I Gotta Feeling

I like music.  No!  I love music.  While my wife was sitting downstairs enjoying The Sound of Music on tv, I decided to dip into the wealth of pop available on You Tube and watch I Gotta Feeling (by the Black Eyed Peas).  Imagine my surprise when the music video was preceded by an ad (surely a spoof?) for SingleMuslim.com.  What next?  KosherDates.com or MatesforMethodists.co.uk?  Actually that one sounds like a condom ad for nonconformists.   But why should I be surprised?  My reaction is interesting and presupposes a negative judgement, but why?  I'm not entirely sure, however I am curious.  (The picture of Pink appears as a not quite random choice and will hopefully be discussed in a later post.)

A tidy house is a wasted life

I have tried and failed on numerous occasions to persuade my wife that we need an au pair, someone to ease the daily burden of keeping a largish house clean and free of dust, unwashed clothing, cat hair, dirty dishes, discarded newspapers, and so on.  She has not so far been persuaded.  Nonetheless my scheme has a great deal to commend it.  An  employment opportunity for a young woman, still the gender more discriminated against in the job market.  An employment opportunity for a migrant worker, for we hold no truck with racial discrimination.  And think of the fringe benefits, not least of which is the freeing up of all that time to engage in more fruitful and leisurely pursuits - painting, cycling, hillwalking, reading.  For is there not truth in the old saw that 'a tidy house is a wasted life'?  As Richard Dawkins, author of the seminal work 'The Selfish Gene' would undoubtedly recognise, my suggestion for a (female) au pair is entirely altruistic.  But still my wife proves stubbornly resistant to the idea and I can't think why.

Cover point

Once again I have missed a tremendously exciting Test Series because of my refusal to hand money over to the Rupert Murdoch Corporation.  But who is the greater loser? Rupert won't miss my measly contribution to his overflowing coffers but I have missed out on watching some great cricket - and England won.  I console myself with the thought that a Sky subscription would amount to several hundred pounds a year, surely better spent on a holiday.  And having Sky would inevitably lead to more hours slumped in front of the tv.  (Question to self: why is this such a bad thing given that I happily slump for hours on the sofa listening to music or the radio?)  Anyway, one of my resolutions for 2011 is to learn by heart the fielding positions in cricket, all of them.  This ties in neatly (to my mind anyway) with my determination to learn the Chronology of the Ancient World, starting with Ancient Greece, which I have already begun to do.  Progress is slow however. 

A plague on both their houses

The government proposes that cash machines routinely give customers the opportunity to donate to charity, or not.  The government proposes that 'giving' should be made a new social norm without saying how exactly they would achieve this.  The government proposes a number of different things to make into a reality the fuzzy, farcical notion of Cameorn's 'Big Society', but stressing that this should be done by persuasion not coercion.  It is certainly striking that 8% of the population contributes more than 50% of the charitable donations.  However, a friend of mine would always argue that charitable donation undermines the social and moral responsibilities of government.  Giving money to good causes allows the government to reduce its own spending or eliminate it altogether.   And isn't this precisely what is happening?  Isn't the slew of ideas from the think-tank green paper simply a political tool to rationalise, post hoc, the decision to reduce public spending?  A decision that is totemic.  A decision taken more for reasons of political ideology than economic necessity, whatever the buggers in the Coalition Government say.  (Petition #1 for 2011.  No more with 'Coalition Govenrment'.  Let's call it 'A Plague on Both their Houses').

A vow

This is how the world outside my window should look today.  It doesn't.  The skies are grey and overcast.  It's damp.  The roads are smeared with slushy brown snow.  There are still piles of hard packed snow and ice standing sullenly on street corners sulkily refusing to melt. To cap it all I think I may be struggling to ward off a cold.  Rats!  I want to be walking through trees along a broad, sun dappled path.  At the end of the path would be a small restaurant where we would have a long leisurely lunch - with wine - before walking back again.  Next year.  Next Christmas.  I vow by all that is mighty in Santa Land that we will be trekking along such a path as this in the weakly warm winter sun of southern Spain - or Rhodes -  instead of trudging through December snow in Scotland.

