If blogs were ketchup, and I had to transport thirty four peas from plate to mouth, I would certainly not have an adequate amount of collatory material to successfully stick them to the fork vehicle. Neglection is not even the word (actually it isn't even A word, but we're so above that pedantry), absence is not the word either, neither is laziness, neither is avoidance, it is just a simple non-existance, and many many peas may have fallen somewhere as a result.
SO here I am, getting on with it, alone in my house for the first time ever (everyone has osmosed out, along a concentration gradient of busy to nocrowd), kind of half packing to go home for Christmas, deliberating whether to trust my laboriously deducted 4sock=2week+3(wash) formula. The world is supposed to end tomorrow anyway, so all my underwear strategies are probably a waste of time. 'Probably'? Interesting accidental word choice there, Gregson. Maybe I secretly think it is going to happen. To be fair, the entirety of France seems convinced: only today I got told by two children, as they clasped their faces and lamented at the state of humanity, that the playground will crack in half to reveal the centre of the Earth,  and that Francois Hollande will become an angel. Didn't quite know how to react to the second part, I kind of just petted them on the head and smiled with my mouth and muttered something in mutant Panicfrench about opening Christmas presents early and avoiding any suspect vortexes. It probably wouldn't be that terrible anyway if Hollande did join the celestial host - in fact, it would be quite enjoyable to watch (provided that there were no other apocalyptic interferences such as plagues/smogs etc ruining the view). In any case, I can now tell you for certain sure that the world won't end on tomorrow, as my supreme self-distraction talents have allowed for two days's worth of time to pass, and it is now the 22nd, and I have not yet been eaten by worms with elbows or other such appropriately endofworldy type beast.
In other news, cos talking about endings that weren't going to and never did happen gets a bit boring after a while, we bought a house wheelchair and I can now do 97 turns balanced at a 45 degree angle to the ground. It might also be interesting to note that it is now the 23rd which means CHRISTMAS is nearly here which means much food and festivity and cold nights which means potentially walking outside in towns which means warm quick food is needed which means crepes.

Kwismiskweppz 

100g plain flour
2 eggs
180ml milk (180mlk)
50ml water
50g butter
1tbsp caster sugar

3 apples
cinnamon
nutmeg
rayyysssinnnzzzz
sugar
water

1) Cut and chop apples
2) Bung them in pan with the other ingredients
3) Leave them to cook until they are soft puttableinablecrepeable
1) Whisk the flour with the eggs
2) Add and whisk in the milk and the water, bit by bit, obliterating any lumps with your merciless trident
3) Melt butter in pan
4) Pour dollop of mixture into pan, swirl around a bit, flip it, put one hand on your hip at some stage to make it look like you are at utmost ease with your oven and batters, casually toss your head of hair back in appreciation of a joke one of your woolly jumper wearing friends has made, stroke the dog lovingly and glance through the frosty window to the fresh snow gathering on the tree branches. Pile crepes up on platter and adorn with apple mush and MANGEZ. It is certainly no coincidence that the French for 'eat' is spelt exactly like festive vocabulary frequenter and the 2000 year old popular crib MANGER, by the way. I heard from a very reliable source* that one derives from the other - although it is not known which - as the cattle ate from this trough as we do from the table during this twelfth month.

Whilst I can completely see how few people could like anything more than a good fringe waft along with George Michael and his histories of Christmas heartbreak, I am not going to suggest you eat these frepes (festive crepes, for those of you whose brains are too tiny and feeble to guess) alongside such jingles, as I recently heard a man got actual sprout poisoning and am now paranoid about the possibility of overdosing on Noël, so have gone for something diff instead. Hitparade by Klangkarussel (youtube here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQNQFd21wQ   for 1hr 37mins 46 secs of tunes and boobs; many nudey girls contemplating bits of music paraphernalia in a naturally highly realistic and not at all myopic portrayal of females going about their daily life) is a nice solid block of perfectly rhythmized crepe stirring backdrop. Watch out for 34 mins and 30 seconds in, however, as every single person in the vicinity will start bopping with the upper half of their bodies only, which can be disturbing if unexpected, and also can induce batter spillage.

So, once you have whisked frepes with your arms and bopped with your abdominals, your mind will no doubt be knocking on the window of your requirements, demanding for some attention. It is easily solved, however, so don't send him away - tell him to come round to the door and let him in and hand him a copy of Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, give him a cushion or whatever it is that minds prefer to sit on these days, and let him at it. I think I probably say this a lot (mummy Gregs says 'this is the best tree we have ever had!' each year even if it is a twig in comparison to last years evergreen beauty and I think I may have inherited this trait) but I think this is the best book I have ever read. I mean this without any twigsympathy because I ACTUALLY REALLY REALLY LIKED THIS BOOK PROBABLY MORE THAN I HAVE EVER LIKED A BOOK BEFORE EVERYBODY LISTEN I AM TELLING THE TRUTH IN FACT I LIKED IT SO MUCH I AM GOING TO STOP USING THE PAST TENSE AND SAY I LIKE IT STILL YES THE LIKE LASTS LONGER THAN THE READING I LIKE THIS BOOK. Wow, how about that for cathartic book love.
Quite embarrassed about that outpouring actually, so am going to wish you all a M.C and H.N.Y and swiftly leave the room under the excuse that I'm nipping to the loo so I don't have to be there when you talk about how intense and borderline awks it was.

*my bwain

WELL THIS HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING. Everything in France seems to move at half speed, due to freshly baked baguette weighing down the stomachs of the people and increasing their inertia, so it has taken me about three weeks to even approach the keyboard and contemplate emptying out my mind all over it. But seriously, I have actually consumed a baguette a day for the past three, so don't think I'm falling back on the classic mildly xenophobic non-joke, for it is actually now a personal truth. I think it's the crust to fluff ratio that makes them so super eatable. Or maybe the fact that they cost €0.88; an immediately spendable yet quality assuring price.
In a desperate bid to appear thoughtful and on a journey, I have attempted to note a few Fundamental Observations of Human Life. After reading them all through, however, I feel like a gigantic twat and am sightly ashamed about my compulsive desire to seem more astute than I ever will be, but I'm going to share them with you anyway, because the best way to get over yourself is to mercilessly mock. HERE WE GO:
- The human race is at its least attractive when eating cereal out the packet. Fingers are clearly not designed to clasp oaty nuggets and mini-projectile plop them into the mouth.
- One must always be depressed on the metro. Compulsory collective swaying and frowning only, unless you want to be judged a potential menace to society.
- All human temptation and repulsion can be represented in the €1.86 bottle of red wine. It must be done before it must not be done.
- Always look upwards. Stuff on the underneath of windowsills and tree branches and lampposts isn't given enough eye-time.
- It's easier to tell someone your name isn't Pauline straight away.
- The best way to get offered a job is to be incompetent. Go into any butchers, ask for 'one of your saucissons please', get an old lady to cackle loudly next to you to start the joke, blush and flounder with some substandard French, wait for the sweaty man with blood on his shirt to say 'ah we have been looking for a nice young girl to work here for a while - would you like a job?', immediately panic reply with 'yes yes, tomorrow at nine?', regret risky joke choice, collapse internally when he says 'YES SEE YOU TOMORROW MY ENGLISH FLOWER', flee, never return to the building that is one meter away from your house, write about it afterwards to get over the shame. Yes this really happened.

THERE WE GO. Sometimes it is nice to share. In fact, sharing is caring. And daring. And bearing, and faring and tearing. It is in this fashion, therefore, that I bring you the collaborative effort from the colocs at Rue Célu; a multinational, multilingual melting pot of wannabe locals.
First up is Giuliano and his Pastry Obsession. Here is a real life story: he once made some dough and carried it with him on the metro for comfort. He then decided he didn't want it anymore so he wrapped it round a lamppost in a suburb somewhere. Serious.

1) Guess the amounts of the following ingredients: lukewarm water, salt, yeast
2) Guess the amounts of the following ingredients: flour, olive oil
3) Mix the first group of ingredients into the second
4) Kneed
5) Leave to rise in a bowl somewhere (this can be on the floor, on the windowsill, on a chair, in an unplugged microwave)
6) Use for a variety of different dishes; pizza, pies, pizza pies, bread, all thrown together before wandering off and doing something completely different.

