"I don't understand; how will you heat your houses? You do not want gas, you do not want to develop nuclear energy. Where will you get your heat from then? From firewood?
"But even for firewood you will need to go to Siberia, you do not even have wood."
- Vladimir Putin to Germany
Friday, 3 December 2010
Friday, 19 November 2010
Momentary lapse of...whatever
The proprietor of this blog would like to beg the readers’ forgiveness for the downbeat nature of the last few posts. He is going through his annual pre-birthday bout of existential angst combined with the feeling that he could have been so much more by this point in his life. He is led to believe that this is part of the general experience of being a male member of the species Homo sapiens.
Once he turns forty-one on Sunday, he hopes that he shall be rid of said existential angst until this time next year, at which point, he advises his readers to potentially stay away, or, if they are so inclined, gaze on in morbid fascination as someone temporarily loses his grasp on reality.
Thank you for your support.
Once he turns forty-one on Sunday, he hopes that he shall be rid of said existential angst until this time next year, at which point, he advises his readers to potentially stay away, or, if they are so inclined, gaze on in morbid fascination as someone temporarily loses his grasp on reality.
Thank you for your support.
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
A Meditation Upon hearing the Indigo Girls
Life is relentless, I heard Dennis Prager say on his weekly Happiness Hour.
My life has been blessed, but relentless lately, nonetheless. No great tragedies to speak of, really. Work is a pain in the ass, and my commute’s a bitch. I turn 41 this week. Edging into middle age. And everything seems a slog lately. When did it get like this? Everything seemed so effortless (what seemed like) just a few short years ago. Now it’s an effort just to work the will up to get out of bed.
Typical spoiled middle class suburban white collar twaddle.
Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. Time to change tack.
Anyway, I had the iPod on shuffle last night and “Blood & Fire” by the Indigo Girls came on. Typical folky lesbian torch song. One of my all-time favourites, actually. When that song came out I must have been a junior in high school. An aspiring poet. With pretensions to my own intensity. I thought I had problems then, but I didn’t really, other than being strange and adolescent. I thought life was so complicated and complex. Wow.
It is amazing how much one knows when one is younger. I wish I had been aware of the depth of my own ignorance. It would have been handy to know that there were things that I didn’t know.
But it is funny, listening to “Blood & Fire” now. It reminds me of how complicated life has become in the intervening years, and just how simple and easy it really was back then.
I still love the song, but it is a rather masturbatory paean to intense, obsessive love, when one does not have a single other care in the world. But it is done so well...
And to use another trite phrase - which I sometimes find hard to digest, myself - “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” There are times when I thank God that that is so.
My life has been blessed, but relentless lately, nonetheless. No great tragedies to speak of, really. Work is a pain in the ass, and my commute’s a bitch. I turn 41 this week. Edging into middle age. And everything seems a slog lately. When did it get like this? Everything seemed so effortless (what seemed like) just a few short years ago. Now it’s an effort just to work the will up to get out of bed.
Typical spoiled middle class suburban white collar twaddle.
Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. Time to change tack.
Anyway, I had the iPod on shuffle last night and “Blood & Fire” by the Indigo Girls came on. Typical folky lesbian torch song. One of my all-time favourites, actually. When that song came out I must have been a junior in high school. An aspiring poet. With pretensions to my own intensity. I thought I had problems then, but I didn’t really, other than being strange and adolescent. I thought life was so complicated and complex. Wow.
It is amazing how much one knows when one is younger. I wish I had been aware of the depth of my own ignorance. It would have been handy to know that there were things that I didn’t know.
But it is funny, listening to “Blood & Fire” now. It reminds me of how complicated life has become in the intervening years, and just how simple and easy it really was back then.
I still love the song, but it is a rather masturbatory paean to intense, obsessive love, when one does not have a single other care in the world. But it is done so well...
