102. Making my own CDs

My iTunes library is not something I would ever share with the world. It's too embarrassing and revealing of my hopelessly teenage taste in cheesy pop and - worse - soft rock and electronica.

My friend Mr Farringer, who is an ex-professional musician and current and continued arbiter of excellence in modern music, sometimes makes me CDs, which I greatly enjoy and which teach me a little something about 'good' music. I like this approach, and wish that I could find other, similarly talented individuals to teach me about paintings, good clothes and wine.

I make Mr Farringer the odd CD, and he's very sweet to me and doesn't laugh in my face.

So, anyway, today Herself toddled off to Hibernia for a few days, and I decided to make myself a poptastic CD to play while I sit in the eyrie writing like a demon (and as badly). So I've got Kylie's new one on there, but otherwise it's a gentle stroll round the crappest, naffest pop you can imagine. Brilliant. The dog managed to pull one of her own claws off earlier today, so she's feeling a little bit downcast, but I can tell that she too has been buoyed by my latest CD.

But maybe my rubbish CDs should join my other hidden talents, expertly bad disco dancing, and expertly bad musical theatre anthems sung at high volume. Maybe I should embrace their rubbishness, and get them out at parties.

Or maybe I should save them for dancing round the eyrie...

101. Charity Shop Bargains

Generally I dislike shopping for clothes. Books, yes. Lipstick, yes. Shoes, yes. Clothes... no. But the one main exception I make to this is picking up bargains in charity shops.

I think its partly the hunt. Will there be anything in this strange-smelling shop which is either a) made from natural fibres or b) not crunchy with unexplained spooge? If 'yes' - will there be anything I like? Will it fit me? If yes - on to the acid test - will Herself allow it in the house or would my Parent go pale and silent if she saw me wearing it. Most things fail at this last stage. Those that make the grade, however, often go on to be worn into rags.

Of course the quality of the hunt depends on your location. In Sandwich the other day the quality of shmutter in the charity shops was generally high, and I would have been happy and done well had Herself not been tapping on the shop window with her head.

In Faversham you have to be prepared to go through the racks of nylon spooge - but between us me and the BF have done pretty well, so it is always worth the risk.

My best ever charity shop bargain was my Gap leather jacket - which came from the Sue Ryder shop in Aldeburgh, was that season's stock, the perfect size, and £10. Sweet.

I like charity shop bargains partly for the altruism, partly because the clothes don't scare me the way new ones do, and partly because I usually end up with something a little bit different, so I don't feel that I am going through the world dressed exactly the same as everybody else. It also gives me something to do when I'm not book shopping.

100. Nigel Slater

(My hundredth blog post. Cool.)

Nigel Slater did not teach me to cook. No, Jamie Oliver has that honour, as the first proper difficult thing I cooked as an adult was his prawn and pea risotto. Soon after that, however, I found that I needed something a little more ... considered, than Jamie, and there, waiting in the wings, was Nigel.

Nigel took over from Jane Grigson at the Observer and he is beloved throughout the land for his faultless, never-fail recipes, and for a writing style that is intimate without being cloying, and beautiful without being distracting. It's possible that I have learned as much about good writing from Nigel as I have about good cooking. I hope so.

I own most, if not all, of Nigel's cookbooks, but for me his piece de resistance was The Kitchen Diaries. Here he brought together everything that makes him special - for me - as the book is part diary and therefore memoir, part seasonal guide, and part recipe book. If I'm feeling down, or tired, or otherwise below par, I pick up this book. It never fails to soothe me, and soon I'm feeling much better. And hungry! Of course I also pick it up when I'm looking for a new recipe to try, and frequently when I want to see what he was cooking on a particular day in a particular month.

For Nigel, cooking is a way to show people that he loves them, and I have come to realise that that is true for me, too. Few things give me greater pleasure than cooking for and eating with someone dear to me, and it is largely thanks to Nigel that I have a fund of recipes to choose from.

I met him, a few years ago. He signed a couple of books for me in his lovely copperplate handwriting, and he was charming and shy, and a giggler. His books have always felt like friends in the kitchen, and meeting him did nothing to lessen that feeling, only accentuate it.

I have lots of other cookbooks now, and I've probably got to the stage where 9 times out of 10 I don't need to use a recipe - but Nigel is my default mechanism, the place that I start, and his writing is a sanctuary.

(His bread never works, though. NEVER.)

99. The SeaVole

The SeaVole is my boat, so called because it is small, questing, and has a pointy nose. It is a 6-foot Walker Bay and it was a present from Herself. I use it as a rowing boat, and sometimes we put a two-stroke engine on the back of it. It is possible to get a sail etc for Walker Bays but Herself does the sailing in her Topper - so the SeaVole is for rowing. The dog comes out with me in the boat - we are Byron and Boatswain - and we row out to the shingle spit, get out, go swimming, get back in, row back and the row about some more. It's excellent exercise.

