Chocoholics' Harbourside Festival

Taste Chocolate was a two day celebration of all things chocolate held on the harbour side near our mooring.  

Lots of amazing artisan chocolatiers displayed their wares, from the extravagant.....

.....to the simplest tiniest 'richest' cup of hot chocolate I've ever tasted.

My favourite purchase were these..... I bought two. (They were £1 each)   Raspberry ganache encased in marbled chocolate.  A work of art in a mouthful made by chocolatier Jacqueline Keenan as part of the range in her chocolate tasting club La Fleur de Chocolat

A perfect Easter festival!

Back to the Seventies

I loved the Seventies! 

Even these bonkers 24 inch flares I made myself - and look at the lapels.  Age 15 and thought the suit was the bee's knees.  Lordy! 

Now, in 2015, I'm living on and surrounded by all things Seventies because the boat was built  then.  However, my affection for the decade isn't going to stop me removing some of the more fetching patterned Formica of the time.  

Even the rubber plant image is SO '78!
It is literally everywhere, apart from on the floor which in part is retro lino.  I'm sure I had a set of crockery in this pattern....

 And last night I caught a programme on TV called  Back in Time for Dinner - a fantastic historical cookery show. 

It was the Seventies episode and many of my remembered favourites appeared including boil in the bag Cod in Butter sauce, Pot Noodles and Vesta Beef Curry which I can remember was a real treat when we watched The Forsyte Saga and was the first time I'd had fruit in a savoury meal, SULTANAS with meat!  So exotic.  

Co-incidentally I was also asked yesterday to advise on a Seventies retro menu for a function   I said no to the proposed hummus, sun-dried tomato and goats cheese but did ask where was the Heinz sandwich spread!  

   

Food and friends

A couple of nights away from the boat found me unexpectedly back in a normal size kitchen and able to cook for friends. While I feel rather liberated by the chaos of the boat, meaning we won't be receiving callers anytime soon, I do love to cook for friends so an opportunity to turn out a supper during a Devon pit-stop was a complete treat.  Is there anything better than good friends around a kitchen table for a very informal supper on a Saturday night? 

Learning on the job, as I am doing with blogging, I now also understand that readers of blogs do particularly like food postings!  In the ten days since I re-took up the tale of a life in constant audit that's latest adventure sees us moved onto a tiny and ancient boat in an inner city marina, I know that blogs featuring food are box office!  My blog stats show that after the UK, the US and Russia are level pegging with regular readers and others check in daily from the Ukraine and all over Asia.  Everyone seems to favour the ones that feature food!   

But I am still learning the discipline of blogging, especially in chronicling life in pictures as well as words.  Best intentions were forgotten in the serving up and consuming on Saturday so I only have the 'before picture' of a gorgeous leg of lamb that was slow braised and served with its vegetables pureed into a wine and redcurrant gravy alongside boulangere potatoes and sprouting broccoli. 

It was a lovely interlude before back to the boat this afternoon and as I write, the weather forecast warns of severe gales coming in tonight.  The boat is already being buffeted against the pontoons with alarming crashes, the plastic sheeting on scaffolding around vessels in the boatyard is wildly flapping and the rigging on the visiting big yachts is sounding positively panicky in its jangling.  I think it's time to batten down the hatches!      

Game

We went to see Game, Mike Bartlett's new play, on at The Almeida Theatre.  (He of the recently much acclaimed Charles III, which also premiered at The Almeida).  I hadn't been to that theatre for years, in fact, since before its big refurbishment when I lived in London in the late Nineties.  

It still had the same vibe and the foyer was full of the sort of audience seeking out brave, experimental theatre experiences.  Game was certainly that!

The audience were led into the theatre in groups and placed in separate zones, some seated on benches, some standing.  The zones were separated from each other.  We were clearly in some sort of viewing 'hide' and were each given a set of headphones to wear.  When the play started, the 'hide' screens in front of each zone rolled up to let us see the action through one way mirrors while, simultaneously, television monitors played other sequences being performed out of our vision.   

A dystopian tale played out over the next hour about what happens when a young couple and their child make a repugnant deal in exchange for a roof over their heads.  It's about the un-affordablilty of housing and what could happen in a divided society of very rich and very poor with the extreme lost habits and mores of the Big Brother legacy.   Very bleak and unforgiving.  Wearing our headphones and unable to see the rest of the audience gave each of us an intense and personal experience watching the sickening events play out.  

The technical production, staging and mixed media was amazingly slick and intelligent.  

Most shocking - was a few of the audience members finding some sequences funny  - a case of nervous laughter I hope, or we're nearer than we think to a fresh hell.       

Allowing my soul to catch up fed my inner woman too.

