What's for Dinner?

There are different ways to spend a Saturday afternoon: relaxing upon the warm sands of Carshalton Beeches; taking it as it comes in Upton Downs; or maybe reflecting on the good life in Steeple Bumstead. But sometimes it's necessary to take care of some business—to acquire provisions necessary not only for an evening meal but for the upcoming week. And in such cases, Old Ken often makes the journey to Borough market.



Swarming in the shadow of Southwark cathedral (whose fragmented flint walls are visible in the background of the photo above), Borough market is a rambling affair, packed on Saturdays with shoppers and diners alike. Old Ken always leaves this place feeling over-stimulated—there is so much to see, taste, and smell, plus it's almost impossible to take a step without stamping on someone's toes or being pressed up against the carcass of a roe deer (for example). So, fortify yourself before a visit (perhaps with some fortified wine?) and allow for nap-time afterwards.



Beyond the lovely range of vegetables, one of the great Borough market treats is the array of baked goods. At a recent farmers' market in greater south east London, I had purchased an amazing loaf of sourdough rye bread. Back in the land of the free and the home of the brave, I had always thought of rye bread as being very dark and chocolate-colored with carawayay seeds in it. It was this last bit which put me off, I'll confess. But, what passes for sourdough rye here is quite amazing.



Anyway, so with this bread as an absolute lock for dinner, I decided to boil up some black beans (as you see in process above). Black beans are not much part of the English diet, so they can only be purchased in a few locations. Should you be in south east London and find yourself craving them, I would suggest the Sainsbury's at Puerta de Nueva Cruz (or New Cross Gate, for y'all who no hables espanol). I served the beans with cheese and a garnish of fresh tomatoes from Borough market (they actually smelled like tomatoes rather than those hard red balls they sell you in the supermarket) and jalapeno peppers with the rye toast on the side. The classic English dish: toast on beans, guv!

Old Ken's Music Reviews

One of the interesting things that differentiates ye olde merrie England from its cousins across the water is that, in the Old Country, one can go to almost any supermarket and purchase a broad selection of new musical releases. And no, I don't just mean the sort of holiday-themed novelty items or charity releases but (to use a British-ism) "proper" albums. So, as I might make it a special treat to add a musical selection to my shopping basket every month or two, I thought I'd pass along my reviews on a couple of albums which both seem to yours truly to be very British - - albeit in their own discrete ways.

First up is the debut release from the Arctic Monkeys. This album has been getting a lot of press over here; from what I can gather, the band is comprised of a gaggle of teenagers from Sheffield. To the ear of this experimental philosopher, the band sounds a lot like a cross between the coarse vocal delivery and guitar emphasis of American bands like Modest Mouse or The White Stripes. But, then, their rhythm section suggests another British popular fave, Franz Ferdinand. And it is this latter influence that finds the band mixing crude production, snarling vocals and distorted guitars with tight, dance-floor-friendly beats: a bit of a strange combination to the ears of one raised on Twisted Sister or, more pertinently, the Scorpions (perhaps the world's least funky band).

Now, I should add that this orientation to the dancefloor—and, through it, to British youth culture more generally—registers in the lyrical content of the songs as well. Two tracks speak to dancing explicitly ("Dancing Shoes" and their hit song, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor"), while one of the most compelling songs on the record ("From the Ritz to the Rubble") narrates the protagonist's confrontation with bouncers as he tries to get into a club.

I will admit that, dance club neophyte that I am, all this leaves Old Ken a bit mystified, as do descriptions of those who "wear classic Reeboks / Or knackered Converse/ Or tracky bottoms tucked in socks" as we get in "A Certain Romance." Yet, on the album's best songs, the band works beyond these superficial categorizations of the alienated urban youth, which the Labour government has recently sought to make a big show of combatting with their liberal dispersal of Anti-Social Behavior Orders (or ASBOs). As if to reiterate the album's title ("Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not"), songs like "Red Light Indicates Doors are Secure" and, above all, "Riot Van" go some way to produce compelling or at least amusing narratives out of the labels and categories of thuggish (or "yobbish" as it's called here) behavior.




