Wednesday 29 February 2012

Golden Quotebook (4): Tuchman on Taxes


There will be presidential elections in France next April, and the various candidates are fine-tuning their positions so as to rake in as many votes as possible. Sitting president Sarkozy has just announced that there will be no French referendum on the European Austerity Plan; this is so popular with the citizenry that he prefers them to express their approval by returning him to office. Meanwhile, under the time-honoured slogan From Where’s The Beef?, Ms Marine Le Pen has initiated a campaign against halal meat being sold unlabelled in Paris supermarkets; indeed a somewhat dubious practice, but one wonders if France has no greater problems to address at present. Finally, François Hollande, the Socialist candidate, has dipped his hand into the dusty carton of Mitterrand heirlooms, and announced that as soon as he’s in office, the tax rate on the rich will go up to 75 %. The population of Monaco has doubled over the weekend. Since M. Hollande is set to win, I thought it would be nice to give him a tip how next to proceed in his quest to tax France into prosperity, with this hilarious quote from chapter 14 of ‘Stillwell and the American Experience in China’, by the inimitable Barbara Tuchman:

Lung Yun's resources for raising money were infinite. In one case he ordered that all two-wheeled carts, the common vehicle of the area, must be equipped with rubber tires. He then opened his warehouses to sell the tires he had confiscated during the days of traffic on the Burma Road. After that, he passed a new law taxing all carts with rubber tires.

Oh, and incidentally Ireland IS to hold a referendum on the subject. Reportedly, the question put to the voters will run: ‘If we grant you another 10 billion Euros next month, do you then approve of the EU Austerity Plan?’ And the answers from which to chose are: ‘Yes’ and ‘I wish to vote again in December’.

Tuesday 28 February 2012

Triumph of Brevity REDUX


Yesterday I got an impassioned complaint from an individual who said to be representing the so-called George Borrow Society. The George Borrow Society, if I understand it well, is a club of slightly befuddled eccentrics who aim to keep alive the memory of one even more befuddled and eccentric than themselves, so that - in contrast and comparison - members appear a little more… regular, let’s say. Britain seems to have a monopoly on the thing. Their assemblies often consume a lot of sherry, wear bowties and sensible shoes, and engage in tremendous, often vicious disputes over the fine points of their idol’s life, which not rarely end in schism. And then there were two…

When you observe such goings-on in adolescents, you tell yourself it is only a phase. When you see it in children, you comfort yourself with the notion that it keeps them off the streets. When it concerns grown-ups of means and education, you wonder if you should really hold on to your British passport…?


The fellow in question, who wrote with a rather distinct and unpleasant northern accent, played it along martyr lines. In so many words (and there were rather many….) he pointed out that George Borrow, although an author of limitless genius who has much to offer mankind, is being dreadfully neglected by this insensitive and senseless century. ‘Nobody ever talks of our hero’, he would have written had he not been so verbose. Then he went on to whine that I had caused him, and many of his fellow GBS members, a most cruel disappointment by citing George Borrow in a mutilated text (see last Sunday’s Triumph of Brevity). How could I be so callous? Why rub such salt in open wounds? For once their obscur objet du désir got cited on the internet, and now – and here I quote – ‘internauts can no longer see the forest for lack of trees…!’ As I said: befuddled. And eccentric.

Yet Alfred B. Mittington is not a heartless man, dear reader. He himself has often been pestered and persecuted for his uncommon ideas, his nonconformist ways! So Mea Culpa, Ye Small But Fierce Tribe of Borrovians, all three of you! I will make amends. I will, for once, be merciful, be merciful, tanding to the mad, I will for once  of a nutcase must themselves also have something of a screw lose, and since weand do your humble bidding by publishing the full text of last Sunday’s post. Not that that spiteful Natasha from down the hill deserves to have her trivial jabber immortalised. But those are family affairs, dirty Luso-Russo linen which I should not hang out for all to see.   





