Bed Pan Cakes

It's Shrove Tuesday here in the holy land (England I mean), so it's pancakes for tea therefore.  I don't normally bother with them, to be honest, but something's prompted me to give them a whirl this year.  I must be yearning for spring and its attendant warmth and light.  Yes, it's been a long cold lonely winter, to quote Audley Harrison.

As we're having them for supper, I've opted for savoury ones, yes, I know, very French.  I couldn't face brown sugar and lemon for me tea.  I'm not eleven, ferrchrissakes.  I picked-up a recipe on the BBC website that was trying rather too hard - it's vegan.  Meat-free would have done me, but there you go.  The thing with p-cakes is what to have with them?  If you ate them on their own, you'd need to neck at least nine, which would be unseemly.  These ones are clad with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes, so a nice dressed salad might be in order.  And some sourdough bread.  That would surely constitute an ample meal for the jobbing 6-foot-tall man-about-town?

I also bought the wife a splendid-looking bottle of French wine for Valentine's Day, which we haven't yet necked, so that's going for a burton, I tell you.  I feel reborn today; it's the weather.  It's simply splendid out.  Wine, pancakes and original British drama on DVD.  What could be finer?

Kalt following

Jesus wept, it's cold this afternoon.  Not that this should come as a surprise; it's been well-forecast.  It's just that one's ability to objectively recall the pain of cold weather is weak.  I can remember heat pretty well, I think - but not cold.  Why is this?  It doesn't seem on the surface of it to afford me any evolutionary advantage.  Also, I'm London-born to Irish parents.  I was always going to be at the front in the war against shit weather.  That's why I don't tan well.  My skin goes red and then I'm physically sick in hot climes.  

I can see the point of this, though.  My blood wasn't designed to tolerate heat, and evolution hasn't yet come to terms with the rise of budget air travel.  In 50 years, cockneys like myself will no doubt have thick rubbery GM skin that can equally-well withstand alpine Europe in the winter and Dubai in the summer.

But I suppose there is an upside to the chilly temps: the missus and I have a lot of fabulous telly to get through, so it's supper on our knees and the goggle box "on" as soon as we're able most nights.  Last night was "Happy Valley", which is as intense a crime drama and I've ever lain eyes on - and I'm old enough to remember McMillan And Wife.  It's so frantically over-wrought in fact that I dread watching it.  The missus has to insist.  I'm always delighted she does though.  It's absolutely brilliant.

We alighted on this series thanks to a camp barman in a pub in central London.  We were in there one evening in the dead-eyed week between Christmas and New Year.  The boozer was practically empty, and we got chatting to the staff and a nice young couple from Chicago, who where in "London, England" for the night before flying home.  The barman raves so compellingly about H.Val that we had to have it.  It is as good as its shrill hyperbolic billing, however.  When I'm next in that hostelry, I'll tell him so too.

Tonight is "Wolf Hall", with the peerless Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell.  Everyone is being acted off the screen by Rylance.  But no-one fares worse than Damian Lewis as Henry VIII.  This is the worse piece of miscasting since Janette Krankie landed the role of Lolita.  Poor D just isn't magisterial.  He's good-looking, yes, but that's not enough in a production of this haute qualité.  Actually, it is enough for some of my more impressionable female friends.  When the first episode went out, they wouldn't stop tweeting about how marvellous he was in the role, notwithstanding that all the positive notices revolved around his ability to fill a pair a tights.  These are intelligent, professional wimmin d'un certain age too, not dozy young slappers.  They should know better.  Tsk.