Needless to say, very different musical and thematic terrain is explored on the new Belle and Sebastian album. Old Ken is certainly not a big Belle and Sebastian fan, although I will confess that some of their music provides some very naughty guilty pleasures. For the completely uninitiate, my understanding is that there are about eight people in this band and they generally play lush, folky music behind mumbled, slightly self-indulgent lyrics. In any event, some traces of this formula are clearly in evidence on this new album. In songs like the slightly woozy "Mornington Crescent," for example, the narrator makes the following claim: "I’ve got a job on / For a Senegalese rich arbitrator / In African law / To paint his apartment, strip down the walls." This all set to a kind of "Astral Weeks"-era Van Morrison accompaniment, complete with steel guitar. Far more successful are the up-tempo songs like "Another Sunny Day," where Byrds-style 12-string electric guitars chime and interweave with one another, or the catchy but slightly annoying "Sukie in the Graveyard." My favorite song on the album—a track which has gone directly into my guilty pleasures playlist—is the T-Rex inspired "The Blues are Still Blue," which contains the fabulous line: "I left my homework in the launderette / I got a letter from my mamma which my stoopid dog has ate" (fabulous because the singer makes "ate" rhyme with launderette).

But again, so much of these vignettes—they are less the narratives we get with the Arctic Monkeys—are told through a highly British idiom. While it's a really gorgeous song, "Another Sunny Day" evokes an "attic window looking out on the cathedral / And on a Sunday evening bells ring out in the dusk." I mean, are you going to find such a landscape in Arizona or Seattle? And, as if that weren't enough, there's a song called "For the Price of a Cup of Tea"! Why not go all the way and have a song called "Awright Guv-nah?"? So, perhaps these selections truly are for Anglophiles only, but "Riot Van" and "The Blues are Still Blue" are worth a download no matter where you hang your hat.

Behind the Sneezeguard

Membranes, boundaries, porous surfaces, liminal spaces—these are all so many terms that have fit the academic fancy of recent years. Why? Well, Old Ken supposes that one might gesture to their suggestion of the blurring or leaking of neat categorizations. That is, the might seem to claim that the material chaos described by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle also operates at the level of lived human life. But, what happens when we cross these thresholds? And who are these Tiresias-like figures able to move between worlds so effortlessly?



More to the point: how do you like your tuna-sweetcorn? Allow me to set the scene: there I was, just minding my own business at the cafeteria of a certain institution whose name is not important here, when I came across this spectacle. Cucumbers? Relish? Mustard? Roasted red pepers fresh out of the can? Roast beast? Salmon mousse? Mutton? The ubiquitous tuna-sweetcorn (that is, tuna fish mixed with mayonaise and corn)? What do any of these things have to do with one another, you ask? Well, they are all on offer, ready to be stuffed (by the friendly, smiling chef) into a baguette, at this, the "Baguette Bar."



Well, such muy delicioso cuisine is not the only delight that Old Ken has recently encountered tucked ever-so-elusively behind a thin membrane. No, also on this list one should count the charming, back-lit dioramas visible in the crypt of the Foundling Hospital, just off Brunswick Square in central London.



Flanked by an arbor of crepe-paper trees and wispy butterfly clouds, what seems to be an extended loggia (recalling the pedestrian walkway that bisects parking lot of the Sainsburys at Puerto de Nueva Cruz, for those of you who might want to transport this to the geography of south east London) invites us deeper into the fictional space. Alas, just as the sneezeguard keeps us from diving head first into the briny depths of pickled baby corn and stewed prunes, so too does the low, rounded doorway prohibit our entry to this marvelous fairyland. Quoth the poet: "Good fences may make good neighbors, but sturdy sneezeguards are the stuff of dreams!"

Cock: Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

As many a Junior Miss contestant and radio advertisement for car insurance has reminded us over the years, it was Shakespeare who famously asked "what is in a name?" Old Ken asks "what is in a bottle that says 'Cock' on the label and costs 69p?" In the latter case at least, the answer seems to be anchovies, salt and sugar—ingredients of "supreme quality," so the bottle reassuringly informs us.



But, would a cock of another name taste so sweet, er, so to speak? This is a question being asked across the capitals of Europe—from Brussels to Bucharest the chorus rings out—as concerns for the scourge of avian flu loom large across Europe. That is, the prospect of entirely synthetic, anchovy-based cock is being bandied about, as bureaucrats and health officials scramble to find alternate ways of "delivering the goods" in a safe, drinkable form. Yet, even within the domestic confines of one experimental philosopher in southeast London, such questions are being raised by the appearance of a strange being.



Mike Reno of Loverboy once asserted that he was "not man or machine, just somethin' in between." And I wonder if this newly-arrived specimen might want to make a similar claim. Well, in the amended version, it might be something more like "I'm not a wig or a hen, but I'm something like both of them." Where did you come from? And what should I call you? Perhaps playing on the French term for wig we could call him the "perruquester"? Alas, recalling a certain cooking experiment that went afowl (sorry, it was inevitable) of the laws of all that is holy, I wonder if we should call him "son of cock ale"? Well, that doesn't quite get at the wig component.

So, the competition is officially now opened: name this wig-and-cock jackalope and win the bottle of Cock. (Second place winners will receive two bottles of Cock.)