Sri Lanka Revisited

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Getting To Sri Lanka

Highlights of the first 24 hours of our journey to Sri Lanka; note the 3-hour jam on the motorway, the dash for the flight, the random meals and the bit where we are met by NK at Columbo airport, taken to a restaurant and served our third breakfast in 12 hours.
 

When NK laid eyes on the poor straggly things that we had become he said, When did you set off? ... Yesterday morning ... hahahaha ... we now have very a long drive, you are going to kill me .... 

 

Friday, July 9

Today I Am Mostly Buying Foam

After bumping across the country for about 12 hours we finally arrived at the lodge where we will stay and film for the next month.


The first day is spent getting everything set up, we have a lot of very sensitive equipment so we make nests for all the components which we fit in the filming vehicles to help them withstand the battering they will be getting. Mostly what is needed for this is foam and cardboard - I have achieved piles of these items and the two vehicles are now ready to go.

It is bake-a-cake-in-the-oven hot but we can't use the air conditioning because it will upset the many computers that we use outside for filming then bring back inside to transfer and log the images. From now on I will become a Data Monkey working in my room all day tapping away with my fingers and operating a fan with my big toes.

The food is really good here and I'm wondering if sweating counts as exercise.

Sunday July 11th

My World of Wildlife

Every afternoon the boys drive off into the National Park to film proper he-man animals: crocodiles, elephants and leopards. I stay behind at the Lodge, process footage and have a different sort of wildlife experience. The Lodge is in a sandy woody area, guests stay in cabins among the trees. I have set up a work station on a couple of tables in my room and the geckos have taken up residence above me, their tails poke out from the rafters, I like them but wish they wouldn't deposit such unusually large amounts of lizard poo among my hard drives, adding fresh ones every time I go off for a coffee.

When I do go out for a coffee, giant squirrels suddenly appear on branches, close to my face, cocking their big-eyed faces and holding out little paws, (for what? Spare change?), palm squirrels copulate on the table where I am eating my dinner and cows belch and fart explosively outside my window.

In the evenings at six, about two dozen wild pigs come round for drinks, they snorkel noisily around the cabins waving their snouty lips up at the air-conditioning pipes to catch the icy drips. Tonight I watched a big old boar with his head stuck down a drain, front legs knelt down, hind legs on tiptoe, straining his bottom and huge swollen testicles up in the air in an attempt to reach something delicious, he sensed me watching him, jerked his head out of the drain and glared at me, the absolute image of Ken Dodd, it was just an instant, then he tossed his tatty mane and trotted off to join the outlet-lickers.

Wednesday, July 14

Shopping For Man Stuff

Photo: Gayam and W. M. Upali the tuktuk driver, we are eating fishy buns to fortify ourselves for the journey ahead.

Four hours before I took that photo, Gayam and I had come to town in a jeep, we were in search of lunchboxes, batteries, chargers, clips, leads and other motor-related items, we also needed a piece of ply the size of a small coffee table top.

In town there are lots of 'everything shops', they seem to be divided into two types; the ones that sell women’s things like household items, crayons, key rings and shinyshiny. The other everything shops sell men’s things; loudspeakers, bendy tubes, wheelbarrows and batteries.




Most of my items needed to come from the Man Shops, we chose the ones with most car batteries stacked up outside them but each shop only had one component on my list, we went from one shop to another and back again assembling a compatible set of items, none of the items have a guarantee, if you buy and it doesn't work - well that's just tough! You identify the shop selling a battery charger that works and another shop with the battery you are thinking of buying, then you accompany the owner down the road to a place where the equipment can be tested to everyone's satisfaction.

Prior to all this we had spent an hour in the bank, our jeep driver now had to leave, he introduced his friend W.M who would drive us back to the lodge in his tuktuk.
Last item on the list was the piece of ply - the shop would only sell us a whole sheet, the whole sheet was the dimensions of a king-sized bed but a bit longer.

cutting is not possible


A tuktuk is a three-wheeled mo-ped in a cabin with a soft roof, they are usually decorated, this one had gold fringing around the windscreen, a vase of flowers on the dashboard and a red and yellow garland hanging from the ceiling. The three of us looked at the big sheet of wood, then at the tuktuk, we went for tea and fishy buns then we returned to heave the ply onto the roof of the vehicle, we got in and each put an arm out, clamping the sheet onto the roof with a hand - finally ready, we put-putted along the pot-holed road for an hour - all the way home. 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, July 15

The Babbler

At dusk the most extraordinary boinging and hooting noises erupt around my cabin. I think it's mostly birds. There is a dust-coloured bird that comes around several at a time, the size of a fat thrush, it is not at all sleek, they chatter away together and make a lovely sound - I am told that it is a Babbler. I look the Babbler up in Birds of Sri Lanka where Mssrs Wijeyeratne, Warakagoda and De Zylva inform me that it is a garrulous bird ... members of the flock help build each nest, which may be shared

Sweet!


Friday, July 16

The Breakfast of Champions

String Hoppers are a sort of steamed shredded wheat.



To make Egg Hoppers
• Pour coconut milk pancake batter into a bowl-shaped iron pan on a hot ring
• swirl the batter up the sides and crack an egg into the bottom
• Place a lid on the pan and let it steam for a minute or two
• When it is cooked, the steamed egg in it's crispy pancake bowl will slide out onto your plate
• add a spoonful of dahl and a sprinkle of coconut sambal if you like.





Saturday, July 17

More Wildlife Than Might Be Good For Me

I'm much worse at packing than I used to be, I pack far more these days and yet I have only a couple of wearable outfits - the other ninety per cent of my luggage might as well have stayed at home.

I had considered my pyjamas to be redundant, at bedtime I take a cold shower and lie on the bed hoping sleep will come before I reheat. This morning, when I went to the bathroom, I noticed all the gecko pellets stuck on my legs.

A lady sunbird pecks for long periods on my window pane, I think she is attacking her reflection and imagines herself to be arguing with another sunbird but her persistence feels rather Hitchcockian.

