Hope and Greenwood

Did you spot your favourite chubby confectioners on Market Kitchen this week making Sugar Plums? We had a ball. Mr Greenwood ‘thumbed’ ganache into some prunes and I missed a golden opportunity to lick Aldo Zilli. I did however lovingly stroke Amanda Lamb’s baby bump, she is one very beautiful lady.

Later on, and back in the real world, I was partaking of the Selfridges’ lift towards the shoe department discussing Casper’s Christmas retail needs with Mr G.
Long gone are the Spiderman Webshooting Gloves or the Power Rangers Light Up Trainers, now it’s all interfaced keyboards with multitudinous wires and unnecessary twiddly ladknobs, man tackle inspired gadgetry and Jack Daniel’s.

Back in the lift I am regaling Mr G with the following mother-son banter,

‘… Casper said to me this morning, ‘Just go to Applecrumble and Filtch mum.”

‘But it is dark, dingy, pumping club,’ I barked with old lady horror, ‘and there are muscly, waxed breasted, 18 year old boys, without tops on, who disturb me. I am flesh and blood after all and it may bring on a menopausal flush. What do you want? A £300 trappers hat made from Canadian moose fur or perhaps a polar bear lined, ski gilette to wear on the 37 bus to Croydon? One would hate you to look like everyone else Mr Neon-Weirdy-Girlboy.’

‘Look mum’, he says patiently, ‘you are not going to go to A & F and buy something shit, you are a smart woman you will find something nice.’

The lady next to me in the lift pipes up,

‘Go and buy the cheeky bugger an acrylic, banana yellow jumper, that will teach him.’

This very morning I have taken myself to Age Concern and bought a jolly beetroot coloured jumper, resplendent with a delightful teddy bear motif, for £2.50, originally from C&A Clockhouse I do believe. I have hidden the moose fur hat and popped the teddy bear jersey into the Applecrumble and Filtch carrier bag.

Oh the deep filled mince pie joy of being a mother and taking pleasure from causing ones children Christmas present pain.

For those who missed it, the recipe for Sugar Plums can be found in the recipe section.

Makes about 40 Sugar Plums

Ingredients 

500g good Prunes (Sainsburys do a good organic D’Agen plum) 

For the Ganache

150ml (5fl oz) extra thick double cream

150g (5oz) Plain chocolate, broken into bits

1 oz (25g) of unsalted butter

Small splosh of brandy, 1 for the ganache and 1 for the cook

For dipping

500g (16oz) Plain Chocolate

Generous Palm full of Granulated Sugar

Method
1. Put the cream and butter into a small pan and bring to the boil.

2. Remove from the heat and add 150g (5oz) of the chocolate pieces and a small splosh of brandy.

3. Stir gently until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth, check by putting your finger in several times and licking it.

4. Allow to cool, you can pop it in the fridge if you like, or preferably make it the day before. You will think that this runny sauce will never thicken, but it will be as firm as a pert bottom in time.

5. While you are patiently waiting for the mixture to cool and have hidden it in the bottom of the laundry basket lest you eat it all, remove the stones from the prunes, if they have them, by making a cut down the long side of the prune.

6. Using a teaspoon spoon the ganache into the open prune cavity, it doesn’t matter how messy this gets, in fact the messier the better, I take much pleasure from throwing caution.Sandwich two prunes together with ganache in the middle. 

7. Place the remaining 500g/16oz of chocolate in a heat proof bowl and place over a pan of simmering water until the chocolate has melted. The bowl should not touch the water or the chocolate will burn.

8. Using a fork, or two, dip each individual prune into the chocolate until it is covered on all sides. Place the smothered prune on a sheet of baking parchment. Distract yourself, take the dog for a walk, paint your nails or summink.

9. When the chocolate is on the verge of set, and your nail varnish is dry, roll the covered prune in a generous heap of granulated sugar. They will keep for 3-4 days in the fridge though it is unlikely they will last beyond tea time.

10. Wrap in squares of cellophane and tie with a fine purple ribbon, dangle your plums coquettishly from your Christmas tree.
 

