I am an artist, illustrator and author. I trained at St. Martins School of Art and exhibited regularly in the UK and abroad throughout the 1980s. My illustration highpoint was designing the cover for the UK paperback edition of the novel, Billy Bathgate. I lived in Israel in 1970 and then again from 2009 until 2012. I continue to write, as well as make Moscatel wine. My first book, King Saul – The True History of the First Messiah was published to critical acclaim in 2007. In 2014 I published my first novel - ARK (previously, The Sons of Kohath).
obscure gems, camera-obscured vermeers and an unwatchable nightwatch…
I am a very fortunate and privileged person. In 1987 I and my then-girlfriend visited the Alhambra Palace in Granada, and had the entire place to ourselves. The stillness of the Court of the Lions in particular, with its serene Solomonic atmosphere, only disturbed by the wing flutters of doves and the chirping of swallows was a transcendental experience.
About ten years later, I had an equally powerful-yet-serene artistic moment of solitary good fortune in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, when I had its famous collection of nine Vermeers all to my lonesome. This was especially lucky, as few great works of art demand peaceful contemplation more than those of the genius from Delft. It was probably no more than five minutes, but easily sufficient time to appreciate a unique opportunity for private quality time with nine of the finest paintings ever conceived.
Young Italian Woman with Puck the Dog – Thérèse Schwartze (1884/5 – oil on canvas). Ashamed to say that I had never heard of Thérèse Schwartze, but I’ll never forget her now after being thrilled by this life-size study of attitude and poise…
But that was then, and now things have changed for the worst, at both the Alhambra and the Rijksmuseum.
Both places are victims of their own massive popularity and their increased accessibility due to an exponential rise in mass-tourism. And, both places resorted to the same “remedy” for dealing with the ever larger crowds of people wanting to see their glories – the dreaded time-slots…
I have visited Amsterdam many times since 1997, but because I knew I could never repeat that incredible Vermeer encounter, I had avoided the museum – until last week.
We were in town for 48 hours and our hotel was next door. Everytime I stepped out onto the street, there was the great red-brick edifice, staring me in the face, taunting me. So, I gave in, and booked a 10 am (and first of the day) slot on my iPhone for the second day. Get there early I thought, and I might just have a chance of beating the crowds to the Vermeers, even if only by a minute or two, it would be worth the €20 for the ticket.
A Young Woman Warming her Hands Over a Brazier: Allegory of Winter – Cesar Boetius van Everdingen (1644-48 – oil on canvas) Again (although here I was aware of the painting), I had only a vague knowledge of this exceptionally gifted Dutchman. As with the Schwartze above, the painting in the flesh (so to speak) is unbelievably compelling.These iPhone photos, don’t convey a fraction of their power in real life...
How wrong I was. I got to the entrance at 9.45 (15 minutes before the official opening time) and, much to my pleasant surprise was allowed in. However, my cheerfulness was instantly doused, the moment I entered the grand vestibule, to discover it full of people – mostly grouped in tour parties, with tour guides, whose competing, amplified voices, filled the space with a kind of strident, oddly-American-accented hiss.
On my way to the Vermeers I passed large classes of school children, many spread out, sitting on the floor spaces, surrounding their teachers, like bees around a queen, but all (teachers and children) dressed in white lab-coats. And no, I haven’t a clue either, but it all added to overall feeling of organised pandemonium.
Having navigated my way past these sizable (and voluble) obstacles I eventually made it to the gallery containing the Vermeers, but of course, I was too late. I don’t know when wouldn’t have been too late, seeing as I had entered the museum 15 minutes before the official opening time, but I’m guessing, some time around three in the morning? How/why/where all these people came from – hundreds of them – in yet more tour-guide parties, between me and getting anywhere near the paintings, is a mystery. But whatever, I wasn’t going to see the Vermeers – not that I would have wanted to given the football-crowd environment engulfing them.
Three Portraits of Notables of Antwerp – Jacques Jordaens (1635/36 – oil on canvas) If, like me, you’re a sucker for the wow-factor possible from supreme painting technique, then this virtual triptych of life-size portraits, by yet another artist I barely knew of (Flemish this time, not Dutch) is the exhibit for you. While it might not have the subtle deftness of The Night Watch, for example, they’re packed with empathy, presence and attitude – and most importantly of all, have no unsightly screens, and rarely any people between them and you!
