bhuidhe’s blog

What's something that you're really proud of, which most people in your life don't know about?
Submitted by CosmicBabe.

And these:

- I know how to make a dovetail joint (that's carpentry, not illegal substances)

- I can change the wheel on my car if I have a puncture

- I can paint, wallpaper. make curtains and I'm really mean with a drill.  Need some shelves put up anyone?  Just let me get my spirit level out (that's a tool, not my daily alcohol intake)

What's something that you're really proud of, which most people in your life don't know about?
Submitted by CosmicBabe.

All the times I smiled and listened to people and helped them out when inside I really needed some help myself, and no one guessed.

Last spring Emilio was in my front garden.  He admired the flowers: hundreds of daffodils, tulips and hyacinths.  Then he dug up half of them for the work I was doing on my house.

This spring Emilio won't be admiring the flowers.  He'll be underground in a hole someone else dug, like my bulbs.  And if anything grows from this strange seed it won't be among the vases of crysanthemums and the marble slabs.

Nothing makes a mockery of everything like the eyes of a dying man.

I have a few itches that need scratching and one dates back to the eighties when I first started listening to The Waterboys, and fell in love with "Red Army Blues" (which Mike Scott got so sick of he once stormed off the stage after the crowd demanded it; how silly is that?).  I've always had THAT song in my head, lovely harmonious army boys singing their great Russian souls out - and what I wanted to know was, do the boys in the Red Army really, really, REALLY sing that song?

Last night I got my musical itch scratched. I went with my pals to the Auditorium in Milan to hear... YES!  The Red Army!  Them, the very ones, the boys themselves!  There they all were (well not all of them, just the ones that made it into the choir).  I'm sitting there in my red plush velvet seat looking down at thirty Russians in immaculate uniform, half of them land army and half of them with those gorgeous sailor tops and the hats with the ribbons on the back, and I'm thinking "they could sing baa baa black sheep for all I care, this is UNIFORM HEAVEN baby!". 

And then, quite without warning, without giving me a moment to prepare or get myself into the necessary awed emotional framework..

THEY DID THAT SONG!!!

Beautiful, perfect, immaculate.  Oh...  And I'm just sitting there with my respiratory and cardiac systems in complete suspension, swimming through a perfect sound soup.  This is it, this is the moment I've waited almost twenty years for.. the boys themselves, the Soviets, the Ruskies, doing THAT SONG!   This is what Joyce called an epiphany.  This is what I call fucking brilliant.

So was the rest of the concert a pleasant afterthought?  Was it hell!  It just got better and better.  Every single voice in that choir is a soloist, one after the other the boys (and men, a couple of these guys were probably old hands in the army when Brehznev was still on for a game of tennis..) came out and stunned with the most unexpected voices.  A big heavy old guy with the purest, most crystal tenor voice, a lad who looked 12 with a bass that made my seat (and more) tremble...  They have your heart breaking with unbridled homesickness for the steppes, for your babushka and her samovar, when you were born in a Victorian hospital in Edinburgh and haven't been near Russia in your life. 

And I haven't even got to the dancers yet...  This is the Red Army, anything less than perfection and you're farming parsnips in Siberia.  Did one single dancer at any single point put so much as a thumb wrong?  Are we joking?  We're talking Russia in movement: we're talking all the best and brightest images we have in our heads - is this art imitating life or do these guys really do this stuff?  We're talking birling swirling girls, we're talking ribbons and gold head dresses, we're talking striped skirts and flowery shawls, we're talking red boots (a personal fetish I won't go into) moving faster than several members of a certain royal family towards a bottle of gin. 

And men.. They really DO THAT STUFF!  We're talking legs over heads, backflips like they were picking their noses, big grown-up blokes being picked up and thrown about like they were newborns (I'm not suggesting you throw newborns about, they don't like it).  We're talking legs kicked out while the rest of the man's body appears to be sitting on nothing more than thin air..  We're talking thighs I last saw in a zoo on the back legs of a rhino.

These are men.  These guys can wear purple satin Cossack shirts that would have had Liberace weeping with desire, do things with tambourines and still look more macho than a bunch of Masai warriors on the huntdown in the Serengeti. 

And of course the audience wanted an encore - you don't know the meaning of interactive theatre till you've been in the middle of an Italian audience.  Forget ice poles with carrots up their arses, this is the land of football stadiums and Christians being thrown to the lions while people picnic on olives and wine at the Colesseum and exchange tips on how to set their toga drapery off to the best advantage.

So what did they do for an encore? Hey these are the ex-Soviets, these guys do their homework.  They did "Va Pensiero" from Verdi's Nabucco, only just the unofficial national anthem..  Did we really fight a cold war with these people?  How come suddenly they're all waving to us from the stage?  How come everyone's waving back? 

Ah well, this is the Red Army, they sang "Kalinka", they sang THAT song, they wore red boots. It really doesn't get any better.

It helps to make the culinary experience all the more enjoyable if you ply yourself liberally with a reasonable (don't take out a mortgage!) bottle of wine.

Given the alarming lack of a tasty man in the near vicinity, a dreadful cold, a hungry family and a cold afternoon, may as well get into the kitchen.  Every so often I come over all domestic, an inexplicale phenomenon given that I consider myself an animal about as domestic as a hammer-head shark. 

