.
About mid-February last year, we were sitting around one afternoon, exchanging the usual disenchantments on the subject of St Valentine’s Day, when my best mate’s mum casually dropped into conversation the fact that in her younger days she once co-wrote a book for Mills & Boon.

Well. I was agog, I don’t mind telling you. My cup of furtive, post-adolescent imagination ranneth liberally over. Slavering and drooling may have been involved.

The rest of the room went rather quiet. “Is there, erm, any chance that I could… see it?” I asked, trying not to sound too excited. My mate (we’ll call him ‘Dominic’) was now looking decidedly uncomfortable.

His mum got up and went to fetch the volume from wherever heirlooms of inestimable value are kept hidden away from prying eyes. Returning to the living room, she placed this Holiest of Holies gently in my hands. “Enjoy yourself,” she said, in the voice of Charlotte Rampling.

I was not disappointed. Spine rent asunder, pages falling out through excessive consultation, and a familiar but unplaceable tacky residue all over the dog-eared and faded cover, the image whereon showed a young gentleman in C.18th servant’s garb, surrounded by a good many permutations of Great British flora and fauna. The jacket copy alone promised ‘girls’: ‘attractive’, ‘interesting’, ‘expensive’, and ‘repeatedly used’. Not to mention ‘evidently enjoyed’!

And inside, oh my…! It was everything that I could possibly have hoped for. 239 pages of sizzling – not to mention educational – elaborations on the finest and most ancient of arts, up to and very much including the latest hand-held technologies, comprehensively accompanied with dozens of ‘specially drawn illustrations’ (even if, rather disconcertingly, it said ‘the artist has relied for reference on diagrams’).

As befits a manual of this nature, the introduction warns of ‘disappointment’ and ‘frustration’, and cautions against being ‘too ambitious,’ or ‘making excessive demands on skill or resources’. But it hopes ‘a girl who has been shown a given method may try [X, Y or Z] with a good chance of success’. ‘Freedom to experiment’ is key, and the ‘collective teaching experience’ highly rewarding in the case of ‘girls who work enthusiastically’. ‘After a demonstration lesson,’ the reader is all-but-promised, ‘girls go eagerly to the bookshelves…’ And not just the girls, I thought! I could feel myself moving rapidly along the predicted spectrum from ‘very slow’ to ‘very hot’.

Dom’s mum had used a pseudonym, I noticed. And tended to refer to ancillary lace-wear (e.g.), rather coquettishly, as ‘doyleys’. But who can blame her? North Derbyshire in the early Seventies wasn’t exactly a hotbed of open-minded cosmopolitanism. So in general the language tends towards the blunt and technical (the narrative not being of the utmost importance in these situations, if you catch my drift), but already one can detect the signs of a pervading Continental influence – ‘in the French style’, and so forth – counterbalancing the slightly staid, Victorian English fare.

It’s a classic tale of ‘fools’ and ‘tarts’, ‘Swedes’ and ‘beef’ – an oyster-laden romp of liaisons involving maitres d’hotel and maids of honour positively dripping with ‘almond essence’. There is, it is true, no clearly identifiable heroine; but I like the sound of an evening with Bain-Marie, and Chicken Maryland seems like she ought to be a game bird. The sub-plot of Rich Short-Crust (seeks Quiche Lorraine) reads like an outré outtake from the Pilgrim’s Progress. And the delectable Chelsea Buns ends up with a nasty case of rose hip (something to do, no doubt, with overuse of her Rabbit fricassée™). She’s partial to a bit of ‘cod Portugaise’, is our Chelsea. But frankly she’ll take anything, even, asked nicely, a ‘chocolate truffle’. We get more than a few glimpses of her friend Eve’s ‘pudding’.

The dramatis personae are not all from the top end of the social spectrum, mind you (‘We have often preferred margarine to butter’, remarks a Bertoluccian sub-protagonist, unblinkingly. It makes it ‘easier to cream’) and in the seamier passages there is much otherwise unremarkable dialogue concerning ‘raw weight’ and ‘average portions’. One of the minor characters contracts, at one point, a touch of ‘small mould’ on his ‘Welsh rarebit’. (SPOILER ALERT: they make you wear an arrowroot cup.)

