Saturday, February 03, 2007
PC or not
Yesterday made a dish which I recall from childhood being called black sambo. Nothing more offensive than mince - the usual sort of thing with carrot and onion - but with rice added towards the end rather than having separate potato. A sort of savoury rice pudding. Served with cabbage and bread - this last being an innovation as parents not greatly into bread. No idea why it was called black sambo but presumably one would be in trouble trying to sell it under that name in a public place.
Talking of which, talk in TB is turning to what will happen when smoking is banned in the summer. The suggestion is that those with large garden sheds can do a public service by opening shebeens. If this takes off the nannies will have great fun devising ways to police barbecues - and no doubt creating all kinds of new offences to help us along the way. One can imagine - leave Sainbury with pile of tinnies. Get stopped by the police. What are all those tinnies for? Personal consumption officer, I have got a big habit. Nonsense, what is your address? Some time later, said police come around to inspect your indoor barbecue to make sure that no money is changing hands...
Yesterday to QEH to hear one Charles Rosen doing the Appassionata and Diabelli. Amazed at what an 80 year old can drag out of a Steinway. I liked his stage manners which included a joke for the first encore - a 10 second peice - I think a bagatelle opus something number 10. Then with perfect timing he announced that the second encore was number 11 which turned out to be rather longer. Couldn't help wondering how many times he would have performed these two peices in the course of his long career - even at the modest rate of once a year that would make fifty or sixty, which might explain why he managed without score.
Not so impressed at the way the QEH managers have been instructed to sweat the space and no doubt to make it more accessible (which might be freely translated as trying to be hoody friendly. And I am not so sure that trying to suck up to such people is quite the right approach. Apart from anything else it must make them think us stupid - patronising being too long a word for those from bog standard comprehensives). So instead of a large and comfortable concourse we now have a rather cluttered space with some rather unexpected people in it. The same disease that overtook our railway stations some years ago.
PS: where can I do spread betting on how long our beloved leader will stay in office? Given his enthusiasm for betting, there must be somewhere.
Talking of which, talk in TB is turning to what will happen when smoking is banned in the summer. The suggestion is that those with large garden sheds can do a public service by opening shebeens. If this takes off the nannies will have great fun devising ways to police barbecues - and no doubt creating all kinds of new offences to help us along the way. One can imagine - leave Sainbury with pile of tinnies. Get stopped by the police. What are all those tinnies for? Personal consumption officer, I have got a big habit. Nonsense, what is your address? Some time later, said police come around to inspect your indoor barbecue to make sure that no money is changing hands...
Yesterday to QEH to hear one Charles Rosen doing the Appassionata and Diabelli. Amazed at what an 80 year old can drag out of a Steinway. I liked his stage manners which included a joke for the first encore - a 10 second peice - I think a bagatelle opus something number 10. Then with perfect timing he announced that the second encore was number 11 which turned out to be rather longer. Couldn't help wondering how many times he would have performed these two peices in the course of his long career - even at the modest rate of once a year that would make fifty or sixty, which might explain why he managed without score.
Not so impressed at the way the QEH managers have been instructed to sweat the space and no doubt to make it more accessible (which might be freely translated as trying to be hoody friendly. And I am not so sure that trying to suck up to such people is quite the right approach. Apart from anything else it must make them think us stupid - patronising being too long a word for those from bog standard comprehensives). So instead of a large and comfortable concourse we now have a rather cluttered space with some rather unexpected people in it. The same disease that overtook our railway stations some years ago.
PS: where can I do spread betting on how long our beloved leader will stay in office? Given his enthusiasm for betting, there must be somewhere.
# posted by Jim @ 2:39 AM 
