Crunchie bar pudding

My sister is really, really sick. During her latest bout in hospital, all of us around her bed, we begin to talk about food. My sister has always been a fantastic cook. Out of necessity as young girls we had to get dinner together for all five of us as our parents worked, full time, in East London, and would get home dog tired with an evening of paperwork ahead of them. No choice: we had to get dinner ready. So all of us evolved a skill for getting large amounts of food together in record time and throughout my life as a result I have never been able to cook food for less than five people, a habit consistently exploited by my kids. But puddings were not usually part of the mix. It would be Birds Eye custard with apple fritters or neopolitan ice cream from Mr Gold the sweet shop man down the road. How my sister got into baking I am not absolutely sure. But she got into it years before I did, and her skills as a baker were astonishing. So, as we sat round her bed, we began to talk to her about her Pudding Hall of Fame. And it took us just seconds before we got round to her Crunchie Bar pudding. Actually we had a spirited discussion about whether our Number 1 favourite was the Crunchie Bar pudding or the dark chocolate mousse dotted with mini marshmallows, and in fact the debate on that score continues...but in this matter I am on the side of the Crunchie Bar. And here is what it is. Loads of double cream, whipped into a frenzy. Loads of egg white, similarly thrashed. Twelve, yes twelve!! - Crunchie bars. Add egg white to cream. Stir in mashed up Crunchie bars. Scatter more Crunchie bar shards over the top. Put in fridge. Wait until it sets if you can possibly contain  yourself that long. Take it out. Attack. So incredibly moreish is this pudding that one of my kids requested it in place of a birthday cake one year. Talking it over with my sister in her hospital room made me yearn to make it, so I have my crunchie bars, cream and eggs all lined up on the table ready to go. Thinking about why I want to make it so much, there are two overriding emotions. One is the clandestine delight of chopping up so many Crunchie bars. Who eats that many without wanting to throw up!? And the other is about the preservation of a memory. My Crunchie Bar pudding will taste yummy and will be snarfed down by the family within seconds of putting it on the table. But the making of it will be a celebration of my sister's amazing, pudding-baking skill, her ability to generate joy at the table with a pudding like this.

Customer Service. Who cares as long as the food's good.

I have been away on a holiday in Israel, gloriously night swimming in the Mediterranean, slathering myself with mud on Dead Sea beaches, staring uncomprehendingly at the security wall inside Bethlehem's boundaries, climbing on to roofs in the Old City and drinking in unmatchable views of overlapping histories and religions, and eating shedloads of food. Bread. Loads of the stuff. I would fall out of bed and into Carmel Market and come  back with my arms full of flatbread and pita. And a market visit is a must, because it drums into you faster than any other experience, the shift in customer service culture. There is no hallo, how are you, how did you sleep, what can I do for you today. There is just a direct stare, a pinching together of the fingers to indicate to you that you should hold your horses while they serve someone else, or just the bark of "Mah?" Which, loosely interpreted, more or less means, what the hell do you want, and make it quick.  I loved this style. It unleashed my years and years of pent up commuter aggression, all those unspoken frustrations and irritations, liberated into the release of direct, social-niceties-free, give and take of doing business. I want these oranges, how much? No way, I'm not paying that. Nope. What? Five shekels? Fine. Here you go. Cheers. And I am off, triumphant, not in my purchase, but in the successful capture of direct, chit chat free, transaction. In the Old City, a friend weaves us through the Muslim Quarter, winding deeper and deeper through the back streets, till we get to a filthy and unprepossessing looking arch. We walk through it and find ourselves in a cavernous looking space with a bizarre range of birdcages perched on the concrete alcoves, with a din of birdsong and clashes of saucepans. A man wielding a towel approaches us. Can we see a menu, my friend asks. The man stares at us. No, he says. And keeps on staring at us. Our kids, by now used to the style, stare straight back at him, unfazed. He spreads out the fingers of one hand and ticks them off. Falafel, pita, salad, houmous, chips, He says. We look at each other. Yeah, we say to him. Falafel, pita, salad, houmous, chips. We'll have that then. He turns around and walks off. Back ten minutes later with the food. Quite simply THE best falafel, pita, salad, houmous and chips ever. Especially the houmous. And the falafel. And the pita. Why would you want this man to waste precious time being nice to his customers that could be spent more satisfactorily to his purse and his customers' stomachs, cooking up matchless falafel?? There is definitely a moral in there for my commute.

