Notes from a 3D skeptic

All things come to an end

2011-10-02T19:44:00.001+01:00

Thanks for reading.

Pleasance Courtyard, Mosque Kitchen, on Arthur's Seat in the Bongo

2011-08-22T12:55:00.000+01:00

Piemaker Scotch Pie (minced beef, fat, spices), Brunstfield Links

2011-08-10T11:44:00.001+01:00

Bordeaux

2011-08-09T12:13:00.005+01:00

I went to Bordeaux. It was a very nice time. Two months living with Isa, Matthieu, Buzz the dog and Isa's bump. They're going to be parents in October (that's not their kid in that photo up there).

I worked in a primary school, then in a centre de loisirs as a stagiaire. It was nice to go back to France and start speaking French again. It's been a long time.

I ate an awful lot of good, good food and drank an awful lot of good, good wine.

More here (click on French Bred):

French Bred

Surprise Visit, London to Melbourne

2011-06-14T22:22:00.004+01:00

'Course I didn't disappear. I went on a trip. Here's the short account:

DAY 0
The plan: London to Melbourne overland as much as possible to surprise visit my sister and meet my niece. Thanks to the usual culprits (time and money), I have 31 days.

DAY 1-2
Riga: bad start. I've brought the wrong money. Who knew Latvia has its own currency? Still, it's Ratification Day. Right time right place, I meet the Prime Minister of Latvia. He has a firm handshake.

DAY 3-7
I bus overnight to Moscow. Not the best preparation for 4 days on a train. I have 3 hours turnaround in Moscow, so I change socks in Red Square.

DAY 7-9
Irkutsk, Siberia. Mayonnaise is ‘Mayonnaise’ in Russian except spelt with a backwards N, an H and a 3. Apparently swimming in Lake Baikal gives longer life. It's snowing when I arrive. Not a snowball's chance in hell I'm going in. Eternal life be damned.

DAY 10
I spend more time in No Man’s Land between Russia and Mongolia than I did in Moscow.

DAY 11-12
Ulaan Bataar. I get fleeced for 10,000 Tugriks by a monk. All he says is, 'Ho!'. I admire his salesmanship. Could you make 10,000 Tugriks with 1 word? Ho. I thought so.

DAY 13-15
Terelj National Park. I stay in a ger. I have the park to myself. Each morning I pick a peak from the horizon to hike.

DAY 16-18
Rolling out of UB, we enjoy our large, clean train window. Then a Mongolian lady hurls milk all over it. Good luck, apparently. Me, I prefer milk with cereal.

DAY 18-20
Beijing. I hit the great wall, swept up in a million Chinese tourists. They hawk, clamour, shove, spit. It's an experience. It's part of the experience.

DAY 21-23
Yangshuo. I rent a bike. The lady hands me a map. I think, 'Lady, I eat maps for breakfast'. I get lost, the trail gets technical, I fall in a rice paddy. My shoes grow mouldy.

DAY 24
I have to cancel my train through Vietnam: there’s no visa on arrival by train, after all. Instead, I fly to Kuala Lumpur to fly to Saigon. Beats me why.

DAY 25-26
I book a tour on the Mekong Delta. We ride various forms of transport: bus, big boat, little boats, bus. We all wear pointy hats on the little boats and float along like perfect asses.

DAY 27-30
I fly to Melbourne via Darwin. They ask why only 4 days. I give them the short version. I tell them work.

I surprise my sister and her husband on their doorstep. They're skyping Dad. I walk into shot and surprise him too.

I meet my niece, Bella. She's 8 months old. She's the first 8 month-old person I’ve ever met. It's a pleasure.

DAY 31
Endings- never drag them out. Keep it clean, keep it quick, don't ever stop in Perth for 1 day returning from Melbourne.

I wander. I eat half a roast chicken. I sleep for 3 hours. Then I go home.

HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY

2011-05-02T21:05:00.000+01:00

Paganello, San Marino

2011-04-27T20:18:00.000+01:00

London Marathon 2011

2011-04-18T23:24:00.004+01:00

I feel like I have some excuses to make.

3 hours was the dream time to complete my first marathon. With hindsight, this was ambitious.

Failing that, 3 hours 15 minutes was the next target, and one I hoped to meet. If I missed that, I thought keeping it inside 3 hours 30 would be realistic and towards the latter stages of my training, I thought of it as more of a formality (pah!).

In the end I staggered through the finish in 3 hours 28 minutes. Along Embankment my pace had slowed to a shuffle, and there were plenty of runners zipping past me. I finished in 3,787th position, and along that last stretch to Buckingham Palace and back round on the Mall, there were points when it felt like all 3,786 people were zipping past me at once. On the upside, the crowd picked me out as the runner most in need of attention and supported me so much along that last stretch.

Things hadn't really started as well as they could have. I was late. I arrived with 20 minutes to use the loo, throw my kit bag on the kit bag lorry and find my start zone. There were runners milling about everywhere, kicking back and chatting in the park and I figured I had more time than I actually did. I had just enough time to jog to the very front (I'd put myself in the 2'30" - 3'00" finish time bracket..), stretch my calves out a bit and watch Jonathan Edwards walk past to get things started before we all raced off.

The first 10 miles felt like a dream. I didn't need water, certainly not carb gels. I was high-fiving the crowd as I went. Smiling for cameras, taking it all in- the ticket tape blowing along beneath us, the pubs, the bands, the sun peeking out from under the clouds and a runner with a bright red 2'59" stick marker just ahead of me.

At about 1'15", I felt my quads starting to hurt. This hadn't really happened previously, ever. Usually they are the very last muscle to tire, since I do a fair amount of cycling to and from work and they've built up. At that point, I knew it was going to be a longer race than I'd reckoned on. The 2'59" marker started to get further ahead of me.

At somewhere around 2 hours, my legs tanked. I saw the house-mates at 18 and yelled out, 'It hurts! It hurts!', trying to indicate my legs and not really sure why. I'm not sure how I got through the rest of it. I saw people stopping to walk and thought to myself I didn't want to do that. I saw people throwing up and I thought I definitely didn't want to do that. I forgot about hitting times, or trying to calculate them. I focused on the next water station, the next opportunity to run in the shade, the next bend and mile marker.

Anyway I did it. There wasn't really a euphoric feeling- all that had come before. I cannot express how good the crowd was- the support was by far the best thing about running the marathon. There was a long, long walk to my kit bag lorry, right at the end of the line. There was a phenomenal reception by all the Oxfam staff, a long walk up some steps to the British Academy building where the charity's after-party was held, a tunnel of pom-pom girls I danced down very gingerly, a sports massage and a jazz band in one of those private gardens they usually lock, and then a bus and a cab to the pub to mull over a slightly disappointing day.

You can take the Japanese out of Japan, but you can't take Japan out of the Japanese

2011-04-16T21:59:00.002+01:00

44'16"

2011-04-08T08:40:00.001+01:00

Here's a map of a route I've been running for months:

iMapMyRun: Dec 3, 2010 7:49 AM

Find more Runs in Camden Town, GR

I started on 48, 49 minutes to do this. Gradually I whittled this down to 46-something, which I took as a good time. Turn of the year, suddenly I'm sub-46 and all I can think of is sub-45.

I ran 45'02"as I stopped for a bus at the finish line for the route (a zebra crossing). Then I ran 45'00"19 and started to think I was never going to crack 45 minutes.

This morning I ran 44'16" in probably my last hard run before the marathon, in broad and brilliant sunshine all the way.

Drowning on Dry Land

2011-04-05T23:20:00.001+01:00

Timing’s essential. These days, celebrity careers are born and ruled by it. Drowning on Dry Land was fortuitous to premier at Scarborough in spring 2004 in the immediate wake of the news of David Beckham’s affair with Rebecca Loos. This real-life celebrity snafu and subsequent fallout matched rather neatly with the play, in which protagonist and media darling of the moment, Charlie Conrad (Christopher Coghill), is caught in flagrante with a clown hired for his son’s birthday party. The play has now resurfaced for a London run in the year that brings the regrettably landmark watershed of the demise of the Big Brother television series.

Our hero Charlie is famous for being inept at everything he turns his hand to, like some bastard brother to Midas. From the moment his knee popped at his one shot to be a middle-distance running champion, to his situation at the beginning of the play opening supermarkets and toppling pyramids of stacked cans, he has never been good at anything and the public love him for it.

They have warmed to his vapidity, his everyman charm, while he himself frets over falling apart completely should those around him desert and leave him to disappear not only into anonymity, but altogether. Or course, this is exactly what happens following his indecent romp with Mr. Chuckles, delightfully rendered into a twitchy number one fan of Charlie’s by Helen Mortimer.

Ayckbourn’s play scrutinizes the modern celebrity from every perceivable angle and while the premise should tire over two hours, it doesn’t, thanks largely to a sharp, crackling script brought to life by a tight cast. The play has ripened nicely since 2004 and the intimacy of Jermyn Street Theatre together with the play’s solitary setting in the shadow of a Victorian folly in Charlie’s garden evoke 2011 media saturation of celebrity coverage very well. These days, if it’s not tweeted, it’s Liked, or webcast, or disseminated through a thousand different micro-media and our celebrities can sometimes seem more like neighbours or old school friends, such is the triumph of social networking and 24-hour news coverage. In the same way, you just cannot escape Charlie’s torturous descent, as near, hot and flushed as he is at this venue.

