The Saturday List #456 - My ten favourite pickled foods

 I am in France as I write this. We've gone to Paris for my Goddaughters wedding and are staying in a suburn of Paris. As you might expect, we've had a few decent meals out here. It may be churlish to criticise French cooking, but there is one thing which always bugs me. This may sound odd, but after I've been here a few days, it starts to irriatte me. You simply cannot get pickled onions with your fish and chips. I love fish and chips on a Friday, most likely a side effect of being raised a Catholic, when there was a prohibition on meat eating. It was meant to be a penance, but we all loved fish and chips. Dad emerging through the front door with a big box of fish and chips, still in the white coat he wore from work, is one of my fondest memories. Huge hunks of fish, far too many chips, pickled onions, gherkins, salt, vinegar and Heinz ketchup. Mum moaning as he'd 'bought too much'. Occasionally mum would make fish. That was a disaster for us. As Dad agreed, he'd rarely agree. Anyway, it inspired me to think about my top ten favourite pickled foods. I have discussed this before in detail. So here we go

1. Pickled onions. Fish and chips is simply wrong without a gherkin (as it is without malt vinegar). I should add that pickled onions give me the same pleasure that most folk get from chocolate. I have many great memories of them. 

2. Gherkins. Ditto above, a nice big juicy wally completes the picture!

3. Pickled Shallots. Very similar to onions, but Boucherie Gerard does wonderful home made ones. I slice them up and put them on the salad I take to work. You really should try it.

4. Pickled chillies. Just as fish and chips is not 'proper' without a pickled onion, a Kebab is not proper without a pickled chilli. At Coban's kebab's in Mill Hill, he gives me a couple. I eat one first and the other half way through.

5. Pickled Eggs. These have simply disappeared. Before pubs lost the plot, a pickled egg was just about the only food you'd get. Many people would say 'yuk' but if you've ever stood on a wet football terrace in the freezing cold on a November Saturday, you'd get just how wonderful a pickled egg is. Best consumed with a bag of cheese and onion crisps.

6. Jalapino chillies. This is a new discovery. Like the pickled shallots, they are wonderful on my lunchtime salad.

7. Pickled red cabbage. Much underrated. I first got into it when I worked with a Hungarian decorator called Mickey, who'd bring it along with Salami as a snack. A hunk of rye bread with salami and pickled red cabbage is the perfect snack.

8. Cockles. Oh yes, love em. Great with mayo on toast!

9. Beetroot. A great and inexpensive food, another one that is brilliant with salads. Also good sliced wafer thin on cheese on toast. 

10. Rhubarb. About forty odd years ago, I briefly went out with a lovely young lady, who was very into gardening and cooking. She had an amazing array of pickled foods, all grown on her allotment. She said "You do realise you can pickle anything". I said "What about rhubarb?". She said "I've never tried it". So we spent an afternoon harvesting the rhubab and pickling it in jars. A couple of days later, we split up, not particularly acrimoniously, but it seemed wise. I thought no more of it. About six weeks later, I got a phone call. She said "I need you to come around, it's important". In truth I was terrified that she was pregnant. When I turned up, she was in a fine mood. After a cup of tea, I said "whats up". She replied "Your pickled rhubab is ready". I'd completely forgotton about it, but she'd said that as I'd helped her, half of it was mine. I was quite relieved. I got home with six jars of the stuff. It didn't appeal to me at all. About a week later, a mate came around for a jam on guitars. At around ten pm, we got hungry. All I had was some sliced white bread, a small amount of cheese and the pickled rhubarb jars. I said to my mate (a rather unhygenic fellow called Ubungus) do you fancy, toast with cheese and pickled rhubarb. He hadn't eaten all day so he said "Oh yes!". I thought it was a good way to get rid of some of the stuff. When I opened the jar, it smelled OK, so I had some as well. With a mug of nice tea, I was astounded. It was amazing. I foolishly gave Ubungus a jar of the stuff. Sadly you can't buy it in the shops. I guess everyone has my suspicion of such things. I may well make some when I get home, we've got some rhubarb growing in the garden. Forty years is lon g enough to wait!

Have a great weekend, here's a song to entertain you from The False Dots reportoire! I selected this as the surrogate grandma I refer to made the most wonderful pickled onions, which she'd always give Mum a jar of around this time of year!

If Punk Rock is dead, how come we are all still making a racket?

