Tremble before me, mere mortals, for I am the Death of Memes.
This time I got tagged by Katherine with:
"twenty-five random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end choose twenty-five people to be tagged. You must tag the person who tagged you."
You know me better than that.
This is where memes come to die. Any tag that stumbles in here doesn't get out alive.
You know the rules:
- If you feel like doing this, do it;
- Don't tag anyone or I'll come round and punch you hard in the head.
- That's it.
So … Twenty-five things.
Normally this would be easy; this is my 927th. post and a frighteningly high proportion of those have been memes or self-confessional ramblings so I could easily do a no-brainer and just re-hash old classics.
But a fellow blogger told me this morning: "Bollocks to that! No way are you getting away with copying and pasting old crap."
Hey ho.
Because I don't want to risk a slap I will comply with her wishes and deprive you of such re-hashed favourites as "the cum-eating episode" and "I'm A Celebrity, Beat The Crap Out Of Me".
Sheesh! Twenty-five things that I've not written before? I can't even think of one!
Hang on …
Okay:
1) My favourite poem at the moment (which will probably change by the time you read this):
My favourite poem as of this Saturday lunchtime is "Blashey-wadder" by the splendid Shetland Islands shop-assistant and appalling mandolin player Jen Hadfield.
This is from her latest collection, "Nigh No-Place" available from Bloodaxe Books (ISBN 978-1-85224-793-5) and is of course copyright so go out and buy the book NOW so I don't get into trouble for copying this out:
Blashey-wadder is Shetland dialect; "wadder" means weather and "blashey" is about as onomatopœic as it gets.
Blashey-wadder.
by Jen Hadfield.
At dusk I walked to the postbox,
and the storm that must've passed you earlier today
skirled long, luminous ropes of hail between my feet
and I crackled in my waterproof
like a roasting rack of lamb.
And across the loch,
the waterfalls blew right up off the cliff
in grand plumes like smoking chimneys.
And on the road,
even the puddles ran uphill.
And across Bracadale,
a gritter, as far as I could tell,
rolled a blinking ball of orange light
ahead of it, like a dungbeetle
that had stolen the sun.
And a circlet of iron was torn from a byre
and bowled across the thrift.
And seven wind-whipped cows
clustered under a bluff.
And in a rockpool,
a punctured football reeled around and around.
And even the dog won't heel since yesterday
when - sniffing North addictedly -
he saw we had it coming -
and I mean more'n wet weak hail
on a bastard wind.
Wonderful!
Now read it again only slowly and out loud.
One down; twenty-four to go.
At least I've not repeated myself yet.
More meme crap tomorrow as I really can't be arsed right now.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Fuck Death; Let's Play Guitar
So farewell then John Martyn.
From leading light of the seventies folk revival to grizzled, wheelchair-bound monopod, one of our finest songwriters and most chaotic and drunken performers has died, aged just sixty.
Here, as inadequate tribute is a version of his song "Bless The Weather" I played when I guested with the Dave Thomas Band (for any fans of Old Dive's guitar playing, most of the guitar here is Dave Thomas but I do have a couple of solos - you'll know it's me because I'm a noisy bastard - starting at around three minutes in and at around nine minutes in … Dave does tend to go on a bit).
For any Colonials who may not have heard of the man, I've included three songs from throughout his career.
"Songs of misery and romance" as he calls them.
Beautiful and heartfelt.
Should you have the time or the inclination please play these.
They encapsulate so much of what was special about him (and his long term collaborator and drinking buddy, Danny Thompson); the last clip (especially his expression right at the end) shows just why I loved him.
Many of us will miss him an awful lot.
From leading light of the seventies folk revival to grizzled, wheelchair-bound monopod, one of our finest songwriters and most chaotic and drunken performers has died, aged just sixty.
Here, as inadequate tribute is a version of his song "Bless The Weather" I played when I guested with the Dave Thomas Band (for any fans of Old Dive's guitar playing, most of the guitar here is Dave Thomas but I do have a couple of solos - you'll know it's me because I'm a noisy bastard - starting at around three minutes in and at around nine minutes in … Dave does tend to go on a bit).
For any Colonials who may not have heard of the man, I've included three songs from throughout his career.
"Songs of misery and romance" as he calls them.
Beautiful and heartfelt.
Should you have the time or the inclination please play these.
They encapsulate so much of what was special about him (and his long term collaborator and drinking buddy, Danny Thompson); the last clip (especially his expression right at the end) shows just why I loved him.
Many of us will miss him an awful lot.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Ballad Of Bob And Jane
I've scoured the interweb for this for years with absolutely no success.
One of the finest lyrics ever written; the tale of Bob and Jane and … er … a different Bob.
Long deleted and beloved only of Michael and myself, this silly little song was a staple in The Blind Willies' set list.
Unfortunately I don't have a recording of us performing it (which is a shame as our version knocked spots off the original) but should I ever succeed in dragging Michael back into the studio I shall be sure to rectify that.
Then earlier today I was scouring the attic for something else and - as stated in Newton's Law of Attics - inevitably I forgot what it was I went up there for and got sidetracked by some boxes of cassettes I thought I'd thrown out years ago.
Imagine my "YAY!" when I came across the original, self titled album by the "Colorblind James Experience," knowing full well that it contained this very song.
So here it is in all its gleefully unresolved lyrical glory.
Seemingly unavailable anywhere else on the interweb, you can now listen to it here in tribute to Colorblind James who sadly died a while back.
I even typed out the lyrics:
A Different Bob
by the late and sadly missed Colorblind James.
My baby was talking in her sleep.
She said "Bob"
I said "What?"
She said "Bob"
I said "I'm Bob"
She said "No …
I mean a different Bob."
And so I asked her the next day;
I said "Jane"
She said "What?"
I said "Who's Bob?"
She said "You're Bob."
I said "No …
I mean a different Bob."
My baby was run over by a truck.
It was a Dodge.
As she lay dying
She called for Bob,
I touched her hand and said "I'm here."
She said "No …
I mean a different Bob."
My baby was talking in her sleep …
One of the finest lyrics ever written; the tale of Bob and Jane and … er … a different Bob.
Long deleted and beloved only of Michael and myself, this silly little song was a staple in The Blind Willies' set list.
Unfortunately I don't have a recording of us performing it (which is a shame as our version knocked spots off the original) but should I ever succeed in dragging Michael back into the studio I shall be sure to rectify that.
Then earlier today I was scouring the attic for something else and - as stated in Newton's Law of Attics - inevitably I forgot what it was I went up there for and got sidetracked by some boxes of cassettes I thought I'd thrown out years ago.
Imagine my "YAY!" when I came across the original, self titled album by the "Colorblind James Experience," knowing full well that it contained this very song.
So here it is in all its gleefully unresolved lyrical glory.
Seemingly unavailable anywhere else on the interweb, you can now listen to it here in tribute to Colorblind James who sadly died a while back.
I even typed out the lyrics:
A Different Bob
by the late and sadly missed Colorblind James.
My baby was talking in her sleep.
She said "Bob"
I said "What?"
She said "Bob"
I said "I'm Bob"
She said "No …
I mean a different Bob."
And so I asked her the next day;
I said "Jane"
She said "What?"
I said "Who's Bob?"
She said "You're Bob."
I said "No …
I mean a different Bob."
My baby was run over by a truck.
It was a Dodge.
As she lay dying
She called for Bob,
I touched her hand and said "I'm here."
She said "No …
I mean a different Bob."
My baby was talking in her sleep …
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
You Live Where?
The Noo Yoik Times has been quite considerate these past fifty years in that it has left me alone to get on with fucking up my life unassisted.
This week, however, it has thrust itself most intrusively into my world and both times it has made me giggle.
First up was of course the sexual survey that - amongst such delights as the plethysmograph - revealed that most women are physically turned on by watching dubbed chimpanzee porn but will not admit to it.
And now the lovely Petrea has pointed me at a delightfully chortlesome Noo Yoik Times article raising a somewhat startled eyebrow at our quaint English place names.
Those fun-loving Colonials have been chuckling into their non-fat vanilla lattes at the prospect of living in such places as Crapstone, Peniston, Ugley (which could only be in Essex), East Breast, North Piddle, Spanker Lane, Crotch Crescent, Butt Hole Road, the splendid Titty Ho and the unfortunate Sluts' Hole Lane.
Sluts' Hole Lane is actually in Attleborough, home to my brother Phil, although he lives at the "nicer" end of the village, where such a place would be euphemistically renamed "Escort Companion's Lady-Parts Lane."
I have great affection for rude historical place names ever since my old mate Babs, up in the Shetland Islands, pointed out a standing stone to me, in front of which a small sign read (in a splendid attempt at the local vernacular) "The White Stane Of Willie."
Old Dive (who lives not far from the village of Six Mile Bottom; surely a place many US citizens would feel at home visiting) has actually posted on this subject before, when pot-holers in Derbyshire confirmed that Britain's biggest cave had been discovered hidden below a fissure known for centuries as the Devil's Arsehole.
The most splendid example of vernacular profanity in English place names is a street I pass along every working day.
For centuries, fragrant ladies have plied their venerable trade there, offering such exotic delights as "penny up the wall" knee-tremblers, as a result of which, the place was officially known by the delightful soubriquet of (brace yourselves) "Gropecunte Lane".
Unfortunately, when the Bank of England was located there, they renamed it Threadneedle Street (still a lingering trace of the old profession in the new name).
I must say that the moral standards of Gropecunte Lane's working population have declined catastrophically since the bank moved in; they are still screwing people and taking their money but the amount of pleasure per penny available there now is nothing like it was in the old days.
The "C" word was of course happily used by Chaucer, Shakespeare and Pepys and has only recently become the great taboo.
It was for many a century merely a jolly and far from offensive euphemism for a lady's furry front-bottom and its diminutive derivative "cunny" was still in everyday use when I was a kid, producing no more shock value (and about an equal amount of sniggering behind the hand) as the word "bum."
Times change and prudery increasingly bowdlerises our lives, which is a great pity as it deprives us of much that was once colourful and richly evocative in our wonderful vernacular history.
Long may such names avoid the censor's shameful attentions.
This week, however, it has thrust itself most intrusively into my world and both times it has made me giggle.
First up was of course the sexual survey that - amongst such delights as the plethysmograph - revealed that most women are physically turned on by watching dubbed chimpanzee porn but will not admit to it.
And now the lovely Petrea has pointed me at a delightfully chortlesome Noo Yoik Times article raising a somewhat startled eyebrow at our quaint English place names.
Those fun-loving Colonials have been chuckling into their non-fat vanilla lattes at the prospect of living in such places as Crapstone, Peniston, Ugley (which could only be in Essex), East Breast, North Piddle, Spanker Lane, Crotch Crescent, Butt Hole Road, the splendid Titty Ho and the unfortunate Sluts' Hole Lane.
Sluts' Hole Lane is actually in Attleborough, home to my brother Phil, although he lives at the "nicer" end of the village, where such a place would be euphemistically renamed "Escort Companion's Lady-Parts Lane."
I have great affection for rude historical place names ever since my old mate Babs, up in the Shetland Islands, pointed out a standing stone to me, in front of which a small sign read (in a splendid attempt at the local vernacular) "The White Stane Of Willie."
Old Dive (who lives not far from the village of Six Mile Bottom; surely a place many US citizens would feel at home visiting) has actually posted on this subject before, when pot-holers in Derbyshire confirmed that Britain's biggest cave had been discovered hidden below a fissure known for centuries as the Devil's Arsehole.
The most splendid example of vernacular profanity in English place names is a street I pass along every working day.
For centuries, fragrant ladies have plied their venerable trade there, offering such exotic delights as "penny up the wall" knee-tremblers, as a result of which, the place was officially known by the delightful soubriquet of (brace yourselves) "Gropecunte Lane".
Unfortunately, when the Bank of England was located there, they renamed it Threadneedle Street (still a lingering trace of the old profession in the new name).
I must say that the moral standards of Gropecunte Lane's working population have declined catastrophically since the bank moved in; they are still screwing people and taking their money but the amount of pleasure per penny available there now is nothing like it was in the old days.
The "C" word was of course happily used by Chaucer, Shakespeare and Pepys and has only recently become the great taboo.
