Wandering Around Talking To Rainbows

June’s album is Last Summer Effect by Last Summer Effect. This album feels a bit like a cheat, but it is an album that came out last month, and I did have it on heavy rotation for the rest of the month because I liked it. The reason it feels like a cheat is that one of our freelancer’s at work is a sound engineer and worked on it, and the reason I even heard this album is that he dropped the Spotify link in our team group chat the day it came out with a plea to share it about/give it a listen. (By his own admittance they were the band he was in at eighteen, so he might even be playing on it too.) So I stuck it on in the background while making brunch after a night in the pub, to do a colleague a solid on the stats front and ended up really liking the vibe.

It’s kinda…It’s kind of an emo album I think. A bit Hundred Reasons I think, all crunchy guitars and soulful emoting singing. It’s not really my taste in music any more, but twenty years ago it would have been absolutely my jam and I’d have loved this album. (This album came out last month, but the only reason it couldn’t have come out twenty years ago is that the band would have barely been in double digits at that point, but my point stands, it should have come out on Chemical Underground some time between 2005 and 2009 - which is not far off given that the band were officially together between 2010 and 2013!) It feels like stumbling across an album released by a tiny band I saw at a gig when I was twenty, that I saw twice, followed on MySpace and bought a hand-burned EP off the band at the back of the gig. If one of those bands had miraculously got hold of some decent production values, the harmonies and production are pretty lush - Steve does know what he’s about. It sounds like sunny hungover mornings in friends flats after gigs, or big nights out. (The smell of stale sweat, flat beer and other people’s dead cigarettes hanging in the air.) I’m really not sure if there’s actually a market for this that isn’t millennial nostalgia, I probably wouldn’t have listened to it if they weren’t friends of friends, but that could go for a great number of bands I listened to from that actual period of time too. I keep putting it on to listen to while I do other things so nostalgia or not, so clearly present day me rather likes it too.

Still working on that 'posting more regularly' so have another thefridayfive post, though this one's from a couple of weeks ago. But it's about food, so obviously I had lots to say!

1. What is your favorite meal to order in a restaurant?

Well, I feel that depends massively on what kind of restaurant that we're talking about. Frankly it also depends hugely on the restaurant in question, some places have their specialities, and at places I go a lot I obviously have favourites. However presuming it's an unfamiliar restaurant... If it's a Chinese restaurant then it'll probably be something in Black Bean sauce, as I enjoy that sauce and it's generally a safe bet whereever I happen to be. (I usually have tofu if it's on the menu, but I once memorably - before I was a vegetarian - had frogs legs in Black Bean sauce in Geneva.) If it's a Indian restaurant it's likely to be Palak Paneer, with a side of daal and a paratha unless I know it well, in which case I might be more adventurous. At an Italian place I'm likely to have Spinach and Ricotta cannelloni, because I love that but it's a total faff to make myself. My safety order if I'm away filming somewhere in the Highlands in macaroni cheese, because that's the default veggie option.

2. What is your favorite home cooked meal?

Oh I love making lasagne. My absolute, special occassion, treat to myself meal is a sweet potato and butternut squash lasagne, for extra indulgence I like to serve it with roast potatoes. If I'm working Christmas I like to make it on the day - because I can prep it in advance and depending on my shift have it before my shift or leave it to chill in the fridge and bung it in the oven after my shift. Then leftovers for days! It's often a birthday indulgence too, for much the same reason in that I can prep it in advance, then bung it in the oven once my guests are here and have plenty of food to share.

