Soup Song

There's a gale blowing outside and I've been soaked in the rain once again. The house is dark and the air smells vaguely of both peat and eggs. Seagulls are wheeling distantly over head and the trees are winding their bodies down; the sound is like a platoon of fat men marching across an endless plateau of crisps. It's August in Belfast.

I got soaked yesterday too but that was on a fun family excursion and I was sporting a pack-a-mac so it was fine. It was Stephen Mullan's last day in Ireland so the family made a trip to Gulladuff and we commemorated it with a walk up a Cairn that I forget the name of. It was great to get some exercise, some quality time with the Mullans and a look at the big stupid, Dali skies they have over here. The skies are too sky-ey; weird, fiddly bits of filligreed cloud, too nuanced and cleanly delineated to be real. The sky here reminds me of the hyper-realist matte paintings of "Black Narcissus", brilliant colours and crisp purple shadows where the sun breaks through cracks in the clouds, picking out the fields like a spotlight. It is very beautiful here. When the sun's out.

In the evening I treated myself to the only bottle of Meerlust Rubicon I've ever seen in Ireland. It was a delicious end to a day.

I've been feeling quite desperate recently and haven't been shy about it but I laughed a great deal on Friday. I had been moaning vehemently on Facebook* about the lack of available foods here, especially when it comes to seasoning my fancy-pants soups. I thought nothing of it, I rant therefore I am. But on my return from the head-shrinkest I found a very carefully put together package. It was from my old work colleague Jodie and contained: sage, oregano, shallots, some Bisto gravy granules (!), angel delight, marsh-mellows, two terrifying looking packets from Germany containing I don't know what and a Wham bar - with a note apologising for the inclusion of the wham bar as she knew the perilous condition my teeth were in.

I was delighted. The shallots are going into tonight's soup.

Once again I am reminded of the tremendous quality of my friends.

Dr. Who returned to our screens last night. The first one of the revamped series that Kelly won't have seen. These are the unexpectedly sad things that leap out at you when you least expect it. I didn't expect Moffat's shark vaulting exercise to have quite such an emotional undertow but you can be sure that he didn't put it there. It's all Kelly.


*I'm on Facebook strike at the moment. Well not strike exactly - I'm still reading what's going on but I'm not really writing anything on there. I was finding that I was spending four or five hours a day on there and really that' too much time. I'm stepping back from Facebook. I just want to live!

Partying is such sweet sorrow

The party was fantastic. It was one of the best nights of my life. Marcella, despite my previous rough treatment of her in this here blog, had sorted everything out, had decorated and shifted furniture, had organised incredible food and was flexible about pricing and payment methods (though I would have been pretty flexible confronted by a stuffed envelope full of flipping great wadges of cash! And I'm nearly forty!). Still, she did an excellent job and I'm assuming did a lot of business. Litro was my wife's choice of venue and in this as in all things she proved herself wise beyond her tender years.

Shouts-out to Row, Gwen and Mike for getting to the venue before me and setting up all the equipment in the down-stairs rumpus-room and again to Mike for actually DJing (and of course latterly to Douglas who repeatedly hurled himself at the decks in his boozed up pomp to play Big Marker tunes at tooth rattling volume).

Kelly arrived looking luminous and regal in a way that must surely have compromised her politics. It was incredible showmanship; the whole room seemed to surge toward her, sucked in by the gravity of her charisma. She held out remarkably against the strains of the day; hob-nobbing like a pervert with a cooker fixation and even essaying a couple of ill-advised dance moves (from memory they were "American Smooth" and "the worm"). My mother arrived, snootily announced that the decor wasn't to her taste (it wasn't - it was to Kelly's taste. That was the point!) and turned her nose up at a carafe of the house-red that somebody had bought for her. That didn't last long - she was soon downing them in quick succession and having a rare old time.

The sainted but evil Ange Calaco - McGaw made the most amazing birthday cake in the shape of a pink Parisian poodle, which was recognised by everybody as being me in confectionary form. Its little feet had neat stockings of child saliva long before I worked a cake-slice through it ( and the small rash of indentations in the liquorice hooves would be traceable back to a certain Rose Love without recourse to dental records!)