Casper, super thesp, is currently strutting his restoration stuff as the pox riddled, womanising, drunken, 2nd Earl of Rochester, Sir John Wilmott in the Libertine. He is using Mr G as a reference point.

I am rehearsing with him in the calm of my fazzer and bazzer ’string’ drawing room, where nothing bad could ever happen, except when the fireplace fell off the wall during a particularly gratuitous episode of Murder She Wrote.

There is posturing and hanky twirling and he is wearing Mr G’s shoes. I have no idea why. Perhaps in the spirit of Beryl Reid.
This play is a bit of a shocker when one has a lady life full of lace hankies and Bronnley Lemon Guest Soaps, where nothing comes between me and my Jane Asher bun tin.

How does one rehearse a boy gobble scene as an 18th century whore with ones 18 year old son? As luck would have it I have never been a whore with sentiment and find deep down some literary chutzpah, and pull it off. Verbally that is.

Casper stays in character for the rest of the evening and requests mum’s taxi to his chum’s house.
‘Go whore’, says the Earl of Rochester in his Jones the Bootmakers finest footwear, ‘fetch your car keys and bring round my carriage, for I, the Earl of Rochester require transportation to Nigel’s yard whence I will plunder the pants of the many whores of James Allen’s Girls’ School, feast on Cap’n Birdseye Chicken Dippers, sup some fine Breezers and drag on a couple of Marlboroughs, hurry up motherwhore it’s freezing out here’.

However none of this muck prepared me for an incident, the very next morning, involving naked women, liquorice wands, Cillit Bang and an email from Miss Dolly Mixture at our Dulwich shop.

From: Miss Dolly Mixture
Sent: 06 December 2008 10:00
To: Miss Hope
Subject: There are naked girls in the shop!!

Morning Miss H,

The photographer and his team of nubile girls have arrived from Loaded Magazine.

He just said, “Pull on her knickers with your teeth Suzy”! And then brought out the baby oil.

Who knew a liquorice wand could be so erotic!

Love from
Miss Dolly Mixture

From: Miss Hope
Sent: 06 December 2008 10:16
To: Miss Dolly Mixture
Subject: RE: There are naked girls in the shop!!

Mr G is on his way down to you, to . . . ‘protect your modesty’.

Please keep a damp cloth and some Cillit Bang close to hand.

Miss Hope
Head Girl
PS Please can you hide the giant jelly snakes?

From: Miss Dolly Mixture
Sent: 06 December 2008 10:21
To: Miss Hope
Subject: RE: There are naked girls in the shop!!

One of them is using a strawberry lollipop to hide her tuppence! 

Now they are ‘lezzing off!’

Mr G has arrived, my goodness his telephoto lens in enormous.

Love from
Miss Dolly Mixture
 

Here follows a phone conversation with my mother, she is unhinged.

Me,

 ‘We were packing boxes of organic chocolate buttons until 11 last night, I fantasise about selling up and running away to Norfolk.’

Granny Hope, trilling shrilly on the wrong side of normal,

‘Oh no, you mustn’t sell up and run away to Norfolk, not with current slump in house prices! You will end up selling your house for tuppence ha’penny to a pikey builder with snotty children and a fat wife with long greasy hair and carrier bags. You will know him because his eyes will be too close together and he will walk like a cat. They will fleece you out of your door knobs and light bulbs, and his tattooed gypsy brothers will strangle your hamster in the night and singe your net curtains with their tab ends. I forbid you to run away to Norfolk!’’

Me,

‘Casper has run away from home again, and I found cigarettes in his bedroom.’

Granny Hope, sensible Clarke’s clad toes, teetering over the cliff edge of reason squeals,

‘You must change your locks! Except he will break the windows with his gun which he will acquire from a gang of  boys from the North Peckham Estate who shoot each other for sport. His new juvenile, robber comrades will pilfer from your Lulu Guinness clutch. Worse, you will wake up and find your Lladro collection is missing! They will rummage in your knicker drawer looking for jewels, Pringles and toast. The rozzers will hove up and beat you with their sticks. I forbid him to smoke!’

