Life must be filled up

Yesterday evening I caught up with Nigella Lawson’s programme about Anna del Conte, The Cook who Changed our Lives. Anna del Conte is ninety one and still cooking! Her book The Gastronomy of Italy influenced countless chefs yet she has never become a household name.

Portrait of Pasta (see above) is dated 1976, which must be when I bought it. Half the book is a history of pasta and instructions on how to cook it; the other half, recipes. These begin with ‘Recipes from the Past’. My copy has many pencilled annotations where I’ve commented on recipes I tried and I see that one was the old Roman dish ‘Horace’s chickpea, laganelli and leek soup.’ There’s a bookmark for Bucatini alla Carbonara.
‘Spaghetti alla Carbonara became a very popular dish in Italy after the second world war. This is presumably because it was loved by the Allied Troops since it combines their old favorites (sic) bacon and eggs.’
I seem to remember that a bean and pasta dish was a favourite during our vegetarian phase. Over the years I amassed quite a library of cookery books. There have been many purges but I’ve always held on to Portrait of Pasta.

By the end of the TV programme we didn’t really know much more about Anna del Conte. I’m grateful to her for her excellent, totally reliable recipes and glad she’s getting public recognition.

RIP Andrew Sachs. There was much more to him than Fawlty Towers but it’s what he’ll always be remembered for. ‘I know nothing’ is his most famous line, from the episode with wonderful Joan Sanderson as the grumpy deaf woman (Communication Problems). I’m also fond of ‘she go crazy’ (The Psychiatrist) and the scene where he climbs into a laundry basket, saying, ‘I stay here, is nice’ (The Kipper and the Corpse). Timeless.

I was absolutely furious yesterday evening to find that the borefest which is Autumnwatch had taken over the schedules for the entire week and there would be no University Challenge or Only Connect. My favourite programmes! All was not lost because I had the second episode of Andrew Marr’s Paperback Heroes to look forward to. This is a brilliant little series. In the first episode Marr looked at detective fiction. Last night’s episode, about fantasy writing, was even better, I thought. Phew, it was so fast and so dense I could hardly keep up.

I’m a bore about fantasy, thinking that once you’ve read Tolkien you don’t need to read any more. It’s often been pointed out to me that there are many different forms of fantasy and Andrew Marr convinced me that this is true. I now have to read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, for example. This series (BBC 4 of course), is television for intelligent viewers and shows what TV can be at its best. Next week: spies!

I watched this delightful little film yesterday evening and enjoyed it so much that I stopped knitting in order to concentrate and try not to look at the subtitles. Michel is a prosperous dentist. Out shopping one pleasant Saturday he finds a rare jazz record he’s been looking for forever and can’t wait to get back to his lovely apartment to play it. Everything conspires against him. His neurotic wife wants to confess something. His son imports a large family of ‘illegals’ into the attic. His guilt-ridden ex-mistress keeps phoning, as does his mother. The cleaner makes a racket. The Polish (only he’s not) builder crashes about then causes a flood which brings a neighbour round to complain. And so on. This clip gives some idea of the farcical chaos which ensues.



Handled differently, this could have been a dark tale about betrayal, identity and middle aged angst but here all is light, sparkling froth. I loved it and have rather fallen for Christian Clavier.

Saturday evening, knitting to do and absolutely nothing I could possibly want to watch on any of the dozens of Freeview channels available. So I turned to Amazon and The Man in the High Castle. I watched two episodes back to back and was gripped by it. I’ll certainly be watching the rest. I’ve read some very cynical comments about Amazon’s venture into TV series but if they’re all like this, I’m in. The Guardian liked it.

Everything was gloomy yesterday evening. Then I watched Sir András Schiff play Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Only on BBC4 would you get seventy five minutes devoted entirely to one man playing one piece on the piano. To say it was sublime is an understatement; I knew as I was listening that I couldn’t begin to appreciate the complexities of the music. It’s available to watch again on the BBC iPlayer.

A rather good little piece in The Guardian here.

