Best shot

KermesZ a l'Est on Taste the World stage making mitraillettes

shopping list

a big bag of big potatoes

20kg beef dripping

2 X deep fat dryers

a can of sunflower oil

lots of diced lamb

20 X eggs yolks

a lot of garlic

2 X jars of 'unsweeted' mustard

salt and pepper

many big baguettes


method

make audience chop potatoes

double fry in sizzling dripping

band prepare lamb kebabs shake maraccas and hoot horns

horn player uses electric wand to make mayonnaise while playing mouth organ

loud noise must be produced for duration of project

to serve

Wipe a cooked kebab through a 10cm slice of  baguette that has been
liberally spread with garlic mayonnaise - you now have a lubricated meat
sandwich

cram sandwich with chips and more mayonnaise

you can be a little quieter now while you share the eating with a friend



KermesZ a l'Est also do this sort of thing

It's WOMAD time again

I will be operating the Taste The World stage*

a band of Balkan-music-playing-Belgians wish to make frites - the correct way 

Taste the World starts with a series of quests, today I must venture into the a part of the city devoid of homes, beard trimming workshops, and artisan bread shops. I drive my trusty steed deep into the land of wholesale fruit markets, timber yards, metal welders and ... the edible oil depot to collect 20kg of beef dripping   

I park alongside a fleet of lorries, buzz a wonky doorbell and am let into the sort of reception area that shouts at you that the entire workforce is male    

Scraps of discarded bits of paper  decorate the carpet, I wait for a man in wellington boots to process my order, I pay, he disappears then returns with my box of dripping

are you using it to make casts?


today I learn that sculptural casting is a common use for beef dripping


*Taste The World is a kitchen on a stage,  musicians come here cook (or direct me to cook) and talk about what they eat back home - click tags beneath this post for previous on this event

overheard conversation

I came across this in one of my old notebooks

Three women are sitting at a table under a tree outside a café, they have tea and cakes, one of the women is asked about her new boyfriend   

So what’s this man like?

He’s the hairiest man I’ve ever seen - hairier than a monkey

hairier than Robbie Williams?

I’ve never seen Robbie Williams

He’s really hairy

Yeah hairier than that – when he was in hospital the nurse drew back his sheets and screamed

I'm being interviewed in a hairdressing salon

between the sinks are small mountains of bosomy torsos and manly sets of legs

phantom limbs stick out - waving or drowning or kicking the air

one of our volunteers inherited the contents of a vintage shop, these mannequins will go in our sensory room

our conversation is overwhelmed by the religious service going on in the care home lounge which is also a coffee shop. The hairdressing salon-slash-office is a glass-walled cube within the lounge-slash-church-slash-coffee shop. 

when the congregation shut their eyes in prayer we sneak out to investigate the sensory room

it's along the 'willow' corridor

care homes use plant names so they don't have to say 'dementia' too much, other homes refer to patients with dementia as 'bluebells', the same way some people say 'fudge' instead of other, ruder 'f' words   
  
we stand in the doorway of the sensory room, it's empty except for a row of chairs and a rainbow-coloured-fibre-optic-disco-light 

we'll bring in herbs and then people will smell the mint and it'll remind them of sunday roast lamb dinners

I think of the willow people feeling the boobies and manly trunks when the mannequins take up residence