The haar is the thick sea fog that rolls in from the North Sea, especially in eastern Scotland. Its sudden appearance and striking opacity mark it out as a distinctive feature of the local weather, forming a part of the national character and worthy of a specific name, in much the same way that Scots would be at a loss without the word dreich to describe those chilly, overcast days when the drizzle never stops unless it's to rain a bit harder.

The haar is formed when previously warm air blows in over the cold North Sea, bearing moisture that it is now too cold to hold onto. Droplets condense out of the vapour to form a thick fog, while the wind spreads the cold upwards, building the fog ever higher, and all the while blowing it over the land. The haar is usually quick to come in, and slow to leave. You might be in Edinburgh or Aberdeen enjoying a sunny afternoon - a bite in the breeze perhaps, but pleasant enough - when in the space of half an hour the city just disappears, as fingers or whole fists of fog make stealthy but rapid progress through the streets, around the hills and over the buildings. Before you know it you can't see the far side of the road, the fog is shading into drizzle and it's hard to believe it ever felt like summer.

It usually is summer when the haar hits, though, at least officially; it's most common between April and September, though it can come at almost any time. It might not be the most joyous of weather, but there is something quite magical about it. In nine years of living in the Scottish capital, I never got over the awe the haar inspires me, or the sense of unreality.

Credit to this BBC article for some of the meteorological details. It also points out that much the same phenomenon affects north-east England, where it is known as sea fret.

What might London look like a thousand years from now?

Michael Pinsky explored that question with a simple public art installation, Plunge, which appeared in London in the early months of 2012.

Pinsky wrapped three iconic London monuments, the Duke of York column by St James's Park, the Paternoster Square column near St Paul's Cathedral, and the Seven Dials Sundial Pillar near Covent Garden, with a simple band of blue LED lights at a height of 28 meters.

The Guardian suggested that these blue rings "could be mistaken for those ultraviolet fly zappers popular in kebab shops."

The lights, which had no accompanying signage or expalanation, marked a waterline one thousand years in the future, when sea level rises will have put much of the city underwater. (There is no scientific data to determine the height of the Thames in the year 3012, so the 28 meter mark was chosen by artistic license).

The glowing halos were meant to have Londoners and visitors to the city see the monuments in a new light (literally), and elicit a vision of a possible future, one where anthropogenic global warming leaves London a ghost town of towers and monuments emerging from the water.

Photos of Plunge can be seen here and here.

Plunge was commissioned by Artsadmin and LIFT.

"Yorkshire caviar", a British Comfort Food

"Fish and chips without mushy peas? That's just not right!"

Seven-plus years into my life in the USA, and people are still asking me what I miss about England. Most of them are food-related, things like pork pies, Cornish pasties, The Pub, fish and chips, the wide variety of street food. I miss rain; living in California's Central Valley, there's not a lot of it, even in our wet winter season. I regret leaving behind narrow streets, ancient buildings and the BBC on the radio. Some of these things I can find; Cornish pasties are available quite locally, or by frozen-mail-order. There are narrow streets and older buildings an hour's drive away, and I can put the sprinkler on for pretend rain. There is even a fish-and-chip shop in Davis, and I have eaten there, but it lacks the atmosphere of a true British experience. And most of all, it lacks comfort. It lacks mushy peas.

So what is mushy peas? Well, firstly, it's a comfort food, filling and warm. Once a staple of a poor family's diet, the dish at its simplest comprises boiled marrowfat peas, and at this level, it is, as Willie Rushton once said "the world's almost only grey food". That he said this of porridge may tell you something of the nature of the beast. Yer basic pease made in this fashion is fairly bland, and the kind of grey-green that I think a space-alien's skin should be. In fact, given this unappetising description, it's hard to imagine why it's so popular.

