Thoughts From A Soiled Belief 6

September 16th, 2011 by Billy

FORAGING AND F***ING

“Death nettle white, sweet cicely, hairy cress, ground elder and lovage…” says Ben the Forager, “and Alexander.” I regard him with that look one reserves for enthusiastic amateur foragers. “Isn’t Alexander poisonous?” “No, no,” avers the budding David Bellamy, “that’s Alexander’s root.” Then, with the enthusiasm that comes from gamboling about in bosky glades with a wicker basket, Ben asks, “So, what are you going to do with all these goodies?”

“Perhaps I’ll…”

Excuse me folks, someone is screeching and bawling on the television as I write this…A man, in a chefs uniform, with a face like a parsnip with yellow roots, is fulminating about, well, human excreta. He’s in a darkened toilet with a curious contraption, which has the same effect as neon nightclub lights – in a club they highlight your dandruff or give you a Tom Cruise smile, here they highlight streaks of piss on the toilet walls – “Look, look,” he explodes, “there’s urine on the roof!” He drags the unfortunate owners, who look like a couple of smackhead rejects from the Jerry Springer Show, into a cubicle for a closer inspection. Welcome to Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA. The same tired old formula is in full effect. A woebegone Midwest town or, better still, somewhere in the industrial belt that has somehow managed to lose all its industries? Tick. A disused industrial estate on the outskirts of town where everything is boarded up? Tick. Save for one unit on its outer edges, which is a crushingly ugly concrete and cinder blockhouse? Tick. This cinder blockhouse houses – you’ve guessed it – a down at heel Italian restaurant that the bold Gordon is about to resurrect. There follows a great deal of filth and fury, before Ramsay does his Lone Ranger bit and then, like the Lone Ranger, he rides off into the sunset. Unlike the Lone Ranger however, he hangs around for the fulsome praise of the owners and their, mawkishly grateful, extended family. Bloody Groundhog Day.

“So, what are you going to do with all these goodies?” Asks Ben the Forager. “I’ll make a stock from the bruised leaves and stems, then we’ll add some Parmesan rinds, to make a sort of cheese infusion, then we’ll make a salad from the shredded foraged herbs and pour the warmed infusion over it.” I ad- lib, breathlessly. Ben nods approvingly whilst looking at me profoundly. “Next week I’ll bring you sea buckthorn…”

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Thoughts from a Soiled Belief 5

November 13th, 2010 by Billy

Welcome to the working week. Last night was a burlesque evening in the Guilty Lily, this morning is a blinding hangover on Constitution Street. My eyes look like soft poached eggs and my stomach feels like it is full of razor blades. The low winter sun through the window is about as welcome as a reverse charge long distance telephone conversation. I am, in short, washed up and washed out, like the scum on Portobello beach. Tea is slurped, e-mails perused. One is from the editor of The Leither, articles required for Issue 50, he writes. Lo and behold, The Leither is 50! Which means I have sent out 50 sheets to the wind – otherwise known as Billy’s Column – and, as this intro avers, I still haven’t learned my lesson. I’m sure about 4 columns start with hangovers…let’s have a look.

One of the curious things about this column writing game is that a lot of people assume everything you write is made-up. This couldn’t be further from the truth, every word is hewn from the granite of ones own humiliating and, usually, downright embarrassing experiences. Which is why my partner – I’ve been told to say partner rather than girlfriend, because girlfriend makes me sound young – cringes whenever she reads my  scribblings. A brief flick through the 49 Leithers that have gone before, prove she has every right to be concerned. In fact, if we  were married and she filed for divorce citing mental cruelty, I’d probably get banged up for 25 years. No parole.

As evidence I offer, with not a scintilla of pride, Issue 3. Where I  was first sick on a girl; then managed. in my drunken fumblings, to knock her headfirst of a gate and finished up burning her arse in quicklime on a bowling green. Sounds like the work of a serial killer, rather than someone trying to woo his schoolyard crush. Issue 4 found me poured on to the Edinburgh train in Pitlochry, a bottle of whisky to the wise. With, for some reason, 5 kilos of chanterelle mushrooms in a basket. I woke as the train crossed the Forth Rail Bridge, there were mushrooms all over the aisle and people, very kindly, tried to tip toe round them. I say kindly, because I was splayed all over two seats with my, ahem, ‘tackle’ hanging out of my trousers. My fellow travellers would have been perfectly entitled to take a more judgemental approach. A pistol whipping would not have been out of the question.

