Norway was great, met up with lots of friends, drank and ate too much, swam in the gulf stream, sat through a massive storm, the usual stuff.

Good to be back, though.

The Habit gets some tourists but most of the regulars are locals who like the coffee or the chat, and they do a cheap breakfast which is what draws me in from time to time.

The Asian waitress slipped a plate of concentrated calories on to the table in front of me and caught the tall woman’s eye. ‘Can I get you something?’

‘Thanks. I’m waiting for someone.’

As I worked my way around the plate I imagined what he would be like. When someone came in through the door we looked up together. There was a girl with a message from the waitress’s boyfriend and they spoke together in low tones over the counter for a couple of minutes. When she’d gone a delivery man came in with two crates of fruit-juice.

The tall woman left her table and walked to the door, straining her neck to look up and down Goodramgate. She sighed and returned to her chair. We exchanged smiles. I don’t know what mine was like because it was accomplished with a mouth full of toast and bacon, but hers was tired, resigned; a smile which said this-is-not-gonna-happen.

I wondered if I should offer her hope, mention how difficult it was to park or come with a platitude about the reliability of public transport in the early 21st century. But I didn’t want to make it worse.

I was at the mopping-up stage when the next customer arrived. The tall woman came to her feet immediately and their faces lit up, I supposed with relief, but when I think about the moment now, it was more than that.

The newcomer was past her prime. If the 21st June is the height of summer, she was somewhere around the beginning of August. She looked good and if she’d been let in on my metaphor she’d probably have seen herself at some point towards the end of May.

They touched fingers and the second one slipped her coat from her shoulders and said something I couldn’t hear. The tall one whispered the other’s name, ‘Galatea.’

The waitress left the bar and came over to them with her pad. ‘Ready to order?’

Neither of the women acknowledged her. Their moment had rendered all of us invisible and mute. Outside of Galatea and her lover there may have been shadows and rhythms but nothing of any account.

But there were lots of old friends around and microscopic hors d’oeuvres served by (mostly) smiling waitresses kitted out in The Crown’s interpretation of Victorian propriety.

Ann Cleeves and Martin Edwards introduced us to their separate groups of tame Americans, over here for the festival and a couple of other stops. Ann is shepherding her group back to the States on the Queen Mary, while I believe Martin is simply waving goodbye on the dockside.

British parties consist of disparate groups of three or more individuals who form a fortress with their backs to the room, thus forbidding entry to all but the brave. We still managed a few words with Natasha Cooper, Lindsey Davis, Jean Rogers and Roger Cornwell.

We spoke at length about old and new times with Val McDermid and her partner, Kelly Smith of Bloody Brits Press (my American publisher).

And suddenly all but three hours had cruised on by and we were approaching the witching hour. There was just time to catch up with the Donna Moore gang before we were travelling back home through the night.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”

Some big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous.

Murder – A Beginner’s Guide, with Kathy Lette and John Mortimer was one of the events that didn’t work for me. Lette wrote How to Murder Your Husband. Mortimer created Rumpole.

The two of them were obviously friends and may have done similar gigs together in the past. But Lette was patronising towards Mortimer, begging him in little-girl fashion to repeat this or that story and constantly telling the rest of us how much she adored him. Similarly, she tried to ingratiate herself with the women in the audience, referring to them collectively as ‘girls’.

Wrapped in a sliver of red and white cotton on a particularly cold afternoon she was brimming with sound bites and carefully prepared one-liners and succeeded in lifting the temperature not a jot.

Mortimer, for his part, was hampered by his microphone being too far away from his wheelchair, making it difficult for us to hear what he said. But apparently he was only telling the stories he usually tells, so we may not have missed much.

I had a very nice snooze.

But I’m already ahead of myself. Last night we went to bed around 1.00 am, the same time as the wedding guests were leaving. We thought we’d seen the last of the marquis and marchioness as they hadn’t shown since supper. Obviously filthy rich, we thought they’d found somewhere better and climbed up onto the king-size mattress alone, just the two of us. But the helicopter came back, must’ve been about three-thirty in the morning, down into the hotel carpark. I don’t know if that’s legal, landing in a carpark. Shouldn’t they have a helipad or something? Helipad? Is that a word. I must’ve picked that up from John Grisham, one of those guys. I’ve never needed the word at all my whole life, and there it is, right when I need it on a trip to Hay.

I was vaguely aware of them joining us in the bed, tried to shut it out, concentrate on my breathing, but there were at least one pair of cold feet to contend with.

This morning they were there in all their glory, completely unconscious as we extricated ourselves from their embrace. In the carpark their yellow helicopter was leaning dangerously to one side, one foot crushing the back bumper of a silver-grey merc.

On site we joined Elif Shafak and Maureen Freely as they read from their books and discussed their work as it related to the modern Turkish state. Elif Shafak’s reading from her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, was wonderful, and she spoke with great conviction about her life and her mission as a novelist.

