St Valentine, Pavlova and the Iron Lady

 Last week we celebrated St Valentine’s Day, a day even more reviled than Christmas for its commercial quality, in fact it’s often denounced as a fake feast day since opinions are divided as to who Valentine actually was and why this day is dedicated to lovers. Most would agree that he was a 3^rd century Roman priest – some even have him as the Bishop of Terni in Umbria - who appears to have been martyred on February 14^th, the day we associate with him.  One hagiography claims Valentinus was put under house arrest by a judge who put Valentinus’ beliefs to the test by asking him to restore the sight of his blind daughter.

But what is the association with romance?

The Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 has Valentine being arrested and imprisoned for aiding Christians and even marrying Christian couples who were being persecuted by Claudius II of Rome.   

Yet another account claims to be the ‘real story’:  here there is agreement in that Valentinus was imprisoned and tortured for performing Christian marriage ceremonies. One of his judges, here named Asterius, on being so astonished when Valentine prayed with and healed his blind daughter, that he himself became a Christian. In 269 AD, Valentinus was sentenced to being beaten, stoned and finally decapitated for supporting Christian marriage. And herein lies the romance: before his death, he wrote a note to Asterius’ daughter, signing it, ‘from your Valentine’.

Now some say that it wasn’t until the time of Chaucer in 14^th century England that Valentine’s feast day was associated with romantic love. But that last ‘real story’ is the one that has my vote. Not because of its hagiographic credentials, nor for its ring of authenticity. It is an account by Father Frank O’Gara of Whitefriar’s Street Church in Dublin.  To put it purely and simply, the Irish tell a cracking tale; as well as having the gift of the gab, they have the gift of the craic.

On that same day last week I got to the supermarket display of beautiful orchids just in time to see a young woman scoop up every last one. That got me thinking: I guess we girls, less than confident that our gallants will do the romantic thing, just get on with it and treat ourselves!  So off I went home and made up a batch of Pavlova.  

 I use a failsafe recipe of Alastair Hendy’s – no eggy smells, no seepage or separation.  Here it is as it appeared in his Masterclass column in the Sunday Times on 8.4.2001

Ingredients  :  

 4 egg whites, 120 g castor sugar, 110 g sieved icing sugar, 1tsp cornflour, 1 tsp white-wine vinegar,  half tsp vanilla extract; approx 300 ml double cream and  fruit for decoration.

Method :

Set oven at 150oC / 300F/ Gas Mark 2; cover a large baking tray with lightly greased baking parchment.

 Beat the egg whites and caster sugar for about 3 minutes until very firm. Then add the icing sugar, cornflour, vinegar and vanilla for a further 4 minutes until ultra-firm, white and glossy.  The trick is in beating and beating and then beating some more; the consistency is moving from ultra-firm to cement-like!  With circular sweeping movements spread it out onto the parchment so that there is a slight hollow in the centre and nice fluid lines around the sides.  Just before placing in the oven reduce the temperature to 140oC/290F/Gas Mark 1.5 and bake for around 1 hour 10 mins or I hour if you have an electric convection oven. For smaller or individual meringues you need to reduce the cooking time accordingly. Your cooked meringue should be firm on the outside and wonderfully gooey on the inside; leaving it to cool in the oven stops the pavlova cracking so much.

 I have once had the pleasure of entertaining a lady Muscovite and it just so happened this was the dessert on my menu. Being an Applied Linguist, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for phonological practice. Thanks to Olga’s coaching, what we serve up is now pronounced PAV-lo-va, with resounding Russian first-syllable stress.

Instead of making one large meringue base, this time I made three heart-shaped (well, nearly!) couple-sized ones : one for H’n’me, and one each for our sweet-toothed, sweet neighbours, Anna and Olympia….to share with their respective Valentines!

One friend is such a devout fan that he has been served one such large pavlova in its entirety for his sole enjoyment. Stephanos, in response to your recent ‘lemon curdy greetings’,  here’s a sweet  salutation!

                                                      

Living out in the sticks, it’s only now I’ve seen the award-winning film, ‘The Iron Lady’. Unquestionably Meryl Streep deserved every accolade and award for her role as the older Baroness Thatcher, magnificent in her control, diction and facial expression. The film did focus on her father’s influence, her ascent in the political world, her friends and foes, the fighting spirit that ensured her place in world politics, but that also led to her downfall. We saw what her career cost her in terms of family life.

