Of Books And Men

When I read this post, mentioned by 24 Hour Portly Person over at Occupied Country, I couldn't resist the challenge.

The BBC's Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books that emerged from their survey.

I don't know how you feel about that, but to my mind that's one scary statistic. It's an interesting mix of literature, dominated by the classics. I managed a reasonably-respectable 58%, and I know a lot of people who would probably score higher - which must mean that there are an awful lot of folk out there who've read less than the average 6, if my knowledge of maths is right.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8= Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
8= His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien,
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

If you fancy having a go at it, here are the 'rules' ...

1) Look at the list and embolden those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

The Birds

There will be some who try to tell you that Bill Blunt has far more holidays than he deserves. My advice – for what it’s worth – is not to listen to those gainsayers.

After a lifetime at the peak of provincial journalism, a man deserves to slow the pace a little. Retirement can too often feel like being turned out to grass, unless it’s leavened with a little travelling.

It’s a fine line, of course, between work and leisure. There aren’t many who would choose to spend their ‘holidays’ mowing lawns, chopping wood and learning the finer points of artisan bread-making, French-style.

That’s how I came to find myself, once more, in the delightful town of Bergerac. Yes, the doubters and the critics will put it about that I spend half my life there. I can’t worry about that, at my age. Under the watchful tutelage of Jean-Philipe, I spent a happy morning moulding and shaping bread dough into all manner of shapes and designs. So much enjoyment did I have that I realised how, if I hadn’t been seduced at an early age by the smell of printer’s ink, I could have slipped easily into a career as a local baker.

Jean-Philipe makes old-fashioned bread using quality, organic ingredients. It’s a slow, thoughtful process, dependent on a fine eye for the state of the weather and the ambient temperature during the mixing of the dough. Real bread, strong enough to last a week, not the insipid, plastic rubbish that predominates in the shops in England today. Crofty would have loved it.

On my current trip, I also had the pleasure of meeting Mr and Mrs Dixie, part of the powerhouse that err…fuels Fuel My Blog. They live in La Rochelle, of course, but reasons of economy meant this was my point of entry into France, despite the three hour journey it entailed down to Bergerac. And a very lovely couple they are, too.

La Rochelle’s a fine city, which my flying visit for a coffee with Kevin and Sylvie couldn’t do justice to. Perhaps that’s why fate – and a few stray birds on the run-way at La Rochelle that managed to mangle themselves in the engine - conspired to hand me a free afternoon in the place on my return to the UK. Either that, or it was some terrible curse cast upon me by Mystic Veg, in repayment of the delays I had forced him to endure in June.

If Easyjet had been a tad more honest about the reasons for the delayed departure of their 1.15pm flight EZY5034 to Gatwick, I might even have had much longer. At first they admitted it would take four hours to fly out an engineer to check for damage, which at least meant I could leave the airport and hop a bus into town. Having been in a few airports in my time, I can tell you that La Rochelle’s doesn’t have much to hold your attention for much more than twenty minutes, so when balanced against the prospect of a bowl of moules et frites in a pleasant bar overlooking the harbour, it was what the younger set might call a ‘no brainer’.

Returning to the airport at 5pm after my modest repas, I was delighted to discover that Kevin and Sylvie were also going there, so they were able to offer me a lift. Their flight with Ryanair had, we discovered, also been afflicted by the kamikaze birds of La Rochelle.


Once the engineer had done his stuff (about 6pm) we were informed that the plane now needed a new pilot – who was similarly being flown in and – yes - it would be another (this time unspecified) delay. I suppose it was too much to expect that whoever was working on the logistics of this problem at Easyjet could have factored this matter into the equation when working out what to do about the birds in the engine, and sorting out an engineer. But that would have been too simple. Instead, we awaited hourly announcements that finally culminated in the plane taking off at 23.15pm, a full 10 hours after schedule.

To rub salt into already very sore wounds, the less than merry band of passengers we had become as the day wore on were informed that there were no refreshments available on the plane, other than a glass of water. For a group of people who had become increasingly annoyed by the surly manner of the chap who runs the bar at La Rochelle airport (where food and smiles had run out quickly) this was the final straw. By now, of course, we might have been a cowed and whimpering lot, denied our Easyjet sandwiches and Pringles, but too worn-down to complain. Or maybe (and this is what I’d prefer to think) we were strengthened in our resolve and determination not to let this last tribulation break our spirits. Our stiff upper lips prevailed.

