Things I don't understand, No 23

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

There are many things in life I do not understand. I do not understand why anyone would want to wear mustard yellow; I do not understand people who do not read; I do not understand why women get their faces sliced off, stretched, and then stitched back into place, in the name of beauty. I am a little bit confused by politicians who still think that no one will notice they have not answered the question. I am oddly baffled by bad manners (a smile costs nothing, my old mum might have said, had she been the kind of person who says things like that, which she is not).

Perhaps the thing that puzzles me most, in a whole box full of oddities, is what the magnificent Rachel Maddow would call the fear of The Gay.

In the grooviness that is modern Blighty, we adore Graham Norton and Stephen Fry and Sir Ian McKellen. When, ten years ago, the British army allowed gay men and women to serve openly, there was barely a ripple of protest. (One grumpy brigadier did resign, but mostly 'people just got on with their work', as one naval officer remarked.) Sandi Toksvig and Clare Balding are stalwarts of the BBC. The police go on Pride marches. Even the Tories are bragging about how they will have more gay MPs than Labour after the election. The happy introduction of civil partnerships is one piece of legislation of which the government can be unequivocally swanky.

Of course pockets of homophobia still exist, and probably always will. It can be blatant, or passive aggressive. There was a very strange moment on this Sunday's Broadcasting House, one of my favourite programmes on Radio Four, when the enduringly odd Christine Hamilton started complaining about someone declaring their gayness: I thought it wasn't supposed to matter any more, she said, crossly. I've heard that tone before. It is usually code for: I wouldn't mind all those buggers so much if they would just shut up about it.

The point is: we are generally quite relaxed in this country about who sleeps with whom, so it is easy to forget that this is not so everywhere in the world. In Uganda, there is currently a ferment over prospective legislation to make homosexuality a capital crime. In Iran, if you are lucky you will be subjected to a public flogging; if unlucky, you are hanged by the neck until you are dead. Even in shining 21st century America, there is a huge, shouty fuss over gay marriage and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

I wrote yesterday about the oddity of Hollywood being perceived as so outrageously liberal, and yet having a bizarre discrimination against women directors. Gayness is another area where the liberalism seems to take a long weekend. The film industry gets tremendously excited about itself when it daringly addresses the love that dare not speak its name. Look, look Sean Penn winning his Oscar for Milk! Patrick Swayze in a frock! Gay cowboys! Gay Cowboys! KISSING! In reality, the rule is: the gay characters must be played by straight actors, all the critics must then congratulate the straight actors on their 'brave' choice, and everyone gets to put on their red ribbon and die of smugness. Meanwhile, the actual gay actors must get married, have children, hide all their Judy Garland records, and put up with blind items in the gutter press about their 'special friends'.

I do not understand any of this. I am thinking of it because in the past week the very strange story of State Senator Roy Ashburn emerged, in the pages of the You Couldn't Make It Up News. Ashburn was a good old family values Republican, who voted against every single piece of legislation which even hinted it might do something nice for the non-straights. He voted against Harvey Milk Day. How can you vote against Harvey Milk? Then, he got stopped for drunken driving. That might not have been so bad, except he was leaving a famous gay nightclub, and there was another gentleman in the car. (I admit they might have been going home to play Scrabble; we shall never know.) Finally, after days of breathless speculation in the press, Senator Ashburn put the rumours to rest. 'I am gay,' he said. 'Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long.' I know I should have compassion and empathy for the afflicted, but are they really so difficult? Really? Three little syllables? Probably easier to say than: 'I am a big fat hypocrite.'

My question is: what is the fear? Lovely Rachel Maddow politely reminds her viewers, with a wry smile, that The Gay is not contagious. I am not sure I shall ever quite understand why it gets people in such a lather. I do not understand why they must quote Leviticus and wag their gnarly fingers and rush into closets and slam the door.

I do not get what is scary about this:

Or this:

Or this:

(That is the fabulous Ma Rainey, who was having a high old time in the Harlem of the 1920s. Did you know that, in the twenties, Harlem was a positive garden of free loving? I did not. According to Richard Bruce Nugent: 'Nobody was in the closet. There weren't any closets'.)

How could anyone be afraid of a man who dresses as beautifully as this? Unless it was terror of being thought dowdy by comparison, I suppose:

(Is that a magnolia in his buttonhole? I want to take him home and gaze at him forever.)

I do admit, because if I have a fault it is that I am too fair, that there are those who might have reason to fear this:

But that is nothing to do with gayness. It is because he is The Prince of Darkness, and he knows where you live.

The Women and the Oscars

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

'59-year-old woman wins prize' might not sound fabulously exciting, but when you consider it is Kathryn Bigelow being the first female to get a Best Director Oscar ever, it takes on a whole new meaning. It seems a marvellous and fitting thing to happen on the eve of International Women's Day. Hurrah for the Ladies.

It's not just that no woman has ever won for direction before, it's that there hardly are any women, directing. Women make up 7% of directors in Hollywood, and 23% of producers. There is something entirely bizarre about this. One of the things the Right in America loves to bang on about is those pesky latte-drinking arugula-eating com-symp peacenik Obama-lovin' coming-to-get-your-guns Hollywood types, who have no idea what the Real America is all about. They are liberal elites, who sit smugly on the coast, dreaming of a socialist paradise, the lefty bastards. They are all about political correctness and huge government. Except, oddly, when it comes to the ladies, and then it's all back-to-the-kitchen 1950s retro madness. So that's just one more thing I do not quite understand.

What made me especially happy about Bigelow is that she is not just a women, but a women of a certain age. When Hollywood is not dreaming of Karl Marx, it occupies itself by indulging in a blatant youth fetish, which is why everyone has plastic surgeons on speed dial. I am not much for red carpets, but I did enjoy looking at pictures of the mature females beating the hell out of the babies in the style and elegance stakes.