It was for many a century merely a jolly and far from offensive euphemism for a lady's furry front-bottom and its diminutive derivative "cunny" was still in everyday use when I was a kid, producing no more shock value (and about an equal amount of sniggering behind the hand) as the word "bum."
Times change and prudery increasingly bowdlerises our lives, which is a great pity as it deprives us of much that was once colourful and richly evocative in our wonderful vernacular history.
Long may such names avoid the censor's shameful attentions.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Knob Gag Of The Week
Effusive thanks emanate from the Divery and gush somewhat messily all over a certain Blogville neighbour (who had probably better remain anonymous for reasons that should become apparent) who forwarded to me an article from The Noo Yawk Times called "What Do Women Want?"
My long term blogpals and lurkers will know that this is a question that has seriously vexed me for millennia and the lack of a decent answer to it has rendered me an undateable born-again virgin.
Inevitably, the article is no help whatsoever, but it did provide me with the best knob gag I have heard in quite some time.
Are people in the US not aware that "knob" is a euphemism for "penis"? Apparently not the researcher in this article, to my profound glee.
Anyhoo … peruse the article at your leisure. It contains some major mirth.
F'rinstance: Does anyone out there know what a plethysmograph is?
Do any of you actually have such a thing tucked away in a drawer?
I was not at all surprised to read that said contraption was invented by the clichéd "German professor" but you shall have to read the article to discover just what one does with one's plethysmograph, hopefully in the privacy of one's own home.
It also tickled me that the researcher was described as being "full of scientific exuberance." What a lovely phrase! Now I know why President Obama wants to bring science back to the USA.
The best piece in the article, however, has to be this wonderful knob gag:
""What women want is a real dilemma," she said. Earlier, she showed me, as a joke, a photograph of two control panels, one representing the workings of male desire, the second, female, the first with only a simple on-off switch, the second with countless knobs."
As a typical male (a person equipped with but a single "knob") I now feel utterly inadequate, but at least I now understand why women fill their bedroom drawers with various battery-powered contraptions such as "rabbits" and Boston Startlers.
And I now feel a little better about never getting dates; I would hate to get as far as the bedroom to be confronted with a disappointed wail of "you only have ONE?"
Toodle-pipski, smut fans.
My long term blogpals and lurkers will know that this is a question that has seriously vexed me for millennia and the lack of a decent answer to it has rendered me an undateable born-again virgin.
Inevitably, the article is no help whatsoever, but it did provide me with the best knob gag I have heard in quite some time.
Are people in the US not aware that "knob" is a euphemism for "penis"? Apparently not the researcher in this article, to my profound glee.
Anyhoo … peruse the article at your leisure. It contains some major mirth.
F'rinstance: Does anyone out there know what a plethysmograph is?
Do any of you actually have such a thing tucked away in a drawer?
I was not at all surprised to read that said contraption was invented by the clichéd "German professor" but you shall have to read the article to discover just what one does with one's plethysmograph, hopefully in the privacy of one's own home.
It also tickled me that the researcher was described as being "full of scientific exuberance." What a lovely phrase! Now I know why President Obama wants to bring science back to the USA.
The best piece in the article, however, has to be this wonderful knob gag:
""What women want is a real dilemma," she said. Earlier, she showed me, as a joke, a photograph of two control panels, one representing the workings of male desire, the second, female, the first with only a simple on-off switch, the second with countless knobs."
As a typical male (a person equipped with but a single "knob") I now feel utterly inadequate, but at least I now understand why women fill their bedroom drawers with various battery-powered contraptions such as "rabbits" and Boston Startlers.
And I now feel a little better about never getting dates; I would hate to get as far as the bedroom to be confronted with a disappointed wail of "you only have ONE?"
Toodle-pipski, smut fans.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Fifteen Minutes In Heaven
Well bollocks to YouTube for not having anything at all by the marvellous John Browne.
I had been looking for his "O Maria salvatoris" for reasons that those of you who actually managed to read the past few days' posts will still find obscure.
But yesterday's last-minute stand-in from the quill of Signor Pergolesi brought up the subject of those beautiful pieces the Stabat Maters - or possibly Stabats Mater, depending on your degree of pedantry (at least they did with Lucio, who is a fellow collector).
Stabat Mater Dolorosa is a thirteenth century chant describing Mary's feelings at the crucifixion (not a happy song) and the earliest extant versions are in unison "Gregorian" chant, after which things got more interesting with harmony and chorus and eventually (as yesterday's example) musical accompaniment.
Stabat Maters are still being written. Dvořák wrote one and I have them by Szymanowski and Arvo Pärt from only a few years back.
The classic versions are by Pergolesi, Palestrina, Browne, Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Bononcini but there are many, many others.
Here is a list from a website that Lucio also uses, should any of you want to tool up and go shopping.
Now it is time to brew up a coffee and chill out for a little.
This is John Browne's very own Stabat Mater, written in the 1490s and here performed by the Tallis Scholars in Salle Church, just a few miles from my little village in Norfolk.
You cannot download this as it is copyright (I cheated and stripped the copycode; I'm not telling you how but then I have a recording studio with wizzy boxes in it and you don't, so there), but if you - like me - find yourself utterly captivated by it, go visit the Amazonians and order the CD (or better still, support your local independent music shop and order it there).
It is not expensive and it is one of the most beautiful and uplifting ways to spend a little over seventy-one minutes.
The CD is:
"John Browne. Music From The Eton Choirbook"
by The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips.
It's on Gimell Records.
Anyhoo … This particular fifteen minutes' worth is often used to stop me killing mobile phone users on the train.
Early choral music is even better when the treble and mezzo parts are sung by choirboys and not laydee soprani but the only version I have of this particular piece with boys is just a little over-enthusiastic and has some cringe-notes that spoil it.
So put on your headphones.
Sit back.
Take a few deep breaths (it's a big file so it takes a few seconds after you've clicked "PLAY" for anything to happen).
Close your eyes.
Enjoy.
I had been looking for his "O Maria salvatoris" for reasons that those of you who actually managed to read the past few days' posts will still find obscure.
But yesterday's last-minute stand-in from the quill of Signor Pergolesi brought up the subject of those beautiful pieces the Stabat Maters - or possibly Stabats Mater, depending on your degree of pedantry (at least they did with Lucio, who is a fellow collector).
Stabat Mater Dolorosa is a thirteenth century chant describing Mary's feelings at the crucifixion (not a happy song) and the earliest extant versions are in unison "Gregorian" chant, after which things got more interesting with harmony and chorus and eventually (as yesterday's example) musical accompaniment.
Stabat Maters are still being written. Dvořák wrote one and I have them by Szymanowski and Arvo Pärt from only a few years back.
The classic versions are by Pergolesi, Palestrina, Browne, Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Bononcini but there are many, many others.
Here is a list from a website that Lucio also uses, should any of you want to tool up and go shopping.
Now it is time to brew up a coffee and chill out for a little.
This is John Browne's very own Stabat Mater, written in the 1490s and here performed by the Tallis Scholars in Salle Church, just a few miles from my little village in Norfolk.
You cannot download this as it is copyright (I cheated and stripped the copycode; I'm not telling you how but then I have a recording studio with wizzy boxes in it and you don't, so there), but if you - like me - find yourself utterly captivated by it, go visit the Amazonians and order the CD (or better still, support your local independent music shop and order it there).
It is not expensive and it is one of the most beautiful and uplifting ways to spend a little over seventy-one minutes.
The CD is:
"John Browne. Music From The Eton Choirbook"
by The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips.
It's on Gimell Records.
Anyhoo … This particular fifteen minutes' worth is often used to stop me killing mobile phone users on the train.
Early choral music is even better when the treble and mezzo parts are sung by choirboys and not laydee soprani but the only version I have of this particular piece with boys is just a little over-enthusiastic and has some cringe-notes that spoil it.
So put on your headphones.
Sit back.
Take a few deep breaths (it's a big file so it takes a few seconds after you've clicked "PLAY" for anything to happen).
Close your eyes.
Enjoy.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Enjoy
Hey ho. YouTube has everything on it but the very thing you're looking for.
In my case it was The Tallis Scholars singing Browne's "O Maria salvatoris" (the piece that turned up at the water cooler in yesterday's post).
In fact they've got no Browne at all, not even his glorious Stabat Mater, curse their cotton socks!
Instead, as I don't have time to write a post today I will treat you to one of my favourite Stabat Maters (I have a quite alarming number of them by a couple of dozen composers and many different ensembles but then I'm kinda creepy that way).
Like our Kultürmeister Lucio I love the countertenor voice (and bemoan the lack of castrati in the world today) and here is the fabulous Andreas Scholl duetting with soprano Barbara Bonney for the first movement of Pergolesi's heart-stoppingly beautiful Stabat Mater.
In my case it was The Tallis Scholars singing Browne's "O Maria salvatoris" (the piece that turned up at the water cooler in yesterday's post).
In fact they've got no Browne at all, not even his glorious Stabat Mater, curse their cotton socks!
Instead, as I don't have time to write a post today I will treat you to one of my favourite Stabat Maters (I have a quite alarming number of them by a couple of dozen composers and many different ensembles but then I'm kinda creepy that way).
Like our Kultürmeister Lucio I love the countertenor voice (and bemoan the lack of castrati in the world today) and here is the fabulous Andreas Scholl duetting with soprano Barbara Bonney for the first movement of Pergolesi's heart-stoppingly beautiful Stabat Mater.
Friday, January 23, 2009
In Praise Of Mickey Dolenz: Anti-War Hero
Water cooler conversations in our office usually involve the girls moaning and bitching about each other in various cliquey combinations.
Water cooler conversations with Chris B, however, can take a left turn from reality and head off in all sorts of interesting directions.
You remember CB; egg-spattered bow tie and tweeds, a master of the incomprehensible spuffle, an accomplished morris dancer and expert in the arcane ways of the shawm and the serpent.
There we were this morning at the water cooler, discussing the finer points of John Browne's beautiful, mystical "O Maria salvatoris" (written in the 1490s … CB is nothing if not bang up to date) and the relative merits of the Tallis Scholars v. The Academy of Ancient Music when we happened to wander back to my cubicle with the intention of bringing them up on iTunes to illustrate our points.
Chris is a "mouse" man and has never quite got the hang of using my Wacom tablet but he is enthusiastic in his cack-handedness and so instead of the Tallis Scholars glorious eight part harmony he managed to dial up The Monkees playing "Randy Scouse Git" (my iTunes is nothing if not comprehensive).
I managed to hit the pause button as Chris was going into his patented "semaphore signaller being surprised by a sudden enema" act and then found myself in the position of having to defend my reputation as a highbrow snob in the face of the quite alarming number of Monkees songs displayed for all to see on my monitor.
Then something struck me about that particular song that had never occurred to me before and Chris had to grudgingly acknowledge its rightful place among the great and important works of musical and cultural history.
As any fule no, The Monkees were a manufactured band put together for a kids' TV series in the mid 1960s. All the music on their first album was played by session guys but the band rebelled and insisted on writing and playing their own material on later recordings.
Randy Scouse Git was a phrase Mickey Dolenz picked up on a visit to England; it being the phrase used by Alf Garnett in the BBC sitcom "'til Death Us Do Part" to describe his son-in-law, played by Tony Booth (Tony Blair's real-life father-in-law … I hope you're following this).
Dolenz had no idea what "randy scouse git" meant but thought it would make a great song title.
And so was born something that earns The Monkees serious respect: the world's first ever, incongruously titled, three minute singalong fluffy pop chart anti-war protest song.
Previously, anti-war and anti-establishment protest had been the preserve of the folk singer: Pete Seeger with "This Land Is Your Land", Woodie Guthrie with just about everything and Dylan with "Masters Of War" and "The Times They Are A'Changing".
Pop was too lightweight and unimportant to take seriously.
Sure, there had been pouty tantrum pop songs like The Stones' "Satisfaction" and The Who's "My Generation", but those were hardly protest songs; yet suddenly, here were the dumbest of dumb pop bands grasping the protest baton with a vengeance.
Mickey Dolenz can rightly stand beside Dylan and Lennon, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie at last. A hero of the anti-war protest movement.
Yay!
History's first pop protest song starts out by lulling the listener into a false sense of security.
Yadda, yadda; it's another hippy-dippy, throwaway Monkees tune with silly lyrics.
And then suddenly … Fucking Hell!
