h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My mother was a good cook and we always had a Sunday roast, with slices of the meat cold with chips on the Monday. The kitchen was always clean and tidy and everyone marvelled that she had the saucepans washed up and on the draining board before we started eating.

Strangely enough, I can't remember many weekday meals, except the fry ups on Saturday nights - this usually involved mushrooms, tomatoes, possibly kidneys, bacon and eggs. She would cook it whilst we were watching Doctor Who and Juke Box Jury which were regular Saturday early evening viewing.

Jumping forward to secondary school days here, we had cookery lessons in the second and third form at school and sometimes it would be a proper meal which we had to transport home on the bus.

Most meals were meat-based, and I've just remembered a few more weekday favourites: Gammon and pineapple, sausages and mash, (of course) and fish fingers.

All hot meals included potatoes. The British housewife in the 60s was suspicious of rice and pasta, and we used to chuckle at one of my aunts who turned up her nose at both of these, as, back in her day, both of these staples were only eaten sweet, as pudding.

There was a packet of spaghetti in the larder which I remember seeing for years - it survived a couple of house moves and still never got eaten.

I make a point of rotating among the starches. I'll cook something with potatoes, then something with pasta, then something with rice, and then back to potatoes. This is maybe part of a survival plan. If I ever run out of any of the three, I will always have the other two to fall back on.

My mum was not so good at cooking, but she made a Sunday Roast because she thought she had to, even though she didn't like what she cooked, never mind us. Her parents enjoyed it, though, and took the leftovers, but these days we eat out on a Sunday! A chef of her acquaintance taught her how to do a proper slow cooked roast a few years ago, so the family all enjoys that on a Bank Holiday.

My gran was born in India, so she cooked rice dishes for her children as well as potatoes, but pasta was never considered. My mum cooked 'spaghetti bolognese' for us every week, though, and we loved it - not the same as the proper Italian dish, but totally delicious because it was our home recipe . I still enjoy pasta based meals now.

I'm like you, paulh - I like to have a variety of starches each week, which also helps to ensure I have a variety of meals

I like the expression "crimes against ragu."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolognese_sauce

Considering how many different versions of Bolognese sauce there are, I wouldn't worry about not being authentic. It's a big world. Chances are, someone in Bologna ha cooked the sauce the way you have, TC.

Spag bol was actually one of the dishes we did at school. Even at the time I thought it was odd that the teacher had us cook the spaghetti IN the sauce - we had to put it in hard to the bubbling mincemeat concoction.

Anyway - I've just realised that I haven't NaJo'd for a few days, so here goes:

Sorry about the hiatus - had a birthday in the meantime and am flying to the UK tomorrow so it will continue sporadic for the next few days.

Here are some memories about the holidays we went on when I was about 7. I know we went there for about 7 consecutive years, so it may have been from age 4 to age 11 or so. Probably earlier, because in 1964 we went on a really unforgettable holiday.

My parents had always gone to the English coast - there are photos of me as a tot and my sister a babe-in-arms at a holiday camp somewhere, possibly Bognor Regis, in typical 50s sundresses.

I don't remember much about them, of course, but I do remember the years we stayed at a little bungalow right on the cliffs at Scratby near Great Yarmouth. There was usually an Aunt or a cousin who came along, too, and we would spend the time playing on the beach, or playing board games inside when it rained. A typical British seaside holiday, where you had to buy sticks of rock to take home to your friends.

Once per holiday we drove into Yarmouth and were given a handful of pennies (the old ones, huge copper things) to try our luck in the penny arcade. We went for rides on the roller coaster, and probably ate fish and chips.

Then came 1964. I had started learning French at school, because the nuns at the convent where I went were keen to teach us it and to try out a new audio-visual learning method. And, on the recommendation of some good friends, my parents planned a trip to France.

The friends also lent us their tent and some sleeping bags. My father actually made a kitchen cupboard - the sort of dresser most people would have had in their kitchens! We had a Cortina estate (my father being a Commercial Traveller, this was his company car - he had a new one every year for most of my childhood.

My parents, obviously, sat in the front, and we girls (aged 10 and 8 at the time) sat in the back with our Auntie Ida - one of my father's older sisters.

The tent was heavy and bulky - it was made of cotton and the poles were wooden - I don't think I could even have got my hands round the biggest of them. The guy ropes were sisal, at least 1/2" thick. It rolled up to a huge sausage which was the length of the car roof and when put on the roof rack, filled half of it.

So even getting the car ready was a massive undertaking; I really don't know how my parents got that tent on top of the car every morning; my aunt was rather delicate and was probably charged with keeping us out of the way during the loading process.

Great care was taken to paint the headlights in the obligatory French headlight colour (How does that joke go? What does a Frenchman get if he fails his driving test? - Yellow headlights) and to stick elongated triangles in the proper position so that the lights didn't shine too far over on the other side of the road.

My cousin was there when we left - possibly he was house-sitting - and the subject of "weight distribution" became a standing joke with him and my father - they were always laughing about something.

So, eventually we set off to catch the ferry to Boulogne (or maybe Calais, Dieppe, Dunquerque, whatever).

Lots of stories to tell about what happened on the way. Another time perhaps.

Wow - our family recipe for spag bol is unconventional, with the sauce for the meat being smooth rather than having tomato chunks in it because we didn't like them, but cooking the dry pasta in the sauce is a definitely an unusual thing to do! I don't think I would have liked that - ours was served with the sauce on top of a bed of spaghetti. I enjoy the meditative aspect of rolling up some spaghetti on to my fork, then applying just the right amount of bolognese on top to eat the whole dish in as balanced a way as possible

Italians don't eat spag bol, as it's completely the wrong shape of pasta for a lumpy sauce.

What, not even one Italian person would eat spaghetti with a sauce Bolognese? If you told ten Italians not to do it, three would probably do it just to be contrary.

Well, I really flunked that one, didn't I? Nothing posted after 18 November. This was due to

- breaking in a new laptop
- visiting my mother
- several family birthdays
- moving offices at work
- a general tendency to be distracted by other people's journals

It was *not* due to me not managing to remember 30 things from my childhood to write about.

However, what with possible retirement looming on the horizon and a week's holiday just before Christmas, I may just throw in the odd (!) journal entry throughout December, and thereafter, as long as h2g2 is here to do it in.

The reason I bought the new laptop was because I had several photobooks on the go - some as birthday and Christmas presents - and the old laptop was getting rather slow, despite deleting loads and clearing up the hard drive. Also the hinge had broken and I couldn't shut it without being worried the screen would snap off completely, and recently, whilst skyping, the sound card was giving some problems, too.

The visit to my mother was very pleasant, as another relative came, too, and my sister was in a play at her village hall - written by a friend of hers, it was a "Victorian murder mystery musical". The costumes and props were most impressive, as was the standard of acting and singing. The story was rather convoluted and not quite coherent, but that didn't matter and I think the mystery got solved and there was a happy end, too!

My sister played the obligatory Dowager Duchess and had made her costume - an elaborate affair with a bustle and lots of folds of black satin and she wore a HUGE wig which looked like a silvery tea cosy. She adopted a Lady Constance voice and had some hilarious lines and a song about etiquette.

Hands up anyone who remembers Lady Constance.

Lady Constance was distantly related to Alice in Wonderland.

Second cousin once removed. Well I never. And her grandfather Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword" according to WikiPeeja.

Interesting chap, Bulwer-Lytton. His novel "Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes" was made into an opera by Wagner.

So what's a Lady Constance voice? She hid her aristocratic background in order to avoid getting special treatment while in prison as a suffragist.