This was a good year for the Edinburgh Festival. The flat I rented stayed pretty empty (a couple of jolly lunches with schoolfriends and west-coast neighbours filled the space and made inroads into the enormous quantity of potatoes I'd brought with me) but the shows were good and the rain held off. The rise of rubbish multi-media events in the international festival's drama programme means that I went to very few plays although I should be mentioned in dispatches for sitting through two and a half hours of pointless Russian drama that was
The War. After that marathon, honorable mentions go to
John Byrne's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery;
Sister Marie Keyrouz in Greyfriars Kirk and
Daniel Kitson in a suitably dingy basement. Last year I sang in
The Events at the Traverse and Daniel helped continue my run of sold-out shows by casting me as the (pivotal) 'person C' in his wee drama. Every one of my lines was dead filthy but I delivered them with both volume and conviction.
I packed up my bags after
Sweet Mambo, added some clean underwear and a gold maxi-dress and set off south with high hopes of drunken parties and further uses for my potatoes. I ended up in the Cotswolds with fine chat (apparently Castro isn't really a 'people person') and wicked caipirinhas. Thankfully the party was in A's cottage and she's a thoughtful and generous host. Left alone in the cottage to sweat out the remains of south american liquor I've been able to critique A's refurbishment (very classy although she'll have to get her gutters checked ... we west coast architects have a keen eye for rain-based issues) and work my way through the party leftovers. I've almost reached my limit for smoked-salmon bagels but I've also made a stack of blueberry jam which is looking damn fine. I'm not quite sure why jam-making has such mystique applied to it but maybe I'm just more slapdash than others. My
Glasgow Cookery Book goes into exhaustive detail about testing pectin levels (they assume that every kitchen has methylated spirits to hand ... maybe it's a Glasgow thing) but it seems to me that as long as you include fruit skins in the jam and boil it with extreme prejudice you'll be fine. A decent set can be elusive but it is at least easy to see when you get it: pour a bit of the jam onto a saucer, blow on it to cool and push with your finger, if the surface wrinkles you're done.
blueberry jam
about 1.5kg blueberries (couldn't find the scales)
dash of lemon juice
1kg sugar
boil the blueberries and lemon juice 'til most of the berries have broken down
add the sugar and stir 'til dissolved
boil hard for about 5 minutes - test for a set
pour into jars
I had a little sit down after the first boiling (the south american liquor was unexpectedly potent) and I've still got to wipe down the kitchen (as well as being tastefully decorated it's also much cleaner than anything I normally operate in) but the whole operation took about 15 minutes. I bought the sugar from the local shop where jam retails for £2.99 so I've got about fifteen quid's worth ready to go.