"I like to arrive early to let my soul catch up with me....." is something the late and lovely Edna Healey once told me as she bemoaned husband Denis's habit of being late for everything.  "He has to get 'maximum extraction from wherever he is," she wryly observed. 

 

A lifetime of being stressfully late for everything has finally forced me to over compensate for all delays these days.  Plus, I've really got the time management bug - (I know I should have ages ago, after writing the LA book, but....) Living on a boat means constant planning ahead, even if it's just to get from one end to the other in our current state of chaos.

As a lark, I'd rather do a breakfast meeting any day but an 8pm one following four hours driving on M4, M40, M25 and M11 and then country roads was made a little better by an early supper

The small village of Belchamp St Paul is picturesque but looked completely deserted when I arrived at 6pm, frazzled from the journey .  Feeling dismal about how I was to kill two hours, I was more than relieved to spot that the only pub was not only open but was serving food. The tiny Half Moon Inn turned out to be a tardis of all that's good in country pubs.   

• 

Sixteenth century, thatched with a log fire and warren of rooms with comfy tables and chairs and a brilliant menu - the kitchen opened at 6.   Their old fashioned suet steak and kidney pudding tempted me but my chicken choice was the regulars'  favourite.  Diet police - notice the sauce on the side!

Cooking on the boat has restricted my cooking repertoire for the moment so getting food fixes are all the more special and when the hour long meeting in Essex, meant to be a four hour return trip, turned into a 24 overnight pass of a treat to see Mike Bartlett's new play at Islington's Almeida Theatre, arriving early had more foodie fall-out.  

I've read the books, tried the recipes but not eaten the man's food - until now.  Yotam Ottolenghi's Islington canteen was opposite the theatre and I had several hours to kill before the play started! 

 An unprepossessing shop front - amazing food!

Tapas sized portions of roasted aubergine, with sorrel yoghurt, turmeric pickled radish, spring onion and almonds then seared English beef with sweet coriander-mustard sauce and followed by seared lamb cannon, spiced peanut sauce, piquillo pepper, caper berries and anchovy.  Just perfect,  although the mouthfuls only took an hour of the three I had to fill. 

Lucky then I had two tiny 0.80 pence Penguin Little Black classics to while away some time.

For some reason I've struggled to find any fiction I enjoy recently but the taster reminder of Edith Wharton's wonderful prose has given me her catalogue to now pursue.  Excellent and filled the time until curtain up (not!) of the play - Game. Of which, more tomorrow......  

Much as it's easy to romanticise aspects of our new life afloat, actually, living onboard in as small a space as ours is all about being very practical and organised. The chores have to be done -  filling up with water, pumping out, changing gas cylinders, putting stuff away the minute it's finished with.....not a lot of time for creative whimsy.  Or, at least, not yet.

  

We are however surrounded by lots of artistic endeavour.  All along the waterfront warehouses are being used as studios, practice rooms for bands and exhibition spaces. There's nothing gentrified or pretentious about these gorgeous beat up buildings and it's only when you hear some riffs from an upstairs window or spot paint-covered hands buying a coffee from the waterside takeaway van that you realise there is a whole other community living with us.

The bridge between former working harbour and its artistic community was evident, very literally, the day we moved in and walked along to the first pedestrian crossing - Pero's bridge.

In her first UK installation, eighty-two year old Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya enveloped the bridge in fog which she wanted to celebrate Bristol's status as European Green Capital.  "The changing cloud of fog aims to invite visitors to consider the changing climate," she said. 

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She created it by pumping water at high pressure through many micro-fine nozzles that were installed at foot level, a metre outside of the bridge.    I found it surprisingly unsettling walking through its dense parts. Children loved running in and out of visibility.   M thought it was unnecessarily wet.   

Here comes The Young - little darlings.

I'm just wondering if there has been any research into the benefits of being surrounded by young people along the same lines of how warmer climates suit older joints.   Many of our neighbours on the boats around us are in their twenties and our days start and end with the University rowing teams practicing and competing in the harbour in front of us.  

They start at 6 am and the last outing is after dark.  Races are held on Saturdays with all their mates on the banks cheering them on.

Their energy and gusto is infectious and with 35,500+ students living in the city I just wonder what effect they have on the rest of us.  Are we less curmudgeonly, less inclined to be set in our ways and a bit more optimistic and easy-going.  Does breathing the same air as them make any difference at all.  I find their sheer enthusiasm joyous to watch - I just wish their 'infectious energy' was more catching.  It's too easy to spend time not doing anything much at all other than people and boat watching.  

There is the most extraordinary variety of craft afloat around us.  Glanced up and saw this large rigged wooded ship yesterday. (I know - I need to get a better camera)

Is there a "twitcher' equivalent moniker for boat-spotting?