Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring, Alice Thomas Ellis

Cookery books are not generally as amusing as this one! Alice Thomas Ellis gives us three centuries of recipes and tasty titbits about food, sprinkled with a delightful handful of comedy.

Take, for example, the anecdote about Edgar and Gladys – he married her in haste when he was leaving for a remote part of Africa. When she joins him, he shows her round the bungalow and asks what she means to cook him for supper. Eggs were, he claimed, the only available ingredients. ‘But I don’t cook eggs!’ responded Gladys, who hated cooking, ‘but I could play you some Chopin.’  He threw her to the lions.

The male chauvinism of such a story is matched by the opulence of some of the menus. A menu for a 21st birthday party includes 30 roasted bullocks, 50 hogs, 50 calves and 50 sheep as well as, rather oddly, one leveret.

Five a day was simply not the rule. We are struck by the absence of vegetables in menus of the last three centuries.

Full of laughs and well worth reading, Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring – A Gallimaufry, published by Virago, is nevertheless, a book to dip into. It will keep you laughing for a month, but would be difficult to digest in a single portion.

Attractively bound hard-backed books containing lots of information seem to be big sellers among the piles laid out for Christmas. E: Foley and B. Coates ‘Homework for Grown-ups – everything you learnt at school … and promptly forgot’ is yet another in the series.

I received my copy as a gift and dipped into it rather casually at first. I was soon thoroughly enjoying some of the masses of information the book provides. It is embarrassing to get halfway through each chapter and confront ones own ignorance. In mathematics, for example, I got as far as a decagon but what is an icosagon?

Homework for Grown-ups

This is a treasure of a compendium of facts we like to think we know. It deals with English, Mathematics, Home Economics, History, Science, Religious Education, Geography, Classics, Physical Education and Art – a fine rounded education. (’Whose history?’ I hear you ask. There’s an eclectic dabble including Marathon, Yarmuk, Agincourt and the Somme.)

Homework for Grown-ups is certainly a useful book to have around if you need to know where your pancreas is or the name of a Greek letter. There are even test papers at the end of each chapter. My only criticism is that the authors didn’t provide an index of all that useful information.

The death of a child is the worst nightmare for most mothers. Oscar has cancer. He has very few days to live and knows it, but his parents are unable to face the truth and share their grief with him. The elderly hospital visitor, the lady in pink helps Oscar come to terms with his death.

The lady in pink suggests that Oscar  should write a letter to God each night. Each letter will represent a decade, so that we find Oscar at the age of 110, exclaiming with delight that he is older than his parents now. The letters are a lovely way of coming to terms with harsh reality.

The lady in pink has the very touching final words on the morning Oscar dies.

Oscar and the Lady in Pink, translated from Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s original novel in French, is a world best-seller – understandably! It fits into the category of ’self-help’ without being patronising or mawkish.

There are copies in the outstanding selection of books in English at the La Combe Migros store in Nyon. What a surprise to find such well-chosen novels, best-selling crime-fiction and factual books at prices that are approachable.

After many years spent laboriously teaching and learning languages, I was surprised to learn that teach yourself have a series of one-day courses. My Greek is minimal. I have the ten words most people share – kalimera, yasu, ne, ohi, efharisto and so on. We have a holiday in Greece coming up so why not?

The course comes with its CD and booklet and uses a mere fifty basic words. Liz teaches Andy on the plane. He is a bit of a clown but his low brow comments have some value as mnemonics. For example, he talks about throwing moss when he has to learn ‘thromos’ (street).

An advantage, for me at least, is that the course uses the script I am used to – that reduces the problem!

The idea behind the course is that it is infinitely better and more polite to have a smattering of a foreign language and at least to try to communicate, rather than expecting everybody else to speak English. The Independent claims that Elisabeth Smith’s one-day courses are “a language lifeline … fun, fast and easy”.

You can attempt French, German, Italian or Spanish in the same way, but I have yet to find out whether my ‘one-day’ skill will be any use at all.

Three lively little hardback books, published by Michael O’ Mara Books would make ideal presents for an elderly relative who seems to be becoming forgetful.

I Used to Know That by Caroline Taggart contains just about enough basic information to give its reader a set of GCE passes or average SAT scores.  There are chapters on basic English, mathematics up to the level of quadratic equations, chemistry, physics, biology and so on.

The General Knowledge chapter at the end contains intriguing up-to-date information like the new name for Pluto (Eris) now that it is no longer a planet.

It is rather daunting to realise that you have forgotten which US Presidents were assassinated or whether the Cretaceous period came before or after the Jurassic. This small volume lists all that sort of information as well as some rather irreverent comments. Take, for example, the remark that President Ford is remembered largely as the man said to be so dumb he couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

Two other works in the series are My Grammar and I (or should that be ‘Me’?), also by Caroline Taggart with J A Wines, and I before E (except after C) by Judy Parkinson. Neither is as dull as it sounds. The second of these lists hundreds of mnemonics for recalling significant information that we are sure to have forgotten.

Can you list the heads on Mount Rushmore? I couldn’t, but the mnemonic ‘We Just Like Rushmore’ reminds me that they are Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. The book is full of similar mental tricks.