A Fizzing Summer

It’s been a summer without a summer, which happens every couple of years in the North East. The last truly glorious weather we had was over the Easter weekend. Since then we’ve lived in ever-diminishing hope for a hot summer, which has finally been extinguished today, on this grey and drizzly “Summer” Bank Holiday Monday.

Summer in New Zealand but it could have been England

We spent the last couple of summers in Fiji and from the vantage point of Facebook, it looked like Northumberland had magically turned into sunny Spain. Of course, I realise now that 95% of people will only post photos if the sun is shining as the entire point is to generate envy. Nobody wants to commit the act of eating an ice cream while sheltering from the howling wind in their anorak to their Facebook timeline when everyone else is baring their flesh in bikinis on white hot sandy beaches in exotic locations. So when the sun makes a brief appearance, coats come off, pints get taken outside and the moment is captured for all of eternity on Instagram, where goosebumps and damp bottoms from wet picnic benches are effectively air-brushed out of existence.

Just because we’re not all prostrate from the heat doesn’t mean that we didn’t have a reasonable summer. We just adjusted our expectations. For example, BBQ weather at our house means that it’s not raining too hard, you’re unlikely to attract a bolt of lightning while handling the barbecue tongs and the wind isn’t sufficient to start a fire from blowing embers somewhere inconvenient.

Despite our human-centric take on the rubbish weather, the flowers keep blooming and the fruit keeps ripening. This year, we made an epic version of elderflower champagne, which starts with what looks like a bucket of garden clippings and magically transforms into a sublime essence of summer in a glass. Sugar, vinegar, flowers, water and lemon ferments courtesy of the yeast living on the flowers in sterilised soda bottles. It is truly kitchen alchemy.

There’s also been a lot of beer brewing going on in our house, with the concomitant amount of beer drinking. Beer is an intrinsic part of English life and you can probably chart social change in the UK through beer and attitudes towards it. One of my abiding memories of my first trip to England was my husband (then boyfriend) sending* me to the bar to get two pints of beer in a pub in the Lake District. I came back to the table with one and a half pints, as the barman would only sell me a half as I was a woman. And you ask what feminism has done for us...

We recently took a tour of brewery at Matfen – High House Farm Brewery. For a fiver each, we were taken around by a knowledgeable chap (whose name currently escapes me). I was struck by how close the process was to what we did at home, just on a bigger scale. We sniffed stinky hops and chocolatey malts and I marveled at how much better beer has become in England since I first arrived. I’ve also got much better at understanding of it. I will no longer be tricked into ordering a pint of spleen-splitter (though it was very amusing for husband and bartender) and I certainly wouldn't be fobbed of with a half if I want a full pint. Though these days I wouldn’t order a pint, I’d order a schooner and immediately find a postage stamp sized bit of sunshine so that I could capture the moment on a selfie and post it to my timeline.There would then be no question about how hip I am or how sunny my life is. Not that there ever was.

*I had no idea that English people speaking English in England were going to be so hard to understand and that they were going to have such a hard time understanding me, so I communicated with the locals only reluctantly.

There’s no place like home (in a parallel universe)

Arriving back to the UK after our Fijian adventure was like landing in parallel universe where things are the same but different. With just a few items of furniture out of storage placed strategically around the house, it was like returning to an uncluttered version of our previous life. Drawers previously filled with 15 years of accumulated detritus were appealingly empty. Someone had put a new houseplant on the kitchen window sill and no one had killed it yet. The freezer had a single, lonely looking loaf of bread in it. The only thing that made me sad was my empty condiment cupboard. Americans need their condiments.

That first night, exhausted by 40+ hours of travel, I crawled under the duvet, relishing the cool silence after years of sleeping in sticky heat or with the constant rattle of the air conditioner. Rather than go straight to sleep, which would have been difficult as I had my three Fijian cats lying on top of me, freaked out after being let out of their travel crates, I got my phone out and checked the “near me now” option on the TripAdvisor app. Imagine my shock to see a 4.5 star restaurant 822 meters from my house that I’d never heard of. I live in a village, not a heaving metropolis.

Contemplating the walk to the Wood Oven

A few months later and the Wood Oven, run by long-term Wylamites Chris & Cathy Dixon, is one of my favourite places to eat out. What a great surprise to find a local that makes pizza just the way I like it – with a thin and crispy crust made all the more delicious with a side of wine or IPA from their reasonably-priced drinks list. The only downside is that they do get very busy so you have to book. Having said that I’ve had a few lingering meals there and have never felt any pressure to vacate the table. And at 822 meters from my bed, it’s a ten minute walk along the river to get home.

