Runny Thoughts

Come back Australia, all is forgiven

A strange thing happened one morning a couple of weeks ago. Pale, sleep-deprived men staggered out into the streets, disbelieving grins on their faces. They smiled at random strangers and helped old ladies across the road. Some were even polite to traffic wardens.

Alan Sugar was nice to an Apprentice.

Yes, extraordinary circumstances prevailed: England had won a Test match in Australia during a live Ashes series (by which I mean an Ashes series that hadn't been won six months before it started by those dastardly Australians with their underhand trick of playing the game much much better than anyone had ever played it before).

From the prevailing mood of euphoria you'd've thought that the whole country had got laid simultaneously.

Which, in a funny kind of way, it had.

In the period between that Test match and the one that has just started, even stranger things happened.

England got confident. The country, that is. The cricket team was already confident.

Mockery of Australians became the norm. Pitying texts, tweets and status updates flew through cyberspace. Stranger still, Australians seemed resigned to their fate. In desperation, they selected a player called Beer, as if invoking the spirit of David Boon, whose record of 52 cans consumed on an Australia-England flight stands to this day. Hilarity ensued. Meanwhile, I got nervous, preemptively texting friends with doom-laden warnings like "it's still only 1-0, you know", "a long way to go yet", and "steady now".

And now we’ve had the first day of the Perth Test, and a couple of things have become clear:

Thing 1: even the most cautiously optimistic of England fans (guilty as charged) has realised that the series is England's to lose.

Thing 2: World Cricket, and especially Test Cricket, is in deep trouble.

A disclaimer on Thing 1: England may still lose the series, but, if they do, it will be the result of the biggest choke since Oxford United threw away a 7-0 lead with ten seconds of injury time left against the eight surviving members of Dagenham and Redbridge Under-12s (reserves) in the First Preliminary Round of the 1987 Watney's Red Barrel Consolation Cup.

Thing 2 is, for the England fan keenly anticipating a first Ashes victory down under since 1986, somewhat counter-intuitive (sorry, I hate that word, but sometimes only the hideous words will do). Much as England fans would enjoy a long-overdue retention of the oldest trophy in cricket, the sport needs Australia to be strong, and, unthinkable a concept as it may have been just a year ago, the signs for the future are not good.

Consider this: back in the day, when Aussie batsmen were lantern-jawed, box-girder-chewing, Pommie-munchers, it was commonly held that Australia’s second-best (and third, and fourth...) would make fine-grained, low-fat mincemeat of England’s first team. This was regularly proved by the insultingly easy victories for Australia A in the warm-up games at the beginning of England tours down under. It was as if they were the commis chefs in a Michelin-starred restaurant, passing the platter of diced Pom to a baggy-hatted, spongebag-trousered tantrum factory with a casual “there you go, chef, we’ve skinned, gutted and filleted them for you, and put them in a nice lemon and garlic marinade. I’m sure you can finish them off.” Batsmen of the calibre of Stuart Law (79 first class hundreds, average of 50), Darren Lehman (82 first class hundreds, average of 58 or so) and Michael Hussey (he could teach Prince Charles a thing or two about waiting your turn) were unable to establish themselves in the side.

But now, faced with injuries and loss of form, and the possibility of losing the Ashes at home after just three tests, the selectors turned to the next-in-line, and found the coming generation unready for the task.

Phillip Hughes may well develop into the most destructive batsman of his time, but at the moment, on all available evidence, he is as much a Test-class opener as I am a surprisingly spacious three-bedroomed house in Clapham’s fashionable Abbeville Village, situated within easy striking distance of all local amenities and travel links. His lack of anything approaching a defensive technique was cruelly exposed by Chris Tremlett, and England were up and running, able to exploit the lack of confidence in the Australian upper order with startling ease.

Soon enough they had the opportunity to bowl at Steven Smith, a talented young cricketer, albeit one batting at least a place too high, whose stated aim was to ‘come into the side and be fun’. This is a remarkable new slant on the role of the number 6 batsman, and one which prompted the ignoble thought that a more appropriate pick might have been Sir Les Patterson.

The shots played by Hughes (cross-bat to a full straight one) and Smith (indeterminate post-lunch prod) may have had the desired effect: ‘Test opener and number 6? Don’t make me laugh!’

