Snow Joke

That’s quite enough, thank you; it’s beyond a joke now.

I originally thought this cold snap (what a misnomer – if a snap is what you find in a cracker, this is small nuclear explosion) was Mother Nature’s little taunt at Patrick, our producer. As if to tempt fate, he’d written these opening lines for a film we were supposed to be shooting this week: “A little girl wanders into a dark, mysterious wood. It’s the end of autumn and the trees are still sprinkled with brown leaves. Running through a deep leafy carpet, she tries to catch them as they float gently to the ground.”

We thought we’d timed it perfectly: not too soon, so there’d be plenty of leaves, yet not too late or we’d risk the January snows. We found an ideal location, booked the crew, cranes, dollies and location catering and cast a 12-year-old girl from scores of hopeful candidates. What could possibly go wrong?

I passed our chosen wood yesterday morning on my way to the airport. Not a leaf to be seen: they’re all mulched away under the snowdrifts. Instead of the dry brown carpet, it now has a shiny white floor like a television studio. You could expect Harry Hill to emerge from behind the trees with a broad grin, a couple of dancing girls and a cheeky Happy Christmas.

We’ve postponed, of course. Patrick has rewritten: “A teenage girl wanders into a wood, carpeted with daffodils.” Sadly it doesn’t have quite the same resonance.

If this weather has affected one film project, I can’t begin to imagine how disastrous it’s been to other industries in the region. On Saturday night I braved the black ice to visit my favourite Newcastle restaurant, Rasa. It was nearly empty: absolutely unheard of for a place that serves by far the best Indian food outside London. Save for a couple of frozen buskers and some semi-naked hens, the Quayside was virtually deserted. If the northeast had a mayor, he’d have declared a state of emergency.

Yet, despite the problems, I’m amazed by how calmly we’ve taken it. Despite the most unpleasant weather in memory, everything has kind of worked. There’ve been no food shortages or panic buying, all our main roads have been kept remarkably clear, trains and planes have got us in and out, and neighbourliness has smiled its way through the crisis. Rasa even managed to get its spectacular kingfish flown in from Kerala.

Sure, we’ve had no post – our icy farm track would have swallowed up the postman’s little red van – but when I eventually made it to the sorting office, our postman had it all organized. He came out with a broad smile and a large box containing the mail for our hamlet, which I then distributed like Santa to the grateful community. This weather brings out the best in northerners, and the worst in our southern compatriots.

Judging by the national headlines, you’d have thought the world had ended when a smidgeon of snow finally fell on the south earlier in the week. The Transport Secretary ordered an enquiry into travel disruption: apparently London was late to work. Yesterday I flew south to see for myself. The sun was warm, the snow completely gone. Almost everyone was wearing designer Ugg boots as they lumbered down de-iced designer streets. People spoke of Kent and Northumberland as distant heathen lands.

I drove comfortably into Berkshire and Wiltshire: there were crashed cars on the M4 every few miles, yet there wasn’t enough snow on the ground to ice a Frappuccino. The woods were amazing, sprinkled with brown leaves and golden carpets of… Hang on a minute: perhaps we should relocate our movie down there?

Indian Summer

It could so easily have been a disaster. Thankfully Saturday night turned into an evening of delicious surprises.

I’m not referring to Kevin Nolan’s hattrick in Newcastle United’s 4-0 trouncing of Ipswich, or the removal of Richard Dunwoody from Strictly Come Dancing, pleasant as both incidents were in themselves. It was the fact that our party actually worked.

It certainly might have been a different story. Three months ago, on a particularly warm late spring day, Jo and I decided that as we were getting married in California, we should throw a little shindig for our closest friends and family back home in England. Dreaming of chilled pink champagne and strawberries in the garden, I unilaterally decided to write “4.30pm start” on the invitations.

As the months passed and we discovered that the Meteorological Office’s promised “barbecue summer” was just a fantasy, Jo berated my absurd optimism. What on earth were we to do with 70 people in a chilly windswept Northumbrian farmhouse in the pouring rain in late September? As usual, I stubbornly refused to accept she might be right.