Encounter with the Ex

A few days ago, while I was on the train reading the Times online on my IPad and laughing at Caitlin Moran's latest outspoken rudeness on the subject of, I think it was, combing your pubic hair, a man got on at the station with a woman and two boys. I gave them a passing glance before returning to my personal chortles, and then I stopped chortling and gave them a much closer look. Especially the man. He looked very familiar, and after a few moments I recognised him. This man was an ex boyfriend. He was someone I had gone out with very briefly in my teens, in a relationship that ended, humiliatingly, when he sent his bezzie mate to come and break it off because he obviously didn't have the front to do it himself. I have friends who have their own hard-to-believe stories of being dumped - by text message, with the words "because you're just too fat", or by some other ignominious route, but I have to say that sending a mate to tell your girlfriend you don't want to see them any more, probably hits the jackpot, or at least it's a contender. On reflection, and I have to say this didn't strike me at the time, but it began to cross my mind as I stared, with increasing ill will, at this man sitting opposite me, it probably says as much that is awful about his mate as it does about him. If ever one of my girlfriends asked me to go and meet up with their partner instead of them and do the honours I feel fairly confidently sure I would refuse and would probably follow it up with a lecture about doing your own dirty work. Be that as it may, here is what happened. I was due to meet this guy, who I'd been seeing for a few months, at a station, from where we were going to go to dinner. His mate turned up. I went to dinner with him. He broke the news. We'd got through the starter by the time he'd plucked up the courage. I lost my appetite. He left. I went home and cried on my Mum's shoulder. By the weekend I was over it, though I had learned more than a few lessons from the experience, and among other consequences, I dropped contact with his friend as well as with him. So you can imagine the slight shock of finding myself opposite him. Well, he didn't appear particularly discomfited so obviously he hadn't recognised me. The woman he was with was obviously his partner and the two boys looked hilariously like a mixture of both of them. So, the idea of raising the past and demanding an apology bordered far too much on a cack-handed episode of daytime drama, say, EastEnders, and I'm too much of a Britisher and it would take a lot, even from me, to go down that route. But I did indulge myself in fantasising about it. In my fantasy it went something like this. He recognises me. He says, hi, it's Melinda isn't it? How are you doing? He says this, you understand, because he is a shameless bastard who has not repented for his sins. I tell him I am an extremely important person with an extremely important job. He tells me I seem a bit hostile. I take several deep breaths and then I say something like this. That would be because, I say, I have a mental list of the top 5 Blokes I would Go To Great Lengths Never To Meet Again If I Could Help It, and you are on it. And you might think it's not that big an insult because maybe the other 4 are also blokes who treated me badly in a relationship. But you would be wrong. In assessing who to put on this list I don't just include ex boyfriends. I don't just include everyone I know well, or everyone I've ever met. My assessment includes the hairy bloke in a white van who yelled obscene innuendo as I cycled down the street. It includes the bloke I saw chuck rubbish out of his car window and drive off. It includes the grumpy station guard who wouldn't tell an elderly woman when the next train was due. It even includes the courier who put a "Nobody at Home" card through my door and made me trek to the post office to pick up my package, because he couldn't be arsed to ring the bell. In short my assessment is drawn from millions and millions of people. And your stinking cowardice STILL sounds out sufficiently strongly to put you in the top five. And then I get up and leave the carriage, to the applause of other passengers and the embarrassed chagrin of the ex, who meets his wife's accusing eyes and has no words.  I don't say any of this. I don't get off the train, because it's not my stop and would be really inconvenient for my commute if I did. But I think it, in technicolour and minute detail. And boy, it feels good.

Preparing for the holidays

I have a holiday coming up shortly. For reasons of family sickness the question of whether or not we were going to take this holiday, which we planned months ago and is fully paid up, has been hanging in the balance, but finally at the end of last week we decided we would take it. This decision sparked a flurry of panic stricken activity. Tim was that I used to hop on trains, planes and buses with nothing more than a backback containing one change of underwear and a toothbrush, but oh how times have changed. The acquisition of children and the relative rarity of any trip that does not involve a business justification, has left me totally unused to holiday packing. I look at magazine pages extolling the virtues of "inflight facial rescue packs" or "luxe beachwear" dazed, alienated and not a little intimidated. Should I part with fifty quid so I can have bottles of Jo Malone smelly stuff so tiny that if I overdo it I'll use the lot before I've left Duty Free? I try to make out a list of the necessary but it becomes apparent to me half way down it, that holidays aren't about the necessary. They are about the totally spurious. A list of necessaries includes suncream, mosquito repellent and adaptors. A list of the spurious includes kaftans, UV resistant eye cream, thong sandles, a Kindle, strawberry Tic Tacs, a fourth swimsuit just because it's Sea Folly and looks like a bikini unlike my other three which are functional Speedos and therefore wholly unsuitable for sand and surf; a myriad of hair decorations, most of them involving artificial flowers; ropes of beads with which to accessorise my beach dresses; oh, and beach dresses. I take both lists with me to the awful shopping centre close to my home. I despatch the first one at Boots within minutes. I wander confused around department stores waving the second, folornly. To be sure, beach dresses are in abundance in the last week of the sale, though of course they are the really ratty looking ones that have been tried on and discarded a hundred times and are looking distinctly sorry for themselves. They are packed together on one rail to make way for Autumn's collection, so it takes some effort to prise one off without bringing the whole lot down, and it is disconcerting to be trying them on surrounded by the wholly predictable and unimaginative display of burgundy and dove grey sweaters and suit jackets we apparently cannot do without in our depressing post-Olympic return to the daily commute. There are also quite a few bikinis in the sale, and these look more hopeful: but holding them up to the light and you can see immediately why sales enthusiasts have relegated them to the remainders basket. They may be billed as swimsuits but would fall foul of the Trades Description Act. Pocket handkerchief would be a generous term for the coverage these bikinis would give any self respecting woman, especially one with a figure more ample than that of a stick insect. I give up, dispiritedly, and make my way to the Krispy Kreme station, located incongruously right next to the swimwear (subliminal message: TOO FAT TO FIT INTO THESE? WHY NOT TUCK INTO A DOUGHNUT AND MAKE YOURSELF EVEN FATTER!!) Lingering over my glazed classic with sprinkles on top I come to a courageous decision. I will take my Speedos and my Nivea suncream. I will take three good paperbacks, my trusty shorts and a few block colour t shirts. I will take one dress. That's it. I'm sorted. I am free. I am back in the days of the mini-backpack. I am clearly having a reverse midlife crisis.