The point is not that these two are untalented - on the contrary, they are almost certain to develop into high class Test cricketers, given time. But when the Ashes are about to be lost, Australia should be able to whistle up cricketers who can offer more than a season's batting average of 22 (Hughes) and some bits-and-pieces middle-order biffing and occasional, eminently hittable leg spin (Smith).

Before you say anything, I am well aware that by even thinking those words, I am inviting run-a-ball double centuries from both players in the second innings, backed up by an unplayable and series-turning spell of spitting leggies from Smith and g azelle-like wonder-catches in the gulley from Hughes.

They were going to happen anyway. Not my fault.

Looking further down the order, the spin-bowling cupboard, post-Warne, is distressingly bare. X-man Xavier Doherty lasted just two Tests, poor chap, and it seems that the selectors are blind to the Ashley-Giles-esque qualities of Nathan Hauritz. He may never play Test cricket again, and it would be to Australia's detriment.

As for the fast bowling, the selection policy is in confusion, but the overwhelming impression is that this is all they have. There are no young thrusters waiting to burst into the squad. The standard of cricket being played in the Sheffield Shield, which used to be held up to all other countries as the example to which they should aspire, is, according to those who know, lower than ever before.

Now, it is very un-Australian even to consider the possibility of them not being at, or at least very near, the top of any sporting tree, and particularly crucket. But they’ve been doing some terribly un-Australian things recently.

The worst-case scenario is that the dip in quality in Australia's domestic scene persists, young athletes look to other sports (notably Australian Rules Football) and Australia become, medium-to-long term, a mediocre team, thus further denuding the pool of competitive Test-playing nations.

Unthinkable? That's what they would have said about The West Indies in the 1980s.

In A Bit Of A Fix

I have blogged before (here) about how the Classical Music industry could and should learn from sport. The events of the past week have thrown up another instance.

First, a bit of background.

The News of the World revelations about alleged ‘spot-fixing’ in cricket have caused, it is safe to say, a bit of a stir. The moral high ground is now more crowded than Groucho Marx’s cabin as commentators, ex-players, bloggers and ordinary-men-in-the-street wring their hands while simultaneously throwing them up in the air in horror (quite a feat when you’re also balancing on the High Wire of Hypocrisy).

Most laughable was the look on ECB chairman Giles Clarke’s face as he handed Mohammed Aamer his Man Of The Series award. Obviously Clarke himself is above criticism and has never associated with shady characters or accepted money for actions that could endanger the future of global cricket. Oh no. Of course not.

Anyway, the ins and outs of the case (and they are complex) are not my concern.

Cricket has its problems, but Classical Music has been beset by similar headaches for years, with performances being manipulated by betting syndicates shamefully indifferent to the effect on an unsuspecting concert-going public.

The following is a brief extract from a conversation held in a central London hotel this week. Full details are in the hands of the police, and I have obviously had to change some names to protect the probably-guilty.

Man A: So we’re talking big money?

Man B: You’d be amazed. Spot betting on Proms has escalated hugely in the last few years. All the money’s in the little details: wrong entries, split notes, all that kind of stuff. Enough to be noticed, but not enough to disrupt the performance as a whole.

Man A: And you can arrange it?

Man B: OK, let’s go into details. This is just to prove that I have these guys in my pocket, ok? Tomorrow night’s Prom, in the overture, the principal horn will split the third note of his solo.

Man A (taking notes): The third note in the overture.

Man B: That’s right. The Bb. Then at the beginning of the recapitulation of the last movement of the concerto, the pianist will have a memory lapse and go into the wrong key. He will be out for a whole bar.

Man A: OK. Wrong key in recap.

Man B: And the third event that we will arrange is at the beginning of the main allegro in the first movement of the symphony.

Man A: Allegro in symphony.

Man B: the flautist will play double speed for half a bar and then correct himself.

Man A: OK I think that’s all clear. Thanks. Here’s the first payment.

(Sounds of money being counted).

Man A: Second payment to follow after the concert.

Man B: Thanks. Believe me, you could make a lot of money on this.

Man A: Just one question.

Man B: Fire away.

Man A: Do you ever fix events with conductors? You know, dodgy upbeats, wrong tempi, that kind of thing?

Man B (snorts derisively): Tchah! You have to be kidding. Who’s going to notice another mistake by those guys?

Man A: Fair point. Nice doing business with you.