Between Bez from the Happy Mondays and an Eastenders paedophile, Christopher Coghill is perhaps more accustomed to playing colourful and complex parts. In spite of this track record, he impresses as a wonderfully flat Charlie who matures into a genuinely pitiful and compelling presence as his ultimate failure dawns on him. Siobhan Hewlett is excellent as the young, successful television journalist, Gale Gilchrist, particularly in a breathtaking and energetic scene that leads into Charlie’s moment of madness. Hugo de Préscourt also deserves special mention for his teeth and spittle legal defence of Charlie, as hot-shot lawyer Mark Farrelly. Last, Les Dennis: himself no stranger to the ups and downs of life as a celebrated media figure, Les is perfect as Charlie’s agent Jason Ratcliffe and puts in a performance full of patient and knowing smiles as his client’s career enters free-fall.

http://www.playstosee.com/page.php?sad=play&id=103

Miss Hope Springs: Je m'appelle Hope

2011-04-05T23:14:00.003+01:00

‘I’ve had many a dream to squander’, sings Miss Hope Springs in a warm, rich timbre as she takes her station behind the piano at the beginning of the show, and it doesn’t take long for you to believe her. Ty Jeffries stars in this one wo/man act, touted as a musical comedy cabaret but really much more than that- the show is all at once a tribute act, a follow-up, an indulgence, and simply an evening at the pleasure of Hope Springs (the clue is in the name).

Washed-up cabaret chanteuse Hope, recently jilted by her husband Irving and successfully escaped to Paris in her winnebago in search of a new life, recounts for us her story and ongoing struggles in between cute, witty and memorable little numbers. Son of the late Lionel Jeffries, Ty is clearly a chip off the old block and no stranger to the glitz and glam of the stage. Hope is no different- all feather and sequins, lip liner and heavy mascara, she has led a life in the spotlight. In a delightfully sordid tale of casual sex, indecent, wanton exposure and murderous jealousy, Hope runs through the songs and hosts like a natural.

The humour is fast, ribald and set to Hope’s personal take on life- in spite of all that befalls her, twice she trills, ‘Live, laugh, love and be happy’. Some of the jokes fall flat, but even these are carried off by Hope’s character and you can’t help letting it slide until the next gag or song, never far behind. To say anymore about the characters that populate the story and cause her so much heartache would be to spoil it, but rest assured Jean-Jacques and Fifi the Russian bodybuilder in particular have their moments.

In one sense, it’s hard to know where Ty Jeffries ends and Miss Hope Springs begins. She bawdily recounts an ‘audition’ with Gene Kelly and drops a dozen more names. His programme biography sees him tapping down Sunset Boulevard with Fred Astaire, modeling for Jean Paul Gaultier and befriending Andy Warhol.

Although we’re under no illusion as to which of the two is the real star, a certain blurring of them has become inked and fixed. Hope has even been released from the confinement of the stage- her website reads, ‘Miss Hope Springs is available for private parties, weddings and bar mitzvahs.’ It seems she is less an alter ego and more of a complementary identity for the man himself. Hope Springs isn’t the only one with a new life. Like all the best character comics, Ty is in danger of becoming trapped inside Miss Hope Springs- but then, with such a sunny outlook on life, that doesn’t seem like such a bad place to be.

http://www.playstosee.com/page.php?sad=play&id=133

Spring

2011-04-03T10:58:00.003+01:00

First time in a while back on the roof.

Looks like Stumpy didn't make it.

Early Lunch + 2nd Lunch

2011-03-31T06:28:00.002+01:00

From the latest information from Oxfam:

'In the 4 days leading up to the marathon it's a good idea to try and load your body with carbohydrates. This practice is known as carb-loading...

This process takes time so you shouldn't try and carb load the day before. It's best done 4 to 1 days before the race to give your body time to store the extra energy.

You should be aiming to eat an extra 300-400 calories of carbohydrates a day. The easiest way to do this is not by increasing your meal sizes, but by adding another meal into your day. Start by having breakfast, then perhaps an early lunch, followed by a meal around 3pm and then a normal dinner in the evening.'

Hels Bells, The question on everyone's lips, Red Velvet Cupcakes

2011-03-29T23:07:00.001+01:00

9.9 school in the news

2011-03-15T22:54:00.004Z

Things in Japan have lurched suddenly from the awful to the surreal. The BBC is now reporting from Yamagata, with regular updates and interviews with two old friends of mine, from a private English school I used to do some evening work at.

I spent most of today watching it all on TV. The media are running with all kinds of stories. This is all getting of hand.

Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside, Ingleborough

2011-03-13T22:49:00.000Z

11th March in Japan

2011-03-13T22:36:00.000Z

Thursday I get a call. It was the other Japanese TV company I applied to work for last autumn. The big time, central London one.

Things aren't working out with the guy they hired. They're looking for someone, again. They don't want to go through the recruitment process again. Did I want to put myself back in contention for the job? A whole new direction opens up, but I have plans til September, and then I'll be training to be a teacher. It's a done deal. I've handed in my notice at my current, less impressive Japanese TV job, and I'll finally be shaking Japan out of my system- nearly 2 years after I left, and a lot longer after most of my foreign friends in Japan have come back and moved on.

Back in the interview for the big time time job, they caught me out with a yorker in the general knowledge quiz. Who's the Prime Minister of Japan? I didn't know. 'There have been so many changes recently, I've lost track', I answered. 6 months on and I think everyone is aware who Naoto Kan is. Some footage has surfaced very recently of the Japanese Prime Minister in a Parliament session the moment the earthquake hit on Friday:

What's terrifying about this footage is that he does nothing. Of course, there is nothing he could do, except look around and hope it ended soon.

Friday morning I woke up and saw a friend in Yamagata had posted on Facebook, 'Was that one big enough for you'. Minutes later the news starts filtering through and the Today Programme picks it up. The disasters unfold threefold and we have the news streaming on BBC and NHK at work. The British newscasters stumble through unwieldy Miyagi ken and Iwate ken town names. Images of black waves and boats shoring in combeenee parking lots surface. Another friend wearily announces the 200th aftershock in the Kantou area. One lady ambles around a place she once knew and no longer recognises and pronounces blankly, 言葉が出ない- Words fail me. I think of Matsushima's tiny pine islands on the coast near Sendai and wonder if it is still there.

Friends in Tokyo and Yamagata seem fine. Each of them has friends with bad stories though. The more I think about it, the more people I think to contact and check on. People I knew in Sendai, even Ishinomaki. I think of friends to be concerned about, and that prompts more friends to think about and contact. Just when I thought I had shaken Japan from my system and taken a step away, I realised in a pathetically individual way that I am bound to that weird little archipelago in more ways, and through more people, than I knew.

PUB QUIZ DEUX

2011-03-13T21:50:00.003Z

'...He was quite impressed by the fact they understood him..'

2011-03-10T22:32:00.002Z

From an office window, from the end of the street, from the top of a hill

2011-02-28T23:25:00.002Z

17 miles

2011-02-28T21:23:00.002Z

17 miles hurts, but not like I thought it would.

I fell after 3 by the canal along the towpath, just at the bend where the route led up to the road, a flat road with no gravel nor puddles and a lot wider than the path beside the canal. Put a hole in my tights.

12 miles later and the guy running next to me for 6 or 7 of them tells me he's had a stone in his shoe since the towpath. It takes forever to overtake people when you're going marathon pace.

The miles ticked by.

Tonight

2011-02-24T23:36:00.001Z

Tonight I saw this man in the flesh.
Spellbinding.

Postscript to 17th February

2011-02-18T20:41:00.002Z

NME bags a shot of a normal night Friday night at Hachiko and passes it off as thousands of Radiohead fans

The Procrastinators

2011-02-18T20:08:00.002Z

The Procrastinators - episode 2 from Lernert & Sander on Vimeo.

Wrong place, wrong time

2011-02-17T22:52:00.002Z

Tesco MoneyCard

2011-02-16T17:13:00.001Z

Lemon Tart and the Leftovers

2011-02-12T16:17:00.002Z

Leo da V interview practice

2011-02-07T07:52:00.001Z

1.
Je m’appelle Guy Taylor et je viens d’une petite ville qui s’appelle Hertford. Ce n'est pas très loin de Londres. En fait, c’est à environ 30 kilomètres de Londres. Mes parents m’ont donné un nom français, mais en Angleterre on le dit Guy et pas Guy. J’ai un frère et une soeur - je suis le benjamin- et ils ont des noms français tous les deux. Mon frère s’appelle Oliver, c’est presque Olivier, et ma soeur elle s’appelle Helene, exactement comme Helene en français. On s’entend tous bien.

Après université je suis allé au Japon et j’y ai travaillé pendant trois ans. Depuis que je suis rentré en Angleterre, je travaille comme chercheur dans une maison de production a Londres. Donc, chaque jour, j’utilise mon japonais. Les e-mails de nos clientes au Japon sont écrits en Japonais et pour comprendre ce que nous devons faire, ce que nous devons chercher- les vidéos de youtube, les candidats et les endroits pour faire les tournages ou peut-être les sujets des nouvelles émissions de télévision japonaises.

2.
Eh bien.

Mes passe-temps- les sports.

J'aime beaucoup faire des sports. Depuis ma jeunesse, je faisais le course à pied de grands variétés: le jogging, l'athlétisme et le cross mais cet année je vais faire un marathon. C'est un peux individualiste mais avant de courir je fais la quête pour une œuvre de bienfaisance qui s'appelle Oxfam. Je dois ramasser deux mille livres.

En plus, j'adore faire des sports d'équipes. À l'école j'ai fait le rugby et bien sûr le foot mais ces derniers temps je faisais un nouvel sport: le frisbee. C'est un sport mixte, donc, on joue avec les femmes et c'est très, très fatigant parce qu'il utilise tous le corps- les bras pour lancer le disque, le tronc pour tourner rapidement, les jambes pour courir à toute vitesse- mais c'est tellement amusant. Chaque équipe joue avec sept personnes mixte mais on peut substituer; il faut qu'on reste immobile quand on a le disque et comme le foot américain, pour marquer un but on dois attraper le disque dans le zone de but, au fin de terrain.

