Pilgrims Way damson gin

Thursday 15 September. The Queen is Dead and it’s day ten of national mourning. The weather is changing from summer into autumn and it feels like the mood – in fact the world – is changing, too, from an era of relative stability into an uncertain and unsettled future. There’s a chill to the wind and the sun is struggling to break through, only occasionally piercing the low, grey, moody Kentish skies to diffuse weakly outwards. I decide to set out from Hythe by bicycle to Wye crown, carved into the North Kent Downs high above Wye in 1902 to celebrate the coronation of King Edward VII, by students from the town’s agricultural college. I first spotted the giant crown from the train earlier in the year, en route from London to Margate, and was intrigued, wondering what on earth had made them to go all that effort. 

My route takes me uphill to Saltwood, where I get up close to a group of curious peacocks from the writer and broadcaster Kenneth Clark (and later, his right-wing politician son, Alan)’s castle, past the nursery where we used to go to pick out a Christmas tree every year from austere rows of pines, and over the M20 to Postling, a village that, while quite pretty, has no amenities except for a museum in a phone box. Joseph Conrad’s former home on the outskirts now has an airstrip outside, the fins of vintage planes peeking out of an old barn building. 

Soon afterwards, I pick up the Pilgrims Way, the route once taken to Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury cathedral, which crosses Stone Street, the former Roman Road. The narrow road looks over the flat landscape below; marsh sheep and oast houses are now joined by vineyards and wind turbines. I pass homemade produce signs and honesty boxes closely monitored by CCTV and The Tiger Inn, advertising Mackeson’s Hythe Ales in large letters on its frontage. Damsons line the side of the road and apples rot in large back gardens; no-one’s picking them. As I struggle uphill, a couple overtake me on electric bikes. They have the right idea, I think to myself. 

As I reach Wye, I leave the road for an exposed, elevated footpath and the ground turns sandy and orange. The crown comes gradually into view, but the picture is partial and fragmented; close up it’s just a collection of white-painted rocks, enmeshed in wire. I follow a curve and try to picture the sections forming a crown in my head, then walk down the slope to see if I can get a better view. It’s impossible to see the whole from here – it’s best seen from the train line below, passing at speed, on the way to somewhere else.

Issue 16 of the Shrieking Violet will be dedicated to Bert Jansch (1943-2011)

The Shrieking Violet issue 16, which is currently in production, will be dedicated to (as in I will recommend that people listen to his music while reading it) Bert Jansch, singer and guitarist in Pentangle and notable folk musician in his own right, who died from cancer earlier this week at the age of 67.

It will be the third issue of the Shrieking Violet to be dedicated to the memory of a musician who soundtracked my teenage years and passed away prematurely: Issue 8 was finished in April 2010, coinciding with the death of my musical hero Alex Chilton (Box Tops/Big Star) at the age of 59, and Trish Keenan of Broadcast passed away just as I was finishing issue 12, aged only 42.

One of the most compelling arguments for owning records (or books) in a physical format is that you never forget how you came into possession of those that sum up certain stages of your life.

As a big fan of folk and blues guitarists like John Fahey, I’d heard a lot about Bert Jansch but it wasn’t until a trip to Ireland after my A-levels to meet the editor of a fanzine I had been contributing to that I bought The Best of Bert Jansch (along with Fakebook by Yo La Tengo and a Hank Williams boxset, both of whom also became major musical obsessions) from a cosy, crowded record cum bookshop in Dublin. The record came to define the end of that summer, the changes in my life as I moved away from home to start university, and the passing of the days into autumn; there’s a darkness and sadness to Bert’s music behind its delicate, fingerpicked beauty and I have always thought that Bert’s was a music for the drawing in of the days, falling of leaves from the trees and the brief intensity of autumn light.

What makes Bert’s music for me is his warm, personal voice, which is one of the most distinctive and recognisable I’ve come across. As well as being one of my favourite guitarists, he’s also one of my favourite singers: his voice is plain, unadorned and unaffected. Bert’s is singing how it should be, unflashy and unshowy, complementary to rather than distracting from the guitar melodies which are at the centre of his songs.

As a shy, awkward teenager, when I started university my love of musicians like Bert Jansch helped me make friends. A fellow guitarist lived in my flat in halls and we traded CDs, introducing me to Bert Jansch’s 1968 album Birthday Blues.

This summer I stumbled across The Pentangle’s absolutely magical 1969 LP Basket of Light for £1 at a car boot sale at the end of my parents' road in Kent, a record I had long coveted on vinyl. Returning home, I rushed to put it on the stereo. My mum, who was lucky enough to be teenager during punk and post-punk, protested loudly and turned it off; she couldn’t stand it. In a reversal of the usual parent-child relationship, my taste in whimsical, gentle, introspective folk music made me a rebel!