So, as a second prize I tried for the Rembrandts but fared little better, and ultimately settled for distant side galleries and the often surprisingly superb consolations on offer, which comprises most of the illustrated story accompanying this post.
In short, do visit the Rijksmuseum next time you are in Amsterdam, but be prepared to make do with side galleries and supposedly “minor” exhibits. Fortunately, being one of the greatest art galleries on the planet, insures that there are plenty of allegedly “lesser” gems of outstanding and memorable value on offer, to enjoy in relative peace and harmony.
The other side of the Rijksmuseum coin. Somewhere behind all of that lurks The Night Watch. There has to be a better way…
I remember my history teacher at secondary school explaining to me that the reason British soldiers wore red tunics in battle for over three centuries (starting during the English Civil War and ending with the Zulu War) was for two reasons; the first being to mask blood from wounds, and the second, because the sight of massed ranks of red-coated soldiers instilled awe and fear in the enemy.
Whatever the merits of either of these theories (and I think the revolutionary American armies would have had a their own distinctive opinion concerning the latter), the emergence of accurate, long-range rifles towards the end of the 19th century turned British redcoats from swaggering symbols of imperial might into haplass sitting ducks for snipers everywhere – from the Hindu Cush to the high velt.
Fortunately for the makers of the film Zulu, and little Adams throughout 1960’s UK, the red tunic was still in use by the British Army at the outset of the Zulu war of 1879. For, if the redcoat was nothing else, it was highly photogenic, especially against the majestic backdrop of the Drakensburg Mountains of Natal. Several historical inaccuracies notwithstanding (e.g. the British troops engaged belonged to the 2nd Warwickshires and not the Welsh Borderers, with most of the men hailing from Birmingham rather than South Wales, and the Zulu force being led by a young renegade prince, acting against the orders of King Cetshwayo), the film Zulu fired the imaginations of a generation of children. In my case, together with Rudolf Maté’s worthy-but-wooden 1963 offering of The 300 Spartans, Zulu began and shaped the entire course of my lifelong self-education in history, ancient and less-so.
All of which brings me to the slightly surreal photo which heads this piece – members of Gibraltar’s Reenactment Society, in uniforms of the Zulu War period, taking a lunchbreak in our local Burger King, here in Gibraltar. Every Saturday, throughout the Spring and Summer, this little band of enthusiasts, entertains (and in some cases perplexes) locals and tourists alike with a march or two up and down Main Street, to and from Casemates Square. Their uniforms cover most of the British imperial era, from the scarlet of the American and Napoleonic wars all the way to the khaki and green of WWII. And, although I’ve seen them on their well-earned breaks many times, normally with a refreshing pint in hand, and perhaps a slice of pizza, this scene struck me as particularly curious. So much so, a third practicality for the redcoat tunic occured to me that probably never occurred to men like Cornwallis and Wellington, that being a mask for ketchup stains as well as blood!
Our local mountain, Maroma, snow capped this April, for the first time in several years. A welcome wintery scene, guaranteeing this year’s water supply to the pueblos and springs.
We purchased our finca and moved to the Axarquia region of Andalucia in 1993. Like many people unfamiliar with the region and its seasons, we were surprised by the severity of our first winter, both with regards to its length and its chilly dampness. 93/94 was particularly harsh, with heavy rains beginning in late August and continuing off and on until mid April. The tops of the sierras were regularly blanketed in snow, and shrouded in dark cloud, and for much of the time our own hills felt more like those of Cumbria than of southern Iberia.
The Axarquian locals have a distinctly ambivalent attitude to their winters; on the one hand, many being farmers or related to farmers, they celebrate the breaking of the summer droughts and the first rains, but on the other hand; being true Andalusians they quickly tire of the cold and the damp and long for the return of the Spring sunshine.
In the winter of 2006it wasn’t only the sierras that got a covering of snow . This was at our late friend and neighbour, Edgar’s place, and one of his two rescued Shetland ponies looking as happy as Larry in the wintery conditions.