I actually just ate a plate of his pasta about five minutes ago. It was so good that I whimpered. It was salmon, courgettes, garlic, ricotta and spinach all slowly bubbled up together, so if you feel like being a bit carefree and fluid in your cuisine, get some and or none or all of the above ingredients and treat the dough like a friend.

Second comes Pierre-Olivier and his heartfelt, mindfelt, soulfelt appreciation and understanding of Jim Morrison. The Doors Soft Parade live at the PBS Critique 1969 induces an absolute trance of absorption that cannot be penetrated, even if the music is turned off.  It's good to watch, but probably even better to do. I am incredibly unqualified to talk about it, but I will say with confidence it is a poem that is sung, rather than a song that is poemed. It goes with the dough of Giuliano because you can chew on it, and it would also probably wrap around a lamppost.

And finally for the livre, it is the house's bookshelf's Rimbaud Un saison en enfer Illuminations (folio collection, bitches). So so impossible to understand as it is written in the French of a genius, but still worryingly captivating. I found two in particular that I really liked - the first one is (get ready) from the second paragraph of the second part called Phrases II of a chapter called Matinée d'Ivresse from a section called Les Déserts de l'amour: Proses en marge de l'Evangile, which is written prosaically and spans only three lines, and seems to be the product of a drunken ecstasy during a prolonged depressive phase. That sounds fairly heavy, but it chats about stretching tinsel type stuff between stars, so it can't be that tortured. I'm actually going to give it to you so that we can all join in and have a nice time together:

J'ai tendu les cordes de clocher à clocher; des guirlandes de fenêtre a fenêtre; des chaînes d'or d'étoile à étoile, et je danse.

Google Translate actually does it an average amount of justice, so EVERYTHING IS SWELL.
The second is a longer, more arduous chunk that I cannot relocate in the book at this present moment in time, but it starts with him sitting Beauty on his knees, which should already sound like it is heading in the right direction. It's The Doors all over again; youth and brilliance and decadence and burning out, and I imagine if you mixed it with courgettes it would also be delicious.

It cannot be contested that America does things BIG. Everything is massive; sometimes brilliantly so (e.g. 10 inch diameter cookies), and mostimes to a completely useless, wasteful extent (e.g. 10 inch diameter cookies). Like I said ages ago, I love lists, so here is a medium sized list with small paragraphs of detai explaining the big things stateside:
Biggest meal: A 'sharing plate for two' that was probably responsible for all salmon shortages everywhere. This also came with 500 slabs of three other unidentifiable ichthyoids - all of them completely delicious and smoky - an entire pot of Philadelphia cheese and a bagel the size of my head. That is actually saying quite something, as the entire Gregson family all have large heads, especially my bro.
Biggest compliment: I LIKE YOUR LINEN!!...MA'AM!! I LIKE YOUR LIIIIINNNNEEEENNNN!! Shouted at me by a disembodied voice somewhere on the street. I panicked and went into denial, convincing myself that my fairly plain linen dress was not exciting enough to warrant this outburst of appreciation for the flax, so carried on without turning round. I now regret this as I would like to have met the fabric enthusiast.
Biggest cringe: Beautiful Waiter: Sorry, I'm not so good at holding these bowls, they're new here and quite an irregular shape.
Polly: Oh no problem at all. [simpering please be my friend voice] They're lovely bowls :D :D :D :D
Beautiful Waiter: [slightly put off] Yes. Lots of fun.
Polly: A party in every mouthful you could say, eh? EH?
Beautiful Waiter: ...
Biggest small thing: Teeth. So many perfect, massive, shining, glorious, calcium-saturated, square representations of private health service. Similar to the basilisk, one must never look directly at them in order to avoid instant death from strong feelings of inadequacy.
Biggest secret: I ate all the free chocolates that were put in our room before my brother had a chance to see them.
Biggest cultural peculiarity: The attitude towards alcohol. A) Drinking age of 21 - people under this age are not even allowed inside the bar. My brother and I just sat dejectedly on the pavement while our parents had a great time. B) No booze for sale in supermarkets. One must track down a specialist store for this. C) No alcohol allowed visibly on the street. They issue brown paper bags with every purchase, and if you are found holding a bottle in the open air, you are immediately exploded.
Biggest travesty: The harsh treatment of worms in the fishing world. One worm should go nine ways apparently, and each individual chopped up bit can still wiggle independently. I felt like I should massacre the worm myself, if I was going to be the one using its magical baiting properties, but was reduced to a pile of weeping mush every time I imagined the reflection of the knife in their non-existent eyes. After about eleven attempts of trying to choose the oldest worm who had lived the longest life and was ready to go, I eventually gave up and used a sweetcorn kernel instead. I caught no fish.
P.s. Yes, I am aware this is more of an international travesty and not necessarily USA-specific, but maybe I am just a crazy kid who laughs in the face of rules.

CHEESECAKE. BROWNIES. SALTWATER TAFFY. Those were the three regional specialties from our chosen destinations of New York, Boston and Cape Cod. Cheesecake, obviously, is brilliant, brownies are foolproof, and taffy is ming. Honestly so disgusting. If you can imagine chewing a squishy pebble then you are pretty much bang on. Cheesecake is so faffy and I've never made one in my life, so I bring you the recipe for the only other tasty thing of the three options; les browniés.

185g soft unsalted butter
185g dark choc
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
250g caster sugar
110g plain flour
pinch of salt
150g things of your choice

!)Preheat oven to 180 degs
@)Melt the butter and the choc in a pan on a hob. Take off and leave to cool for a bit
£)In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and the vanilla
$)Beat the chocolate/butter mix into the egg/sugar/vanilla mix
%)Stir in the flour, the wee little pinch of salty crystals, and the textural excitement (granola, walnuts, white choc chunks, glacé cherries, marshmallows, bits of digestive biscuit, shredded coconut, small bits of office stationary etc)
^)Scrape into a tray (lined, of course)
&)Bake in the oven for about 25 mins, checking regularly. A bit of uncooked Augustus Gloop in the middle is good, but make sure there's not too much raw egg wobbling around by dipping in a skewer and seeing how drenched it is.

Because I am a huge fan of brownies, I'm going to do them complete justice with equally fab music and books. Today's Artist of the Moment is Floating Points aka Sam Shepherd - listening to the stuff is like swimming through a zero-gravity sky of cotton wool and raisins. Although v hard to choose, I would say Love Me Like This (Nonsense Dub), Truly, and Vacuum Boogie are the top three blip sequences, and they come in quite big and lengthy with an average duration of 7 minutes 23 seconds, giving you plenty of time to eat the brownies.

Resting and digesting can be boring, but this need not be the case, as I bring you a top reading experience to pass the time and allow you to become less obese. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is actually SO GOOD, I started it and wasn't hugely in love immediately - lots of planes and Colonels with similar names - but so worth persevering for. It's hilarious and poignant, comical and touching, amusing and heartfelt, witty and emotional, entertaining and thought provoking, funny and insightful, CHECK OUT HOW MANY TIMES I JUST SAID THE SAME THING. It is a fair size, not an epic, but not a thin book either, I reckon one could definitely get away with calling it biggish. But more importantly, it is de lollest ting.

BIG UP BIG

Addendum: Bear with me through the first three paragraphs, I am aware they make little sense, but it takes a while to warm up, yeah? 

If I were a wizard, one of my fave office possessions would undoubtedly be the pensieve, as I very much like the idea of depositing silvery beard strands into a pot. I would most likely also endeavour to become the creator of a pocket size, invisible, indestructible, turbo 4000 version that you could sneak into exams and recall pages of textbook in a morally dodgy yet most likely successful way, shattering the word 'revision' into a squillion tiny fragments and distributing them evenly all around the Earth. Unfortunately, this would actually be an unrealistic goal for me, as DT has never been my forté. In fact, I can distinctly remember being given an intensely simplified and separate task to the rest of the class, as I was so inept and couldn't be trusted with a bandsaw, so had to come home offering an entirely non-functioning wooden puzzle, watching from the shadows of ineptitude my normal friends who had somehow managed to conjure up fully working radios. Coupled with the fact that I am ceaselessly baffled by the grey matter that writes the numbers on a digital watch, and that my childhood dream was to become the inventor of the already existing electric toothbrush, I would probably be better off selling the concept of the mini-pensieve to a wizarding manufacturing company who could do the soldering for me, as I shall never be competent enough to make it myself, even if it is entirely fictional...

