Orlando Gough.

The highlight of our one and only trip to India was a hilarious, surreal, heart-warming visit to Fort Begu, a sprawling Gormenghast of a fort in the very south of Rajasthan, covered with peacocks, pigeons and pigeon poo. It had been partially restored by the Maharana, Rawat Sawai Hari Singh (M.Sc. Agron., ex-Minister, Rajasthan) and his son Ajay, to make a hotel. We were the only guests, and we were the epicentre of their epic hospitality. They showed us everything, told us everything, asked us everything. It was breathless – and breath-taking.

A memorably bizarre moment: we are in a huge unrestored wing of the fort, with a banyan tree growing through the walls; the Maharana orders up a bucket of water and a mug, chucks water casually at a plaster wall, and reveals some eye-wateringly frisky wall paintings. Religion and sex – there doesn’t seem to be much distinction round here. Another: we have ordered tea in our room, first thing in the morning. The two servants, Suresh and Deja (probably the most handsome man in the universe), tap on the door and bring it in. Two servants, one pot of tea. Wow. They are followed by the Maharana himself, who starts fiddling with the remote control for the air con, muttering ‘ Sixteen degrees, it’s got to be sixteen degrees, like England’. Another: as we are leaving, a protracted negotiation between the Maharana and Ajay about what kind of envelope the final bill should be put into. (They eventually settle on the fully crested version – very flattering.)

The Maharana has a gag of which he is understandably proud: ‘You conquered us with gunpowder; we conquered you with curry powder.’ On the face of it, this is unarguable…

Orlando Gough. 

OMG, it’s all going horribly wrong, we’re eating all the wrong stuff, and the Obesity Czar is banging on the door, demanding to see a detailed inventory of everything we’ve eaten in the last three months. We’re living a good two years less than those cunning health-conscious Japanese with their sophisticated restaurants that won’t accept foreigners.

We’re eating too much horse, and we’re not doing enough foraging. We’re bingeing on TV cookery programmes, and then we’re buying packs of Findus frozen lasagne. We’re ricocheting between dieting and cup cakes. There’s the Fast Diet, invented by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson. There’s the alarming Milf Diet (1/3 pint of milf a day), and the Cambridge Diet, a diet of Aristotle and Beowulf. Some of these diets involve weird pouches of stuff you add water to. It’s like being an astronaut. (Actually, maybe if you’re an astronaut you don’t add water, because the water will just fly away……not sure about this…)…

Orlando Gough.

Once upon a time it was mackerel and herring, then it was mackerel not herring, then herring was reprieved and it was mackerel and herring again, and now, shock horror, it’s herring not mackerel. A poke on the nose (or rather, a slap round the face with a wet fish) for those smug buggers, like Hugh F-W and Yotam – and me actually – who thought they’d got it every which way with mackerel – delicious, healthy, sustainable. Now it’s just delicious and healthy. As usual it’s all about greed – Iceland and the Faroe Islands unilaterally upping their quotas, which turns out, curiously, to be legal because they’re not part of the EU Common Fisheries Policy…

Orlando Gough. 

1.

Shortly before Christmas we went to the ghastly Excel Stadium in South London to see Adrenaline, a horse show directed by my exuberant and uncompromisingly French friend Roland Bréand. My wife Jo and I are horse agnostics, but we went with her sister Lucy who is a brilliant horsewoman. Roland gave us ‘VIP’ tickets, which meant that we had the right to arrive early, sit in a tacky enclosure in the airport-like foyer, and have a free glass of Cava and some of the most disgusting food I’ve ever tasted, food which must originally have been cooked several years before, the kind of food where you find yourself calculating the probability of ending up alive after eating it. Bits of solid material (meat?) served with jam, mushy fish with mushy chips and mushy peas… The other ‘VIP’s looked entirely content with all this horrible stuff. Considering that they had paid an eye-watering £145 each for their tickets, this showed remarkable forbearance on their part. I thought we were supposed to be a nation of whingers…

Orlando Gough. 

There was a complex ritual which started a couple of weeks before Christmas, when my father and his friend Keith would go off to the meat and poultry auction in Heathfield to buy The Bird. My father didn’t drive, and Heathfield is (by the standards of South-East England) in the middle of nowhere, so Keith and his van, normally used for transporting antiques, were crucial. They’d bid for various birds, including The Bird itself, the largest turkey that would fit in my parents’ oven. Bidding had to be done with care, as there was live poultry on sale as well, and my father had once or twice been obliged to slaughter several chickens himself; but generally speaking he and Keith were alert punters. There was a lot of banter with the auctioneer, who knew them well. And then back at home an elaborate post-mortem about the price, which was either infuriatingly high or thrillingly low…