Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

 Ed Davey held to task Ed Davey, LibDem MP and Undersecretary of State for Business In a conversation an hour ago, Ed Davey insisted that if it wasn't for their participation in the government then things would have been much worse. We act as a brake on the Tories and are able to introduce a lot of policies that we are proud of. Look, I said. I voted against the Tories, but thanks to you, I've got a Tory government. N o, you got a LibDem MP and we've done a lot to look after people. He gave me some examples. We've helped disadvantaged children... He continued. Blunket , and Reed and others came on TV and ruled out the possibility of a  coalition with the Labour government anyway. And it would have been a minority government. What we see, I said, the people on the left who supported the LibDems because  of their green policies and tuition fees and so on, is that  you are all like Nick Clegg. You  have no red Lines. There are no deal breakers for ...

Jim Higgins was Dad's boss at Events , the Middle East companion magazine to the Arabic Al Hawadess and then Dad's good friend. He was a very witty intelligent man. Roger Protz in his obituary in the Guardian said that Jim: 'was one of the most remarkable and didactic figures in the British revolutionary socialist movement of his time, someone who drew generations of people to independent, libertarian Marxism. He was also the best-read and mos t truly scholarly person I have known.' I met him and his better half Jane on the occasions they came down to visit us in Brighton. I didn't understand a lot of the jokes because they were in-jokes and a lot of them were filthy and I was only 17. But I laughed anyway.

Daffodils, Nod if you remember, Were the Yellow lamps Silk screened And Printed Onto the postcards You sent Me (when you were 17) Daffodils, Are  Untimely; They Bud And  flower unexpectedly; When we're unready, And so, In return, We pluck them Unwarned. Daffodils, When their stalks, Copper green, Are clipped From bulbs Blooming in Flower beds, Upstand When put in vases, Dead. Daffodils,  In pretty fasci, Are for sale In London stalls. In spring  And smell of galantamine. . Here! I bought you a Daff.

  Those in the picture (from left) are your father Tony, your mother Eve, Tony Levy, (then two men students I can't identify), Glenys Harrison (as she was then), Paddy Roome, and myself (John Patten). Hi Philip!  I'm in California looking after the grandchildren for a few weeks. Not too effectively, I think, as my grandson fell out of an apple tree yesterday  and broke his arm! I remember we all went on the big protest march against apartheid, starting at Wits and winding down into town. All the policemen turned their backs on us. We didn't have any idea at that stage how bad things would get.  We  often went to parties together , or out on picnics. We just discussed everything going on in our lives, politics, courses we were taking. I don't remember any specific words, except once, when we were all in the car ready to go on a picnic and already late, when  Tony said he had forgotten the bottle opener, so got out of the car very slowly a...

 From Goodtoknow  From Essentially England  From Thrifty Living  From John's in Stow  From images of  From Naturaliscious I challenged Allegra  McEvedy to  invent a cake to celebrate a royal occasion. It was a provocative and Republican challenge, but she rose to it.  Since then I have wanted to make this  cake.  1. Soak four layers of Victoria sponge with sherry. 2. Bind the discs of sponge together using clotted cream and     lemon curd. 3. Mix some Elderflower cordial into whipped Jersey cream. 5. Layer the whipped cream mixture on top of the cake. 6. Arrange the raspberries and blueberries into a Union Jack on     the cream. 7. Decorate with sparklers and ribbons. Allegra explains: T'would be a celebration of all that Great Britain has to offer: Our most celebrated curd, lemon curd, that which has held English teatimes together for centuries. Hand ...

 Big science without the hallelujah Just about an hour ago the Easter king died and was resurrected. Robert Graves and James George Frazier can explain. Adonis was killed in the Nahr Ibrahim , Osiris dismembered in the Nile, and Jesus died crucified on a hill near Jerusalem. Meanwhile, scientism seeps into the culture and makes rationalist fools out of the bible thumping Christians, whose religiosity is sabotaged by their pride in their western heritage. They defend the scientific reality of miracles, making straw men of themselves. The spiritual key to human experience, and the human experience of spirituality, is lost; either washed away in the literalism of Mel Gibson's blood festival, or diluted by Rowan William's all inclusive notionalism. Williams can defend Philip Pullman because he shares Pullman's beliefs . The poetry of sermonry only makes his philosophy seem different to Pullman's. As my father used to say. 'I'm an atheist, but t...

 SOAS Library, a jewel amongst libraries Our civilisation is truly up the creek if we think the idea of the library is now an impossible dream and that access to books and information for all is unrealistic. That's a sign of a decaying civilisation. A sign that the vultures are now in completely in charge, the predators and the psychopaths. We need public libraries, online libraries, free access to information for all. The current state of the web does not give us this. There are few monetary incentives to set up proper online public libraries. None whatsoever, in fact. And yet good libraries are a mark of all civilisations. Of course in Britain we assume, for the moment, the right to go to a public library or university library and they form part of a network of libraries and you will find almost any material you need there, much of it out of print. In order to write an essay, for example, you might need to consult many books and periodic...

I've been adding people I like the look of to my  Facebook page. Writers I admire, publishers, activists, journalists, politicians, poets, teachers, chefs, producers, fellow humans - all kinds of people. It's a two way street of course. Some of them have been kind enough to add me out of mere curiosity, but I was most honoured and happy when the great Harold Evans added me. I imagine him thinking. Let's try out the social media, let's see what it brings in. My father, also an editor, got to the stage where he said. Look Phil, I am not really interested in having a forum where people talk back. I want to hold forth for a while. You mean Ipse Dixit, I said, and told him the story of Pythagoras behind the curtain holding forth. I can't really express the quality of my  father, he was shot through with it. Those who know him, know this. And I heard him speak well of Harold Evans, respectfully. Of course he deeply appreciated good writing and even his pronouncements,...

Jacobus Swart In a parody of the synchronic I met up with Jacobus and in doing so I put him out. 'I suppose you've left by now,' said Jacobus on Facebook, 'if so we'll meet some other time. I am off to Budapest.' And then I got a mail saying much the same thing. In fact,  at almost the precise moment Jacobus was typing the word Budapest I was looking at a photo album with pictures of Budapest and thinking. 'Should I take these? No. What possible meaning could they have.' 'What people don't realise,' said Jacobus, 'is that there is a connection with that woman cooking a stew in her house and that rabbit running across the road.' I came across Jacobus through his close mentor and father figure, William G. Gray. Josephine, the old lady who used to work managing bookshops and who then worked at the Oxfam bookshop in Twickenham and who always said: 'I like matching up a book with a person,' helped m...

Can you learn the language of chile? Photo by Stephen Seuss The truth about Chile is that only Mexicans and Amexicans fully understand it. In the first place it is not a spice. Spice comes from the East. The mistake is as crass as calling the Aztecs and Tlazcaltecas Indians. Europe's head was facing backwards as it headed west in the 15th century. Spices are dry condiments, often powdered - designed to mask and even enhance the smell and taste of  decaying meat or enhance the flavour of boring vegetarian food. Spices work particularly well with odiferous mutton. They give flavour to lentils and Paneer. The truth about Chile is that it is syncretic. Wherever it was taken, along with maize, squash, tomatoes, cocoa, beans and vanilla, it was made to fit contours. Outside Mexico Chili is a lexicalised borrowing not a neologism. Think of the Welsh. They went to the Pampas and New Zealand in search of the rain and the green. Think of the Russians who chose Canada. Who w...

The Meat Roll     Photo by Teddingtontown There is nothing that tastes better  to me than food eaten in its proper setting. The wateriest Dal tastes just right with a warm chapati in Rajasthan, but eaten elsewhere it tastes foul. Sage and onion stuffing only makes sense here in the UK. The British are a different sort of islander to the Japanese , though they share some of their characteristics. Things have to be ship-shape and orderly on both of our islands, but, in contrast to the Japanese, we are rough hewn and imperfect. We are incomplete. Perhaps the Japanese think they are complete. 500 girls and 500 boys, two halves of a golden O , were sent to look for the secret of life by the Chinese emperor and never came back. They settled Japan, married each other and stayed at home for the next thousand years. We, however, are always parched for the new. The looks that the crusty whites, give to British people descended from natives of the Caribbean, Sri Lank...

Political infantilism: Cameron and Sarkozy smash up Libya.   A Mad Max army of Islamic fundamentalists and nationalists prepare for government , with the help of Cameron and Sarkozy The African Union has called for an immediate cessation to the bombing of  Libya. This call has been completely ignored and censored by the British and French  media who are now fully embedded into their respective governments policy of military intervention.  The panel representing the AU calling for cessation comprises Presidents Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania, Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali and Sassou Nguesso of Congo.  The legitimate contribution of the high ranking representatives of the African Union, including the South African president Jacob Zuma, to a negotiated solution to a civil war in a country on the African continent, was sabotaged and subsequently dismissed out of hand by NATO and in particula...