the greasy spoon

the code

2005-08-16T22:34:00.000Z

the greasy spoon - an opinionated yet charming collection of commentaries on the state of the world, its cultural artefacts and the things, people and ideas that inhabit and furnish my working life in iceland.

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i'm off to china

2005-06-24T12:52:00.000Z

pics posted here.

self-satisfied “click-click” noises

2005-05-17T23:01:00.000Z

I just read a rather irritating short story by an otherwise excellent author, narrated by a self-satisfied character who rambles aimlessly. It inspired me to do some rambling of my own.

With aimlessness as my goal there can be no shortcomings to perfection. There is little that irritates me more than a small fault in an otherwise perfect situation. My new bike makes minute “click-click” noises as I cycle uphill. Sometimes I arrive at my destination in a fuming rage as a result. It begins as a persistent itch in the frontal lobes of my brain. At this stage I can quell the sensation and force it back with random thoughts if I am so inclined. If I allow it to grow, however, it soon reaches a critical mass and drops down to my stomach with a sickening, sinking feeling. I start wiggling my toes, wrinkling my brow and blowing gusts of angry air out my nose. This develops into a whirlwind of irritation and stomach acid that shoots up my spine and spreads a venomous cloud of fury over my brain, expelling all rational thought. At this point I am anger.

Stupid bike.

mostly inanimate

2005-04-17T01:38:00.000Z

i got a spanking new camera the other day and have been running around town taking pictures of (mostly) inanimate objects.

on closer review...

2005-03-11T17:01:00.000Z

I recently wrote this review of Mike Nichols' new film, Closer. I sacrifice it here on the altar of The Spoon:

Closer
Dir. Mike Nichols
(U.S.A. 2004, 104 mins.)

"I have seldom seen a film as boring as that. It was just a two hour conversation!" This frank opinion, expressed by a middle-aged lady as she squeezed past me on her way out of Mike Nichols' new film Closer, will undoubtedly be shared by many. If you're in the mood for an exciting car chase, a spot of murder, some refreshing violence or if you just want a good laugh, then steer clear. Closer is an adult drama dealing with contrasts and conflicts in love and desire, honesty and deception, truth and lies, intimacy and strangeness.

Set in modern day London and based on a stage play by Patrick Marber, who also adapted it for the screen, Closer is directed by The Graduate (1967) director Mike Nichols. The film spans four years in the lives of four strangers (a frequent theme of the film) that, despite love and devotion, seem to remain strangers throughout. Dan (Jude Law), a failed novelist exiled to the obituary column of a daily London newspaper, meets and falls in love with cool and quirky waitress Alice (Natalie Portman) when she's run over by a taxi in the film's opening scene. Dan then meets and falls in love with Anna (Julia Roberts), a successful photographer, who subsequently meets and falls in love with successful doctor Larry (Clive Owen), and thus the stage is set.

The subject matter, storyline, setting, look and tempo have a clear American Indie feel to them with numerous coffee and cigarette dialogues harking back to conversation films like Before Sunrise (dir. Richard Linklater, 1995) and Sex Lies and Videotape (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 1989).The film attempts to mix this laid back intellectual Indie style with a set of stunningly beautiful, slick and successful characters played by cinematic-baggage-laden stars with financially proven track records. Although the attempt is engrossing, and the script generally a good one, it doesn't quite pull off the mix.

The smell of Anglo-American Notting Hill (dir. Roger Michell, 1999) commerciality pervades throughout and undermines the credibility of an already overloaded dialogue. These characters were just so damn pretty, so well dressed, and so damn successful that I had a hard time buying the fact that they were all really intelligent as well.

Closer attempts to be too many things at once, Hollywood as well as Indie, English as well as American, intellectual as well as realistic. It ends up somewhere in between, neither fish nor fowl. The script is in many ways original, particularly in a Hollywood context, and mostly engaging (although an unscheduled toilet break or two do it no harm). The dialogue is intelligent and much of it is highly insightful, sometimes even poetic, but mostly it just ends up sounding contrived. If you like slow-paced drama with pretty people and have the time and the patience, Closer is not a complete waste of time. However, I'd wait for the video and then rent it on a Sunday.
alistairig

order of pectinibranchia, class of gastropods

2005-01-23T21:46:00.000Z

We fished for two hours without bringing up anything of value. Our dredge would fill up with Midas' ears, harp shells, melaniae and the loveliest hammer shells I had ever seen. We also brought up several sea cucumbers, pearl oysters and a dozen small turtles which were reserved for the kitchen on board.