A Triumph of Brevity! (Full text)

My beloved goddaughter Ivana came to see me yesterday afternoon when boredom in the family mansion reached absolute zenith and Vera, her mama, threatened to pressgang the poor girl for making the Sunday borscht. Which is all work, no play, and stains your hands beetroot red in the process. She wore a battle-ready mien. I knew I was in trouble and I smiled.
‘Dedushka,’ she growled, ‘I thought you were a socialist?’
‘I was, dear. And I still am. It’s just the boys and girls in Brussels who forced me to join the ranks of reaction and throw in my lot with my natural enemies.’
‘So… How come you quote that Thatcher person with such approval? I understand he's a right-wing bastard! So wouldn’t you say that’s a little inconsistent?’
‘What? Just because I’m a Working Class Hero I can’t appreciate a good phrase by a die-hard conservative? There goes half my Golden Quotebook! No more Cato the Elder for me! Or Winston! Not to mention young Dalrymple!’
‘That’s another one I was wondering about. Do you know the kind of things he writes about poor folk?’
‘Beautiful articles, woven together of gorgeous phrases, by a man who has unique, privileged knowledge… What more can a man of taste and sophistication ask? But I understand I am not to sing his praises in my very own house, on my very own blog. Ah, you are young, my dear Ivana! You still do not know what life is really all about!’
‘What is it really all about then, Dedushka?’
Chachipé!’
‘Excuse me?’
Truth, dear. In the Gypsy lingo. I’ll lend you my Borrow. Perhaps then you’ll understand.’
‘¿Como? You speak in bloody oracles. What’s loans have to do with this?’
‘¡Ay! I pity the poor Pythia! George Borrow, love. Victorian fellow. A nutcase if ever I saw one, but he had pluck. Came over to Spain in the 1830s to sell Bibles to the unwashed and count fleas in Spanish jails.’
‘There you go again: Bibles! Fascist propaganda to keep the masses up to their eyeballs in opium! Like that Pope piece you posted the other day!’
‘What was wrong with my VatiLeaks? I thought it was rather charming…’
‘It makes the freaking Pope out to be a suffering old scoutmaster with an open mind for scientific achievements!’
‘It is only fiction dear. Parody with a jest and a smile. I was not trying to paint an exact portrait of the present Pope, bless him. Nor do I think that there is such a thing as the Turbo Teachers for Instantaneous Creationism. So don’t fret… I was only doing a little Voltaire.’
‘A little Voltaire? You need 1,400 words for a little Voltaire?’
‘Only 1,369 if the truth be told. Not counting the title.’
‘In spite of what I said last Thursday?’
‘What did you say to me, love? Refresh an old man’s faltering memory…’
‘About VERBOSE! Wordy! Prolix! Rambling! Loquacious!’
‘I do not rightly know what you’re getting at…’
‘I mean you are a long-winded windbag who forever chatters on about stuff nobody is interested in and gives my family a bad name in the valley!’
‘Ah…! That! I remember now. Yes. Well… As a matter of fact, I did contemplate what you said that day. And I decided you had a valid point.’
‘You did?’
‘I did indeed. When did Alfred B. Mittington ever fear to look Truth in the face, I ask you? So just to please you, oh bright spark of my dark old age, I will make you a promise. I promise that your godfather will be a long-winded windbag no longer! Starting tomorrow, I will cut EVERYTHING which is redundant from the blog. Tomorrow’s post will be the leanest, meanest, most concise text that I ever produced! Only the truly vital will remain. All the brushwood will be relentlessly axed.’
‘You can do that? You?’
‘Of course I can. No problem at all. I will simply write my text the way I am used to. Then I go back to it, I erase everything superfluous, and replace the bowdlerized bits with dots between brackets. The old scholarly way of shortening quotes with which I suppose you are familiar.’
‘Like “(…)”?’
‘Precisely! Now: will that satisfy your craving for brevity? Will it make you a happy young lass?’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it. But I swear: if you do, I will never complain again!’
‘Good. That’s a deal then. I’m so glad we finally see eye to eye on these little matters of style and substance...’


