Born to run – or possibly not?

Unlike Joe Biden, I don’t have a running mate. But then, I haven’t run since around – oh, 1986 – and nobody has been waiting around for me to join in.

I liked running – but then I liked sport, even if I had limited opportunities to engage in it. For my first five years at secondary school, we’d only run around a field, since we were near the middle of Manchester. With my second secondary school – in semi-rural Lancaster – I’d missed cross-country PE (though I loved volleyball and particularly badminton). In terms of running, I was inspired by the 1984 Olympic Games.

It almost goes without saying that I was stopped from playing football, which I wanted to do so much that, in my pre-teen years, I prayed to God to make me be a boy so that I could play the game.

I have always been competitive. I can’t resist it. I want to win. I remember playing non-competitive pool in a lesbian bar in Amsterdam in the 1990s and finding myself wondering how you even begin to do that! I mean … how do you endeavour to not pot the ball?

That didn’t win me any friends.

So inspired by top athletes, I bought shoes (Reeboks) and ran circuits around central Lancaster, where my family lived at the time. There were comments from passing drivers. ‘Don’t give yourself a black eye!’ was the wittiest that I remember. Because some people are fecking idiots and I had always had big boobs, irrespective of weight and BMI.

But I carried on running.

I registered for a race – can’t remember how long, but it was the sort of race that saw you sent An Official Race Number to attach to your shorts.

God, I was so proud when I got that, propping it on a shelf to be in view. I wasn’t quite at the distance for the race, but I was on the way and it was an incentive to pump up my training.

And then, in a sporting competition between the Lancaster Footlights (for whom I was the captain that night), the Duke’s Playhouse and the local leisure centre, I tore the lateral ligaments in my left knee: a full-blown ‘Gazza’.

I completed the night’s competition – in agony – and the next day, dragged myself to A&E, where my leg was encased in cotton wool and lots of plaster, and I was given crutches.

I got over it enough to be thrown to the floor by Salieri in the Footlights’ award-winning production of Amadeus that spring (I was playing Mozart’s missus), but I had issues with the knee for years (particularly in damp winters) and, when I moved to London to find work in 1988, discovered that running on uneven London pavements was not fun.

And there my running career ended.

Until now.

For reasons about which I have no clue, at the beginning of this year – before COVID-19 – I started to feel an itch.

Could I run again? For some reason that I don’t particularly understand, I wanted to.

The lockdown intervened and I didn’t do so until 6 August, a day or so after I’d signed up to a charity fundraiser.

Step Up September will raise funds for There for You, a charity from public service trade union UNISON, which helps members in need. In recent months, that’s been affected hugely by the new Coronavirus. Members who clean hospitals, care for the elderly and the vulnerable, and carry out myriad other essential tasks have found themselves struggling too – and There for You is helping.

My running can hopefully help those who have been helping us all.

Because of the pandemic, Step Up September doesn’t carry specific targets. But as an overweight woman of almost 58, who hasn’t run in decades, then if I can manage, by the end of September, to run more than five minutes, it’ll be an achievement built on bloody-minded grit and really quite serious, regular training.

My first session was on 6 August and saw me using interval training: I could only run for 30 seconds at a time. Two weeks later, I am hitting two minutes regularly, with a maximum time of two minutes and 24 seconds.

Look – I know it’s not exactly Olympic standard, but it requires genuine effort (believe me!), and my own GP is delighted.

And if you can manage to make a donation to a really good cause, then I thank you in advance.

Please help me fund-raise here – it you can, it will be fantastic.

Bread of heaven

For many people, the realisation that they’re likely to be made redundant in the not-too-distant future is one of the most unwelcome pieces of news that they can receive.

But for some, it can offer the opportunity for a major change of direction.

Bill King had spent years working in local government in the Cwmbran area of Wales. More than that – he was also a trade union convenor.

But when he realised that his own job was to be rationalised away, he saw a possibility and seized the opportunity with both hands.

“I’ve always cooked,” he explains in his soft burr, which is more West Country than Wales. With a father in the RAF, he was leaving the UK for Suez at three weeks old and only came back when he was 10.