But then when I was least expecting it, I put my hand on something marvelous, or rather, I should say, a natural deformity that is very rare. Conseil had just brought up the dredge filled with various ordinary shells, when he suddenly saw me plunge my hand into the net, pull out a shell and utter the conchologist's cry - the most piercing noise the human throat can produce.

"What happened to Monsieur?" asked Conseil, very startled. "Has Monsieur been bitten?"
"No, my boy, even though I would have gladly given a finger for this discovery!"
"What discovery?"
"This shell," I said, holding up the object of my triumph.
"But it's nothing more than a porphyry olive shell, of the genus oliva, order of pectinibranchia, class of gastropods, phylum of mollusks..."
"Yes, Conseil, but instead of having its spiral going from right to left, this olive shell has it going from left to right!"
"Is that possible!" cried Conseil.
"Yes, my boy, it's a left-handed shell!"
"A left handed shell!" repeated Conseil excitedly.
"Look at its spire!"
"Ah, believe me, Monsieur," said Conseil as he took the precious shell in his trembling hands, "I've never felt such a thrill!"

Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - (written in 1870)

Aah, but to have lived in simpler times! :-)

fucking war

2005-01-07T14:37:00.000Z

Nothing justifies this crap

I'm an addict

2005-01-03T23:05:00.000Z

It's out of control. I'm out of control. It started a few months ago as a harmless recreational thing, some friends were doing it so I thought "why not?". It looked kind of fun. I guess I was also a bit vulnerable at the time and in need of some sort of distraction. After the first couple of times I started to find it really relaxing so I’d have a quick one after work, just to wind down. It soon became a habit and before I knew it, it was a routine.

Now I can't stop. I'm yoyo-ing all the time. I've started staying up all night, showing up late for work and sneaking away for a quick spin at more and more inappropriate times of the day. I'm neglecting my friends, eating junk food and ignoring both the doorbell and the telephone. I'm just staying in and practicing new tricks all the time, or even old ones, it doesn't matter, as long as I've got that smooth blue hunk of metal spinning around me, up and down, back and forth, in and out, around and through... and that noise, that sumblime "whiiiiiiiz...whiiiiiiiz" noise...

I need help.

the year shall be magnificent

2004-12-30T13:33:00.000Z

I have decided that this is pathetic. How can any self-respecting blogger neglect to post for a whole month?! So, as a result of this crisis of conscience I will post the following pile of hogwash despite its lack of inspiration, lack of perspiration and, of course, its lack of anything profound or meaningful. What follows is a short summary of my blog-free month: I've been gearing up to finally buying a flat (fingers crossed, more on that later); I've been running around hundreds and thousands of millions of shops in a sweaty panic (hooray! some perspiration after all) in the freezing cold trying to get the bare minimum of xmas shopping done (I got away with 4 real ones and 5 crap ones this year but received loads of good ones myself - teeheehee); had a very short xmas vacation (1/2 a weekend): got into the xmas spirit with four sherries and a fair amount of red wine; got a cold; went to work and am working still - *sigh* - However, the new year shall be magnificent. I have so decreed. Hope you have a good one too.

More on that later.

on the verge of civil war

2004-11-29T23:25:00.000Z

With another ex-soviet country on the verge of civil war and a possible east-west split, I decided to add a little to my pitiful knowledge of the Ukraine, a country best known, sadly, for the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

News:
The Kyiv Post (Ukrainian daily newspaper)
Forum (Ukrainian online news)
BBC (check out the split on the map)
Channel 4
New York Times

Info:
Wikipedia
Lonely Planet
ukraine.org
Pictures of Kiev

I see these lights from my bedroom window

2004-11-28T02:04:00.000Z

Anyone remember the tv series about The Tripods? It was one of the few tv series that really affected me as a kid. I didn’t miss a single episode. It was about a future world were all humanity was controlled by huge alien machines on three legs that new everything you did and and everything you thought. Everyone was implanted with these electronic devices on their heads that made them content with what they had, a simple rural life where nobody needed more and everyone was happy with the world as it was. Only free will was missing. The main character managed to evade the coming of age ritual where he was to be implanted with this device and he started a quest to find the head alien and uproot the evil that controlled the world. The twist was that it was men who where controlling the machines.

Maybe he should have just relaxed and stayed content.