3.
Bon.

Mes espoirs.

Cette année, à partir de septembre, je vais suivre une formation pour devenir un instituteur aux écoles primaires. J'ai passé trois ans au Japon comme assistant puis comme instituteur à l'école maternelle-c'est-à-dire une école bilingue pour les élèves de moins de six ans. Dès qu'ils arrivent et entrent dans la salle de classe, les enfants japonais essayent de parler en anglais.

L'école primaire à Londres où je vais commencer ma formation cette année est en train d'introduire l'enseignement bilingue français-anglais. En partenariat avec une école française, chaque semaine les élèves suivent les cours en français et en anglais.

Cet été, je voudrais participer au projet européen d'échange professionnel à Bordeaux, pour pratiquer le français, avant de commencer ma formation.

4.
Pourquoi voulez-vous aller en France cet été, avec ce projet?

Je veux y aller parce que j'aimerais améliorer ma connaissance en français et prendre part à la création de liens internationaux. J'ai déjà commencé à écrire un petit journal sur l'internet assister avant aller en France. En plus, je veux aller pour avoir une expérience professionnelle à l'étranger. J'ai déjà passé trois ans au Japon et je crois que j'ai eu des expériences diverses de grande valeur là-bas.

Marathon clock

2011-02-04T06:29:00.001Z

Seventy-one days

Continuing theme

2011-01-31T23:04:00.002Z

Here's one I wrote a year ago, just published.

I can appreciate how disappointed you must be.

2011-01-27T23:30:00.008Z

Dear Tesco PLC,

I am writing to you to inform that I am sorely disappointed with your own-brand 'Recipe Improved' English breakfast muffins (pack of 6). I am at this very moment eating one. Indeed, I have been eating Tesco muffins for breakfast for many months now and there is just something missing from the new recipe: a certain 'je ne sais quoi' has been replaced with a bald 'quoi?'. The muffins are not the same. I hope to see the old recipe reinstated soon.

I hope to hear your thoughts on this soon.

Yours expectantly,

Guy M. Taylor

Dear Mr Taylor,

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the delay in getting back to you. Please let me assure you that we always try to respond to our customers' queries in a timely manner and I’m sorry that due to high volumes of contact, this has not happened on this occasion.

I'm sorry that you're not happy with the new recipe on our English Breakfast Muffins. I can appreciate how disappointed you must be.

I'd like to look into this to establish what changes have been made or if there is a quality issue with the ones that you've purchased. Can you kindly advise of the following information from the packaging:

Barcode Number
Date Codes
Batch/Production Code (Found with the Date Codes)

If you could also send me your full address details, and the amount you paid when purchased then I'd be more than happy to issue you a refund in the form of a Tesco Moneycard.

I do hope that, despite the problems you've faced, you'll continue to shop with us, giving us the chance to provide the excellent service you've come to expect and so rightly deserve to receive.

If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me at customer.service@tesco.co.uk quoting TES9067180X.

Kind Regards

J------------
Customer Service Manager
Tesco Customer Service

Dear J--------,

QUOTING TES9067180X

Thank you very much for your e-mail. Of course I understand the customer services team of a supermarket chain as large as Tesco must receive a lot of correspondence and the delay is understood.

However, I have since disposed of (recycled, actually) the packaging of the English Breakfast Muffins and so sadly cannot provide you with the Barcode Number, Date Codes, Batch Code or Production Code.

Should I have been able to provide these details, your kind offer of a Tesco Moneycard is duly noted and much appreciated.

However, it's not about the money. That the muffins only cost 74 pence is beside the point, even in these austere times. That I have witnessed the price of butter (it's not an English Breakfast Muffin without butter, it's just a muffin) rise on an astronomical scale from around 1 pound to 1 pound and 30 some pence in a matter of months is also beside the point.

It's the recipe that's wrong. J-----, Tesco has let me down. I used to love breakfast, I used to rejoice in it. Now your muffins just taste cheap, and there is nothing to celebrate and certainly nothing to rejoice in. Can you please change the recipe back, please?

Kind regards,

Guy M. Taylor

Dear Mr Taylor,

Thank you for your response. I appreciate that you've thrown the packaging away given the delay in my reply.

I've asked my support team if they're aware of any issues with our muffins so we can establish if its the change in recipe or possibly a quality issue with the pack that you purchased.

However, my offer of a moneycard still stands. If you wish to receive this, please advise me of your address and I will duly send this to you with my best wishes.

Thank you for taking the time to write further.

If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me at customer.service@tesco.co.uk quoting TES9085797X.

Kind Regards

J-----------
Customer Service Manager
Tesco Customer Service

Dear J--------,

QUOTING TES9085797X

That's no problem, I'm determined to get the bottom of this.

I look forward to hearing what your support team has to say about the muffins. I'm fairly convinced the change to the recipe is to blame, but I'm still interested to know of their findings.

With this in mind, J------, can you tell me what change was made to the recipe? I've since eaten some more Tesco muffins, and I can say with some authority that the so-called, 'new, improved' muffins taste stale even when they're fresh. Could that be to do with flour? I think that's part of the problem. I'm no baker, but I suspect flour is at the root of all of this.

Kind regards,

Guy M. Taylor

Dear Mr Taylor,

Thank you for your email and I apologise for the delay in my response. My colleague J------- is currently away so I hope you don't mind me replying on her behalf.

We are sorry to hear that you don't find the English muffin to be improved.

A lot of work has been done to improve the product. This has been independently tested and benchmarked. The new product has been formulated with new kit and a new recipe in order to improve the taste and texture. A 2-stage mixing process allows the correct consistency of dough to be achieved and provides further aeration which in turn gives a more open texture. The griddle settings have been formulated to give a slightly crunchy outer texture and a soft, fluffy inner texture. The quality of the flour used in the recipe combined with the level of added soya flour allows a white crumb to be produced. The flavour of the muffin has also been improved with the addition of an extra 0.2% salt compared to the existing product. An alternative improver system allows a more stable open texture.

I hope this helps and thank you for taking the time to email us.

If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me at customer.service@tesco.co.uk quoting TES9097518X.

Kind Regards

A----------
Customer Service Manager
Tesco Customer Service

Bella

2011-01-21T22:29:00.000Z

On the subject of Romantic Love

2011-01-19T19:55:00.015Z

I've been debating whether or not to write this for weeks.

The beginning of the year saw the end of another very brief and inconsequential fling. That's how I'm training myself to see it, although it probably meant a lot more to me than that, in all honesty. (It's a coping strategy of sorts, and, in any case, the last time I wrote about a similar topic here, the wrong person read all about it and that, as they say, was that). You wonder about it for hours and your mind can't really get any purchase on any other subject, but, for whatever reason it didn't work out. The less said about it the better, but I do want to note that the other person in this very brief and inconsequential fling read my blog. All of it. Apart from maybe my mum, I don't know of anyone else who has done this. Props to Jackson and Watkins, both of whom I suspect are avid if occasional readers; Champ, who once used this blog in a class he taught and Simon W, who chastised me when I stopped writing somewhere back there in May '08 or something.

No-one else has read all of it though and that's why I hesitated for a long time. You can never be sure of your readership, especially on the internet. You cannot guarantee your readership, nor their point of view on what you write, whatever it might be- poetry, blog entries, articles, whatever.

At work recently we've had some research about (going to say it now) Love. Someone in Japan wanted to know about timing and Love for a TV programme. When is the best time to propose, when is the best time to kiss for the first time, when to reject someone or when to ask something of someone you love. Etc.

It transpires that one of the world's premier experts on Romantic Love is an anthropologist called Dr. Helen Fisher. I had never heard of her, but you might. She is very careful to refer to Love as Romantic Love, and in various speeches, papers and books of hers she peppers her work with references to literature and folklore and aphorisms and stories about Love. She talks of it as one of a handful of things to have been found in every known society on earth and as something that people have always been driven to articulate, understand, counsel on. She'll take a quote like, 'The less my hope, the hotter my love' and study fMRI scans of people recently fallen out of a relationship and afix a scientific reasoning for the very emotion that gave birth to this poetic articulation. It's all about the reptilian brain buried at the core of our minds, apparently. She'll explain everything we have ever had to say about love, in our most lucid expressions from the best of our poets, ever, by looking at the brain and pointing to the R-complex in the middle of it all. It takes a little of the fizz out of it all, but reinvests it with so much substance.

Dr Fisher also found activity in the brain region that calculates and measures gains and losses. It's impossible to come through a very brief and inconsequential fling without trying to weigh up what you won and what you lost in it all. Things mostly pile up in the Losses column. But it looks like I've got through December and January with one big Gain, one lesson learned- comedians know it, politicians, not so much: you can't let an audience- imagined or otherwise- get in the way of what you want to say.

Laser 3.14

2011-01-19T18:50:00.002Z

I SAW this guy in Amsterdam, everywhere, back between 2004 and 2005. Came across him again researching artists to film in Amsterdam for a project. Some of his stuff is pretty pithy but some of it really strikes a chord.

Good to see Laser 3.14 is still kicking.

The Leaderboard

2011-01-16T11:12:00.003Z

It seems like a long time ago now I tried online dating with Guardian Soulmates. For those not familiar with GS, there is a leaderboard of sorts that guarantees boosted exposure, self-esteem and, one presumes, dates. Lots of dates with lots of attractive people pulled from the cream of the gene pool (does that phrase work..). They call the leaderboard 'Popular profiles' and there are 20 girls and 20 guys.

