The Frumplingtons

Just finished reading Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down by Nicey and Wifey. I feel I must state my position from the outset: I like Plain Chocolate Digestives for one simple reason — they are far better than Milk Chocolate Digestives. End of story as far as I’m concerned. However, according to the opinions expressed in this otherwise super little book, my preferences mark me out as someone with a pronounced superiority complex. Well, I’m not the argumentative sort as a rule, but I will say just one thing in reply to that: my favourite biscuits are better than your favourites, so there!

And while I’m being all superior, I would also like to put in a good word for Pink Wafers, which are much derided by Nicey. (Such chauvinistic attitudes really must not be allowed to go unchallenged.)

But let’s not get too belligerent about all this. After all, we’re talking about the pleasures of tea and biscuits here.

Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down covers virtually every aspect of the tea and biscuit experience, from the technicalities and techniques of dunking, to what sounds like a horrendous example of bad table manners: the Tim Tam Slam, a pastime indulged in not in the far more demure tea rooms of England, but by (yes, you guessed it) Australians!

Most of the well-known biscuits and their various characteristics are discussed in this book. As well as difficult matters of etiquette, such as mug thieves in the workplace, and what to do if you are at a stand-up buffet and are trying to juggle three or more plates at once.

Nicey and Wifey are not afraid to explore areas of controversy, including the court case involving ASDA and the imitation Penguin; and the great Jaffa Cake controversy: is it a cake or is it a biscuit? (Oops, sorry Nicey, you’re too late, it’s neither biscuit nor cake: it’s GONE. Apologies for talking with my mouth full, by the way.)

And for brainy readers there is even a bit of science stuff, about the processes that go into creating some bizarre substance called hydrogenated fat, which is an important ingredient of some biscuits. And a really quite off-putting description of the family dog in a piece about Why Americans Call Biscuits ‘Cookies’. Not while we’re eating, please Nicey.

Nicey and Wifey also enjoy frequent bouts of biscuit anthropomorphism. Ironically, this is most in evidence in the section on Cake, and in particular about wedding cake, which apparently likes a drink or two. Or three.

Or four.

Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down is a wonderfully warm and funny read. The only real thing missing from it is that there is no mention of Gipsy Creams, a true classic biscuit if ever there was one. This fantastic biscuit is however, judging from recent correspondence on the Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down website, in danger of disappearing altogether. And this, I think we can all agree, would be a tragedy. Time for a campaign to prevent their total extinction, I think.

Chris

John Peel was — indeed, still is — considered by many to have been one of the world’s greatest radio presenters, although Peel himself would doubtless have shrugged off such wanton admiration.
Margrave of the Marshes is written in his familiar understated, at times whimsical style. Or at least, half the book was written by John; a computer problem resulted in his early drafts of the book being accidentally deleted, and he had to start all over again. Sadly, he did not live long enough to complete the book. The second half was written by Sheila, whom John affectionally dubbed ‘Pig’ and tells the story from John’s return to England from the USA (where he spent most of the 1960s) right up to his untimely death, at the age of 65, on holiday in Peru, which he had always wanted to visit. Familiar material to Peel fans maybe, but an absorbing read nonetheless.

Mitch Albom has achieved quite a difficult feat: he has written this book, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, which tells the story of an elderly fairground worker who is involved in an horrific accident. By bringing the various events of Eddie’s life into perspective, we see how everyone’s lives are intertwined in one vast fatalistic matrix. It is a sort of fable, a morality tale, if you will; what it essentially says is that even the lowliest member of society is important in the grander scheme of things. In less experienced hands, this story might have come across as sickeningly over-sentimental. But Mitch Albom has managed to avoid falling into that trap. And instead, this is a moving, thought-provoking story. Highly recommended.

When Wall Street Journal writer Stefan Fatsis decides to try to become a Scrabble champion, he has little idea of what he has let himself in for. Especially as he begins his mission by beating none other than John Williams. Who he? Only the top man at the National Scrabble Association, that’s all. Thus lulled into a false sense of security, Stefan sets off to explore the twilight world of competitive Scrabble. Word Freak is his story of his experiences along the way.

