Ich bin eine Europäerin

With one of those European devils.

It could hardly have seemed like more apt timing: back from a trip to the Continent and straight into the joys of local elections and their campaigns.

This year, much is being made of the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the threat that it poses, in particular, to Conservative seats.

UKIP, which doesn’t have a single MP, is getting rather more than its fair share of media coverage: one senses certain agendas among newspaper proprietors.

Much has been made, in recent months, of the nuttier elements within its ranks, including among candidates.

But setting that aside, what is factual is that the party is deeply Europhobic and that this plays to a percentage of the population – not least from the Conservative right, which has been anti-Europe for years (conveniently forgetting that it was St Margaret of Grantham herself who signed the Maastricht Treaty and the Single European Act).

Europe has become such a divisive issue for the Tory Party that it’s practically reached the status of a tradition, but this could be one of those occasions where a revolt by grassroots activists and supporters actually makes itself felt. Whether they’d do the same at a general election is entirely a different matter.

Like so much of the rhetoric surrounding the issue of Europe, the arguments can hardly be dignified with that term.

Take this little anecdote by way of an example.

I was on the phone with my parents the other day and my father – not for the first time – announced that he was voting UKIP out of disgust at the Eton boys currently running the country.

I pointed out that UKIP leader Nigel Farage is another former public schoolboy, but that didn’t seem to carry quite the same weight.

“At least he’d get us out of Europe,” huffed my father.

I pointed out that many people who are opposed to the EU are so because they want to reduce the rights of workers to below those of EU levels. My father – from very humble working-class stock himself – purports to have sympathy on such matters, so it seemed a coherent point to make, and I thought that it would, at the very least, make him pause.

He did pause.

And then: “We didn’t win the war to be ruled over by the Germans!” he exploded.

Facepalm moment.

Europe has become the big bugbear; the scapegoat for everything that certain people see as wrong with this country.

But the problem is not so much the political disaffection, as something far wider - the conflation of 'Europe' and the political institution(s) of the EU.

Let's be clear: there are many faults with the EU, and I am not some uncritical supporter: quite the contrary. Although it also needs to be stated clearly that the EU is NOT the reason that we, as a country, are still not showing economic growth.

You can, entirely rationally, be a Europhile and an opponent of political union. But there exists this extraordinary way in which Europhobes are not EUphobes, but have turned the political questions and issues into a phobia about the continent as a whole, starting from the brazen untruth that 'we are not Europeans'.

A little personal background here may be helpful for the sake of context.

I grew up in a home where patriotism was paraded as a virtue, albeit no actual thought or reason behind it, and all other nations (or at least the 'important' ones) had derogatory nicknames.

My father was hardly best impressed when I started grammar school and was expected to learn French – Latin was okay, though. We suffered a dinner table rant the following year when I had to start German.

For many years, while I didn't feel the same belligerent intolerance, I had no desire to visit 'Europe': the list of places that I wanted to travel to was pretty much limited to the US and one or two other countries that spoke English.

So against that home background, it can hardly be surprising that I struggled with languages at school: I felt no reason for them.

It was only in 1998, on a first long weekend trip to northern Europe (Amsterdam) that this changed. Suddenly, I could see both difference and similarity. And the over-arching sensation of feeling at home.

Whenever I go back, that feeling is the same. France too. Germany rather obviously so, being more obviously northern European – although my 'discovery' of Germany and German culture, and my realisation that I love it, that I am a Germanophile, still came as something of a shock.

It shouldn't have, though. Since 'discovering' classical music in the third year at school, I had been worshiping at the altar of Beethoven (preferably played by the Berlin Phil, conduced by Herbert von Karajan), even while pretty much everyone else (or so it seemed) was putting safety pins through their noses.

My father's screaming, ranting rages at the television whenever England were playing West Germany (as it was then) left me not simply teary with the tension of it all, but secretly nursing a hope that the dreaded Krauts would win.

In the meantime, my mother, being in charge of Christmas presents, was delighted to buy me classical albums, even though she herself has rather more limited tastes.

Indeed, the household record collection, partly stored in a massive radiogram, was less culture-vulture and more aspirational, pretentious middle class, comprising vast amounts of Readers' Digest boxed sets of 'best of' classical tunes that were then barely (if ever) actually listened to.

But this is the background against which 'Europe' was such a shock.

The thing is, it seems, that with the UK, we try so desperately to pretend that we are not a part of Europe; that this sceptered isle somehow sits in splendid isolation from that continent that has, so often, erupted in trouble.

And yet once you begin to read the history, we have always been there – including in the trouble.

The Thirty Years War, for instance – which was not a 'German war', but a European one – saw men from these islands learn their soldiering and then bring it home to participate in the English civil wars and in Ireland.

