Rafan Khan, chef at the New Paradise, Horbury
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RAFAN, chef at the New Paradise Indian Take-away,
Horbury, started helping out in the kitchens when he was 14 and was
fully qualified by the time he was 18.
‘Cooking is more than my job, it’s my hobby as well.’ he
says, ‘It's
what I've always wanted to do.’
He occasionally visits the local
primary school and gets the pupils making onion bhajis.
I drew him on Saturday evening as he prepared our chicken korma, potatoes
& spinach and fried okra with a garlic naan bread. Delicious. Hope
he gets his own restaurant some time soon.
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Common Things
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 Simon's
Seat, Wharfedale, North Yorkshire,
by Chaing Yee
‘ The
whole landscape in that part of Yorkshire—the hills, trees,
cottages, rocks, stone walls—is covered with a very thin bluish
layer and looks soft and tender, yet untouchable. To me it is in
this misty atmosphere
that Simon’s Seat is at its best. I like it so because it is
easy to catch it in this mood, for dull misty days predominate in the
Yorkshire dales, and I prefer common things to exceptional ones. In
England one will often be disappointed if one waits to see a fine piece
of scenery on a sunny day ; the weather is not very reliable.’
Chiang Yee,
The Silent Traveller
in the Yorkshire Dales, 1941
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A
Gap in my Sketchbook
There’s a gap in my sketchbook for the end of May and beginning
of June. I went down with a cold which lingered far longer than it should have.
Unable to draw, I launched myself into mindless tasks that I could complete
on
auto-pilot;
clearing
the
garage,
double-digging
the last veg bed, laying down a wood chip path next to it . . .
Perhaps I should
have a cold more often; I get more everyday tasks done but the blocked up nasal
passages, the sore throat, tiredness and the throbbing head
(not to mention the nightmares, such as being chased around the gantries backstage
at a theatre by two ferocious polar bears) are too much to cope with!
Last
Paradise
As a respite from feeling so awful, I’ve
been reading what for me is a nostalgic natural history book; The
Last Paradise by Helmut Handrick, published
in 1957 is a large-format photographic essay on a green oasis to the north
of the
industrial Ruhr Valley. I remember
browsing through it in the SPCK bookshop, in Leeds, and being astonished at
the glossy full-page colour photography - at a time when so many natural history
books were still in black and white or had matchbox/postage stamp-sized colour
illustrations. I was delighted that almost every bird, flower and animal he
included was one
that
I could
have seen myself
on
my own
local patch.
I was even more astonished when my mum asked if I'd like to have
a copy of it; it oozes a quality that seemed way beyond anything I could aspire
to. After 50 years there's still a 'new' smell of varnish which brings back
the awe I felt at the sumptuous treatment of familiar subjects. It was a present
for my eighth or ninth birthday but until now I don't think I've
ever
read
it right through,
although
the photographs
are
imprinted
on my memory.
Like Handrick and Chiang Yee, I'm fascinated by what
I see on my local patch. Like them, I prefer common things to exceptional
ones - if I have a day when don't see a one-in-a-lifetime
sunset
or a first-for-Britain bird species I don't feel that I've wasted my time.
You can still get that sense of wonder from common, everyday things.