Back when I tried out GS, I told myself I would pay for no more than one months' membership- roughly equivalent to what I could piss away down the pub one night getting drunk and not quite scratching together the courage to go up to a girl who caught the eye. A month of casual flirting and dates sounded like a good return in place of one night down the pub. Most of all lots of dates excited me, with people totally unaffiliated to anyone I know.

Early on, I realised the leaderboard was the answer. If I could just get myself in amongst the popular profiles, it would all happen. It's based on the number of people who have added you as a favourite- if more people like you and make you a favourite then you get on the popular profiles list.

Now, I thought I'd give myself a helping hand, of sorts, and devised a strategy to get on the leaderboard. I'm not going to divulge the details of my strategy, but suffice to say it was pretty shameful stuff. Could be seen as shameful, maybe. But, you know, all's fair in love and all that and it's nice not to be on the receiving end of that aphorism, or any love-aphorism, for a change.

The strategy didn't work. It didn't exactly backfire, but it was a close-run thing. I didn't get on the leaderboard.

Imagine, then, imagine my incandescent envy when my housemate tells me she's signed up to Guardian Soulmates and she's on the popular profiles list. Number 17. JUst waltzed on, no strategy, no nothing. To make matters worse, she ran through all of the top 20 guys and told me me which of them had got in touch with her. 'That one...that one...that one and that one...' A good quarter to a third of them. Proof that if you get on the leaderboard, the cream of the gene pool comes knocking (..now that phrase definitely doesn't work). Hmpph.

More like a clatter than a pop

2011-01-11T23:03:00.002Z

Insomnia

2011-01-10T22:52:00.004Z

I haven't been sleeping well. It hasn't been the best start to the year. Actually, to articulate it properly, it's been a shit start to the year. I don't think that's to blame though. Maybe partly.

I don't usually have a problem with sleep. Sleep is a good, good friend to me. One of my oldest friends, in fact. I hit the sack, lights out. Straight out. I can eat a tonne before I climb into bed, I can drink coffee late at night, I can exercise and get to sleep easily. I sleep well before big days, interviews, etcetera... So not much idea why sleep has rolled over and turned her back to me.

It's not such a problem really, it's just the getting to sleep. Usually that's my forte. I don't even have time to register pillow:cheek before everything sinks away, usually. Lately I can't. I get to the very brink of sleep and something pulls me back, gently and not altogether unpleasantly, were it not for the fact that I know I'll be tossing and turning before I do finally get to sleep. It's not like I need too much sleep for my current day-to-day, so it's not a bother, more a weird inconvenience.

Coincidentally, I've been researching folk remedies and naturopathic treatment for insomnia at work. Onions work, apparently. Cut up some onion, stuff it in a glass and breathe deeply from the glass before you go to bed. Who would have thought. Grass too- take a walk barefoot on grass before you go to bed. People swear by this. Long-term insomniacs- not like me.

When I did finally get to sleep last night, I dreamt I was riding a London bus on the top deck. Then the flooring disappeared, along with the chassis and the driver and the other passengers- pretty much the entire bus- and I was a long, long way up, kind of floating along the path the absent-bus was taking. Lots of people below milling around like there was a carnival going on. No vertiginous complaints, no fear, no idea where I was going. All I could think of was How on earth am I going to reach all the way down to push the button for my stop (wherever it is).

Appendix to Friday 10th December 2010

2011-01-04T22:33:00.000Z

- Appendix to 4th January 2011

2011-01-04T19:19:00.000Z

Cars 3 - Bike 0

Top 5

2010-12-30T12:04:00.012Z

This time of year, everyone has a top 5 or a top 10 or some kind of round-up, so I thought I'd get in on the act. I've been researching weird things for Japanese TV for over a year now. Recently a broadcaster we contact often suggested I try adding the word 'wacky' to any searches in their online archives for finding topics we'd been charged with digging up. That's the kind of research work I do.

At the beginning, I tried to note down what I was researching with the intention of writing about them all here. Soon enough, I realised it would be pretty much every topic we research. The list grew longer and longer until it was entirely unwieldy. Top 5 makes sense.

In no particular order:

- Jim Le Fevre

This man is a hero. Jim Le Fevre uses record players and revolutions per minute to make smart animations. He dubs his creation the Phonotrope (formerly the Phonographantasmascope), itself modelled on a Zoetrope.

His website is packed with wonderful things too.

- Cat Gets Stuck in Window

From the wildly imaginative and inspirational, to the wacky, the most lowly of low-brow entertainment available (that no one else in Japan has broadcast yet). That's how my job rolls.

Pretty funny though.

- And one giant mirror

Viganella: a small town in Northern Italy with no sunlight for three months every year, due to it's location nestled at the bottom of a valley. The mayor instals one giant mirror to rectify this.

The Japanese featured in the trailer had nothing to do with us and I don't think the people in Japan we were working for even used the footage in the end. Didn't stop me burning a copy of the entire documentary to take home and watch (it's office policy - eurgh what a phrase!- to burn copies of everything that comes in anyway).

The array of characters is the most compelling thing in the documentary. The guy playing a caisa (the instrument you can hear at the beginning) plays all kinds of instruments throughout but never utters a word. There's a brooding, quiet type who lives at the top of the hill near where they instal the mirror. And the mayor is delightful and gregarious and determined throughout. I love how he gets nearly blown backwards by the helicopter down-thrust, as he tries to take pictures with a pocket camera of the mirror dangling. Landscape then portrait, then back to landscape.

- Solar Impulse

A solar plane that can fly at night.

I spoke with the PR who was lovely but who told me there was no footage of the plane flying. They hadn't got it off the ground yet. Two months later it hits the national press with the maiden flight. Now it seems it's flown at night too.

- World's Deepest Bin

I love this.

Finally, carols

2010-12-28T18:09:00.002Z

All has been said and done now, but in the run-up to Christmas I was really craving carols. Various plans fell through. Audience participation is not always welcome- who knew there is difference between carol concerts and carol services? Even Midnight Mass turned out to be a lot more Godly than I had remembered. Much less clementines with candles and more, well, like you'd expect from a church I suppose. No less enjoyable for that, mind, in it's own way.

So it was nice, really nice, to get word from the school I'd visited on work experience during the summer, inviting me to their carols and staff party. I don't think I've sung Away in a Manger since I was 7 years old myself. Certainly not Little Donkey. Plenty of candles too, and a few Kings and a Joseph and a Mary trembling on the stage after holding pose for 10 minutes. Back at school, the staff had transformed the corridors into The Lion the witch and the wardrobe. They even has an Aslan (pictured). The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Essentials: sign of the times

2010-12-20T08:19:00.001Z

BAA spokesperson:

"People are in the lounges and all over the airport. We have given out thousands of blankets, food vouchers, bottles of water and there is free wi-fi. Things are improving slowly."

Snow, snow, snow

2010-12-19T22:28:00.004Z

Christmas shopping

2010-12-19T14:06:00.002Z

This is very much a traumatic affair, an annual, traumatic affair.

This year I found myself in an awful, traumatic human tangle on the ground floor of the Oxford Street branch of John Lewis, fighting for access between display stands bearing thoughtfully packaged and well-presented foodstuffs, perfumes, lotions, superfluous stationary and all the other accompanying accoutrements of Christmas (board games, wooden toys, cards and gift wrapping, bored children with mittens on strings), in this mind-numbing, department store light. It all came to a head as I debated spending five pounds on gift tags- nothing more than a folded piece of card with a hole punched in one corner and a barcode on the back.

Even my attempts to skip off the masses with a digital bounce were thwarted this year. The book my brother wanted wasn't in stock. The snow and the ice has stopped any postal guarantee for internet purchases. The cheese website crashed, or wouldn't load, or something. I don't recall why I thought buying cheese over the internet seemed like a good idea, but it did at some point.

I finally caught a break yesterday. I had one more little something to get and the shop I had in mind was a ways away, but I had time and the inclination to wander.

I passed by L'Occitane on my way and a sales assistant inexplicably spraying the area around the door with one of those perfume atomizers with a cord and a spongy ball at the end. I walked past, stopped, turned back and went in. Could have been the perfume. Not really sure. In any case, I was presented with a glass of champagne the moment I entered. Here was something for nothing and I instantly congratulated myself on the best Christmas shopping decision of this year. I found something and bought it from the same sales assistant that had sprayed the door space and offered me the champagne. She processed the transaction, slipped the product in a bag and then she did something else inexplicable. She took a sheet of pink crepe paper, loosely stuffed it into the bag and then jammed the bottle of perfume in and sprayed a good puff-puff-puff, and another puff for good measure. People always seem to want to go the extra mile at Christmas time, even if it's a bafflingly strange gesture, like spraying the inside of a bag.

No car go, Stumpy, Making it further than Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain etc

2010-12-15T20:37:00.006Z

Something wicked this way stalks

2010-12-10T18:38:00.001Z

Yesterday marked the greatest moment of my working life in London. That’s not to say much, given it’s been only a year and in an entirely one-dimensional capacity, but even so, this was big. This was a coup, this was an Everest: Attenborough.

A brush with a hero is a rare occasion indeed. That’s part of heroes being heroes: they have a distance and an impenetrable aura about them that underwrites your reverence. If you bumped into a hero in your local cafe week, it would take a little lustre off. At least in my book, that’s how it works.

When I was a kid, at one stage, I remember liking two things in life quite obsessively: collecting books I never read, and animals. I was going to be a vet and one day I was going to read all of the books I had collected, just as soon as I finished the collection. All three of these things never happened- I’m not a vet, I never read those books and I still haven’t finished collecting books. I gave away all my old CDs, I streamlined my stuff between England, Scotland, Japan and England again and I toss out old clothes before I’ve bought new clothes. Books, though, I can’t really bear throwing away or donating or ditching.