Recipe callout

I am currently looking for a vegetarian/vegan recipe to include. If you would like to contribute a recipe, with photo of the finished dish, email Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com.

Pumpkin vs. squash

Although technically a type of squash, I find the light, subtle, juicy orange flesh of the round, orange skinned pumpkin infinitely nicer, both in texture and in taste, than the bland, soapy, sweet, almost perfumey stodginess of something like a butternut squash. Unfortunately, pumpkins only tend to appear in this country in October and then disappear again after Halloween once their novelty factor has worn off, which is a shame for such a versatile vegetable which yields so much delicious food, both from its flesh and seeds. Luckily, pumpkin flesh is ideal for freezing, so it’s easy to eat fresh pumpkin around Halloween then freeze the rest (either in thick slabs or bite size chunks) to be used throughout the winter, in meals as diverse as soup, curries, risotto and lasagna — or simply just enjoyed roasted.

To prepare a pumpkin, I slice the top off with a long, serrated knife and remove the seeds with my hands, setting aside in a bowl (these seeds can be either cooked immediately or frozen). To maximise the amount of flesh I get out of the pumpkin — if you want to carve a face into your pumpkin, then you’re going to need to slice the top off then scoop the flesh out from the inside — I remove the skin with a sharp knife as if peeling a potato (due to the round nature of the vegetable, it can be easier if you chop it into smaller chunks). I then chop the flesh into cubes, and either cook immediately or place in sandwich bags or plastic containers and freeze. After it’s been frozen, pumpkin can either be left out to defrost if planning ahead, or thawed for ninety seconds in a microwave when needed.

Pumpkin and apple soup with cumin

This is the nicest food I know how to make. Pumpkin, apple and cumin really is a dream combination — all three flavours are improved immeasurably in the company of each other. Hearty, warming Pumpkin, apple and cumin is my all-time favourite type of soup — probably because, due to the limited availability of pumpkin the rest of the year round, I only eat it in Autumn when the idea of winter is still novel and before it gets too bitterly cold. Dark, early nights are softened by the cosiness inside, and crunchy leaves and the excitement of Halloween, bonfires and fireworks outside.

Serves 3

550g pumpkin, chopped
4 apples, peeled and chopped (no particular variety — I use the type that come, ten for a pound, in sandwich bags from the Arndale Market)
One large onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
700ml vegetable stock
350ml apple juice
1-1.5 teaspoons cumin
Six sage leaves, chopped
Salt and pepper to season

Sauté the onion in olive oil in a large pan for five minutes. Add the garlic, pumpkin and apple and sauté for a further five minutes. Add the apple juice and stock and simmer for 25 minutes. Add the sage leaves, season well with salt and pepper, stir in the cumin and remove from the heat. Puree with a hand blender, adding more water if necessary.

Roasted pumpkin seeds

These make a satisfying snack during the day or a crunchy alternative to popcorn to take to the cinema.

Simmer the pumpkin seeds, fresh or frozen, in lightly salted water for 10-15 minutes. Preheat the oven to a medium to high heat. Drain the seeds well, place in a shallow baking dish or tray and coat with olive oil. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper and cook for 20-25 minutes (checking frequently as there is a very fine line between just cooked and burned!), stirring every few minutes. The pumpkin seeds are done when they are crispy and starting to go brown around the edges.

Roasted pumpkin with gnocchi and rosemary

This quick and simple but effective meal is my favourite lazy convenience food, and one of my favourite dinners. Preheat the oven to a medium to high heat. Take the required amount of pumpkin cubes (described above) out of the freezer and defrost. Drain any water, coat with olive oil on all sides and place in a small, shallow casserole dish with a fat clove of garlic, chopped. Roast in the oven for ten minutes. Chop a few sprigs of fresh rosemary, to taste. After the pumpkin has been cooking for ten minutes, add the rosemary and roast for a further ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until the pumpkin starts to go golden and crispy around the edges. Meanwhile, bring a pan of lightly salted water to boil on the hob. Add gnocchi and simmer until the gnocchi rises to the surface of the water. Drain. Remove the pumpkin from the oven, stir the gnocchi into the pumpkin and its juices, season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper (and cumin if desired), grate cheese on top and serve in the dish it cooked in.

The above recipe also works well with aubergine, with the addition of honey and lots of cumin.

