Musical Alphabet: I

A one-hit wonder for Natalie Imbruglia (actually a cover of a song by a Swedish duo). Listening to this song takes me back to autumn 1997, being driven to work at Bray Studios by a colleague. It was played on the radio pretty much every morning as we drove through the dawn mists out of London and into the Berkshire countryside.

The director of the video, Alison Maclean, apparently had a remote control for the camera so that she could run it whenever she fancied, including during rehearsals, setting up the shot, and relaxing moments between takes.

 

Why so serious?

While suffering recently through Termination Salvation, I got thinking about how when I was growing up there were two kinds of movie. Movies for adults and movies which were, you know…for kids. But recently a middle ground seems to have opened up, to be filled by what usually turn out to be the most expensive and heavily hyped movies around. At a guess I’d say that these films are aimed primarily at teenage boys, but they seem to want to have their cake and eat it. They’re based on source material which was obviously originally aimed at children (superhero comics, robot toys, theme park rides), but they want to be all grown-up and dark too.

Yet the “darkness” is often no more than window dressing. For example Terminator Salvation has a washed-out, grainy, Saving Private Ryan look to it and a portentious voice-over which claims to have something to say about what it means to be human, but at the end of the day it’s just a collection of explosions and crashing helicopters and men scowling and growling. The third Pirates of the Caribbean movie seemed to forget that it needed to be a) funny and b) exciting, and pootled about chasing random plot threads and secondary characters through the gloom and rain, as if that made it darker and more interesting than the simple romp of the first episode.

I remember someone asking once on a Brussels expats online forum where they could take their child to see Superman Returns in English. I replied with the details, but then cautioned that despite appearances this in fact was not really a suitable film for a small boy. Not that he’d find anything upsetting in it, but more likely that he’d be bored to tears. During two and a half hours our hero moons about stalking his ex-girlfriend, brooding over his place in the world and what people think of him and generally spending more time on existential angst than villain chasing. The very occasional action scenes are repetitive and unimaginative, leading one reviewer to rename the film Superman Lifts Things.

This is what happens when geeks grow up to become writers and directors and want to revisit their childhood obssessions but give them weight and respectability by taking them oh so seriously. This can be done, but only if you put some effort into making the content dark and interesting, and not just the design and lighting. This is what The Dark Knight got right. And yet the merchandising departments seem to be on a different page from the actual filmmakers. While the movie itself is all doom and violence and nihilism, in the shops the related products are toys and clothing aimed squarely at pre-teens. You’ve seen the long, gory, self-important, depressing movie, now buy the lunchbox!

 Can we have some summer blockbusters next year that are actually fun, please? Otherwise, where will it all end?

 

Musical Alphabet: H

Ozark Henry is a pretty big star in Belgium, but in spite of singing in English and producing fairly radio-friendly stuff he’s never really crossed over into the wider world, which is a shame. He’s a talented producer, has an interesting voice and stylish hair.

This song’s from his most recent album, The Soft Machine.

 

Only here for the beer

I started drinking beer relatively late in life (that is to say, I waited until I was of legal drinking age). For the first four or five years I stuck to cider; preferably dry, usually Olde English or Scrumpy Jack. Please note, the latter is a brand name only and is not to be confused with genuine scrumpy. A friend once procured some real scrumpy for me: a plastic container he’d bought from a local farm which seemed to hold an unholy concoction of paraffin, twigs, hay and a handful of rotten apple peel. It nearly took my head off and I’ve never been anywhere near it since.

Later I switched to lager, usually going for the best combination of price and flavour, and doing my best to avoid anything Australian. It was during these years that my drinking declined, and by the time I moved to Italy at the turn of the millenium I was mostly drinking wine, apart from the occasional bottle of Nastro Azzurro or Moretti to accompany my pizza.

Then I moved to Belgium, where beer is viewed in an entirely different light. In the land of (literally) a thousand beers connoisseurs abound and  the amber (or ruby) nectar is treated with reverence, the subject of learned treatises and civilised tasting evenings. It’s a far cry from the “Never mind how it tastes, just keep pouring it down your neck until your bladder bursts” attitude to which I was accustomed in my youth.

Nowadays when I return to the UK I like to taste the local brews with this slightly more considered approach, seeking out unusual local specialities. The south west offers much to entice the beer enthusiast, not least Otter, which has been doing very well of late, but the one which caught my attention this time was Badger. The pint of Badger First Gold pictured below didn’t grab me at first, but halfway through I started to notice the complexity of the flavour, and the wonderful smokey aroma. I bought a gift pack of four of their other beers and am looking forward to savouring the rest of them.

