The things that happen when I’m not concentrating…
It’s my birthday! This year I am twice as old as my little sister, but more than half as old as my Dad.
For those of you who live nearby, the ritual culling of braincells will begin at Paddy’s after work (around 19h). Presence and presents entirely optional (but expected :)
George Galloway on the BBC saying what few would dare.
It’s deeply refreshing to hear a counter to the mass-media partisan whitewash most people are subscribing to.
Two soldiers kidnapped and the whole country goes off on one. This is the kind of thing that should be on the news.
More exciting news comes with the new year… We will have a new franchised English pub in my town, and I am to be the resident DJ.
t's all under wraps right now so I can't blab the name (although the clue's in the title, Admiral). They expect to open in mid february, so I'll get details up in advance for my local readers. The venue is sweet – spacious central bar, enclosed beer garden out back and plenty room for comfy seating.
The DJ booth is all brand new equipment and will have sofas beside it so my groupies don't get tired. They're also planning wireless internet, which means I can hang out there in my spare time too!
I have an exciting new task to take on this year! My long-time friend and agony-uncle, Mark [right of picture], is getting married in 2007 and he's asked me to be his best man. I'm understandably proud :)
Not to be outdone by anyone else though, he's having multiple best men due to the geographical distribution of his best buddies. I'm the Swiss best man, but there will be a UK-based one (doing all the work!) and one in America. We will be having a stag night in each location!
It should come as no surprise (to people that know me) that one of my tasks involves creating a website for the happy couple. It will serve as a kind of wedding list, but not for fondue sets and toastie makers or vases and cutlery sets and all that crap – they've already set up home together and have better taste than your average wedding guest – instead they will have a list of experiences for people to purchase for them.
The honeymoon will take in Asia and Australia (yet again, lucky bastards!), so the experiences will mostly be in those regions allowing some rather extravagant possibilities which I will update you on in a future post. Watch this space for more news on Mark and Chantelle's excellent adventure…
Peanut allergies, ever present in the public conciousness due to litigation-shy food labelling policies, are a pretty dangerous condition to suffer from.
I have a mild allergy to some nuts, as well as to bananas, bits of avocado that have been near the stone and some seeded fruit. If I do eat them, my lips swell up like I've been stung and I get dizzy or faint. Once, I collapsed at dinner while eating guacamole.
My sister can't eat strawberries for the same reasons. Having been advised by doctors that repeated exposure to whatever part of those foods I'm allergic to could increase my sensitivity, I try to avoid eating them though I don't go so far as to read food labels or avoid Peanut M&Ms. However for some people, even complete avoidance is not enough to shield them from danger, simply kissing someone who's eaten peanuts recently can kill.
This kind of allergy is on the increase, and exposure at an early age seems to be the catalyst. As technology permits increasingly esoteric combinations of molecules to be admitted into our bodies, are we reducing our tolerance to the environment we have created for ourselves?
Tidy surfaces are a beautiful, calming sight. Katazukue, the Tidy Table is a bit like the cleaning lady we had at university. Every day she would go into the kitchen, take the piles of dirty plates, pans and cutlery and dump them en masse into the sink. Then leave them there to stagnate until we got back from lectures.
I think she expected one of us to see the greasy, food-speckled mountain overflowing from the double sink and drainer, feel guilty and wash everything up. Maybe, she thought we'd take turns and perhaps even draw up a rota, thus becoming great housemates and better citizens of the world. Anyone who has been within 40 metres of a student kitchen will know that this is not the likely outcome.
As a lacto-ovo vegetarian, this story about growing meat in a lab is intriguing.
I'm not sure how I'd view manufactured meat – as animal or synthetic – or indeed whether I'd fancy eating it. Most of the anti-meat arguments are invalidated by this idea; no cruelty; no hormones and additives; no risk of disease. It should also be more consistent, no random bits of gristle in your sausage for example.
Quorn is already quite a popular meat substitute made from mycoprotein (a bit like an underground fungus). It is stretched and formed into numerous chicken-like fillets and chunks, beef-like burgers and mince as well as sausages, slices for sandwiches and specialities like Sunday Roast. I really like it, but although I know it's not meat when I'm eating it, other veggies have told me they don't like it because it reminds them of meat.
So I guess the market is likely to be be driven by non-veggies at first, until the definitive artificial bacon can be developed. It'll be me at the front of the queue then…
These people seem to be leading the field in meat substitutes – but the spooky company name conjours images of Children of the Corn!