My photograph of the day is of Sigourney Weaver, Helen Mirren, Kathryn Bigelow and Meryl Streep, showing how it should be done:

And for extra loveliness, I salute Susan Geston, the wife of Jeff Bridges, who not only has managed to stay married for 33 years, which must be a record in California, but looks utterly glorious without appearing to have had any plastic surgery at all:

Oh, and one more, of the Firths, just because I think they exemplify dignity and class in the red carpet zoo:

I really am going to stop now, but I can't resist a final snap of Sandra Bullock, who had the grace and moxy to turn up to collect her Worst Actress award the night before she got her Best Actress award, and made jokes about it:

Happy International Women's Day.

Places I shall never see

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

There is a time, in middle age, where you have to admit that there are some things in life you are simply not going to do. This might sound a little defeatist or morbid, but I actually find it rather liberating. I can concentrate on what I am going to do, rather than fret about possibilities missed.

Travel, to certain destinations, for me, is one of these. I know now that there are places in the world I shall never see with my own eyes. I really hate to fly. I hate everything about it: the expense, the queues, the security panics, the discomfort, the lurking fear that I shall in fact die in a ball of fire. So I am now embracing the fact that I am not going to go anywhere I cannot get to by train or boat. I feel rather joyful as I write that sentence. I realise that I have known this for a while, but refused to confirm it; there is a lurking guilt in me, because I was brought up in a generation that religiously believed in travel broadening the mind.

The gap year was fetishised in my youth. Everyone hurled their possessions in a backpack, and set off for South America and India and the Far East. How we all scoffed at those mad statistics everyone bandied about in the eighties, about only 7% of Americans having passports. I remember feeling properly shocked by the fact that George W Bush could become president when he had only ever visited Scotland and Mexico. How could a son of such preppy East Coast privilege, from a family of great wealth and sophistication (however much he tried to pretend he was just a down-home Texan) never have been to Paris or Rome or Bombay or St Petersburg?

So travel was never just a whimsical luxury to me, but enshrined as a moral imperative. This is, of course, absurd. There are plenty of perfectly good, clever, imaginative people who do not dash off about the world. There are travellers of the mind. I suddenly realise that I do not have to castigate myself because I shall never see the statues on Easter Island. I am going to think of the great luck I had in seeing the places I did. I shall live off my hump, like a camel. I shall remember Venice and Rome and the Italian Lakes and Capri and the great, crazy New Year's Eve I spent in Naples. I will recall taking the train from Bombay to Cochin, three magical days in a crowded carriage with an American artist, two Swedish hippies and a very polite Keralan called Albert. I have in my mind Manhattan in a snow storm, and Seattle in the blinding sun, and Paris in the rain, and the marvellous city of Malacca in the sultry, tropical heat.

All the same, I feel the need to bid a formal farewell to the places I shall not witness. It is an occasional series, if you like. Today, for no reason I can identify, it is Colombia.

I shall never see Bogota:

Or the wonderful Las Lajas Cathedral:

Or the majestic plaza at Villa de Leyva:

Or the backstreets of old Cartagena:

But thanks to the miracle of The Google, I can see the pictures. And I think that is sort of all right.

Fact check: I am certain that 7% figure can never have been true, although people did repeat it as if it were gospel. I do discover the current number of Americans owning passports is 22%, according to State Department figures, and I do think that is quite strangely low. But then if I lived in a country with such an amazing variety of landscape and flora and fauna, maybe I would come over all Uncle Matthew and refuse to go abroad too.

If I were Prime Minister

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Quick, quick: name me a single Labour or Tory policy. Ten seconds: go.

I'm not going to be cruel and ask you about the Liberal Democrats.

Bet you can't.

No one can. I inhale politics like oxygen, and I can't. Actually, hold on: I know one Tory one. They are going to restore the teaching of history in schools. Hurrah! And they are going to stop the ID card scheme, which I think is probably a good idea. (It is too expensive and no one can say what it would actually achieve.)

As for Labour, I think nice Ed Miliband is going to do something good for the environment, because why wouldn't he? He is clearly a well-brought up fellow.

Everyone is going to do something about the deficit, but no one will say quite what, or how. It appears to be the difference between cuts now or cuts later.

I know it's a bit unfair. The starting gun has not yet been officially fired; the manifestos are still being polished. Maybe, in a couple of weeks, with their dazzling policies, they will surprise us.

I keep thinking that it's all very well, getting grumpy with politicos for not putting enough meat on the bone, just expecting them to fix everything with their magical political wands, while I sit back like an armchair general, with no ideas of my own. Maybe the political class should set up a special website where the public could send in their own prescriptions, and each month the best one would be chosen. I admit it might be too tempting for the green ink brigade, but why not get the righteous citizenry involved in their own polity? It's positively Athenian.

Here is what I would send in:

Simplify the tax system. I would strip out all the complex allowances, put in place three plain bands, and close the loopholes which allow some of the richest British companies to pay no tax at all. I would get a kick-ass task force, a sort of fiscal band of Jack Bauers, to collect the outstanding £11 billion of revenue. Eleven billion, going spare. Let us just contemplate that for a moment. I would put extra VAT on luxury items, like yachts and Bentleys and Damien Hirsts, so that everyone would know the new Russians were doing their bit.

I would find the twelve cleverest women and men in Britain, put them in a room and not let them out until they worked out how to teach the children to read. (My scariest statistic: 63% of working class boys of 14 have a reading age of 7. I know statistics are suspect, but even if this is slightly true it is a national scandal.)

I would institute prizes for everything, especially all areas of scientific achievement. The scientists need cheering up, just at the moment. The tiny cost of the prize money would pay for itself many times over with the boost in innovation and advancement.