I see these lights from my bedroom window. They remind me of the Tripods:

jumping up and down on beds

2004-11-25T22:34:00.000Z

I know nothing about dance. The only dancing I’ve ever enjoyed has been alcohol-induced, late-night disco dancin’ (and I’m damn good at it... I think). However, the fine art of dancing artistically, ballet or modern stage dancing, has completely managed to pass me by, until now.

A couple of nights ago I went to the City Theatre to watch a production by The Iceland Dance Company (Íslenski Dansflokkurinn) of an Israeli piece called “Screensaver”. A crappy name if I ever heard one. The dancing itself took place on five large beds with some curtains hung here and there. At the front of the stage were six or seven projectors projecting various messages and patterns onto parts of the stage and set. There was a lot of prancing around and jumping up and down on the beds with all the dancers wearing minimal costumes, basically white underwear. Watching these young, fit dancers prancing around on large beds in their underwear turned out, surprisingly, to be rather erotic. This was despite the regular entrance of the silver clad, sideways walking character with the nuclear fallout mask and the ominous, personal theme song. Equally disturbing was the ballerina that moved so slowly across the stage that you just wanted to stand up and shout: "Get the hell off the stage lady!" There was an antiwar message that came and went somewhere near the beginning giving way to people jumping up and down on beds and wrapping themselves around each other.

I enjoyed the show. The dancing was powerful and the coordination and expression in the movements struck me. I’ve never seen this type of expression executed so emphatically and honestly. The music was energetic and driven. The dancers were young and vibrant and their ambition lit up the whole theatre. The little coda at the end was cute and showed a willingness to please the audience with a little aftershow treat.

The specialists with whom I chatted afterwards didn’t agree. They were all a bit disappointed, thought it was monotonous, too long and rather unoriginal. I thought it was powerful, exciting, erotic and fun. Though I do agree it could have done with fifteen minutes chopped of the back end.

alternative media politics links

2004-11-17T23:26:00.000Z

I was sorting through my bookmarks, gathering together all the alternative media, politics and media-politics links. Decided to post some of them here. I don't necessarily agree with any or all the views expressed on these sites but I find the subject of alternative media interesting and would like to collect more links if anyone can recommend any:

Free Press
Media Channel
Independent Media Center
Alternet
Squall
Do or Die - eco-action
PirateTV
European Social Forum 2004
Move On
Stanford Center for Internet and Society
Media Matters
Al Jazeera - English Edition
WTO spoof site
Youth Media Council

Added: Common Dreams (Thanks to B)

the sickness

2004-11-11T13:53:00.000Z

I spent most of last friday afternoon trying not to shit myself with fear. I couldn’t sit still and couldn’t concentrate on the most menial task or routine conversation. Any real work was completely out of the question. At lunch I had made an offer on my first apartment, by five o’clock I would know whether I would me shouldering a debt for an inconcievable (to me) amount of money and taking on responsibilities only grown-ups take on (something that I have always had a hard time defining myself as). I had butterflies in my stomache and heart palpitations, my palms were sweaty and I avoided all eye contact.

I bought a green jacket two weeks ago that I tried on twice last year but both times decided to think it over for a bit before making a final decision. This apartment I saw on wednesday night, made an offer on friday lunchtime and spent the rest of the afternoon with the crap in my pants.

Nodding my head at the estate agent amid the whirlwind of numbers and percentages, before I knew it I had agreed to shoulder silly-sized debts, the size of which I have no real grasp. With the fierce competition on the local housing market the pressure was on and if I wanted the flat I had to make an offer. As the estate agent spat digits, percentages and interest rates all over his desk, the numbers raced through my head: how many green jackets could I get for that?

By 4:30, any question or request directed at me got a short, high pitched answer. 5:00 came and went but at 5:15 I got the call. Someone had outbid me.

Deeply disappointed but mostly hugely relieved, my breathing returned to normal and my complexion regained its cheery colour.

Now I wake up in the middle of the night with strange, eerie real estate nightmares in which I’ve just bought a huge house that’s falling to pieces. It’s a sickness this business.

the situation

2004-10-26T13:15:00.000Z

Farnaz Fassihi, correspondent in Iraq for the Wall Street Journal, recently sent an e-mail to family and friends regarding her daily life and the situation in Iraq. As a result of its subsequent publication on the Internet she has, apparently, been recalled from Iraq and thereby effectively barred from reporting on the situation until after the upcoming U.S. election. As it was not intended for general publication this e-mail makes an interesting read.

