Comments on: Goodies from the UK

By: The Tea Tastes Great, So I Must Be In… | Cosmic Variance

The Tea Tastes Great, So I Must Be In… | Cosmic Variance — Thu, 18 May 2006 05:27:37 +0000

[...] And then, when I can get away, I think I’ll go to some old haunts to drink it all in, such as South Kensington, Bloomsbury, and Soho. I’ll go to a John Lewis to buy some household items like one or two more pieces of the Denby Greenwich dining set and a set of place mats and coasters, have a look in some museums and bookshops, and -oh yes- I’ll definitely buy some essential food items to take back with me: Green and Black’s chocoloates, Malden Sea Salt, good English Breakfast tea, etc, etc. (Must also remember to get some Hendrick’s gin on the way back through Heathrow.) See here for a previous haul my mum brought me when she visited last. [...]

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:33:35 +0000

Even better, I am shipping my mother out, curtainmaker extraordinaire, for the rest of the house. Just wanted some quick curtains for a couple of rooms (guestroom and master bedroom). There are plenty more to be done, though.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:27:40 +0000

Yes, curtains are expensive. Consider making your own. It’s trivial, fun, and waaaaay cheaper.

-cvj

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:18:50 +0000

Ah yes, been writing computer programs. And moving house, and the like. I had never even thought about curtains before, really. It turns out that they can be quite expensive.

On the plus side, the local supermarket has added Ribena to the ‘British foods’ selection and I can still buy ESB in bottles up here (not sure if I could get them in Princeton, but the bottles do taste pretty good).

By: Clifford

Clifford — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 18:33:49 +0000

Noooo! That’s bad. Hey Adam… long time since I’ve heard from you!

-cvj

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:57:12 +0000

With regard to my earlier post, it seems that the Alchemist and Barrister in Princeton has now stopped serving Fuller’s ESB. The swine.

By: janet

janet — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:52:43 +0000

Arrgh, I did it again. I got confused about two threads. The whole bit about Harry Potter was supposed to go in the “Visitors as Pleasant Distractions” thread. Maybe I should just go back to bed….

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:02:43 +0000

I’d rather listen to an hour of Keillor singing than that third Kate Bush song, however.

My tolerance for understated, self-deprecating humour, on the other hand, is high.

By: janet

janet — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 15:22:53 +0000

Clifford, I think the degree to which the text of the Potter books has been changed for the American market has been exaggerated, mainly by people who were (rightly, I think) aggravated by the change of the first book’s title. Something like 35 words were changed in the first book, and in later books most if not all of the British idioms remain — there is a great deal of snogging in the most recent one, and they wear trainers and jumpers and so forth, the Quidditch pitch is a pitch, not a field. My husband, purist that he is, always insists on getting the British editions. I haven’t gone through any of them with a fine-toothed comb to compare them to the American editions, but as far as I can tell the main difference is that the spelling and punctuation have been changed to the American style, something that is done with virtually all British books published in the US (and the same is done in reverse).

The differences in covers and that first book’s title are the kinds of decisions that are made by marketing in the publishing industry. It’s very amusing to analyze the differences in the cover art — my favorite covers for the books are the German ones, because they are just so German! See:

http://www.carlsen-harrypotter.de/basic1/buecher/content.html

Re Garrison Keillor: When I hear him singing on the radio, I change the channel almost as fast as I do when I hear George W. Bush’s voice. As for the rest of the show, there’s only so much understated, self-deprecating humor I can take….

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:55:41 +0000

I figure he’s just like the aunt who got told 40 years ago that they could sing well and hasn’t re-evaluated since, terrorising every christmas gathering since with her tremulous version of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 03:20:52 +0000

Yeah, I like the News too, but despite being quite an admirer of the guy, I wish he’d just stop the singing. Please!

-cvj

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 02:35:28 +0000

It’s not his singing, oh no.

The news from Lake Woebegone, however, is a different matter.

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 02:23:56 +0000

Me three. Josh Andrews does his best to parse Garrison.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 02:20:26 +0000

I have to side with Clifford on this last point (but not about Marmite). I was with you all the way until APHC.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 02:13:33 +0000

Adam,

You were doing well there until the last five words. So Garrison Keillor’s singing will be in Heaven will it? I don’t think so!

-cvj

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:35:06 +0000

I wouldn’t eat molasses as is (nor, indeed, spread it on toast).

But my point wasn’t merely that it looks, as one might say, like crap, nor was I claiming that things that look like crap do, in general, taste like it, but rather that marmite looks like crap and tastes like it looks.

And don’t give me any of this subjectivity stuff. Marmite is objectively evil, as are celery and pepsi. New arrivals in Hell will in fact be greeted with a limited smorgasbord of marmite dip with celery crudites to be washed down with pepsi. For snacks between meals, twiglets, their steady crunch, crunch, crunch providing a rhythmic accompaniment to a medley of the banner performances of the James Last Orchestra.

Heaven will, of course, be a matter of how much murgh makhni, gulab jamun and coca cola one can consume in front of looped tapes of England’s recent Ashes cricket victory over Australia before A Prairie Home Companion starts.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:21:32 +0000

Adam,

Never judge something by its looks alone:

Marmite looks exactly like molasses. I also find that delicious! Do you find that disagreeable too?

-cvj

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 23:00:33 +0000

Twiglets are also, clearly, evil. If there’s a hell, it’ll involve eating twiglets dipped in extra marmite.

Marmite tastes like it looks*.

Incidentally, should any limeys ever find themselves in Princeton, the Alchemist and Barrister stocks genuine hand-pulled Fuller’s ESB served at cellar temperature. I miss it (although I can get it in bottles where I am now, so all is not lost).

*And it looks like you should be able to process it to extract gasoline. Either that or spread it over your fields to ensure good plant nutrition.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:45:01 +0000

I have recently bought a Ryanair flight to Stansted because after a year on the continent I feel the strong need to stock up certain products at Tesco’s and M&S (not to mention the book shops and visiting friends and DAMTP at Cambridge). But my shopping list’s intersection with your picture is empty I must say! I will buy some tea but not the plain black one (really no need to buy that in the UK!) plus I will export real ale (unfortunately not a cask) and all kinds of biskuits and curries.

By: Visitors as Pleasant Distractions | Cosmic Variance

Visitors as Pleasant Distractions | Cosmic Variance — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 18:24:32 +0000

[...] (2) The sounds of my mum (visiting for a while from the UK) chuckling away as she reads J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” with evident enjoyment (she has not even noticed me snapping this picture). She’s recently discovered Potter, and so I expect she’ll have several days of fun to come, reading these. (I’ll have to borrow or buy the later ones for her since I’ve never read further than the first one, which someone bought for me several years ago. – Yes, I know it should be “Philosopher’s Stone”: don’t get me started on that topic!) [...]