The fate of the Ryanair passengers was furthermost from our minds, although I heard they departed shortly after us, and landed safely at Stansted. Perhaps they fared better when it came to the sarnies.

It’s a brave man who says Bill Blunt is easily put off enjoying his holiday by a simple matter like a 10 hour delay in the return journey. I’ll be back to learn a little more about bread-making in Bergerac, and I’m more than certain there’s another bowl of moules waiting for me on a table outside a harbour bar in La Rochelle with my name stamped on it.

Going Nuts

A man in retirement has time on his hands. That's a truism, if ever there was one. Nevertheless, even though it's many years since I hung up my quill, I like to think my quiet, measured voice still resonates in the corridors of power.

Or, in this case, in the aisles of my local Sainsbury's. My subject today is Nuts - or, more precisely, I'm about to let you into one of Bill's ways of saving 33% on the price Sainsbury's would like you to pay for their Pine Nuts.

Pine Nuts, as any decent Italian worth his garlic, basil leaves, parmesan cheese and olive oil will tell you, are an essential ingredient in the classic Ligurian recipe for pesto. As a devotee of pesto, you will understand if I pay more than an ordinate amount of attention to the price of pine nuts. You can't make an omelette without eggs, and you can't make pesto without pine nuts (unless you buy one of those commercial brands that seems to think it's acceptable to substitute peanuts for the real thing).

On a recent foraging trip, I noticed that Sainsbury's appeared to have re-packaged their Pine Nuts, and that the price had increased by 50p per hundred grams. Have a look at this:



As you can see, they're promoting the product as a 'snacking' nut. You'll find it near the fruit and veg, and will be invited to pay £1.99 for 100grams.





That's all very well, but if you take the trouble to walk ten yards and find the 'cooking ingredients' section, you'll find the humbler version of the Sainsbury's Pine Nut still available for just £1.45 for 100grams.



If this was Bologna, housewives would be taking to the streets in protest. And I, for one, wouldn't blame them.

The Passage Of Time

When you get to my age - the kind of age for which discreet veils were invented - it would be nice to think that the passage of time didn't play an unduly influential role in one's life.

But the truth is, like most other people, I spend more time than is probably healthy worrying about a future that hasn't yet happened. My old uncle Jesmond used to say "Yesterday is a cancelled cheque; tomorrow is a promisary note. Today's the only cash you have - so spend it wisely, son."

And so it proved when I made the trip north to attend the 124th Durham Miners' Gala. All my anxieties about whether it would rain were in vain. The sun had his hat on, and the pac-a-mac stayed dry. A year on from my last visit, here are one or two photos of the 2008 Gala, which I hope you enjoy. I must confess I enjoyed my cup of Labour Tea. Even though the price had gone up due to rampant inflation, I think they met the Government target of selling more than last year.

Cheap Tricks

It’s a brave man that accuses Bill Blunt of stooping to cheap tricks to boost his ailing blog readership. Not for me the shoddy inducements to people to drop by to my blog, enticed by a gimmick or the strategic placement of a label or two.

I had enough of that during the infamous Stockport Circulation War of the 1960’s, which saw two fine newspapers go to the wall, and the reputation of the Stockport Leader left in tatters after it introduced its widely-copied Page 9 girl. I was working for the rival Herald at the time, and our editor (Wally Green) was firm in his belief that, while readers might flock to see such lurid spectacles at first, a reputation for truth, honesty and good writing was what would make them come back for more.

It was a long, hot summer in 1965, and many were those who tried to persuade Wally to relax his Presbyterian stance as the Herald’s circulation plummeted. But he dug his heels in, even as the Stockport Leader began to overtake us for the first time since the 1890’s. His one concession to the masses was the ill-fated introduction of Where’s Wally? - a competition which involved readers trying to spot him as he wandered, incognito, around town. Once spotted, the idea was they would challenge him and then claim the munificent sum of £5.

The game didn’t last longer than a couple of weeks, however, since the local constabulary sternly advised us to draw a halt to it. A spate of fights in pubs and clubs across the town had drawn their attention to the Herald’s competition, and the received wisdom after the dust had settled was that it was a mistake to expect punters to point at total strangers while uttering the words ‘You’re Wally – Give Me A Fiver!’


