Comforts

Familiar comforts

Long day, today. Sitting down at nine (still cooking something to eat) tired. What to turn to? What's soothing?

Robert Wyatt, and For The Ghosts Within. First things first, and that's a good start. There's pork in the fridge, hovering around the use-by date. I'm using the ageing Pole definition of 'use-by' (this seems to come to us all) which the rest of the world regards as 'at' or 'unsalvageably beyond' the use-by date. Well. Rules are made to be broken and I prefer to see these things as guidelines rather than dogma. So the pork's now in the oven in that Chinese cha sui treatment, and the five spice, soy and oyster, dash of sesame and garlic aroma is filling the kitchen. Nice.

Hungry. So there's the pork (that'll take an hour or so) for tomorrow's supper. There's chicken curry and rice for tonight. There's the immediate pangs of hunger to deal with, so I may eat BLISS' olives (use-by dated the 4^th and the 8^th – of this month) or the marmite crisps she treated me to.

Reading matter: on the computer there's Le Grove and Arseblog, daily doses of Arsenal goodness, and (sadly, the should've won the Booker Umbrella's finished) Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads.

By the way (1): the olives are fine. I've gone for the sell-by the 8^th ones first. If they were radioactive or toxic or one of those spider's web hairy science projects things in fridges turn into eventually, naturally I'd abandon any idea of eating the four-day older tray.

By the way (2): Wyatting (verb) is to put obscure or difficult music on the pub jukebox in order to cause consternation in others. Apparently Wyatt, while honoured to be a verb as well as a proper noun, would never deliberately seek to cause discomfort or consternation in others. He said he was quite capable of doing that without trying, just by being himself.

Might watch the football later.

FIFA

FIFA BLOKE 1: what's the forecast?

FIFA BLOKE 2: teeming, sheeting, persistent rain, enough of it to waterlog the pitch.

FIFA BLOKE 1: has the stadium got a roof?

FIFA BLOKE 2: yeah, shall we close it and ensure the game can be played?

FIFA BLOKE 1: Nah, let's leave it open and see what happens.

Booker travesty

I think the panel withdrew their heads back into their shells. Once it became a two-horse race, Will Self says: willing to take risks, try something different. Hilary Mantel says: safe, safe, safe.

Also, don't bother when they publish part three. Just give her the cheque and call it a day, save all the hand-wringing and agonising.

Pussies.