Of elderflower cordial and antisocial behaviour

Every May when the elder tree in the corner of my garden is a mass of frothy white blossom, I promise myself I'll make some elderflower cordial, and every year I fail to get organised before rain and wind spoil the flowers. This week, for once, I actually made time and we are currently enjoying the deliciously refreshing results of my domesticity.

Apart from the blossoms, only one ingredient is not a kitchen staple: citric acid. I asked at my local chemist's where I've been a customer for many years, and was surprised to be questioned about my purpose in buying the packs. According to Wikipedia, citric acid is commonly used to increase the solubility of brown heroin and is also one of the chemicals required to make a highly sensitive explosive. Thus, purchases arouse suspicion, whether of potential substance abuse or terrorist activity in my case I'm not sure.

This was the second time in forty-eight hours that I'd been questioned for suspicious behaviour. Just the day before two policemen had challenged me for snapping a group of over a dozen London Transport Police congregated at a bustop in an operation to clamp down on fare dodgers, on the grounds that I could have been a terrorist...

This is the recipe I used. It makes about a litre and a half. Take twenty or so elderflower heads and, on Sophie Grigson's advice, "shake them gently to expel any lingering insects". Mix about 1.8 kilos of white sugar in a pan with 1.2 litres of water and boil, stirring, until the sugar completely dissolves. Roughly pare the zest of two lemons into a bowl with the elderflowers and add the boiling syrup. Stir in 75g of citric acid. Cover and leave for 24 hours, then strain into clean bottles through a fine sieve (lined with a J-cloth rinsed in hot water if your household is right out of muslin or cheesecloth). Serve a splash of the cordial with sparkling water, ice and a slice of lemon. Perfect. But watch out for dawn raids.

Watch a video of Sophie Grigson preparing the recipe here:

http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/516164/displayVideo/Hi

Hackney's stately homes

Topiary is not the exclusive preserve of the upper classes. Here in a Hackney street whose one claim to fame is to have been the location of a recent Mike Leigh box office success, at least two of our terraced houses (described, I discovered recently, by local estate agents as "semi-detached" because pairs are not linked by a party wall) sport magnificant topiary privet hedges. The more impressive of the two has transformed its cat stalking two peacocks into a stag by allowing the privet ears to grow into leafy antlers. Less narrative credibility, but definitely more aspirational, though the feline tail is hardly convincing.

Ghost bikes - a postscript

Driving home earlier this month, I passed a knot of people standing around the Clissold Park 'ghost bike', which regularly has flowers fixed to the railings. Family and friends had gathered to mark the tenth anniversary of the death. The victim was sixteen-year old Thomas Love, killed by a joyrider with five passengers in a stolen car travelling up Green Lanes at over 70 mph. May 1999. The coincidence of place and time struck home. At least one of the passengers in the car had also been killed, I realised. May 1999 was just months before I left a part-time post teaching excluded teenagers with 'educational and behavioural difficulties' in Islington. One of the passengers must have been SD, a troubled youth who I'd worked closely with for several terms, with a disturbed family background and a habit of running away from home into even the greater dangers of a local paedophile network. He'd been accommodated out of the borough for a couple of years and I'd lost track of him until one morning in 1999 I overheard the other kids describing a fatal accident involving a stolen car on Green Lanes and heard SD's name. I'd seen the mangled railings without realising the connection. I'd seen flowers from the victim's grieving mother, brother and friends twice a year without realising either. A dark story and at least two tragedies.

Jobs for all

Saturday 23 May - lecturers' and public service unions marched in defence of jobs, services and education from Highbury Fields, near City University where adult education courses are under threat, along the Holloway Road past London Metropolitan University,where 500 plus jobs are to be axed, to Archway Tower, where 500 civil service posts are to go. The demonstration was followed by a rally with speakers from various unions and the local MP, Jeremy Corbyn. Demonstrators learned that David Lammy had already reneged on his promise to hold an independent inquiry into possible collusion between the University management and the Higher Education Funding Council for England over wildly misreported student numbers with the excuse that he was referring to an existing investigation by Hefce into "lessons to be learnt” from the crisis ... So much for politicians' promises, even in a week when they are desperate - to an unprecedented degree - to convince us of their squeaky-clean records.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=406651&c=2

At Highbury Fields

Passing London Met

At Archway

Private Members' debate on London Met

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2009-05-20a.435.1

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=4054

Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North, Labour

Diane Abott, MP for Hackney North (Labour)

David Lammy, Minister of State (Higher Education & Intellectual Property), MP for Tottenham

On Wednesday - thanks to the efforts of Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn - there was Private Members' debate at the House of Commons, attended by MPs from all the main parties (links to full text and video of the debate above).

