a couple of hours at least to prepare, even before it went in the oven, and it generated a shitload of washing up to boot, but it is one of those rare dishes that is worth the faff. It is Marcella Hazan's  vegetable lasagne. I noticed in a tweet yesterday that Marcella has departed this life, RIP Marcella.

There are 3 main ingredients, courgettes, carrots and broccoli. You have to slice the carrots and courgettes thinly and par boil the broccoli, before breaking into tiny florets. You brown 2 garlic cloves in a big pan with butter and oil, then you chuck the garlic away, wilt all the carrots down in the pan, then repeat the whole damn process with the courgettes, then the broccoli. You are supposed to keep them separate and layer them up individually, but, as a very wise man once said: "fuck that for a game of tin soldiers". Then you have to make a cheesy bechamel and layer it all up as you would any lasagne.  It seems simple, and it is, and it is delicious and it makes loads for probably not much more than about 4 quid for the lot.

Next up, a veggie shepherd pie. Nothing to it, all you do is make it as if you were making a meaty one, but use green lentils instead of mince. I like to add some very finely chopped mushrooms too; dunno why, it just seems like a reasonable thing to do. I make the topping nice by mixing up sweet and ordinary spuds with loads of very well caramelised onions, a bit of chopped and wilted spinach and shitloads of cheese and butter.

River

My affair with Jamie has come to an end. The book had to go back to the library, and there wasn’t enough good stuff in there to justify spending  the 26 quid Jamie  wants for it. Having said that, it is a decent book, and not nearly so aggravating as the telly series; it gave me some good ideas to do with leftovers, and almost converted me to brisket.

I deviated slightly from Jamie’s recipe for the brisket. I seasoned it and topped it with mustard, as I was told, but then poured half a bottle of wine into the roasting tray and cooked it for 6 hours. It came out alright, ‘twas still only brisket though. I didn’t make a meal with it, couldn’t be arsed, nor did I make any of the leftover recipes, but it made bosting sarnies, with a bit of red cabbage. Some might argue that spending 12 quid on a lump of brisket and cooking it for hours, just so you can have a nice sarnie at work is a bit of a false economy, and they might be right.

The major problem I have had with this new book is that it is really, really heavy on the meat……………..the main premis seem to be to buy a huge fuck off lump of meat and have a Sunday dinner with it, then spice and rice some of it up a bit and have a sarnie or a wrap with the rest. That’s OK, up to a point, but you do get a bit sick of scarfing down the same thing day after day. This morning I opened the fridge door and was confronted with leftover veg curry, leftover bean and chorizo stew, leftover lentil soup, leftover rice and half a bastard chicken. Couldn’t face any of it, made a load of brie and ham sarnies. On sliced white bread. To be fair to Jamie, as we must, none of that grub came out of his book.

I had a go at Jamie’s broccoli and cauliflower bake last week. It was alright, if a bit of a faff. I noticed on the box that he used frozen veg, and he reckoned it was as nice as with fresh veg, if I do it again, which is unlikely, I might try that, not for increased cheapness but for decreased faffness. Another faff was his fish pie, which I did make with frozen fish and veg. It went straight into the bin. I don’t mind a bit of faff, but I want the results to be spectacular, not just OK, and that fish pie, even using frozen ingredients, was bastard expensive. That's not why it went into the bin though; it went into the bin partly because I had been cooking like a bastard and we never got round to eating it, and partly because it looked shit

I finished “The Cook” in no time at all, having taken to my sick bed with it. It maintained its brilliance throughout, although the twist at the end, while delicious, stretched credibility a bit too far.

I’m now reading Denise Mina’s new one, “Red Road”. The jury is out. I read one of hers years ago, and thought it was brilliant, and then read another, which I thought was shit, and then didn’t read any more of hers until this one. I’m feeling quite poorly and sorry for myself, and have a very thick, fuzzy and painful head, so it has done well to keep my attention for the 60 odd pages I have read: however, a bunch of shady toffs are becoming more prominent, and I am fast losing interest.

Fat Man

This morning I made bread. Beset by a mild malady, I spent Friday evening in bed, with a cup of cocoa and a book, rather than drinking wine and posting endless nonsense on twitter. Consequently, I was up early, and feeling revived, rather than desperate, so I made bread, to go with a lentil soup that hadn't yet been made.

