This is a strange affair

This is a strange affair.
One of many many fine songs by this man and some I have played for a long time. You can look him up for yourself, not look back and gain much. His song 'This is a strange affair' is, for me, one of the most moving of all songs. You can see Linda his wife singing it on the Tube but when I heard June Tabor singing it with Martin's (Simpson) guitar it was one of those times you have to sing it. I can play the guitar part ok but my wife can sing it with a haunting touch and we are moved. No recording of that yet but do yourself a favour and hear June and Martin here - if you or someone have time past and passing in your life you will hear the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVFpMLE6WIo&feature=related

Blackberry time

We managed to catch the last of these up along the loch - scratches and yelps later and we had a bucketful apart from the ones that were eaten along the way. Blackberries are really good food and full of antioxidants and omega 3 - whatever they are. Personally I think they triumph in Blackberry & Apple pie but here is our recipe for Blackberry wine - chateau longwayhome.


4lb Blackberries
3lb Sugar
1 Gallon water
Yeast
Pectic Enzyme

1. Wash berries well - small maggots hide in 'em.
2. Put fruit in a basin and crush well with a wood spoon.
3. Pour over the gallon of boiling water.
4. Leave until lukewarm - add the pectic enzyme according to instructions.
5. next day add the yeast.
6. Cover and leave for 4/5 days - stir every day.
7. Strain through net or muslim onto the 3lb of sugar. Stir well.
8. Pour into a dark fermenting jar - just to the shoulder of the jar. Fit an air lock.
9. Keep the spare stuff in a bottle plugged with c.wool. Keep an eye on for a week to see if it is going to erupt through the airlock - if all ok add the leftover stuff.
10. Keep in a dark warmich place.
11. Wait until it clears and rack off into bottles. Keep for a year - (if you can) but taste occasionally to check it is ok.

John Martin

Ever heard of him? Many other people I ask haven't either. Maybe where you are that that is reasonable but up here in Scotland it is just a sadness. if you haven't go to this place on You Tube and listen to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNnzrlim-4&feature=PlayList&p=5DDD1F72895684EB&index=0&playnext=1
John died just before Christmas last year and gave his last performance in Glasgow -home town - just a couple of months before.
You can see this on the Tube too if you look.
I've been listening to John since the 70's and playing some of his songs. I think he is the finest songwriter ever to come out of Glasgow and think he should have a statue in George Square.
His music explored all avenues - his songs recorded by so many - his asscoiations and contributions read like a musical Who's Who
Quote - Folk? Blues? Jazz? Rock? Reggae? Trip Hop? Funk? John refuses to conform to any particular music genre whilst simultaneously embracing them all. Without fail he always takes the less travelled road in search of new experiences and inspirations. The diversity and quality of John's music is undeniably stunning. A virtuoso musician with a voice to melt the coldest of hearts.
He never made the mainstream or the big lights but year after year produced music of such intense emotion and diversity.
Here is his site - www.johnmartyn.com - treat yourself. Listen to him singing Hurt in Your Heart and not be moved.

George Butterworth

It has been since 2007 since I did this place. If you start something keep going. Unless its falling off a high building or watching Big Brother in which case revise rules fast.
Ask people who George Butterworth was and you too often get a shrug. This is a dire sorrow becaue if you are English (or would like to be (form an orderkly queue of 6 here)) you should at least onece listen to his music. Along Ralph Vaughan Williams and Elgar who is quintessentially romantic, bucolic english. He was born 1885 and between 1911 and 1912, he composed two of the most enduring cycles of British song: Bredon Hill and Other Songs and Six Songs from “A Shropshire Lad”, both settings of Housman poems. His career was brutally cut short, however; after enlisting with the British Army in World War I, he eventually became a company commander with the Durham Light Infantry. On 5th August 1916, while leading a raid at the Somme, he was killed by a sniper; he received a Military Cross during that battle, and was posthumously honoured at the Thiepval Memoria. For me his The Banks of Green Willow is a defining picture of english countryside. Everytime I travel through Somerset I play it as I pass Brent Knoll and anytime else.
If you haven't - go make a cuppa- find a quiet spot in the garden with a player and do yourself a favour. Or go here to Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Q9dz1kse8&feature=PlayList&p=479539E66953DA65&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=34

Cornish Pasty

I have been asked by some to throw in a recipe for a real Cornish pasty. Now this is a dangerous venture because A) I'm not Cornish and B) everyone in Cornwall thinks they have the best recipe. Mine is simple and I believe it should be because it was a workmans meal and not 'posh nosh' rubbish - it was meant to feed a working man.