In a major victory for students and lecturers, the Minister, David Lammy, also a local MP with many of his constituents current or former students of the University, announced an independent inquiry into the funding crisis and the fraudulent misrepresentation of student numbers at its root. Thanks to the student occupation and their meeting with Corbyn and other MPs in the Commons last week, as well as the less newsworthy actions of the staff unions, UCU and Unison, this marks a significant advance in the battle to oppose the threatened compulsory redundancies and make the real culprits accountable. Tomorrow a protest march to defend jobs, services and education is planned up the Holloway Road.

Cityscape 1

Whitechapel High Street has some dramatic picture hoardings around new developments at Aldgate. This young tourist realised what a great photo op' it was. Her English was minimal, but she handed me her camera to take some snaps and I got this one in exchange.

The Sir John Cass sit in

Students at the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design have been occupying the canteen area of the Commercial Road building on city campus since Monday evening in protest at plans to axe 550 jobs at London Metropolitan University. The department is one of the worst hit at the university and students are sitting in rather than sitting back. The spirit of 1968 has been revived. Sous les pavés, la plage!


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http://www.flickr.com/photos/julesaime/2163534113/


http://savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com/2009/05/to-students-in-occupation-at-london.html
http://savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com/2009/05/student-occupation-at-london_12.html
http://savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com/2009/04/march-to-defend-jobs-learning.html

Today from 2.00 to 3.00pm Resonance Radio is broadcasting from the Sir John Cass occupation.
http://resonancefm.com/

STOP PRESS: An injunction was served on the students shortly before the programme was due to be broadcast and the occupation ended after five days.

Flâneries - Au temps perdu

Technology is the madeleine that has just taken me back in time to February 28th 1967. The location - a boîte called La Cave in Thonon-les-Bains, Haute Savoie, on the French side of Lac Léman. The occasion - my twenty-first birthday party. One of my friends there, Daniel, worked for RTF (Radio-Télévision Française) at the time and brought along a ciné camera. We only ever viewed the few minutes of footage once, a group of us at his flat behind the Lycée de Jeunes Filles where I spent the school year as assistante d'anglais, and he missed the big drama of the evening. Dwynwen, one of my oldest friends from school and university, set fire to her heavily lacquered hair as she bent forward to light her gauloise at a candle. I must have been standing next to her because I managed to beat out the blaze with my bare hands before she even noticed the flames and saved most of her coiffure. I hadn't seen the film since, though I'd kept the reel in a drawer with old photos that never made it into scrapbooks. But thanks to Snappy Snaps, I've had it transferred to DVD, no unaffordable specialist film service required, just the local chainstore. I've edited it and added a soundtrack - 'les tubes' that month were "Heard it on the Grapevine", Marvin Gaye; "Whiter Shade of Pale", Procol Harem; and "Let's Spend the Night Together", Stones. No Johnny Hallyday, Françoise Hardy or Sylvie Vartan. The nightclubs played all UK and US hits, unlike a few summers before when French artists always topped the charts. Weird to see old friends that I've lost contact with - Helga, the German assistante, Martine, Belette (Anne-Marie), Annie and Colette (in sunglasses in the candle-lit gloom of the cellar), all 'pionnes' and all also students at Grenoble University just a year before the '68 strikes; Jenny and Pattie, assistantes too and both studying French at Cardiff with me; Doreen; Dwynen invisible; Nicole, still in regular contact, being the good hostess she is and handing round the birthday cake; forgotten boyfriends - Sylvain, Daniel, Jacky. A packet of Gitanes; a French 45 rpm turntable with no speakers; sixties dances; me camera shy even then; black bob and fringe, dangly turquoise clip-on earrings and a dusky rose-coloured corduroy trouser suit from Geneva. Trouser suits were cutting edge fashion at the time, revolutionary even in France: just the previous summer during our stay in Paris, Dwy and I had got tickets to see a Molière play we were studying at the prestigious Comédie Française, but were only allowed entry if accompanied by a guard of two uniformed theatre attendants, who stood oustide the door of our box during the intervals to make sure we were not on public view. Our crime? I was wearing a white, bell-bottomed trouser suit with gold braid edging on the jacket hem! The fact that it was home made by me from rather synthetic fabric purchased at a bargain price from Llanelly market probably had nothing to do with it ... Compared with student grants, I was loaded that year - a salary, free accommodation and food; just a few hours' conversation classes a week when I played pop songs and translated and tried to explain the lyrics - if I could ('a whiter shade of pale', 'we skipped the light fandango', 'Eleanor Rigby, keeping her face in a jar by the door', 'crying like a banana in the sun' in French?); snow in abundance; alpine sunsets over the lake; pastis and dice games in an all night café with the eccentric, aged patronne, Zinette; and a major shopping experience just half an hour's hitched ride away. La vie en rose.