Spicy Food (and a menu idea)

We ate at Nando’s last night, the South African owned fast-food chain that specializes in grilled chicken. Their peri-peri chicken is marinaded in a sauce made from olive oil, lime juice, garlic, paprika, oregano and chilli. And you get to choose exactly how much chilli your chicken has been soaked in. The highest option is Extra-Hot. Mindful of how sensitive my guts have become to strong spices, I chose the lowest level of chilli. Sitting next to us were a group of lads tucking into their chicken pieces and piling on more extra-hot sauce from a bottle. My mind flashed back to the time before my four cancer operations (during which my guts were hoiked around by an array of surgeons, and from which they’ve yet to properly recover). In those halcyon days I used to be a very adventurous eater. I really looked forward to all the new dishes I could try on my regular cycle trips to far-flung destinations. After riding all day through the backroads of Laos or China, the group would get together for an evening meal in a local restaurant. None of the restaurant staff spoke any English, so plates of strange food would just arrive from the kitchen and be placed before us. The oddest of these was a dish of chicken’s feet, on a trip through the foothills of the Chinese Himalayas. Yes, yellow chicken’s feet stir-fried in a spicy sauce. When the pile of yellow toes arrived, people shook their heads and turned away. I reached forward with my chopsticks and grasped one. “You must be mad,” said the Englishman sitting next to me. I put the chicken’s foot into my mouth and began to chew. All of the group were staring at me, horrified expressions on their faces.

The foot was rather rubbery and didn’t taste very pleasant. But with a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on me, I felt I had to swallow it. The foot went down with a bit of a gulp. Still they kept staring at me. Were they expecting me to keel over foaming at the mouth, or to start flapping and squawking? I put down my chopsticks and smiled. They responded with a round of applause.

I’m still willing to experiment with food, I just have to be careful with what I now try because of how reactive my guts have become. My four boneless chicken thighs soon arrived. They were tiny, barely a mouthful in each. I bit into one. It tasted good, flavoursome and lightly spiced. Then I began to wonder. Did the Chinese Nando’s serve chicken’s feet?

Back to Porridge and Heater Units

We returned home to piles of things to do. Not just the dirty washing in our suitcases, but the many tasks left undone because we departed in such a rush. Our first adjustment was to the cold and damp of Northern Ireland. Not easy after we’d been in the dry warmth of Mallorca. The first week had days of 25 and 27 degrees. The second week was the usual 21 or 22. But that is pretty good compared to the high of 8 degrees in balmy Co Down today. Our second week had one huge rainstorm. Not on the scale of the terrible events in Valencia, but still pretty dramatic. The street outside our apartment was turned into a rushing river almost a foot deep. In the afternoon, the rain stopped and the sun dried everything out. We were staying in Son Baulo, on the north coast. It’s towards the middle of the bay of Alcudia and marks the end of the developed part of the coast. Beyond is the protected coastline, the nature reserves and the mountains of the east. Ah, never mind, we can always return, like the birds, next Spring. In the meantime, we’ve plenty to be getting on with. First of all, my poor car immobilized by the Fire Brigade.

I took photos of the burned parts and sent them to the mechanic. “That’s the heater unit for the plugs, to start the engine in cold weather,” he said and talked me through disconnecting it. I drove my car to him and he checked it over. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he said. I chose the good news first. “The heater unit isn’t expensive to replace,” he said. “Trouble is the wiring loom is damaged too.” That would take a day’s work to check thoroughly and could be very expensive to fix. “But some cars start alright without the heater unit,” he said helpfully. “Even in the winter?” I asked, mindful that it had been minus 10 last year. “Why not try it?” he suggested. So I am. The car is starting alright at the moment. Fingers crossed it won’t get as cold this winter.

Three Things Not to Do Before Going on Holiday

1)    Covid and Flu vaccinations boost your immunity - but don’t get both jabs on the same day, just before you go away. We had to do this and quickly developed very sore arms and fatigue. T needed to spend the day in bed.

2)    Don’t have hospital treatment just before going away. Seeking to avoid this, I gave the Cancer Centre my holiday dates. They called me in the day before we travelled. I had to drag my sore body to Belfast and came home stressed and exhausted.