It's a mad world. No, really.

I don’t get political very often on this blog. But here’s a brief rant. I’m afraid those of you who have come to expect writing of a comedic and trivial nature here will have to wait a bit longer (those who think my writing is more laughable than funny should, on the other hand, feel right at home).

The papers, blogs and social media were abuzz yesterday with the story of the cat and the wheelie bin.

If you missed it, a lady in Coventry was caught on CCTV stopping to stroke a cat before whipping open a handy wheelie bin and popping the benighted moggie into it.

It’s ok. The cat (Lola) survived. It is possible that the lady (Mary) won’t, given the level of vitriol that has been spat her way. The inevitable Hatebook pages have been started up etc etc.

Disclaimer: I love cats. There is one sitting next to me as I write. It is slightly damp from an ill-advised jaunt into the rain, but I love it still. And along with many people I was disgusted and fascinated by the thing wot that lady done. It weren’t right, were it?
But people, please. If we’re talking animal welfare, let’s turn our attention towards battery farms, shall we? Organised cruelty on a massive scale, not just a random and slightly mad act of temporary incarceration.

And if we want real perspective, how about going here and giving all you can afford to the flood victims of Pakistan?

The world has gone mad. Mad, I tell you.

Ok, rant over. I promise I’ll be trivial again soon.

I #heart @Twitter

It’s been quite a week for Clare Balding.

She joined Twitter last Tuesday, with the specific intention, or so it seemed at the time, of calling AA Gill a twat. This wasn’t, I should add, a random act of abuse, merely a response to an article in The Sunday Times in which Gill referred to her as a ‘dyke on a bike’.

Now I don’t intend to take sides on this. All I will say is that The Sunday Times doesn’t seem an appropriate place to display childishness, homophobia and ignorance.

We have The Daily Mail for that.

It does seem, though, as if Mr Gill has aroused the ire of quite a section of society. The row has escalated to the extent that John Prescott joined the fray, referring to Gill as a sh**. (Either the asterisks refer to an erudite footnote and AA Gill is a ‘sh’, or he meant ‘shit’.)

Pithy though the epithets ‘twat’ and ‘sh**’ are, they are no more than ‘sixth in the semi-final and hoping to be one of the fastest losers’ when compared to Emma Kennedy, who in a flash of Usain Bolt-like inspiration branded the Sunday Times journalist ‘a cockjuggling thundercunt’.

That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is championship-quality swearing. Hats off. With form like that Kennedy will surely have a chance of glory in the Potty-Mouthing event come 2012.

Swearing, enjoyable though it may be, is not the point of this post, however.

The blogosphere is littered with invective concerning the joys (hurrah!) or perils (boo!) of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, Hobnob (made that one up) and other forms of ‘social media’.
While I am an avid user of at least one of these, I am interested by the use of the word ‘social’ in this context. It is a curious way of describing a phenomenon that encourages people to spend more time interacting with their myriad computing devices than with their families and (real) friends.

Be that as it may, these sites do have their uses. Where else would it be possible to be ignored by so many celebrities simultaneously? Or gather ‘followers’ who wouldn’t recognise you if you trod on their toes?

There are those who poo-poo Twitter. Well, at the risk of plagiarising Blackadder, I see your poo-poo and raise you another poo-poo.

One of the joys of Twitter is that it can be what you make of it. Faced with the limitation of 140 characters, and the opportunity to reach thousands of people without actually having to go anywhere or meet any of them, there are those who have decided to use it for professional development and ‘reaching a wider audience’.

Others see at as a way of sharing stuff they’ve seen on the internet, a development for which I am profoundly grateful. If it hadn’t been for them I wouldn’t have thought to revisit Dave Allen, The Two Ronnies, Morecambe & Wise, Tommy Cooper, Cheers and many others.

And while the days of tweeting such things as ‘I am now going to go upstairs and brush my teeth’ are thankfully long gone (mostly), there are still others who spend most of their time bantering with their mates, passing wry comment on the passing world and generally wasting time. So much cheaper and less debilitating than going to the pub.

In many ways, Twitter is (or at least feels) liberating. Other people’s banalities are mercifully short; and your own are quickly lost in the swirling maelstrom that is the Twitter timeline. If someone likes it, they can prolong its life it for a few more minutes with the blessed Retweet. If it’s rubbish, it’s gone in an instant.

