By: Blonde One
The question ‘what did you do in half term?’ is one that gets asked a lot in my life. Sometimes I am doing the asking and sometimes the answering. Normally the answer will be one of the following:
- Marking and planning.
- A DofE expedition.
- A little holiday (if I’m lucky) with Mr Blonde One and Little Miss Blonde.
I have particularly enjoyed answering the question this week though. Here’s a little taste of how the answer would have gone: “I was interviewed for BBC radio, went wild camping the same day and then the next day went to St James’s Palace to see the Duke of Edinburgh.” It was a bizarre 2 days requiring much packing, planning and clothes changing, but I liked it a lot and fully expect every half term to be like this in the future!
I was interviewed by BBC Radio twice in one day – on the death of the English pudding. Does that surprise you? I was better the second time round, started to get a taste for it. Then abruptly the Outside World closed down and nobody, ever again, was interested in any of my opinions. This was in the late seventies and I’ve lived a sheltered life since, my sole source of kicks being Two Blondes Walking. Alas not all my comments are responded to and I get the feeling I’m shrinking, such that I’ll soon be able to pass through the hole of a pin-hole camera. That I’ll become merely two-dimensional, then the silver nitrate will fade.
Monday morning in rural Herefordshire.
Does Herefordshire still smell of apples in the autumn? I have a strong urge to be there right now and can almost taste the orchard. If it does, then the English pudding cannot be dead as crumble is only a step away. I was once informed, by a lad in much need of tlc, that I made a “banging” crumble” and Six-Foot still expects it when he comes home. I think you have the makings of a Tale of the Unexpected in your pinhole camera. My solution to the possibility of fading … and I insist that you do this … go and sniff an apple tree!
I do hope the English pudding hasn’t died. There’s nothing like an apple pie and clotted cream!
Spotted Dick and custard.
Or better still, TREACLE PUDDING.
Or, what was it they made on the T.S. Golden Hind?
LEMON BOMB PUDDING !!!!!!! WOW !!!!!!!
I can confirm (and Starfire will know the source of my pudding delight) that I partook of a rather delicious treacle pudding last time I was in the Malverns … not so far from Hereford!
Do I detect a hit of boasting?
I was reliably informed that most of Herefordshire had gone to sleep under a coating of plastic and duvets for plants? I have fond memories from the 60s of walking miles of Herefordshire by night among eerie hop poles, then sleeping on the pavement in the town itself for an allotted half hour. But you know, you only have to fulminate a little to go out with a bang before the silver nitrate fades completely?
Hops … oh hops. I was taken as a young child, on a school trip to a hop farm. I fell in love with the fields, the smell, the machinery and (if I had been old enough to realise) probably the farmer too! I can remember it as clear as day and would love to go back.
We shall have to arrange it! Preferably between midnight and two a.m.
Starfire, Blondes Two and One: Three re-responses! I am a man again and you’re all angels. I’ve edged my way back out through the pin-hole and am now expanding, despite being into the third year of the 5/2 diet. I am comforting you all with apples (lit. quote!) and imagining you as my guests at that lovely, gnarled old pub in Ledbury which, on its premises, has proof of the wonders that can be achieved with hops.
You’d better believe the English pudding is dead. At the time (1976) I spoke authoritatively on this since I was editor of a catering magazine and had commissioned a freelance to investigate this very subject. She too was interviewed by the BBC on her findings. One slight modification: the trawl was limited to whether or not puddings were still being ordered in staff canteens. We even got a three-column headline in The Sun.
But best of all – I can savour it now in my sere and withered times – I gained brief ascendancy over the younger generation. My second interview went out later in the day on an afternoon chat-show and I was able to get home to listen to it. The programme was just starting when my elder daughter and her friend (both horribly blasé teenagers) arrived home from school and demanded to know why the oldsters had the radio on. “Just listen,” I said, and soon they were able to hear the unmistakable nasal, whining, West Riding voice of someone they had both held in contempt for many a year. For all of four seconds their mouths were stopped.
One crowded hour of glorious life is better than an age without name (lit. quote number two)
And a merry party we would be in said pub in Ledbury! I like the idea very much indeed (especially the hops).
PS Can we invite Sir Hugh? He would probably walk there and still arrive before us all!