Monday, July 19

The Jesus Pig

Just beyond the bushes surrounding my cabin is a bright green lake, the luminosity of which led me to assume that it didn't support much life but I watched as horned cattle waded in to shoulder depth in the mornings, stood around for an hour or two then disappeared back into the bushes. I also saw some deliciously cartoon-ey storks standing in the lake and realised that a lot of birds come visiting here, so I got out my crayons and walked up the spit of sand that runs part-way into the lake to see them more closely.

Yesterday evening I climbed to a look-out post from which I could see the lake. The sand spit was covered with fat man-sized crocodiles, which made me gulp a bit, then I watched a pig emerge from the bushes, keeping up a steady trot, she made straight for the spit, slalomed between the crocs and when she got to the end of the land she kept going, running on the water without slackening her pace until she got to the island in the middle of the lake.

impressive surface tension!

 

Tuesday, July 20

Boundaries

This is a map of my world these days, the film crew occupy three of the two dozen wooden cabins that accommodate the lodge guests, we each have a little fenced-in beer porch outside our front door.

A central wooden building contains the bar and restaurant, there is a Look-Out! tower on top of the restaurant and a fiendish pool outside the bar. The pool looks really good - new guests jump in with the anticipation of a refreshing swim only to find that the water level comes to just above a grown-ups knees. The children have great fun though, there are little islands to leap around on and I spent a happy hour watching three Dutch children playing an interesting drowning/life-saving game there the other day.

Apart from my foam- and battery-buying forays I am confined to the lodge boundaries and have yet to visit the National Park.

Due to the proximity of the park and the quantity of animals that could present us with so many exotic ways to die, we are requested not to venture out of sight of the cabins on our own. I can hear a crashing sea, metres from my cabin but I can’t go and look at it without company.

The Camera Boys are subject to the same restrictions as everyone else, when they pack up the vehicles for the shoot they must include a park warden and everyone stays inside the cars until they get back home again.



Langurs come to play on our roofs, usually a great big herd of them descend and bounce around noisily for an hour before moving on to the next one. 

Thursday, July 22nd

Points of View

Our film is about what happens at night.

If you go into the Park at night, and it is a bit cloudy without much moon, it all looks like black scribble.

With night vision goggles you can see shapes of animals but the ones more than a few metres from the car will be quite fuzzy.



Our magic cameras can magnify the light of a single star by a factor of thousands and translate heat into light. Out in the bush only the one with the camera gets a clear picture.



The view from my cabin is another thing. The Camera Boys give me their boxes containing the fragments of a thousand stories, I sort through the clips, looking for the edge pieces and important details that will accumulate to become The Most Interesting Story, a good one with little sub-plots and dramas.

Saturday, July 24

Some Things...

Sun Protection
I haven't seen a Sri Lankan in sunglasses yet, nor much hat wearing.

There is however, plenty of umbrella-sharing.

Feeling Like A Farmyard Animal
I am often sitting on my beer porch in the evening when the pigs come round, they poke their noses in at me through the railings. I think they are laughing at me.

If they had bananas I think they'd throw me one.


Laundry Conversation
I don’t understand how the laundry system works - a few days ago I put a pile of clothes on my bed with a hopeful note saying laundry. The man who comes in to sweep the room looked at the pile and said

I can’t take the laundry until tomorrow. Here is a bag, write your items on the list

I am confused
But you can't take it until tomorrow?

Maybe I can take it today

Monday, July 26
Jaggery
a concentrated product of cane juice without separation of the molasses and crystals, contains sugars and other insoluble matter such as ash, proteins and bagasse fibers.

Considered to be a particularly wholesome sugar, retaining more mineral salts than refined sugar. Moreover, the process does not involve chemical agents. Ayurvedic medicine considers jaggery to be beneficial in treating throat and lung infections.

Jaggery is for sale in all the shops I go in here - except the ones that sell car tyres - it is one of the things you need to make wattalapam

Jaggery is how I feel when I've consumed too much jaggery - on the other hand maybe it's how I'd feel if I had bee stings around my mouth.

Jaggery-filled things 

The Golden Pudding Cupboard stands at one end of the dining room - a glass case full of sari-coloured sweets.























Wednesday, July 28

Things I Can't Show You

I used to do a lot of people-photographing but nowadays all this bloggy, facebooking, interwebbery inhibits me, not knowing where an image may end up and how it might be used can make the camera an unwelcome intrusion, so mostly I leave it in my bag.

There are so many photos I’d love to take in Sri Lanka; groups of schoolgirls, clustered under umbrellas in the street, their hair in thick black plaits, looking like a flashback to the fifties in impossibly white dresses and ankle socks, I’d also like to snap the men in bright sarongs holding umbrellas, shopping slung around them as they weave between buses on their bicycles.

and there’s the little girl with birds-nest hair dancing on the shop counter in her baggy underwear...

Last time in town I went to buy some sarong fabric. As soon as I walked into the shop the owners called out back to someone to come and see me. A skinny child with enormous eyes and a huge tangled pile of hair peeped from behind the curtain. Initially shy, she was soon showing off and performing dance routines while I shopped. Fabric bought and bagged I asked if I could take a photo, the mother said yes and disappeared so I took a quick snap of the dancing child, said goodbye and was about to go when the mother returned with a set of clothes and a hair brush, she quickly dressed the child and set about taming the hair.

This is the photo I feel that I have permission to use - you’ll just have to imagine other one.

Thursday, July 29

The Mouse Deer Whale Pig

The star attraction of the nature reserves are always the big cats. In Yala the leopard paparazzi flood into the national park every day hoping for a fleeting glimpse of the big spotty glamourpuss.

My own crush is on the much more mysterious and melancholic-sounding mouse deer. The books all describe this creature as secretive and solitary, the sole surviving member of the infraorder tragulina. It runs up low, shallow-angled branches to get itself into trees and it isn't really a deer at all, it is in fact more like a pig, especially in it's sexual behaviour.