ANYWAY, if I ever did manage to make this tiny bowl of thoughts, and I were to cast back to this day a whopping two years ago, I would see myself as a keeny fresher-to-be thinking all about whether I was going to be accepted as a normal human being if I wore my borderline peculiar top. I have been thus inspired to provide an Essential Freshers' Triangle, which I can guarantee shall not be at all essential, or particularly fresh, or indeed that triangular, given that it is an abstract piece of writing, not a 2D polygon. Nevertheless, it may help you out in a dark moment of unharmonious loose end eveningness, when you have seen The Copper Rooms 14 days in a row and just want a meal, a song and a book to soothe away the thought of another 9am welcome speech in another mysterious location (by the way, L3 is in the science concourse and is VAST. If you have anything there, turn up at least three days early to avoid embarrassment of clambering/tripping down stairs).

The University of Warwick is unique* in its exclusively self-catered halls, so you better be prepared for the slog to Tesco and the fight for oven space. If you are reading this, it's probably too late to be prepared, as you are already here, but I'm going to storm ahead with my advisory tone anyway because it makes me feel wise. I grabbed a bargainous tripartite theory of kitchenality which provided me with a wonderful wok, a fantastic frying pan, and a sad excuse for a saucepan that couldn't even cook one bean in it, but still looked good as part of the collection in my cupboard. I would recommend doing likewise, as one can never have too many metal pots. 

So, to fill this array of cuisine paraphernalia with nourishment, here is a recipe that will put the FUL(L) back in HELPFUL**. 

4-6 chicken thighs, bones an'all - much cheaper than breast meat and nicer if cooked long enough 

1 tin of chickpeas

a good serving of chorizo, chopped up small like

2 tins of tomatoes

some optional tomato purée, use only if you are going to be that person anyway

1 red onion, chopped up equally smallish like

1 tin of sweetcorn

1 tin of baked beans

teaspoon of paprika, to be affectionately referred to as 'paps'

half a teaspoon chilli powder

1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees

2) Fry the chicken thighs in a little olive oil in your frying pan of choice until the skin is golden and slightly crispy

3) Sizzle off the onion and chorizo in one of your many gloriously assembled saucepans. I say saucepan and not frying pan because sauce is about to be added and a large volume receptacle is needed. No need to add extra olive oil as the chorizo oozes its own cooking juice (in the word chorizo lies one of the world's greatest conflict of pronunciation - choritzo or choritho? To be English and risk sounding ignorant, or to be Spanish and risk sounding like a nob?)

3) Add everything that is in a tin, plus our good friend paps and the chilli

4) Add the fried chicken thighs

5) Place in oven for a decent hour and a half

6) Remove from oven when the chicken comes away from the bone very easily

This should last you for two or three meals provided you store it properly (Mama Gregz drills this in on a termly basis - air tight container, straight into fridge, freeze only once etc), which makes it cheap and space-effective too. If you don't want to become known as Chickpea McBeanson for eating the same thing three times, then freeze two portions and keep them for later.

By this stage, your stomach will be full, but your ears will still be empty cavities yearning for attention. No amount of saucepans can satiate this, so one must turn to the thing we call music. This time two years ago I was into my breaks, and once I actually got told to turn my music down by the warden oh gosh and blimey how naughty, so I bring to you my three part freshers' playlist of the tunes I was having a right jolly old skank to in my ensuite room. Raspberry Dub by Ed Solo & Skool of Thought will give you one of the most pleasant headaches ever, Night by Benga will banish this ache away, and Cornish Acid by Aphex Twin, which is technically defined under the genre 'braindance', will make you forget you ever had a headache that needed banishing in the first place. My brain does dance a little bit when I listen to it, and I hope yours does too.

So your stomach and your ears have now been satisfied, but your eyes are crying out for their lucky break from staring at endless timetable chaos (WHAT?! WHY WOULD THEY PUT TWO COMPULSORY MODULES AS A CLASH?! FIVE 9AMS?! HOW DO I GET FROM MILBURN HOUSE TO THE ACCR IN UNDER FIVE MINUTES?!). We solve this, oh brothers***, with Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange. After reading this perfectly addictive and pointed novel you shall feel a compulsive need to sneak in bits of Nadsat to everyday speech, which shall no doubt help you attract the friends that will stay with you for the next three years. Don't be tempted towards any campus-style gang warfare though, as Bluebell will always have the unfair advantage and it shall only end badly.

Hopefully, as promised, this has been an averagely-helpful, semi-fresh, multi-angular guide on how to spend one evening of your many to come at Warwick. WELCOME EVERYONE, hope you have a great time here, even if we are 83rd in the Student Sex League 2012.

*Probably not true

** Don't worry, my strap lines aren't usually this unbelievably great

***Literary in-joke. Ahem.

I bought this consciously edgy jumper with a wolf's face on it at the end of term, and my mother hated it so much she secreted it in my brother's wardrobe while I was away having the best time of my life in Guadeloupe under the pretence that he had 'the masculine shoulders to carry it off'. Don't know whether to see this as a compliment to my non-manly build, or whether to march in and seize the jumper whilst audibly mumbling about being a grown up and thus entitled to freely express myself with bad-taste wolf faces if I want to. As well as claiming it back on the grounds of basic human rights, I might actually need to wear it as I've packed all my clothes for Lyon so only have the dregs of sloppy wardrobe rejects left. My outfit options currently stand at a velvet shrug, some delightful green running leggings and a pair of shorts that don't fit me any more but am keeping for my first born child...fairly desperate sartorial times. The only way in which I could pull this look off would be to become one of the pioneers of the mashup movement, mixing combos of genres and decades like I had been dipped into a pot of molten 80s on one end, and drenched with bridesmaid on the other. Kind of like a Viennese Whirl biscuit, only that I'm a human, not confectionary. This mashup theme (bold makes it look more unstoppable) was at the centre of the Olympics closing ceremony - hence all the Jessie J crashing Queen's gig - and is apparently set to be the big trend for the end of this year, so I'm getting in there before the masses so I can look cool and (most of all) EDGY.
This jumbly effect comes into the kitchen via the fusion route - the concept that it is culinarily acceptable to take traditional dishes from two different countries and stir them together a bit until they blend. In my opinion, however, it entirely overshoots the 'culinarily acceptable' category and soars effortlessly like a buzzard into 'highly endorsed and encouraged'. It is for this reason that I say to you all FUSE YOUR DISHES RIGHT NOW. Any plate with fewer than two countries on it shall be heavily frowned upon. To avoid such intense disproval, follow these steps and achieve Italian/Indian greatness:

Acquire:
A pizza base, if you're feeling majorly snazzy make it yourself...but I would probs ceeb at this point and just use a ready made one
A handful of cubed paneer
Two tablespoons ricotta cheese
8-10 really ripe figs, thinly slicéd
Bit of salt and pep
A handful of basil leaves

Assemble:
Spread the ricotta on the pizza base
Scatter the paneer around (on the pizza base, not just about the room)
Pop the figs on
Salt and pep it
Bake for 10 - 12 mins at 200 degz
Sprinkle basil leaves over when cooked

Call it an Indalian creation and float around in a salwar kameez with a black leather man-bag to really embody the bi-cultural blend. Only two more things could possibly make you a more perfect hotchpotch, and these are, OF COURSE, a soundtrack, and a literature.
To start with the musical accompaniment, some of you may be surprised to hear that is it not the cover song that I am going for, nay, it is instead a song with two clear halves; a song that spans two genres in distinct segments more similar to the idea of the sartorial mashup where it was easier to see the lines between the styles. Upon the Heath/A Tale of Two Cities by Mr.Hudson and The Library is this song - it is Mr.Hudson before he got all autotuned by Kanye, and it is therefore much much better than the more faaaymiiiss stuff. I feel, but am not 100% sure, that the title of the song is inspired by Dickens, which brings us on nicely to the bewk side of things.
For the literary mashup, you can look towards Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Sadly it's not the Peep Show Davey Mitch, but it is still pretty good...not wowworthy but still enjoyable enough to read. It spans six hugely different stories in a kind of pyramid shape as it progresses and then climbs down in reverse order, so the first story you read is also the last one. Furthermore, being written in 2004, it can be seen as an early mashup novel and can be recommended on this merit, if not an intellectually stimulating one.

