Good riddance to the calorie

Wayhey! Apparently, the calorie might be on its last legs!

Let’s have a street party. After all those years of people counting them dedicatedly, in the belief that one or two fewer would change their lives, it appears that that tyrannical little unit of energy wasn’t really very accurate.

In my own years of diet madness – which started with an obsessive faith in the then received wisdom that 1,000kcals per day was the scientifically correct amount required to lose weight – I used to keep a diary of my calorie intake: and grams of fat and grams of salt and grams of starchy carbohydrate and grams of fibre and …

Well, you get the picture. Like most other women, my own dieting was of the yo-yo variety. It’s bad enough trying to live off 1,000 calories a day, but at one stage, my doctor told me to cut to 800 per day because I could not get quite below the weight listed in some book somewhere that he unquestioningly considered correct form my height.

But in so instructing me, he also revealed either his own lack of knowledge about food intake, body weight and health – I was actually very active and close to athletically fit at the time, but he didn’t bother to consider any of that – or something rather less pleasant. I shall probably never know which it was.

Only many years later did I discover how unhealthy his figure of 800kcals was: for instance, an elderly woman who is bed-ridden still requires approximately 1,200kcals per day to maintain her body weight.

And I was stupid enough to assume that, as a doctor, he was a knowledgeable authority figure who should be obeyed.

Oh, I remember the days of heavy workouts in the gym, followed by a protein drink and then later, at home, a bowl of boiled vegetables with nothing other than salt to make it palatable.

And the soufflés made from egg whites alone – one of the gems that I found in my bodybuilding books.

The Other Half, who used to do much of our household cooking in the days before my culinary road to Damascas moment, recalls one particular evening when I ended up in tears because I couldn’t weigh all the ingredients for the stew he was cooking.

They’d then have been noted down in one of those diet diaries, as I struggled to control my food consumption in a way that suggested that I was actually struggling to control my life.

Fortunately, those days are long gone – and almost perversely, seven years after giving up dieting I actually started very slowly losing weight.

It seems that, having been allowed to find its own balance, my body is now responding positively and in a sustainable way to good eating.

On that note, I have to say that I have now seen the basic food survey, as mentioned in yesterday's post. After a standard series of question, it posits the issue, through two questions, of offering “healthy options”.

So what we are offered now is unhealthy, then?

Quite apart from that – and the patronising aspect of the idea of providing signposts for 'healthy options' – just what are 'healthy options'?

For instance, one dish that recurs as a vegetarian option is broccoli-cauliflower cheese. Okay, so one might say that the cheese isn't 'healthy'. But the rest of the dish provides two of your five a day. Which is apparently healthy.

And it's simplistic in the extreme to simply dismiss fatty foods as 'unhealthy' (as I touched on a short time ago). The point is balance – and variety.

I shall have huge fun when they finally send us the proper form, responding to this unnecessary but trendy (and box-ticking, I suspect) exercise.

Of politics, baking and preserves

It was a pleasant morning in London – which was provident, since I did the second leg of my journey to work on foot. Traffic was snarled more than usual as commuters took to their cars, with swathes of the underground closed by strike action.

I don’t like the Tube (and avoid taking it unless absolutely necessary) and I don’t like RMT leader Bob Crow, but looking beyond the usual shrill headlines about how awful it all is, they have a serious case. Anyone who really believes that you can get rid of 800 staff without having an impact on service and safety is naïve in the extreme, I think.

One thing that struck me recently, given all the strikes in France (where they actually have a far lower density of trade union members than we do in the UK), was the explanation of one commentator that the French media in general doesn't play this infantile game of simply shrilling its irritation at the inconvenience. All the media, right across the political spectrum, actually bothers to consider the issues.

They might not agree, but they actually consider the issues.

Oh, to have a public discourse like that.

Anyway, just for once, I wasn’t nearly knocked down as I walked by some cyclist careering along the pavement and then getting aggressive when I challenge them as to why they think they can break the law.

But in general, the day felt as though everything was back to some form of normality after the excitement and work of the bake-a-thon.

As a direct result of my recent decision to join Facebook, Mary popped into the office on her way from Birmingham to a conference in Belgium – and took away her reserved slice of chocolate cake, plus a couple of pieces of bark, to eat on the way to that centre of chocolately excellence.