The summer of our arrival in 1993 marked the end of about seven years of overly dry winters for much of the Mediterranean rim, with several climate scientists confidently predicting that our part of Spain “would resemble the Sahara by 2003”. Fortunately, the predictions proved wildly incorrect, both with that winter’s appropriately biblical rains, and then the following six or seven being equally long, wet and often very cold. One year, for example, about 30% of the Rio Velez Valley avocado and mango orchards were destroyed by a harsh early-winter frost. Subsequent to those first 14 years, we’ve experienced smaller runs of wet and then dryish winters, the latest such dryish run being the last four years which thankfully broke this winter, with long periods of rain, filling reservoirs and the reassuring sight of snow-peaked sierras.
However accurate or not the predictions of the climate scientists have proven, or will prove for this corner of Europe, the coming of the Sahara still feels a long way off.
Edgar’s stallion Ned however looking a little less certain with his first experience of the white stuff, even if wearing the appropriate tartan. And remember, this was three years after climate scientists had predicted that this would be a Saharan scene…
This must have happened to most people reading this post. You mislay a possession somewhere in your home, and while turning out various drawers, cupboards and shelves searching for it, you discover something else, long-forgotten, and often more precious than the original object.
Last week I was rummaging through a wooden chest we use for storing bits and pieces, looking for a lost drawing when instead, I turned up a small bundle, packed with old photos of my wife Dido from her time as a ballerina and a model. My curiosity at finding dozens of images that I had never seen before was heightened, when among the pictures I also found a yellowed, newspaper article from the Saturday edition of the Glasgow Evening Times, featuring Dido and another Sadlers Wells dancer, Nick Millington.
Although the article was for a Glasgow newspaper, the shoot was done in London, before a Scottish tour. The reporter, Rosemary Long, writes an entertaining piece, but she gets a couple of things slightly wrong; Dido’s“huge – doe-like” eyes are blue-grey, not “brown”, and the other issues I deal with below.
However, while I of course enjoyed the article, and got the whole forthcoming Scottish tour – Scottish interest thing, there were several details, probably due to a desire to accentuate a direct Scots connection, the journalist got slightly wrong. And, as is often the case, the more complicated truth, is also much more interesting.
While Dido’s parents regarded themselves as proud Scots, they were both born continents and oceans distant from Saltcoats and Edinburgh respectively.
Ann’s very Scottish father (who was from Saltcoats) was a high ranking doctor in the British Army of India, where she was born in Murree (now Kashmiri Pakistan). Following the war, Ann was educated at the famous Quaker private school, The Mount in York where she met Judy Dench, a fellow pupil. So, while some of Ann’s family did indeed hail from Saltcoats (others also hailed from Pitlochry), she herself, was not a native.
Ann’s family lived on a houseboat during her childhood in Murree, probably similar to this, from the 1930’s
Dido’s father, David, was born in Long Island (New York) during the journey to the UK from Chile where the family had interests in copper mines. He was later educated in Scotland where he attended Loretto School outside Edinburgh (Scotland’s oldest boarding school)) before leaving Scotland for London, where he studied medicine at Guy’s (teaching) Hospital (NOT “Edinburgh University”). David eventually became a general practitioner, later specialising in pulmonary medicine.
David’s family moved from Chile to the slightly less exotic west London suburb of Northolt, where he spent his childhood.
David met Ann in London where she was an opera student at LAMDA (London school of Music and Dramatic Art) and working as an usherette at Covent Garden. Soon after they married, they immigrated to Canada in the early 1960’s, and then on to Dallas (Texas). Together with their two children, Dido and her older brother Niall, they then moved around the United States according to David’s latest medical posting, including spells in Kentucky and Ohio before finally settling in Little Rock (Arkansas). There, David worked at the UAMS (University of Arkansas Medical School) and the VA (Veterans’) Hospital as professor of pulmonary medicine until his retirement, while Ann became something of an Arkansas celebrity, broadcasting a weekly culture “magazine” show (“Arts Scene“) for the state university radio station (KLRE-KUAR). In all that time, they never took up US citizenship – preferring the status of resident aliens, and “proud Scots”.