[POSTSCRIPT on February 28: After I posted the above text in shortened form last Sunday 26th, an anonymous person, at whose identity I cannot possibly guess, added a comment which ran something like: “Dedushka! I hate you! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOOUUU!!!!”. To this unknown individual, who obviously has some trouble expressing herself without ugly endless repetition, I merely say: people only ‘hate’ what they deeply fear and respect. Nobody hates what she is indifferent to. Q.E.D., you little Jezebel!]


Monday 27 February 2012

Cheerful Epitaphs nº 1


Due to a weekend full of generational conflict, I’m feeling a little down today. And at my age, there’s nothing better to cheer you up than the contemplation of a few good graveyard epitaphs. Just to remind you that the fun doesn’t stop when life happens to end.

In due course, dear reader, I will treat you to my own incomparable compositions. But today I will merely entertain you with a few hilarious ones from such charming books as W.T. Vincent’s ‘In search of gravestones old and curious’, and ‘Quaint epitaphs,’ by Susan Darling Safford (guess what her husband called her?)


Okay, here goes the first. As my good friend, the Amsterdam poet Marten Marcos, never tires of telling me: ‘If you can’t hide it, show it!’ Which must be what the family of this shipwrecked sailor had in mind when they wrote on his tombstone:

Here lies the body of John Mound
Lost at sea and never found

A pair of grief-stricken Vermont parents faced similar trouble and in their utter bewilderment concocted the following muddled inscription:

Under these stones lie three children dear;
Two are buried at Taunton and I lie here

Just to warn you to behave to your family, particularly if your name lends itself easily for a pun, see what his loved ones did to this fine fellow:

            Here lies John Wood within his coffin
            One Wood inside another
            The outer wood is very good
            We cannot praise the other

Lastly, here is one the poet Alexander Pope pretended to have seen at a local churchyard (even though I suspect he invented it himself, the same way that old Michelangelo faked the Laocoön). Supposedly, this inscription adorned the grave of two youngsters killed by a flash of lightning in 1718:

Here lye two poor Lovers who had the mishap
Tho very chaste people to die of the Clap



Okay! And now that we all feel good again after this jolly read, go look at Paul Krugman’s take on ‘What Ails Europe?’ in today’s International Herald Tribune. And remember that the Infallible, Divine Euro would bring us prosperity, stability, brotherhood and bliss.


Sunday 26 February 2012

Triumph of Brevity!


