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Pizza Shut

26/11/2014

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Anne's been working late and I'm on dinner duty this week and, being Wednesday, that means my repertoire is down to pizza. Which is fine for I am king. A white pizza – gorgonzola, rosemary and sweated red onions - for her degustazione followed by the perfect margherita y acciuga. Social media were tweeting the smells from the moment the slices of homegrown garlic met the olive oil. Grubby-faced urchins spent the twilight hours noses pressed against our windows wishing they lived in Naples. I was, quite literally, cooking with gas.

Remember that cooking for Anne is, as some of you will know all too well, like cooking for Torode and Turnip-head; for Trencherman Fort, Posh Leith and Mincing Wossname. She takes no prisoners, brooks no argument, will countenance no beetroot chutney but hers alone. And she has a way with a compliment. Sashaying niceness, she'll prepare her finest drop volley. Only last week she said to me “You still look lovely, from behind.”

And so it was that tonight she wiped the finest tomato sauce ever to trouble her chin, stretched and sent her finest backhand down the line. “It's so nice to come home and not have to cook for yourself.”    


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Sleepless in Shifnal

20/11/2014

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A mere 30 years behind the curve, Shifnal has become the Seattle of Shropshire. We will soon have five independent coffee bars within 100 yards of each other. True, a couple of them are hybrids – akin to the Irish fetish for skulling pints of Guinness in the local shoe-shop. One used to be, and still is, the photo/portraiture gallery – a clever use of otherwise wasted space. Another is the back corner of the florists, knick-knack and geegaw shop. These and The Shifnal Deli have been fighting hand-to-hand for months over who controls the lunchtime ham panini trade only to be joined by Nan's (I kid you not), greasy caff in the morning, light lunches for ramblers and lycras, and high-end cocktails in the evening - assuming you've a taste for the film of chip fat that descends slowly onto your Manhattan on the rocks. And this week the newsagents closed its doors to re-open as a “high-end” café whatever one of those may be.

The aroma of arabica has Nestled over us these last few months. No longer a dozing backwater – we're now a teeth-stained, bug-eyed, sleepless strutting salsa of a town. The kids at Idsall school have stopped learning. There's no longer any need to 'wipe the dirt of this crummy little town off my feet and lasso the moon'. “Nah – I'm gonna be a barista like my gran,” they say.

And somehere in the shadows, watching and waiting, must surely be lurking, Costa Coffee...    
      

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Engel's Shropshire

11/11/2014

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The journalist and (ex) editor of Wisden, Matthew Engel has just written a book visiting all the counties of England. It's in the tradition of Rural Rides and English Journey. I read the Shropshire chapter first - ahead of London even - which I guess is progress.

He ticks off most of the topics covered in my own book – the modern Olympics, Housman's imaginary land, place names and how to pronounce Shrewsbury, a quick turn round most of the market towns (though not Shifnal obviously), and an ascent of the Long Mynd – though his description of the latter is far less shteep and shcary than mine.

In writing the book he comes to see that each county is largely defined by its distance from, and relationship to, London. For example, Shropshire, he says, is the only county without a direct train service to London, 'not that they actually want to go to London. They just think they have a right to go.'

And on he rattles, seemingly enthusiastic, but tempered with a selection of observations that read like a collection of two star reviews on Trip Advisor:

'A few Scottish-border villages excepted, nowhere in England feels more remote from London.'

'This is a county for the conscientious and the unambitious.'

'Shropshire can seem a bit small-minded and backward.'

'It is a county, the county, of small towns, now almost all forgotten by the railways, and often by major roads, and to some extent by time itself.'

In case you think Engel is being a bit harsh or blinkered, just another member of the metropolitan elite denigrating anything outside of his own posh life in London, it's probably worth pointing out that he actually lives in that mighty bastion of cosmopolitanism, Herefordshire.






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