Me,

 ‘A couple of my friends are retiring to Spain, sounds really nice’.

Granny Hope, reaching a peak of hysteria alerting all feral beasts within a 5 miles radius to leave chocolate calling cards on the well trimmed lawns of Dulwich, 

‘You can’t go to Spain! People go to Spain on cheap flights and build houses. After 6 months the Spanish pigs carve toll roads through their olive groves, despite the fact that they have ingratiated themselves by eating fried squid. Their Burberry shopping bags are torn asunder as they weep into their sangria. Their virgin daughters are raped by swarthy moustached gringos with tight pants who piss in their infinity pools, I forbid you to go to Spain!’

Me,

‘I licked Heston Blummenthal this week; he tasted of plimsolls, Cheesy Wotzits and Butterscotch Angel Delight’.

Granny Hope,

 ‘I would have thought he would be flavoured with KeyLime Pie, Engine Grease and Radish. My lovely Phil Vickery was in Gastric Band Monthly spending a little and living a lot with an Aldi Canadian Lobster, I bet he tastes of Minty Peas, Nivea and Tapioca. I’m going to pop into Joan next door, her son plays the tuba you know, and tell her you have licked a celebrity, this will do wonders for my credit at the newsagents.

I command you to lick more celebrities.’

I am cleaning, boy I hate cleaning, and this is the sort that makes you strangle a coat hanger to rescue your AP pants out from behind the radiator. There are traces of cat soirees on top of the fridge and the gory left-for-dead remnants of the mouse pole dancer Miss Mousey Mirkin, or possibly a bit of raw sausage culled in a pool of ketchup. Casper and new squeeze Monica have created an Everest of boy-cheese laundry which will require Sherpa Tenzing and his performing tampons to conquer it.

I receive an email from lovely Nik at the Covent Garden H and G. Nik is adorable, cute and very popular, he goes to Wizard of Oz parties dressed as The Emerald City.

From: Nik
Sent: Sat 18/10/2008 12:24
To: Miss Hope
Subject: Admirer

Hi Miss Hope,

Just to let you know you have a lovely admirer in the form of a guy working somewhere in Bluewater. He’s brought you in a little present and was singing your praises. He’s an absolute fan of the blog. He’s left his details in a card. Thought you might also like to know that he described Mr. G as a mix between Simon Callow and Patrick Stewart.

I’ve left the present downstairs and will put it on the pile with stuff for you to take to Sugar HQ. Have a good weekend!

Nik x

From: Miss Hope
Sent: 18 October 2008 13:47
To: Nik
Subject: RE: Admirer

Dear Nik,

Was he a mentalist/Bedlam outpatient/Peter Sutcliffe’s brother?
Does the present smell/tick/ooze?
Was he young/old/handsome/solvent?
Did he have a guide dog/wooden leg/Jeremy Beadle flipper hand?

For your information if Mr.G looked anything like Patrick Stewart I would be getting my knees dirty a lot more often, and I’m not talking about cleaning the oven.

Miss Hope x

From: Nik
Sent: Sat 18/10/2008 14:43

To: Miss Hope
Subject: Admirer

Dear Miss Hope,

All of the below in bold-

Was he a mentalist/Bedlam outpatient/Peter Sutcliffe’s brother?
Does the present smell/tick/ooze?
Was he young/old/handsome/solvent?
Did he have a guide dog/wooden leg/Jeremy Beadle flipper hand?

. . .  plus a tattoo of you on his left breast (yes, he had a left breast).

It is Christmas at H and G Sugaropolis, yes already. I am duty bound to tell you that there is no evidence of confectionery complacency at H and G, nay, just the last stages of fully blown hysteria caused by a mallow crisis.

Miss Rosey Apple emailed me;

‘Trying to stay calm have eaten a lot of crisips

advised Big Yellow Store that we could deliver directly to store at which point my head almost exploded. Put the phone down to answer call from Mary from Geordie Store who must have her Christmas order by Friday

As for the lack of Bloody Mallows I keep emailing Mr Fluffy Mallow Co. all they can tell me is that they have left, but they don’t seem to understand what day or when. They are foreign. Apparently the mallows are on the British Channel, as a last resort I can hi jack a pedalo from Dulwich Park pond and in true Dunkirk style sail over there and rescue them.