My beloved goddaughter Ivana came to see me yesterday afternoon when boredom in the family mansion reached absolute zenith and Vera, her mama, threatened to pressgang the poor girl for making the Sunday borscht. Which is all work, no play, and stains your hands beetroot red in the process. She wore a battle-ready mien. I knew I was in trouble and I smiled.
‘Dedushka,’ she growled, ‘(…)?’
‘I was, dear. And I still am. It’s just the boys and girls in Brussels who forced me to join the ranks of reaction and throw in my lot with my natural enemies.’
‘(…)?’
‘What? Just because I’m a Working Class Hero I can’t appreciate a good phrase by a die-hard conservative? There goes half my Golden Quotebook! No more Cato the Elder for me! Or Winston! Not to mention young Dalrymple!’
‘(…)?’
‘Beautiful articles, woven together of gorgeous phrases, by a man who has unique, privileged knowledge… What more can a man of taste and sophistication ask? But I understand I am not to sing his praises in my very own house, on my very own blog. Ah, you are young, my dear Ivana! You still do not know what life is really about!’
‘(…)?’
Chachipé!’
‘(…)?’
Truth, dear. In the Gypsy lingo. I’ll lend you my Borrow. Perhaps then you’ll understand.’
‘(…)?’
‘¡Ay! I pity the poor Pythia! George Borrow, love. Victorian fellow. A nutcase if ever I saw one, but he had pluck. Came over to Spain in the 1830s to sell Bibles to the unwashed and count fleas in Spanish jails.’
‘(…)’
‘What was wrong with my VatiLeaks? I thought it was rather charming…’
‘(…)!’
‘It is only fiction dear. Parody with a jest and a smile. I was not trying to paint an exact portrait of the present Pope, bless him. Nor do I think that there is such a thing as the Turbo Teachers for Instantaneous Creationism. So don’t fret… I was only doing a little Voltaire.’
‘(…)?’
‘Only 1,369 if the truth be told. Not counting the words in the title.’
‘(…)?’
‘What did you say to me, love? Refresh an old man’s faltering memory…’
‘(…)!’
‘I do not rightly know what you’re getting at…’
‘(…)!’
‘Ah…! That! I remember now. Yes. Well… As a matter of fact, I did contemplate what you said that day. And I decided you had a valid point.’
‘(…)?’
‘I did indeed. When did Alfred B. Mittington ever fear to look Truth in the face, I ask you? So just to please you, oh bright spark of my dark old age, I will make you a promise. I promise that your godfather will be a long-winded windbag no longer! Starting tomorrow, I will cut EVERYTHING which is redundant from the blog. Tomorrow’s post will be the leanest, meanest, most concise text that I ever produced! Only the truly vital will remain. All the brushwood will be relentlessly axed.’
‘(…)?’
‘Of course I can. No problem at all. I will simply write my text the way I am used to. Then I go back to it, I erase everything superfluous, and replace the bowdlerized bits with dots between brackets. The old scholarly way of shortening quotes with which I suppose you are familiar.’
‘(…)?’
‘Precisely! Now: will that satisfy your craving for brevity? Will it make you a happy young lass?’
‘(…)!’
‘Good. That’s a deal then. I’m so glad we finally see eye to eye on these little matters of style and substance...’

Saturday 25 February 2012

Saturday Snapshot (3)

The other day, I read somewhere that no less than 54 % of parents soon regret the name they gave their baby at birth. ‘It does not fit my child’s personality,’ they moan - whatever mysterious correlation they may have in mind…

No less comical: 20 % of grown-ups would like to change their own given name! They also have the feeling that their deeper self is not adequately reflected by the Ominous Nomen which their callous parents improvised at their birth.  

All good and well, but if first names are so very unsatisfactory, then why are people so deeply in love with them? Look around you. People scribble their name whenever and wherever they find an excuse. On their T-shirts, on their licence plates, on backpacks and baseball caps, on toilet doors and alley walls. They carve them into the barks of trees that have done them no wrong, and I even know of literate British hooligans (not always a contradiction in terms!) who chiselled their moniker into the pillars of Cape Sounion!

If you are really ashamed of your Christian name, you do not do such things. You forget about graffiti and find an alternative to immortalise yourself. As did the owner of a house up on the crumbling citadel of Castelo de Vide in eastern Portugal. I guess he was called something like Wamba, or Eudoxio Hermenegildo. Can’t scribble that on the outside of your home sweet home, can you? You’d be the laughing stock of your community! So you go for a different form of vanitas: you put your face on your façade…







Castelo de Vide is, incidentally, one of the nicest and most neglected towns of Portugal. European Development Funds mostly passed them by for lack of political connections, which means that the historic inner city has not yet been improved with parking garages, empty cultural centres, and monstrous tourist bazaars where you may buy pots of honey and authentic ceramic. They do have rare Jewish buildings, gorgeous renaissance fountains, dolmen galore, and a population that still welcomes travelers with money in their pockets. You surely get my hint, dear reader…

[PS One of the investigators who discovered people’s profound discontentment with their first names is called Nifa McLaughlin. One wonders what urged her to tackle the subject…?]