And to use another trite phrase - which I sometimes find hard to digest, myself - “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” There are times when I thank God that that is so.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
And now for a Primal Scream:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for your support.
Thank you for your support.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants...
The following is an essay I wrote a while back and posted on previous blogs at this time of year, so I think it's well worth resurrecting. I hope you enjoy...
Yesterday morning the wife, the daughter, and I were down in town, and it just so happened that the mayor was presiding over an act of remembrance at the war memorial in front of the town hall in honour of Armistice/Veterans’ Day.
Whilst waiting for it to begin, my eyes were caught by the following poem (hat tip to Steve for publishing it):
Well, once my eyes were caught, they started leaking like no one’s business, and my daughter jumped up and gave me a big hug, her little hands patting my back.
Beginning in 1992, I spent six years in the US Navy. In the first three years of serving in the Navy, I was probably the most conscientious sailor one could hope to meet. I loved the Navy, I loved its history and I was damned proud to be seen in my crackerjacks. But something happened to me, gradually. Many of the goals I set for myself, and for which I thought I was punching all the right tickets were not coming to fruition. I was beginning to get a little burnt out on being so squared away for my first three years, with no – apparent – return other than a job well done.
After that point, I couldn’t wait to get out. Not that I actively tried, but I could have really left the Navy at the first chance presented.
I served the rest of my time, maybe not as conscientiously as I should have, but probably better than many of my colleagues, nonetheless. Looking back now, I’m a little bit ashamed of the fact that I didn’t necessarily give my best to the Navy, and by extension, my country. Back then, I could justify it by the fact that I was such a good boy, but Santa still wouldn’t bring me presents.
I may not have been proud of my service then, but I am definitely proud of it now.
You see, I have shared the experience of wearing a uniform in the service of my country with some of the greatest souls to ever grace this planet. Men who were definitely better men than I. Men who did not know what was in store for them when they signed that dotted line and received the queen’s shilling or that paycheck from Uncle Sam. Men who gave up their youths and their freedom so that the rest of us could enjoy our own. Many men whose remains now lay on the fields in which they were mowed down, or the watery graves where their ships lie.
Yes, it’s true, some of us join/ed the military because it was a way out or a way up from whatever circumstances may have been going on (I initially walked into the recruiting office because I was running away from something.) But no matter the reasons for joining, the sum total of the efforts of my predecessors, colleagues, and those who came after me was that this world is just a little bit better than it may have been had we not done our “duty”.
My father served in the Navy for 20 years. My uncle just retired from the Navy, himself. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII, one in the British Army and one in the US Army. And I am proud of all that they did.
I may have said that after my first three years I didn’t get anything from the Navy. But the truth is, my whole experience gave me the world.
Thanks to all those people with whom I shared that world and those experiences, and whose boots I could never fill. I am truly humbled when contemplating the greatness that came before, and that follows, my brief stint of service.
I didn’t see any action, and I am grateful I didn’t have to. But then, as they say, I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
Yesterday morning the wife, the daughter, and I were down in town, and it just so happened that the mayor was presiding over an act of remembrance at the war memorial in front of the town hall in honour of Armistice/Veterans’ Day.
Whilst waiting for it to begin, my eyes were caught by the following poem (hat tip to Steve for publishing it):
They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.
Well, once my eyes were caught, they started leaking like no one’s business, and my daughter jumped up and gave me a big hug, her little hands patting my back.
Beginning in 1992, I spent six years in the US Navy. In the first three years of serving in the Navy, I was probably the most conscientious sailor one could hope to meet. I loved the Navy, I loved its history and I was damned proud to be seen in my crackerjacks. But something happened to me, gradually. Many of the goals I set for myself, and for which I thought I was punching all the right tickets were not coming to fruition. I was beginning to get a little burnt out on being so squared away for my first three years, with no – apparent – return other than a job well done.
After that point, I couldn’t wait to get out. Not that I actively tried, but I could have really left the Navy at the first chance presented.
