Avaragado's blog

I’ve packed, more or less. Just odds and ends to sort out tomorrow, then we’re all off to Teri-Aki for Rob’s birthday meal in the evening. It’s a pre-dawn start on Saturday to catch the 9:50am flight from Heathrow to Geneva.

I couldn’t get an appointment with my neurosurgeon until after the holiday, but I reckon I’m OK to ski. He said I’d be well enough by now, anyway. I’m going to be taking it easy: no lessons, no off-piste, etc. But I am going to try to get up at the same time as the others. Well, for a few days at least…

Our apartment looks good. You can tell from the word “luxury” that Chef booked it :-)

Looks like the increase in the stock price was more than just end-of-year fun.
There’s a new CFO to go with the CEO appointed last month, plus a scattering of other new execs, all external appointments. Edmundo and Scheybie are still hanging on, though.

BBC4 has just broadcast a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard II from the Globe Theatre in London.

It was, of course, a repeat (ba-dum-tish).

Last September it was transmitted live from the globe, but I didn’t see it then. I didn’t see most of it this time either, having not spotted it in the schedule despite it hijacking over three hours of prime time. BBC4, you see. Just a bit off the beaten path.

Grumble grumble, surely this is the sort of thing you used to get on BBC2? Well, no. Apparently nobody can remember anything like this being broadcast before: an attempt to accurately recreate a gen-yoo-ine Shakespeare “experience”, including men in drag for the female roles, and the company jig at the end (Shakespeare’s equivalent of the closing credits, which, reminiscent of some of today’s blockbusters, could take up to forty minutes).

I only saw the last hour and a half, but it was fantastic. Real, proper acting, with real, proper actors, not square-headed soap zombies Ross-Kemping across the stage monotonically hawking their upcoming albums.

I did of course watch the “interactive” version, which turned out to be the same thing but with some subtitled commentary. A bit like doing O-levels again, but without the essays, schoolboy acting, or sitting next to Nev Fountain.

For shame, in watching a four-century-old play I missed “Rail Cops” on BBC1, “World Darts” on BBC2, “True Crime” on ITV1, and “Shattered” (AKA “Watch people not sleeping”) on Channel 4. However will I cope.

Bush in 30 seconds is a competition to produce a 30-second ad that best explains the policies of Dubya. That’s “best explains” in a critical sense, of course.

Fifteen finalists have been chosen by popular vote, and you can watch each of them on the site (Quicktime format). A panel of celebrity judges, including Michael Moore, will select the overall winner.

My personal favourites are Hood Robbin’ and Leave No Billionaire Behind. They’re all well-made and worth watching.

In the last few months two new restaurants have opened next to each other on Bridge Street. La Tasca we visited for Chef’s birthday. Last night we ate at Ask.

It’s part of the Ask chain, naturally. Italian food, can’t really go wrong. But it was significantly less busy than La Tasca when we arrived, which was ominous. We had a table by the window. Hmm, OK, but you feel a bit on display.

We ordered a bottle of the Pinot Grigio, but they were out. We also ordered the Chardonnay, which arrived warm, and we had to ask for an ice bucket. I got Chris to swap my wine glass for one from another table, as mine was pretty filthy – smeared and fingerprinted. Not too impressed so far.

Starter: Mushrooms stuffed with this’n’that, garlic, etc. Nicely presented, pretty good.

Main course: Panzerotti con Ricotta e Spinaci, I think it said. Again, nicely presented and pretty good (v. tasty sauce), though my portion seemed a little measly compared to the spag carbonara alongside.

I felt obliged to have a dessert. Tarte Tatin, again pretty good, though maybe a touch small. Picky picky.

Chef didn’t seem a fan of the wine, though I had no complaints. The six of us got through three bottles anyway.

Toilets were posh.

Overall? Well, maybe “Don’t Ask” isn’t entirely fair, but it makes a good headline. They need to sort out those pesky little things, like clean glasses, chilled wine, and reasonable portions. Give ’em another couple of months.

Avaragado’s rating: three mushrooms.

We saw in the New Year in style at Bov and Chrissie’s place.

Highlights included Bov’s new haircut, seeing people like Ray, Reiko, Elaine and Denise again, and champagne at midnight. Plus the usual sumptuous spread.

Lowlights included walking in on Andy Heckford cuddling the toilet bowl at some unearthly hour of the morning. You’ll be glad to hear that I don’t have any photos of that.

Happy New Year, by the way.

The Tarantella share price has shot up in the last two days, from about $1.20 to $1.73 as I write. This has always happened a few days ahead of some news.

It can’t be a new CEO, as they’ve just played that game. There’s nothing new on the web site. Maybe it’s just the institutional investors messing about before the end of the year.

Surprise? From Fast Food Nation, p202:

About 75 percent of the cattle in the United States were routinely fed livestock wastes – the rendered remains of dead sheep and dead cattle – until August of 1997. They were also fed millions of dead cats and dead dogs every year, purchased from animal shelters. The FDA banned such practices after evidence from Great Britain suggested that they were responsible for a widespread outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as “mad cow disease.” Nevertheless, current FDA regulations allow dead pigs and dead horses to be rendered into cattle feed, along with dead poultry. The regulations not only allow cattle to be fed dead poultry, they allow poultry to be fed dead cattle. Americans who spent more than six months in the United Kingdom during the 1980s are now forbidden to donate blood, in order to prevent the spread of BSE’s human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. But cattle blood is still put into the feed given to American cattle. Steven P. Bjerklie, a former editor of the trade journal Meat & Poultry, is appalled by what goes into cattle feed these days. “Goddamn it, these cattle are ruminants,” Bjerklie says. “They’re designed to eat grass, and maybe, grain. I mean, they have four stomachs for a reason – to eat products that have a high cellulose content. They are not designed to eat other animals.”

From today’s Weakest Link:

Anne Robinson: In 1743, which British King was the last to lead an army into battle: Edward VIII or George II?

Contestant: Edward VIII

From a Celebrity Weakest Link shown over Christmas:

Anne Robinson: What is the sum of the number of sides of a square and the number of sides of a triangle?

Edwina Currie: The hypotenuse.

I’ve sent these to Private Eye for consideration for their Dumb Britain column.

From BBC online, Anne’s dog ‘wrongly accused’:

In the latest attack, the Queen’s corgi Pharos had to be put down after both its legs were broken by one of Anne’s dogs.

I know the corgis, like the royals, are a bit inbred, but…

(One housepoint for knowing the reference in the heading without Googling.)

(Update: Bah, they’ve fixed it.)