Attention, Mike, over at Coffee Corner; there’s a great interview with Anthony Bourdain in today’s Observer that I think you’l enjoy.
And for the rest of you, if you haven’t yet read Kitchen Confidential, you don’t know what you’re missing.
Year: 2006
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Koninginnedag Comes Early This Year
On the 30th April every year, the Dutch celebrate the late Queen Juliana’s birthday. This is Queen’s day (Koninginnedag). It’s really an excuse for a big party that will happen throughout the Netherlands. Because the 30th April falls on a Sunday this year, the celebrations are being brought forward to the 29th.Tomorrow, weather permitting, we’ll be cycling around part of a 44 kilometre circuit that takes in a series of art exhibitions in the locality. Then on Sunday we’ll be joining our new neighbours for the local Koninginnedag party, which, to confuse everyone, is actually being held on the 30th instead of the 29th. I’m sure it made sense to someone… -
China Dispatches
Brian Sack (Banterist) is visiting China at the moment. His impressions of the country and its culture are being captured in a series of dispatches. Well worth reading – particularly the guidance for using the squat toilet. Brings back memories to me of a trip through some of France’s camping sites about 20 years ago… -
A Brisk Lesson
What with all the work involved in the move to the country, we’ve missed several weeks of The Apprentice. However, we were able to catch up with last night’s episode – a real humdinger involving Syed and Ruth fighting tooth and nail with each other. And they were on the same team. Nancy Bank-Smith’s review of the episode in today’s Guardian is worth reading. Watching Sir Alan deal with them was, as Bank-Smith says, a brisk lesson in elementary butchery. Lovely stuff. -
An Addition to the Family
As I’ve mentioned before, Martin had his heart set on owning a dog once more once we moved to the country. The original plan was to sign up for a puppy. However, a breeder contacted us saying that she had had a three-year old Labrador returned to her, because the owners were no longer able to keep it, and were we interested?Naturally, Martin was excited, and so we went to view the dog. Signs were good, and thus we became the owners of the dog last week. So far, despite my rationalism, I find myself reluctantly becoming fond of the beast. Martin is, of course, besotted. The dog is, of course, just a dog. But when it gazes up at you with those big brown eyes… then there’s obviously some deep genetic thing going on between humans and dogs about which I am powerless to protest.Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kai van de Beckenkamp; offspring of Just Brown van ‘t Meijelicht (father) and Fresh Fields Makaya (mother)…
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The Film Meme
OK, a quick digression into meme-land. This list should probably – for reasons of alliteration – be called the "Movie Meme", however, if you don’t mind I prefer sticking to "Film". The word "Movie" has an air of cheap cigar about it as far as I’m concerned.Anyway, here’s a list of 102 films that people who are supposed to be literate about film really ought to have seen. My score is in bold. How did you do?“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
“The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
“8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
“Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott
“All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
“Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
“Apocalypse Now” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
“Bambi” (1942) Disney
“The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
“The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
“The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
“The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
“Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott
“Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
“Blue Velvet” (1986) David Lynch
“Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
“Breathless” (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
“Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
“Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
“Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz
“Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
“Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
“Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
“A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
“The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) Robert Wise
“Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
“Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
“Do the Right Thing” (1989 Spike Lee
“La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
“Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
“Dr. Strangelove” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“Duck Soup” (1933) Leo McCarey
“E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg
“Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
“The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner
“The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
“Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
“Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
“Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
“The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
“The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
“Gone With the Wind” (1939) Victor Fleming
“GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
“The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
“Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
“A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s a Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra
“Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg
“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
“Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean
“M” (1931) Fritz Lang
“Mad Max 2" / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
“The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston
“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
“Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
“Modern Times” (1936) Charles Chaplin
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
“Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
“Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
“North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
“Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
“On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
“Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
“Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
“Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
“Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
“Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
“Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray
“Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“The Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
“Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
“Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg
“The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
“The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
“Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
“Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder
“A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
“Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
“Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
“Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
“West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
“The Wild Bunch” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
“The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming -
The Garden in Spring
We’re starting to tackle the garden at the farmhouse with the arrival of some warmer weather. There’s quite a lot of the garden to tackle, so it will be occupying much of our time, I feel. At the back of the property is a one acre meadow that should be mowed at least once a week apparently. Even though we have the luxury of a sit-upon mower, this takes a few hours each time to complete.