Snacking with the big boys

So, first it was Pringles.  Then I graduated to 'handmade' crisps.  Now it's cheese straws. Seems like I'm snacking with the big boys. I first saw them being eaten by a colleague at work. I then bought some from the Co-Op one Sunday morning having popped out to get my Observer.  Then we taste-tested packets of different cheese-straws from Sainsbury, Tesco, Asda and Marks & Spencer.  My wife bought a truckload of the delightful things over Christmas and my will-power when confronted by an open packet fell to zero - if I'm drinking wine.  Or milk come to that.  They surely must be loaded with monosodium glutamate or some other food additive that makes them so addictive.  How else can you explain my greed? 

Thanks, Kafka!

It went.  My newly grown beard didn't even last a week.    And I couldn't decide if my wife was happy or not, but she was probably too polite to say.  Or perhaps she has seen it all before.  This would have been the umpteenth time I had started, without finishing, the cultivation of a beard.  The rest of the family didn't even notice.  Oh, well.  I'm not even sure that I feel any different.  So much for the bloody metamorphosis.  Thanks, Kafka!

Sorry, but ... hair today ...

It's been almost a week and it's still there.  

Will it last until I go back to work - and how long thereafter?

The initial itchiness has receded and I think I'm growing into it, or vice versa.

But what will my work colleagues say?

Should it go or should it stay?

Duh!

I know, I know.  But it makes me smile.  The genius of The Simpsons is exactly that.  They always make you smile.  It's a trick few can pull off.  Laurel and Hardy could, but not Chaplin.  Buster Keaton could.  Harold Lloyd.  Morecombe and Wise.  Larry David.  Not Norman Wisdom, despite the Albanian vote. And most certainly not the cretinous Borat.

Shutter Island and me

What did today bring?  One of my occasional idiot-turns, a foray into the post-Christmas sales, a hugely enjoyable Chinese lunch, a cold collation for dinner, and then Shutter Island on dvd.  Not sure if I enjoyed it but there was a neat irony in watching a film about mental health and madness following on from  my irrational behaviour earlier in the day.   Was it a panic attack?  Mental instability?  An episode in simply being human?   Wish I knew.  Things picked up from there and the day ended  quite well.  Think I ate too much again however.  A tv news item about the increase in the average weight of Britons and the prevalence of diabetes, although a regular seasonal offering, pulled at my gut strings and determined me to take a long walk tomorrow.   Hope there's no more snow.

So, was Martin Scorsese pulling our collective legs?  The ride was enjoyable, the music, sets and photography atmospheric if slightly heavy-handed.  I enjoyed least the gauche flashbacks.  I enjoyed most di Caprio's imitation of Humphrey Bogart from The Maltese Falcon.  There was more than a nod to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and enough electrical storms, howling wind and night-time thrills to outdo a hundred Rebecca's.  Was Daphne du Maurier credited?  I don't think so, but she seemed to have had a hand in the script, along with Hitchcock.  And does Virginia Wolf know they borrowed the symbolism of the lighthouse thingy?  We had dark corridors (or,  'dark thoughts'), rickety iron staircases (the shaky foundations on which we build our sense of reality), cages reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter's underground pad (metaphor for being trapped), and mazes within mazes of which the Ancient Minoans would have been proud (please see 'The Maze at Knossos: a metaphor for the human mind').  There was literal fog and fog as metaphor for memory.  And an onscreen debate about the use of drugs versus surgical butchery as a tool of social control.  To answer my own question, I think the old master was having a huge joke at our expense but a richly textured gag it was to be sure.  There's enough material in it to keep film and media students busy for decades to come and why not, says I.

Gluttony

The beard is still there -- along with several helpings of cold turkey, cheese and Parma ham pastries, cold Christmas pudding, mushroom risotto, one pear and three satsumas.  Fruit is good for you of course, but a dietitian did once warn that oranges carry a health penalty if eaten to excess.  Are  three Satsumas excessive?  Possibly not.  On top of the other things consumed today however, it probably doesn't help.  And did I mention the nice Spanish wine we had with dinner, or the kir we had as an aperitif?  Or the dollop of creme fraiche I had with the pud?  No chocolates, no biscuits, no cheese straws -- and we did have a walk before lunch.  However, lunch was home-made roasted sweet pepper and tomato soup with croutons.  Ye gods!  Am I becoming a Christmas glutton?

