Well, all my stuff is slowly being put away in what is now Elizabeth's and my apartment. There is still a pile of boxes and a fifteen-foot oriental rug taking up most of the dining room, but at least we found a home for the saute pan.

I'm posting this in a hurriedly snatched ten minutes away from German homework, which is my new spare-time activity. Apparently I am really into it, judging by the fact that I never seem to do anything else these days.

However, I wanted to tell you collectively (since I have told many of you individually) about a fine curio from the radio 2 website -- the Radio Ballads. You can access them at the Radio 2 website by clicking on the "Listen Again" tab. You want the ones from the fifties and sixties, not the new ones from 2006.

Anyhow -- it seems that the fascinating-sounding Ewan MacColl*, assisted by Peggy Seeger, made a series of peculiar folk documentaries about such issues as a train crash, the building of the M1, and the herring industry. The basic format is: interview with working man, followed by newly commissioned folk song based on the interview, followed by experimental modernist bit combining early sound effects with folk and bits of the interview cut up and replayed in funny ways. The first one, "The Ballad of John Axon," is the strangest and possibly the best. It combines folk, opera, jazz, Dr. Who-style effects, and such lyrics as "Curse the steam and the steam brake handle." They seem to have been up on the site since February -- don't know how long they will remain, but I urge you to check one out.

*father of Kirsty MacColl, too.

Fill in your own... / Thought for the day

Phew. I am too busy working and moving house and doing summer school to write new blog posts right now. Instead, fill in your own, using this template.

It was the farmer's market today. I bought [pretentious foodstuff] and made [pleasant/hubristic dinner]. Earlier in the week I went to [bad film/restaurant of some variety]. After that I looked [in the library/online] and discovered this: [an amusing quotation/a stupid website/Richard Thompson's hurdy-gurdy player's connection with Peter Owen Publishers].

Enjoy. In the mean time:

Though for the day
"The Black Hand in Etching. One's hands are sure to become more or less thickly coated with ink, which moreover gets under one's nails and prefers to remains there. The wearing of thin gloves may be resorted to by the hyper-sensitive, but with their use one loses a certain amount of touch with things." -- Frank I. Emanuel, Etching and Etchings

It is all about my dinner

After my latest farmers' market adventures I have a question and a suggestion.

i) Question. I bought some courgette flowers and fried them in batter. They were extremely pleasant. But even though I fried them very fast at a very high temperature, they went kind of limp? Is this correct? I have every intention of buying them again, so I will try to refine my methods.

ii) Suggestion. I also bought some potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes and turnips with the greens attached -- I should really say with the roots attached, since, round these parts it's considered more normal to eat the greens and throw the roots away. Anyhow, I had every intention of making some kind of grilled vegetable salad, parboiling the root veg, then char-grilling it on the griddle, then mixing it all up with the wilted turnip greens . . . anyhow I lost interest in this half-way through and just decided to boil up the veg, bung it all in a pot with the greens and turn the heat up. Guess what? It turned out to be an amazing variation on bubble and squeak. I thoroughly recommend it for all food ponces. I may send it to Nigel Slater.

Right, off to have some gin and watch The Muppet Show on DVD…

My dad sent me a fun link: the Lego Bible.

Thought for the day

"Let us not play at kittly benders." -- Henry David Thoreau

The US domestic soccer league, which doesn't even stop playing during the World Cup, since so few US internationals play domestic soccer, has some stupid team names. For instance, in Utah, we have Real Salt Lake. The New York side is sponsored by Red Bull. Guess what they're called? Red Bull New York. Why can't they have proper names, like Hamilton Academical or Accrington Stanley, that's what I want to know?

More Zevon

Richard points me to the Muldoon poem online. Also the referring link is enjoyable. Oh, and this. Not sure I agree the poem is worth so much scrutiny, but anyway...

Citable Boy

Last week's (June 2) TLS has a huge, three-page poem about Warren Zevon in it by Paul Muldoon. The whole thing is too large to reproduce in full, but here's a little bit:

their office indulgently to fit
actives to passives in the doldrums

of the swimming pool, these fishionistas (qv) with their food fads
having nothing on these rare
birds that divide

the spoils, Warren, these rare
birds that divide the spoils
with the gasbag, gobshite, gumptionless A&R

men who couldn't tell a hollow-body Les Paul with double-coil
pickups pushed through a Princeton Reverb
from a slab of London broil

an excitable boy might rub
all over his chest

A post-script says: "Lately he [Zevon] acted as musical co-ordinator to the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of writers, including Stephen King and Amy Tan, who performed at book fairs and like events." Personally I'd be very keen to see the Remainders in a Battle of the Bands with Jeff Baxter's "Coalition of the Willing" -- perhaps with ground-to-air missiles...

PS Will, if you remind me of your address I will send you a photocopy

They call it "soccer"

They say the World Cup is a big deal here in America, and, it's true, every game is on TV -- many on terrestrial -- but their commentators want to get a few things straight first. Here are some gems from the Paraguay game:

On Gerrard getting a yellow card:
Those cards carry over from match to match, so you don't want to take them unless you have to -- for professional fouls. That was just unnecessary.

Beckham may not be the best player in the world, but he's certainly the most well known. Everywhere you go, if people are talking about soccer, the name of Michael Beckham comes up.

Wright

For some reason I am listening to Steve Wright on Radio 2. He has just informed me that people in Oregon and Idaho wear dungarees, which they buy from Wal-Mart "for tuppence." Well, all right then.

Films

So, Tristram Shandy. Terrible reviews, as far as I remember, but really funny, as it turns out. It's true, Coogan is really only good for Partridge impressions, but who cares. I laughed harder than I have at a film in many moons. The stuff about Fassbinder is hilarious, and all the stuff with Gillian Anderson -- and the scriptwriter ordering a lamb shank...has anyone seen this film? Otherwise this is all fairly meaningless. Anyway.

Also with regard to films -- Roger Ebert's review of the remake of The Omen made me laugh too:

There they meet an old priest so close to death that the Grim Reaper would be an improvement, and the trail leads on to a demonologist (Michael Gambon, in full wretched decadence mode). […] The British character actors (Thewlis, Gambon, Postlethwaite) bring so much creepy atmosphere onto the screen that they could have walked right over from the matinee performance of "Nosferatu." It was George Orwell who said, "At 50, everyone has the face he deserves." We can only marvel at what they must have done to deserve theirs.

Ready Steady Cook

With the onset of the summer's extreme heat comes the first Hyde Park Farmers' Market of the year. Little was available on Thursday except huge spring onions the size of leeks. This didn't stop Elizabeth and me, however -- last night we created organic farmers' market steak with a huge spring-onion sauce, accompanied by potato salad with huge spring onions. I look forward to next week, when there is talk of outsize radishes.