That said, this particular reader can now consider himself enlightened as to the ‘savoury tricorne’, one (or more) ‘toad(s) in the hole’, the ‘tossing of salad’, and the timely application of a ‘Viennese finger’. ‘Macaroni a l’Americaine’ sounds a lot like something I might want to try, and ditto the enigmatic ‘Victoria sandwich’; but trust me, you don’t want to know about ‘cheese butterflies’. The ‘Russian pie’ sounds positively non-consensual.

All animal, vegetable and mineral life is here. No two pages pass without something being either on or off ‘the bone’, the pinching of fat, or the kneading of knobs of one kind or another, and altogether too much talk of liquids on the whole. Considerable space is given over to the forms and attendant etiquettes of ‘rough puff’. I am still not sure which is more difficult on the sensibilities, the stomach-turning passage about ‘removing the skins from nuts’ (‘the nuts are immersed in cold water, then brought to the boil…’) or the frankly harrowing ‘loosen each segment from its enclosing skin with a grapefruit knife’!! And I am pretty sure the ‘Yule log’ is illegal in most UN signatory countries.

You can have things ‘plain (rubbed in)’ or ‘rich (creamed)’, and with or without a succession of ‘melting moments’, ‘roly poly’ and ‘kebabs’, or any one of about 37 different types of ‘stuffing’. There’s even a section relating to the manufacturing, and use of, ‘stuffing balls’ – though I believe those are now called something slightly different.

‘Strain’, ‘taste’, ‘refresh’, the book exhorts us. ‘Decorate with half a glacé cherry!’ ‘Suggestions for piping’… ‘Making a cream horn’ (or was it vice versa?)… But never forgetting that this is, in the end, an instructional text – to wit, the mindful, prophylactic advice: ‘Pack your joint in a polythene bag, foil or moisture-proof paper[!?]’ Well, it is an old book, and perhaps back then times were, um, hard.

Discerning readers of a certain vintage and/or persuasion will by now have twigged that the magnum opus in question is, of course, a cookbook. Specifically, The Alfreton Cookery Book (M&B: London, Sydney, Toronto, 1972) by the maidenly threesome of Gillian Crompton, Mair Boothby and Jean Smith, with drawings by Eileen Posteen: a GCSE-level collection of recipes for the edification of 15-year-old Home Economics students. And while Mills & Boon do indeed produce many themed erotic sub-genres (Historical, Intrigue, Medical Romance and so on), cookery – alas – is not yet one of them.

But too late! Once you have set off down this single track (as any schoolboy, current or retired, could tell you), pretty much everything becomes ridiculous. The index alone becomes an absolute snort-fest (not a sex-move…), from ‘cream-cheese balls’ to ‘coating’ via ‘vegetables: general methods’. There is, disappointingly, not a single mention of ‘tongue’. But the ‘Manchester tart’ comes, as it were, right before the ‘Mandarin tartlets’. Or so I’ve been told.

To tease out just one (randomly-selected but) obvious euphemistic theme: ‘clear gel’, ‘savoury jelly’, ‘apricot glaze’, ‘economical batter’, ‘barley water’, ‘stuffing marrow’, ‘lattice jam’, ‘lemon curd’, ‘shellfish cocktail’, ‘egg wash’, ‘celery soup’, ‘scotch broth’, ‘almond paste’, ‘savoury milk’, ‘American frosting’, ‘yoghurt dressing’, ‘chuck casserole’, ‘white sauce’, ‘Dutch sauce’, ‘mock Hollandaise sauce’ (obviously, anything with the word ‘sauce’ in it), and – I absolutely promise you – ‘devilled butter’, and ‘confectioner’s custard’. It’s enough to make Fanny Hill blush.