Crowbarred in between trippy little verses and the silly "doo-bi-doo" scat singing, the chorus is a demented scream of rage; it has no tune, just a single note battered into submission as Dolenz assumes the character of "The Establishment" and rails against the hippies, yelling:
"Why don't you cut your hair?"
And suddenly, out of tinny wireless sets across the world - and most particularly in the USA and Vietnam - Mickey the Monkee screams the greatest lines he ever wrote:
"Why don't you be like me?
Why don't you stop and see?
Why don't you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill,
To be free?"
Holy crap!
The Monkees?
"Why don't you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill,
To be free?"
Little gurning, silly-haired kiddie-pop actor Mickey Dolenz sums up the insanity of US foreign policy and the whole 1960s counter-culture clash in fourteen single-syllable words.
Fucking awesome! I still get chills listening to it.
Because it was a Monkees hit we kids sang it out loud in the playgrounds and the streets.
And, like Dylan's "Masters Of War" from Wednesday's post, those lines are even more tragically relevant today after eight years of the Bush regime screaming them in our ears like murderous lunatics to justify their insane warmongering.
It is the same imbecile chant that has been shrieked by our leaders for the whole of recorded history.
The late, great historian Barbara Tuchman explored the theme in her masterful book "The March of Folly", taking examples from Troy through to Vietnam.
The inability of leaders to learn that single most basic lesson of civilisation: "that it is sheer folly to pursue a policy contrary to the interests of their people by waging unjust war".
Unjust war …
And today we have an even more sickening twist of that folly: unjust war "in the name of freedom and democracy".
Neither Vietnam nor Bush's insane war in Iraq had a damned thing to do with freedom or democracy but everything to do with political self-interest.
Stir up fear and hatred and then kill!
Fear and hatred of communism to justify destroying Vietnam and Cambodia.
Fear and hatred of Islam to justify Bush's personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein and his cronies' lust for that country's oil reserves (the so-called "war on terror" had fuck-all to do with alQaeda and 9/11).
Unjust war …
A lesson that after thousands of years of repeating the same mistake over and over again we seem never to learn.
Thank God the US has at last elected its first intelligent President since FDR.
We have yet to see the result of that decision but he's started promisingly enough, halting the illegal military tribunals, ordering the closure of the CIA's secret prison network, banning torture and "rendition" and renewing the US commitment to international law and the Geneva Convention.
President Obama just doesn't cut it as a "hater".
I somehow cannot picture him joining Nixon and Kissinger, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove, urging Joe SixPack to hate and kill in his name by screaming along with that devastating chorus:
"Why don't you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill,
To be free?"
So here's to Mickey Dolenz: bona fide hero of the anti-war movement; wrapping a mailed fist of a message in candy floss and serving it up to the children of the 1960s as the very first pop protest song.
Little wonder I turned out like I did.
Thanks, Mickey!
Sing along, people:
Water cooler conversations with Chris B, however, can take a left turn from reality and head off in all sorts of interesting directions.
You remember CB; egg-spattered bow tie and tweeds, a master of the incomprehensible spuffle, an accomplished morris dancer and expert in the arcane ways of the shawm and the serpent.
There we were this morning at the water cooler, discussing the finer points of John Browne's beautiful, mystical "O Maria salvatoris" (written in the 1490s … CB is nothing if not bang up to date) and the relative merits of the Tallis Scholars v. The Academy of Ancient Music when we happened to wander back to my cubicle with the intention of bringing them up on iTunes to illustrate our points.
Chris is a "mouse" man and has never quite got the hang of using my Wacom tablet but he is enthusiastic in his cack-handedness and so instead of the Tallis Scholars glorious eight part harmony he managed to dial up The Monkees playing "Randy Scouse Git" (my iTunes is nothing if not comprehensive).
I managed to hit the pause button as Chris was going into his patented "semaphore signaller being surprised by a sudden enema" act and then found myself in the position of having to defend my reputation as a highbrow snob in the face of the quite alarming number of Monkees songs displayed for all to see on my monitor.
Then something struck me about that particular song that had never occurred to me before and Chris had to grudgingly acknowledge its rightful place among the great and important works of musical and cultural history.
As any fule no, The Monkees were a manufactured band put together for a kids' TV series in the mid 1960s. All the music on their first album was played by session guys but the band rebelled and insisted on writing and playing their own material on later recordings.
Randy Scouse Git was a phrase Mickey Dolenz picked up on a visit to England; it being the phrase used by Alf Garnett in the BBC sitcom "'til Death Us Do Part" to describe his son-in-law, played by Tony Booth (Tony Blair's real-life father-in-law … I hope you're following this).
Dolenz had no idea what "randy scouse git" meant but thought it would make a great song title.
And so was born something that earns The Monkees serious respect: the world's first ever, incongruously titled, three minute singalong fluffy pop chart anti-war protest song.
Previously, anti-war and anti-establishment protest had been the preserve of the folk singer: Pete Seeger with "This Land Is Your Land", Woodie Guthrie with just about everything and Dylan with "Masters Of War" and "The Times They Are A'Changing".
Pop was too lightweight and unimportant to take seriously.
Sure, there had been pouty tantrum pop songs like The Stones' "Satisfaction" and The Who's "My Generation", but those were hardly protest songs; yet suddenly, here were the dumbest of dumb pop bands grasping the protest baton with a vengeance.
Mickey Dolenz can rightly stand beside Dylan and Lennon, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie at last. A hero of the anti-war protest movement.
Yay!
History's first pop protest song starts out by lulling the listener into a false sense of security.
Yadda, yadda; it's another hippy-dippy, throwaway Monkees tune with silly lyrics.
And then suddenly … Fucking Hell!
Crowbarred in between trippy little verses and the silly "doo-bi-doo" scat singing, the chorus is a demented scream of rage; it has no tune, just a single note battered into submission as Dolenz assumes the character of "The Establishment" and rails against the hippies, yelling:
"Why don't you cut your hair?"
And suddenly, out of tinny wireless sets across the world - and most particularly in the USA and Vietnam - Mickey the Monkee screams the greatest lines he ever wrote:
"Why don't you be like me?
Why don't you stop and see?
Why don't you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill,
To be free?"
Holy crap!
The Monkees?
"Why don't you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill,
To be free?"
Little gurning, silly-haired kiddie-pop actor Mickey Dolenz sums up the insanity of US foreign policy and the whole 1960s counter-culture clash in fourteen single-syllable words.
Fucking awesome! I still get chills listening to it.
Because it was a Monkees hit we kids sang it out loud in the playgrounds and the streets.
And, like Dylan's "Masters Of War" from Wednesday's post, those lines are even more tragically relevant today after eight years of the Bush regime screaming them in our ears like murderous lunatics to justify their insane warmongering.
It is the same imbecile chant that has been shrieked by our leaders for the whole of recorded history.
The late, great historian Barbara Tuchman explored the theme in her masterful book "The March of Folly", taking examples from Troy through to Vietnam.
The inability of leaders to learn that single most basic lesson of civilisation: "that it is sheer folly to pursue a policy contrary to the interests of their people by waging unjust war".
Unjust war …
And today we have an even more sickening twist of that folly: unjust war "in the name of freedom and democracy".
Neither Vietnam nor Bush's insane war in Iraq had a damned thing to do with freedom or democracy but everything to do with political self-interest.
Stir up fear and hatred and then kill!
Fear and hatred of communism to justify destroying Vietnam and Cambodia.
Fear and hatred of Islam to justify Bush's personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein and his cronies' lust for that country's oil reserves (the so-called "war on terror" had fuck-all to do with alQaeda and 9/11).
Unjust war …
A lesson that after thousands of years of repeating the same mistake over and over again we seem never to learn.
Thank God the US has at last elected its first intelligent President since FDR.
We have yet to see the result of that decision but he's started promisingly enough, halting the illegal military tribunals, ordering the closure of the CIA's secret prison network, banning torture and "rendition" and renewing the US commitment to international law and the Geneva Convention.
President Obama just doesn't cut it as a "hater".
I somehow cannot picture him joining Nixon and Kissinger, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove, urging Joe SixPack to hate and kill in his name by screaming along with that devastating chorus:
"Why don't you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill,
To be free?"
So here's to Mickey Dolenz: bona fide hero of the anti-war movement; wrapping a mailed fist of a message in candy floss and serving it up to the children of the 1960s as the very first pop protest song.
Little wonder I turned out like I did.
Thanks, Mickey!
Sing along, people:
Thursday, January 22, 2009
English Sporting Prowess Triumphs Again
This makes me proud to be an Englishman.
And you guys think I'm weird for ironing my boxer shorts and tea towels …
And you guys think I'm weird for ironing my boxer shorts and tea towels …
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Goodbye To All That
Just another quick filler post with more of young Bob from Hibbing showing how relevant his 1963 lyrics still are … at least they were until yesterday when I could only grin at the sight of Monkey-Boy being evacuated by helicopter from the White House like the last Yank out of Saigon.
Thank fuck that's over.
Thank fuck that's over.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
A Marxist Muses On A Train
Jon Favreau and Barack Hussein Obama. That's a potent mix and has been so for some time. A cunning speechwriter together with a charismatic and inspirational orator.
I was listening to President Obama (I love typing that, but let's go one better): I was listening to President Barack Hussein Obama's inaugural address on my little radio whilst stuck on a train with my little black notebook, ready to leap on any phrase that proved an easy target for a Marxist curmudgeon and long-standing anti-US protester.
Yet here I am actually euphoric about a US Presidential inauguration.
Yes, you heard.
This is something that nobody - least of all ME - ever thought would happen. Normally if I hear someone say they are proud to be an American I wince in pain and launch "Dive" at them in a merciless tirade of ranty rhetoric, yet today I would hug them.
Let's just take a few phrases from that speech (only a very few as I know some of you get bored easily and if you let me have my way I would debate every sentence of it at length):
First up:
"I thank President Bush for his service to our nation".
Well … Favreau obviously knows that starting with a joke is a great way to get your listeners' attention and empathy … and that was a fucking awesome joke!
And made even funnier by Obama's deadpan delivery.
"On this day we gather because we have chosen hope over fear …"
A great phrase, and one that totally sticks it to the previous administration who whipped up the American people into a frenzy of fear then fucked 'em up the ass by using that fear to tear up civil liberties, to ignore habeas corpus and international law, to falsely imprison and torture with seeming impunity and much, much more.
We will have to wait and see what actually happens but it was nice to hear rejection of "government by fear".
" … In the words of scripture …"
A little clunky, Mister Favreau, but we understand you have to appease the Godbotherers.
"The God-given promise that all are equal…"
Woohoo! I actually got one! The one and only phrase in the entire speech that I can take issue with (though only a little and on a point of semantics).
Those wonderful words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …"
Those words were written by men of the Enlightenment; men who valued reason above superstition and at least one of whom would these days be hounded out of the midwest as atheist scum. Men who argued against putting "endowed by their Creator" into the Declaration and only did it to grudgingly appease the Godbotherers of their day.
The words of Thomas Paine; of Jefferson and Franklin; men of reason and science rather than religion.
Wonderful words but definitely not God-given; instead given to the world by rational men who questioned God's existence.
"… a nation cannot prosper long when it favours only the prosperous."
Yee-fucking-ha! Now, you're talking!
"To all other peoples and governments … we are ready to lead once more."
This is the biggie.
The "once more" was - I take it - another one of Favreau's excellent jokes, as up until today, a statement that America is ready to lead, coming from the mouth of a US President meant only one thing: using US political power and "might is right" to force unwilling nations to support illegal wars.
In this case it seems - from the paragraphs leading up to the phrase - that things are different.
That the US under President Obama will indeed lead …
But LEAD BY EXAMPLE.
That is the most welcome news I think I have heard from any US politician over the past fifty years of my life.
The President's speech was full to the brim with inspirational talk about the economy, climate change, employment, healthcare and a commitment to seeking peace instead of bringing war and suffering.
Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, et al must be baffled, laying there in the darkness with the sudden realisation that they have stopped spinning in their graves.
The President also stressed that the USA is a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.
From over here outside its borders the USA is regarded as pretty near to a fundamentalist theocracy; a Christian Fundamentalist state in the same way that Afghanistan under the Taliban is a Muslim Fundamentalist state.
