It's (not) Complicated

Watching It's Complicated recently I was overwhelmed by a feeling of deja vu. Then I realised I had seen the film before - except it was under the title 'Something's Gotta Give'.

So startling were the similarities, that I feel I can confidently predict what will next be cranked out of the Meyers movie machine:

A wealthy, creative, neurotic, insomniac woman of a certain age - who can cook, loves France and lives on the west/east coast of America - has a Lipitor-taking ex-husband who has left her for a younger woman. Two men are vying for her affections. One of said men has a foreplay-induced cardiac episode. Her grown-up children have an emotional crisis. She ends up with the right guy.

Hopefully, Nancy Meyers will prove me wrong. And when she does, I might be able to overlook the fact that she portrays all women in their mid-twenties (i.e. my age) as erratic home-wreckers.

Onion Marmalade

I soon realised, when I started growing veg, that there's only so much one (quite petite) person can eat. So, back in August, with more tomatoes and runner beans than I knew what to do with, I made my first ever batches of chutney. Since then, though, I've become a bit obsessed with boiling stuff up in vinegar or sugar and cramming it into jars. This has not gone unnoticed by my friends, who, perhaps in an attempt to shut me up about it, have started making jammy requests.

And that is how I came to spend my morning making onion marmalade.

I don't remember where my friend said she got the recipe from, so I'm going to appropriate it as my own.

Onion Marmalade

Makes three 225ml jars.

What you'll need:

50g unsalted butter
150g unrefined caster sugar
1tsp salt
2tsp ground pepper
Literally LOADS of onions*
and
Most of this booze...















Put the butter in a large heavy-bottomed pan on a medium heat and wait for it to go brown, but be careful not to let it burn.

Finely chop the onions and put them in the pan, coating them in the melted butter. Stir in the sugar, salt and pepper. Loosely place the lid on and leave for 30 mins. In which time you can have a tidy up. Or make yourself a sandwich and watch tv, which may or may not be what I did.

After half an hour it should look sort of like this:















Then add 1/2 a pint of red wine, 100ml of sherry vinegar and 2 tablespoons of Creme de Cassis to the pot. You might want to put the extractor fan on, or open a door or window, as the smell is a little strong while the alcohol is burning off. I don't drink, so was slaughtered after one sniff.

Leave for another half an hour, stirring occasionally so it doesn't stick to the bottom.

After which time, it will look like this:















Then simply decant into sterilised jars and label when cool. Can be eaten on the day it's made or up to a year later.

Delicious with pates, cold meats, cheese - or with anything, really.

* Well, 12 medium ones (or 675g), which is, by anyones standards, quite a lot of onions.

The Outcast - Sadie Jones

All the signs about The Outcast were good. Mariella raved about it on The Book Show, Richard & Judy had selected it as one of their Summer Reads, and, as if that wasn't enough, Sadie Jones had just been handed the Costa First Novel award for it.

I was convinced I was going to love it, and then I started reading it and then I thought I hated it and wouldn't be able to get past the first chapter and then I got over the fact that she used 'and then' all the time, and then I finished it in three sittings.

I hope it's not damning it with faint praise when I say that it was alright. It was 440 perfectly readable pages about a traumatised young man living in stifling post-war suburbia: but I think the reviewers might have been getting a bit high over-excited when they started calling it the new Atonement.

Academy Awards 2009

Well, what a night it was. I twittered intermittently throughout and - for the first time ever - managed to stay awake until they had handed out the last award. Usually I watch the red carpet on E! and then listen to the ceremony on the radio in bed, but this year I watched the whole thing on Sky. And how glad I am that I did.

The Highlights

Kate Winslet winning Best Actress (of course!)
Slumdog Millionaire sweeping the board
The musical numbers
Hugh Jackman
Jennifer Aniston keeping it together in front of Brange. Was sure she was going to cry at one point, or at least take her shoe off and throw it at Angelina.
'DON'T fall in love with me.'

The Lowlights

Stephanie Beacham in the Sky studio. She was a complete miser and seemed to think she was the authority on the subject - was willing Marc Dolan or Danny Wallace to point out that she is now working on Coronation Street. I doubt she will be back next year.