Last week I took delivery of my Amazon TV Fire Stick but didn’t try to set it up until yesterday. I pre-ordered the gizmo when it was on offer at £19.00 (usual price £35.00), which is pretty good considering that it’s a one off payment. I wanted this because I wasn’t making the most of my Amazon Prime film and video streaming. I also wanted to be able to see BBC iPlayer programmes on a big screen.

My first problem was that I simply couldn’t open the remote control to put the batteries in. Of course I thought, ‘You duffer! Why are you so hopeless?’ Then I Googled the problem and found that it’s quite general and one that people consider a design fault. The suggested solution (from users, not Amazon) is to use a little knife. I did. It worked. First problem overcome. Connecting everything was easy. Then came:

Problem two. I’d previously watched a couple of YouTube videos about set up. Watching these guys, they just plugged everything in and the Fire Stick logo appeared on the screen instantly without them fiddling with their TV sets. This didn’t happen to me. The instructions say: ‘Select the appropriate HDMI input’. It took me a while to work this out (my TV manual was useless and I did say this was for dummies) but all you do is select AV using your TV remote. Yes, it seems obvious, but there may be other people out there for whom it isn’t. As soon as I’d done that, it was all systems go. It found my BT hub quickly, and I entered my wireless code when prompted. It knows at once who you are and asks if you want to use that account or change it. You have to wait a while for ‘updates’ (already?) then you get the cheery chappy introductory video.

After that I had a play. Downloaded the iPlayer app, which didn’t take long, and experimented. It’s easier to find a programme than it is on the PC. You go to ‘find a programme’ and see an alphabet grid. If you click on say, ‘G’, all programmes beginning with G are listed, so you don’t have the faff of typing in a whole programme name. I selected Gardeners’ World, just to try it out, and in no time I was watching Monty. Easy to stop any time you want to and the back button is your friend.

Any videos and music which you already have from Amazon are listed for you and once you’ve downloaded any apps you want, they’re in your app library. So, quite user friendly and very good value, is my verdict.

Oh dear, this journal is turning into an obituary column but I was really sorry to hear just now that Warren Clarke had died. He first impressed me with quite a small part in The Jewel in the Crown. I never watched Dalziel and Pascoe but have fond memories of Sleepers (with Nigel Havers) and Nice Work, based on David Lodge’s novel. Rather creepy that he will still be seen posthumously in a new Poldark.


Photo BBC

I enjoyed Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death when I read it way back. I see I didn’t write anything about it, due to having a broken wrist at the time. I’m currently hobbling about with Achilles Tendonitis; what is it about this book?

Sidney Chambers, the young clergyman who divides his time conscientiously between running a parish and teaching at Cambridge, yet is fond of drink and women, is an attractive character. So I was alarmed when I read the pre-show blurb for Grantchester, based on the first book in the series. ‘Gritty’? ‘ A ‘Ripper Street vibe’? I’ve never watched Ripper Street but it doesn’t sound my kind of thing at all. I just didn’t recognise James Runcie’s book from the description. I watched a recording yesterday evening (fancy putting it on against New Tricks)! There was even a ‘sex and violence’ warning before the programme.

I needn’t have worried. You might just as well put a sex and violence warning before an episode of Miss Marple. Why not sell it as a 1950s period piece about a sleuthing clergyman? Although James Norton doesn’t match the book’s description of Chambers physically, you could believe in him as a man people would confide in. I also liked Robson Green as Geordie, Sidney’s Police Inspector friend. OK, the producers have invented the odd character and altered the continuity of some events but it was all very pretty and I enjoyed it. The book is better and I’m now reading it again. I really must read the next two volumes.

I love New Tricks, however far fetched the stories are. I wondered how the new set up would work but I’m liking Nicholas Lyndhurst as Danny; I love the way he knows everything. Yesterday’s episode was particularly good, venturing into the realms of psychogeography. Two murders connected with London’s underground River Fleet and a spooky trip into the sewers were just part of the fun. All that stuff about the river demanding blood? I was expecting Peter Ackroyd to get a credit at the end! See my review here of London Under.



Nicholas Lyndhurst, photo BBC