My Tea Towel

Nine out of ten readers whose cats expressed a preference have commented on the quality of what they (erroneously) think is my new black and white tea towel. One of my friends popped round the other day and caught me drying the dishes, and the second thing he said to me was, “Stewart, that tea towel is a reet bobby dazzler; I’ve nivver seen one like that afore”. (The first thing he said to me was, “Why ist tha drying dishes, ist tha a puff”.) One needs to note at this time that he is from Barnsley, and in terms of that fair town is seen as something of a new man. Not only does he rarely physically chastise his children but he also allows his wife to vote in local elections. He even admits to one time having partaken of a vegetarian meal, which he felt was alright, although following it he did need to take a couple of days off work because of “a bit o’ gut trouble”. But I digress somewhat. The tea towel is not new, but is to some extent novel. I feel now is the time to tell the full story of my excellent tea towel.

The story begins in 1973, predating the three day week and the winter of discontent, although where I worked on the railway there were a fair few discontented souls and despite turning up for five days in each week most only actually worked a one day week. The phrase “work is the curse of the drinking classes” could easily have been coined for the staff in West Offices in the 1970s. It all started with a trip to the local butchers. We were a bit strapped for cash so my mum sent me out to buy a sheep’s head. Now, in these days when less than choice cuts of meat are hard to come by and offal is either trendily expensive or simply unavailable, and BSE and scrapie have ruled out the sale for human consumption of nervous tissue, a sheep’s head is not even perceived of as food. How wrong that is. Anyway, I went to the butcher and asked him for a sheep’s head, to which the hilarious wag replied, “what do you want a sheep’s head for, your own head seems to fit you very well”. He was such a card. I patiently responded by stating that I was not Wurzel Gummidge and only wanted the sheep’s head for food and sustenance not as an alternative adornment to my neck. I then added “could you leave the eyes in as I want it to see me through the week”. He then proffered me a nice looking head complete with a full set of peepers, for which I paid him one shilling and then duly took home to my mum.

Upon receiving the sheep’s head my mum washed it and then put it in a big bowl and covered it in brine. (Now, as a relatively poor family we didn’t buy those fancy bottles of made up brine, but made our own just by adding table salt to cold water, and I remain convinced that it is just as good as supermarket brine.) She left the head to soak in the brine overnight and then she washed it again, put it in a big pan, covered it in cold water, added a stock cube and brought it to the boil, then simmered it for two hours, constantly topping up the water. She then removed the head from the pan and left it to cool. She added diced carrots, sliced onions and a handful of pearl barley to the remaining liquor and brought it back to the boil. She then removed the chaps (cheeks) from the sheep’s head, cut them into small pieces and added them to the pot. This was left to simmer and reduce and within another couple of hours we had a tasty pan of sheep’s head broth. Mum then removed the tongue from the sheep, peeled off the outer skin and placed the peeled tongue on a plate and added a weighted plate on top. By the following morning we had some delicious pressed tongue for sandwiches and salads. Finally, she cracked open the skull and removed the brain, which then went into the fridge to chill, and was used as a wonderful creamy paté or spread. (It may seem strange today, but my memories of sheep’s brain are that it is one of the very nicest things I have ever eaten.)

As all this was going on I was watching the telly. Not surprisingly, Bruce Forsyth was on reprising his act from the first ever TV broadcast in 1936. Although I am not his biggest fan it was nice to see him (to see him nice?). Then my mate Dave rang up on our new trimphone and asked if I had heard of the new competition on BBC2. They were offering a prize of a weekend in London and a meeting with PLO leader Yasser Arafat for the person who could best complete the phrase “What shall we do the National Front do dah do dah, what shall we do the National Front?????…..” Dave the brave (so named because he once went to Leeds by himself – although it later transpired that the epithet was somewhat undeserved as most of his family actually lived in Leeds) knew I had a more than passing interest in politics so thought I would be the man to give it a go. I pondered the phrase for several hours and discussed with my mum and dad and eventually came up with the answer. “What shall we do with the National Front do dah do dah, what shall we do with the National Front, make them go away” Amazingly I won, manly because the only other entrant was an illiterate lunatic from Cardiff who just sent in a picture of a racing car. When the man from the BBC rang me up I was quite excited, partly because of winning the competition, and partly because I loved the ring tone of the trimphone.

