I was once in a taxi on my way to Gatwick airport when the traffic on the motorway came to a standstill. The driver turned on the radio to discover what was going on. It transpired that some bloke had decided to kill himself by jumping off a bridge over the road and, to this end, had climbed over the railings lining the bridge. But then he'd had second thoughts and when we tuned in he was dangling there, 10m above the southbound carriageway of the M23, undecided, while negotiators tried to talk him out of it. After about ten minutes listening to the idiot savant fronting Radio One at the time my taxi driver, evidently not a compassionate man, smacked the radio with the palm of his hand and shouted "Jump, you bugger, jump!" I can't remember whether the bugger jumped or not but I caught my flight.
Here's another (approximately) true story. A former colleague of mine bumped into an old friend in the lobby of J.P. Morgan's then headquarters on Wall St, in New York.
"Can't chat," said the friend, "I'm on my way to JFK."
"Why don't we have dinner tonight and you can fly home in the morning instead?" suggested my colleague.
The friend dithered for a while but Janine was persistent and eventually it was agreed that they'd have a girl's night out and reminisce.
The flight that the friend was due to catch, Swissair flight SR 111, departed without her and not long afterwards crashed into the sea near Halifax, killing everyone aboard. According to my colleague, the friend had neglected to call her husband to inform him of her change of plan (no one had Blackberries in those days) and he and her children therefore spent several hours believing she was dead, while she slept off a champagne-induced coma.
Or what about this one? I'm in a restaurant in Primrose Hill with a group of colleagues and my wife. Among the colleagues is a woman whom I'd very much like to sleep with. The party is going well; everyone appears to be having a good time, so I suggest that we all go back to our place and continue the evening there. Raucously, everyone agrees. I order three taxis and engineer it such that the object of my desire and I are eventually the only ones left, waiting for the third taxi. We are both quite tipsy. Beneath the table our knees touch.
What these three (approximately) true stories have in common is that relatively small decisions made in the brains of single individuals in one narrow context had major ramifications for dozens or even thousands of related and unrelated individuals in a much broader context.
A few extra molecules of acetyl choline dribbled into the relevant synapse, or a few withheld, and a body might have smashed through the window of a car bound for Brighton, my colleague's friend would have met with a premature and terrifying death and perhaps I would still be married to my ex-wife.
The question that interests me is this: who made these decisions? Expressed differently, how did the brains in which the decisions crystallised arrive at those decisions? If you think that the answer is either obvious or uninteresting, I put it to you that you ought to reconsider.
To be continued...
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Saturday, 22 January 2011
Lamb
The best meal I ever ate was in the Romanesque town of Sepulveda, north of Madrid, about 20 years ago. My girlfriend and I were taking a short holiday in Spain and we had been advised by a friend to head for this place carved out of the vast limestone plateau around Valladolid, just to eat the lamb in one of the many restaurants dedicated to the consumption of this beast. He said it was worth making an effort to get there. He was right.
We were on a miniscule budget and our only means of reaching Sepulveda was by bus from Madrid, where we had found a cheap hotel from which to explore the city. The bus departed once a day, early in the morning and was scheduled to arrive at Sepulveda at about 1pm. Perfect. Except, of course, the one we caught left late and got later as the journey wore on. We'd skipped breakfast and were hungry.
When the bus pulled into the main square of Sepulveda at 2.30pm we flung on our rucksacks and rushed down the steps to the old town, hoping to find a restaurant still open. Alas, most seemed dark and deserted but we pushed on the door of one that showed signs of life and put on our most winning smiles. We realised that we were very late, we explained ingratiatingly, but we had come a long way to eat lunch in Sepulveda and was there any chance...? The proprietor seemed a little nonplussed but welcomed us in and said that, of course, we were welcome, please come in. Let me take your luggage. He showed us to a table - the best in the room - by a window in the empty dining room and left us alone. Charlotte and I smiled at one another in silent triumph.
A few minutes later, other diners started to trickle in to the restaurant and it dawned on us that we had arrived early, not late. This was our first visit to Spain. There was no menu. We placed no order. After a while a waitress appeared at our table with a board on which sat a quarter of a lamb, its kidneys still attached to the ribcage. She returned moments later with a large bowl of salad, oil and vinegar, a loaf of bread, a jug of red wine and another of water. Using two spoons, she tore the lamb into pieces and departed.
