Over but not out

Dear all,

I am delighted to see that I still have the occasional visit, and I hope you've enjoyed my occasional musings.

What a let down: all those promises, so little delivered. While this blog is not dead yet, if you'd like to read work of a more business/financial bent may I suggest you mosy on over to www.tyketotycoon.blogspot.com.

This blog deals with my burgeoning awareness of the world of work, and is intended to track my stellar progress to billionaire businessman. Or more likely it will be a cautionary tale of entertaining failure. I hope you enjoy it either way.

All best,

Don

the human face of tourism

I should have listened to my own advice - a friend has published some of this blog in the college magazine. Remember Da Nu Rossetta Stone? Turns out it looks pretty racist when read on its own.

The last few days I've been in France on tour with my choir, singing in some grand old Cathedrals and eating some fine fine food. We stayed with host families, and mine went out their way for us, literally, driving us to and from rehearsals. Their children were lovely, we think - we were mutually incomprehensible. Yesterday the choir was treated to a diplomatic reception from the Mayoress of S -, for whom we were about to sing a mass. They handed out some tourist bumf including a priceless leaflet written in flamboyantly haphazard English. Titled 'Expressions: The Human Face of Tourism' it includes such corkers as,

The river is 'A real delight, for image hunters but also for fishermen'

The area 'knows haw to enhance the sky. Nature and man have drawn pictures with varied taste and colours'

You can look forward to 'the biggest conglomerate of troglodytes, gardens brimming with rare flavours, exuding golden and chalky reflections.'

And finally, your visit will be 'a journey sprinkled with water and history which will not let you forget that S - and its region has a multitude of marked hiking paths'


And if all that wasn't enough, I found a £ in the street yesterday.

radio ga ga

Yo yo yo yo! Yes he's back, back again, Buri's back, tell a friend. So the blogging's dropped off a little lately ... sorry. Although you're never supposed to appologise or explain - was that expression invented for the British? Someone drives their 4x4 up the pavement, ploughs through the garden and parks in your front room, so you applogise profusely and make a cup of tea.

But that didn't actually happen, so here's a handy newsreel. Remember M. the chef? We went to his old restaurant and waited two hours for a bruschetta and some cold pizza - good thing they've asked him back to sort things out. There's been going home, singing, going to plays, running around, and also work, but more on that later. It's time to pack up and go again, so there'll be less internet than usual. Time for an experiment: can I last a week without email, instant messaging, facebook, browsing?

the illusion of progress

There is a telescope perched on an extinct volcano in Hawaii which cost £24 million. It is the result of a series of incredible engineering feats, gathering light to its core with a huge reflector made of tessellated smaller mirrors which are cooled, shifted by thousandths of millimetres and polished by ionic sandblasters (these are so precise and gentle that they can autograph a hair)

Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections saw the presenter cooing over this testament to human ingenuity and demonstrating some of the technologies that went into it by setting fire to a dinghy and sensing one doctored tennis ball in five hundred. In hushed tones he concluded that this telescope was producing images from the very edge of the Universe, giving us insights into its formation between 13.61 and 13.85 billion years ago.

If I take my glasses off I can barely distinguish a friend at arm's length, but I can focus upon objects only an inch away from the tip of my nose. If it weren't for the invention of lenses there would be no big picture for me: no leaves on faraway trees, no stars, no birds. So, thank you science. But how could anyone could be so shortsighted to spend £24 million to see something so insignificant to humanity? Who cares when/how/if the Universe exploded from nothingness when that amount of money could restore the sight of 1.3 million people?

Sources: ORBIS, BBC iPlayer

come back here

Due to an unfortunate prior commitment to conscientious university attendance the management will be making strategic cutbacks to the content generation division of this weblog (henceforth 'blog') in the interest, going forward, of maintaining and leveraging high value in the long term.

While we are adamant that the challenging economic and educational conditions shall not require permanent job loss, certain key team members will be taking voluntary sabbaticals in order to refocus on their core competencies; namely, writing dissertations.

This is a temporary setback, but in around two weeks we commit to leverage new articles - delivered by a sane and refreshed staff - on such topics as 'New York, New York', 'Opera' and 'Oy lads, gerroff 'im an' chug this'.

With sincere thanks,

the management (by dictation)

little low, little high

They say the best fiction stems from experience - though I hope creativity is allowed too - so it's nice when life unfolds like a storybook. This is one of those moments. It might not be extraordinary, but it was out of my ordinary.