I have every thing crossed including my eyes that they will arrive today’

Miss Hope Replies;

‘Rosey, here is The Plan.

Put the phones on answer machine, then we can all hide in the kitchen, eat salt and vinegar crisips and Birds Trifle with sprinkles with our claw like, repetitive strained, ribbon tying hands.

Mr Greenwood will serve oysters and champagne using his hairy belly as a hostess trolley, you can dance your special, ‘Dawn Porter Crisp-and-Dry-Cooking-Oil Samba’.

The warehouse manager can gleefully accept his part in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, wear a flappy arsed, mad person’s, long sleeved coat and drool into his Tizer.

The packing team can do a jolly 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle depicting ‘Evidence of Interbreeding at Yates Wine Lodge, Wolverhampton’.

I will, of course, be on my sofa, tearing up bills and feeding them into the silent mouth of a life sized effigy of Vanessa (that will take up quite a bit of space).’

Miss Rosey Apple replies;

‘Can I have chicken crisips? Salt and vinegar plays havoc with my ulcer.’

I have been surfing for interesting blogs and I find myself reaching for my smelling salts. It is my own fault, I should never have typed ‘raising agent’ into a Google search.

One of the most interesting so far involves allotment excesses and folk who date vegetables, in one particular case a marrow.

I am really shocked! Perhaps I am naive, just too nice, too wholesome, and frankly a little old fashioned. I am away to burn some feathers under my schnoz and have a lie down in a dark room to think about butterflies and pretty flowers.

Later in the office, I quiz The Duke about allotment fun, ‘Absolutely,’ says Mr.Toffingham Duke, wiping foie gras off his Eton tie, ‘Lots of people do that!’ he quips, his vintage Rolex twinkling.

It is just me? Have I missed something? Have I spent too long on tapestries and shortcrust pastry? Are my lady eyes blinded by jolly bruschetta picnics and An Affair to Remember?

It is the evening of the proms and I am sitting on my lady sofa with my friend John, a cup of builders and a Ripple. John is gay, obviously gay, he likes Diana Ross, Eurovision, the Wizard of Oz, Rear Window, Laduree macaroons and weeps over the untimely departure of His Princess. I’m not supposed to know he is gay, and I wonder if the skinny guy he has been living with for 20 years, who is also not gay, knows John is in fact - gay? Someone should tell him to put paper on the seat and refrain from hanging his jocks on the same radiator.

John fingers the horn buttons on his Liberty waistcoat and takes a sip of his Campari and Vimto.

I am regaling him re the demise of the marrow and The Duke’s veggie fetish when it occurs to me that perhaps John has some comestible secrets of his own.

‘So, John, my old chum,’ I chitter-chatter, ‘have you ever molested a marrow?’
‘No Miss H, my angel, my chum, I have never molested a marrow, I would have remembered a marrow, I suspect marrows are memorable lovers .’

‘A squash perhaps?’ I hope he says no, or my affair with Covent Garden Pumpkin and Orange Soup will be history.
‘Oh no Miss H, I have never snuggled a squash, certainly not, though the night is young and I hear that squashes are well bred, polite vegetables apt to call one the next day.’

‘Any vegetables at all?’
‘No Miss H, my little sausage, my buddy, my pal, I have never gotten jiggy with a vegetable, I shun the Linda McCartney freezer section and abhor Aunt Bessie’s Cauliflower Cheese.’

‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves. . . ’

‘A fruit then, what about a fruit?’ Will I ever hush my stupid mouth?
‘Nope, I have never bonked a banana, molested a mango, poked a pineapple, or groped a grape, I live a quiet peaceful life, just me, skinny poof friend of 20 years (who is not gay, the very idea, how dare you) and my iguana, Liberace.’