The native name for the mouse deer translates as 'a deer and a pig' and my sense of it being stranded between species is reinforced by the wiki entry that says that it has

... a remarkable affinity with water often remaining submerged for prolonged periods to evade predators or other unwelcome intrusion. This has also lent support to the idea that whales evolved from water-loving creatures that looked like small deer


Wednesday, August 11

Trying to Give Gifts

We went along to watch a farmer, his young son and their cattle herd being presented with an anti-leopard pen last week, the idea being that young or sick animals can be put in the pen at night to protect them from leopard attack. The farmer was thrilled, but the calves weren't too keen.

Monday, August 16

The Wonder Dog

This is the hotel dog formerly known as Bollocks. All that changed last year when he was discovered with his head down a python's throat.

The rest of the python was wrapped around the dogs body and squeezing hard, the dog's owner thought Bollocks was a goner but shouted out for help anyway and noticed that the tiny bit of Bollocks that wasn't being strangled, the tip of his tail, wagged in response to his master's voice.

Help had arrived, the two men hit the python with sticks and it released the dog, unharmed but a bit cross, Bollocks bit the python before running home and has been henceforth known as Wonder Dog. 

Bringing Back The Sun

I'm back in the UK feeling all hazy and jetlaggy and it's bloody cold. A little pile of books that I read while I was away are still by my bed so I have been dipping back into them since my return for a warm-up.

The Book of Indian Birds: Salim Ali (1941)
Lovely illustrations and great text, I particularly liked Mr Ali’s descriptions of bird calls, here he is on the Malabar Pied Hornbill’s call;
A variety of loud cackling and inane screams reminiscent of the protestations of a dak bungalow murghi* seized by the cook, and also the yelps of a smacked puppy!

*Baffled I looked for explanation and found this wonderfully informative passage here
The British had set up rest-houses known as Daak Bungalow... Somehow, there was always an Anglo-Indian woman who would found her way to the Dak Bungalow to keep the company of the traveling British officer. Every Dak Bungalow has a love story to tell, only if the walls could talk.

In the rear, every Daak Bungalow had chicken coup manned by 'Murghi wala'


Reef: Romesh Gunesekera (1994)
Narrated by Triton, a young houseboy in the service of his hero Mister Salgado, sensuous and funny, turning chillingly dark towards the end, I loved it’s 170 pages so much that I eeked them out for days.
Thanks for the recommendation Eryl


How to see Ceylon: Bella Sidney Woolf (1914)
An early travel guide, Bella Woolf went to Ceylon in 1907 to visit her brother Leonard and ended up marrying the Assistant Director of the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens. Contains fascinatingly descriptive travel itineraries and plenty of useful advice:
A Topee should always be worn until 4 to 4.30 pm even on dull days


Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book (1929)
...constitutes a serious attempt to aid the housewives of Ceylon to practise the art of cooking so that, like the quality of mercy, the preparation of palatable dishes will bless her that gives and him that takes.

Contains recipes for things as diverse as Poached Eggs with Mince and Titta Tibbatu Mallung. I’m particularly fond of the section entitled Invalid & Convalescent Cookery, which gives this advice
Do not consult a patient about his meal, but try and find out what will be liked and let it come as a surprise.

Then follows such appetite tempters as Egg White Water, Beef Tea Custard, Invalid Blancmange, Sago Gruel and Stewed Spaghetti.
Who wouldn't get better when faced with this?

Running in the Family: Michael Ondaatje (1982)
The most delicious memoir of Ondaatje’s Sri Lankan family history, pieced together from photo albums and anecdotes told by friends and family members. I looked for it in a bookshop in Columbo, the elderly salesman snatched it down from the shelf when I mentioned the title declaring
this book is a must have ... an absolute must have
he clutched it so tightly that I had to fight it off him. Anyway it’s great and now it’s mine - here’s a bit;

An aunt gives an account of her journey to Ondaatje's father's wedding, they have seen a car in a ditch and next to it the Bishop who was to officiate at the wedding, everyone knew the man to be a terrible driver - he has to be given a lift.

First of all his luggage had to be put in carefully because his vestments couldn’t be crushed. Then his mitre and sceptre and those special shoes and whatnot. And as we were so crowded and a bishop couldn’t sit on anyone’s lap – and as no one could really sit on a bishop’s lap we had to let him drive the Fiat...

First Catch Your Bison

A water bison is what yer wash yer face in  Roger McGough

This year's Taste The World was the usual voyage of discovery; new friends, new music, new food. 

When a Canadian band requested bison meat I was a bit stumped, there doesn't seem to be enough room to raise bison in the UK but we discovered a bison-owning lady near Sedgefield who will post bison meat to you should you ever need some.  Bison meat is very lean, the Canadian boys' secret for BB perfection was to add beer to the bison burger mix - it was excellent.

Occasionally an artist has the sort of agent that will say 'oh yes my musician loves cooking he'd love to cook on stage,' I am sent a popular regional recipe and the musician has no idea what he has been signed up to. The Poulet Directeur General recipe was one of those; a very handsome Blick Bassey arrived at the kitchen stage on Sunday morning, told the audience that, as he has 7 sisters at home and no men are allowed anywhere near the kitchen, he had no idea how to make this dish. Therefore I must cook and Blick must play his guitar.

That turned out surprisingly well and there were lots of great moments during the event. The highlight of the weekend was a band called Nuba Nour, they belong to a tribe of Nubian people who lost their land to the Aswan Dam project and are effectively permanently homeless. There's a better video of them here  They cooked a fantastic lamb and okra recipe full of secret ingredients but gum mastic was essential to getting the texture right, during the cooking there was a lot of dancing going on, I managed to get this little clip.

Cheesy Bison Cakes

Minced Bison
20 kilos of Gruyére
2 kilos of salted cod
Pink biscuits from Reims
3 kilos smoked sausage
1 kilo 'good quality flower'
'30 graines de djansan'

Some of the items still on my shopping list. I'm having problems with that last one which is for a Cameroonian dish called Poulet Directeur Général - please let me know if you know what this spice might be.

This, of course, is all in aid of the annual gourmetfest or 'Taste the World', part of the WOMAD festival and I shall be reporting back on it next week.

Meanwhile I have fallen in love with these boys, they live in Switzerland where they have a chili farm and will be making a chili fondue with me on Friday.

Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake Baker's Man

I am off do another batch of cooking work soon. In order to hone my skills I recently visited a Master Baker for some expert tuition in the art of cake decoration. I have carefully noted the key requirements of tasteful decoration and will be applying them to my next job.

Scary Footwear Alert!

Don’t make a visit to a UK hospital or a pair of these may happen to you!

I put this blog and other online activities on hold lately in order to spend more time in the real world – yesterday the real world bit back and I found myself the A&E department wearing terrible footwear.

What have I been up to? – this year I have been in thrall to acid and ink and rubbing and rolling and all the things associated with the art of making an impression in the printmaking studio.

Printing presses are tanklike heavy and yesterday I felt the full weight of a metal press bed as it slid off it’s tracks and hit my foot on it’s way to the floor.

You know how when you trap a finger or bang your head on the doorway there’s a loud crack, a yelp, hot cursing but no real damage?

This event had the silence of something very serious, the impact knocked all feeling out of me, I stared at my boot and then slowly took it off, wondering dreamily if blood would gush and loose toes roll around on the floor.

By some miracle that bed bounced between my bones, I'm not crippled but do I need to rest up for a couple of days, so I’m confined to the sofa and a chance to catch up with the online world.

Meaningful Headgear

Sorry about all the neglect round here. I've been busy looking for the Meaning of Life which I had hoped might be revealed through the medium of a new job. The grave-digging thing didn't work out, mainly because I had to wear a frightful yellow helmet while operating the digger. I am now hoping to find a more stylish sort of Meaning.

I'm quite keen on getting a pirate-ey lifestyle, I like the swag and the swaggering, very fond of the rum and above all I love the hats. I've been doing a bit of research into the subject, here is one of my interviews.

Road Trip 5: In Which I Get Kippered

All Scottish dragons slain, set off back home, via Angel of the North.

Veered off direct route to visit Whitby, stayed in an old kippering house next to Fortunes. I still appear to be quite yellow, also noticing that friends giving me a little more space than usual.

Road Trip 4: in Which I Fight Dragons

Spent some days in Scotland fighting dragons/dinosaurs and volcanos with my nephew who helped me draw this picture of our adventures.




Explored a part of Scotland which involved a journey through the 'Devils Beeftub' also ate a fishcake while I was there.

Road Trip. 3: In Which I Encounter Children

Ensconced in Scotland, looking after my sister's children. Have only dropped baby twice so far and seem to be getting on quite well with the four-year-old who shares my enthusiasm for Dennis the Menace.

I tell the boy about my new grave-digging job, he thinks about all the excavating involved and says:

I expect you have to do that to stop them smelling

Road Trip. 2: In Which I Purchase A Spiny Balloonfish

Headed into the depths of Yorkshire and found a suitably scary-looking inn to stay for night. The sort of place full of people who all go silent when I walk through the door.

Barman says that in this part of the world one drinks Baileys with Brandy, wanting to fit in, tried a few of these ... rather good actually ... don't remember much of the rest of the evening.

Needed a Hair of the Dog to get going the following morning.


Continued drive towards Scotland, stopped in small town to investigate curio shop with large, dried Spiny Balloonfish. Request to purchase item. Take surprisingly long time to wrangle what is effectively a brittle, fragile, balloon stuck with sharp spines out of shop and into car. Next stop I see that the beast has thoroughly embedded itself in my upholstery.

Road Trip. 1: In Which I Visit Art

I'm going to visit Scotland via Art. In order to get to Art as fast as possible I take the motorway.





Absence of planning on my part so I arrive at Yorkshire Sculpture Park between exhibitions, saw lots of sculpture-moving kit and car-park renovationers.

Thank the Lord there is still plenty of Art lying around; very much liked set of huge military jackets made of metal.



Very keen on James Turrell. Visit JT 'Skyspace' in YSP. Sky doesn't seem very interesting during my visit but allow that freezing temperature has diminished my ability to contemplate properly.

Grave Digger Required

I'm on a bit of a Dickens jag at the moment and have just been watching Edwin Drood on telly.

Drood was duly murdered then I went and checked out some small ads, I found a job advert for a Grave Digger, the job description stated that:


Candidates must have previous experience in all tasks associated with the preparation of graves ...

Speechless

Heads, heads - take care of your heads!" cried the loquacious stranger, as they came out under the low archway, which in those days formed the entrance to the coach-yard. "Terrible place - dangerous work - other day - five children - mother - tall lady, eating sandwiches - forgot the arch - crash - knock - children look round - mother's head off - sandwich in her hand - no mouth to put it in - head of a family off - shocking, shocking!

Pickwick Papers: Charles Dickens

I lost my voice a few days ago, I can muster enough wind to squeak or whisper and make my predicament clear but it's easier to stay silent and it’s been fascinating how people react to this; a chap delivering wood to the house yesterday scrunched himself up, presented himself sideways and whispered at me from the corner of his mouth as though afraid that, unarmed with my own voice, his might shatter me into a million pieces.

Then there are people who must converse, I can usually head off brewing nonsense before it becomes torrential but today at the hairdressers I was helpless as a lady who clearly couldn’t bear the idea of there being no sound let her voice run riot in the face of my mutitude.

...everyone has this bug, I think it’s the weather getting cold then warming up ... the germs hang around at a lower level when it does that...


...Christmas, it took ages coming this year didn’t it? And then it came all of a sudden and much more than usual.


????

Best Christmas Present

Pork Tool Kit

Child Scaring

My Christmas contained young humans this year, I'm not often in their company and I find it hard to gauge my answers to their questions;

My 4-year-old nephew asked me what work his Auntie Lorna does

She sells cranial drills


...to brain surgeons


... So they can do brain transplants.

Reviving Absurdity

Who doesn't need an off-the-shoulder-see-thru poncho trimmed with pompoms?

I just went to Paris.

The whole point of going away is to renew one's sense of the absurd, you go to a new place with all its strange behaviour, you're there long enough to normalise the strangeness, then you come back home to a whole new set of previously unobserved ridiculousness.