“For my sins, I got a charity scholarship to a public school [he was in the same class as RSC and The Thick of It actor Roger Allam] and you did learn to cook.

“When you’ve eaten at 6 o’clock in the evening, you’re going to be hungry at 8 o’clock, 10 o’clock whatever. One of the first things I did, when I got into it, was set up what I suppose was one of the first ever supper clubs.

“It was a kind of covert dining club. We found a room that wasn’t being used, and I'd cook in one of the very small kitchens upstairs, and then 10 or 20 people would just get together and have food.

"So I always have cooked and was largely self-taught. Always done all the cooking at home."

His partner Janet never learned to cook, he explains, not least because her mother “god love her – couldn’t cook to save her life. She was set in her ways. For example, 1 April was salad season until the 30 October.

“And it went on a strict rotation: cheese, ham, cheese ham, with the immortal question: ‘ow d’ya want yer salad? On a plate or in a saaandwich?’

“And Sunday lunch would go pork, lamb, beef, chicken; pork, lamb, beef, chicken – irrespective of the weather. Friday lunchtime would be fish in plastic bags. Saturday lunch was always pie and chips from the chippy.

“She came and ate with us once and I’d cooked my usual incredibly rare bit of beef, and she said: ‘just how I love my beef!’ and I thought: ‘why do you cook yours like boot leather then?”

“So I’ve always cooked. I’m not artistic, but I put stuff into cooking that I probably couldn’t put into anything else.

“Years back – probably 20 years ago – I was given a voucher for a one-day course at Ballymaloe, and I went and had a great time, and thought: ‘I’ve got to go there; I’ve got to do the three-month course.”

That’s not cheap and, he says, every time he had just got the money together, “some major disaster would come up” and he was back to square one, saving for it.

But eventually, he had enough in the bank. Then, as the end of a lengthy job evaluation neared, which his union duties had seen him heavily involved in, it became “clear that I’d never be going back to my old job after it”.

His employer agreed that, under those circumstances and since it was really rather sensible to be planning for an alternative future, he could use a combination of paid leave and unpaid leave to make up the three months of the course.

“It was the best three months of my life,” he says.

“Extremely intense. People talk about going into the ‘Ballymaloe bubble’ and you do kind of live in one. It’s in the middle of a 100-acre organic farm with 10 acres of organic market garden, and effectively you do a three-year catering college course in 12 weeks.

“The way you do it – the average college course is nine to 3.30, breaks and whatever: at Ballymaloe, you’re in the kitchen from eight to 1.30. You get a short break, then at quarter to two, you’re back into demonstrations until, say, quarter past, half past five, with a tasting at the end.

“Then you get another quick tea break and there’s a lecture of some variety – could be on wine, cheese – so you’re generally finishing seven or eight o’clock at night. You go back, write out your work for the next day, file the recipes for what you’ve been cooking that day – and go to bed.

“And at 7 o'clock in the morning, you have ‘assorted duties’, which may be getting fresh veg out of the field, selecting the herbs from the herb garden ... or milking the cows.”

If those “assorted duties” mean milking the Jerseys, which Bill describes as “the prime job”, students then separate the milk to make butter and cheese, nipping back all morning to stir the curds for the latter.

It’s not difficult to see how three months of 18 to 19-hour days can mount into the equivalent of a three-year course.

And then there are the weekends: all on a ‘voluntary basis’ (Bill’s quotation marks). Students are sent out for a different kind of training – to Cork on a Friday to do a night shift with an artisan baker or to a hotel or restaurant to wait on tables for the evening, for instance.

The Ballymaloe philosophy, he explains, is an holistic one: students need to gain a really wide understanding of food – “where it comes from, how to use it, how to process it, how to serve it”; there are even some basic lessons in business.

The final exam requires students to complete such varied tasks as identifying 20 kinds of salad and drawing a diagram of a table setting, while “the first recipe you get at Ballymaloe is actually for compost”.

Because, he notes, as Ballymaloe founder and slow food doyen “Darina [Allen] says, ‘good food starts with good earth’.”

Bill is a delightful raconteur, and he happily describes things in great detail, seasoned with anecdote and his mimicry.

But after Ballymaloe, what then?