Thus, as I said, while Saltcoats and Edinburgh did feature in Dido’s immediate ancestry, it wasn’t in quite the way the journalist reported it. As for her “attractive Stateside drawl…”, these days it’s still attractive, but more mid-Atlantic.
Followers of this site will already be familiar with many of the details of our remarkable trip to Chile back in 1991, just several months after the demise the Pinochet regime.
As if to mark this new era of democracy, freedom and hope, the month we arrived, the southern Atacama Desert experienced – what we were assured by the locals – were the first meaningful rains in forty years, and so, as if in celebration, exploded in a riot of colour. It was as if a vast technicolor carpet had been laid atop the normally monochromatic desert floor as every cactus, every succulent and every dormant seed erupted into vivid flower.
Even in normal circumstances Chile’s many disparate landscapes offer a stunning smorgasbord for the visual senses, but this was simply wondrous. Rarely have we experienced, before or since, such good luck being in the right place at the right time.
The dozen or so images presented here give a taste of what we were so privileged to witness with our own eyes…
Several eminent British space scientists have all just predicted that 2024 will be the year that the existence of extraterrestrial life is finally proved. Nothing concrete has yet been published, but murmings about distinct “biosignatures” and exoplanets detected by the Webb Telescope are apparently soon to be revealed in a British scientific paper.
I first heard these rumours the same day we picked the “alien” lemon pictured above. The tree from which the bizarre fruit comes is our oldest lemon tree (we planted it 30 years ago on the terraces of our finca in southern Spain), and while the tree has often presented us with freakish fruits – including one lemon the size of a rugby ball and weighing over a kilo (over 2lbs) – this was by far its weirdest offering to date. So weird in fact, it had me recalling the fruit bowls dotted around the sets of the (Next Generation) Enterprise, filled with wax creations of the studio props team, and how even they never dreamed up anything as odd, or indeed alien looking as our lemon.
So, with this in mind, I would like to wish all my readers – terrestrials and alien – a very happy and peaceful 2024.
Bedu playing a form of draughts with petrified camel turds…
In 1978, my oldest friend Simon and I spent the summer as volunteers on a kibbutz in northern Israel. Although our labour was voluntary we were paid a weekly amount to cover basic needs such as cigarettes, booze and staples from the kibbutz general store. Fortunately, we didn’t smoke; the beer was cheap, and we were sufficiently content with the food produced in the members’ dining room that we’d spent relatively little, and by the end of the stay had a reasonable amount of money saved up. We decided to pool our savings with another couple of English guys, Tim and Ben, hire the cheapest car available (which happened to be a typical 70’s yellow Fiat 127) and drive down south to spend a week in the Sinai Desert.
Our trusty yellow “horse with no name” above the Valley of the Inscriptions…
The Sinai was still under Israeli rule back then, free to roam almost all the way to the edge of the Suez Canal. Little did we appreciate then, that a uniquely peaceful era in the modern history of the Sinai was nearing its end and that we were about to enjoy privileged access to virtually the entire peninsula.
A typical scene at Nueba…
These days, most travellers associate the Sinai primarily with its exotic beach resorts and scuba diving and snorkelling. And little wonder, as the peninsula is blessed with a sublime coastline both above and beneath the waves. Even now, the beach at Dahab remains the most beautiful I have ever seen, and the Sinai’s coral reef―as regards accessibility and quality―is a match for any other in the world.
My old mate Simon, on salt flats near Ras Mohammed
But for me, from the moment we passed through Eilat and entered the peninsula its superlative watery attractions notwithstanding, the feature which most grabbed my attention was the equally extraordinary landscape. The combination of desert plains and craggy mountains in a myriad of different colours; from white, to golden ochre through deep umbers and sienna, and culminating in blues and purples, was simply astonishing. The changing light; the chromatic sunrises; the intense sapphire of the day and the copper-tone sunsets reacted with the multi-surfaced sand and rock, presenting an optical feast of shifting tones and colouration.