The point of the Parisian trip was to attend a 'Congress', I found a world in miniature: I felt enormous as I tried not to wolf eclairs made for dolls and sipped on the tiny tiny cups of coffee. There were also people speaking and there were films being shown but I mainly remembered people obsessing about beverages. Listening makes people really hungry.

There were a lot of Americans at this event, from my own visits to the USA I know that American people need to be permanently plumbed into large reservoirs of caffeine - at the end of the Paris event when we were asked how the next one could be improved the big demand was for bigger coffee, I would've asked for bigger cakes but I was too shy.

When is a Kitchen not a Kitchen?

Fridge and microwave were hauled upstairs, lounge became lounge/kitchen diner, Bill the builder started work on the ground floor tearing up the floor and knocking holes in walls.

That first morning Bill asked me when the kitchen was arriving. I pointed at the cooker and dishwasher standing together in one corner and told him that the dining table, sink and a couple of sets of drawers were under the blue tarp outside. Bill gave me a look but said nothing and then the plumber turned up, he also asked when the kitchen was arriving, there were a couple of beats of silence, Bill and I looked at each other, then he informed the plumber

I think she wants it to be organic


Apparently a kitchen is defined by the arrival of a set of identically new items, the main point of the modern kitchen exercise is to cram as many 'units’ and appliances into the available space - these items must be fixed, they can’t move or change because, in say five years time, when your circumstance change or that style has become passé, you will be expected to take the whole lot out and start again. Clever, clever marketing people.

When we first moved into this house there was a constantly shifting population of lodgers, children and visitors, we needed lots of storage for food, pots and pans and work surfaces for prep. Cooking happened at odd times, people loafed around on sofas watching tv, arty school projects happened, Christmas decorations were made. After a few years of this, the office moved in, lodgers moved out, children grew up and the kitchen turned into a meeting room/workshop/cooking place/dining room.

When the office moved out last year the amount of cupboardage in the kitchen seemed excessive so I removed everything above waist height and proved the law about rubbish expansion in the presence of storage space - just how many colanders do we need, how many times have we used those funny knives, what exactly were we planning to do with all those plastic carrier bags? Why do we have a drawer/drawers for things that we don't know what to do with?

It's not quite finished yet - but already our old stuff  looks new because it’s in a different place, there’s room to add more storage if we need it but right now we’re enjoying lots of lovely spaces between lumps of furniture.

Danger: This blog might be turning into one of those home improvement sites – if you are allergic to such things turn away now.

Sorry about all the blog-neglect going on here, renovations Chez Labonne have taken over my life.

It's the ground floor, and it started with just a little bit of picking around the edges, first in February, and then a bit more in May,

Can Of Worms doesn't do the resulting mess justice: over in the lounge-ey area, the removal of a rancid blue nylon carpet uncovered shiny little tiles with deep fissures running through them. I threw my biggest rug over them, dragged in a couple of sofas and decided to ignore the situation for another thirteen years.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen area, tearing down the wall cupboards and built-in appliances revealed some impressive mouldiness. I picked off the scabbiest bits, whitewashed the walls, proclaimed myself a ‘New Rustic Minimalist’ and decided to ignore the situation for another thirteen years.

I cracked a week later and after many false commencement dates, Bill the builder arrived last month...

Who Ate All The Pies?

Lisbon is lovely but I headed straight out to Belem where the world-famous-best-ever Portuguese custard pies are made. This turned out to be the world's biggest cake-eating palace, as well as all the almond cakes, rice cakes, meringues and gateaux made here, 12,000 custard pies are baked and eaten daily in a cafe that can seat 2,000 cake-eaters.

Service Will Resume Shortly

Miss Whiplash drew up a schedule with lists and addenda of all the things that needed to be done by the end of today.

Tomorrow I shall sleep for a few days and then I'll go to Portugal to eat and have fun, I'll probably have something to say about that here.

Education These Days

A lot of people like the idea of 'working in television' but have no idea what that means, sometimes I get a glimpse into what is supposed happens in a production office, the letter below* arrived this morning and has managed to simultaneously brighten and depress my mood.



Hello, My name is xxxx xxxxxxx and i was wondering if there was any work experience available for producing? I am 15 years old and currently study at xxxxxxx (fancy school). I live in xxxxxx near xxxxxx (fancy area) and would be very grateful for any more information you have on work experience! I have skill such as:

Horse riding (hobby intermediate level)
Ballet (grade 7 and pointe)
Tap (grade 6)
Sailing (level 4 RYA)
Violin ( grade 5)
Piano (grade 8)
Running (hobby)
Drama (xxxxx School)
I have also done work experience with xxxxxxx productions so I know what I'm doing with the camera!

Thank you very much for your time! xxxxxx.

*The entire application is faithfully reproduced here, the only additions are the x's and the bracketed notes

Sun Exposure Will Harden Pants

Finding jeans to fit me has got more difficult, this is possibly due to my recent obsession with cephalopods resulting in my becoming part squid.

Surfing the net to see if there were any sexy 8-legged jeans, I came across some instructions from True Religion about how to care for TR jeans*.

1. Wash true religion jeans jeans when the first salt water (brine concentrated more) wash will not fade over time; wash jeans as much as possible without detergent, detergent will speed up the fade.

2. Please do not use hot water soaked pants, and that there will be a large degree of shrinkage phenomenon, the general temperature of 30 degrees can be. If possible, please do not use a washing machine to wash jeans, pants fold that would undermine the sense of touch of the original color pants, and that the body's natural wear white pants have become unnatural. Do not iron, to maintain the natural pants.

3. pair of jeans is best not to prolonged sun exposure, sun exposure will harden pants, dry pants on the pants to keep your great help. Dry clothes, the pants over and avoid the sun fade when your pants.

4. wash when we must remember to turn over inside the washing, can reduce fading. If the jeans are not dirty with oil or other special circumstances, the minimize liquid detergent (neutral) the amount (try not to use detergent, alkaline detergent is easy to make jeans fade), or even water to wash.

5. from the health point of view, of course, every day, wash pants. If you do not wash dirty with dust and bacteria under blisters like without detergent.

*this becomes even more amusing to English people because for us pants are underwear.

