Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

back down to earth

I'm back in the Uk after nearly a month in France, of which the latter half (in Toulouse) was superior to the former (Strasbourg). I'm presently sitting in a hotel room in Birmingham, rather a curious nostalgic experience for me, as my bedroom window directly overlooks the Alexandra Theatre, where I spent rather more than a year as Chief Electrician.

As anyone in this country will be aware, it's rather wet for this time of year. I'm pleased to report that this phenomenon extended as far as the south of France, where my three days of doing nothing were characterised by a continual downpour. This did encourage me to do some proper writing, as I had no internet access either, and the close proximity of two artisan boulangeries and a nice wine shop made it easy to stay in. Three days of rain turned the Garronne river into a foaming torrent, the colour of milky coffee, no mean feat when you consider it is about 500m wide.

The technicians at La Garronne were constantly muttering darkly about 'how the weather must make us feel at home,' as we had had a very dry and warm spring, this didn't quite ring true. My banana plant survived the trip, and is now merrily growing in the Nottingham correspondents garden, even the offset has grown a new leaf. I made a very swift trip to London yesterday, as I needed documents to tax my car, and the bananas are doing well there too. I think we may have had enough rain now, though.

Returning to the Kopi Lewak coffee story, for a moment, Radio 4's irritating consumer affairs programme, 'You and yours', did a feature on said coffee, with what I consider to be a typically sloppy report. For a start they used a correspondent in Australia, when they didn't need to go any further than Lincoln, and they seemed confused about what form of animal the Kopi Lewak is, referring to it as a cat on several occasions. I've known cats that drink coffee, but not many that voluntarily contemplate a vegetarian diet. The Kopi Lewak is a civet, which is often confusingly called a civet cat, but is an arboreal mammal with a penchant for coffee. The prevailing opinion from their vox pops was that it was rather insipid, the Australian coffee merchant who is selling it for some vast ill-reported sum, referred to it as subtle, so perhaps it's one of those rarified flavours that can only be appreciated by a cognoscenti sitting in a darkened room with a tea towel over his/her head, in which case you'll have to include me out. A moment spent googling might have been profitably spent, I fear.

If you want to hear it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/items/03/2007_22_wed.shtml

buy the coffee:

http://www.imperialteas.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=35_36

or find out what the damn thing looks like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civet

More disjointed thoughts later...

I hope that you, gentle reader, have appreciated the adroitness with which I've avoided using the words; lemur, shit and coffee in this blog. Oh, bugger...

posted by Lampy @ 5/31/2007 08:21:00 pm