But popular they are. In most parts of England, a decent chippy will have them on the menu. When sold, they are green, with a texture ranging from a thick soupyness to a fairly stodgy pottage. The green colour is achieved by cheating with food colourings, the texture depends on the supplier or recipe. Most of the cheaper shops buy their supplies in tins, but (rarely, these days) some do make them in-house. If you are fortunate enough to have such an emporium close at hand, relish the fact. But do not tell me, as I will become jealous.

How Mushy Peas Are Made

The basic marrowfat pea is large, starchy and tough as old boots. Like its distant cousin the chickpea (aka garbanzo bean), it is picked when fully mature and dried, not young and juicy. Preparation begins in the same way as the garbanzo, being soaked overnight and simmered until soft enough to eat. Buying packets of pease in the supermarket is the best way forward, and ofttimes the packet will contain a tablet of bicarbonate of soda (more about that later). In some areas you may also be fortunate enough to be able to buy in bulk.

Some folk will tell you to use split peas, and that can work. There are also those, including the dreadful Jamie Oliver, who would have you make this with fresh garden peas. Yes, you will have a pea dish, but it will lack that quality of true British "sticks-to-your-ribs" quality that is traditional. Mushy peas simply demand to be made with the correct ingredients, Mister Oliver, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it. I have also seen recipes that add meat or meat broth, but in my opinion, that's more associated with pease pudding.

So let us begin. Eight ounces of pease will make for a good helping for four people. If buying them loose or in bulk, check for foreign bodies like bugs and grit, and wash them thoroughly. Place them in a bowl or pan and cover with lots of water, seriously lots. I err on the side of too much, although a pint and a half will suffice. (Time was, I'd convert to metric and whatnot, but not today.)

Now, to the baking soda. Some people add this because it does help preserve the greenness of the dish, but at a cost, in that it reduces the content of vitamin C and the B vitamins. The choice is yours; personally if I want the buggers green, I will add some food colouring, or cook up and mash some garden peas and stir them in before serving.

Once they are well-soaked, they will be plump and firm as fresh peaches, and can be cooked. Add them to a pint of water in a pan, add a little salt and bring them to the boil, then simmer for around twenty minutes, stirring every few minutes. The peas will begin to break down and in time, form a fairly thick soup, and this is where you can ring the changes and play with the texture of the dish. Adding more or less water changes the dish radically. Some people like the idea of the stodgy mass that seems to have become the norm, but as I prefer mine a little moister, I tend to leave a little more water. If I have time, and think enough about it, I take about a third out when they are still al dente, so there's an even wider textural range.

At this point, the dish is more or less ready. Some people cook it longer to create a more even texture, some people mash it up with a fork. I wait until the liquor is beginning to really thicken, and add a knob of butter and some pepper and cook for a minute or two longer.

There is also a cheat for speeding up the preparation time, one I use with many pulses. This involves fast-boiling the pease for ten minutes, and letting them stand in that water for an hour or so. I say "or so" because unless I'm in a big hurry, I leave them for an hour and a half, but they can be left for some hours in the fridge. Then, I drain and wash the pease and cook them up.

Serving Options

As a little wertperch, I was taken to Nottingham's Goose Fair, and at the time, one of the food treats available (alongside candyfloss, toffee apples and "cocks on sticks"¹) was a bowl of mushy peas served with mint sauce. Seriously warming on a damp and chilly autumn day, and very, very popular.

There are many local serving options, such as in the Midlands and North, where a popular dish is the "pea mix" of chips smothered in peas. I've seen spoonfuls of it deep-fried in batter and served as a "pea fritter", I've had bowls of it with sprinklings of pepper and malt vinegar, and in one wonderful meal in Malham, ladled over a meat pie.

The possibilities are endless, and I admit that it's a dish I manage to miss whenever I buy fish and chips. Perhaps I need to go on a crusade to introduce the dish to every American "chippy". Wish me luck.

¹ A sugar confection, shaped like a cockerel. On a stick. See cock on a stick.

