There are many things we Scots should be proud about, too many to list. However we have a hefty counterbalance when it comes to the list of things we ought not to be proud about. Like Buckfast Fritters.
A friend of mine popped back up the road over the holidays, and having been very abstemious on the food front, she decided to have a splurge on her last evening, Easter Monday. So, at eight o'clock, she stoated doon tae the local chippy in Girvan, th
e cradle of innumerable delights. As she was waiting to order, her eye was caught by a hand-written sign advertising Buckfast Fritters. There seemed a certain incongruity between the words, an oxymoron of ideas. How could Buckfast feature in a fritter? She was compelled to ask the vendor for an explanation. Black affronted he was, asking her if she had no idea of his local celebrity. He had invented the Buckfast Fritter, so popular had it been that he had become a TV personality. As for the fritter itself, the batter apparently had been emboldened with Buckfast. They were a huge hit amongst the folks of Saltcoats.
The vendor also waxed lyrical about his deep-fried Mars Bars and other equally unhealthy meals. Such was her surprise and curiosity, my friend felt compelled to order the aforementioned Fritter. She was given short shrift; apparently they are so popular they sell out by 6pm. She left with a large fish supper but no fritter. No bad thing, I trust you'll agree.
If you can't take the pressure cooker, get out of the kitchen I found myself face-to-face with a newfangled pressure cooker the other day, and it brought the memories flooding back. The pressure cooker was the staple cooking implement of any Indian household. There was a certain alchemy about an old-fashioned steel contraption that somehow halved cooking times. Every day my mum would fill it full of luscious ingredients, struggling to affix the locking top. She would then attach the top weight. Moments later the most clattering cacophony would commence and steam would fly in every direction and I would fly out of the door. That damn machine scared the life out of me.
That same machine was beautiful, defined by its simplicity and its functionality. And this was true of all gadgets of that age. Our Sony Triton TV which, when plugged up that Saturday afternoon in 1978, offered John Wayne as Rooster Cockburn. That TV lasted throughout three decades and four presenters of The Generation Game. There was a simplicity to gadgets that meant they lasted, they survived. There were fewer moving parts and no technology that linked implementalia to the internet. In design and delivery they avoided adding unnecessary complications and applications into our lives.
I realise that at this point I am about to sound like an old man who is searching for his dentures, but stuff really isn't as well made as it used to be. Obviously we are all now consumers and consumers need to consume things. The more consumers consume then the greater the appetite for consumption. (I remember when consumption used to be merely a disease in a Brontë novel). The free market now requires us to have the latest model of the latest thing that does significantly more than the last version did. This begs the question as to why the manufacturer released the last model only 18 months ago if they've managed to action so many improvements in such a short space of time? We become so reliant on improvements and upgrades, that it is an endless pursuit of perfection.
I do miss the simplicity of the old days. The safety, the comfort, the continuity of the same pressure cooker cooking the same meals all day, every day. There is a disposability in society now, a lack of commitment between vendors and purchasers. The pressure cooker that frightened me out of the kitchen all those years ago still resides, still lurks somewhere in a kitchen cupboard in my mum's house. Occasionally it'll be dragged out and dusted off and another deliciously rich, butter soft lamb curry will be delivered from its 30-year-old orifice. And I have to say that in a world of constant change, in a world when nothing seems stationary, it's very comforting to have the continuity of the pressure cooker that fed me and my family when I was a boy still clattering away.
Curtain up, pants down: the bare necessities of Fringe appealHaving decided to launch forth with an Edinburgh Fringe Show, what I hadn't realised was that there would be so many wee bits and pieces to sort out, and so far in advance. So I was having my photo taken on Wednesday. I need to get an image for brochures and posters. Resident Edinburghers will need no reminding of how swamped the beautiful city gets with flyers and posters during the eighth month.
There are few stipulations when it comes to the image: from experience I know that Festival-goers are inundated with them and so I need to make mine stand out. I was a little hampered by a) not really knowing what my show is going to be about yet, and b) not really having a title for the show. I had to make quick decisions. I decided the show should be food driven; I seem to quite like food. The title was going to be something self-explanatory, perhaps involving the word dinner – I think it's always best to give the audience a clue.
Now all I needed to do was combine these elements with an image. What image might that be? My fat face smiling out at you with half a wink in the eye? Me in a kilt and turban with an oversized black pudding? Or me dressed as an all-day breakfast? Somehow none of these images seemed to work. Then I hit upon a new title: The Really Naked Chef. Therefore I spent Wednesday morning in my Calvin Kleins with a strategically placed frying pan and a wooden spoon. That'll get them laughing on the way into the venue, at least.