I would institute a golden rule of no jargon, ever. If any of my minsters are heard using management-speak on the Today Programme, the whip would be removed. I would ban obfuscation. Sometimes, politicians really can't answer the question, for reasons of national security or party unity or because a policy is not quite worked out yet. The sight of them weaselling about under Paxo's pitiless gaze is what makes people tired of politics. I would tell them that if they don't want to answer a question, they should just say so. Imagine that. There would be dancing in the streets.

I would damn well make sure that the armed forces have proper houses to live in. If you expect someone to fight and die for their country, the least you can do is give them a roof that does not leak. It can't be that hard.

I would forbid any political operative to ever again use the expression: 'for the many, not the few'. The great test of a political slogan is to imagine whether anyone would ever advocate its opposite. Are there really people running around saying: 'Yes, yes, for the few, not the many'?

I would recruit a vast national army, composed of everyone who is an expert in their field. I would send them into schools and hospitals and universities and prisons and communities, to talk and lecture and advise and hold workshops and open days and I don't know what. The point would be to rouse, encourage, enlighten and support; to show what is possible. It would build a new sense of national unity and communion. It would give the successful the great gift of feeling they were giving something back; it might offer the children and the unemployed and the old a new, hopeful perspective. It would be a like a great voluntary brains trust version of national service.

I thought of it because, every year, in my little village, I give a writing course as part of our arts festival. I do not get paid for it, but I come away vastly richer, because my students arrive, tentative and unsure, and leave bursting with confident creative thought. (I wish I could say this was because of my great genius as a teacher, but in fact it is because all they needed was someone who could show them a little attention and encouragement.) Imagine if we got all the writers to do that? And the actors and inventors and entrepreneurs and professors and musicians and painters too? Imagine the galvanising effect.

So there we are, my darlings, vote for me, and we shall all eat cake.

Picture of the day is of the late, great Michael Foot, who died this week. His manifesto was described as the longest suicide note in history, but he did care passionately about ideas and ideals, and everyone who ever met him said he was a tremendous gentleman. He was one of the last brilliant orators in British politics; backbenchers still speak wistfully of how, when he stood to speak, members would rush in from the tea rooms and the bars to hear him.

Products vs politics

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I know I should be writing about Chilcot. It really is a banner day for us political geeks, what with the Prime Minister finally giving his evidence and all. As a concerned citizen, I should be following every word. I dutifully turned on the BBC news channel, and after about five minutes I felt so cross and demoralised that I decided to write about face creams instead. That'll learn 'em.

I spend excessive amounts of time getting very, very cross about the beauty industry. All those idiotic made-up cod-scientific terms, all those bogus claims, all that awful emphasis on cheating, beating and battling age, as if the worst thing a woman could ever do is grow older, make me mad as a wet hen. At the same time, being a mysterious creature of infinite contradiction (or, in other words, a human being) I love a good product. My strong feeling is that as long as you understand that any given potion will not change your life or perform miracles on your face, it is quite safe to buy a nice moisturiser. As in all things, it is a question of degree.

Sarah, in her role as beauty editor of The Times, often sends me things to test. I feel very important and grown-up as I do this, and send her detailed and emphatic feedback, half of which never ends up in print, because it's only one column and there is never enough room. I am currently acting as guinea pig for a new line which I suspect may turn out to be one of the most irritating of things: a product which actually works, but is not that much fun to use. When I say works, I do not mean it made me look instantly five years younger (nor do I even think that should be desirable), but my skin did appear rather soft and smooth this morning when I woke, which was a surprise, because it has been made sad and cross by all this hard weather and the central heating that must chug away in my house so I can write without my fingers freezing. So: there was a result, but the creams and serums do not have the heavenly scent and feel that I prefer in products. There is a sense of useful but not beautiful. I shall bash on and see, but I am not entirely convinced.

It made me think of the products I really do love. I like almost anything from Origins, because it all smells so divine, and they have a real talent for texture. I adore Nuxe dry oil, which smells of summer and goes on luxuriously with no hint of greasiness. I love the little bottles of camomile oil from Darphin, which really do soothe a troubled skin (you can see the difference almost instantly, it's like magic).

A while ago, Sarah and I came up with the idea of testing organic products against the cutting edge skinceuticals (horrid, ugly word for creams which carry a promise of scientifically developed active ingredients). She would use the artificial ones and I would use the organic ones, and then we would compare. Sadly, this rather interesting experiment got sidetracked, for various complicated reasons I can't remember, and so it never ended up in the paper. I was sad about this, because the very, very nice people at Spiezia had kindly sent us a carton of stuff to try. Spiezia is a little company in Cornwall that really puts its money where its mouth is. All its products are made by hand on an organic farm; they recycle like crazy, avoid animal testing, and shun chemicals. I had so much fun for the six weeks I was a Spezia girl. Everything felt delightful on my skin, smelt outrageously lovely, and did seem to have a benign effect. They make no stupid promises about erasing signs of age or turning back the clock, but they produce good stuff that makes the skin happy. I am always banging on about how the secret of a great soup is that it must be made with love. At Spezia, you really do get the sense that they make products with love. And who knows what difference that might make? I like the idea, anyway.

They are quite expensive, but not outrageously so, and I think you are very much getting what you pay for, rather than shelling out for a brand or swanky packaging. So if you want to give yourself a little mad March treat, I recommend them without reservation.

You can do mail order here:

http://www.spieziaorganics.com/

Tomorrow: a serious disquisition on moral relativism. Or, hand creams I know and love. Who knows where the muse will take me?

Link of the Day

Posted by Tania Kindersley.
 

The always excellent Rachel Maddow interviews the truly marvellous Major Mike Almy:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#35699288

I like Queerty.com's take on it, here:

http://www.queerty.com/we-have-recruited-convicted-felons-but-maj-mike-almy-wasnt-qualified-to-serve-because-hes-a-homogay-20100304/

Money quote: 'we want to hug the crap out of him'.