Later in my trip I was in Bath and discovered the Bath Ales range, specifically Golden Hare. Not as complex as the Badger, but crisp and refreshing, without sacrificing taste. One of the things that bothers me about how many beers are presented is that their prime concern seems to be that they be ice-cold and thirst-quenching, as if all they were were a hydration tool rather than a drink to be enjoyed for its own merits. I’m reminded of the Hobgoblin marketing campaign: “What’s the matter, lagerboy, afraid you might taste something?”

By the way, can we seem a theme emerging here? Yes, the English like to name their beers after small furry animals…

Lastly, I couldn’t resist buying this one:

I wavered initially, as it sounded both intriguing and repellent. I mean, I like beer, and I like bananas, but together? The aroma wasn’t too encouraging, smelling more of artificial banana flavouring than genuine fruit, but the drink itself was surprisingly pleasant, and not at all sickly as I’d imagined. Of course, the Belgians, with various cherry and peach flavoured beers, have great experience in brewing with fruit, so the question now is which other fruits could be used to make the perfect pint? Kiwi beer? Passion fruit beer? Mango beer?

 

Musical Alphabet: G

Goldfrapp are one of those bands who change style with every album, while retaining a distinctive identity.

To wit: Utopia, from the first album Felt Mountain.

Strict Machine (love the video) from the second album Black Cherry.

(and if you thought that was sexy, check out Twist…). Their third album Supernature, was more of a Studio 54, disco and coke type thing, and I gave it a miss. And then they went all pastoral and folky with their most recent album, Seventh Tree.

So which Goldfrapp do you prefer?

 

Musical Alphabet: F

Frazier Chorus are another of those groups who never seemed to achieve the success they deserved. They made deceptively fluffy-sounding pop with sharp lyrics. Some of their songs are unbearably dark, others are the most feelgood tunes I know of.

It’s not easy to get hold of their three CDs any more, although apparently their first one, Sue, is about to be reissued, so let’s hope the other two will be too. This song’s from my favourite, their second album Ray. You can hear a few more tracks on their Myspace page.

 

El doctor will see you now

“Spain’s state health system is a command economy. My view of it is, of course, largely subjective. Once you have got beyond primary care, you are there to do as you are told. You fill out this form, stand in that queue, and remember that el doctor or la doctora knows best. Spaniards are normally wonderful, imaginative abusers of bureaucracy or rules of any kind. Given the chance they will charm, cheat or bulldoze their way through them. Stand them in front of a man or a woman in a white coat, however, and they go meekly wherever they are led. Doctors, pharmacists and even the owners of healthfood shops – who have adopted the uniform to hide their quackery – are all treated with a degree of respect, even awe, that their counterparts elsewhere could only dream of.”

Giles Tremlett, “Ghosts of Spain“

 I can’t comment on the assessment of the Spanish psyche, but it does seem to me that the author’s Englishness is colouring his view of attitudes in his adopted home. In other words, it’s not so much that Spaniards trust and respect their doctors as the fact that the English mistrust and avoid their own. I’m lucky enough to get free annual health checks through my job in Brussels, and my experiences with the Belgian health system have been more than satisfactory, but it’s true that back in the UK I pretty much never went to the doctor as an adult, and never once went to hospital. I’m very lucky in that I almost never get seriously ill, have no inherited defects and have never been involved in a major accident, but I’d also be more wary of using UK hospitals compared to their continental European equivalents due to the way they seems to be organised, run and funded (or rather, not funded).

But there’s something else behind my (and Giles’, and, I suspect, all Englishmen’s) attitude to doctors. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, then his body is the most secret, private room in that castle, and very few people are ever admitted therein. Allowing a stranger in a white coat to prod, poke,  intrude and investigate is, for us, the ultimate invasion of privacy, and is only to be borne under the most pressing of circumstances. It reminds me of the relationship between the king and his doctor in The Madness Of George III, when the monarch becomes increasingly incensed by the medic’s impertinent questions about his health and sternly informs him that the colour of a man’s water is no-one’s business but his own.

 

Musical Alphabet: E

Probably my favourite Eurythmics song. And am I the only one who remembers when Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were in a pre-Eurythmics band called The Tourists?

 

Hof van Cleve

Hof van Cleve, currently rated 26th best restaurant in the world, sits in a field just outside the tiny town of Kruishoutem, halfway between Ghent and Kortrijk in Flanders. This was a rare return trip – usually we prefer discovering something new, but this was one of the first three-Michelin-starred restaurants we ever went to, sometime in 2006 I think, and that was back before I started photographing and blogging meals.