‘Britain, never, never, never shall be. . . ’

I slump back into the plumptiousness of my lady sofa and we sit tapping our toes to the music. Economising is taking its toll and I have a big hole in my sock, there is whiff of Charlie by Lentheric from the scatter cushions and I have a pain up the side of my head promising sure death by excess Ripple snaffling before next Friday.

‘. . . slaves.’

‘Swarfega, Miss H,’ reminisces John, ‘is most unxious and yeilding, and a tad less cucumber-some than a marrow’.

‘That is a such a clean fanatasy John’, I blush, ‘ for a dedicated uphill gardener’.

I am having a Fat Attack. It won’t be the first or the last. I am a right chubster and no mistaking.

It is as if I am dragging around a pink Draylon sofa in my knickers with two winged armchair outriders and an Ikea pouff up my jersey. If I linger too long in John Lewis strangers will plop their carrier bags down and take advantage of my scatter cushions.

If this is not enough Dorian Gray has gone AWOL and I am confronted with the harsh overhead light of middle-age. There is no SJP here ladies, tripping around town in a child’s tutu and FMBs with a feathery frippery on top of her heed, how could her mother let her out without a vest? I am the real deal, a middle aged, saggy arsed, blancmange gutted, wibbly wobbly jelly being.

I am peering at my visage in the en suite mirror, pulling up my forehead, and thinking about the immediate benefit of Spanx and a fringe.

‘This’, I weep, as a grey hair falls into my G and T, ‘this,’ I cry, as I hoist my bosoms to the nipple height of an 18 year old, ‘is not the life I ordered!’

I am lying in bed with my favourite husband. He grabs the light switch with his free hand and fixes me with a rueful stare.

Switching the light off he exclaims,
‘Elle Macpherson!’

He turns the light on,
‘Jade Goody!’ he says

Light Off,
‘Angelina Jolie!’

Light on,
‘Bernard Manning!’

Light off,
‘This’ he says snuggling deeply and gratefully into my ample comforts, ‘this,’ he says burying his head in my warm  and wobbly valleys, ‘is a lot more wife than I ordered’.

I have been helping Mr G write his CV. If you are his ex wife I am very sorry, for everything.

Mr Greenwood
Sarf London
mrgreenwood@hopeandgreenwood.co.uk

OBJECTIVE

To run away to Norfolk, hang out with crack whores on Blakeney Quay, eat big pies, drink whisky with down and outs and drown happy in a sea squall with my beloved cat.

EMPLOYMENT

Aug 2005 – present      Hope and Greenwood Staff Motivator

Hope and Greenwood is a 1950s styled confectionery company. Since joining the company I have been responsible for successfully motivating my team to increase sales at both wholesale and retail. Using such phrases as ‘picture this. . .’ and ‘that’s not how you wrap an f****ing  pallet’, I have proved that my excitable and affable personality is a winner with my staff. One year I gave them all a car each as a summer bonus and we drove in convoy to the seaside where I cooked an organic barbeque consisting of rare treats such southern fried elephants wings. Later I ladled champagne into their eager mouths and entertained them with my banjo playing.

June 2002 – Aug 2005 Sales Manager – Mr. Chumley’s Fireplace Co.

Mr. Chumley’s is a premium fireplace show room specialising in fireplaces found in back gardens and skips, polished up a bit and sold to unsuspecting gay interior designers for £1million.

Responsibilities include:

• Liaising with Janet Cranky
• Selling some wobbly bits of marble
• Driving a big car
• Opening the Atlanta showroom when not engaged in watching King of the Hill
• Popping to the cafe next door for starburger and chips
• Emptying the San bin

Oct 1990 – June 2003   Unfaithful Husband

Working from home, I excelled at being an Unfaithful Husband, no stone was left unturned in my pursuit for skirt and earned the tile ‘Philanderer of the year 1995’ as awarded by Housewives on Heat Magazine. This position involved oversees travel.

Responsibilities included:

• Maintaining exercise flip flops to a high standard
• Being appropriately dressed for all occasions including 5 x identical M & S sweat shirts
• Organising Rapunzel tresses into manageable pony tails.
• Instrumental in the polishing of pikey earring.
• Diary and database management –  ie 4pm bandstand, bring waterproof square.
• Fleet manager. Push bike and rusty van.

