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WHERE HAS ALL THE SODA BREAD GONE?

/ gorgeousgael / 2 Comments

             

    

I have always loved soda bread, now I cannot find a single loaf in Hastings. I have tried at least half a dozen bakeries as well as several supermarkets, only to be told they no longer sell it. If indeed they ever did!

I HAVE DECIDED TO BAKE MY OWN AS A RESULT!

Recipe

  • 250g plain white flour
  • 250g plain wholemeal flour
  • 100g porridge oats
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 25g butter, cut in pieces
  • 500ml buttermilk

     method

  1. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6/fan 180C and dust a baking sheet with flour. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then rub in the butter. Pour in the buttermilk and mix it in quickly with a table knife, then bring the dough together very lightly with your fingertips (handle it very, very gently). Now shape it into a flat, round loaf measuring 20cm/8in in diameter.
  2. Put the loaf on the baking sheet and score a deep cross in the top. (Traditionally, this lets the fairies out, but it also helps the bread to cook through.) Bake for 30-35 minutes until the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. If it isn’t ready after this time, turn it upside down on the baking sheet and bake for a few minutes more.
  3. Transfer to a wire rack, cover with a clean tea towel (this keeps the crust nice and soft) and leave to cool. To serve, break into quarters, then break or cut each quarter in half to make 8 wedges or slices – or simply slice across. Eat very fresh.

         WATCH THIS SPACE FOR DETAILS OF HOW I GET ON

 

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

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FRIGID-AIRE

 Glacial white ice-box

Clinically humming your cynical tune

Cat-purring smooth on the outside

Insides as cold as an icy moon

 Your  stalactite smile frozen rigid

I never would believe you were frigid

 

            SEASONAL

           Time tolls the seasons

            And men grow old

            Chasing rainbows to the end.

            Death has neither rhyme nor reason

            But we all get there in the end

 

 

 

DID I MENTION THE FREE WINE

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Felix Dennis ,the publishing magnate, kicked the bucket recently. Wealthy beyond dreams – possibly a billionaire – had a simple philosophy; ‘to have a blolody good time filling the gap between being born and dying’. He boasted that had spent £100 million on ‘sex,drugs and rock-n-roll – especially on drugs’.  Well, you can’t take it with you.

Born into poverty he left school without an O-level to his name, but found that he was a genuis at spotting opportunities in the magazine market. The one-time hippy began with the satirical underground  magazine Oz, started with his friends Richard Neville and James Anderson. However, it began badly and they were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act for publishing obscene cartoons in one issue, and convicted and sentenced to 15 months in goal. They won their subsequent appeal, but not before spending several weeks in prison first. After that the only way was up for Felix; he formed Dennis Publishing and was soon publishing titles such as Computer magazines, Kung Fu monthly, Auto Express, and many others.

Soon he had houses and estates all over the world, including in Mustique, where he spent half the year. He also acquired an estate near Stratford-upon-Avon, where up to a dozen women could be found at any given time. ‘Yes, I do have sex with all of them’, he said once, ‘and of course they all know about each other.  I am not monogamous  by nature and I can’t be any other way. That’s why I never married. The thought of waking up  every day in bed with the same woman horrifies me’. All his women knew he would never marry them, he said, and that they were free to leave him whenever they wished.

For years, he said, apart from expanding his business empire, he did almost nothing bu t have sex., take vast quantities of drugs and feel absolutely fantastic.

However he gave up drugs in 1997 and in recent years his interest in women has been slightly supereceded by his interest in trees and poetry. He had planted a millon trees in his Heart of England forest project on his estate, whilst he developed his love of poetry when in hospital being treated for throat cancer a decade ago. While there he began writing poetry and wrote his first collection, A Glass Half  Full. Afterwards he toured the country  with his poetry-reading show called DID I MENTION THE FREE WINE.  Was it any wonder he was always guaranteed an audience!

‘The forest will be my legacy’ he said shortly before he died.

Felix certainly put the H  in hedonism!

