No more potatoes!

Curse the day some codpiece-wearing Elizabethan first set eyes on a potato on the dinner table of a bored Amerindian and thought, 'That's an exciting tuber'. It's an excuse, a sham, a fake food. What is it for, with its high glycaemic index and lack of any real flavour?
CHIPS. But other than chips?

Last Friday I had fish and chips from the staff canteen. Yum. Except it wasn't fish, it was fishcakes. Fair enough. Big, chunky, home-made (but who calls the staff canteen 'home'?) fishcakes. And maybe some chips. And I wanted some vegetables. Mushy peas were the closest thing available. OK.
So I tucked in. The fish cake was about 98% potato, with three or four slivers of fish to give it a slight fishy tang. The chips were chips. I would not expect anything but that they were largely potato-based. The mushy peas were mostly potato starch, with a few squashed peas and some green food colouring.
Thus I had consciously purchased a dinner of three types of potato. Potato supreme.
Needless to say, I was nonplussed. Then shameful. Then rather uncomfortably full for two hours. It almost put me off my Guinness that evening.

I was interested and delighted to discover that the potato can be poisonous . I was also interested to see that the same article on Wikipedia, at time of writing, is illustrated by a picture of a large tomato called 'pikachu'.
You live and you learn.

Raining

It's raining again. That light grey drizzle that suits London so well. Coming down over the whole city, making the streets shiny (but close up they are dirty water, and grit).
Inside, in the dry, I am staring at the computer with little piggy eyes that are tired from having a few too many beers last night. Three and a half hours until I can leave. I've had a sandwich, but I had it early, so I will be hungry again in a couple of hours when there's nothing left in the staff canteen except egg mayonnaise. There's always egg mayonnaise.
I need more brown liquid from the tea/coffee machine (no.52, strong, no sugar).
I'm not sure how long the alcohol and caffeine can keep me suspended.

In the office

I work in an office. Like many people who work in offices, I lack spiritual fulfilment.

I would heartily recommend the album Gulag Orkestar by Beirut. I find myself moved every time by the plaintive voice of NY troubadour Zach Condon accompanied by a roustabout Balkan-style orchestra. I am not a music journalist.
It has joined my top five favourite albums. I will post the other four when I know what they are.
That should be accolade enough. If not, you can listen to it on iTunes or here. There are also some videos on Youtube but the quality is terrible. Just buy it.

When the revolution comes I will send a copy to every household in the country.

London - facts and figures

London is a big place, so there are lots of facts about it. That's a fact.
Here are five things about London, but there's a red herring, as one of them is made up. Can you guess which one?

1. London was named after Jack London, who starred in 'Dances with Wolves'.

2. London has more downward staircases than any other European city.

3. Oxford Street originally led to Oxford, which until the 17th Century was situated on the Hammersmith & City Line near Shepherd's Bush. During the Civil War it was moved north by Charles the First using a system of levers and log rollers, and it became the Royalist capital in the centre of the country (near Swindon).

4. Archaeological evidence suggests that humans evolved in London 400,000 years ago, and then moved to Africa because the weather was more clement.

5. In is possible to buy a comfortable flat in Zone 2 for less than the fee charged by a Covent Garden Rickshaw to go 300 metres.

Did you guess?

Here are some other facts about London, courtesy of George Boole*:

1) London is named after the transition metal Londinium (atomic number 74), whose name is derived from the Greek Londis, meaning "small merchant's abode, around which groups of youths are congregated"

2) Hitler's Luftwaffe famously avoided bombing South London during the second world war, the führer stating "Nicht worztsen sie bist" - "it's not worth it"

3) Londoner's anthem "Knees up Mother Brown" was written in 1992 by the famous cockney Damon Albarn

4) London's celebrated "homeless" people have their origins in a 1984 recruitment campaign, headed by the famous anti-paedophile campaigner Esther Rantzen, designed to recruit people to distribute the popular magazine "The Big Issue"

5) The legendary McDonald's chain of burger restaurants grew from the ideas of one Malcolm McDonald, of the scottish McDonald clan, who in London in 1884 first had the idea of placing a dog turd between two pieces of bread.

*(I have been unable to ascertain whether this is the actual nineteenth century mathematician or simply a nom de plume of some anonymous blogger)