DonJaime says re Mushy peas: Very complete, very informative to the higgerant savage. But you neglect to mention how irredeemably revolting they are.

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Pictures

The Royal Mile runs from the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle, way down the hill to Holyrood Palace and the Scottish Parliament - all the way from the peak of Edinburgh's most central extinct volcano, which looms impressively over the city's main shopping street, to the foot of the next volcano along - the elephantine Arthur's Seat.

Roughly the top third of the street is cobbled, and packed with the most egregious tartan tat imaginable - tourist kilts, souvenir whiskies, and a shop dedicated to the Loch Ness Monster... that most Scottish of beasties, whose home after all is less than a hundred and seventy miles away to the north. At Festival time, most of this section is pedestrianised and filled to heaving with performers, flyerers and above all tourists. It's quite fun for a while, if you have a high tolerance for gawping crowds, but for the most part the city's residents either steer well clear or get very good at avoiding contact with anyone while declining promotional material as efficiently as possible.

Like many Edinburgh roads the Royal Mile changes name every couple of hundred yards, presumably to befuddle any invaders or other visiting foreigners. From top to bottom it goes from being the Castle Esplanade to Castle Hill, Lawnmarket, High Street and then Canongate. It is at least blessed with a single overarching name though, which even appears on some road signs - this is in contrast to most many-titled Edinburgh streets, like the bafflingly seven-named road which is called North Bridge (or possibly South Bridge) when it intersects with the Royal Mile.

Most of the touristry is confined to Lawnmarket and the High Street - as you head down towards Canongate it slowly gives way to some quite interesting shops, little museums, and institutions like the Scottish Book Trust and the Storytelling Centre. All the way down, you get closes coming off on either side, often with their own fascinating histories and places to visit, where you can head downhill even more steeply on foot.

Like so much of Edinburgh there is an astonishing amount of really gorgeous architecture to be seen here, as well as some rather fine statues. The Castle, The Hub, St Giles' Cathedral and the old John Knox house are particularly worth seeing, but there's plenty more that you'll miss if you don't stop and raise your eyes well above the shop fronts from time to time. Right at the bottom is the very pretty, fairytale-ish Palace, and next to it the controversial parliament building, which tends to divide people firmly into 'Love' and 'Hate Hate Hate' camps. For my part I actually like quite a lot of it, from up close, but the overall impression it gives is nevertheless a formless hodgepodge of concrete and barred windows. It's fascinating, in a sense, that they managed to spend £414 million of public money on something that ended up looking like that, but aside from that it I consider it one of the less interesting buildings on a street with so much history and beauty.

Bigotgate was the name given to the political scandal that briefly held the attention of the British public on the 28th April 2010, and might or might not have been the defining moment of the 2010 General Election campaign.

With a General Election scheduled to be held in the United Kingdom on the 6th May 2010, the election campaign was in full swing and all was not going well for the incumbent Labour Party. Indeed, according to a number of polls, Labour had been relegated to third place, and appeared to be on course for an historic defeat. Thus on the 24th April it became known that Labour were going to change their election strategy, as they feared that it was about to become a two-horse race between their Conservative and Liberal Democrat rivals. As part of this new strategy, Brown would be making an effort to "meet more ordinary voters", and on Wednesday 28th April 2010 dramatic evidence emerged of what happened when Gordon Brown did indeed make contact with "ordinary voters".

Gordon Brown was campaigning in Rochdale, and being interviewed by James Cook of the BBC, when a "voice in the background" began questioning "where the money was going to come from". The voice belonged to a sixty-six year-old former council worker named Gillian Duffy who had only popped out to buy a loaf of bread, and stumbled across the Prime Ministerial media circus. This attracted the attention of the local Labour candidate Simon Danczuk who went to speak to her. Having established that she was a 'lifelong Labour supporter', Danczuk naturally concluded that she was exactly the kind of 'ordinary voter' that Brown should be making contact with, and a conversation ensued, during which she duly challenged Brown on a "number of issues including immigration and crime". At the conclusion of their conversation, Mrs Duffy told reporters that she had been happy with Brown's responses, said that he "seems a nice man", and that despite the fact that she didn't think he had answered all her questions, she would indeed be voting for him, although without any great enthusiasm it must be said, as she apparently viewed Brown as "the best of a bad bunch".

