EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

I love pancakes. I’m well-known in my family for making them, and making them well. OK, they take a little time, and there’s that faffing around with eggs, flour and milk, but that’s part of the fun of it. I enjoy cooking partly because I can make a joyous mess. The delicious end result is simply a side benefit.

But no, apparently I am a time-wasting fool. Why on earth should I make pancakes the old-fashioned way when I can squirt batter out of a can and into the pan?

And it’s organic, too! Why, I’d be an idiot not to try the stuff! Maybe I can mix it with some spray cheese for an added taste treat!

*bork*

(via HolyMoly)

…or not, depending on your point of view.

Ok, I’ll stop now. Not quite sure what came over me there…

Ho ho, hos.

Who knows? Might be worth a look.

Because tis the season, a link to George Harvey Bone’s Cooking With Booze. A fine work, and deeply appropriate for the festive season.

Tell you what, try a couple of recipes then splash out on the real thing. Cookbooks are much more worthwhile with a patina of use.

(and on a slightly sadder note, a diatribe on the sad state of Oddbins, once my boozeshop of choice. Sounds like they’re going down the tubes rapidly. What a shame. They sorted me out with emergency birthday and Xmas pressies on numerous occasions.)

Just cos it’s Christmas, and everybody likes a taste of greasepaint…

To St. Luke’s Church in Chelsea last night, for the Coro Christmas Concert. This is starting to become a seasonal ritual for us, and as it usually comes around the end of Birthday Week puts us in the mood to put up the tree and decorations, mull some wine and slap “I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Winter Solstice Vol. XVIII” on the CD player.

I’ve called it a carol concert in the past, and this is a disservice. There are carols in the setlist, giving us mere mortals a chance to bellow along with the exquisite tones of the choir (and believe me, they will leave you standing when it comes to the last verse of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” and they pull into fifth gear. It’s like being in an Austin Seven pottering along quite happily thank you, and all of a sudden a E-Type Jag smoothes past you and disappears into the distance. No effort. Just sheer bloody class and power) but the emphasis is more on music for the season, and they take on a broad remit. This year’s programme took on everything from a Vaughn Williams piece, to a 13th century hymn, In Dulci Jubilo, to my personal favourite, Riu, Riu, Chiu, a 16th century Spanish peasent song whose call and response structure put me in mind of Gaudete. Sterling work from the debonair, handsome soloist on this one too. (Will this do, Simon?)

Readings this year were by Harriet Jones MP herself, Penelope Wilton, who did a fantastic job with poems and short prose pieces that ranged from the humorous to the quietly melancholic.

This is one reason I always enjoy Coro’s Christmas do. They’re never afraid to include reflective, and sometimes downright sad pieces in the evening. Take their reading of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”

“One day soon, we all will be together
If the Fates allow,
Until then we’ll have to muddle through
Somehow.”

It’s hardly Rudolf The Red-Nosed Ruminant, is it?

In short, great fun, and it’s always good to try something to add a little sharpness to the sugary glop that Christmas music can so often be.

Talking of sharpness – next year, guys, either get the heating fixed in St. Lukes or lay on some mulled wine. it was frickin’ freezing in there!

Woo yay I’m officially older than I used to be. As time has wandered on I’m tending to find that I’m blurring the boundaries around the cursed day itself, and spreading the celebrations across a full week. This year’s Birthday Week has been full of treats, and has pretty much dulled the blow of the dread four-one.

To start then, one of the most eagerly anticipated comebacks of the year, a band who’d been away for far too long hit the UK. We were one of the lucky few to get tickets for their gig.

No, not flippin’ Led Zep, although we are talking about a band whose drummer also died suddenly and too soon. We caught Crowded House at Wembley Arena last Sunday. We’ve been part of this community for a while, and it was a huge rush to see the boys in full cry again. The last time we saw Neil Finn was as part of the Finn Brothers tour, the night after Paul Hester, the mercurial Crowded House drummer, had been found dead in a Sydney park. That evening was part wake, part celebration, and one of the strangest concerts I’d ever been to. Bic Runga, the support act, kept bursting into tears during her set. Hester’s place was taken by a mike stand and snare drum stage centre, a tribute to his place in the band.

This time was a much more celebratory occasion. Most of the outstanding Time On Earth album got an airing, and of course all the hits, which I roared along to with abandon. This is part of the fun of a Crowdies gig, of course, and if you don’t get chills from a full Wembley Arena flawlessly singing Four Seasons In One Day with no input from the band whatsoever (in fact they’ve been known to put down their instruments and just listen at this point in proceedings) then you’re dead from the hips down. A joyous, transcendent evening. 

She’s a Vintage VR100, a punky plank I’m planning on thrashing mercilessly. Simple, stripped back, a no-nonsense grin machine. And even Clare approves of the choice. I’m so happy I could just fall over.

Finally, a couple of sites that deserve your perusal. My good friend Dr Timothy P Jones has started a blog where he turns the news stories of the day into poetry. This site is getting better by the day, and I’m waiting for the day when he responds to my challenge to summarise the Daily Sport.

Scott Johnson has hit the nail on the head well and truly with this one. I’m at least 20 of these!

Fantastika was a word I thought I’d find being used much more frequently this year. First brought up by Warren Ellis (of course), it describes the supergenre that encompasses SF, fantasy and horror. When “literary” authors dip their toes into genre fiction (or in the case of Margaret Attwood and more recently Jeanette Winterston, dive in fully clothed, and then claim that what they have written is not SF because SF is rubbish about cloning and robots and space aliens) they are adrift in the seas of fantastika, and it is a thoroughly refreshing dip. Being a writer of fantastika means that you can play with all kinds of genre conventions, and twist them into new shapes that better suit the story that you wish to tell. In my latest (work in progress) book, I’m happily throwing all kinds of junk together, mixing magic with an arms race involving petrol-driven mecha. It’s enormous fun to write, and hopefully will be as much fun to read.
Anyway, co-writer of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, John Clute, has come up with a road map for fantastika that’s instantly got me thinking anew about the structure of my book. It’s a fascinating read in it’s own right, and claims a new and unexpected writer to the fold.

(ganked off Warren Ellis – who else?)