I suppose that it had to happen: Pandora always has to open the box. She is never content with life as it is; always thinking of what has been unfairly hidden or forbidden.
Not content with taking ordinary photographs I have, like so many others before me, now discovered the ‘effects’ pallet on the photo program I am using. You see the results. I must admit that I am rather taken with them: the things you can do with a cyclamen and a rose. May I be forgiven!
I think that I will keep my experiments hidden from now on, at least until the techniques dangled before me like exotic carrots have lost some of their tempting sensual allure and have become something useful and rather ordinary. At least I am still taking photographs so the attempt to improve my technique is on going!
The obligatory visit to McArthur Glen when any member of the family from Terrassa visits Cardiff went well, with 66% of the shoppers purchasing something and only the shopaphobe Toni returning empty handed.
The shopping frenzy which accompanies the lead up to Christmas has obviously begun with ranks of children demanding ever more expensive toys as their god given right and parents and other adults looking more harassed and impoverished as they stare with stony horror at the goodies all too visible for the potential acquisition by the hordes of budding capitalists.
Christmas is obviously going the same way as Halloween with the increasingly vulgar accretion of electrical impedimenta as a necessary adjunct to the only tolerable celebration by every family in the land. More and more artificial box trees with flashing lights; waving Santas looking malevolent and distinctly shady; nodding reindeer looking as Dickens described oil pumps, like elephants in a state of melancholy madness; black Christmas trees with black decorations and black tinsel (surely an oxymoron?); Christmas scenes of revolting sentimentality and questionable spirituality. The thrust of this year’s impulse to buy seems to be emphasising the outside of the house even more than the inside. Inflatable creatures with integral lighting at vast cost are now de rigueur for every house with the capability to harbour a gleamingly horrific representation of some aspect of Christmas card reality that stands for the Festive Season in the American Mind.
I like cheerful vulgarity at Christmas time; the more decorous attempts to make the Christmas Tree a fashion accessory in carefully calculated and tastefully colour themed displays I find more at home in the shop front than the front room of a home. I don’t want to feel that Christmas is the sort of festivity which can be tamed to fit the design fascism which dictates some modern life interiors. Christmas is the Christianisation of a much older pagan festival which emphasised disorder and useful chaos rather than the decorous (if homely) birth of the religious founder. It should be more to do with raucous parties; inappropriate behaviour; gratuitous purchases and nary a thought for the morrow. In British terms, that’s not a bad description of most people’s experience of the time of the year.
It is also the time of the year when restaurants can begin to fleece their patrons by giving them basically the same that they have been used to for the previous eleven months, but add a 50 – 100% surcharge on the meals that they can enjoy in the goodwill season which lasts until Christmas and the New Year. I will have to moderate my comments on this avaricious, rapacious and cynical behaviour until I can compare it with what I am going to experience in Spain (Catalonia) this Christmas. We will see if the difference in value for money deserves a whole rant to itself!
The meal we had this lunch time was in a Harvester. There are those who will say that if you choose to eat in a restaurant which barely deserves the name then you should leave your critical apparatus at the door and just sit down and accept what you are given.
Why should we? The Harvester chain has gained its reputation by providing a basic menu of limited choices of guaranteed quality throughout the country. Let’s take it step by step. Firstly we found it difficult to find a table in the restaurant, in spite of the time (which was late) because they were packed with shoppers wanting a cheapish meal which they could eat. The success of such places is obvious and perhaps deserved: but only in the sense that every country gets the culinary service that it deserves.
Take my meal. The salad (a feature of the Harvester chain) was uninspiring to the point of almost literal invisibility. The choice of salad items was limited with a rather desultory service to replace the gapingly empty spaces. The items themselves were insipid with the beetroot being a cubed masterpiece of fatuity in flavour. My main course was grilled tuna with a spicy tomato sauced and some sort of Cajun (?) rice. The tuna was overcooked and the vapid rice was uneventfully graced by wrinkled peas and other detritus. It was edible but a disgrace. Roll on Catalonia when the menu del dia will be something to consume not to condemn!
Tomorrow Carmen will show me how to prepare her own version of meat balls. I will be the diligent student and look forward to a delicious repast, when my belief in the redeeming quality of food will be restored!
