Pontevedra 2 and other musings

So I see that the Pope has ´lifted the ban´on Oscar Romero becoming a Saint. Perhaps we can expect Romero to feature in the PRs from Rome very shortly. No doubt all those priests and lay people who supported the previous Pope´s decision as Head of the CDF will now be rejoicing in this new Pope´s action. I ask you! This has been long awaited. Romero´s (and those who came before and after him) actions in El Salvador during the troubled times should have been recognised by the hierarchy of the Church a long time ago.

Anyway, back to the beautiful surroundings of Pontevedra. I visited the church of A Virxe de Peregrina which was built in 1778 and forms part of the Portugese Camino to Santiago. The church is beautiful both inside and out. You rise the 30 or so steep steps into a very long dark interior. But the array of side chapels transforms the interior. All the statues of Jesus on the cross show him in absolute agony, bloody dribbling from his forehead. It is certainly an image.

Yesterday we took a trip to the Pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela. The story around how the remains of St James got to Santiago is almost farcical. My favourite is that the remains arrived in a concrete boat up the river and dumped them on the banks of the river. The main church itself is beautiful, if plagued by scaffolding. There is an image of St James killing Muslims in one of the side chapels but the murdered Muslims are now hidden by flowers.

And finally we had dinner in a bar yesterday for lunch. We had the meal of the day-rice with peppers, chicken and octopus followed by fillet of veal and fried potatoes. It again was a showcase of simple

Simplicity is genius

as a course facilitator once remarked during a particularly confusing presentation. It turned out that he was right. The trouble came in trying to convince my colleagues of the same.

Now, as i sit in a sitting room overlooking the town of Pontevedra in Galicia i am pondering the food that I have been privileged to eat since Friday afternoon. So far I have only had Tapas in the town. The most complex meals have been cooked by my host. Well, if you can call curry complex. The Galiceans clearly do if the lack of curry houses around here is anything to go by.

The tapas has so far focussed on the fruits of the sea, mainly octopus and calamari. I have had the battered mini octopus and the larger version. When something is battered here it is seasoned with a little salt and pepper and then lemon juice is squeezed over the top. That is it. There isn´t the need (or want!) to do anything more with it. Simple cooking at its finest. If Jamie Oliver has taught us anything in the last ten years from his TV shows, it is that the quality of the ingredients (source etc) really does matter. Indeed, this is especially pertinent given that last summer (or perhaps the summer before) we were dealing with the horse meat scandal in the UK. Hopefully food is in a far more stable condition now.

I have just finished reading ´Life´by Keith Richards. In it, in the final chapter he gives his recipe for Bangers n Mash. The first process is ´find a butcher who makes his sausages fresh.´Again, regardless of the flavour, he focusses on the need to know the origin of the sausages and ensure that they are fresh. I was tasting calamari on my first night, it was about 8.45pm and I lapped it up. My host remarked ´no, this isn´t as fresh as it could be...we should have been here at 8.15.´

We ordered chorizo this lunchtime. It arrived, cooked in the creole style which for the people round here meant less pimenton and more chilli...basically. Again, very simple way of cooking food.

Tonight is the last evening of the fiesta season (if I have got that wrong then please let me know.) and will be marked with lots of fireworks going off around midnight, probably announcing to the town that it is now party time (!). There were fireworks on Friday evening, marking the end of the Feast of the Assumption. It has been nice to catch some of the events of the fiesta, even if this is the end and I have only just arrived in town. However I did spot a colleague of mine from Leeds in the street this afternoon. He was on a road trip of Spain and was in Pontevedra for one night only. The luck! Last night we had a walk around the stalls. Think Ilson fair but 4 times bigger, warmer and friendlier. There was a stall doing A4 framed sheets with your name on and all the nice things that it represents. I´ve had ones in the past ranging from ´born leader´to ´family man.´ But you never see the negative aspects of a name. ´Jack: utter bastard, serial adulterer, trust at your peril.´If you have anything else to add then let me know. I would be more than happy to return the favour.