It was probably the first complete take-away meal originally designed for the Cornish miner and farmer who was away working all day and needed a meal but had no facilities to prepare one. The reason the filling was contained in a pastry case with a thick crust along one side was to hold on to, especially as their hands were dirty or tainted with tin, copper or iron. Often in previous times this was discarded or fed to "The Cornish Knockers" (ghosts of dead colleagues said to haunt the mines). The traditional filling was meat or fish, potato, onion, turnip and a little butter or cream.The housewife prepared these daily for the man of the house and for the children who took them to work or school. It was the staple diet of the Cornish for many years. As the mines in Cornwall declined and "Cousin Jack" travelled extensively to find work this recipe went with him and still today one can still find small outcrops of societies all over the world producing the Cornish pasty, especially in Australia, South Africa, Canada and America.

Here is the recipe I have used and it works.

Pastry

You need:

500 gms strong bread flour
120 gms white shortening
25 gms cake margarine
5 gms salt
175 gms cold water

Mix fat lightly into flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.Add water and beat in a food mixer until pastry clears and becomes elastic. This will take longer than normal pastry but it gives the pastry the strength that is needed to hold the filling and retain a good shape.Leave to rest for 3 hours in a refrigerator, this is a very important stage as it is almost impossible to roll and shape the pastry when fresh

FILLING

You need:
450 gms good quality beef skirt
450 gms potato
250 gms Swede
200 gms onion
Salt & pepper to taste( 2/1 ratio)
Clotted cream or butter

Chop the above finely then add to the rolled out circles of pastry raw. Layer the vegetables and meat adding plenty o f seasoning. Put the dollop of cream or a knob of butter on top. Then bring the pastry around and crimp together. The crimping bit takes practice.

Fan assisted 165 approx 40 min (bit hotter and longer in an ordinary oven I guess)

Swede or Turnip?

People get these either way around - here in Scotland they call them the other way they do in Devon. In Cornwall I believe the round yellow one is the Turnip.

Do not use carrots - ever - it is never never used in a true pasty.

a little scrap of life and death

Its amazing how a little scrap of life can find their way into your life and your heart and yet you don't realise just how much until they've gone.
This was Rooney the Love Bird who is no more.
I put his cage outside on a sunny Sunday and somehow he managed to escape. The last we saw of him he was loudly shrieking at passing birds and promising severe times if he caught up with them.
Sad though - he was such a part of our daily life - we talked to him when we went by him - he whistled to us and he was a real character that bought so much happiness and enjoyment into our home.
He will not have lasted long outside - he was born a cage bird and would not be able to feed or defend against wild birds.
I take a bit of comfort from thinking that at least he went out free and flying even if only for a short time - rather than quietly going on the cage floor. How you do get attached to wee scraps of life though.

The Oggy Man

Cyril Tawney (1930 – 2005)

I first started to sing and play guitar as a young lad at a pub in Devonport in Plymouth which Cyril hosted in the late 1960's.
I have always said that whatever I have done since owes it to his songs and singing and I still sing his songs to this day as many others have done.

I have been asked before about the 'oggy man' and what an oggy is.
The song was written by Cyril - longest performing singer in the country, incidentally, who sadly passed away in Exeter in 2005.





His song the oggy man is, as all Cyril's songs, straight to the heart whether in pathos or humour. This is an exquisite gem of a song.
It helps if you know the background to the song . . . . . .

Before the war (WWII) in the old days, you could buy oggies at many places in Plymouth, but sailors coming back to the Dockyard last thing at night were most likely to get them from the man who sold them from a box outside the Albert Gate.

Before the war the Oggie Man had no competition, simply because there was no room for any. The Blitz, however, cleared a space right opposite his pitch, and in the late Forties first one, then two or three, caravan snack bars appeared on this bomb site, selling a variety of snacks, not just oggies. It was only a matter of time before the Oggie Man, as such, disappeared, either to retire from business or to get his own caravan and join the others. In the song, this change has taken place while the sailor has been away.

Picture a dark evening in the rain outside an old Dockyard gate in Devonport Plymouth . . . .

and slowly sing . . . . .

Oggy Man

Well the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more
I can't hear him calling like I used to before

I came through the gateway and I heard the sergeant say
The big boys are coming, see their stand across the way

Yes the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more

It was there that she told me when she bade me good bye
There's no one will miss you one half as much as I

My love will endure, dear,like a beacon in the squall
Eternal as the oggy man beneath the dockyard wall

Well the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more

Beautiful isn't it?

Cyril's wife Rosemary keeps the official site where you can learn about the man, other songs and buy recordings - do yourself a favour and do that.
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/cyriltawney/enter.htm

You get oggys - or pasties as they are more often known nowadays all over the world where ever Cornish people went. They were often taken by tin miners because they were easy to handle and contained a meal in one. What is a real oggy - and how do you make it - there's another blog and some risky territory.