So, you’ll gather I am no fan of cheap attempts to garner readers. That’s why I don’t want my dwindling band of subscribers to read too much into my featuring Olga The Travelling Bra in this posting. I believe Olga represents a genuine cultural phenomenon – an item of lingerie that has already traversed thousands of miles in its quest to … err … traverse the globe and appear in blogs.

Here’s Olga when she visited Liverpool yesterday, in the company of 70’sTeen and Claire, two fine bloggers who had brought Olga for her day out, much to the bemusement of visitors to the Albert Dock.

I like to think it isn’t the first time Billy Fury twirled a bra strap around his index finger, but you never can tell with these pop icons, in my experience. I'd hesitate to make the same comment about Cliff Richard, for instance.

As for the Super Lamb Banana, this was already a potent symbol of Liverpool before the powers that be behind the European Capital of Culture decided to clone it and site small-scale copies across the city and the wider environs of Merseyside. I think you'll agree, Olga looks like she was made to fit the Ringo Starr version of the new icon.

Don't Rain On My Parade

It's around this time of year that I get excited about the prospect of attending, once again, the Durham Miners' Gala. It's become something of a tradition that I turn up at this celebration of all that is great and good about the north east working class. Just because I shop at Sainsburys doesn't mean I have forgotten my roots.

Next Saturday, 12 July, therefore, I'll be strutting my stuff in the streets of Durham City, following one of the brass bands as it winds its way past the Royal County Hotel. In my mind, previous visits to the Gala are always associated with a day of wall-to-wall sunshine. It's July, after all, and the British people have every right to expect a bit of sun now and again. The reality, however, is often not quite so comfortable. Many's the time I've sheltered under my pac-a-mac as the relentless drizzle fails to lift.

I've been around the block enough times to know that selective memory comes out to play whenever we look back on our own Blue Remembered Hills. Our mind has a nasty habit of censoring out the bleaker parts of our life, and that includes the dismal rains which so often accompany the Great British Summer. However, the British psyche is nothing if not optimistic. That's why we are the country in Europe which apparently buys more cabriolets than any other: the triumph of hope over experience, I suppose. And that's why I'll be packing shorts and a t-shirt - just in case.

Meanwhile, I contemplate a visit to my allotment which, after the recent rain, will most probably resemble something like a World War I battlefield. Somehow, I don't think I'll be needing any of Mystic Veg's wonderful, patented Soil Improver.

Did I Mention The Dementia?

As the grey hairs continue their steady advance across my head, in step with the cruel march of time, it becomes increasingly difficult to blame my forgetfulness on that old standby, alcohol.

A recent trip to Bergerac revealed this all too starkly. The first part of my holiday was in the company of a friend of mine from Chester. We go back a long way, but it was nonetheless good of her to stay calm and collected when we arrived at our place of stay to discover I had forgotten to bring the key. We drew on our collective wisdom to construct a plan, rapidly discounting breaking in or calling a lock-smith (reasoning that if two French people tried to persuade an English locksmith to break into a either of our own houses on the strength that they had forgotten their key, we'd hope they'd get pretty short shrift).

I was dimly aware that an organic baker of the name Jean Philipe held a spare key, but wasn't exactly sure where he lived. When, after some driving around, we did finally find his oven, he was nowhere to be seen. We back-tracked into Bergerac and I made what was to be the first of many trips to the Tourist Information Centre there. The girl behind the desk listened in a bemused sort of way as I told her my sorry tale. She then proceeded to do a lot of phoning around, finally locating the said Jean Philipe, who promised to deliver the key a couple of hours later at a rendezvous (which is French, apparently, for a meeting place). That left Sue and I a couple of hours to amble round the town and take in a spot of lunch, relaxing for the first time since we'd stepped off the plane a couple of hours earlier. True to his word, he turned up at 2pm, and the holiday could get back on track.

My friend was departing a couple of days later, so our time was spent in a whirlwind tour of markets, cafes, restaurants and vineyards. On her final night, I admit we may have consumed more than either of us is used to when it comes to wine and pastis. Nevertheless, I managed to deliver her to the airport safely where, once she was through check-in, I was able to position myself in a cafe outside the airport and wait for my second visitor, who was arriving off the plane she was departing on. Everything went to plan this time, with my writing-accomplice Dick Broadhean clearing the tiny arrivals hall in minutes, and his bags safely deposited at the house just ten minutes later.