Bread vexes me. Most weekends I make soup at least once, and you need to have nice bread to go with it, but, have you seen the price of it? Even nasty bread costs an arm and a leg, and a decent loaf is painful to purchase. You can buy a decent loaf in  any supermarket, I'm not so daft as to deny that, but you can't argue that it is good value: in the end, it's only flour, yeast, sugar, salt and water, for fucks sake.

I used to have a bread machine, but I kept losing the little paddle thing and having to replace it, and I didn't like the bread it produced all that much either, long and thin, like the Nicola Zigic of the kitchen. Trying to cut a piece of that in a straight line required the dexterity of a surgeon. So I binned the machine and started making bread by hand, although not all that often, to be honest.

Here's the thing. Making bread is a piece of piss. No skill is required, very little time is required, and even a basic bleeder is as good as a premium supermarket store baked loaf, and, in most cases, better………and you can arse about and add flavours and textures as much you like, virtually for free. The bread I made today is very basic, half wholemeal, half white, sachet of yeast, bit of salt, bit of honey, bit of olive oil……..I dunno how much it cost, but I would be surprised if it was much more than 40p and I had the added bonus of a wonderful smelling house. A similar loaf in Sainsburys would be about £1.50, at least.

The book I took to bed was "Cook" by Wayne Macauley. Got about half way through, and so far, I love it. The thing has no punctuation, apart from full stops and is quite difficult to read until you get used to it; then it develops a strange, hypnotic rhythm all its own. So far, it is a bit of an hosanna to service, whether it remains so time will tell. I hope not, but it is still a brilliant, original and exhilarating read.

I can't watch Masterchef, it brings out the class warrior in me, all that fine dining; the kowtowing to the knobocracy: the deference. I sometimes think that if I had  my time again, I might want to cook for a living, but I doubt I could cope with the subservience. 'Cook", so far, takes a different stance, and celebrates the monied class, the heroes of the book salute them, as their willingness to spend absurd amounts of money on a plate of innards provides the bottom feeders with a route out of the shitkicking suburbs. I love it, and it is funny, not uproariously funny, but funny, and provocative. What more could you want, apart from a couple of murders?

I haven't finished with Jamie by the way, I still have all last weeks recipes to complain about, and I have made his fish pie this morning, but I've come over all delicate again, so it will have to wait.

One Meatball

I made a Jamie leftover thing and it turned out delicious, however, I became confused and started with one recipe only to finish with another, in the same dish. Moreover, I bastardised it, so I'm reluctant to give Jamie the credit. He can have a bit of the credit, but not all of it. On the telly I'd seen him do a Korean stir fry with left over brisket. It looked nice: I had leftover pork, and it was obvious that the dish would work with pork just as well as beef, probably better.

I shredded up all my left over pork, it didn't look like much, so I chopped up a few mushrooms; it still didn't look like much, so I chopped up half a cabbage, and some spinach. It looked delicious even before I cooked it. I took Jamie's advice on the spice mix and whizzed some garlic, chilli, ginger, turmeric and fresh coriander into a paste.....it required the addition of a fair bit of water to make it into an actual paste. The aroma was worth the price of admission on its own. That was more or less it. I chucked the paste into a pan, let it sizzle a bit, then threw in the 'shrooms, and the cabbage, then the spinach, let it all sizzle and pop for a bit, then chucked over the leftover pork gravy, that I was no longer going to have with mash, and some coconut milk, made from a block of creamed coconut, and let it all bubble away. I may have chucked a bit of soy sauce in, can't remember.

At this point, I decided to open the book and check the recipe. Fuck me, I wasn't doing Korean stir fry, I was doing beef rendang, except it was pork rendang, with a few minor Cwmbran interpolations. I continued as if nothing had happened and I was making Korean stir fry all along, which consisted of boiling up some rice and chucking that in with the rest. When the rice went in, it started to take on the appearance of an old fashioned Vesta biryani, so I chucked some sultanas in, just for a laugh. Turned out to be an inspired decision.

We scoffed it while watching the latest Breaking Bad, or the Mrs scoffed it, I wasn't that hungry as I had cooked the eldest some sausage and chips, but he was out, so, taking Jamie's entreaties to be frugal on board, I scoffed that, with a couple of eggs. I watched with increasing dismay as the Mrs stealthily went back to the trough, for more Cwmbran Rendang Stir Fry Bollocks, 3 times.