Since I returned to the UK, I’ve eaten out a lot. From the look on my friends’ faces when I describe my recent North East culinary adventures, it’s clear that I’ve probably squeezed a year of dining out into a couple of months. I’ve had so many amazing experiences. This is not the North East of the 1980s and 1990s when eating out was mostly unsophisticated, expensive and an utter disappointment.

Tom & Shaun explain their vegetable magic

The most striking example of how far the North East has come culinarily was the Trail Shift dinner at The Cookhouse in Ouseburn in March. Showcasing the vegetables grown at Vallum Farm by Ken Holland, Tom Anglesea and Shaun Hurrell created a spectacular vegetarian menu. And no, spectacular and vegetarian are not mutually exclusive words. The main course of roast pumpkin, with fried onions, tamarind chutney, a peanut sauce, piles of fresh herbs with a soft roti/naan-type flat bread to wrap it all up in was, quite possibly, the most delicious thing that I’ve ever eaten in a Newcastle restaurant (except perhaps the lobster and truffle risotto that I had at 21 Queen Street, but that was in 1994).

And while my wallet, waistband and liver cannot maintain this frantic pace, we’ve booked the Trail Shift pop-up at Vallum on June 19th. Looking at the menu I’m struck by a couple of things. First, the only reason that burnt vegetables appearing on the menu isn't totally alarming is that I've seen what these guys can do to a parsnip. The next thing is – did everyone discover Aperol at the same time, or am I just late to that party? In the same week that someone generously made me my first Aperol spritzer from a bottle that they carried in their luggage from Berlin to Fiji, I see that the dinner at Vallum is going to include a watermelon and Aperol ice pop. And finally, is it sad that that is the thing that I’m looking forward to the most?

I’m loving being home, especially this new and improved version. Now, if I can just keep my drawers from filling up with odd fuses, broken bike locks, mysterious cables and foreign change, I’ll know that this is indeed a parallel universe where I also have a new and improved husband. Fingers crossed.

It's Warm up North

Deciding to start a blog isn't difficult. But you actually have to write it. And there is the slight problem of having to have something vaguely interesting to say.

When I started my last blog (which I perhaps I should start referring to as my late blog), I was at the beginning of a 2-1/2 year adventure to the South Pacific. Everything was strange and new and I had loads to say about everything, much of it uninformed.

Arriving in the UK for the first time things were new and exciting and I had loads to say about everything too. Except the internet hadn't been invented yet and the idea of self-publishing your everyday musings through a medium where millions (billions?) of people could access it instantly would have been filed in the same place as hover cars and successful cryogenic reconstitution.

Interesting concept - great salad!

For those of you that cannot picture a time when there was no such thing as the interweb, it was also a time before there was a McDonald's in Newcastle. I understand that this may be too difficult or distressing to imagine, but I once spent a fruitless day walking the cold, damp streets of Newcastle searching in vain for a Big Mac. At that point you could not get an edible burger in Britain anywhere else. McDonald's had obviously already entered the Geordie psyche because every lovely person that I stopped and ask for directions to McDonald's directed me to various branches of Wimpy's. Decades later I can still feel the burgerless disappointment keenly. I digress…

In this blog I hope to capture some of the wonder and enthusiasm for the North East that I had for Fiji recently but that also had for Geordieland when I arrived in the grey, damp 1980s - when going down to the Quayside was scary because you might get mugged properly rather than just mugged while buying an overpriced cocktail. Since then, it has felt like life in North East England has emerged from an era of black and white into the age of Technicolor.

When I arrived back from Fiji in March, it was all the same but different. NUFC was still floundering around the less salubrious end of the table and the random bus driver still called me pet, but there was a fabulous sense of renaissance - a flourishing of culture and dynamism despite the continuing grind of austerity.

The North East is a place of contrasts. Maligned by those “down south” as a post-industrial wasteland, there are pockets of serious deprivation but there are also vast unpopulated beautiful spaces, with some of the country’s most beautiful beaches and countryside. The people are also exceedingly friendly though the recent election results do suggest a certain number who secretly keep a shiny pair of jackboots at the back of their wardrobe. And when you walk the streets of Newcastle you pass queues outside of expensive restaurants as well as a disturbing number of homeless people.

As I've got older my sense of wonder and outrage have both increased dramatically. I can be deeply moved by the sight of a happy family or viscerally angered by virtually anything that I read in the Guardian. Maybe this is the early stages of dementia, but I’m hoping that it’s actually the onset of wisdom. Either way, I will try to capture it in Latitude 55. Welcome -  it’s warm up north.