New recipe?

We're big fans of Masterchef Goes Large (but why the "large"?) in this house. Once 7.30 pm comes around (Belgian time) the Waffle family are to be found crowded around the television set to see who goes through. If it's not Masterchef it's Ballroom dancing and if it's not that it was the Sound of Music nonsense.

Emma has discovered a new recipe - she's adamant Greg told the competitors to "cook their socks".

What would Elizabeth David say?

Q: Who was Frankenstein's sister?

Watching 'The Yellow Submarine' this evening with the girls - part of their IB A2 Media Option homework - I notice that John Lennon metamorphoses from the Frankenstein monster after drinking a potion. So, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein plus Stevenson's Dr Jekyll - I really should look into conceptual continuities in my teaching syllabus.

Lara goes for George Harrison. Emma likes Ringo Starr ("he's funny"). Not bad.

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Album reviews:

Jarvis Cocker's new one - disappointing (sadly). We really & truly wanted to like it.
Virgil Thomson's 3rd Symphony - Charles Ives plus seasonings of Varese & Stravinsky. Worth a second listen.
'Grotesque' by The Fall - puts Jarvis into perspective. Ear rinse material.

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Idly thinking about The New York poets as coffee selections. Who would be a cappucino? A macchiato? A latte?

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This morning lying in bed with a sense of perfect equilibrium: the light through the curtains, bird song outside in the street, the girls chattering upstairs, synchronic movement of the interior and exterior planets.

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BBC4's re-run of Nigel Finch's documentary on the Chelsea Hotel - a particular favourite ever since we saw it back in Bristol in the flat on Redland Road. It's that last sequence of the roller skater disappearing into the night wearing a cloak of coloured stars which seems to bring it all together.

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(* A: Phylis Stein - who else?)