I am writing this from the dauntingly large white leather sofa of au pairing. So far, everything is exactly the degree of uncomfortable I expected; the family are mostly nice, but occasionally lapse into scary Parisian command mode, the baby doesn't appreciate all the squeaky voices I am giving inanimate objects in a desperate attempt to entertain her, I am permanently hungry but too scared to tuck in to the fridge and my hair is not behaving.

[Time passes]

I am now in Guadeloupe. I've actually been here for two weeks now but this is the first day that my brain has actually felt capable of forming normal, English sentences. How does one baby (...)

[More time passes]

Ok so my plans to blog out my soul in an eloquent yet entertaining and therapeutic fashion during my séjour in Gwadders didn't quite succeed. I've been back for a good two weeks now...feeling pretty much recovered but still suffer from the occasional haricot vert flashback - never in my life have I eaten so many squeaky beans for so many days on end. One day, however, that made the whole ordeal worthwhile was The Day of the Poo: 24 hours of pure enjoyment and low levels of cringing. Only joking, it was the worst day of my life and it went as follows: The family bought this minimum €100 inflatable pool style rectangle, danced its way into the house, rejoiced in their ingenuity at bringing a body of water to their garden space for about 10 minutes, and then barked at me to inflate, clean and fill. After doing this, it was time to ceremoniously swimming costume the baby (who didn't even care about the mighty almost-a-pool) and parade her down to the water's edge before the momentous paddle took place. We both climbed in and it was almost fun for about 5 minutes, but this soon ended as she laid the largest poo ever, which broke up like a rocket dispatching another mini rocket and distributed itself everywhere. I was then charged with emptying 1416 litres of bobbly water with A GARDEN BUCKET and distributing them around the edges of the grass so as to 'prevent the garden from flooding'. Now, arduous poo emptying I can just about cope with, but unfortunately this wasn't the worst of the whole conundrum as I further managed to fantastically puncture the side of the pool in the process. Might have been a subconscious drive to destroy the source of all evil, or it might have been a genuine accident, but either way I murdered their new favourite vessel of water in one swift bucket swoop. No bicycle repair kit in Mr.Bricolage could fix this rip, and neither could it patch over the hole left in their lives by the departure of this demon creation from the mortal world - along with the translucent vinyl, my hard earned rep as a functioning, capable au pair was deflating rapidly, leaving behind and empty shell of shame.

[Nice pause in order to allow thoughts of excrement to dissipate before commencing food based discussion]

If you ever find yourself in a similar situation of high stress and panic, the best solution is probably to just stop doing whatever it is that is making you so stressed and panicky, drop whatever is in your hands and pick up a mug and drink deeply from it. You are likely to be even more effectively de-stressed if there happens to be something tasty in the mug, so here are some herbal tea combos of stuff to pop in:

(basic rubric is put listed stuff in mug and then add hot water)

A good chunk of fresh ginger, a squeeze of lime and a bit of honey

Clipper green tea with raspberry and ginseng tea bags and infuse away

The Classic Mint

Slice of lemon and some...ROSEMARY SPRIGS?!

A little drop of elderflower cordial and some raspberry leaves

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Now for the music that you should forget all your ruined pool nightmares to:
Tell Me Something Good by Rufus (featuring Chaka Khan, I am told) which soothes with its distorted guitar funk vibes and the frequent mention of the word good. My one piece of advice to you all, oh keen musical appreciators, is to never ever OD on funk (or actually, just never OD on anything...but especially funk) as it is a truly beautiful creation of this world, but can quickly become nothing but a series of annoying men singing like women trying to sing like men if overplayed in any way.
If you have ever studied psychology, you will know that a big part of coping with trauma (such as pooey pools/something worse) is to regress back to childhood, so do this you shall. Grab any piece of early JK Rowling/Dick King-Smith/Spike Milligan and tuck in, relishing how little you have to concentrate and how great Hogwarts would be. If, alternatively, you wish to regress but do not wish to repeat, try some more obscure kid lit, such as I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith or Elmer the Patchwork Elephant by David McKee, and become increasingly concerned as you find it more interesting and stimulating than that Rushdie thingy you felt obliged to try.

During the deepest, darkest depths of a revision low, I watched a youtube video of an ambiguously nerdy man blending tricolour silly putty. I feel this is probably an appropriate metaphor for my end of June 2012 life, as the many putties of me (stay with me) are also getting mushed together, though minus the vicious metal blades, I am pleased to add. The orange putty is my degree shtooff including exams and their impending arrival/completion and my voyages to Lyon next year. The blue putty is my beautiful party calendar of smashy smashy. The purple putty is, however, the big dollop that engulfs everything else in a slightly panicky glop, as it is me being offered yesterday a summer au pair job to a French family in Guadeloupe starting in...fourteen days. I am obvs completely psyched for this opportunity HOWEVER I don't possess many of the necessary things, among which are a typhoid inoculation and a crumple free linen wardrobe, and I need to move out of my house and I need to learn how to change a baby's nappy and I need to somehow not be so goddamn pale or else I am going burn to an actual crisp, A REAL LIVE HUMAN CRISP.
To counter act this, I'm bringing the blending back to the kitchen where it belongs and offering you a Stella Fox inspired smoothie which tastes nothing like putty:

Tesco frozen fruits of the forest (£2)
One banana (1/5 of £1.20)
Thee tablespoons of vanilla yog (£1 for Onken at the mo)
One tin of peaches (69p)
Orange juice (£1.60)

1) Pop it all in a jug or other suitable receptacle for containing sploshy liquid
2) Whizz it all up, ideally with a hand held blender. This is better than a general food processor (G.F.P.) as it means less fiddly washing up and you feel like a very powerful wizard, pulverising everything in your way.

Another handy hint that is not the entire meal, but rather a tasty enhancement to a basic risotto dish, is the blending of peas, mint and oil to create what one could term a paste. This can then be stirred into any kind of risotto, but preferably one with ham or other pea friendly flavours, to make it green and more diverse.

This smoothie / emerald delight combo is to be eaten IN CONJUNCTION WITH (yeah I did) several different pieces of musical genius, either all playing at once on various stereos of Hi-Fis or other forgotten devices of electronic sound equipment, or listened to in rapid succession, in order to give off the impression of a seamless transfer and resultant blend effect. That sentence is a prime example of such blending; breathing is cheating. They are all remixes too, just to add to the hash up effect. First up is Cay's Crays Kalbata Remix by Fat Freddy's Drop, which at first sounds disconcertingly like Nelly Furtado's Maneater, but don't worry - the similarity soon ends. Second is Please Mr Postman Refix by Cragga, which I find myself singing joltingly along to, bravely and misguidedly attempting all the deliberately juttery mash ups, and third is Lonely Lonely Frisbee's Mix by Feist, which is good for having a conversation over the top of. I mean that in a good way, as you can still appreciate the music when you are taking breaths, for example.

The blended book for this probably quite hectic mix (especially if you are playing the songs all at the same time) is The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. If you have watched the film, put aside your prejudices - the book is almost four hundred million times better, and if you have already read the book FOR GOODNESS SAKE PLEASE DON'T WATCH THE FILM. Time travelling in the book is sexy and emotionally confusing, but in the film it is problematic and inconvenient. Right now, time travel would just be so handy for unblending all my life putties.

My favourite Mr. Man is Mr. Rush. It has always been this way, so I put it down to the 'birds of a feather flock together' theory: I see in him a nose similar to if not larger than my own and am therefore drawn towards him as my equal. The one major problem with this affinity, however, is that he is lilac, and that is the one colour I really really despise. What is its purpose?! It's not grey, it's not purple - it's just a limp shade of complete apathy that instantly makes everything look less appealing. Poor Mr. Rush, not only is his entire body a nose, but it is also the colour of damp cardboard mixed with my grandma's hand cream. HOWEVER, if one looks past these superficial problems, Mr. Rush is actually in possession of the best ever quality for this time of year: getting on with stuff.