I was hoping to have some for the next days dinner at work. Luckily, she left enough, which is how I know it was truly delicious. I'll try and make it again, but I doubt it will turn out the same......it was probably that delicious pork gravy that was the kicker, and I won't have that to hand very often. In the end, it's as much as about the energy you put in as the ingredients you use, and the universe was smiling upon me that day.

I have also utilised the sauce I made for the Crap Chicago Pizza through the week, once for a very simple coating for some left over chicken, fried up with some mushroom and spinach for a pasta sauce, and also for a simple sauce for some slightly spiced prawns, again with pasta. I offered the daughter pasta again last night but she declined, and opted for poached eggs on toast. There's gratitude. I bet Jamie doesn't have to contend with that.

I watched the Jamie episode with the pork the other day. It showed that, while his heart might be in the right place, his brain isn't. For a start, the joint cost 28 quid. He justified it, like the berk who claimed a whole salmon was frugality itself, by saying that it would last a week. I have 3 observations on this. One, if you are skint, or poor, or yer finances have, one way or another, gone down the shitter, it is highly unlikely that you will have 28 quid to spend on a single joint of meat. Second, did you see the size of the fucker? You would need an industrial sized fridge just to keep it in... an ordinary household fridge would not be able to house a lump of pork that big. Third, no one in their right mind could cope with pork every day for a week, no matter how often you bling the fucker up with a bit of galangal.

I'm not convinced Jamie is enjoying this series; it looks like little more than a marketing exercise on behalf of his Uncle Ben. He doesn't really seem all that enthused by any of his recipes, he doesn't even provide many recipes, and the thing is padded out with idiocy. He has some inarticulate "mate" try one of his creations, looking very uncomfortable, before declaring it amazing, and also goes around to some chumps house to teach them how not to waste stuff. This weeks food waster bought half a lamb every week, despite not knowing what to do with it or what the different cuts were. Half a lamb. Ye fucking Gods. She didn't need a visit from Jamie, she needed a visit from a man in a white coat.

I'll give Jamie some credit. Using his ideas, if not his recipes, has saved me a few bob this week. I have a load of chicken and different packs of mince in the freezer that I didn't need to use, and which, most weeks, I would have used. And here we are again, back at the weekend, and I'm going to do a Jamie again. I have already got a biggish lump of brisket brining. I'm not confident though. I hate fucking brisket,

Us Brummie types, especially us Brummie types who support the Blues, have been getting all beside ourselves at the prospect of Peaky Blinders starting on the telly. My departed nan used to call me and my brother peaky blinders when we played up, which was hardly ever. It concerns a bunch of Brummie hoodlums from 1919 or thereabouts, and there is a femme fatale, a mad Irish cop, social history, revolution and fuck knows what else in the pot. Jamie would be proud…..everything gets cooked, or overcooked.

Plenty has been written about the sets and the accents, but I have been surprised by the generally good press that it has received, because it is shit, absolutely woeful. If they had put as much effort into writing a decent script as they did in practising laughable accents, it might be OK, but they didn't and it's embarrassing. It's one saving grace was getting a mention of the Blues in. The barman in The Garrison reckoned half the team were in there, sinking a few before the game……a tradition which continues to this day, going by our start to the season.

I'll Trade You Money For Wine

First things first, I only found out about Robbie Fulks a few weeks ago, and bugger me, what a man, what a talent, what a crime that he so little known. Listen to that track just up there if you don't believe me. You might want to visit his website too; it's very old fashioned in that he writes stuff on there, as opposed to filling it with PR bullshit.

I've been struggling to find a book that holds my attention for a few weeks, but I have been saved by "Black Irish" by Stephan Talty, which has had me scouring wikipedia for information on Buffalo, where it is wonderfully set. The city is as much a character as Washington is for Pelecanos, but minus the sentimentality. Talk about hard bitten.