We were there, ostensibly, to do some writing, and were to be joined the next day by a third scribbler. In the meantime, Dick and I had a trip out to watch Jean Philipe firing up his huge bread oven, situated in a large shed in a tiny village outside of Bergerac. Like a vast ship's engine (but not on a ship) the oven required almost constant feeding with carefully-selected pine wood. The wood had been chosen to allow the oven to reach it's optimum 'calorific weight'. Much discussion took place about this concept, I can tell you. Dick seemed to understand it more than I did. Then, it was a trip to a nearby market for a spot of food shopping.

That evening, as the sky shone with stars, Dick and me spent hours putting the world to rights. I'll admit, more wine and pastis were involved. The next day, we had one main task to accomplish - the collection from the airport of my old mucker, Mystic Veg. I'd managed to lose the paper with his arrival time on but, Bergerac airport not being exactly a hub of activity, it was fairly easy to discover that the Stansted flight wasn't due to arrive until 4.30pm, which left Dick and me with a full day to explore some of the villages around Bergerac. And very pleasant it was, too.

We were in good time to meet the flight, which arrived early. As we waited excitedly for MV's emergence from the arrivals shed, there was much 'That's him-ming' followed just as quickly by 'No - that's not him'. As the last passenger cleared customs, it was clear that MV hadn't made the flight. Unless something else could have gone wrong.

Dick and I drove back to the house, pondering what could possibly have happened. The fifteen minute journey seemed to take an hour. When we arrived, we found a note - quite a polite one, under the circumstances.

Dear Bill and Dick

After waiting two hours at the airport I decided to get a taxi here. After a further four hours sat in the garden, I decided that something must have happened to you both. I'm going to book into a hotel tonight, and will meet you outside the Tourist Information at 11am tomorrow.

MV

Mortification isn't the word. The thought that a man of such advancing years as Mystic should have had to spend the best part of a day alone and abandoned in a foreign country made me ashamed to be a Blunt.

Dick and I sped off to the Tourist Information, where I found myself instantly recognised as 'The Key Man'. It was a slim hope that we'd find MV making enquiries there, but they hadn't seen him. They gave us a list of hotels in the place, and we began our task of searching them. After we'd visited a couple, we finally had a call from Mystic, who had just booked into a hotel two minutes away from where we were standing, and where he'd found a phone in his room that didn't require a degree in french to operate. When we told the receptionist our tale, she was pleased to release him from his contract.

It's a brave man that accuses Bill Blunt of dementia. There's life enough in this old hack's frame to be able to blame the Ricard from the night before. However, there's a lesson to be learned from this whole, sorry affair.

I've learned that Lincoln is MUCH closer to East Midlands airport than Stansted is, and that only a fool would assume otherwise.

And, on the positive side, we found it easy enough, after the experience of our trip, to come up with a name for the sitcom we're working on - Losing The Plot. I like to take credit for that.

A huge Big Up is due to the staff at the Bergerac Tourist Information Office, though. They don't half get some weird enquiries.

Sowing The Seeds

It will probably come as no surprise to those who have read this column that I am something of a stranger to hard graft. In fact, it's a truism to say that I have spent most of my life avoiding it like the plague.

I was fortunate to be the first member of my family to receive the blessings of a university education, and my choice of a career in journalism meant that any notion of manual labour was easily sidestepped. That's not to say that the life of a scribbler has always been an easy one. Wally Green at the Stockport Argus taught me an early lesson in life, when he said 'Son, the Olivetti is your lathe, and your brain supplies the engine oil to keep it moving.'

So, it has been something of a shock to my system to recently take on an allotment. There's a lot to be said for digging away in the sun, eagerly anticipating the point at which your seeds will be sown or your bulbs will be transplanted. Even if six hours of solid labour only managed to transform a plot little bigger than my bathroom. Admittedly, it was a bit of a jungle, but even so it gave me pause to consider whether I was doing the right thing. Six decades of studiously shunning physical exercise had not exactly prepared me for such toil.

I'll be persevering, however. To everything there is a season, in the sun, and I sense that in my own personal autumn has approached. I may be hanging up my quill, and replacing it with a hoe. At least it's cheaper than a gym membership.

Endorse and Be Damned!

Older readers of my blog (by which I don't necessarily mean the more geriatric amongst you) will recall how I have sometimes pointed those who drop by here in the direction of a good bargain.