The President's speech hints at Thomas Jefferson's own First Amendment: freedom of choice in religion, including - and this is the new and important piece - freedom to choose not to worship any God or Gods.
Freedom to be a rational US citizen.
And this leads us on to my own personal favourite phrase from the President's inaugural speech:
"We will restore science to its rightful place …"
To hear that phrase uttered by a US President is so wonderful and so shocking that I am still reeling.
Thomas Jefferson presided over the glorious days of The Age of Enlightenment.
Will Barack Obama herald a New Age of Enlightenment?
We shall start to find out tomorrow morning.
The Godbotherers must be shitting their pants.
Whatever happens now, this has been a momentous day in human history.
And one that has left me astonished and surprised and a little baffled at the prospect that the nation I had railed against all my long life may just be coming to its senses.
What the fuck can I rant about now?
The full text of the speech is here and it is worth reading again.
I was listening to President Obama (I love typing that, but let's go one better): I was listening to President Barack Hussein Obama's inaugural address on my little radio whilst stuck on a train with my little black notebook, ready to leap on any phrase that proved an easy target for a Marxist curmudgeon and long-standing anti-US protester.
Yet here I am actually euphoric about a US Presidential inauguration.
Yes, you heard.
This is something that nobody - least of all ME - ever thought would happen. Normally if I hear someone say they are proud to be an American I wince in pain and launch "Dive" at them in a merciless tirade of ranty rhetoric, yet today I would hug them.
Let's just take a few phrases from that speech (only a very few as I know some of you get bored easily and if you let me have my way I would debate every sentence of it at length):
First up:
"I thank President Bush for his service to our nation".
Well … Favreau obviously knows that starting with a joke is a great way to get your listeners' attention and empathy … and that was a fucking awesome joke!
And made even funnier by Obama's deadpan delivery.
"On this day we gather because we have chosen hope over fear …"
A great phrase, and one that totally sticks it to the previous administration who whipped up the American people into a frenzy of fear then fucked 'em up the ass by using that fear to tear up civil liberties, to ignore habeas corpus and international law, to falsely imprison and torture with seeming impunity and much, much more.
We will have to wait and see what actually happens but it was nice to hear rejection of "government by fear".
" … In the words of scripture …"
A little clunky, Mister Favreau, but we understand you have to appease the Godbotherers.
"The God-given promise that all are equal…"
Woohoo! I actually got one! The one and only phrase in the entire speech that I can take issue with (though only a little and on a point of semantics).
Those wonderful words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …"
Those words were written by men of the Enlightenment; men who valued reason above superstition and at least one of whom would these days be hounded out of the midwest as atheist scum. Men who argued against putting "endowed by their Creator" into the Declaration and only did it to grudgingly appease the Godbotherers of their day.
The words of Thomas Paine; of Jefferson and Franklin; men of reason and science rather than religion.
Wonderful words but definitely not God-given; instead given to the world by rational men who questioned God's existence.
"… a nation cannot prosper long when it favours only the prosperous."
Yee-fucking-ha! Now, you're talking!
"To all other peoples and governments … we are ready to lead once more."
This is the biggie.
The "once more" was - I take it - another one of Favreau's excellent jokes, as up until today, a statement that America is ready to lead, coming from the mouth of a US President meant only one thing: using US political power and "might is right" to force unwilling nations to support illegal wars.
In this case it seems - from the paragraphs leading up to the phrase - that things are different.
That the US under President Obama will indeed lead …
But LEAD BY EXAMPLE.
That is the most welcome news I think I have heard from any US politician over the past fifty years of my life.
The President's speech was full to the brim with inspirational talk about the economy, climate change, employment, healthcare and a commitment to seeking peace instead of bringing war and suffering.
Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, et al must be baffled, laying there in the darkness with the sudden realisation that they have stopped spinning in their graves.
The President also stressed that the USA is a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.
From over here outside its borders the USA is regarded as pretty near to a fundamentalist theocracy; a Christian Fundamentalist state in the same way that Afghanistan under the Taliban is a Muslim Fundamentalist state.
The President's speech hints at Thomas Jefferson's own First Amendment: freedom of choice in religion, including - and this is the new and important piece - freedom to choose not to worship any God or Gods.
Freedom to be a rational US citizen.
And this leads us on to my own personal favourite phrase from the President's inaugural speech:
"We will restore science to its rightful place …"
To hear that phrase uttered by a US President is so wonderful and so shocking that I am still reeling.
Thomas Jefferson presided over the glorious days of The Age of Enlightenment.
Will Barack Obama herald a New Age of Enlightenment?
We shall start to find out tomorrow morning.
The Godbotherers must be shitting their pants.
Whatever happens now, this has been a momentous day in human history.
And one that has left me astonished and surprised and a little baffled at the prospect that the nation I had railed against all my long life may just be coming to its senses.
What the fuck can I rant about now?
The full text of the speech is here and it is worth reading again.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
For Phil
Another quick filler post; this time for Phil.
Dude, do NOT let the little guys in your aquarium go round Mike's house for snacks!
Yum!
Dude, do NOT let the little guys in your aquarium go round Mike's house for snacks!
Yum!
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Filler Post
Yesterday's Non Sequitur 'toon tickled me greatly so as I'll be out all day today I thought I'd leave it here for anyone who might pop by.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Bummer
Until further notice the office servers are blocking blogs and my stupid commute means I don't have the time to blog unless I'm sitting in the office pretending to work.
The upshot of that is that I'll be posting and visiting a whole lot less.
Stop smiling, you bastards!
The upshot of that is that I'll be posting and visiting a whole lot less.
Stop smiling, you bastards!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Cheap Post! Yay!
I love "cheap post" days.
Those lovely days when Maria gives me a meme or I have some other excuse not to bother to use my brain.
Today it is Katie's turn.
Her latest post documents a visit she made to my old stamping ground in Cascais and she laments the fact that having visited Sintra she completely failed to see the castle.
Yay! Cheap post!
Coming up: photos of Peña Palace and Sintra Castle.
Katie, I wasn't sure whether it was the castle itself or both it and the Peña Palace that you missed so I'll post them both.
For anyone who's not been to that particular part of Portugal, just up the coast from Cascais is a cute little mountain around which the oddly Bavarian-styled town of Sintra nestles picturesquely.
Up on top of the mountian sits the utterly bonkers Peña Palace, one of the world's most wantonly unhinged buildings.
Apparently designed by an architect who had taken acid to try to cure a migraine it is glorious gibbering madness on a monumental scale.
Subtle it is not.
Though fairy tale romantic it may well be.
You really don't want to know what's going on here.
So anyhoo … Katie is not alone in having missed the Moorish Castle that shares the mountain with Peña Palace.
The first time I went there it took over an hour of battling through trackless woodland to discover the completely unsignposted mediæval stronghold clinging to the side of a lower slope where it could overlook the town and the sea in the distance.
I don't know what it's like now - they've probably built a road and a car park since my time - but back then the castle was gloriously unspoilt and overgrown, only visited by the few people mad enough and fit enough to do the Indiana Jones bit needed to reach it.
So, Katie. That's what you missed.
Pretty, huh?
An outpost of Islam in Christian Europe.
They brought us civilisation, mathematics, science, philosophy and trade with the world and we kicked 'em out and went back to the dark ages.
Sigh …
Those lovely days when Maria gives me a meme or I have some other excuse not to bother to use my brain.
Today it is Katie's turn.
Her latest post documents a visit she made to my old stamping ground in Cascais and she laments the fact that having visited Sintra she completely failed to see the castle.
Yay! Cheap post!
Coming up: photos of Peña Palace and Sintra Castle.
Katie, I wasn't sure whether it was the castle itself or both it and the Peña Palace that you missed so I'll post them both.
For anyone who's not been to that particular part of Portugal, just up the coast from Cascais is a cute little mountain around which the oddly Bavarian-styled town of Sintra nestles picturesquely.
Up on top of the mountian sits the utterly bonkers Peña Palace, one of the world's most wantonly unhinged buildings.
Apparently designed by an architect who had taken acid to try to cure a migraine it is glorious gibbering madness on a monumental scale.
Subtle it is not.
Though fairy tale romantic it may well be.
You really don't want to know what's going on here.So anyhoo … Katie is not alone in having missed the Moorish Castle that shares the mountain with Peña Palace.
The first time I went there it took over an hour of battling through trackless woodland to discover the completely unsignposted mediæval stronghold clinging to the side of a lower slope where it could overlook the town and the sea in the distance.
I don't know what it's like now - they've probably built a road and a car park since my time - but back then the castle was gloriously unspoilt and overgrown, only visited by the few people mad enough and fit enough to do the Indiana Jones bit needed to reach it.
So, Katie. That's what you missed.Pretty, huh?
An outpost of Islam in Christian Europe.
They brought us civilisation, mathematics, science, philosophy and trade with the world and we kicked 'em out and went back to the dark ages.
Sigh …
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The Full English
Many thanks to Arial Ray for putting things in perspective in yesterday's comments.
Sure, US crimes against food and language are easy targets (and I just love an easy target) but back here in Blighty we too are guilty of some pretty horrendous culinary atrocities and the alleged "full English breakfast" that we thrust on tourists and then go off to giggle in the kitchen is one of the very worst.
Arial's nauseating description of "… the vilest, fattiest bacon and eggs I have ever eaten, and instant tea. Not just any instant tea, instant white tea …" doesn't surprise me in the least as I have witnessed these horrors for myself.
Add to that the English Tourist Board Code of Practice for Abusing Johnny Foreigner:
- All food served to tourists must be at least a week past it's use-by date.
- All vegetables must be boiled until they scream for mercy and then boiled some more.
- Cabbage must be liquid.
- Sprouts must be soggy mush.
- Food that would never be fried in your own home must be fried in stale, gritty grease at high heat so the outside is burnt to a cinder while the inside remains raw.
- What is not overcooked must be undercooked.
- Everything (and that includes pasta dishes, curries, soup, fruit and croissants) must be served with soggy, greasy chips and watered-down tomato ketchup.
- Everything must be caked thickly with salt.
- If a dish looks dry, add a portion of baked beans.
- All desserts must be made entirely from artificial chemicals.
- All tea served to tourists must be weak, pale brown, insipid and flavourless. Use one part tea to four parts sawdust.
Even that sweet little hotel in Bloomsbury where Katie stayed on her visit to London last year served up this crime against breakfast:
Sorry, Katie. I stole it from your blog.
Note the flabby and overcooked fried egg, running with grease;
the tough, cheap, chewy excuse for a bacon rasher;
half a raw tomato (what the fuck is that doing there?);
and of course, the inevitable baked beans.
Note also the thin (ready-sliced catering pack) toast, the awful little pot of over-sweet apricot "preserve" and the dreadfully weak emetic fluid in the teacup.
This is actually pretty decent compared to the slop that gets pushed to most tourists.
So let's redress the balance a little.
Come and have breakfast with Old Dive.
Let's go shopping to start with.
All of these ingredients are local, organic and free range (except the marmalade, which - quelle horreur - is French).
We're in a recession and apparently some fairweather fools are beginning to abandon real food in favour of body-altering chemicals and drugs that are pumped into the agro-chemical-industrial fat/salt/sugar "product" that the supermarkets serve up for a few pennies less.
This is not just fucking dumb stupid, it is criminally insane.
Stop it!
Now!
Buy fresh, local, organic, seasonal, REAL food, or these farmers and suppliers may not be there when the recession is over.
It's only pennies, people; don't be fucking dorks!
So here we have some classic English breakfast ingredients from Harvey's, my local organic emporium.
First up, get a hold of a big ol' frying pan and heat that sucker up.
Add a few drops of organic sunflower oil and smear it around the pan.
No lard.
No greasy "cooking oil".
Old Dive's Full English Breakfast will consist of (per person):
- two lightly fried eggs (good deep, rich yellow runny yolks that burst open and soak the plate with yummy goodness);
- three rashers of unsalted organic bacon;
- three slices of black pudding;
- three lightly-fried lamb's kidneys;
- one huge, flat field mushroom fried until the gills turn black and the top is browning;
- one large, fried pomodoro tomato full of beautiful juice that goes so perfectly with black pudding and flat mushrooms.
A word about mushrooms:
All mushrooms that reach the shops are a minimum of three days old (five for supermarkets) since picking.
These mushrooms are only good for soups and stews.