So, it was time to go to London. I then remembered the sheep’s head and asked my mum if I could have the eyes, so she got them out of the bin, washed them and gave them to me. “What you want to take these eyes from me for?” she sang; “because I have read that sheep’s eyes are a delicacy among Arabs and I think Mr Arafat is an Arab”, I replied. (I had read it in a book somewhere that was all about weird food like salami, olives, garlic and such stuff.) Anyway, I got on the train and went to London and met Mr Arafat at the BBC Television Studios, where he had just completed a recorded interview with Robin Day. I was shown into his dressing room and immediately offered him the sheep’s eyes as a gift of friendship. “You’ve read that bloody book, haven’t you, I am up to here with sodding sheep’s eyes, but thanks for the gesture, it beats that knobhead last week who brought me an entire casserole of pig’s eyes; what he was thinking beats me, and he was the Israeli Prime Minister for God’s sake. Look lets go the Savoy Grill and have a proper meal; I’m paying”. So we dined on Caesar Salad, Beouf en Croute and a nice bit of Blue Stilton from the cheesboard, washed down with a creditable yet unassuming Bordeaux Villages, and a couple of Crème de Menthes. We then got talking about vexed question of Israel and Palestine. I must admit he did seem to have a slightly one-sided take on the issues, but you know what it is like; when you are too close to something it is hard to see the wood for the trees. My main contribution was to posit the ‘two-state’ theory and suggested that it would probably begin to see the light in about forty years. He was unsure, but thanked me for my contribution and offered me a gift in appreciation of my efforts; he gave me his keffiyeh (his distinctive hat).

I bad him farewell and made my way back home with my wonderful prize. Sadly, as the years went by I lost the agal (headband) so the keffiyeh became reduced from a symbol of Palestinian nationalism to the role of a large yet distinctive tea towel, which upon marriage and subsequent children served me very well, drying a million dishes whilst all the time I was thinking of the day when Palestine would be liberated. Unfortunately as the years went by it become more and more worn out, until last year I had a fateful decision to make; do I throw it out or renovate it. Despite the cost I got a team of expert cloth renovators in to give it a complete retread, and once again it graces my kitchen and has started the process of drying its second million dishes. So my tea towel is not new, but it is novel, and will always hold a special place in my heart.

All of this is true. I know, as I made it all up myself.

The current financial crisis

It appears that a number of economies across the world from Iceland to South Korea and from South Africa to Argentina are in crisis through lack of confidence in their currencies and need to be propped up by all manner of means, ranging from handouts from international institutions to nationalising private pensions funds.

This follows highly publicised bailouts for banks in the USA, UK and several EU countries, and the partial or complete collapse of certain ‘big name’ financial institutions across the world.

Yet, I can remember the ways in which Alan Greenspan, when he was head of the Fed in the USA was hailed as an economic guru when he preached less and less regulation of markets and led almost all western politicians to at least tacitly worship at the alter of the free market. Apparently the free market creates wealth, engenders democracy, and is the one and true benefactor of mankind. Our politicians only just fell short of praising the free market for Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and even virtue itself. It is now apparent that this was, as some of us heretics always suspected, utter nonsense; at best a bag of hot air, at worst a recipe for collapse. The economic Tsunami has now arrived and these great apologists for the free market are expressing amazement and wonder. One needs to be reminded of the dangers of false prophets (and false profits).

The rhetoric of the free marketers also posited another dangerous thesis; that economic growth would always be per se a good thing. How on God’s earth did they work that one out. The clear and unambiguous dangers of climate change, driven by unfettered, loosely regulated industrialisation since the late eighteenth century, and particularly since the enormous changes in human economic activity that have taken place from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day, have driven the planet to a probable climatic tipping point, whose consequences we cannot possibly envisage until they are upon us. Economic growth was the watchword that brought us to this point. The environmental Tsunami will follow the economic Tsunami as sure as night follows day.

Even before the current financial crisis the free market has led to other disasters. The development of cotton as a cash crop in Sudan in the 1970s just before the bottom fell out of the ‘free’ cotton market led to mass starvation, and eventually the appalling crisis in Darfur. Africa’s problems over the past three decades have been well publicised; starvation and drought and mounting debt; another free market triumph. Comfortable liberals in the West mourn the passing of huge tracts of the Amazon and other rainforests. I believe that logging is a free market activity. The Sumatran rainforest is so diminished now that we will probably witness the extinction of the Orang Utan within our lifetimes; yet another triumph for the free market. The difference with the present crisis is that dumb animals and the people from the poorer countries have been joined in the firing line by those from the developed world.

There is, and always has been another way; the way of fully accountable democratic control of the economy and seeing the economy as an economy not just in terms of the cash nexus. The economy comprises, to be sure, the banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions (but must never again include such total parasites as hedge fund managers; the worst criminals on the planet). It also comprises manufacturing and service industries. What, however, seems forever to have been ignored, is that the economy also comprises the natural resources of the planet both as the raw material for manufactured goods and also as the heart and lungs (and liver and kidneys if we wish to stretch the analogy) of the earth. What is required is economic stability, an even playing field and a full and sophisticated appreciation of nature in all our economic activities. To say such things even now is seen as heterodox, after all that would be socialism, or worse still the green subversion of environmentalism.

Nothing worthwhile will happen. We will muddle through the present crisis and then wait for the next one. Capitalism is the scourge of the earth, but sadly is yet to fall terminally ill. As someone once said, there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.