A food post

Friends will be aware of my developing love of food. I suppose to look at me you would think I enjoy my food-you would be correct! But in the past 3 years or so I have really begun to hone my skills and  reflect on  my food philosophy. For me, cooking from scratch is essential, and I look for new techniques and ingredients to use, as well as picking up ideas from the plethora of food programmes on the TV.

Now, I happen to think that Rick Stein is a bit over the top. He not only provides you with a recipe but a rolling commentary of the history and context of the area he visits as well as an almost poetic delivery of his thoughts on food and life in general. Whilst I do not always appreciate this (show us the cooking, Rick!) I have really enjoyed his series on Spain from a few years ago. I recall the joy he had in his voice when he explained the process of creating pimenton.

He visited Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain as part of the trip and, as I will be visiting this particular area of Spain shortly, I watched with great interest. You can view the clip here. Pay special attention to how they cook cockles in the market!

This blog is an introduction to a series of posts I intend to complete over the next two or so weeks about the food I shall be tasting and the cooking I shall see.

Can't quite place it...

In April of this year we heard of the news that Levon Helm, the troubadour at the heart of The Band had passed away. I wrote an article on his autobiography This Wheel’s on Fire however I wanted to offer another piece along the same lines, but this time on the revival of folk music in Britain.

For me, the style of American folk which I love (that of place names, historic struggles and battles, ditties about carpenters, fishermen and the sunny side of life) has never managed to come to the fore in British popular music. Apart from listening to Bob Harris’s country broadcast on BBC Radio 2, access to British folk for me has been limited. That is until Mumford and Sons arose a few years ago. For me, Mumford and Sons epitomise that early folk sound of the Band; a rip-roaring cacophony of instruments and harmonic voices creating a spine tingling moment. For a modern Rag Mama Rag check out I Will Wait or Little Lion Man. They may start slow but soon get going.

Lyrics-wise, Mumford are generally emotion-centric, like many artists of the current generation. Personally, I have found the most liberating piece of new folk music to be Two Fingers by Jake Bugg. Biased I may be. I don’t profess to have championed Bugg’s early musical life. To be honest, I only discovered him in the summer but I cannot stop listening to the Nottingham-born boy now.

Jake Bugg refers to Clifton in his Two Fingers. Not referring to a desolate outpost in Mississippi, no. Clifton is a suburb of Nottingham. For someone who re-wrote Dylan’s Oxford Town with lyrics about Ilson Town I find myself optimistic to this public acceptance of English place names. Perhaps Ralph McTell shares this too?

Now I don’t pretend I’m a wordsmith. I received a shit shit shit thesaurus for Christmas. I do know, however, what words sound good, and I know that some place names sound more Romantic than others. For example Memphis, Tennessee sounds nicer than Leeds, West Yorkshire. Folsom Prison feels like a dirtier establishment than Dover Immigration Removal Centre. Rock Island Line has a greater ring to it than Midland Mainline.

The Americans go a further step by using places in their names. I am unsure why this is the case, but perhaps it gave them a greater prominence when trying to market records. The Tennessee Two, Mississippi John Hurt, Bull City Red, Alger Texas Alexander, Louisiana Red, Memphis Slim, Memphis Minnie, St Louis Jimmy Oden, the great Kokomo Arnold and, finally my favourite, Lafayette Thomas. I doubt we will ever see the likes of Nottingham Norris, Camden Chris, Headingley Harry, Richmond Ritchie and the Thames Two but for now, a little mention of a UK town in a song will do for me.

Happy New Year!

Must dash...

So, I have started to grow a beard. Well, ive nearly entered my third week of beard growth. However according to beard.org, I should leave it for at least 4 weeks first before even attempting to shape or style it.

I have certainly experienced the usual comments:

Lost your razor?

Being lazy?

But then after about a week and a half I started to get more interested comments:

Are you growing a beard?

It suits you

Nice whiskers

Now I have bearded colleagues offering me advice and help. The most recent one went along these lines: "I know you probably don't have any of this, but if you do have some conditioner, then you should try that." Well actually, dear reader, I have a Lush facial scrub with lavender oils and sometimes use a conditioner now and again to keep my face soft and soothed. I have had to wash my face mid-way through the day but this is seldom.

