ALAN ASHTON-SMITH

27 February 2012

An attempt at defining where I live

A musing on how London’s geography is assembled: I intend for this to be the beginning of a more extensive piece of writing.

For the past six months I’ve been living in an area of north London called Stroud Green.  Since I moved to London I have always lived within a couple of miles of here, so I’ve been at least vaguely aware of this part of town.  It was only after I moved here that I realised that it’s something of a hidden area.  If I’m asked whereabouts in London I live and I respond that I live in Stroud Green, then more often than not I’m met with a look of complete incomprehension from my interlocutor, even if they are a native Londoner.

To be fair, Stroud Green is in a way neither one place nor another.  The electoral ward of that name is bordered by a railway line to the east, and by the thoroughfare of Stroud Green road to the south; to the north and the west its boundaries are less prominent.  Within these borders it consists almost entirely of rather peaceful residential streets: as such, it’s not really a surprise that it doesn’t have a distinct identity like many parts of London.

Since my saying that I live in Stroud Green is pretty much meaningless to most people, I’ve given up on doing so, and identify my part of town by referring to one of the neighbouring areas: Finsbury Park to the south, and Crouch End to the north.  There are good reasons for me to identify my neighbourhood with each one.  My area has the same postcode as Finsbury Park, and it is the location of my nearest tube station.  But Crouch End is in fact a few hundred yards closer to where I live, and Stroud Green gives off an aura that’s more in tune with the genteelness of Crouch End than the grit of Finsbury Park.

Ultimately, I get to choose which of these places to claim as home, and I have almost invariably taken to choosing Crouch End.  This may have something to do with a wish to align myself with the organic supermarkets of Crouch End rather than with the street drinkers of Finsbury Park; it may also have something to do with the fact that until recently I lived in the heart of Finsbury Park and might want to project the impression that I have moved on to new terrain.  On a simplistic level it’s because I feel more at home in Crouch End than I do in Finsbury Park, so that’s where I declare home to be.

But regardless of my feelings for one place or another, Stroud Green’s ambiguousness as an area of London shows us that within this city the limits of areas are not as clearly defined as they might seem to be, and their geography can be defined by a number of different factors.

20 February 2012

Home brewing

In the absence of anything else that’s piqued my interest enough that I want to write about it, I’ve decided to write a few words about the homebrew I currently have on the go.

These eleven bottles constitute my second attempt at brewing my own ale.  The first might be worth remembering as an interesting experiment, but is probably best forgotten.  Although the recipe I worked from promised a light ale of medium alcoholic strength, the product of my endeavours turned out to be rather dark, extremely sweet, and alarmingly potent.  Not altogether displeased with this cheap route towards inebriation, but nonetheless confused, I wondered whether this discrepancy was due to an excess of sugar, or whether the fact that I conditioned the first batch in two litre coke bottles rather than more professional looking 500ml glass bottles could possibly have had something to do with it.

The brewing process is actually pretty simple: first you dump a load sugar and malt extract in boiling water for half an hour, then add hops and boil for a further half hour.  When the mixture has cooled you sprinkle on yeast and leave to ferment for a week.  Then siphon into bottles and leave for ten days or so to condition.  With so few ingredients and not a lot of steps to take in, it should be very difficult to mess it up, but during my second attempt I realised where I had gone wrong first time round.  For all of the ingredients, I had halved the quantities stated in the recipe – but somehow I’d neglected to do this for the malt extract.  This excess malt evidently released a surfeit of sugars into the beer – hence the sweetness and strength.

Round two is currently conditioning in its bottles, so I can’t comment on whether it’s any good, but it’s certainly looking better the malty moonshine I ended up with last time.  With luck, I’ll finish up with something that doesn’t knock you out after a half a pint, and having mastered the simple starter recipe I’ll be able to move onto boiling up the malt from scratch rather than using jars of extract from Holland and Barrett (a pleasing side effect of this will be that I should never again have to go into the Dalston branch of Holland and Barrett, which has possibly the slowest cashiers I’ve ever encountered), and experimenting with different varieties of hops.

In fact, part of the reason why I’m feeling very positive about what’s currently sitting in those bottles is that I suspect over-energetic future experimentation might mean that this turns out to be my best ever brew.  I’m keen on the idea of culinary meddling and hate seeing food go to waste, so once I’m dealing with bags of raw grains and blending hops together I will no doubt find it hard to resist throwing all kinds of extra ingredients into the brew – anything hanging around in the fridge too long could end up in the ale.  And at the moment that includes capers, marsala syrup, and black pudding…

9 February 2012

Hatchet job

A couple of days ago The Guardian’s website proudly announced that Adam Mars-Jones’ review of Michael Cunningham’s latest novel, By Nightfall, published in its sister paper The Observer, had been awarded the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year award.

The prize, which in its material form consists of a golden hatchet and a year’s supply of potted shrimp, is awarded ‘for the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months’.  The manifesto published on the award’s website states that it is intended as a means of championing the role of the book reviewer and ‘to promote honesty and wit in literary journalism’.

While that’s a commendable remit, I can’t help but find the ‘Hatchet Job of the Year’ rather depressing.  I’m not setting out to defend Cunningham’s novel, which I haven’t read, nor to produce my own hatchet job of Mars-Jones’ review.  In fact, Mars-Jones presents a compelling case for why I shouldn’t read By Nightfall, and as such I’d say he has produced a strong review of the book.

However, it’s a pity that the Hatchet Job of the Year favours angry and trenchant reviews.  It suggests that a book review can’t be witty or honest if it praises the book under review.  People will always enjoy reading things that are acerbically critical, and all the more so in the age of an interactive internet in which they can verbally spar with one another and achieve kudos amongst their peers by coming up with a put-down that is accurate, incisive and funny.  But the Hatchet Job of the Year seems to imply that the best reviews are by their very nature negative.

I’m very much in favour of the literary review becoming something that is recognised as a form that one can enjoy reading, rather than merely something that is glossed over in order to determine whether a book is worth bothering worth.  As an occasional book reviewer myself (and a more regular reviewer of music), I’d love to see the profile of the form raised.  Additionally, I’ll admit that it can be fun to write a negative review: if you’ve had to read a terrible book then it is satisfying to explain what makes it so bad.  And the English language does seem to lend itself so well to expressions of dissatisfaction.  It’s difficult to rave about something without sounding either clichéd or maniacal, but original barbs are fired far more easily from the pen.

So how about another new prize, which rewards the best positive book reviews.  Being able to write a favourable review that’s entertaining and honest, and which doesn’t wax on in such a way that you suspect bribes have been handled, is at least as commendable as being able to wittily explain what’s wrong with a book.  Let’s remember that good criticism needn’t always be critical.