We arrived at midday and as it was a warm, clear day we were seated in the garden off to one side of the main building while we sipped our aperitif (champagne, angostura and a sugar cube) and perused the menu. There’s not usually much point in me examining the options in this kind of place, however, as I always just end up ordering the longest tasting menu available.

The “Freshness of Nature” menu consists of nine courses, but before that we had five amuse-bouches to get through (which weren’t listed on the menu so forgive me if I forget some of the ingredients). First, anchovies on toast and spring rolls filled with oxtail, with a soy and coriander dipping sauce. The oxtail rolls in particular were strong and meaty, yet light.

Then beef carpaccio, raw tuna and wasabi ice cream.

The next was absolutely my favourite – a herb-encrusted frog’s leg, some kind of creamy mousse, and underneath pesto-flavoured couscous. Great textures and a confident juxtaposition of flavours.

The next one I have problems remembering anything about, and the photo doesn’t help, but I do remember that the dominant flavour seemed to come from the brown gel encircling the seeds in the middle – miso-infused, perhaps?

Finally an onion and bacon soup with a skinny strip of Peking duck on the side.

Then we moved inside the restaurant to start the meal. It’s a relatively modest interior, but very comfortable. The only thing that bothered me about the setting was the appalling modern art on the walls. In fact I’ve noticed before in many different types of restaurant that as a general rule, the better the food, the worse the art.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not all that keen on bread with meals, especially when you’re pacing yourself over a dozen courses, but we were offered such a wide and tempting selection (breads flavoured with cheese and bacon, or Westmalle trappist beer) that I couldn’t resist.

I’d ordered the selection of wines with my menu, and first up was something of a surprise – saké. Also surprising was how light and tasty it was, with a delicate citrus flavour making it much more pleasant than other rice wines I’d tried. The first course was a trio of shrimp; one in a small bowl with some avocado cream and some kind of shoots:

one grilled:

and a tagliatelle of cucumber with shrimp sauce.

Next, mackerel and razor clam with coriander, tomato and little lemon bubbles. Also probably the prettiest dish of the day.

It was accompanied by a cockle soup.

The inevitable squid course, with yuzu, seaweed and dashi soup.

The equally unavoidable lobster course, with belotta ham, rocket, asparagus and a quail egg.

The fourth and final fish course was Danish cod with crab and leek. The parmesan crumble at the top and bottom was a masterful touch. There was a slight delay in receiving this dish as the waitress dropped one of them as she was coming out of the kitchen. The speed with which they plated up and served a replacement got me thinking about how this stuff is prepared, whether they have spare portions on standby just in case, and in particular about how fast and skilled they must be at prepping such an elaborately presented dish.

Finally the one and only meat dish: veal with mushrooms and tarragon gravy. The lightly-fried potato cubes were wonderful; slightly leathery skin, fluffy and light as a feather on the inside, and flavoured with Moroccan spices.

To cleanse our palates before dessert, a shot of mojito topped with lime mousse.

Dessert number one: strawberries with mint, white chocolate and prosecco, with a side dish of mascarpone ice cream.

At this point chef Goossens made an appearance and circulated among the tables, stopping for a brief chat. I complimented him on his integration of Japanese ingredients into the fish courses, which he said was a result of two research trips to Tokyo.

Dessert number two: banana cream with lime, passion fruit and a chocolate madeleine.

And a side dish of cake, ice cream and crumble.

And that was the end of the main part of the meal. We moved back outside for coffee and more sweet nibbles.

 

We were full, but not uncomfortably so, which I think is a sign of a well thought out and balanced menu. My wife’s belly was looking rather large though…

 

(OK, for those of you who don’t know, she’s five months pregnant)

Overall I’d say it was as good as the first time, if not better. Let’s hope we manage to get back there before another three years pass…

 

Musical Alphabet: D

Before moving to Italy my experience of Italian popular music extended no further than once having inadvertently heard an Eros Ramazzotti song on MTV Europe. But you can’t spend any time in my wife’s hometown of Genoa without getting to know the work of Fabrizio De André. He dominates the city, and his varied repertoire describes it in all its ugliness and beauty, often in Genoese dialect. But he’s not just a local hero – he’s recognised nationwide (and beyond) as one of the all-time great Italian singer songwriters.

I’ll always associate certain songs of his with the year I spent living in Italy, driving along the Ligurian coast or wandering the alleyways of Genoa.