Regrets? Ah go, I'll have a few

I had the pleasure of experiencing a garden centre with my parents this weekend. Yes you read that right. A garden centre. On a Saturday. Nearing Christmas. With my parents. Any one of these sentences on its own has been known to induce panic in many a normally sane and sentient human and, as these things go, it was a venture that had come about in a perfect storm of necessity and timing. Whether that was good or bad timing was really up to my patience on the day. But nevertheless, I hadn't seen them properly in a while and I needed a poinsettia. And so I found myself amidst the poinsettias and Christmas fruit cakes listening to my parental units froth at the mouth over the rising price of buds and seeds wondering if I had indeed entered an outdoor version of hell. It didn't help that I seemed to be continually surrounded by groups of clucking women all googly eyed at the gifts and gadgets that now litter normally useful garden centres. Kitchens are now covered with these little kitsch pictures and ornaments found in garden centres. They are all fake distressed wood, straw ropes and etched with 'contemplative' quotes; 'A messy kitchen means a happy cook’; 'Life is a journey'; 'Dance like no-one's watching', to name a few of the banal platitudes. I have no idea why these cloying snippets of 'wisdom' are sold in garden centres, other than the suspicion that they must sell well in there as garden centres create a specific type of nesting feeling in women (see clucking women above) and a king and castle characteristic in men. Or maybe it's the compost fumes. But in between chairing peace talks with my mother and a wide eyed member of staff who really didn't know the correct way to water an orchid and fielding questions from my father about my savings plans, I actually found a quote that struck a chord (again it might have been the compost fumes). ‘Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.’ According to a recent survey we spend more than two hours a week dwelling on our regrets – around 19 minutes a day. From thinking we’ve picked the wrong career/partner/choice of lunch, over a quarter of 2,000 people surveyed believed it was impossible to live a life without regrets. As I witnessed a scrum for cut price Yankee Candles on Saturday I didn’t half know what they meant. In the top ten list of regrets was not spending enough time with our parents and as I stood there in a garden centre, on a Saturday, nearing Christmas, cursing these scrums, queues and feeling a little bit like Bridget Jones but without Hugh or Colin and yet seeing more of my parents than I had in weeks, I decided to buy this cheesy little sign with that quote on regrets. I knew exactly what it was talking about.

The reason I wore a poppy this year

They say that everything is political, well Thomas Mann did anyway. He must have visited Northern Ireland. Here, even your choice of bus could be twisted into apparently declaring a viewpoint on the constitutional position. Wearing the poppy certainly is. This year was the first year I have ever worn a poppy. I hadn’t refrained from wearing one before deliberately, but as a young middle class Catholic who had no immediate connection to anyone who had fought in the world wars, it wasn’t on my radar. I respected Remembrance Day, but this year something was different. In recent days and months, a young PSNI officer Ronan Kerr was killed by a booby trap bomb, a young army medic Channing Day was killed after being shot on patrol in Afghanistan. And then David Black, a prison officer from Cookstown, was murdered on his way to work. There have been many more killed in the line of duty but these three were different for me. Channing and Ronan were very close in age to me and David Black was from a town I practically grew up in. Every day these three put on a uniform and vowed to try and make the world a safer place. They died as a result. Two of them at the hands of those seeking to drag our country back into a time no one ever wants to see again. This year also marked 25 years since the IRA bombed the Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen. This was one of the darkest days of the Troubles. It was a moment of shame for all involved in the violence and yet from that dark and desperate act came the light and hope of Gordon Wilson. His daughter Marie was killed that day and his simple words of forgiveness were, and still are, an inspiration to me and to our province. Standing in Donaghadee at the cenotaph on Sunday I was moved by the dignity and quiet strength of those gathered to pay respects. I thought of how 25 years ago that day Gordon Wilson would have been doing the same and how hours later he somehow found the strength to forgive those who had murdered his daughter. It was people like Gordon who helped create the more peaceful province we now live in. It didn’t matter to me on Sunday that Catholics and Protestants had died together in the Somme, but it was an appropriate context in these times when dissidents have heightened their campaign to dismantle the peace Gordon Wilson helped create and have not discriminated in their victims in trying to do so, targeting innocent people from both sides of the community. And so I chose to wear a poppy this year. Because it has never been more important to show solidarity as a community in our commitment to peace and to show respect for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us all from harm. We will remember them. Together.

Advantage Megan? Let's wait and see

Readers of this column will know if there is one thing I will always support its youth involvement in politics. There is nothing more important for a healthy future than an engaged younger generation educating itself on how society is run and prepared to take a role in civic duty and responsibility for what surrounds them. Northern Ireland is probably the UK region with the lowest level of youth disillusionment with politics. In a not entirely positive way, more young people are exposed to politics here earlier and so it’s no real surprise our Assembly now boasts an MLA who is 21. Sinn Fein’s Megan Fearon, a recent graduate of Queens’ was co-opted to take the place of Conor Murphy for Newry and Armagh. As recently as May she was tweeting about her economics finals and clearly found herself in the position of many coming to the end of education when she said: “This time tomorrow il have my economics outta the way and will officially be unemployed! Haha” Now she is in the Assembly and taking her place on committees scrutinising the finance minister and OFMDFM - I’m sure youth unemployment is no longer a laughing matter. Although clearly intelligent, ambitious and an active member with Sinn Fein for years I find the choice of Megan’s co-option bizarre. Here is a young woman, full of potential and clearly with talent being cherry picked to go straight into the Assembly. No previous hands-on experience of local government, at any level, and no election campaign where her constituents can come to their own view on this rather unconventional representative. It is not the sort of political route many will be familiar with and it no doubt puts a lot of pressure on Megan to make an impact right out of the blocks – a tough task for any new MLA, even one buoyed by an election win and security of rising through the ranks of their party’s machinery. Any clips of Megan I have seen it is like a rabbit in headlights and I’m not surprised, a committee debate is a long way from an economics tutorial. I know it doesn’t sound like it but I am actually trying to champion Megan and her ilk, which is why I’ve resisted the temptation to wheel out the ‘she has little life experience’ argument. But I’m frustrated that someone with her ability has not been allowed a normal gestation period in her party. She should be allowed to make her political mistakes of youth in the party’s backroom, to hone her election skills in campaigns for other party members and be allowed to explore her political and moral compass without electoral inhibition as it evolves through her twenties, not be plumped right in the thick of it where one blip could end a promising political career before it’s even started. Good luck, Megan, you’re going to need it.

