We love a hasselback. This takes all the… err… fuss out of making them.

You will need:
Cooking oil
Baby potatoes (or new, charlotte, whatever) – 4 or 5 each, and try to make sure they’re similar sizes
Clove of garlic
Oregano
Salt
Black pepper

In a bowl big enough to hold all the potatoes, drizzle a bit of oil. Not too much, you only want to be coating the spuds. Add a shake of oregano, salt and pepper and the finely chopped garlic.
Cut into the potatoes a couple of knife-widths apart and half to two-thirds deep.
Put them in the bowl, cover with clingfilm and give them a shake so that all the spuds have a chance to get oily and salted and garlicky and herby.

Put them sliced side up in the air fryer basket and put it on 180C for 20 to 25 minutes (depending on your air fryer and how big the potatoes are) and you are done. A fine accompaniment to any dish.

For something extra, add a shake of cayenne pepper to the seasoning mix and turn them into Hasselbaink potatoes. Because they kick a lot harder. Yeah? Yeah.

We love Bundobust. One problem – it’s at least a half-hour train journey to a city where there is one. In order, therefore, to get my dose of dahl, I had a go at making my own. Working from home as I do, I prepare this at lunchtime, whack it in the slow cooker and it’s ready by tea time. There’s no reason why you can’t do this in shorter time or have on a low setting for even longer than I have it.

To make enough for two, you will need:
Can of lentils
Can of coconut milk
Half a red onion
Big clove of garlic
Ginger
Two medium tomatoes
Tomato puree
Coriander (fresh ideally)
Turmeric
Cayenne
Cumin
Paprika
Garam masala
Pickled jalapeños
Salt
Black pepper
Wholegrain mustard

Drain the lentils, lob them in the slow cooker with the coconut milk. Add a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard, salt and pepper to taste
In a frying pan, fry the diced onion, garlic, coriander, ginger and a few chopped slices of jalapeño – depends how you like your chillies. Chop the tomato relatively finely and add to the pan. Add the spices and a couple of healthy squidges of tomato puree.
Give all that a stir and chuck it in the slow cooker.
Stick it on low for approximately 6 hours, jobs a good un.

We got a take-out curry the night before making this, and they sent us an extra garlic an coriander naan for some reason. Thoughts begin a-whirring and I decided to make us a desi breakfast the morning after. Worked like a charm.

In a small saucepan, fry the finely diced onion and garlic until softened.
Chop the tomatoes small and chuck them in.
Chop a couple of slices of jalapeño and chuck them in.
Add the spices, salt, coriander and a couple of healthy squidges of tomato puree and give it all a stir.
Drain the beans – not entirely, you want some of the liquor but not loads of it – and chuck them in with a healthy slug of Hendo’s.
Add salt to taste – chuck more spice in if you fancy, but for breakfast I wasn’t after blowing anyone’s head off or having them sit on the Japanese flag all day.
If it looks too dry, add a dribble of boiling water. You’re after the consistency of baked beans, not a stew.

While that bubbles away, fry a couple of eggs each with a bit of coriander on top. Cook the naan as the packet instructs, or warm up the one you had left over from last night.

Serve as per the above.

5th of November, always remember.
November 11, forgetting makes you a felon.
The rest of November, no-one will remember what you forgot or did not.

On the back of the awful (not the word, but I don’t have the words) case of Sarah Everard, the stories every woman has been sharing in the aftermath, I got to thinking.

Some years ago, I was walking home from the pub. It was late. Very late. Walking in the same direction but faster than a young woman, as my shadow drew into alongside hers she turned and launched a furious tirade at me, exact details of which are lost in time. In short, I was intimidating her by my presence and I should cross the road. It being six lanes, I said I wasn’t going to do that, asked her to wait in the brightly lit spot while I passed as wide as I could on a reasonably wide piece of pavement, then we could both continue on our way. And it angered me. I know I’m a big soft lump, and while she couldn’t possibly know that, it seemed grossly unfair to be labelled as a danger. I really didn’t understand.