So, I grew up with David Attenborough on the TV, sweating in a jungle and a headlock at the gangly, orange arms of an orangutang; at the poles, with the penguins and much later, just an absorbing voice speaking over gorgeous footage of things I’ll never lay eyes upon at the bottom of the sea or deep in caverns or stashed in wild ravines. He was always around animals. Not so much books. He became, and remains, a hero of mine.

Yesterday, investigating rights of some early ‘90s nature footage to license for broadcast in Japan, our contact at dear old Auntie came back with a message- we would have to run it by David Attenborough if Japan wanted to broadcast anything with him or his voice. And there was his address and his phone number.

As it turns out, Japan only wanted the penguins. King penguins. That wasn’t going to stop me calling up David though. Except, when the phone had rung through a dozen or so times and an anonymous, computerized approximation of a voice had invited me to leave a message, I thought it more respectful to call him Sir Attenborough. I explained the situation and asked him to call us back, although I thought this a ridiculous proposal. Imagine, Sir Attenborough telephoning T--------! Ha!

So today I drafted a letter. The printer at work (we have only one) is playing up and there are two white smears that run down the printed page it spits out, down the right side. I shifted everything left and tried again, but this only eliminated one white smear and left one column of letters half-way between type and hallucination. This simply wouldn’t do. Not for Sir Attenborough. Instead I plan to print it out from the library and send it myself. Or maybe even hand deliver.

I guess that rules out toys for Christmas

2010-12-01T10:25:00.001Z

The Future is French

2010-11-30T22:31:00.003Z

A work in progress:

Motivation letter
http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa111000.htm

Name: Guy Maunder Taylor

Date: 3rd Decembre

Monsieur, Madame,

General personal description including hobbies and pastimes

Je me permets de poser ma candidature pour le poste d’internat avec le projet Leonardo da Vinci. Je suis vingt sept ans et je travaille depuis Septembre 2009 comme un chercheur de production a une maison de production japonais en Londres...

Why would like to join the programme

Je suis désireux de travailler en France afin de... I would like to spend some time living in France- I spent two weeks as part of a school French exchange when I was 17 so I would like to return there.

The ideal internship that you are looking for
What type of tasks you would like to do in your internship
What are your strengths and what can you offer the employer
What you hope to gain from the programme
Any other details you feel will strengthen your application

Comme l’indique mon CV, j’ai travaillé pendant trois ans en Japon. Mes expériences de travailler en Japon m'incite(nt) à penser que je suis à même de vous assurer une collaboration efficace pour ce poste. I am very adaptable. I have very strong organisational skills having worked in TV.

To renew my French, to learn about teaching in France, to learn about Bordeaux and life in a French city.

Yours truly,

Your name

Notes:

Your letter of Motivation should not exceed one page
Once you have completed you letter please ensure all text is in BLACK

Breasts

2010-11-28T19:07:00.005Z

'I have lots of milk'

These are words you should never hear from your sister.

'I'm lucky, I have lots of milk'

It was my mistake bringing up the subject. I had strolled into no man's land last week: a baby shop down the road, just near a guy with a cart with onion and garlic strings spilling over every side. Baby shops and onion strings. Hampstead is that kind of place.

They had cute stuff, toy stuff, early learners and clothing and then a whole bunch of stuff that I had no idea about. Exhibit A: Boob Tube, a Mama Mio product.

This product promises:

'Within a week you'll notice that the skin on your neck, chest and boobs looks firmer, fitter, glowing, more dewy and youthful. As it reduces crepe and creasing above and around boobs, reduces wrinkles on neck and chest and plumps up skin so it looks young & bouncy. This high quality product is super nourishing in Omegas 3,6 and 9 and packed with very high levels of nature's amazing anti-oxidant, CoQ10 (co- Q- ten).'

What is crepe? How does skin look dewy?? What the hell is CoQ10? Dewy..?

I considered all of this, then I thought about picking it up for my sister as a joke present but in the end the price was a little prohibitive.

Exhibit B was a little further into the shop. I can't deny that as I went further in I felt a shiver of nervous excitement, an illicit frisson something like when pocketing penny sweets in a corner shop.Small time stuff, but enough to make you think twice. And there it was, top shelf, surrounded by all of the other practical mum/baby goods- the manual breast pump. The horror, the horror.

I felt a little strange staring at this product, but I was totally enraptured. In spite of this, I failed to note the brand name. Here's what it looked like:

Application, usage etc remain a mystery. Exhibit B I also considered picking up as a joke present, but I didn't have the chutzpah to walk to the counter and pay for a manual breast pump. Instead I picked up something else and later brought up the breast pump with my sister on the phone.

'How about a manual breast pump?', I asked, jokily.

'Actually, I already have an electric breast pump', she said.

There ensued a 3 minute monologue, the details and gist of which I'm sure you can imagine. Suffice to say the phrase, 'express milk' (my sister used this as a verb) entered my vocabulary. God-willing it will never again surface.

Inside the Royal Albert Hall, the Most Beautiful Tree in Gunnersbury Park, Arabella (aged 45 days)

2010-11-22T08:43:00.005Z

Debut

2010-11-21T22:20:00.007Z

I made my debut. My speaking debut on Japanese television. A year in the job and I've seen some pretty good times- the time I first started eating my lunch on the big red sofa, the day I moved to the Desk by The Window, the other day when I figured out the keyboard short-cut for format painter. Woah nelly, some pretty heady days, some good good times.

But this takes the biscuit. I once appeared as a walk-on, fill-in for a part. They needed a staff member from the National Archives to push a trolley of old books and documents (Meiji era stuff), and to wear white gloves. No-one from the NA wanted to do it, so I got the call. I never saw that one though- the AD was a bit of a frosty character, the story the Director had was falling apart as he went along and there wasn't such a healthy production relationship.

This, though, this was my speaking debut, and we got a DVD of the show through just fine. I was Local Gib Driver No. 1 and I nailed it in 2 takes. Tony the cameraman said I was a natural. The guys in Japan put a Japanese voiceover mine. The works, the whole 9 yards.

I tried to take some screen shots, but I guess the DVD is protected somehow, or you can't take screenshots from DVDs, or I'm just doing it wrong, cos all I got was the image above. Sorry folks.

Instead, I ripped some pictures from the net of the programme my speaking debut features on (Unbelievable):

CAPELLO:CARL FREDRICKSEN

2010-11-18T16:37:00.000Z

Art?

2010-11-17T22:28:00.015Z

I don't know much about art. I know nothing about art. At school I got stuck at Rothko. My A-level teacher, Mr. Box, tried to explain it all to me. I couldn't understand why such massive blocks of colour are held in such high esteem. I didn't get it, I was frustrated, there wasn't a ready solution. I quit art soon after.

During art I had learned one important lesson about the gap between what you envision and what you produce. Sometimes it's a gulf. I've learned that lesson again and again since the art room: I've learned to avoid recipes with photos (that just plants pictures in your head to measure up against), although I'm invariably drawn to them. I've learned that words and stories don't always come out how you'd read the script in your head: sometimes, by some happy accident, things will turn out differently, but just as good as you'd envisioned. Mostly this doesn't occur though. It takes time and skillful execution to pinch the gap between the images in your head and the thing in your hands or that come hurtling out of your mouth.

Work is research and research lately has been art. Find some new art. Something that translates fluently to television, to Japanese television. It's not as easy as it might seem, especially when you consider what kind of art people produce nowadays- conceptual art, found art...how do you explain that?

Not much on TV is new. Most of it has come from other TV, or at least other media. It really does just feed into itself. Another research topic for another channel and another programme at the moment is art. 'Trick' art. Optical illusions and anything remotely related. The illusions have a charm to the eye all of their own. An illusion to demonstrate Four Stroke Apparent Motion has really got Japan stumped though- they keep asking, how does it work? They keep asking, but why?

Deconstructing optical illusions, penetrating the jargon and the theory for condensed, soluble blurb to translate into Japanese and then easily into the mind of the producer in Japan requires care, and it reminds me of the task I and Mr Box faced up to and failed.

Rule number 7 of a Top 10 Problems Within the Art World list reads:

7. Press Releases and descriptive, explanatory texts next to pictures.
We shouldn’t need words to understand or access a work of art anymore than we need art to understand a film or an album cover to listen to music. They are extra, they can bring you to a greater comprehension of an artist – but if they are necessary then the artist has messed up. If they are not necessary, then don’t display them next to the work. If one watches an audience go round the Tate they spends as long reading the small print as they do looking at the work. Additionally poor artists use these explanatory texts to justify obtuse obscure work, or banal conceptual pieces – the writing often eclipsing the art in eloquence and expression.

I don't need any notes, or chats with Mr. Box or any other art authority to understand Rothko these days. In fact, I'd even venture to say he's one of my favourite artists (without wanting to appear like someone who knows anything about art). What I do know is that I know what I find appealing in his art. The size and depth of colour, especially in person and in close consultation for a prolonged period, is nothing short of mesmerizing.

With this in mind, I wanted to share some art work I've come across at work. (With no more explanations.)

Andreas Gursky, Blu, Anne Hardy.

RESULTS

2010-11-15T22:20:00.002Z

The results for the inaugural Fund-Raising Dog House Pub Quiz (+ prizes):

1. Quiz Eubank and the Long Shots (a flagon of Old Navy Rum).

2. The Quiztal Malaise (a signed Jimmy Carr DVD).

3. Pirates of the South London Pacific (a fully PAT tested electric vegetable steamer tower).

4. Quiz in my Pants (a quarter bottle of French red wine).

5. An Ode to Guy: Ultimate Quizbee (a jar of mint humbugs).

6. Quiz Team Aguilera (some 'Free Tibet' stickers).

7. Stepfathers because we beat you and you hate us (AWOL at prize-giving?).

7. Let's Get Quizical (a toy water pistol).

9. Quizzie Rascal (a Cafe Nero loyalty card with 5 stamps).

ISO 800

2010-11-09T07:43:00.004Z

Last night I ate this with Hannah, who agrees that composition can really make up for a lack of any photographic ability or technical expertise.