Pedant's corner

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Yesterday, I was happily watching The Daily Politics.  I love and revere The Daily Politics. I think it is my favourite programme on British television. I get quite twitchy when Parliament is in recess and the show goes off the air. And as for Andrew Neil: I used to think him embarrassing and vulgar, all that running off to Tramp with glamorous Indian ladies, and now he has turned into a brilliant, forensic political interviewer. Which just goes to show. (Not sure quite what; something about books and covers perhaps.)

Anyway, there I was, plugged into the BBC iplayer, in hog heaven, when Tessa Jowell, who used to work in the Department of Education, said that young people were 'disinterested in politics'. At which point, my pedant alarm went off. She meant, of course, uninterested.
That's it, I thought; it's official. It's like the day the music died. If a former cabinet minister can go on national television, on Lord Reith's BBC (purpose: to educate, inform and entertain) and misuse the word disinterested, then it is quite deceased. It is an ex-word; it has gone to meet its maker, which quite soon will be spelt 'it's maker', because no one gives a damn about the apostrophe either.

I am not one of those dead hand of language people. I am not for things cast in stone. I am not much for exceptionalism either (I have to go and hide behind the sofa when people talk about America being the greatest nation on earth) but I will hang out a flag for the exceptionalism of English. I think it is an extraordinary, supple, various carnival of a language, and I think this is because, like a shark, it never stops moving. We have no stern Academy, like the French, which litigates on neologisms (just say non). English ruthlessly steals anything it can get its hands on and makes it its own. It pinches from a multitude of other tongues, from Japanese (tycoon, tsunami), to Malay (gong, cockatoo), to Hindi (bungalow, thug), to Norwegian (ombudsman, quisling). I love that it borrows and shifts; it makes the very use of words feel playful and surprising. I love that to google is now a verb.

Every schoolgirl knows that Shakespeare made up thousands of words for fun, although this might be a bit of an urban myth. Whether or not he actually invented gnarled and bedazzled and lacklustre and eyeball does not really matter. What is certain is that he picked up the language by the scruff of the neck and threw it about the room. Take this, from Love's Labour's Lost:
'Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany,    some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick.'

Zany, which is one of the words people attribute to Shakespeare, is the only one of that list that survives to this day, but don't you wish that mumblenews and carrytale had caught on?

Excessive reverence is death to language, and a too-strict reliance on grammatical rules can act as a straitjacket. Occasionally, I throw my Strunk and White out of the window and go crazy. I start sentences with prepositions (don't faint at the back); I leave out commas for the sake of momentum; on my nuttier days I sometimes split an infinitive. I'm with James Thurber, who once wrote: 'When I split an infinitive, it is going to damn well stay split'.

My deity is not correctness, but clarity. It is for the sake of clarity that I shall hunt down dangling modifiers until I have no more breath in me. I think there is an intrinsic ugliness in them, but the real sin is that they make you go back and read a sentence again, to check the meaning.  It is why I believe the usage of the apostrophe really does matter. It is why I care about disinterested. Now Ms Jowell has done her worst, every time someone uses the word, we shall have to stop and ask ourselves: are they bored, or do they not have a dog in the hunt? We shall have to resort to unbiased or neutral instead, which do not carry the same nice distinction. That is why I am mourning the loss.

According to the New York Times, people were worrying about this as long ago as 1954. In the eighties, Anthony Burgess blamed the hapless USA, calling the use of disinterested to mean uninterested 'the worst of all American solecisms'. See what excellent company I keep? But the fate of pedants is to get hoist with their own petard. Here is the awful irony: when I go to the dictionary I discover that the original meaning was 'not interested'. All my carefully juggled balls fall crashing to the floor. No less an authority than the American Heritage dictionary tells me that the word started in the sixteenth century with its meaning of not interested, and only shifted its definition in the eighteenth. It turns out that disinterested is merely going back to its roots.

Now I have to find something else to get cross about.

In the meantime, I leave you with a picture of lovely Will Shakespeare, the zaniest of the zanies:




PS Thank you all so much for your enchanting birthday wishes from yesterday. They made me quite teary. 

Birthday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Lately, it has been in the back of my mind that I started this blog sometime last March. I was vaguely aware that soon would come the banner day of ONE WHOLE YEAR of blogging. This morning, I was wandering about the internet, when I thought I might just check the March archive, and there it was, the very first post, on March 3rd 2009.

It is The First Birthday.

There should surely be:

And:

And a salute from:

And a nice telegram from:

(Gor bless you, ma'am.)

Amazingly, the world seems to keep on turning calmly, quite without remarking on this momentous event. There is no popping of champagne corks or singing of hosannas. There is only a tiny huzzah in the echo chamber of my own mind.

I do feel oddly proud.

This last year has been a curious one, a stop start of secret projects that did not quite come to fruition, and endless pitches that did not quite hit the mark. After the small success of Backwards, I had naively assumed that Sarah and I would just suggest something else and everyone would fall on the floor and say Yes, Yes, Please. Instead, as the entire capitalist system crumbled about our ears, I entertained the horrid thought that no one might publish a book ever again, and certainly not ours. I started furtively to brush up on my animal husbandry, just in case I should need something to fall back on. In the end, after a lot of work and angst and false dawns, a deal did materialise, but the hunt for it left me bruised and thinner-skinned than I should be, after all this time. (Butch up, I kept telling myself, and keep buggering on.)

Curiously, the one constant has been this tiny endeavour. I am daily amazed by the generous readers who take the time to read and comment on my random thoughts. I am keenly appreciative of your patience as I roam off on tangents, indulge in rants, put up far too many dog pictures, and generally appear to have not much idea what I am doing. I am particularly grateful to the other bloggers who have been so astonishingly supportive. (Oh my God, this is turning into an Oscar speech, and I have not even won anything. I must Gather, as Miss Kate Winslet once told herself, in an entirely dissimilar situation.) I have said it before, and I shall say it again: the thing that delights and surprises me most about the blogosphere is the kindness. It is the thing I remember when people say the world is going to The Dogs.

