I er, stumbled across the food channel sometime ago and got hooked on the culinary porn they have there. Now, I suppose James Martin, Giorgio Locatelli, Bill Granger, Gino D’Campo and Jamie Oliver are all very good looking without their clothes on but I’m more partial to the likes of Kylie Kwong, Sophie Michell, Rachael Allen, Sophie Wright and Nigella Lawson whom I bet look much better sans undergarments. A sight to make your eyes really water (and not from chopping onions either) would be Keith Floyd, Ainsley Harriot, Rick Stein or those Hairy Bikers in similar circumstances.

This is the food channel, not the fashion channel. Here it’s what you put together, not how you’re put together that counts. So I tune in to watch these chefs make whipping up soufflés, roasts, salads and the occasional cocktail look so easy. The ingredients always look exotic even if I have them in the refrigerator, the recipes always sound mouth-watering even if it’s just a ploughman’s lunch that is on the menu and their kitchens always have appliances and utensils that are either more rustic or more cutting edge (that includes knives) than mine.

Ah so, after an hour of furious drooling and limited scribbling, I set off to my kitchen to attempt to recreate what I have witnessed on television. Rummaging around the larder and turning out the cupboards reveals that half the ‘exotic’ spices are missing and so is the sirloin steak. So, I start up the car for a quick dash to the shops and come back laden with jars and cold things wrapped in newspaper and other things that claim to be organic just because someone forgot to give them a quick squirt with a hose to wash off the soil that still clings to the roots.

Back into the kitchen, curse not having an island (hadn’t factored in camera angles when it was being built), whine about inadequate pots & pans, get depressed over not enough water pressure from the faucet in the kitchen sink, sceptically wonder if my stove will get the job done and proceed to slice my finger instead of a carrot on the cutting board. “@#&!*%$^” I say, slap on an elastoplast and try again.

An hour  and 45 minutes later, what started off as a salad somehow turned into a vegetable stew, the steak is extremely well-done on the outside whilst remaining very rare on the inside, my soufflé is crater shaped instead of dome shaped and has an incinerated  surface that looks like a nuclear explosion took place there and  the chocolate-mousse-and-something-or-other cake is just fine. Only that it is salty, smells slightly of moose and has to be cut with a powersaw.  Ah well, I give myself a pat on the back for a job well done and wince every time my injured finger presses the buttons on the phone as I dial my local Chinese restaurant to deliver my won-ton soup, sweet & sour pork and egg noodles.

Audiophile: Fela Kuti – Konfussion
Off my shelf: Batman; Year one – Frank Miller, Lynn Varley
Midday Matinee: Casino Royale (2006)
Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen and Judy Dench
Directed by: Martin Campbell

I am on leave for a month and silly me, I hadn’t made any proper holiday plans. After 3 days of cable TV and an unhealthy diet of fast foods and a soft couch, I was ready to pull my out hair by the roots. To remedy my cabin fever I lighted upon a what I thought was a rather novel idea and I decided to act upon it forthwith (I love that word,  forthwith – it always makes me feel so full of purpose).

Right, I decided to fulfill a childhood fantasy of mine where I explored a railway tunnel. It just so happens that I love close to a railway line and a little way along it is a tunnel that I have only seen from afar. The line isn’t known to be a particularly safe place but I figured during daylight hours, this wouldn’t be an issue. I pulled on some old jeans and a T-shirt, left my wallet, phone and identification at home and promptly set off for my date with destiny (that didn’t come out right). The railway line is a somewhat lonely place, running through the last of the farmlands and on to a little wood that few people venture into. Pretty soon I was all alone on the tracks with just the chirping of the crickets filling my ears. At times the embankment towered above me and twice I was tempted to turn back and abandon the expedition but I held my nerve and followed the winding tracks as they meandered through the countryside. As I went round one more bend (how appropriate an analogy for this expedition), I suddenly sa it before me – the dark gaping maw of the tunnel set upon a hillside with a motorway passing far above along the crest of the hill.

I plodded along resolutely, now more curious than afraid and I came right up to the mouth of the tunnel. It was scored with graffiti from those who had come before me and chose this spot to make their mark upon the world; their names and dates immortalized in stone. The tunnel herself held the pride of place with a large plaque proclaiming she was built in 1949. I looked around for any sort of grim warnings ordering me to keep out and with the confidence that can olnly be borne in ignorance, I stepped in and started walking.

I could see a little pinprick of light at the very end and since the earth wasn’t rumbling, I presumed that it was the other end and not a train coming towards me. The tunnel’s pretty long and it gets dark pretty quickly as you go along and wet too because once you’re past the concrete ends, the rock’s damp from runoff rainwater. It also had this menacing smell (yes, menacing as in scary) that oozed out of the wall but thankfully, that was it. The tunnel was deserted so there were no bats, rats and assorted creepy-crawlies to spook me out. I had no flashlight or any thing else to light my way so I relied upon how the ground felt underfoot and made my way cautiously towards the light which had stopped getting any bigger. I felt as though I was walking on the spot, the only thing that kept me going was that occasionally I passed these dark recesses on the walls that I expected a pair of burly hands to shoot out of, grab me, smother me and then it would have been curtains. As I looked back I saw that where I had come form looked just as far away and I figured I was committed so I had no choice but to see the whole thing through.

As I came closer to the other end, I saw a human figure peering in, I became really worried because so far, all my fears had been fed by my imagination but this here was no figment of it. I slipped on a wet sleeper and my right shoe came halfway off. I stopped and put it back on again and continued walking. As I came closer, I saw that the figure stand to one side and squat in the bushes at the entrance. I was now convinced that this person did not wish me well, I swore silently to myself that if I saw another head appear next to his, I’d make a run for it in the direction from whence I came. I kept to the shadows and as the figure stepped more into the light, I saw it held something long in its right hand. I decided to make sure and crept a long slowly whilst focusing on the held object. I was preparing to bolt because with every passing second, the object looked more and more like a club but the figure’s hand turned slightly and I saw the open jaws at the end of the object – it was a large wrench!

