The Italian Restaurateur Antonio Carluccio ia campaigning to have “mediterranean cuisine” given World Heritage status by UNESCO. Good luck to him. In doing so he argues that a love of food is part of the Italian soul whereas the English don’t care a fig about food and never have done. In throwing scorn on the English he trots out the old saw that when Elizabeth David published her book “Italian Food” in 1954 you could only get olive oil in England by going to the chemist, where it was sold as a treatment for ear-ache. This was a good joke when it was first made, but it has no basis in fact. A glance at cookery books from Victorian times onwards (and probably before) shows that olive oil was used extensively, and it was sold in every grocery shop. Of course, in 1954 rationing was only just coming to an end after a war which, I believe, involved Italy to some extent, and supplies of many basis products were still difficult to obtain. But the notion that Elizabeth David introduced olive oil to British cooks is complete nonsense.

Although I have no interest in maths I was enthralled by Alex Bellos’ book “Alex’s Adventures in Numberland”. In fact I couldn’t put it down and read all 410 pages in one weekend.  I was telling Glen Isaac-Welcome how the abacus can be faster than a calculator and it turned out that this wasn’t news to him as he too  has become fascinated by the abacus.  Glen’s job is teaching children who have been excluded from school, many of whom don’t even have basic learning skills, and he had the idea of teaching them to do maths by using an abacus. He got the idea after reading that this is how Japanese schoolchildren are taught, to great effect.  Glen had been trying for several weeks without success to buy an abacus in London.  And then, while browsing the shops in Kendal today he found one in the Oxfam shop- which they told him was the first they had ever had in stock.  This video shows how two nine year old Japanese girls can count a series of numbers displayed for a split second on a screen (which they do by using an imaginary abacus in their head), at the same time as playing the word game shiritori. Amazing stuff.

“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.”
From “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B.Yeats

This recording of Yeats reciting “Innisfree” may be old, scratched and barely discernable but it is absolutely wonderful. No poem epitomises the Slow Life better than this. It was inspired, as Yeats describes in his introduction to this recording, by Thoreau’s “Walden”. He wrote the poem as a young man, before the publication of his first book of poetry, and it was to become his best loved. But not by Yeats himself who grew tired of it and he was seen to visibly wince when asked to recite it.
He made this recording when he was 67, for the BBC. There is no sign of any tiredness here. If the poem were to be recited by an actor today on a programme such as “With Great pleasure” it would be read as a piece of prose in a conversational style. But not by Yeats, who captures the beauty of the poem by emphasising its rhyme and its rhythm

J B Priestly was born and brought up in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as I was. He would answer a friendly enquiry with the reply “Mustn’t grumble”, which makes perfect sense to a Yorkshireman. When I was a teenager his novel The Good Companions was my favourite book, although when I picked it up a a year or two ago I was disappointed to find it unreadable. On the other hand his play, “An Inspector Calls” has remained one of my favourites and I go to see it whenever there’s a new production. 60 years ago, when Priestly was 65 he published a collection of 114 brief essays under the title “Delight”, which became a best seller. In it he describes the pleasures of the Slow Life in elegant simple language. Here’s an extract , “Not Going”, which explains why I’ll be staying in this New Year’s Eve:

One of the delights known to age and beyond the grasp of youth is that of Not Going. When we are young it is almost agony not to go. We feel we are being left out of life, that the whole wonderful procession is sweeping by, probably for ever, while we are weeping or sulking behind bars. Not to have an invitation- for the dance, the party, the match, the picnic, the excursion, the gang on holiday- is to be diminished, perhaps kept at midget’s height for years. To have an invitation and then not to be able to go- oh cursed spite! Thus we torment ourselves in the April of our time. Now in my early November not only do I not care the rottenest fig whether I receive an invitation or not, but having carelessly accepted the invitation I can find delight in knowing that I am Not Going. I arrived at this by two stages. At the first, after years of illusion, I finally decided that I was missing nothing by not going. Now, at the second and, I hope, final stage, I stay away and no longer care whether I am missing anything or not. But don’t I like to enjoy myself? On the contrary, by Not Going that is just what I am trying to do.

One of my heroes, Ludovic Kennedy has died aged 89. He was best known as a campaigner against miscarriages of justice – exposing corrupt policemen complacent judges and the unfairness of the adversarial system of justice. His book, 10 Rillington Place, about Timothy Evans who was hanged for a murder he didn’t commit was influential in ending capital punishment in this country. Which reminds me that, disgracefully, Barak Obama even though he says he agrees that capital punishment is not a deterrent, is nevertheless in favour of it because it, “sends out the right message”. Sir Ludovic was also well known as an atheist. As a good child he had said his prayers every night but as a teenager gave up since ‘no-one was listening’. His father, he presumed, knelt as usual to pray the night before his ship was blown up by the Germans. Sir Ludovic wrote with clear logic, he was never strident he was always good humoured and I can’t think of any modern campaigner with anything like his compassion or ability.