Red Sea Crossing

I am grateful to Peter for the following piece of information:
As you know, Cecil B de Mille was a great producer of biblical epics in the Hollywood style. It seems that, when filming the Ten Commandments, he spared no expense on the scene where the Israelites cross the Red Sea. He created a gigantic film set, hired literally thousands of extras, had the special effects and the sound recorder boys at the ready, and so on. When he deemed it ready for the shoot, he was about to call "Action!" when the heavens opened and God's voice boomed down from the clouds: "Ready when you are, Mr de Mille."

Hamsi

My many visits to Ankara between 1989 and 2003-ish are filled with good memories - of the many wonderful people I worked with; of the fascinating excursions I made to see the cultural, historical and geographical wonders of Turkey; of the endless fascination of trying to learn Turkish; and, I won't say above all, but at least not least, of the delicious variety of food I ate and wine I drank.
Ankara reminds me of Madrid in one respect - they are both as far from the sea as they can be, and yet they both have a reputation for excellent fish restaurants, with fish brought in daily from the coast.
Iskele, Deniz Yildizi and Yakamoz - memorable fish restaurants; only wish I could remember the names of all the dishes and fishes I sampled over the years.
But one I do remember:- a dish called hamsi, although it was a long time before I knew what hamsi were.
This note is prompted by a marvellous discovery I made today while doing my weekly shopping at Tesco's in Ely: they now stock hamsi in their delicatessen section! Except that, of course, they call them anchovies. I bought a portion and am now having great difficulty in refraining from eating them all in one go.
Many years ago, one of my teachers, about 30 years old said "I sometimes think that the pleasures of the table are preferable to the pleasures of the bedroom", and I thought, what a pillock. But as I approach my seventy-third year to Heaven, I have to say it will take an incredibly buxom woman on an incredibly shiny tractor to lure me away from my dish of Tesco's hamsi.

More fenland foolishness

An ice-cold day out on the fens erecting new Barn Owl boxes and modifying old ones.
It's an interesting mix of art, craft and science.
The science is knowing from systematic observation what the bird's requirements are, for instance, the need for a clear approach to the box, the need for some kind of initial layer (we use wood shavings) to cover up the bare-boarded floor.
The craft consists of the skill in constructing the box so that it is easy to make, easy to assemble, easy to erect and easy to monitor and maintain; and thereafter, in knowing the tricks for erecting boxes in many varying situations: on brickwork, on beams, on trees, and so on.
The art consists in knowing where to put the box to make it maximally attractive to the birds. And it is this last that is the most fun, because, being an art and therefore imprecise, it is the most likely to cause differences of opinion between my colleague Peter and me. Not that we argue, you understand; it's just that sometimes he has difficulty seeing that I am right.

Just kidding, Peter. It's always a joy to be out on the fens, frozen goolies notwithstanding, not only because what we are doing is in itself worthwhile, but also because we get to see some wonderful parts of the fens and meet some wonderful people too.
The lunchtime BLT sandwiches from Budgen aren't bad either.

Het es cowd

When the delicious young lady who later became Mrs Allsop and I first met, you know how it is, we explored each other. I am too much of a gentleman to be more specific, but I will share one piece of discovered information with you. I discovered that my good lady had spent the summer in Holland when she was 16 or so, and had learned just one phrase of Dutch: het es cowd - at least that's how she pronounced it. Ever since - and we are talking five decades or so - whenever I look out of the window of a morning and see the hoar frost on the ground, I say Het es cowd. At the moment, we have vicious arctic winds pulling down the temperature, so at the moment het es really f.........g cowd, believe me: a good excuse for adding a shluck of brandy to my bedtime cocoa.

Racy Newmarket

Yesterday I went to Newmarket, which has one of the most elegant main streets of any town I know in Britain (Sorry, I don't have a photo later than 1905). It is broad and long, with inns at intervals where, in the old days, stagecoaches would pull up so that their passengers could find victuals and a bed for the night. Many of the shops are one-man businesses, quaint really, and quite different from the multiples that blight most town high streets these days. Newmarket is a racehorse town, and it shows. Quite apart from the stables and the exercise paddocks, I know of no town that has so many short bow-legged men, or so many stern-looking women with sensible shoes and moustaches.
But my mission was a specific one, to go to the emporium called Kitchen and Things, a real labyrinth of passages and carousels selling everything culinary that you can think of. I found what I wanted - a wine rack for my home-made booze - and a couple of other things besides. Now, here's a bonus: on the way there, just short of Soham, two birds flew across the road in front of me, going at speed. They were starling-shaped, and there was a flash of waxy yellow on both of them.
It's a great wine rack, but I do wish Waxwings - if that is what they were - would slow down a bit, and preferably come feed on the berry-laden Guelder Rose next to my patio.

Trellis on card games

Mrs Trellis shows the breadth of her life experience.
Dear Germaine Greer, she writes, I was fascinated by your piece on the game of cribbage, though I didn't agree with most of your expressions. For example, my late husband, Mr Trellis, always said "Jack up for two!" not "two for his heels", and always seemed to find the expression very amusing. But then, he often laughed for no particular reason I could see, like whenever he asked to "see my box". But I am sure you and I share a mutual incomprehension of the workings of the male mind.
Anyway, there is more to life than cribbage, and I am glad to see that you are still fighting the feminist cause in your old age. Like me, I notice that your neck has gone, but "there's a dance or two in the old dame yet", as Mrs Thatcher used to say. By the way, although I admire your struggle for women's rights, I do hope you are not a lesbian, because I can imagine nothing worse than having to share the bathroom with another woman.
Yours etc
Blodwen Trellis, Mrs, Widow, retired

The Lurch

It's a long time since I took one for his knob. Or two for his heels. It's a long time since I added up fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, and six is a dozen. All this because I only discovered today the origin of the phrase to leave someone in the lurch. If you have ever "died in the hole", you were left in the lurch, because that is exactly what the lurch is: you are on 50, when your opponent has sailed past you to win the game.
Have you the slightest idea what I am talking about? If you haven't, then it means that your youth was not misspent as mine was. Thanks, dad, you were a great card player.
My best year at this game was the year I spent teaching at Longton High School, Stoke on Trent. Most evenings, I went to the Windmill pub at Meir Heath near where I had digs, and sat at the table with the cribbage enthusiasts playing crib and drinking pints till it was time to stagger back down the hill to my lumpy bed chez Mrs Ainsley, a dyky sort of woman, who never tired of telling me she was descended from the famous Ashley pottery family, and equally never tired of telling me what a wonderfully SUPERIOR person her previous lodger, Michael, was. Superior to me, that is. I wouldn't have given one for HIS knob, and that's a fact.