Last week, as the BBC weatherman was still insisting it was sunny and warm, we were lighting the Aga and bringing in the winter logs. I buttoned up my jacket against the cold drizzle and defiantly trudged round the local wine shops. Apparently there isn’t much demand for pink bubbly right now. Eventually a nice man at Ponteland Wine Rack managed to track some down in Sheffield. Just in case, we’d booked heaters and a marquee. Then, to really warm people up, we ordered curry.

It wasn’t just that we wanted fine weather for our party, it was that we’d invited so many friends from London who were utterly convinced we’d moved to the North Pole. This was their first sight of our new home and for some it was their first taste of our region. As self-appointed North East ambassadors to our unfortunate city cousins, we wanted the whole county to make a good impression.

We needn’t have worried. On Saturday morning we woke up to blue skies and warm air. Somebody was smiling on us – and on Northumberland. The September roses were at their peak in the garden, the sheep were bleating in a major key, and the guests arrived with smiles, gifts, and a determination to party.

Theatre directors, television producers and showbiz agents mingled with farmers, doctors and landowners. It was the most eclectic mix. But the highlight of the night was the curry. Our dear friends at Rasa really pulled out the stops and threw us a full-scale Keralan wedding banquet, complete with music and dancing. Even Jonathan Shalit, agent to stars like Myleene Klass, Jamelia and Kate Silverton, and hitherto a terminal curry-hater, was won over.

Jonathan’s been a good friend since the day we stood side by side in the urinals of The Ivy and he offered me a television exclusive with his new signing, a 12 year old Welsh opera singer that he thought was going to be huge. I politely declined the opportunity and the fact that I’d turned down Charlotte Church is a story he retells with great relish at every party he comes to.

Jonathan had rung me on Monday to say that he simply couldn’t bear curry, so we prepared him a separate meal. But in the middle of the banquet, surrounded by the wonderful smells and sounds of Kerala, he couldn’t resist. The conversion was instant. Everyone in the room pronounced it the finest curry they had ever tasted, and were shocked to discover that it had been cooked by an Indian restaurant in Newcastle. The Londoners were even more shocked to find out that they could get precisely the same cuisine in several Rasa branches in London.

It was one of many surprises that night. David Cottrell, my old schoolfriend and one of the country’s top eye surgeons, discovered that the Indian dancer performing astoundingly exotic and sensual moves right in front of him actually worked in his ophthalmology department at the RVI.


As I write this on Sunday, the weather is back to its gloomy chill and the garden is a forest of empty bottles. Ah well, back to reality.

A Tale of Failed Diets

Despite the fact that in five week’s time I’m due to get married in a sleek cream suit still a size too small for me, this week I broke my diet three times. I blame the rain: our summer of sun morphed into dismal October, so Jo and I decided to try out some local restaurants to warm ourselves up. First we went to Southern India: or at least to Newcastle’s quayside.

Now I know a bit about South Indian food. I cooked my first proper curry on a deserted beach in Goa, years before the place had been ruined by hotels and tourists. My girlfriend, shortly to become wife, and I parked up our VW camper van for a few weeks solitude and befriended a young man climbing a tree for coconuts. He introduced us to his family, and his mother taught me the secrets of the Goan fish curry: the dish that smiles at you with its coconut milk before its spices blow your head off.

The principal reason for heading South was to visit an army base. We couldn’t resist the polite invitation from the commander of the Marathas, India’s most famous light infantry regiment. Jilly’s father had served as a junior officer in India during the war and he’d written to his old regiment saying that as we were touring the country, could we please pop in for a cup of tea. The result was a two thousand mile detour.

Imagine the scene: battered old camper van arrives at the smart security gates; inside, two hippy Brits, one with a scraggy beard and torn jeans: neither had touched a bath for two months. The sentry snaps to attention; a bugle sounds. The base commander, resplendent in full dress uniform, marches up and ushers us into an open topped jeep. Jilly and I look at each other in amazement.