I will therefore zoom on to the speedy recipe of today that will not gauge a chunk out of your revision (if you're in some kind of education) / partying (if you've just finished some kind of education) / daily life (if you are neither a student nor an ex-student), Pasta à la Lazy Gregson:

Spaghetti or other variant of pasta in a quick easy to open packet

2 sausages (either veggie or real) ready defrosted for quick cooking

1 red pepper quickly plucked from a nearby tree

tomato ketchup stored in a nearby cupboard for quick fetching

harissa paste in a jar with the lid already unscrewed for quick use

tomato puree same as above, except replace the word 'jar' with tube, as this is the more likely form of container

honey with a quick eazy squeezy function bottle

olive oil in a bottle with a wide enough mouth that allows quick pouring

1) Put the water on to boil at lightening speed

2) In a frying pan, fry the sausages and pepper in a bit of olive oil at cheetah speed

3) Put the pasta in the water at concord speed

4) Dollop in some harissa paste, some ketchup, some purée and some honey to the sausage and pep mix at rollercoaster speed

5) Combine everything in a medium sized bowl and eat at high speed at lightening speed again

I would recommend not eating this at such pace, however, as indigestion can be an unpleasant thing and might ruin the next few minutes you are going to spend rapidly listening and reading the following: Salaam by K'naan, which clocks in at 26 seconds long. Once again, it's eerie, which seems to be an emerging trend in my tracks of choice, however at 43.3% of a minute you are unlikely to be entirely freaked out.

For a zippy (seriously running out of fast words here) read, Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe has it all - it took me about 3 hours to read cover to cover and is so tightly packed with comment that you will feel as if you have devoured a 1000 page epic...a bit like one of those dried out compacted flannels Father Christmas used to pop in the stocking that expands and becomes a lovely jungle scene when wet. You probably wouldn't want an image of Welcome to Our Hillbrow on your flannel, however, as it centres around the problem of HIV and apartheid, but it is so sensitively dealt with that it's not a confrontational read by any means.

I was so Mr. Rushed when I created this ensemble that the spaghetti was insufficiently drained, but thankfully Mpe had bored even this in mind and laminated her cover so no books were harmed in the process:

I feel sorry for The List. It's only ever really seen as a way of shopping effectively or rushing off an answer in an exam if you run out of time, but it deserves so much more recognition that this. You couldn't possibly write down everything ever, so The List really exists to show what is NOT needed - how handy is that?! To help explain, here is a list of everything I can't draw: people, horses, shadows, detail, geometric shapes, odd perspectives, buildings, underwater scenes, food, flowers, fabric creases, flags, lilac, fruit, letters, sports, blurry speedy movement, vehicles, snow, ivy, wind especially wind how do you draw wind, waterfalls, gemstones, extreme melancholy, bridges, headland and/or gorse bushes, whisks, snowflakes, graffiti, hoovers and deck-chairs. See? Writing down everything I can draw would have taken about 50 years of solid dedication, so The List has in actual fact saved me from becoming an empty 70 year old with no friends.
I would naturally follow on to a list themed recipe, but sadly that doesn't exist, so here is a not entirely tangential (think queues...they are sort of like lists and are pretty British) but perhaps off puttingly typical JUBILEE SURPRISE. Try to see past the grimyellowschoolbaglunchcoronationchicken preconception because this is actually a seriously nice sandwich filler:

2 cooked and chopped chicken breasts
1 tablespoon of mango chutney
2 tablespoons of mayo
1 tablespoon crème fraîche (è and î NICE)
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 lemon's worth of squeeze
1 finely chopped red onion
handful of chives
salt and pep

1) Mix it all together
2) Use a medium sized flame torch to brown up the edges. Then hydrogenate it to make it solid at room temperature. Flake some gold leaf and sprinkle over to finish.

For a Jubilee themed song, what better than some classic and resolutely British brass music?
...Well I can think of at least 46 things better than that, so here is a merry world vibe that I cannot really imagine the queen sailing along the river to: Biriya by Mory Kanté. It's got a great drum beat and if you listen to it enough, you can sing along and feel bilingual.
For the novel, I am going to fully indulge in an English classic of, as we do actually do the old Nov quite spectacularly, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Apparently it is the first detective type novel - came before Sherlock an' all that - and it features a huge diamond that is so big it's almost yellow, some really grim quicksand and someone called Godfrey. There are obviously a lot of nineteenth-century-closed-in views, their sentiments on a group of three travelling Hindu priests for example are a bit dubious, but the narrator of the majority of the novel told by Gabriel Betteredge is brilliant and I wish he were my grandfather.


Also, seeing as we haven't had much vegetable in this triangle, and we all know I need to mention vegetables as much as possible, here's a shout out to John's greengrocers on Brunswick Street in Leamington - 1000 splendid grapes for under £2? Yes please. 

Various conversations (Luigi in the kitchen) over the past few days have led me to the conclusion that, if one were to be resurrected in another life, the worst thing to come back as would be the running person on Temple Run. This is for several reasons, most notably the fact that the running would never end, save for fleeting moments of respite in some kind of tree trunk related death, only to be once more reborn into the same unfulfilling fate. For as long as the procrastinators of the world continued to take the idol if they dared, you would be condemned to the same exhausting doom - it would be nothing short of HORRENDOUS. The only upside would be your status as a hipster, because we all know Aztec is so hot right now.
In order to get in there before it becomes uncool to be living in the 1300s, here comes a delicious and filling Aztec recipe:

Potatoes
An outside space

1) Put some potatoes outside on a cold night
2) Let them sit there for a while, until they turn to a pulp
3) Consume within one year

Sounds good. It's called chuño too, which is pleasantly lyrical and appropriately poetic for such an elegant and refined meal. If, however, in the unlikely event that the chuño does not satisfy you, there is always the rightly worshipped cocoa bean to fall back on.
The authentic, very Aztec and therefore very edgy cocoa creation is Xocolatl, the traditional chocolate drink:

710ml water
2 sliced green chillies inc seeds
2 more litres of water (water = good for you so cancels out the cocoa)
45g unsweetened cocoa powder
20ml vanilla extract

1) Bring the 710 ml water to the boil
2) Put the sliced chillies and seeds in
3) Cook for seven minutes
4) Strain out the chillies and seeds and return water to the heat
5) Add the two litres of water to the chilli infused water
6) Stir in the cocoa powder and the vanilla extract
7) Continue to cook for 10 minutes
8) Recline and sip whilst wearing some suitably Aztec patterned tee shirt, probably from topman, preferably with the short sleeves rolled up a minimum of two folds

This bev, howev, is definitely not best enjoyed with accompanying Aztec music. Unless you are in to off beat squawks and piercing pan pipes, in which case go for it. Instead, I am going to share with you the gift of KNOWLEDGE and INSIGHT given to me by my homeboy Borton, which is the entirety of Alt-J (∆) 's new album An Awesome Wave. Every song on it is good, especially Fitzpleasure, Breezeblocks and Taro, perfect for chilling to whenever, and not just 'in a revision break' because I hate that phrase so much.
While still in your Aztec tee, crack out One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - it comes from the same part of the world as the Aztecs and does the whole remote civilisation thing, dwelling significantly on foliage description. I'm only half way through it at the moment, but what I have read so far has been a brilliant tangle of magical realism and unhappy wives. I've also heard Marquez is a fan of colour symbolism - apparently yellow and gold represent imperialism, something you are pretty much endorsing when you are collecting those coins on Temple Run (coin magnet = best thing ever), so that's a nice circle we have come in there. If you want to be really indulgently nerdy, there is an entire article on MY FAVOURITE EVER WEBSITE JSTOR which goes into much more detail about this: 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30203613


And to finish, a fab fun fact about the Aztecs!!!: Montezuma II's headdress was made from the feathers of over 250 birds!!! WOWOWOWOWOW!!!!!