The Most Beautiful Tree In All Of Gunnersbury Park

2010-11-04T20:05:00.004Z

HOW TO BLOW AN INTERVIEW

2010-11-02T21:44:00.003Z

Things were going badly until one of the interviewers started asking questions in Japanese. Actually, he only got through one question before he abandoned it completely. Thereafter, things nosedived sharply.

This was my shot at the big time. No more car crash clips. No more dancing dogs, or interminable searches for third-party rights holders to nature documentary footage. This was a job in news.

There was a quiz to kick things off. Just to get started. Amongst others, I couldn't answer who the current Prime Minister of Japan is. I went with cheek, charm and humour instead: 'There have been so many changes recently, I've lost track'. Yes, Guy. You might not know the answer, but you bloody well know the background to it!

The English interviewer scanned through my answers and said not to worry, there were only a few he'd be really worried if I'd gotten wrong. 'Actually', he said, looking closer at my answer script, and frowning slightly.

He didn't wave me off at the door, returning to his desk instead and leaving me to gibber through some small talk with the two Japanese interviewers, in pigeon Japanese.

I left the building and started walking with no direction whatsoever. At first I felt giddy that at least I had a story to tell, but when the full weight of what I'd just tossed away came to bear, a different kind of feeling sank and settled.

It might not look like much

2010-10-31T22:01:00.001Z

CARROT AND ORANGE SOUP

Snowdon

2010-10-31T19:20:00.005Z

I don't think I've ever travelled by National Express before. I've never had to- there's always been a train or a car or even a plane going where I want to go, but Friday I took off from work and headed straight to Victoria coach station. Destination: West Country.

Next morning, doorstop bacon sandwiches dealt with, Paul and I made our way up to Snowdonia to meet Si, who had slept in a tent in the rain the night before. The sunrise had made it all worthwhile.

Half an hour or so later, hail hammering down and wind blasting indiscriminately, we were facing down Crib Goch (one of the tougher ridge ascents of Snowdon). We decided against the route and took an easier way, along with everyone else climbing on the day.

The hail continued for a while and we trudged on, hooded and bowed. At one point I wondered aloud what we were doing it for. People climb mountains for different reasons: to get to the top, for a nice view, for the air, for the exercise, some even climb them just because people climb mountains. Others climb simply because the mountains are there. I hadn't even envisaged climbing Snowdon when I planned this trip- I was interested in seeing some of the autumn colours. We had settled on hiking Snowdon almost without discussion.

My Boss.

2010-10-21T22:08:00.002+01:00

Weiwei

2010-10-21T08:30:00.003+01:00

Guy says:

20 October 2010 at 07:31

I loved the exhibition- I too appreciated the thoughtful layout of objects nearby paintings containing them, as well as the objects themselves: call me a philistine, but I had no idea Gauguin had been such a talented carpenter. I went on a Friday evening, expecting it to be extremely busy but it was by no means heaving and I didn’t have to wait too long at any point to steal a look at something that caught my attention.

However -at the risk of straying from the topic- I also went in great anticipation of the new Turbine Hall exhibition. Just before I left work for Tate, I saw an article saying it was now an off-limits exhibition, due to health concerns about dust.
I have to say, I was extremely disappointed when I did finally lay eyes upon the latest, sterilized addition to a series that has as it’s hallmark interaction and social immersion. It wasn’t the fact that you had to view the artwork from behind a tape-barrier, it was that earlier during the week you could trample all over it: knowing that this was not how the art was originally conceived to be detracted from the experience significantly. And from an artist who typically takes a pugnacious attitude to authoritative dictums. I would have gladly worn a respiratory mask if it meant I could enjoy the art as it should be enjoyed.

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Another opinion:

Letters

Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern – health and safety gone sensible
(3)

The Guardian, Monday 18 October 2010

Article history
Your article on Tate Modern's decision to stop visitors interacting with Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds installation misses the point (Keep off the art: dust puts sunflowers out of bounds, 16 October). It consists of a series of quotes from people complaining about "health and safety gone mad". They, and you, have thoughtlessly failed to consider the people who will be most affected by the large amounts of ceramic dust that was being created as people interacted with the exhibition.

While the health and safety of the general public is important, it will be Tate Modern staff who will suffer from prolonged exposure to such dust. That is why many of them quite rightly refused to work on the exhibition, supported by their PCS union reps, and ensured that management took their views seriously.

My partner works at the gallery, and my son and I are glad that she was part of this refusal. The disappointment of a few visitors is surely a better outcome than long-term, and possibly fatal, health effects for her and other workers at the gallery. Despite the decision, people can still view the work in the same way they would almost every other piece of art – by looking at it.

Matthew Cookson

London

• Tate Modern seeds? Ceramic dust? Sounds like a good use for stockpiled swine flu masks. Kind of makes it more "art", though not sure how.

Shetland Pony Attack

2010-10-12T07:54:00.002+01:00

Running

2010-10-12T07:32:00.002+01:00

I've been doing a lot of running recently. The idea is to get a good base level of fitness ahead of some serious marathon training from November or December onwards..

Mostly I've been running in the mornings. Once on the weekend, a few times at night. Any time of day I run, it takes a certain degree of willpower to get outside and start. Actually, it takes a lot of willpower. In the mornings, there's always a warm bed between me and the cold morning and weak light outside. If I run in the evenings, I can't shake the thought of the run for the duration of my commute home and my mind tests my resolve, turning over all kinds of excuses- I won't have time to make dinner if I run; it'll already be dark when I get back, I won't see my feet or be able to judge the camber and roll of the pavements; I have other things to do (I don't, really).

Once I'm outside though, once I've stepped out of the door there's no turning back. Once I crawled back into bed instead of running, crying heavy legs and convincing myself a day's rest wold do me good. So long as I make it downstairs to the front door I'm ok though. All I have to do is trick my mind, or sabotage my natural thought-processes long enough to get there, stamp my feet into my trainers and slam the door behind me.

A good year for apples, Sheep on Cleeve Hill, Dog hair basket

2010-10-06T07:35:00.001+01:00

Near Wormwood Scrubs

2010-10-05T12:07:00.001+01:00

After you've watched 67 horse and gun trot and trundle past, the rest of the morning just kind of pales in comparison.

Perfect Start

2010-10-01T08:42:00.001+01:00

To the day, to October

WELCOME, ARABELLA

2010-09-27T23:00:00.003+01:00

i don't go south of the river

2010-09-24T08:42:00.002+01:00

It's beens just over a year since I got back from Japan.

I have lots of memories- good, bad, evocative, cherished, distant. Some memories are sharpening, brightening, calcifying. Others I'm losing. Still more have gone without me even realising, surely. Nostalgia has become habitual. For me, the grass will always be greener. I came across an interesting definition of nostalgia last night that strikes a chord:

'Nostalgia, psychoanalysis teaches, is always neurotic: an imaginary-hallucinatory-attempt to recover a lost past, but one doomed to fail because it ignores or forgets the present that was the essential component of the lost time.'

Ignore the 'pschoanalysis' bit. That's never really been my bag.

I know I'm not the only one with such nostalgic feelings for where I was, what I was doing, that's the thing. Thanks to social media, I know other friends that committed to a transient stay in Japan feel like returning too. Turn the thought over of someday going back. Maybe starting up in another part of Japan.

When I was 19 I travelled to Japan on my own and went from Tokyo to Kagoshima and back. I distinctly remember wandering around Tokyo, all of it, thinking, 'What a cool place to live'. Thinking, 'Wouldn't it just be incredible to live in Tokyo one day'. But part of me knew I wouldn't, that I would go back to England and get on with the business of growing up in Europe. To me, at that time, it seemed hallucinatory to consider living in Tokyo. 5 or so years later I proved myself wrong, and I did it. I made a life there, and I never want to forget that.

Part of the fun of living abroad in such radically different circumstances was reflecting upon my own language, national character, my own upbringing, daily habits, surroundings from another space, from the other side of the line. It threw everything that had come before in life into sharp relief- suddenly I inhabited a position far removed on a scale of comparison. Someone once said, 'The unexamined life is not worth living'- and the converse is just as true.

It can be as simple as the embrace of national stereotypes: kicking more footballs, lauding a capital city I'd never spent longer than a month, sending for brown sauce. Or it could be rejoicing in the aisles of the foreign food store. Or much more: reflecting on all the ambiguities and miscommunications between native speakers of a common language, acknowledging they occur much more than I had previously registered, realising this thanks to all the frustrations of trying to communicate in a language I hadn't yet learned.

It's all quite complicated, and difficult to express. But returning to the green grass on the other side, I give you Guardian journalist Scott Murray's live text-update introduction to the New Zealand innings against India back in March 2003:

'Preamble

It's really simple: India are already through, New Zealand have to win.

