Regardless of the wind and rain and wind, the beige lunches, the depressing industrial decay you experience when motoring through Stoke – relics of a bygone era of pottery forges and affluent productivity – and the occasional dead dog floating arse upwards in the locks; I felt like we not so much as bonded as got through the journey together in avoidance of a full scale blow out and / or murder. We were all in the same boat.
Something that struck me immediately on the canal was the shocking amount of litter simply dumped along the tow paths and into the water itself, in the space of two miles I saw more refuse than in the entire river Thames between Tower Bridge and Kew, and although I am partial to a hyperbolic notion this observation may be a reserved understatement. It was absolutely disgusting.
I will never understand people who feel the urge to simply drop rubbish wherever they go; even when there is a litter bin in plain sight you witness mindless twerps discarding their unwanted wrappers as they walk. We live in an educated society, we are all perfectly aware of the detrimental effects that littering can have on the environment, we have been shown countless videos and images of how it effects wildlife, how seals and seabirds get caught in plastic bags, and ducks are suffocated by the rings that hold your six pack of special brew together. Beyond this it looks horrible as well.
So it was as we boated into the North end of Stoke on Trent that a couple of hooded youths dropped an empty crisp packet on the tow path; I slammed our vessel into reverse (an action that doesn’t immediately get a response in a seventy foot barge), and jumped from the helm onto the bank, picked up the packet and asked if this pustule ridden oik would be taking his used bag of Golden Wonder with him to deposit it in the nearest receptacle dedicated to detritus. He replied in a surly manner that indirectly insinuated he had a tiny penis, and began lurching away up the canal as though someone had made way for an enema by means of a particularly large carrot, as only a mentally challenged fifteen year old can. My father put it in words that he could understand: “you little knob head” he shouted from his position on the bridge.
After jumping back on and grabbing the tiller I seethed quietly for a while and thought about how I could vent my frustrations; whilst dreaming up ways to belittle this oaf of tomorrow I was reminded of a bus journey I took between McLeod Gang, the home of the Tibetan government in exile, and Amritsar, site of the Golden Temple and Sikhism’s holiest shrine. At the first loo stop of the journey a Dutch guy called Danni approached me as a fellow Westerner and struck up a conversation, he lived in a small town near Rotterdam with a name of no consequence, he had been volunteering in Nepal for three months, but more importantly; he was a cock. All he talked about were his experiences which he then somehow managed to turn into advice that was both unwanted and uninvited; he had something to say about absolutely everything. For instance: I bought a potato burger from a street vendor
“Have you been ill yet?” the Dutchman asked, “you will be, everyone is”.
I wasn’t aware that the first part of this question was rhetoric however his answering for me made it so. He then enquired as to whether “they” had told me to bring earplugs for the bus journeys to drown out the incessant horns that are synonymous with Indian roads. Now I don’t know you the hell “they” are, but nowhere have I read or heard this nugget of information with which he so readily interjected as I tried my best to ignore him. Above all it was the tone of arrogant condescension in his voice that I cannot convey effectively in my writing that really got on my wick; he was a wanker, no two ways about it. The barrage continued.
He asked me what I was doing when I returned home so I politely told him I was off to France for my mother’s birthday.
“Why would you go to France?” he spat out the words disgusted.
“Because my grandfather bought a house there in the 70s, we go every year”.
“Why would anyone buy a house in France?” he smiled disdainfully.
There is a reason that France is the most visited country on earth that perhaps a baboon from a postage stamp sized country associated with windmills, weed, tulips and clogs can’t comprehend. It is a country overflowing with culture and steeped in history; a country of Camembert and Saint Emillion, Paris and the Riviera, Napoleon and Joan of Arc, Bordeaux and Brest. Van Gogh was Dutch and he moved there, he loved it so much he even chopped his ear off! So next time you’re shat shtoned in your room in a country that will be underwater in twenty years by all accounts, think twice before slating a country far greater than your own. Oh, and another thing, you cheated in the World Cup and still lost, nice one. Vive la France!
When I thought he couldn’t get any worse he proceeded to throw a plastic wrapper out of the window, I glared at him and he told me he had “given up binning his rubbish as no one else did”, but that he would “never do it in Holland”. Firstly I thought how hard it must be to “give up” not littering; somewhere between heroin addiction and chocolate for lent perhaps? Secondly, if you are a guest in someone else’s country you treat it with the respect it deserves, irrespective of whether its inhabitants have been educated in matters of the environment or not, you can’t simply resign yourself to the ‘needle in a haystack’ ‘won’t even scratch the surface’ philosophy, as ultimately you will and it’s the only surface we have. I minced words with him and ended all conversation thereafter.
I have come up with a theory based on my detailed scientific research then: the amount of litter someone decides to drop is directly and adversely linked to the size of the penis. More litter, smaller cock. End of.
After I got off the boat I needed something to warm me up, this did the job just brilliantly.
Ingredients: (Serves 6)
1 medium sized chicken
Small bunch of thyme
½ a lemon
50g salted English butter
1 white onion, roughly chopped
1 whole bulb of garlic
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
1 small cabbage, roughly chopped
2 sticks of celery, chopped into 1cm bits
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 bay leaves
1 large white onion, quartered
8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
1 tablespoon of white sugar
300ml chicken stock
1 tablespoon tomato purée
2 tablespoons brandy or cognac
150ml of dry white wine
5 potatoes for mashing
2 tablespoons crème fraiche
1 egg
100g of salted English butter
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil
Method:
1. After watching one of Heston’s programmes recently about how to cook chicken properly I was amazed at the difference in the meat; un-truss the bird and spread the legs apart before smothering it in butter. Stuff the bunch of thyme and ½ a lemon up its arse; whack it in a roasting dish with a couple of bay leaves, a few chunks of onion and a bulb of garlic cut across the middle. Put it in the oven at a temperature of 90°C and slow roast it till the inside temperature of the breast hit around 50°C, the time will depend on the size of the bird but it should take at least 2 hours.
2. When the breasts reach 50°C take the bird out of the oven. Get a large casserole and chuck in a couple of slugs of olive oil a brown the bird on all sides using a couple of wooden spoons to clumsily turn it around; when this is done take it out and let it stand on the side.
3. Chuck the quartered onions, celery, crushed garlic and carrots and stir them around in the juices, then add the cabbage, wine, tomato purée and brandy and stir it around until the alcohol burns off. Now pour in the stock and tablespoon of sugar, along with a couple more bay leaves and simmer for 10 minutes to reduce and infuse.
4. Now it’s time to return the bird to the casserole, I ended up transferring most (but not all) of the sauce to another pan, lowering the chicken in breasts up, and return the sauce to the casserole all over the top of the bird. Then lay out the streaky bacon over the breasts, cover, and simmer for one hour.
5. While the casserole is stewing boil the potatoes, strain them, then mash them with the crème fraiche, raw egg, 100g of salted butter and some seasoning.
6. After an hour take the casserole off and remove the bird once more; chop the meat off the bones and return it to the sauce in chunks and stir it thoroughly. Serve up on mash and feel amazing.