It saddened me, however, to see how much time was spent on seeing things through her dementia.  Certainly many of her policies were greatly unpopular- the Poll Tax being one of them- but whatever our political position, we cannot deny that she was a great political force. Paradoxically in gender terms, she could be described as one of our last real statesmen, leading her country as she did to war, as well as through political and economic crises. How sad today to see political action based on currying popularity, maintaining power, rather than consistent with an overall perspective and cohesive policy as was the case with her. She showed herself to be a person of moral fibre, the longest-serving UK Prime Minister of the twentieth century, and the only woman to have held such a post.

  Rather than focus so much on the image of an ailing old woman, we needed to have more of a balance and see the strength that personified her and earned her global respect.   

And here I reach for another image, a metal metaphor: Antony Gormley’s  towering steel structure, the Angel of the North. Its picture is reproduced courtesy of Google images. This 20 metre-high structure in Tyneside expresses the mettle, if you like, of the northerner. Like the Angel, our image of Margaret Thatcher should have been allowed, though visibly tarnished by the passage of time, to stand as a symbol of strength, dignified and true. 

                                                        

Finally, our alkyon or kingfisher seems to have heard my plea and protected us from adverse weather conditions.  I recently managed to do some tidying up in the garden. Here you can see its prior sorry state and Leon doing an inspection of it in the ‘after’ shot. 

          

                               

Yes, we have been having more dreary, grey days with much atmospheric humidity than we want but it’s not so cold and the snow that has fallen has been  mainly on the high ground.      

                                    
                                    Our lilies and primroses are currently in bloom.

                                      

 

 


                                                                                

               So to paraphrase Percy Bysshe Shelley in his Ode to the West Wind:

                        If Winter is on the wane, can Spring be far behind?

Health Issues and Halcyon Days

Already the sands of time are running out for the first month of our new year and a new month fast approaches. For us January passed in a flash: getting back to normal after the festive season and dealing with medical issues.

For me that meant relatively minor surgery. For four years we have been following the ‘progress’ of minute particles in one breast. It was decided that though non-dynamic, the slow proliferation was enough to justify investigation. Similar action had been taken some years ago but this time high-tech equipment and techniques meant my experience was vastly different. 

Members of the radiology department inserted wires to locate these particles with precision. This was done under local anaesthetic, but with such shoving and squeezing, pushing and pummeling, I shall never again flinch when undergoing a mundane mammogram! That procedure, amounting to 80% of the operation per se, allowed the surgeon to extract these dubious deposits. I guess the instrument he used could be called a ‘boob tube’. The great thing was that the team, on stand-by to do analysis there and then while I was completely out, came up with negative results - which means a positive outcome for me. These were innocent little calcium clusters which meant the surgeon need probe or extract no further. For me this time the wonders of medical science generated minimal effects from the anaesthetic, (last time I had felt really doped) and with the surgery being minimally invasive, I have had the full use of my arm and negligible discomfort. So, …… all good.

In the meantime, H suffered a dental debacle with a molar imploding and a bridge and crown no longer offering the necessary support. Now that he is wearing temporary prosthetics, eating has lost its joy for him because of malfunctioning mastication and because of limited food range - soups, pasta, etc.. Currently our kitchen table looks like an apothecary’s dispensary but the good thing is we are both moving into a happier, healthier phase. H has already ear-marked the local restaurant where he wants to celebrate the end of dental deficiency!

 We have had a dip in the weather conditions : here is our local Chortiatis mountain with a seasonal icing-sugar dusting of snow some days ago, a view from our kitchen window. But, in fact, we are fortunate. While N Europeans struggle with heavy snowfalls, floods and sub-zero temperatures, here we are enjoying the Halkyonides meres, the Halcyon days. 

This phrase is one which fits the EFL ( English as a foreign language) category of ‘false friends’ : in this case, terms which derive from Greek  and look familiar to Greek learners of English but in actual fact have now come to mean something altogether different.   My Chambers dictionary entry defines the phrase as ‘a time of peace and happiness’, and we often use the term to refer with nostalgia to the golden days of our youth, the ‘best years of our lives’. And this is the irony related to the divergence of meanings, for originally in Greek these days fell in the depths of winter. 

Let’s look at how it was used by Shakespeare in 1592 in Henry VI , part 1,

…’Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon days’….

 Since the feast is celebrated on November 11^th, this might suggest unseasonably warm weather, which is closer in sense to the Modern Greek usage.

In Greek literature Ovid probably gives us the fullest account of the mythological character, Alkyone, the daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds. She married Ceyx, King of Thessaly, and they lived happily together but somehow incurred the wrath of Zeus. The Bibliotheca, the 3-tome comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology written in the first century BC,  claims that they often called each other Zeus and Hera, thus showing disrespect to these particular gods. Whatever the reason, Zeus punished Ceyx by throwing a thunderbolt at his ship when, according to Ovid, he was on his way to consult an oracle. In her grief, on hearing of his death or on seeing his body washed ashore, depending on which source you read, Alkyone threw herself into the sea. Out of compassion, the gods changed the pair into birds- the kingfisher now bears her name. One further divine act of benevolence was to grant the kingfisher two weeks without storms (traditionally on either side of the winter solstice in mid-December) in which to build her nest.