I hate to single anyone out, when so many of you have been so lovely, but there are a few stalwarts who were there right at the beginning, when I had no readers, hardly knew what a blog was, and found myself setting out on a journey without so much as a map. They gave advice, encouragement, and an unstinting welcome to a strange new world. They are Miss Whistle, Cassandra Castle, Mrs Trefusis, Charlie Circus, and LibertyLondonGirl. I knew none of them before, but somehow miraculously encountered them in this novel universe, and they adopted me and kept me going. I send them my absolute thanks, because without them I would almost certainly would not be here at all.

And since I am doing a bit of an unBritish gush, I really must thank my dear old mum, who overcomes her slight alarm at new technology to read this every day. ('I did like your blog today,' she says, rolling her tongue around the unfamiliar neologism.) You have to bear in mind that she was brought up in a world where people sent telegrams, jiggled the telephone and said 'Speedwell 3478' when making calls, and still rode about in a pony and trap. So it is a bit of a miracle that she now surfs the web. ('I'm buffering,' she says, when I ask if she can see the latest dog picture.)

Although I am convinced that everyone else out there knows exactly what they are doing, and I am constantly amazed by the polished and professional nature of so many of the blogs I follow, one of the themes I notice in the blogosphere is that of evolution.  People start off intending to do one thing, and find themselves doing quite another. They revamp and rejig and regroup. This blog started off as an adjunct to the book Sarah Vine and I published last year, and was intended to address any subject that might in any way concern The Women. (When we wrote Backwards, The Women were our chosen audience, although, to our delight, it turned out that quite a lot of The Men read it too, some more quizzically than others.) Because Sarah has two jobs, two children, one husband and one dog, she found she did not have the time or the appetite for blogging. At the end of her day, she needs to sit very still in a room. So it has turned, really, into my own personal blog, which was not quite what I meant it to be. I am still contemplating whether this is a Good or a Bad thing (sometimes it seems an act of rash arrogance).

However it evolves from here, I love doing it. And I absolutely love that you spend your precious time coming to read it. In the next year, I shall invoke the ghost of Sydney Carton (after whom my old dad once named a horse) and attempt to make it a far, far better thing.

Today's picture is, in honour of tradition, a shot of how I started the day, watching my two old ladies lounging languorously on the unmade bed. As you can see, the thin end of the wedge was firmly inserted some time ago:

A ray of light?

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I call my mother. She is very worried by the political situation. We discuss the precarious state of poor old Blighty's Triple A rating and the terrifying level of the national debt and how much blood and treasure the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost. She is also worried about the looming council cuts.

'The old people,' she says mournfully. She has always fretted about the old people, even before she was one.

'And they are threatening to close the libraries,' I shout. I have always fretted about the public libraries, our great unsung national treasures.

Even I, a lifelong Labour voter, have to admit that a change of government may be the only answer.

'Oh,' she says. 'But I would not want to be poor David Cameron.' Because the new crop of politicians are so young, and she has reached a venerable age, she always talks of them with maternal concern, as if worried that they are not getting enough iron in their diet, or they might forget to wear a vest in the cold weather.

'Well,' I say, 'everyone says he is at his best in a crisis.'

'Ah,' she says, brightening. 'Of course. They always say: in a crisis, call for an old Etonian.'

'Mum,' I say. 'Who says that? No one I know says that.'

'The war,' she says staunchly. 'Won on the playing fields of Eton.'

'That was the battle of Waterloo,' I say. 'And it was really quite a long time ago.'

'Oh,' she says. 'Yes.' She starts to laugh, helplessly. 'Oh well,' she says.  'Never mind.'

Afterwards I think: maybe she has a tiny point. It's fashionable to write off Etonians as effete toffs, running around in those penguin suits with their top hats and their privilege. What can they know of the good ordinary hard-working Britons? The lesser-known fact is that this tiny elite school produced thirty-seven gallant recipients of the Victoria Cross. Almost two thousand of its alumni died in the two great wars. (Over ten thousand fought.) The much-admired Colonel H Jones, who fell at Goose Green, went to Eton. It also gave us William Gladstone, George Orwell, Robert Byron, Humphrey Lyttleton and Peter Benenson, who founded Amnesty International. (Benenson was an extraordinary man, who should be better known. When he was only sixteen, he set up a fund for the orphans of the Spanish Civil War. He went on to serve at Bletchley Park during the second war, breaking German cyphers; founded JUSTICE in the fifties, an organisation for human rights and law reform; and finally, with several others, started Amnesty.)

I don't know how much difference it makes, where you went to school. I usually think the Eton debate is a silly diversion, a shorthand for lazy inverted snobbery and the putting of people into reductive little boxes. I have an old-fashioned liberal belief in taking a person on their merits, not their accent. But wouldn't it be lovely if my old mum was right? Because if ever there was a crisis, we are slap bang in the middle of it, and someone must be called for.

Photographs of the day:

Etonians, by Henri Cartier-Bresson:

A lone Etonian, watched by local boys at the 1937 Eton-Harrow cricket match, by Jimmy Sime:

The dullness of received opinion

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I am so staggeringly bored by people saying how boring Henry Moore's art is. It is such a shallow, glib criticism. Sing another song, boys and girls, because this one has grown old and bitter.

I am not an art expert. I think Henry Moore created many objects of beauty. So sue me.

Here is the picture of the day, in honour of Hank:

And one more, just in case you are not bored enough:

The oxtail, the oxtail

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I am in a slight state of hysteria after performing what I can only call an oxtail triumph. (There is no call for false modesty on such a banner day.)