“I’ve always enjoyed making bread, and at Ballymaloe you make bread every day”. But there’s another rather special advantage.

“It’s the easiest way to get past environmental health,” he reveals.

“There’s very little risk in bread. Done properly, it’s flour, it’s water, it’s salt, it’s yeast. It bakes at 230 degrees. That will kill any bacteria.”

Even though he’s currently only got a double oven – there's another oven on order – he’s still able to bake from within his home kitchen.

There are still schedules for cleaning his kitchen and equipment, including deep cleans, but he doesn't have to wash his baking tins (“unless something sticks to them”). Regular use seasons them, and environmental health is happy with that, as long as he stores them upside down so that nothing can get inside.

But baking is “also something you can teach people – and teaching is far more profitable than making bread,” he adds with a wry version of his characteristic laugh.

“The overheads are extremely limited and it only takes four hours!”

Which is probably a good thing. He was given a helpful spreadsheet by the Welsh government when he started the business, and “the last time I looked at it, my hourly rate was 98p!”

On the other hand, he observes that his new career has made a ‘phenomenal’ difference to his quality of life.

“I loved my years in the trade union movement,” he adds, proudly pointing to his UNISON lifetime membership badge, “but I get the same adrenalin rush when I’ve done a really big bake” as after a week at annual conference.

Indeed, he had nipped up to Liverpool for the day to meet old friends and catch up on the gossip at this year's conference.

And he says that it’s an incredible buzz to have people going back, time again, to see him on a market “and saying things like: ‘thank god we’re here early ... you were out of such and such last week and it’s the best I’ve ever had’. And you think: ‘this is nice. This is what I want to do’.

Baking has also opened doors that he never expected, and he’s made many new friends.

He mentions Arun Kapil of Green Saffron Spices – “you will hear a hell of lot more of him” – and enthuses about how the former musician blends his spices, treating his work like music, looking to combine “high notes, low notes, medium notes”.

“I’ll tell you how good he is – he makes bespoke spice mixes for Mark Hix, Richard Corrigan and Gordon Ramsey, and he’s a consultant to some bloke called Blumenthal!”

It’s a friendship that means that, when Arun gives “tutored master classes and tastings” at this summer’s Abergavenny Food Festival, Bill will be baking the breads that he will use.

In September, he’s off to Cork for the Celtic Cook Off. It’s a sort of Ready Steady Cook-style competition, using just local ingredients, and featuring chefs from all across the Celtic world, including Cornwall and Brittany.

They’ll start the event with a big lunch – and Bill is the baker of choice for both the lunch and for the cook off.

Then in October, he’ll be doing a “hands-on session at the Newport Food Festival”.

It is, he says, a bit more “about who you know than how good you are”, but then again, you don't get invited back into that company if you're not good.

Just before Christmas last year, he reveals that Rachel Allen (Darina’s daughter-in-law) was over here and they’d met up, with her introducing him to some influential people as “the best baker we had at Ballymaloe!”

“I’m sure I wasn’t,” says Bill, “but that got me an in with chef and TV presenter Matt Tebbutt!”

He talks about the rising food scene in his part of Wales – not just top chefs, but good producers too.

And it’s clear that his own food philosophy extends way beyond bread.

There are farmers that he knows, and he describes not only how they look after their animals, but also how they slaughter them, in the least stressful manner possible. It’s light years away from the horror stories of industrialised, centralised abattoirs.

Which is a good thing, since (accidentally) he actually managed to take Janet on a visit to an abattoir on a recent wedding anniversary.

In the meantime, of course, the final product of such an approach, in your pan or under your grill, and most certainly on your plate, is so much better for having had such care taken.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he says, after observing that he’s always understood the value of fresh, quality ingredients, but “in many ways, there’s nothing as satisfying as a fishfinger sandwich, with ketchup, on some really thick, sliced industrial white.”

And he then gives another example of how to use a cheap, Chorleywood loaf.

“That bread is so flimsy … take the crusts off, roll it out – you can get it paper thin – dip in melted butter, either side; stick it in a bun tin, bake it off in the oven for 10 minutes, and you have the most amazing, crisp stuff.