Well, apart from being preserved for ever in the Library of Congress, which for most people probably isn’t as scary as it sounds (“Aagghh! Future generations will know what I had for breakfast on January 29th 2010! I’m ruined!”).

For my part, I use it as a relatively harmless way of offloading the ridiculous and juvenile thoughts with which I would normally torment my family (although of course it doesn’t stop me from sharing with them as well. Lucky things.)

This may explain how a simple tweet about the cricket the other day developed into a tweet exchange that culminated in a potential surrealist sitcom starring Martin Clunes and Salvador Dali and featuring a euphonium-playing fish.

All you have to do now is wade through twenty billion tweets to find out why.

Higgs Boson a la CERN

It’s a commonly held misconception that the creation of a Higgs Boson particle is the province only of the professional particle chef. But it’s quite simple to rustle one up at home. Here’s one of my favourite recipes.

Higgs Boson a la CERN (feeds 0)
For this recipe you will need:
Everything You Thought You Knew About Physics
A Window
Most Of Switzerland
A Great Big Bag Of Cash
1 Large Hadron Collider
1 Linear Particle Accelerator
1 Proton Synchrotron Booster
1 Super Proton Synchrotron
1 Super-Duper Synchromesh Tronatron Da-Doo-Ron-Ron Dustbuster
6 Particle Detectors: ATLAS ((A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS), TOTEM (TOTal cross section, Elastic scattering and diffraction dissociation Measurement), ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), BOB (Big Old Bugger), CAROL (Crap AcROnym Lunacy), TED (TEDious list of stuff)
Some Particles
A Rubber Spatula
A Lot Of Very Clever Men Probably Wearing White Coats

1. Take Everything You Thought You Knew About Physics.
2. Throw it out of the window. Make sure window is open first.
3. Make sure you have your Great Big Bag Of Cash ready.
4. Take Most Of Switzerland. You don’t need to be that careful with it - it stands up to rough treatment, especially if you dip into your Great Big Bag Of Cash.
5. Dig up Most Of Switzerland and build a very big Circle Line.
6. Install your Large Hadron Collider in the Circle Line you have built.
7. Fire that baby up.
8. Oh.
9. Ah.
10. Magnetic quench in your superconducting bending magnets. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
11. Fire that baby down.
12. Set aside for a year or so to cool.
13. Fire it up again.
14. You need to prepare your particles for injection into the Large Hadron Collider. First pass them through the Linear Particle Accelerator, then through the Proton Synchrotron Booster, then through the Super Proton Synchrotron, and finally through the Super-Duper Synchromesh Tronatron Da-Doo-Ron-Ron Dustbuster.
15. Now the particles are ready for collision. This is the fun bit.
16. Crank ‘em up and smash ‘em together. You are looking for a force of up to 7 TeV.
15. Don’t ask me what TeV means. I thought you were the particle physicist. It’s a lot anyway.
16. At this point there is a danger that the particles may curdle and that the entire known universe will be sucked into a black hole, meaning the end of existence as we know it. There is no need to panic, though. Simply take your spatula and carefully fold the particles back into the collider. Adding another egg yolk may help stabilise it, too.
17. You should now have a Higgs Boson particle. As it will only be in existence for a fraction of a nanosecond, serve immediately.

Not Waving But Drowning

Imagine you have a hobby. Maybe you do. Perhaps you like to paint. Or play netball. Or build models of San Francisco out of toothpicks.

You get the idea.

Most of the people I come across in my regular working life have a hobby: they play a musical instrument.

Incidentally, before I get on to the main business of this blog, I must urge you, if you haven’t already done so, to seek out and befriend an amateur musician. Two or three, why not? If you can steer them away from subjects like Bruckner symphonies, awkward fingerings in Sibelius tone poems, and the relative merits of recordings of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, they are extraordinarily invigorating and enjoyable company. What’s more, the standard achieved by amateur orchestras and choirs in this country is little short of staggering - as if I, a dedicated but limited Sunday cricketer, were taking on a County attack and scoring fifties, if not hundreds, on a regular basis.

If you are neither a cricket nor a classical music fan, you may not have made it through that last paragraph. Sorry about that.

Anyway, let me return to my muttons, as the saying very nearly has it.