Meanwhile, have you ever thought WHAT SORT OF LIFE IS THIS AND WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING BOARDING A TRAIN FOR MOORGATE AT 6.30 IN THE MORNING AND THEN STANDING AROUND FOR AGES WAITING FOR A TUBE WHILE STARING AT A SIGN TELLING YOU THAT IF YOU WAIT FOR FOUR MINUTES YOU CAN BOARD A TRAIN TO UXBRIDGE I'D RATHER WAIT FOUR HOURS FOR A JOURNEY WITH THE GRIM REAPER QUITE FRANKLY AND THEN YOU GET TO WORK AND THEN THERE'S THIS AND I KNOW THE CRICKET'S GOOD AND ALL THAT BUT I'VE GOT OUT OF THE WRONG SIDE OF BED THIS MORNING AND IN ANY CASE IT'S NOT AS IF I'LL WRITE A CRACKING MATCH REPORT AND THEN GET REWARDED BY BEING SENT ON A WONDERFUL ASSIGNMENT AROUND THE WORLD BECAUSE I'LL BE VERY SURPRISED IF ANY OF MY BOSSES WILL READ ANY OF THIS LET'S BE HONEST THEY WON'T ALTHOUGH ON THE OTHER HAND THAT'S PROBABLY JUST AS WELL HEY I WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO GET AWAY WITH TYPING THINGS LIKE THIS KIqL!UYS^%$DFLI ZSDSAFC SFE4O92 )(^(*^o"$ bBLKU E875O3 96*&^%o*"$ogb LOOK I'M SORRY THIS ISN'T EXACTLY THE SORT OF QUALITY EDITORIAL COPY YOU EXPECT FROM THE GUARDIAN BUT LOOK AT THE FACTS I'M ADRIFT IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF THE WORST CITIES IN THE WORLD SITTING IN FRONT OF THE SAME COMPUTER SCREEN I FACE DAY AFTER INTERMINABLE DAY HELL I COULD BE WAKING UP IN SAY THE MALDIVES OR SYDNEY OR COPENHAGEN OR A CROFTER'S COTTAGE IN SKYE AND GOING FOR A WALK IN THE CRISP MORNING AIR?

No? Only me then. Good.

The pitch

There are a couple of big cracks in the pitch which may open up later in the day...'

Ah, Royal Mail

2010-09-23T23:04:00.001+01:00

AT THE CHAMBERLAYNE ROAD/KILBURN LANE INTERSECTION

2010-09-21T10:24:00.001+01:00

Cars 2 - Bike 0

2010-09-20T23:09:00.005+01:00

A friend came from Japan. I took Tuesday off and we went around town. It was nice to have someone to show off London to, and do half the things I'd love to do. She'd been to the two best galleries the day she arrived, and I eventually ran out of ideas so I took her to the pub.

Throughout the week we spoke in Japanese, we spoke in English. Since I left Japan, all those words and radicals and kanji I got to know have retreated to higher and higher shelves, out of reach of my mind's grasp. Phrases don't come easily any more. I need to think through grammatical structures before speaking them. Whole tracts of vocabulary are gone, just gone. But hanging out with Ran, bits came back, of course. All the parts of the language are still sitting waiting on shelves, somewhere in my mind, just buried in dust but within fingertip grasp.

The funny thing is, looking back, I can't even remember if we spoke in Japanese or English for most of the conversations we had. It's only been a few days. The message is there, and I know what we talked about, but I just don't remember.

THIS WAS GONE IN SECONDS

2010-09-20T22:18:00.002+01:00

Gibraltar: Africa, National Day, Biting off more than you can chew, Tagged, Local News

2010-09-11T14:08:00.002+01:00

My name

2010-09-06T07:46:00.002+01:00

The only way I can motivate myself to run.

The Swan

2010-09-04T11:45:00.005+01:00

Here's one I ran earlier.

THE POWER OF TIMEOUT

2010-09-04T11:38:00.004+01:00

Trendy art store opens in bohemian north-west London neighbourhood (also location of my home).

Trendy art store advertises free giveaway in Timeout.

Barricaded at home by a line that winds round the corner, for hours.

Piccadilly Circus, close to 3.30am, Monday 30th August 2010

2010-08-31T08:45:00.000+01:00

Hello Autumn

2010-08-31T08:44:00.000+01:00

Autumn is the new summer. Shout it to the eaves, whisper it to the chrysanthemums, tell the nearest kid to pull out his wellies and go jumping in puddles. Rain came and with it, an unseasonal, thick green sweep across the land. Autumn raided Summer's wardrobe and stole her best frock. The wind picked up and the temperature dropped. Except for that green wash, all of the brightest colours on show tarnished and bleached quite suddenly- the hydrangeas went from bright blue to weak tea, the trees started dropping pale leaves, all of the berries have gone and the gorse has started to retreat. All in all, it's been the kind of delightful foretaste of autumn that inspires a feeling of dreaminess that compels you to use words like delightful.

At work, Spotify has come to satisfy a large chunk of my daily music needs. It's one perk in an otherwise tedious, unfulfilling job with no discernible redeeming factor whatsoever. I listen to lots of music at work.

Occasionally, inspiration deserts me and I am bereft of ideas of what to select next to listen to. Sometimes I take a chance and follow the similar artists selected by Spotify. Sometimes I browse review sites, blogs or facebook music likes to get my imagination going. Sometimes I play things I've been listening to elsewhere. Sometimes, sometimes I even consult my colleagues, although this is a risky business and to be considered an absolute last resort. Recently, I discovered the search menu on a website called allmusic.com. You can search by Editor's Choice, by instrument, or you can search by mood.

Acerbic, Agressive, Ambitious, Amiable/Good-Natured, Angry, Angst-ridden, Atmospheric, Austere and right at the end of the A Moods, Autumnal. This has been my go-to point for music recently.

Thanks to allmusic.com's parameters of autumnal music, I discovered Fairport Convention and a few other bits I hadn't known. Some choices I agree with and definitely find autumnal. Some I don't. However, the really interesting part wasn't in the music but actually comparing the 'Similar Moods' with my definition of Autumn. According to the site, come Autumn I'll probably be feeling a little 'reflective', 'intimate' and even 'literate', amongst others. Which bodes well.

FAILURE

2010-08-19T21:49:00.007+01:00

Total failure.

I thought I was the big man in the kitchen. Sure, I've had failures before. Big ones. In this very kitchen, I once tried to bake some white chocolate chip scrumptious something or other, from a recipe on the side of a funky shampoo bottle. A shampoo bottle. Think about that. Don't know why I didn't. Didn't even buy the shampoo. I was working near a concession stall in Harrods that sold the stuff and just scribbled it down one day. Big failure. Big mess.

I thought I was the big man, I've now made three quiches, one a total mess but quite tasty (what was left of it), one a little shallow and one an absolute, chest-thumpingly marvellous success. I've made three quiches and I thought that qualified me to make puff pastry for sausage rolls, from scratch.

I mostly blame Delia.

Delia Smith makes it sound simple. According to her recipe, we neatly segue from,

'coat all the pieces of fat with flour until the mixture is crumbly' (she means butter, not fat, for the record),

to,

'Next add enough cold water to form a dough that leaves the bowl clean, using your hands to bring it all gently together.'

And that's it.

No measurements, no indication of how much water, no problem! according to Delia.

Well, looks like I added too much water, Delia!

You would not believe the amount of information there is out there on the internet about making pastry dough from scratch that I didn't bother to look at, because I had Delia's recipe and it looked bloody simple. Reems of video. Columns and comments and theories. And it all pretty much says, 'Good luck, novice! Hope there's someone there to laugh at you when it all goes wrong and you're left with cold lumpy porridge stuck to your fingers.'

One helpful chap even notes,

'Practice
Everyone's ability to handle doughs, both the mixing and the rolling, increases with experience. If your first efforts at pastry doughs are not successful, refer to the corrective measures described below. Above all keep practicing. The rewards will be beautiful tarts and pies, appealing to the palate as well as the eye.'

Above all keep practicing.

Bloody strawberries don't defrost from frozen either.

Look what I found: the Pergola and Hill Garden

2010-08-17T08:36:00.005+01:00

I was out jogging and got lost. I carried on and found myself in a clearing with a giant open rooved building, buried in the woods over the road from Hampstead Heath and round the back of Jack Straw's Castle. Signs said the Pergola and hill garden were closed for the day and I immediately felt like breaking in. No-one else around. The entire place was covered in green and inside were herb gardens and columns, walkways that stretched out and vines that clutched round stone. A little magic garden all to myself.

I did some research when I got back. It turns out it's rather old. I was going to paraphrase the information I found, but figured I might as well transcribe some of it in original.

'Construction began in 1905. Central to the project was raising the large gardens of The Hill to the required level. This required an army of workers. There were no mechanical diggers or earth-movers then. Furthermore, a vast amount of material was needed. As chance would have it, the Hampstead extension to the Northern Line was being built at the same time. The contractors urgently needed somewhere to dump the spoil from tunnels being created. Soon thousands of wagon-loads of that spoil were making their way to The Hill, with the astute Lord Leverhulme being paid a nominal fee per wagon for accommodating the material that he happened to need to realise his dream.'

So there you go. I was standing on earth tunnelled from beneath the house I live in.

Serviced

2010-08-13T17:31:00.006+01:00

I cycle to work and back every day. It's a fairly substantial distance and the brakes have gradually worn until the bite point is low, the braking distance long and the calipers immune to any amount of tinkering with my new allen keys. I finally gave in and took it to the experts for a service yesterday.

I had a free service at Evans a couple of months ago- one of the perks of having bought it from them, although it seems to be quite a common offer. I took it in, but when I collected it nothing had changed. I raced off to work but returned it at the end of the day, complained, and 10 minutes later it re-emerged from the mechanic, serviced. So I wanted to choose somewhere with a clearer sense of customer service this time round, and where I could come face-to-face with the mechanic.

In Japan, the bike guy is a thriving tradesman. Every neighbourhood seemed to have a leathery old dude with dungarees and wrenches and a workshop dripping in spokes from the ceiling. Sometimes two per neighbourhood. They charge a few hundred yen per job, or part, rather than the package service you're sold in London. Best of all, it's a face-to-face transaction. You get to know the guy. He's the bike guy, and he's your best friend on a monsoon Saturday when you pancake your tire. In London, the mechanic works in a separate room.