Metamorphosis, part one

To shave or not to shave?  Such a simple question.  Shaving is tedious, a chore, it eats up precious sleeping time first thing in the morning.  And yet it can also be stimulating.  It helps me to make the transition from not-quite-awake to fully alert.  Shaving also makes me look younger.  However, growing a beard and then removing it allows me to change my appearance quite dramatically.  Shaving allows me the opportunity for a metamorphosis.  From hirsute and slightly grizzled one day, to clean shaven and fresh-faced  the next.  Growing facial hair, if only temporarily, also adds another layer of protection from the bitterly cold weather.  My wife likes it too.  But then the question becomes 'what style' of beard to adopt.  The choice is vast.  This time, I think I will opt for the neatly trimmed as illustrated in the bottom row, far left. 

Rock on, Doris!

Ah, well. Contumacious once again.  I think I am now 'getting into the book' by Doris Lessing more than I had been previously.  Howard Jacobson once criticised books for being recommended simply on the basis that they were 'a good read'.  He meant by this, I suspect, that great literature both required and repaid the effort that went into its reading.  I agree. Lessing is clearly a good writer and my enjoyment of her fiction increases the longer I stay with her.  It's harder work than skimming through a Dan Brown might be, but the rewards are commensurately greater. Rock on, Doris!

zzz ...

Is my bed my favourite place to be?  It often feels like it. It's in bed that I enjoy making love to my wife (more than anywhere else around the house).  It's a place to relax, unwind, read, listen to the radio, and of course sleep.  It's cosy, comfortable, a safe and warm refuge, a hiding place from the travails and troubles of the world.  I rarely have trouble sleeping.  I can go from being awake to snoozing in minutes, much to the annoyance of my wife.  And dreaming is - literally - an escape from reality, a refuge, a hiding place from the pressures of of everyday life, the workplace, even the family ('god bless 'em, every one!').  Bed too is usually where we talk the most.  It's certainly where we cuddle and canoodle the most.  I love my bed.  I love to sleep.  I can sleep sitting up, slouching, on a bus, in a car, on a plane, at work, at home, in a waiting room, on a beach, in a field, anywhere.  If 'sleeping sickness' could be defined as a 'propensity to snooze' I am smitten.  I regularly fall asleep listening to music, the radio, watching tv.  I have even fallen asleep while having sex. I can sleep on the floor, on the couch, in a chair, anywhere.  I'm not picky.  But if I get to choose, I just love to fall asleep in my bed.  However, waking up, now that's where the problems start.  But more of that another time.

A Christmas wish

I enjoy Dali and I enjoy Rhodes. 'The Colossus of Rhodes' is not my favourite work of his but it makes the point.  I yearn to be on the sunny Mediterranean island of Rhodes next December, avoiding all the angst Christmas generates and, instead of waiting for the turkey to be ready and setting the table for a gargantuan feast, then snoozing, simply strolling around the Old Town doing not very much of anything.  Or perhaps enjoying  a walk along a beach.  This is my Christmas wish for 2010.  Now all I have to do is persuade my lovely wife to take me in 2011. (If she reads this, I would be prepared to compromise on Andalusia.)

Contumacious, part 2

I should be enjoying the Doris Lessing more than I am, at least according to the effusive reviews adorning the inside covers from writers and critics whose work I admire.    I do recognise the quality of the writing but do I really care about the characters?  There are are far too many to easily keep track of and the extended dialogue and contrived situations they find themselves in quickly wear thin.  (Yes, I know, fiction is by its very nature contrived.)  The fictional world Doris Lessing creates is attractive and I desperately want to immerse myself in it.  Something prevents this happening.  Is it me, my mood?  Should I make more of an effort?  Or, should I simply hurl the book across the room and chose another? 