Mission accomplished one might have imagined, particularly since Mrs Duffy had began by saying that she was "absolutely ashamed of saying I'm Labour". One more Labour supporter reassured, and one more vote in the bag one might have thought, except that after shaking Duffy's hand, and waving at the crowd, Brown then climbed into his car and quite forgot that he still had his Sky News microphone attached and that it was still live. His subsequent remarks as he sat in the car were therefore not quite as confidential as he imagined and turned out to be quite at variance with his previous closing pleasantries. Brown pronounced that his meeting with Mrs Duffy "was a disaster", and that they "should never have put me with that woman". When his aide Justin Forsyth asked what had gone wrong, Brown replied "Oh everything. She was just a sort of bigoted woman that said she used to be Labour. Ridiculous." The issue here being that Mrs Duffy had at one point asked Brown the question, "all these eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?", and it seemed that Brown had therefore concluded that the questioner was some kind of racist for daring to raise the issue of immigration.

As it was, Brown was enroute to an interview with Jeremy Vine to be broadcast on BBC Radio 2, by which time Sky News had already broadcast Brown's candid conversation to a startled nation. By 12.30 pm a rather puzzled Mrs Duffy had herself been played a recording of Brown's candid remarks and described herself as being "very disappointed" and "very upset". She went on to say, "He's an educated person, why has he come out with words like that? He's going to lead this country and he's calling an ordinary woman who's just come up and asked him questions that most people would ask him - they're not doing anything about the national debt and it's going to be tax, tax, tax for another twenty years to get out of this national debt - and he's calling me a bigot. When he was chancellor he did very good things for this country, but now it's all gone to pot, everything. I don't want to speak to him again really. Just give an apology. What was bigoted in that what I said? I just asked about national debt? I am quite shocked. Very shocked." (As could be seen by Mrs Duffy's reactions; it was the issue of the national debt that was at the forefront of her mind, and the fact that she had made a passing reference to the "Eastern Europeans" who were allegedly "flocking" to Rochdale was neither here nor there as far as she was concerned.)

A quarter of an hour later Brown was sitting in the studio being interviewed for the Jeremy Vine Show and was forced to listen to the same recording. The BBC had a camera in the studio and therefore caught his reaction as he realised that his "bigoted woman" remark had been captured for posterity, and his head slumped into his hands as the full enormity of his faux pas sunk in. Initially Brown did his best to squirm his way out of the hole he had dug for himself. "They have chosen to play my private conversation with the person who was in the car with me" he complained, although he did say that he was sorry "if I've said anything like that". (What do you mean 'if' Mr Brown. We've got it on tape.). Once he was out of the studio, Brown then decided to telephone Mrs Duffy to offer his apologies. The BBC contacted her to ask her if she was satisfied with this apology. Her response was; "No, absolutely not. It makes no amends. It makes no difference to me".

Brown therefore felt obliged to rearrange his schedule, and at 3.00 pm turned up at the Duffy household to speak to her in person in a desperate bid to mitigate the damage. After a meeting lasting thirty-nine minutes Brown emerged bearing his trademark forced grin to inform the assembled throng of waiting journalists that she had accepted his apology, as he announced that he was "mortified by what has happened", had offered Mrs Duffy his "sincere apologies", and that he had simply "misunderstood what she said". He was, he said "a penitent sinner" as he explained that, "Sometimes you say things that you don't mean to say, sometimes you say things by mistake and sometimes when you say things you want to correct it very quickly." It was however notable that Mrs Duffy did not appear before the cameras and remained safely indoors. In fact, according to her nephew, Peter Duffy speaking later on BBC Radio 5 Live, she was indeed asked to step outside with Brown but politely refused.

