Some quick EOTWQs!
1. I'm buggering off to London (that's my secondary school in the picture) for a week on Sunday, what should I do whilst I'm there?
2. I like to film people dancing, but what's your favourite bit of dancing in the Movies?
3. I still make "packet of ham risotto" that my mum taught me (so that I could make it when I went to Uni) - what did your mum or dad or gran pass on to you, cooking wise?
4. What % do you work at work, and what % is sheer procrastination?
5. Mini McF has started to love making art, and tons of it is piling up in the house. What one bit of home-made art or craft have you kept for ages, and would never throw out?
44 comments:
Woo - first time ever I've been first to answer an EOTWQ. Although, by the time I've thought about it all, I'll probably have been beaten to it by one of the younger, more sprightly 'Spillers ... [Get on with it. Ed.]
OK - here goes:
1. If you mean that you're visiting your (presumably former) secondary school then you could no better than to walk into your headmaster's office and in true Bertie Wooster fashion, tell him a few home truths ...
2. Laurel & Hardy in Way Out West. See it here.
3. Jimmy Young's recipe for Moist Apple Cake - and yes, that's the second time I've mentioned JY in a 'Spill post today!
4. On a good day, about 20% work, the rest buggering about. More often it's 80% work - rarely higher ...
5. Just looking around the living room now, I can see no fewer than six artifacts produced by the two MissToffees, which will never be disposed of. Never.
Have fun dahn sarf, blimpy. If you happen to be anywhere near Watford or Kew, let me know.
1 In London: Meet eJay and the rest of the London RR mafia.
2. Movie dance: Singing in the Rain, Gene Kelly. Anything with Fred Astaire.
3. I love to cook, no thanks to my parents. It wasn't until my 20s that I began to learn what different foods were supposed to taste like.
4. I found this great link on YouTube for this question.
5. Are you kidding? We have two young kids and two young dogs. Nothing lasts for long in this house.
1. Go to The Globe if it's the right season for Shakespeare. Stand up and watch if you can't afford a seat. It's worth it. Take a plastic mac in case it rains.
2. I have to say Patrick Swayze in "Dirty Dancing". (No you don't - ed)
3. Absolutely brilliant bread pudding, buttery, fruity, crunchy on the outside ...
4. About 50/50 until I get in a panic.
5. A shall shell bracelet, an iron man (who featured on these pages) and some play-dough moulds of little hands.
I meant a small shell bracelet ...
1. What Tin said, or go see a gig, Mnemonic should be able to tell you what's on.
2. Don't remember at the moment.
3. Shake the frying pan with grace, and mix butter and oil, although now he denies that, now that my parents have become self-loathing health freaks.
4. Depends on the day, if I'm at home it's 98% procrastination
5. There's 2 things I made that my parents haven't gotten rid of, a bread board in two parts, you can pull the grid-like part to get rid of the crumbs, and a kind of trivet, made of ceramic, with drawn "flowers" on them. My little sister did a bowl of spaghetti made of clay, which I don't think I'll ever throw out. I should tell my godson Cassiel to get to work.
1 If it were me I would go to the Moctezuma exhibition and see all those gory Aztecs.
2 That would be the dance hall scene in West Side Story. My ex (before I met him) was in the band for the original West End production, but he didn't enjoy it much as where he sat (he played the cello) was actually underneath the stage so he could just hear lots of thumping feet, and not see anything.
3 My school: cakes. My mum: white sauce. My husband: proper omelette.
4 It's public money so I shouldn't say really...but it's on the same lines as ToffeeBoy. Very often what I do do turns out to be a complete waste of time.
5 Ab, when she was very small, presented me with a scrawled-on piece of paper, and when I asked her what it was a picture of she said "Heavy bird." I looked again and, by golly, it was.
1. Donds to the impromptu 'Spill Social.
2. Scarecrow and Dorothy linking arms and skipping around the cornfield junction, then off towards Oz.
3. My mother? Teach me?! You're having a laugh, aintcha! My dad taught me that you have to get up early if you want a bacon butty before you leave the house in a morning.
