pumpkinstrokemarrow

BH has been reading a book by Paul Theroux where she finds a snippet about going dolally, a bit of slang which I have occasionally come across in the past, meaning to go a bit gaga, but in a jolly and cheerful way. Hopeless but harmless. According to Theroux, the word came from the name of a mental hospital run by the Indian Army during the Raj to provide asylum for all the soldiers who went mad in the midday sun. Curiosity aroused, I ask OED who knows nothing about the word in any of the spellings that I try. But then we ask FIL, who says that it was the name of a large transit camp near Bombay, the camp through which, as it happens, he both entered and subsequently left India during his service there in the second war, more than 50 years ago. Not a mental hospital at all, although it was true that men sometimes went a bit funny while waiting there to ship out at the end of their tour. Demob happy. Finally, we ask Google Maps who finds the place in very short order, now known as the Deolali Cantonment. It seems that the Indian Indian Army was not so cheesed off with all things British that they found it necessary to raze this potent symbol of our rajtime authority to the ground. It rather looks as if they have just taken it over. Rather different to the experience in Israel where the Israelis have, certainly on occasion, made a point of trashing any facilities on land which they have been pushed into handing back to the Palestinians.

So presumably Theroux has unwittingly recycled a slightly shifted version of the story. Right sort of idea but wrong in detail.

Meanwhile, two not altogether satisfactory meaty experiences with meat from the Manor Green Road butcher. The fiirst concerned some sirloin steak, something I used to buy from time to time in the days when I used to cycle to Cheam. This steak was in good condition and I think I grilled it about right; still moist and just about pink in the middle. But shape bad, texture not great and flavour a bit thin. Shape bad in that the steak was not a thin (half inch thick) brick in shape. Rather a trapezium when viewed from above, a trapezium which tapered in thickness crosswise. Partly careless cutting and partly the inclusion in the sirloin steak lump meat which might have better been rib-eye steak. Texture and flavour probably down to the meat being of a lower grade than that from Cheam, maybe just passed through Scotland rather than reared in Scotland.

The second concerned a blade bone of pork, a joint we used to have quite often many years ago but had not had for some years. So the butcher neatly cuts the blade bone out of the pig and scores it. Just over 4lbs in weight. Rub salt into the scorings and cook the thing for an hour and a half at 180C, in a fan oven but starting from cold. The crackling turned out very well but some of the meat was a bit underdone, something I do not like in pork, partly because of parental anathemas of same on account of tape worms and such like pests. So not a butcher problem, but I do need to do something about the cooking time. Maybe start high and finish low with a much longer overall cooking time.