Contumacious

'The influences of Christmas, that contumacious festival, were spreading dismay as early as the evening of the 12th of December'.  A wonderful line from Doris Lessing's 'The Sweetest Dream' (p79).  But I then had to double-check the meaning of contumacious, one of those words that I was aware of, but wasn't entirely sure about.  It means, according to my trusty Penguin English Dictionary (p610), 'disobedient, rebellious'.  The Shorter Oxford adds, 'stubbornly perverse' (p416).  And now I am puzzled because the meaning of the sentence seems further away than before.  No, wait a moment, I think I have it.  Yes.  Got it.  Ah, the warm glow of satisfaction from making sense of the previously elusive.  Love it.  Back to my book.

 

baying at the moon

There was a wonderful eclipse the other morning.  The moon as life symbol: a body which waxes, wanes and disappears.  And then reappears in its wholesome state: a symbol of passing time. Unlike the permafrost Christmas card scene (above) that never existed, whose image is timeless and unchanging, featuring a moon that defies the laws of astronomical physics, but which is nonetheless attractive in a James Stewart / Frank Capra It's A Wonderful Life sort of way.

Pomegranate jelly and hot split toasted muffin

The Christmas Holiday has officially started, for me at least.  The rest of the family is still gainfully employed, if year-round hibernation counts as gainful employment for our younger offspring.  I had intended heading out into the freezing cold for a walk, but a toasted muffin spread  with pomegranate jelly intervened.  Radio 4 is also partly to blame.  It is impossible to resist their programming at most times of the year, but especially over Christmas with the weather as it is.  Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time is on in just a few minutes - so walk postponed, and then there's something by Tim Rice about The Eagle comic coming on later ...

But what kind of fizz?

One of the reasons I don't enjoy Christmas as much as I should is that there are too many decisions to make, especially in the matter of presents. I normally solve the problem by either buying very few, except for close family, and usually at the last moment, or buying none at all.  But the decision making extends into the area of food and drink.  Crisps or no crisps, for example?  They're fattening and addictive, so should we buy them?  Ditto salted nuts, cheese straws (a new find), sausage rolls, and etc.  And so to fizzy wine.  Should we splash out on pukka champagne or stick to Cava and Prosecco?  Reviews in the media suggest splashing out at Christmas but my inherent fiscal conservatism leads me to go for the latter.  Enjoying a bottle of shop bought fizz at £20 or more is something I find hard to do (although, of course, not at all out of the ordinary in a restaurant ).  But this is the time of year when surely, and if you can afford it, it's ok to over-indulge?  Roman Saturnalia anyone?  To Sainsbury's I go and compromise (which is my middle name) by buying a bottle of their own brand champagne that is very well reviewed in the all the right places.  Hope it's ok ...

Christmas? Bah, humbug! But which wine to have ... ?

I do like the definition by Shaw of Christmas as 'a conspiracy kept up by poulterers and wine merchants', even if I do rather enjoy both roast turkey and a nice red wine to go with it.  We once experimented with a white Burgundy, as recommended in a Sunday newspaper.  The wine was expensive, we were recently married and not at the top of our salary scales.  It was a lovely wine, I seem to recall,  but whether it was the best match for the turkey or not is a moot point.  The guilt at buying something so expensive probably took the edge off the bouquet.  So what would the best match be?  I'm not entirely persuaded by the necessity for a white wine, as once suggested by pretty much every wine-guide, white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat and so on.  Although I am rather hoping my wife has bought a white Rioja I heard her talk about recently.  We will probably end up raiding the wine cellar and picking something more or less at random.  And by wine cellar I mean the downstairs bathroom that has no heating in it.  The only certainty is something fizzy to begin the day with and I have already embarked on a subliminal campaign to persuade our sons to buy something suitably fizzy.  We'll probably end up with sparkling mineral water ...