Any mushroom that begins to dent when pressed hard with a finger (or God forbid is slightly squishy) is no good for breakfast. Soups and stews only, people.
If you do not have a nice patch of woodland and meadow with a secret stash of fungi, then buy your mushrooms at your nearest mushroom farm.
There are three around my own tiny village and all of them have a little hidden counter where Joe Public (or at least those of us in the know) can buy mushrooms picked only minutes earlier for far less than shop prices.
Organic, button, brown, white, flat Portobello, shiitake, oyster; all sorts.
Fresh!
Big, flat, Portobello field mushrooms must be hard and go "clonk" when rapped with a knuckle.
Button mushrooms must be so fresh and crisp that they almost pop when you bite into them.
I always buy a bag of fresh picked buttons to eat like sweets on my way home.
Once you've eaten mushrooms like this you will never, EVER eat soggy shop crap mushrooms again.
Anyhoo. Serve that lot up with a piping hot cup of Fortnum and Mason's Breakfast Tea (from a TEAPOT, people - or at least an infuser! And add the milk first).
To complete the "Full English", cut a couple of really thick, doorstep slices from a local organic granary loaf (preferably a still-warm one you picked up from the baker in the village on your way home from the mushroom farm, though I do find that bread that's just starting to go stale makes excellent toast).
Never use ready-sliced. Whoever came up with the phrase "the best thing since sliced bread" was a twat.
Toast 'em under the grill, carefully turning the bread several times and ensuring that the outside is crisp and dark (but not burnt) and the inside good and hot (making successful "Fat toast" is an art form in itself) and then spread thinly with local unsalted butter and serve up with lashings of yummy bitter orange marmalade.
A second cup of tea to wash that lot down and there you have a proper Full English Breakfast.
Accept no substitute!
I treat myself to this around once a month. Usually, my breakfast consists of a latte and a croissant but as a special treat this is unbeatable.
The only drawback to enjoying a Dive-cooked Full English Breakfast is that you have to spend the night with me first.
Sure, US crimes against food and language are easy targets (and I just love an easy target) but back here in Blighty we too are guilty of some pretty horrendous culinary atrocities and the alleged "full English breakfast" that we thrust on tourists and then go off to giggle in the kitchen is one of the very worst.
Arial's nauseating description of "… the vilest, fattiest bacon and eggs I have ever eaten, and instant tea. Not just any instant tea, instant white tea …" doesn't surprise me in the least as I have witnessed these horrors for myself.
Add to that the English Tourist Board Code of Practice for Abusing Johnny Foreigner:
- All food served to tourists must be at least a week past it's use-by date.
- All vegetables must be boiled until they scream for mercy and then boiled some more.
- Cabbage must be liquid.
- Sprouts must be soggy mush.
- Food that would never be fried in your own home must be fried in stale, gritty grease at high heat so the outside is burnt to a cinder while the inside remains raw.
- What is not overcooked must be undercooked.
- Everything (and that includes pasta dishes, curries, soup, fruit and croissants) must be served with soggy, greasy chips and watered-down tomato ketchup.
- Everything must be caked thickly with salt.
- If a dish looks dry, add a portion of baked beans.
- All desserts must be made entirely from artificial chemicals.
- All tea served to tourists must be weak, pale brown, insipid and flavourless. Use one part tea to four parts sawdust.
Even that sweet little hotel in Bloomsbury where Katie stayed on her visit to London last year served up this crime against breakfast:
Sorry, Katie. I stole it from your blog.Note the flabby and overcooked fried egg, running with grease;
the tough, cheap, chewy excuse for a bacon rasher;
half a raw tomato (what the fuck is that doing there?);
and of course, the inevitable baked beans.
Note also the thin (ready-sliced catering pack) toast, the awful little pot of over-sweet apricot "preserve" and the dreadfully weak emetic fluid in the teacup.
This is actually pretty decent compared to the slop that gets pushed to most tourists.
So let's redress the balance a little.
Come and have breakfast with Old Dive.
Let's go shopping to start with.All of these ingredients are local, organic and free range (except the marmalade, which - quelle horreur - is French).
We're in a recession and apparently some fairweather fools are beginning to abandon real food in favour of body-altering chemicals and drugs that are pumped into the agro-chemical-industrial fat/salt/sugar "product" that the supermarkets serve up for a few pennies less.
This is not just fucking dumb stupid, it is criminally insane.
Stop it!
Now!
Buy fresh, local, organic, seasonal, REAL food, or these farmers and suppliers may not be there when the recession is over.
It's only pennies, people; don't be fucking dorks!
So here we have some classic English breakfast ingredients from Harvey's, my local organic emporium.
First up, get a hold of a big ol' frying pan and heat that sucker up.
Add a few drops of organic sunflower oil and smear it around the pan.
No lard.
No greasy "cooking oil".
Old Dive's Full English Breakfast will consist of (per person):
- two lightly fried eggs (good deep, rich yellow runny yolks that burst open and soak the plate with yummy goodness);
- three rashers of unsalted organic bacon;
- three slices of black pudding;
- three lightly-fried lamb's kidneys;
- one huge, flat field mushroom fried until the gills turn black and the top is browning;
- one large, fried pomodoro tomato full of beautiful juice that goes so perfectly with black pudding and flat mushrooms.
A word about mushrooms:
All mushrooms that reach the shops are a minimum of three days old (five for supermarkets) since picking.
These mushrooms are only good for soups and stews.
Any mushroom that begins to dent when pressed hard with a finger (or God forbid is slightly squishy) is no good for breakfast. Soups and stews only, people.
If you do not have a nice patch of woodland and meadow with a secret stash of fungi, then buy your mushrooms at your nearest mushroom farm.
There are three around my own tiny village and all of them have a little hidden counter where Joe Public (or at least those of us in the know) can buy mushrooms picked only minutes earlier for far less than shop prices.
Organic, button, brown, white, flat Portobello, shiitake, oyster; all sorts.
Fresh!
Big, flat, Portobello field mushrooms must be hard and go "clonk" when rapped with a knuckle.
Button mushrooms must be so fresh and crisp that they almost pop when you bite into them.
I always buy a bag of fresh picked buttons to eat like sweets on my way home.
Once you've eaten mushrooms like this you will never, EVER eat soggy shop crap mushrooms again.
Anyhoo. Serve that lot up with a piping hot cup of Fortnum and Mason's Breakfast Tea (from a TEAPOT, people - or at least an infuser! And add the milk first).
To complete the "Full English", cut a couple of really thick, doorstep slices from a local organic granary loaf (preferably a still-warm one you picked up from the baker in the village on your way home from the mushroom farm, though I do find that bread that's just starting to go stale makes excellent toast).
Never use ready-sliced. Whoever came up with the phrase "the best thing since sliced bread" was a twat.
Toast 'em under the grill, carefully turning the bread several times and ensuring that the outside is crisp and dark (but not burnt) and the inside good and hot (making successful "Fat toast" is an art form in itself) and then spread thinly with local unsalted butter and serve up with lashings of yummy bitter orange marmalade.
A second cup of tea to wash that lot down and there you have a proper Full English Breakfast.
Accept no substitute!
I treat myself to this around once a month. Usually, my breakfast consists of a latte and a croissant but as a special treat this is unbeatable.
The only drawback to enjoying a Dive-cooked Full English Breakfast is that you have to spend the night with me first.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Musings From The Naughty-Cupboard
Well, I'm still locked in this fucking cupboard.
He says he'll let me out when I show some sign of sanity.
Sheesh!
At least he left me the laptop and a stack of movies, though it's getting pretty unpleasant in here what with the constant fights with Stouffer over who gets to use the litter tray.
And talking of catshit, my comment box seems to be full of weiners.
Katie writes (rather scarily):
"I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner
That is what I truly wish to be
cause if i were a Oscar Mayer Weiner
everyone would be in love
oh everyone would be in love
everyone would be in love with me"
And Maria:
"Oscar Meyer has a way with B O L O G N A."
I have spent fifty years blissfully unaware of the existence of Oscar Meyer weiners - or indeed any other brand - but now you've gone and spoiled that and introduced me to a new horror of US "cuisine" to add to the supersized burger, "freedom" fries, alleged pizza with macaroni cheese on top and greasy bits of deep-fried gristle served up in a bucket.
Now I have to add to that list of shame classic Italian dishes with the meat replaced by pink plastic hot-dog "sausages"?
Holy crap!
This from a country that - since 1492 - has to date signally failed to produce a single edible cheese.
Shit! The stuff comes in spray cans over there … or in thin, shitty-smelling sheets of sweaty rubber that look, feel and taste almost exactly unlike cheese of any description … except perhaps knob-cheese.
We had a flirtation with US "cuisine" over here when I was a kid in the sixties.
We poor urchins, dressed in rags and scratching for turnips amidst the bombed-out cities of post-war austerity Britain, assumed that as you Colonials all appeared to be filthy rich and to drive flying cars (or at least cars shaped like "weiners" as this lovely photo from Lulu shows) and live in Disney castles that you must have been doing something right and that maybe it was your diet …
Er …
Okay, so now we know that a diet based on saturated fat, sugar, salt and chemical additives produces a nation of grossly obese, hyper-aggressive morons (present company excepted, of course) with the attention span of a bored gnat, but back then we thought you were really on to something.
The result was truly dreadful, a "food" product the memory of which still produces creeping horrors in my scarred soul:
"Heinz Baked Beans With Pork Sausages".
A can of orange goo with some stale borlotti beans floating in it in amongst some weird, squishy, pink, poo-like tubes of mystery "meat" of a consistency to suggest that maybe you guys farmed earthworms.
"Weiners".
When I was a nipper these were the very pinnacle of "luxury international cuisine".
Together with SPAM®, of course.
Fortunately for us those things were indeed "luxury" items and for special occasions only, so the chemical damage to my child's body was limited.
So anyhoo: back to the weiners.
I checked on YouTube and it appears that I must now add the word "weiner" to "risotto" and "basil" and all the other words our errant Colonials have yet to learn how to pronounce correctly.
It's as if you guys look at a written word and take a wild, flying guess as to its pronunciation without bothering to consult an actual alphabet or indeed any form of language, let alone the language whence the word originated.
"Weiner" - for your information - has the soft German "V" at the start and is not pronounced "whiner" or even "weener", at least not in any civilised part of the world.
Of course, being an Englishman it is my natural genetic birthright to blame absolutely everything on the Irish and this case is no exception.
Back in the good old days of the potato famine, millions of starving, illiterate and uneducated Irish peasants washed up on the shores of Noo Yoik City, their brains addled with poteen.
Too dumb to realise they could choose anywhere on that enormous continent to live, they huddled together in Noo Yoik's seething tenements and quickly took over and monopolised those bastions of the establishment where spectacular, mule-headed stupidity was not an impediment but was indeed a guarantee of career advancement: politics, the police and the immigration authorities.
As the wars, pogroms and other horrors of late nineteenth century Europe and Russia raged, they produced the biggest human migration ever seen and countless millions of poor and uneducated Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, Czechs, Russians and folk from all points unpronounceable descended on the illiterate Irish immigration officials who now ran Ellis Island.
Here, they found that they would lose their ancient and beloved family names and be given instead a piece of official stamped paper with a new and usually very stupid word scrawled on it.
This was the inevitable result of some dumb Oirish schmuck-o asking the poor immigrant's name and then wrestling incompetently with the alphabet (and usually losing badly) in a deranged attempt at phonetic spelling.
The Irish - whom most people in the US assume are charming romantic poets - cannot even spell their OWN names, let alone anyone else's.
An Irishman at a spelling bee is a sight to behold.
They launch into spelling with more enthusiasm than is probably wise in a people for whom the alphabet is an alien concept, adding endless "g"s and "h"s and cramming consonants in where no consonant has any business being crammed.
They spell "Neve" "Naimh", for fuck's sake!
The current fad for giving kids Irish names makes junior school roll-call sound like a spectacularly phlegmy coughing fit.
Sweet cheeses of Nazareth (not, by the way, available in a spray can)!
These are the people who gave us the hilarious misnames that make the credits the funniest part of any US movie or TV show (my personal favourite being Lolita Fatjo from one of the Star Trek spin-offs … Lolita's bad enough but where the fuck did she get "Fatjo" from? Shamus in immigration; that's where).