A few days ago I was full of cold and tasteless, so plumped for a hugely fiery lunch of prawns with garlic, spring onions, two chillies, ginger and lemon. The ingredients were chopped and lying in Venn diagrams when M. walked into our kitchen. It's shared accommodation, and we're lucky enough to have cleaners for the communal areas. We said hello and M. started on the sink. Seeing my disorgazboard he said,

'Coriander would be nice'
'It's off, sadly.' I held up the recently binned bundle. A convivial pause as I put the pan on the heat. As I reached for the oil he pointed to some butter on the table. 'It will be nice with butter'
'I think I've only ever done it with oil'
'No, but put some oil with the butter, or it ...'
'... burns?'
'Exactly. You get it hot, cook the prawns a little, put in the rest, but don't for leave too long, or do you know?'
'They get tough.'
'Yes.' He had put down his sponge by now, his eyes riveted to the board. The pasta was bubbling over. He was concerned to hear that I'd added neither oil nor salt - '... they'll stick. You can't salt them unless in the pot. Do you have olive oil? Look.' Taking the pan from me he drained it into a colander and, drizzling oil over them from a height, shook them to glistening point.

'Should I start the prawns?'
'It's ready, hot. Go!' The prawns hissed and slid in the furious butter, and as I stepped back M. took the pan, threw in the aromatics and shaking his head at the proffered wooden spoon started to toss the lot. The plump prawns flipped and plunged together like a flaming pancake. 'Can you get the rosemary?' I was already out the door and running. Briefly vacillating between two or three sprigs I ran back and put them on the board to be chopped and crushed under his knife. M. poured the curry onto the pasta with a flourish, adding, 'You should buy better pasta. It is only a few more pennies. I could tell you three hundred pastas.'

I was unbearably curious, so he told his story. He is a recently retired chef who has worked at the town's two most prestigious Italian restaurants, as well as its unrivaled seafood establishment. He told of long nights slaving over 350 servings of pasta, days preparing ragu, and Salmon roast the Scottish way. His current job is less tiring, he says, although he did hint he might have been too frank at times. He tried the dish and approved, although he wouldn't have a bowl and 'the chillies are for your taste with the cold, but maybe less the next time'.

Leaving he thanked me for trusting him, as if I was the one doing him a favour. He's decided to go back to being a chef - and if I ever need a whole trout filleted, I'm to tell him.

edit, edit, edit

The best literary advice ever given to me was this:

'Don't publish'

Once it's printed, that's it. The words are your dumb ambassadors fled to be read and misread. I used to think I was pretty nifty at poetry, and so sent in an incomprehensible mishmash to the school magazine. The reaction: 'It was... good. What does it mean?' There's a good story by Kipling (who I've been spending an amount of time with lately) which has a tired old writer advising a boisterous amateur. The boy churns out reams of doggerel, 'seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already done, and turned to me for applause'

Looking over what I wrote is excruciatingly cringeworthy, begging the question: will this blog cause me pain down the line? I've pretty much stopped writing poetry, but I have been editing. So with reservations here is an experiment in sonneteering written around five years ago; maybe six. And with it, the year-old rehash. Perhaps it will be interesting to see what's changed, including me.

Please excuse the anachronisms, bizarre word orders, herniating metre and the word 'methinks'.

p.s. this spellchecker doesn't recognize the word 'metre'. The world's broken.

***

I would that I still could begin to write,
without the stress to stress or beat in time,
why should I wrap my words in corset tight
or sacrifice my meaning to a rhyme?
I would reveal my mistress fair and true,
enveiled in myst’ry thick yet clear to see
for those who know us, for those lucky few
I need not hint nor with lewd phrase demean me.
Methinks my quest to write is yet in vain,
without any skill’d verse I, truth to tell,
do stumble, ungainly, mending again and again
trapped within a dull and senseless cell.
yet for all my groping for image and sound
she defies the best to write her down.

***

To put wrong right these words I'll write,
without the stress of stress or beaten time.
Why should I pull this age-old corset tight
or sacrifice my meaning to a rhyme?
I'll reveal my sweetheart fair and true,
behind a veil of words but clearly seen
by those who knew us, those patient few
who've met us both, and the veils between.
This form is her loss as her life was my gain,
this love too old to be roped to a page
to stumble, ungainly, again and again,
ripped clipped and tripped in a fourteen line cage.
They say 'love hurts' as they shrug and they turn.
So it did, so it does, and these dead words still burn.

***