4. Is DsMam listening? No? Then I'll admit it's 10% work TOPS when I'm at my desk, but obviously 90%+ when I'm running a course.
5. Oh too many to mention. Darcey's not producing much worth saving yet, but Jess has done some wonderful pieces. But the one that springs to mind is the one that got away: we went to Millie Moo's Paint-A-Pot Cafe in Halifax's Piece Hall before Darcey was even 1.y.o., and painted all four of our handprints, names & the date onto a big charger-plate. We had it glazed and then we mounted it on the wall at home. 6 months later DsMam got a bit overzealous with the dusting; it came out of its holder and broke when it hit the floor.
:o(
1. The Anish Kapoor show at the Royal Academy. It moves and splatters.
2. Er... I'll get back to you on the rest.
1. Has to be a Rough Trade Records pilgrimage in there somewhere.
2. Would go with John & Uma doing the twist in "Fiction". (although Dick Van Dyke as a puppet in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has popped into my head unbidden).
3. Nan on how to brew the perfect cup of tea.
4. Thanks for another reminder to do something else real soon.
5. Me, I've never thrown nothing out never. As we haven't had to move due to insuffucient space to contain endless production of sports trophies (#1) & artistic masterpieces (#2); there must be some secret process of which I am blissfully unaware. Feel for Mrs. S. on this one; caught between the devil & the deep blue sea of Mother's pride & houseproudiness.
1. Visit the British Museum, I always do when in London, never get tired of it, always discovering new things....
2. The twist contest in Pulp Fiction (John Travolta & Uma Thurman)
3. My mom used too (and still does) cook a lot of great Indonesian recipes she has got from a good friend of hers, I have copied the whole notebook, and I am eternally thankful for the 'spicy meatballs in sweet soy-sherry sauce', simple but incredibly nice.....
4. Yesterday 100% work, today 90% work, 10% play (checking my private mail, checking the 'Spill etc.), as a contractor I feel I am obliged to the customer to show a certain level of professionalism, and there is plenty of work to do...
5.A picture I took in Switzerland a couple of years ago, it won me a prize in a photo contest, part of the prize was a professional enlargement and framing, and a place in an exhibition for two months. It now hangs in my living-room.....
1: British Museum, def. I spent about 4 hours just looking at the early British rooms last time, I can stare at the Lewis chessmen for hours.
2: I posted it when John Hughes died: Duckie's dance to Try A Little Tenderness in Pretty In Pink, it's so heartfelt. Also room for Napoleon Dynamite's climactic dance for Pedro.
3: Sunday roast from my mum, dab hand at pastry thanks to mum's mum: the secret is to have bad circulation, as the cold fingers won't make the butter sweat. From dad the perfect way NEVER to make beans on toast or devilled chicken, a phrase that still sends shivers up the collective spine of the Kidner family.
4: Well, I consider standing in front of the kids and teaching as about 75% of my work and then 25% is thinking about fun things we can do, mainly involving film. I procrastinate as much as possible when it comes to marking.
5: My diaries are the closest I can get to this, 1987-2004. 1991-1995 are especially juicy.
Donds for British museum anytime. plus Aztecs, Turner, Globe etc. or even the Spill mafia.
Dancing: Ditto donds to all of the above but I hope someone can help me with this one, I've searched for ages to no avail. At film school we were shown a Busby Berkeley clip that involved a dancer/series of dancers on some steps in a desert environment, the steps disappeared into the perspective of distance. The dancers danced up and down the steps with enormously long multicolored silk scarves, 20-30-50ft long wafting in the wind machines. It was a fabulous image, anyone else ever seen it, know which film?
My work was 100% doing whatever I thought interesting, an amazing result of not having a boss.
1. If you don't know it, the Sir John Soane's museum is a fascinating visit and packed with incredible curios, as well as having very interesting and quirky interiors, with lots of neat mirror tricks to make it appear bigger than it is.
2. I'd love to be able to do this (from 6:17 onwards..)
3. A haggis recipe.. haven't had the guts to make it yet, though
4. There isn't much flab on my work effort these days, though I do allow myself surfing pauses- it sharpens the concentration, I find. Don't be surprised though if I fire off the odd sharply worded German missive in the wrong direction by mistake.
