Bernadette Strachan

PIE It was a very good shepherd’s pie that I made last week (top tip: a dollop of tomato chutney in the mincey mix) but I thought it would never end.

Day after day, when Matthew would hopefully ask what was for dinner, I’d say brightly ‘Shepherd’s Pie!’ as if he hadn’t already eaten his own weight in the bloody stuff. ‘Great!’ he’d say, then slink off to keen somewhere. But it’s all gone now. And I won’t be making Shepherd’s Pie again until perms come back in to fashion.
 
SHOES ON THE BED I pride myself on not being superstitious.  My parents were super-superstitious and it infuriated me. My Father would dance a polka of panic if he cracked a mirror, and my Mother happily prophesied an argument if she saw knives crossed on a plate. There’s no place for these doughily peasant fears in our bright shiny modern world. I chase black cats, I laugh in the face of the single magpie, I detour under ladders. Why, then, am I unable – physically unable – to put new shoes on a bed? Accustomed to spinning in her grave at my beliefs or lack of them, my very superstitious Grandmother is presumably having a smug little rest just now.

DOG/EGG CONUNDRUM If you read regularly (and God bless you and keep you if you do) you’ll be aware of Mavis, our dog.

You may also be aware of Eggs Benedict. I’m inordinately fond of both these things, altho’ Mavis is better company. I ordered Eggs Benedict when Matthew and I had a rare Niamh-less night in a hotel to celebrate our wedding anniversary this week, but as I raised the fork to my mouth I stopped. (This is rare – forks do not stop on the way to my mouth, unless there’s a fire alarm or somebody is pointing a gun at me.) ‘Here,’ I said to my husband of exactly eight years. ‘What does that smell remind you of?’ ‘Mavis,’ he replied without hesitation. Put me right off.

And here’s the start of an occasional series! Oh the excitement.

No, I don’t like him Anton du Beke. Can’t like him. (I haven’t tried very hard, but all the same.) He’s so oily, treating the viewing public as if they’re a mass of sex-starved octogenarian ladies all gagging for a glimpse of his bony behind as he drags some poor celebrity around the Strictly Come Dancing set. He seems to be becoming a celebridee in his own right now. He looks at the camera as if there’s a mirror on it, and he’s admiring his own glorious features. I saw him in the street the other day and purposefully didn’t let on I recognised him. Ooh, I’m hard, me. Oh, and his real name is Anthony Beak, for goodness’ sake. I think I’ll write my next book under the name Bernadine du Strack.

Yes, I do like her Claudia Winkelman. Once I’d come to terms with the thinness, the orangeness, and the nature of the eye make up, I realized I love her. She’s funny, and original, and so very small that it puts her on a par with Mavis vis a vis cuteness levels. I like to see witty women doing well. And she’s got lovely hair. I only really like the sort of people you can imagine lunch in a restaurant just going on and on with, and I fondly fantasise that Claudia and I would still be there when dinner started.

STOCKHOLM Very jolly, the Swedes. Never thought I’d write that sentence. I thought my trip to Stockholm would be a two day long Bergman film, but it was a delight. Stayed in a hotel owned by Benny from Abba. Yes, really. It was 5 star funky opulence and comfort, yet cost less than I’ve paid for chain-hotel misery in this country. The Swedes are very well dressed, very cool, but friendly and natural. I felt right at home. Not because I’m well dressed, you understand, despite the new trousers I was sporting, but because everybody spoke to Matthew and I as if they’d known us for years. I saw no WAG-style nightmare young women at all, although there were herds of 80’s kids. The night before, at home in Kingston, we’d passed countless girls dressed for an orgy somewhere much warmer than Kingston, and it was nice to be surrounded by women with actual clothes on, as opposed to strips of lycra. I’m a convert to the Nordic way of life, but this always happens. I come back from Rome on an imaginary vespa, and when I get back from Ireland I cry sentimental tears over anybody whose surname begins with O’.

PRINCE Niamh, my 5 year old, is a Prince devotee. Especially 'Get Off' and 'Kiss'. Although she confuses him with Michael Jackson. Her love of the latter led to me trying to explain plastic surgery in terms she would understand. He asks the doctors to change his face around I stammered.

TELLY Hoovering up the Easter leftovers before the post-Easter diet meant that I was enjoying a cream tea for dinner as I settled down to watch the first instalment of Hell’s Kitchen. I learned so much. I learned that Linda Evans’ lips are not nice (they seem to have been turned inside out by a bored plastic surgeon). I learned that Grant Bovey (husband of Anthea Turner, God help us) refers to himself in the third person. And I learned that Marco Pierre White is the most ponderous, self obsessed sod I’ve ever come across. The simplest question gets a Yoda-esque, carefully enunciated response. ‘Where,’ you might ask, ‘do you keep the cheese, Marco?’ He would reply, ‘Ah my friend. If it is cheese you seek, why do you ask? If I were to tell you, what would that make you?’ (He often includes one of these mantrap little questions, to which there is no correct answer, only kitchen-y death. Quite fun watching Adrian Edmondson struggle with how to answer ‘Did you season it?’ about a beef sandwich.) I hope fire never breaks out in Hell’s Kitchen because Marco is incapable of shouting ‘FIRE!’ he would have to drawl ‘When heat meets chip oil, my friend, something is bound to happen.’

BOOKS Just finished The Genius and The Goddess by Godfrey Meyers, a book that examines the professional and emotional partnership between Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. There are snippets in here that Mr Miller left out of his mighty memoir Timebends, and much new, scurrilous stuff on Marilyn. (The bald assertion that she was a prostitute seems unsupported by any source.) Such a beauty, such a pain in the ass. Sorry, arse. I always catch vocabulary from reading.

EASTER I baked a cake, a gooey chocolate one which is my default cake. There were chicks on it, not real ones, that would be silly. Dressing the table for a big lunch I started off stylish and chic, then mouthed oh sod it and strewed the whole thing with rabbits, chocolate eggs, fluffy chicks emerging from plastic eggs, the lot. We had not one but two easter egg hunts. We know how to live, don’t we?

WRITING  After a week off (Stockholm, then Easter visitors) I’ve forgotten how to do it? Any tips, anyone?