Waitrose Weekend...

Waitrose Weekend...

...summarised here to save you the trouble. Vietnamese. That's the 2013 buzzword. Along with triple-dip and referendum. Referen-dumb-and-dumber, even.

Vietnamese, according to the trade magazine The Grocer, is the next big thing. Cuisine-wise. Waitrose are peddling 'kits' for people too middle-class to visit an ethnic supermarket. A pho kit (how you put noodles, vegetables, meat and water into kit form baffles me, but then I'm properly thick in that department). They're also selling a dipping sauce. This will be fish and soy sauces, with some garlic and chilli thrown in and sold at £exorbitant / fluid ounce.

We had some fantastic Vietnamese food in America. The dishes were highly flavoured, yet light, garnished with unexpected mint and sweet basil leaves. I love street markets and speciality markets. Anything a Waitrose or other supermarket has on the shelves will already be old news.

The wonderful Alan Davies talks about going to the grocers with his mum, where their big leather bag was filled with loose, muddy, dusty spuds. There's green credentials before they were invented. I remember going out with one of those bags, some coins, and a note listing what I was to come back with. I handed the note and the coins to the grocer, and went home with a bag full of loose, unwrapped, unpackaged vegetables, and the change. He says that you don't see spuds with mud on now. I have seen some new potatoes that seem to have a sanitised, clean, sandy, rust coloured coating which looks suspiciously sprayed on to please anyone longing for the good old days.

I had the misfortune to miss out on hitting the CD button in time, and recently heard a supermarket spokesman talking about 'second-class' carrots, meaning those that have not grown into the perfect tapered torpedo shape demanded by the modern consumer. Apparently they might have to stop throwing away these misshapes. What a terrible waste. Maybe if they concentrated more on taste and less on cosmetics we'd all be happier and healthier.

Brian Turner writes about haggis (which is absolutely delicious, as are faggots and most things that get that childish nose upturning reaction from too many) and rumbledethumps, which also sound fantastic: mashed swede and spuds, mixed with braised green cabbage, topped with mature cheese and baked in the oven. That's straight on the to-do list. In times of wariness about national stereotypes and ethnicity, it seems the sweaties are widely regarded as robust enough for the new rules not to apply. His article is Burns' Night based, but gets a mention of wearing a kilt in there, refers to himself as a sassenach, there's Scotland the Brave played by a piper and drams of malt whiskey. He signs off with 'Och aye the noo'. Brian! No deep fried Mars bars for afters?

Richar Hawley – Truelove's Gutter

I stumbled on Coles Corner in a second hand / charity / junk shop. Bit of luck, there. Ex-Pulp guitarist, I think. Beautiful, mellow voice. Real Sunday morning stuff.

Meanwhile, back at Waitrose Weekend...

...Simon Williams, who looks like an anorexic Christopher Walken, and apparently was a star in the original (was there a non-original?) Upstairs Downstairs, chooses his six best books. Nice one Simon. Tale of Two Cities. A PG Wodehouse collection, an Ian McEwan, a Rose Tremain. See? Lidl just give you pictures of next week's offers and Sainsbury want to charge you for their magazine.

There's even a sudoku and crossword. There's the link to book the view from the Shard tour. The Guardian critic said the best thing about the view from the Shard is that you can't see the Shard. Bit picky, that. There's sport on the back page with Jon Agnew and Clare Balding and some telly pages I skipped past quickly as there was a photo of the odious Jeremy Clarkson, my tip for a good bet to follow Saville and Stuart Hall.