I served the rest of my time, maybe not as conscientiously as I should have, but probably better than many of my colleagues, nonetheless. Looking back now, I’m a little bit ashamed of the fact that I didn’t necessarily give my best to the Navy, and by extension, my country. Back then, I could justify it by the fact that I was such a good boy, but Santa still wouldn’t bring me presents.
I may not have been proud of my service then, but I am definitely proud of it now.
You see, I have shared the experience of wearing a uniform in the service of my country with some of the greatest souls to ever grace this planet. Men who were definitely better men than I. Men who did not know what was in store for them when they signed that dotted line and received the queen’s shilling or that paycheck from Uncle Sam. Men who gave up their youths and their freedom so that the rest of us could enjoy our own. Many men whose remains now lay on the fields in which they were mowed down, or the watery graves where their ships lie.
Yes, it’s true, some of us join/ed the military because it was a way out or a way up from whatever circumstances may have been going on (I initially walked into the recruiting office because I was running away from something.) But no matter the reasons for joining, the sum total of the efforts of my predecessors, colleagues, and those who came after me was that this world is just a little bit better than it may have been had we not done our “duty”.
My father served in the Navy for 20 years. My uncle just retired from the Navy, himself. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII, one in the British Army and one in the US Army. And I am proud of all that they did.
I may have said that after my first three years I didn’t get anything from the Navy. But the truth is, my whole experience gave me the world.
Thanks to all those people with whom I shared that world and those experiences, and whose boots I could never fill. I am truly humbled when contemplating the greatness that came before, and that follows, my brief stint of service.
I didn’t see any action, and I am grateful I didn’t have to. But then, as they say, I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
Monday, 1 November 2010
Bitter and Twisted...
I have definitely lost something over the past few years, even more so recently, it seems to be escaping me even more and more.
I am culturally an American. What that used to mean was that I had a certain golly-gee-whizness in my outlook and an indomitable belief that everything would work out for the best. For some reason, maybe for many reasons, that golly-gee-whizness is no longer there. It has been replaced by a dark, pessimistic cynicism. A perfect example of this happened yesterday...
I was on the phone to my mother who is back in the States. She asked me whether I voted or not in the US elections. She was treated to a rant about how, due to immigration policy (formed under both Democrats and Republicans) that won’t let my wife have a green card unless I have $66,000 cash in a bank, the whole lot of them can kiss my ass. Three years ago they were jumping all over each other to make citizens of any one living illegally in the US (which was only held back by the threat of mob backlash). She seemed to think that politics have changed in the US since then, making a reference to the Tea Party movement.
I am extremely cynical: the Tea Party may get the politicians talking one way for a little while, but none of them, especially career politicians, will do anything to really change the way their business is done. As far as I’m concerned, for the next few years, I have been effectively exiled from my own home country, because it is now too late, due to personal circumstances, for us to really try to make a move to the US again for another eight years or so. (My wife’s application was rejected about two years ago, which would have been a good time for us to start the process of establishing residency in the states again.)
And I’m probably going to see my income get taxed more by those bastards, as I happen to be a citizen of the only developed country in the world that feels it can tax its citizens on money that they’ve already been taxed on in the place where they earned it. And they can all just kiss my ass.
Oh yeah, Republicans will pay lip service to lowering taxes on those of us living abroad (and actually, I’m not really paying right now as I come in under the threshold, but it is still a pain in the ass to deal with.) But I’m really skeptical when I am the apparent low-hanging fruit that they can pick. As someone once said, democracy is mob rule with neckties. Why should anyone give a sh** about what happens to those of us who are living and working outside of the US?
But what I am getting at, though, is that I have developed what feels like a well-reasoned deep mistrust of institutions and people that I’ve never really had before. And I am becoming angry. Generally grumpy. I’m not the best company of late. There’s bound to be something wrong with the person who finishes his diatribes with the words: “And they can all just kiss my ass.” Especially when that person uses it more than once in one day...