We traded with the rest of the continent for centuries: as I've mentioned before, there were Hanseatic outposts here, but we have all but forgotten them and, with them, the League itself.

We 'forget' the European nature of the Armada, as though it arose in isolation. We forget, even, the foreign influx of royals – even when we gather around our own tannenbaums.

We forget that, after Waterloo, Wellington's dispatches homes made a point of stressing the vital role in victory that had been played by the Prussians under Blücher (and we imagine that all Wellington’s troops were English/British).

We forget the cultural links. We forget the linguistic links – English is, after all, a Germanic language. We forget the centuries of migratory movement between this island nation of ours and the rest of Europe.

You could be forgiven, indeed, for imagining that we are not part of the continent of Europe at all. Somehow, we manage to sit apart from any continent – we’re clearly not African or Antarctican, after all.

And that is a grave misrepresentation of fact; a massive delusion.

We are a European family. Like any other family, there are differences. There are bad days and good ones.

But frankly, there is no contradiction in saying, as I do, that I am both English – and a European.

And there is point where, if you look at yourself only in the mirror, and not within the wider context of society, you only see a part of yourself and not the whole.

The same is true of any nation. No country on this earth sits alone, in splendid isolation. Not even the global powerhouses of the US or China.

You don’t have to like any form of the idea of Europe – let alone the political one. You don’t have to feel European. But that does not change the facts.

And the sooner that we learn and understand that, the better. And if you still want to vote for UKIP – well fine. But stop pretending what it is that you're voting for – or, more to the point, against.

Time for a change

Just the thing to lift the tastebuds.

Mid-March, and a change of culinary tune was needed more than ever; something to provide a little zest as the gloom continues, with rain added in for good measure.

Early Saturday morning, pre-market, was invested in swotting both Mimi Sheraton’s The German Cookbook and Elisabeth Luard’s European Peasant Cuisine.

On the one hand, Germany is beckoning loud and clear now. After months of procrastination brought on by both a complex work schedule and underlying panic, the last week has seen bookings finally made. Lübeck, here I come!

My first solo trip outside the UK might have had to wait until my 51st year, but now it is looming, less than a month away.

Of which much more in due course.

In the meantime, back to yesterday morning’s culinary ruminations.

Sheraton’s is a remarkable book, thorough and packed with culinary history. But it's not particularly easy to actually cook from. So for instance, I’ve put off trying frikadellen for ages on the basis that her recipe contains so many ingredients.

I’ve had these little burgers ready-made from Lidl in the past, but really wanted to make my own. A spot of Googling served to reveal that they can be much simpler than something like 18 ingredients.

But that’s for another day.

In the meantime, before the onslaught of Germanophilia, a change was still required. And it came via Luard’s wonderful book.

Like Sheraton, Luard's scholarship is a joy – with the added bonus of a deliciously dry but light writing style. The answer to my need came in the shape of a French classic, chicken and 40 cloves of garlic.

Now if you don't like or aren't used to garlic, that's going to sound like a vast amount, but long, slow cooking makes it beautifully soft and sweet.

It's an easy dish.

Take your cloves of garlic – it's about three large bulbs – but don't peel them. Pop them in the bottom of a good, solid cooking pot and add about half a wine glass of olive oil.

Ready for the oven.

Take your bird and wipe it inside. Season and place on top of the garlic before adding more oil 7 the same amount again – on top of the bird. Just olive oil ordinaire, of course - not virgin.

Pop a lid on and, if it isn't a really good tight fit, Luard suggests sealing the pot with flour and water paste. I used my Le Creuset, with a sort of cartouche of foil over the top before the lid was placed on top.

And then it's into the oven at 170˚C (fan) for half an hour before the heat is turned down to 160˚C for around another 45 minutes.

Luard suggests serving it with toasted slices of bread, onto which you can then squeeze the garlic.

Unfortunately, I have a combination oven and grill, and there is no toaster in the place, but a sliced, decent-quality baguette is perfectly good.

And it was served with a salad of frisée lettuce, endive and watercress, with a dressing of white wine vinegar, olive oil, seasoning and grain mustard.

The chicken skin doesn't brown, but in this case, no matter: the meat is moist and wonderfully tender.

And given that there were just the two of us, there was plenty left over. My lunch tomorrow will involve some of the meat, plus a dressing made from the jelly that was left over, reduced and then whisked with the juice of half an orange.

For a jaded appetite in need of a lift, it was the perfect thing – not least the salad: how do I forget that salad is not just a summer thing?

Then today, I roasted a rolled and boned piece of pork shoulder.

The oven was set for 180˚C (fan). Sage leaves were pressed into the rolled meat and the scored skin rubbed well with coarse salt.