The SeaVole has got to be up there in the top three best presents I have ever received - with one of those being Life Itself. As a small person I was forever begging to be allowed to row various boats, so to own my very own rowboat is the fulfillment of many childhood dreams.

Here's to the SeaVole. Long may she quest.

98. Sandra Bullock

Sorry, can't help it. I love her.

I haven't seen All About Steve, for which she won a Razzie, and I haven't seen Hope Floats because Harry Connick Jr is forever the killer in Copycat, but I think I've seen most of the rest and it's simple: I love her. Herself understands this, and my feelings for Her Royal Highness Queen Meryl of Streep (to whoome we will wreturne), and puts up with it graciously. She has deep dark feelings for Juliette Binoche, you see, and before she met me had every single episode of The New Adventures of Superman on video, so she gets it, the love.

In order, my top three Sandra Bullock movies are:

3) While You Were Sleeping. The original, for me. Saw it, I think, 5 times in the cinema and bought it on video and then on DVD.
2) Murder by Numbers. Rubbish movie, but sad and sexy Sandra is an interesting twist.
1) Two Weeks Notice. Ha! You were expecting me to say Miss Congeniality, weren't you? Nope.

That's about it really. Me and Sandy, it's for keeps.

97. 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society'

If I could produce, in my whole lifetime, one piece of written work that induced in another the feelings this book produces in me, I could die happy on the spot. Sadly for me and my meagre talent, I don't think it will ever happen, but it is a joyous standard to attempt.

The story of Juliet Ashton and the Guernsey islanders is a classic one, in many ways, but there's a spring and a twinkle in the writing that's just delicious, and while you're reading the characters seem to leap off the page into the room and stand around you chatting. The structure of the story is perfect, the highs and lows judiciously meted out, the payoff substantial, yet subtle.

Of course the biggest frustration and sadness of the book is that its author didn't live to see it published - which causes grief in my heart for two reasons:

1) She probably worked hard to produce it - I wish she had lived to see how much her book is loved and cherished by its readers.

2) I can't look forward to the next one.

I bought myself a copy yesterday in a secondhand bookshop because the weather's been rubbish and Herself keeps having long, loud telephone conversations when I'm trying to work (to be fair, so's she) and I needed both distraction and cheering up. I've managed to buy an American copy which means there are some bizarre and annoying 'translations' but suffice to say by the time I was ready for sleep last night I had read more than half the book and was feeling that same mixture of gratitude, joy and raging jealousy I've felt before. It's mainly the first two, with a small but tangy drop of the last. I will try NOT to finish it today, as once it's finished I'll have to wait another few months to read it again and I'm not sure that the Anne Tyler I've bought to read next will make it onto the 365. But you never know...

96. A Boiled Egg

Towards the end of primary school I did a lot of competitive swimming, which meant going to galas all over London in the evenings after school. It was usually the Parent who took me, and before we piled in the car she always tried to get me to eat a boiled egg. Trouble was, my stomach was always full of fists and snakes and acid before a gala so eating was torture. I'd have preferred some butterscotch Angel Delight, but I suppose that wasn't Nutritious.

An unfortunate by-product of those years was that boiled eggs came to stand for jittery nerves and so were off the menu completely, until I met Herself. (I've got her back onto mushrooms, she's got me back onto boiled eggs. But I still can't do pesto.)

Now a boiled egg (4 mins) is a treat for breakfast, with Marmite soldiers, and those swimming galas a warm memory. Of course I mainly remember the ONE time the Old Man came to collect me from a gala in somewhere bizarre like Hornsey, and all I could hear as I came up for air was snatches of his favourite supportive yell, "Come on my son!" Or, as I heard it, "Cuh ayyy onn" I'm fuzzier on all the many galas the dear Parent slogged out to, not because they didn't matter as much but because it was normal, that she was there. Taken for granted? 'Fraid so. But now I see it, and I'm grateful.

Grateful too, for the eggs, which surely meant the difference between winning and losing. Maybe the many kids the St. Peter's team THRASHED in the pool would have done better with a bit of boiled egg inside their tummies. Poor dears.

95. Fountain Pens

Or ink pens. Or cartridge pens, whatever.

The BF might well correct me on this, but I'm pretty sure that our school insisted we use fountain pens for all our work. To a stationery addict with a speciality in pens, this was obviously no problem. The school even issued blotting paper. I would like to point out that I am not 130 years old - this was in London in the mid to late 80s. It was, however, quite an old-fashioned school.

'Duh', you all say.