There is one donation to come in: a couple pieces of the bark remain, together with a little ginger cake, but we’ve already hit £81. So it feels worthwhile. Everyone seems to have enjoyed it too, which was every bit as important to me as raising the money. So a big thank you to anyone reading who helped and dipped into their pockets.

And the good things keep coming: after my medlar and quince jelly had failed to set at the weekend, an internet exchange with George prevented me throwing it away in a frustrated huff. He suggested adding some liquid pectin and bringing it back to the boil very, very gently.

I’d assumed – I don’t know why – that you couldn’t do that and that it was effectively ‘dead’ if it hadn’t successfully set straight away. But now it’s set nicely – not too solid, but with a hint of a wobble, and it’s lovely and clear and pink. So thank you, George.

‘If at first you don’t succeed’ applies to preserving too – and in more ways that I had imagined.

And as George also pointed out, although I’ve been thinking of the jelly accompanying meat, it’ll be perfect to eat with cheese – and as I really should have remembered from Les Trois Moutiers II. Indeed, the Spanish produce a much more strongly set quince jelly called membrillo to eat with cheese.

But much as I love cheese, I’m fascinated by preserves that you can serve with meat (or fish, for that matter). And with a bottle of liquid pectin now opened, I want to use it up before it goes off.

So with that in mind, I may pop to Waitrose this evening or tomorrow – they had some rhubarb in last week. After years of being nigh on impossible to get hold of – except perhaps within a very limited season early in the year, when it’s ‘forced’ it in big, dark sheds in Yorkshire’s ‘Rhubarb Triangle’ – it has been enjoying a revival.

I remain utterly convinced that rhubarb and chili will make a great combination for a savoury jelly. I’ve had a couple of attempts already, but haven’t yet got it right. The problem – which I discovered from Jane Grigson’s English Food – is that chili appears to negate the effect of pectin, so you need to compensate by adding quite a lot more than you would usually.

On the first attempt, I didn’t add anywhere near enough; it didn’t set at all and – not knowing what I know now – I threw it away.

The second attempt went to the other extreme, with a tasty jelly that was way too hard: it almost needs a hammer and chisel to extract it from the jar.

In the meantime, a survey is being sent around the office to see what we would like from the deli bar when we move to a new building next year.

Simples: please not such a preponderance of spicy dishes and please just go for a bit more simplicity!

I can't actually open the survey at present and have let IT know. Is there a plot afoot to prevent this foodie from commenting?

I shall let you know.

And the culmination of the bake-a-thon ...

It was about 12.25pm when I suddenly realised that my stomach was churning.

It's one thing to bring in to the office some sort of culinary effort as a gift for colleagues – it's entirely another to expect them to pay for something! Would it be good enough that people would genuinely enjoy it and not just pay for it out of a sense of 'duty'?

I was up early to solve the final parts of the puzzle – getting everything organised so that I could carry it into work on the bus.

Four cake and biscuit tins did the basic work – the chocolate cake had spent the night in the fridge, on a plate that had been covered with foil, which had been turned down and folded under the plate. It was then easy enough this morning for me to unfold the excess foil and gently lift the cake off the plate and into the biggest of my tins.

With two large carrier bags weighing me down, plus my camera and a handbag, I was out early to avoid the schoolchildren. It turned out to be an easy journey.

And sure enough, a colleague who, like me, is an early starter most days, bought her chocolate bark early.

But nonetheless, after a morning's work, the nerves kicked in.

I should have realised – if you bake it, they will come. Particularly when you liberally sprinkle the word 'chocolate' around.

And they did come. Slowly but surely, they came.

I'm left with some ginger cake and some bark, but they'll sell in the next couple of days.

The reality is that people enjoy my wares and I'll raise a decent amount for charity.

In the meantime, The Other Half is off at a conference and I'm having a girly night in. So please excuse me if I don't post at length.

This has been a really exciting day. I'm quite chuffed, if the truth be known.

And on that note – I'll talk to you soon.

It's a good thing I don't do this for a living

Blimey! Anyone doing this cookery lark for a living must have the stamina of a marathon runner! I'm absolutely knackered! But everything is now done for tomorrow.