He also had a hard-hat and safety clothing on too and looked mightily pissed off to see me there. I was so relieved to see him that I almost ran but he challenged me asking who the f**k I was and I promptly identified myself verbally. Like I said, the guy wasn’t as thrilled to see me as I was to see him. Turned out he was a railway repair-man out fixing a section of track that had been vandalised the night before and I promptly became his prime suspect. By this time I was only too happy to be arrested and carted off to a sturdily-built police cell guarded by lots of gun-wielding officers. He called the local station and told them he had me in custody and was going to bring me in. I followed him very willingly and chatted amiably in response to his laconic questions.

He thought I was crazy.

Well, all we had was a bit of a chat with the stationmaster and two police officers where I’ve managed to clear my name with the help of a neighbour who runs this cybercafe in town which I’m posting from. Later on they told me the tunnel is about a mile long and I was one of only 2 civilians they knew who’d ever walked it.
Yay for me! I walked through a mile-long tunnel.

Oh yeah, I had to give the railway-guy and police £5 (which I’ve borrowed from my neighbour) for their ‘trouble’

Audiophile: Nothing (no mp3 player)
Off my shelf: Nothing (I was empty handed when I left)
Midday Matinee: I suppose that would be this incident (2008)
Starring: Me, a railway repair-man, 2 police officers and the railway station-master
Special guest appearance: The spooky railway tunnel
Directed by: Yours truly

I have been blackballed.

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This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• death (2x)
• drugs (1x)

Very Gothic, I like it.

As soon as the plane touched down, I realised why my Mediterranean holiday had come so cheap. Istanbul was unseasonably frigid. I had decided to take a vacation to escape the stresses of my emotionally draining occupation as a skiing equipment salesman in the sahara.
My little firm has a staff of one; me and like many small organisations, the working environment can get crushingly intimate. Being both boss and employee has forced the firm into a truncated corporate structure which makes dealing with conflicts of interest something of a challenge. Recently there was what would be modestly described as a mutiny at the office. The boss was making unrealistic demands on his employee, expecting him to single-handedly improve turnover in the next quarter for the first time in the company’s six-month existence and return a profit no less. The employee upon whom these demands were made just happens to be a cynical slacker whose apathy is legendary.
There was no way the CEO’s rabid realism could share a room with the staff’s mulish realism. There was a falling out and no matter how hard I tried to bring them together (literally) I’m ashamed to say I failed. Things came to a head one fine Friday in Timbuktu the employee quit just as the boss was preparing to fire him. Then they simultaneously booked a vacation in turkey with different travel agents (the twits!) and here we are, I playing the reluctant diplomat to a family feud.
Istanbul was freezing just as tempers were flaring.
It didn’t help that labour had packed suitable clothing whilst management had brought only swim wear along. One was too proud to ask whilst the other was too stingy to offer and don’t get me started on the credit cards and traveller’s cheques they had brought with them but were constantly bickering on what to spend the money on.
Coincidence? had it that we were all booked in the same hotel room at the Istanbul Orient. we too our baggage off the carousel and boarded the same taxicab. The animosity was so palpable in the rear that the initially chatty cabdriver hunkered down in his seat and turned the volume way up on his tinny radio. We rode int town to the sound of Arabic music; ‘ride of the dervishes’ would be a more appropriate term for that incident. checking in was like a waking nightmare, Management wanted to leave the doorman and porter a tip but labour was having none of it – at least not until he got a raise.

We are still in the lobby now, More updates as events warrant.

Ladybird ladybird
fly away home
your house is afire
and the brigade say they’re tired
your children are all gone
sold abroad for a song
all except one
and her name is Anne
she runs guns and peddles drugs
and is queen of a biker gang

Here’s something I wrote once, long ago. It came to me when I misheard something my aunt said. For a while I thought she’d turned into Willy Wonka’s stockbroker. Figured it’d make a good ‘virgin’ post since it’s the first thing I ever wrote on my own.

“Jellied Eels”
As a little boy, I had a marked fondness for jelly. I even developed the rather peculiar habit of quantifying all the little-boy transactions I engaged in at the time using this sweet conserve as the currency. ‘Jelly Deals’, I called them. “Hey Tim”, I would say at some point, “If you help me beat up Charlie, I’ll give you some of my Jelly. As was typical of such arrangements between boys we would then engage in some of haggling or other involving the quantity of jelly in question as well as other minor details such as what flavours the said jelly was available in. Two little things; Charlie was bigger than the both of us put together and Tim was not renowned for his prowess in matters pertaining to physical combat. I really ought to have taken the hint that Tim probably had jelly for brains. Usually, I happened to be unavoidably detained and thus unable to keep our appointment with Charlie. Maybe that could could have you calling me a jelly-belly. Tim, (bless his heart) would keep the said appointment, to his detriment and get a black eye for his troubles. Since the encounter would render him indisposed, I would then be faced with the heavy burden of disposing his jelly for him. However, it is noteworthy that as our business relationship matured Tim had the foresight to require payment in advance whereupon getting him to hold up his end of the deal became as easy as nailing jelly to a wall. I then decided that Tim had become something of a spineless jellyfish and that marked the end of all jelly deals between us.
My next partner in matters jelly was of a more unusual sort. She was a girl, I suspect she still is. The only jelly that stood between me and her was to be found in my knees. Those treacherous appendages would turn to mush and unabashedly knock together at the merest thought of this enchanting creature. She was my jelly-baby. What then happened between us is a tale for another day.