St David's Day

                                   

March 1 is St David's Day. He is the patron saint of Wales so it is a Welsh National Day. You are supposed to wear a daffodil as a buttonhole. Unfortunately, except in the mildest years, my earliest daffodils are not in flower for another week or so, so it is either a bought flower imported from the Scilly Isles or a plastic one sold in aid of the Marie Curie cancer charity. Often young children go to school in national costume.       

                                   

Valentine's Day

February 14th is Valentine's Day, a day of great popularity or heartbreak for young people. The idea is supposed to be that young men send a card or flowers to the young woman of their choice but do not sign their name leaving the young woman to work out who they are. Nowadays most young men value certainty over romance and tend to identify themselves. It is also an opportunity for husbands to get into their wife's good books by sending her flowers and taking her out to dinner. The occasion is getting commercialised by card manufacturers, flower sellers and restaurants.
Nevertheless I have known three separate young women whose boyfriends have done the whole thing in style by sending a huge bouquet of flowers to her work, (where her colleagues will notice); taking her out to a restaurant which has been previously bribed to produce a special pudding with a diamond ring , and getting down on one knee to ask her to marry him.

Pancake day

             


Rio and Venice get Carnival but England just gets Pancake Tuesday. Both festivals are because this is the last day before the 40 fast that was observed for Lent in preparation for Easter by the christian church. Obviously people didn't stop eating for 40 days but the medieval church had them banned from eating meat, although fish was allowed. Nowadays many christians give up something regarded as a treat -like chocolate- for Lent.
In preparation  for Lent people would eat up food supplies, hence Carnival and the parties, but in England this seems to have been reduced to just cooking pancakes; most people will eat pancakes today whether practising christians or not.
Other traditions which are slowly dying out are pancake races. Pancakes have to be tossed to turn over the cooking side in the frying pan and it was traditional for women to run races in whch they carried pans with pancakes which had to be tossed a certain number of times in the distance. if the pancake were dropped on the ground or did not arrive whole you were disqualified. The secret is to move steadily tossing the pancake rather than trying to run to quickly.

Basic pancakes with sugar and lemon

Ingredients

For the pancake mixture

• 110g/4oz plain flour, sifted
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 200ml/7fl oz milk mixed with 75ml/3fl oz water
• 50g/2oz butter

To serve

• caster sugar
• lemon juice
• lemon wedges

Preparation method

1. Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl with a sieve held high above the bowl so the flour gets an airing. Now make a well in the centre of the flour and break the eggs into it. Then begin whisking the eggs - any sort of whisk or even a fork will do - incorporating any bits of flour from around the edge of the bowl as you do so.
2. Next gradually add small quantities of the milk and water mixture, still whisking (don't worry about any lumps as they will eventually disappear as you whisk). When all the liquid has been added, use a rubber spatula to scrape any elusive bits of flour from around the edge into the centre, then whisk once more until the batter is smooth, with the consistency of thin cream. Now melt the 50g/2oz of butter in a pan. Spoon 2 tbsp of it into the batter and whisk it in, then pour the rest into a bowl and use it to lubricate the pan, using a wodge of kitchen paper to smear it round before you make each pancake.
3. Now get the pan really hot, then turn the heat down to medium and, to start with, do a test pancake to see if you're using the correct amount of batter. I find 2 tbsp is about right for an 18cm/7in pan. It's also helpful if you spoon the batter into a ladle so it can be poured into the hot pan in one go. As soon as the batter hits the hot pan, tip it around from side to side to get the base evenly coated with batter. It should take only half a minute or so to cook; you can lift the edge with a palette knife to see if it's tinged gold as it should be. Flip the pancake over with a pan slice or palette knife - the other side will need a few seconds only - then simply slide it out of the pan onto a plate.
4. Stack the pancakes as you make them between sheets of greaseproof paper on a plate fitted over simmering water, to keep them warm while you make the rest. Serve sprinkled with a little  sugar and lemon juice.

I would never eat pancakes with anything other than sugar and lemon but other filling are becoming popular, particularly, Bananas and Chocolate Sauce, and ,Cherry Pie Filling and Icecream.

Twelth Night

                                   

January 6th is Christmas day for the Orthodox Church but for western christians it is the feast of the Epiphany celebrating the coming of the Wise Men to worship the infant Christ and is otherwise known as Twelth Night being the 12th day of the Christmas Feast.
In the middle ages this would be the day that the fool or one of the lower servants was made Lord of Misrule and took the place of the master to direct the feast.
Nowadays most people regard it as the end of the Christmas celebrations and the day they take down their decorations and throw out the tree although one vicar has been on the radio a lot yesterday and today explaining that the  church regards Christmas as a 40 day feast which ends at Candlemas on February 2nd. This is of course a cross quarter day and emphasises the link with pre-christian religion.
Shakespeare wrote one of his plays for the court festivities of 1601. It is a comedy and one of its themes is a play on the upside down world usually created by the Lord of Misrule. We saw an excellent production at Stratford in the summer by the Royal Shakespeare company and they had managed to make it completely up to date with characters speaking on mobile phones.