Seth Rogen and James Franco falling about laughing when the latter failed to pronounce Spielzeugland correctly. A lot of bloggers have said that they think this was the funniest moment of the night, but it wasn't: it was just unprofessional.

Best Dressed
Tina Fey


















For ages I thought Kate Winslet had nabbed it, but Tina just looked better.

(pic courtesy of Perez Hilton)

Worst Dressed
Beyonce












She usually gets it so right which is why this fish-tail flock frock just doesn't cut it. And where was her jewellery? (Ordinally Whoppi Goldberg would have won.)

BAFTA Predictions 2009

The Film BAFTAs are tomorrow and so, in time-honoured tradition, I shall have a stab at guessing who will be the big winners on the night.

(*) = Who/what I think will win.
(&) = Who/what I want to/think should win.

Best Film

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon (&)
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire (*)

Outstanding British Film

Hunger
In Bruges
Mamma Mia!
Man on Wire
Slumdog Millionaire (&) (*)

Director

Clint Eastwood [Changeling]
David Fincher [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button] (*)
Ron Howard [Frost/Nixon]
Stephen Daldry [The Reader] (&)
Danny Boyle [Slumdog Millionaire]

Original Screenplay

Burn After Reading
Changeling
I've Loved You So Long
In Bruges
Milk (&) (*)

Adapted Screenplay

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (*)
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Revolutionary Road (&)
Slumdog Millionaire

Leading Actor

Frank Langella
Dev Patel (&)
Sean Penn
Brad Pitt
Micky Rourke (*)

Leading Actress

Angelina Jolie
Kristen Scott Thomas
Meryl Streep
Kate Winslet [Revolutionary Road] (&)
Kate Winset [The Reader](*)

Supporting Actor

Robert Downey Jr.
Brendan Gleeson (&)
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Heath Ledger (*)
Brad Pitt

Supporting Actress

Amy Adams
Penelope Cruz
Frieda Pinto
Tilda Swinton (*) (&)
Marisa Tomei

Orange Rising Star Award

Michael Cera
Noel Clarke
Michael Fassbender
Rebecca Hall (&) (*)
Toby Kebbell

**********UPDATE: WHO DID WIN IN BOLD.**********

Countdown

I can't watch the new Countdown. It's not because of the appalling way they treated Carol Vorderman. Or even because Rachel Riley is younger/prettier/gets paid more than me. No, it's because Jeff Stelling talks with his eyes shut.

There, I said it, and now that I have you won't be able to not notice it.

Sorry.

Bullies, Bitches & Bastards - Eileen Condon and Amanda Edwards

A nice feature in the Mail today about a book I worked on in August.

Amazon are selling their copies fast, so you'll have to be quick. Or buy it from The Book Depository instead.

The not-so curious incident of the dog in the night-time

5:10am - sound of whimpering by the side of the bed wakes me up.
tell dog to go back to her basket.

5:11am - get out of bed,
put dog back into her basket in hallway,
get back into bed.

5:13am - sound of whimpering by the side of the bed.

5:14am - get out of bed,
put dog back into her basket in hallway,
get back into bed.

5:20am - dog launches herself on to bed, landing precisely on my kidneys.

5:22am - dog fast asleep - underneath blanket.
have sneaking suspicion Cesar would not approve of this.

5:46am - still awake.
get up to retrieve extra blanket from airing cupboard.
walk past thermometer thingy in hallway and realise it is -8c outside.
feel bad for having made dog sleep on floor.

5:48am - return to bedroom to find dog sprawled out on pillows.

5:49am - put dog back into her basket in the hallway.

5:57am - hardly feel bad about it at all.

6:06am - tell dog she can sleep on bed, as long as she keeps my feet warm and doesn't expect to go for a walk at 8am.

8:02am - sound of whimpering by the side of the bed wakes me up.

New Year's Resolutions

1) I will not buy any more books, but read the ones I got for xmas and borrow some from friends.

2) I will no longer work at the weekend.

3) I will no longer form romantic attachments to wildly-inappropriate men.

4) I will complete my as-yet-untitled secret project by the end of February.

