Reading etc.

If you’re a small country with a big neighbour, then you know all about them and they don’t necessarily know anything much about you. This reflection was prompted by an article on “Blair’s babes” in last Sunday’s Observer.

The English paper had a little background on women in Parliament in Britain. This is what it said about Constance Markiewicz:

“Women were first allowed to be candidates in 1918. The only one elected, Countess Constance Markievicz, was unable to take her seat because she was in prison suspected of conspiring with Germany during the First World War.”

It is true that Countess Markievicz spent a lot of her time in and out of prison. She belonged to an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family and was, famously, a very active supporter of Irish independence. She was elected as a Sinn Fein candidate in the 1918 general election and like all the other Sinn Fein candidates elected she didn’t take her seat in Westminister (it is important that this Sinn Fein party not be confused with the Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland today, I can’t face going into the detail but it just is). According to Wikipedia she joined her colleagues assembled in Dublin as the first incarnation of Dáil Éireann, so I’m guessing she wasn’t in jail as our correspondent from the Observer says. Though I am also indebted to Wikipedia for the information that she spent some time in jail in 1918 for “anti-conscription activities”; is this the same as conspiring with Germany? Well, what with the “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity” mantra, I suppose that there was some possibility for confusion among the ranks of English journalists, even today. But is this annoying? Oh yes, it is.

I imagine all those Canadians with maple leaves sewn on to their back packs have the same problem. And, of course, the Belgians with the French. I was out with some Belgian friends the other day and they said that a survey has shown that most Belgians could name three candidates for the forthcoming French presidential elections but none for the Belgian elections this June.

On the plus side, it is fun to see all the very nice middle class English people we know here squirm with post-colonial guilt when we refer to the crimes of their ancestors. I don’t know what the Canadians and Belgians have by way of compensation; public health care and chocolate respectively?

In other news, the computer has been broken for a couple of days and the Princess had her birthday party today.  I was bereft and am flattened.  Details to follow. Hold your breath.

A couple of weeks ago, Kristen nominated me for a thinking blogger award. Since then, I suspect, the kind and generous Kristen has been thinking something along the lines of the following: “the ingrate, she didn’t even acknowledge it in her blog”. But I’ve been thinking about who (or should that be whom, you know, I think it should) I should nominate. Before we get to the votes of the Belgo-Irish jury, here are the rules:

The rules for accepting this award are:

1) If you get tagged, write a post with links to five (5) blogs that make you think (or you know, not, if you’d prefer).

2) Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact location of the MeMe.

3) Optional: Proudly display the Thinking Blogger Award with a link to the post that you wrote.

And we’re off:

1. Gin and teutonic. I have been reading this blog for a long time in various incarnations. It is funny. It is clever. It is the original thinking expat blog.

2. Diary of a Playgroup Dropout. Beth is lovely. The whole internet thinks so, so I’m probably not introducing you to anybody new here. To me she epitomises all the good things about the US. All that get up and go and clever and polite too. Like all of us, I suspect, Beth is concerned about children who are less well off. Unlike most of the rest of us, she has decided to try to do something about it. Her blog has a section devoted to trying to help less well off children. It is here. It’s not about money, though, if you are time poor and cash rich, it can be. It’s about doing something for unfortunate children and that can be making cards for children sick in hospital or whatever the richness of the internet suggests to her as the monthly challenge. Brilliant.

3. Geepeemama. I have a lot in common with the geepeemama except that she thinks about things more. Well, this is a thinking blogger award.

4. Brother Lawrence The man who proves that monks are human too, though, frankly, the jury may be out on some of the others. Did you know that he is a real monk?

5. Only five? Well how about the sarcastic journalist then? There’s something about the way she writes which combines humour and an occasional dose of misery which reminds me how we are all compromised by our choices. This makes her sound very grim but she isn’t at all, she’s hilarious and, um, thoughtful.

Beth published this recipe a while ago and since then I have printed it down and thought about it a surprising amount. The name seemed so authentic and the recipe seemed so American, I felt that they must be the original cookies that Americans dream of, that they were, if you will the “cookies d’antan” (free pretention available here) and I wanted them. The biscuit aisle in the supermarket held no allure for me, I wanted Grandma Lucille’s monster cookies.

