Friday 19 April 2019

Tyrone DL

APPOINTMENT OF DEPUTY LIEUTENANT

Mr Robert Scott OBE, Lord-Lieutenant of County Tyrone, has been pleased to appoint
Mrs Maureen Stratton
Cookstown
County Tyrone
To be a Deputy Lieutenant of the County her Commission bearing date the 12th day of April 2019

Robert Scott

Lord Lieutenant of the County

Thursday 18 April 2019

Hot Cross Buns


Do you ever go through phases, where you crave real home-made food? Take the humble chip, for instance.

The triple-cooked chunky version, cooked to the right method, with the correct type of oil, at the appropriate temperature, can be supreme.

Timing matters, too.

I like Hot Cross buns.

Lest you employ a chef, you'll buy these traditional Easter buns from a bakery.

If you are one of those consumers who aims for perfection, however, I can suggest a recipe from the renowned culinary author, Felicity Cloake:-

Makes Sixteen

200ml milk, plus a little more for glazing
3 cardamom pods, bruised
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
¼ tsp grated nutmeg
Pinch of saffron
20g fresh yeast
50g golden caster sugar, plus extra to glaze
450g strong white flour
100g butter
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground ginger
3 eggs
150g currants
50g mixed peel
3 tbsp plain flour

1. Heat 200ml milk gently in a pan along with the cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and saffron until just boiling, and then turn off the heat and leave to infuse for 1 hour. Bring back up to blood temperature and then mix the strained milk with the yeast and 1 tsp sugar.

2. Tip the flour into a large mixing bowl and grate over the butter. Rub in with your fingertips, or in a food mixer, until well mixed, and then add the rest of the sugar and the salt and ginger. Beat together 2 of the eggs.

3. Make a well in the middle, and add the beaten eggs and the yeast mixture. Stir in, adding enough milk to make a soft dough – it shouldn't look at all dry or tough. Knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic, then lightly grease another bowl, and put the dough into it. Cover and leave in a warm place until it has doubled in size – this will probably take a couple of hours.


4. Tip it out on to a lightly greased work surface and knead for a minute or so, then flatten it out and scatter over the fruit and peel. Knead again to spread the fruit around evenly, then divide into 16 equal pieces and roll these into bun shapes. Put on lined baking trays and score a cross into the top of each, then cover and put in a warm place to prove until doubled in size.

5. Pre-heat the oven to 200C and beat together the last egg with a little milk. Mix the plain flour with a pinch of salt and enough cold water to make a stiff paste. Paint the top of each bun with egg wash, and then, using a piping bag or teaspoon, draw a thick cross on the top of each. Put into the oven and bake for about 25 minutes until golden.

6. Meanwhile, mix 1 tbsp caster sugar with 1 tbsp boiling water. When the buns come out of the oven, brush them with this before transferring to a rack to cool. Eat with lots of butter.

Are hot cross buns what they used to be, or has our year-round greed taken the shine off them? Which modern additions do you approve of (please, no cranberries, we're British!), and what do you eat them with? (To start the ball rolling, I'll offer black pepper Boursin – an inspired topping idea from my friend Sharon.)

Saturday 13 April 2019

By Jeeves, what a Find!

PATRICK KIDD, DIARY EDITOR OF THE TIMES NEWSPAPER, WRITES ABOUT SIR P G WODEHOUSE KBE

Asked late in life for the secret to being a writer, PG Wodehouse flippantly said: “I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.”

Sixty years earlier, however, the young Wodehouse needed more constructive advice.

The response that led him into a career as creator of Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and a menagerie of other characters can be revealed after the discovery of a letter he wrote at the age of 16.

“How can one become a journalist?” asked “Mr Wodehouse, of Dulwich” in a letter to Chums, a boys’ weekly newspaper, published on May 18, 1898.

It received a lengthy reply from the editor that began, slightly pompously, “only if Providence has willed it” before giving more helpful tips.

The reply to Wodehouse in Chums magazine on May 18, 1898.

“The first requisite is not only that a man shall be able to write about the things he sees and hears, but that he shall be able to write about them in such a way that other people will be interested in his work,” the editor continued.

“If he have this gift, the rest is easy."

“If a man can write, editors will soon discover the fact and wish to employ him. It is the man who cannot write who is the nuisance to them."

"He deluges them and the waste-paper basket with his hopeless productions.”

The editor suggested that Wodehouse study the columns of “some journal that he likes” and attempt his own pieces.

“[They] should be brief; they should be bright; and they should deal with some subject a little out of the common,” he concluded.

Assuming that this is the Wodehouse, who was a student at Dulwich College at the time, the advice worked.

He soon started to write for The Alleynian, the college magazine, and his first bylined piece, a poem entitled On the New Football Ground, was published in 1899.

It had long been thought that this poem was the first time that Wodehouse’s name appeared beneath his own writing in print, but it is claimed in the latest Wooster Sauce, journal of the British PG Wodehouse Society, that the letter to Chums should be considered his debut.