“And I’ve had people say: ‘that’s the most amazing pastry we’ve tasted’, and you tell ’em: ‘actually, it’s just really cheap bread!’

He’s been contemplating that busy festival ‘season’ that is approaching, and remembering the festivals that he used to go to. The Jerry Garcia t-shirt gives a hint.

“It’s really worrying,” he muses, “to think that most of the people I went to see are dead.” And then he bursts out into Falstaffian laughter once more.

He remembers seeing “The Doors and Hendrix at the Isle of Wight.

“I first saw the Grateful Dead in ’72 … I love Jerry,” he adds, before noting that the food world has also led him to “a bigger Dead head than myself” in James Swift, who runs Trealy Farm, which makes British charcuterie.

The discovery of their mutual love of Grateful Dead came at last year’s Newport Food Festival, where Bill was the “official blogger or something to that effect”.

A completely accidental comment saw James revealing that he’d got recordings of 1,500 live shows.

Such is the way to start a friendship.

And with thoughts of such music, another strand of memory begins to unfurl.

“In those days, I was on a fairly macrobiotic diet – or mung beans 500 ways. The only place you could get them in Aberystwyth was a place called The Happy Stores, which was run by one of these weird and wonderful cults and they were all trying to recruit you if you went in to buy anything.

“‘A pound of balti peas, please’. ‘Would you like to come out to the ashram for a weekend?’ ‘No, just my peas please’.”

In a complete swing around from his admission of a brief period of vegetarianism, Bill has a book that he’s keen to recommend – An Irish Butcher Shop by Pat Whelan.

Pat is a seventh-generation farmer and fifth-generation butcher who now runs James Whelan Butchers in Ireland, and is committed to sustainability, nose-to-tail eating and quality, and Bill describes the book as a “a brilliant treatise on cooking”.

Pat’s philosophy is that ‘knowledge without sharing is merely information’, says Bill, so Pat shares it – and so does Bill himself.

The conversation wanders off into further discussion of the link between compassionate farming and the quality of produce, plus the disconnect in the UK between food and how it is produced, which allows a good laugh about a recent Apprentice competitor who thought that a field of horses was a field of dogs.

Bill would happily talk the hind legs off the proverbial donkey when it comes to matters culinary, but one thing’s clear: for this artisanal baker, finding himself forced into a career change in his mid-50s really has proved to be the bread of heaven.

Bill King Artisan Baker

Ballymaloe Cookery School

Green Saffron Spices

Trealy Farm Charcuterie

The Meat Course at Trealy Farm

James Whelan Butchers

Abergavenny Food Festival

Celtic Cook Off

Newport Food Festival

Putting school dinner on the menu

Henry Dimbleby listening to school kitchen staff.

Back at the end of September, equipped with notebook and camera, I sat in on a forum hosted by public service union UNISON around the latest review of school dinners.

The new review is being headed up by Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent, the co-founders of the Leon chain of quality fast food restaurants across London.

The forum gave the former the opportunity to meet staff who work on the frontline of school catering.

Unfortunately, given that the Department of Education was involved and had produced letters to authorise their attendance (and UNISON was covering wages for that day), few were able to take the time to attend.

Make of that what you will. But small though the gathering was, that probably produced a tighter and more focussed discussion.

And the question at the top of the menu was “what does ‘great’ look like?”.

Mr Dimbleby observed that there had been “a real improvement in schools in terms of, say, nutrition” since 2005 when the then Labour government took on the issue on the back of high-profile campaigning by Jamie Oliver and more grafting work by the likes of UNISON.

But he added that there were still schools that were not doing as well as they might.

It was reassuring to hear Mr Dimbleby say that he didn’t want the exercise to simply be one of writing a report and giving it to the secretary of state, only for it to disappear from view.

It would, he explained, be “action focused”, carried out in a spirit of complete openness and, if they found “quick wins – things that can be done quickly”, those would be started straight away.

So, “what does ‘great’ look like?” was the question he was eager to ask kitchen staff, as he aims to “create a vision” around school food.

The contributions revealed a varied picture – some of which might not have been expected.