My weekend with Jamie was not a great success:

The Dough

 

I don't usually cook on Friday night, what with working all day, then going shopping and not usually getting home much before 7, but Jamie had inspired me, and I resolved to make his Chicago pizza pie. I can  make pizza, I've made thousands of 'em, and I can make bread, I have made millions of loaves, and they are usually pretty good, so I why I decided to use this new and unfamiliar method of making the dough, Lord knows. Anyway, it didn't work. The dough didn't rise and it felt very heavy, dense, and soggy. The sauce was very easy to make though. Being Friday, and as I'd been shopping, the kitchen was well stocked and I  managed to ease the disappointment  with plenty of red wine accompanied by many corned beef cobs 

 

I couldn't be arsed throwing the dough away on Friday night, and when I got up on Saturday morning, bugger me if it wasn't showing signs of life. Having nothing to lose, I decide to give it a whirl. I stretched it out, lined a flan tin with it to make a big one, not the 4 recommended by Jamie, smeared some of the sauce on it and topped it with some crumbled sausage, some torn pancetta and a load of cheddar and Parmesan. It was alright, no better, no worse. The kids ate it, but wondered why I hadn't made a normal pizza. It was no easier to make than yer bog standard pizza, and I won't be using that method to make dough again. The sauce, though, was something else, and required absolutely no effort to make, and I still have loads left .The kids will be getting it mixed up with some pasta and leftover chicken before this week is very much older.

 

The Sauce

 

I'm not at home typing this, but, as best as I can remember, you just chuck a tin of tomatoes into a processor with some red wine vinegar, a clove of garlic and some chopped chilli and salt and pepper and whizz the bastard up. That's it.

 

Usually, when making a topping for pizza I sweat an onion, then add garlic, chilli, sugar, salt, pepper and red wine or sherry vinegar and reduce it down into almost a jam. Takes a bit of time but tastes nice. Jamie's simple effort is as good, and  there is loads left. It is virtually an arrabiata, so just cook up a bit of bacon and mushroom, mix with the sauce and some pasta, and you have an effortless tea. 

Hats off to Jamie for that

 

The Pork

 

His recipe for pork shoulder required a 4.5 kilo lump of meat. One is not going to find a lump of pig that size around here, besides which, 4.5 kilo???? No one can eat that much pig, you'd have to be a family of 14, and even then, people would be begging for mercy. Now, I may complain that we have no deli, baker, greengrocer or decent butcher in town, but we do have 3 big supermarkets and a little M & S. I am intimately acquainted with all of them, so I knew that the best place for a sizeable lump of pork was Asda, so that's where I went, and I bought the the biggest pork shoulder they had.......a measly 1.2 kilo. At times like these it is best not to think about the provenance of the meat, but, it looked like a sorrowful and sad specimen.

 

My plans for this went a bit awry. I had intended to do a huge Sunday dinner, except it would be for Saturday tea. What I hadn't factored in was that, come tea time, I would be the only fucker in the house. That was OK though, the point of buying this joint was to try some of Jamie's recipes for leftovers, rather than have him tell me what veg to cook with a slab of meat, and, clearly, there were going to be plenty of leftovers,

 

Jamie doesn't say to do it, but I brined that poor dead flesh for about 12 hours. He recommends bashing or whizzing up a load of fennel seed with salt and pepper and rolling the joint in that. This was new to me and I gave it a whirl, with some trepidation, but it turned out fucking delicious. That's it for the meat really: chuck the spice on, with some oil, sit it atop some sliced onion and apple and whack it into into the oven. I deviated from Jamie a bit, I added a glass of white wine  and about half a pint of chicken stock to the roasting tin and cooked it on 160 for about 3 hrs. The crackling was the best crackling I have ever had. I shall be doing this again, but not until I can find a lump of meat weighing at least 2 kilo.

 

The Gravy

 

The eldest got in from his McDonalds shift at about half nine and declared that he wanted me to cook him steak, mash and gravy. My initial thought and response was rather unkind; fuck me, I thought, I've been arsing about all afternoon and half the night and now he wants steak, mash and bloody gravy. Well, he had the steak, a huge ribe eye, and that wasn't going to take more than 10 minutes, the spuds would be little trouble and I had the pork just about finished, which would give me juice for the gravy. So I did him his bloody steak, mash and gravy. The gravy was so nice it made me cry. I'm crying again, just thinking about it. I've saved some and I'm going to make a huge mound of buttery mash and have the gravy with it. Nothing else. Then I shall rest.

