move over, Matthew

I’ve tried to remain loyal.

I real­ly have.

Since my crush on my dar­ling Matthew Mac­fadyen began over a year ago (oh, my good­ness, we did­n’t go out for our anniver­sary! and I did­n’t get him any­thing!) I have watched his var­i­ous films many, many times, his tele­vi­sion series “Spooks”, reli­gious­ly kept up with the chat forum where we all dis­cuss his eye col­or, his accent, and try to sound hap­py about his mar­riage to actress Kee­ley Hawes. But…

He has­n’t released a sin­gle new thing for us to hang onto since last Novem­ber, unless you count his trip to Tribeca to pro­mote a new movie (that still has­n’t been released yet!), or the odd BMW voiceover (and since we watch only the BBC which has no com­mer­cials, there was no joy for me in that). Oh, and there was the voiceover for a doc­u­men­tary on the Nurem­berg tri­als. OK, he gets points for his voice. But please, we need more.

So in an effort to remain plugged-in to that seg­ment of the British male pop­u­la­tion who are crush-wor­thy, I have expand­ed my hori­zons. To these two gen­tle­men pic­tured above. And instead of going for beef­cake this time, I’ve turned to The Intel­lec­tu­al. The Brain, as it were. You can vote for which of these gems of genius you think should be my first choice. Is it… Bam­ber Gas­coigne, erst­while pre­sen­ter of the fab­u­lous tele­vi­sion quiz show “Uni­ver­si­ty Chal­lenge”?, a com­plete­ly absorb­ing and total­ly Eng­lish pro­gramme where every­one, even the direst losers, is much smarter than I am. Hon­est­ly, the ques­tions that are asked! And the suave, pro­fes­so­r­i­al charm of Bam­ber him­self. Last night we watched a pro­gramme on the his­to­ry of “Uni­ver­si­ty Chal­lenge” (the Eng­lish love to make pro­grammes about their pro­grammes and we love to watch them). So much won­der­ful lan­guage! It turns out that in this coun­try, “flan­nel” can be a verb as well as a noun, mean­ing to mess about, I gath­er? And did you know they are “pink-coloured spec­ta­cles”, not “rose-col­ored glass­es”? These are dis­cov­er­ies I adore.

But my point is, while we’d watched “Uni­ver­si­ty Chal­lenge” itself a lot, our expe­ri­ence of it was always with the rather surly, judg­men­tal and cur­mud­geon­ly (but bril­liant) Jere­my Pax­man as host. Now my friend Bex from my screen­writ­ing course is a pro­duc­er on Jere­my’s news pro­gramme “News­night” and she reports that he real­ly is dif­fi­cult. I can’t have a crush on a dif­fi­cult person.

Then there is Can­di­date Num­ber Two, Matt Har­vey, a radio per­son­al­i­ty also on BBC Radio 4, among oth­er accom­plish­ments. Yes­ter­day evening as I was care­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ing traf­fic in Knights­bridge on my way home from the gro­cery store (yes! I drove all by myself! and no mishaps), I made the tac­ti­cal error of turn­ing on the radio. I know, I know, I was tak­ing a risk in spend­ing any brain pow­er on any­thing, even turn­ing on a radio, besides dri­ving, and then I real­ly got into trou­ble because Matt Har­vey was a guest on the very enter­tain­ing Radio 4 pro­gramme “Word of Mouth.” His top­ic yes­ter­day was “Mis­used Words of the Year,” which could have been clever enough just as that, except that Matt went the extra kilo­me­tre and spoke the entire­ty of his text in mis­used expres­sions! As in, “… which begs the ques­tion: why do so many peo­ple mis­use the expres­sion ‘begs the ques­tion’? It does not mean ‘rais­es the ques­tion…” Would you believe that there is an actu­al web­site devot­ed entire­ly to clear­ing up the mis­tak­en usage of “begs the ques­tion”? You sim­ply must go on it. I have wast­ed so much time on that site that could be applied to writ­ing my blog. Hmm, per­haps that’s a good thing. And then there’s “World Wide Words,”, whose exis­tence alone proves, should I have need­ed bol­ster­ing on this sub­ject, that Eng­land is filled with many, many peo­ple smarter than I am. A bit demor­al­is­ing, but enough good fun at the same time that it’s almost all right. My last sug­ges­tion for time-eat­ing web­sites (it’s com­plete­ly addic­tive) is “Straight Dope,” whose tagline is “Fight­ing Igno­rance Since 1973 (it’s tak­ing longer than we thought.”