I decided today was the day for the oxtails. As usual, I searched through my recipe books and the online cookery sites for the perfect recipe. As usual, I could not find quite what I wanted (although I was rather tempted by the idea of basil dumplings). As usual, I ended up making it up as I went along.

There appear to be as many oxtail recipes as there are cows. Interestingly, it is a big thing in Jamaica and China, which I would not have expected at all. I had always thought it confined to these rainy British islands, and hardly even here any more. It is one of the great dishes of my childhood, but now quite out of fashion. I was also quite surprised that Escoffier gives a recipe for it. I would have thought it far too humble for his refined sensibilities. So those were some cheap assumptions shattered.

The common thread appears to be a good long browning of the meat to start the thing, although then everyone degenerates into arguments over whether to use red wine or Guinness, to cook in the oven or on top of the stove, and how best to thicken the sauce. There are also differences over which vegetables are best.

My top priorities were flavour (obviously), but, above all, texture (I wanted it soft and melting and sticky).

Here is what I did:

First, I caught my oxtails. (Sorry; I can never resist my little Mrs Beeton joke.) I dredged them in flour and cooked them in a big frying pan with olive oil, until they were nice and brown all over. Sadly I had no chicken or beef stock, which would have been ideal, so instead I brought to the boil a big heavy pot of water, with some Marigold bouillon added for flavour. Into this I put nice chunks of carrot, celery and red onion. Once it was at a good simmer, I added the oxtails.

Then I went about my day, letting the thing cook and cook and cook. I kept it at 2 on my stove, which produced a perfect steady simmer. As with all stews, the heat must be kept low, or the meat will toughen. All the recipes say three hours, but I let it go for seven. This might seem theatrically excessive, but I found it achieved two vital things: it magically turned the stew beautifully thick and unctuous, and it brought utter tenderness to the oxtail.

In the last hour, I put in some thickly chopped leeks, some white wine for flavour, and two tablespoons of tomato passata. This last was not because I wanted any taste of tomato, but because it softens and very slightly sweetens the stew, which can veer towards the bitter with all that red meat. And then, I can hardly bear to write it, I added my excessively naughty secret ingredient: a tablespoon of Bisto granules. I know. Please do not faint away in horror. I hardly believe I have even admitted that in public. But it performed the excellent function of thickening and darkening, and I am not going to apologise for that.

If I were to be a perfectionist, next time I might remove all the ingredients with a slotted spoon, turn up the heat, and reduce the sauce so that it is thick enough to stand a spoon in, but today I could not wait another moment. A scattering of Maldon Salt and a je ne sais quoi of chopped parsley and the thing was done. It was so delicious I exclaimed out loud. It was tender and comforting and reminiscent of another age. I cannot recommend it more for a cold winter's day.

Next time, I might even go mad and try to do the dumplings.

Sadly, I have no photograph, because I can't find my camera, but I must admit it is not exactly a thing of beauty anyway. I leave it to your vivid imaginations.

Instead, the picture of the day is a cautionary tale from the front row of the Burberry show in New York. Whoever said fashion was not fun?

If ever there was a bunch of women in need of a good oxtail stew, this is it. And, it's the coldest winter in twenty years, should someone not tell them it's all right to put on a pair of tights? Who decided bare legs were a good idea in February? I want to wrap them in blankets and feed them up. I'm not at all certain that the price of fame is worth paying if it involves uncomfortable shoes and goosebump thighs, but then I'm a little old-fashioned like that.

In which I declare an interest

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I suddenly realise it is positively perverse that I have not written a word about British politics since May, despite it being the most febrile and fascinating political season since the Old Queen died. And I suddenly realise why. It is that: some of my best friends are Tories.

I KNOW.

Actually, it should not make a blind bit of difference. The two I love the most are serious men of conviction who are far too busy trying to work out thorny policy problems to pay attention to flaky blogs. But you see, I am an unreconstructed old lefty liberal bleeding heart. I think I have been hampered by an absurd subliminal desire not to upset my right of centre buddies.

Luckily, the truth will set you free, and now I have worked out this fabulously stupid reluctance to overturn any applecarts, it is going to be psephology a go-go. Obviously with a bit of dog thrown in. I am not abandoning first principles.

Actually, what I want to talk about is in fact slightly related to dogs. It is what political geeks like me call the dog whistle. Dog whistle politics is a right wing phenomenon which some people say was invented by an Australian called Lynton Crosby, who was the Karl Rove to ex-prime minister John Howard. It was a sinister way for the Right to say hard-line things whilst sounding perfectly reasonable. In the last election, the Tory leader Michal Howard (no relation) used it when he asked: 'Are you thinking what we are thinking?' It had a nasty little taint of John Bull to it, an underlying suggestion that maybe all those pesky foreigners were coming over here and taking the jobs and stealing the women. To its great credit, the good British public took not the blindest bit of notice.

The new Tories have, I think, decided to go back to their One Nation roots, and are now talking about things like social inclusion and co-operatives. They have put the Little Englander dog whistle in a drawer. But the irony is that it is still working against them.

The great puzzle of the last month is why the Conservatives are not miles ahead in the polls. The economy is trashed, unemployment is a joke, the prime minister is being accused of bullying, cussing, briefing against his own chancellor and generally going bonkers. It reminds me of what Evelyn Waugh once said about James Joyce: 'You can hear him going mad, sentence by sentence.' The whole administration seems tired and cranky and out of ideas. Even old Labour loyalists like me look at the debt and look at the war and think: what is the party for? And there are the Tories, all clean and respectable and untainted by power. They don't seem to be scared by women and homosexuals and people who are not Anglo-Saxon any more. Why not give them a go?