I called the makers of my bike, got the address for a family-run independent place down the road in Chalk Farm and ran it in yesterday. First thing the guy does is measure with a chain wear indicator pulled from his pocket. Next he asks if there were any particular problems. I explain the brakes, he tests the brakes. I explain the noisy bottom bracket, he tests it til it makes a noise then says, 'That noise?', I say, 'Yes, that noise'. I picked it up this morning and it rides like a dream. I took it along the canal for a change.

NEXT TIME

2010-08-12T16:19:00.001+01:00

5 pints or a bottle of rosé.

Strawberry muffins, underpass near Box Hill, a dry evening film screening at Somerset House

2010-08-08T12:22:00.002+01:00

2010-08-04T12:15:00.007+01:00

My Boss came in late today, she usually does. It's her way of saying she's Boss. She's not really Boss, but the Real Boss is largely excluded from the day-to-day running of the business, so the Boss is in charge.

First thing she did she came in and she shouted at the New Guy. New Guy's been here about a month now, and he doesn't know who drinks tea and who doesn't drink tea at the morning meeting. Either that, or he's just being polite when he asks who would like to drink tea.

So he got shouted at and copped a scaly tail swing to the head. The Boss missed with her first effort, knocked one of the cups of tea off the table. Second time round she swung her tail twice as hard. Whoosh (miss), crack (cup of tea), sploosh (tea emptying), wallop (New Guy's head), whimper (New Guy). She hit him so hard she left a big red bruise on her tail.

Now every time she sees that big red bruise she reminds herself she should be angry about something and her whole tail glows red all over and she starts lashing out at things in her office. Bang crash gnash GNEuRFGh whizz whee crash krash etc etc. It gives the office a weird kind of avant-garde, percussive soundtrack. Not altogether uninteresting but a little unsettling. Who knows when she'll break through the walls.

Do they come in kevlar?

2010-08-03T22:36:00.006+01:00

I'd been waiting for the moment for a little more than a year. I knew a man in Tokyo whose stated goal in life was to develop a pair of pants that could be washed, then dried with three swings around his head. He was a pants guy. He had filing cabinets filled with all manner of different pants. He really knew his fabrics. The samurai pants range was designed as something a wife might gift her husband to wear on that really important day at the office or for that crucial board presentation. They were a success- they even made it onto boing boing.

One of my last days in Tokyo he laid them all out, the samurai pants range, and he invited me to pick out my favourite pair. So I did, and they didn't surface again for a year; I hadn't forgotten about them, it's just the moment had never come. There's no board room in my office. There's only one room, really.

Recently I had an interview for a front-of-camera job. This was the moment. I wore them, and I like to think I really knocked that interview out of the park. Throughout the interview, I couldn't stop thinking about my pants (I think maybe I did need an L rather than M after all). One mighty swing. Bam. Here's my CV, yes it's all quite true, why thank you I'm proud of that yes. Didn't get the job though. They wanted someone with more front of camera experience.

A new post

2010-08-03T16:59:00.002+01:00

Work has been slow. Typically I spend six hours of my day in front of the computer screen, one hour in front of a television screen, hovering over my lunch, and about one hour in total shuttling between the kitchen, the toilet and the fire escape, where I stare at planes coming and going from Heathrow airport.

Recently I've spent a good portion of the computer time looking at friends' blogs. It breaks up the day, it stops me from clock-watching and also planning dinner for the eleven-thousandth time. Unless of course I'm looking at a recipe on a friend's blog, in which case I catch myself thinking about dinner again. And it's interesting keeping up with old friends' news that way, reading posts, old posts (especially old posts), those recipes, travel tips and diaries, hobby notes, reflections and all kinds of unique experiences. Friends from Japan in particular are scattered far and wide. Two went back to America and married. Another two went back and had a baby. One from Tokyo is preparing to join another in California, to begin art school. Another couple are in New Zealand, having come through teacher training. Another friend has been writing flash fiction, one piece every day for the whole of 2010.

I've admired a friend's digital space for a while too. It has his own domain name, large and beautiful images and a clear, user-friendly format. It's not a run-of-the-mill blogger or tumblr. I am enormously envious, but sadly for all my time in front of a computer I am unable to fully harness the power contained in that black, oblong tower down by my feet and design my own. Google has been my go-to point for any question I've had since about 2007, but for designing my own blog I itch to join a class or take a course or grab a geek and chain him to my desk til he teaches me everything he knows.

So as a next-best, I jazzed up this blog a bit. I added some widgets and shifted the other things (whatever you call them) about. Then I deleted the widgets and shifted the other things back. Like you might spend an afternoon shifting heavy furniture around, just to see what it looks like the other way round in your room, before shifting it all back again and rewarding yourself with a beer for all the hard work. Hm. Maybe I'll have a beer with dinner tonight. Dinner..

The paradox of urban cycling

2010-07-23T16:57:00.000+01:00

Bad traffic = deterrent and incentive.

SESQUIPEDALIAN

2010-07-23T13:47:00.001+01:00

Put that in your online dictionary and smoke it

Slow days at work

2010-07-23T12:30:00.001+01:00

Junk e-mails unsubscribed from

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One Fine Quiche, Latitude Festival, View from Ben Nevis

2010-07-22T17:42:00.002+01:00

Shareholder

2010-07-02T12:42:00.002+01:00

Today the shareholder visited the office.

He's gone now, along with the management, out for lunch.

The shareholder brought presents for everybody, as is tradition in Japan when you visit someone.

A colleague and I each got a bar of soap made from 'sumi': charcoal.

It's not as bad as it sounds. It's actually quite a posh gift.

There was some mochi, too.

Before and After, Beer-Can Chicken

2010-06-28T14:13:00.004+01:00

England fan

2010-06-23T09:49:00.001+01:00

This morning I wore my England shirt on the ride to work. Somewhere in Acton a tramp in the sun cheered at me and gave a thumbs up as I rode past.

Brazilian rhymes

2010-06-22T12:24:00.002+01:00

15th June, Brazil versus North Korea in what had begun as a flat, low-scoring World Cup 2010.

Maicon the Brazilian right back scores a wonder goal. Down to the by-line, he shoots and squeezes it through on what the commentators would call an impossible angle past the keeper. Except it can't be an impossible angle. He scored.

Question is cast on his shot. The studio pundits are divided. Was it a staggeringly audacious shot, or a horribly skewed cross for another player to score? Was it a display of incredible talent, or a gross error from an ordinarily exceptional player? In the aftermath, of course, Maicon claims it was entirely intentional. But then, given the other option of admitting his mistake, he hardly had a choice.

In the TV studio, one pundit is more inclined to believe that because he is Brazilian it was indeed intentional. He is willing to believe in an astonishing store of ability.

Zoom out several hundred kilometres, spin the globe on a vertical axis about half way and zoom in again that few hundred kilometres onto --------- school in central London.

A Year 1 class are being introduced, possibly for the first time, to the concept of rhyme. They are asked what rhyme is. They are invited to have a go at rhyming some words together. Some short childrens' poems are read to them. Next, on the interactive whiteboard, 3 rhyme lists are begun with simple, monosyllabic words. The third word begins, 'tan'. Hands leap up and rhyme words sound out.

'Fan.'

'Ban.'

'Man.'

'Catarmaran.'

Can we believe in the astonishing ability of the minds of children as well as the feet of Brazilian footballers?

New Friends

2010-06-07T18:41:00.001+01:00

First there were 8. Then 6. Then 5. Now they've grown up and moved on.

Hiatus

2010-06-07T18:27:00.001+01:00

I've been without internet at home. Soon I'll be back.

SW8 to NW3

2010-05-07T17:43:00.002+01:00

I moved.

My new neighbourhood is very posh. Thanks to My New Baby, Bebe (see earlier posts), I've only ridden public transport once on the commute to work (puncture). I felt like apologizing to everyone else on the train as I got off at my stop. I definitely felt a bit embarrassed. I feel like a bit of a fraud wandering round my new neighbourhood, it must be said.

Things are different in my new neighbourhood, in my new house and my new room. I've now got so much bed and duvet I don't know what to do with it all. Acres and acres.

My new neighbourhood is at the top of a hill that would look over the rest of London if it wasn't so sheltered by all the trees and the leaves.

The weekend I moved in, I saw a busker with an oboe and a soft-top classic car roll by. An oboe.

Even the street signs look posher.

The website for the neighborhood association (we have one of them too) lists a plumber, electrician, piano tuner. They also organise a picnic, presumably when everyone shows up and eats sandwiches and cake and feels smug together for living in such a Nice Neighbourhood.

A question that we have all asked ourselves at one point or another

2010-04-29T13:26:00.002+01:00

http://whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com

Asa in town

2010-04-29T12:20:00.005+01:00

Look at the two pictures.

Asashoryu, one of the most successuful sumo wrestlers of all time and the Chelsea Flower Show.

Chanko nabe, salt-tossing, early morning exercises in the stable versus the Royal visit, Chelsea, green-fingers. They don't seem to belong together, do they?

This year, however, the enfant terrible, the bad boy, the Big bad boy of sumo will be making an appearance at the Chelsea Flower Show, citing a passion for flowers.

Sensationally ending an incredible run in the ring with premature retirement earlier this year, the big Mongolian has clearly got some time on his hands.

And it seems the Japanese haven't quite got rid of Asa yet, in spite of their best efforts across a career dogged with incident and controversy. He'll be meeting Kazuyuki Ishihara, Gold award winning gardener and creator of the above.

I want to meet him.