3. What was the best meal you ever ate?

Now that's difficult to say, because there's so many different metrics for that, I've had a lot of great meals that were special because of the combination of people round the table, what was cooked and who it was cooked by. I'm nearly 40, how can I quantify, the amazing home made lasagne my teenage best mate's dad cooked us, against a big bowl of my mum's homemade soup when I'm feeling ill, or learning to cook rice and chicken with my first serious boyfriend, against the chicken parmasan my first proper girlfriend made me the first time I stayed at her flat? Against meals eaten in hole in the wall takeaways in London or Dublin on formica tables crushed together too tightly with friends, against excellent veggie food in Riga or Helsinki, or alfresco dining in Brussels or Paris, against the same thing in Glasgow or on the West Coast of either Scotland or Ireland after a long day's filming? How can you hold a home cook making food for the people they love against a professional chef? I had the best crepes of my life in Quimper, I can tell you that, and I still miss the excellent Chinese restaurant in my childhood hometown, I had schnitzel at an old fashioned restaurant in Vienna that was the purest distillation of comfort food I've encountered, and no paella will ever compare to the little place round the corner from my hostel in Barcelona.

4. Do you ever try to re-create a meal you've eaten that someone else cooked?

Yes, often. I have no shame about asking for the recipe if I've enjoyed something. In fact even if one of my colleagues has a dinner that just smells amazing and is veggie suitable I'll snaffle the recipe and give it a bash. I love sharing food like that. When I was doing my masters one of my 'grown up' friends, taught me to cook a bunch of her favourite recipes over the internet and classed up my repertoire signficantly. More commercially, I have a Wagamama's cook book, as they are my favourite chain restaurant, but there aren't any for 100 miles up here so I've had a bash at several of my favourites from their book.

5. What's the first meal you tried cooking yourself?

It was a very long time ago, so I presume it was some combination of pasta, sauce and sausages, as that was a staple of my diet as a student. I think of the months when I was writing my dissertation and learning to practice self-care through cooking as when I properly started learning to cook beyond the basics, and at that point I was working my way through one of my mum's 'Oxo' cook books, and transferring the successes into my own little recipe notebook. According to that little notebook my first success was exactly that, a dish called Rainbow Pasta: pasta with a selection of frozen veg, a can of chopped tomatoes some sausages and a few herb-based embellishments. But the first time I felt like a proper cook that knew what they were doing, was a couple of months later when I first made myself lasagne, and yes the pasta was out of a packet, and the white sauce was out of a jar, but I'd read the back of a jar of the lasagne 'red sauce' in the shop and thought 'I could do that' and bought passata and onions and celery and a carrot, and I figured it all out. I had to buy a big casserole specifically for the job (and to this day I mentally refer to it as my 'lasagne dish' even though I rarely make it in that anymore, it's huge) but I made a massive lasagne for myself and it fed me for the rest of the week and it tasted excellent. I refined that recipe over the years, but until I became a vegetarian it was a staple part of my diet, a dish that made me feel grown up and competant - doubtless helped by the fact that it was never one my mum mastered - a comfort food dish that takes me right back to being 21 and finally feeling that I might actually know what I was doing.

Thems The Rules: If you'd like your own questions, let me know in the comments! I'll ask the first five commenters five questions each. Answer them in your own journal, offer to give the first five commenters their own sets of questions, and let the cycle continue!

Questions from netgirl_y2k:

1. Because adults do not get asked this enough, what's your favourite dinosaur?
Pterodactyl. I've loved those winged pointy bastards since I was a kid. Not even that scene in the third Jurassic Park film could break me of it. Actually if we're going to get really specific about it the particular kind of pterosaur that they recently identified from fossils on Skye that has the delightful gaelic name of Dearc sgiathanach (a speckled or striped winged creature).

2. Where do you stand on Scottish Independence, are you in favour of it and do you think it will ever happen?
I'm in favour! But okay I have a fairly nuanced view on it, in that I think that there are plenty of good reasons for the countries of these islands to be in some form of political union - there was brief moment after the 2014 referendum when it looked like we might get proper federalism and realistically that's probably the best option - much as we're better being part of the EU. However, the ruling establishment of the UK has fundamentally never accepted that the Empire is gone and isn't coming back. And I sincerely believe that they never will accept that until and unless the UK breaks up entirely. Once we've all come apart and figured out who we are as individual countries then maybe we can come back together as actual partners again then, but I think that'll be a long time coming because the establishment seems intent on doubling down and alienating all it's obvious allies. It saddens me but I think that the only way out of the hole Westminster seems determined to drag us down into, is for Scotland to actually leave. It might be enough shock to the system to get them to pull themselves together, or it might prompt the other nations to walk away too.