OH,THE SILK OF THEIR FLESH

Oh, the silk of their flesh, once hidden beneath
Those mulberry bushes of plenty,
Their breast on my belly, their tongue in my teeth —
God! What it was like to be twenty!
Sweet Jenny, Ornella, and Charlotte, and Blaine,
In beds or on floors or al fresco,
The threesomes with Lily and knickerless Jane —
Now innocent mummies at Tesco!
                                        Felix Dennis

 

I WONDER WHAT THEY WILL SAY

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I WONDER WHAT THEY WILL SAY 

I wonder what they will say of me when I am gone?

It was him that penned those lines, you know

The ones about choking the chicken.

Ah, poor Katie Doyle never lived that one down!

And the lies he told in that Altar Boy book he wrote

Just as well his poor mother wasn’t still around…

 

Then there was that tale about the Kray Twins

How he walked and smoked with them

On remand in Wormwood Scrubs if you don’t mind!

How they didn’t seem nearly as bad as they were painted

In fact he almost said they were kind!

 

I wonder what they will say of me when I am gone?

Perhaps they will say nothing

 

THE WATERFORD COLLECTION REVIEW

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THE MUNSTER EXPRESS 24th June 2014

 

ARTS & THEATRE COLUMN

 

 

COLLECTION OF PLAYS REVIEW Tom O’Brien

 

The Co Waterford-born playwright and novelist, Tom O’Brien has just had another successful three week run with another new play, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Poles, in London’s Pentameters Theatre. The play despite its provocative title with echoes of a time when ‘No Irish’ might have given it a London context, but this play is set in an Irish town. I was not able to attend its premiere, but Alan Cliff the (up to last year) Waterford-based playwright went along and gave me his considered opinion. Alan is studying theatre in Manchester.

He described the play as complex in structure with at least four aspects overlapping; the return of a son-in-law, who has married an Aboriginal Australian and this brings out themes of racism and bigotry; a revelation of another characters bi-sexuality; the introduction of drugs into the family via a hostage situation; the revelation of an illicit family member’s affair. The London reviews suggested some confusion with themes of racism, immigration, identity and a longing for the past, spiced with sexual repression.

To coincide with this production O’Brien has brought out a collection of three plays, all with Waterford connections, with the title, The Waterford Collection, and its three plays show the detail and proven ability of the author to forge a career for himself. I still find it hard to understand why no Irish or indeed no Waterford theatre group have as yet staged one of his plays. Stagemad Theatre Company were to do so, but it never came to rehearsal stage.

The cover is impressive with three pictures of the new bridge. The first play Queenie is a 5-hander and tells a poignant story of Victoria Dwan who has been institutionalised, and is now being ‘released’ back into the community. This features open-air stage dancing at Granagh Cross, as she wheels around an indigent accordion player in a pram. This seems so surreal and Beckettian, with a wild theatricality. Queenie is a troubled soul who has second-sight. The play is beautifully ‘threaded’ with music and songs.

The second play, Money From America, is a much darker play about two brothers and a farm. Lardy has spent a lifetime toiling on the Co Waterford farm for little reward, and his older brother Jack returns from America and sees the farm as his rightful inheritance. This conflict involves two female partners, who would not be out of place in a McDonagh play, and it has a dark and dangerous resolution.

The third play, Johnjo, is a one-hander, a monologue set in the late seventies, and is a study of Johnjo McGrath from cradle to grave, from the Comeragh’s to wartime England and the dark underbelly of the construction industry. This is a harsh unrelenting play, but it held my attention all the way, and it is filled with songs and music that is as nostalgic as it is ironic.

Such was the success of the recent Pentameters production that they will present another Tom O’Brien play in London in July, about the women in Brendan Behan’s life, and still no Waterford production.    Liam Murphy

available @  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent

 

 

 

 

Self Doubts and Life’s Stories

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You got your MoeJoe working MichaelJohns! ‘Cromwell’ was a fun production. We still hope to tour Ireland with it – following the Cromwellian trail, as it were – if we can raise the finance. The saddest news is that our wonderful director of the show, Owen Nolan, died earlier this year. A brilliant actor/director/musician. He will be missed.

ps. I was looking for the ‘top shelf writer’ and then realised it was me you were talking about! With flattery like that you could well end up playing the violin in Cromwell’s New Model Army!

