Pickled Onions

Do people outside the north of England still pickle their own onions? Honest question, I don't know.

The pickling season starts round about October when suitable onions are sold in supermarkets and certain garden centres. There is, of course, nothing to stop you making use of your own onions or shallots, the only key requirement is that they be relatively small, as they have to fit in jars.

Peeling them takes ages. It's a horrid, tedious task and, be warned, leaves a strong smell of onions on your hands. If this worries you, wear gloves. Top and tail the little onions and remove their outer skin. If the first layer is wrinkled or displeasing to the eye, strip it off and discard.

Next, soak them in brine for at least 24 hours. This is to make them crunchy. Apparently you can just put them in salt, but it would take an awful lot of salt to cover the batches we do. So brine is probably easier.

Now, put them in jars. Any old jars will do. Of course if you are posh you will have bought special jars for the purpose. But you don't need to. It does help though if the jar has a lid that can be sealed. (If it doesn't, use grease-proof paper and an elastic band to seal the jar. Not ideal but it will work.) Squeeze as many pickles as you can into each jar.

Next, pour in pickling vinegar. The special vinegar is best, but you can use ordinary malt vinegar instead and add spices to taste. If you like your pickles sweet (ugh!) add sugar. Make sure all the pickles are covered by the vinegar.

Leave in a cool place for at least three months. You might get away with opening them a little earlier, but they will be immature. I prefer to leave them for six months. Even twelve months at a pinch, but there is then an increasing risk that the pickles will go soft and taste horrible. I'm sure there's a scientific reason for this but I have no idea what it is.

A nice mature pickle should beat any shop-bought pickle into a cocked hat. It's the equivalent of real ale against fizzy 'keg' beer. Nothing is better sliced onto a cold beef sandwich, or as part of a ploughman's lunch. You can even eat them on their own if you've got the taste for them. Mmmmm!

A word of warning - the unsliced pickles are probably best kept away from small children as there may well be a choking risk. Better safe than sorry.

The Greatest Knight

The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Simply one of the best historical novels I have ever read.



Just enjoyed it for the second time of reading, and it is every bit as good as I thought it was. Elizabeth Chadwick goes from strength to strength. Has she reached her best yet? Only time will tell, but the standard she sets is very high indeed.



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The Sheen on the Silk

The Sheen on the Silk: A Novel by Anne Perry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I found this quite a challenging read. This is partly because what I know about Byzantium can be written on a postage stamp, but this is certainly not a novel you can read with half your mind on TV or what you're having for dinner. Such inattention will leave you lost and having to go back to find out who this character is and what their motives might be.

Anna Zarides, a doctor, arrives in Constantinople in disguise as a eunuch, trying to establish the innocence of her brother, who has been banished to a remote monastry. Well, I thought, that's not very likely is it? She'll never get away with that! And she doesn't, because one character after another works out what she is and you wonder when and by whom she will be betrayed.

Set against a background of a threatened crusade against the city, and an attempt to avert this by an unpopular submission to Rome, the story is full of complex intrigue. If you like action, as such, you may find it rather boring as much of the book is devoted to Anna picking up patients and making discreet enquiries.

I thought it was worth the effort in the end, but this is not a book that will appeal to all.



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Eternity beckons

While I was in Llandudno the other day I was asked where I was going to spend eternity. The lady who asked me the question came from Eccles originally, but lives in North Wales now, apparently spending much of her time distributing religious leaflets to random strangers.

The circumstances were a bit odd. I was sitting on my wife's disability scooter while she toured a shop, and I was just quietly minding my own business and watching the world go by. Consequently the lady sneaked up on the blind side and there was no getting away.

She was quite a nice woman though and even with the Black Dog sitting on me I am far too much of a gentleman to tell nice old ladies to **** off. The leaflet was short and to the point and it confirmed my long held suspicion that to get into heaven one has only to accept Jesus. I did that quite a bit ago and it appears no further action is necessary as it's all down to God's Grace and nothing to do with what we actually do. It's always pleasant to have one's opinions confirmed in writing though. (That's why stupid, bigoted newspapers sell more than the intelligent ones.)

I can recommend Llandudno's main shopping street as a locus. The last time I was there I got addressed by a lamp post, this time by a former resident of Eccles acting as an agent for Jesus. Next time perhaps someone will try to sell me a copy of Socialist Worker. I can hardly wait to find out.

Progress Report, August 2010

Still hoping to complete the MS by end of this year, though it will be a push. It will be nothing like what was originally planned, but it will still be a serious novel around Richard III. I have not got a title. I am no longer happy with either of the previous working titles and so will have to come up with something else. The present title in the heading is 'Richard Novel' and I don't think that will cut the mustard, although it is to the point.

During the process I have produced a whole pile of 'rejected' stuff, some of which I am quite pleased with but simply doesn't fit into the present scheme. This will probably form the basis of a second book in due course. For the purpose of reference I am calling this 'Norfolk Novel'. It is likely to be quite light-hearted but not as way out as Alianore Audley. That is to say it won't have any deliberate anachronisms in it and it will be a straight piece of HF, albeit light-hearted.

The third main project for about a chapter has been written is my Richard the Second and Anne of Bohemia thing which I have been promising to do for some time. Working title - This New Spring of Time.

I have pretty well scrubbed round everything else, despite the attractions of Urraca of Zamora and Sir Thomas Fairfax. Although both intrigue me as characters, it is unlikely I have enough life left to do the research necessary to write what I should like to write about them.

So, after TNSoT I shall almost certainly retire from novel writing for good and focus on critting and making models of obscure pre 1914 railway wagons in 7mm/ft. scale.

Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book proved to me - much to my surprise - that it is possible to write a historical novel in the present tense without it becoming unreadable. The quality of the writing probably had something to do with it, but after struggling a little bit at the start I was drawn in.

Thomas Cromwell may seem an unlikely hero. He's almost invariably the deep-dyed villain of any novel in the era so it's a pleasant change to see things from his POV and he comes across as a very sympathetic character. In fact he seems to go out of his way to accommodate people. Thomas More, for example, gets thrown lifeline after lifeline, which of course he rejects.

It is sometimes just a little hard to work out who is speaking. There's a lot of conversation in this, and the author likes her personal pronouns. 'He' is however, not always Thomas Cromwell in these exchanges.

One oddity - it's stated that Elizabeth Woodville gave Edward IV a (remote) claim to Castile. News to me. It may be true, but if so it was vastly inferior to his own claim, which he made in heraldry from the start of his reign. (See the Edward IV Roll for proof). La Woodville had many qualities, but claims to thrones was not one of 'em.

This apart no historical issues jumped out of me, and the author juggled a very large cast of characters with great success. Having said all that, I still don't like present tense for HF and beg and plead with all authors out there to refuse to use it!!!

I do recommend the book, and I don't think it's a hard read. In fact, if it's classed as a literary novel, which it seems to be, it's a lot more accessible than most of that genre.


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Not how the Despensers lived

Sometimes one finds something on the internet that's so amazing it just has to be shared. One such is this: Folklore Essay

It's certainly news to me that Humphrey Duke of Gloucester was murdered by Henry V.

I'm also a bit puzzled as to how a man born in 1390 could have a son also born in 1390. I know they started early in the middle ages, but that is going some.