By now the restaurant was full and humming with conversation. The smell of roasted lamb pervaded the room. In the kitchens were huge, wood-fired clay ovens, in which whole lambs had been cooking since dawn. Their fat had melted through the flesh until all that was left was meltingly tender, aromatic meat, falling in strips off the bones, and sheets of crispy skin. The limestone around Sepulveda supports the thinnest of vegetation, all of it adapted to resist grazing. It is therefore full of the most fantastically aromatic oils, which seemed to have been concentrated in the flesh of the lamb. We ate. No, we feasted. Fat dribbled from the corners of our mouths and we washed it down with wine. We mopped up the juices that had spilled from the lamb's collapsing corpse with bread. We drank more wine. Truly, I have never put anything more delicious in my mouth.
We had been the first to arrive and I believe we were the last to leave. For the final hour or so we picked in a desultory way at the remains of the quartered carcass, its fat now congealing on the board. Eventually we had to leave and we staggered out into the still bright sunlight of a Spanish summer evening. We could not afford a hotel. The bus for Madrid had long since departed and the next one would not leave until the morning. We had a tent and sleeping bags and we decided to find somewhere to camp.
As we left the town, heading east, we soon found ourselves walking along the banks of a small river running through woodland. We were young. We were in love. There was no-one else in sight. Quite soon we found a meadow beside the stream and made love, lying naked in the long, damp grass. I have never been a fan of al fresco sex. As with picnics on the beach, sand gets in the sandwich(es) and the execution of the act is rarely as enjoyable as the fantasy. Of this particular experience, however, I remember nothing but bliss and afterwards a feeling of mellow fulfillment.
That was a long time ago. Charlotte and I got married and later got divorced. Roast lamb remains one of my favourite things to eat. I have tried often to reproduce the flavour of those Sepulveda lambs. It can't be done. I shall have to go back, which would be a terrible mistake. While I debate the merits of returning to Sepulveda I occasionally slow roast a shoulder of lamb, sourced from the best butcher I can find. It's not the same but, damn, it still tastes very fine. Tonight I am alone and, even if I weren't, I'd be beyond incapable, after eating, of putting on a rucksack, walking five miles and fucking in a field.
 |
| Sepulveda |
We were on a miniscule budget and our only means of reaching Sepulveda was by bus from Madrid, where we had found a cheap hotel from which to explore the city. The bus departed once a day, early in the morning and was scheduled to arrive at Sepulveda at about 1pm. Perfect. Except, of course, the one we caught left late and got later as the journey wore on. We'd skipped breakfast and were hungry.
When the bus pulled into the main square of Sepulveda at 2.30pm we flung on our rucksacks and rushed down the steps to the old town, hoping to find a restaurant still open. Alas, most seemed dark and deserted but we pushed on the door of one that showed signs of life and put on our most winning smiles. We realised that we were very late, we explained ingratiatingly, but we had come a long way to eat lunch in Sepulveda and was there any chance...? The proprietor seemed a little nonplussed but welcomed us in and said that, of course, we were welcome, please come in. Let me take your luggage. He showed us to a table - the best in the room - by a window in the empty dining room and left us alone. Charlotte and I smiled at one another in silent triumph.
A few minutes later, other diners started to trickle in to the restaurant and it dawned on us that we had arrived early, not late. This was our first visit to Spain. There was no menu. We placed no order. After a while a waitress appeared at our table with a board on which sat a quarter of a lamb, its kidneys still attached to the ribcage. She returned moments later with a large bowl of salad, oil and vinegar, a loaf of bread, a jug of red wine and another of water. Using two spoons, she tore the lamb into pieces and departed.
By now the restaurant was full and humming with conversation. The smell of roasted lamb pervaded the room. In the kitchens were huge, wood-fired clay ovens, in which whole lambs had been cooking since dawn. Their fat had melted through the flesh until all that was left was meltingly tender, aromatic meat, falling in strips off the bones, and sheets of crispy skin. The limestone around Sepulveda supports the thinnest of vegetation, all of it adapted to resist grazing. It is therefore full of the most fantastically aromatic oils, which seemed to have been concentrated in the flesh of the lamb. We ate. No, we feasted. Fat dribbled from the corners of our mouths and we washed it down with wine. We mopped up the juices that had spilled from the lamb's collapsing corpse with bread. We drank more wine. Truly, I have never put anything more delicious in my mouth.
We had been the first to arrive and I believe we were the last to leave. For the final hour or so we picked in a desultory way at the remains of the quartered carcass, its fat now congealing on the board. Eventually we had to leave and we staggered out into the still bright sunlight of a Spanish summer evening. We could not afford a hotel. The bus for Madrid had long since departed and the next one would not leave until the morning. We had a tent and sleeping bags and we decided to find somewhere to camp.
