Hardeep Singh Kohli: Don't throw a wobbly over tomato jelly

Published on Saturday 1 August 2009 22:55

JELLY. Jelly is definitely regarded as a sweet thing. With ice cream. No children's party would be complete without the saccharine-sweet wobble of a fluorescent jelly. Adults too are more than happy to spike their jelly with vodka or champagne as a route to comfortable numbness.

Yet I found myself faced with a plate of savoury jelly at lunch the other day. I was at a pal's restaurant and the chef is a lovely guy called Colin frae Glasgow. What Colin does with food is truly remarkable. And the fact that he is a fellow Weegie only makes me prouder. But I did find myself wondering where he got the idea for tomato jelly from? I don't remember seeing much of it doon Partick way. But, never one to shirk a new experience, I ploughed my spoon in to the red savoury jelly. (A spoon: it's jelly after all.) What an amazing flavour! I'm not about to suggest we all start a trend for savoury jelly, but this one, embellished as it was with coriander, onion and soft white Italian cheese was a most pleasant assault on the senses. I'm going to ask Colin if he'll do a sausage supper jelly next week. Why not?

The joke's on me as I stand up for comedy

Three days. Seventy-two hours. A few thousand minutes and then I'll be there. Forty years of desire, dreams and doubt will (hopefully) evaporate into the ether and the show will go on. At 7pm on Wednesday 5 August I will perform my first ever stand-up comedy show; the first of 25.

It's been a surprisingly serious journey to this point, this verge, this edge. I had always had a nagging doubt that perhaps I should try stand-up. I grew up educated, entertained and informed by some of the finest comics that have graced a stage. Chic Murray, Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard... the list of brilliant comedians is endless. What made me think I could offer anything new to an already well provided for world?

Yet the thought tugged at me relentlessly through my thirties as I discovered that I enjoyed the idea of a roomful of folk listening to me. (The jury is most definitely out as to whether the enjoyment is reciprocated.) My wee brother, who is taller, more handsome and significantly funnier than me never got on with his few dalliances into the harsh and unforgiving world of live comedy. His face still turns ashen when he is reminded of the car-crash comedy evenings he had to endure: he was unfortunate with the wrong audience and the right material. I have to confess that this served as a cautionary tale for me; if he cannae make it work what hope was there for me?

There is of course the sanguine separator of those that are funny over a dining table, at a family function or at work. Genuinely funny folk who have you in stitches with the minimum of effort. Their journey to onstage entertainers is not an automatic occurrence. The corollary are those humourless comics who can have you gasping for air for an hour, sending your mind on all sorts of funny flights of fancy but who are devoid of any charm in the bar immediately thereafter. I am neither but find myself falling somewhere in the middle. Occasionally funny on stage and occasionally funny in the bar. But one wonders if that is enough? Well, I'll find out soon enough.

Time's on the wrong side of the tracks

Sometimes time just doesn't do you any favours. I was in Leicester on Wednesday and I missed the fast train which would have got me home in an hour. I sat on the rain-drenched platform for 40 minutes waiting for the slow train home only to hear upon it's arrival that it had become the very slow train, taking an extra hour to get me home. I lost nearly two hours. And without a buffet car or a trolley. And then we wonder where our time goes.

Lose yourself in Lanark for a life-changing experience

Picking a favourite book for some folk is like picking their favourite vital organ: next to impossible. What makes a book so special that it elevates it above all others? We are blessed in the English and Scots speaking world to have a plethora of paperbacks worthy of greatness. I have read and loved Orwell, a man who inspired my own political philosophy and thought; Ronnie Renton (my old and beloved English teacher) gave me Iain Crichton Smith, a gift that continues to give; my life would be sadly monochromatic without the breathtaking brilliance of Ian Rankin, surely one of the finest, most accomplished, living story tellers? So many great books. So many astonishingly astute authors.

Yet on this sea of superlatives floats a single text that will forever be inextricably connected to my heart and my soul. Lanark by Alasdair Gray is a work of flawed genius, a magnum opus with the broadest sweep, the widest horizon. And it, for me, is peerless in the world of literature.

I decided to re-read the book last week, the first book I will have read for pleasure since last year's onerous Man Booker deliberations. Canongate issued a 25th anniversary edition with a foreword by William Boyd. Boyd, himself a great writer, made mention of why certain books impact on a reader. He mentioned the time in life when one reads having a profound effect. I concur. I first read it some 22 years ago and was utterly swept up in it. I had only just turned 18. It was the first book that made me think that perhaps my hometown was known outside of the city limits. It was rare to read literature about Glasgow and Glaswegians. Lanark was unashamed in its Glaswegianism yet had an internationalism about it.

I also at the time would enjoy the occasional pint of Furstenberg in The Ubiquitous Chip bar, the longtime watering hole of Gray. It was an amazing feeling to be drinking beer in a bar standing a few feet from the man that had written a book that had changed your life. That is exactly what Lanark did for me. And it is with a deep breath that I started re-reading. As Boyd says, it is more commonly the case that a book read again in later life disappoints. Years of experience and knowledge render great writing as pedestrian, amazing stories as anodyne. Neither could be further from the truth with Lanark. The book is better now than I remember. The story resonates more deeply, Duncan Thaw's alienation is more pathetic, Unthank's darkness yet darker. I'm ensuring that I read slowly: I'm in no rush to end the enjoyment.