I am culturally an American. What that used to mean was that I had a certain golly-gee-whizness in my outlook and an indomitable belief that everything would work out for the best. For some reason, maybe for many reasons, that golly-gee-whizness is no longer there. It has been replaced by a dark, pessimistic cynicism. A perfect example of this happened yesterday...
I was on the phone to my mother who is back in the States. She asked me whether I voted or not in the US elections. She was treated to a rant about how, due to immigration policy (formed under both Democrats and Republicans) that won’t let my wife have a green card unless I have $66,000 cash in a bank, the whole lot of them can kiss my ass. Three years ago they were jumping all over each other to make citizens of any one living illegally in the US (which was only held back by the threat of mob backlash). She seemed to think that politics have changed in the US since then, making a reference to the Tea Party movement.
I am extremely cynical: the Tea Party may get the politicians talking one way for a little while, but none of them, especially career politicians, will do anything to really change the way their business is done. As far as I’m concerned, for the next few years, I have been effectively exiled from my own home country, because it is now too late, due to personal circumstances, for us to really try to make a move to the US again for another eight years or so. (My wife’s application was rejected about two years ago, which would have been a good time for us to start the process of establishing residency in the states again.)
And I’m probably going to see my income get taxed more by those bastards, as I happen to be a citizen of the only developed country in the world that feels it can tax its citizens on money that they’ve already been taxed on in the place where they earned it. And they can all just kiss my ass.
Oh yeah, Republicans will pay lip service to lowering taxes on those of us living abroad (and actually, I’m not really paying right now as I come in under the threshold, but it is still a pain in the ass to deal with.) But I’m really skeptical when I am the apparent low-hanging fruit that they can pick. As someone once said, democracy is mob rule with neckties. Why should anyone give a sh** about what happens to those of us who are living and working outside of the US?
But what I am getting at, though, is that I have developed what feels like a well-reasoned deep mistrust of institutions and people that I’ve never really had before. And I am becoming angry. Generally grumpy. I’m not the best company of late. There’s bound to be something wrong with the person who finishes his diatribes with the words: “And they can all just kiss my ass.” Especially when that person uses it more than once in one day...
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Mobile phones and their discontents...
I have noticed one thing about a certain type of person that I tend to find myself working for (current boss excluded):
They are surgically connected to their mobile phones. There isn’t any place they can go or any situation they can be in where they will refuse to pick up their mobile when it rings: at children’s parties, on the train, whilst driving, you name it. The individuals I am thinking of also display a high level of assholiness to their subordinates whilst puckering up big time for their bosses. (I’ve worked for 3 people like this.)
One thing I’ve noticed about the boss’s bosses: They tend to be some of the most decent people to work for, and they never pick up their mobiles at inconsiderate times, unless they are dealing with ongoing crisis situations.
So what is it? Is my refusal to pick up my mobile phone every time it rings holding me back? Would I be able to break through to the next level if I walked everywhere with phone to ear? Do I have to go through that awkward phase of assholiness in order to get more pay for what I do?
And how about getting to the level after that? How would I make the transition? Who would surgically remove the mobile phone from my ear and make me a decent person again?
Also, how about d***heads driving brand new Wehrmacht General Staff cars but can’t afford hands-free kit? How many times have I seen someone in a new Mercedes or BMW talking into a cell phone, driving with one hand? You’ve just shelled out bucketloads of cash for a car, but you can’t even spare a couple hundred pounds for a hands-free kit? Pr***s.
I can always tell, too, when I am driving behind someone who is speaking on the phone, especially on A-Roads marked out at the national speed limit: they are the ones whose speed varies within a range of 35 to 60 miles per hour without a corresponding change in road conditions. Just because you drop down to 40 mph whilst on the phone does not make you a considerate driver...Particularly when you realise someone (like me) is trying to get around you and then you crank it up to 70 to keep them from passing...