Scrabble has, some would say, more than its fair share of eccentric characters, and Stefan plays against them all: to name but a few, there’s pill-popping health nut, Matt; black rights activist, Marlon; the Man With a Thousand Allergies, GI Joel; and Scrabble supremo, Joe Edley, who used to sleep under a bush in his local park — because he believed it would be a character-building experience.

The scariest opponents though, were the many middle-aged women in Scrabble’s lower leagues; women Stefan nicknamed ‘blue-hairs’, and who were not all as mild-mannered as he at first suspected.

Stefan also explains how Scrabble developed over the years and why many players feel it is undervalued by the companies that make and sell it. And he meets the men who gave years of their lives to help produce Scrabble’s definitive dictionaries and word lists, only to receive virtually no reward for all their efforts.

But the big question is: Did Stefan Fatsis finally manage to become Scrabble Champion of the World?

All I will reveal is that he was present at the World Finals. If you want to know more than that you’ll have to buy the book and find out for yourself.

Mid term elections are underway in the USA, but if you thought modern-day politics could get a trifle heated from time to time, you should try the fourteenth-century Italian equivalent: as Frances Stonor Saunders explains in Hawkwood, that had a tendency to verge on the positively nasty.

Top players on the Italian scene back then were the Visconti family up in the north of the country; and the Pope in Rome and the Papal States. The fact that the papacy — and its vast accumulated wealth — spent most of the fourteenth century holed up in Avignon certainly didn’t stop the Popes of the time from meddling in Italian affairs; on the contrary, they were among the most active combatants of the time.

Around 1360, in the early days of the Hundred Years War, England and France declared a truce. Instead of returning to England though, large numbers of now unemployed soldiers were left to wander around France, causing mayhem wherever they went. (Saunders suggests that this may have been a deliberate tactic on the part of the English king, Edward III, to ’soften up’ the French, hoping that they would make concessions in return for Edward calling off his troops. And who am I to argue?)

Essex boy, John Hawkwood, was already in command of a whole company of troops, and his men were no different from any other soldiers of the time. Forget all those old ideas of mediaeval chivalry and damsels in distress; freelance soldiering was all about extorting ransom money from individuals or entire towns. If a ransom was paid, then the person or town in question might be spared further harrassment (although this was by no means guaranteed).

But the wily old Pope, who was himself under pressure from Hawkwood’s troops, saw a chance to kill two birds with one stone. How? By persuading Hawkwood to take his men to Italy and bother the Viscontis instead. Hawkwood would therefore be working for the Pope. (Mediaeval religion was quite a bit different then from how it is today; clearly, things were a lot more action-packed back then.)

Both the Pope and the Viscontis had reason to employ mercenary, John Hawkwood, at various times. It was while he was in the pay of the Pope that Hawkwood became embroiled in one of the worst massacres of the Middle Ages, at Cesena. Whether this was carried out on the direct orders of the Pope is still a matter for speculation.

While reading this book, I lost count of the number of times Hawkwood changed sides. If the Pope was a bit tardy with the payments Hawkwood would simply transfer his allegiances to the Viscontis. And vice versa. (And if he and his men were at a loose end, they were not averse to doing a bit of pillaging and laying waste to the countryside to wile away the hours.)

Hawkwood isn’t just about one man though. It brings the whole of the latter half of the fourteenth century to life in ways that you never dreamed possible. All sorts of other people are woven into the narrative, from Chaucer (yes, the Chaucer) who based some of the characters in his Canterbury Tales on real people of the time, possibly even including John Hawkwood himself; and the frankly oddball Catherine of Siena, who later went on to become a saint.

As for what happens to Hawkwood in the end, well, you’ll have to read the book for yourself to find out. But it’s a good read, and no mistake.

In conclusion, there was a time, not so long ago either, when, if you had given me a copy of Hawkwood and said, “Here’s a book about fourteenth century Italian history,” I would have laughed derisively at you, mumbled my thanks and promptly filed it under ‘miscellaneous’ (meaning: “What a dull subject. This can go straight to the bottom of my personal slush pile.“). Frances Stonor Saunders’ Hawkwood has opened my eyes to a whole new world.