Very annoying commentary (or Monkeys in the funhouse)

With New Year's resolutions come New Year's confessions. Here's my first of 2008. I've been defrosting. Not food from the freezer. (I'm just not organized enough to freeze in the first place). But blog posts. (Gasp!)

The New Year is rolling along, indeed probably already more appropriately the new year, and my head isn't quite in the game. So I've been putting out entries that I wrote earlier but for some reason or another never posted (actually, today's is the second).

I'm back at the wheel of the flugelbindery now, so I'm hoping soon there will be new stories to tell.

In the meanwhile, here's something I wrote a while back. The commentary seems rather annoying, so you can just ignore it and look at the fun pictures.

Cheers,

BB

* * *

Title: Monkeys in the funhouse

OK, I admit it. That's the meanest thing I have ever written. But in fairness, I'm included myself among the monkeys. It's really more attributing malicious intention to the creators of Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern and the artists who exhibit there. They are taking cruel pleasure in creating displays for us to huddle around, to pod, poke, and explore, exactly as if the zookeepers had put a new toy in the enclosure.

OK, I admit it wasn't that bad: Oooo, here it comes the crack:

Notice how everyone huddles around it, like a beached whale.
Some of the brave even look it in the eye, some even braver test its depths:



Just give me ahhhrt. Boring art.

BB

P.S. I promise to be more generous and fun-filled next time...

Before / after: Attack of the mushroom mound

It started innocently enough, with the desire to cook a mushroom ragout for 6-9 people. So I doubled the recipe that could feed 4-6 people. I had never seen what 2 kg of mushrooms look like, here it is:


Intimidating and impressive. That's my 10-person paella pan filled to the brim. But the alchemy of the fire again takes over, and after 90 minutes it looks like this:


It was (thanks Mark Bittman) delicious, but still enough to feed 14 people. Since I only had 4 for dinner, if you would like any mushroom ragout drop me a line and I'll send you some in the post.

Cheers,

BB

P.S. Another excellent blogging theme stolen from my friend Lola.

Your corny inspirational phrase here

Insert your corny inspirational phrase here:



No bird flies higher than on his own wings...

You'll never fly as high as on your own wings...

Trust yourself and you'll soar...

Solitude is the biggest high...

Join in! It's really easy / not as hard as it seems actually quite difficult.

Cheers,

BB

Puting the B back in BB

No , not what you might first have thought, I'm not off at some beauty treatment, indeed perhaps quite the opposite. Instead it's the first-b that needs a little bit of revitalizing -- I'm in Bombay!

I'll return in a few weeks a few pounds heavier but otherwise happier in every way.

More soon.

BB

Saturday morning on Coronation Street

I give you a kiss

I remember when I first heard this phrase. I was speaking over the telephone with an Italian - a beautiful Italian - I had met the day before, and just before hanging up came that phrase: "I give you a kiss..." We had met incidentally if not randomly and exchanged numbers. I thought there was a flirtatious frisson there, but couldn't be sure.

I couldn't be sure because it was the first time I had met an Italian from Italy. Indeed, it was my first week on my own, outside the little world (albeit large country) in which I grew up. I wasn't used to seeing people stand so close to each other during casual conversations, kiss socially, and it seemed pause for normal conversation within continuous flirtation. I didn't know that this phrase or some variant of it can close a conversation among friends in more than a few European languages.

Of course, this is the way I saw it then. In India, no one kisses socially: parents and children, husbands and wives, movie actresses and movie actors, no, no, no. It is more common to see two men holding hands - a friendly gesture - than a man and a woman. Coming from this world, I couldn't tell what was going on. Was everyone sleeping with everyone else, or at least trying? (Having to come to understand the male subspecies a bit better over the last decade I actually now believe the latter is true, but that's another story.)

Coming back to me an my beautiful Italian. I heard the words and my heart jumped. I was aglow from within. I felt as though I had actually been kissed, unexpectedly and wonderfully. We kept on meeting from time to time, always with warm flirtation, and I got comfortable with the right-left (or is it left-right, to this day I am never sure and am convinced I get it wrong) kiss. I didn't really expect anything to happen, though I might have hoped, and it didn't. But I was always thrilled to hear this awkwardly translated phrase at the end of our phone conversations.

BB

Some simple facts for today:

New York






Sunrise: 7.01 am
Sunset: 4.28 pm
High: 0 C, Low: -4 C

London






Sunrise: 7.47 am
Sunset: 3.53 pm
High: 13 C, low: 12 C