Coronavirus, My Dogs and the First Gulf War

Working up a hunger to finish
off the sofa

Discussing the plight of our cosseted canines in a post-COVID world - if such a thing will indeed exist in the short- to medium-term, a friend of mine commented that if the lockdown is lifted in various steps, it will give our doggies and moggies time to get used to our prolonged absences again, instead of just one day our getting up early getting ready and shutting them in for what for them must be an eternity. It might even prevent them from eating a sofa or two mightn't it, Blas? My  friend talked about "preparing them for the eventual restoration of 'normality"'.  Please excuse the proliferation of apostrophes - anyone would think I'm a grocer.

Having eaten the sofa, what's
  next on the menu?

But, Dear Reader, a grocer I most definitely am not. More of a jobbing linguist than a professional purveyor of vegetable viands to victual the culinary consumer. Anyhow, back to business. The word normality, is a good, solid, legacy word that has stood us in good stead for many a century. During the First Gulf War, I heard for the first time the somewhat mangled, rather ugly neologism (at least for me, although The OED states it originated in the mid-19th Century) of normalcy. No prizes for guessing from which ex-colony that one came from, y'all. I first heard it fall from the lips of General Norman Schwarzkopf. indeed it fell on my ears with all the euphonious grace and subtlety of one of his bunker-busting bombs. Come to think of it, it's a pity they didn't have any bunkum-busting bombs to shatter the lies, half-truths and sheer warlust that led Tony Blair (a poodlesome person himslef) and his cronies to back George W Bush's second Iraqi adventure. 

Long after both conflicts, the BBC - probably on R4's excellent Word of Mouth, hosted by the genial, witty, entertaining and all-round good egg, Michael Rosen -  brought to my attention that normality is what life is/was like before epoch-defining catastrophes, such as the EU, COVID or a Labour government, and normalcy is the post-cataclysmic semblance of relative normality - at least in British English. Iraq, therefore is a great example of what seems to be an eternal state of normalcy.

I could now go on to rant about how the Americans mangle our language, have no idea of grammar and can't even spell correctly, This is probably a manifestation of most Americans' inability to think clearly and rationally, but as we already know all of this is true, why bother? Sometimes, however, they do produce some quite wonderful creations. I might even write a blog about it, but, Dear Reader, that would be a whole nother thing. 

Rock Ferry, Rock Ferry, Rah. Rah. Raaaah!

This entry was inspired by Silver Tiger's own blog entry, Avoiding the Ball

Rock Ferry Birkenhead, Wirral, September 1973. A poke in my back. A grunt.

Him: “Orrahunsel?”

Me (very politely – I had been brought up to be courteous and to never say Yer what?): “Sorry, could you repeat that please?”.

Him: “Orrahucken nunsel?”

Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand”

Him, trembling with the effort of not gobbing me there and then and wrestling with the difficulties of pronunciation: “Ave yer gorra fucken pencil yer fucken posh c*nt?”

All the while, our orthdontically-challenged form master, Mr. Snailsson, whose jumpers stank of maturing slobber, dribbled yeasty saliva onto his jumper from his ship’s prow incisors, slurping noisily as he attempted to arrest the flow. He was so preoccupied with this Canute-like effort that he never had time, or the inclination, to maintain discipline in his class. Bullying was rife. I suppose it was easier for him that way.

My home was two miles away from this now-demolished august seat of learning whose gates were at the end of Ravenswood Avenue, but it might as well have been in a different country. I suddenly realised that I was in Apache country – and would be for the next 6 years.

This was the introduction to the brutality and random violence that characterised my secondary school education – a brutality practised by schoolmates and the majority of teachers alike. I never quite understood how the school could forgive, nay adulate, the rebels and bullies, provided they were good at sports, yet despise the academic achievers if they weren’t. I sure as hell am glad that my children didn't have to run the guantlet of the English education system.

I hated sports. A PE teacher, let’s call him Mr Fiddling, tried to teach us how to do neck springs. I and many of my classmates, clumsy or otherwise, regarded this particular manoeuvre as life-threatening: either you did it correctly, or you were in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. After the class – after every class – this same PE teacher, would join his pupils in the shower lathering his wedding tackle extravagantly while exhorting us to keep our manhoods clean. His bits must have been squeaky clean, considering that he gave at least 2 PE classes a day. What happened to this pervert? Nothing, that I know of. Remember this was the Jimmy Savile era.  