 Nowadays in Greece, we use the term to refer to an actual meteorological phenomenon of mild days, mid-winter. We usually expect them to be at the end of January to early February, though there is no real consensus on that.  Certainly today we are expecting noon temperatures of around 15 o Celsius.

 I like to think that right now that pretty little bird, presented here courtesy of dreamstime, is constructing her nest on the shoreline.

  

           So let us look forward positively and ask February to protect us similarly   

                                                        ….. kalo mas mina !

Highland Haj episode 1

Our festive season began with someone at the local radio station singing, instead of ‘Feliz Navidad’, ‘Theleis Danika?”  i.e. ‘Would you like a loan?’. A very apt question at a time when we are all tightening our belts - at least financially. The season ends on the twelfth day, January 6^th, Epiphany, here known as ‘Ta Fota’ or ‘Theophania’. In Spain on this day they celebrate the coming of the Magi; here it is when Christ’s baptism is commemorated with the Blessing of the Waters as the priest throws a cross into the sea and stalwart divers brave the chilly main to retrieve it. I’m not greatly devout and wild horses would not get me in there but I would feel a great deal more well-disposed towards the ecclesiastical set if they paid tax on the vast swathes of property they own and if the Church rather than the state were to foot the salary bill for the clergy.

 2013 has arrived and, in the words of Billy Connolly, that great Scottish comic, actor and banjo-basher, ‘So here we are – where are we?’. Our politicians lurch from one crisis to another- the Lagarde list being the latest one – while we seemed to lurch from one groaning table to another. But I should draw the obvious contrasts: we are aware of the damage we have wreaked on our constitutions (don’t you just love that pun?!), take full responsibility for our actions and have made resolutions to take measures to improve things. To continue the gastronomic metaphor: our politicians really do take, apart from other things, the proverbial biscuit. Tomorrow will certainly see me back working out at the spa! 

If Billy’s question had been in the past tense, my response would be that we left off having a wee break at Glasgow Green. So now we begin the Highland Haj proper, episode 1. There were a few baited-breath moments when we heard that due to landslides after heavy rain the road was blocked at the Rest and Be Thankful stretch –the well-named steep climb out of Glen Croe. Sure enough, mounds of shale and scree were in evidence and single-lane traffic was in operation while clearing work continued. We reached there just as the south-bound convoy’s turn came so thankful, indeed, we were! It is impossible for our family to descend towards the banks of the beautiful Loch Fyne without bursting into Highland airs – Westering Home and The Hiking Song being firm favourites. Both of these, incidentally, can be heard on YouTube- and finer versions than we could ever muster! We cross Inverary Bridge and view the castle, seat of the Clan Campbell, with flag on staff indicating the family is in residence.

 

 

  Those of you who follow the magnificent ‘Downton Abbey’ will have seen the Christmas edition in the third series. Members of the Crawley family are seen to attend the Ghillies’ Ball at Duneagle Castle, but in reality they were filming at the Duke of Argyll’s seat, Inverary Castle! And isn’t Maggie Smith just superb? Nearing eighty, this grand dame of stage and screen seems able to express fifty shades of indignation with an arch of the eyebrow! I adore her and her magnificent put-down one-liners.  This year’s broadcasting of the series has proved very popular here in Greece.

But I digress! We reach Tarbert, Lochfyne- a place my heart can ache for and always leaps at the initial sighting of it every trip I make. We used to enjoy a panoramic view of this beautiful fishing village from the crest of the hill, but the area is now disappointingly overgrown and visually impenetrable. Our entire family descended here in August, renting accommodation which was not only splendidly equipped and very comfortable, but afforded a beautiful view of the church and bay. Tarbert was to be our base but the focus of our Haj, our Mac Mecca, was Kilberry, on the Knapdale peninsula, part of the ancient kingdom of Dalriada. 

 

 We head out along the single-track road and en route spy a grazing herd of roe deer- raising fond memories of Bambi, a baby buck we reared, feeding him initially from a fountain-pen ink tubing! 

 We pass Lergnahension, or Lergie, which used to belong to our grandfather, Hugh Scott. Our mum used to work there during the day as a farmhand tending their livestock and at night as a barmaid at their inn. She never forgot that experience – especially seeing someone so drunk he vomited while standing bolt upright – a 10-point erect eruption! I guess that was why she used to welcome Hogmanay ‘first-footers’ with the same wee sherry schooner and about two rounds of shortbread ‘to take the taste away’!