I started this morning with the quince and medlar jelly – it took far longer to boil than I expected and is setting only slowly. My fingers are crossed – it tastes lovely.

Then came the first chocolate bark – plain chocolate (72%) melted gently over water, with a teaspoon of espresso granules added while it was melting and then some finely chopped candied ginger before it was spread in a lined baking tray and sprinked with a very small amount of sea salt, to really get the palate going.

After lunch, I bashed on with the ganache for the chocolate cake – something was bound to go wrong this weekend and it was this: the thing split. So I had to hare round the corner and buy more double cream and start again. Second time lucky ...

That cake is now sitting in the fridge with it's rich coat on, waiting until tomorrow morning to be decanted into a cake tin for transportation to the office.

After getting the Boeuf Bourguignon going – I looked at the clock and realised that, with a two-and-a-half hour cook minimum, it needed to be in the oven – I set about the second chocolate bark.

So, melt more dark chocolate in one bowl and some white chocolate in another bowl. Strip the seeds out from two vanilla pods and decant into the two chocolates.

Take a lined baking tin and carefully pour the white chocolate into half the tray. Pour the dark chocolate into the other half and gently use a spatula to make them meet in the middle. Then have a bit of fun feeling artsy and creating patterns that Jackson Pollock might have appreciated.

Done.

Well, apart from the rest of the Bourguignon (mushrooms to prep, bacon to cut up and these, together with whole small onions to brown in butter before joining all the other ingredients in the oven for at least half and hour) and an apple and blackberry crumble that I have sort of promised The Other Half.

When I analyse what I've actually done, and when I read Bill's blog, about his training at Ballymaloe, I can scarcely believe how tired I feel: it's not even just mental, but I'm actually aching physically.

Not that any of this food is exactly out of place on Halloween – or Samhain, as Pagans know it; the time of year when light turns into dark. The dark, velvety richness of bitter chocolate; warming ginger and unctuous cream. And that's before we think of the Bourguignon, with dark flesh, root vegetables and fungi cooking slowly in blood-red wine. And the blackberries and apple, buried beneath a bed of flour, butter and sugar, waiting to drip their juices into the soft, brown sugar they're coated in.

All in all, perfect autumn fodder.

And with that, I will leave this post for today. Knackered, but with a sense of achievement. Not least because, only two years ago – or perhaps less even than that – I would have been completely intimidated by what I'd set myself to do this weekend. It hasn't gone completely according to plan (what ever does?) and it's involved it's tearing-hair moments – or tearing baking parchment moments – but while I've felt irritated at times and tired this afternoon, I've never felt that I've lost control. And that really is a personal step forward.

All that remains now is the eating and, tomorrow, the selling!

The bake-a-thon gets underway

“First line your springform tin” might well be the most complicated instruction in the English language.

Oh yes, it might sound easy, but by the time I’d finally managed to do exactly that this afternoon, there was rather more baking parchment lying scrunched and torn on the kitchen floor than in the aforementioned tin, while the air had turned a vivid shade of blue.

This was well into the weekend’s bake-a-thon, but I can only hope that it was the apotheosis of the project’s fraught moments.

In a fit of charitableness a couple of weeks or so ago, I’d decided to take up a challenge from Greenpeace to raise money for that organisation through ‘flour power’: “bake a cake, not the Earth” runs one of the slogans.

Thinking something along the lines of: ‘Eh? I can raise money by doing something I enjoy and by making things that other people will like’! I signed up.

It’s worth noting here that my colleagues have enjoyed previous culinary treats – homemade chocolate bark and truffles – so this wasn’t a wildly optimistic appraisal. Indeed, once the news was out in our department, the first phrase on several pairs of lips was: ‘It has to involve chocolate!’ Even with this weekend to come, there was a frisson of expectation in the office yesterday.

And I’d picked Monday because … well, because it’s a Monday and because it’s the first day of November, so everyone probably needs a little cheering up. Add into that equation that it sits between Halloween tomorrow night and Bonfire Night on Friday, and it seemed perfect.

After my recent chocolate tart trials and tribulations, I had decided not to make any of those: too much work for too small a return anyhow.