Of course, I know that at least three of my very favourite blogpals are of Irish descent but being locked in a cupboard with a sweary blue rubber cat gives rise to odd thoughts and being soundly beaten by angry weemen becomes a strangely attractive notion.
Anyhoo … I shall conclude this stream-of-semi-consciousness drivel-fest with the observation that a similar admixture of enthusiasm and complete ignorance gave rise to what has become that most fearsome weapon of mass destruction: US "cuisine".
The confused, illiterate peasants from various parts of Europe found themselves hunkered down with their new, incomprehensible names, in little turf houses miles from anywhere in the howling snowstorms of the prairie.
Some tattered remnant of folk-memory still lingered in the names and vague notions of the noble cuisines of their home nations but with none of the correct ingredients to hand and struggling with the weird pronunciations of Noah Webster's twisted English they did the best they could.
Occasionally they came up with something wonderful, such as gumbo, chowder or indeed the original Boston baked beans; sometimes they almost produced something edible, like hominy grits; but mostly they came up with deep fried varieties of saturated fats, sugar, salt and gristle - usually coated liberally with maple syrup - and with increasing industrialisation unnatural chemicals were added to mask the appalling taste and texture.
And of course they came up with the "weiner".
If the Germans know nothing else they know how to invade a country and how to make a good sausage.
Just as the French and the English know how to make great cheese ("blessed are the cheesemakers").
A true weiner schnitzel is a joy to behold and delicious to eat.
The thing that passes for a "weiner" in the States deserves its very own circle of Hell.
Though I still want one of those weiner cars!
So that's all the news that's fit to print from the naughty-cupboard.
It's back to scrapping over the litter tray.
Hey ho.
He says he'll let me out when I show some sign of sanity.
Sheesh!
At least he left me the laptop and a stack of movies, though it's getting pretty unpleasant in here what with the constant fights with Stouffer over who gets to use the litter tray.
And talking of catshit, my comment box seems to be full of weiners.
Katie writes (rather scarily):
"I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner
That is what I truly wish to be
cause if i were a Oscar Mayer Weiner
everyone would be in love
oh everyone would be in love
everyone would be in love with me"
And Maria:
"Oscar Meyer has a way with B O L O G N A."
I have spent fifty years blissfully unaware of the existence of Oscar Meyer weiners - or indeed any other brand - but now you've gone and spoiled that and introduced me to a new horror of US "cuisine" to add to the supersized burger, "freedom" fries, alleged pizza with macaroni cheese on top and greasy bits of deep-fried gristle served up in a bucket.
Now I have to add to that list of shame classic Italian dishes with the meat replaced by pink plastic hot-dog "sausages"?
Holy crap!
This from a country that - since 1492 - has to date signally failed to produce a single edible cheese.
Shit! The stuff comes in spray cans over there … or in thin, shitty-smelling sheets of sweaty rubber that look, feel and taste almost exactly unlike cheese of any description … except perhaps knob-cheese.
We had a flirtation with US "cuisine" over here when I was a kid in the sixties.
We poor urchins, dressed in rags and scratching for turnips amidst the bombed-out cities of post-war austerity Britain, assumed that as you Colonials all appeared to be filthy rich and to drive flying cars (or at least cars shaped like "weiners" as this lovely photo from Lulu shows) and live in Disney castles that you must have been doing something right and that maybe it was your diet …
Er …
Okay, so now we know that a diet based on saturated fat, sugar, salt and chemical additives produces a nation of grossly obese, hyper-aggressive morons (present company excepted, of course) with the attention span of a bored gnat, but back then we thought you were really on to something.
The result was truly dreadful, a "food" product the memory of which still produces creeping horrors in my scarred soul:
"Heinz Baked Beans With Pork Sausages".
A can of orange goo with some stale borlotti beans floating in it in amongst some weird, squishy, pink, poo-like tubes of mystery "meat" of a consistency to suggest that maybe you guys farmed earthworms.
"Weiners".
When I was a nipper these were the very pinnacle of "luxury international cuisine".
Together with SPAM®, of course.
Fortunately for us those things were indeed "luxury" items and for special occasions only, so the chemical damage to my child's body was limited.
So anyhoo: back to the weiners.
I checked on YouTube and it appears that I must now add the word "weiner" to "risotto" and "basil" and all the other words our errant Colonials have yet to learn how to pronounce correctly.
It's as if you guys look at a written word and take a wild, flying guess as to its pronunciation without bothering to consult an actual alphabet or indeed any form of language, let alone the language whence the word originated.
"Weiner" - for your information - has the soft German "V" at the start and is not pronounced "whiner" or even "weener", at least not in any civilised part of the world.
Of course, being an Englishman it is my natural genetic birthright to blame absolutely everything on the Irish and this case is no exception.
Back in the good old days of the potato famine, millions of starving, illiterate and uneducated Irish peasants washed up on the shores of Noo Yoik City, their brains addled with poteen.
Too dumb to realise they could choose anywhere on that enormous continent to live, they huddled together in Noo Yoik's seething tenements and quickly took over and monopolised those bastions of the establishment where spectacular, mule-headed stupidity was not an impediment but was indeed a guarantee of career advancement: politics, the police and the immigration authorities.
As the wars, pogroms and other horrors of late nineteenth century Europe and Russia raged, they produced the biggest human migration ever seen and countless millions of poor and uneducated Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, Czechs, Russians and folk from all points unpronounceable descended on the illiterate Irish immigration officials who now ran Ellis Island.
Here, they found that they would lose their ancient and beloved family names and be given instead a piece of official stamped paper with a new and usually very stupid word scrawled on it.
This was the inevitable result of some dumb Oirish schmuck-o asking the poor immigrant's name and then wrestling incompetently with the alphabet (and usually losing badly) in a deranged attempt at phonetic spelling.
The Irish - whom most people in the US assume are charming romantic poets - cannot even spell their OWN names, let alone anyone else's.
An Irishman at a spelling bee is a sight to behold.
They launch into spelling with more enthusiasm than is probably wise in a people for whom the alphabet is an alien concept, adding endless "g"s and "h"s and cramming consonants in where no consonant has any business being crammed.
They spell "Neve" "Naimh", for fuck's sake!
The current fad for giving kids Irish names makes junior school roll-call sound like a spectacularly phlegmy coughing fit.
Sweet cheeses of Nazareth (not, by the way, available in a spray can)!
These are the people who gave us the hilarious misnames that make the credits the funniest part of any US movie or TV show (my personal favourite being Lolita Fatjo from one of the Star Trek spin-offs … Lolita's bad enough but where the fuck did she get "Fatjo" from? Shamus in immigration; that's where).
Of course, I know that at least three of my very favourite blogpals are of Irish descent but being locked in a cupboard with a sweary blue rubber cat gives rise to odd thoughts and being soundly beaten by angry weemen becomes a strangely attractive notion.
Anyhoo … I shall conclude this stream-of-semi-consciousness drivel-fest with the observation that a similar admixture of enthusiasm and complete ignorance gave rise to what has become that most fearsome weapon of mass destruction: US "cuisine".
The confused, illiterate peasants from various parts of Europe found themselves hunkered down with their new, incomprehensible names, in little turf houses miles from anywhere in the howling snowstorms of the prairie.
Some tattered remnant of folk-memory still lingered in the names and vague notions of the noble cuisines of their home nations but with none of the correct ingredients to hand and struggling with the weird pronunciations of Noah Webster's twisted English they did the best they could.
Occasionally they came up with something wonderful, such as gumbo, chowder or indeed the original Boston baked beans; sometimes they almost produced something edible, like hominy grits; but mostly they came up with deep fried varieties of saturated fats, sugar, salt and gristle - usually coated liberally with maple syrup - and with increasing industrialisation unnatural chemicals were added to mask the appalling taste and texture.
And of course they came up with the "weiner".
If the Germans know nothing else they know how to invade a country and how to make a good sausage.
Just as the French and the English know how to make great cheese ("blessed are the cheesemakers").
A true weiner schnitzel is a joy to behold and delicious to eat.
The thing that passes for a "weiner" in the States deserves its very own circle of Hell.
Though I still want one of those weiner cars!
So that's all the news that's fit to print from the naughty-cupboard.
It's back to scrapping over the litter tray.
Hey ho.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Don't Blame Me …
Well … Who should stagger in the door last night but Old Dive.
Having yelled "Yo, Bitches! I'm back!" he proceeded to fall over the coffee table and then got into a fist fight with Stouffer.
I locked them both in the understairs cupboard with some of Savannah's yummy baked SPAM (see yesterday's comments for her recipe) and went to bed.
They're still there.
Dive won't tell me where he's been, though I thought I saw him on the news at a pro-Palestinian rally and rumour has it he's been wandering around London punching random Americans in the head; in protest either at their support for Israel or for their inability to correctly pronounce the word "risotto", I'm not entirely clear on that one.
I'm leaving the two of them in the cupboard for a while longer as I'm not convinced Dive is currently in orbit around the planet Sanity.
He slipped this recipe under the door this morning:
"Thanks for the SPAM! I loved it when I was a kid and I love it now.
Not to eat, of course, but it feels great rubbed on the skin.
Hokay, dudes. Let's see what's cooking here in the "Naughty Cupboard".
Right …
Tripe!
Good, traditional food we never seem to eat any more.
Get hold of a couple of pounds of tripe. Don't cook with it yet, just spend a little time groping and squeezing it.
Fun, huh?
Now slip it inside your clothes and go for a good long run.
Done that? Excellent.
You should now be looking (somewhat askance) at a couple of pounds of warm, sweaty tripe.
Wrap the tripe round a chicken carcass, mash half a dozen bananas into it with some cloves and capers and stick it in a saucepan and cover the lot with milk.
We want to simmer that slooooowly on the lowest setting for a good four hours.
Carefully skim off any scum (we've covered scum-skimming when we made stock if you remember) and any icky stuff that floats to the surface.
It will form a skin after a few minutes and it's that deliciously flavoured skin and the scum we want to keep.
Toss the rest away.
Now coat the inside of an old sock (the riper the better) with maple syrup and pack all of that milk-skin and good yummy stuff inside it.
Don't forget to knot the top!
Now we need to make some custard. About a quart; quite runny. It's okay to use custard mix as I'm locked in a cupboard and it's all I've got.
Add a good half pound of grated Parmesan to the custard and stir it until it melts and goes all gooey.
Pop in the stuffed sock and two heaped tablespoons of instant coffee granules and boil the whole lot until the cheese/coffee/custard has evaporated/been absorbed by the sock.
When it's done, empty the sock's contents into a bowl containing a chopped onion and a cupful of malt vinegar and stir well.
Sprinkle with chocolate chips.
Serve with raspberries and the broiled lung of a horse.
Voilá! Banana Lungfat Surprise.
An old family favourite (though whose family I have no idea).
Now let me out of this cupboard, you fuckers!"
Don't blame me … You wanted him back.
Having yelled "Yo, Bitches! I'm back!" he proceeded to fall over the coffee table and then got into a fist fight with Stouffer.
I locked them both in the understairs cupboard with some of Savannah's yummy baked SPAM (see yesterday's comments for her recipe) and went to bed.
They're still there.
Dive won't tell me where he's been, though I thought I saw him on the news at a pro-Palestinian rally and rumour has it he's been wandering around London punching random Americans in the head; in protest either at their support for Israel or for their inability to correctly pronounce the word "risotto", I'm not entirely clear on that one.
I'm leaving the two of them in the cupboard for a while longer as I'm not convinced Dive is currently in orbit around the planet Sanity.
He slipped this recipe under the door this morning:
"Thanks for the SPAM! I loved it when I was a kid and I love it now.
Not to eat, of course, but it feels great rubbed on the skin.
Hokay, dudes. Let's see what's cooking here in the "Naughty Cupboard".
Right …
Tripe!
Good, traditional food we never seem to eat any more.
Get hold of a couple of pounds of tripe. Don't cook with it yet, just spend a little time groping and squeezing it.
Fun, huh?
Now slip it inside your clothes and go for a good long run.
Done that? Excellent.
You should now be looking (somewhat askance) at a couple of pounds of warm, sweaty tripe.
Wrap the tripe round a chicken carcass, mash half a dozen bananas into it with some cloves and capers and stick it in a saucepan and cover the lot with milk.
We want to simmer that slooooowly on the lowest setting for a good four hours.