The southern Sinai range erupting from the flat desert plane “like brooding granite ice bergs above a gravelly, sandy ocean…“
In the south of the Sinai Peninsula in particular it was easy to see how its awesome visual dramatics gave birth to Yahweh―the eventual supreme divinity of the Israelites, and which would gradually evolve into the monotheistic Judeo-Christian concept of “God”. And funnily enough, of all the many remarkable aspects of the Sinai, the one which struck me most had an appropriately biblical reference: I recalled, even back then, the passage (Exodus 19:12) where Yahweh warns the Children of Israel not to touch the sacred mount (Mount Sinai / Horeb) “or they shall certainly die”. Until witnessing for myself the “biblical wilderness”―familiar then, only with the mountains of Europe which have nothing like defined parameters, but rather evolved from their neighbouring foothills which themselves slowly emerged from undulating plains―I had always found that to be an odd warning. I even recalled as a child in Synagogue on a Saturday morning, when first reading the relevant passage, asking my grandfather how the poor Israelites were supposed to know where the sacred mount began. But now, looking at the actual mountains of southern Sinai, thrusting forth from ironing-board-flat plains like brooding icebergs above a gravelly, sandy ocean, I could immediately attest to the voracity of the biblical author’s knowledge of the geography he was describing. And it sent a shiver down my spine.
Snorkelling off the southern Sinai coast was beautiful and awesome in equal measure…
Presented here are a handful of the dozens of photos I took on that trip with my old Cannonet 28 on high-speed Ektachrome film. Sadly, most of the transparencies were too damaged to convert, but I think these few, in their raw, scratched and grainy condition, begin to convey to sheer wonder of what we saw on that wonderful trip to that “great and terrible wilderness”.
Finally, and on a lighter note, I recommend viewing these images to the sound of America and their iconic track The Horse With No Name . This song became a kind of unofficial anthem to our trip, and thus the adoptive name of our trusty little Fiat…
In my previous post I described several instances of discovering wonderful food in the plainest of locations, and since I published that piece, I have also discovered human beauty in an unexpected location.
It happened in Almuñécar, a seaside town on the Granada coast. We were there for the annual “Jazz en la Costa” music festival, when we were enjoying a late post concert beer at an all-night churreria and crisp (chip) frying shack on the beach.
Dido, our friend Pepa and I were feeling a bit down having just witnessed a hugely disappointing performance by the legendary jazz pianist, Abdullah Ibrahim. Unfortunately the elder statesman of South African jazz had a very bad night indeed, constantly hitting off-notes and missing his queues. And that, compounded by the hapless attempts of his sax and double bass accompaniasts to occasionally play jazz riffs on piccolo and cello respectively! So embarrassingly awful was the performance, that we upped and left early to seek solace in some liquid refreshment, and so found ourselves at the churreria.
Within seconds of sitting down at the table I became captivated by a scene of such elegant industry and confident movement, the recent memory of Mr Ibrahim’s faltering piano playing drifted away on the Mediterranean night breeze.
These images are my photoshopped fun attempt to turn a few hastily snapped iPhone photos of that effortlessly stylish scene into a modern-day Vermeer-esque tableau. I hope they please…
Francophones have long understood the difference between a hearty gourmand and a fastidious gourmet, and their two sharply distinct gastronomic philosophies – the first being a love of all good food (and all good drink), and the latter, a love of the refinement of good food (and good drink). These days, the closest Anglophone equivalent would be “foodie” versus “trencherman” or “trencherwoman”.
As someone who both used to eat regularly in Michelin starred restaurants (including many 3-star establishments), and who makes wine I am often presumed to fall into the “foodie” camp. Yet, while it’s certainly true that I found many of those fine dining experiences highly enjoyable, none of them provided me with unforgettable plates of food. Quite the opposite in the majority of cases, when the theatre of the experience, and the food’s appearance was deemed far more important than what the stuff plated up actually tasted like.