Whooshing

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams

Last June our small company accepted a challenge to deliver 5 hours of television by the end of September 2011 - a 500% increase in the previous year’s output. Each film has to meet a series of deadlines along it’s production route and as the last two hours of programming enters the final stages of delivery the whooshing has now reached hurricane-like proportions, our hair is all tangled and we are clinging on to heavy objects as we hope that we get to be spat out more or less intact at the other end.

The deadline heading straight for us right now is the final cut of our Giant Squid film*, getting to this point has involved working thousand-hour weeks ever since I can remember, this bank holiday weekend the director, producer and two editors are working continuous shifts.

It hasn’t been all work though, the producer nipped off on Saturday lunchtime to be the lion in a local production of The Wizard of Oz and to reassure his family that he is still alive and the director definitely got himself a couple of hours sleep - so when people ask us if the work has taken over our lives and whether we still have any friends left I can say with confidence that we totally embrace the idea of a healthy work/life balance.

*updates about this and our other films in production can be found on the Ammonite Films facebook page

Tea - Mongolian Style

Find a large brick of tea and crumble part of it into a pot of boiling water, add toasted millet.

Keep the tea at a steady simmer and place slices of cold mutton fat, some cheese that is like unsalted Feta and a cheese that is like a very hard Parmesan in the drinking vessels.

Play some songs.

After half an hour of boiling add salted rancid butter and mares milk - a bit at a time until it tastes right then pour into the tea bowls.


This is the scene when the cooking is nearly finished, a drinking tune is being played and strong alcohol is being passed around the audience they must flick three drops from the cup into the sky before drinking the rest in one go.

Tstsegmaa tests the mutton dumplings and Chinggel is putting the finishing touches to the tea.

Camping Queen

I'm hoping that I’ll have time to borrow a human this weekend.


Getting home from the Azores three weeks later than planned meant that I’ve had to cram the start of a new building project and catching up with five-weeks worth of office stuff into three and a half days before heading off to work at WOMAD for the weekend.


I love everything about WOMAD festivals except the camping, tents make my face go funny and I can never sleep in the things, however, if I want to do this job I have no choice and I love this job. Miss Whiplash lent me her little red tent for easy popability and I arrived early to pop it up in what seemed to be an advantageous place - near some rather posh-looking tents. I then went off to go and do some preparation for the weekend and came back a few hours later to see that the posh-looking tents have been assigned – I checked the tags on the tents to either side of mine.




I checked them out on Youtube, I don't think it'll be so bad - here’s one of them



BBC Radio 3 will be broadcasting some of the music from WOMAD.

An ABC Of Curiosities

Ambergris
I have been given a lump of ambergris by a whale-and-squid specialist

Ambergris is made in a whale’s stomach, it is the sharp parrotty beaks of many squid mixed up with the whale’s intestinal fatty juices. Sometimes this mélange is burped back out of the mouth like a fur ball but more usually it passes through the other end of the whale, the lump bobs to the surface of the sea where the process of salt water and oxidisation turns it into ambergris – it smells like whale poo and is used in the more expensive perfumes.

Bloody Kit
No sooner does one thing start working properly but another thing breaks down. We finally got a knob replaced that had broken last week - one full day of filming with everything working perfectly, by the following night the Giant Cable was broken...

Capes
The Faial cape is celebrated as an island icon, its distinctive outline is scribbled as grafitti on walls and picked out in stones on the pavements. Made from very heavy fabric, the hood is disproportionately large and is made to sit above the wearer’s head by means of a wooden frame which is apparently very uncomfortable. Could this have been the inspiration for Darth Vader?

Strange Behaviour

A Camera Boy has just turned up to help us find a giant squid somewhere in the big wet area in front of our house. He is fresh in from Indonesia where he was filming slow lorises (sounds a lot like slow lorries).

The slow loris in the wild is nocturnal and it is the world's only venomous primate; they excrete venom from their elbows and when threatened they lick their elbows to make their bite poisonous.

Before they were brought to my attention by the Camera Boy's filming trip I knew nothing about this animal but now I know that it is cute, furry and big-eyed so they are captured to sell on as pets*. They are also endangered.

*To get round the venom thing their teeth are snapped off.

Split Shifts

Now that half the team are out filming at night our mealtime structure has fallen apart. These days at noon 3 people will be eating toast or a full-on fry up while the others are half way through their working day.

Somewhere in the early afternoon a 'proper' cooked meal is ready, it would be nice if we sat and ate together but now we're never hungry at the same time so it gets eaten in shifts. Sandwiches and snacks are packed for supper on the boat and those of us left behind have a bread and cheese supper sitting at a table outside our house watching the sunset and wondering if the specks we can see on the ocean are 'our boat’.

I think we are all feeling a bit disjointed.

Ant Hoovering

Today I finally hoovered the ants.

During any given summer many ants launch themselves on doomed nuptial flights wherever it is that I am staying. It seems futile to try and do anything about it until the stream of bodies stops but I’ve been here for two weeks now and still they are pouring out from under my window frame, heading straight for any electrical items and then dying. Drifts of little black bodies had piled up too high to ignore any longer.

After hoovering I rediscovered the product that I bought last week in the Azores. I haven’t dared use it yet, I think it is moisturising cream but then again my translating powers might not be all they should be.


I prefer my body lotion not to smell. A few years ago I endured a harrowing journey to London when I boarded a train after rubbing my knees with cocoa butter. The train was packed and I took a seat behind a family with a little dog, the child started on immediately and loudly that there was 'Someone eating chocolate’ and the dog spent the entire journey scrabbling at me through the seats.

Despite the train-and-cocoa-butter experience, I ended up buying this product mainly because I was intrigued by the words on the bottle. 'Love Lotion’ promises 'sexy and attractive skin’ which is what one might hope for in a moisturiser but it also explicitly claims in words written around a pair of kissy lips that it 'seduces 9 out of every 10 men’ on the back of the bottle this claim is reinforced with the words 'in tests 9 out of every 10 men ...

I need more information about this testing: at what distances does Love Lotion work? Does it work on any particular sort of man?