Some years later, but still some years ago, I was accosted by two lads on my road. It was an attempt at a mugging. I told them to fuck off. I know I’m a big soft lump, but they couldn’t possibly know that. What they did do was attempt to rob someone standing over six feet tall and of reasonably large build. ‘Pick your battles, lads’, I thought. They fucked off. Then the penny dropped.

I – you, us (as men) – can’t have it both ways. I can’t congratulate myself on seeing off two muggers merely because I’m a sizeable bloke and not appreciate how I may look to a woman on her own. I can’t say to myself ‘they don’t know I’m a soft sack of shite’ regarding those muggers without the self-awareness to also say ‘she doesn’t know I’m a soft sack of shite’ regarding that lass who bawled me out.

I haven’t got answers. I guess that all I’m saying is be aware. And be better. Learn. This is on us, men, far more than it is anyone else. We have to be better.

Something I wrote years ago and got to thinking about this morning. 

 

The day always started like this. He never intended it to, but it always did. Let’s face it, All-Bran tastes like shit – he wouldn’t even give the budgie that crap – and the well-intentioned cup of tea just never seemed as appealing as the four-pack of cheap unbranded lager from the local offy. And so Danny Allinson cracked open his first can of the day. It was half past eight.

It wasn’t always like this. The faded poster on the wall of the bedsit spoke of a British heavyweight title fight. He was 23 at the time, four years a pro, but it was a step too far and too soon. His opponent that night, Carl Lonergan, was nearly ten years his senior with twice the number of fights under his belt and gave him the mother of all beatings. Sure, Danny had tried to come back, but he was always ‘that lad that got his head woven into the canvas against Lonergan’. After that, he was just a stepping stone for any other young fighter on the way up. He wanted to advise them, let them know what they were getting into. Tell them not to go anywhere near his manager when they’d beaten him.

His manager, Alan Crossley, was a grade A twat. Said he’d put all his prize money in a trust fund. What the fuck did Danny know about trust funds? Apart from the lack of trust that is, which he found out when Crossley legged it to Barmouth with the whole lot, leaving Danny penniless. He’d had an aversion to Wales since then.

He’d squeaked out a living on the doors in town, but once people got to know who he was, they’d all fancy a crack at him after ten pints. “Take him on his left Dave”, he’d heard one bloke say. “He always drops his left, that’s how Lonergan got him”. The fury washed over him and seven months in Armley for ABH was the result. That was his door security career finished.

The benefits paid for the bedsit, a few cans of beer and the occasional packet of Old Holborn. He wasn’t a big smoker, never had been, but a roll-up once in a while took the edge off that first drink of the day. Now and then, he’d have enough for some millet for the budgie. He could never work out how he came by that thing. Pointless bloody bird. He’d called it Adam Faith. It was his idea of irony.

The loss of the money was the start of it – the drinking. By that time, his legs had gone. He was no use as a fighter any more, not that he wanted to carry on. He’d had enough years before, but just kept going. One more. Just one more. It became a mantra to him, he’d said it so often to the wife. The wife… There’s another story. Once the gravy train had stopped calling at Allinson Junction, she’d soon buggered off. She took the boy. No idea where he is now. Probably university age these days. Danny would have liked university. A different crowd to the lowlives he mixed with at that age. And he was smart, but that didn’t matter much when his dad got ill. Money. That was what mattered and Danny knew that a lad who could punch could earn some, much more than the coal board were going to cough up. That was his dad’s pun.

“Bugger this”, he said to Adam Faith, swilling down the dregs of the can and heading for the bookies. Two hours and four races later, he’d done all his remaining money and was back within the four walls of the bedsit. He was sick in the sink. Grab another can. That should take the taste away. “How the fuck did this happen?”. Adam Faith didn’t reply, merely headbutting the small mirror Danny had found round by the chippy. “I looked after meself” Danny continued, scarcely noticing Adam Faith’s indifference. “I liked school. I getting good marks until… well, you know”. Adam Faith didn’t know, or if he did, he wasn’t letting on. Danny threw the can across the room. “It’s all that bastard’s fault!” he yelled. He could hear them downstairs, perturbed by the noise.