It had half an hour at that temperature, before the oven was turned down to 160˚C, a little boiling water added to the dish, and a peeled, cored, chunked Bramley apple tossed with liquid and fat, before the meat was put back on top.

It had another 90 minutes like that, with par-boiled spuds tossed in melted lard and popped in alongside after an hour.

On the side, tender stem broccoli.

Apart from sausages and mince and the very occasional gammon steak, I tend to avoid pork; fear, mostly: getting it too dry can be an issue after all.

But this worked well, was tasty and well cooked, not dry but with crispy skin – and like yesterday's chicken was a welcome change from a diet that seems to have been largely the same, week after week, as the second half of winter has dragged on.

And of course, could there be anything much more German than a bit of pig? Well, I'm going to start exploring that cuisine a little in the coming days.

Life and death in Venice

When Jane Hudson disembarks from her train in Venice, she’s full of excitement at the prospect of spending time in the beautiful city. But her awe at the beauty of the sights takes a blow when the sights that she sees include Italian men eyeing up women in a rather obvious manner.

As her dream holiday unfolds, Jane is torn: desperate to be her independent self on the one hand, but lonely on the other; shocked by the sexual openness that she sees around her, yet desperate for an experience that has eluded her.

And when she meets handsome antique dealer Renato de Rossi, he challenges a whole host of her beliefs about relationships.

Written originally for the theatre by gay US playwright and stage director Arthur Laurents, before being scripted for film in 1955 by the quintessentially English talents of HE Bates and David Lean (more famous for Dickens and deserts than romance) Summertime, Lean's own favourite film, is as astonishingly open work for the time.

It’s quite clear that there can be no hope of anything but a holiday romance, and Renato, separated but married, challenges Jane to question her illusions: that all romances could be out of the storybook of her dreams, with a complete set of idea criteria. Indeed, he even tells her that Americans are mixed up about sex.

So when Jane makes her decision, she is under no illusions, but chooses to embrace life. Extraordinarily, in terms of the 1950s, there is no price that must be paid by this unmarried woman who has an adulterous relationship, and the film closes with no moral judgment.

The judgment of the viewer, though, will surely be that she was right to grasp the opportunity: that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It is better to have reached out and grasped the opportunity to taste the life-affirming power of love and lust, passion and sensuality, than to have fled in the belief that somehow those things are wrong unless governed by strict rules.

And it brings to mind another work set in the same city – Death in Venice. Thomas Mann’s novella, filmed in 1971 by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde in the central role, tells the story of acclaimed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, who is utterly dedicated to his art, disciplined and ascetic to the point of severity.

Tired and disturbed by a strange encounter with a rough-looking man he sees on a walk, the writer resolves to take a trip to Venice. Once there, he is appalled by the appearance of an elderly man who has tried desperately to use make-up and a wig to make himself look young.

Once installed in his hotel, Aschenbach finds himself fascinated by the young son of an aristocratic Polish family who are fellow guests. Over the weeks, it becomes an obsession and, even when he realises that cholera is ravaging the city, he stays put, refusing to warn the family and convincing himself that, if the boy Tadzio dies now, he will never age and lose his beauty.

But even as Aschenbach tries to regain his youth, his own trips to the barber for hair dye and make-up a pathetic mirror of the man at the beginning of his visit, he realises what he’s doing and warns Tadzio’s mother.

A day later, as the family prepare to leave, the sickening author sits in his deckchair, watching the boy bathe one last time. Delirious, he sees Tadzio as an almost classic vision beckoning him. Aschenbach attempts to rise, only to fall back, dead from the cholera.

Mann, who spent a lifetime struggling with his own sexuality, partly intended the piece to show passion and sensuality as a disease. But it is far more than that.

For Aschenbach, at the end, has an epiphany: finally, he is full of joy – full even of life. He pays for it with his life, but his existence before that lacked anything but dedication to his work. Work as disease, denying the human being the chance to blossom fully, to become.

Mann, like Aschenbach, was disciplined and ascetic, his writing almost a duty. This was the Protestant work ethic applied to art. Perhaps he believed that, if he gave full rein to his own passions, it would kill him – or at least his work. Perhaps that, by submerging himself in his work, he could kill the passions. But perhaps he envied Aschenbach too, for that final epiphany: a salvation, if you will, that is earned at the last by his warning to the family to flee.

Unlike Jane Hudson, Aschenbach pays a price that we know of. But as with her, Venice opens him up to sensuality and pleasure: as with her, it breaks down the barriers of Anglo-Saxon repression and fear and even guilt, and offers him, however fleetingly, a moment of pure beauty.

Life and death intertwined in Venice. Two works created by two very different northern European artists, but both reaching a strikingly similar conclusion. To live fully, means to live sensually and passionately.