Left unmolested, of course, a typical paragraph will more usually run: ‘All the recipes have been repeatedly tested, and the 25g basic unit is the same as that recommended by the Working Party of the UK Federation for Education in Home Economics. Oven temperatures have been left in degrees F, as we understand that cookers marked in degrees C will not be available for some considerable time yet. However a conversion table is provided.’

Still. A boy can dream.

—
ASH Smyth is a happily-married man. For now.

The Alfreton Cookery Book remains, tragically, out of print.

Readers interested in exploring the ‘Swedish tea ring’ are encouraged to write in for details. No perverts, please.

.
I spy
You spew
He/she/Pierre Spies

We (Graf) Spee
You Spanx®
They spunk
.

— Idries Shah

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‘The trouble with the straight and the narrow
..Is it’s so thin, I keep sliding off to the side.’

— Jason Spaceman
.

p15
febrew-
wery

p20
rub–
brickredd

p34a
as a pious

p34b
ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison
which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial ex-
ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison

p37
ildiot repeated

p45
………..[Balbaccio, balbuccio!]  Italics

p66
New paragraph  a pillarbox? [The……………………….

p72
Alocutionist, Deposed,

p74
Italics  [Animadiabolum, mene credidisti mortuum?]………

p78
Italics  [(hypnos……………
chilia eonion!)]

p79
feeding

p82a
laying all

p82b
all aside, laying

p93
as would turn

p96a
Armoury … Sir Rumoury

p96b
of the peace

p101
knows

p116
gentleman is(?).

p135
and his burialplot

p174
82 bis

p176
Holy Baba And the Forty Thieves
Prisson your Pritchards and Play Withers Team

p224a
thinker‘s

p224b
guardian

p229a
……..[Nom de  Italics
plume!]

p229b
leave. Had Days. Nemo

  p251
Italics  [in omnibus moribus et temporibus]…….

p256
owreglias

p261 n4
Bhing, said the her burglar’s head, soto poce.

p262 n1
Yussive

p266 nl
Bet you fippence,
anythesious,
there’s no pug-
gatory

p269
………[haec genua Omnia]  Italics

p271
……….[nolens volens]  Italics

p272 n1
that, ma’am?

p278 n3
Essastessa

p282 n2
Lawdy Dawdy Simpers 

p285 n2
Barneycaorroall, a precedent for the prodection of curiosituy from children.

p338
No paragraph  ]Germanon.………………..

p340
unsheathing

p346
muckinsltushes

p367
Indent  [Till the Juke done it.…………..

p399
host

p418
Ordinary type  [The thing pleased him andt, and andt, [and ff.]…………
No paragraph……………………………………………………………………
Indent…………………………………………………………..

p427
from orw 

p443
hebdomedaries

p494
— The giant sun

p496
Italics  [Auxilium Meum Solo A Domino]……..

p547
— This time a hundred years!
No gap
— But I was firm with her.

p567
bigbagbone

p594
Bra-
Brathwacker

p617
correctly[]informed
. 

After attending St Paul’s, Westminster School of Art and the Slade School – interspersed with stints in Italy and France, of course – he received high-profile commissions to redecorate the Borough Poly dining room, the First Class lounge of Cunard’s RMS Queen Mary (torn out as soon as the directors saw it), and the Russell Chantry of Lincoln Cathedral, where he calmly cast his lover in the role of Jesus.

As a conscientious objector during WWI, Grant took himself off to Suffolk for a spot of fruit-farming (not a euphemism). In WWII, the War Artists’ Advisory Committee hired him to paint St Paul’s Cathedral (small picture of).

Per Bloomsbury, almost anyone who wasn’t directly related to him was having sex with him. This included Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), a woman, with whom he fathered a child and lived, fairly consistently, for more than 40 years. Their progeny, Angelica, later married David Garnett – the former lover of both her father and Vanessa’s husband Clive Bell.