As one member of a kitchen team put it dryly: “It’d be nice to see more contribution from the parents – kids knowing how to use cutlery, for instance.”

For instance, many schools – particularly very large ones – struggle to manage proper sittings for lunch, because they simply don’t have the space for so many children.

But there were plenty of more positive experiences and ideas to be shared, as those assembled there chatted.

Various schemes in individual schools are seeing all manner of initiatives, including using the school kitchen to give parents cooking lessons.

Other schemes include using vegetables grown in the school garden in the kitchen, and inviting pupils to help cook a meal with kitchen staff and then invite parents to taste it (an idea from Sweden).

Unfortunately, these last two fell foul of officials who said that they breached health and safety regulations. Ah yes: good old ’elf ‘n’ safety.

But Mr Dimbleby doesn’t fall for the tabloid hysteria, and argued that that was just an excuse used by people who didn’t like the schemes for whatever reason. And as a restauranteur himself, he speaks from a position of experience.

Staff talked of managing hours and budgets, and formulae based on the number of meals served per hour for the staffing levels they were expected to work on.

Most reported having to work longer than their contracted hours – in their own time – just to get the job done.

An exception was Fay Hart, a cook in East Lincolnshire, who will have been at her school for 28 years next year.

None of her team worked beyond their hours, she said. Surprised, Mr Dimbleby asked why.

“Because I’m the union rep too,” she responded, before adding that she had a contract for 35 hours a week, a rare thing in itself, with most other cooks in her position on 27 hours.

“When they replace me, they won’t advertise the job for 35 hours,” she said. “It’ll be 27.” There were plenty of nods around the room at that.

Inevitably, one of the biggest problems that emerges is that of resources – whether that’s a question of having to budget for a meal to cost between 67-75p per person or simply the time and the staffing levels needed to do the job.

It’s quite extraordinary listening to cooks explaining just what hoops they have to go through to get past managers – to get something like strawberries when in season, for instance.

It was interesting to hear that teams don’t actually want vast amounts more machinery. Dishwashing machines, for example, are less speedy than washing up by hand when you have to get the cutlery and plates back into circulation.

There was a consensus that serving children on ‘flight trays’ was awful – but thankfully, not all schools do it.

One member noted that her headmaster “insists on proper plates – even for children having packed lunches’. In a school with a large number of pupils from deprived backgrounds, the head felt that such relatively simple things were important.

There were interesting comments on the difference between rural and urban schools, with children in the former generally far more likely to prefer fresh food than their urban counterparts, who preferred fast food.

The general feeling was that after the service was moved from “a slow-cooking approach” to a fast-cooking one in the 1980s, it was now having to try the former on the resources for the latter.

Mr Dimbleby highlighted the importance of raising uptake in order to raise standards further: in the 1970s, uptake of school meals was in the 70% range. Now, it’s 40%.

He was clearly aware of the cost issue for parents on low incomes, and seemed to think that a universal free school meal service would be the idea, although as he said, getting such an idea taken up would be “difficult”.

It was a fascinating forum: some of what we heard could seriously depress you, but there was plenty of good practice being related too.

Hearing about schools that do more than simply feeding children – with cookery classes for parents and those school gardens, for instance – was enormously heartening: a much more holistic approach to the issue.

Personally, I was impressed with Mr Dimbleby's obvious enthusiasm and commitment, and with what he actually said and how he listened.

And I got the feeling that the members who had come to tell him about their experiences were positive – indeed, talking to one of the members later, I know that's the case. They found him charming and attentive and genuine. And these are feisty ladies!

One member who spoke to me simply said that they hope that this new review creates positive outcomes.

Okay, do we really need yet another review of something that should, in theory, be so blindingly obvious? Perhaps not, but on the basis of being present here, I have faith that the people given this task are good people for the job.

And whatever happens in the coming months, Mr Dimbleby was certainly given much food for thought, by people who are every bit as committed to doing the best for children as he can be.

• You can get involved with the school meal review here. Please do.

UNISON in education.

Who's idea was muzak with the Cornflakes?

There is nothing quite like hotel living. Or at least, not when you’re staying in a hotel for work.