Carefully skim off any scum (we've covered scum-skimming when we made stock if you remember) and any icky stuff that floats to the surface.
It will form a skin after a few minutes and it's that deliciously flavoured skin and the scum we want to keep.
Toss the rest away.
Now coat the inside of an old sock (the riper the better) with maple syrup and pack all of that milk-skin and good yummy stuff inside it.
Don't forget to knot the top!
Now we need to make some custard. About a quart; quite runny. It's okay to use custard mix as I'm locked in a cupboard and it's all I've got.
Add a good half pound of grated Parmesan to the custard and stir it until it melts and goes all gooey.
Pop in the stuffed sock and two heaped tablespoons of instant coffee granules and boil the whole lot until the cheese/coffee/custard has evaporated/been absorbed by the sock.
When it's done, empty the sock's contents into a bowl containing a chopped onion and a cupful of malt vinegar and stir well.
Sprinkle with chocolate chips.
Serve with raspberries and the broiled lung of a horse.
Voilá! Banana Lungfat Surprise.
An old family favourite (though whose family I have no idea).
Now let me out of this cupboard, you fuckers!"
Don't blame me … You wanted him back.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Has Anyone Seen Dive?
Where the fuck is that dickwad?
I need him here to write this blog as I am crap at it.
Without him it turns into a lame-o diary blog.
Today I vacuumed and dusted and polished and re-arranged books and did some "work" work and scrubbed the cooker and washed the kitchen floor (and then walked on it in my socks and got cold, wet feet) and I'm bored shitless and I've still got the car to wash, the ironing to do and dinner to make.
Thank goodness it's freezing and too cold to mow the lawn.
How on earth do people find any time to sit in front of a TV?
If anyone finds Dive would you please stick a stamp on his forehead and mail the bastard back here? He has an appointment for an arse-kicking.
Thank you.
I need him here to write this blog as I am crap at it.
Without him it turns into a lame-o diary blog.
Today I vacuumed and dusted and polished and re-arranged books and did some "work" work and scrubbed the cooker and washed the kitchen floor (and then walked on it in my socks and got cold, wet feet) and I'm bored shitless and I've still got the car to wash, the ironing to do and dinner to make.
Thank goodness it's freezing and too cold to mow the lawn.
How on earth do people find any time to sit in front of a TV?
If anyone finds Dive would you please stick a stamp on his forehead and mail the bastard back here? He has an appointment for an arse-kicking.
Thank you.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Bus?
Dive's still missing, so here are a few more lovely Natalie Dee 'toons in an attempt to cover his absence.
They pretty much cover what he would have written if he bothered to turn up.
They pretty much cover what he would have written if he bothered to turn up.
Friday, January 09, 2009
More Nothing
Hokay.
Old Dive is still missing.
I searched the house, the office and what remains of my brain for him but he's sneaked off somewhere, no doubt doing something furtive and unsavoury.
As soon as he gets back normal sweary service will be resumed but for now I am just posting crappy filler stuff like this.
Hey ho.
By the way, Katie wins yesterday's postbag contest.
Mikey and Prudence get honourable mentions for their impeccable morse code but Katie's braille pips them at the post because I like writing that comes in feely-bumps (I'm a nipple man).
As for a prize; we'll have to sort something out in Paris. It will probably be obscenely biological. Or a meal. Whichever you prefer.
TTFN
Old Dive is still missing.
I searched the house, the office and what remains of my brain for him but he's sneaked off somewhere, no doubt doing something furtive and unsavoury.
As soon as he gets back normal sweary service will be resumed but for now I am just posting crappy filler stuff like this.
Hey ho.
By the way, Katie wins yesterday's postbag contest.
Mikey and Prudence get honourable mentions for their impeccable morse code but Katie's braille pips them at the post because I like writing that comes in feely-bumps (I'm a nipple man).
As for a prize; we'll have to sort something out in Paris. It will probably be obscenely biological. Or a meal. Whichever you prefer.
TTFN
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Fa-la-la
This is scary.
I am enjoying being back at work so much that I'm neglecting my blogging duties.
Writing posts suddenly seems like much more of a chore than playing with my 3D programmes and pimping the results in Photoshop (no doubt I'll post 'em when they're done) and gleefully watching the misery of my work colleagues.
The Godawful holiday forced upon me at Christmas (having no kids and hating television and drunks makes the compulsory Christmas and New Year's break a time of abject misery for me) has reawakened the joy I used to find in my work.
No doubt the commute from Hell will soon suck the life out of me but until then, please excuse me enjoying myself and forgive me if I'm not around so much.
Toodle-pip!
I am enjoying being back at work so much that I'm neglecting my blogging duties.
Writing posts suddenly seems like much more of a chore than playing with my 3D programmes and pimping the results in Photoshop (no doubt I'll post 'em when they're done) and gleefully watching the misery of my work colleagues.
The Godawful holiday forced upon me at Christmas (having no kids and hating television and drunks makes the compulsory Christmas and New Year's break a time of abject misery for me) has reawakened the joy I used to find in my work.
No doubt the commute from Hell will soon suck the life out of me but until then, please excuse me enjoying myself and forgive me if I'm not around so much.
Toodle-pip!
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Hey Ho
Back in the saddle today with the seven hour commute from Hell, so I've not had time to write a post or visit more than a couple of blogs.
Expect the usual crap when I get back into the routine, but for now, I'm going to bed.
Expect the usual crap when I get back into the routine, but for now, I'm going to bed.
Monday, January 05, 2009
More Boring Bricks
Fancy a quick wander?
Come on, then. Now that we've finished poking around The Great Hospital we shall venture just across the road to see some of the yummy old houses between the hospital and the Cathedral.
There are many more (and sunnier) photos of beautiful old Norwich buildings to be seen in this post and in this one but these are from last week when I was on my way to meet Mikey.
Contrasting styles.
Two fifteenth century houses and an early nineteenth century one.
The pink house has had a bizarre, seventeenth century front wall added and the middle one has had the original windows replaced with sashes on the upper floors.
Most houses of this period or earlier have been bashed about so much over the centuries that little of them is left.
Check this one out, however, for the real deal!
Dragon Hall Post 1
Dragon Hall Post 2
This is much earlier. The back end of The Deanery by the west door of the Cathedral. I am always torn between thinking this would be a fantastic place to live (especially as when I used to walk past it on my way in to my old office I could hear the Cathedral Choir rehearsing in the Choir School just across the way) or a total nightmare, as every quarter of an hour the bells from the Cathedral go apeshit, so perhaps I'll move here when I go deaf.
The Deanery from the garden side. Again with windows added in just about every century to make a charming mess.
Most of the houses around the Cathedral and The Great Hospital look like this. To say I want them all is an understatement.
Here is one of my favourites.
People actually live in these places. I want to kill them and steal their homes. Is that so wrong?
Don't answer that.
Some early Georgian houses from another part of Cathedral Close.
This one would make an ideal setting for Katie, Lynn, Petrea and Lucio to indulge in their Austenesqueries (yay! Another neologism for the Small Glass Planet)!
Kindly pass that sheep's-gut condom, Mister Darcy; I feel somewhat frisky!
I have always lusted after this house. The front of this one dates from the year before the pilgrim fathers set sail for the colonies (there's a date plaque) though it would have originally had leaded casement windows; these are late seventeenth century replacements.
The bulk of the house, however, is fourteenth century.
All of these houses are owned by the Cathedral and when I was working in Norwich my mate Gerry was surveyor for the Close and I managed to sneak inside several of these places with him and had a good rummage around in roofs and basements, dating the timbers and construction methods. I love stuff like that.
A trio of Elizabethan cottages belonging to The Great Hospital with later brick walls set in front of the original timber framing and sixteenth century Dutch gables added.
Quaint and beautiful in a vernacular fashion.
Again, this would have originally been timber framed with oak mullioned windows, then when the brick was added the windows would have been leaded casements. These are early Victorian windows, from the start of plate glass production when windows were no longer hand-blown glass and larger panes became possible.
This was originally the monks' brewhouse from the Cathedral monastery and the lower parts of it date back to the 1080s. Now one of my favourite houses in The Close.
It is the first house on Hook's Walk, leading down to The Great Hospital. The cream house beyond it is a fourteenth century timber framed house with fifteenth century additions and the original great hall inside.
We shall finish today's picturesque perambulation with another part of Hook's Walk.
The path turns left at the pink house (a nunnery) and if you follow it round you see those lovely Dutch gabled cottages and The Great Hospital in front of you.
In the spring, when the weather is warmer and sunnier I shall do more posts of Old Norwich.
If you find them boring, tough titty. I love old buildings, so there.
Come on, then. Now that we've finished poking around The Great Hospital we shall venture just across the road to see some of the yummy old houses between the hospital and the Cathedral.
There are many more (and sunnier) photos of beautiful old Norwich buildings to be seen in this post and in this one but these are from last week when I was on my way to meet Mikey.
Contrasting styles.Two fifteenth century houses and an early nineteenth century one.
The pink house has had a bizarre, seventeenth century front wall added and the middle one has had the original windows replaced with sashes on the upper floors.
Most houses of this period or earlier have been bashed about so much over the centuries that little of them is left.
Check this one out, however, for the real deal!
Dragon Hall Post 1
Dragon Hall Post 2
This is much earlier. The back end of The Deanery by the west door of the Cathedral. I am always torn between thinking this would be a fantastic place to live (especially as when I used to walk past it on my way in to my old office I could hear the Cathedral Choir rehearsing in the Choir School just across the way) or a total nightmare, as every quarter of an hour the bells from the Cathedral go apeshit, so perhaps I'll move here when I go deaf.
The Deanery from the garden side. Again with windows added in just about every century to make a charming mess.
Most of the houses around the Cathedral and The Great Hospital look like this. To say I want them all is an understatement.
Here is one of my favourites.People actually live in these places. I want to kill them and steal their homes. Is that so wrong?
Don't answer that.
Some early Georgian houses from another part of Cathedral Close.This one would make an ideal setting for Katie, Lynn, Petrea and Lucio to indulge in their Austenesqueries (yay! Another neologism for the Small Glass Planet)!
Kindly pass that sheep's-gut condom, Mister Darcy; I feel somewhat frisky!
I have always lusted after this house. The front of this one dates from the year before the pilgrim fathers set sail for the colonies (there's a date plaque) though it would have originally had leaded casement windows; these are late seventeenth century replacements.The bulk of the house, however, is fourteenth century.
All of these houses are owned by the Cathedral and when I was working in Norwich my mate Gerry was surveyor for the Close and I managed to sneak inside several of these places with him and had a good rummage around in roofs and basements, dating the timbers and construction methods. I love stuff like that.
A trio of Elizabethan cottages belonging to The Great Hospital with later brick walls set in front of the original timber framing and sixteenth century Dutch gables added.Quaint and beautiful in a vernacular fashion.
Again, this would have originally been timber framed with oak mullioned windows, then when the brick was added the windows would have been leaded casements. These are early Victorian windows, from the start of plate glass production when windows were no longer hand-blown glass and larger panes became possible.
This was originally the monks' brewhouse from the Cathedral monastery and the lower parts of it date back to the 1080s. Now one of my favourite houses in The Close.It is the first house on Hook's Walk, leading down to The Great Hospital. The cream house beyond it is a fourteenth century timber framed house with fifteenth century additions and the original great hall inside.
We shall finish today's picturesque perambulation with another part of Hook's Walk.The path turns left at the pink house (a nunnery) and if you follow it round you see those lovely Dutch gabled cottages and The Great Hospital in front of you.
In the spring, when the weather is warmer and sunnier I shall do more posts of Old Norwich.
If you find them boring, tough titty. I love old buildings, so there.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
What's Cooking With Dive? Sesame Seaweed Snacks
A quick snack before we get back to the Norwich photopost.
Mike and I were talking food (as we so often do) the other day and he is feeling the health benefits of having stopped eating crisps (that's "potato chips" if you can't speak English) last summer and having replaced them with those yummy crispy seaweed snacks you get in Japanese stores.
I am a sucker for those things too but these days I find it much easier and cheaper to make them myself.
So here - if any of you are remotely interested in replacing some of the salt and fat in your diets with something healthy - is Old Dive's Sesame Seaweed Snacks recipe.
First up:
Ingredients: (all organic) …
Sesame seeds. Easy peasy.
Toasted sesame oil.