My hobby is standing in front of the aforementioned musicians waving my arms, all the while hoping that my efforts will in some way improve the sound they are making. Luckily for me, I also make my living from it. I understand this is what is known nowadays as a win/win.

You may not know anything about classical music. Even if you do, it’s probable that you’re ignorant about exactly what it is that conductors do.

Yes, that’s right, we collect the fares.

Ha ha.

Well done.

May I continue?

The art of conducting (and yes it is an art, but this is the last time I will take it seriously in this post) is so complex that several widthy books have been written about it, a lot of them as off target as this penalty kick. They will typically include diagrams of what we in the trade call ‘beating patterns’ - ‘different ways of waving your arms around’ to anyone else - the practice of which can cause the budding conductor severe muscular and frontal lobe injuries should they not exercise due care and attention.

These very gestures, finely honed over decades of intensive and draining study, are the selfsame ones that are ignored by orchestras the world over, from Aalborg to Zanzibar (both now permissible in Scrabble, incidentally).

This is the natural way of things. Orchestras know best.

But what do these gestures mean?

Well it’s complicated. Let me talk you through some of the gestures that make up the average (and believe me, we’re mostly average) conductor’s stock-in-trade.

The All-Purpose ‘Starting-Everyone-Off’ Gesture
Otherwise known as the ‘upbeat’ (a misnomer if ever there was one), this is usually a nervous upwards jerk with both arms, somewhere during the fallout of which the benighted orchestra is expected to play together. The conductor, sensing an ominous silence of the kind not experienced since Marcel Marceau and Harpo Marx went on a day trip to a trappist monastery, then jiggles his arms about a bit on the way down, in the hope that someone, somewhere, will interpret it as an invitation to play.

This renders the meaning of the gesture, already oblique, completely impenetrable.

The ‘Oh Bugger I’ve Started Too Fast’ Flail
The trouble with this one, which resembles little more than a flightless bird trying to defy gravity and evolution simultaneously, is that it simply gets in the way. The damage is done. The orchestra, which, remember, always knows best, has already gone off at the speed you gave them with your first gesture (see above). Too late now, mate. If you wave your arms slower, half of them will go with you, and the other half will stay the same speed. The music will die, and it will be your fault.

Music-murderer. Blood on your hands. Shame on you.

The ‘You Shouldn’t Have Played There’ Shimmy
Usually directed at a player who has been sitting around doing nothing for a while, like a trombonist (and before all the trombonists reading this start complaining, and you know who you are, just take a long hard look in the mirror and then tell me I’m wrong).

Where was I?

Oh yes. The shimmy. The way it works is this:

1. The player, whether trombonist or not, has not had anything to play for a while, and has lost track of where they are. This is emphatically the composer’s fault for not giving them enough to do.
2. Thinking they recognise the bit the second clarinet has just played, they hastily stop playing ‘Words For Free’ on their iPhone, pick up their instrument and start playing music instead.
3. Loudly.
4. In a quiet bit.
5. The conductor, sensing something is wrong, but not sure exactly what, looks up, sees guilty trombonist (let’s say - it’s just a hypothetical example, for God’s sake, don’t be so touchy) and gives ‘em the shimmy.

The shimmy requires co-ordination: the left hand must clearly send the message to the errant player ‘you’ve come in two bars early, but it’s ok we all make mistakes, now all you have to do is keep calm and start the next bit, you know the one starting with the rising diminished fifth...HERE!’; the right hand must continue conveying flowing rhythm and expression to the rest of the orchestra as if nothing untoward was going on. The effect should resemble an expert maitre d’ removing a fly from a customer’s wine glass while diverting his attention with a well-directed compliment about his tie.

It usually looks more like a startled man hiding a pornographic magazine from his wife.

The ‘More Expression’ Left-Hand Flemble
A cross between a flap and a tremble, this gesture is designed to encourage a more expressive style of playing (usually, for some reason, from the first violins. Probably because they’re nearest). Unfortunately, as the co-ordination required to execute the gesture takes up all of the conductor’s available RAM, it usually results in stasis of the right hand, and the music, more often than not, falls apart just a teensy bit.

This can engender a modicum of panic in the ranks, which in turn leads to:

The ‘Getting-It-All-Going-Again’ Thrash
The conductor is under the impression that faster and larger gestures will be clearer.

Wrong.

It just looks as if he is drowning.