5) I will not be seduced with by Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

6) I will try to resist the temptation to email/call/text/DM Alice when she is at work.

7) I won't watch things on TV that I've seen twenty (or even two) times before.

8) I will start leaving feedback for sellers on eBay.

9) Oh, and I'll do something philathropic, you know, for good measure.

Goodbye, 2008.

New Year's resolutions tomorrow, but, for now, here are a few things I enjoyed (or not) in 2008.

Books I Liked

Dad Rules - Andrew Clover
The Believers - Zoe Heller
Starter for Ten - David Nicholls
Karlology - Karl Pilkington
Collected Stories - Richard Yates
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst
Bringing Nothing to the Party - Paul Carr
A Dangerous Liaison - Carole Seymore-Jones
On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - Toby Young

Books I Didn't Like As Much As I Thought I Was Going To

That Old Ace in the Hole - Annie Proulx
The Understudy - David Nicholls
The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan

Books I Wasn't Expecting To Like, But Did

Northern Lights
The Subtle Knife
The Amber Spyglass

Films I Liked

Lars and the Real Girl
Knocked Up
Stranger Than Fiction
Lovely & Amazing
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Casino Royale

Film I Was Expecting to Like, But Didn't

Sex and the City

Most-listened to CDs (According to iTunes)

Amy Winehouse - Frank
Bitter:Sweet - The Mating Game
Noisettes - What's the Time Mr Wolf?
Adele - 19
Kings of Convenience - Quiet Is the New Loud
Cake - Comfort Eagle

Favourite/Most Successful Recipes

Rachel Allen's Lemon Tart
Gordon Ramsay's 'Perfect' Scrambled Eggs
James Martin's Banoffee Shortbread
Ina Garten's Cupcakes
And
(as always)
Raspberry & Blueberry Lime Drizzle Cake

A Random Assortment of Everything Else I Enjoyed

The best birthday I've had in years
Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn
Sarah Palin
The third series of Ugly Betty
My Kitchenaid mixer
Last.fm
Walking across the fields with the puppy most days
30 Rock
Krispy Kreme doughnuts
The endless hours of conversations with Alice

Being You - Mary E. Holmes

A nice article in the Mail today about a book I worked on earlier in the year.

Unfortunately, though, Austin & Macauley seem to have under-estimated the demand there would be for this feel-good book: Amazon, Waterstones and The Book Depository sold all of their copies weeks ago.

Kill the Wabbit! (...and the mouse)

I haven't seen this in maybe 15 years or more, and thought I never would again, but it was, of course, on YouTube.

To my mind, it is second only to this:



What discerning (and violent) taste I had as a seven year old.

I can smell...

I've had long enough to figure out my stance on Lily Allen's music, and yet still don't know what I think. But I love a good PR stunt as much as the next person. And nearly as much as I love a good cover.

Mark Ronson 'accidentally' leaked Lily's cover of Britney Spears' track 'Womanizer' on his East Village Radio show on Friday.

Her record company, Parlophone, are said to be furious that 'it is taking attention away from her new album, It's Not Me, It's You, which hits the shops on 9 February.'

So furious, in fact, that they have put it on the front of their website before the video for her not as good latest single.

'I am afraid your letter is most unsuitable for me at the present time...

...as I have just spent the entire weekend writing the novel that you have summarily rejected.'

I didn't get shortlisted for the Asham Award this year. I'm disappointed, but not surprised. I have since been reading Richard Yates' collected stories and now realise that what I wrote was merely a sorry excuse for an imposter of a short story. I'm a little annoyed with myself only because I should have know that my first person prostitute-with-a-heart-but-also-a-borderline-personality-disorder narrative wouldn't be the sort of thing they were looking for, as last year's winner was 1500 words about a girl climbing into a bath of cement.

Titles of shortlisted entries include:

Anubis Ate My Inner Child;
The Belle of Biloxi;
Chameleon Soup;
Colour Me Julie Christie;
and
JK who?