down to the harbour and around the pond

2004-10-26T11:10:00.000Z

During Sunday's hangover treatment, after the greasy hamburger but before the hot tub at the pools, I went down to the harbour and around the pond to take a few lazy snapshots of the cold autumn stillness.

the stakes

2004-10-25T21:40:00.000Z

Following on from and in response to my blog of a couple of weeks ago regarding the difference between a Bush victory and a Kerry victory, or a lack thereof, the editorial of this week's New Statesman makes an interesting point:

"As the aftermath of the Thatcher era in Britain showed, a political climate, once created, can be hard to change. That is all the more so in the US, where decisions about what is acceptable - in social mores, civil liberties and democratic practice - rest ultimately with the nine judges on the Supreme Court... These are appointed by the incumbent president, as judges retire or die. Currently, four are aged over 70; their replacements will have an incalculable influence on the America of the next generation. If the presidential election goes the wrong way next month, it may not be the America that millions across the world have known and, for all its faults, admired. The stakes are that high."

Source: www.newstatesman.com

concrete hath no soul

2004-10-20T01:08:00.000Z

Went for a windy walk after work today and took some sterile photos of soulless buildings.

snow, suburbs and seventies guitar solos

2004-10-18T21:02:00.000Z

King Winter has arrived with a freezing wind that creeps down your collar and wraps the dry snow around your feet. I thought they were some sort of pollen coming off the trees when the first flakes drifted down from a blue sky yesterday. I had to catch one and taste it to convince myself it wasn’t. I’d parked the car outside the hospital where my grandmother is staying and was heading in for my first visit. She’s been getting worse and looked older than ever when I sat down at her bedside.

I spent the afternoon driving around, listening to the radio. The sun shone in through the windows keeping me warm and happy while the cold wind swirled the autumn leaves up around the car. I drove out to the edge of town, winding my way slowly through the new concrete suburbs, humming along to eighties pop-rock and seventies guitar solos. When the city finally ended I was at a lake. Its banks were lined with summer cottages with an advancing army of cranes and concrete that threatened to devour them from behind. I saluted nature by taking a good long piss with the cold wind creeping in through my fly and down my legs.

Long live the king.

how do you like them apples?

2004-10-13T20:09:00.000Z

If I were an American, it’s not unlikely that these days I would be spending a good deal of time jumping up and down in public places screaming for everybody to “Vote Kerry! Vote Kerry! Pleeeeease vote Kerry!” I’m a rather quiet person so this unusually extroverted behaviour would only be as a result of a desperate longing to be rid of the evil Darth Bush. But I am not an American and I don’t have the right to vote in the U.S. elections and I don’t really like Kerry anyway.

Ideally the truly democratic elections would provide the electorate with a wide range of political flavours to choose from. Candidates would come from all sectors of society and, as a result, would hold fundamentally differing opinions on its nature of and on how it should be run. There would be candidates of both sexes, all ethnicities and with genuine variation in hairstyle and width of pin-stripe.

Bush and Kerry both come from wealthy caucasian homes, they went to the same university and were members of the same clubs. Whoever wins the election will most probably continue to bomb foreign nations on questionable grounds and refer to foreign children blown to bits by U.S. bombs as “collateral damage.”

Political thought and debate in a democratic society should be a fruit salad of ideas and ideologies: apples and oranges, pears and mangos, lemons and grapefruit etc. etc. Voters in the modern American democracy are given a choice of red apples or green apples. They look different, they even taste a little different, but really they’re both just apples.

To be in a position to stand for the presidency of the United States of America it’s not enough just to be rich, you also need be well nested in a web of political and industrial influence, preferably since birth. Not many people fall into this category and those that do all have a common cause: more money. It is in the interest of this elite network of wealthy caucasians to provide the electorate with as narrow a range of political choice as possible in order to protect their assets and the system that constantly nurtures and adds to those assets. Money buys media and the media sell the apples. While the electorate jumps up and down screaming: “Green apples! GREEN apples!” or “Red apples! RED apples!” other fruits rot. When their roots are no longer cultivated, these fruit trees, these alternative visions, this variety of thought and ideology will ultimately die out.

Swallowing another four years of Bush is a bitter prospect, but I'm not so sure that a Kerry pie will be all that much sweeter.