Lyon, the land of what Wikipedia defines as 'sophisticated salami', is going to be my home for a year. Although I am sure this charcuterie is uniquely splendid and a very desirable aspect of the city's heritage, it is not the main reason that I am drawn to the region. I am going there primarily for SNOW. And also the Jazz cafés (pronounced with a soft and slurring J...almost verging on a Y actually). And also obviously to improve my language/immerse myself in French culture/enrich others as a primary school English teacher...ahem.
It is with this city in mind, therefore, that I bring you my own interpretation of sophisticated salami in the medium of chorizo and scallop risotto. In the colours of the Irish flag, this dish instantly makes your presumably unpatterned plate more look more interesting:

some onion
some cloves of garlic
some celery
some chorizo
some scallops
some peas
some risotto rice
some stock cubes
some hot water
some parmesan

0000) Fry some onion with some garlic and some celery
1000) Add some chorizo and some scallops and fry them too
0100) Add some risotto rice to the same pan and fry that off too
1100) Add some peas and stir around
0101) Dissolve some stock cubes in some hot water add to the pan and boilyboilyboily
0110) Continue to boil until the rice is cooked then stir in some parmesan
0111) Eat some

All instructions are either vague or in binary in order to increase the challenge.

The Yazz song to be eaten with this cured meat feast is Fat Freddy's Drop's Big BW - it's not actual Yazz, but it does have some saxophone and possibly trumpet in it, so it is on the CUSP. I am huge fan of all Fat Freddy's Drop, my faves are probably Wandering Eye, Ray Ray and Cay Cray's Digital Mystikz remix, so I would definitely recommend sacrificing 22 minutes of your life to give them a listen.

HELLO AGAIN. I got interrupted by the beach, where an impromptu semi-bikini semi-underwear (I wasn't prepared for the irresistible azure, so only came in half and half) swim occurred as there was absolutely zero surf but I still needed to get salt in my eyebrows. Talking of the beach, have you read The Beach? It's by Alex Garland and the beach in The Beach is in Thailand and infinitely more tropical than the beach not in The Beach that I have just come from, and therefore makes for a sweltering cult novel that will make you feel just like you are on the beach in The Beach. There's a film of the beach in The Beach too, and apparently it's quite good, but I haven't seen it as the beach in The Beach book was satisfying enough for me, but maybe it will be one for when I am back in the Midlands and therefore not near the beach not in The Beach so need the beach in The Beach to fill this void. It's perhaps ever so slightly verging on airport novel, as it is easy to read and very escapist, but it is totally engrossing and full of fishing, smoking and mutinying - and what more is out there than that?

And now for a parting anecdote tying in neatly with the cotton pants of the swim: in the evening, when faces are to be washed, there comes a crisis in the Gregson household, as neither I nor my brother own a suitable garment for keeping hair off the face, so have to be resourceful, and often arrive at the option of clean pants on the head. This means that every so often a rare and beautiful spectacle happens where we both simultaneously emerge from the various bathrooms of the house wearing the head pants and see our ridiculous gear reflected in each others' eyes. Such a moment just passed. I shall leave you on that thought.

Currently on the most unappealing six-hour train journey of my life – it is so sunny outside and I have had at least three texts from different people exclaiming about how GLORIOUS and BOILING it is and how they are having a PRICELESS TIME in Jephson gardens. Every metre it advances, another wisp of cloud appears – there is about 78% sky coverage now. I think this is an appropriate time for a visual expression of my own emotions: :( . I do, however, have a seat on this hideous metal…tube? Is a train tubular?...which is some lucky, as I was preparing myself for the classic floor of vestibule by overflowing bin and popular toilet combo. ‘Vestibule’ is a big contender in the list of exotic but insignificant words that give off the impression of belonging to the vocabulary of only the intellectual elite, but in actual fact have very little place in the majority of chat. ‘Deciduous tree’ is another. So is ‘chasm’. The other, more significant, reason why I have not yet thrown myself out of the window (yes, this is one of those West Country glories that doesn’t feature the electronic door, instead leaving you to flounder with your arm bent awkwardly out the window in the never ending war of man versus handle. The handle opens up a whole new world of rant, as it is only located on the outside of the door - why? Why not just stick to the classic door design of two handles? WHY, CROSS COUNTRY TRAINS?) is that I am going hooooommeeee. This means many things, but the shortlist of positive aspects stands at 1) seeing my fam and mentally incomplete dogs, 2) surfing, and 3) delicious food/sinky cosy bed/more than one room that is not my bedroom/a shower that doesn’t trickle/a car/television licence/lots of tomato ketchup in brilliant time as I just yesterday ran out/all the other merits of living in a proper house, so it should be a top few days (especially as, during the time it has taken me to write this (which is quite a long time as I got massively distracted by iTunes and the awkward politics of whether you should move seat if a free set of two arises, in order to give both yourself and the person you are seated next to a more comfortable rest of journey whilst also running the risk of them thinking you don’t like sitting next to them for personal reasons and then having a secret vendetta against you for the remaining hours) the clouds have fled and the sun is back and technically it should be even hotter here because it’s closer to the equator.)

That was all spew and no substance, so down to the juicy bits now. The recipe of choice today is à la mother Gregson and is a healthy yet hearty alternative to the Classic Salad:

1 garlic clove
olive oil
salt and pepper
1 avocado
3 largish tomatoes
1 apple
a third of a bushel of sultanas or raisins
1 lime
some fresh rocket leaves
some pine nuts

1) Crush the garlic with some salt (in a pestle and mortar, if you are so well equipped. At uni I possess a chopping board and a saucepan and some hideous hedgerow plates unearthed from the loft of my aunt, so coming home and finding a pestle and mortar at my disposal is just lush) until it forms a gloop

2) Mix in the olive oil and more salt and pepper

3) Chop avocados, tomatoes and apple, bung together in a bowl

4) Add garlic/olive oil to the bowl and get involved with your hands, making sure the seasoning is EVENLY DISTRIBUTED over the ambiguous fruit or veg (what is avocado - surely a vegetable, no?)

5) Lightly roast the pine nuts and then add them to the bowl, along with the rocket and the sultanas

6) Squeeze the lime over it all. The best bit about this salad is that you have the three C key components to a texture experience: crunch in the apple, chew in the sultanas and...well I can't think of a third that begins with c, but it's basically the softness of the avo and tomato.

Family Gregson ate this with sausages and burgers on the BBQ in the still evening air, with only this tune (and bird song, and Tom nasal warbling like Nina Simone does at the end of Feeling Good, and the dogs barking at a cow, and the the farmer quadding over to check on his pheasants) interrupting the tranquility: Truro Agricultural Show by Ian Marshal. Only to be listened to if you come from Cornwall, or else the novelty will not compensate for the insufferable plod of the melody. People from all over the globe, however, should be able to appreciate this piece of regional gold: Cornish Acid by Aphex Twin. The novel of today is typically location appropriate Cornish classic, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Apparently, last night she dreamt she went to Manderley again. The nameless narrator recounts her relationship with Maxim de Winter, and also apparently her relationship with his dead ex-wife, who constantly haunts the present with her reputation. Permanently in her ghostly shadow, Mrs de Winter the second also has to battle it out with the bitchiest female character ever, the housekeeper Mrs Danvers. Much like the salad, this book ticks all the criteria of an English novel - a big house, a bit of a twist, some romance - big up C'Wall, pard.