The claim states that 90 per cent of men are seduced by Love Lotion but was it applied to women or, like cigarettes and other cosmetics, was the testing done on beagles and mice?

If anybody reading this is a tester for Love Lotion will you please supply answers to my questions.

The Odyssey

I have been informed that it is a legal requirement to install one television set per 20 square metres in every public place in the Azores, I haven’t verified this but I have seen a lot of screens - all showing what appears to be the same continuously running soap opera featuring swarthy men and heavily made-up women in dramatic and emotive situations.

We appear to have been caught up with the drama, our days now cycle through a series of fairly predictable lurches from tragedy to triumph and back again.

Last Monday afternoon a lorry turned up with our Giant Cable which made us happy, but then we couldn’t get it off the truck which was awful … but then we did something terribly clever with poles and leverage - haha.

We celebrated our possession of the cable while choking on the smell of burning clutch left by the Giant Cable lorry who spent an hour trying to leave our property.

As the lorry finally heaved itself away an Austrian lady appeared with a truckload of dry wood, the wood was unloaded and we were very happy, the wood lady wanting to return home to her starving children got into her truck … which refused to start, we pushed her in her vehicle sending it cascading down the hill but still it didn't start - I hope her children are ok.

The principle location for our drama has now moved down to the harbour where our boat is moored and we are building a system for managing our equipment on the boat, a system that would gladden the heart of Heath Robinson - a knotty affair of pulleys, winches and fly-wheels, that has needed endless modification. Several days after we should be in the water we are still trying to make everything strong enough and balanced enough and not too heavy.

Our efforts would not have succeeded this far without the genius of the boat’s skipper and his friends who have pitched in on the whole glorious affair. To counter-balance all of this practical brilliance and to stop us feeling too positive we are also dogged by a Greek chorus of shaggy old men who stop by, often for hours at a stretch, to shake their heads and tell us that what we’re doing is rubbish and it’ll never work.

Our island is a very decorated place, wall paintings and mosaics are everywhere, the picture I’ve posted here is on a wall outside a restaurant where one can eat and watch the weeping/smouldering soap opera. Interpretations welcome.

Here We Are Then

Friday

Arrived Azores at lunchtime, it is damp and it is a bank holiday here. Shops shut. Luggage still in Lisbon.

We hear that our giant cable, housed in a crate the size of a small apartment and the major component of our filming kit – the one that was freighted two weeks ago - has not arrived.

Seven of us are occupying two adjacent holiday homes, most of us are sleeping in the upper house, the lower house has become the camera-cable-computer-nerve-centre. The upper house has a wood oven and I have ordered wood which can’t be delivered until Monday.

Saturday

Starts misty, gets rainy … then torrential

Mosquitos don’t like being out in the rain, the island’s entire population of biting insects appear in our house looking for food and shelter. At breakfast time the youngest Camera Boy, fed up with the attention, took his can of man perfume, pointed it at 'flying stuff’ and pushed his finger down on the sprayer until the can was empty.

Someone called with the information that they spoke to a man who is almost certain that our cable is in his cargo-collecting place on our island – he will check first thing Monday when the cargo place opens.

Sunday

The sun is out, steam-drying the landscape - colours are supersaturated

A veteran cameraman-oceanographer is part of our team, charming, handsome and fishy – it’s like we have found a synthesis of Clark Gable and Jacques Cousteau. He goes out to sea in a kayak that he pedals rather than paddles. When he sees something interesting he gets in the water and films it. Today he filmed a baby whale playing near the surface of the ocean, the footage is very beautiful.



Monday

No-one has any idea where our cable is until lunchtime when it is tracked down in Lisbon.

The man with wood for the wood stove is called to find out the time of his delivery, he tells us that he has not had time to go out and chop down any trees yet.

Praying To Edna

Miss Whiplash and Girl Wonder have organised our squid-hunting trip. Without them there would be no expedition.

I have talked about Whiplash in previous posts, she is very tall and good at sums and when she is not in trouble with the police she runs our film company with a rod of iron. Miss Whiplash also sings in a band. This weekend she is off to play at Glastonbury and somewhere between handing me the call sheet for the trip and telling me that she had ten packets of Betty Crocker mix at home which had to be turned into hash cakes by the morning she advised me to pray to Goddess Edna, I misheard this before I looked it up, so forever in my mind we will be asking Edna's help in our quest to find a Giant Squid before the end of July.

Accounts of Edna's life vary, she was an Inuit with an abusive father who was desperate to marry her off to the highest bidder. In some accounts, having realised that he'd married her to a 'bird creature' Edna's father tries to rescue her, this involves throwing her into the sea. Other versions have it that the father is so enraged by Edna's refusal to obey him that he throws her into the sea. Either way Edna always tries to rescue herself by climbing into her father's kayak and he chops off her frozen fingers. Edna falls to the depths of the ocean turning into a sea animal as she plummets. Edna's fingers grow into seals and whales and polar bears and Edna becomes the ruler of sea monsters.

the image is one made by my new favourite artist Ningeokuluk Teevee

Doodling

There is so much graffiti going on where I live that the shopkeepers have decided that, rather than fight it, they will go with the flow and many have asked the graffiteurs to artify their shop signs and shop fronts. I am filled with the urge to go out at night with my own cans to add to the decoration.

Does anyone else think that my plan to transform the 'Massage Club' front would make it more amusing?




This is all work displacement daydreaming, I pass the 'Sausage Club' twice daily but my waking hours are taken up with getting ready to go on a filming trip in the Azores which is why I have no time to blog let alone paint.

I'm off at midnight and will try to post from my far away island when I'm not busy trying to catch a giant squid

Man and Lady In Garden With Cat

Twenty years ago I bought an old Super 8 camera in a flea market and filmed everything that moved until I ran out of film. These masterpieces then languished in a drawer for years.

I made two attempts to get the reels digitised but neither time was the job done well. Bits of my footage have survived the process though and earlier this year I used them to practice using a video editing programe.

This first epic shows my parents playing in the garden

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.

Getting a Reputation

Bristol gets in the news now and again it’s always interesting to see which bits of information stick.

