Coastalblog

It's been a rum old few weeks for what we used to laughingly call the alt-right in this country. First The Beeb's go-to "balance" for rationality, Nigel Farage, quite rightly got the boot from his LBC show, and lo there was much chortling. Then, even more entertainingly, Twitter finally decided it had had enough of the tedious Katie Hopkins, an unpleasant rentagob who'd been monetising her appalling opinions for far too long already. This gradual realisation on the part of broadcast and social media that the opinions held by the likes of Mr Farage and Ms Hopkins is welcome, albeit overdue (It's interesting to note that this period has also seen Twitter flexing its muscles over the American President's somewhat elastic relationship with the truth, even the usually supine Facebook has pulled some ads from The Donald). A mainstream media presence gives the gloss of respectability to even the most objectionable opinions, and Lord knows they've plenty of th...

Aside from a few gentle explanations on facebook about why parping "All Lives Matter!" and then expecting a biscuit is idiotic*, I've largely kept quiet on the BLM issue. This is due to a number of reasons, but chief amongst these was I thought that the last thing the situation needed was the opinions of yet another middle aged white man. I may well be wrong about this, and I've seen plenty of arguments that suggest that if you're not vocally pro, then you're tacitly accepting the status quo. This has some merit, but I still rather felt that getting blogging about it would be jumping on the bandwagon to an extent (I also though that it would make for a fairly short blog. Black Lives Matter. Tearing down statues of racists and slavers is fine. Don't @ me). Official inquiries into racism though? Now that's bang up my alley. Particularly when we've just had two in the last two years. There's little I enjoy more than the sight of a spot of brazen p...

There was a joke doing the rounds during the early part of the Covid crisis. At least, everyone said, we've stopped talking about Brexit. Ha ha. Then, as the crisis rolled on longer than we'd feared, a few thoughtful souls pointed out that this was no time to be negotiating a trade deal. Perhaps, they said, it might be wise to postpone things a few months. Absolutely not, said the Government. This seemed odd. After all, even the more rabid elements of the Brexiteers saw the sense in this. We all had a lot on our plates. Nope, said HMG, we're out by the end of the year, come what may. Now, this may strike you as a little odd. They had, after all, spent years harping on about the importance of a deal. The details of said deal had already brought down one Prime Minister, and forced two elections. Insisting that we're out by the end of December brings the dreadful prospect of no deal a lot closer. Unless, of course, no deal was the goal all along. Cards on the table, I vote...

Well, you can't say I didn't warn you. I threatened vaguely in the last cooking related piece that when I ran out of ideas I'd probably return to this one. Well, here I am again, and whilst it's not that I'm out of ideas as such, it's more that the things worth commenting on at the moment are so rage-inducing that I doubt I'd manage anything coherent. And so I retreat back to the safety of my kitchen, to give you a few more nuggets of how I manage to navigate my professional day. I spoke last time of the building blocks: stock, butter, garlic, fat, onions. So I suppose now it behoves me to add a couple of frills to the structure. Chefs talk a lot about "elevating the dish". A fairly poncy phrase which you would be well within your rights to mock to within an inch of its life. At its worst (anyone on MasterChef: the Professionals) this can come to mean "Taking a perfectly decent dish and fucking about with it to the extent that you can justify...