 I got a phone call from my old mate Noel Martin from the skinhead/punk band Menace yesterday, inviting me to see the band at the 100 club on Friday. I was gutted as I can't go, we are in France for a wedding. If, like me, your idea of a great night out is to watch a band playing loud music that you can jump around wildly to, then you'd like Menace. I've spent my life appreciating such music. When I was about seventeen, an old hippy informed me that "when your taste's mature, you will appreciate having a big spliff and listening to proper music like Dark Side of the Moon (by Pink Floyd). Sadly for me, whilst some of my mates decided that this was a spiffing way to spend the evening, I could only really bear it if I'd drunk ten pints of beer first, so I could fall asleep. I concluded that any music that required a mind altering substance to make you appreciate it was not really my cup of tea. Generally, we'd listen to Dub Reggae, which was a decent compromise. Reggae has never been down beat, kill yourself music, so it was fine with me. Later, my Dad informed me that I should try getting some good, smoochy music, so that I could have something that any young lady who may be unlucky enough to find herself in a compromising situation with me, may at least have something pleasant to ease the awful situation (more or less his words). That was his way of saying "Beat on the Brat with a Baseball Bat by the Ramones will not set the scene for a nice romantic evening. Luckily, I like a bit of Stax and Motown, so that has seemed to surffice, although a few of my girlfriends actually liked a bit of New Rose. 

But here I am aged 62 and when it comes down to it, I'd still always listen to Ska or Punk Rock. I don't really know any hippies anymore, who smoke massive spliffs and insist on complete silence for Floyd. I've been married for 29 years so we rarely have smoochy situations (more's the pity). But we do go to a hell of a lot of gigs and most are either, Ska, Punk or Reggae. It is funny because I hear may snotty commentators who say "Punk was finished by 1977". That was when I got into it. Of course all of the first wave of Punk Bands had either split or changed their sound by 1978, but the whole time was still absolutely buzzing and for me was turbocharged when Two Tone came along. The Specials were probably the only band that I felt were up their with the Ramones as a live act. 

By the time I got it together enough to have a band and start doing gigs, the music industry had moved on from Punk and new wave. We launched on the world doing punk/new wave songs, just as the music industry lost interest. We were full of anger, energy and passion, as the new romantics took over. We'd play gigs to packed audience, who went mad and loved us, despite our lack of technique, but we were totally ignored. We took our demo's to labels such as Chiswick records. For a laugh, I replaced all the guitars on one of our demo's on a song called Fog. I replaced them with synths. Ted Carroll who ran Chiswick loved it and asked us to come back with a demo of electronic music. I was quite annoyed. His feedback was quite reasonable. He said, in effect that punk was dead and if we wanted a deal, we'd have to write a hit and if we wanted a hit, we'd have to write pop music. 

We eventually decided that we'd see if we could get a deal. None of us wanted a job. We got a female singer, and wrote some more pop material. It was a huge mistake, the audiences declined and we didn't get a deal. Certain members of the band blamed me and split off. I regrouped, got in an amazing singer called Venessa Sagoe and decided to have another go. I chucked out all of the crappy pop songs and wrote a set of fairly dark songs, which we then put pop sounding backing to. Songs such as Africa Morning, which was about exploitative sexual tourism became the new set. Venessa found a half finished punk song called Action Shock in my lyrics tin. It is the story a mate told me about shooting an Argentinian conscript on the Falkland Islands during the war. It has been a key part of our set ever since. Vanessa made it sound like a lush pop song. The feedback from the labels was horrific. They said Venessa was too black and too fat to be a pop star and the music was too dark to be a hit. Despite this, the gigs were great and the audiences loved it. I realised that the industry was full of idiots. I also realised that if I couldn't get signed in a band with Venessa, I'd never get signed. I was a fool. I should have set up my own label and sent the records to John Peel. 

Venessa got fed up, and the glory years of the early band faded. I pretty much lost interest in the music scene. If I saw a band I liked playing, I'd go. I've always gone to lots of gigs, but the late eighties were grim. The bands I loved were falling to bits. Teh Ramones were disintegrating, Johnny Thunders was slowly shuffling to oblivion, Two Tone had given up the ghost. There were some great bands and gigs, but they were on the fringes. 

The band downed tools for the duration of the 1990's.  We got back together in the early 2000's for a fundraiser for Ernie Ferebee's family. We played a gig at The Red Lion in Colindale. It was packed and people loved it, much to my surprise. It was all punky stuff. I'd lonmg given up on getting a deal, but it seemed there was an underground punk scene. The music hadn't gone away. In 2008, The False Dots did a charity gig at The Bull Theatre. The main band was a scratch band put together by Lee Thompson of Madness. Lee is a mate and he kindly helped us get it all together. The band played an amazing selection of Ska tracks, Ian Dury covers and 1970's rock (Chris Spedding joined on guitar and they did Motorbiking). With his Madness connections, the gig sold out. It reminded me of my love of Two Tone and Ska. It sowed the seeds of what is now the False Dots set. 

In 2021, when Allen Ashley departed the band, we put together a set that reflected our true roots, punk, ska,  2-tone and Ian Dury inspired songs. Not only was it fun, but audiences love it. We've secured a residency at The Dublin Castle, Camdens most iconic small venue.

On November 17th, we launch the album we've been working on for the last 45 years at The Dublin Castle. It took me a long time to stop listening to the naysayers and have the courage of my convictions to make the sort of music I love. Bands like Menace, 999 and Wire keep the punk/new wave flag flying. Great new bands like Voodoo Radio will carry it forward. 

The industry hates us all, but we don't care! If Punk Rock is dead, how come we are all still making a racket?