Eventually everything settles down, and the musicians remember that the conductor is like the national speed limit: everyone ignores him, but it's kind of comforting to know he’s there. They can then get on with the business of listening to each other and playing together (driving safely) while very occasionally slowing down to sixty-eight miles an hour (watching the conductor) when they see a police car (when they think he's looking).

After a while we come to:

‘The Wrapping-It-All-Up’ Lung
Somehow, the music needs to stop. Regardless of how they negotiate the final bars, the conductor must do one of two things, depending on the circumstances.
If the music finishes loudly: stiff outstretched arms, open mouth.
If the music finishes quietly: exaggeratedly long silence after the final chord, closed eyes.

NB These are not optional.

As the applause begins, a relieved smile and nodding head are usual. These purport to mean ‘well done everyone, you were great' but actually mean 'well done me, I'm great, aren't I?'

So there you have it. A crash course in conducting. Why not give it a go yourself?

Next week: the rehearsal, including 'Stopping After You've Made A Mistake And Pretending You Heard A Wrong Note In The Woodwind Section’ and 'Anecdotes - How And When To Tell Them'.

Spawny Gits

Dennis Hopper - the one that got away.

Do you remember Frogger?

Great game. I was addicted to it when I was 16.

But then I was addicted to everything when I was 16. Except any form of academic work.

My favourite was Space Invaders - the original, classic version. Asteroids was good too. And I fell briefly under the powerful spell of Missile Command. It had a trackball - need I say more?

I’ve got off the point already. Please don’t let me do that.

Frogs. That’s what this is about. Bloomin’ frogs.

Seems like there’s more of them this year. Especially in our kitchen.

The day after the above photo was taken, there occurred what shall henceforth be known as ‘The Unfortunate Incident’. Dennis (or it may have been one of his cousins) reappeared in our house, looking, let’s be honest, a little less perky. That tends to be the way when you are clamped in the jaws of a hungry felis catus (the one on the left).

Poor Dennis. I gave him as dignified a burial as I could.

Since The Unfortunate Incident, we have kept pretty close tabs on said felis catus, with reasonable success. He hasn’t brought any more frogs in as little presents.

Just spawn.

Great big mouthfuls of it, dumped on the kitchen floor. Semolina with twigs.

This can’t go on, we thought. We must nip it in the bud. Or buy some garlic and a French cook book.

We have a little pond in our garden. Quick-thinking and on the money as ever, The Flame-Haired Temptress deduced that this must be the source of the frogs and their spawn. Sure enough, when we went to investigate, we found a scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an episode of Dr. Who c.1975.

As well as some ill-looking reeds and leaky pond-liner, there was a mass of frog spawn, resembling nothing so much as a heaving soapy mass of flatulent bubble wrap.

What to do? We’re essentially animal lovers in the Runny household. I don’t know what the pro-frog-life lobby would think of us doing away with a bathful of spawn in a frogocaust of unprecedented proportions. I had visions of being bundled into a squad car while being spat on by protesters waving ‘Kermit Murderer!’ placards.

On the other hand if we do nothing...frogs in the kitchen, frogs in your bed, frogs in the bathroom, frogs on your head...

So we started plotting. Where’s the nearest pond? Have we got a bucket? Off we go then.

Only one snag - said pond is surrounded by head-high railings.

We might have to resort to a drive-by spawning. It’s either that or Exodus 7:25 - 8:11.

Splat

Breakfast: the two slices of toast with the thinnest spreadings of the butter and the grape jelly. This was the first thing I had eaten for 36 hours. Yum.

Lunch: the fishcake and the sweetcorn. Oh and the some chips.

Supper: the rescued bowl of soup followed by the scrambled eggs on the toast.

A couple of Penguins may also have passed my lips on occasion.

The Rescued Bowl of Soup

Well. It was all going so smoothly. A gnomic butternut squash and a slightly fatigued sweet potato, each yielding a disproportionately large pile of peelings. The inevitable goose fat. Some two-day-old roast potatoes that were lurking in a bowl in the fridge, added to the roasting tin at the last minute to revitalise them. Another spoonful of goose fat (I think it's breeding in there) for onion and garlic, heated slowly until temptingly glossy. Plenty of thyme, ripped roughly from the sprigs. A bag of the goose stock that I froze yesterday, and then the roasted vegetables into the stockpot.

Blender.

