Some Azorean Culture

I have a new bff in the Azores, keen to educate me in the culture of the islands she has sent me this link featuring Azorean singer Zeca Medeiros. I love it.

Slugs and Snails

This week I have been cooking in the depths of rural England, back to the house where little girls danced with whales, here are some of the week’s high- and low-points

1. The place is now full of little boys - the meals were appropriately themed; last night’s supper was worms in a compost heap followed by mud pie with extra dirt.

2. This is a no-electronic-games-allowed household, most of the boys were outside, happily running around thwacking things, but I discovered a sad-faced child called Oscar in the pantry, he was fingering something he called a DS. He agreed to wash his hands and help me make pizzas.

3. Oscar wants to be an actor and shows great promise, after flinging something to the floor during supper, his mother insisted that there would be no mud pie until he picked it up, he left the room roaring
I am now going to kill myself

4. I stayed on the premises this time, I dislike 'living-in’, but it’s a long commute and The Director is away stalking vampires.

My bags were taken to a converted barn adjacent to the main house; a vast split level space with fat oak floorboards and stone gable ends - it is wonderfully empty, a bed one end, a sink the other and a huge old tub somewhere in the middle. It is the old hay loft and harness rooms and is over a mill race - in daylight the sound of the stream rushing under the building is charming. At night I realised that the big empty space of my apartment is a supersonic amplifier, it was like being trapped in a giant’s bathroom with a broken flush - I have not slept a wink for four nights.

5. There is no internet or phone signal at the house so I found a big empty pub with wifi. I went there this morning at 9 am and sat down at the only table with an electric socket, then some people came in; two couples and a teenage boy, none of them appeared to have a neck and they were clearly all very closely related. They walked past the empty tables and came to sit with me - they weren’t being at all friendly, finally one of the men said
We always sit here

6. While I was preparing supper tonight Oscar lurked nearby, finally he asked me
What do you really do for a living?



Photo by Mark Peterson

Dances With Whales

Last week's cooking job came with in-house entertainment, it was half term, no electronic games in the house and the television was curiously only able to receive a signal for a couple of hours each day, so the children had to work out what to do for themselves, after a bit of bored flopping around someone has an idea

Let’s put on a show!

they disappear excitedly to start rehearsals, only to return after an hour, the project has been abandoned due to artistic differences.

The two girls then decide that they will do 'Dancing On Ice’

One child strips down to her underwear and the other ran off to get her swimsuit and goggles on, they explain;
in Dancing on Ice you have to have bare arms and bare legs

They wafted around the kitchen, describing their sequinned outfits, one child dancing with a stuffed whale while the other, embracing a column of air, told me about her handsome partner

He has long brown hair and a blue hair band

then she stopped dancing and asked her friend

Do we have to be in love with our partner?

The girl with the whale continued dancing and replied dreamily

I’m in love with mine

Dancing and sausages

21st july
The village fete is four days of fun. After the sausage meal on Friday night there's a disco at the Salle which I didn’t attend but heard quite well through my shuttered windows. Last night I witnessed my first bal-musette - old time dancing on a packed dance floor where pensioners execute perfect polkas, waltzes and foxtrots. I don’t know how to do these dances and made many men regret asking me to dance because I'm not only taller than most of them, but I’m also clumsy and have no sense of rhythmn.

Tonight for the finale there will be a bigger, better bal-musette, accompanied by a bigger, better sausage and pulse-based meal.

There is a price to pay for all this fun. Arriving at the Salle des fetes to help clear up after last night's festivities I noticed that the volume of cars coming, going and parking has squashed Bee City flat.