At home, for instance, you don’t have to face muzak with your bacon and egg. Shown to the furthest corner of the dining area first thing on Thursday morning, The Other Half was growling instantly: “Who thought I needed cheerful music with my breakfast?”

Perhaps it was a deliberate technique for getting guests in and out as quickly as possible, because after bolting his fodder with more than usual alacrity, he bolted outside for a fag, muttering grimly that, if he didn’t escape quickly, he was going “to murder someone”.

But we were in sometimes-sunny Bournemouth for a full week, so there was no escape. And although I am well over the original strangeness of it, there is something rather odd about meeting colleagues, bosses (clients) and members at breakfast for an entire week.

Odd – and not perhaps conducive to relaxation.

My own responsibilities involved penning reports on this year's UNISON conference.

That is, in effect, the union's parliament, and the debates are as impassioned and varied as one might expect.

Of course, as a member of the team staffing the conference - albeit a freelance member - obviously I cannot contribute to the debates. But like anyone else in that position, I suspect, there are times when I desperately want to say something.

So I have to make do with little notes to myself in the margins of my spiral-bound reporters' notebook.

At other times, I simply long for one of those rolly-eyed emoticons, when hearing something that i Personally find risable.

But there are always, of course, highlights. TUC president Paul Kenny turned up and delivered an entertaining speech while making me wonder if he was Ray Winstone's long lost twin. I kept expecting him to turn to Dave Pentis at any moment and say: "You're the daddy".

Neville Lawrence addressed conference on Friday and reduced much of the hall to tears with a quiet and dignified retelling of how he heard about his son's murder and the struggle for justice that has followed.

And he went on to say that privatisation of the police would be a dreadful step, with profit coming before solving crime.

When you look at the case of his own son or that of murdered private detective Daniel Morgan - let alone many miscarriages of justice - that's a salutary reminder of just how negative a step such a sell-off would be.

Carmen Mayusa, a nurse and trade union lead from Colombia, where they murder and 'disappear' trade unionists as regularly as most of us take a shower, made everyone realise that things could be a lot worse, while four of the wives of the Miami Five highlighted the injustice of the continuing imprisonment of their husbands by the US.

Our own little team was based in a bunker - sorry, room - surrounded by tons of cable and the usual piles of conference documentation, trying to keep the tech running while filing a mass of reporting from the conference hall.

Away from the serious stuff, there were chances to enjoy the banter - I know who the Manchester United fans are and had great fun joining delegates to watch the England v Ukraine Euro 2012 match.

I admit to having been one of three England fans (the others, a father and son, are pictured here) running through a remarkably wide repertoire of about four songs, while several Scottish (Ukrainian for the night) members drowned their sorrows as the co-hosts failed to score.

A very rapid lunchtime trip to the Bournemouth Oceanarium, after reading that it had introduced a pair of otters last year, proved thoroughly enjoyable.

Stan and Roxy are Oriental small-clawed otters aged two, who have been at the Oceanarium since last November.

Otters are very sociable – but only within their own family groups. It's hoped that Stan and Roxy will breed – and so their group will get larger.

One of the staff was feeding them when I was there – and explained how they help to keep them active and alert. We've thankfully come a long way since animals were simply stuck in an enclosure without any thought to their mental state.

With just the iPhone for this trip, I managed a rather splendid shot of a spiny tailed lizard.

It's well worth a visit anyway, as I skimmed around some of the other exhibits: lobsters - impossible not to think, 'dinner!' There were sharks too and a little turtle (or similar) that spotted me at the window and turned to swim right up to me

The otters gave me a much-needed dose of cuteness, that sent me back into the conference hall with a glow about me.

But for sheer, much-needed serenity, there were moments of total calm in the early mornings, sitting outside watching the sea, with the sounds of the wind, the waves and the birds soothing. There was food - and there were some personal moments of note - but that'll have to wait for another day.

And the trophy goes to …

Since I’ve just got back from spending a week in Manchester, working at the UNISON local government and national delegate conferences, it seemed like a good idea to put together a brief list of my ‘bests’ for the past seven days.

Some are serious, some are silly and some are just downright fun – and they are all entirely personal.

So, let's get going!


