Our old amigos Vi and Desmond Hornblower made a whirlwind visit last week on their valedictory tour of the region before being put out to pasture. I must say they’ve slowed down a bit since those heady days out in the tropics, when Vi once danced the can-can in a dugout canoe going over Victoria Falls and Desmond was known in the local dialect as “Little White Chief With Huge Set of Congas”. He got on the wrong side of a Tsetse fly whilst up-country in Umbongoland a few years ago, and has suffered from narcolepsy ever since. Vi wheels him through airports and pours him in and out of taxis, although frankly I’ll never understand why she doesn’t just leave him at home in bed in front of reruns of “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum”. He’d never know the difference. He falls asleep at the most embarrassing moments: in the middle of a game of charades, for instance. We wasted half an hour shouting out titles like “The Big Sleep!”, “Goodnight Sweetheart!”, “A Night at the Opera!” (that was Harold of course), and so on, before we realized Desi really was on an awayday to the Land of Nod. Then he woke up halfway through dinner, screamed “The Horror! The Horror!” and passed out again face-down in the ratatouille. Vi doesn’t seem to mind at all, she says as long as he’s still got his share options, she’s quite happy to keep him tucked up in bed while she devotes herself to charity work involving some young Romanians - strapping young lads to judge by the photograph, in which one of them was clutching Vi with obvious gratitude, although it was unclear why they were both wrapped in towels. I’d never have thought of Vi as the charitable type, but it shows how wrong you can be.The Major and I have been so caught up in the summer social whirl that we haven’t had much chance to review any restaurants lately. We did however pay a visit a while back to Bazyliszek, on the old town square, a most elegant establishment where the food is excellent and very reasonably priced, despite what the Insider says. The menu is very traditional old Polish fare - barszcz, golonka, duck with apples (happy Harold!), pierogi, etc., but all presented very elegantly, none of this faux-rustic pseudo-peasant business that’s very trendy in some quarters. Comfy chairs, nice classical piano music, chandeliers and lots of mirrors tilted at useful angles to check one’s tiara is still in place (or in Harold’s case, to look down the waitress’s cleavage), quite our cup of tea as you can imagine. You can keep your smalec, if you want to dine with the hoi polloi you can always go to the Pink.
On the subject of food, my dear friend Imelda (the Dowager Duchess of Southend) has published a cookery book! Let me share with you one of her award-winning recipes, her signature dish, Scotch Fruit Cake:
IMELDA’S SCOTCH FRUIT CAKE
Ingredients:
1 cup water 1 cup sugar 4 large eggs 2 cups dry fruit 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt 1 cup brown sugar lemon juice nuts 1 gallon whisky
1. Sample the whisky to check for quality
2. Take a large bowl
3. Check the whisky again to be sure it is of the highest quality
4. Pour one level cup of whisky and drink
5. Repeat
6. Turn on the electric mixer, beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl
7. Add one tsp sugar and beat again
8. Make sure the whisky is still OK. Cry another tup. Turn off mixer
9. Break two legs and to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit
10. Mix on the turner
11. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers, pry it loose with a drewscriver
12. Sample the whisky to check for tonsisticity
13. Next, sift 2 cups of salt, or whatever
14. Check the whisky
15. Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts
16. Add 1 table. Spoon. Of sugar or something. Whatever you can find
17. Grease your oven
18. Turn the cake tin to 350 degrees
19. Don’t forget to beat off the turner
20. Check the whisky again
21. Go to bed.
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Fruit cake is the expression that best describes Imelda. She is truly a relic of another age. She was at Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury, on the Magic Bus, on a kibbutz, had an affair with a Black Panther or three, danced down Oxford Street chanting Hare Krishna, and rode pillion with the Maidstone chapter of the Hell’s Angels. She even claims to have been engaged to Che Guevara but I’m not sure I believe that. (She says he had some unsavoury personal habits). The eroding effect on her brain of far too many substances over the years, not all of them legal, have left her a little, well, vague. She gave up herbal remedies after the demise of Janis, Jimi and Jim (her pet hamsters, who became convinced they were lemmings after nibbling on one of Imelda’s psychedelic muffins and launched themselves off the sixteenth floor balcony of Ravi Shankar Towers), and her anaesthetic of choice now comes in amber liquid form. And I don’t mean Lucozade. She has a little trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, and makes outrageous claims, such as being the reincarnation of Marie-Antoinette. It’s a little hard on Imelda’s neighbours. The sheep do leave such a mess in the courtyard, you see.