Issue 6 saw me win the girl and, surprise, surprise, lose the girl, after failing to make it to three meetings. To one of which I plead extenuating circumstances, I was upside down in a hedge, in the lawns of a palatial hotel, er, drunk. Our last attempted liaison went so badly  pear-shaped that I woke up the next morning in a pig sty, in the middle of winter, hugging a pig for warmth. Which was, gentle reader, my first ever one-night stand. Issue 21 offers up the disastrous radio tour of the Highlands. The one that culminated in a gig in Inverness, where I was asleep behind my guitar amp after six songs and  the drummer had put his kit together so haphazardly that the bass drum rolled off the stage into the lap of a guy in a wheelchair. Lastly, but not leastly, Issue 33. Where your correspondent decides to do a bit  of culture vulturing at the Edinburgh Festival. Fisticuffs with a minor poet and a kerfuffle involving a D List celebrity, out of which nobody emerges with much merit, ensue. As a postscript, I feel it incumbent upon me to make no mention of the column entitled, “Teenage Dog Orgy.”

So how did I first volunteer for this, very public, humiliation? Mr Peter Laing, our then editor, popped into my place of employ, whilst The Leither was but a twinkle in his eye. He was noticeably rubicund of feature and obviously a few brandy and ports to leeward. “Who writes the rather amusing blackboards outside?” He hiccuped. I told him that would be me. “Could you expand  them?” What, make the blackboards bigger?  “No, no, no, expand the words dear boy, the words. This is no time for persiflage.” Of course, as ever, he was right. And here, redfaced, nonetheless, I remain.

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Of Queens and Grub

June 27th, 2010 by Billy

Before disembarking the Queen Mary 2 at foul Fort Lauderdale I was advised that American food was cheap, substantial, and crap. The first two observations proved correct, happily the latter did not. The food, incidentally, on the Queen was uniformly fine. I particularly recommend the tasting menu in the Chino/Japanese restaurant. That is to digress, the meat of this piece is modern American cuisine and for those of you planning a visit the prognosis is good. From grits – like polenta only, well, grittier – to porcini dusted snow crab, you will find it in rude good health.

They have not yet latched on to – excepting Enoteca’s and Deli’s – the current British vogue for letting the ingredients speak for themselves. Here the average dining experience is all flash and filigree put to good effect. It is elaborate but never overly so. Thus, pecan dusted orange roughy fish with jalapeno mash and cilantro jam or pheasant chipolatas in an oyster broth with chorizo oil – cheap certainly, though on closer inspection the above soup which kicked off at $10 eventually costs $14 once you factor in local and state taxes and obligatory service charge. As an aside it’s funny that as a rule of thumb American establishments suggest between 15 and 20% as a reasonable tip yet when they visit our shores more often than not they do not tip at all. I presume they assume the tip is ‘built in’.

What of quantity? Why here I have no complaints. In Savannah’s 45 Bistro a lacquered bento box contains: ½ a kilo of rare seared tuna; 8 vegetable tempura fritters; a mountain of ramen noodles and a lake of endame and nori sauce. Unbelievably, this constitutes the first part of a three-course lunch for one. In Scotland this would be the makings of a substantial meal for two, end of story.

As we veer over the border into Montreal, all is style over substance, which is to pontificate. In mitigation I offer these dishes sampled; coffee dusted scallops on walnut mash, foie gras, apple jus, candied leeks with a grapefruit and caramel syrup followed by frozen fig nougat, fig carpaccio, maple syrup and chips flavoured with port. Thank heaven, then, for Schwartz’s deli – a favoured haunt of Leonard Cohen. Melt in the mouth salt beef, dill pickle, mustard and rye, simple. Anything you can’t eat gets packed into a doggy bag and will sustain you for another couple of days, all for $3.50.