5. Tell me about it- every single horizontal surface here is filled with things Mara has made. The only thing of mine I've kept from school is a glazed clay rhinopotomas, which was partially the inspiration for my user name.
1.Go to Highgate Cemetery and say hello to Karl - and apologise for me that I still haven't made it over.
2.Tricky... Perhaps the 'Choreography' sequence from White Christmas.
3.Love of food and cooking. Parents both excellent cooks, so I've spent most of my time avoiding their recipes in order to develop my own style without fear of inferiority complex.
4.It's not procrastination, it's letting the ideas sort themselves out in my subconscious. No point in doing anything until they're ready.
5.We have a staggeringly over-elaborate and unusable pair of log tongs made by MrStepAbahachi, that Mrs Abahachi would never throw out...
1. Another vote for the British Museum. The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House is great too, if you haven't been, and is free on a Monday before 14:00.
2. Probably the sequence in Chaiya Chaiya where they're all dancing on top of a moving train. It's ridiculous and quite brilliant.
3. Very little that i actually use. Most of my parents' meals had meat in them. Cauliflower cheese might be the best of the rest.
4. It varies. I rarely go lower than 80% procrastination in any one day though.
5. I have a lovely hand-made card from a niece thanking me for putting some DS games on a memory stick for her. It's a nice reminder that however technologically-advanced they may be, children still love to draw and stick things together.
1. What to do in London? Umm, if you’ve got some free time, pull your finger out and get cracking on Aye Tunes. Otherwise, the free galleries and museums are always worth dropping into if you’ve got some time to kill. I love Tate Modern, so that would have to be a must for me, and am also rather partial to the National Portrait Gallery.
2. Dancing in the movies: The dance scene in Napoleon Dynamite (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmMAw5a7POU from about 3:30) is aces: just a shame it’s soundtracked by the twat in the hat. There’s also a great dance scene in the last episode of the first series of Flight of the Conchords (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMjgSkfQPSY). Not a movie, I know, but it’s filmed.
3. Handed down cooking: Not a skill or a dish but a memory. My gran lived in Brisbane and I spent Christmas with her when I was 17. Despite it being 30+ degrees she insisted on cooking a full traditional Christmas dinner. My abiding memory is of Grannie in the kitchen with her paper hat plastered to her forehead with sweat! Twas a good turkey, though...
4. My work/procrastination ratio: ooo, I like Abahachi’s answer – that’s what I’ll tell the boss.
5. Home-made art: Little Miss Satan has loads of artwork all around the kitchen. I can’t see me throwing any of it away for now, but at some point I’m just gonna have to be ruthless.
Go to the Klinker Club on Tuesday or Thursday. Also, pop in and water my plants 'cos I'm off to Liverpool and Scotland.
Getting into the Mood for Dumfries and Galloway so how about the Maypole Scene from The Wicker Man? Somehere there is still a picture of me, aged 7, Maypole dancing at a public display with a terrible grimace 'cos I'd been made to wear the girl next door's knee length white socks.
My mother had four sons and a father who couldn't boil an egg so we got lots of basic techniques. By the time we were 10 we could all cook a full Sunday roast including Yorkshire pudding ... which is still her recipe.
Another vote for Abahachi's elucidation. What's important is how much you get done when you're 'on'. Actually I've always liked the times in my life when I've had physical jobs, still enjoy a building or woodwork project where your hands can get on with it and your head can do what it wants - a win win situation.
My youngest (of 3) is now 19 and I have folders full of art work. On painting days the four of us would start with a whole roll of lining paper (wallpaper) and I'd mix up vast quantities of paint. We'd go at for hours at a time, not unusual to have 30 or 40 pictures somedays. One favourite that is always on display is a Garden of Eden scene painted by my daughter aged 8 or so.
1) Rarely go near London these days, but the Aztecs sound good.