So the first thing I chose was a ginger cake, using my mother’s recipe and which I’ve baked a number of times over the years. It’s carefully written out (with imperial measurements) in a hardbacked notebook that I bought something like 30 years ago in order to copy down recipes before going to college. There aren’t even half a dozen pages full.

It seems funny, after what I was writing about yesterday, to be contemplating anything my mother baked. But as I said then, there has always been, I think, a struggle going on within her. Perhaps the fact that neither my sister nor I were ever asked to help her bake was her concession to that Wesleyan attitude: ‘bad enough to make things they’ll enjoy, but let’s draw the line at letting them enjoy helping make such things’.

Not that I don’t adjust her original recipe. For goodness sake, it calls for “marg”! In my version, that obviously becomes butter.

One of the points that Greenpeace make about ‘flour power’ is that, if you can, it’s nice to look for environmentally sounds ingredients – so, for instance, is the flour organic?

Well, my flour has not been organic: shopping for baking basics in Waitrose earlier this week, I realised that there was a choice between their own-brand organic flour, which comes from a number of un-named countries, and their non-organic flour, which comes from their own farm in Hampshire.

I opted for the latter on the basis that I knew where it came from and that it hadn’t racked up air miles – and that their farm is run to good standards in general anyway. Besides, if we’re doing food ethics, then Waitrose is part of the John Lewis Partnership and is, therefore, a co-operative. Which is good of itself.

The sugar is fair trade. So is the chocolate and ground ginger. The eggs and cream and milk are all from farmers on Broadway Market and are from livestock that is kept to the highest standards.

Butter is from La Bouche and is unsalted and French. Baking powder and bicarbonate of soda are from Waitrose (I have no idea of their provenance beyond that).

Anyway, part of these were bought this morning, at Broadway Market – the weekly trip also having to provide the ‘ordinary’ food for the weekend too.

I picked up excellent frankfurters from the German deli stall to make a sauerkraut dish from Stéphane Reynaud’s Ripailles: Traditional French Cuisine this evening: a dish that is really more German than what we think of as French, but such is Alsace cuisine.

There were parsnips and apples to blend together for lunchtime soup. Plus braising steak from Wild Dartmoor Beef for a Boeuf Bourguignon tomorrow evening – I’ll pop that in a marinade later.

But then, because the very best laid schedules of mice and men are only there for the overturning, I spotted punnets of something unfamiliar at the Chegworth Valley Farm stall. On closer inspection, it turned out to be medlars – a fruit that was very popular in England in Tudor times, but fell out of fashion in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Now apparently, it’s possible to eat them raw, but only after the fruit has ‘bletted’ – or got almost rotten, as the man on the stall described it.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with them – although The Other Half, who was with me this morning, suggested a jelly – but decided that I couldn’t miss such an opportunity, so I picked up two punnets.

When we got home, the first thing I did after putting everything away was sit down in the garden with a coffee, a fag, Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook and Jane Grigson’s English Food, to see exactly what to do with the medlars.

Sure enough, a jelly proved to be the obvious thing. The only question was whether to follow the instructions of Ms Grigson or Ms Raven. The main difference was whether one chopped up the fruit before simmering to release the juices – or not. In the case of the latter, Ms Raven urges readers to resist the temptation to break up either medlars or quince, and simply simmer them patiently until they spilt all of their own accord.

I opted for this version and – after quickly photographing the medlars with a couple of quince and a pumpkin – piled the medlars into a large pot, together with the pair of quince I’d bought last weekend, covered them with water and set them to simmer.

Then came the ginger cake – I doubled the ingredients (eggs, Golden Syrup, sugar, butter, milk, self-raising flour, salt and ground ginger) and also sifted the flour with the salt, although this isn’t mentioned in the recipe. Later, I used a skewer to test that it was completely cooked – and left it until it was.

Unfortunately, it didn’t come out of the tin cleanly – I probably should have buttered it lightly. However, the taste is good, so after letting it cool thoroughly, I’ve cut it into nice chunks – it’s almost more like a parkin, which is perfect for this time of year.

After lunch, it was on to the chocolate cake – and lining that springform tin. After I’d achieved that – thanks to instructions found on the internet – the actual mix was easy.

Set your oven to 180˚C. Take 80g good quality cocoa powder and mix carefully with 300ml boiling water. The add 550g light brown sugar and 250g butter and melt over a gentle heat.