I play this one a lot

2004-10-03T19:23:00.000Z

I sit here copying my grandmother’s cd’s of old icelandic popular music into my laptop as she takes her afternoon nap on the couch. When this music was popular in the 1950’s my grandmother was middle aged. This isn’t the music of her youth, this the music of her parenting years. My father was just entering his early teens while his sister was already married and soon to have her first child. It’s eleven years today since my grandfather’s funeral. That's the only time I've ever seen her cry. As she listens to this music of happier, healthier days, she moves between sleep and and wakefulness, between the present and the past. Suddenly, smiling, she turns to me and says: “Isn’t this a beautiful song? It’s so romantic. I play this one a lot.”

on how to kill a concept

2004-09-19T13:03:00.000Z

In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother attempted to eliminate the word "free" from the language in the hope that the people would then forget the concept. In Bush's 2004, Dubya and the U.S. media have used the word so relentlessly and in so many different misleading ways that the word has become meaningless and disposable. The concept is now a semantic orphan while the word has become a reluctant whore of american propaganda.

on how to peel a banana

2004-09-16T01:24:00.000Z

A Bulgarian colleague of mine recently, during a wholly unrelated conversation and right in front of my nose, started peeling a banana. Not so strange in and of itself but something about what he was doing immediately struck me as odd... then I suddenly realised: He was peeling it from the wrong end! He pinched the outer end, the one that was never attached to the tree and peeled up, which was actually down since he was holding it upside down in the first place, with the stem at the bottom. I commented on how ludicrous this was and exclaimed that I had never seen anyone do such a horrid, twisted thing. He calmly informed me that when he first arrived in this country, this was one of the first things he noticed about us natives: we peeled our bananas the "wrong" way and that all Bulgarians did their peeling in the way I had just witnessed.

Once I got past the initial shock I started thinking about Gulliver and the issue of at which end to break an egg. Raising the obvious question: should we declare war on Bulgaria? Wars have been fought over issues more trivial than banana peel. Finally I decided to try a little diplomacy first. I scolded my colleague, telling him that while in Rome... He ignored my advice. The next day he was at it again, causing turmoil and confusion with his twisted, upside-down banana peeling in the middle of the work-place, undermining our culture and spitting on our heritage in the process. I can sense that this is going to turn ugly.

Down with the outer end! Long live top-down peeling!

topping up on time

2004-09-14T01:15:00.000Z

Well, it's been a while so it's time to top up on time and dish out the dirt. Quite a lot has happened since I last unveiled the proceedings of the my mind and life to the world that is you.

Among the many wondrous happenings that have peppered my joyous life in the past few weeks was crashing the car while on holiday. We went flying off the road while admiring the scenery on a relaxing Sunday drive around a lake. We did a 180 spin into oncoming traffic at a 60 mph. Landed in a ditch, on a fence-post, on the other side of the road. Exciting stuff. I tell you, the adrenaline rush was a blast! Thankfully, we hit no other cars and no one got hurt. However, as a result, I spent the next couple of weeks talking to car mechanics and scrap metal merchants in an attempt to find parts and work that wouldn't cost more than the car itself. If it had been my car I'd just have chucked it but it isn't, so I can't, so that's that and it's shit.

I went to Copenhagen. Took no pictures as I was too busy cycling and sipping on duty-free whiskey. That Little Mermaid looks depressed and understandably so as she was being swamped by a hoard of japanese tourists as I cycled past. Seems like a pretty cosmopolitan place, Copenhagen. It's got a whole lot of pizza and fast food take-aways along with special little traffic lights for cyclists.

mine! all mine!

2004-07-26T22:43:00.000Z

It should be quite clear by now that I am not the prolific blogger that I would like to be. However, regardless of the infrequency of my posts and the less than spectacular size of my audience, I relish the posting that I do. I couldn't help but notice that this has become a somewhat private blog with the supposed contributors conspicuously absent in their quite impressively infrequent posts (read: none). I have therefore decided to delete them all and keep the medium to myself :o)

My sincere apologies to all involved.

groans and heavy breathing

2004-06-19T22:27:00.000Z

There has been a new twist in my ongoing adventures in the world of the smoke-free and (relatively) healthy. In an attempt to top the already quite considerable achievement of ditching tobacco I am attempting to to pull off a full transformation of this long maltreated body into a real-life version of Michelangelo’s David. I've joined a gym, and what a gym it is! It's a massive sprawling place with hundreds of machines mounted by machine-like people oozing fluids and hormones all over the place. TV-screens line the walls and the massive windows look out onto a huge swimming pool with hot-pots, steam-baths and water-slides. The clinks and clanks of the machines blend with the tinny pop-music pumped in over the tannoy and a wide variety of groans and heavy breathing.

