Porridge Recipe

A real conversation from this morning offering both a recipe for porridge and a cultural insight into social mores in present day India.

[09:49:18] HIM: had breakfast?
[09:49:23] ME : yes, porridge and fruit
[09:50:10] HIM: what is dis porridge?
[09:50:21] ME : oatmeal
[09:50:35] HIM: did u prepared this porridge?
[09:50:43] ME : yes, i simply added water and microwaved for 3 mins
[09:52:12] ME : then added pears and blueberries
[09:54:06] ME : and a splash of milk and a little honey
[09:55:32] HIM: ok
[09:56:23] HIM: r u staying alone?

The Leaf

I saw this solitary leaf suspended in the air like a badly judged remark in a bar room. It was supposed to fall to the ground like all the others as the season dictates. But it didn't seem to want that. It wanted a final tilt at life. There was something about the leaf that spooked me at first. It seemed to portend the end of the world. But when I touched it gently it was friendly. It was heedless to the wind and it stayed and it stayed. I thought about taking it home and letting it live in a matchbox in my kitchen. But I don't think I'm ready for that kind of responsibility.

Clouds

Three years ago Michela L went up to her internet and asked it the following question.
I wonder how she is these days.

Beans on Toast

I was eating beans on toast this morning when the waiter came over and asked me if everything was ok. I told him that the toast was good and that, so far, all the beans had been ok. I assured him that I'd let him know if any of the beans went wrong.

Mine Beer

Me : What breweries do they have in Froome?
Him: Well they have the Milk Street Brewery and Mine.
Me : Yours?
Him: No Mine
Me : Ah ok. Yours.
Him: No. It's a small town
Me : That figures.
Him: Yes.
Me :
Him:
Us :
Me : You said Mine. It was eh ... I was just...
Him: The Pitchfork's good.

Werther's Original

On the plane today the nice lady next to me offered me a Werther's Original and what's more I took it. It was very kind of her and, for some utterly unfathomable reason, I quite enjoyed the taste of butterscotch toffee as we approached Bristol.

Tokyo-Montana-Galway

The Tokyo-Montana Express by Richard Brautigan sits in the toilet to be read, not in one sitting, but in snatches, a few pages here and there, little pearls of fragmented, solipsistic wisdom plucked from that great, deceased mind. And brought back to life, not in Tokyo or Montana, but in Galway which, as the crow flies, is more than 14,000 miles away from both those places. How long are the snatches? How big the pearls. Well that depends. Any more than 15 minutes could be regarded as sinister. In his story The Closest I Have Been To The Sea Since Evolution Brautigan writes:

One morning I took a shit and it smelled just like the sea. There was no difference between the smell of my shit and walking along a beach on a wharf, staring at ships and the sun going down behind them into billions of years of water.

So I don't think he'd mind a few of his pearls residing here in this little toilet under the stairs.

Poetic Champion Composes

This week I've been listening, almost exclusively, to Villagers. Villagers are a band from Dublin but really they're just Conor O'Brien. When I first heard (let's call them) him supporting Wild Beasts in Galway I thought he was pretty good. Then I got the record and I thought it was merely decent. Someone told me it was a bit patchy so I figgered that it must be a bit patchy. Like so many others this record was destined for THE PILE. I caught the start of his set at Latitude and left, not due to ambivalence but, because the kids were hungry again. I think I have a tendency to assume that stuff, and not just music, is going to turn out average. Most stuff really does.

But I was wrong about this. A week's immersion has shown that the record isn't patchy. It's damn close to perfect. It's really got under my skin and, in the words of Elbow's Guy Garvey, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. Conor O'Brien strikes me as a very serious, poetic young man. I heard him play live on the radio last night and he's already deconstructing, simplifying the form of his songs. Letting the poetry out.

Another serious, poetic young Irishman had the supreme confidence to do this at a similar age back in the early seventies. I'm talking about Van Morrison. And that's not just by way of shoehorning a clever reference to title of this 'piece'. Honest it isn't.

Here he is on Other Voices.

это может быть верным?' 'Это может быть верным?

Irish internationalist Aiden McGeady was in shock last night after his Spartak Moscow side's one-nil away victory to Marseilles. According to insiders the former Celtic winger was suffering from "euphoric shock syndrome" and was given oxygen by the Russian medical team. Spartak goalkeeper Andrei Dikan told me " Aiden продолжал спрашивать, 'это может быть верным?' 'Это может быть верным?'"" ("Aiden kept asking 'Can it be true?' 'Can it be true?'"). Later, the 24 year old had recovered sufficiently and was able to board the flight back to Moscow with his team mates. This morning, he is described as being comfortable and is currently coming to terms with the achievement.

Bee Specialists

The best-known bee species is the European honey bee, which, as its name suggests, produces honey, as do a few other types of bee. Human management of this species is known as beekeeping or apiculture.

The Rain

At the playground today when the rain started all the adults put on raincoats and magically produced umberellas and complained about the rain. Then they took all their kids home and then the rain stopped.

ATM Stalemate

Yes, I'd like a hundred euro please.
No, it's not incorrect.
No, I don't want to correct it.
Dum de dum di dum...

Arrive'n'Jive

The main prerequisite of this dance competition, it would seem, is that you have to physically turn up. It doesn't appear that simply frolicking around your kitchen to the unparalleled, joyous soul-funk of Earth Wind and Fire whilst striking wooden spoons against various percussive surfaces will be given any special consideration by the judges this year. Harsh.

Timotei Shampoo

I find myself more than usually troubled by the new Timotei adverts that seem never to be off the telly. Which, in turn, these days, never seems to be off Nick Jnr.

I'm guessing that these ads are aimed squarely at mothers who will well remember the original, inexplicably famous, campaign. This, coupled with the likelihood that a day's childminding is unlikely to have left Mum's hair at its most "volumised" or "voluptuous", will render the demographic as particularly "ripe for the picking" (to use a marketing term).

Talking of which, here's the thrust of the ad. The good people at Timotei care so much about your hair that they literally scour the world to steal nature's finest edible ingredients like:

Pink grapefruit from Spain
Acai berry from Brazil
Avocado Oil from South Africa
Pistachio Seed from Persia
Macadamia from Australia

Then, they take all these mouthwatering treats and they simply tip them into a big industrial vat full of the original Timotei they couldn't sell back in the seventies. In short the bastards make shampoo.

Shame on them!