This Mr Fiddling, along with another two sports teachers one that we shall call Mr. Brian (what else?) Ewer and a certain Mr. R.N. “Wogga” Williams (real name,.Thankfully he’s dead and I hope it was a particularly painful death) beat up a rather belligerent student and then claimed self-defence. Yeah, right. BTW, Ewer is a good pseudonym as a ewer can also be called a crock and as our American cousins know, crocks are usually full of shit.

The school sport was rugger. God, I hate that word. I hate the “sport” even more. Not wanting to achieve a set of false teeth before the age of 18 and preferring to keep all of my bones intact, I would collapse scrums, fumble balls, run away from people whom I should tackle, etc. On one occasion Mr. Ewer asked me if I was a coward. I answered without hesitation that I was. This led to me being banished to the library and ignominiously stripped of the “privilege” of practising any sports for the rest of my time in the school. You can imagine the depths of my anguish, dear reader. This final “punishment” however did not come before I had received several unwarranted kickings – one to unconsciousness – on the rugby field.

Another teacher, known as Spadger, actually did get tried and condemned for kiddie fiddling in the local swimming baths where he was a volunteer instructor. In his defence, he had the hypocritical impertinence to state that he had never betrayed the sacred trust placed upon him as a teacher and that he had never fiddled with any of his pupils at work. I'm sure that that was a reilef to our parents, who I think never got to hear of Mr Fiddling's soapy exhibitionism. 

Discipline was based on physical violence and humiliation – preferably both. I remember at the age of 18 (in other words I was now an adult) being punched on the arm with such violence by my form master (an ex-Regimental boxing champion) that the whole of my upper arm was purple for over a week. From that moment on I refused to be the victim of physical punishment and as a result got sent home.

Curiously enough, most of these Fascists had fought in WWII. Recently I have begun to wonder on which side and if, indeed, they had washed up at RFHS via Argentina or Brazil.

There was, however, light among the darkness. The languages teachers tended to be younger and more human. And, thanks to the English Literature teachers, my love of English in all its forms was fed and encouraged. I would like to give all of them a heartfelt thanks, while I belatedly celebrate the demolition of Rock Ferry High School.

Plip Plop Cod

Or in Spanish, Bacalao pilpil. This is an onomatopaeic  dish, pilpil, being the Basque equivalent of plop plop.

In Spain, as in GB, we are all in lockdown. Some of us with doggies can still go for walks, while those of us with "gardens", ie untended wildernesses, can go out and enjoy a bit of fresh - and with every passing day fresher - air.

But we all need to feed the inner man (for the PC among you, read person, or human unit, just in case AI has caught up on us) and so today I raided the freezer and came up with ingredients for the famous Basque recipe mentioned above, Bacalao pilpil.

1) Thaw your frozen cod steaks, but keep the meltwater. If you have a huge slab of frozen cod, about four inches per person is sufficient. Many a lady friend has told me that, but I digress. Bring the cod pieces (no double entendre intended. As Kenneth Horne used to say about such things: if I see a double entendre, I whip it out immediately) up to room temperature. 

2) Peel and thinly slice about 2 cloves of garlic per human unit and fry slowly in Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) - the Hojiblanca variety is best - until golden, then remove the garlic and set aside. The oil should NEVER smoke. That spoils the oil and ruins the whole dish. 

3) Place skin up (the cod - this is not an imperative) and fry slowly until the cod begins to brown a bit. If you want to, now is indeed a good time to skin up or open a bottle of Cava (Juve & Camps, if you can get it) - I prefer the latter.  By now the cod will be sweating out lovely, coddy juices. Carfefully, very carefully turn the steaks over with a pair of spatulas and add in the meltwater and loads of chopped or dried parsley. continue to cook. If you're rich and faddy, you can brown the cod later with a fancy kitchen blowtorch. If not, heigh ho, it's just as good without browning. As well as the cod, you should now have a mixture of olive oil, parsley and a load of what looks like a lot of cream bobbling about the frying pan. when the cod is cooked through, remove it and using a fine mesh strainer as a whip, emulsify the liquid in the pan. Voilà you have your sauce.

4) I usually serve this on a bed of al dente spinach pasta nests with the fried garlic sprinkeld over the cod and, perhaps, another dash of EVOO. For the more adventurous, some chili flakes may be sprinkled over the cod fillet. 

A good bottle of Rioja white (the Cava is the cook's prerogative only), crusty bread, Manchega cheese and some good old English Apple Crumble for pudding will make the lockdown slightly more than bearable. For a couple of hours at least.