Special mention must go to Julia Postill for being a blizzard of entertainment all day. To Chris Kasch for not getting me in a head-lock (summoning every ounce of will-power to resist - his buttocks were clenched white all day!). Thanks must go to Sarah, Sinead and George for coming all the way from Scotchland (the latter two incognito). To Tori, Archie and la Bloor for reprazentin for the Spa-Town Massive. To Jen Warren whose thank you letter was longer than her stay at the party and to three fifths of THE RED ATLAS who were as emotional as I've ever seen them: I think Martin took his jacket off at one point and Si raised his hairier eye-brow (Ben was stripped to the waist and fucking anything that moved as soon as Mike dropped the needle on Dave Bowie - but that's quite usual). More thanks to the members of my family who were on delightful form and have managed to produce such remarkable children. And of coure DaveEvans who was much drunker than me! Oh and Daniel Howes for leaving the manifold delights of Norfolk to walk among us city bumpkins. But really massive thanks to everybody who came to send us off it was a truly lovely time. And I haven't even mentioned the gifts! I need never wear the same pair of socks again! I'm like Prince!

Thank you!

Hold onto your friends

Yes, that was a Morrissey quote. Though anyone who knows me will tell you I despise that man.*

I'm a lucky fella. Cash poor but friend rich. Throughout the last few months my friends have been amazing: supportive, pro-active, informed and conscientious. And unfailingly generous. I won't embarass them by naming them. Unless they want me to. In which case I have no qualms. I'm qualmless.










*they won't. Everyone assumes that I love him. I honestly dislike him more and more with the passing of time. Not least because he is 12 years older than me and looks approximately the same as me. And he's a millionaire. And people seem to like him despite the fact that he's clearly a total cock.

You'll never eat lunch in this town again quite so reasonably!

This weekend was a triumph and not just because I had two free meals! Although mainly that, obviously. Kelly's friends Emma and Francess decamped from Belfast allowing her to up her game magnificently. We were due to go to the British Museum where Emma had once worked but, for reasons of Francess not wanting to go, we opted instead for a visit to London's fashionable cell of dissidents Stoke Newington. We hopped in a black cab that had four quid on the clock before we left the rank owing to the fact that the taxi rank is in the bus station and there were throngs of hobbling red and white twats failing to be kettled by the loitering be-tabarded police, as they made their way out of the Arsenal shop and off to the Emirates Stadium.

We took a slow loping route around Stoke Newington's one-way system, like a piece of tainted pork circumnavigating the lower instine: noisily, in fits and starts and at no little cost; the route negotiated by our driver also negoiating him out of a tip.

What is there to do in Stoke Newington? Well, it looks nice, there are lots of pokey little shops to poke around in. We trudged through the higgledy-piggledy cemetary speculating on the meaning of the veiled urns that adorn every Victorian coffins. (the urn it turns out is fairly self explanatory; it has ashes in it like modern urns. Except tea-urns. Which aren't true urns at all! The veil represents "the mortal veil"; a gateway through which you must pass from one state of existence to another. Like those coloured strips of plastic hanging from the door frame you used to get in old-school betting shops or pornography outlets).

We went to the "Three Crowns" for lunch and then off home, walking all the way to Finsbury Park! The longest distance that Kelly has been able to walk for a month. I thought she would be exhausted but no, she was up and at 'em for the next set of visitors on Sunday.

Mike and Row came up from East Dulwich laden with delicious treats from the unjustly not world famous Franklin's store. (Franklin's is the restaurant where Kelly an I had our first date and where I proposed and is therefore "our place" - they have a shop now selling poncey delicacies to the yummy mummies of the South and delicious Earl Grey with blue flowers to me!)

We took them on a walk up to Crouch End (the East Dulwich of the North: full of jobbing actors and women with prams the size of 4 by 4s; prams that are, in fact, 4 by 4s!)and ate at Banner's. Kelly had wanted to go there for years but it had always been packed ( and of course I was never keen as it is notoriously child friendly and I am, in temperament if not in practice, child hostile). Well the gods, damn them, were smiling on us and we got a table and sat down to a pleasant meal in a rather nice place. I asked for my lamb burger to be rare and when it arrived I was introduced to the concept of Lamb Tartar: it was practically raw. That said I ate it and it was delicious.

Actually that was a really nice weekend. At last. Hooray.