It's been a good exercise, though, in not only finishing something off, but also putting it up for critiquing too - neither of which I had done before September. And there's plenty of time to work on my quirkiness before the next one comes around in 2010.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I've been working my, already quite small, behind off lately because I've taken on far too much, but my brother is coming to stay this weekend to swap presents  - he is going to his girlfriend's parents' for Christmas this year - and I knew that if there were no mince pies on the premises he would turn around and go home again. So I got up early and, eschewing all else, made some. That's just the kind of sister I am.

I cheated massively, of course. I used pre-made bought puff and Filo pastry and a jar of mincemeat. And I used (oh, the shame of it) a Jamie Oliver recipe.

I haven't made them before, though, and always like to try out new recipes when there isn't any pressure. I thought I'd crapped it up for a minute when the Filo stuck to the muffin tin and started tearing but I patched it back together with some melted butter, and they seem to have turned out quite well. I'm not a big mince pie fan myself, but these are delicious.

If you fancy making some, the recipe is here.

There's no place like home

In this month's village newsletter there is a copy of a letter sent to Cherwell District Council by the Parish Council, urging them to reconsider their proposal to build 200 new homes locally. They say that the village is unsuitable for development because of:

an already over-subscribed primary school

an already congested and historically valuable village centre with narrow unalterable bottlenecks

the presence of a major dairy farm with consequent areas ineligible for development

a relatively isolated position with poor road connections

an unreliable electricity supply

no mains gas

poor television and mobile phone reception

high radon emissions

low water pressure

All of which makes me wonder why we continue to live here, never mind how they are going to convince 200 new families to want to too. But then, there is the view.

In Hel's Kitchen

This afternoon I was having a little lay down on the sofa (it is Sunday, and I'd had a busy morning - I did at least a whole hour of work before abandoning it to bake a lemon drizzle cake), when I was woken by Gordon Ramsay saying 'Come on, Helen' in an exasperated tone. It freaked me right out. Ironically, I had to rewind the advert selling the box that lets you rewind live TV to check that I wasn't imagining it. I wasn't, by the way; he really does say it. Thank God, though - otherwise I would have had to explain to a therapist that not only had my subconscious adopted the voice of Gordon Ramsay, but, far worse than that, it was urging me to get off my arse.

The Sonnets - Warwick Collins

I worked on this book back in the last week of July. It was my first assignment for The Friday Project and I was full of trepidation. I already knew that Heather - the publishing editor - was lovely, but I was going to be working directly with the author*, was unfamiliar with the House style guide, and if I didn't like this book, there was a chance I wasn't much going to like what came my way in the future, either. Lucky, then, really, that they started me off with a bit of a corker.

The Sonnets is set in the 1590s, and follows a young William Shakespeare as he is forced back on the patronage of the enigmatic Earl of Southampton, after the London theatres are shut to halt the spread of the plague. I'm not sure what I can write now without giving the rest away, but suffice it to say it's got everything good historical novels should have; history (naturally), sex, poetry, horses and intrigue, as well as an intelligent and poignant narrative. Just in case I haven't said the word 'novel' enough, I should point out that the story behind The Sonnets, although aided by known facts, is entirely imagined by the author. However it is undoubtedly lent an authenticity by the 32 original sonnets that are weaved in to the text.

I am reminded of the book by it's recent publication, and the arrival of my own copy. It is my understanding that there has been some talk among bloggers about the image on the front, but I think the cover is as handsome as I'm certain the woman pictured is from the neck up.

The Sonnets is available now in limited edition (1,000 signed and numbered copies) hardback.

* (My worries about working directly with an author proved to be unfounded. Warwick was meticulous, and so quick to reply to my queries that the proofs were complete in little more than a week. He also agreed with nearly all of my suggested changes - which, on its own, just about guarantees an author a place in my good books.)

Just call me Julie...

Before I upload my next post, let me just say this:

It has barely been four days since I accused that one off Dinnerladies of being a self-promoting sell out, and yet here I am, about to do the exact same thing. Of course I can see the irony - I'm just not going to let it stop me.

In other - obviously completely unrelated(!) - news, I am now an 'associate' for Amazon. This does not mean that I have sold out, or that I endorse Amazon (except I have and I do) - I'm just in it for the little widget that lets me post my reading list ----->

Oh, and the free goods.

Word of the Day

'Synonymitis' - as seen here.