And just as I am thinking this perfectly reasonable thing, I turn on the television and there is Ann Widdecombe. (For my international readers: she is of the ship in full sail school of politics; old Tory to her fingertips; religious; Manichean; proud to be a battleaxe.) 'Will you cut the size of the state?' Andrew Neil asks her. Cuts are the absolute battleground at the moment, but the usual thing is to hedge and be diplomatic about it, to talk of how the lovely nurses and teachers and soldiers and policeman must be protected, while the evil quangos must go and ghastly bureaucracy be slashed. But Miss Widdecombe did not get the memo. 'Oh yes,' she says, with indecent glee, in her strange querulous voice. And the dog whistle blows. I think: I can't I can't I can't. In a feverish liberal panic I imagine thousands of poor civil servants begging on the streets. I think: the Conservatives have not changed at all; they still hate and loathe government and we shall all be thrown on the mercy of the free market, which is as ruthless and unpredictable as a gangland killer with a pocket full of razor blades. This is what the whistle does: it flings sensible centrist people like me into a frenzy of hyperbole.

I think this is what is doing the Tories in. The old guard is let out, blinking, into the light and, without meaning to at all, blows the whistle, and everyone runs inside and bolts the doors and contemplates sticking with the devil they know.

The most interesting and least known thing about David Cameron is that his hero is Robert Peel. Peel is my hero too. When I was reading history, all young and foolish and idealistic, I worshipped Peel like other people adored pop stars. He might not have won any charm contests, but he stood up, almost alone, to the howling might of the vested interests when he repealed the egregious Corn Laws in 1846. He put the people before politics. He placed the national interest above loyalty to his own class. He split his party rather than do the wrong thing. There should be parades for him. That's a Tory that all good people can believe in. I think the central question of this election is whether Peel will trump Widdecombe. I admit that no one else in the entire political firmament is asking this question. I admit it might be the wrong question altogether. But it is the one to which I would most like the answer.

Picture of the day is in honour of the great Sir Robert:



And his magnificent wife Julia, who he adored:



Bonus facts about Sir Robert Peel:

As well as repealing the Corn Laws, he also passed the Factory Act, which protected women and children from the worst depredations of ruthless industrialists, emancipated the Catholics, and invented the police force, which is why they are called Bobbies to this day.

Thursday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Did not sleep much last night so have no coherent or useful thoughts for you. As always after a night of insomnia, I attempted to restore myself with an indulgent breakfast. In honour of the glory and necessity of breakfast, I present to you what I, with utter lack of any kind of humility, think is the perfect Egg Bread. (I think that some people call this French Toast, although I should say that no French person would be seen dead eating it.)

Take two slices of thick brown bread. White is too mere for this, and will disintegrate under the weight of the egg. Whisk up two eggs with a pinch of salt. The eggs should be as fresh and free range as you can manage. Some people will tell you to add milk; ignore them. Leave the bread to soak for five minutes; it is very important that it is absolutely saturated, or there will be a dull bready dryness at their heart, which is most demoralising. Put a large frying pan on a medium to high heat; add a dollop of olive oil.  Some people like to use butter, but I find it burns. Carefully put the slices of bread in and fry for about four minutes each side, until crisp and golden brown. Anoint with butter. This is no time for half measures. You can have yoghurt and berries tomorrow. Eat. (You may need a pinch of Malden Salt and a screw of black pepper for perfection. I leave that to you.)

PS Through my brain haze I have a sudden horrible feeling that the majestic LibertyLondonGirl did a recipe for this exact thing a few weeks ago; so if you follow both of us, I do apologise for the redundancy.

Tomorrow I promise I shall be sharp and rested.

PPS I have bought some oxtail in honour of the excessively wintry weather; have not cooked it in a hundred years so if any of you have a delightful oxtail recipe, I should be most grateful. I like it sticky and unctuous and falling off the bone, so I am thinking a very long gentle stewing would be the thing.

Now completely obsessed with Treo the dog

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

If you have the capacity, do watch glorious Treo the army sniffer dog get his medal for gallantry here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8533479.stm

It may be the sweetest thing currently on the internets. Someone should make it a massive You Tube hit.

Picture from the Press Association, via the BBC news website.

And since we are on the subject

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It's a dog day, what can I tell you?

The tremendous Treo the army Labrador is getting a medal, for sniffing out explosives and saving many soldiers' lives. There is nothing I love more than a proper working dog, and this fellow is doing some serious work.

Report in The Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/24/labrador-awarded-animals-victoria-cross

And more from Major Paul Smyth's excellent Helmand blog here: http://helmandblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/video-top-dog-bomb-sniffer-treo-wins.html#links

Lovely quote from Treo's handler, Sergeant Dave Heyhoe: 'He is also a very good friend of mine. We look after each other.'

I try, without a vast amount of success, not to get too sentimental about dogs. I remind myself they are animals, not humans, and to anthropomorphise them does no good for their dignity, or ours. But, as anyone knows who has a canine, they do bring a very particular and heart-expanding kind of love. And in the case of this marvellous creature, they can actually save your life.

Dogs and snow, dogs and snow, dogs and snow

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Title of post to be sung to the tune of 'Here We Go'.  Of course.

I should be writing about freedom of the press, which seems to be today's hot topic. I could do you a little essay about the price we pay for liberty, because nothing comes without a price, although there is some odd magical thinking going on at the moment which seems to imagine that this is not the case. My theory:  if you want a free press, you have to read some things which make your stomach churn. It's the exact same philosophy as freedom of expression: if you really want it, you must put up with people saying things that make you want to throw heavy objects. So really there is not much of an essay there after all, more a haiku. It seems that the answer to the question 'Do you want a free press?' must be 'Yes'. Or, you can go and live in Russia, where journalists get shot with guns.

Turns out I was slightly crosser about that than I thought.