2) The 'Floorshow' from Rocky Horror Picture Show
3) Everything I know about cooking I learnt since leaving home. However when I went off to college my mother gave me her 1938 edition of 'Teach Yourself to Cook' which does have some useful basic recipes (the christmas pudding is particularly good). It's also full of recipes for things that people just don't eat anymore, stuff I refuse to believe people ever ate, and the sort of things that have always given british food a bad name. I won't elaborate here (possibly a few of the choicer items could make a later spill post) but suffice it to say that the recipe for spaghetti involves boiling it for 45 minutes and then baking it in the oven for an hour. Hardly al dente.
4) here I am at work typing this...
5) I have a book rack that I made in a woodwork class at age 12 - only thing I successfully made. I regularly got an E in woodwork.
I WANT TO SEE THE RHINOPOTAMUS!!!!
They are very very rare.
And quite dangerous, when riled.
I'll see what I can do.
1. Sherlock Holmes musuem in Baker Street surely? I had a young, beautiful female student tell me last week that she spent 500 quid on airfare and god knows how much on hotels to spend a few days in London because she loved Sherlock Holmes so much and wanted to visit the museum!!
2. For me it's the barn raisin' scene in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, incredible!
3. Not much at all i'm afraid, but much like TYT, my Mum was a single parent with a full time job and 4 kids so we learnt pretty early to cook the basics like a good Spag Bol.
4. Being kind of semi-kinda-self-employed-but-not-really, it's difficult to tell, but quite a bit of procrastination does go on
5. Not so much as we don't have kiddies (yet!) but Mrs J refused to throw anything hand made, and we usually hand make birthday cards and things like that. I ain't so sentimental, and don't mind chucking them though....
Hey, folks, the Graun has started displaying avatar pics on the blogs, so get yours uploaded before today's MFF.
You just click on your profile and edit it, linking to a small .jpg or .gif on your computer (I used a .jpg that's 76kb in size). A moderator has to check it's not obscene or something but that's done fairly quickly. And then you have a personal symbol of you shown with all your posts. Coo!
Ah, yes, questions 2-5. Must think...
1. Can't think of anything better than meeting RRsters. And maybe going to a gig with them. Or shoe shopping with Cauliflower and mnemonic.
2. Bande a Part, and it's imitator, Hal Hartley's Simple men. I like when the dancing is self-consciously unexpected, like Blackpool or Pennies from Heaven. Busby Berkeley's pretty amazing, too. DOnds' for Nap Dynamite
3. We used to call them flat pancakes (when I introduced David to them he said "as opposed to the spherical kind?") but basically they're crepes. We used to have them only on special occasions, but I make them for my kids all the time, because they have protein and other good stuff and they almost always eat almost all of them.
4. My whole life feels like 98% procrastination. I think I'd be better off becoming a professional procrastinator.
5. We've made each other presents and cards as long as we've known each other, so all of that stuff. Plus all of my boys brilliant brilliant artwork. I'll try to link to a couple.
(continued)
2. Probably one of those Busby Berkeley numbers, with the women dancers that looked like women, rather than vertical coathangers. Or one of the various subversions of a Busby Berkeley number, as at the end of Blazing Saddles or in The Big Lebowski (in which Jeff Bridges passes between the dancers' legs, open-eyed for a naughty reason).
3. My Mum wasn't a particularly adventurous cook and so I'm not sure there's anything culinary I've inherited from her. My Dad only really started cooking when she got very ill and I can't remember anything at all cooked by a grandparent.
4. As I don't really work much at all any more, most of my life is procrastination. But I seem to remember that work used to be something it was necessary to get out of the way before you could start wasting time.
5. Not being overly sentimental, there's very little I've kept. Just a hideous clay creature, painted and fired, made by my infant son, and a small watercolour of Jerusalem painted by my ex-stepdaughter.
I am deadly serious about the Anish Kapoor show, btw. It really does look like an event to witness. Here's the address of the RA exhibition details, with a live webcam of what happens: http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/anish-kapoor/about/
TY's pic must be dead rude, because they haven't approved it yet.
I was there early and when they threw the 'on' switch this morning me and Ejaydee were in. I then went and edited some other profile bits and clicked 'save' but it looks like your picture is going to get 're-approved' every time you tweak your details, whether you've changed the file or not. Have you done something similar, 'cos now I'm there but you're not?
You and I are both there, TY, when I look on IE8, but when I look on Chrome, neither of us are!
@gordonimmel: there's an Eagles tribute band called Desperado playing on Oct 23 in Castle Douglas!
You're both there in Firefox, and I'm now pending...
I was seeing both in IE but only me in Chrome
1. Walk. I've started walking places instead of taking the Tube when I've been to London recently, and it's wonderful. You'll see some famous or significant thing every 50 yards.
2. The Bear Necessities
3. I've learnt most things myself, but they passed on a love of lots of fresh, seasonal vegetables.
4. I effectively take money from charities when I procrastinate, so I'm quite good. But I do notice how much more I accomplish when I'm offline. (RR is, of course, a refreshing break which boosts overall productivity)
5. Innis's first paintings have just gone up on the fridge. Ask me again in a few years... I'm a hoarder by nature, so it will probably be loads.
Before I respond to the EOTWQ's I just spotted treefrogdemon's last post so have to respond to that...
tfd, let me put it this way, on October 23rd I'm supposed to be at my parent's Golden Wedding Anniversary. Now, let me see, Desperado? or Mum & Dad's? Hmmmm, what do you think I could getaway with?
BTW I have a similarly difficult judgement to make the following wednesday when Man City are playing Scunthorpe in the next round of the cup but it happens to be frauimmel's birthday. Hmmmm, another poser.
(Not to mention excitement of the RRSocial on 24th October...who needs London?)
Oh, which reminds me...
1. Apart from my quick visits to London in 2006 & 2007 for the RR Socials my last 'real' visit to London was in 2000 when frauimmel and I went along to the Millenium Wheel only to find that it was booked out until a week next Friday, so that's still on my 'to do' list the next time I 'do' London.
2. I'm a bit overdosed with dancing movies at the moment due to that being tessimmel's favourite kind of movie so I just can't bring myself to nom 'High School Musical' or 'Mamma Mia'. For some reason tho', some of the dancing from Grease, especially 'You're The One That I Want' has entered my brain...
3. As I think I said last week, my Dad didn't like anything with herbs or spices in it (we got spam and chips when we visited his mum, my Gran) and so my Mum never cooked anything with herbs or spices in it. I didn't learn real cooking until I left home and then I did it by adopting recipes I saw in books or on TV or ate in a restaurant and adapting them to what I like.
4. Well, I don't recall ever missing a deadline and if I have to get down to it I do but I also live by the saying 'Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow'
5. Three answers (a) tessimmel produces reams of 'art' which we hold on to as long as possible until the piles of rubbish gets too bad and we get rid of most. But I do admit to having a sentimental attachment to her cards especially the 'Get Well Soon' card she did for me when I was in hospital with a bit of pneumonia three years ago. (b) I'm still hoping that my parents unearth my first world map, drawn aged 5. I would still recognise it because the Red Sea ended up round instead of long and thin (c) Exodus reminded me of the coffee table I made in woodwork class aged 14. I nearly destroyed it myself as a teenager, my Dad had to put it back together with copious amounts of wood glue but it still holds pride of place in the centre of my own living room now. tessimmel is doing her best to destroy it but I'll just keep mending it because...
Oh, well, gordon: I'm not going either. Because I shall be in MK with the grandsons.
1. Don't know London well enough to make any recommendations. An impromptu RR Social sounds pretty good, though.
2. Grease was brilliant, especially You're the one that I want. For really bad dancing try the Spanish film El otro lado de la cama - like seventies Seaside Special choreographies, only worse!
3.My mum's cakes and short crust pastry. Not allowed to make them at the moment 'cause I'm meant to be losing weight. But Mrs Maki's birthday is coming up so I may be forgiven if I prepare my mum's "London Coffee House" special.
4. When in class it's pretty much 100% all the time. Otherwise procrastination takes over. This is a bad thing because I'm crap at paperwork and without the paperwork - I don't get paid!
5. Some butterflies painted by my brother's daughter Theresa years ago on a holiday in Wales. I'm in Spain, he's in Germany and we see each other far less than is good for us. Mario, my grandson is only two months old but when he starts doing "art" you'll have to ask me this question again!