The deep freeze

Brr!  Just looking at snow or ice makes me feel cold.  And there is a hard frost again tonight with more snow forecast for the end of the week.  Our garden doesn't look quite like this photo.  Even in the midst of the deep freeze of last week it didn't look exactly like this.  But at times it came quite close, especially around the pond.  Speaking of which,  I do hope some of our fish have survived, but I'm not sure how they could.  The low temperatures have affected both my mood and my libido, my appetite for food has increased, I seem to have become more slothful, so what the cold weather would do to fish swimming around in sub-zero conditions is anyone's guess.  Perhaps the fish respond by hibernating?  That would certainly be the smart thing to do, the sensible option. Personally  I can't wait for Spring to arrive.  I have officially now had enough of the Big Freeze, even though it did lead to some bonus holidays in the form of days off work.   I really don't think I could be happy as an Inuit, unless it was an Inuit living in the south of France. 

Life without music?

Bach was one of the first classical composers I bought on LP, the legendary Switched-on Bach by Wendy (then Walter) Carlos.  Swiftly followed by Holst's Planet Suite conducted by Adrian Boult.  Then Beethoven, Beethoven and some more Bach. I also dabbled in Sibelius, Chopin and Haydn.   Mahler came as a revelation in my teens, and then Shostakovitch, Stravinsky, Bartok ... etc.  What would life be like without music?

I agree, I agree

Once again Alex Ross rides to the rescue.  In today's Observer he is asked about the meaning of music: 'I'm looking for music in which I can lose myself, which I can trust, which never fails me ... What the meaning is, that's up to each listener to say.  But I do think that quality of disappearing into someone else's world is so powerful'.  I first had this experience of 'disappearing' when listening to the American group 'Anonymous 4'.  The sound world the four women create is one I want to spend time in, safely wrapped up, soothed, comforted by the music.  Opera has the same effect on me, the Bach cantatas, Beethoven's symphonies, Mozart, Mahler, Haydn piano trios.  It works with Laurel and Hardy too.  There are occasions when I just have to spend time in their company, relax into the safe yet anarchic comic world they create.   Or Woody Allen, Larry David, Seinfeld.  Less so with Chaplin whose films always seem to have a harder, darker, more troubling and unsettling edge to them:  Buster Keaton I enjoy more.  With books it is C.S. Forester, Dickens, Jane Austen, Conan Doyle or Just William.  Although Dickens certainly has a darker, more troubling edge than anything Richmal Crompton ever wrote.  Or biographies, especially of writers, composers, explorers and scientists, painters.  Never generals or political leaders.  By and large I despise these people, with only a few exceptions (Nelson Mandela for example).  Generals earn their stars by being efficient at giving orders and harming or killing large numbers of  people.  Politicians likewise.  Neither category is renowned for being honest and candid.  Both enjoy the untrammeled exercise of power and authority.  Both believe they have a right to do what they do by virtue of superior intellect, ability, knowledge, judgement.   Why on earth would I want to spend any time at all inside their world?  A plague on both their houses!  William would have known how to deal with their sort.

A breakdown in communications

 

I'm sure that my wife often feels this way.  If it isn't my expression, my body language, or my disappearing act upstairs into the computer room, I'm quite sure there are other tell-tale signs that I'm in a huff or spoiling for a fight.  Usually it's either something trivial and mundane or a complete misunderstanding, a breakdown in communication between two people who have been living together for the last thirty-three years (and who should know better).  And of course I hate falling out with her.  Without wanting to sound maudlin she is my best friend, as well as being my lover, my confidant.  But, being human, the arguments still happen.  Making up for it in bed later on can be quite good fun though ...

The power of music

It's Christmas.  Well, almost.  So it must be Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.  What terrific music.  That man could certainly write a good tune.  For how many people was the '1812 Overture' their introduction to classical music?  In my own case a recording on LP by Kenneth Alwyn and, I think, the LSO.  If I had to pick eight recordings for my Desert Island Discs, Tchaikovsky's String Sextet  his 'Souvenir de Florence' would definitely make the final cut.  Along with Pergolesi's Stabat Mater.  George Lewis playing 'Easter Parade'.  Beniamano Gigli singing 'Una furtiva lagrima'.  Bessie Smith and 'Kitchen Man'.  Bach's 'Goldberg Variations'.  Any Haydn 'String Quartet'.  And  'Madame Butterfly', the bit at the end of Act One that always makes me want to cry.  A tribute to the power of music and the genius of Puccini. 