Miss Whiplash stayed late in the office last night, waiting for one of our cameras to be returned by a French company who had been using it to film bats in Nicaragua.

The camera was delivered by a handsome and underemployed young artist who was delighted to be in Bristol - our city was a holy place for him.

Where can I see ze Banksys?

Whiplash gave him a map and pointed out some of the places where the young man could see some of the artist’s best work. But the man looked concerned

Are zese in any of the bad places?

Whipash was puzzled - what do you mean by bad places?

for example, St Pauls I ‘ear it is full of how you say? ... toxicos

is there anywhere else you’ve been warned about?

yes Southmead are you telling me to go anywhere near Southmead?*

Whats wrong with Southmead?

The Nazis are living there


*The only reason that we know of Southmead is because of its hospital which has an excellent neurosurgery unit.

Whale Meat Again

I have just returned from the Azores, this was a recce for a forthcoming filming expedition which was arranged and executed with tremendous haste. I’ve spent the last four days meeting skippers and making lists, measuring things, making drawings and drinking a lot of strong coffee. The main things that have stayed in my head from the trip are these:

a) Portuguese as a written language clearly has similarities with Spanish, but when spoken it is full of soft szjujj-ey noises which makes it sound like a language being played backwards

b) There are a lot of sausages on the Azores, I didn’t get a chance to sample them all, but I can recommend Azorean black pudding.

c) The Azores is Whale World; former whale-processing stations line the roads to the harbours, bars are full of little whales carved out of their own bones, snack bars operate from whale-shaped huts and whales are woven into the in the pavements.

I saw 'whale’ on a restaurant menu but I didn’t find out if it really was from that animal, it might have turned out to be just a whale-shaped sausage.

Chasing John Lynch

We like whiteboards to keep track of what's to be done around the office. They get full of notes about jobs to be done, shopping lists, and about a million unresolved problems.

Next week we will be recording the narration for two of our films, Whiplash and I have been squabbling over who gets to chase John Lynch.

Fuzzy Pictures: day 7

Since our 'riots' last month, my neighbourhood has been host to a continuing party, even in the rain people crowd the streets. Yesterday I was struggling home with my shopping and was so overcome by the glorious technicolour everywhere that I decided to photograph my favourites in the last 500 metres before I got to my door.

Fuzzy Pictures: day 6

I needed a photo frame and wandered into what looked like the right sort of shop. I didn't see a photo frame but I did see a clock on a suction pad which I thought might be useful stuck to our fridge (now that I've thrown my cooker out I have no kitchen clock). The suction clock was £4.

On the way to the till I saw some antlers shaped like mirrors which I had no idea I needed, I couldn't see the price on them so I took them to the till. On handing them over I noticed a ticket for £22 stuck on the back of the packet of antlers. At that moment the man at the till said

those antlers are 50p

Gosh, I said that's good do you have any more?

the man checked the computer and said that technically the one I had didn't exist and in fact the till price was not 50p but -50p, he rang my purchases up and I paid £3.50.

Bargain!

Fuzzy Pictures: day 5

I've been tearing out strange and interesting pages from magazine for decades, today I decided to decorate one of the edit suites with them, the parts are still being shifted around but they must get stuck down tomorrow.

I'm hoping the editor will enjoy it, this bit appears to be the animal cruelty section, it includes a photo of James Dean playing bongos to some cows and a pig, Emilio Zapata blowing smoke in the face of a night monkey and some images of a horse dressed as a zebra being ridden by a tiger.

Fuzzy Pictures: day 4

Darn fox - still evading capture

Fuzzy Pictures: day 3

Trying to round up the animals for treatment - panic ensues!

Fuzzy Pictures: day 2

I've just discovered that Hugh has carpet moth.

Treatment starts tomorrow

Fuzzy Pictures: day 1

My lovely Lumix has broken, just as I've got the urge to photograph things, but I shall not be deterred, my iphone 3 will stand-in and herald the start of a week-long 'Fuzzy Picture of the Day' feature.

Today's image shows you two things of which I am very proud:

Thing Number One = Brick-o-matic Bread, it might look a bit black but it's jolly nice and people have been known to pay a lot of money for this sort of thing in Paris.

I'm much prouder of

Thing number Two = this is yeast that I've kept alive for two whole weeks. Yeast must've inspired someone to make the Tamagotchi; one has to feed it, protect it and keep it happy or it dies.

I've never had a proper pet or looked after a baby (my sister is having one and might need my help), this is a sort of practise run.

Oven Shopping

The Brick-o-matic is all very well but a kitchen needs an oven and I'm keeping an eye out for something suitable. Yesterday I saw this one. I like the towel rail detail and the little warming box at the foot of the burning part (presumably it's for reviving/steaming cold mice). However that oven won't fit anything much bigger than a single cat*, I need at least a double-catter, maybe even a triple so I'll keep looking ...


*I'm not planning to actually cook any cats, but I have noticed that cats are an excellent unit of measurement

Baking A Labonne

When we moved into this house I threw out the mimsy fireplace that was blocking our magnificent chimney hole. Since my recent kitchen destruction I've been experimenting with different configurations for cooking in this space.

Please note the Labonne Patented Brick-o-matic Adjustable Height Grilling System, once I've finished my trials I'll be putting it on the market and hoping that you will all support me and purchase several - the ideal wedding gift!

My New Minimalism

I’ve been a bit stressed lately...

Normally I bake my way out of trouble but lately I've needed to get a bit more physical; I recently spent a happy weekend (I think it was happy) pulling up the nasty carpet in the living room and tearing off wallpaper, beating the room into submission until it was reduced to a bare shell.

When the thrill of that destruction had ebbed I turned my attention to the kitchen. The toy oven that never baked evenly and won’t fit a proper roast dinner, that and the leaky fridge were both hurled outside. Great lumps of wall cupboard that were stuck up on the walls taking up valuable air space, they came off ... so did the mimsy peach-coloured tiles.

All done, the next thing I needed was cake.

I now spend a lot of time looking at the space where the oven was.

PS: I've just reread one of my old posts, clearly home chaos is a recurring theme in my life (and that of my friends)