As we make to leave the counter assistant asks me if I’ve forgotten my coat, “I didn’t bring one,” I say (outside it is minus twenty degrees). He smiles ruefully. “You grow old quickly but not wisely,” he says, shaking his head slowly. Homespun homilies for free…what’s not to like?

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A small death in Leith

May 1st, 2010 by Billy

You will not be alone for long, you will either have a guest or you will have a visitor, the phone will thrum with messages of sympathy, velvety voices that will sound, to you, like razor blades. No one will understand but everyone will be ‘understanding’. It will be 9am in a flat on Bothwell Street and your husband of thirty-five years will have been dead for six hours.

This small death will bleed into the fabric of people’s lives and nobody will be able to wash it away, except by pretending it is invisible. The future will be devoid of all promises. The present, a full stop. Even the past, will be rendered meaningless. Nothing about this day and date will seem remarkable, except to you. Exceptionally, to you. For, in order to continue existing, you will have to move from what has made you into what will make you.

The first weeks will be the worst, looking at the snapshots from his numbered days. The wedding photos – when you said yes to him, it was the sweetest yes he had ever heard – you in your wedding gown looking like you owned everything. Him trapped there forever, like a pressed flower in a forgotten book. You will look closer, trying to inhabit the waste lonely places behind his eyes, sewing nothing to nothing, trying to remember. Trying to remember not to forget.

When you try to sleep you will have that dream you always had, where he is waving to you from the far horizon, the one you mistook for certainty and a long life ahead. You will be startled into wakefulness in a roar of blood and mucus. And nothing about your room, his room, will be familiar to you. It will take the dawn to paint the space he has left in your bed into a shape that you recognise. Then you will be restful, knowing that whatever strange latitudes he travels in, he will always be nearby.

There will be a funeral; your youngest daughter will hide her bloated eyes behind a pair of Jackie Onassis sunglasses (I know this because I will know her). The mourners will feel as conspicuous as a butcher in a slaughterhouse. There will be a dryness to the ceremony – a conveyor belt in Seafield crematorium – that will leave some people praying for rain, but you will already be soaked to the skin. People will remember your composure, your quiet dignity – they cannot know, that quiet is harder than loud – they cannot see, that when you are alone, at last, you will weep as if your eyes are broken. They will not hear his last beseeching question, something he read somewhere – you alone will hear that:

“Why does the darkness come all at once, where was it when the light was here?”

And you will answer, from this place where you are, for a little while…

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Sketches of Spain

March 12th, 2010 by Billy

Alona Berri

Into San Sebastian, in the Basque region of Spain, for a tour – more of a feeding frenzy – of its Michelin starred restaurants. Given that the city has more three star restaurants per head of population than anywhere else in the world, this holiday borders on the obscene. Perhaps foodie tourism has taken over from sex tourism?

A curious thing happens when I consult my notes, for though I make mention of Arzak, Mugaritz, Akelare, and Martin Berasategui, it is the places arrived at by happenstance that seem to have marked me most. So I shall put the big guns on hold and offer a few titbits from one man’s journey with his near saint of a girlfriend and their convection oven of a car.

In the Picos de Europa amid vertiginous gorges and extraordinary scenery, we stop for bread fish soup – a shellfish broth that is leavened with stale bread. It plops onto the plate like pig slops but tastes like heaven. A local sidre, poured from a great height to oxidise it, is dungeon cold and sour as green rhubarb.

At Praia de Mogodof on the scalloped, bleached white, beach, made from the dust of a billion crushed shells; a lean-to shack offered salade nicoise made, correctly with tinned tuna stored in sunflower oil. Who needs French beans? This came on a plate you could land a helicopter on along with a tractor wheel of tortilla that had been cooked to order and was thus perfectly liquid at its centre. The owner was touchingly aggrieved we could not finish it. It would have sufficed for a coach party of sumo wrestlers.

