Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Something fishy
Tried out cod's roe for the first time yesterday. Bought two of them from the man from Hastings, rather like pink sausages. Boil them in the bag as per instructions and they swell up to around twice the size. Remove, slice and fry. Nice fishy smell in the frying and the twice cooked roe looked attractive. But didn't like the taste or texture very much. So will leave roe to BH (who likes the stuff) in future.
To Uncle Vanya at the shiny new Rose theatre at Kingston last week. Except that the theatre was not all that shiny. Attractively laid out auditorium but the supporting spaces were not quite finished. Various patches of bare concrete where there should not have been. A shortage of chairs to sit down on in the bar during the interval. But we liked the play - which somehow I have not seen before. One continues to be impressed how someone writing a hundred years ago in a very differant country has something to say - and in translation. But the acting seemed a bit disjointed, certainly during the first half. The leads did not quite convince, although the (easier)supporting roles did well enough. The delivery was rather fast, too fast for me. But impressed enough that we shall go back for a second helping when the thing gets to Guildford in a month or so. It will be interesting to see how it plays in a rather differant theatre and with the company settled down.
And talking of being impressed by old masters, have started re-reading the non-clerical Trollope, which I have probably not looked at for 35 years or so. For books with a rather light tone, there is much wisdom. I am reminded, for example, that while the ballot box is the way forward, there is attraction in the idea that electors should declare their vote publically. If they believe in a thing, it would be good if they were able to say so out loud. Rather than hiding away, all furtive, in a voting booth. There was also something about the way that politicians might hold very differant views about important matters and tear into each other big time in the chamber - but be quite able to get on over a dinner table afterwards. The aggression is contained, ritualised and constrained; it does not need to spill over into other areas of life. Which is all well and good, but one wonders how much one could really care about an issue if one could still get on famously with someone taking a radically differant view. And then, does one get a better result from people who really care? Might people doing it for fun deliver a better result than a bunch of zealots and bigots?
Drifting sideways, I do have a sneaking regard for Muslims because they do seem to care about their faith. They really do believe that their god is the one god. Unlike the good old CofE which seems to happily admit the validity of all sorts - which to my mind (that is, from the outside of all of this), seems rather to take away from the value of one's own faith. But a pity that some of them still go in for rather barbaric punishments. The DT tells me today that the Iranians are at it again.
In which vein, I have also been checking up on Execution Dock at Wapping and so far the story does not quite run. It seems the custom was to hang the pirates (rather slowly) and then leave them hanging while three tides washed over their heads. Now for this to work the scaffold would have had to be erected fairly low down on the foreshore, which seems a bit unlikely. But at least they were not tied up at low water and left there to drown as the tide came in - which was the first story we came across and which does seem like rather a grim way to go. But something which did presumably happen as it made an appearance in a large film about vikings with someone like Kirk Douglas in it. Bit more digging needed.
To Uncle Vanya at the shiny new Rose theatre at Kingston last week. Except that the theatre was not all that shiny. Attractively laid out auditorium but the supporting spaces were not quite finished. Various patches of bare concrete where there should not have been. A shortage of chairs to sit down on in the bar during the interval. But we liked the play - which somehow I have not seen before. One continues to be impressed how someone writing a hundred years ago in a very differant country has something to say - and in translation. But the acting seemed a bit disjointed, certainly during the first half. The leads did not quite convince, although the (easier)supporting roles did well enough. The delivery was rather fast, too fast for me. But impressed enough that we shall go back for a second helping when the thing gets to Guildford in a month or so. It will be interesting to see how it plays in a rather differant theatre and with the company settled down.
And talking of being impressed by old masters, have started re-reading the non-clerical Trollope, which I have probably not looked at for 35 years or so. For books with a rather light tone, there is much wisdom. I am reminded, for example, that while the ballot box is the way forward, there is attraction in the idea that electors should declare their vote publically. If they believe in a thing, it would be good if they were able to say so out loud. Rather than hiding away, all furtive, in a voting booth. There was also something about the way that politicians might hold very differant views about important matters and tear into each other big time in the chamber - but be quite able to get on over a dinner table afterwards. The aggression is contained, ritualised and constrained; it does not need to spill over into other areas of life. Which is all well and good, but one wonders how much one could really care about an issue if one could still get on famously with someone taking a radically differant view. And then, does one get a better result from people who really care? Might people doing it for fun deliver a better result than a bunch of zealots and bigots?
Drifting sideways, I do have a sneaking regard for Muslims because they do seem to care about their faith. They really do believe that their god is the one god. Unlike the good old CofE which seems to happily admit the validity of all sorts - which to my mind (that is, from the outside of all of this), seems rather to take away from the value of one's own faith. But a pity that some of them still go in for rather barbaric punishments. The DT tells me today that the Iranians are at it again.
In which vein, I have also been checking up on Execution Dock at Wapping and so far the story does not quite run. It seems the custom was to hang the pirates (rather slowly) and then leave them hanging while three tides washed over their heads. Now for this to work the scaffold would have had to be erected fairly low down on the foreshore, which seems a bit unlikely. But at least they were not tied up at low water and left there to drown as the tide came in - which was the first story we came across and which does seem like rather a grim way to go. But something which did presumably happen as it made an appearance in a large film about vikings with someone like Kirk Douglas in it. Bit more digging needed.
# posted by Jim @ 1:27 PM 