While the advent of Nouvelle Cuisine began my disillusionment with “fine dining”, the arrival of its evil twin-spawn, “molecular gastronomy” and “New Nordic” killed off any lingering affection I had for the concept of haute cuisine. Although, in fairness, the few such up-scale dining experiences I was unable to avoid were incredibly memorable – albeit, for their smug, and aloof awfulness. These days, the minute I see a self-consciously-ernest chef wielding a pair of tweezers I’m outa there quicker than spittle on a red-hot skillet. Ironic really, that the Nordics of all people, should have created the gastronomic equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes. Hans Christian Anderson, being the devout trencherman he was must be turning in his grave.
The reason I mention all of the above, is because I was asked the other day by an old friend to name the best meals from all my years of travel? Then, as I began running through the half dozen or so plates of food that immediately sprung to mind, he and I noticed that not one of them had been served up at a posh restaurant. On the contrary, each and every item was as simple and basic as the eatery in which it had been prepared. So surprised was my old mate by my list, he suggested I devote a post to it, and hence this, which if nothing else, and despite a touch of self-indulgence, might help convince one or two people, especially in these financially stretched times, to look for their culinary treats in good, honest, modest establishments, where flavour and quality is everything.
Wild rabbit stewed with prunes and red wine: Driving down from Catalonia to the south of Spain, we stopped at lunchtime at an empty and drearily decorated cafe-type place – pealing linoleum floor, steel counters and flickering fluorescent strip lights near Gerri de la Sal. Seeing only things like egg, chorizo and chips on the grease-smeared laminated menu, I asked the apparently depressed girl serving us if there was anything else to eat? She said that her father had shot a rabbit that morning and that it had been stewing all day in a “nice gravy”. It was my first ever taste of rabbit of any variety, and it, and the red wine gravy, generously populated with large, juicy prunes was simply exquisite. It remains the best lunch I have ever eaten – anywhere: Price, with a glass of local red; about €4.00 in today’s money.
Samosa chaat: During our trip to southern India, we were based in the industrial city of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, where Dido was helping set up an autism clinic. One day, while Dido was working, the son of our host took me shopping for “authentic tailor made” “Pierre Cardin” shirts. While the three shirts were being made up we went for lunch at a highly recommended near-by street-food cafe. It was suggested that I try the samosa chaat, which I presumed would be a typical, potato and pea filled pasty with an accompanying bowl of chickpea chhole (stew). But while I was correct about the constituent parts of my lunch, I could never have guessed that the samosa would be broken up and mashed into the chhole, and then eaten scooped up with a couple of fresh chapatis. It was a flavour/texture revelation, and easily the tastiest thing I ate in all our time in India – and boy, that’s really saying something. I washed it down with a bottle of King Fisher lager (a very different and much better beer in India than the swill brewed under license in the UK): Price, about 50 pence, in UK money.
Penne pomodoro: I can’t be the only person to have found that in general, pasta (and pizza) is always better when eaten in Italy. While there might be an element of the truism in this claim, it is certainly true that the only two memorable pasta meals I enjoyed were both eaten in that country. While one was merely the excellence expected from a tagliatelle a la Bolognaise served in a Bologna osteria, the other was something surprising as it was inexplicable. As the main dish element of a set lunch in a lorry stop outside Piacenza we were served deep bowls of penne coated in a tomato sauce (made from freshly skinned and crushed tomatoes), sprinkled with the usual parmesan and black pepper. Neither Dido nor I could tell you quite why, but this remains the single plate of food we first remember as a couple (Dido did not eat the rabbit mentioned above). All I can say, is that it exemplified why so many Italians are happy to dine on such simple food on a daily basis. It was taste and texture in perfect harmony: Total cost of menu, with as much local red sfusi as we liked about €4 each.
Fried chicken with slaw: Swap fermata del camion for truck stop gas station diner, and northern Italy for south east Missouri and imagine a plate of such perfect fried chicken that I found myself chewing on the bones themselves. And to accompany this with a freshly made, tangy and sweet, crunchy slaw, washed down with an ice cold diet Coke, was for me at least, as close to every-day American food heaven as it’s possible to achieve. Tragically, we can’t remember the name of the diner or its exact location, except that it was about an hour south of St. Louis on Route 67. If anyone reading this has an idea where we experienced this poultry perfection, I would be keen to record it: Price for one, about $12.00.
