Posts (page 2)

I've been playing with these combinations recently:

1. A sausage and bean soup, made by boiling a tin of black eye beans then adding 3 roasted sausages with crushed cumin seeds, finished with some mint before serving

2. A lamb casserole with root vegetables, and crushed cardamom and caraway. Again, some torn mint at the end

Both warming yet fresh

Another observation from the air, where I have been getting my most fluid
thinking done lately:

The pyrenees look very appealing from here. Sure, in December some are snow
capped, but many are still covered in rolling green. Conjures images for
me of nutty mountain region sheep's cheese, and beautiful grilled lamb,
maybe accompanied by some simple roast potatoes or rice bartered with
passing traders.

Such a dream deserves a trip to understand the likely richer reality. A
trip that could also take in the richness of southern France and northern
Spain, with a glorious mountainous interlude.

I spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the Amsterdam Van Gogh Museum last Sunday.

First stop was the van Gogh and Expressionism exhibition. I was surprised that the vast majority of expressionists featured were German. I'd be interested in whether this is because Van Gogh made a bigger splash with this group than the French (despite spending a few years of his career in Paris), or had more to do with the availability of paintings?

The collection is arranged chronologically. This makes great sense given the very clear evolution in Van Gogh's style over the ten years that he was painting. The museum's collection is vast, and illustrates this point well, yet precious little is written about it. What inspired Vaan Gogh to make these changes in his style?

Both these questions seem pretty fundamental, yet were not really answered in the text about the galleries. I enjoyed looking at the paintings hugely, but Van Gogh is a character that sparks curiosity. The visit left me wanting much more explanation and analysis than the curators provided.

Smooth and crunchy, in texture and flavour

I finally got round to seeing this film yesterday. It is highly recommended. Much has been written about the excellent performances of the cast. However, for me the interest came from lingering on a pivitol moment in British history. I was abroad for the whole period of Princess Diana's funeral, but it was clear from afar that the public mood was extraordinary. I remember watching the reports on TV with a sense that this was rather more than a typical news story, then picking through the remanins of the moarning when I arrived in Kensington as a fresh-faced student a few months later.

For the first time in living memory there was a very public outpouring of grief accompanied, from many, by clear rejection of quiet conteplative British ways and even of the value of the royal family. Of course, a minority have questioned these things for decades, but at that point the numebr of desentors seemed much closer to critical mass than ever before.

The mood in those few weeks never boiled over into something more permanent, but I am sure its effect as a signal is still felt. Government and royal machines could not fail to recognise the unexpected nature of the public reaction, and are sure to have calculated the lessons into their subsequent actions.

Well, it has got better. At least there is a full set of listings on it now, but what took so long? And why does it still lack any form of personalisation. Surely I should be able to build a diary or wishlist, share them with friends, find people with similar interests, find events these people are interested in. Surely this would increase the number of page impressions (just look how many views per session MySpace gets), and surely it would create other mmonetisation opportunities too.

Time out is such a great paper publication. I'd love an opportunity to shape their site.

I have been wondering where the Christmas carols were coming from earlier this evening. They wafted in the skylight from somewhere nearby. Maybe an office, maybe the hospital round the corner. Definitely live, definitely from a sizable choir, and definitely very close. Such a pleasant interruption to an otherwise hectic evening.

Why are some airline website so bad? Have they learned nothing in the last 10 years of trying?

Sites I like: KLM and Ryanair. KLM's site is beautiful, functional, and reliable. Ryanair certainly do not prioritise aesthetics, but their site always works.

Sites I hate: BA - the website looks and feels OK, but the back-end systems are often not working. Too often I get to the end of a booking to find that it cannot be accepted. My latest bad experience is Wizz Air. They use the skylight software, like almost every other low-cost airline. Despite drawing on the experience of others, they still cannot manage to get a correct security certificate, or a link to login from the front page. In Safari the site almost works. Everything is available, except the date of travel...

It does not give me a good feeling to plan travel in planes maintained by an airline that cannot engineer something as common as a website.

While traveling home from Amsterdam this afternoon: I feel really happy to pick out the Suffolk coast from over the north sea.

I can see the Orwell, Stour, Deben and Alde. Each holds its own happy childhood memories. Sailing on the Deben, day-trips around the Alde, the industrial lure of Felixstowe port. Each remembered for its own reasons, each put in context as I travel from a happy weekend back to my life in London.

Looking from this height, I realise more clearly than ever that my London life has all the dynamism I craved while growing up in Suffolk, but not enough of the peace I took for granted. The Suffolk coast is being replaced now by rural Essex, but I feel less of the joy I experienced as a teenager making the same journey by train. In many ways I am excited to be landing at city airport in a matter of minutes, but given the option I would have chosen to stop 70 miles back and find a quiet country pub by a river.

One small example of how I feel at the moment:

I write this on the tube, traveling across London to meet a friend at 6.30pm. I was convinced that the tube would be packed. Rush hour, surely? No, it seems. The tube is emptier than it is for my normal weekend journeys.

I realised that I have no clue when the rush happens here, or even if there is one. In five years of work I never had the pleasure of leaving work at a normal time. Before that I was spoiled by four years of leisurely luxury wandering as a student in and around Fulham and Kensington.

It really has been more than nine years since I have traveled on the tube at this time. The great thing about that is it brings back a sense of excitement and an awareness of the possibilities that London offers - possibilities that I have hardly scratched the surface of in almost a decade here. I look forward to the chance to explore them more.