Conium Maculatum

Sometimes mistaken for wild parsnips. Scientific name Conium Maculatum. After swallowing the hemlock provided by the jailer poor old Socrates would have experienced a burning sensation in his mouth, excessive salivation, muscular tremors in his legs.  He would also have felt cold and probably died in less than fifteen minutes. His crime?  Good question.  Listening to the final part of the serialisation of Bethany Hughes book, I'm not sure that it wasn't suicide by any other name.  Why didn't he try to escape?  Clearly he was a man of principle but what point was he trying to make by his (self-imposed) death?  I don't want to sound unsympathetic however.  Who could not find Socrates an attractive and likeable figure, unlike the quasi-fascist Plato?  But there must surely come a point when you have to bend with the prevailing wind?  Death is a pretty final scruple to stand by.  What price integrity when your corpse is decaying and 'a mouldering in the grave'?  Oh, and don't mistake hemlock for parsnip.  The photo should help you avoid a fatal error. 

The problem with history

Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome?  Or Ancient Egypt?  The Crusades in particular or the Medieval period in general?  The Renaissance perhaps, or the Eighteenth Century?  The history of China, Japan, Europe, the Americas?  For me the problem with the study of history is deciding which history to study.  Some of it, all of it, which bit?  Certainly I could never do a PhD because I would never be able to decide which microscopic part of the historical past I would be most interested in.  There is an associated question here to do with which parts of our history should be taught in schools, and even on this surely more fundamental issue I am uncertain.  Simon Schama among others has offered a possible syllabus and it looks entirely reasonable, but then other historians offer alternative fare and their choice looks equally valid.  Indecision reigns.  That it should be taught, and be made compulsory up until the age of 16, I am more sure about.  It is I believe one of the most important subjects at school level.  Having decided that, all I need to do now is decide which history should be taught.  Something to return to.

Would the real Socrates please stand up

The latest book by Bethany Hughes is currently being serialised on Radio 4 and 'The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life' is very good indeed.  At least, her reading of it is.  The book itself is something else for my Christmas list.  I'm still struggling with the idea of a city-state putting to death one of its greatest men, but the stakes seem to have been high.  Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth, the young men of Athens.  Given that the city's young men were held in such high esteem by Athenian society, it was a serious accusation.  But worthy of the death penalty?  I'm interested in discovering how the story unfolds because although I know the rough outline of what happened to Socrates, I am distinctly fuzzy on the details (can you be 'distinctly fuzzy' about anything?).  So it was I found myself trying to cut and paste a chronology of Ancient Greece, which turned out to be easier said than done.  I was determined to sharpen my vagueness surrounding the timeline of what happened when, and still find it tricky getting my head around the concept of dates BCE, but I'm getting there.

Curiously today's Radio 4's 'Thinking Aloud' programme featured an item on moral panic (and yes, I am a R4 fanatic).  I wonder if the diagnosis of moral panic could usefully be applied to the treatment of Socrates?  Did Socrates undermine the social order of Ancient Athens?  Or more pertinently, was there a widespread perception that Socrates undermined the social order?  A  key feature of moral panics is the existence of  media that spread the contagious notion, to help it along, but is there an absolute need for media involvement?  Was there such a media in Ancient Athens, or an equivalent?  I feel a research thesis coming on ...

The power of smell, part two

The difference in the smell (is that the right word for perfume?) between my Burberry for Men and my previous bottle of L'eau D'Issey by Miyake is remarkable.  A tribute to the perfume makers art and justification of the premium price their products command.   But as difficult as it is for me to describe the music I enjoy, it is many times more difficult to describe the scent of the perfumes I favour.  I could always quote the advertising blurb and, like the labels on bottles of wine, it at least gives you something to go on - fruity, smooth, full bodied - but it brings me no closer to being able to articulate the pleasurable sensation I experience when inhaling its scent. 
 There are unpleasant associations associated with smells too. Smells that trigger bad memories.  Smells that raise anxiety levels and smells that frankly terrify.  For me grass is the villain in the scary smells stakes.  Fresh cut grass that if I touch brings me out in hives.  Fresh cut grass that if I inhale too much of causes me  hay fever.  Which is a shame because I love the smell.  I can even remember the moment (I think) I first had hay fever and why.  It was in the 1960s.  My friends and I were playing in a farmer's field full of hay waiting to be harvested.  We rolled around in it.  We plucked it from its stalks and threw it at each other.  We probably even chewed on it a little.  I went home with red runny eyes and a streaming nose and (I believe) this was the first ever time I had hay fever.  Playing in the field (I have always thought) infected me with the 'hay fever bug'.  If there is such a thing.  I became susceptible to hay fever by being exposed to so much of the hay / grass pollen, my immune system kicked in, produced a flood of histamine, and ever since I have been a hay fever sufferer.  Does that sound even vaguely accurate, medically speaking? If not, is there an explanation for the way in which my body appears to have developed a greater tolerance for pollen as I have grown older?   Socrates might have had something to say about that.  More about him next time.