A winter soup, delicious and warming, enough to stave off the snow that they say will arrive tonight.

Whizz. Whhiiiiizzzzzzzz. Phhhhzzrrrrrrrrrr.

And then, as I lift the blender jug off its spindle, the bottom of the jug gets all stubborn. Displaying admirable loyalty, it remains attached to the main body of the food processor, which has treated it so well over the years. The top of the jug displays a more adventurous spirit, striking out on its own. The soup within the jug can’t make up its mind.

A token amount lands in one of the bowls, and some on the worktop. But mostly on my clothes and the floor. I am tempted to squeeze out the cloth into a bowl, just to salvage some of the precious golden gloop. But then I realise that the cloth in question is the one that hasn't been washed for, ooh, let's pretend it's only a week.

Scrambled eggs then. And that, as anyone who has ever ruined them (and let's face it, we all have) is another story.

Running On Empty

A day without food.

Not my choice, you understand. Gastric doo-dahs.

It kicked in on New Year’s Eve, in fact. It was as if the virus was sending me a message, a message that said: ‘ok that really is quite enough now’. The virus has been with me, on and off, for the last five days. I say ‘on and off’, not just because it describes my relationship with the lavatory in that period, but because I have, to a great extent, had a normal appetite, and been able and willing to pursue a regular-ish diet. None of the usual lying-in-bed-with-a-cold-compress-on-my-head-while-watching-entire-series-of-The-West-Wing that is the standard upshot of such a virus.

Odd.

So I have had appetite, eaten, and then bowed (or squatted) to the inevitable consequences.

Today, belatedly and reluctantly, I took a day off food, hoping to settle things down a little bit. My only indulgence has been copious amounts of water and a couple of cups of sweet tea. Result: decidedly calmer on the digestion front and some thoughts on the nature of food, hunger, and all that malarkey.

An enforced layoff makes you (or me, really. Sorry, didn’t mean to speak on your behalf) realise how little food we actually need to survive. How glibly we say 'I'm starving' when actually we mean 'I'm quite hungry and haven't fuelled my gluttony for a couple of hours.' Hunger comes in waves, and can quite easily be fended off with other activities.

Sorting Lego for three hours, for example, or watching Ashes DVDs.

But crikey how much you notice what other people are eating. Deprived of my grape nuts this a.m., I coveted, even more than usual, The Boy’s mid-morning crumpet with grape jelly; as morning passed to afternoon and The Flame-Haired Temptress tucked into scrambled eggs on toast, I felt like Winnie the Pooh towards the end of his week stuck in Rabbit's front door - no amount of sustaining books would soothe or comfort this wedged bear. And by eventide the prospect of a dry oatcake had me salivating like an interloping crocodile at the annual meeting of the National Society for Overweight Rodents.

So what of it?

Well I don’t want to come across as all worthy and everything, and I’m sure I will revert to my evil ways soon enough, but we do eat far too much. Far far too much. Far far far too much, if you’re anything like me.

And we go to ridiculous lengths to fuel our ever-increasing gluttony, freighting tasteless imitations of real food all the way round the world so that we can eat it out of season, when it’s worse than pointless.

‘Bloody hell,’ the cry goes up, ‘bloody Tesco Express were all out of asparagus’.

Yes, well, it’s January. Go figure. Have a slice of swede and shut up.

[Please note that I don’t hold myself up as a paragon in this area. Come June I will be waxing lyrical about the magnificence of the Alfonso mangoes that have been flown to my doorstep (or Tooting, which is very nearly the same thing) at plenty of cost to myself and the environment. But I just think we should try to do a bit better.]

So I’m going to try to eat less this year. No, I really am. And not just through January, either. Through all the other months, even the ones ending with ‘-ember’, when I find the going gets really tough, and our natural inclination is still to fatten up for the winter.

And I’m going to write it all down, so that at the end of the year, should I be so inclined, I will be able to compile a list, which will in all likelihood begin ‘235 bowls of Grape Nuts’ and end ‘87 Pret Choc Bars’. If you look hard enough, somewhere in the middle of the list, you will find lurking the admission ‘53 Alfonso mangoes’.

I can already feel that it will be a chastening experience.

Some of it I will put on the web. Again, should I feel so inclined.

To that end, here is my first entry:

4/1/10
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Followed by niente, and washed down by thin air.
There. I feel better already.