I've never been one to needlessly fritter away money on expensive food and beverages - not so long as there are expensive wines, women and other such diversions to soak up my cash. 'Look after the pennies, and you'll have more to spend on the finer things in life' is a motto that has guided me down the years.

So, when I endorse a product, it's not because I expect recompense. It's because I recognise its intrinsic worth. That's why I was so keen, just recently, to flag up one or two purchases I had made at my local branch of Sainsburys.

I've already written about how my decision to highlight the good value of Dove's Farm Organic Wholemeal Flour came back to bite me, here.

Now, I find that just weeks after pointing readers in the direction of Sainsburys Basics Ground Coffee, the company has chosen to up the price by over 25% Previously available for just 79p, this week I had to pay £1.06 for the same product.

It's the curse of Bill Blunt, and it spells, I'm afraid, the end of any further product endorsement by me. No sooner do I seem to find a bargain than the greedy supermarket barons rush to capitalise on my celebrity recommendation. Well, it won't happen again. I'll be keeping my counsel in the future.

It's a brave man that accuses Bill Blunt of chagrin, but it seems my readiness to spill the beans (so to speak) on cheap coffee has unwittingly led me to have to pay an extra £20 per annum on the stuff. There's something wrong here, surely!

A Conspiracy of Silence

It would be easy for readers to imagine that my recent 'radio silence' has been prompted by threats of legal action, promoted by the powers that be who are always anxious to still the voice of the dissident.

A glance at the list of labels used for my postings over the last year (handily listed in the side-bar, to the left) will show that my potential enemies are legion, so it would be natural to assume there was a queue of potential litigants.

The truth, however, is more prosaic. I have been distracted from my blogging by one or two projects that demanded my energies. My on-going attempt to compile a Guide to the Wetherspoon Pubs of England has proven to be a task which makes the painting of the Forth Road Bridge look like a pushover. New establishments are opening by the week, and I fear it may be years before I can bring the Guide to publication.

At the same time, I have been getting excited at the idea of taking over part of an allotment which a friend has just procured. I'll doubtless be stopping by over at Mystic Veg's place more frequently for tips and tricks to guide me in my growing - although if his attempts with rhubarb are anything to go by, I may have to cast my net wider in the search for advice.

Accept No Substitute

It's a brave man that accuses Bill Blunt of being worried about the competition. It's not my way to concern myself with imposters.

But Jasper was doing a spot of Googling just today.

William Blunt looks like the kind of guy you'd stake your pension on. Or use as your estate agent, if you lived in California.

That's OK with me. So long as he doesn't intrude into journalism. The world's big enough to take two Bill Blunts.

I like to think that my distinctive voice will set me apart from any imposters, so that readers will find the 'real' Bill easily enough.

Don't Leave Me This Way

It’s not very often I hear from my old pal and former drinking-companion, Des Smith, but when I do my memories of our days together on the Preston Globe are inevitably stirred. Des made quite a name for himself by championing IT at a time when most of us couldn’t tell an Atari from an Apple.

His retirement has found him in Japan, of all places, where he ekes out his pension by ‘stringing’ for a couple of Tokyo dailies. His irregular missives back home are always an intriguing insight into the cultural differences between east and west, peppered as they are with accounts of his trips to bars with his work colleagues. He’s developed an out-of-character fondness for eating raw fish and sea-weed, but apart from that has slipped easily into the Japanese way of life.

Anyone even remotely familiar with that lifestyle will know that Karaoke looms large in the social currency of the country. So, it came as no great surprise to him, when attending a leaving-party for one of his male workmates who had secured an advertising job in the capital, to find the Karaoke machine was blasting away in the corner.

“What do the British sing at farewell parties?” he was asked. Des’ assertion that it was quite unlikely that anyone would sing anything was met with blank incomprehension. “Oh, go on…” they cajoled. “Sing us the British farewell song”. Not wishing to offend his friends, but stuck to know quite what might be appropriate in the circumstances, he noticed that the ‘menu’ of songs included that Peter, Paul & Mary classic ‘Leaving On A Jet Plane’ – a song which most of us, of a certain vintage, could make a decent fist of. At first glance, it would seem to be a decent enough choice for a ‘leaving’ song and the chorus, at any rate, is a familiar refrain (altogether, now):

And I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go

As a confident Des took to the stage and began his rendition, the smiles on his friends’ faces were enough to convince him he’d got away with not offending them. Then, as the words of the song unfurled, he began to hope that their English wasn’t up to understanding the finer points of the lyrics. Increasingly crimson with embarrassment, he ploughed his way through the song, which he later described as ‘A Stalker’s Lament’.