As we left the town, heading east, we soon found ourselves walking along the banks of a small river running through woodland. We were young. We were in love. There was no-one else in sight. Quite soon we found a meadow beside the stream and made love, lying naked in the long, damp grass. I have never been a fan of al fresco sex. As with picnics on the beach, sand gets in the sandwich(es) and the execution of the act is rarely as enjoyable as the fantasy. Of this particular experience, however, I remember nothing but bliss and afterwards a feeling of mellow fulfillment.
That was a long time ago. Charlotte and I got married and later got divorced. Roast lamb remains one of my favourite things to eat. I have tried often to reproduce the flavour of those Sepulveda lambs. It can't be done. I shall have to go back, which would be a terrible mistake. While I debate the merits of returning to Sepulveda I occasionally slow roast a shoulder of lamb, sourced from the best butcher I can find. It's not the same but, damn, it still tastes very fine. Tonight I am alone and, even if I weren't, I'd be beyond incapable, after eating, of putting on a rucksack, walking five miles and fucking in a field.
 |
| Tonight's supper |
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Grappa
As my heroine, Bridget Jones, would no doubt also say in the circumstances:
'Agorrrr. Blurry hell. Thish shtuff ish good. I love you all. Night night.'
'Agorrrr. Blurry hell. Thish shtuff ish good. I love you all. Night night.'
Booze
I'm half way through a bottle of wine made with a blend of merlot and cabernet sauvignon grapes. It comes from somewhere within the vast appellation of Bordeaux and apparently won a bronze medal at the international wine challenge 2010. It cost me about a fiver, after the 50% 'discount' skillfully offered by Sainsbury. In fact it's delicious (but the bottle that preceded it down my gullet might explain that).
Once upon a time I worked for an American bank, in the days when the uncognoscenti hadn't yet had it explained to them in one-syllable-words that bankers earn (no irony intended) twenty times what everyone else does, in exchange for a fraction the effort. They are also advised sufficiently well that they pay tax at about 15% on the proceeds, which explains why tax revenues to the exchequer go down every time the imbeciles in charge of the asylum raise the marginal rate of tax on high earners. Also they eat children raw.
At the height of the last boom my the boss's boss's boss arranged an 'off-site', a self-congratulatory circle jerk at a smart country hotel within relatively easy reach of London. Mostly I remember it for the poor bloke in IT, who got even drunker than me and ended up in the heated outdoor swimming pool, loudly fucking two bridesmaids from a wedding party staying in the same hotel. He was fired.
There was a dinner and therefore there was an after-dinner speaker. Some hapless wanker in HR had hired Roger Black to make the speech. For the 99.998% of you who have never heard of him, he won a silver medal, as part of the UK's 4 x 400m hurdles relay team, in the 1996 Olympic Games. Having peaked at the age of 27 in his chosen career (running, faster and faster and more-and-more pointlessly around an amphitheatre, jumping occasionally over barriers) he became a motivational speaker.
Roger's speech was all about doing your best. His punchline was about how, to him, the silver medal was really a gold, because it represented the very peak of the performance his pastey, white body was capable of. After the speech, he left, to huge sighs of relief. The boss's boss's boss (Fawzi Kyriakos-Saad was his name) stood up, glanced furtively at the door and said 'I don't know who the fuck that twat was, but I want you guys to win gold, gold medals, not silver ones'. Then we drank more, much more very expensive wine and went to bed, in most cases with a colleague. Those were the days.
Here's to capitalism, economies of scale and the fact that decent red wine is still available for less than a fiver.
Once upon a time I worked for an American bank, in the days when the uncognoscenti hadn't yet had it explained to them in one-syllable-words that bankers earn (no irony intended) twenty times what everyone else does, in exchange for a fraction the effort. They are also advised sufficiently well that they pay tax at about 15% on the proceeds, which explains why tax revenues to the exchequer go down every time the imbeciles in charge of the asylum raise the marginal rate of tax on high earners. Also they eat children raw.
At the height of the last boom my the boss's boss's boss arranged an 'off-site', a self-congratulatory circle jerk at a smart country hotel within relatively easy reach of London. Mostly I remember it for the poor bloke in IT, who got even drunker than me and ended up in the heated outdoor swimming pool, loudly fucking two bridesmaids from a wedding party staying in the same hotel. He was fired.