Oct 1975  – Oct 1990   Married

• Instrumental in conception of baby
• Liaising with wife over conception of second baby
• Travel - Go to Pizza place
• More Travel - Go to pizza place a bit more
• Organising social diary and liaising with mates to meet at pizza place.
• Operation/maintenance of wine rack and beer cupboard.

Sep 1965 – Jun 1975

Moved some furniture about

Jan 1960 -  Sep 1965

Occasional trip to school

QUALIFICATIONS/SKILLS/HOBBIES
Pie Eating - MA
Drinking Rioja until unconscious – Spirit level
Snoring like Stuck Pig - O Level
Bog Hogging – BA (Hons)

REFERENCES

Available on request

Some of you may have had the pleasure of seeing your favourite chubby confectioner on the BBC Breakfast sofa with Sian and Bill last week. Yes that was me, looking floral and chummy without a care in the world, that was of course until I said the thing, a thing so vulgar I considered retiring to the green room where I would goad Mr. G into suffocating me with a chocolate bar wrapper.

On Tuesday arvo Miss Opal Fruit takes a call for the Beeb inviting me to talk about the re-re launch of The Wispa Bar.

‘So Miss Hope, may I call you Hope? What is so special about the Wispa?’ says telephone researcher boy, Graham.

‘Is it not transparent?’ I reply politely, ‘that The Wispa is the King of bubbly bars created by an aeration guru?’

‘Can you tell me, Hope, what makes the Wispa so much lovelier than the Aero?’ says Graham factually. Oh he is too dull for words.

‘The Aero is a mere poo stained serf administering to the needs of his smooth and creamy Majesty, The Wispa.’ Is it not obvious? I think tetchily.

‘But surely they are the same thing, just chocolate and bubbles?’ says Graham.

This man is a fool, he knows nothing and should be sent home to his mother where he can put the elastic bands on the lids of her home made jam, watch Countdown and leave his toe nails on the carpet.

 ‘The Wispa Bar, I reply steadily, trying to stay calm, ‘is a lover of a bar, a secret, sophisticated suitor.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t get it,’ says Graham who has clearly never hoed a lady garden let alone planted meadow mix in one.

‘It’s all about girth!’ I say, exasperated, ‘The Wispa is neither a builders crack Yorkie Bar nor a Linford Christie Mars Bar, THE WISPA BAR is a knob of chocolate, a steel todger, a love sausage, a beef bayonet, a pocket rocket, a pork sword, a Brighton rock, a bit of afternoon, the kids are at granny’s, let’s dance the mum and dad hokey cokey, of a chocolate bar. Does that help you at all?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says drearily, I still don’t get it.’ Nor will you ever I think.

Graham is unaware that The Wispa was once deemed too big for a lady’s gob and was reduced in size. Clearly Mr. Cadbury has never lived in the North East where we lasses are far more accommodating than southern, shandy swilling, weedy wets.

The car picks me up at some indecent hour. It is truly wrong to wear spangly heels before 6am and I am wearing not-so-magic pants and a dress I pulled out of the wash box.

After 3 fruit salads and 14 coffees in the green room, I am thrown onto the sofa brandishing a Sherbet Fountain.

‘Good morning Miss Hope, forget the Wispa Bar, I love Sherbet Fountains’, says the delightful Bill, boyishly.

‘So Bill,’ I retort as quick as a confectioner who knows a thing or two about Sherbet Fountains and the liquorice within, ‘are you a sucker or ……’, enormous pause where I realise I am on the path to hell and have no option but to finish the entire hateful, before 9am breakfast watershed, sentence, ‘……….…a licker?’

Oh I die the death of a million baby rabbits, wearing bonnets tied with pretty robin’s egg blue ribbons, skipping along a windy country road, oblivious of Mary Whitehouse’s combine harvester bearing down on them.

I’m a biter,’ says Bill, oh he is such a pro.

The Wispa Bar returns on October 6th.