3. It's so cold! Favourite and least favourite things about this weather?
Well, I'm a knitter, so the excuse to wear lots of cosy knitwear is pretty high up there, I love layers, and I love being cosy and having an excuse to drink fancy hot beverages - both alcholic and not - and crunch through the snow in my favourite boots. My least favourite thing is ice, especially when its done that annoying freeze/thaw/freeze thing that makes everything deceptively lethal. (Actually, I think it might really be people who don't drive with due caution in icy/snowy weather. Just charging at things like it'll some how be less dangerous because they're in a hurry.)

4. If you could only listen to one podcast from now on which one are you keeping?
Ooooh that's difficult. Probably a toss up between From Our Own Correspondant and 99% Invisible, which I think 99% Invisible would probably win just because I could cheat and listen live to FOOC on Radio 4 (I wouldn't though, the reason I subscribe to it as a podcast is because I'm utterly useless at tuning in at the correct time.) Everything else I listen to is to specific, focusing on one subject - sound, linguistics, food, history, whatever - they're the only ones wide ranging enough to keep me satisfied in the long term.

5. What's the most memorable 'bad' book you've read, one that you just couldn't stop thinking about?
Hmmm... I think either, Prozac Nation or Catch 22 because while I never finished either of them, even the thought of them some twenty years later makes me go 'urgh'. I've probably bounced off some worse books in the intervening years - I read a chapter of Twilight to see what the fuss was about but I never really got either the intense hate or love for that book, I just thought it was badly written nonsense - but nothing that has quite stuck with me in quite the same way. I definitely subscribe to the mantra of 'life is too short to read bad books' and giving myself the gift of noping out of a book I wasn't enjoying has been a good life choice.

Today however I went to another sewing class - I learned to do boxed corners and how to put lining into a bag, both of which you really need to be shown how to do but that aren't generally explained in instructions for things. We made a weighted pin cushion - filled with sand, which apparently helps keep your pins sharp? - with attached little tool/scrap bag to sit on the edge of your work table to keep all your odds and ends to hand/out of the way when you're working. It's very cute. I also went to see Parasite with a friend - we used to work together but have stayed friends since I left - this afternoon, and had a good catch up afterwards. The film was great and so was the company - my friend H and I used to get the bus to work together most days and I miss our politics and life chat - and I also got to show off my morning's creation to an appreciative audience. We did have a hilarious miscommunication, where she though I said 'swing class' instead of 'sewing class' and was therefore hugely baffled when she asked where it was held as she fancied that herself and I started talking about sewing machines and fabric! (When we worked together we had a colleague who did salsa dancing as a hobby and I was known for being able to keep up with her reasonably well on the dancefloor, so it would not have been off-brand for me to have taken up swing dancing.)

What I've Finished Reading/Listening To
I didn't mean to binge listen to three seasons worth of Intrigue, I certainly didn't mean to listen to the entirity of series 3 (Tunnel 29) today on my day off, but apparently 20 minutes is my sweet spot for podcast episode length so I just burned through episodes this evening, knitting away frantically as I did. Both the first and the third series were that length - though the first one has half as many episodes as the rest and is a much tighter experience for it - and I enjoyed them both all the better for it. Series 2 is very different, a much denser, twistier story and due to involving Nazis immediately post WW2 much grimmer. The other two feel much more of a piece

What I'm Currently Reading/Listening To
I've continued with Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers I haven't got very far yet but I'm enjoying it. I seem to recall that being a pattern with these books. For the first hundred or so pages I can pick them up and put them down easily but after that it suddenly grabs me by the collar and I'm hooked/can barely put it down for the rest of the book.

