Cultures

I made soup. Like many soups, I put in potatoes. Probably we eat potatoes at least one day in three, maybe more often. Tonight, we had potatoes and pasta in the same dish; at lunch time, we had potatoes and rice on the same plate; some people might think we are odd! This is still a lot less frequently than my childhood, when I can't think of a main meal that would not have involved potatoes - but also quite often for breakfast, and even at a third meal on the same day. In those days, pasta came in tomato sauce from a tin and rice was for puddings

We caught an interesting snippet of a radio programme about an organisation that is trying to promote the cultivation and consumption of potatoes in China. This is much more than a marketing exercise; it is a cultural inversion of daunting complexity. Potatoes are not a new crop/food in most parts of China, but very few communities buy them or eat them because they want to

Broadly, people in north China aspire to eat wheat, those in the south to eat rice. Both of these require a certain level of affluence. Some poor people even put potatoes in a serving bowl and top it with a thin layer of rice - manifesting their aspirations. A standard way of explaining your humble origins is to say "I was reared on potatoes". Well, I was

The radio was on the journey into the retail hell that is some parts of Banbury. One shop was selling grotesque, unrecognasable, highly packaged plastic figurines in the supposed likeness of 'celebrities': Noel Gallagher, Lewis Hamilton, Darth Vader, Harry Potter; strange bedfellows. I could not see any purpose for them, only their perfect embodiment of emptyness and waste

In that context, a cycleshop was a relief. A cycle shop needs bike racks. I was primed for the release of an uncontrived visual joke