Indeed, Don Taylor, whose research is reported in the journal, suggests that his debut may even have come a year earlier, with a piece of literary criticism about a short story in Chums.

“A letter reaches me from Mr Wodehouse,” the Chums editor wrote on March 17, 1897.

"I think that Rogues of the Fiery Cross is the best story I have ever read. It knocks spots off In Quest of Sheba’s Treasure, which I didn’t think was quite up to Chums’ usual standard’.”

It went on to ask advice on how to lose weight and whether 11.30pm was a “harmful” bedtime.

The editor replied that a couple of late nights a week were fine for “any lad under 21” as long as he was in bed by 10.30 on the other five.

“Until recently we believed that Mr Wodehouse’s first published words appeared in The Alleynian but now it seems that he may have started a year or two earlier,” Mr Taylor wrote in Wooster Sauce.

Of the letter in 1897, which did not include an address, he wrote: “We can’t be certain that this is PG Wodehouse but the date is plausible.”

He suggested that the careers advice letter was more certain.

“The mention of Dulwich is pretty conclusive.”

A decline in the family finances meant that Wodehouse was unable to go to Oxford when he left Dulwich in 1900.

He started work as a clerk at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, where he filled the ledgers with scribbled thoughts and plotted his escape.

He resigned in 1902 to take a job on the By The Way column of The Globe newspaper and published The Pothunters, the first of more than 90 novels and collections of short stories.

In 1938 it was reported that he was the most highly paid author in the world.

Chums was first published in 1892 with stories on such topics as football, Harrow School and Julius Caesar.

The last edition was published in 1941.

Wodehouse wrote a serial for the newspaper in 1908 called The Luck Stone under the pseudonym Basil Windham.

In 1933, the paper listed him at No 4 in Chums Gallery of Famous Men and asked for an interview.

Wodehouse suggested they speak instead to his daughter, Leonora, saying: “She knows more about me than I know myself.”

Neither Leonora, who told the paper that he was first published in The Alleynian, nor the Chums editor of the time seemed aware that the paper had given his career a vital spark 35 years earlier.

Friday 12 April 2019

New DL

APPOINTMENT OF DEPUTY LIEUTENANT


Mrs Joan Christie CVO OBE, Lord-Lieutenant of County Antrim, has been pleased to appoint
Mr James Ernest PERRY MBE DL
Gracehill
Ballymena
County Antrim
To be a Deputy Lieutenant of the County, his Commission bearing date the 4th day of April, 2019.

Joan Christie

Lord Lieutenant of the County

Thursday 11 April 2019

The Bedford Tiara

I've just finished reading an autobiography by Nicole, Duchess of Bedford, called Nicole Nobody.

Her Grace, second wife of the 13th Duke of Bedford, wrote it in 1974.

At that time they lived in the ancestral seat, Woburn Abbey, one of the very grandest houses in the British Isles.

They also had a London town-house in Chester Terrace.

The Bedford Jewels are renowned, particularly the famous Bedford Tiara.

About three months before she married the 13th Duke, Nicole was staying at her flat in Paris when Ian arrived (the 13th Duke didn't like his Christian name, John).

Ian discarded a brown carrier-bag onto Nicole's lap, which contained the exquisite tiara.

Woburn Abbey

It was made in the 18th century and once belonged to Caroline Bonaparte, Queen of Naples and sister of Napoléon.

The tiara comprises roses, thistles, and wheat, mounted on springs so that it quivers gently.

One evening, at a dance in Luton Hoo, the residence of Sir Harold and Lady Wernher, attended by members of the Royal Family, the Duchess of Bedford noticed that her tiara was grander than Her Majesty the Queen's.

Her Majesty approached the Duchess during the reception to have a closer look at it.


Incidentally, in 1970, when the Duchess reached 50 years of age, the 13th Duke bought her an Astrakhan brown Rolls-Royce Phantom VI, registration number DOB 1.

One luxury item fitted was a kind of "teasmade" (which cost £600, equivalent to about £9,000 today).

Tuesday 9 April 2019

Royal Visit

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall have arrived in Belfast and were welcomed by the Lord-Lieutenant of Belfast, Mrs Fionnuala Jay-O'Boyle CBE.

Their Royal Highnesses are visiting Hillsborough Castle and Gardens prior to its official opening on the 18th April, 2019.

The royal couple were greeted at the Castle by the Lord-Lieutenant of County Down, Mr David Lindsay.

Friday 5 April 2019

Tyrone DL

APPOINTMENT OF DEPUTY LIEUTENANT

Mr Robert Scott OBE, Lord-Lieutenant of County Tyrone, has been pleased to appoint
Mrs Catherine Duffy OBE
Moy
Dungannon
County Tyrone
To be a Deputy Lieutenant of the County her Commission bearing date the 1st day of April, 2019.

Lord Lieutenant of the County