A military band leads out the entire regiment and, for a glorious moment, I find out what it’s like to be the Queen as we take the salute. It’s only when the commandant addresses the troops that the penny drops. “We are so honoured to have the daughter of Colonel Barber with us today”. “Colonel? I thought he was only a Captain”, I hiss beneath my breath. “He was”. Captain Cecil Carrington Barber was a delightful man, but colonel-in-chief he most certainly wasn't. Nevertheless the chap in charge droned on about the brave colonel's extraordinary leadership qualities.

I thought about halting the proceedings and to explain the mistaken identity. But I thought it would have been rather mean to let them down, particularly as they'd made such an effort. Particularly after they led us to a maginificent banquet in the officer’s mess. “Our chef is from Kerala”, they proudly tell us. Kerala: God’s own country, the lushest, most educated state in India. It also has the best food – fish cooked in tamarind, coconut and the freshest vegetables.

And, amazingly, we have our own Kerala in Newcastle. The Tyne doesn't have a great deal of culinary expertise to recommend it. Great ingredients, mediocre cooks. But if you're ever in town and you want to know what good curry really tastes like, go to Rasa and order their kingfish and tamarind curry with a side portion of black-eyed beans simmered in yoghurt. Rasa trains its chefs in its own cookery academy back in India and, so long as you order fish and vegetables, you won't be disappointed. It’s simply the best in town. Rasa, run by a delightful chap from Kerala called Das (who I believe had a hand in Jamie Oliver's wedding feast) has several branches in London. And, for some bizarre reason, Newcastle. Thank God.

By contrast, my two other diet-breaking diversions were less successful. I’d been warned about National Express and I can now confirm the catering on the East Coast line has been truly wrecked. Tough little steak sandwiches are no substitute for fresh meals in the restaurant car. I feel sorry for the catering staff, who used to be so proud of their culinary offerings at 125 miles per hour. The smoked fish used to come from Robsons of Craster, the beef and lamb was Northumbrian, and everything was cooked fresh and served with panache and good silver. Now there's no reason to go by train. It's usually twice the price of the plane, and you can't even enjoy a leisurely meal. The sooner National Express is stripped of its franchise the better. From now on it's Terminal 5 and Gordon Ramsay's Plane Food for me.

But Seaham Hall’s restaurant still has a Michelin star, so I was looking forward justifying the damage to my waistline by an evening of exquisite flavours and skilled cooking. I last went two years ago with a former Michelin inspector and we both reckoned it was on its way to its second star.

How have the mighty fallen. I don’t expect to pay £80 a head for a square of overcooked salmon the size of a thumbnail in a menu of bland, uninspired predictability. From the rubbish-strewn entrance to the over-familiar service, Seaham seems to have lost its way. What a letdown.

We went on Saturday for Joey's birthday. I was positively willing it to be great (not just because of the price: it was a rare baby-free evening and I really wanted Jo to enjoy it). We went for the tasting menu and course after course relentlessly arrived. Now I go to Michelin rated restaurants to be blown away by imagination and skill. I've flown to Rome to enjoy Heinz Beck's architectural creations; next month Joey and I are driving 8 hours to visit America's finest, The French Laundry in Napa. I'd go anywhere for a good meal. But not to Seaham. I don't think there was a thing on the menu I couldn't have rustled up at home without a recipe book. All beautifully presented, of course. But all somehow...dull.

It wasn't just the unmemorable food. As we drove in, there were plastic bags strewn over the drive (a fox had probably been in the bins the previous night and noone had bothered to pick them up); the place looks somehow tatty compared to when I last saw it: even the garden is lazily pruned rather than artistically pampered. Worst, the head waiter came up and interrogated every new arrival. "How has your day been?". The man couldn't be satisfied with "Fine, thanks": he had to ask us what we'd been doing. I felt like a six year old being forced to be polite to an annoying aunt. And if I he'd uttered one more "That will be no problem at all" in response to a request for something on the menu I think I'd have hit him with glass vase thing which substituted the need for fresh flowers (presumably because the gardener hadn't bothered to grow any). Seaham Hall changed hands since we last went. To the wrong hands, no doubt.

Ah well, vent over. Back to the diet.