Working with fountain pens meant having ink permanently on your hands, and quite often on your face and frequently on your clothes. They leaked into school bags and onto any furniture they came into contact with. They always needed refilling at the most inconvenient times and if your brother tried to use them as darts they rarely survived. It amazes me to think that I wrote all my A-level papers with a fountain pen. Three subjects, three papers each, each exam was three hours long. That's a lot of bloody writing. That's a lot of ink.

I have always owned a fountain pen, and at the time of writing I own five:

1) A beautiful silver Caran d'Ache which was a gift to me on my 30th birthday from my sisters-in-notquitelaw. I cherish this pen. It's heavy, and smart and aesthetically wondrous and I feel both clever and interesting with it in my hand. It is the pen I use to write thank you letters and cards and anything with some heart in it. It's ink-thirsty and a bit leaky but if I lost it I would be distraught.

2) A dead posh Parker with a gold nib, bought for me by Herself one Christmas. Another beautiful pen. But I dropped it and the nib is bent. I've been saving up for a replacement - they're VERY expensive.

3) A Lamy, bought for me by the Parent. This is my workaday fountain pen. It goes with me everywhere.

4) Another Parker. Not a posh one, therefore obviously bought by me, for myself. This is what you might call a jotting pen, if you were a twat. It's the pen I use to write telephone messages, practice my 'Mrs Jason Bateman' signature, that kind of thing. You know.

5) Another one of the above. It's broken. But I can't get rid of it. Somebody please help me.

But the pen I love the most is 'The One That Got Away'. My Old Man had a gold Parker he carried about with him wherever he went, with his Smythson diary. It was a truly classic pen - a beauty, heavy, serious. He let me borrow it sometimes, but the nib was moulded to his handwriting so it only really suited him. It should have been mine, his legacy to me, but it didn't come back from the hospital with his things...

I'm not complaining. I got half his genes after all, and his baby blues.

A writer isn't a writer without a fountain pen, is my feeling. If words are your business you need the best possible tools for the job, and a fountain pen is to the writer what the brush is to the artist. Not the only way to do it, but the original, and still the best.

94. Prawn Cocktail

Despite being a child of the (ahem) 70s, I don't really remember that decade. I remember my denim winnie-the-pooh suit and the yellow transparent mac that I wore with it. I remember OshKosh B'Gosh dungarees. I remember wellie boots and the consequences of drinking Auntie's glass of wine down in one and the flat and the cottage and all sorts of things but not the food.

Food from the 70s is still a source of wry humour as, for most normal people, is the memory of the 'fashion'. So black forest gateau, avocado mousse, quiche lorraine, cheese and pineapple chunks and good old prawn cocktail are considered irretrievably naff, because they came from those style-blighted times.

But Herself and I have reclaimed the prawn cocktail and so have many chefs and restaurateurs. Hurrah! It all began ten years ago in Amalfi, in a little place at the bottom of the cathedral steps. I ordered bresaola. Herself, with a slightly self-conscious hesitation, ordered prawn cocktail. It's called summink much smarter in Italian. Anyway, the prawns were large and juicy and immaculately fresh. The sauce was perfectly balanced between sweet and sour and the lettuce was clean and crisp and crunchy. I say all this but I didn't get to eat it myself. I hadn't opened my mouth to ask for a taste before it was all gone. I think she would have liked to order another one but then her fritto misto arrived and distracted her...

Since then, prawn cocktail has become a favourite. I've been practising with the Marie Rose sauce and I've got it just about right. Sometimes Herself likes it with avocado, at which point I excuse myself briefly and return wearing a full paisley Muu-Muu and a turban, but it does taste really good. Mainly we have it with Little Gem lettuce.

So next time you're wondering what to have as a little amuse-bouche, consider making Prawn Cocktail. Don't buy it ready-made, please, it's cheating, and only Waitrose make a nice one.

93. Living 'The Good Life'

Well, sort of.

Herself has taken to growing vegetables in pots in our tiny urban back garden. So far she's produced lettuces, tomatoes, rocket, mizuna, chillies, cavolo nero and radishes. These, I believe, are the nursery slopes of vegetable growing, but I'd say she's ready to move on to a steeper challenge.

She goes out there at frequent intervals and while she's not quite talking to her plants there is certainly a lot of chat going on, usually to me or the dog - depending on which of us is nearer. We are required to listen attentively, ask sensible questions, enthuse prodigiously and provide unflagging moral support. Also, sometimes I provide actual, physical, support in the way of sheer bloody muscle.

There are two wonderful consequences to this new hobby:

1) It all tastes fantastic. Salad from your own garden tastes completely different to anything you can buy, even from the Farmers Market. The radishes were extraordinary and the tomatoes are outrageous.

