Have you noticed how many gags people make about the wonderful comfort food soup?
Besides the usual “waiter, waiter, there’s a fly in my soup” jokes, there are many others. “Waiter, waiter, what soup is this?” “It is bean soup, sir.” “I don’t care what it’s been. I want to know what it is now.” That is unfair. That is not right. What if people made jokes about other foods, like beans? Oh, wait. Bad example.
Yet, someone else once said: “A home is a place where a pot of fresh soup simmers gently on the hob, filling the kitchen with soft aromas and filling your heart, and later your tummy, with joy.” Well said, that man. That was TV chef Keith Floyd. Mr Floyd, who is no longer with us, was well known for his TV shows, which still get aired because of his skill and unusual delivery, where he would go into small kitchens and galleys in exotic locations abroad, take them over and, soon, miraculously produce a great pan of something hot and delicious.
Keith was also known for swigging ingredients like wine himself before, during, and after he and the crew would devour the remains of the dishes. This was made all the more interesting by his fondness for cooking in the galleys or on the decks of fishing boats. Wouldn’t be allowed nowadays.
Flamboyant Floyd was right about the effect that a big pan of steaming soup has on any kitchen and home, and the people who hang around them to be fed. I say this as someone who has just had his first bowl, or two, of lentil soup: a sign that autumn, with its brown leaves and cool temperatures, is well underway and, of course, that electricity consumption is going up. Mrs X does a fine job with that particular lentil broth, which is as unfailingly warming as her cuddles. Well, almost.
Will Dame Judi save the Screen Machine?
Also cuddly is Dame Judi Dench. The star of many James Bond films and many other movies is being asked by the pupils of Castlebay Community School on Barra to help them out. With the current threat to the funding of the much-loved Screen Machine community cinema service, the island’s pupils have decided to get a famous star who loves Scotland to help them push the case for funding for it to continue. So they got on to Dame Judi and asked what she could do.
I don’t think the Barra boys and girls have received a reply yet. Well, Dame Judi is probably busy doing these insurance commercials. She was also at the Braemar Literary Festival over the weekend. She’s a very busy lady, you know. When I heard about the Barra pupils’ appeal to her, I asked my people to get on to Dame Judi’s people. We have not received a response yet, but we have not given up hope.
Nor have I given up hope that veteran campaigner Fergus Ewing will still be an effective voice in Scottish politics. He says he wants to stay in the SNP. For myself, I am not bothered whether Fergus is in this party, in that one, or in no party. It may be better for Scotland if he wasn’t in any party. We need campaigners who will speak out regardless of affiliations, and who will not be silenced by overbearing party apparatchiks. The fact that the SNP cannot bear to hear Fergus’s truth without punishing him says a lot about them.
The image last week of SNP leader Humza Yousaf talking to the cameras in Holyrood after the vote to sanction the warhorse while Fergus, in his coat, could be seen quietly heading for the exit was iconic, memorable, and ridiculously sad. So unlike when I met his mum, Winnie Ewing, who sadly passed away recently.
A warm welcome from Winnie
I was going for lunch to the County Hotel in Stornoway with the late Reverend Stanley Bennie. As we entered the lounge, there she was, beaming. They knew each other, and Winnie came out with Humphrey Bogart’s slightly amended classic line from Casablanca: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Stanley Bennie had to come into this one.”
We were promptly invited to join her; we spoke little about politics, had a great time, and we may even have had a wee gin. It was necessary after a welcome like that.
I remember being in Gibraltar, and the weather was really warm. For dinner, we went to a restaurant under the Rock. It was so warm that the meals were being served outside in the garden. Gorgeous, it was. Then it began to rain, but it was warm rain. It was quite lovely.
Another thing I remember about that meal – for some reason, it took me hours to finish the soup.
Iain Maciver is a former broadcaster and news reporter from the Outer Hebrides