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Good things

I had a carefully linked list of recent good things which lead one to the next in a pleasing series of elegant segue-ways and I appear to have deleted it by mistake. Never mind.

The first good thing, which occurred after the demise of the list, has to be the result – a draw, but an honourable one. I speak, of course, of the firstborn’s endeavours on the AstroTurf this morning. He scored the equaliser.

w00000t

Almost as good was the long lens which came with the E-400… not bad for a first sporting shot I thought. Shame his mother hadn’t washed his socks though.

Staying with the family, my gorgeous cousin Jules got married. She’s beautiful. She’s funny. Talent oozing out of her fingertips – acting, singing, directing. And so clever they didn’t have a grade high enough for her degree. I love her.

Here she is giving a specially customised rendition of “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” at her wedding reception.

Jules is a singer

Obviously I want to be her, but it’s rather too late now so I take delight in watching her being her.

And on Monday I had the most wonderful time at Mr Beelicious’ birthday party.

jonathan in another brilliant hat

We met on Holy Island last August where already his excellent taste in headgear was well in evidence. He came from New York to celebrate at Les Trois Garcons. The food was fabulous, the decor outrageous-flamboyant-baroque and his friends so delightful and interesting and funny and sympa.

After eating we were taken upstairs to the living quarters of two at least of the trois garcons which had enough quirk and fluff and spangles to keep me happy for several lifetimes. And an African grey parrot with which I (and others) immediately fell in love. It was a night I hope never to forget, thank you so much Mr B!

To the realm of work. The major excitement for us at Global Voices was the launch of the new Reuters Africa site. It has a feed of the relevant Global Voices content on every country page across the entire continent.

The announcement made quite a splash since it’s the first time that blogger content has been incorporated quite so extensively in a mainstream media site. My friends and colleagues Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman both wrote great analyses of its significance and from openDemocracy came an excellent article by Becky Hogge.

The comments on the announcement article also let me discover the blog of my friend and former BBC colleague the journalist Lara Pawson who is currently in Luanda, Angola, and also writes for openDemocracy.

Hold that openDemocracy thought, we’ll be coming back to oD a bit later. Because this is where the filaments multiply beyond my ability to keep a single thread. We’ll continue with GV and another great thing which is the appointment of Sami Ben Gharbia as our new Advocacy Coordinator. Yes, for those of you with good memories, the same Sami Ben Gharbia of the Tunisian Prison Map about which I waxed lyrical last year.

We stay with the people of GV and move to the lovely Neha Viswanathan, our South Asia Editor (and reader of 3000 blogs). Quite how she finds the time to do anything beyond her work I don’t know but she does. She came over the other day and, despite being a confirmed dog person, fell for the cat big time. She also writes. Beautifully.

Click through to the previous link and you will see a picture of the aforementioned cat. The writing may be a response to or triggered by the picture – in other words ekphrasis. And, delightfully, the theme for this month’s edition of qarrtsiluni is that very thing. You can submit an image for inclusion in the gallery which acts as a seedbed of potential textual inspiration and you can submit “poetry or poetic prose” inspired by any of the gallery images or any other image you choose.

This is where Ariadne’s thread proves inadequate for navigating the maze of contemporary existence. I cannot, for the life of me, knit or even navigate a path from ekphrasis to Bamako, although no doubt it is possible. So I have to invoke the oD reference I asked you to keep in mind, and on your needle, earlier.

Some weeks ago I mentioned going to see the film, Bamako. The next day I interviewed the director, Abderrhamane Sissako, and the executive producer, Maji-da Abdi for openDemocracy. They also happen to be married, Maji-da speaks English and translates for Abderrhamane of whose European languages French is better. The interview is here.

This was one of those interviews where everything “clicked”. I have been privileged to talk to many interesting and inspiring people over the years. Abderrhamane and Maji-da are up there with the best. The more I think about the more convinced I am that everyone should see this film. It’s even had good reviews in the London press – do yourself a favour, go and see it!

This is the downside of infrequent blogging – the complexity of the catchup. However there was another good thing fueling this marathon. Purchased from the recently opened Nigerian wine merchant’s down the road is a delicious Saumur blanc from Saint Vincent in the Loire Valley. Spicy, as promised. Pale amber in colour. Complex. Citrus. A honey nose. And I’ve finished the bottle.

Also, while accentuating the positive, my pictures got some fan mail today. They were pleased, I was delighted. Which reminds me there hasn’t been a picture of ages. Here’s one the boys and I all like called “pollen”.

pollen

Good night!

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Corned beef stew

Secondborn’s school has asked parents to provide a family recipe, preferably with a bit of a story to it, for a cookery book which will go on sale to raise funds.

We have such a recipe – corned beef stew. My mother made it when I was a child, her mother made it for her when she was a child in the days of rationing after the war.

The name has nothing to do with maize, though…

The name comes from Anglo-Saxon times before refrigeration. In those days, the meat was dry-cured in coarse “corns” of salt. Pellets of salt, some the size of kernels of corn, were rubbed into the beef to keep it from spoiling and to preserve it.