As we all know, Wednesday is windsurf day (it seems I live my life by alliteration), but yesterday there wasn't any wind, so I would say it was just surfing day, but that would also be a lie as the VERY NATURE of the midlands means they are in the middle of the land, and therefore waves are not ample. Rather, therefore, it was a day of drifting slowly downwind, jumping off boards into scummy water and generally trying to look like we were having more fun than the sailors, so all in all a highly rewarding, productive and strenuous session. Somewhere there's a video of me doing a headstand on a board and then crumpling onto myself, so look out for that if you ever need to feel better about your own gymnastic skills.
What the world lacked in wind, however, it more than made up for in sun, so my face is now a shiny beacon of warning to all comrades on the ginger spectrum: don't think you won't burn because it is England in May - you SHALL sizzle and you SHALL look like a polished balloon.
To max out this rare gift of 23 degrees, we had a rather large scale BBQ (I'm using the abbreviation as I actually don't know how to spell the real word and I don't want to have to face the shame of being beaten by my mac with its accusatory red underlining that boasts 'yes I am an aesthetically pleasing white box that more intelligent than you. And yes, I can see you using google to spellcheck) in our loosely titled 'garden' (in reality, an angular paved area with weeds pretending to be real grass containing three road signs and two Tesco trolleys), and swore to gorge until we could gorge no more. I was still windsurfing for the provisions shop, so my homies were in charge and they did nothing less than a MARVELLOUS job. We had a combo of real burgers and bean burgers, corn on the cob, the standard yet crucial baps and ketchup, (get this) red peppers roasted with feta and basil, cous cous and cider mmmmm it was so good. So good, in fact, that I had to pause to have a little moment of reflection / mourning as the meal I am going to eat tonight is going to be comparatively grim (my fridge contains some coconut yog and a mushroom...might have to be pasta again) just then.
The summer tunes we had on repeat in the background consisted of many classics such as Mia ya heee (formally known as Dragostea Din Tei, google tells me) by O-Zone, The Summer by Josh Pyke, the entire Sigh No More Mumford and Sons album, Ben Howard's These Waters and also his Every Kingdom - all safe bets for public gatherings. My own personal music taste tends to be a bit more anti social as people generally turn off my iPod the moment it is plugged into the communal speakers, but I'm going to offer you Summer Breeze by Aphrodite and Kobo by Baka Beyond, try them out if you are in a tolerant mood, if not then best stick to the unfading faves as they definitely won't lose you any friends.
Summer = reading, so for the first flip flopped and possibly even barefooted steps into May, I recommend (just to butt in on myself with a bit of quality social advice...do make sure that you talk to people after the BBQ though, don't go straight from food to book - people might think you are reluctant to mingle and boring) THIS POEM by A.E.Housman


Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my three score years and ten,
twenty will not come again.
And take from seventy years a score, 
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty Springs is little room, 
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Nothing like mixing the ephemeral nature of the human existence with the image of a nice bit of foliage. Hattie just rang, and we're having a mini repeat of yesterday's BBQ with the left over bean burgers - the threat of coconut yogurt has gone! 

Monday begins with an M, Morocco begins with an M. Coincidence? I THINK NOT. After the falafel, it was only natural that the progression to authentic tagine took place. Whenever I type tagine into my iPhone, autocorrect puts it all in capitals, as if to emphasise the merits of the fragrant veg and shout to the world that THIS IS THE DISH YOU ALL WISH YOU WERE EATING, NOT THAT CO-OP PIZZA, NOT THAT PLAIN RISOTTO, THIS! THIS MARVELLOUS, STEAMY CONCOCTION! My buddy Groundsey did the Morocco Hitch over Easter and brought back a fine specimen of a tagine, along with 35 spices (one for every mm of film in a standard camera) so she prepped me up the meal. It was so good, so I forced her at gunpoint to copy out the recipe as it is practically illegal to keep such tasty secrets to yourself. Here it is:

(serves 3...tagine not 100% necessary; you can use a saucepan with a lid on)
1 baking potato
1 aubergine
1/2 courgette
1 carrot
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
olive oil
35 SPICES (have fun sourcing those)
Serve with cous cous

1) Fry all the vegetables in a little olive oil for 10 mins
2) Add the spices (if you are panicking about not having 35 spices the just bung in all the classics - cinnamon, saffron, ginger, turmeric, cumin, paprika, pepper etc) and fry them off for 2 minutes
3) Transfer to tagine/almost equally good but less ethnic looking saucepan
4) (and this is a direct quote) "add copious water amounts"
5) Simmer for 2 hours or more, checking frequently that the water hasn't boiled off, adding more if it has
6) Serve immediately with cous cous, crusty bread and hummus

YUM is the standard reaction to this, unless you are one of those meat fanatics who is slightly repulsed by the idea of too many vegetables in one place. If you are one of these people, then please do add some chicken thigh to the recipe (fry it at the beginning before adding it to the tagine along with the vegetables) and enjoy the protein it gives you. I have just realised that the traditional way to spell tagine is tajine, I wish I had been using that spelling so I looked worldly and accurate, but it's too late to go back now.
In terms of la musique, I am going to ride along the vegetable road to arrive at the Beach Boys' surreal Vegetable song, which is a bit disconcerting, however I personally have a huge love for vegetables (almost as huge as my love for chutney, but not quite) so I can empathise with the sentiments expressed, especially in the following lines:

I'm gonna keep well my vegetables
Cart off and sell my vegetables
I love you most of all
My favorite vege-table
Oh oh taba vega vegel

Whilst not only allowing the audience to clearly understand the adoration the speaker feels for his/her vegetables (gender unknown), this extract can also be seen to promote the benefits of growing your own, which is highly relevant to today's supermarket obsessed, shrink wrapped society.  Furthermore, the closing statement of 'Oh oh taba vega vegel' makes lots of sense and is fundamental to the understanding of the song as a whole.
Now that your real teeth have had a blast, it's time to sink your metaphorical teeth into something equally tasty, and it comes in the form of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It's all about yams, yams are everywhere: here, there, hanging out in their lair (freestyle rap is not my forte), as the livelihood of the whole village depends on the harvest. Things Fall Apart(the centre cannot hold...Yeats innit) follows the Ibo tribe in Central Africa, using the life of protagonist Okonkwe to mirror the tragic effects of colonisation. It's written in English, but the African vernacular and the peppering of many italicised words from Ibo language alter the sentence structure and give the impression of a native narration. This also serves to point the finger at the Western world responsible for colonisation, so it's not a comfortable read by any means - the ending in particular makes a Westerner feel really guilty! Give it a go anyway...if you're feeling yammy. 

Bit of a retail extravaganza occurring over here - have just blown my life's fortune in Birmingham's Bullring, so all the meals from now on are going to consist of spaghetti hoops and rice...soz. I was, however, SIMPLY INSPIRED by a Mexican bean wrap thing I had for lunch from the height of culinary expertise, Boots' sandwich fridge, so I'm going to seriously follow up the Southern American tangent with a quest for the best chilli con carne in the entire world. Obviously, my mother's is a big contender - vary quantities depending on how much you want to make: cook the onions and garlic and chopped red chilli in some olive oil, then brown off the mince in the same pan. Stir in some plain flour to soak up the juices before adding the tinned tomatoes and a squeeze of tomato purée (nice accent) and maybe even a bit of water and vegetable stock to completely cover the mince in liquid. Then pop in the kidney beans, paprika and cumin too, whack it in the oven (aga = second hottest oven for an hour before transferring it to the third for another two or three, other less desirable oven = 180 degrees for an hour and then down to 120 for two or three) and wait. Taste to make sure it's nice and spicy if one likes it that way, if not then add some more chillz. Serve with a warmingly big pile of rice, or, if it's an adventurous week, tortilla it up and melt some cheese over it to create what is widely known as A BURRITO. Musically, I think Zambra by Ojos de Brujos is a shout - it's feisty and definite, which seems appropriate for such a substantial meal. With regards to a bewk, I'm going to go for something equally punchy in the form of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (I'm a postcolonial lit fan, obvs) which contains one of literature's 'strongest females', apparently(1). Even if you don't care for a touch of the feminist in your novels, it is still a fab read, quite dramatic and maybe even unlikely, but you feel immediately warm towards Janie so YES this is my novel of choice for today.