There was a dinner and therefore there was an after-dinner speaker. Some hapless wanker in HR had hired Roger Black to make the speech. For the 99.998% of you who have never heard of him, he won a silver medal, as part of the UK's 4 x 400m hurdles relay team, in the 1996 Olympic Games. Having peaked at the age of 27 in his chosen career (running, faster and faster and more-and-more pointlessly around an amphitheatre, jumping occasionally over barriers) he became a motivational speaker.
Roger's speech was all about doing your best. His punchline was about how, to him, the silver medal was really a gold, because it represented the very peak of the performance his pastey, white body was capable of. After the speech, he left, to huge sighs of relief. The boss's boss's boss (Fawzi Kyriakos-Saad was his name) stood up, glanced furtively at the door and said 'I don't know who the fuck that twat was, but I want you guys to win gold, gold medals, not silver ones'. Then we drank more, much more very expensive wine and went to bed, in most cases with a colleague. Those were the days.
Here's to capitalism, economies of scale and the fact that decent red wine is still available for less than a fiver.
Flikr
For someone who likes flowers so much, I am a very angry man. To show that I still have a temperate side, I have started uploading photos of some of my favorite plants to Flikr. As the season progresses I shall try to stick to my resolve to add many more.
www.flikr.com/photos/evolution-plants
www.flikr.com/photos/evolution-plants
Monday, 17 January 2011
No two alike
Apologies to readers who prefer toxic waste to stuff about plants. There's a lot going on in the greenhouse at the moment.
Sometimes people say to me that all snowdrops look the same. 'Seen one, seen 'em all' is their motto. They are either blind or not looking. Judge for yourself.
Sometimes people say to me that all snowdrops look the same. 'Seen one, seen 'em all' is their motto. They are either blind or not looking. Judge for yourself.
 |
| Alison Hilary |
 |
| Wasp |
 |
| Daphne's Scissors - maybe |
 |
| Florence Baker |
 |
| Primrose Warburgh |
 |
| Benton Magnet |
 |
| John Long |
 |
| Roulade |
 | |||
| Lyn |
 |
| Gerard Parker |
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Seed
The days are long gone when sowing wild oats was even remotely on the agenda for yours truly. Sowing seed of wild-collected species peonies gets my heart racing about as fast as its safe to push the old ticker these days. November through to January are the months when seed catalogues arrive on the doorstep or via email and I can rarely resist ordering at least a handful of packets. If I know that some poor schmuck has slogged up a mountain in Tibet to collect the thing, I am particularly prone to buying it.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of planting all these seeds is the opportunity for vicarious travel it affords. In the photograph below there are seeds that were collected in Kazakhstan, Nepal, Japan and the USA. One minute you are at the source of the Irrawaddy, trousering a rare Arisaema, the next stooped over a propagating bench in Illinois, hand pollinating Amaryllis. Most of these seeds were collected in the 'wild', with considerable effort and virtually no hope of adequate financial compensation, by a handful of nutters who are, to put it politely, doing it for love. Others were sent to me by friends who collected the seed in their gardens or nurseries, from plants they think are particularly worth growing.
Some of these seeds will never germinate, either because they are dead-on-arrival or because I treat them in the wrong way, in my ignorance. Of those that germinate, however, some will be brand new to cultivation in the UK, never having been grown here in the past. Few sights give me more pleasure than a pot of seeds, collected in some distant land, germinating like cress in the spring. And who needs exercise when you can get all the cardiac stimulation you need in a packet.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of planting all these seeds is the opportunity for vicarious travel it affords. In the photograph below there are seeds that were collected in Kazakhstan, Nepal, Japan and the USA. One minute you are at the source of the Irrawaddy, trousering a rare Arisaema, the next stooped over a propagating bench in Illinois, hand pollinating Amaryllis. Most of these seeds were collected in the 'wild', with considerable effort and virtually no hope of adequate financial compensation, by a handful of nutters who are, to put it politely, doing it for love. Others were sent to me by friends who collected the seed in their gardens or nurseries, from plants they think are particularly worth growing.
Some of these seeds will never germinate, either because they are dead-on-arrival or because I treat them in the wrong way, in my ignorance. Of those that germinate, however, some will be brand new to cultivation in the UK, never having been grown here in the past. Few sights give me more pleasure than a pot of seeds, collected in some distant land, germinating like cress in the spring. And who needs exercise when you can get all the cardiac stimulation you need in a packet.
 |
| More thrills than than a treadmill |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)