Meanwhile, sift 400g plain flour with 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder and 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda and beat four eggs.

When the sugar, cocoa and butter have melted fully, let the mix cool a little before beating in the eggs. The blend in the flour, mixing carefully until you’ve got a completely even colour.

Pour into your lined tin and pop in the oven. It’ll take between an hour and an hour and 45 minutes. Mine took the latter before the skewer came up easily clean. Then leave to cool a little for about 15 minutes before carefully removing from the tin and peeling away the parchment. Leave upside down on a cooling rack to even out the shape. The sense of triumph was huge.

That’ll be finished tomorrow.

Dinner was easy. My adjusted version for two people goes like this: take a chopped onion and soften in duck fat, before drained sauerkraut, eight juniper berries and some bay leaves are added. The recipe mentioned cloves, but I substituted more of George’s celery salt.

Add stock or boiling water to cover. Pop on a lid and leave for around 40 minutes on a low heat.

After that, pop in some diced smoked bacon and leave for a further 20 minutes. Then add a glass of white wine and some diced potatoes and give it another half an hour. Finally, pop some frankfurters on top and leave for another 10 minutes. Serve with some good German mustard. Very nice.

Not daring to stop for too long, I diced the beef, tied the herbs into a bouquet garni, crushed four cloves of garlic and lobbed them all into a bowl, sloshed in a bottle of burgundy and covered the lot with cling film. It’s now in the fridge, ready for cooking tomorrow evening.

The medlars and quince have long been taken off the heat and are slowly dripping sweet juice through a muslin-lined colander. I’ll nip to the corner shop tomorrow for granulated sugar – they have plenty of pectin themselves, apparently, and don’t needed preserving sugar.

For the third summer running, I lost weight while we holidaying in Collioure. For the first year, though, I haven’t out it straight back on after returning to Blighty. I suspect it’s all these weekends in the kitchen – I barely seem to stop for breath!

Don’t let that fool you though – tiring it might be, but I love it too. But thank goodness the hour goes back tonight and I get an extra hour's kip!

In danger in the devil's garden

Taking Wednesday off work, I journeyed into deepest, darkest Surrey – and all by a spanky new train service – to visit my parents.

It was an odd sort of a day; mentally exhausting. No rows or disagreements, but it was such an effort to make any conversation at times, with both of them dozing off at different moments while I wondered what subject could safely be used to fill in the silence.

And then there is also the matter of my mother’s cooking. For our evening meal, she took some chicken breast, diced it and cooked it in the oven in a dish with some broccoli and a ready-made sauce. I saw the empty jar but not the label and, to be honest, I couldn’t tell what the sauce really was – if it was anything much more than the sort of ‘white sauce’ she’d once have served with cauliflower.

On the side were some new potatoes, scrubbed and picked over with a knife for the smallest imperfection. It was bland but inoffensive.

Yet it took her around two hours to prepare. She doesn’t have a chair in the tiny kitchen, so she wasn’t exactly sitting down and secretly quaffing sherry. But every meal, no matter how easy, takes her such a long time.

I keep out of the way, while my father asks me, as though I can explain, why it always takes her so long.

Well, to start with, she’s no youngster any more. She’s slowed down a lot. But perhaps as obvious to me is that cooking has always been a chore for her – never a pleasure.

Oh, she took great care to ensure that her family were fed properly, with a varied diet, but I don’t think that it was ever really a pleasure. Then again, considering her oft-stated belief that: “We eat to live – we don’t live to eat”, this shouldn’t be much of a revelation.

I did manage, between both train journeys and then sitting in bed at night with a soothing cup of camomile tea, to finish reading Stewart Lee Allen’s In the Devil’s Garden: a sinful history of forbidden food, which may sound rather po-faced, but is actually very entertaining and informative.

Talking of the Victorians and their attitude to childhood – they were the first people to view children as inherently different to adults – and of Pye Henry Chavasse, a 19th century Dr Spock who penned that handy 1844 tome, Advice to Mothers on the Management of Their Offspring, Allen notes that the blandest of food was recommended for children.

Developing the theme, he goes on: “This sadistic approach to child nutrition was a perfect match for the theories of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who believed children were ‘natural atheists’ because they enjoyed nature instead of God.

