Victoria Josephine Fox

Moving to Essex was hard. I was six, nearly seven, and went to primary school, ever the optimist, expecting to be knocked down by a stampede of kids who literally could not wait to be the new girl's friend. It didn't happen. I was weird, and kids have a special way of sniffing out weird. Not only was I about a foot taller than all of them, I insisted on having boyishly short hair to keep my bonkers Irish barnet under control, and I read Dickens. A seven year old. Reading Dickens. If I had children at that school, I would assume some sort of Let The Right One In scenario, and keep them away from that new kid completely. Not only that, but the first five years of my life in Australia had been followed with a year of hanging out with my bumpkin cousins from Suffolk. Take the Melbourne accent, combine it with the Newmarket one, and you have the deeply unappealing amalgamation of Antipodean Questioning Intonation where everything is uncertain (It's a nice day? I have some Barbies? I like chips? ) , and sentences like 'asssss an 'orrible chickun, ut boites' (Apparently I once said that but I refuse to believe it). In short, it's a combination that makes you sound like you were just beamed in from Planet Stupid.

 Then I went to First Holy Communion Class and it all started to look up. I was the only kid there who didn't go to the Catholic primary, so I assumed the worst, and prepared to be ignored, or kicked in, or both. The terrifying nun (all nuns are terrifying, The Sound Of Music is full of shit) looked me up and down and said 'Oh yes, you aren't from St Francis are you? You can sit with Victoria'. Thus I ended up next to this kid that was an exemplar of what would happen if you allowed your Irish hair to grow; a halo of wild growth and a fringe that stuck out in front like the peak of a cap. We were issued with blue folders and some pictures of Jesus to colour in. Because nothing says religious devotion like keeping within the lines. Victoria was silently regarding me with large blue eyes. As soon as the nuns back was turned, she did the sort of mucousy sniff a Victorian street urchin would do, said 'Awlrite?' leaned across, and with a green crayola, drew a massive penis on my newly issued folder. It was of course, love at first sight.

Vic didn't mind that I was weird, because she was weird too. There was the hair for a start. And her insistence that she could breakdance, and that everyone must watch her displays, even though she just looked like someone had flipped a stag beetle onto its back in some Vaseline. And the fact that she played the flute. And had a wrestler for a Dad. In fact, she won all the prizes for weird.

Incidentally I'm not writing about her in this mournful past tense because she is DEAD or anything like that. She is alive and well and living in Jakarta, which I have barely forgiven her for (how DARE she have a life. Abroad.). Our friendship is now nudging the thirty year point so I like to think I know her well enough to do a recipe for her (she won't read it as Victoria lives in some sort of self imposed cultural black hole and has only just worked out what the internet is). Vic likes traditional food, and when she loves a food stuff has the deeply unappealing habit of referring to it as 'smeary'. As in 'That jacket potato was really smeary'. Possibly from the idea that the food stuff is so good you end up with it smeared round your face? I actually have no idea.

I have chosen rice pudding as when Vic first got her own place, my mother would send her food parcels. Like she was a war-torn country, as opposed to a twenty year old who had just got a mortgage (she was actually really broke and living on crisps and wine so in retrospect Mam may have saved her life, or at least prevented scurvy). Rice pudding was always the favourite. So Vickie, if you have worked out what blogs are in the year 2038, and you find this, hopefully this is really....smeary?

Last day of secondary school. What a pair of bellends.

Rice Pudding for Foxy

Ingredients

100g pudding rice
75g sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or extract if you prefer)
900ml of milk
150ml double cream
20g butter
Whole nutmeg

Method

1. Preheat oven to 140C

2. Melt the butter, then tip in the rice and sugar. Stir on a low heat until well coated.

3. Add the milk and cream. Then the vanilla bean paste. To be honest this is just a culinary conceit, I really only buy it because I like to sniff the jar, extract is a good alternative.

4. Bring the mixture up to a simmer, then add to an oven proof dish. Probably one deeper than the one I used, so you don't get spaffy looking stuff all over the floor of the oven.

5. Grate nutmeg over the top, to taste. For me, this is about half of a nutmeg but that is more because I like my house to smell nutmeg-y and am then struck with remorse when I realise my pudding tastes like candles. So go easy on it. 

6. Bake for about an hour and a half, whilst your husband repeatedly nods off in front of The Bridge, then wakes up yelling 'Where is my pudding?'. In actual fact, I had to cook for more like an hour and forty, but my oven is v.bad, so check from an hour in. Test a little from the edge if you are unsure. Obviously the rice needs to be cooked, but texture is a personal preference, some people like it more liquid-y, I prefer it to be claggy. Mmmm. Claggy.

7. Eat greedily, and if you wish, smearily.

Smeary.