York (the old one, not the New)

Ask a child what she wants to do for her birth­day and you may well be sur­prised by the answer. Zoo? A big par­ty with a gooey cake? No, my child want­ed to go to York to vis­it the Viking archae­o­log­i­cal dig. Hmm. So we did.

It’s a love­ly his­toric town with some­what less than its fair share of chains, mean­ing it’s retained more of its par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter than I would have expect­ed, giv­en its promi­nence as a tourist des­ti­na­tion. I’m always thrilled at a pauci­ty of Star­bucks, so to find few­er of oth­er seem­ing­ly uni­ver­sal stores as well (Mon­soon, Riv­er Island, all the givens of a British high street) was a relief. Real­ly beau­ti­ful old streets, the Riv­er Ouse a glo­ri­ous sun­speck­led shin­ing rib­bon, and rais­ing a sort of pro­tec­tive pater­nal spire over all, the com­plete­ly gor­geous York Min­ster Cathe­dral.

The train ride was just love­ly, through the flat­test coun­try­side I have ever seen in Eng­land (since my expe­ri­ences have typ­i­cal­ly tak­en me to hilly Devon, the Cotswolds and such), one pic­ture-post­card farm­house after anoth­er, on a day shot through with both sun­shine and gold­en cloud. We played “Go Fish,” Avery taught Anna to play Soli­taire, and I read a com­plete­ly junk-food but enter­tain­ing book called “Me and Mr Dar­cy,” in which a New York book­shop-man­ager’s love life on a Jane Austen tour mim­ics Eliz­a­beth Ben­net’s rela­tion­ship with Mr Dar­cy, but of course only the read­er can see it until the end. I amused myself in a com­plete­ly obnox­ious way by flag­ging all the lit­tle instances where the nar­ra­tor’s voice (meant to be Amer­i­can) gives her­self away as reflect­ing her Eng­lish author, Alexan­dra Pot­ter. Only in the UK is it “the” menopause, with hot “flush­es” instead of “flash­es.” But you’ll love it. Clever, a real­ly fast and charm­ing read.

First stop was, believe it or not, Piz­za Hut, for the worst lunch ever (the girls were in heav­en) and then off to the Jorvik Cen­tre, where a dis­cov­ery of a Viking town under­ground from 966 has been made into a tru­ly… dis­gust­ing dis­play! Why on earth was this my daugh­ter’s choice of a birth­day treat? You and your fel­low tourists are bun­dled into a room and sat down in front of a video dis­play that, accom­pa­nied by lots of bench-shak­ing from where you sit, shows the way cloth­ing changed from 966 to the present day, back­wards. Does that make any sense at all? Then just as you’re feel­ing rather nau­se­at­ed and dizzy, you’re herd­ed into plas­tic cable cars, a bit like ski lifts only they move hor­i­zon­tal­ly instead of up, and dri­ven through a recon­struct­ed town from the 10th cen­tu­ry. Peo­pled by creepy bulky fig­ures who occa­sion­al­ly raised a hand hold­ing a tool or piece of crockery.

There were stuffed dead ani­mals bit­ing each oth­er, sim­ply grue­some and not at all child-friend­ly scenes of Taxi­dermy May­hem: dogs rip­ping each oth­er’s bloody feet off and oth­er dogs with bared teeth about to cap­ture a ter­ri­fied cat. What about this edi­fies one as to life in the 10th cen­tu­ry? I could not say. And, I am not mak­ing this up, it’s com­plete with SMELLS. All bad. First there’s the fish­mon­ger, then the hide-tan­ner, then the met­al­work­er, then, believe it or not, an out­house com­plete with a cur­rent cus­tomer, and I will not, in the inter­ests of del­i­ca­cy, describe for you here the sound effects. Suf­fice to say, there ARE sound effects. Just awful.

There was one fas­ci­nat­ing bit where the exca­va­tors had sim­ply left the wall they found intact, and anoth­er com­plete skele­ton left in the ground. Those bits made me wish the archae­ol­o­gists (or more like the mon­ey-hun­gry attrac­tion cre­ators who came after them) had just exca­vat­ed every­thing, cov­ered it with plex­i­glas, and let vis­i­tors walk around in clean-aired silence. I know I can be a cur­mud­geon about what I feel are over­ly inter­fered-with arte­facts from cen­turies gone by, and I near­ly always feel that less, in this sit­u­a­tions, is more. But in the case of Jorvik, I think I might advise that you skip the Time Machine and move direct­ly, if the pow­ers that be will let you, to the rooms of arte­facts them­selves which are real­ly stun­ning in their simplicity.