Feh!
They are surgically connected to their mobile phones. There isn’t any place they can go or any situation they can be in where they will refuse to pick up their mobile when it rings: at children’s parties, on the train, whilst driving, you name it. The individuals I am thinking of also display a high level of assholiness to their subordinates whilst puckering up big time for their bosses. (I’ve worked for 3 people like this.)
One thing I’ve noticed about the boss’s bosses: They tend to be some of the most decent people to work for, and they never pick up their mobiles at inconsiderate times, unless they are dealing with ongoing crisis situations.
So what is it? Is my refusal to pick up my mobile phone every time it rings holding me back? Would I be able to break through to the next level if I walked everywhere with phone to ear? Do I have to go through that awkward phase of assholiness in order to get more pay for what I do?
And how about getting to the level after that? How would I make the transition? Who would surgically remove the mobile phone from my ear and make me a decent person again?
Also, how about d***heads driving brand new Wehrmacht General Staff cars but can’t afford hands-free kit? How many times have I seen someone in a new Mercedes or BMW talking into a cell phone, driving with one hand? You’ve just shelled out bucketloads of cash for a car, but you can’t even spare a couple hundred pounds for a hands-free kit? Pr***s.
I can always tell, too, when I am driving behind someone who is speaking on the phone, especially on A-Roads marked out at the national speed limit: they are the ones whose speed varies within a range of 35 to 60 miles per hour without a corresponding change in road conditions. Just because you drop down to 40 mph whilst on the phone does not make you a considerate driver...Particularly when you realise someone (like me) is trying to get around you and then you crank it up to 70 to keep them from passing...
Feh!
Monday, 13 September 2010
Party in the USA
Back in July, I had the dubious pleasure of putting together the music for my daughter’s tenth birthday party. In order to compile said music, I canvassed her and her friends for requests. To say that 10-year-old girls do not have sophisticated tastes is a bit of an understatement. But I managed to get a slight lesson from one of the requests: “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyruss.
The theme of the lyrics is a sort of fish-out-of-water story about a Southern girl from Nashville who ends up in Hollywood, feeling distinctly out of place. She’s looking at the way the buildings look and the way people interact and she’s wondering if she’s done the right thing. Then, at the end of each lyric she hears a familiar song that she loves and she puts her
“...hands up and their playing my song
and the butterflies fly away
Yeah,
It’s a party in the USA, a party in the USA.”
Now, I don’t normally go looking for significance or profundity in a top 40 pop tune, least of all, one by Hannah Montana, but the song struck a chord with me.
When I was 22, I enlisted in the Navy and, at that point, I had only left the South once from the time that I was 12 or 13. One could say that my teen years were relatively sheltered and that my cultural point of view was limited, despite having lived in far flung places in the world prior to that. My viewpoint was distinctly Southern - not that I had really appreciated it - until I left the South.
In boot camp in California, I didn’t get a chance to appreciate that point so much, as many of my fellow recruits were Southerners just as well, and, well...there were other more pressing matters to attend to that just didn’t allow one enough navel-gazing time. Military culture can be very Southern in flavour, so there weren’t many immediately apparent differences from what I was used to. (I will say, I found more of the Westerners and New Yorkers to be a bit more openly, shockingly, racist than all but a few of the redneck peckerwoods from back home.)
It was when I was stationed in Rhode Island that I became acutely aware of how there were different cultures throughout the US, and that, despite all my many rough edges, I definitely had a more genteel Southern disposition than many of the people I encountered in New England. The way people spoke to each other actually shocked me, the man of the world I imagined myself to be.
But one thing still stood out...When I turned on the radio stations, they all played the same tunes, with only slight regional variations (for instance, one was more likely to hear Billy Squier on the radio in Rhode Island more often than Lynyrd Skynyrd.) And when “my song” came on, people from the rest of the country would join in and enjoy the party just as much as I would. I suppose seeing the dance floor fill up when “Love Shack” by the B-52s came on was the same for me as it was for Miley Cyruss when she heard a “Jay-Z song” come on.
I guess what I’m getting at is - on the one hand - that the USA is filled with so many little subcultures, some regional, some socio-economic, and one can almost argue that the USA is made up of several different “countries”. But - on the other hand - there is an overarching shared culture of being American. And whether she was aware of it or not, Miss Cyruss was reminding her fellow Americans of the famous motto:
E. Pluribus Unum.
Out of many, one.
The theme of the lyrics is a sort of fish-out-of-water story about a Southern girl from Nashville who ends up in Hollywood, feeling distinctly out of place. She’s looking at the way the buildings look and the way people interact and she’s wondering if she’s done the right thing. Then, at the end of each lyric she hears a familiar song that she loves and she puts her
“...hands up and their playing my song
and the butterflies fly away
Yeah,
It’s a party in the USA, a party in the USA.”
Now, I don’t normally go looking for significance or profundity in a top 40 pop tune, least of all, one by Hannah Montana, but the song struck a chord with me.
When I was 22, I enlisted in the Navy and, at that point, I had only left the South once from the time that I was 12 or 13. One could say that my teen years were relatively sheltered and that my cultural point of view was limited, despite having lived in far flung places in the world prior to that. My viewpoint was distinctly Southern - not that I had really appreciated it - until I left the South.
In boot camp in California, I didn’t get a chance to appreciate that point so much, as many of my fellow recruits were Southerners just as well, and, well...there were other more pressing matters to attend to that just didn’t allow one enough navel-gazing time. Military culture can be very Southern in flavour, so there weren’t many immediately apparent differences from what I was used to. (I will say, I found more of the Westerners and New Yorkers to be a bit more openly, shockingly, racist than all but a few of the redneck peckerwoods from back home.)
It was when I was stationed in Rhode Island that I became acutely aware of how there were different cultures throughout the US, and that, despite all my many rough edges, I definitely had a more genteel Southern disposition than many of the people I encountered in New England. The way people spoke to each other actually shocked me, the man of the world I imagined myself to be.
But one thing still stood out...When I turned on the radio stations, they all played the same tunes, with only slight regional variations (for instance, one was more likely to hear Billy Squier on the radio in Rhode Island more often than Lynyrd Skynyrd.) And when “my song” came on, people from the rest of the country would join in and enjoy the party just as much as I would. I suppose seeing the dance floor fill up when “Love Shack” by the B-52s came on was the same for me as it was for Miley Cyruss when she heard a “Jay-Z song” come on.
I guess what I’m getting at is - on the one hand - that the USA is filled with so many little subcultures, some regional, some socio-economic, and one can almost argue that the USA is made up of several different “countries”. But - on the other hand - there is an overarching shared culture of being American. And whether she was aware of it or not, Miss Cyruss was reminding her fellow Americans of the famous motto:
E. Pluribus Unum.
Out of many, one.
Friday, 10 September 2010
Been a good week...
In anticipation of returning to work on Monday, the wife and I have been enjoying each other's company on daytime "dates" which usually include a bit of a walk and lunch at one of Sussex's finer eating establishments. (With a little bit of shopping thrown in.)
Wednesday found us at the George and Dragon Inn in Burpham after a brief shopping trip to Chichester. I had a rib eye steak that, upon first glance of the menu, seemed a bit on the pricey side at about £20. However, it had to have been the tastiest restaurant steak I have encountered since a steak I had from the private herd in a restaurant at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. The chips were just about perfect as well.
My wife had a fillet of mullet that she absolutely adored.
Being inspired by Wednesday's lunch, for Thursday we decided to plot a 5-mile walk in the Burpham area to end with lunch at the George and Dragon once more. This time lunch was a bit lighter with each of us opting for a mezze platter. Very basic, but very tasty. Judging from the menu, it appears the George and Dragon is very big on sourcing local produce for its dishes, and it tasted fresh.
Today we decided to have a walk around Arundel Park and find something to eat in Arundel. Arundel has got to be one of the best kept secrets in the UK, as I very rarely meet anyone who is not from Sussex who is familiar with it. There are a lot of quirky little shops, wonderful buildings, and from certain angles - thanks to Arundel Cathedral and Arundel Castle - you could almost swear you were in France.
We had lunch at a little place called Osteria in the centre of the town. Yet another excellent eating experience. Although one was not assured of the local provenance of the food, one could tell that a lot of attention was paid to the quality of the ingredients. The double espresso I had perked me right up, and displayed a very well-balanced flavour. For eating, I had a panini made with prosciuto, an Italian cheese the name of which escapes me right now, and balsamic onions, with a side of salad. For £3.95...For what I got I would have expected to pay at least £2 more for eating something of that quality at a table. The wife had a bruschetta made with brie and a red onion marmalade (which she insisted I sample - excellent!).
To finish it off, we had a tiramisu, which wasn't the best I've ever had, but was nice nonetheless.
We shall be returning for dinner some evening.
I also returned to a shop that helps me out when I'm feeling homesick for the States: Sparks Yard. In the upstairs kitchen/food area they sell American junk food. Today I purchased a bag of Reese's peanut butter cups, a few Jolly Ranchers, a couple of Twinkies, some Tootsie pops, and a 3 Musketeers bar. The proprietor was enthusiastic about his wares and always soliciting opinion from his customers. Very heartening.
But, boy, it has been a good week.
Wednesday found us at the George and Dragon Inn in Burpham after a brief shopping trip to Chichester. I had a rib eye steak that, upon first glance of the menu, seemed a bit on the pricey side at about £20. However, it had to have been the tastiest restaurant steak I have encountered since a steak I had from the private herd in a restaurant at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. The chips were just about perfect as well.
My wife had a fillet of mullet that she absolutely adored.
Being inspired by Wednesday's lunch, for Thursday we decided to plot a 5-mile walk in the Burpham area to end with lunch at the George and Dragon once more. This time lunch was a bit lighter with each of us opting for a mezze platter. Very basic, but very tasty. Judging from the menu, it appears the George and Dragon is very big on sourcing local produce for its dishes, and it tasted fresh.
Today we decided to have a walk around Arundel Park and find something to eat in Arundel. Arundel has got to be one of the best kept secrets in the UK, as I very rarely meet anyone who is not from Sussex who is familiar with it. There are a lot of quirky little shops, wonderful buildings, and from certain angles - thanks to Arundel Cathedral and Arundel Castle - you could almost swear you were in France.
We had lunch at a little place called Osteria in the centre of the town. Yet another excellent eating experience. Although one was not assured of the local provenance of the food, one could tell that a lot of attention was paid to the quality of the ingredients. The double espresso I had perked me right up, and displayed a very well-balanced flavour. For eating, I had a panini made with prosciuto, an Italian cheese the name of which escapes me right now, and balsamic onions, with a side of salad. For £3.95...For what I got I would have expected to pay at least £2 more for eating something of that quality at a table. The wife had a bruschetta made with brie and a red onion marmalade (which she insisted I sample - excellent!).
To finish it off, we had a tiramisu, which wasn't the best I've ever had, but was nice nonetheless.
We shall be returning for dinner some evening.
I also returned to a shop that helps me out when I'm feeling homesick for the States: Sparks Yard. In the upstairs kitchen/food area they sell American junk food. Today I purchased a bag of Reese's peanut butter cups, a few Jolly Ranchers, a couple of Twinkies, some Tootsie pops, and a 3 Musketeers bar. The proprietor was enthusiastic about his wares and always soliciting opinion from his customers. Very heartening.
But, boy, it has been a good week.
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
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