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Marina425
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Interests: Any animals that tend to be on the roley-poley side: pigs, pugs, puffins, punxsutawney phil, hedgehogs, woodpigeons and guinea pigs. Arts management. What a combination...
Expertise: Risotto and pasta.
Falling down stairs.
Sleeping.
Wasting time.
Catching frisbees.
Message: message me
Member Since:
3/4/2005
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| Hey y'all. Check out http://www.xanga.com/fourlittlecarewpigs. It's the food blog for my flat. We make everything from scratch and thought you might like to see what we come up with!
For instance, last night we had pepper and cream sauce pasta with green beans on the side with a nice bottle of Bordeaux. For dessert, warmed up frozen berries with cream. Easy, and delicious. That's what we're all about.
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| How pathetic is this?
The Pit of Despair (from The Guardian), on the plight of bored orchestral musicians.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,,1700213,00.html
Will comment later. | | |
| Ok, so it snowed in London, but a lot more in eastern England in places like Ely (Cambridgeshire), where my mom and I visited today. The cathedral is totally fabulous and HUGE with lots of juicy Romanesque and Gothic architecture. But we all know that the Romanesque was da bomb. Here's a photo, but imagine it in freezing fog with snow on the ground and the trees covered in a thin layer of ice. Oooo...
The town seems to be overrun with Muscovy ducks for some odd reason. It was too freezing to spend time wandering about the town, but it's a cute place, despite its dampness, and oozing with history (it was the home of Oliver Cromwell). Just reading about all of the Ely bishops and their exploits is enough to keep you entertained for a couple of hours. The "idle youth" with their midriffs showing off their fake bake tans did take away a bit of the charm, but the ponies behind the cathedral quickly restored it. And of course, I can't forget The Most Competent Postal Worker in England, at the local post office, who handled my outgoing Christmas letters.
As we were on the way back to London on the train, we got stuck somewhere in the middle when our train broke down. We just sat there for about a half hour while the driver ran "diagnostic tests" to figure out what was going wrong. Finally, he came on the loudspeakers with, "Well, the news gets worse. The train is broken. You're going to have to get out at this station and get on the train that is right behind us."
Now, this broken train had been freezing, barely heated and it was probably about 30F outside with snow on the ground. We had been waiting for 30 minutes. In the States, or many other places, probably, people would have been superbly cranky. Someone would have blown a gasket. The tension would have been high. Someone would have demanded a refund. But the Brits like things to be as calm as possible, which usually means making the best of a potentially volatile situation. As we waited, people just joked around, making the odd wise crack, but all in good fun. When we got off the train, people were talking to each other. One guy just came up and said, "So, was your carriage as cold as mine?." Everyone along the platform laughed at a kid who got stuck on the now dark train as it pulled away from the station.
We all piled into the next train, which was filled with confused passengers who were probably thinking, "Why are there 100 people at this tiny, middle-of-nowhere station?" My mom and I were standing next to two teenage boys who looked like the previously mentioned idle youth, but were actually polite and amused by the situation. An elderly couple just laughed and laughed about the whole situation. We read about British stoicism after the 7/7 bombings, but it's so great to experience it in person, even in such a minor situation. | | |
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