                                      

The commercial drive peters out now as the January Sales come to an end. In my youth these started in January with the excess stock not sold by Xmas substantially reduced to make way for new stock. All the repricing had to be done by hand so sales started in January. Now it's done by computer so some start before Xmas  and most on Boxing Day and most have finished by the time the schools go back next week. 

Burns night

                                            

January 25th2013 may be the feast of the Prophet's birthday in the Islamic world but in Scotland it is Burns Night. This celebrates the 18th lowland scots poet Robbie Burns and all over the world groups of (usually only)men get togther in his memory. They eat Haggis, a Scottish speciality made from a sheep's stomach stuffed with various parts of its minced offal, barley and flavourings and boiled for hours. It is ceremoniously piped in by a pipe'r wearing full kilt costume,(usually all the men will be in kilts too), Burns' poem "Ode to the Haggis" is recited and the it is cut with a sword before being served.
At many Burns dinners each diner is required to bring a bottle ofwhisky and there is subtle competion as who has brought the rarest or oldest malt (and hence the most expensive).Everyone is supposed to partake of each and as theorectically each man is expected to drink a bottle of whisky (for a non-alcholic to do so would probably mean a trip to Casualty with alcohol poisoning) everybody gets very very drunk.

                                                

                                                                                

                                                      
Here is one of Burns' more lyrical poems which is often set to music

My love is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June :

My love is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in love am I :

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun :

And I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only love,

And fare thee weel a while !

And I will come again, my love,

Thou’ it were ten thousand mile.

Goodbye 2012

                                  

2012 has been a good year for Brits what with the Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee although Londoners got the best of it and the rest of us may just remember 2012 as the wettest year since records began. Meanwhile we are all waiting to welcome in the New Year.
The place to be is Scotland where the New Year celebrations are called Hogmanay and are much more important than Christmas. They have two days off to recover and probably hangovers to match as the welcome consists of numerous toasts of whisky.
New Year is the other time (with Guy Fawkes night) when the public can buy retail fireworks and a number of neighbours will be letting them off at midnight but fireworks are a recent addition to the New Year celebrations. In London the traditional place to go was Trafalger Square and crowds would gather and the more inebriated celebrate in the fountains. Many years ago they started turning the fountains off to prevent this  and controlling access to the square to prevent crushes and stampedes as Trafalger Square can only hold about 80.000 people. For the Millenium the authorities were concerned that many, many more people than usual would turn out so they put on a special fireworks show on the river to disperse the crowds. It could take 250,000 spectators safely and was such a success  that they have repeated it every year since.
The old tradition is of first-footing where the first person to visit the house, usually immediately after mid-night should be tall, dark and bring presents of salt and coal. Usually a member of the party, preferably not the householder was sent out at five minutes to mid-night to be let in at 30 seconds past. It is also traditional to sing "Auld Lang Syne" by the Scots poet Robbie Burns. The words are not really English but lowland Scots.
My favourite New Years were when we were living in Liverpool. It was the tradition there to leave your party and go out into the street to join hands in a circle to sing Auld Land Syne at midnight. The circle would be joined by other parties and stray motorists who hadn't got to their party in time. Midnight was marked by the sounding of horns by ships on the Mersey and after the singing you would kiss everybody in sight and wish them "Happy New Year".

                                             

                                           Auld Lang Syne

                                               Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
                                               And never brought to mind?
                                               Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
                                               And days o’ lang syne!

                                              Chorus:
                                              For auld lang syne, my dear
                                              For auld lang syne,
                                              We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
                                              For auld lang syne!

Father Christmas

                                                              

Father Christmas (UK) and Santa Claus (USA) have different histories but are now  essentially agreed to be the same character.
He lives in Lapland (UK) or the North Pole (USA) where for most of the year he makes toys with the help of Elves. On Christmas night he flies round the world in his magic sleigh pulled by reindeer called Dasher, Dancer , Prancer, Vixen,Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen and, on foggy nights, assisted by Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer.In the course of the night he visits every child in the world bringing them gifts but only if they are asleep and if they have been good in the previous year.  His elves keep a list of all the naughty children so that he knows who to visit.

He used to wear a green coat like the elves but for the last century and a half he has worn red trousers and a red jacket trimmed with white fur and a red hat. He has snowy white hair and a long beard and moustache. He used to come down the chimney to children but now fewer houses have chimneys he has to be more imaginative. He puts smaller presents into stockings which children leave for him by the fireplace or at the end of their bed but larger presents (like bicycles) will be left wherever is convenient. As it is hard work delivering presents he likes it if the children leave a glass of sherry or brandy and a mince pie for him and a carrot or some sprouts for his reindeer. If Father christmas has visited these will always have been eaten and drunk when the children come downstairs in the morning.
In order that he knows the right present to take to each child he has lots of assistants who dress like him and go into shops and town centres in December to ask children what they want. Some of these also collect money for charity or to buy christmas presents for poor families. Alternatively children can write to him at Lapland or the North Pole and get a reply from him telling them to be good; or you can send you note to him up the chimney.

NORAD track the progress of his sleigh on Christmas Eve and a few lucky children with wealthy parents are able to visit him in Lapland before Christmas on special holiday flights. They can see the reindeer and ride in a sleigh themselves.
He has starred in many films and is the subject of numerous songs and poems. In particular http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19286

                                                                

                 A Merry Christmas to All and to All a Goodnight