For those who might have forgotten, here are a few lines:

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye

But the dawn is breakin', it's early morn
The taxi's waitin', he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go

There's so many times I've let you down
So many times I've played around
I'll tell you now, they don't mean a thing

Every place I go, I think of you
Every song I sing, I sing for you
When I come back I'll wear your wedding ring

Now the time has come to leave you
One more time, oh, let me kiss you
And close your eyes and I'll be on my way

As Des dashed off the stage, he could only reflect how fortunate he was not to be singing that song in the saloon bar of The Black Horse Hotel where, if our previous visit was anything to go by, he would have been lucky to escape with a couple of broken arms.

Plus ça change, as they probably don’t say in Japan.

Let Them Eat Cheaply

An interesting post on Gail's blog got me thinking it was time I shared with my readers a recipe that has come to be a mainstay in my weekly eating pattern.

It's a regime that has made me a regular visitor to Oxfam - not only to off-load the portly size 38" jeans I used to wear, but also to stock up on the much more becoming 30" ones that have been donated by someone who is perhaps travelling in the opposite direction.

Gail's plea is for cheap, wholesome food. Here's Bill's suggestion:

Tuscan Bean Stew

Take three tins of assorted beans (available from Sainsburys for the ridiculous price of three for a pound): pinto, butter, black-eyed - it doesn't really matter.

Drain them, and throw them into a slow cooker with a couple of tins of cheap tomatoes.

Add a good spoonful of tomato puree, a little olive oil, some pepper and a bloody good sprinkling of mixed herbs.

Now - the technical bit. Switch the slow cooker on. Go out and see the world for a few hours, and return to your sumptuous dish.

If you've made enough, but can't face eating the same dish two days in a run, throw in a tablespoon of chilli powder and heat the whole thing up again for a couple of hours.

Result - a couple of nutritious, delicious meals for around £1.40, with enough left over to freeze up for another meal.

Of course, you'll need some decent bread to mop up the juices. That's why I'm teaming up with the estimable Crofty to launch the Better Bread Blogger marque.


Wherever you see this, you'll know you're reading a blog penned by someone who appreciates the taste, texture and sheer, down-to-earth goodness of a decent loaf of bread.

Anyone who wants to prove they're up to rising to support this campaign can copy the code for the BBB widget and insert it into their blog.

Battle of the Poets

Things have come to a pretty poor pass in UK journalism when two of our more obscure quality newspapers are battling it out for circulation by trading on the reputation of the country's greatest poets.

The marketing boys at The Independent and The Guardian must be having a 'Doh!' moment, now that they've realised they've both commissioned a series of booklets profiling the nation's best poets as giveaways to boost their readership.

So - who'll win with this one? It's not an easy call when, on a slow Wednesday, Alexander Pope is pitched against WH Auden. But my money's on Auden. You heard it from Bill Blunt first.

Peace, Bread, Land

Having eulogised of late about the reasonable price being charged by Sainsbury’s for Dove’s Farm Organic Wholemeal Flour, it came as something of a shock when I went to stock up on supplies this evening.

After months perfecting my artisan bread-making techniques, I’d grown accustomed to paying just 60p for 1.5kg of the stuff, pleased to be able to make a decent loaf of bread for little more than 25p a go. I was hardly prepared, therefore, for the price-hike that faced me tonight. The same product has all but doubled in price, and now retails at £1.19 for a 1.5kg bag.

That’s why I’ve dusted the flour off my Bill Blunt Blast accolade, to award it to whoever it was at Sainsbury’s who has sanctioned this crippling price increase. Did they give a moment’s thought to the poor pensioner, eking out their pittance of an income, when they authorised this calamitous price rise? I doubt it.

If I were Gordon Brown, I’d be sleeping a little more uneasily in my bed tonight (and it’s worth stressing that no earthquakes are anticipated). His Government has failed to deliver peace in Iraq, and now the price of home-made bread has doubled. As for land, that’s a subject we might want to studiously avoid, lest we re-awaken Bolshevik instincts in the British population.

I’ll be writing to Sainsbury’s about this outrageous matter, I can tell you. Anyone tempted to add their voice to my campaign can do so by e-mailing their Customer Services people, here.