Peter Rhodes on crunchy burgers, foreign furniture and an orgy of hindsight over Russia
As you may have noticed over the past few days, the Wagner Group's armed rebellion in Russia has led to a sudden explosion in the number of Russia-experts on telly and in the newspapers. Many of them are predicting that Wagner's aborted advance on Moscow has left Putin weakened and may even lead to civil war in Russia and the collapse of Putin's state.
All very impressive. But do you recall a single one of these Russia-experts predicting the rebellion before it actually happened? Me neither. Hindsight – the growth industry of our age.
Meanwhile, one of the national newspapers seems to be running short of military experts. Its online pages have a photograph of a man in Ukraine contemplating a bombed road with the caption: “A resident looks at an explosion hole.” An explosion hole, eh? Or as some people call them, craters.
Eager to do our bit to kick-start the UK economy, we decided to buy a new chest of drawers and loyally visited a family-owned furniture shop. Turns out their range of furniture not only costs the earth but is made in Germany and takes four months to arrive. It's all very well blaming the post-Brexit paperwork for such delays but what's happened to our home-grown British furniture industry and our economy in general? Too many graduates, not enough joiners?
A Michelin-starred New York chef, David Chang, has shaken the entire barbecue culture (oxymoron) to its roots by declaring that burgers should never be cooked over an open flame. Better by far, he says, to use a frying pan. Best of all, if you take my advice, is to barbecue them – but in the dark.
To explain. Some years ago a pal and I ended up at a garden party being put in charge of the barbecue. We were inexpert but keen to help. Early in the proceedings the garden lights blew a fuse. We carried on cooking in pitch blackness and got many compliments from guests who asked how we made the burgers so flavoursome and sort of crunchy. When the lights came on we found we'd been barbecuing not only the burgers but also the plastic film between the burgers. Yummy.
