Sparrow Chatter

Friday, 13 November 2009

Ice cubes anyone?

Photo courtesy of the Dominion Post

Question: What is half kilometre long, flat and floating off the coast of NZ?

Answer: A part of Antartica. Yup, icebergs again folks (shades of 2006)

I knew there was a reason we needed two blankets on the bed as well as the duvet last night..........

Monday, 9 November 2009

7300 days

I believe I have lived through one of the most extraordinary periods of history. I can tell you where I was this night twenty years ago, the night the Berlin wall was breeched. I was in London on business and staying with a friend. We both could not believe our eyes seeing people attacking the wall and hauling it down with their bare hands.
I went to University in a town with a large Polish community. Only a few months into my stay there, I was raising funds for Solidarinosc. With friends we watched closely as the Soviet Refusenik movement gained momentum. We wrote letters to politicians, we supported people who went on clandestine trips to take aid to the families of prisoners. In the early 1980s we could never have imagined that people from the Soviet Block countries would one day pour over borders into Austria and Germany.
Tonight I want to cry. It’s only 20 years ago. So much has happened. The Iron Curtain felt immovable, Communism had squeezed the spirit and the life breath out of generations. No one would have believed that one day, it would crumble and crack, like the concrete walls of its Brutalist buildings.
For me, this is more than just the tale of regimes coming and regimes going, it is a story of hope. Contrast this twenty year anniversary with the thirty year anniversary of the Iranian hostage crisis. The swing to radical Islam of the people of Persia; maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised by that, or the fact that it appears to have spread beyond Iran’s borders with viral-like swiftness. But regimes come, and regimes go. Ideologies rise and fall. Where there is a spirit wanting to grasp freedom, justice, and life, it will prevail. So often it is the ordinary man on the ordinary street living his ordinary life who does something which makes the first crack.
Being very ordinary, that gives me hope. I am watching out for the extraordinary.

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Food glorious food

At the beginning of the day, after a very early start gardening, I decided to enjoy a leisurely stroll through a recent indulgent purchase, a travel/food book, “Saha” by Greg and Lucy Mahlouf. I was struck by how much the attitude to food has changed in my lifetime, and how privileged I have been, being able to sample food all over the world. As I read Saha, I recognised the Syrian cheeses, the date biscuits and meatballs common in the Levant.
I was raised on organic veggies grown in the garden and simple home cooking. The first time I ever ate in a restaurant, I was 11 years old. The choice in our neighbourhood was Chinese, Chinese or Chinese. Both of my parents experienced the scarcity of the Depression and World War 2, so Chinese food was pretty exotic and only for special celebrations.
Only a generation later, and looking at my bookshelves, you would think I was a food critic. My cookery books are the culinary equivalent of Around the World in Eighty Dishes; Middle Eastern, Indian, Italian, Russian, Swedish, French, Austrian, Jewish, and even one from Newfoundland. I have specialist books on Trifles, bread making and pasta. I use most of them, and can find the ingredients for most of the recipes in our city.
In the last 10 years we have the cult of the celebrity chef, an entire TV channel devoted to food, and specialised holidays where you can learn to cook your food of choice.
How sad that we live in the generation with possibly the worst famines and food wastage in history.
Makes you think doesn’t it?