I've also continued with Starship Iris, thank you train journey, the characters are really growing on me, but I still find it really difficult to listen to more than one episode at a time unless I'm on a train. I've got some leave to use up at the end of next month, might find an excuse to take a train trip somewhere - even if only to Aberdeen - to make some progress!

What I'm Reading/Listening to Next
I need to find a new podcast to try so I'm going for the Boring Talks as I've tried a couple of episodes and they seem charming.

Somewhere along the way I think I lost the knack of watching television the way most people do. I don't mean in the sense of linear versus non-linear watching but rather in the sense of being habitual watcher following a bunch of shows on a regular basis. I guess it started when I was a student, between not having a television of my own and spending a considerable part of my life analysing the heck out of media for class, if I wasn't fully immersed for fannish reasons, I just stopped watching. When I was actively studying Gaelic I watched a great deal of BBC Alba output but that was as much homework as it was anything else - not that I didn't enjoy the content, it's just that immersing myself in the language was the primary goal there. (I sociably watched the various CSIs and POI - all out of order because Channel 5 hates us apparently - with my mum when I was living at home but that was the extent of it.) Occassionally a show would catch my imagination and attention but otherwise I just fell out of the habit of regular television watching.

It causes a certain amount of amusement to my colleagues that I don't own a television. That fundamentally I don't watch television in the way that they, and for that matter a lot of fandom, would understand it. I've almost always got music on, whether from my own collection or the radio, and I listen to hours and hours worth of speech radio whether live, on catch-up or in podcast format. Radio is the wallpaper of my life, what accompanies my housework and crafting and travelling. If people are looking for a recommendation at work, they don't ask me about boxsets, they ask me about podcasts. Most of them have four or five shows they're watching regularly with various levels of enthusiasm and probably something from a few years ago that they're just now catching up on via boxset. BBC Four's arts and documentary output has saved me from numerous awkward conversations over the years, as I'm much better at keeping abreast of niche non-fiction programming than I am at literally anything else on television.

Last week I watched more television than I had in the whole previous month because I was binging the recent Civilisations series which was 9 hour-long episodes. I've been watching Person of Interest slowly over the last six months, because I tend to take a notion and binge a disc of episodes in an evening and then not have the notion again for another month. Just the thought of tackling another long US series after this one is an exhausting thought. (I really want to watch Elementary but 7 seasons at 24 episodes a series? *sobs gently* Not going to happen.) Thank goodness for short BBC series, I have enough trouble getting through a three or six part series, not because they aren't good or I'm not enjoying them, but because...well I'm not actually sure why. I think maybe because there is so much available content, maybe subconsicously I feel it's impossible to catch up and get overwhelmed and give up?

All this, really has been me working through why I was so weirded out by the responses to my last post about Good Omens - cheerful enabling, should really have been expected - and I think it's because the point that I thought I was making and one I was actually making are two different ones. Fundamentally if I wait six months (or however long it takes) for it to arrive on the iPlayer, it is highly likely that in 3 years time I will still not have got round to watching it. I am absolutely 500% more likely to watch it all if there is an active fandom that I want to participate in. (Gentleman Jack has boosted its way up my to-watch list from 'looks interesting' to 'watch after Killing Eve because loads of my colleagues are watching it and talking about it, one of them is practically bouncing waiting for me to catch up so we can chat about it!) Television drama has somehow become an almost entirely fannish endeavour for me - the same way I pick summer blockbusters I guess - if I'm going to push past the inertia to watch the whole of something it needs to hit my fangirl button and it needs to have a fandom for me to squee along with. It needs to be a collective experience.

So fine. Yes, I accept your compelling arguments. I need to order stuff from Amazon anyway, might as well have expedited shipping while I'm at it!

(Basically, sorry I haven't replied to any of your comments, I was being a big weirdo.)