Spectator Life

Philosophy has a new champion. MC Hammer, hip hop artist and record producer, known for songs like 'Can’t Touch This', used Twitter to respond to someone who dismissed philosophy as mere 'flirtation with ideas', and who claimed that science alone is 'commitment to the truth'. Hammer hammered him. 'You bore us', he said, pointing out that science has a dubious history, and needs philosophy to keep it in check, adding the wise words: 'When you measure, include the measurer.'  In fact, this will come as little surprise to his regular followers. His Twitter platform is rife with intellectually stimulating debate, and it’s a not a matter of a few pretentious fans wondering whether ‘Can’t Touch This’ refers to the question of immaterial transcendence.

Now that there's a chill in the air and it's getting dark at 4pm, it's time to turn to those comforting winter staples that get us through the bleaker months of the year. And with lockdown 2.0 in full swing, we have never needed these satisfying dishes more: Braised lamb shanks Lamb shanks are one of my favourite cuts to braise. When it comes to meat, braising is great for cooking tougher cuts – like shanks, but also the shoulder, neck and shortribs. It breaks down the connective tissues in the muscles; it’s this connective tissue that makes the meat chewy if cooked hot and fast. If cooked slowly, the connective tissue turns into gelatine, making the meat soft and tender – and also gives body to the sauce that forms around the meat, making it rich and luscious.

Every weekend Spectator Life brings you doses of topical trivia – facts, figures and anecdotes inspired by the current week’s dates in history. 20 February Gordon Brown (born 1951). Brown is blind in his left eye. Jack Straw is deaf in his right ear. When Brown was Prime Minister, Straw (the Lord Chancellor) sat to his left in Cabinet, meaning their awareness of each other was severely limited. Many said this was appropriate, given their strained relationship. Image: Getty 21 February Drew Barrymore (born 1975). When the actress (then six) was filming E.T., she found it impossible to look the puppet in both eyes at once, as they were so far apart. So director Steven Spielberg told her to concentrate on just one eye.

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it a little hard to get out of my own head, these days. I’m trying not to think about how long life has felt stalled, how many days we have spent inside the same four walls, save for a daily constitutional, how many more we have to do. Those projects of early lockdown – jigsaws, learning a new language, finally reading Moby Dick – have lost their allure. There’s little to define the days, or break them up; the weekends feel the same as the weekdays. In an attempt to get close to culinary mindfulness (or mindlessness, I really don’t mind) I’ve found myself reaching for dishes that don’t require a lot of thinking, but do need attention.

No-one is born knowing how to poach an egg. Indeed, the technique is hardly intuitive: the addition of a little vinegar, whisking the water to create a swirling vortex. Just as golfing enthusiasts barred from hitting the links have resorted to putting practice in their living rooms, a lazy lockdown weekend feels like an ideal time to perfect classic cooking techniques. Here are six to try. Spinning sugar Spun sugar is a guaranteed way of achieving collective ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from assembled guests at your next dinner party. Playing around with burning hot sugar is however the sort of thing that can tip you over the edge should you attempt it unpractised whilst trying to make polite conversation with the in-laws between courses.

Imagine, if you will, that there existed a television interview with Henry VIII. Sprawled in one of his Royal palaces with the interviewer nervously perched amongst the discarded chicken bones and giant dogs, what would he say? Would he be repentant about the beheadings, the adultery, the abject violence? Would he make us believe that his quest for an heir lay rooted in a deep and fervent respect for his bloodline? Definitely not. For the Tudors were monarchy proper; mysterious and shadowy, sheathed in transcendence. Monarchy before the mystery was replaced by the dull sheen of celebrity and its Instagram accounts, television interviews, zoom appearances and podcasts.

Claire Robinson, in (where else?) The Guardian, this week, announced that 'the phallic necktie is an outdated symbol of white male rule in New Zealand's parliament': 'The necktie echoes the shape of the codpiece… designed … to emphasise a European nobleman’s importance through his large phallic size. It is arrow shaped and directs the eye of an onlooker down towards a man’s groin.' Blimey. Newly elected Māori Party co-leader, Rawiri Waititi, meanwhile, refused to wear one in Parliament, referring to it as a 'colonial noose'.  Waititi carried the day. Ties are no longer obligatory law-maker apparel in the happy, Covid-free home of the Bungee Jump and Cloudy Bay. The kind of men who do like to assert alpha status no longer use ties.

The vagaries of the great British summer are uncertain enough without a deadly pandemic and lockdown thrown into the mix. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has revealed that, while there is still 'a lot of uncertainty' about booking holidays at home or abroad, he has already booked his own summer break in Cornwall. Frankly, if I wasn’t already put off the idea of a summer break in Blighty, the prospect of bumping into Matt Hancock and his knobbly white knees while paddling in the chilly Atlantic surf was the final nail in that coffin. I have the most wonderful childhood memories of holidays in the golden age before foreign package holidays were even a glint in Michael O’Leary’s eye.

Next Tuesday the banal humdrum of lockdown life will be interrupted, however briefly. No longer the sad, soggy Weetabix while listening to the daily hospitalisation numbers or Special K eaten at your makeshift desk. No, even if just for a couple of hours, next Tuesday is an opportunity to block out the Outlook calendar and have some fun in the kitchen. Shrove Tuesday. Pancake Day. It’s a funny old thing. We don’t have a celebratory day dedicated to trifle or sticky toffee pudding (though we should). Of course there’s logic to our scoffing our faces with pancakes on this day preceding Lent—it was traditionally the way to use up rich foods such as eggs, butter, milk and sugar before the fasting began.

Just a few minutes into watching the latest Netflix sensation Lupin — its biggest-ever French show — and I was giving some serious Gallic shrugs. It’s hugely popular: it has been no. 1 in the US and was the first French series to break into their top 10. Elsewhere, Lupin is vying for Bridgerton for the number one streaming spot. Inspired by Maurice Leblanc’s stories about the gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin, the show’s success has prompted fresh print runs of the books, first published in 1905. (Some had sold out on Amazon when I checked last week but have now been restocked.) But watching the show is a strangely dislocating and downright weird experience.

On the face of it, Wikipedia’s list of the key events of 1 February, 2013 seems impressively comprehensive, ranging from Hillary Clinton’s resignation as Secretary of State to a hurling player denying he’d won €10.6 million in the Irish lottery. What’s missing, though, is something that’s surely had a bigger impact on our daily — and nightly — lives than any of Wikipedia’s choices. On that day Netflix released its first original series, House of Cards, the same way it had released its earlier bought-in repeats: by making all the episodes available at once. Now that we know how successful both the show and the format proved, it’s easy to forget how risky this was, especially for a $100 million production.