Sunday 17 February 2008

meh

It is hot, and I can't sleep and I am grumpy.

And I can smell cake. and there is no cake, and it is making me hungry. It is carrot cake with lemon cream cheese frosting.

and it is hot.

and i am hungry.

I want to move to the mountains.

Saturday 9 February 2008

Andavadoaka

So far, the second year of teaching far out strips the first, but I still have a bucket full of doubts about the whole malarkey.

Sometimes it is nice to remember/be reminded that I lived here for a while.













Even if I never get a chance to go back.

Wednesday 6 February 2008

migratory habits of food in the kitchen

This one got lost somewhere, it is here now.
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 05:49:07 +0100 (BST)
From: Ceels
Subject: migratory habits of food in the kitchen.


When I was little someone gave me a book on migration and it fascinated me.

I have noticed the same phenomenon in the kitchen. The only notable difference is that the food separates into two migratory factions. The food you chase around the kitchen and the food that follows you round the kitchen.

I arrive at work. I begin my mis-en-place (preparation for service). I notice that my sugar (which I filled last night) is missing. I hunt down a 1-litre bucket and descend to the dry store. I fill the bucket and return, complete. My task here is done.

Later. An order is called away for toffee-apple kebabs. The sugar is gone. I find it in larder (section). I use it and put it on my shelf.

5 mins later. It is gone.

The stuff that follows you is more insidious. No matter how many times you put it away or take it downstairs, it always returns to somewhere you won't see it and will tip it over. Fish stock is particularly prone to this. Incidentally, fish stock is the hardest kitchen stain (apart from ball point pen) to remove from your clothes. I have got everything else out (including my own blood), but not the fish stock or the ink.

Maybe it is the teatowel dragon who is taking the sugar. The teatowel dragon slinks around the kitchen, breathing steam and puffing little pilot lights of blue flame. The neon light glints off her invisible scales and she waits, watching, for an opportunity to snag that teatowel to just beyond your grasping fingertips.

She sets them alight when you are not concentrating and lobs them up behind the bamboo steamers when you lapse in vigilance.

Mum says I have an overactive imagination and that I romanticise life excessively.