A major component of military rations during the first and second world wars and then a feature of the austerity years of post-war civilian food restrictions, corned beef has long been very much looked down on. Now is the time to reclaim this shunned delicacy with its bizarrely-shaped tins and their lethal mode of opening.

The children love the corned beef stew I prepare for them from an amalgam of memory and experiment. We made it together tonight and took pictures in case the book will be illustrated. You can see the results below.

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Pass the sick bag, Alice

(And for those who don’t know, as I didn’t, the origin of the above endearing expression, it was apparently a catch-phrase of former newspaper editor Sir John Junor. From the same source we discover that “here’s one I made earlier” is from Blue Peter, where blogging is hot, not Fanny Craddock as might have been the case. Another mystery solved.)

Anyway, enough of this quick tour of the murkier quirks of British culture of the second half of the last century and back to current cuteness.

Today the sleep deficit caught up, we all overslept and there was more-than-usual chaos in the house. And there was a deadline very very close.

This is all by way of explaining why so much of the morning was spent on the bed in a dressing gown with the creatures. I was working, frantically, on the laptop. I failed to shut the bedroom door. They infiltrated and, it being cold and the laptop hotter than any radiator, moved in. Together.

Obviously the camera was to hand. And every now and then, when the files took entire minutes to save or the internet was broken, there was enough time to take a quick picture of the cutesome twosome.

And the pictures are by way of attempting to convince various visitors to the house who have witnessed Maizy clamping the cat’s head in her jaws and dragging him across the floor whilst emitting sounds which resemble death-curdling growling (but are obviously meant in a very kind and caring way) that the two do really get on very well together. Displaying cuteness so cute you might need a bucket.

Unfortunately every time I shifted position Maizy would wake instantly and spring to attention thereby significantly reducing the cuteness quotient. Stealth was required, and no flash.

It’s also an excuse to use this fantastic little widgety thing called PictoBrowser which comes live and direct via the Via, the Via Negativa, where Dave has used it to make a breathtaking display of his favourite pictures. He’s also explained all its exciting mouseover features which is another really good reason to visit.

For those with a stomach strong enough for blurry soft focus pet pics the cuteness slideshow is below the fold.

Continue reading “Pass the sick bag, Alice”

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Potty

I am, I freely admit, absolutely potty.

potty

I should really draw a veil over the subject.

spring gauze

But there’s no getting away from it.

takeoff

I have bought a new camera.

catera

Put it next to something so I can see how small it is, she said. The cat! she said.

It is absolutely tiny, like my hands. And so are the lenses. I took a 4″ handheld shot which included the clock on my desk and so small and light is it that there’s very little shake and the clock’s second hand can be seen equally in each of the four second positions.

I’m selling my old body to pay for most of it. (Yeah yeah very funny. NOT.) But actually it’s just sheer irresponsible self-indulgent retail therapy at its most hedonistic.

Up far too late again, very tired but floating on the gadget love boat.

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Pink and orange weekend

Two colours I like very much together.

Sunday was pink,

wet flowers

Saturday was orange.

night park

Yes it’s ridiculously late but I have achieved much. And I might have a nap tomorrow.

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Playing with the moon

It was up in the afternoon, a gleaming crescent basking in the spring-like sunshine.

calipers

Semi-sprawling semi-crouching over the bonnet of a car got it aligned with the calliper branches of the tree above. It took several attempts to get the picture right. Then again in a different position, wedged between a phone junction box and a lamppost, to get it reaching to cup a bauble.

moon under bauble

A beautiful day. Low gentle sun and blossom erupting everywhere. Someone (not me) threw away my bunch of tulips not realising their huge beauty and the beauty still to come. Luckily a neighbour had shared their own bunch of spring flowers by putting them out on the windowsill in front of a superbly reflective window.

spirit of spring

Thank you for sharing them, whoever you are.

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Communication breakdown

last legs

Some people have tried to comment and can’t. Whilst this blog is not a throbbing hub of sparking dialogue I do like it when people comment and it’s distressing to learn that there appears to be an obstacle.

This seems to be a problem encountered by other WordPress users and I suspect might be related to the coComment enhancer plugin I’m using. I’m deactivating the plugin to see if that addresses the problem.

So, um, (the standard question for checking everything works before recording an interview) what did you have for breakfast? Or alternatively we could discuss the extraordinary beauty of dying tulips. Below is a crop of the picture above to illustrate this point.

last toes

Less welcome would be comments about the quantity of dust on my kitchen table. Or the dead pixel in the picture.

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Fly Feather Fly

Fly Feather Fly

This is Fly Feather Fly, a stone print made by Zimbabwean artist Richard Jack in 1993. And a very small part of the chaos that is the room I spend most of my time in.

I’ve been a bit lax with the picture a day project the last few days and it’s nearly midnight again. And there have already been far too many pictures of the cat.

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Change

As the tulips on the kitchen table bend gracefully with the imperative of gravity on decreasing turgidity so their petals spread wider and wider. But each has one or two furled inwards over stigma and stamens like a man surprised naked will cover his genitals with his hand.

modest tulip