Food and futility

Basque broth: sounds good, especially in a restaurant like Le Monde where the deliberate policy of the place is to push the price up a bit so that the lesser breeds without the law go to the other two places rather than pollute the expenses account eaters of the upper stories.

The basic ingredients of the soup were calamari, chorizo, tomato, onion, celery, pepper. You can’t really go wrong. Except they did. It was supposed to be a starter but we had it as a main. The chorizo (according to Toni) was not Spanish (he suspected German) the calamari was hard and rubbery; the surrounding sauce was bland, though perhaps a hint of smoked paprika. Disappointing. I could make better: fresh calamari, addition of diced potato, a few small shelled prawns and I thought two or three capers. With a glass of white Rioja and French bread we still ended up paying a tenner each. I think we resented it.

We passed the time studying the Christmas menu: how much (How much?) and what you get. The key expense is always the wine. In general, if you compare British with Spanish meals then, because the wine is always included in the price in the Spanish version, you are always better off in the peninsular. And if you drink enough the food is irrelevant. So I’m told.

I’ve been reading ‘The Gods of Mars’ by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan etc. I knew that he wrote sci-fi stories as well, but this is the first time that I have actually read one. This is one of a vast series, it was written as a serial in the All-Story Magazine during 1913 from January to May, and published as a novel in book form in 1919. It is absolute rubbish, though I have to admit that I didn’t actually stop reading it and I was actually interested to know what happened in the end. Not so much to find out if the hero survived (the story is told from notes that the hero had given to his nephew before he returned to Mars after he had apparently risen from the dead – don’t ask!) but rather to find out how the plot was resolved.
The hero of the story is John Carter a Viking like superman subject to fits of bloodlust, but deeply moral in a muscular Christianity sort of way. The thrust of the story is of a discovery that people of Mars have been hoodwinked by religion for thousands of years and the redoubtable John Carter is the one to break superstition and bring a new freedom to the population of the planet. The myths are takes on well tried religious stories using Christian and Classical elements to bring interest to the narrative.

The true interest is centred on the approach to the different racial aspects of the protagonists in the novel. The lying priestly caste turns out to be composed of self seeking indolent white supremacists; they turn out to be only one part of a further layer of exploitation by a race of black pirates, who in turn are held in thrall by a hideous black hag pretending to be a goddess; they are also cannibals, eating the white girls that they steal. 1913 – Makes you think. The heroes of Mars are, of course, red – while the original races (formed from the mutated Tree of Life) were white and yellow with the green people being savages. It’s all very complicated and I’m sure reflects more of Burroughs society and mores than any literary influences. All the blacks are wiped out, and the priests and the hideous hag is thrown to the people she has duped. Haggard does this sort of thing so much better and Gagool in ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ is a much more satisfying creation than Issus, Goddess of Death and of Life Eternal! Having said all that, I do want to know what happens when the Temple of the Sun finally revolves for a year to open the cell into which Dejah Thoris, Thuvia and Phaidor have been placed. Did Phaidor manage to drive her dagger into Dejah Thoris, or did Thuvia manage to interpose herself in a particularly selfless fatal act of love? Sad, isn’t it?

Talking of sadness, the much vaunted new mobile of a certain Catalan has not been performing with the correct amount of luminescent blueness that had been expected: the backlight, the blue backlight, is intermittent and does not leap into action with the touching of the keys. We have tried everything and nothing is working. He is ready to give it back: bad news!