Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, May 01, 2011

I said last night I'd return to the subject of driving in Spain and the UK. Well, suffice to say that, in the last two weeks of driving in and around Leeds, no one has annoyed me but I've managed to upset more than one driver. Perhaps I've picked up a bad habit or two.

And I thought percebes (goose barnacles) were a joke! The latest fashionable delicacy is snails' eggs. Or “white caviar”. Need I say that they are, like percebes and the dreadful durian fruit, alleged to have aphrodisiac qualities. Is there no limit to man's gullibility. What next, I wonder. Horse droppings?

Incidentally, the best description of the Durian experience I ever heard was that it was “like eating rancid cheese when standing in a sewer.” 

Here's another demolition job on the Special One, Jose Mourinho. I must say I'm a tad surprised at all the surprise now being expressed at his approach to the game. As I recall, the night Oporto won the Champions' League they managed only two shots at their opponents' goal. And won 2-0. As the writer puts it, “He is renowned for his attention to detail, his ability to create a siege mentality, his mastery of the black arts: tactical fouling, concerted group protests and the calculated undermining of referees. But there is no generosity, no daring, no giddy sweep of tactical imagination about him. Instead, he demands obedience to his own bleakly negative strategies.”

Talking of English and its dialects . . . In the past week I've heard this construction at least twice on the TV – 'He could have went straight for goal.'/I see he's went for the African look.' My impression is that this is how they speak up in the North East, in Geordieland. Can anyone confirm this?

Finally . . . Given the number of cookery programs that dominate TV here, there can be no excuse for Brits not being the best cooks on the planet. Or perhaps they just enjoy watching other people do it. Culinary voyeurs, in other words.

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