Not only is this the feast day of the patron saint of music, but also the birthday of Benjamin Britten and the anniversary of Thatcher’s resignation. So Hail, bright Cecilia, as I start the day in gratitude for the wonderful gift that is music – something that can not only express our moods but even transform them. As Alexander Pope put it,
Music the fiercest grief can charm
And Fate’s severest rage disarm:
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please:
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
This the divine Cecilia found,
And to her Maker’s praise confin’d the sound.
When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,
Th’immortal Powers incline their ear:
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
while solemn airs improve the sacred fire,
And angels lean from Heav’n to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell;
To bright Cecilia greater power is giv’n:
His numbers raise’d a shade from Hell,
Hers lift the soul to Heav’n.
It is strange how Cecilia developed her link with music, which, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Saints was something to do with a passing mention – in the hymn sung on her feast day – of organs playing at her wedding. This turned out to be something of a disaster, almost on the scale of Jane Eyre’s first one to Rochester or Lohengrin’s to Elsa. (Just why do they play the wedding march from Wagner’s opera when people get married? It’s the prelude to one of the worst wedding nights of all time: the bride and groom have a blazing row about the groom’s reluctance to come clean about his antecedents, only to be interrupted by a botched assassination attempt, after which he runs away in a boat pulled by swans and she drops dead of grief. (No. I really am not making this up.)
Cecilia’s own wedding went pear-shaped for different reasons: she put something of a blight on the proceedings by informing her husband that she had taken a vow of perpetual virginity. Rather asking for trouble, one feels. According to the story, despite her awful timing, she managed the difficult feat of converting her husband and brother-in-law to Christianity, after which they were martyred. After Cecilia buried them, she got martyred too. Not a jolly way to go for a saint who left such an appealing musical legacy – Handel, Purcell, Howells, Britten, Gounod and McMillan to name only a few of those who wrote works in her name – behind her
I decide that I am going to take St Cecilia’s Day very slowly. This is not just laziness or ghastly weather, but mainly because of my Friday, which was an incredibly long one: going to Gloucester for work required getting up at 4.45 in order to be sure of getting a 7.30 train from Paddington, as I’m (a) deeply paranoid and (b) need time to prepare and consume porridge and coffee to get myself into a fit condition to leave the house. This does not stop me from having a naughty custard tart on the train and eating rather too many sandwiches during the day.
We got back to Paddington at 6.40, which ought to have given me time to get to the Coliseum for a 7.30 opera performance, albeit without dinner. But I hadn’t reckoned for a Friday night rush hour crammed with misguided people taking their suitcases on wheels for a weekend in the country. As a result, the tube station was closed ‘due to overcrowding’. I just LOVE the way that London Transport makes it all the passengers’ fault. Fortunately, after ten minutes of me dithering what to do next, the tube deigned to open up in time for me to get the opera with ten minutes to spare. Alas, The Gospel According to The Other Mary proved to be rather hard going – John Adams at his least inspired and Peter Sellars at his most predictable.
I am deeply grateful for a glass of life-giving rosé during the interval and even more grateful for the fabulous and jolly meal with Kate, Andrew and Faizal at the Green Man and French Horn afterwards. This features sublime, perfectly-done cod with a warm, creamy, cider-infused sauce, salsify – which is like a more elegant version of watercress – and roasted Jerusalem artichokes. To follow, I have their masterly white chocolate mousse in a ramekin dish with roasted almonds on top and some espresso poured over it. This pudding breaks the first rule of restaurant food – never order what you could easily do for yourself at home – but it tastes so good that I have it every time, and I have yet to regret it.
Nevertheless, as a result of eating after instead of before the show, I don’t get home until 1 am, which means that I have been on the go for 20 hours continuously, and consequently arise late. After a lazy morning dithering over breakfast and the gastroporn in Saturday’s Guardian, I fry leeks in some oil for lunch, and, once they are soft and starting to brown, deglaze the frying pan with a little vermouth. I put them in a dish and grate some ageing cheese that needs to be finished on top, and pop them in the oven for ten minutes. With some Mediterranean fresh bread from the Co-op, it makes for a delicious lunch.
I realise that I am not am not in a state to achieve very much – and decide that, if I’m going to sleep for most of the day, I might as well do it at the cinema in front in front of Interstellar. The plot rather reminds me of those creepy stories I read as a child, where someone is invited is invited by the fairies to join them at their feast. He has an amazing, magical night, but then returns home the next morning to discover that 50 years has gone by and everyone he knew and loved is old or dead. The Freudian implications of this are almost too terrible to unpack. Instead of fairies, Interstellar, plays games with relativity and space, as astronaut Matthew McConaghay is distressed to discover that his daughter, the luminous Jessica Chastain, whom he left on an earth that is starting to die is ageing seven times faster than he is, as he spends the time asleep in a spaceship on a mission to save the world by finding a wormhole that humanity can travel though to reach a new planet. Plot hole more like !
In the last 40 minutes, you eventually get some dividend on your substantial and rather dull investment in the previous two hours. But the first two hours comes across as a cynical, protracted, cumbersome and clichéd assembly of the most iconic bits of Field of Dreams, Gravity and 2001 to the accompaniment of some dreadful and intrusive music. It was the visual equivalent of Andrew Lloyd Webber – nicking other people’s ideas and making them less interesting and attractive than they were in their original context. If I didn’t actually fall asleep, it was the volume of the soundtrack rather than the excitement of the film. Anne Hathaway’s gamine bob suggests she has wafted in from the sixties, even though it’s supposedly set a couple of years from now. Nobody’s hair or beard grows during their seven year hibernation on board the spaceship. There is something fascinating about the film’s image of our older selves failing to warn our younger that lingers in the mind afterwards. But I wish I had listened to my lazier wiser self and stayed at home.
Dinner is oven roasted sausages, which is naughty, as pork is bad for cholesterol, but it is soooo good, quick and easy,
4 large sweet potatoes peeled and chopped
2 small onions peeled and quartered
6 sausages
Olive oil
mixed herbs
Chilli flakes and black pepper
cherry tomatoes halved
half a lemon, chopped herbs (optional)
Heat oven to 220C. Put sweet potatoes and onions on a sheet of foil. Pour over olive oil, herbs and chilli flakes. Wrap tightly and roast for 30 mins.
Add sausages and cherry tomatoes and roast uncovered for another 50 minutes by which time the sausages should be golden.
Squeeze half a lemon and some chopped herbs over if you have them and remember. Don’t worry if you don’t.
I follow this with strawberry crumble. I know that this sounds deeply counterintuitive, but no more so than the strange weather we have been having, which has produced strawberries in December,
Nigella’s Strawberry Crumble
Completely counterintuitive, but utterly marvellous with poor quality strawberries. If you have good ones, you wouldn’t do this, but it does make a lovely crumble.
500g Strawberries hulled
50g caster sugar
25g ground almonds
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
110g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
75g cold butter diced
100g flaked almonds
75 g demerara sugar
Preheat oven to 200C.
Put hulled strawberries in dish and sprinkle over the sugar, almonds and vanilla. Mix.
Put flour and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Rub in butter between thumb and fingers til mixture resembles oatmeal. Stir in sugar and flaked almonds.
Tip over the strawberries.
Bake for 30 minutes.
With custard, this makes me a very happy boy indeed.