Instead of tangled arguments about liberty and constraint, I am instead going back to my true and tried theme of weather and canines. The snow has come again, and I can't help but be oddly excited. The woods are gloriously still, making me think of Narnia and Mr Tumnus (odd how some of that childhood reading dies so hard), and the dogs are beside themselves with excitement.  There is something about the white stuff that turns them at once into romping puppies instead of stately old ladies. Also, it gives my friend Sophie who lives in Santa Monica a little taste of old Blighty, and she has had a horrid time lately and needs all the cheering up she can get. So these are for Soph, and all of you who occasionally miss a bit of good British weather:

This is a slightly absurd attempt at an artistic shot from under my umbrella. There is an old idea that only vicars are allowed to use umbrellas in the countryside (some crazy class thing) which I very much enjoy subverting:

Lights, camera, ACTION:

Go, go, go:

That's quite enough of that racing about, thank you so very much:

C. S. Lewis magical woods:

And one more dog, because I can't resist:

Whoever said blogging was a massive exercise in self-indulgence? It's practically a public service.

A tiny harbinger of spring

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

The first snowdrops are here. I am quite beside myself with excitement. It was MINUS ELEVEN yesterday, and yet these minute delicate little creatures are somehow defying the arctic temperature and getting ready to unfold themselves. Nature is a bloody miracle, I don't care how many times I say it.

So no prizes for guessing the picture of the day:

This is just by my back door, on a patch of rough ground that runs away from a dry stone wall. No one planted them there, they just grew, for the hell of it.

As you can see, the excitement was infectious:

(Surely an action shot worthy of Kathryn Bigelow.)

The other old lady was more about dignity on the monument:

And then, as if all that was not enough, there were some crazy mackerel skies, for a tea-time treat:

It's enough to bring out the Dr Pangloss in a girl.

Let us now praise famous men.

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Or rather, one famous man.

I was going to do a meaty political post today, because I have been slight and domestic lately, but then the entirely enchanting Colin Firth went and won an award and gave the finest acceptance speech I have ever heard. It was polite and funny and graceful, which is a rare combination. So today must be salute to him.

I usually find myself bored to catatonia by awards ceremonies; where I used to love the glitz in my feckless youth, I now see dullness and self-congratulation. I can't bear the fact that all the women must do an obligatory beauty parade, because skin tone and fashion sense shall take precedence over any actual acting talent. I find the tears painful. This awards season, I have been even grumpier than usual, on account of someone deciding that a bloated epic about blue people must have prizes. (I never understood how anyone could take James Cameron seriously after the agonising boredom of Titanic. 'Just SINK already,' I furiously shouted at the screen.)

But last night there was nothing much on, and I ended up half watching the BAFTAS, whilst doing other things. I remained unmoved by the Twilight girl and the Inglourious Basterds fellow ( if there is one immutable rule in life, it is:- never, ever, refer to yourself in the third person). Then, suddenly, I found myself minding like hell that the best actor went to the best actor, and that best actor was clearly Colin Firth. They won't do it, I thought. They'll get all dazzled by the wagon of charm and twinkle that is George Clooney, or they'll get sentimental about Ian Dury and give it to Andy Serkis. They'll be horridly prejudiced against Tom Ford, because he criminally once designed a frock, and he's just too handsome and suave for his own good. They'll get distracted by the perfection of the suits. And do you know, they didn't. They didn't do any of those things, and the right man won, and I actually found myself shouting at the screen: GOOD DECISION, BAFTA. Good decision. And for a bonus, we got a lovely, ironic speech about fridges and fragrance, and not a theatrical tear in sight.

 

(Photograph by Jon Furniss).

I sometimes think that the reason Firth does not quite get the credit he deserves as an actor is that he is a fatal combination of good-looking and self-deprecating. People were so blinded by the sight of him in britches that they forgot to notice how damn good he was as Mr Darcy. He'll do a little light comedy on the side and happily send himself up. He does not ever speak of his craft, but makes jokes instead. If you want to see him at his most brilliant, hunt down a copy of A Month in the Country. This is possibly in my top ten films of all time, and he is so restrained and moving in it that he pulls your heart right out of your chest. It was very early in his career, but it and A Single Man form a pair of perfect bookends; in both, impossible grief is signalled by the flicker of an eyelid.

As a bonus, you also get a very young Kenneth Branagh (left) and a lovely, delicate Natasha Richardson. There is ravishing countryside, a glorious score, and a few universal truths thrown in for good measure. Everything is in what is not said. It is one of those unusual films that treats its audience like grown ups.

So here is to Mr Colin Firth and all who sail in him, and the clever people at BAFTA, who chose correctly.

Sunday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Picture of the day.

The blue hill, in the gloaming:

At this precise moment, I feel exactly how that picture looks: quite calm and still.

Saturday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Yesterday was a flat day. They come, every so often, for no reason I can identify. I like proper emotions. I like happiness, obviously, and joy, and intense interest. I embrace melancholy, which I like to think comes from my Irish blood (and even a tiny teaspoon of Danish, so I can go all Hamlet on you when the mood is in me). But I hate flatness.  It is what my friend Sophie calls the shallow trough. It is what the Americans, with expressive brevity, call blah. That's why I did not write a post.

Today, the sun is shining, the snow is glittering, and Scotland is in her pomp. There has been a tremendous pre-prandial party in honour of the excellent visiting relatives. Champagne at noon, never let it be said I forget how to be decadent. I got the good conversation, which I sometimes think is all I need. I have no talent for small talk, but there was no danger of that. We spoke of food, physics, James Joyce, the nature of the English, and the perils of sentimentality. (Sentimentality is unearned emotion, said one of the relatives, which I thought the best description of it I ever heard.) Now I must drink black coffee as thick as treacle and clear my head and get some work done.

In the meantime, here is a quick snapshot of the glorious weather: