Wishing on a star

Le Chip has tagged me so that I am now forced to make public the eight things I would like to have happen in 2008. Just eight? And do I have to be modest in my requests? Can I be outrageously self-pleasing? Why not?

1. I want the farm to thrive and for me to learn how to make it more income generating and less money gobbling
   
2. I want the bevy of arts funding/policy making senior wonks to sort themselves out and discover honour, judgement and openness
3. I want to be able to party at the end of 2008 in fabulously waterproof, structurally sound and beautiful barns, so that post-party they can contribute to the life of the farm
   
4. I'd like to have a happy year please, not too inundated with life's difficulties and woes and
   
5. then I'd make the time to appreciate the good things, of which there are many and be satisfied
6. I want to lose the podge that has slowly crept up on me and get back to my 2005/6 relatively slinky self
7. I'd like to have my faith in politics renewed, but THAT ain't gonna happen any time soon - in the meantime I hope for a democrat president in the US and a positive trickle-down effect
   
8. I'd like to learn something new, something substantial that will engage me in thinking interesting thoughts that have never yet popped into my head.
   

And I must of course pass on the tag, so if they fancy sharing their hopes for this year, I pass the tag to: Swearing Mother, Rilly Super, Locks Park Farm, Field Day and Yorkshire Pudding.

Food glorious food

To be tagged by a Flowerpot is not a daily occurrence, and she has offered me the chance to write about food, one of my very favourite topics. I cannot decline. I must find a way to subvert the requirement to describe my five tastiest restaurants and instead recount five memorable meals. Ok. Sorted. I am the boss of my blog.

My most expensive meal to date was also a delightful one. Four of us descended on Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant in Padstow to celebrate two birthdays. We ate the most sublime of fish dishes, a series of tasters that celebrated the ingredients rather than smothered them. It was posh, it was supremely delicious, and we licked our lips from beginning to end, grinning like the cats that got the fish.

Also incredibly posh was the Castellon de la Plana Yacht Club dinner. I had flown to Barcelona, was whisked miles down the coast by taxi to meet the others and after a quick recce at the hotel walked across the road, past the fish market at the edge of the harbour, to share a massive crushed iced platter loaded with shellfish from tiny shrimps to major lobsters and everything imaginable in between. Once the hands had been soaked in finger bowls and dried on hot flannels, the most heavenly saffron scented paella was placed reverently in the middle of the table. It was mountainous. It was a paeon to earth and sea and sky, of shellfish and birds and mammals. We talked, we laughed, we slurped. We didn't notice that the waiter was waiting for a "gracias" to stem the flood of cognac being poured into huge balloons. We staggered back to the hotel. We knew the meaning of replete.

Less fancy was the superfresh ficelle slathered with unsalted butter carved from a huge hunk of the stuff and shaped by butter pats, topped with slices of dried salami and ripest beefsteak tomatoes. This was all bought from the market in Yssingeaux and eaten sat on a rock by the Loire, feet dangling in the water with the bottles of beer to keep both cool.

My first ever dinner party, held whilst I was still at school, was also memorable. Mostly for the lasagne. Never one for underusing ingredients, I employed so much mozzarella that strings of cheese connected each plate around the table for twelve in a continuous circle. I was sure that dinner was a metaphor for friendship.

And something that continues to give me deep pleasure are those meals I produce for friends that contain entirely home/farm produced ingredients. It might be a tomato and basil salad followed by roast pork, freshly picked veg and apple sauce, followed by pear tart. It could be marinaded lamb on skewers, sausages and other barbecue nosh with strawberries for pud. Roast goose or duckling, with celeriac mash and peas perhaps. Whatever it is, I reared it, planted it and probably plucked it.

There was my friend's mother's fortieth birthday with lobster for all and the most exquisite puds. The chicken supper served with tales of massages in Cambodian opium dens. The huge Cornish pasties baked for the curious in ovens on a kibbutz in Israel. The fishmonger's hamper from which friends produced a continual supply of sea seasoned delights. The Tenerife squids turned inside out with a clingfilmed cucumber causing mass hilarity. I could go on. I probably will. But now it's time for supper.

Oh, and consider yourself tagged, any reader who likes their grub. Will yours include quite so much fish?

The meme game

Thanks to le Chippy, followed swiftly by Jan Tregeagle, I have yet another meme (or more appropriately meme) to send on its merry way. If this carries on, I will have no secrets left.

What was I doing ten years ago?
It was a Sunday, and according to my diary the day was blank - but I was no doubt recovering from the previous day's surfeit of stunning outdoor international theatre at its very best - and all a decade before The Sultan's Elephant was a twinkle in a Parisians eye.

What was I doing one year ago?
I was working in London for the day, with a view of Tate Modern, and meeting more than 40 of the most interesting artists and arts managers in the capital. I was also celebrating my first year living in Devon.

Five snacks I enjoy (only five?)
Halloumi, fried in olive oil and served with rocket and raspberry vinegar - it's posh cheese for adults, and it squeaks!
Ready brek
Raspberries with clotted cream
Sausages - homemade, with friends and an old Kenwood
Chocolate puds - any luscious kind will do.

Five songs to which I know all the lyrics
If I were a rich man
I've farted
She was poor but she was honest
Every last word of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (feel free to wipe that memory any time you like)
I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter (or perhaps a blog)

Five things I would do if I were a millionaire
I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen... (actually no, I'd restore the old barns on the farm)
I'd fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks (and lots of art)
I wouldn't have to work hard (in reality I would probably work harder, but on the land, using muscles and no less brain)
I'd buy my sister a house with garden in central London - make that if I were a multi-millionaire
I'd have a party!

Five bad habits
Picking my feet
Snapping and snarling
Forgetting important things, remembering the minutiae
Innate laziness
Writing other people's to do lists

Five things I like doing
Walking the dogs
Eating with friends
Dibbling my toes in the sea
Lambing successfully
Reading in the sun

Five things I would never wear again
Zigzag orange and purple psychedelic flares
Yellow crocheted dress
A suit
Red stilettos....then again
Polo necks

Five favourite toys
Binker the bear
Twister
Newspaper fish
iPod
My Canon iXus

Phew. The baton is now passed to: Eurodog, Flowerpot Days, Keir Royale, Around My Kitchen Table and And Who Cares? Feel free to pick it up, to ignore it or to pity my revelations.

My Crufts champs

OK, no. They aren't champs. They have various "not quite perfect" traits. But I love 'em. To bits. And not for the world would I hold their tails out, raise their heads unnaturally or flick at them with a brush like a demented game show contestant (not in public anyway). No Crufts for us. But all the same, they have been prepared for a hot summer by having their coats stripped and the thick under layer of matted fluff removed. Their toes have been trimmed to perfection and they look and smell cleaner now than they will in five minutes time. They won't stand for more than a cursory weekly grooming from me, so off to the professionals they go and my, don't they look a picture?
Both dogs have collar tags with mobile number, home number and vet's number - that way they can make the phone call they need to, as long as they have the requisite change in their pockets. I have a different kind of tag. Keir Royale has bummed one of these my way. Eight things you don't know about me?

1. I have an EVIL temper. Snap, snap, snap, snarl.
2. My parents owned a joke shop in Soho, but I can never remember the punch line.
   
3. I can lift heavy weights when there is no-one else around; somehow that talent disappears when there is help at hand.
4. I'm scared of having my hair cut short; when I am older I will have a long white pigtail down my back and look like some freaky eccentric. Which means I can act like a freaky eccentric. And that sounds good to me. Win/win.
5. I like to be in new places but I hate to travel. I want a magic carpet.
6. You only cry in the theatre three times in your life. I wish it was more.
7. Unlike M&M I have one earring in my left ear. But none in my right. This is to keep one earlobe utterly perfect - an earlobe is so nice to twiddle and a hole mars the pleasure factor. Thirty years after having my ear pierced my Mother still asks me when I am going to have the other one done.
   
8. I'm not telling.

Anyone who reads this, consider yourself tagged. And if I'd read this first, I could have got away with just five things.