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Reconnecting the Firehose
I’m here crossing my fingers because tomorrow, with a bit of luck, someone will arrive to install ADSL at the farmhouse. This last month without Broadband access has felt really strange. I’ve hardly been surfing at all on the Internet and the blog has slowed almost to a standstill.Mind you, I think it will also be a problem to find the time to surf. These last four weeks we have been falling into bed every night totally exhausted from all the jobs that need doing around the house and the land. Today, for example, I mowed the meadow – which took 3 hours even though I was regally seated on my mowing machine dispensing royal waves to passing cyclists.Add to that we now have a dog – a 3-year-old chocolate brown Labrador – who needs lots of attention every day. Quiet life in the country? You have got to be joking! I think it was quieter when I was working for my living. Still, this life is giving more satisfaction.Hopefully, more updates to follow once ADSL is installed… -
Sharing the House
We’ve had a wooden floor put in the bedroom at the farmhouse. While that’s been going on, we’ve spent the last couple of nights sleeping in a room in the outhouse. A bit basic, but doable – and the plan is to turn that room into a guest bedroom anyway. The room has a small attic above it, which is accessible from the workroom next door.The first night we were vaguely aware of the patter of tiny feet, but last night the patter appeared to turn into a full scale barn dance. And either the mice were wearing hobnailed boots, or we may have a larger species of rodent to deal with. This will explain the selection of traps that the previous owners left in the workroom. I shall get some practice in. Oh, and a cat. -
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
"There’s nothing we can do – it’s an automated system"That’s a sentence that is guaranteed to raise my blood pressure. Having worked in IT myself, I know that it’s not the computer’s fault; the blame can be laid entirely at the door of the humans who designed, programmed and paid for the computer system.The latest example that has been sent to try me is provided courtesy of my Internet Service Provider, XS4ALL.Normally, when one moves house in the Netherlands, the telecom provider (KPN) and the Internet Service Provider work in tandem to ensure that the ADSL (Broadband) service is also moved at the same time. Alas, my experience has been been far from troublefree and seamless. My experience has resulted in an XS4ALL sales support person uttering that dreaded sentence at the beginning of this piece.The seed of my misfortune lies in the fact that I used an ISDN line at my old address to carry the ADSL service, while here at the farmhouse we have a plain old Analogue line. KPN and XS4ALL are quite happy to move ADSL between two ISDN lines, or between two Analogue lines; but between and ISDN and an Analogue line? Unfortunately, "that does not compute", as I’ve found out to my cost. At first, I was told that it could be done, but then it was: "sorry, you’ll have to cancel the ADSL service on the ISDN line and then reapply for a new ADSL service on the Analogue line". This I did – and then found out that I couldn’t apply for the new ADSL service until the old service is stopped. This takes a month. Then, once the application for the new service is made, it takes a further two or three weeks before the new service is available. Going back to dialup speeds after ADSL is like watching paint dry on most modern web sites. Still, I resigned myself to being up to three weeks without my ADSL fix.But now, a new wrinkle in this sorry saga has appeared. KPN have indeed stopped my old ADSL service, but XS4ALL are still insisting that I have it, and are still stopping me from applying for a new one.According to KPN’s automated system, KPN stopped the old ADSL on the 31st March. Not bad, I suppose, considering that they were supposed to have stopped it on the 27th March, as had been agreed. Considering that they had a month’s notice, they really should have been able to hit the 27th March target…Meanwhile, XS4ALL’s automated system is still stubbornly insisting that I am enjoying ADSL service on an ISDN line that is itself no longer operational (I also cancelled the ISDN line). Last week, an XS4ALL’s sales support person first claimed that this was a temporary abberation, and that all would be well on Monday 3rd April. Inevitably, Monday has come and gone with no change. A second sales support person claimed on Tuesday the 4th April that it would all be alright by the end of