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túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

Chickpea Fritters with Zingy Tomato Sauce:

1. Blend chickpeas, walnuts, capers, shredded carrots, flour, salt, pepper, cumin, hot sauce (or any combination of chickpeas plus whatever happens to be in your fridge)
2. Make into small patties.
3. Fry until golden brown - don’t overcook, delicious even when quite soft.
4. To make sauce crush cherry tomatoes and add a good amount of lime juice (I also added Yeast Flakes).

Serve with brussel sprouts

Just then the water in the pot began to boil, making the top jump up and down with a comforting sort of clattering sound, and Millicent shifted her gaze. That was when she saw the second distracting thing. That was when she saw the painting. Torn between a gasp, a splutter and a shriek, she attempted all three simultaneously and the resulting sound caused Marama to look up sharply from her preparations. After seeing Millicent’s ashen face, as frozen in shock as if it too had been caught up in an ice storm, Marama followed her gaze to the face in the small painting hanging on the wall and said, “Ah, yes, I’ve been wondering about that”.

This reaction was almost as incomprehensible to Millicent as the face staring back at her from the painting, and it shook her out of her trance, “What do you mean you’ve been wondering about it?” she cried. “Where did you get that painting? Why do you have it? How did it…” she trailed off as she rose to her feet, lost for words. “How did….” she tried again, but it was too hard to know where to begin. How could there possibly be an explanation for the fact that hanging in Marama’s cave was a picture of Millicent Mint of Muckleberry-Down-The-Lane? Millicent decided that there couldn’t be, and although she had never fainted before, she also decided that now was as good a time as any to give it a try. So she did.

She came to what felt like hours later. The cave was much darker than when they had entered it, although there was a candle burning somewhere behind her, casting flickering shadows across the ceiling. She guessed she must be lying on Marama’s bed. There was a cool cloth draped over her forehead but it didn’t seem to be making any difference to the horrible pounding in the back of her head. The brooding notes of Marama’s violin came from close by, but when Millicent tried to lift her head the pounding exploded in unbearable pain and the playing stopped.

“Lie still”, said a soft, rumbling voice from somewhere beside her. “Now that you’re awake I can give you something that will ease the pain”.

Marama’s huge, furry paw appeared above her and dropped something cold and slimy into her mouth. Under normal circumstances Millicent would never have swallowed something without a proper inspection - it was something she was always getting into trouble for at the supper table at home - but she quickly gulped down the tasteless globule without a word of protest. Her thoughts were fuzzy, but they were still in order and she didn’t want to waste any more time.

“Marama”, she began through gritted teeth, trying to ignore the pain, “The painting… How did you come by it?”

Marama sighed deeply. “It was painted a long, long time ago”, she said, as if that was all that needed to be said on the subject.

“But it can’t have been!” exclaimed Millicent. “I don’t look a day older today than I do in that picture!”

“You?” said Marama, the tone in her voice quite altered from a moment before. “But it isn’t a painting of you”.

“How can you say that? I saw it with my own eyes”, said Millicent, pushing herself up in bed to look directly at Marama despite the shooting pains this caused, “It was like looking into a mirror!”

Marama stood up and walked into the darkness, but she returned almost immediately and held out the painting so that Millicent could see it up close. Millicent held it up to the light and scrutinised it carefully. She had to admit that while the resemblance was striking there were details about the face that did not match her own. For one thing the scar on her left temple was missing, as was the little brown mole on her cheek. Also the collar of the dress of the girl in the picture, just visible at the edge of the frame, was of delicately embroidered lace and far finer than anything Millicent had ever worn.

“Who is she?” she asked, convinced now that Marama was telling the truth, but Marama didn’t reply. She was sitting perfectly still, and Millicent could see that all the hairs on her back were standing perfectly on end. Millicent felt a shiver go down her spine.

“Marama”, she whispered, “What is it?”.

Marama raised a paw to silence Millicent, then she rose to her feet and moved soundlessly towards the cave entrance. Millicent struggled down from the bed and followed after her but the pain from her head made her sway awkwardly and she bumped into Marama’s music stand, sending a flurry of papers flapping to the ground. Marama wheeled around on the spot, her eyes burning, and in the same instance the howling started and Millicent knew she had made a big mistake.

Captain Bellamy made this speech to the captain of a merchant vessel he had taken as a prize. Bellamy had wanted to let the captain keep his ship, but his crew had voted to burn the sloop. The captain of the merchant vessel had just declined an invitation to join the pirates.

“I am sorry they won’t let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief, when it is not to my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by knavery; but damn ye altogether: damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make then one of us, than sneak after these villains for employment?”

When the captain replied that his conscience would not let him break the laws of God and man, the pirate Bellamy continued:

“You are a devilish conscience rascal, I am a free prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world, as he who has a hundred sail of ships at sea, and an army of 100,000 men in the field; and this my conscience tells me: but there is no arguing with such snivelling puppies, who allow superiors to kick them about deck at pleasure.

like a tea tray in the sky

This just wouldn’t be the same without the lovely Welsh accents… Enjoy!

I’ve been around for thirty one years. A shock indeed, as anyone who has ever been around for three decades will perhaps recall. The first two I spent in England, and over half of the last decade I have spent in the US. I sometimes forget that I am a foreigner here. I forget that if I were in England the scale of cultural references that I could understand would be much greater. I might not have been the most astutely political creature, but I paid attention, I read newspapers, I debated in pubs, I knew who the Education Secretary was. No longer. Not here, not there. And I have been tricked.

Sarah Palin, Karl Rove’s gun totin’, baby lovin’ answer to whatever turned up in the research they did to find out what those (nails on a blackboard) Undecideds in Ohio wanted to see standing next to McCain on the campaign trail, last week attempted to attack Obama with accusations about his relationship with Bill Ayers, co-founder of The Weathermen/The Weather Underground. Obviously this attempt to further associate the big-scary-black-man with the T word was not aimed at the likes of me. Nevertheless, I fell prey to an aspect of the reporting that really surprised me when I realised it this morning.

Without really giving it any thought at all, I wrote the whole thing off as not worth paying any particular attention to, but I did so with the assumption that The Weather Underground had killed a bunch of people with their bombs in the 70s, hence the total sense of condemnation. I assumed that ‘innocent civilians’ had been killed, that Ayers had already served a long prison sentence or gotten off on a technicality. Knowing that the group had been protesting the Vietnam War, I wasn’t going to automatically attach judgement to what they had done without understanding more about the situation. However, if I hadn’t happened to read a paragraph about them in an article on Common Dreams I would have slotted this set of assumptions into my world view, and there it would have stayed.

Now, I’m only fifteen minutes of internet research the wiser, but it turns out that the only people who ever died in a Weather Underground bomb were three members of their own group, and that they mostly sent out evacuation warnings. Compare this to the death toll in the Vietnam War they wanted so desperately to bring to an end:

3 to 4 million Vietnamese from both sides, 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and 58,159 U.S. soldiers.

Of course now I still know very little about The Weather Underground, but now I know very little about them from an active perspective as opposed to a passive one. An important distinction in this age where ‘common sense’ is being constantly manipulated by the megalomaniacs and their stooges.