The sight of tiny, per­fect­ly pre­served coins and jew­el­ry is very affect­ing, and even the World’s Largest Pre­served Piece of Poo did­n’t both­er me ter­ri­bly, as it did­n’t get up and dance, or give off lit­tle puffs of steam to imply smell, as the old Lon­don pave­ment signs used to: “Do Not Foul the Foot­path,” com­plete with a pic­ture of a real­ly naughty-look­ing dog and a pile of feces with lit­tle wavy lines float­ing upwards. What ever hap­pened to all those signs? They were here in 1992, but they seem to have dis­ap­peared. I’m pret­ty sure the statute of lim­i­ta­tions is up, so I’ll tell you: my sis­ter stole one in the dark of night to take back to Amer­i­ca with her, she was that tak­en with them. But I digress.

The girls were com­plete­ly thrilled with the gift shop, com­ing away with feath­er quills and bot­tles of ink and a set of play­ing cards with scenes of York on them. Off we went along the riv­er to the Cathe­dral itself, and the bells were peal­ing the three-quar­ters hour when we got there, just stun­ning. The stained glass just as glo­ri­ous as you’ve ever read about, and the dec­o­rat­ed ceil­ing made acces­si­ble by a stand with a mir­ror on it, so you can, dizzy­ing­ly, look into the mir­ror and be trans­port­ed hun­dreds of feet in the air. A man on an old upright piano out­side the cathe­dral was play­ing var­i­ous show­tunes, rag­time, Christ­mas car­ols, you name it, and we had anoth­er love­ly for­ay into the qua­si-Cathe­dral gift shop across the way and bought Christ­mas orna­ments and music. But I think the high­light of our lit­tle-girl shop­ping after­noon was a two-way tie: John Bull Con­fec­tion­ers (since 1911), and Stonegate Ted­dy Bears. The for­mer is a tru­ly charm­ing old-fash­ioned can­dy and bis­cuit shop, where I bought what turned out to be the best York­shire bis­cuits I have ever had: not too sweet, crunchy, full-flavoured.

And the girls bought some­thing called York­shire Rock, which solved a mys­tery for me. John rec­om­mend­ed a book for me that’s turned out to be com­plete­ly addic­tive bed­time read­ing. It’s Eat­ing for Eng­land, by every­one’s favourite Nigel Slater, and is noth­ing more or less than a sequence of mus­ing lit­tle para­graphs about typ­i­cal, icon­ic, some­times dis­ap­pear­ing tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish foods. And the cov­er shows piles of long hard can­dy with all dif­fer­ent phras­es on the bot­toms, includ­ing in the cen­tre, one say­ing “Eat­ing for Eng­land.” It turns out, with a lit­tle assid­u­ous googling, that one can order “rock” to say any­thing one would like! The mind bog­gles, does­n’t it?

Well, let’s see, has any­thing else inter­est­ing been going on besides a vis­it to York? Well, we came home to have Anna sleep over, and then in the morn­ing it was, as you see, onto enjoy­ing Avery’s birth­day present from us: mini-jumps for the gar­den! They were dressed to go to the sta­ble any­way, and it was a beau­ti­ful blue-sky day, so they jumped to their hearts’ con­tent. Tacy con­sent­ed to be tak­en over the jumps pre­cise­ly ONCE, after which we were all through­ly scratched and spat on and she dis­ap­peared with tail held high. And as I pre­dict­ed, it was the pas­sage of but a few hours before the poles were in the hands of our lit­tle neigh­bor boys and being used as swords. As far as I can see, any­thing longer than it is wide is, far from Sig­mund Freud’s analy­sis, a sword.

Oh, I’ve been read­ing a lot, and it occurred to me that the sea­son of fran­tic gift-giv­ing is approach­ing, so I thought I’d give you a cou­ple of very Eng­lish rec­om­men­da­tions. Remem­ber “Two Fat Ladies”, the won­der­ful cook­ing pro­gramme that sort of ush­ered in all oth­er won­der­ful (and not so) cook­ing pro­grammes? Well, the sur­viv­ing fat lady Claris­sa Dick­son Wright (and who knew the title comes from a bin­go call indi­cat­ing 88? I did­n’t) has writ­ten her mem­oirs, and while it isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly felic­i­tous in its writ­ing style, the sheer fas­ci­na­tion of her life makes it a worth­while read. It’s called “Spilling the Beans,” and any­one who’s inter­est­ed in British life over the last half-cen­tu­ry or so will find some­thing of inter­est, espe­cial­ly the his­to­ry of British food pro­duc­tion, and thorny issues of hunt­ing and cours­ing. And sur­viv­ing a child­hood of abuse and an adult­hood of alco­holism, if it comes to that (not so Christ­mas-cheery, that bit, but still fascinating).