Not content with taking ordinary photographs I have, like so many others before me, now discovered the ‘effects’ pallet on the photo program I am using. You see the results. I must admit that I am rather taken with them: the things you can do with a cyclamen and a rose. May I be forgiven!
I think that I will keep my experiments hidden from now on, at least until the techniques dangled before me like exotic carrots have lost some of their tempting sensual allure and have become something useful and rather ordinary. At least I am still taking photographs so the attempt to improve my technique is on going!
The obligatory visit to McArthur Glen when any member of the family from Terrassa visits Cardiff went well, with 66% of the shoppers purchasing something and only the shopaphobe Toni returning empty handed.
The shopping frenzy which accompanies the lead up to Christmas has obviously begun with ranks of children demanding ever more expensive toys as their god given right and parents and other adults looking more harassed and impoverished as they stare with stony horror at the goodies all too visible for the potential acquisition by the hordes of budding capitalists.Christmas is obviously going the same way as Halloween with the increasingly vulgar accretion of electrical impedimenta as a necessary adjunct to the only tolerable celebration by every family in the land. More and more artificial box trees with flashing lights; waving Santas looking malevolent and distinctly shady; nodding reindeer looking as Dickens described oil pumps, like elephants in a state of melancholy madness; black Christmas trees with black decorations and black tinsel (surely an oxymoron?); Christmas scenes of revolting sentimentality and questionable spirituality. The thrust of this year’s impulse to buy seems to be emphasising the outside of the house even more than the inside. Inflatable creatures with integral lighting at vast cost are now de rigueur for every house with the capability to harbour a gleamingly horrific representation of some aspect of Christmas card reality that stands for the Festive Season in the American Mind.
I like cheerful vulgarity at Christmas time; the more decorous attempts to make the Christmas Tree a fashion accessory in carefully calculated and tastefully colour themed displays I find more at home in the shop front than the front room of a home. I don’t want to feel that Christmas is the sort of festivity which can be tamed to fit the design fascism which dictates some modern life interiors. Christmas is the Christianisation of a much older pagan festival which emphasised disorder and useful chaos rather than the decorous (if homely) birth of the religious founder. It should be more to do with raucous parties; inappropriate behaviour; gratuitous purchases and nary a thought for the morrow. In British terms, that’s not a bad description of most people’s experience of the time of the year.
It is also the time of the year when restaurants can begin to fleece their patrons by giving them basically the same that they have been used to for the previous eleven months, but add a 50 – 100% surcharge on the meals that they can enjoy in the goodwill season which lasts until Christmas and the New Year. I will have to moderate my comments on this avaricious, rapacious and cynical behaviour until I can compare it with what I am going to experience in Spain (Catalonia) this Christmas. We will see if the difference in value for money deserves a whole rant to itself!
The meal we had this lunch time was in a Harvester. There are those who will say that if you choose to eat in a restaurant which barely deserves the name then you should leave your critical apparatus at the door and just sit down and accept what you are given.
Why should we? The Harvester chain has gained its reputation by providing a basic menu of limited choices of guaranteed quality throughout the country. Let’s take it step by step. Firstly we found it difficult to find a table in the restaurant, in spite of the time (which was late) because they were packed with shoppers wanting a cheapish meal which they could eat. The success of such places is obvious and perhaps deserved: but only in the sense that every country gets the culinary service that it deserves.
Take my meal. The salad (a feature of the Harvester chain) was uninspiring to the point of almost literal invisibility. The choice of salad items was limited with a rather desultory service to replace the gapingly empty spaces. The items themselves were insipid with the beetroot being a cubed masterpiece of fatuity in flavour. My main course was grilled tuna with a spicy tomato sauced and some sort of Cajun (?) rice. The tuna was overcooked and the vapid rice was uneventfully graced by wrinkled peas and other detritus. It was edible but a disgrace. Roll on Catalonia when the menu del dia will be something to consume not to condemn!
Tomorrow Carmen will show me how to prepare her own version of meat balls. I will be the diligent student and look forward to a delicious repast, when my belief in the redeeming quality of food will be restored!
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