A maid once told Virginia Stephen (later Woolf) “that Mr Grant gets in everywhere.” This famously included the flagship of the Home Fleet, HMS Dreadnought, when Grant, the Stephens, Horace de Vere Cole (I know, I know) et al. dressed up as Abyssinian royalty and were given an escorted tour, complete with marching band.

I’d hoped Grant might have painted Leonard Woolf. But no. So this is his ‘Self Portrait’ (1920).

I am given to understand that this is the 6th day of Feb. but for the life of me I don’t know what day of the week it is. Anyhow it doesn’t make any difference here. Excuse the dirt. A.A.¹ has just spilt some tea on my pad.

The journey from the forest² to these parts was long and trying but most interesting. The first day lava and then desert. My car buried its rear portion in the sand and while we were waiting for some assistance Cyril Cochran came up, had a good laugh and took a photo which I hope to be able to send you in due course. Camels, dried white bones, and mirages cause the most fantastically beautiful marine illusions. Sometimes the dunes were converted into rocky promontories with the sea below them – just like some of those places we photographed round Cape Point – a solitary goat in the distance looks like someone bathing.

Camped for the night in the sand dunes and moved north again before dawn. Camped again in a rocky dusty area near the frontier and rested for 36 hours. Then began the most remarkable journey of my life – the advance onto our first objective through many miles of dense bush and undulating lava hills. The armoured cars went ahead and made clearings in the thorn bush and the troop carriers followed. In the early afternoon we came on open ground and got into battle formation and soon after this the fun started and by 5 p.m. we had occupied the Italian position. I rushed round with my company on the left flank to head off the fugitives but they were too quick for us. It was an extraordinary advance and we got great praise for it. The Itos were taken by surprise and no wonder because no one would have ever dreamt of a motorised force advancing through such country.

The next day, Sunday, Jimmy’s crowd (a nephew of Gerald Fayle’s) did a stunt with my company in reserve, so we saw some more fun. The fort was occupied before dark and here we are on the qui vive and having a rest. I didn’t see Jimmy but he is O.K. His unit captured some weapons and stores . . . . . . . . For some days I had attached to me two Abyssinian rebels – i.e. whom the Italians haven’t yet captured or subdued. They told the same story, the desire for revenge has become fanatical. On one occasion while we were guarding some prisoners these two birds were all for cutting the throats etc of the wounded and had to be restrained. These rebels are very much on our side. They carry Italian rifles and plenty of ammunition. They are a mixture, I think, of Arab and negro and the former strain gives them a rather noble but desperately cruel look.

—
¹ Allan Arnott
² Marsabit

–oOo–

Tuesday(?) 11.2.41

The hiatus is due to a sudden move with little warning. Another long advance and another successful action.  “A” Company (Gerald’s¹) bumped it first and we had an anxious time for a while when we walked into something that looked innocent enough but was in fact a rather clever trap. But the Italians spoilt things for themselves by not withholding their fire long enough. It is fortunate that we were entering a fort at the time so we were able to take cover and give the other side something to go on with. When I say “we” I mean Micky Williamson with an armoured car, myself, and one platoon. We were cut off temporarily from the others. But thanks to somebody’s prayers and bad shooting on the part of the Italians you’ve nothing to worry about. Anyhow our “chance” was to come. Mickey and I spotted a lot of enemy troops crossing a ridge so we let them have it good and plenty. Yesterday I went up to the spot to have a look and they certainly left in a hurry taking their casualties with them. Allan came on their dressing station and saw the evidence. Where we opened fire on this particular formation the ground was littered with red fezes, clothing, food and ammunition. I have acquired a very nice Ito aluminium water carrier, double lined and holding about 2 gallons. It was originally a vacuum container but it became loosened and the air has got in between the linings. I have put a rubber washer on the opening and it’s grand.

The troops we are up against are Italian Somalis – not Abyssinians – with European officers. The p.c. I sent Gerald² gives a good idea. Please frame this for the boys. It was taken from a prisoner. The different Italian Colonial Infantry Regts. wear different coloured woollen waist bands like scarves. I have two, one black and white (17th Col. Inf) and one yellow (9th Col. Inf). If these ever arrive wash them (I haven’t enough water) and keep them for fun. The family group photo was discarded by some Italian Somali on the run. Just had a bit of a clean up. Had no wash or shave for four days, so I was pretty grubby . . . . . . . . There is no shortage of medals in the Ito army.