At last a full frontal assault on Page 3

Actually got around to putting this on the blog this week. Published in all editions of this weeks' Community Telegraph: I've just returned from a holiday in Las Vegas. When I was telling people that’s where I was going for a holiday I almost felt embarrassed, like going there was some sort of indication of big drinking, loose morals and a high rolling lifestyle. I just went for a nosy really. We were staying in a hotel on the main Vegas strip; little did I know it was a particularly appropriate name for the location. One evening as I walked through the casino in search of a Ghostbusters slot machine that had proved lucky the day before, I turned a corner to be confronted by a stripper's bare arse. I couldn’t believe the cheek. Men hollering, girls dancing and money and alcohol doing the rounds, it was like a scene from a bad American Pie remake and caught me so by surprise I nearly choked on my yard glass of Singapore Sling (well I wanted to get into the spirit of the place). I never thought myself opposed to these sorts of shows for whoever wants to pay to partake. But after the sight had sunk into my shocked optic nerves and the gin into my new maxi dress, I realised what I was witnessing was genuinely grotesque. It was cheap and grubby and not least intimidating, casting as it did the roles of ogling men and ogled women throughout the surrounding area regardless of whether you'd signed up to take part or not. But it was 'the party pit' in Vegas so what did I expect, right? But what about when you’re sitting on a bus and the young guy next to you spends most of the journey on page 3 of The Sun? He’s obviously not taking that long to read whatever excuse for a story they put on that page (do they even bother pretending that words have a place there anymore?) and is happy to sit staring at a naked woman for sexual pleasure in a public place. It's a more subtle intimidation, granted, but it's the exact same sort of vulnerability that I experienced when I stumbled on that sex show in Vegas and it’s the same uneasy feeling a lot of women experience - a mixture of being objectified and sickened. Page three is different though, it’s argued, it's a 'British institution'. So was Sir Jimmy Savile. Thank goodness some have wised up to this anachronistic public titillation by setting up an online petition. Take the Bare Boobs Out of The Sun is a plea to the paper's editor Dominic Mohan. Currently signed by over 37,000 people it is calling for page three to be abolished and has garnered support from both sexes united in wishing to end this degrading objectification of women in a national newspaper. It has even got the support from famous faces including Jennifer Saunders, Lauren Laverne and journalist Caitlin Moran who tweeted: "Teenage tits aren't news OR a feature." That’s really the issue stripped bare don’t you think? http://www.change.org

The new Aga generation

Spring has sprung – an overused but timely phrase considering the lovely weather we’ve been enjoying of late.
It’s one of life’s great little gifts to start seeing a stretch in the evening, having a bright morning to wake up to and some colour in the burgeoning buds. It’s at times like this, as we bask in the glow of global warming, that I wish I lived in the countryside full-time. Whether by the sea or surrounded by green fields, as long as I’m removed from cars, footpaths and bus stops I’m a happy camper.
It’s also at times like this I wish I was Jenny Bristow. Visions of her cooking lemon meringues and mouth watering chicken dishes in her perfect country kitchen take me right back to my childhood and the formation of my dream that I too could one day own an aga cooker and have an island in my kitchen (I’m still dreaming in case you’re wondering.)
She always got it right did our Jenny. There was a freshness to her recipes, a rise in her soufflés and a spring in her chickens as she cooked local and seasonal food, all served up in those dishes your granny used to hit you for using - they are exclusively for visitors don’t you know (even though I technically was a visitor, but anyway).
Modern cookery shows just don’t have that sort of quality. It’s all kitsch kitchens with little dolly birds dressed in faux vintage polka dots and heavily made faces with dark red lips droning on about organic pigeon or some such random creature. They look like they’ve barely ever eaten a dinner, let alone cooked one.
Their hair’s always perfect and their flour never spills as they dance around their penthouse apartments decked out in the most modern of ‘vintage’ furnishings. So original, and all so the same.
And I don’t know about you but I don’t have a little French market of a Saturday to jaunt down to and pick up some specially sourced bree – more like some extra mature from Tescos.
No, Jenny’s perfect kitchen was more attainable, as were her ingredients. How bizarre that shows like Jenny’s are now out of foodie fashion and it’s seen as some sort of conscious lifestyle choice nowadays to eat locally and seasonally – surely that’s the natural order of things, in every sense of the word.
Thanks goodness our schools have taken this on board, with their new Agri-Food challenge for Key Stage 3 pupils. The idea is simple; come up with a two-course meal using fresh, local and seasonal food and win an opportunity to cook it with a professional chef. I am glad an appreciation of the resources around us is on the curriculum and education chiefs have found a way to make their use fun.
It may create another generation of aspirational aga owners, but more importantly it will counteract the deluge of the flavour of the month kitsch cookery that is just junk food by another name.
For further information visit www.nigoodfood.com