Wednesday is windsurfing day (as a fussy dweeb I'm a fan of nothing-less-than-almost-pleasant conditions, which is obviously practically unheard of in England) and seeing as today was the first time on the lake for a while, I'm going to make this entry water themed. Also, a quick plug: if you are any one of the following: a student at the University of Warwick, not afraid of neoprene or the owner of a charitable heart, then please join Warwick Windsurf and please become a highly active member, as we are dangerously close to the worst end imaginable of FIZZLING OUT.
So the watery recipe for today is actually not at all watery, cos that would be unappealing, however it does feature fish, which we all know need the water to survive, so therein lies the link. The focus fish of today comes in the form of the extortionately priced but ever so scrummy tuna steak, a piece of fish that has been famously described as "the fundamental taste of the sea" (Eccles, Hattie. Tuna Steak and All its Merits, Priory Publishing, Leamington 2012). Seeing as tuna steak is so spéciale, this is a recipe that does it justice with many twiddly cheffy things (such as making your own oregano oil??) but do not be put off as the end result is delicious and beany.  http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fish-recipes/chargrilled-tuna-with-oregano-oil-be . Obviously I didn't cook this today as I got back a hungry bungry so raided the fridge for quick food (omelette, chips and salad - quite comforting in a hearty and mountainous way, but nowhere near as thematically neat as Jamie Oliver's chargrilled fancyness) - one day maybe I'll be one of those high powered women who can have thousands of immaculate children, hold an important and stressful job, whilst also having enough time to host sophisticated dinner parties at which tuiles and fricassés are eaten, but for the time being, I'm scatty and incompetent, so a good windsurf and a good meal are mutually exclusive.
In terms of feeling well and truly underwater while you are preparing this, I would recommend listening to Teardrop by Massive Attack, which has pattering rain in the background and is pleasantly chilled for when you are stressing out with the oregano oil. The whole of Mezzanine (the album, not the intermediate floor) is lush if you want an eery wind down, especially the song Black Milk, so whack it out when culinary times get tough.
And now, repping the reading corner of the Berfooda Triangle, is The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, a novel that focuses on the Indian tide country. The dialogue is so cringey, especially at the classic man meets woman on train, where desperately awful small talk that is meant to be doused in sexual tension but instead remains a parched portion of cringe is exchanged. HOWEVER, and it is a big however, I think the majority of the book's significance lies in what is not said, as the two protagonists, American born Piya and native Fokir, cannot communicate through the spoken word, so have to use their knowledge of the water to express themselves instead. I ended up writing one of my essays on this book (if you are studying English at Warwick, looking for module recommendations for next year and a fan of the non English English novel, then definitely go for EN251 New Literatures) and actually really enjoyed studying it, which I think says quite a lot for its depth and imagination. It's a good place to start if you are wanting to read more Indian writing without wanting to hurl yourself in at the deep end (ah, inadvertent water pun, HUZZAH) as it is written in a very 'Englishy' way but the subject matter is all very unknown and exciting. So go forth, be fine and be FISHY.

p.s. the photo here is attached to demonstrate what water looks like. Photo is © Tom Nicholson, he has some GREAT other non watery photos too - here is a link to his website www.tnicholson.co.uk , I severely recommend checking it out if you even so much as dabble in photography. 

I've really got to stop eating stir fry. It gives the impression of being so beneficial as it is essentially just many veg chopped up small, a bit of soy sauce and some noodles, however it is irreparably unsatisfying. I say irreparably, but it is actually quite easy to repair through the consumption of many other foodstuffs, and this is the very reason why it is a rubbish meal. BUT THAT IS ENOUGH HATE, let us instead focus on the one truly beautiful thing in this world; chutney. Like I said the other day, chutters is underestimated in the picnic environment - it completes the bread and cheese triangle and is just so goddamn TANGY...maybe I care a bit too much about it, but it can only be a healthy obsession, surely? My fave student budget style chut is Tesco's own brand tomato creation for 89p http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=258763488 , it is more of a starter chutney to get you hooked before progressing onto more advanced and customised condiment, but nevertheless FAB. If you are ready for an upgrade, then Nigella Lawson does a nifty spicy apple thing:

(this quantity makes about a litre)
500g apples
1 medium onion
2 bird's-eye chillies
250g brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground allspice (or a mixture of nutmeg and cinnamon)
1 teaspoon ground cloves
half a teaspoon sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 heaped tablespoon chopped or grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon turmeric
350ml cider vinegar


And then just boil it all up for 40 mins or so before popping it into jars to delight in later.

On the topic of the best things ever, I'm going to bore you all with a bit of chat about (now I am going to be careful here, as I don't want to have a favourite book, but this one does come really close, and I feel slightly better about it as it's not just one story, so I've sort of saved myself there) a 'strong candidate in my shortlist of brilliant books', Freedom by various writers. It's a collection of short stories compiled by Amnesty International to celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - each story is based upon one of the 30 clauses and some of them are really brilliant (the stories, not the clauses, all the clauses are brilliant, of course). Some of them are also not so hot, obvs, but you can glaze over them when you have 30 to choose from. Start at the beginning and work your way through, it goes well as a sequence and it's helpful to learn a bit more about the human race, which is after all what most reading is about anyway. That was quite serious, so listen to Watermelon Man by Herbie Hancock to get over it.

Yesterday was an unusual combo of horrendous house conflict and delightful falafel consumption. I think, for the sake of everyone's enjoyment and the fact that one day this blog might be read by more people than just my mother, the falafel should be the focus point of this entry. I used a really simple recipe that I found somewhere online a few months ago, but it is v simple to remember : fry some onions and garlic, get lots of chickpeas, probably about 2x400g tins, some parsley, some cumin, some coriander, some chilli powder if you fancy them lightly spiced and an egg. Mash it all up together in a semi-gloopy mix, and then make little falafel shaped blobs and fry them in some olive oil. Sadly, the more oil the better as it prevents burning and sticking and crumbling and ALL MANNER OF FRYING PAN TERRORS. You can serve them with whatever takes your fancy - cous cous with peppers and roasted courgette is nice, or tortilla wraps and creme frâiche with cucumber and salad is also a winner. I fed five people with the quantities above and there was still some left over at the end, so it does go pretty far. As for the music that should be providing the background to this undoubtedly calm, clean and tidy food preparation time (my kitchen looked like a field had exploded in it), I suggest getting well and truly in the Moroccan zone with dubstroketraditional Berber band Argan and their eerily chilled song Tamaguite (iTunes it, babes). Now for the big part. The book to read whilst easing back on your bed, mulling over in your mind the best way to make the falafels less crumbly. It's a tough choice, but I think I'm going to be radical here, and stray from the obvious choice of North African writing as  it might be too much of a good thing. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino is also one of by BBFLs, it is SO GOOD! It's bit 'quirky' (although I hate that word...but it is true) and is also pretty confusing as it alternates between two narratives - one in the second person, describing the reader's preparations before they settle into the books, and the other in the third person, telling the actual story. It matches the falafel in a mashed up way. Please don't ask me to elaborate on that, as I don't think I can, so just eat the falafel, listen to the song and read the book, and get back to me if you still don't get it.

Something terrible is happening to this Earth that has made it warm today, however that is a very long and problematic story, so for the time being, we are just going to strip off, have a picnic and make the most of it. Hitting up the park (as is the done thing in this urban sprawl, apparently. As a bumpkin, I am more accustomed to the entire county being a stretch of green, and the areas of civilisation being the points of interest) along with all the very old and and very young of the world, we armed ourselves with a picnic and bagged a good square metre of space upon which to eat it. Our top picnic foods are: PINEAPPLE AND CHEESE (very cliché and very self-consciously retro but undeniably delicious and nutritious); OLIVES AND FETA (bring Greece to your tongue); HARD BOILED EGGS (one blob bite); SOME FRESH FRUIT (healthy); BAGUETTE (best served warm and fresh out of the stone oven with a light dusting of rustic flour atop); CHEESE SLICES (an alternative to the cubes of cheese found in the pineapple combo...preferably emmental as it is the only cheese that never gets repetitive); ACCOMPANYING CHUTNEY (I am the worlds biggest fan of chutney ever...in fact I might make an entirely chutney based post later, to truly do the fabulous creation it is justice); £1.99 for an ice cream (probs a 99 flake); COUS COUS (pre prepared by yourself, obviously); CIDER (be aware that this will make your day incredibly unproductive and may result in napping and/or enhanced sensations of fullness) and finally SOME SALT AND VINEGAR CRISPS (ties the meal together and introduces crunchy texture). Summery tunes to listen to whilst munching this veritable smorgasbord include Love and Happiness by Ernest Ranglin, 54 - 46 Was My Number by Toots and the Maytals and Rivers of Babylon by Sublime. Best digested alongside Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which, although obviously heart wrenching and generally unfortunate for poor Tess, does have lots of nice milk maid scenes, rolling hills and general ethereal nature which seems right for the warmth of the day. In fact, there is an actual picnic of mainly strawberries in the novel, which reminds me I forgot about the most important element of all - the overpriced red...berry (?? How can it be a berry when it is so FLESHY).