 We stop off at the Old Manse where we lived as kids while our father was alive and running the hiring and contracting business; we lived in the downstairs part of the manse while the deconsecrated church served as the garage for his vehicles. In the foreground you can still see the palm tree that was said to have been brought back years ago from the Holy Land by the then clerical incumbent. 

 

                

                                       

Another stop-over is Kilberry Castle, residence of the local Campbell family. I have memories of us as children walking  from the village school to sing Christmas carols  to Miss Marion Campbell ( full titles were always used !) and her companion, Miss Sandeman, of the family associated with port wine. Holiday accommodation is now available at the neighbouring cottage. I’d love to know whether such tenants have had sightings of the ghostly grey lady I once thought I saw in the area. This shot of the castle in the gloaming looks quite Gothic and spooky.

 Again I digress-back to ‘oor tale’ : we get to Kilberry, ‘my village’ as the Greeks would say. In fact, when I first took my husband there, he decided it would be grandiose to classify it thus, calling it instead an area with scattered houses- rather like the prevalent scattered rain-showers. Devoid of actual church building and square, this does not taxonomically fit the Greek bill - or perhaps that is an unfortunate phrase to employ! In the 1960’s, Mum renovated what was croft accommodation and outhouses which became our home with the adjoining post-office where she served as post-mistress until she sold the house to return to her home area of Tighnabruaich. This has now become the award-winning Kilberry Inn – and what better place for our family to converge on to celebrate my sister’s Big Birthday Bash. As you can see, my brother managed to squeeze in a wee birthday celebration as well!

      

 

 Here is the merry band of family and friends, flanking Iain Campbell, the doughty Pipe-Major who welcomed us on the Kilberry Inn forecourt- well, the main road, really!By the way, he was the piper who played in the Scottish episode of Downton Abbey. It’s the mark of his piping prowess and the wonderful champagne and canapés served outside (especially the savoury mini-scones!) that we noticed not the descending dampness, drizzle, smirr, smur, Scots mist, call it what you will, but it did keep the midges at bay! 

 

The Kilberry Inn is a well-known, award- winning restaurant – having earned the Michelin Bib Gourmand and nominated Scottish restaurant of the year in 2009. Suffice it to say that on our way round to Kilberry we passed a Rolls Royce and a Daimler, carrying  Kilberry Inn clientele.  The Greek Tourist Board needs to take a leaf from their menu-folder. Clare Johnson, the chef, using fresh local produce with expertise and imagination, has enticed high-end tourism from far and near. With equally good local produce just imagine what more remote Greek villages could achieve when you factor in their almost guaranteed sunshine!  

David Wilson and his staff offered excellent front-of-house service and helped us have a memorable evening. It’s not many people who can claim as I can, to have eaten gourmet food, prepared by an award-winning chef, in what used to be their bedroom!

It’s time to bring Highland Haj, episode 1 to a close and what better way than for us both to wish you all health and happiness throughout 2013?  

                                                          Slainte and Yia sas!

Christmas 2012

Christmas Eve dawned here with a very heavy frost and now we have that brilliant sunshine that stunned me many moons ago when I spent my first Christmas in Athens, staying with my ‘adopted’ Greek sister, Betta, and her family. Coming from the northern bleak mid-winter I found the strength and clarity of the sunlight amazing, comforting and memorable. And sunshine and warmth continue to emanate from Greek hearts and hearths, despite difficulties that every single one of us is confronting. That’s what makes life here special.

 I have just come out of a hot kitchen with plates satisfyingly full of mince pies, banana bread, persimmon cookies, chocolate truffles and quince paste awaiting local delivery, but first neighbours’ children are coming to sing the traditional ‘kalenda’ – a carol equivalent - playing the triangle and collecting sweets and coins as they go from house to house.

 Now the holidays are here I promise to resume my accounts of the Highland Haj – shame on me for the delay!  But in the meantime I want to make mention of Richard Hesketh – thank you, Richard, for your kind words on the Craigard posting!  He was a Kilbowie boy, a slightly younger vintage of ’70 –’73, and would dearly love to make contact with contemporaries. Is there anyone out there? – it would be great if we could widen our circle from Oban High days.

 What you probably don’t know is that I have the ability to view not only how many of a reader audience my blog has but where you are all based. This is demonstrated by the relevant country on the statistics world map lighting up green – dark green for a denser readership.  Right now I feel a little bit of a fraud as a huge global area has turned a lovely Christmassy green – thanks to a single but greatly appreciated reader….in Russia!

 Thank you all for following my postings and may you have a thoroughly enjoyable festive time.

 Merry Christmas one and all.