Sprout-tastic

Not the green ones.  Sorry.  Still can’t acquire the taste.  But as a way to build myself back up to some gardening, am starting pretty much as basic as I can, and trying sprouting seeds.

One of my colleagues is a long way ahead of me in this, and has given me some tips, including germinating them in the airing cupboard.  Last week, I managed to grow some alfalfa sprouts – having invested in my alfalfa seeds as part of the Grand Esoteric Foodshop at the start of the month.  Probably should have left them a bit longer, but they happily leapt into Thursday’s stir fry, even if they were still fairly tiny.

Now it’s the turn of sunflower seeds.  Both times, you add water, swill them about in their jar, and squint at them for the first day or so.  And then – the first sign of something else growing.  It’s that day to day change that’s particularly exciting.  Being able to eat the fruits of my labours is – for once – a bonus.  But I’m hoping to transfer that kind of bonus into a bigger activity this year.

Part of the problem is work.  It tends to peak at just the time you need to put things into pots, let alone into the ground, and has, till now, kept up until the point when you’d hope to start enjoying the produce.  But maybe this way, I can build up a little sense of achievement to keep me going in new gardening experiments.

Mustard and cress sandwiches anyone?  You know it’s only a matter of time.  And water.

Auld acquaintance 2

Now that all the Christmas socialising has died down, nice to have a few extra people to see.  Out to lunch today with someone who used to go to the same church in Edinburgh, plus her husband, and a few other joint acquaintances.

How do you pick up when you’re not seen each other for several years?  Or, with another friend we saw last Saturday night, several months, when she’s been on the other side of the world?  Thankfully, fairly easily, it turns out.  Put some people together around some food, and it usually all works out.

We’ve lamented the fact that we’ve had some good friends move away over the last few years – with a couple more to go from our church small group later this month.  The one consolation, it seems, is that we do seem to be able to pick up again with people, whether the gap is short or long, the distance near or many countries away.

Maybe it’s part of the Edinburgh Factor.  (Nothing to do with house sales, although I’m sure Edinburgh’s attractiveness as a city will continue to keep people doing well in that sense.)  Over the years, I’ve termed such friends who move away as Edinburgh Ex-Patriates – they don’t talk about if, but WHEN they return.

And even if it’s just a weekend, it’s great to have them about.  Maybe Edinburgh is a more transitory city than some – though equally, should you stay, it seems to get smaller by the year, as your networks of friends of friends grow greater.  And if you’re going to ‘lose’ people – which is probably inevitable as time goes on – you might as well be somewhere they want to come back to.

The princess and the Gentile

An opportunity to rib one of my colleagues about a misspelling in a recent email.  Trying to indicate a street near our office as our meeting point in case of fire, he alerted everyone to meet at ‘Gentile’s Entry’. Where are our Jewish, and any other faith, visitors meant to go? (Edinburgh residents can work out the original version.)

But I had the opportunity to hear a more regular mis-pronunciation the same day, heading up the close that leads up to the Royal Mile.  A tourist stopped me and asked for ‘Princess Street’.

‘Princes’ is not used in so many place names, I’ll grant you, which I think is why ‘Princess’ seems to be said by various visitors to Edinburgh.  It made me think that there are probably not so many mispronunciations that give you another word instead of your original choice.

Dan and another friend who grew up in London used to come up with alternative pronuncations for London areas.  ‘Streatham’ became ‘St Reathams’, and so on.  Dan equally was very pleased a few years back to hear me saying ‘An-tig-u-a’ for another Edinburgh street name, rather than ‘An-teeg-wa’.  I had to make the joke against myself for a long time to stop that one being repeated back at me.

My brother came up with two of my favourite mishearings of place names.  When a school friend got into an Oxford college (Somerville), he managed to understand that she had got a job at the then local supermarket (Somerfields).  Equally, when I got the news of where I was going to be during my gap year teaching (Warsaw), he thought I would be just up the road, so to speak (Walsall).

New housing estates breed rather odd names (Edinburgh will currently offer you Q, The Visio, along with the lovely East Pilton Farm Rigg – try saying that to your taxi driver after a hard night out).  I can’t help but think they’re missing out on some great mispronunciations to come.

Immediate feedback

Blog writing is a dangerous thing.  Yesterday I learned that one friend reads this blog ‘most days’; another met me at a group yesterday and mentioned she’d read the Robin Hood post from the day before.  That’s immediate feedback for you!

Of course, they could have also posted a comment, and then I’d have known about them reading it.  But there again, am I posting comments on others’ stuff?  I read most of one friend’s film blog posts, but tend not to comment – don’t correct a man with superior film knowledge, eh?  Or something.

All of which could mean there are others reading it, that I have no idea about.  I don’t know if there’s some way of telling who’s read it, whether or not they leave a message.  At least a few people I know who’ve mentioned something, I don’t even remember telling about the blog…

Anyway, can’t help but feel that it’s gratifying for people a) to have bothered reading it and b) to have said something after, one way or another.  It makes me inclined to keep going, at least.

This is bad news for the casual reader, who hoped for something light and frothy about the next series of Big Brother.  For everyone else…maybe I’ll have to up my bus usage so I have enough to write about.  You have been warned.

They didn’t shoot the sheriff…

…but they killed the leading lady. Being a bit taken aback by the sudden departure of Marion as a character from “Robin Hood”, with the series recently finished on the BBC, thought I’d see what others’ reactions were.

Talk about an outpouring.  I didn’t sit and count how many comments(though it was a fairly interesting indication of how many different countries now view the programme, one way or another), but there must have been nigh on a hundred responses on a BBC page.

It did make me think back to my own reaction when another leading lady, Trinity, was killed in the final part of the Matrix trilogy.  I may not have been ‘in shock’ and all the other descriptions when Marion was killed, but I do remember the shock seeing it happen the first time, as it were.  (After all, sword through the middle vs large metal pole through the middle – not a lot to choose between them as a way to go.)

Here’s one way in which the internet is interesting – if you do feel upset, cheated (or equally elated, amazed) about the outcome of something you’ve been following, you can quickly find some more people who share the same opinion, or round up a few if you’re an early commenter.

It’s worth noting that only about 10% of those who commented upheld the way “Robin Hood” was handled - the rest laid in with some pretty strong adjectives describing the distress viewers had.  Maybe it’s more so because “Robin Hood” was seen as a family show.  (I do struggle with that a bit, given the amount of death and bloodshed shown in it week by week.)

But clearly, Marion’s character had impressed on the feisty heroine front.  It seems we have a need for such roles on TV. One person commented on comparisons between Billie Piper’s character of Rose (in “Doctor Who“), and that of Marion, as an indication of how strong female roles are really popular with viewers, but get stopped after a while.

I wondered why this has such a shock factor.  Is it because we are unused to seeing female characters die in film or TV?  Is it because we don’t normally see female characters who are also fighters?  It’s worth bearing in mind that it’s only relatively recently that women in the British army have been allowed into frontline positions, and some are still unhappy with this decision, even though there are women who are prepared to serve there.

Are we upset at the death of a woman, or the death of the love interest?  Or are we just shocked at story conventions being turned upside down?  I remember a similar reaction at the downbeat ending of “Twin Peaks“, nearly two decades before.  It seems to be worse where a couple show signs of getting together in a drama, and then the opportunity is taken away from them.

This is a long post already; I’ll bring things to a close.  But I think it’s interesting to see what people demand of their entertainment, and why, in relation to ‘real life’.  Deputy article following soon.