Autumn, Pennine Lancashire and Panopticons

I have a mental list stored up ready for those fortuitous occasions, which happen about once a year, when I have an afternoon spare, it's not raining too much and I am in the company of someone with a car who will drive me wherever I want to go. High up the list of places I have wanted to visit for which a car is essential (or, at least, a lot more convenient than public transport) is the Pennine Panopticon trail, which consists of four monumental public artworks which were installed a few years ago in the hills above Lancashire mill towns.

We made it to the first three, but not as far as the final artwork in Blackburn. We started in Haslingen, walking up narrow country lanes from the town to what I thought was the least impressive of the Panopticons, although the country walk was lovely (bright green, mossy walls, yellow and orange poppies and marigolds growing out of cracks in the thin layers of bricks and leaves trickling down from the trees). Halo is a giant metal UFO which resembles a big children's climbing frame. Apparently it's lit up with green LED lights at nighttime and, seen from the motorway, appears to float over the town, but in the daytime it looked a bit tatty and worn where bits of the plastic hanging down from its structure were already snapped and broken.

Far more impressive is the Singing Ringing Tree high above Burnley, where the clouds hover above the top of the hills, which takes the appearance of a large, windswept tree shivering on the side of a hill. This sculpture interacts with its environment, as it consists of narrow tubes of steel of different lengths which are tuned to produce chords as the wind whistles through them. When you approach from a distance, it coos softly like birdsong, almost making you look out for a hidden chorus of seagulls. Close up, as you stand underneath, noises come at you from all directions, a sort of call and response which reminded me of all the instruments of an orchestra tuning up to A at the start of a concert, listening to each other and adjusting their pitch until they're in tune with each other.

I associate the word panopticon with the nineteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who designed a prison based on the concept of the panopticon; a place where the prison guard could watch the prisoners at all times, without them being sure when they were being observed (so, a place where everything is on view, and a form of psychological as much as physical control).

The artwork at Colne is based on a broader definition of a Panopticon as a place providing a panoramic or comprehensive view. Atom is a concrete oval structure perched on the side of the hill which has large viewing holes looking out over the hills and a shiny, round nucleus in the middle, which again distorts these views in its reflection. The irregular viewing holes make it resemble a washed up pebble which has been eroded over time by the sea, and the metal coating on the outside of the Panopticon itself is becoming weathered; its turquoise seams show and it's beginning to take on the bloomed, layered look of the landscape around, which is criss-crossed with old walls, dappled with trees and patches of brown and scattered with sheep.

I like the Pennine Panopticons because they aren't just alien interventions in the landscape. As well as being new additions to the spectacular hills that dominate the skyline all around, and being artworks which are fascinating in their own right, they make you look at and think about what's already there. It's impossible to see the Singing Ringing Tree without noticing the huge wind turbines blowing in the wind below; the same wind that produces music for the Singing Ringing Tree generates power for homes in the area. You're also always conscious of the ways that man has intervened in the landscape before, and continues to make a mark, from the dense rooftops of the towns beneath to the ever-present buzz of the motorway in the background.

Sloe gin, blackberry and apple pie and other recipes from the Ashton Canal

Sloe gin

I developed a taste for homemade sloe gin at my grandparents' house at Christmas time, and I have been regularly consulting them for advice on how to make my own sloe gin. Here are some instructions.

First, identify a sloe bush (as I have discovered, this is difficult — it took me ages, after going through a process of elimination with several other bushes with black berries. It helped when I found out sloes are a type of plum, as then I just squeezed the berries, which look like fat, purple grapes, to see if there was a stone in the middle!). I discovered a bush, conveniently enough, growing out of a wall opposite my favourite building along the Ashton Canal and spent a couple of hours immersed in bushes getting plucked and scratched by branches and stung all over by nettles.

Second, find your jars — I spent a long time wandering around city centre shops in search of suitable jars, before finally settling on some biscuit jars from a pound shop (I'm sure you could probably do better than this by finding a demijohn or something). Then, sterilise the jars by putting them in a pan of boiling water.

Third, pick the sloes! All the recipes called for 450g per litre of gin but, even after doing some climbing to reach the higher branches I only managed to gather 350g (so I accordingly adjusted the amount of gin I used to 777ml).

Once home, wash the sloes and prick all over with a clean needle (I dipped the needle in boiling water). This is the most time consuming part.

When the sloes are ready, place them in the jar with the gin (I used cheap gin from Aldi) and 175g of sugar (the recipe called for caster sugar, I only had light brown sugar so used this instead).

Then, shake, seal and find a cool, dark place for the jars — mine are in the cupboard under the stairs. I split the mixture across two jars so there is space to shake the liquid without spilling it.