Most gobsmacking story of the week

Bad stories abounded, but this was left until today and the debate on what’s happening to police staff. That’s the forensics officers, the call centre staff and many, many more civilian workers.

All of whom form a vital part of the police service as a whole.

But it seems that some senior police officers think that the best way to make the cuts that the government is demanding is to sack such staff – and then replace them with police officers who, for whatever reason, cannot do the ‘beat’ stuff anymore.

But it gets better, since these replacement staff are paid, on average, double the rate for the job that the sacked staff got.

Bonkers, bonkers and downright wrong.

Full story here


Costume of the week

Well, setting aside Julian’s Manchester City FA Cup winners socks, it has to be Maureen and her partner at the president’s ‘wild west’ social on Sunday.

Nobody, but nobody else had made even close to such an effort.

Neigh and thrice neigh!!!









Quote of the week

UNISON general secretary “Dave Prentis is not King Kong.

“We do not expect him to climb the Empire State Building and pluck planes out of the sky.

“Dave Prentis is our leader. Dave Prentis is our general and you are our captains.”

I keep trying to put this right out of my mind – but then find myself musing over who would be Dave’s Fay Wray …


Expression of the week













No further comment required – Julie’s face says it all.


Most moving moments of the week

Seeing Kenny and Anne. Both of then are dealing with cancer, but both of then are still concentrating their energies on what they believe – helping others to fight for fairness and justice.

Even if you don't agree with their respective politics, they are heroic human beings.

I wonder if I could be as brave as they are?


Meal of the week

No apologies – it was last Saturday’s visit to Michael Caines @ Abode.

Under executive chef Mark Rossi, this is not cheap, but offers really super food.

I took The Other Half this time and, after a complimentary baby leek terrine, I had almond crusted veal sweetbreads with
poached quail's eggs, gribiche sauce
 and a green bean salad.

The sweetbreads were a first for me – and were lovely. Light and with a slightly gamey taste.

To follow, wild brill with 
crab crushed new potatoes,
baby fennel and sauce vierge.

And for dessert, ‘Tasting of peach’, which meant a lovely dish with a
peach parfait, soup, a peach mousse, elderflower sorbet, glazed peach and roasted almond foam.

I am also delighted to report that, after heavily recommending it and insisting we went, The Other Half enjoyed his meal too.


Best service of the week

Even I make the mistake of forgetting sometimes just how friendly the north is – particularly when compared to London.

Service pretty much everywhere was with a smile and real warmth.

But my own award for service this past week goes to Raymond, the top-hatted doorman at the Midland Hotel, for always being helpful, but also going beyond the call of duty in presenting a down-to-Earth, humorous and warm face to a legendary hotel where one Mr Rolls and Mr Royce put pen to paper on founding a little company.

I rang the hotel a short while ago to thank them and commend him in particular, and was stunned to learn he’s only been in the job two weeks.

I hope the hotel’s management realises just what a gem they have.


Funniest moment

Our conference office was in the hotel and, while we were there, a small but perfectly formed group of ladies from Estée Lauder were also having a conference.

One morning, they were lining either side of a corridor as I walked through, chatting about something or other.

I wished them all a good day – and was tickled pink to see their faces.

Am I really that scary – or was it simply that I wasn’t wearing the right make up?


Best bit of the whole week

In a staggering coincidence, my beloved Manchester City were holding a charity do in the same hotel that we were staying in on Thursday night.

Now the players and coaching staff are still all on their hols, but the FA Cup was brought in to display at the event, and all the staff (including security) were brilliant about letting hotel residents who weren’t attending the event go and gawp at it and photograph it.

For those who don’t know, the FA Cup is the oldest domestic club competition in the football world. And every year, millions tune in around the globe to watch the final.

I was not the only one to get emotional and excited – and indeed, took pictures for a number of other people.

But as a happy coincidence, one of our conference photographers was walking past as I was whispering sweet nothings to this iconic piece of silverware – and took up my camera to picture me with it. So thanks to Steve.

To those who are not football fans – I know it sounds bonkers. But I’m still glowing with the pleasure of that, and I know I’m not alone.

Bloooo Mooon ... You saw me standing alone ...