Nevertheless, the 'bigot row' was now the story of the day and dominated the media, with the clip of Brown referring to Gillian Duffy as a "bigoted woman" being endlessly replayed on every television and radio bulletin during the day. It was the same the following Thursday as the story dominated the front pages of the newspapers, as thousands upon thousands of words were devoted to the task of analysing precisely what this meant for the election.

Some people tried spin the story and claim that Brown was simply being honest and the woman was indeed a bigot. However since they were talking about the very same Gordon Brown who had once promised 'British Jobs for British Workers' that seemed a bit rich. Others argued that Brown had misheard her, and that he thought she had said 'fucking' rather than 'flocking', which was a trifle farfetched, although perhaps the prize for creating thinking under pressure should have gone to John Prescott who complained on his blog (in a piece reproduced in The Guardian) that the whole affair was "nothing but a Murdoch plot", and that the Murdoch media empire had "reached a new low in their desperate attempt to turn the election for the Tories", having "broadcast a private conversation between Gordon and his staff". Brown himself later offered his own explanation when he was interviewed by the BBC's Jeremy Paxman on the Friday, which was; "I thought she was talking about expelling all university students from here who were foreigners". An excuse which was, if anything, even more bizarre, since it bore no relation whatsoever to any words that had ever come out of Mrs Duffy's mouth.

Back in the real world The Independent tried to put the best spin on it by describing it as "more a lapse than a catastrophe", and the best that the Daily Mirror could do was not to really mention it and rather focus on the fact that Brown had said sorry. Which he did. At least six times, according to some accounts. Or even seven, if one counted the rather the admission that "I don't get all of it right" during the course of the third televised leaders' debate on the Thursday evening. Elsewhere, however it was a "car crash for Gordon Brown" that had the "potential to inflict immense damage", as the Labour campaign had been plunged "into crisis", "thrown in turmoil" left "in disarray" etc etc. Or as one "cabinet source" succinctly put it, it was "a total, unmitigated disaster" that featured "absolutely no redeeming features". Even Brown himself appreciated that he had been "personally damaged" by the incident for which he was paying a "very high price".

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Curiously enough those interested parties who read through the entire transcript of the conversation between Duffy and Brown would have been struck by the fact that the whole thing appeared fairly innocuous. Granted she asked some fairly blunt questions, such as "how are you going to get us out of all this debt Gordon?", not to mention her query regarding "all these eastern Europeans", but it all boiled down to a perfectly ordinary conversation with a perfectly ordinary voter of a kind that politicians should expect to have during the course of an election campaign. Quite why Brown thought it was a "disaster" wasn't clear, although perhaps it meant nothing more than Brown was so thin-skinned and paranoid that even the slightest hint of criticism was enough to disturb his calm.

Indeed when it came to analysing exactly where Brown had gone wrong, it was difficult to know where to begin. 'Everything' might have been the best place to start. He had certainly created the impression that there was a marked difference between his public persona and his private reality. Or as Mrs Duffy's niece was quoted as saying, "He has shown his true colours. He's always trying to pretend to be so nice and in touch with the people, but he's obviously not." But perhaps the real damage lay in the fact that Brown had described Mrs Duffy as "just a sort of bigoted woman that said she used to be Labour". So he wasn't simply expressing his contempt for Mrs Duffy herself, but rather for a whole group of voters to which he believed Mrs Duffy belonged; i.e. the white working-class with concerns about immigration. As one "cabinet source" put it, "These are the voters we needed to reach. These are the voters we need to turn out and support us and the Prime Minister insulted them." Or indeed to paraphrase the point that was made by a number of people; if that's what Brown thinks about lifelong Labour voters, you can just imagine the contempt that he holds the rest of us.