 

The Soup

 

When it became clear that there was little point in making a huge, fuck off dinner, I made soup. I love soup, so easy, so cheap, so comforting. I had a bag of watercress on its last legs so made a pea and watercress soup. This is how: I sweated an onion with a spud for about 10 minutes, then I added the pitiful looking watercress, about 12 ounce of frozen peas and a couple of handfuls of spinach; then I added salt and pepper, a chicken stock cube and a spoon of vegetable bouillon. Cooked it for 20 minutes, gave it a whizz, and added a blob of creme freche. That was Bob, my uncle. I had it with some expensive bread, I shall come back to bread another time, as it bugs me. There you go, I had been cooking and preparing food for hours and what I had for my tea was a bowl of soup and a load of pork crackling. And very delicious it was too.

 

The Sunday Dinner

 

I have nothing to say about the Sunday dinner. It was just Sunday dinner: Chicken, with a load of veg, and stuffing. And Yorkshire pudding. That's how it is, some like stuffing, some like Yorkshire pudding. I forgot to salt the Yorkie pud, but It was only me that seemed to notice. I had bought a big enough chuck that there should be enough left on its poor, sorry carcass to utilise another of Jamie's leftover recipes.

 

The Poodles

 

I used some of the leftover pork to make the kids tea, and I didn't use a Jamie recipe. Just tore a load of pork  up, put it in a hot wok with spring onion, spinach, soy sauce, black bean sauce and chilli bean paste, sizzled it all up for a couple of minutes while some poodles were doing and then mixed it all up together. They ate it, and you can't say fairer than that.

 

While I was at it I made a couple of pork wraps for my dinner at work. So pea soup and pork wraps already made for a free dinner.

Jamie is a genius.

 

The verdict

 

So far, so so. I have also made  a pasta, prawn and pea thingy out of that book, which was simplicity itself and all cooked up in the time it takes to cook the pasta. It was OK, nothing special, but good enough to add to the old repertoire, so that's a win. When I make it again though, I'll add some chorizo or bacon to it at the start; it was nice, but a bit lacking in oomph, however, for a tea knocked up in 12 minutes flat, I'm not complaining.

The tomato sauce for the frankly mediocre pizza was really good, and so was the crackling on the pork and the gravy. I'm not sure if me or Jamie should get the credit for the last one though.....me, I think.

 

I didn't use the book that much, I got notions from it, rather than recipes. For the rest of the week I'll be using his leftover ideas, and I hope this is where the book will come into it's own. Some of his ideas are quite obvious, and there is nothing wrong with that, but some of them are new to me and I shall look forward to giving them a whirl.

Working Dream

I think I might resurrect the blog, but make it a bit more focussed than previousy. I learned the hard way that you can't use a public blog to let off steam about yer work colleagues, and the world doesn't need the likes of me to post random links to interesting stuff anymore. Everyone knows how to find stuff now.

Here's the rationale: 18 months ago I experienced a dramatic cardiac event, which necessitated a bit of a lifestyle reappraisal. Sad to report, reappraising a lifestyle is one thing; acting on the reappraisal quite another: I'm still the same fat bastard that found himself being whisked off in ambulance in such a humiliating fashion. I have tried, a bit. I am much more diligent with the medication than I was and the blood pressure and cholestrol level is way down, and I eat less through the week and I make sure a I go on walk of at least 45 minutes every day and I go on the occasional bike ride. The bikes gears are knackered and according to the local repair man, not worth repairing, so that isn't much fun in such a hilly environment, but I try, occasionally.

You may ask, why don't you get a new bike? I might reply, because I'm fucking skint! Which brings me to the point of this newish blog. When I returned to work, I was grumpy and miserable. You think to yourself, I'm not going to accept as much pressure as before, not going to eat quite as much shit, and your managers and human remains departments all tell you that you must look after yourself, before piling as much shit on your poor, decrepit bonce and down yer lily livered throat they did before.

They pile more shit than before on your head, and warn you "not to play the heart card" Then they say, "work is stressful, and it's going to get more stressful, and we are not in a position to protect you, so you better be able to man up…….you said you were fit for work, so you better had be"

Frankly, I was feeling sorry for myself. I was burned out. I was lacking in enthusiasm. I couldn't be arsed. A major crisis would hit and I would think, "here we go again same old shit" I was no fucking use to anyone.

So I changed jobs. Still a social worker, of sorts, and, in some senses I have more responsibility than before, but not as far to travel, no management or supervisory responsibilities, no huge caseload, but, a huge fucking pay cut of about 400 quid a month. Was it worth it? Who knows, time will tell. So far, it seems worth it……..the little team I joined is ace and despite spending all day every day up to our arses in other peoples pain and misery, we spend most of the day laughing our heads off. For the first time in years, I can say that I love my job. Might just be a honeymoon period though. Also, love might be overstating the case, a little. And the pay cut hurts, a lot.