2) The pure delight on the face of Herself when good things happen, like when the first tomato started going red, and the first chilli appeared, and (much earlier in the process) when seeds turned into seedlings in their precious little trays on the window-sill.

She's having a ball, and it's a joy to watch and take part in. Am I Barbara to her Tom? Not quite, I'm still more Margot than Barbara, but I'm doing my best. And her jumper collection is much smarter than Tom Good's and she's not such a control freak. There have been setbacks; neither the courgettes nor the beetroot really worked, and I had to get in professional help (Auntie) when I fried the radishes in a makeshift cold frame thingy, but I'd say so far it has been more success than failure.

Growing veg is her thing, what's mine? Well, I talk wistfully about chickens, and maybe a goat, but for some bizarre reason she seems to think we can only do those things when we move out of London! Bloomin' cheek. I think a couple of Welsomers would be a wonderful addition to the household...

92. The Pub

I've spent quite a lot of time in The Pub, when I come to think about it. It started when I was 15, in the Phoenix & Firkin by Denmark Hill station, with pints of Scrumpy. Fairly quickly we moved on to normal cider, or beer, because we knew that if the Scrumpy itself didn't kill us, the effects of the Scrumpy would.

Aged 17 and 18 I spent most of my time in the Ivanhoe, with three tall young men of my acquaintance. Lots of beer and bullshit. And laughing. Lots of laughing.

At 18 it was really about me and the BF. She was on her 'gap year' which meant she had lots of time to sit in the pub with me. We did lots of talking about boys and laughing and writing notes to our future selves. I'm not sure any of the notes still exist, but mercifully (for me) the friendship still does.

Manchester was all about the pub, really, hence my dismal degree. The BF kept me fed, with Crispy Pancakes and Chicken Kievs (not at the same time) and the rest of the time I was in the pub. I was very bored in Manchester, and miserable, and if it hadn't been for the BF, my lovely friend from Chorley and regular visits home I think I might have gone under. I certainly got pretty fat.

First job was about meeting the BF in The Pub after work for debriefs about just how AWFUL working was. Everybody I knew and was friends with I met at The Pub.

Then I met Herself, who doesn't really do The Pub (far too grown-up and sophisticated) and anyway I was working all hours so there wasn't as much time for The Pub. A few years later I realised I missed it, and reinstated it.

Nowadays, Herself will accompany me to A Pub if we are in The Countryside, and I go to The Pub with my little brother and some of my friends, most notably Mr Farringer, who I meet once a week in The Pub and we chat and he makes me laugh A LOT and I do my best to make him laugh and I look forward to seeing him and having those chats and it wouldn't be the same if it weren't in The Pub.

There is both good and bad in The Pub and the idea of The Pub. My Parent refers to every pub ever built as 'The Rat & Handbag' which still makes me laugh. I wish I could have occasionally gone to The Pub with my Old Man. I have had the best of times and the worst of times in the pub but I have never been sick in one or otherwise disgraced myself. Sometimes I want something more glamorous. Sometimes I can't decide what to drink. But most of the time, of course, I'm in the pub because I'm meeting a friend, and we're going to have a couple of drinks and a chinwag and, really, there's nothing much better than that.

91. A new game

A story that my Mother tells about my Father led last evening to the creation of a new parlour game, so I thought I would share it with you so that you too can play.

He (the Old Man) was asked to nominate two movie types he had yet to meet and would like to. This was at a point in his career when he'd probably met most everybody so I'll bet he had to think about it for a bit, but he chose Robert Mitchum (Bob) and an Australian writer called Morris West (Morris).

Arrangements were then made, and my parents had dinner with Robert Mitchum (Bob) and Morris West (Morris) ((not at the same time)) and, presumably, their wives and whatevers. Fun! Apparently the old man really liked both Bob and Morris so he was a clever chap because most times when you meet your heroes they're awful and a part of your soul shrivels and dies with the disappointment.

Anyway.

So the game is, choose two famous people to have dinner with. They have to be alive. (The preamble to the game may be more interesting than the game itself. This has yet to be decided but it does very much depend on who is playing.)

Me and Herself played the inaugural game last night. I chose Meryl Streep and Bill Clinton. Meryl for flirting and a giggle and because she's got a brain and I'll bet she's a laugh. Bill because I'm sure I could get him to spill the beans on who killed JFK and other international secrets. Of course. Herself chose Diane Keaton and Antony Beevor. Don't ask. I didn't.

The best thing about the game is that you'd probably choose different people every time you played.

I haven't thought of a name for it yet, but I will. I have not been inundated with suggestions for reading material, apart from my Big Sister who is a Goddess of Smart, which means that either nobody is reading this blog but BF and BS, or that people read but do not want to Get Involved. Either way, I'll be playing again tonight.

Jon Stewart I think, and Tina Fey...