This is what I've cooked up so far:

"Sformato di Finocchi e Patate" (Fennel and Potato Pie)

Take two heads of fennel, cut them into quarters and simmer for 10 minutes.  Peel two large potatoes, cut into fairly thin slices and boil for 3 minutes.  Let the fennel fry a little in a little butter.  Butter abundantly the bottom of a shallow dish.  Layer the fennel and potatoes with lots of grated parmesan cheese.  Bake in the oven at c.180°C for about 15 minutes.  Turn out of the dish: if it comes out clean then you can call it "sformato.." etc and your friends will say "Wow!"  If it all breaks up, don't give a shit, put it in a bowl and call it "Baked Fennel and Potato" and your friends will say "wow" anyway.

Aubergines Jewish Style (from the fabulous and very difficult -to-get Jewish cookbook I got from my friend Fiorella who is "in" with the right crowd)

Cut 3 aubergines into cubes, add salt and drain off liquid.  Coat them lightly in flour and fry.  Chop some celery, carots, onion and basil finely and fry in a little oil.  Add half a kilo of peeled tomatoes, a few capers, black olives (take out the stones unless you want to pay your friends' dental bills), half a soup spoonful of vinegar, the same of sugar, salt and pepper.  Cook till the sauce is thick.  Add the fried aubergines and cook for 10 minutes more.  Go to aubergine heaven.

Artichokes

Take a large crate of artichokes that you got for Christmas and a pair of surgical gloves (unless you want black fingernails for weeks).  "Clean" the artichokes: this involves chopping away an alarming 80% of the vegetable and getting down to the core.  If you are not entertaining important or influential people, or Marco Pierre White, do yourself a favour, chop them in half to clean out the "beard".  Fry with lots of garlic in vegetable oil.  Have your telephone cut off while you eat them.

Roast Loin of Pork

Take the loin of an unfortunate swine and "seal" it by frying every side of it lightly in a pan with oil and garlic.  Put it in a roasting dish.  Make shallow cuts on the top and insert rosemary and bayleaves (previously plucked from a herb garden in picturesque manner), pour on a little oil and a little balsamic vinegar.  Cover well and roast at about 200°C for a couple of hours.  Parboil some carrots and parsnips and add these to the dish half an hour before the roast is ready.  A little before this, drain off some of the juice.  Put a large spoonful of sugar in a small pan with some vinegar, and heat until the sugar is dissolved.  Add the roast juice and reduce.  Add a small glass of orange juice and reduce.  Uncover the roast, and pour the sauce over it, leave to roast a further half hour, basting regularly. 

Naturally if a tasty man shows up, none of this necessary and you can make do with a sandwich made of whatever's in the fridge.

It's almost Christmas.  I love Christmas, I'm just a big kid.  I wear a Santa Claus hat, I sing all the carols, one after the other, I make mince pies and I get Christmas crackers imported from the UK because here in Italy they don't exist (like the Sahara without the sand).

As a child I was totally zen-like, completely at one with my shiny paper, glue, scissors and glitter as I confected "Christmas decorations" my mother gamely distributed about the house (I believe she still has a pipecleaner and Kleenex fairy I made thirty-two years ago).  I was Lucy in Narnia when she steps out of the wardrobe.

Thanks to the dreadful Scottish weather and the poor road conditions I've had bad Christmases.  The one where my sister's boyfriend hit a lorry that pulled out, and didn't make it.  The one where my mum's friend skidded and didn't make it (the kids were OK).  The one where my father's business partner's daughter hit a lorry, and didn't make it.

But I've never felt so confused as to how I should feel as this Christmas.  In an hour I'm going to a funeral.  My friend Nadia is burying her eldest son.  A lorry stopped suddenly, he hit it, and didn't make it.  She says her life is finished.  The air around here is so thick with pain it's hard to breathe.

My friend S went Christmas shopping a week ago.  She bought some stuff for herself along with loads of presents for her two small kids and her beloved husband.  She bought hats and false eyelashes because she's about to face eight months of chemio and radiotherapy.

A friend did me the biggest favour I can imagine from a friend: I didn't feel over the moon, I really got up there and looped the loop, for me and for this friend, the world is a better place for having certain people in it.  Thanks to this person I have never felt so deeply grateful for being born.  I have realised the charmed, blessed and perfect life I have.  I see the problems for what they are: nothing, just nothing.  I've never felt so grateful in my life.  This is my perfect Christmas present, and like all the best things in life, you just can't giftwrap it.

Years ago a good friend sent me an old African tale.  The last line is: just being alive is a triumph.  It's true, as long as you're a person like me who lives in a perfect charmed world, a life in a little plastic shaker where you make it snow whenever you want.  Unless someone drops your world and it gets broken. 

Congrats - TIME Magazine voted you "Person of the Year"!  What's your acceptance speech?

You shouldn't have.  It was nothing really.

Have you ever secretly unwrapped a gift before the big day? 
Submitted by Red Pen.

I very much hope to unwrap one this evening actually.  :-)

Show us some great giftwrapping.

This is what I insist on hoping to find under the Christmas tree.  Just in case there is any doubt the giftwrapped version is the first one.  Ever the cock-eyed optimist...