—
¹ Fayle’s, presumably (see first letter)
² Gerald Spence Smyth’s son, Gerald Fayle³ Preston Smyth
³ named after Gerald Fayle (see first letter, and fn. above)

–oOo–

21.2.41

. . . . . . . . We’ve all had a pretty gruelling time during the past week and at the moment we are taking things a bit quietly. There is the satisfaction at any rate of knowing that we have achieved a great measure of success in capturing an important Italian position.¹

—
¹ Mega fort

–oOo–

2nd letter 21.2.41

Just after my last letter written a week ago we had a busy and trying time. After leaving the place from which I last wrote we began an advance which culminated in a final successful attack. The hardships endured by all concerned from wind, cold and exposure were far greater I think than from enemy action. For three days and two nights we were soaked to the skin without shelter and in most cases without greatcoats or groundsheets in cold and almost continuous rain. How the men stuck it I don’t know but they deserve the highest praise for the way they carried on throughout this trial. The more experienced campaigners (chaps who were in the last war) say they haven’t seen anything like it. It’s a great tribute to the Regt. The Italians greeted us with shell fire at the beginning of the show. This went on most of the time as well as M.G. and small arms fire. We captured a large number of prisoners and guns etc. The prisoners who included some officers were anything but downcast: in fact they seemed decidedly cheery.

By this time you will have heard that Mickey¹ died of wounds. It is one of the saddest and greatest losses we could have had. He was terribly plucky up to the end.

. . . . . . . . We have acquired a fair amount of Ito food, e.g. spaghetti tinned tomato, cheese, flour, meal and a lot of tinned curried meat specially prepared for their Mahomedan troops. This morning for breakfast we had spaghetti cheese tomato and bacon. Very good too. One day all I had to eat was an army biscuit and a piece of biltong. It’s most nutritious and I always have a bit in my pocket.

Just had a most gratifying message from the C.O. to be read out of the Company thanking them for their great effort in the last show.

—
¹ The typescript here says: ‘(not the one of the armoured car).’ This seems an unlikely clarification for GSS to have made to his wife, who – the general tone would otherwise suggest – probably knew all these people, at least socially. Also it seems too casual, given the remarks that follow. My suspicion – as with a couple of other bracketed asides, is that my grandmother added these when typing, for the benefit of whichever secondary reader. There seems no reason to think the amendment is incorrect, though: the man’s name is spelled differently, after all (albeit the typescript, once again, is full of typing errors).

–oOo–

2.2.41¹

Now that the rain has ceased for nearly a week the climate here is delightful. Cold at night and warm and bracing in the day at about 7000ft. My attack of dysentery has completely passed off and I now feel grand. We get excellent bacon from Kenya and wonderful tinned tomatoes from sunny Italy.

—
¹ The typescript here says: ‘(so smeared from rain I could hardly read it, it came to-day)’. Either my grandmother’s typescript has these letters in the wrong order, or in the order that they arrived in South Africa (when was ‘to-day’?), or she has misread and/or introduced a typo and the date should actually be 2.3.41. The reference to tomatoes and the rain suggest the last one, as does the altitude.
.

Typescript endnote: ‘All these extracts have been passed by the military censors and most of the bits about the war have appeared.’

Staggering under the burden
of more than he should carry.

The heavy load cruelly rubs his back
until it’s raw and bleeding.

He has sores on his legs, too,
so that every step is agony.

He’s desperately thirsty,
and oh so very, very tired.

.

This is his life until the day he dies –
unless someone, somewhere, is willing to help him.

.

Will you help ease his pain…?’

The most capable woman cannot make a meal without food.

Chinese Communist Party saying

A capable woman can make a meal without food.
.