IT DIDN’T take long. The Gaelic channel is already part of my routine. On Mondays, it must be Cathy Macdonald. She is always so well turned out and has always got someone riveting on, even if their actual grasp of Gaelic is on the short side of minimal.
Being now of an age when I hold one-way conversations with the TV, I have taken to loudly proclaiming how smart she looks on the shiny new channel.
I have even ruminated on how the fresh air that whips up the white horses on Loch Roag has brought benefits of youthfulness to us both.
About then, my beloved usually decides she has a crossword to finish or semmits to iron. She shuffles out muttering how clannish everyone is in Bernera.
However, this Monday was different. My dear spouse managed – and not for the first time – to knock me out flat on my back. This time, though, she did it with the evening meal.
She had, I now know, picked up a curious wee recipe from Jamie Oliver or someone irritating like that. It was ham in cider sauce.
I like ham, I thought. I like cider, too, although I was put off for a while after a holiday round the English south coast in a campervan during which I was introduced to real scrumpy when we called in at a cider mill on a farm in Somerset.
I knew real cider should have bits of apple in it, but this one didn’t have just bits, but what looked like menacing Portuguese men-of-war just hanging there in the curiously cloudy concoction.
The farmer was selling the homemade hooch in plastic containers like the ones you get Castrol GTX in.
So ill was I afterwards that I may as well have been swigging engine oil straight from a sump.
No wonder they all keep saying “Ooh, arr” in that part of the world. It took months before I could even sniff the stuff again.
Asking how she was getting on in the kitchen, I was told that all was well, but she threw in the comment that there were a few things in the Naked Chef’s recipe we didn’t have in.
As well as the four pounds of gammon, several of these large plastic flagons of the strongest variety had been got in.
However, also necessary to get the requisite taste sensation was a litre of apple juice. Herself had rummaged through the cupboards to no avail. Ach, no, it was too late to head out to Tesco or the Co-op for the unfermented stuff. She would improvise by just slooshing in more cider.
There should also have been Muscovado sugar, whatever that is. Hey, there is bound to be natural sugar in cider, we agreed, so she would just put a bit more in.
Oliver also thought dry mustard and ground cloves were necessary, but no, she couldn’t find any of them, either. A little more cider to compensate, then? Aye, chuck it in.
Soon the joint was simmering away in the biggest pan in the house, swimming in enough fermented apple juice to power the Wurzels’ combine harvester for a week.
When the vegetables went in, it was also thought necessary to add something to boost the freshness. Now what have we got? A bit more fresh cider?
It was scrumptious. That ham was so beautifully tender. And the veg was so, er, pickled. I had loads, latterly through a straw. You see, that old feeling from the Taunton farmhouse was slowly returning.
When I did regain consciousness, Cathy was on. She was no longer wrapped up in that massively cosy anorak she had bought for chatting up the rugby fellow on a drizzly Edinburgh pitch last week. Ah, something else you missed by plumping for cheap and nasty non-Gaelic Freeview?
Cathy was now quizzing a man in a study with large books who was convinced the Chinese had the right idea; one child was enough for any couple. Then it dawned on me: this was the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
I wondered if the Right Reverend David Lunan himself had a boy or a girl? Eh? It says he is a father of four. How very odd.
Unlike the Moderator, I myself have adopted the Chinese principle. While I could have happily set about populating the Hebrides if I’d wanted, especially after a few ciders, I have been a model of restraint when it comes to multiplication.
This has, of course, puzzled my dear friends in the Free Church (Continuing), where membership, just like the Free Presbyterians, is dependent on not holding back when any such primaeval urges are felt.
Personally, I think they should cut back on the cider.
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Published in the Press and Journal on November 5, 2008
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