As the child of a one-parent family, and someone who has moved around the world with some regularity, she was conscious of continuity and regarded her writing as the existential glue that ties the different experiences of her life together. She has lived in France, Spain, Germany and the USA as well as in Turkey.

Language shapes us, she told us with conviction. We don’t shape it. She said that she wrote in English when she wanted precision, but that when she was after emotion she could only use Turkish.

She was convinced that Turkey was a society of collective amnesia. The language has been purged of so many words that many people can’t even read tombstones any more, and this denial of language and its connections with meaning she saw as a metaphor for the rupture between the past and the present.

The writer had two grandmothers and each of them interpreted Islam in completely different ways. The one worshipped a god who ruled by fear, and the other worshipped a god who ruled through love.

In conclusion she looked forward to a society and a world which could make peace with people’s differences. This to replace a society which supports islands of people who don’t hear each other.

I’ve got lots of other notes as well, but this post is already too long. I’ll be back soon, but not too soon.

Everything depended upon things being served up to the precise moment they were ready. The beef, the bayleaf, and the wine – all must be done to a turn. To keep it waiting was out of the question.

Boeuf en daube is Mildred’s masterpiece. Mrs. Ramsay’s maid spends three days preparing the dish for the famous dinner party in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

. . . an exquisite scent of olives and oil and juice rose from the great brown dish as Marthe, with a little flourish, took the cover off. The cook had spent three days over that dish. And she must take great care, Mrs Ramsay thought, diving into the soft mass, to choose a specially tender piece for William Bankes. And she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of savoury brown and yellow meats and its bay leaves and its wine . . .

This is the one time in the work of Virginia Woolf where she allows herself to indulge in a domestic scene involving the preparation and presentation of food. The Boeuf en daube is so good that Mrs Ramsay cannot avoid taking the credit for it.

“It is a triumph,” said Mr Bankes, laying his knife down for a moment. He had eaten attentively. It was rich; it was tender. It was perfectly cooked. How did she manage these things in the depths of the country? he asked her. She was a wonderful woman. All his love, all his reverence, had returned; and she knew it.

“It is a French recipe of my grandmother’s,” said Mrs Ramsay, speaking with a ring of great pleasure in her voice.

*

My friends were coming Saturday evening, so I bought the meat on Thursday, we were going to be six people so I went for about
1½ kilos Chuck (or braising) Steak, which I cut into fairly large pieces, 5cm x 2.5cm, trimmed of fat.

The meat went into a dish and was covered with
Thyme, Rosemary, Parsley, a couple of Bay Leaves, 2 tea-spoons of crushed Juniper Berries, black pepper, 5 or 6 cloves of garlic, 1 tea-spoon of mustard, a shake of cumin and corriander, a dollop of Olive Oil and enough Red Wine to cover. This was then placed in the fridge and allowed to marinate until the next day.

Friday, about mid-day, I fished the pieces of beef out of the marinade and rolled them in flour and browned them, a few pieces at a time, in olive oil.
Next I sliced about
2oo gms of Bacon into lardons and cooked until crisp. When they were ready they covered the bottom of the casserole dish.
250 gms of Button Mushrooms were peeled and cooked in the fat left over from the bacon. I put the mushrooms to one side.
On top of the bacon lardons went
2 large onions, finely diced
2 large carrots, roughly chopped
3 sticks Celery, sliced
Then the mushrooms, followed by the beef. What was left of the marinade was poured into the casserole dish with a little chicken stock and the rest of the bottle of red wine.
Finally I blanched, peeled and sliced 2 large tomatoes and placed them on top of the other ingredients and fitted the lid.
It cooked in the oven for an hour at 150 degrees Centigrade or Gas Mark 2, or until it started bubbling, then I turned the heat down very low and slow cooked it for another three or four hours.
It’s important that you don’t try to cut down the cooking time. If you cook boeuf en daube quickly, or on a high heat, the meat will be tough.

Saturday, I reheated the casserole, beginning a couple of hours before it was served. (Of course, you can serve it the same day it is cooked, but it is always better the day after.) When it was ready I used a slatted spoon to remove the meat and vegetables, piling them high on a huge earthenware platter.
Around the edges of the platter I placed plain Noodles which had been boiled and tossed in olive oil and garlic. Immediately before serving I spooned some of the liquid from the casserole over the meat and vegetables and threw onto the full platter a handful of black pitted olives.

Green salad was served on the side.

Was it a triumph? I couldn’t possibly say.

We spoke about the differing ways that one creates character for the novel and for the stage. Although there are many similarities there are also significant differences, mainly drawn from the fact that character on the stage is presented in human form by an actor, while in the novel it is a mere construction of words.

As a result of this event and the many conversations we have had recently, Mike and I have decided to team up to repeat the event (more or less) in other locations, libraries and literary ferstivals.

Might be coming your way soon. You can run, but you sure can’t hide.