I emailed Beth. What is Karo? Corn syrup came the speedy reply. I was no wiser. What is corn syrup? Amazingly, Mr. Waffle found a bottle of Karo in the weird foreign products aisle of the supermarket nestling between cans of Spanish squid and British marmite. Incidentally, the recipe calls for a teaspoonful, so if anyone has suggestions of what to do with a pint of Karo, less a teaspoon, I would be grateful.

Most of the remaining measurements were in cups. I don’t know how much a cup is. I have generally used English recipe books before and, aside from Nigella Lawson, the quantities are always tiny. Nigel Slater is the kind of cook who would confidently suggest that a baked potato topped with cheese would make a nourishing meal for a starving family of four. I say this, so that you can understand where I am coming from.

So I got together my ingredients. A cup is 250 mls, it transpires. Dear God, that is a lot. There was more peanut butter in this recipe than was in the jar we bought in the supermarket. As I started measuring out my quick cooking oatmeal (4 and a half cups and, my sister told me that I had to use regular porridge and ready brek would not do) I realised that, if I continued at this rate our entire stock of porridge would be used up and our children would have to go hungry for the week. So I settled at three cups. A stick of margarine. How much is a bloody stick? Further call to sister in Chicago. 110 grams, in case you ever need to know.

My feeble European mixer (free with supermarket points) whined alarmingly as I tried to beat my thick paste thoroughly. As it began to squeal in pain, I decided enough was enough. I looked at my baking tray and I looked at the enormous mass of cookie dough. I put some out on the tray. I got another tray and another. I filled my whole oven with cookies. 15 minutes later I had 3 large cookie cakes; they spread and two tablespoons of baking powder is a lot. I wish my sister had told me before I started that the standard batch in American cookies is 4 dozen. 48 cookies, people. However, I confirm that despite a lack of peanut butter, mixing and porridge they are indeed the ‘cookies d’antan’. Should you wish to create your own cookies, may I direct you here.

I picked up “Restless” by William Boyd the other day. I loved “Any Human Heart” and I was looking forward to this. It’s not bad but it’s not good either. It’s a spy thriller which is not a genre that I am very keen on but it kept me turning pages. The story is told by two female narrators; a mother who was a spy in the second world war and her daughter who is finding out about it in the 1970s. I found his female voice for the daughter particularly unconvincing and rather jarring although I was pleased to see that whenever he had her jaunting off, he carefully placed her child in the hands of a friend who appears to have been introduced to the story solely to provide babysitting services. The ending is very good but, overall, could try harder.

For my birthday, I got “Tom Bedlam” by George Hagen from the publishing exec. It thrills me to the core to have clutched in my little paw a book with the words “uncorrected proof not for sale or quotation” emblazoned on the cover. I really loved his first book, “The Laments”. It reminded me quite a bit of John Irving but whereas I find he can be a bit cloying, I thought Mr. Hagen much less so. Like John Irving then, but less annoying though he is also a fan of the alarming accident to move the plot along.

His second book is very different from his first. It is Dickensian. It is set in Victorian London and, by gum, it teams with characters. I suspect it is deliberately Dickensian and I wonder whether the Limkin family are intended as some kind of nod to Dickens’s own family with Oscar the parliamentary reporter as Dickens (this sentence should read “Look at me, am I not clever? Yes, yes, you’re right, I’m a genius”). I am not sure that this works for Mr. Hagen. Dickens does Dickens better and the comparison doesn’t do Mr. Hagen any favours. I feared the worst.

The early sexual fumblings of our hero reminded me unpleasantly of Henry’s sexual awakening in “A Star called Henry” which is a dreadful Roddy Doyle book. I would say his worst but I haven’t been foolish enough to read its sequels. Unpropitious but, in fact, I really enjoyed it in the end. It requires an enormous suspension of disbelief as the characters’ lives cross and re-cross in deeply unlikely ways, but I found that quite entertaining. I was sorry to finish it, particularly since the ending was a bit weak compared to the rest of the book. Nevertheless, great stuff overall and am eagerly awaiting his next offering.