Friday 24 February 2012

Cookbook: Fresh fish with a grain of salt





Last Monday was February 20, which means that Pisces swung around on the zodiac belt! What better excuse to take a short break from the Saga of Mayonnaise, dear reader, and give you a recipe for Fish? Fish, that marvellous manna from the ocean, that bounty from the brine, that savoury sustenance from the wine-dark sea?

That said, don’t you just bloody hate fish as much as I do? I’m sure you do. Fish is an impossible dish. Fish is clumsy and slippery and sticky. Fish is impossible to fry or grill unless you are a licenced Chinese torture master. A fish is always just a little too big for the frying pan, so that the tail fin reclines gently against the red-hot rim, and cements itself there as if it had been marinated in superglue. You try to turn it: half the skin sticks to the tefal! You try to broil it on the barbecue, and the outcome looks worse than Savonarola after his final Florentine performance! In a word: Fish Stinks!

But do not despair!!! Alfred B. Mittington is here! And he has the solution for all those who like to eat fish, but loathe cooking it. A foolproof recipe, which will first revolt you, then surprise you and finally delight you. And it is so very easy, so very simple, that you can entrust it to a talented ape. Which means you too can do it! This miraculous recipe I picked up back in ’39, while we were waiting for evacuation with the last of the Republican rear guard in the Valencian Albufeiras. Where we had no kitchen utensils, barely a place to cook, and more pressing matters on our minds than nouvelle cuisine! And it still worked! Goes to show!


Here is what you need:

A fish
2 kilos of rough sea salt

Furthermore you will want

One large ceramic casserole
A working oven
10 minutes quality time
A dish partner with whom to share your rapture (optional)


A small Dorada


What fish should I use? you ask. Well, any kind will do really, as long as it is whole, with head and fins and skin. No steaks or fillets need apply; eels and flat fish like sole are too thin and flimsy. The thicker the better as long as it fits your casserole. Bass, carp, cod, perch, whatever. They all do the job. When we were battling the Italians with Wingate in Ethiopia, we used this method to cook huge Tilapias, which at the time were only just beginning to exterminate all other aquatic life forms in the African Lakes. Nowadays, I favour light white meat with a little more taste, like that beautiful species the Spaniards call Dorada (Gilt-head Bream in English) but only if I can get them out of the sea, not out of them revolting fish factories.


(Me, spearing two at one go, by a native artist)


So, to work! First set the oven to 185º C. As it is preheating, take the casserole, and lovingly lay a bed of sea salt of about 1 cm thick on the bottom. Place the fish on top of it. Fill the empty spaces between rim and fish with salt. Then add a top layer, also of about 1 cm, until the fish is perfectly hidden from view under an arctic salt-scape. Done! Put the casserole in the oven. Pour yourself a generous glass of white wine and grab a good book (Alfred B. Mittington’s À la recherche du temps prévu is not the worst choice you could make…). Let it cook for some 45 minutes.


On a bed of salt

And covered all the way

Once ready, put the casserole on a stable surface. Get your ice pick – or some such tool - and start hacking away the salt (it gets mighty hard in the oven!) Spoon the chunks of salt into the waste bin. Little by little, liberate that beautiful steaming fish from its saline mould, the way Michelangelo freed his statues from their marble prison! When sufficiently advanced, move the fish carefully to a large plate. Sweep off as much of the salt as you can. Bring to the table. There, open the fish in the middle with a spatula, cut in two halves, lift each of these up with the skin beneath, and serve to a guest. You will notice, with surprise, that it is nowhere too salty, but that the meat remained remarkably juicy. Add salt and pe--- I mean: add pepper to taste!


Breaking the crust

Recovery

Incidentally, talking about Nouvelle Cuisine… If you’re curious to see how some of the greatest blessings of mankind were discovered by pure chance - like mayonnaise or gunpowder or LSD -  take a quick look at the last paragraph of good old Colin Davies’s blog for today Feb 24… Can we expect a patent and a sales line soon, I wonder?