this week. It was she who could quite clearly see in her information system that something was wrong, but then cheerfully uttered the Dutch equivalent of "There’s nothing we can do – it’s an automated system".So the upshot is that muggins here has found himself trapped in a hell between two automated systems that appear to refuse to communicate with each other, with support staff who seem to be unable to do a damn thing about it. And until they do, I can’t order my new ADSL line. It looks as though I am condemmed to dialup for at least a month, if not longer. Meanwhile, XS4ALL’s marketing department’s ad campaign extolling the virtues of fast Internetting with ADSL rolls on. I am thinking uncharitable thoughts at the moment. -
How Animals Have Sex
I have mentioned this book by Gideon Defoe before. But that was before I had read it. I am here to report that the reviews were completely on target. This is one of the funniest books I have read in recent years. As the blurb on the book cover says: from panda porn to snail love-darts, this is a guide to the reproductive habits of creatures great and small. It is a simply wonderful book.Message to Chris and Ed – this is definitely one for your collection. Well done Gideon!Look, just order it from Amazon, will you? I promise you, you won’t regret it. -
Country Living
Well, it’s now a week since we took possession of the farmhouse. We arrived last Friday afternoon at 13:45 for an inspection of the property before trooping off to the notary for the signing of the contract. The previous owners were at the house, together with representatives of their estate agents and ours. Neither of the reps had seen the house before – the people who had been involved in the sale had now moved on. The new reps were duly impressed with the farmhouse. One pointed out that in the attic, where you can clearly see the roof construction, that the original roof timbers have been left as an internal skeleton when the roof was enlarged some 35 years ago.Then it was off to the notary, where the notary – who was in his twenties (I really feel old) – went through the formal proceedings. Everybody signed. Why is it that notaries have such flamboyant flourishes that they pass off as their signature whereas I have a miserable spider crawl? The previous owners presented us with a basket of local produce from a neighbouring farm and then sped off to their new home in Friesland.We returned to our new home to find that the entrance had been decorated with streamers and balloons in our absence by a welcoming committee of friends. One of them had also painted a welcome sign, and on the back of the sign hung a series of eight nesting boxes for various species of bird. That evening we were seven for dinner (provided by the mother of our painter friend) – and quantities of champagne and wine were consumed.The following morning we were expecting a visit from the plasterer and the carpenter so that we could discuss our redecoration plans. At 11am, they arrived, but so did their families, a dog, a large cake, coffee and beer. It was yet another excuse for a celebration, and Martin was kept busy with guided tours of the house and grounds – everyone was curious to see what we’d bought. Finally, we were presented with workmans’ clothes – a pair of workman’s jeans for Martin and a pair of overalls for me – together with Dutch farmer’s caps and scarves (mine were both in a fetching shade of pink). Toasts to our arrival were drunk in “Achterhoekse Champagne” (beer), and a good time was had by all.Sunday, we visited some of the neighbours to say hello and to present them with Stroopwaffels (a sort of biscuit that is a speciality of Gouda). That involved a 2km walk passing four farmhouses in the vicinity. All the neighbours seem most pleasant and welcoming to the strange birds that have descended upon them.This past week we’ve had a series of appointments with workmen to discuss what needs to be done. If we do this sort of thing in Gouda, it’s pure business. Here, we discover that they will expect to sit and chat with you about life in general. We’ve just had the attic space in the main house and the roof space of the outbuilding sprayed against woodworm and deathwatch beetle. It was a little worrying to see some of the ravaged timbers in the attic – in the course of nearly 200 years, deathwatch beetle has chewed away some sizable chunks. But then again, as the workman pointed out, the building is still standing, and there’s no evidence of recent activity.Today, we’ve had the plasterer working on the living room – bare brick walls in the living room may have been the fashion in the 