“He recommended bringing this under control by reminding them that ‘they are more ignorant and wicked than they could possibly believe,’ and breaking their spirit at every turn.

“Withholding pleasant food was considered a particularly plum way to do this, because it trained them out of the expectation of ‘natural’ pleasure at the table.”

Now, as readers may know, my father is a (retired) Methodist clergyman – and from the particularly fundamentalist, evangelical end of Methodism (although he’s mellowed over the years). He even claims that, in the early days of his ministry, the aforementioned Mr Wesley appeared to him and gave him some advice on preaching.

My parents were never as intent on delivering a totally pleasure-free a culinary existence for their children as Chavasse or Wesley might have recommended.

Looking back, it was as though they obviously didn’t believe in eating the worst imaginable foodstuffs themselves or foisting such on their children, but it was as though there was a constant battle not to enjoy food ‘too much’.

Clearly, if one follows the logic of Chavasse or Wesley, the highest compliment available to one’s mother, after dinner, would be: ‘Yuk. That was bland and boring’.

Although perhaps that explains partly why my mother has, by and large, eschewed spices in her cookery and food – apart from Christmas cake, mince pies, Christmas pudding and hot cross buns? Although it’s equally true that, in the post-WWII years, British cooking in general was notoriously bland.

But what a way to spend one’s life – waging a perpetual war against experiencing ‘too much’ pleasure. It makes me think of the oh-so-religious guests in Gabriel Axel's film, Babette's Feast, determined to simply eat but not enjoy the feast that Babette cooks for them as a thank you. And how do you define what’s an acceptable level of pleasure and what steps across the culinary rubicon?

Personally, I find the following description by Allen of the Marquis de Sade’s perfect breakfast to be far more up my street: “The marquis recommends a simple breakfast: a plain omelet, served piping hot on the buttocks of a naked woman, and eaten with ‘an exceedingly sharp fork’.”

As I noted, this is a very enjoyable and fascinating book – but it’s also very moving in places, as in Allen’s descriptions of the food aspects of the US state’s genocide against the Native American peoples. After massive attacks on their diet, both in almost entirely wiping out the buffalo and in the onslaught against corn, a government-approved corn was allowed to be grown in the south west. It gave diabetes to a people who had no history of that disease.

His overall conclusion though, is interesting, as he suggests that the current situation in many Western countries, where food taboos have almost entirely died out, is not necessarily a good thing; that our obsession with unrestricted pleasure is not necessarily healthy.

Yet I suspect that there was an element here of trying to find something controversial to say at the end – of playing devil's advocate.

He had already discussed fast food, the culture of not cooking, of not sitting down to eat as a family, of TV dinners etc, and decided that such behaviours are not about pleasure, but quite the reverse, and are essentially part of a massive con by big business. One could argue that the ‘taboo’ for many of these people these days is the idea of spending time cooking and shopping more than once a week at the supermarket to stock the freezer. Such a ‘taboo’ can surely be seen to be not entirely disconnected from the taboo of taking too much pleasure in food?

Further, many people eat constant take-aways in front of the TV etc as a direct consequence of not taking real pleasure in food: the pleasures gained are often the 'artificial' ones of too much salt and sugar, which are added to compensate for poor flavour etc.

But even for real foodies these days, there are plenty of new ‘taboos’ – one might suggest eating fast food, for instance, is a taboo for many foodies.

For the environmentally concerned, there are questions of the carbon footprint of a foodstuff and whether it’s organic or not.

For many others, there is the issue of fair trade – of the actual producers being paid a decent amount and not being ripped off.

And indeed, for many foodies, these ‘taboos’ are also linked directly to greater pleasure: for instance, seasonal food is environmentally sound – but it also tends to be when the ingredients are actually at their best, when they haven’t been flown 6,000 miles between continents.

So it’s rather odd to imply that we have no food taboos any more. We simply have different ones. And as always, these vary according to what group we put ourselves in.

And for many groups who foist taboos onto other groups, they see themselves as above such rules. Class is a perfect illustration as, time and again, Allen reveals how, for instance, the upper classes fretted about what the lower classes ate and whether it would render them either slothful and indolent or overly aggressive. Yet of course they rarely felt inclined to worry about the same matters for themselves.