So, am I glad that i've decided to keep up with the growth? Definitely. From the articles I have read, a beard is a sign of manliness. It's also a sign of committment and dedication. Yes, it's easy to start to grow a beard. But the constant comments, the itchy face and the subconscious twirling does niggle me but it seems well worth it.

For an interesting selection of sites about beard growth check about the manliness blog and a comprehensive site about everything beard related.

Arrival in Marrakech

The time on my phone read 02:15. The taxi was coming at 3 and I awoke, dizzy and drained. I had been drugging myself up on Benylin and pain killers, flu plus and anaesthetic throat lozenges. I had been swigging from the bottle all day and now I was feeling really awful. We took a taxi from Bushey to Gatwick. I was drifitng in and out of sleep. We headed to the check in queue. Walking round the ropes, round and round I was taken back to the time I had over-indulged on a trip to Holland and was struggling to stand up at Passport control in Calais. Anyway, back to the present. I was dizzy, white, sweating and needed my freakin Benylin! I had to duck under the rope, run to the toilet and, well there ya go. Start as ya mean to go on!

Skip forward three hours and the plane is setting off. EasyJet, the pioneers of budget air travel. Always remember big ole Stelios on that programme talking about his company. What started off as a routine take off procedure turned into the biggest bloody shit storm of money making opportunities. The EasyJet flight crew should have been called the EasyJet Commercial Team. Every few minutes they were selling something. I remembered the words of one of the staff "We hope you have a relaxing flight!" How the fuck can  I relax when you're asking me if I want a drink, a snack, Hello or The Times, booze, fags, perfume, gadgets, more snacks, more drinks, lottery tickets then...a collection for UNICEF. The charity collection was almost delivered as an after-thought. I searched through the in-flight magazine for any mention of UNICEF. It was on a page towards the back after the posture pedic chair adverts and DIY Shagging. What a joke.

Anyway, we arrived in Marrakech and it was about 9.30. The heat wasn't so imposing, it being only 25c. It soon heated up when we paid 15 Euros to travel 3 miles in a taxi.

Doing the needful...

One can never fully prepare for the rigours of international travel; in my opinion, anyway. This is especially compounded when traveling to a country and especially a continent you have never ventured to before. As much as preparing for something such as this is important, as long as you can just “do the needful” (a suggestion when traveling to Bangladesh some years ago) then I am willing to open up my senses and mind to new experiences and “chance” some parts of my holiday.

I have read and heard so much about the city of Marrakech. I think I was first made aware of the magic of this Moroccan travel haven through The Apprentice and was amazed by the colour and diversity of the place. Then, when a good friend suggested earlier this year that he may embark on a trip and was wondering if I would accompany him, I thought why not? And now, seven months down the road I find myself writing up a list for my holiday there. With space a tricky thing to manage (one hold bag between three) I am trying to pack light and economical but this is to prove tricky as we near the trip departure day.

I think back, again, to when I traveled to Bangladesh in 2009. I was working for CAFOD at the time and the charity and its partners in Dhaka had “done the needful” and all I had to do was pack then turn up to Stansted on the day. I packed a rucksack full of items but I had only reached half of my 25 kilo limit. I had done the sensible thing and packed my lightest and worn my heaviest. I recall turning up at the house of a colleague and the look on his face sort of read is that it? Where is the rest of your stuff? That evening I experienced a different evening in London, relaxing in his garden whilst the evening Summer sun peaked through the tall trees and I treated myself to a few cheeky Continental beers prior to bed time. One thing I failed to mention, however, was that I’d left all of my toiletries in Ilkeston. That meant a trip to the Tesco Express to raid their stash of Diarolyte, Jungle Remedy, Ambre Solaire and Colgate. I thought best to exclude my usually obligatory Durex. Hope springs eternal and all that jazz!

When I got to Bangladesh I found that I used some things more than others (and would have had no use for the prophylactic anyway). So when I do leave for Morocco on Sunday morning I think I shall be entering over-prepared in the true British sense, but, as long as I have done the needful then I need not worry about anything else.