Observations from a Hill

Just an observation on where we currently seem to find ourselves in the political world of 2026 UK. We are at the moment only two years into a Labour government that inherited the poisoned chalice of a UK economy that had effectively been dismembered and its body parts scattered far and wide by a succession of Tory governments following the precepts of a political philosophy that by now should be outlawed at the very least as a dangerous drug or rather more as a lethal weapon of mass destruction. We all by now know what this heinous excrescence of a theory is called, and most of us are indeed very much the victims of its inevitable dire economic outcomes: neo-liberalism in all its forms and guises is the scourge of all but the very wealthy. Keir Starmer was elected to the leadership of the Labour Party by us, the membership; not because of his personality or charismatic qualities, but because of his skill set: a lawyer with a forensic attention to the detail of law and process: given t...

Pictured, mes amis, the closest I've ever got to my Holy Grail Madras curry at home: an absolute stonker, if I say so myself. This is the best curry I've made in my forty-six year culinary learning curve to date. I'm starting to understand . This is so Zen it's perfect: the realisation that no particular written recipe by however good a cook will allow you entry into the realms of food nirvana. Certain precepts, largely unspoken and often kept hidden, obtain here. I've cooked some pretty decent nosh over the years, but I've never really been satisfied with my take on South Asian cooking - one mutton biriani aside - until ths evening. I've always recognised the need for patience and taking one's time over preparing food, but have never applied this rigorously enough to achieve the taste result lurking in the back of my food memory [a vast store of taste]: until tonight. Thanks to much experiment, research and time, I'm almost there at the point when I...

Sunshine beim Wintergarten heno [there's a linguistic mix for you...] with a brace of wooden ducks and artificial flowers for colour. More important though, is the glass of Italian Primitivo in the foreground, or rather the goblet in which it sits. This venerable old wine glass is pretty much the last survivor of the 1980/90s heyday of the competitive cookery that cemented our friendship with Alan and Irene over forty -odd years. I've written recently about the origins of this long-standing tradition [blog posts passim, and in response to observations about the difficulties of navigating the archive of my scribbles, I'm thinking about mirroring this site in a more accessible form, so I will keep you posted if this thought train hits the tracks any time soon], but since Alan's illness and passing, these collective culinary endeavours have essentially withered and ceased themselves. This rather knackered, chipped and wobbly old glass was part of a set they passed on to us...

I was just watching an interview with one of my favourite guitarists, Robben Ford, on YouTube this evening. He was extolling the virtues of a 1960 Fender Telecaster that he bought some number of years ago, and which has been one of his go-to stable of guitars over the years: a blonde, rosewood-boarded, white-pickguarded beauty, now much road worn and very much played-in example of Leo Fender's genius. Pictured is my bastard-caster, which is now nearly fifteen years old, and which has undergone much modification and mutation in its short life. It started out as a Fender Modern Player, with a middle pickup, Strat-style, and a humbucker in the bridge position. It's a tad different now: Ever since I started to listen to music, I'd always wanted a Telecaster, and almost bagged one back in the early seventies, that was at the sweet spot of the marque: a sixties' model identical to Robben Ford's beauty of a guitar, which I couldn't finance at the time, despite what now...

We had our monthly lunch club today at The White Eagle at Rhoscolyn on Anglesey. We were a few short in number of our customary tableful, but a pleasant time was nevertheless had by all. I made my usual mistake of taking a starter before my main, which didn't leave my shrinking appetite enough room to finish up, but there you go. However, on our way into the restaurant I had noticed the outside chalkboard wasn't advertising specials or offers, but had on it a very familiar verse that at first I couldn't place, as in written form it was totally out of context for me. It only dawned on me a while later during the meal, that it was a spoken piece from a record by The Moody Blues: 'The Dream' from the album 'On The Threshold of a Dream'. Pictured, Jane's original copy of the vinyl from 1969. The Moodies, as they were known by most fans, were a Birmingham band formed in 1964, and their earliest sartorial image would have suggested a lounge act rather than a r...

Well, the voting for the Senedd elections is over and the count is done. No overall majority, but as expected, the vote has gone the way principally of Plaid Cymru and Reform. No other party came remotely close to either. I can't say I'm either surprised at the outcome, or even - speaking as a lifelong Labour voter who still casts a red ballot at every election - particularly upset at the outcome. Bemused perhaps at the ludicrous success of the arriviste Reform and their frankly ludicrous figurehead, but upset, no. We live in 'interesting' times, and the political scene at the moment verges frankly on the surreal; but it's where it is, and for the duration we're going to have to put up with whatever tomfoolery transpires.  That Labour's century long Welsh hegemony was under threat was glaringly obvious from the outset, and the more perspicacious of pundits read it just right: the dual Labour governments were more curse than blessing on either, particularly h...