Now, it could be argued that a certain 'elite' attacks what are often working-class food choices for creating obesity etc.

But all in all, a cracking good read – and dangerously pleasurable.

Now we are one

Today, Loki and Otto are a whole year old.

Boisterous, cheeky, charming, manipulative, cuddly, devious: these are just a few of the adjectives that I could use to describe our youngest furry monsters.

But we were right: Boudicca has most certainly benefitted from having feline company – even though she possibly wouldn’t be the first to agree on that.

She’d had 16 months on her own after Mack died – we’d decided, on the basis of experience, that she should have some time to herself, to blossom in ways she hadn’t before. We decided – again on the basis of experience – that it’s best to introduce a kitten into a house with an established adult cat. The only question at the time was whether to get one kitten or litter mates – we opted for the latter so that, if Boudi had decided to give a newcomer a really torrid time, they’d have had sibling support.

Her ‘bored’ behaviour has all but disappeared – hardly any messing with the wooden tulips in the living room and not even much banging the sliding glass wardrobe doors in the bedroom: theses had become her default bored behaviours.

She even plays regularly with Loki – and very, very occasionally with Otto.

She has plenty to keep her occupied – particularly as all her assumptions about being Number 1 Household Cat are being rather mucked up by Otto’s considerations on the subject.

My little girl, having being named for Otto von Bismarck (when I still thought she was a he), is living up to her name rather well.

She may still love having big cuddles, but she never seems to have harboured any illusions about The Queen B’s status. However, unlike Boudi’s own tormenting of the late Trickie – who always considered herself a delicate old lady who wasn’t really a cat anyway but a small human in a fur coat who was put upon by cats – Otto’s undermining process is infinitely more subtle.

From very small she realised that sitting above Boudi and looking down at her would cause upset. So she set about doing it a lot.

Last night, after Boudi had hopped under the covers and was purring away in a tent created by The Other Half’s legs, Otto very carefully insisted on popping her face in to look, bringing forth irate growling and then Boudi’s rapid departure from the bed.

The Queen B’s old riposte would have been to smack the impudent kitten. But the impudent kitten in question long ago revealed that she could smack back. So now there is much chuntering and grumbling as Boudi becomes less and less obviously top cat; and doesn’t know what to do about it.

Even Loki, who is less clearly involved in the business of regime change, is undaunted. Having realised that she can now get on top of the bedroom bookcases, she half chases Boudi up there at night, into what was once the latter’s place of sanctuary and safety from junior furballs. No longer. Cue more feline grumbling.

One could almost believe in karma.

Not that this is surprising, if you take on board the idea (and it’s only an idea, with no real scientific basis) that a cat of a year old is, in human terms, about 15 or 16. In other words, Otto and Loki are teenagers.

Now, brownie points to all those who spotted the reference to AA Milne in the title of this post.

Being well brought-up children, my sister and I had AA Milne books at home. I don’t particularly remember the poem referenced in today’s title, but I do remember – and can quote chunks of – the following poem.

With which spurious link, I give you:

Disobedience

James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he;
“You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don't go down with me.”

James James
Morrison’s Mother
Put on a golden gown.
James James Morrison’s Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James Morrison’s Mother
Said to herself, said she:
“I can get right down
to the end of the town
and be back in time for tea.”

King John
Put up a notice,
“Lost or stolen or strayed!
James James Morrison’s mother
Seems to have been mislaid.
Last seen
Wandering vaguely:
Quite of her own accord,
She tried to get down
To the end of the town –
Forty shillings reward!”

James James
Morrison Morrison
(Commonly known as Jim)
Told his
Other relations
Not to go blaming him.
James James
Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he:
“You must never go down to the end of the town
without consulting me.”

James James
Morrison’s mother
Hasn’t been heard of since.
King John said he was sorry,
So did the Queen and the Prince.
King John
(Somebody told me)
Said to a man he knew:
“If people go down to the end of the town, well,
what can anyone do?”

(Now then, very softly)
JJ
MM
WGDuP
Took great
C/o his M*****
Though he was only 3.
JJ said to his M*****
“M*****,” he said, said he:
“You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town-
if-you-don’t-go-down-with-ME!”

AA Milne