1970s, but it’s not to our taste. We will leave some of the original beams exposed as a testament to the history of the house, but walls will be plastered, thank you very much.Next week we have the painters in and the main floor will be polished. We still have to get some wooden floors installed in some rooms, and I doubt whether we can do that before the removal men bring all our stuff from Gouda, so I expect that we will be living out of boxes for some time to come.This is a real change of pace of life for us both. It is amazing to wake up at night and listen to the stillness. Equally amazing is that I’m writing this while gazing out at the front garden with a neighbouring farm off in the distance. To my left I can see the local woods – a 10 minute walk. A pheasant has just run across the lawn, and I see that a pair of hedge sparrows have started nesting in the nesting box in the tree 10 metres away in front of the window. I must find suitable places for the rest of those boxes. -
Jumped-up Walkmans
Lucy Mangan, in today’s Guardian, has a most satisfying rant against iPods and their witless owners. She sums up my feelings precisely. -
The Dutch Citizenship Test
Last January, I mentioned the test that would-be immigrants to the Netherlands would have to take. It went live last week. There’s an article on the Radio Netherlands web site describing the procedure. I certainly don’t share the journalist’s touching belief that the voice-recognition system used in the test (there are no human examiners involved) is "foolproof". Pull the other one – it’s got bells on it. It turns out that entrants will need to buy the exam materials, which contain all 100 questions and their authorised answers. Then in the exam, 30 questions, selected from the 100, will be given. My hunch is that the entrant will have to parrot back exactly the words and intonation used in the authorised answer to have any hope of passing the voice-recognition system. So the Dutch want parrots, not citizens…The procedure is described on the Ministry for Justice web site. While I see that EU citizens are exempt from having to take the test, I did notice in the fine print on this page the statement: "As newcomers these people will, however, usually be required to follow the integration programme once in the Netherlands"."Required", eh? That doesn’t sound like an exemption to me. -
The Sub-Editor’s Art
Forget the actual article, just savour the brilliant headline that has been provided by an anonymous sub-editor to this review in today’s Observer. -
Art and Reality
I decided to pull together two things that I came across on the Internet in order to illustrate the polar opposites of what we are capable of.First, the horror.Dr. Crippen, in his NHS Blog Doctor, documents the day from hell in his surgery. Warning, this is not for those with a nervous disposition, or for those who do not wish to be disavowed of their quaint belief that all is well in Britain’s National Health Service as presided over by Patricia Hewitt. If there is any justice in the world, one can only hope that Patricia will get a taste of her own medicine.Second, the beauty.In order to calm down, I spent a while exploring the photographs and art of Gregory Colbert in the online interactive site Ashes and Snow. While some of it verges on the chocolate box, there are some amazing images here. -
A Book Review
This review of this book has instantly made me put it on my "books I must read" list. Clearly, anything that shows what a weird and wonderful world we live in courtesy of millions of years of evolution will get my vote. There ain’t nothing intelligent about these designs. Rube Goldberg and W. Heath Robinson would be proud. -
Service Slowdown
My blogging is likely to be somewhat sporadic for the next month or so. We’re entering the final phases of the house move, and I’m somewhat preoccupied with that. Once the move occurs, I shall also be returned to the dark ages of a dial-up connection for a couple of weeks until broadband is installed in the new house. Normal service should resume mid-April, with a bit of luck. -
Two to Watch
On the strength of this review (particularly of the first film), The Child and The Road to Guantánamo are going on my list of films to see. -
Drinking From the (Image) Firehose
I use Flickr as the online repository for my photographs. It’s a community web site, with a lot of traffic. Trying to get a sense of what’s going on with the hundreds of images that are posted each day is difficult, but here’s a site that attempts to give you a visual impression of what’s happening.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 