UNBEARABLE OUTCOMES

On this gray morning when, after enduring weeks of electioneering, we find ourselves stuck with a hung parliament, there is much media talk about alliances and coalitions which is likely to prove pretty uncertain territory in the realm of politics since - like leopards changing spots and old dogs learning new tricks - it does not fit within the average British politician's comfort-zone.

However, the most surprising changes can occasionally take occur. For example - to lighten the mood and pick up on yesterday's reference to a certain savoury spread - I'd like to ask who would have thought that a particularly celebrated sandwich-fancier would have ever switched his allegiance from MARMALADE to MARMITE?

The next thing we'll hear is that Winnie-the-Pooh's given up honey!

"MANY PEOPLE THINK THAT MARMALADE IS NICER"

A few months back, I wrote about my love of marmalade - rivaled only by Master Paddington Brown - and my good friend (and occasional blog-post-comment-leaver) JEN sent us a jar of her absolutely excellent home-made Dundee Marmalade.


Someone once said, that "Oxford gave the world marmalade and a manner, Cambridge science and a sausage."

Now, whilst I'm not aware of ever having sampled a Cambridge sausage (though I am prepared to accept that they may be quite exceptional) I do know that Oxford-style marmalade is very good indeed, and has - until now - been my breakfast spread of choice!

However, having now tasted Jen's Dundee variety, I'm prepared to change my allegiance to the marmalade-makers of Scotland who (if Jen's recipe is anything to go by - and I'm sure that it is!) know just about all there is to know about turning out a mean jar of the orange stuff!

Essentially, I think, marmalade (whatever part of the British Isles it hails from) is one of the major comfort foods --- with attitude!

I adore its tongue-tingling combination of the sweet and the sharp and I think I understand what D H Lawrence was getting at when he wrote: "I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor."

There is, of course, only one caveat and that was expressed so eloquently in A A Milne's ditty about 'The King's Breakfast': "Marmalade is tasty if it's very thickly spread..."

HOME COMFORTS

Whenever we visit Kalymnos we take various items for ex-pat friends who can't survive in a foreign land without such necessaries as Cheddar cheese, Bovril and Galaxy chocolate.

I suppose it's different when you live overseas (as opposed to just visiting) and I often speculate on how I would get by on a long-term sojourn in one of the countries where I've repeatedly stayed for short periods - America, New Zealand, Italy or Greece.

For example, I admit to missing marmalade and when, one week into our stay (and just as I was suffering marmalade-withdrawal symptoms), our friend Elaine from Edinburgh came to stay in Emporios, she brought me an emergency supply of St Dalfour's exceedingly yummy Orange and Ginger marmalade! Though there is, of course, something frightfully eccentric (and utterly British) about a French-made English preserve being purchased in Scotland and exported to Greece!

Curiously (not knowing that marmalade rescue was on its way), I'd just managed to pick of a jar of St Dalfour's Raspberry and Pomegranate jam - exclusively made in France for Greeks, for whom the Pomegranate is pretty much a national fruit!

For me, one of the joys of foreign travel is being able to enjoy those things that you can't get at home: the Greek version of Walls, for example, offer a wide range of ice creams that we never get to taste and I discovered that Kellogg's All-Bran in Greece is - as you can see below - quite different from the dessicated hardboard that we get in the UK...

And it's not just interestingly shaped...

It is also tantalizingly flavoured with cinnamon and nutmeg!

In a kind of reversal of the ex-pat's desire to still enjoy abroad their much-missed pleasures from the Old Country, I actually contemplated bringing home a box or two of All-Bran Golden Bakes.

But then I realised that it would be like that bottle of ouzo that one returns with but which never tastes quite the same in Surbiton or Slough as it did when sitting in the sun in a Greek taverna by the sea...