So, I have to economise. This is difficult, as I was hardly flush to start with. A few years ago there was a spate of articles on high flyers downsizing. I would chuckle as I saw that they were tending to downsize to a lifestyle and income I could only dream of. I've always been mindful of the cost of good grub, and tried to buy and cook stuff I could get several meals out of. It isn't difficult, if you have the time and patience……..and there's the rub, time and patience: I have little of either.

The prompt for all this bullshit is the increase in celebrity chefs telling us how to economise. There was an Irish bloke on the telly the other week, a big, bluff, jovial bloke, forever on Saturday Kitchen. His task was to shop and cook for a family on their weekly benefit income. He couldn't do it, he blew the budget on a  whole salmon, saying they could make it last a week, the fecking eejit, Then last week there was the Jamie Oliver hullabaloo. I like Jamie, but he can be a dope.

So they have vexed me. They are full of good heart and good intentions but they have vexed me. I propose to change the tack of this blog. There will still be a bit of the usual bollocks, the odd link, the odd book and record recommendation, the odd diatribe against the bastard tories, but the focus is going to be on food, good cheap, everyday food and how to stretch it out…….food that can be bought in a supermarket in a small, nondescript Welsh town: a town that has no decent butcher, no decent bakery, no kind of delicatessen at all.

I got Jamies new book out of the library yesterday.How's that for saving money? I have already tried 2 recipes, one worked, one didn't. I'll be using it all weekend and all next week and posting my thoughts. I bet you can't wait.

The Weight

He was in the G.P’s waiting room. Waiting.

Waiting........waiting......…waiting.

He should have come weeks ago, but it was such a trial. Phone for a specific doctor, the nice doctor, the one who noticed that you were actually in the room, and you would be told to phone after 10 for an appointment the following week, then you would phone, bang on 10, and it would be engaged. You would hit redial, frantically, only to find that when you finally got through, all the appointments were gone. 

No, what you had to do was phone early for an emergency appointment and hope for the best. His wife always got to see the nice doctor, he never did, but he lived in hope. So he phoned. The reception asked if it was urgent. He hesitated. He hated this question. Clearly, it was not urgent, or he wouldn’t be phoning the GP, he would be en route to the hospital........it wasn’t as f he had sliced off a digit or was having a heart attack. Still, if he said it was non urgent he wouldn’t get in, and he would have to go through all that phoning for an appointment next week rigmarole and miss the boat, and then he would have to go through it all again tomorrow. 

“Yes”, he said, as gravely as he could, “it is urgent”.

He was told to present himself at 9, and he did, and here was, at 10, waiting......waiting.......waiting. 

He was a bit conflicted. He should have come at least 2 weeks ago. On the other hand, he didn’t feel as bad now as he had done yesterday, or a few days before. He wondered if he really needed to be there. He had consulted Dr Google and knew that the only thing that was bothering him was a bit of fatigue and a susceptibility to anxiety attacks. The truth was, he was hoping for a couple of weeks off to recharge his batteries and regain some moral heft. He felt a bit of a fraud. Roger Hynd never suffered from anxiety attacks.

Every time a patient came out of the nice doctors room he would implore the universe......me next, me next, it has to be me next, but it never was. Every time someone came out of the other doctors room he would implore the universe, no, not me, it can’t be me....that child should be seen before me. It added a little excitement to proceedings. He could never work out how the system worked, people arrived long after him and were seen, whereas he always had to wait for hours.

He didn’t much care for ancient copies of National Geographic or Golfers Monthly, or even Caravanning Today, so he was grateful for his smart phone, which enabled him to while away the hours, and, thanks to the miracle of twitter, keep abreast goings on in the world, like howpacked the tube trains were, or how many hot babes there were on the Number 50 bus in Birmingham.......all of which is crucial to the well being of a man sitting in a waiting room in South Wales.

The other doctor came out, and called his name. Oh dear.

He presented himself in the room. The doctor, as was his wont, said hello in a cheery fashion, while avoiding all eye contact.....choosing instead to stare intently at his PC screen while enjoying some mid morning tea and cake. He marveled at this mans lack of social, never mind professional graces and waited until the doc was ready to converse. He looked idly around the sparse room. The desk, the bed, the scales, the nearly bare wall, decorated only by an opticians chart. Why the hell was there an opticians chart?

