Home is where The Horse is

Dear Reader(s) - Slight Return

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:47:02 +0200

Home Is Where The Horse Is has ceased publication, due to its author having found more a more rewarding occupation.

His present work can be found at:

luminograph.blog.co.uk.

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Dear Reader(s)

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 04:16:37 +0100

You'll have noticed a distinct lack of activity on this page of late.

To be honest with you, it struck me a while back that there is only so much mileage to be had from anecdotes from my past and cooking instructions for what The Horse and I like to eat.

So I decided to retreat into my childhood, which was spent orbiting a small country town in southern England.

The disturbing effect that this experience had upon my young psyche can be found documented here:

flimwell.blog.co.uk

Thanks, as always, for reading.

tadpoles

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From ‘C’ Wing with love

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 11:25:02 +0100

It was the run-up to Christmas, some 15 years back, when I was working as an examiner in Tokyo. We were sitting, George, Alistair and myself, side-by-side at the long desk, writing, marking, doodling. Pretending to be busy. Each one of us absorbed, the office soporifically quiet in the post-lunch slowdown.

And then our secretary shoved a Christmas card under my nose, asking me to sign it.

Now Christmas is firmly, though not deeply, rooted in the Japanese calendar. Meaning, essentially, that the festive commercial hoopla throughout November and December would easily rival that in any Western country. And, Japan being Japan, it meant also that Christmas had become one of those times in which one looks to maintaining and developing one's relationships.

“Who’s it to?” I asked.

The reply left me shruggingly ignorant. People I’d never met who worked for a company I’d never heard of. But people with whom we had business relations, however tenuous, so they were on our Christmas list. I squiggled my signature and shunted the card along to Alistair.

Five minutes later came another card, to a set of equally anonymous people. Sign. Shunt.

And then, another five minutes having passed, yet another card plopped on the table in front of me. So this time, working on the premise that its intended recipients had never heard of me either, I signed it with cheery good wishes and the name of an infamous British murderer.

And so it went.

By the end of the afternoon, 15 separate groups of people had been heartily bidden the compliments of the season by an incarcerated serial killer.

Well, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?

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Not at all like eating your dead Uncle Norman

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:25:31 +0100

“Why then,” mused The Horse over lunch, “don’t you like tofu?”

Being Japanese, of course, she'd grown up with the stuff - it forms part of her culinary heritage. But me, I bridled.

Now tofu, as we know, is one of the sticks with which carnivores most commonly choose to beat us vegetarians. And personally, I can't say I blame them.

Tofu looks like it might have substance. But it doesn’t. Tofu looks like it might have flavour. But it doesn’t. Tofu is cold, wet, sloppy, colourless and tasteless, not unlike how I imagine tripe to be. Or maybe the white, squelchy bits from inside the belly of an inveterate beer drinker.

But we were not eating tofu. We were eating atsuage...

Can’t give you a definitive English name, but the brand stocked by our local supermarket is ‘House’, and the packet describes it as a ‘Tofu Cutlet’. The block inside the packet has a surface area a little smaller than a postcard, and the contents look as if they might be a small loaf of bread in perfectly rectangular form.

What you do:

Take the block out of the packet and set it under the grill on a low heat.

In the meantime, finely chop some spring onions and grate some fresh ginger. Keep your eye on the atsuage, turning it as the crust starts to crisp.

It’s done when the edges are just beginning to burn. Pop it onto a plate, take a sharp knife and cut gridwise, so that the block is rendered into around ten bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle with the spring onions and ginger, then drizzle liberally with soy sauce.

Eat while still hot.

Bon appetit.

http://www.house-foods.com/variety/variety_age.htm

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See? I told you this would happen...

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 09:53:55 +0100

So, I succumbed.

I finally had my hair cut.

Nothing drastic, you understand, just a tidy up. Been growing it for six months, after all. Listened dutifully to everything the hairdresser told me about layering, split ends, condition and conditioners.

Then paid an exorbitant fee.

Result?

This morning I washed my hair and, one hour later, I find myself with a pagoda on my head.

Où est la justice?

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Mercy Killing?

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 14:15:06 +0100

For crimes against euphony, radical feminism and sell-by dates.

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Tales from the ballroom

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:42:00 +0100

These days, pride of place in our sitting room is given over to a large, blue ball. It’s made of thick, yielding rubber and is surprisingly warm to the touch. It’s also very responsive, and the slightest breath of air will cause it to roll around the room in the most jovial manner. I sometimes give it a gentle punt with my toe, just to see where it will end up. Most of the time, it seems to prefer a position near to my end of the sofa, about five feet from the front of the TV.

This one is our second. We didn’t keep the first one very long.

Neither of them, of course, was ever intended as a pet.

The ball is in fact one of those devices designed to flatten your abdominal muscles while requiring you to lie on the floor in the most undignified manner imaginable. There are several of them at the gym, and The Horse decided she wanted one for Christmas.

I should have known that Christmas morning would hardly be a languid affair. I was but a few pages into my book of quotations when the tacitly applied pressure became unbearable.

“OK, OK, I’ll blow it up.”

So there I was, festive cup of tea little more than a forlorn wish, sat on the bedroom rug wearing nothing but the slippers I’d unwrapped just 10 minutes previously. Inside the box, two plastic bags. One contained the ball, in crescent moon-shaped, deflated form. The other contained a little hand pump, its plunger ergonomically designed to do maximum damage to the palm of your hand. I inserted the nozzle into the hole in the crescent and gave an experimental push. The plunger performed its task with a sad, moribund sigh.

So I got down to work, the regularity of my action producing the sound of an asthmatic seal attempting conjugal relations.

Having pumped vigorously for about 10 minutes, I was rather dismayed to find that the ball was still no bigger than my bladder after three or four pints. This was clearly not going to be an easy job. Shaking my hand to alleviate to the pain, I set to once more.

The Horse came to join me on the rug, looking at the picture on the box and getting herself all excited.

Some four bouts of handshaking - and 25 minutes - later, and the ball resembled the friendly blue sphere depicted in the photograph. I was done in, ready to climb back into bed and forget about the Day altogether.

It was then, and only then, that we discovered that there was no stopper included in the box.

As I sat listening to the mocking, breathy whistle of escaping air, I don’t know which deflated faster, me or the ball.

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Muscular yet well-mannered

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 06:50:23 +0100

I have been to the gym three times in the last four days. Consequently, I’m toned and fit - I have a body that women admire and other men envy.

However, I don’t kick sand into the faces of the puny fellows on the beach.

Because I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to do.

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Don’t Miss Saigon

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 14:38:19 +0100

Putting the bottle of wine into a carrier bag and checking that we had the keys, The Horse and I set off to visit our friends. They don’t live so far away but, curiously, we were unfazed when the taxi stopped at an address in Vietnam.

And we found ourselves in their sitting room, though I don’t remember us knocking or being welcomed. Above all else, I felt thirsty and, though our friends are perfectly hospitable, felt that I couldn’t wait and went outside looking for a drink. In the small square beyond the open side of their sitting room wall, among the knots of people, I found a cold water machine. It was turned with its back to me and its motor cover had a bas relief of David’s face upon its grey metal surface.

Even though I wanted to, I didn't drink. I don't know why. Instead I wandered around the corner and there, outside a cheap restaurant, was a group of my colleagues sitting on white, plastic garden furniture. They were engrossed in a meeting and advised me that it would be worth my while to join them. I promised that I would, just as soon as I had had a drink of water.

I went looking for the water machine.

It had moved, and was now on the south side of the square. The bas relief was speaking to me, its mouth moving languidly. And, although I couldn’t hear what it had to say, I knew that it was commanding me to do something. So I set off across the square, not entirely sure of where I was going, just knowing, subliminally, that I had to.

I found myself in our friends’ bedroom, which was in an entirely different building situated on the other side of the square. Through the doorway, I could still see the sitting room, though I couldn’t see The Horse inside it. I understood, somehow, that I was now in Building 1. I settled down onto the bed and noted how the wall panels washed from black through grey to white and then back to black. In fact, the whole room was done out in monochrome shades.

I wasn’t sure if I liked it. It made me feel uneasy.

The red lips, midway between floor and ceiling, caught my attention, offering, as they did, such a shocking contrast to the rest of the room. Detached from any support and independent of a face, they floated ethereally in the foreground of my vision. Within seconds they were joined by another 11 pairs, pale and etiolated, ranged on either side.

“You have one hour,” said the red lips, “then you will give account.” The grey lips bore silent witness to this.

Desperately aware of how little time this gave me to mount my defence, I stumbled back to the sitting room, noting, on the way, that the water machine was no longer where I had last seen it. Blundering through the billowing gauze curtains, I began shouting for help, knowing that an hour was nowhere near enough time to put together a cogent argument. No-one came, so I shouted again, louder this time. I was shouting, shouting – please, someone, please. There’s so little time.

One of the curtains seemed to have caught around my ankle, it tugged at me and I felt myself falling.

“Calm down. Calm down, darling. It was a nightmare. It’s OK. It’s OK.”

Momentarily displaced, heart beating audibly, I came back to myself.

To our bedroom. To our bed. To a sliver of light coming from the crack in the curtains. To the picture hanging on the far wall. To the silvered surface of the dressing table mirror. To the solid, black outlines of a familiar topography.

And to The Horse, a warm and gentle presence in the darkness, lightly stroking my upper arm in that wonderful way she does when I’m overwrought and panicky.

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Herbal Verbal

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 09:39:45 +0100

My second cup of the day, the sleep melting away like snow on a warm spring morning. Idly flicking on the TV, to find an interview with Herbie Hancock on the BBC. Who actually proved to be rather a dull interviewee. Except, that is, for one pithily perfect dictum, which I reproduce verbatim:

“Music is born of the human spirit; it speaks to the human spirit.”

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Hey, Neil! Michael! Can you guess what this is?

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 08:09:52 +0100

He earned his place in history for being the second man to set foot on the Moon. But how many of us know that Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin earned his unusual nickname by delighting Apollo 11 crewmates Armstrong and Collins with uncannily accurate impressions of a bee trapped inside his helmet?

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Grass

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 12:33:24 +0100

Sitting silently,

Doing nothing,

Spring comes,

And the grass

grows by itself.

Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694)

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~kohl/basho/life.html

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Really, you shouldn’t have…

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:50:40 +0100

One of my jobs, during the lengthy period I lived in Tokyo, was to write and administer language tests. In the case of reading, this would involve finding and adapting texts, usually from a national daily newspaper, and devising tasks around them. In the case of listening, it would entail writing short dialogues and their attendant questions. Typically, these dialogues would consist of two lines and feature speakers of both genders. Once written, each item would be submitted to the boss, who would enter all of them into our database. Once a month or so, he would select what he judged to be the best candidates for recording.

On my last day with the company before returning to the UK, I decided to leave my colleagues with a little memento. So I surreptitiously added a dialogue directly into the database. It read thus:

Woman: “Roses! Oh, how lovely!”
Man: “Well, it’s the least I can do after all the blowjobs you’ve given me.”
Question: What has the woman done for the man?

Some two months later, I received a letter from my friend and ex-colleague Alistair. In it, he told of how he and a female co-worker had recently been in the studio to record new listening material. They were sat facing each other, about three feet apart, the boom mike between them. Both were concentrating on reading clearly and fluently, as well as trying hard to avoid sniffs, coughs and paper rustle. And both, simultaneously, turned over from one page to the next...

and came across my memento question, which somehow had evaded all the usual vetting procedures.

Alistair made it clear that I should be glad that I had resigned. The company, it appeared, took a rather dim view of abandoning an expensive studio session due to their voice actors' inability to stop giggling.

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The night the windmills (nearly) stopped turning

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 07:22:21 +0100

A few years back, when you were a mite younger than you are now, Korean Air was not blessed with the world’s finest safety record. Having suffered mishaps in disconcertingly quick succession, they did what any responsible airline would: they invested heavily in new aircraft and even more heavily in a slick advertising campaign.

That summer, reasoning that lightning never strikes three times, The Horse and I entrusted Korean Air with our holiday personages.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The return flight had been uneventful. Seated near the back of the aircraft, we had even managed to get some sleep during the London - Seoul leg of the journey. A smooth transit at Kimpo, and then the short hop over to Tokyo Narita.

We were nearly there. Safety belts fastened. Tray tables stowed. Seat backs upright. Cabin lights dimmed.

I, being the nervous flier that I am, was already well into my quiet routine of guiding the pilot through his approach:

“That’s it, flaps down. Then drop the undercarriage. Gently now, gently. That’s good. Bank a little to the left. Little bit more. That’s right…now straighten up. Slowly. Slowly, slowly, slowly…..that’s it….easy now…”

We had already passed the first of Narita’s perimeter car parks, the slumbering vehicles all comfortingly life-sized. We can only have been 50 or 60 feet off the ground…

when suddenly we pulled sharply upwards into a climb that had people gasping and discarded bottles rolling down the aisles. A palpable wave of fear washed through the cabin. The lights came on, as did the tranquilising muzak. Nobody spoke, least of all the captain. The Horse took my hand and squeezed it.

We prepared ourselves to die.

Once safely inside the airport, The Horse asked if I would wait for her while she went to the toilet. Upon emerging, she reported that female passengers from our flight were heaving up into the washbasins in the ladies’.

Whether this was a simple release of tension or a reaction to being strapped into a plane seat and subjected to the instrumental version of Windmills of Your Mind remains unclear.

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Raisins to be cheerful

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 07:14:45 +0100

Should you be left with any bottom-of-the-bottle rum or brandy, don't just leave it there till next Christmas.

Get some raisins. Put them in a Tupperware box. Douse them with the spirit. Seal the box and put it in the fridge.

Get the box out every week or so. Give the raisins a vigourous shake (and top them up, if they're looking dry - no problem with mixing the two spirits, they blend perfectly). Do not resist the temptation to nibble one or two.

After about two months, put a generous amount of them on top of vanilla ice cream and consume.

(The Horse and I doff our caps to Ingrid for this one.)

Bon appetit.

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Bringing his playmates to the stars (China, 1980)

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 05:51:25 +0100

I have been unable to trace, and therefore credit, the artist.

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Going for a Song

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 04:52:56 +0100

"And so, while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing."

Fray Luis de León, 1528 - 1591

http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/poesia/frayluis.htm

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A little festive philosophy

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 04:27:34 +0100

So there we sat among the discarded wrapping paper, The Horse wrestling with the first in a book of sudoku that I'd given her, me wondering at the wisdom in a book of quotations she'd given me. Coincidentally, I came upon a saying which I'd spied when it suddenly, and rather incongruously, appeared on the Mechanical Engineering Department noticeboard.

Credited to Lao Tzu (who may or may not have existed) it seems a nice enough little homily:

he or she who

knows that

enough is enough

will always

have enough

until, that is, you stop to think that it was written around two and a half millennia ago. Then it becomes somewhat of an indictment...

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/lao.html

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/laotzu.html

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The fickle finger of Dame Fortune

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:52:38 +0100

Eddie Phillips was playing his Gibson 335 with a violin bow years before Jimmy Page became celebrated for doing the same thing.

The band with whom he played – The Creation – recorded for none less than Polydor and shared a producer with The Kinks. Of their epoch-defining mod/psychedelic sound, Eddie once offered:

“Our music is red with purple flashes.”

A Creation composition – Painter Man – was later to provide a smash hit for disco fluffsters, Boney M.

Late 60’s Creation gigs were notable for being multi-media events, featuring, among other spectacles, semi-naked women and onstage action paintings which, once completed, would then be set on fire. Members of the audience would frequently find themselves going home covered in spray paint, having formed an integral part of the madcap proceedings.

The Creation's influence was such that 90’s music mogul Alan McGee named both a record label and a band after them.

And yet they never made it.

Ain’t life wicked?

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Once

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 17:00:31 +0100

Once in Royal David’s City
stood a lonely cattle shed
where a mother laid her baby
in a manger for his bed.

That much is certain.

Equally certain is the fact that
He was gone the following morning.

Subsequent investigation
revealed Him to be
playing contentedly
in a vegetable patch a little over half a mile away.

When discovered, He was clutching a carrot in one hand
and was covered from head to foot in mud.
Smiling beatifically, He was clearly unaware of the panic that had greeted His disappearance.

Despite exhaustive enquiries,
the swaddling clothes in which He had been wrapped
were never found.

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An Essex Christmas

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:16:30 +0100

A few years ago, finding myself somewhat challenged financially, I took a job in a card shop for the two months prior to Christmas.

It was mundane and tiring, but the money, though hardly generous, was at least better than a poke in the botty from Rudolph's horn.

However, about two weeks into this period of employment, our floor manager had a brainwave. If we played Christmas music in the shop, she reasoned, it would induce a festive feeling in our customers and lead to an increase in sales.

So she brought in her one and only Christmas album...

which we played on constant rotation for 10 hours a day. Six days a week. For the next six weeks. So how many times did I hear it? Well, assuming the album to have been about 40 minutes in duration, I'll leave you to do the maths.

After about a month of this, I felt I had gained considerable insight into the scope and nature of mental cruelty.

By Christmas Eve, I was fit to be committed.

Worse still, the hideously maudlin A Winter's Tale featured in that mélange of seasonal syrup. And I tell no lie if I say that, to this very this day, should I hear so much as a bar of it - nay, even a single note of it - I mutate into a snarling, slavering, howling hellbeast, whose only thought is for the taste of fresh, warm blood.

Do have a Merry Christmas, now won't you?

(The refrain from) A Winter's Tale
by David Essex

It was only a winter's tale,

Just another winter's tale,

And why should the world take notice

of one more love that's failed?

It's a love that can never be

though it meant a lot to you and me;

on a worldwide scale

we're just another winter's tale.

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These Animal Men

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 08:39:36 +0100

The following are animal names that human beings call (or have called) other human beings:

(arranged in alphabetical order for ease of reference)

ape; ass; baboon; bear; cat; cow; dog; donkey; dove; fox; gorilla; guinea pig; gull; hawk; leech; lemming; mare; mole; monkey; mouse; mule; pig; pigeon; rat; shark; shrew; shrimp; slug; snake; vulture; weasel; wolf; worm.

To my knowledge, no-one has ever referred to another person as an echidna.

My thanks to David T for his enlightened animal suggestions.

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Flat-footed flair

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 16:21:17 +0100

I have noticed on numerous occasions that designer-label people, so comme il faut in every other aspect of their appearance, nonetheless walk with their feet turned outwards.

This seeming anomaly puzzled me for quite a while. Until, that is, I hit upon the obvious answer:

being naturally superior, they have realised something that the rest of us haven’t – namely, that the duck is the most sophisticated of all God’s creatures.

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Smashing Fun at the Rubbish Chute

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:37:48 +0100

Now I should be honest with you and tell you that I don’t always try to get back inside my front door before the rubbish hits bottom.

If there are bottles in the bag, I sometimes wait around in the hope that I can hear them break.

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Punching above our weight

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 07:07:36 +0100

As a teacher of the international language, hailing from the capital of what was once the most powerful nation on Earth, I hold certain views about my country.

While not all of these may be good, I did, at least, believe the UK to be possessed of a global identity.

Not so very long ago however, during a break, one of my students asked me:

"Teacher, is this your country?"

He was standing next to the large class map of the world, with his finger firmly positioned on Bulgaria.

Being someone who takes his educational responsibilities seriously, I felt that I had no option but to continue hitting him until his geography had improved.

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A world without trousers

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 07:25:27 +0100

Imagine if, instead of the configuration we all know and live with, the Good Lord had seen fit to create us with one head, two arms and two wheels.

What would women wear in place of tights? Would men sit in armchairs with their tyres crossed? Would malcontents in evening dress lose fortunes on the roulette legs of Monte Carlo?

What effect would this anatomical alteration have had on car design?

And, more significantly, would there have been any need for Jeremy Clarkson?

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How can people just bite into a raw tomato like that?

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 12:51:28 +0100

How many times in your life have you mentioned to someone that you don't like a particular foodstuff, only to receive the smug response: "You don't know what you're missing!"

Well, actually, yes, I do. I'm missing 30 minutes doubled over the toilet, heaving up everything I ate for lunch.

Thank you very much.

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Mind into Matter

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 12:40:14 +0100

What would our minds look like if they could take on human form?

Mine would be the slightly down-at-heel bloke who sits in the corner of the doctor's waiting room, coughing.

Under the poster offering advice on how to eat healthily.

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…and then I kissed her

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 17:56:59 +0100

The Horse and I have just come back from dining on sushi. This is a treat we permit ourselves every couple of weeks or so and, luckily for us, we live about 10 minutes’ walk away from what is unquestionably the best sushi bar in town.

Now I could wax lyrical about the wonders of sushi for longer than it would take you to clean your teeth, say your prayers, have a good night’s sleep and then get ready for work in the morning.

So I won’t.

Suffice it to say that my absolute favourite item is tobiko. This particular delicacy comprises a pad of vinegared rice, wrapped around with paper-thin nori seaweed and topped off with flying fish roe. Like all sushi, it relies on a subtle interplay of textures as much as it does on flavour. A single helping will be heaped with anything up to 500 miniscule orange eggs. These have an surprisingly firm consistency and burst with an almost audible crack! as you bite.

Now 500 little eggs is a sizeable number and they tend to disperse as you chew. Meaning that, for anything up to three or four hours after eating, you’ll be finding sly individual eggs which have had the guile to hide in the less well-lit corners of your mouth. Rather like those wayward bits of confetti that get stuck in your hair after a wedding.

It has always amused me to imagine a situation in which a tobiko lover, having previously indulged at a sushi bar, goes on to a party afterwards. Once there, our imaginary gourmet encounters someone rather attractive. Someone who, as the wine, the music and the moonlight work their subtle magic, becomes quite irresistible.

This irresistible someone, however, is someone who knows nothing whatsoever about sushi. Until, that is, they receive their introduction to the tactile qualities of tobiko, just after that first shy kiss in the queue for the toilet…

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Claustrofluoride

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 06:20:44 +0100

A must for all those who've ever wondered what it would be like to have been born as toothpaste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_foot_tunnel

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