Dude Looks Like a Potato

I went to London's Third Annual Charity Potato Fair today. Unfortunately there were no Celebrity Potatoes (see right and below), because they are (mysteriously) staying at Dulwich College this year, but there were lots of heritage seeds and mushroom logs and very delicious chocolate brownies, as well as several nice old men who knew a lot of claggy soil and 1st early potatoes.

My late-breaking New Year's resolution is to keep a note of the (more interesting) things that I cook. I've already forgotten most of the things I've made this year, despite thinking on several occasions "oooh I must remember that as it was very delicious" and so I'm going to start today. Ideally I should make a note *after* I've made it, as so that I can include my thrilling thoughts and observations, but, erm, never mind. Anyway, this evening we're going to have Pumpkin, Coconut and Ginger Curry. Let's hope it's nice.

Go Fig-ure

It was my birthday in October and my parents bought me a fig tree. As my birthday is practically in November, I left the tree in a sunny spot while I mustered the enthusiasm for winter digging.

I then read two articles that advised me to do completely different things, so I thought, "hmmm, I'll just leave it there while I work out what to do".

Every time I looked at the unplanted fig tree, I could hear my Dad's voice at the back of my mind saying "Be sure to plant it before the sap rises". As I'm a bit of a novice gardener, I didn't pay too much attention to the sap. I then read a slightly odd novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner called Lolly Willowes which is pretty much all about the consequences of sap rising. But I didn't take heed.

Laziness and ignorance were then compounded by mishearing something else that my Dad said, so I brought the tree into the flat while we were away over Christmas. When I mentioned my happy foresight to my dad, he shook his head and said, "Oh dear, now it will think it's spring and the sap will start to rise."

When I got back from my holidays the tree seemed fine. But this week it's become a riot of nobbles and shoots and hard little green figs, and even I - who know basically nothing - can tell that the sap must be rising, and it's not even the end of January.

Even though it is obviously inappropriately choc-ful of sap, the tree looks so pretty and promising and full of sping that it really is the best antidote to rainy January mornings. But I am also slightly concerned that it might (a) turn into a beanstalk and break through the ceiling, or (b) basically die the minute I put it outside and it gets just a teeny little bit cold. If it does die, then i will have to tell my dad that I was too lazy to plant it. If it doesn't die, but yields a miraculous winter harvest, I will have to confess that I was too lazy to plant it and, what's more, didn't follow my dad's advice. The third - and perhaps worst - option is if I leave it in the flat and it just dies because I have willfully continued to do the wrong thing, despite being nagged both by my real dad but also by the small-voice-at-the-back-of-my-head dad, which makes me an even worse person and a tree killer to boot.

I am hoping (vainly) that someone will happen upon this page, having typed "advice for indoor fig tree growers" into Google, and then tell me what to do.

Ravens and Birds

I went to see The Darjeeling Company at the weekend. It's basically about nice luggage and people with serious noses, and it features several toe-tapping tunes, some interesting nods to Satyajit Ray, and a good joke involving pepper spray.

It's prefaced by a short that stars Nathalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman. The film is probably meant to be, like, really deep and art school, but it's actually about how two people who are really bad at kissing are never, ever going to get it on. None of the reviews I've read have mentioned this (mostly because almost all film reviewers seem to be men, and they were probably too distracted by NP's lack of knickers to worry about what her mouth was doing), but it's like watching two people punch each other with their mouths, and not in a "ooh I haven't seen you for ages, hot damn I fancy you" way - more in a "yeah yeah I've watched people do this in films, how hard can it be? uh oh, it seems to be real difficult and far to hard for me to do properly" kind of way.

The other thing really wrong with the "romance" is that Jason Schwartzman keeps playing "Where do you go to my lovely", which is such a silly teenage wank song that it would put any right-thinking woman in a bad mood from the start. It oozes a sort of Adrian Mole-like sophistication.

Unrelatedly, I became a bit obsessed with Simon Raven today. I haven't actually read any of his books, but I'm sure that will be easy to remedy. Anyway, here's a bit from his Guardian obituary:

The death of Simon Raven, at the age of 73 after suffering a stroke, is proof that the devil looks after his own. He ought, by rights, to have died of shame at 30, or of drink at 50.

Adventures in Wool

Having made a very rash promise to a very good friend, I have spent most of the last 6 weeks knitting and assembling a rather large woollen penguin. I am now so exhausted that I can't quite be bothered to turn the photo round to the correct orientation, but I think the essential characteristics of said animal are fairly apparent - and sadly, these essential characteristics include considerable lumpiness round the abdominal area (perhaps he has a gall stone? Although I have no idea, of course, how and if gall stones are manifested in penguins) and rather scary eyes.

Because I want to be cruel to myself, I am also going to post a correctly oriented photo, showing how the penguin should have looked.
I think the "real" penguin (called Nora, photo courtesy of the Patons "Thirteen animals to knit using Diploma Gold DK and 4Ply" knitting booklet - never let it be said that I would steal the work of a more competent knitter) has a rather proud aspect, and an enviably smooth stomach. Despite my production-line experience (cycle-helmet making and chocolate-sealing a speciality), I would appear to lack the finesse required for putting bits of washable toy stuffing up a penguin's bum.

Indie-Pop Homer Simpson

I cleared out my desk at work today and had to bring a load of stuff home. Besides all the old meeting agendas and half-used packs of post-it notes, I was mildy surprised to find the following things:

One fairly unflattering grey jersey dress
Three pieces of Tupperware, including a Lakeland "half of one" container
A complete set of Carry On videos
365 Filofax pages (or, every single page from last year's diary)

In case this hints that I might be lacking in depth, I'd like to point to a dream I had on Sunday night that was so exciting that I woke myself up with delirium. "What could be so good?", I hear you ask. The answer is, of course, jumping up and down to The Vaselines while eating pink macaroons. I think that's exactly the sort of dream a woman in her mid-thirties should be indulging in. Particularly the sort of woman who now finds herself listening to Nigel Ogden's "The Organist Entertains" on Radio 2.

Feeling a Bit Woolly

As quite a keen knitter, I like to think that I'm pretty up-to-date with the trendy terminology for woollen items. I looked at this picture in the very swanky-wanky Brora catalogue and thought, "Ooooh what a nice scarf". But no, I was wrong, it's a throatwarmer.