1) Go to the British Museum and the Tate Gallery.
2) It is either Baby and Johnny dancing at the end of Dirty Dancing or The Timewarp from Rocky Horror.
3) My Mum was an awful cook. It was because she was so bad that I decided to teach myself how to cook properly.
4) I try to limit the procrastination but some days it has been known to get up to around 20%.
5) I have a pottery pig that my ex's younger son made for me when he was at infants school.
1. Don't got to Madame Toussaud's.
2. This (I've mentioned it in the past on a thread started by Blimpy posting the Bande A Part sequence) from John Turturro's Romance and Cigarettes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOQhzvK4wfY
Also, love Archie Panjabi's Bollywood dance in the backyard in the otherwise meh East Is East, and the Libertango sequence in Sally Potter's The Tango Lesson, aqui:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqYg0ZVgV4w
3. Mentioned this before as well - my mum's parippu (dhal), the only bit of "Home" home cooking she passed down.
4. This has tipped the procrastination percentage back into the 80s.
5. I should throw some of the kids' crap out but they always seem to find use for the most crumpled bit of scribble so I don't go there.
Man, my typing's as bad here as on the mothership today - don't GO to Madame Toussaud's. On reflection, you probably worked that out.
If I was left entirely to my own devices in London, which I never am, and had unlimited funds, which I never do, I'd go to Ray's Jazz Shop in Shaftesbury Avenue.
East Is East is a film where the deleted scenes actually add so much more to the film. All the scenes that made the father more sympathetic instead of depicting him solely as an mean intolerant oaf were left on the cutting room floor.
Hi El Blimpo:
1. Hook up with all the Spillers in London in a splendid indian restaurant of their choosing and all have a fantastic night. Otherwise go and see the HMS Belfast - great museum. Depeche Mode actually fillumed their 'people are people' vid on board.
2. Lots of great suggestions above. Will chuck into the fray the final scene in Strictly Ballroom where they break all the rules and he gets a clap from his dad. Like very much the tango scene in Mr and Mrs Smith where they are trying to hurt each other whereas in real life something quite different was happening. Kevin Bacon in footloose is still magical and I love love love the broom sweeping scene in Breakdance. Hey Nilpferd and Lady S. Hope none of the Clip Joint crew are reading this...!!!!
3. Heinz tinned spaghetti in shepherds pie. Lamb and Barley stew - very Scottish actually.
4. Festina lente
5. A mini rocking chair made out of wooden clothes pegs when I was about 10. Still have it.
Oh and I have to add another great dance scene ) the scene in Strictly Ballroom where Fran's Dad teaches them how to dance a real Paso Doble. Little known fact but his daughter was actually my assistant for a wee while. She sold me and did a dance step and the proud movement of the head and I spookily saw him standing on front of me.
Donding May's recommendation of Ray's Jazz Shop/Cafe now in Foyles bookshop .. but with its own entrance on Charing Cross Road. Nice caff, free WiFi and most weeks there's a free promo gig or two around 6 - 6.30 so good start to the evening if you're in town.
Thanks for all the suggestions - British Museum, Anish Kapooooooor are definates (and rough trade, natch!)
The others have gone on a shortlist for discussion.
1a. Go to a Mexican restaurant and try Horchata, or a Jamaica, a Hibiscus drink. I would recommend Taqueria or Crazy Homies, if you're in West London.
Ooh yes, how could I have forgotten Strictly Ballroom, especially given that Mrs Abahachi and I watched it again in the last fortnight to get some tips on the rumba - one of the great things (at least for us, as relative beginners) is that the dance steps are reasonably close to the stuff we've been learning, whereas all the performances on Strictly, fun though it is, are mostly about the choreography and a lot of posing rather than the proper dance.
Yes, I think it would be the Paso scene for me as well. Pedantically (sorry), the great thing about the final scene is not just that Scott gets a clap, but that, at the moment when the plug has been pulled on the music and the dance comes to a halt, his dad - previously completely down-trodden - starts clapping the rhythm for them to start dancing again. Electrifying moment, great film.
Next week's freebies at Rough Trade East are here
http://www.roughtrade.com/site/instore.lasso
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