Soy sauce.
Mirin.
Wakame (fresh or dried; whatever).
I usually use big strands of wakame in my miso soup. I cut them to fit the bowl while I'm making it. But for this it is a lot less hassle to buy a bag of the dried wakame that's already cut up small (which is how you usually find it in the supermarkets … I have to go to Japanese shops to find the big stuff). This recipe is all about spending the minimum amount of time prepping and cooking and the maximum time enjoying.
If you don't have wakame or mirin (c'mon! Even bloody Sainsbury's sells it now), you can use spinach and sugar. The result is pleasant enough (it's how they make that alleged "crispy seaweed" you find in Chinese restaurants) but nowhere near as yummy and healthy as this!
Step one: Grab a handful of wakame out of the bag and soak it in cool water. Give it around fifteen minutes but it matters not one jot if you forget about it and come back and find it hours later.
This is a dish I like to make when I am working around the house, doing chores. There is such a miniscule amount of time actually spent in the kitchen that you can make this stuff almost without noticing you're doing it.
Step two: Dry fry your sesame seeds.
The amounts I am using here will give a couple of bowls worth (like the photo at the bottom of the post only twice as much) which is enough for party dips for half a dozen people or snacks for me for a week.
The total cost of ingredients used for a whole week's worth of yummy snack Heaven is around twenty pence.
Add to that the gas used in having the hob on for a couple of minutes and the oven on the very lowest plate-warming setting for twenty minutes or so and we're talking cheap food for the recession.
Toast your sesame seeds until they are beginning to turn nut brown like in the picture. It doesn't take many seconds.
Next up: take the wakame out of the water and strain it. Then what I usually do is pick up a fistful and squeeze as much of the water out of it as I can, just to cut down on drying time in the oven. We want this stuff crispy and we want it now!
Right! On to the minute or so you shall actually spend cooking this dish.
Heat up the wok and add no more than a teeny teaspoon of toasted sesame oil and woosh it about so it coats the bottom of the wok.
Add the toasted sesame seeds and the wakame and toss 'em about to mix things up a bit. When they're good and hot add a few drops of soy sauce and some good shakes of mirin (the mirin adds sweetness so Joy would want to add about a gallon while I use around a teaspoonful).
Shake things around until any liquid is soaked up (probably three seconds) and we're on to the next step.
With your oven on its very lowest setting, arrange the stuff on a baking tray (I use non-stick foil as I can just shake 'em straight off into bags for lunch).
Now go away and do whatever else you want. The wok will just need a wipe around as all the liquid has been absorbed by the wakame and it's just about clean anyway.
Come back and poke the stuff from time to time.
When it's good and crispy it's done.
This photo is crap.
The snacks are actually a lovely shade of dark green and are dry and crisp, not black and glistening and sinister like the flash makes 'em out to be. Hey ho.
It might look kinda icky but it is totally delicious, intensely flavoured, crispy, more-ish and mind-buggeringly healthy.
It also costs around £2.40 a portion in the shops (called "Izumiya Seika") and in addition to the ingredients I use they add "starch syrup, sugar, salt, MSG and trehalose", whatever the fuck that is, so with my home-made version you're not sucking down all that shit.
My version looks, feels and tastes exactly the same but is much healthier and costs a tiny fraction of the shop price. We're in a recession, people.
Next time you're doing the housework, make a week's worth of healthy snacks for a few pence while you're at it. They're also ideal for making while you're blogging. I made another batch while I was writing this and I am about to bag 'em up for snacks to eat at work this week.
WARNING: These are totally addictive!
Mike and I were talking food (as we so often do) the other day and he is feeling the health benefits of having stopped eating crisps (that's "potato chips" if you can't speak English) last summer and having replaced them with those yummy crispy seaweed snacks you get in Japanese stores.
I am a sucker for those things too but these days I find it much easier and cheaper to make them myself.
So here - if any of you are remotely interested in replacing some of the salt and fat in your diets with something healthy - is Old Dive's Sesame Seaweed Snacks recipe.
First up:Ingredients: (all organic) …
Sesame seeds. Easy peasy.
Toasted sesame oil.
Soy sauce.
Mirin.
Wakame (fresh or dried; whatever).
I usually use big strands of wakame in my miso soup. I cut them to fit the bowl while I'm making it. But for this it is a lot less hassle to buy a bag of the dried wakame that's already cut up small (which is how you usually find it in the supermarkets … I have to go to Japanese shops to find the big stuff). This recipe is all about spending the minimum amount of time prepping and cooking and the maximum time enjoying.
If you don't have wakame or mirin (c'mon! Even bloody Sainsbury's sells it now), you can use spinach and sugar. The result is pleasant enough (it's how they make that alleged "crispy seaweed" you find in Chinese restaurants) but nowhere near as yummy and healthy as this!
Step one: Grab a handful of wakame out of the bag and soak it in cool water. Give it around fifteen minutes but it matters not one jot if you forget about it and come back and find it hours later.This is a dish I like to make when I am working around the house, doing chores. There is such a miniscule amount of time actually spent in the kitchen that you can make this stuff almost without noticing you're doing it.
Step two: Dry fry your sesame seeds.The amounts I am using here will give a couple of bowls worth (like the photo at the bottom of the post only twice as much) which is enough for party dips for half a dozen people or snacks for me for a week.
The total cost of ingredients used for a whole week's worth of yummy snack Heaven is around twenty pence.
Add to that the gas used in having the hob on for a couple of minutes and the oven on the very lowest plate-warming setting for twenty minutes or so and we're talking cheap food for the recession.
Toast your sesame seeds until they are beginning to turn nut brown like in the picture. It doesn't take many seconds.
Next up: take the wakame out of the water and strain it. Then what I usually do is pick up a fistful and squeeze as much of the water out of it as I can, just to cut down on drying time in the oven. We want this stuff crispy and we want it now!Right! On to the minute or so you shall actually spend cooking this dish.
Heat up the wok and add no more than a teeny teaspoon of toasted sesame oil and woosh it about so it coats the bottom of the wok.
Add the toasted sesame seeds and the wakame and toss 'em about to mix things up a bit. When they're good and hot add a few drops of soy sauce and some good shakes of mirin (the mirin adds sweetness so Joy would want to add about a gallon while I use around a teaspoonful).Shake things around until any liquid is soaked up (probably three seconds) and we're on to the next step.
With your oven on its very lowest setting, arrange the stuff on a baking tray (I use non-stick foil as I can just shake 'em straight off into bags for lunch).Now go away and do whatever else you want. The wok will just need a wipe around as all the liquid has been absorbed by the wakame and it's just about clean anyway.
Come back and poke the stuff from time to time.
When it's good and crispy it's done.
This photo is crap.The snacks are actually a lovely shade of dark green and are dry and crisp, not black and glistening and sinister like the flash makes 'em out to be. Hey ho.
It might look kinda icky but it is totally delicious, intensely flavoured, crispy, more-ish and mind-buggeringly healthy.
It also costs around £2.40 a portion in the shops (called "Izumiya Seika") and in addition to the ingredients I use they add "starch syrup, sugar, salt, MSG and trehalose", whatever the fuck that is, so with my home-made version you're not sucking down all that shit.
My version looks, feels and tastes exactly the same but is much healthier and costs a tiny fraction of the shop price. We're in a recession, people.
Next time you're doing the housework, make a week's worth of healthy snacks for a few pence while you're at it. They're also ideal for making while you're blogging. I made another batch while I was writing this and I am about to bag 'em up for snacks to eat at work this week.
WARNING: These are totally addictive!
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Guitars And Drums
Who needs girls when you've got guitars and drums?
Hokay, so maybe I do, but I've been so long without a girl that I wouldn't know what do do with one if I woke up to find one nekkid under my duvet.
So guitars and drums it is …
Besides, they make a much better noise than girls.
Good folk of Blogville, kindly permit me a brief interlude from all those photos of beautiful buildings and instead come and join Phil and Dive down at Woody's rehearsal rooms for a good, therapeutic thrash about.
"What the fuck do I do with all this stuff?"
Because I am retired from gigging, my careful set-up routine has long gone from my woolly old mind.
Hence the look of stupefaction on my face whenever I open my box of leads.
While I'm figuring that out, let's help Phil set his kit up, shall we?
First up … The good old bass drum.
Easy, that one.
These stands are a bit of a pig to set up correctly though, so we'll leave Phil to get on with it himself and stand around drinking coffee.
That's the tom-toms done. Now where are those pesky cymbals?
Ah! That's better.
Phil has a acquired a new snare drum and a new china cymbal since we were last down here.
More boys' toys for the boys to play with.
It sounds awesome, but then it's a Pearl Reference kit and it cost about as much as the US budget deficit so if it didn't sound totally fucking brilliant he'd be doing something very wrong indeed.
Plus, Phil's a bloody good drummer, which helps.
A lot.
Here are his new snare and china cymbal.
And again from a slightly different angle.
Musicians (and drummers) can never have enough photos of their instruments.
Which is why I can't resist taking photos of my guitars.
Especially this little beauty.
Behind my beautiful PRS sits my yummy, hand-built Mesa 25th. Anniversary special; the most totally fucking glorious amp the planet has ever seen.
Oh, and my Converse hi-tops, which Phil wanted to try with his kit as he's after a more sensitive drumming shoe than his current pair of squash shoes.
Hot valves! Yay! Now we're cooking!
Round the back of the Mesa when things get warmed up.
This amp responds like a living thing. It has so much sensitivity and expressiveness it takes my breath away.
Being a Godless Heathen I know I don't have an immortal soul but I am certain that this amplifier does.
Yet more drum porn. You'll notice I was a good boy this week and carefully cropped out Phil's bald spot.
Mine - on the other hand - is there for all to see.
I make the dumbest faces when I play.
Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel would look frighteningly intellectual stood next to me on stage.
I think I must be squeezing out a fart on this one.
So … That's what flabby old folk do to relax.
Maybe I'll get back to proper posting tomorrow but I did enjoy that.
Hokay, so maybe I do, but I've been so long without a girl that I wouldn't know what do do with one if I woke up to find one nekkid under my duvet.
So guitars and drums it is …
Besides, they make a much better noise than girls.
Good folk of Blogville, kindly permit me a brief interlude from all those photos of beautiful buildings and instead come and join Phil and Dive down at Woody's rehearsal rooms for a good, therapeutic thrash about.
"What the fuck do I do with all this stuff?"Because I am retired from gigging, my careful set-up routine has long gone from my woolly old mind.
Hence the look of stupefaction on my face whenever I open my box of leads.
While I'm figuring that out, let's help Phil set his kit up, shall we?First up … The good old bass drum.
Easy, that one.
These stands are a bit of a pig to set up correctly though, so we'll leave Phil to get on with it himself and stand around drinking coffee.
That's the tom-toms done. Now where are those pesky cymbals?
Ah! That's better.Phil has a acquired a new snare drum and a new china cymbal since we were last down here.
More boys' toys for the boys to play with.
It sounds awesome, but then it's a Pearl Reference kit and it cost about as much as the US budget deficit so if it didn't sound totally fucking brilliant he'd be doing something very wrong indeed.
Plus, Phil's a bloody good drummer, which helps.A lot.
Here are his new snare and china cymbal.
And again from a slightly different angle.Musicians (and drummers) can never have enough photos of their instruments.
Which is why I can't resist taking photos of my guitars.Especially this little beauty.
Behind my beautiful PRS sits my yummy, hand-built Mesa 25th. Anniversary special; the most totally fucking glorious amp the planet has ever seen.Oh, and my Converse hi-tops, which Phil wanted to try with his kit as he's after a more sensitive drumming shoe than his current pair of squash shoes.
Hot valves! Yay! Now we're cooking!Round the back of the Mesa when things get warmed up.
This amp responds like a living thing. It has so much sensitivity and expressiveness it takes my breath away.
Being a Godless Heathen I know I don't have an immortal soul but I am certain that this amplifier does.
Yet more drum porn. You'll notice I was a good boy this week and carefully cropped out Phil's bald spot.
Mine - on the other hand - is there for all to see.
I make the dumbest faces when I play.Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel would look frighteningly intellectual stood next to me on stage.
I think I must be squeezing out a fart on this one.So … That's what flabby old folk do to relax.
Maybe I'll get back to proper posting tomorrow but I did enjoy that.
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