Sunday morning- plenty of time for a rant…
Up bright and early on Sunday morning, crisp blue sky, Fuji visible in the distance, no-one but me and the power walking pensioners about, discovered a well-hidden and peaceful little local temple, came back home to sit down with a couple of slices of toast and Marmite, a cup of Yorkshire Tea and the Sunday papers, but…
No Herald Tribune on Sundays! So, was reduced to reading the Observer on the net instead.
When you don’t have the pleasure of rustling the pages and using the magazine to keep tea stains off the carpet you really do notice what a piece of crap the Observer is, I’m telling you. Almost every page is the journalistic equivalent of the shower in my “design hotel” room in London- all style and no substance. It’s like the whole paper (and perhaps the whole country) is run by a bunch of Regency fops who think being witty is the most important thing in the world. (As one commenter on this very British teaching related blog wrote recently, “I’m not witty or British enough to comment on this blog”). Well, Observer journalists, a witty repost and ability to pun on obscure film titles might have been the most important thing when you wrote for the NME, but I would like some news in my newspaper please!
Luckily for you, I have trawelled through it for anything of interest to those of us who do not dream of repainting our suburban semi to look like the next Big Brother house, and have managed to find the story of the Seven Sushi Samurai. Some British advertising guy must have felt so clever when he came up with that idea! Anyway, the history of sushi is quite well written and matches what I’ve read before (as long as you don’t count fermented fish as raw). And more sushi here too, including the bizarre fact that the posher the place the more likely you are to pick the sushi up with your fingers. None of that in my local kaiten conveyor belt sushi place, but you can get chips and cheesecake to go with your 105 yen (40 pence) plate of sushi.