Peter Rhodes on custard, computers and preparing for death by hurricane
“I haven't made custard, real custard, in years,” declares Prue Leith, sending shock-waves through the genteel world of kitchen journalism. Apparently, she much prefers the ready-made stuff in cartons. But what does she mean by “real custard?”
Is she referring to the old-fashioned custard powder, which has been around for decades, that you mix with sugar and warm milk? Or is Prue Leith thinking of an even more ancient option, making custard from scratch using eggs, flour, sugar and vanilla essence? That's how my grandmother used to make custard in the 1950s. It was delicious and would have been the perfect finale for Sunday dinner, were it not so labour-intensive. Gran, a strict Methodist, did not labour on the Sabbath. Her custard was a week-day treat and she would probably have regarded the carton stuff as cheating, if not the work of the Devil. Just desserts?
Even allowing for the hit-and-miss nature of weather forecasting, the Met Office website a few days ago was a rum affair, predicting on my computer “hurricane-force winds” of 527 mph in the Midlands.
Maybe it was a knock-on effect of the US hurricane Milton, which is destined to pass into history as the one where the cops advised the stay-behind heroes/idiots to write their name on their forearms, to help identify the bodies.
I was reminded of an assignment in the Maldives after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. The manager of a devastated island resort told us hacks how, after the first wave, everyone assumed there would be a second. What happened next was a study in cultures. The comfort-seeking French climbed on to the chalet roofs. The adaptable Brits climbed into the trees. But the chillingly organised Germans huddled in the tennis court so that, if the worst happened, their bodies would be held in the high wire mesh and recovered. Pragmatic, or what?
The warning of 527mph winds may make us smile but it also proves, yet again, one of the oldest adages of the microchip age, which has been with us since the 1960s: “In a fraction of a second, a computer can make a mistake that would take a team of humans months.”
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