I find the whole place rather emblematic of modern western civilisation itself. Sweaty people running on the spot, going nowhere, in order to burn fuel they overconsume because they are in control of too many resources but have insufficient self-control, burning it up in protected surroundings with minimum risk and minimum need for thought so as to reward themselves with more consumption.

To complete the picture of the pampered elite, there’s an asian couple in matching uniforms there all day, every day. Each has a changing room in which they walk in circles mopping the floors, cleaning the sinks and the showers, picking up the dirty towels. They don’t speak the language so are silent and their uniforms blend in with the decor making them almost invisible. One gets the feeling that that was precisely the idea.

It’s all quite disgusting but fascinating at the same time.

nutritional anal

2004-06-07T09:24:00.000Z

I noticed this ad at the top of this page this morning:

"Compufood Analysis - Professional FDA nutritional anal. Doing business since 1993."

I suppose that's like normal anal but with added fibre? Suggestions welcome.

fish and coffee

2004-06-05T23:42:00.000Z

Went downtown today for a lonely cup of coffee and a ramble in the rain. Turned out it was Sailor Day, the day when the city celebrates fish and fishermen. Not the biggest date in the country's calendar but a significantly traditional one. I remember standing at the harbour as a kid watching dazzling demonstrations of sea-rescues and speed boat races.

When I’d been there for about ten minutes it started to rain, giving the whole affair a rather calm and mildly melancholic quality.

almostfluensa and the singular of bacteria

2004-06-05T15:39:00.003Z

Had almostfluensa all week. Haven’t been ill enough to take time off work so I’ve been working at half-throttle and just feeling like shit the whole time.

Almostfluensa is the worst type of flu. If you’re a bacterium* and you intend to infect someone, then for fuck's sake do it properly! There’s nothing worse than a half-arsed job. I despise this bacterium, it is a failure of a bacterium, a loser bacterium, the scum of the bacteria world, an insolent little bacterium that continues to pester me even when it is clear that the best it can do is annoy me. Quite considerably, admittedly, but still. Any self-respecting bacterium would have more ambition than that, would strive for a higher standard. This one should should simply admit its failure, pack its bags, bow politely, and leave while it still has a small shred of pride left.

*I’m assuming that the singular of “bacteria” is “bacterium” but if anyone knows better then please don’t hesitate to correct me.

arctic insomnia

2004-06-03T00:49:00.000Z

I can't sleep. Here's why. It's almost 1:00 am and I took these just now from my balcony:

No, not the bike. The light! The LIGHT ! The LIIIGHT!

brunch

2004-05-27T11:28:00.000Z

Of course the full english can also serve as a hefty brunch or be served all day in fact. I expect it will soon be marketed to schoolchildren as it's full of fats and carbo's. Just imagine, Kellogs full english, just add milk and fat.

At a mere 10 stone I face instant obesity from a barrage of advertisers intent on force feeding fast food additives to me. God, that was a mouthful.

Personally as a member of the newly expanded EU i favour a more continental approach with muesli, yoghurt and croissants.

that is all

tennis and needlework

2004-05-26T00:05:00.000Z

We have contributors! No really, we do! Look, it says so on the right :)

I have recently become quite fascinated by this whole blog concept. Take a look at the Guardian blog guide (link on the right). Through it you can read all the crap you want as well as some brilliant writing about anything that interests you and loads of things that don’t. Most of these blog sites are good at linking to others so you just hop around the web reading personal diaries, political commentaries, political rants, fictional love stories, or lack-of-love stories, personal communication, descriptions of day to day life in extraordinary situations etc. etc. There are some very interesting ones that have been coming out of Iraq since before the occupation.

As far as North-Atlantic living goes, the bright nights of summer have begun and I'm loving it. It’s half past midnight now and if I sat in the garden I could do needlework or play a game of tennis without the smallest of squints. Which could be very useful if I ever desperately need an embroidered cushion but have forgotten my keys or wake up in the middle of the night with a burning desire to play a couple of sets. (It has happened).

the full fry-up

2004-05-24T23:27:00.000Z

Welcome to The Greasy Spoon!

As you see it's still a bit basic in here, haven't got all the fixtures and fittings in and it needs a coat of paint, although I have thrown up a few funky colours for that authentic caff feel. I think it's pretty cozy nonetheless and I assure you the food is delicious. Grab a paper, have a seat and feel free to blather away to your hearts content.

Simply go to www.blogger.com, sign in, do your thing, click "Publish Post" and the world is your oyster!