michaelnjohns's avatarMoeJoe Musing

I love the thought that sometimes our best jokes turn into our life’s stories, and turn out to have been our best ideas.  When I was in High School, I used to laugh when people said things and then their lives turned on an axis and they had to eat their words, in good ways.  Well, my own life’s story and direction has taken one or two of those amusing turns, too.  My miraculous marriage, my beautiful kids, my aspirations.  I joked about all of these at one point or another in my life, cynical in my perspective, doubting it all.  I doubted that a person like me would ever find and win the heart of a woman, and then she came along and won mine, held in still-willing thrall for more than 20 years.  I doubted that I would ever be a father. She has given me two children…

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HAMPSTEAD GIRLS

/ gorgeousgael / 1 Comment

 

HAMPSTEAD GIRLS

 A better class of person

Adorns the Hampstead

Red-bricks and glass

Whether lounging in the chic-lit bars

Or just lolling in the grass

Hampstead ladies in particular

Ride their bikes with elegance

And sip their foamy cappuccinos

With practised nonchalance.

On the pavements and in the cafes

There are no sightings

Of the culturally bereft

Even down-and-outs

Lean quite boldly to the left.

John Betjeman could not complain

Or call on Hampstead Heath

For bombs to rain

Nor suffer scorn like poor old Slough

Who he had deemed

Not fit for any humans now

Those air-conditioned bright canteens

In Hampstead’s glades will not be seen

And there’s plenty grass to graze his cow

Hampstead Heath’s as green as Ireland now!

my latest poetry collection – 67 – is now available  @  http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/

 

 

 

 

 

           

BRENDAN BEHAN’S WOMEN ON RADIO

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BRENDAN BEHAN’S WOMEN @Pentameters theatre ,Heath St, Hampstead NW3  – 3rd – 20th july.

listen to radio interview on link below

 

 

THE SILVER TASSIE

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I Finally saw THE SILVER TASSIE at The National Theatre last night. What a play, and what a performance! O’Casey’s great war play – or should that be anti-war play – has finally found its natural home.
review:
Act one is set in a Dublin pub, where the victorious football team is celebrating their victory in the cup – the Silver Tassie of the title. Most of them are home on leave from the trenches and are having one last celebration before heading back to France.
Act two, whic…h is set in what appears to be a bombed-out Monastery, drips with symbolism, and the realism of act one has been replaced by a fantastical second one. The soldiers, battered and beaten by their experiences, cower among the ruins,trying to make sense of all the madness, seeming at times to be worshipping the huge gun which pokes its nose out at one corner of the stage. Whether the inference is that religion is as bad as war,or that it causes war, I couldn’t make my mind up,but that there is a clear link between them is certainly implied. The booming and flashing was quite alarming at times, never moreso than at the end of the act, when the huge gun is trundled centre stage, loaded and then pointed directly at the audience, resulting in another almighty bang and a flash that had me seeing stars momentarily.
Acts three and four deal with the aftermath; act three with with the gassed, the shell-shocked, the maimed and the blind trying to recover some kind of normality in hospital; act four at the celebratory dance at the football club where the story began. Here the wheelchair-bound footballer who had won The silver Tassie for the team and his blinded friend finally realise that for them life will never be the same. The ending is surreal, several girls dancing with their ‘scarecrow’ partners, falling down and picking them up,falling down and picking them up…

Brilliantly done and great writing. 5*****


 

BOOK REVIEWS ON THE STREET

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Homeless Bookworm

Philani is a homeless man in his mid-twenties in Johannesburg, South Africa. Many people in his situation simply stand at corners begging. And that can sometimes meet basic needs…but it certainly doesn’t set a person apart or motivate people walking or driving by to donate.

But Philani does it differently. Every day he takes his ever-changing library to a different corner and sets up a sort of impromptu literary discussion group and bookshop.

For anyone interested, he will review his books and then you can buy one from him. In this way, he raises money for himself and his homeless friends as well as spreading happiness.
Philani says;

‘Reading is not harmful. There’s no such thing as harmful knowledge. This thing is only going to make you a better person.’

And if he has a kids book you’re interested in, it’s free, so that you can give it to a child.

Ride on ,Philani my friend!

See all my books for sale on amazon @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent