Home is where The Horse is

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.wordpress.com

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

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?

“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

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?