It's been a while since I've been in the blogosphere. Is the blogosphere still a thing? Or did that word go the way of cyberspace and virtual? Meh.
Anyway, I'm feeling out of touch with the written word. A crucial element of staying proficient in anything is to keep your tools sharp. Practice your art. If you want to be good at writing, write. So here I am.
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| Stacey's Peach Melba- famed in song and saga. |
One of the ways Stace and I amuse ourselves is to challenge each other to cook dinner. We used to spend ages trawling through recipes, putting together menus which would push the other out of their culinary comfort zone, get dolled up in our finest, er, finery, and eat ourselves sick. This was fun for a while, and resulted in Stacey making her first loaves of bread and her perfecting the peach Melba. It led to me spending a solid month resurrecting Frank, the legendary sourdough starter, in order to provide bread bowls for clam chowder. And while it was fun for a while, it was missing something. A good night in is about more than good food and good company.
The missing ingredient is, of course, music. Actually, music was never missing- it was just never an ingredient. There was music in the background, always, as we cooked, served, ate and played darts. But its role was on the sidelines, until we decided otherwise.
A while back, we were at a loose end on a Saturday, when we decided to go to the cafe at Harmony for lunch. As we waited to order eggplant, salad, polenta and Italian mineral water, the sound of Benny Goodman's clarinet filled the small room which, decorated as it was with bare wood and chrome, seemed to soak up the sound as naturally as if the 1950s had yet to come.
"I think we should buy a record player." Said Stacey, voicing the thought occupying both our minds. So we did, and started collecting vinyl records. It's probably the most hipster thing we've ever done since I started shaving with actual razorblades.
One of the most objectionable people I've ever known was also the first person I knew who owned an actual vinyl record. I met him at Durham, a city where the eccentric are generally tolerated as part of the cornucopia of University life. For example, in my time there, there was the fellow who mad a point of walking everywhere at the speed that 18th-Century Light Infantry regiments would march, which looked particularly alarming as he was quite a short man with little legs. And the bloke who nobody knew personally, but who looked like Mario would look if he stopped running everywhere, started listening to the Grateful Dead and eating pizza for every meal, who was rumoured to either be a kung-fu expert or a former member of the SAS.
But the person I remember with the deepest sense of loathing lived on my corridor, and came within an ace of driving his affable and intelligent room-mate to a murder no jury would ever have convicted him of. He stood out as brash, loud, pretentious and self-obsessed, even in a crowd of first-year students, and he loved his vinyl. He would wax lyrical on the superiority of sound quality, and fidelity, and blah blah blah blah blah. I rebelled by playing Blur's Charmless Man every time he came into the room. On MP3. So the idea of buying records, and being lumped into the same proto-hipster demographic as this particularly charmless man was not attractive.
Nevertheless, we started buying records, and playing them, and enjoying the experience of shopping that way. It's interesting for those of us who grew up shopping on Amazon. For instance, if you want a track, you have to buy all the other tracks. And another thing- you can only take home what the shop has in stock. This is not how I have grown up buying music. It was only a matter of time before food got involved. Now, we challenge the other person by buying them a record or two, with the idea that the music should inspire date night- the menu and the rest.
The missing ingredient is, of course, music. Actually, music was never missing- it was just never an ingredient. There was music in the background, always, as we cooked, served, ate and played darts. But its role was on the sidelines, until we decided otherwise.
A while back, we were at a loose end on a Saturday, when we decided to go to the cafe at Harmony for lunch. As we waited to order eggplant, salad, polenta and Italian mineral water, the sound of Benny Goodman's clarinet filled the small room which, decorated as it was with bare wood and chrome, seemed to soak up the sound as naturally as if the 1950s had yet to come.
"I think we should buy a record player." Said Stacey, voicing the thought occupying both our minds. So we did, and started collecting vinyl records. It's probably the most hipster thing we've ever done since I started shaving with actual razorblades.
One of the most objectionable people I've ever known was also the first person I knew who owned an actual vinyl record. I met him at Durham, a city where the eccentric are generally tolerated as part of the cornucopia of University life. For example, in my time there, there was the fellow who mad a point of walking everywhere at the speed that 18th-Century Light Infantry regiments would march, which looked particularly alarming as he was quite a short man with little legs. And the bloke who nobody knew personally, but who looked like Mario would look if he stopped running everywhere, started listening to the Grateful Dead and eating pizza for every meal, who was rumoured to either be a kung-fu expert or a former member of the SAS.
But the person I remember with the deepest sense of loathing lived on my corridor, and came within an ace of driving his affable and intelligent room-mate to a murder no jury would ever have convicted him of. He stood out as brash, loud, pretentious and self-obsessed, even in a crowd of first-year students, and he loved his vinyl. He would wax lyrical on the superiority of sound quality, and fidelity, and blah blah blah blah blah. I rebelled by playing Blur's Charmless Man every time he came into the room. On MP3. So the idea of buying records, and being lumped into the same proto-hipster demographic as this particularly charmless man was not attractive.
Nevertheless, we started buying records, and playing them, and enjoying the experience of shopping that way. It's interesting for those of us who grew up shopping on Amazon. For instance, if you want a track, you have to buy all the other tracks. And another thing- you can only take home what the shop has in stock. This is not how I have grown up buying music. It was only a matter of time before food got involved. Now, we challenge the other person by buying them a record or two, with the idea that the music should inspire date night- the menu and the rest.
Last weekend Stacey threw down the gauntlet, buying George Lewis and Louis Armstrong. Everyone knows Satchmo, but in years of listening to jazz I'd never heard of Lewis, who turns out to be a hardcore Dixieland specialist. He treated jazz as the gift given to the world by his home town, New Orleans.
So, what conclusions am I going to draw? Louisiana, obviously. Gumbo? Maybe. Bananananana daquiris? Possibly. Home made andouille sausage! Why not? Maybe some Tasso? That sounds like fun. I'll keep you up to date.
So, what conclusions am I going to draw? Louisiana, obviously. Gumbo? Maybe. Bananananana daquiris? Possibly. Home made andouille sausage! Why not? Maybe some Tasso? That sounds like fun. I'll keep you up to date.