The power of smell

The power of smell to evoke a particular place or time in your life is well known.  I am currently wearing Burberrry For Men which previously had only been used on holiday. Now at work when I catch the scent I am, briefly, transported to a different time and a different place, invariably foreign, always warm, and a wonderful feeling of contentment and relaxation washes over me.  The power of smell.  And coming home from work tonight the first thing I noticed stepping into the hallway was the strong aroma of a curry which my wife had prepared for dinner.  Warm, spicy, comforting, a cuddly sort of 'wrap me up in a warm chapati and eat me' smell .  In an instant the ice and snow melted away and I was in a better place.  The power of smell.

Christmas music and when to listen to it

Our sons hate Christmas music of the carolling kind. Actually I think they hate all Christmas music - with carols or without.  My preference is for jazzy versions of traditional favourites by people like Ella Fitzgerald and Dave Brubeck, choral music by Anonymous 4, and seasonal music from across Europe, for example from Russia or Lithuania whose choirs seem able to produce a tone and  musicality impossible to achieve by other singing groups.  I especially enjoy the annual Radio 3 Christmas music from across Europe day they have, which should be coming up soon.

Every year I buy at least one, sometimes several Christmas cds and my choice this year has fallen on the latest Anonymous 4, something older from The Sixteen, and the latest version of Bach's Christmas Oratorio by Ricardo Chailly.  But then comes the problem of when  to play them.  I normally enjoy hearing them over dinner, but our boys don't like them.  However I'm working on a long term plan to convert them both to my musical tastes.  So far I've had limited success despite buying them box sets of Brahms symphonies and the film music of John Williams for their birthdays.  Perhaps I should follow the precept of an old friend who enjoys a wide range of music spanning Twentieth Century Nordic symphonies to Kiss and Metallica.  He always insists that variety in musical tastes, as in all things, is what makes life interesting.  And of course he is right.  Perhaps I'm a musical snob?  But this is not the time to get into the hoary old debate of what makes good music good.  Isn't it all in the ear of the beholder anyway? Either it clicks with you and you like it, or you don't.  Or would Alex Ross of The Rest is Noise fame disagree?  If you haven't come across his history of modern music this is something you should certainly put on your Christmas list.  The only problem is that it's an impossible book to read.  He is such a stimulating and interesting writer that every page or so you have to stop reading and listen to the music he's referring to.  He allows you to hear familiar music in a new way and it took me weeks to get past the section on Richard Strauss, and then another few weeks to work past Debussy, and so on. I wonder if he likes Christmas music?  Maybe I should check his index. 

Boeuf Bourguignon and Hippocras

The snow has definitely stopped for the evening and my wife has arrived home, so all is well.  We had an aperitif from the south of France called Hippocras before dinner and then the Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon, along with our red wine from Saumur.  The beef was excellent and probably tasted better because my wife insisted we use its original French name.  The rice pudding was good too, if filling.  The photo of the JC BB  isn't ours but looks fairly similar.  Different wine of course and we had rice rather than mashed potato.  Tomorrow's dinner is likely to be a chicken curry with home made chapatis.  But University Challenge is on tv shortly.  Can't miss that.

Brrr!

