I don’t know what to call you, so let’s call the whole thing off.

I thought the old Louis Armstrong / Ella Fitzgerald standard with the line “You say tomato I say tomahto” covered the differences between us here in Ireland and our American cousins quite well. On looking up some information on the Aubergine (or Eggplant to ye over there), I saw that it rampages in many different guises depending on where in the world you are. The list includes melongene, patlican, brinjal or guinea squash. For those interested in facts and figures, there are over 35 million tons grown each year and the plant is native to India.

“That knife was pretty sharp. Was he hurt?”

“Hurt! He was stabbed.” 

“How deep was the wound?”

“Deep? It went right up to the second ‘f’ in Sheffield.”

Bad people do bad things. Bad knives do bad things too. There are hacked fingers, missing nails and countless soft flesh wounds as a result. Dull steel does damage. I wince at the memory of that awful feeling of the cooks knife slipping off the edge of an onion and into the top of my index finger.

I blame the Catholic Church

Growing up in Catholic Ireland was pretty strange in many ways. There were all sorts of activities that condemned those partaking to eternal damnation. One could also easily slip into the pit through sins of omission. I well remember the fear and guilt that I felt the first time I allowed more than a month to elapse between confessions. A one way ticket to the hot place. Today, for reasons best known to either God or the church the rules are a bit more relaxed. One does not attract eternal damnation of the soul for eating meat on a Friday.

What Fortnum & Mason don’t want you to know.

For centuries now Fortnum & Mason have made and sold some of the most delicious foods available on these islands. They even pioneered some populist fare. A number of decades ago, that bastion of fine British food was the first retailer to stock and sell Mr Heinz’s now ubiquitous baked beans.

Defeat the terror from the deep

Ancient mariners told tales of ships being pulled apart plank by plank by 15 meter long Colossal Squid. They are rumoured to be a mortal enemy of the Blue Whale, wrestling them into the deep unknown with their tentacles, tearing flesh with the feared giant beak.