Finally. he was asked what ailed him. He spoke: extreme breathlessness, tiredness, heavy chest, numbness in extremities. He explained that he had done his research and it was all to do with anxiety. He didn’t actually feel anxious, but he did have a stressful and busy job, so supposed that his symptoms were physical manifestations of an emotional malaise that his ego wouldn’t allow him to admit to.

The doctor didn’t say anything, but left the room and returned a few moments later with a huge tablet and a glass of water, then left again. He took the tablet. It took some swallowing. The doctor returned, asked if he had taken the tablet. He confirmed that he had taken it, and commented that it was a bloody big pill, only to be told that he should have dissolved it in the water.

“Well”, he thought, “you might have advised me of that in the first place........you might even have put the fucking tablet in the fucking water”.

The doc asked him to open wide, he did (did he moonlight as a dentist, as well as an optician?) the doc sprayed something horrible under his tongue, and said, that’s going to give you a severe headache in a minute, then he left the room again. By now he had guessed that the doc considered him to be poorly, but was keeping it to himself, for some reason, and, strangely, he really didn’t feel like asking. He didn’t actually want to know.

The doc took him to another room and asked him to wait there. After a few minutes a receptionist with a concerned look on her face peeked in on him and asked him how he was feeling; then, before he could answer, said 

“You must be really shocked” 

“Well”, he thought, “I am now!”

He continued to wait. He phoned work. He said he would be in later than expected, as he had no idea what time he would be out of the damn quacks, who seemed intent on playing silly buggers. In due course, a hale and hearty para medic arrived, ordered him into a wheelchair, and wheeled him out into a waiting ambulance. Fuck, he thought as he was wheeled through the waiting room, in front of everyone, this is a bit of a show up.

Ballad of Cable Hogue

That was a decent enough start for England last night, and they played as anyone who has ever watched  a Hodgson team thought they would. At the time, I was reasonably happy, but as night has turned to morning and I've listened to phone ins and read and heard reports, I am wearying of it all. The consensus, especially from ex players and the professional pundits, is that it was a superbly disciplined performance and we did brilliantly to keep France at bay. Where people have dissented, and said that it was bloody tedious to watch, they have been ridiculed……….the wise ones say, hah, how idiotic, play more openly and you will get ripped apart, As is often the case with football debates, people can only entertain extremes. It is shit, or it is bust.

The style didn't surprise me, and, given that we all knew what was coming, it didn't disappoint me. If that's the way we are going to play,we may as well do it well, and we did do it well, especially as it was Hodgson's first competitive game. As was the case when Eck managed Blues, I live in hope that as the players become more attuned to each other and the system, the relationships between defenders, midfielders and forwards will become more fluid and cohesive. I live in hope that we will play on our toes, rather than our heels. My dreams never came true with Eck, but Hodgson has much better players at his disposal; I would hope that their own sense of dignity and self worth will compel them to offer more of a threat.

I have nothing against teams playing to their strengths, whatever they are, and I have nothing against managers analysing the opposition and working out ways in which to nullify the threats they pose, but, there has to come a point when you pose a threat of your own. These are games being played at the highest level, you cannot just play for set pieces, you have to be able to offer a surprise, to work out how to unsettle the opposition. France didn't look all that good last night, perhaps because we didn't let them, but the thought nags with me that if we had attacked with just a bit more purpose, or cohesion, we may have won.

Playing defensively is no guarantee of success. Just because Chelsea pulled off a bit of a coup doesn't mean that England will. Big media is being very kind towards Hodgson this morning, but if we go out having achieved 3 dogged draws the tide will turn….. it's OK to be defensive when you are the underdog, as we were perceived to be last night,  I recall some heroic 0-0 draws under Eck, but, if that style is your default position whatever the opposition, and you fail, life becomes uncomfortable. Just ask Big Fucking Eck.

People are commenting on Alan Shearer's new found desire to gurn idiotically every time a camera is pointed at him. Someone needs to tell him to desist……..it's the scariest grin since Jack Nicholson in The Shining. It's one thing being allowed to travel the world at licence payers expense, saying not very much at all; it's quite another to induce nightmares in the children of the nation.

Reactive football can be thrilling