The skies are clearing and the roads around the village have started to ice up again, even though they have now been ploughed clear of snow.  My wife has not yet made it home unfortunately.  Along with the Julia Child 'Beef Burgundy' recipe for dinner, I have just put a rice pudding in the oven (courtesy of Nigella Lawson).  Might even be tempted by a glass of wine, probably a bottle of red bought from a small vineyard in Le Puy Notre-Dame this summer.  Their white wine was so good that we bought a case, and it is a stunner.  We certainly intend revisiting the village, hotel and vineyard next year.   I'm not sure if these grapes came from the Loire Valley, but they certainly do look good.

A possible contradiction -- and my inspiration

Not sure if the name I've chosen for my blog is particularly apposite.  How could it be 'Sam Crumb's Occasional Blog' if I have already written four blogs in the space of a few hours and all on the same day?  Oh, well.  My inspiration for writing a blog came from a hugely enjoyable dvd we watched recently called 'Julie and Julia.'  It combined many of the things I enjoy so much - good food, wine, France, a well-written story, humour, romance - and it came with a free cook book, a digest from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  In fact we're eating from it tonight.  The famous Beef Burgundy recipe.  In the film, the modern day heroine starts a blog aiming to cook every recipe from Julie Child's book within a single year.  Loved every minute of it and Meryl Streep is a hoot.  Mind you, Amy Adams is adorable.  Time for some ginger tea to warm up.  At least the snow has stopped.

To Scratch Your Heart

This is the name of a double cd set of early recordings from Istanbul, as you can probably read for yourself, and by early I mean the first part of the Twentieth Century.   And it's magical.  How could it fail to be with a name like that?  I have only recently come across Honest Jon's record label but I have a few more cds from the company on my Amazon wish list.  Highly recommended.  I would struggle to describe the music except to say that it's made up of 'whatever musicians and instrumentalists filed through the makeshift recording studios on the day' (to paraphrase the liner notes).  Even my wife enjoyed it and she is notoriously difficult to please.

Returning to France

 

I thought I should correct a misleading impression.  The weather in France this summer was mixed but we had more good days than bad.  The photo above was taken at the end of a wonderful - quite long -  walk in the warm sunshine for example.  The one below is in the garden behind the Toulose Lautrec Museum in  Albi.  If you haven't been, I can strongly recommend a visit.  Lautrec's art is more extensive and varied than I had imagined and all of it immediately appealing.  The town itself is equally pleasant, although I reserve judgement  on the red brick cathedral.  It is impressive certainly, vast and domineering, which was clearly the intention.  But it looks more like a nineteenth century power station than a church and the interior is even less interesting.  We did have an excellent lunch however which, despite gainsayers in the press and amongst our friends, was a regular occurrence for us.  Vive la France!  We enjoyed it so much we are going back in 2011 and the ferry is already booked.

 
 

Below is the medieval 'power station' in Albi - which isn't a bad name, if you allow a rather poor play on words, because what was it meant to be other than a 'power station' for the medieval church?

A day in the snow

This is my first post, ever, and it's not exactly novel as a heading but it is snowing here and I'm stuck in it.  Well, not stuck in the snow exactly.  I couldn't move the car more than a few yards out of the driveway this morning, which took about an hour, and then another hour to move it back into the driveway.  Sons and neighbours helped while the cats watched idly from the windowsill in the lounge.  As it turned out my work was eventually closed and I would have been sent home anyway.  Hope my wife makes it home safely.  The city buses have stopped running and the trains are only every hour, if that.  What the enforced leisure has allowed me to do is catch up on Radio Three's CD Review of the Year programme.  Very good it is too.  I particularly enjoyed the 'Golgotha' cd by Martin and the Jordi Savall magnum opus about the Cathars 'The Forgotten Kingdom'.  Having spent the summer in that part of south-western France, it was good to be reminded of the historical and cultural legacy, especially the music.  How much  the 'Cathar Route' is becoming too much of a 'tourist trail' with a wilful disregard, or at least over simplification of the history, is a moot point.   Not that I didn't enjoy that part of our trip.  Apart from the weather, which was shocking at times, I thoroughly enjoyed renewing my acquaintance with the food and wine of France.  It did, for example, make our visit to Montsegur atmospheric if a little chilly.