Or how about the new biog­ra­phy of Agatha Christie? Agatha Christie, An Eng­lish Mys­tery, by Lau­ra Thomp­son, is a painstak­ing­ly researched and real­ly beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten por­trait of the author, with lots of atten­tion to her famous dis­ap­pear­ance. My only beef is (as a for­mer his­to­ri­an myself) the author’s insis­tence on a one-to-one rela­tion­ship between Christie’s life and the events in her nov­els. I’ve always been a lit­tle wary of that ten­den­cy among biog­ra­phers or even tan­gen­tial ana­lysts (as I was of artists) of cre­ative peo­ple. It always seemed to me a bit dan­ger­ous to imag­ine that the only fod­der an artist of any kind had for cre­ativ­i­ty was his or her own life. But I quib­ble, it’s a real­ly well-writ­ten and engag­ing book.

Then there’s the sub­lime­ly clever “new” Lord Peter Wim­sey mys­tery, “A Pre­sump­tion of Death,” writ­ten by Jill Paton Walsh from ideas left after death by his orig­i­nal cre­ator, Dorothy L. Say­ers. As you know, I am inter­est­ed in (all right, obsessed with) Lord Peter and his por­tray­er Edward Pether­bridge, so I was thrilled to get my hands on this World War II vil­lage mys­tery. How can a fresh new corpse in an out­house also be some­one who died weeks before in a far-off sea?

Any­one in the mood for cook­ing a real­ly light dish that involves a fair amount of fid­dling? This is the sort of recipe I invent when I’m in the mood for putting in a good book on tape (this time The Thanks­giv­ing Day Mur­der by Lee Har­ris) and doing a lot of prep. I know this is an odd mood to get into, but I do. Avery and John both want­ed more… sauce, or bind­ing of some kind, but num­ber one, I dis­agreed on light­ness prin­ci­ples, and num­ber two, it was so beau­ti­ful to look at it, just as it was. Give it a try and see what you think. The recipe involves sev­er­al steps of cook­ing and set­ting aside, and at any of these stages you can help with home­work, do laun­dry, blog, rinse a lit­tle girl’s hair, etc.

And you could actu­al­ly do it all ahead of time, save boil­ing the spaghet­ti, and then assem­ble it in your large skil­let just before serv­ing, so it would be nice dou­bled for a small din­ner par­ty of peo­ple on diets? Just thinking.

Spaghet­ti with Chick­en, Red Pep­pers and Aspara­gus with a Goats Cheese and Fried Sage Garnish
(served 4)

2 tbsps butter
20 sage leaves
4 chick­en breast fil­lets, skin­less and well trimmed
2 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 red bell pep­pers, sliced
1 bunch aspara­gus, cut into tips and same-size stalk bites
1/2 white wine
1/2 cup chick­en stock
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 1/2 tbsp Ital­ian seasoning
1 small log goats cheese
1/2 pound spaghetti
1 cup fresh grat­ed pecori­no or parmesan

Now then. In a large heavy skil­let, melt the but­ter and then arrange the sage leaves in as close to a sin­gle lay­er as you can man­age. Fry over medi­um heat, watch­ing fair­ly care­ful­ly that they don’t scorch, until they’re crispy, a few min­utes. Remove care­ful­ly and place on paper tow­els. Now place the chick­en breasts in the same skil­let and saute, turn­ing fre­quent­ly. When they are NEAR­LY cooked through (still a bit of pink vis­i­ble in the cen­ter, which is vis­i­ble even with­out cut­ting into it), deglaze the skil­let with the white wine and chick­en stock and lemon juice, and bub­ble down a bit. Don’t let the chick­en get tough, and remem­ber the breasts will con­tin­ue to cook slight­ly when you take them off the heat. Remove them to a carv­ing plat­ter with a groove around the edge to catch the juice and set aside, leav­ing the sauce in the skillet.

Put your pas­ta water on, and when it’s boil­ing, dump in your spaghet­ti. Then, in a fresh skil­let, add the olive oil and stir fry the gar­lic, red pep­pers and aspara­gus. Sprin­kle on the Ital­ian sea­son­ing and toss well.

Slice the chick­en breasts thin-ish and throw them and their juice into the skil­let with the sauce. Throw the pep­pers and aspara­gus into the skil­let too, and turn the heat up fair­ly high. Drain your cooked spaghet­ti and throw it in the skil­let too. Toss every­thing togeth­er with tongs until thor­ough­ly mixed. Then just with your hands, crum­ble the goats cheese over all and toss lightly.

Place in a pret­ty, shal­low serv­ing bowl and slight­ly crum­ble the sage leaves over top. Don’t crum­ble them too small or you will miss the fla­vor and crunch which are DIVINE. Like sage-flavoured pota­to chips (my child adores them). Voila! This dish is just beau­ti­ful: green, red, yel­low, white, and so GOOD for you.