3)    Don’t set the car on fire. I was putting the bin out after coming back from the Cancer Centre when I noticed smoke pouring out of my car. I opened the bonnet. Thick smoke was coming from somewhere underneath the engine. I got an old towel and tried in vain to smother the fire. T rang the fire brigade. We stood on the lawn and watched the car smouldering, expecting it to burst into flames at any moment.

Siren blaring, the fire engine screamed up our lane and screeched to a halt. The fire crew rushed out and attached a hose. They heaved the bonnet open. The acrid smell of burnt wiring emerged. But the fire appeared to have gone out. The fire crew stood around the car looking disappointed. One of them disconnected the battery and began removing parts from the car to find the source of the fire. Another surveyed the engine with a heat sensor. The fire had come from a sealed unit low down on the right side of the engine. The plastic covering was all melted but luckily the fire inside had been contained. ‘That’s an important relay’, said one. ‘Going to be expensive’, said another, shaking their head. ‘You mustn’t drive this car until you’ve had it thoroughly checked by an expert’, said the fire chief. ’But', I said. 'It’s supposed to be taking us to the airport tomorrow'.

The Editor's Report

I’ve been quiet on here for a few weeks. You see, I’ve been working with a professional editor on my novel. Louise Walters has edited some 250 novels in a range of genres. For six years she was editor-in-chief of an independent publisher, and she has published five novels of her own. She undertook to read my novel and give me feedback on its structure, plot, pacing and characterisation. In particular I asked her to tell me what was working well in the novel and what were its main flaws and limitations. I sent my manuscript off to Louise thinking that she would come back to me with a pretty long list of defects.

Ten days later I got her report. I opened it with trepidation. Louise said she “enjoyed my writing very much”. She thought that my “central characters were really well drawn and sympathetic. The growing bond between them was well written and their relationship was affecting. The era was well evoked, with good period details, and my description of the natural world was very nicely crafted. The plot was good, pace and tension were fine.” I was glowing with pride. Surely I would soon be on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Then came the defects. Louise told me there was one main problem. I had “too many named characters. My novel was a bit like an over-grown garden, it needed thinning out.” She recommended that I cut my character list. She also recommended that I cut the six chapters written from the antagonist’s point of view. Focus and readability would both be improved if my novel were only narrated from the protagonist’s point of view.

My initial reaction was no, I’m not going to do that. I sweated long and hard over those six chapters. Then I thought, what was the point of paying for professional advice and not listening to it? After all, I could easily lose all the named characters that didn’t have speaking parts. But lose the antagonist’s six chapters as well? That was a good idea I’d nicked from John Banville. I pondered her advice further. The six chapters were short, only 4000 words in total. It wouldn’t hurt to take them out, just as a trial. So I did. And Louise was right. The focus of the novel was improved, as was the pacing and tension.

I’d highly recommend Louise Walters. She’s very professional, insightful and easy to work with. You can read more about her here. https://www.louisewaltersbooks.co.uk/editorialservices

Journey Into Norn Iron

I’m back in the saddle again, after months out of action. Yesterday I cycled up the canal towpath beside Moneypenny’s Lock. The sun was shining, it was warm and I didn’t know what a colourful journey was ahead of me. Entering Portadown, a group of men were blocking the towpath. They had large bottles of strong cider in Tesco carrier bags. Just my luck, I thought, alkies causing trouble again. I rang my bell to warn them of my approach. One of them turned and sang. “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley. Ding, ding, ding went the bell.”  And laughing, they let me pass. Blimey, serenaded by alcoholics, with a tune made famous by Judy Garland in ‘Meet Me in St Louis’.

The end of the towpath is at Town Quay, where a paddle steamer once took passengers across Lough Neagh. Here I joined the Garvaghy Road, the most politicised street in NI and a reputed hotbed of Irish nationalism. But today the houses and the people were bedecked in orange. The colour of the other side. What was going on? Ironic performance art on a grand scale? No. They were supporting the Armagh Gaelic Football team, playing today in the All Ireland Final. I turned onto Ashgrove Road and headed out into open country. On top of the first hill stood the tall pointed spire of the Church of Ireland, Drumcree. The site of large-scale riots 30 years ago over the route of an Orange Order parade. In the oppositional logic of NI, surely this should today be bedecked in maroon and white. The colours of Galway, the opponents of Armagh in the final. But no, the Orange Order had instead applied to march down the Garvaghy Road today. To avoid another riot, permission was refused.