He went next door. Little Marco was about the closest thing he had to a friend. Marco was six and loved Adam Faith – the bird, that is – and would pop round sometimes to see him. “Look after him Marco”, Danny told the young lad as he handed the cage over. He went back to the flat. He packed a bag. A change of clothes, a train timetable, an emergency can of lager and his dad’s old hunting knife – the only thing he’d left Danny.

Tomorrow wouldn’t start the same way. Tomorrow, he was off to Barmouth.

1. Never drink owt you can’t see through
2. Never eat anything bigger than your head
3. Never have a pet that does bigger shits than you do (courtesy @sugwindfire)
4. Be less Morrissey, be more Johnny Marr
5. Never joke about someone else’s shed (courtesy @NorthernWrites)
6. Don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t take advice from
7. Stop buying tech purely designed to point out your perceived shortcomings

Yeah, more stuff about depression. Sorry about that, but when you live with it you find that it kind of dominates things. Even when you’re not feeling down, there’s a shadow, a presence, even if it is diminished for however long.

Anyway, it’s not my fault it’s topical again. No, it’s Johann Hari‘s. He’s written a book and been doing the rounds on various channels, not least Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP). The book has been critiqued by many. I’ve not read it and don’t intend to. I love me a bit of RHLSTP, not just because of the celebrity York City fan aspect, but I had to turn this one off.

I do not doubt Hari’s experiences with depression – and lord knows he’s given us all ammunition to do just that, but let’s be charitable. I do not doubt that what he talks about – and I refer specifically to the podcast here – can and has worked for him. Much of it bears a truth as far as I can see, though only goes part way to making an understanding of what goes on in a depressed person’s brain. The big selling point of the book seems to be these new revelations about lifestyle – societal rather than personal – factors weighing so heavily on the id which, so far as I can tell, aren’t really revelatory at all.

I’m not having a go at Hari – I’ve not read the book so can’t really dive in like Dean Burnett did. More, I want to explore this line of thinking.

At least in part my own depression, I came to work out, lay in this existential angst of my place in the modern world, in a neo-liberal end-game capitalist era. This article from George Monbiot really struck a chord with me. On the back of it, I bought the Paul Verhaeghe book cited within, What About Me?, and again it helped me make a lot of sense about what I was feeling and how utterly misplaced I was within modern society. Still am, really, just better able to understand why. And I keep forgetting the key takeaway – I’m probably a deviant and should be proud of the fact.

Obviously that’s not all there is to it and someone else’s experience of depression will not tally at all with mine. Verhaeghe’s book was no more a magic bullet than any other possibly could be, and from what I’ve read and heard, neither will Hari’s. What worries me more is that Hari’s is being marketed as that magic bullet. Listen to this and all will be fine. And that’s potentially dangerous.

Depression is complex and it’s crafty. It changes. There is no checklist to tick off a few items and declare yourself fixed. I guess what I’m saying is take with a large pinch of salt anyone suggesting otherwise. By all means read Hari’s book, just take it as one bloke’s experience and how he dealt with the issues he was facing, and don’t take it as a recipe book on how to fix depression. There are all sorts of therapies out there – yes, referrals take time and that – as well as medication. Some will work for you. Some won’t. And that’s absolutely fine. You will find one that works for you. Just beware the snake oil salesman.

These aren’t resolutions, but aspirations.

By this time next year, I want to have had my book published (I’m assured this will happen), make a record (I believe this to be achievable) and play some more proper gigs (this is the least likely).

Anything over that is a bonus.

Oh, and not die in the first blast of the nuclear war that man-baby about to assume the White House will launch when someone is rude to him on Twitter.