What did you learn today?

I think we should learn something everyday, though most days I fall pretty short.

I saw the Lefschetz-Hopf theorem recently and it was best thing I'd seen in *days*...

Inappropriate duck behaviour

There are an unprecedented few days of sun and good weather and the ducklings have hatched [see 'duck love' for their origins], and there were many of them, but male ducks [drakes?] can be real dicks.




It is the kids that suffer, really. Them, and the duck getting attacked.

on the bus.

22 April 2008

I feel like I should be having a ‘this American life’ moment where someone with a hip but relatable voice talk about the everyday and gleans something noteworthy. But not in an ironic way.

I’m on a bus from Bristol to Oxford, and beside me sits a skin kid with baggy, tattered clothes and dreadlocks. He smells bad and I keep fighting the urge to try and strike up a conversation – where is he going? Where is he from?

I spent the multi-hour layover in Bristol walking around, exploring parks, enjoying the sun and other people out. Seems like there should be some lesson in it all – something about travel and being alone; about temporary spaces and temporary people.

But instead, I wonder what email will be waiting for me when I return…

duchiphail 2008

Even since x-mass i've been wanting to stuff as many birds as i could inside each other and cook them all. I dont' know where this came from: i think some post-US 'Turducken' fantasy made larger and more grandiose by hearing that the record for bird-stuffing was something like 17 or 18 set here in the UK. So this this in mind, and a dozen willing and open mouths, I set out to find a butcher mad enough to help with my newly-hatched Easter plan: cook four birds at once, each stuffed inside each other.

I go to the covered market and talk to my favorite poultry people and describe what i want to do. The butcher is on board until I ask him to de-bone a quail. He pauses, looks at me with a telling glimmer in his eye and says: "you want me to de-bone a quail, so that you can stuff it in a pheasant?" "That's right." And I see in his face for a split second a smirk of disbelief, but a look of approval, as if to say: "kid, this is a crazy plan you've got. And i'm on board!"

The day of, preparation starts early in the morning. [Actually, preparation started the day before with me making stock, Heather making a *delicious* apple pie and us prepping for the stuffing assembly.] The preparation was chronicled, but needs some explanation.

It being easter and all, I figured the most appropriate thing to to was put a single hard-boiled egg in the center of it all -- the cornerstone from which the rest of the monstrosity would be built. You know: death, rebirth, Jesus, etc.

In the end, it came out really well. Much better than I would have imagined. The flock was moist [though filled with twine and home-made toothpicks to keep the various layers secured].

Next year I'm going for five.