Then, shake the jars every other day for a week, then every week for two months (or longer, depending on how soon you want the gin to be ready). After a week, my sloe gin has already turned a warm, red colour like rosé wine and the sloes are getting lighter and lighter, starting to leave the bottom of the jars where they all settled and float around the liquid.

If you don't manage to find any sloes, try grape vodka instead, following the sloe gin recipe above but substituting the gin for vodka, adding grapes instead of sloes and using half the amount of sugar.

Blackberry and apple pie

Shortly after I had picked the sloes, I found an apple tree laden with ripe apples sitting next to an abandoned, boarded up housing estate. Frustratingly, I could only reach one of the apples, although I managed to knock another down with my umbrella and picked a third, after inspecting it for maggot holes, up off the floor.

There were also several blackberry bushes nearby, so I also picked lots of blackberries.

I made a pie using two of the apples and about a dessert bowl's worth of blackberries. I had some pastry in the freezer from the last time I made pastry, so defrosted it. However, to make the pastry:

Place 112.5g butter/margarine in a large bowl. Add 225g plain flour and rub it into the butter. Add a little salt and gradually add cold water table spoon by table spoon until the mixture starts to stick together, and shape it into dough. If you like cinammon as much as I do, add a table spoon of cinammon. When the mixture has formed a dough, wrap it in clingfilm (or a spare carrier bag if none is to hand) and refrigerate for 30 minutes. It will then be stretchy pastry!

Instructions:

Chop the apples and simmer in a little water and 75-100g sugar for 15 minutes (a tea spoon of cinammon is also a nice touch), adding the blackberries towards the end.

Meanwhile, divide your pastry in two (with one portion slightly larger) and roll out two separate pieces of pastry, thinly, on a floured surface. Line a tin or small round baking dish with the larger of the two pieces of pastry.

Add the fruit to the bottom of the pastry, having drained off almost all of the liquid (retain these juices, add to milk, sprinkle with cinammon and allow to cool down for a delicious milkshake!). Then, place the other piece of pastry on top of the fruit to form the pie lid, removing any excess pastry from the sides. Fold the edges of the bottom layer of pastry over the pie lid to form a thick crust to seal the pie. Use any leftover pastry to make a blackberry or apple shaped ornament on top.

Cook for an hour (after 45 minutes, I added a glaze consisting of of 50ml milk, a tea spoon of cinammon and a tea spoon of sugar to the crust) or until the pastry is hard. Allow to cool down then serve with custard.

Apple porridge

The remaining apple I used in porridge for breakfast.

Instructions:

Chop the apple and simmer in a little water for fifteen minutes or so (depending on how late you are running for work!). When the apple is soft, add 50g porridge oats, two tablespoons of cinammon and stir. Add half a cup of milk and stir, adding sugar and more milk or water as required.

Tindersticks, Bridgewater Hall, October 4

They both played as big bands, but strength in numbers was where the similarlities between Tindersticks and support Sara Lowes ended.

Lowes, a Manchester singer-songwriter, conjured retro, slightly sixties songs that were closer to smooth LA pop than the dark musical heritage of her home town. Her pleasant vocals were tinged with the humour of Fiery Furnaces’ Eleanor Friedberger.

Tindersticks, however, are autumn personified, a distillation of that bittersweet end of summer feeling - the realisation that it’s really over and won’t come back. Like all rich things, their music is best enjoyed in moderation, often as a concoction administered at the end of a relationship.

They’re the aural equivalent of getting your coat, scarf and gloves back out, tucking into shepherd’s pie and settling down inside as the nights get longer. Putting Tindesticks on is as comforting as wrapping up in your favourite old jumper.

Fittingly for a band who create film soundtracks, Tindersticks took to the stage one by one like a roll call of characters listed in order of appearance. A sedate tableau emerged from the darkness, with only one vital ingredient missing: Stuart Staples’ extraordinary voice.

Staples was stuck to the microphone as if by magnetism, eyes closed, for most of the set as if he was straining to hear the dramas that were carried out in the whispers of his own voice. He was spotlighted at times, but the extra attention was unnecessary; his voice is its own spotlight that dazzles everything around it.

When Staples, hitherto grey haired and grave in a grey jacket, came back beaming after the encore, it was akin to Gordon Brown getting up and doing a dance in the middle of parliament.

Like the best movies, Tindersticks were engrossing yet offered moments of excitement. An instrumental with a bassline straight out of The Shadows was accompanied by spotlights sweeping across the stage like the start credits to a James Bond film.