Of course, what difference what effect this would have on the actual election was uncertain, although many may well have agreed with The Sun's judgement that "Gordon Brown's election hopes seemed to be toast". The one thing that was reasonably certain was that it meant that any Labour defeat in the coming General Election would be laid at Brown's door. His enemies within the Party now had the perfect weapon to deploy against him, and any ideas he might have had about remaining as Labour Party leader were probably best put to one side.

There were rumours that The Sun was offering Mrs Duffy £50,000 for her story, but in end it was the Mail on Sunday that secured that "exclusive interview" which it ran under the headline 'Gordon won't be getting my vote' on the 2nd May 2010. It turned out that what upset Mrs Duffy most was the way that Brown had dismissed her as "that woman" and that she wasn't impressed by Brown's attempt at a personal apology which she saw as nothing more than a bout of "prolonged self-justification". At one stage, Brown even issued an invitation for her to "come to No10 and meet me and Sarah", at which point the only thought that crossed her mind was "I don't think you'll be there". She also informed the Mail, that having watched the leaders' debate held on the 29th April, she had concluded that she didn't think that "Gordon came across at all well" and was of the opinion that "David Cameron knows he's three-quarters of the way there". But perhaps the most notable moment came when Mrs Duffy delivered what might be construed as Gordon Brown's political epitaph; "The thing is, I'm the sort of person he was meant to look after, not shoot down."

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SOURCES

• James Cook, Eyewitness: Brown's 'disastrous day' after bigot slur, BBC News, 28 April 2010
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8650235.stm
• Murray Wardrop and Richard Edwards, Gordon Brown versus Gillian Duffy: transcript in full, Daily Telegraph, 28 Apr 2010
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7646088/General-Election-2010-Gordon-Brown-versus-Gillian-Duffy-transcript-in-full.html
• Nicholas Watt, Gordon Brown's election car crash provides Labour with its most dangerous moment of the campaign, The Guardian, 28 April 2010
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2010/apr/28/gordon-brown-election-car-crash
• Lance Price, Gordon Brown's gaffe is nothing short of a disaster, The Guardian, 28 April 2010
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/28/general-election-2010-gordon-brown
• Sam Coates, A highly damaging moment for Gordon Brown, The Times, April 28, 2010
  http://timesonline.typepad.com/election10/2010/04/a-highly-damaging-moment-for-gordon-brown.html
• John Prescott, Bigot 'gaffe' is nothing but a Murdoch plot, The Guardian, 28 April 2010
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/28/bigot-gaffe-murdoch-john-prescott
• Nicola Boden, Gordon goes back to grovel in person, Daily Mail, 28th April 2010
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1269486/Election-2010-Gordon-Browns-bigoted-woman-insult-Gillian-Duffy.html
• Bob Roberts and Patrick Mulchrone, Gordon Brown in agony over ‘bigot’ election gaff, says wife Sarah, Daily Mirror, 29/04/2010
  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/04/29/gordon-brown-in-agony-over-bigot-election-gaff-says-wife-sarah-115875-22219389/
• Roland Watson, Brown’s ‘bigot’ blunder plunges Labour campaign into crisis, The Times April 29, 2010
  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7111086.ece
• Graeme Wilson, Richard Moriarty And Alex West, She’s not bigot... he’s not clever, The Sun, Published: 29 Apr 2010
  http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/election2010/2952263/Gordon-Brown-brands-gran-a-bigot.html
• Niall Firth, Revealed: 'Bigot' row pensioner REFUSED spin doctors' pleas, Daily Mail, 29th April 2010
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1269698/Gordon-Brown-Gillian-Duffy-gaffe-Prime-Minister-draws-line-bigotgate-ahead-debate.html
• Laura Collins and Simon Walters, Gordon won't be getting my vote, Mail on Sunday, 2nd May 2010
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1270337/Gordon-wont-getting-vote-Gillian-Duffy-reveals-REALLY-upset-devastating-exchange-PM.html