I carried on past dairy farms around the margins of Lough Neagh. The slurry that is spread on these fields is the source of the blue-green algae that blights the water of the UK’s largest lake. Given that it is also the source of 40 % of the drinking water of NI, you’d think people would take more care. Or at least the NI Environment Agency would enforce the rules on slurry spreading and runoff. At Maghery there is a footbridge over the mouth of the River Blackwater that takes you into Tyrone. In the middle of the bridge is a sign. ‘Danger. Do Not Jump From Bridge.’ Beside it stood a group of lads in swimming trunks, daring one another to leap the twenty feet into the dark water below.

Selected for the Top 100

I have some great news. Out of 2452 entries from 78 countries, my novel ‘The Cut’ has reached the top 100 in the competition for the Bath Novel Award 2024. In football parlance, I am truly over the moon. The Bath Novel Award is a major international competition for emerging authors with a first prize of £5,000. I submitted the opening 10,000 words of the novel and a one page synopsis. All entries were read blind and the judges voted for the stories they most wanted to read more of. I shouted, jumped up and ran around the house with a huge grin on my face when I got the news. Despite a series of rejections from agents in London, this is proof positive that my novel is good enough.

Novel writing is a solitary pursuit with little opportunity for unbiased feedback on the quality of one’s work. Even attending a writers’ group, novelists only get feedback on around 500 words due to time constraints. But this feedback concerns just a tiny part of one scene, and a novel is made up of dozens of scenes which are interrelated in time and space. Like sculpture, good novels are supposed to emerge through the editing. As readers of this blog know, I’ve been grafting away for a couple of years on my manuscript, trying my best to improve it bit by bit. It has been a long and lonely process, with only rejection for company. But this accolade undoubtedly proves that I am finally getting somewhere. And it gives me renewed energy for the long and tortuous journey towards publication.

Waiting for the Doctor

I’ve been down with sinusitis for some months now. The problem flares up and then recedes. Every time I think I’m finally on the road to recovery, the problem flares up again. I’ve seen the GP several times and have tried all the steroid nasal sprays. I’ve also rinsed my nose with saline solution and breathed in steam with my head under a towel. But none of these have done the trick. In desperation, I returned to the GP. He said I’d have to see a specialist. There was just one problem. Seeing an ENT consultant on the NHS would mean a wait of several years. Did I want to be referred privately, he asked?  In a cleft stick, I agreed. He wrote me the referral. It was only one sentence, appended to a list of major events in my medical history. Because of my years of cancer treatment these highlights spread onto two pages. Then I began to research the ENT consultants who work privately and who specialize in sinusitis. The first thing I noted is that there are more private hospitals and clinics than there used to be. Hardly surprising, I suppose, with Northern Ireland having the longest NHS waiting lists in the UK. So I found a specialist at a private hospital in Belfast and sought an initial appointment. Even going private, you still have to wait. But only a matter of weeks, not years. My appointment arrived today.

The specialist asked me about my medical history, symptoms and the treatments I’d tried. Then he looked up my nose with a little light on the end of a thin metal cable. It looked rather like the light that an anglerfish holds in front of its jaws to attract its prey. At the other end of the cable was a little box. This was a screen. He said he could see no problems in the upper chamber of my nose. So I would need a CT scan of my sinuses. Then I’d come back and see him in a couple of weeks.

As I was about to leave, I asked him which NHS hospital he normally worked at. ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve jumped ship.’ He explained that he’d got so frustrated working in the NHS. His theatre slots were regularly being cancelled because ENT surgery was not seen as important in the face of resource pressures. He said that in the private sector he could treat his patients more effectively and he got much better job satisfaction. As I listened to him I remembered a recent news item. A report has just been published into waiting times for surgery in the NHS in Northern Ireland. The longest waits are in ENT and Urology. Tragically, these are six years!