In Lugo, lamb’s tongue; leathery crunch and yielding interior. Tripes, yes the texture and smell is like eating boiled Converse trainers, but the taste! Raw armandine clams, still throbbing, chewy like seaweed and sweet as fudge. In Santandar, fabada, the Asturian stew of beans, sausages, morcilla, cocina and sweet, artery clogging pig fat, bubbles and broils its way to our table. A mini Vesuvius.

At Alona Berri tapas bar – ‘cuisine in miniature’ – they promise to feed us till we are not hungry. And they do. Stand out dish; pig foot terrine, peppercorn crisp, roast baby squid suspended above a reduced fish stock laced with vermuth. One if by land one if by sea.

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How not to write a column for The Leither

February 21st, 2010 by Billy

This is how it works. When a new issue of The Leither hits the streets, an e-mail is dispatched from the editor’s penthouse at One Diamond Point. He thanks us all for our contributions and then reminds the boys that they are a bunch of sluggards, underachievers, and fly-by-nights, who need to pull their socks up. He thanks the girls again, even more profusely, remarking that there work rate and attention to detail is second only to the late, great, Sir Jock Stein. He always finishes with the words that strike terror into any sane person’s heart – “and remember, deadline day for all articles is the first Monday of the month.”

That would mean this column should have been handed in on the 6th of January. It is now the 15th. Nine days late and no comeback, how come? The trick is to catch the editor as he walks among his adoring public and rugby tackle him into the nearest pub. There to feed him brandy and port and plead for a ‘special dispensation’, which he agrees to, but only until he finds out what special dispensation means. When that runs out, you must dicombobulate him with bottles of Newcastle brown ale and rum and tomato juice chasers, and ask for a little, erm, more leeway. You have struck gold when he manages a, “yes of course dear boy,” before falling asleep in the toilet.

When all else fails you just have to sit down and write the damned thing. D-day finds me leaping from bed at 9am, okay 11.30am, well okay, my girlfriend drags me screaming and kicking into consciousness at around 12.30pm. Tea and toast are magicked up and I’m plonked in front of the computer. But, hark, isn’t that an absolutely hilarious episode of Last of the Summer Wine on the telly that will probably never be repeated? Disaster, they are showing three episodes back to back and Compo has just bought a wardrobe which you just know the irascible old duffers will turn into a canoe…suddenly it’s 2.30pm. I get up to brush the toast from my teeth and am shocked by the state of the bathroom cupboard, it is infact pristine, but any excuse for timewasting is good on deadline day. I marvel yet again at the hundreds of tablets I’ve squirreled away over the years and dig out the Comprehensive Guide to Medicines to find out what they are all for. It is now 4.30pm.

I siddle, sheepishly, into the kitchen and offer to make dinner. The girlfriend laughs fit to burst, “you only ever offer to cook when  your Leither column is due, get on that computer, and don’t start arsing about with the plants.” I come out of the utilty room, arms full of baby bio, plant food, scissors and spray cans and transport all the plants to the bath, where I give them a happy half-hour of pruning and watering. I shout to my girlfriend that I’m just nipping out for some more plantfood and manage to get out of the door before her tongue catches me. In Lidl I buy oil paints, an artists palette and a toolkit – you’re right, I don’t paint or do home improvements – and take the packages home and start opening them. “Your tea is ready.” Oh good!

At 7.30pm I approach the computer gingerly but, hey, the Simpsons are on and it may never be repeated. At 8.30pm I start checking if the phone is off the hook, incase someone is trying to call me for a drink or something. Not that I would, I’ve got an article to write. At 8.45pm I tell the girlfriend that I’m popping to the pub to see if I can, ahem, loosen up the wee grey cells. I sit in a corner of the Allan Breck with my moleskin notebook like a proper tit. The congenial locals are not deterred, Darren sends over a pint, as does Derek. It would be rude not to join them, I put my ridiculous notebook away, I have written one line. The title of this piece.

I get home about 1.30am and resolve to do my article as soon as I’ve completed the computer golf game in at least 10 under par. At 2.30am I check my e-mails, there is one from the esteemed editor, the gist of which is. ‘You’ve let me down, you’ve let your colleagues down, but, most importantly, you’ve let yourself down etc…’ I crack open a beer, at 4.00am I send him this.

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