The prob­lem with tele­vi­sion pro­grammes, tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ters, radio shows and web­sites like these is that I’m smart enough to enjoy them, but I’m also just smart enough to see the enor­mous gap between the intel­li­gence of the par­tic­i­pants and my own! It’s the sad real­i­ty of my cook­ing skills as well: I can appre­ci­ate won­der­ful food, and also the seis­mic, yawn­ing space between tru­ly inspired cook­ing and my own. Ah well, at least I’m a good audience.

But I digress. My point is, these men are def­i­nite­ly crush-wor­thy. And you should enjoy them too. I’m secure enough in my rela­tion­ships that I can share.

Oooh, on a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent and quite dis­gust­ing note, guess who John and I ran into in South Aud­ley Street the oth­er day? David Gest! Eeeew! We don’t watch real­i­ty shows, and I know he’s been on one of them recent­ly, but in the flesh (I hes­i­tate to use that word because of the awful images it con­jures up) he’s even scari­er than he is on the print­ed or tele­vised page. But it was fun to see a celebrity.

Not much else is going on. Anna, Becky, Avery and I were bliss­ful­ly reunit­ed yes­ter­day and got to hear lots of good sto­ries and see excel­lent pic­tures of their African safari odyssey over Christ­mas. I was sort of over­whelmed with a feel­ing of luck, and warmth, that in less than a year we have friends to miss, and to wel­come home, and reunions to look for­ward to. So to cel­e­brate, we kid­napped Anna and kept her overnight, watch­ing the two girls turn my peace­ful sit­ting room into Syl­van­ian mania. (rather a long post to get through to the part about Syl­va­ni­ans, but hang in there!) Do you know what it’s like when Syl­va­nia has a snow­storm? It turns out that many, many pack­ing peanuts, scraps of tis­sue paper and torn-up cot­ton balls fill the air. And the floor. And the bot­toms of your socks. Sigh. But they had fun. And mean­while I cre­at­ed, sort of acci­den­tal­ly, an amaz­ing­ly sim­ple and yum­my thing:

Instant Toma­to Ambrosia (sauce? soup? glaze?)

lots of good-qual­i­ty fresh toma­toes that are just a lit­tle too old
olive oil
sea salt

Place all these things togeth­er in a saucepan, adjust­ing the amount of oil and salt to the quan­ti­ty of toma­toes (I had per­haps a pound, and used 3 table­spoons oil and a cou­ple of tea­spoons salt). Cook over medi­um heat for about 10 min­utes, crush­ing the toma­toes with a pota­to mash­er. Then strain through a colan­der into anoth­er saucepan, dis­card the seeds and skin, and… decide what to do with it. The glossy, gold­en shim­mer of the olive oil against the deep fresh red of the toma­toes are beau­ti­ful, and the tangy, salty fla­vor just ambrosia. I think it could have been soup, if I cooked it down to be thick­er. Or you could add fresh herbs and drink it, or you could add cream and it could be sauce for pas­ta. But I had two hun­gry chil­dren and our­selves to feed instant­ly, so I added a can of com­mer­cial plum toma­toes and some parme­san and it was spaghet­ti sauce. But that first spoon­ful of satiny fla­vor made me real­ize, sad­ly, how far even good tinned toma­toes are from the Real Thing.

John is out look­ing at real estate, and Avery’s after­noon at Anna’s her just turned into a sleep­over, so I shall go make a mari­nade for my pork ribs and think about a side dish… or maybe I’ll just look at my new crush­es and try to choose…