Ham sandwich: I acquired severe flying phobia in my mid-20’s and it lasted about 10 years (long story). As luck would have it, this coincided with our move down to southern Spain, which meant that from 1993 until about 1997 whenever we needed to get back to England we had to drive. The good side of this was that we got to eat lots of lunches and suppers on the roads of France and Spain, including some pretty amazing plates of food – a particular portion of sauteed calves liver in France, and grilled quail in Spain spring to mind. But, by far the most memorable thing we ate was for breakfast, at a rough and ready cafe/bar, in a small town just south of Amiens. We had caught the very early morning ferry and had eaten nothing since leaving London about five hours earlier, so it is possible that extreme hunger played its part in our response to what remains the best meat sandwich we ever ate. Our normal road trip breakfast in France was simply a plain croissant with a cafe au lait. But the large, moustachioed proprietor of this humble bar – drawn straight from the pages of Asterix – was having none of that. We did get our coffees, but with them he put on the little table two sandwiches, comprising long sections of a broad super-sized home-baked baguette, still warm from the oven, encasing thick, unctuous slathers of moist cooked ham, dressed with about half a packet of locally made Normandy butter each, and lashings of Dijon mustard. My mouth is watering even now with the memory. Our constant smiles while eating these enormous slabs of, soft, chewy, yielding, savoury heaven, were as broad as the loaves themselves. Truly, the equal of anything either of us had in all our hundreds of meals in France: Price for two, with coffee, about €6.
Hamburger: Dido and I went to Australia three times for her work in the early 2000’s, and always made sure to find time for some road travel. On one such drive we were travelling around the wine country west of Sydney in New South Wales, when the hunger pangs began, and we agreed to stop at the first place we came to. This turned out to be a another truck stop (something of a theme developing here) in a small ex-mining town (actually referred to as village by the locals) called Barmedman. The diner was almost as vast inside as the lorry park was outside, and just as bleak – all formica, steel and the ubiquitous strip lighting. So, when we saw the poster, above the grill with the boast, in huge red letters, “BEST BURGERS IN AUSTRALIA”, we remained dubious. However, Dido decided to take up the challenge and ordered the most basic beef burger on offer, while I went with that day’s special – a lasagna. We were surprised when the very friendly lady doing the cooking asked Dido how she wanted the burger cooked, and thus confirming that the patties were home made. Dido asked for it to be medium-rare. My lasagna was as acceptable as it was unremarkable, but Dido’s burger was a masterpiece of the genre. Again, as with the penne above, hard to explain in words exactly why? Perhaps the typically excellent Aussie beef (as good as any on the planet) – prime chuck, hand chopped and formed, and simply seasoned (no egg, rusk, filler or flavourings); the light charing from the grill; the quality cheddar slice, perfectly melted, and the sweet tomato, red onion and crunchy, lettuce trimmings; and also the bun itself – soft on the inside but with a just firm enough crust to retain its integrity from first to final bite. Fortunately for me, the burger was as big as it was delicious, so I got to eat that final bite, plus some more besides. Pure burger bliss: Price with fries and a soft drink, around A$ 8.00.
Close runners up to all of the above are equally uncomplicated, and would include the likes of just about any felafel I ate at the old Tel Aviv main bus station; and a grilled fillet steak accompanied by a bottle of Penfolds Grange (greatest “Rhone” made outside of France and one of the very few wines worth splashing out more than £50 on) in the Qantas First lounge restaurant at Melbourne Airport – certainly the best “free” meal I ever had.
In any event, I hope this piece finally settles my status as a trencherman, and not a foodie. Friends, please take note!
*Header photo is an old-school selfie taken at the Barmedman truck stop while waiting for our meal.
a series of virtual guaches from slovenia’s delightful capital city
It’s been a long time since I presented a simple pictorial travelogue on this site, but it seems best in this case to let the images do the talking. All I will add, is that it would be hard to find a more pleasant city break, or long weekend destination, complete with fabulous local wines and excellent cuisine (Italian-cum-Balkan-cum-Austro-Hungarian). And all at a reasonable price. Refreshing and surprising (at least to me) in equal measure…
ARKS, ADAM AND AXARQUIA 