Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Lovelock and Nigella
Last night, returning from a superb lecture at the Royal Society by the great James Lovelock, I think I heard Nigella say something like 'I don't know of a time when I don't want to eat a tortilla.' Having been pondering the end of the world as we know it, I suddenly found myself imagining Nigella playing tennis while eating a tortilla, swimming while eating a tortilla, having sex.... No I'd better stop there. Jim was saying the world must go into wartime mode not to stop global warming - we can't - but to adapt to its consequences. He has always said Britain was at her best during the Second World War and he dreams of a world similarly unified against a common enemy. Gaia - our mother - is now our enemy. But a man from Zimbabwe stood up and said people in his country were starving to death while, across the border, there was an obesity problem. People don't, in the end, make sacrifices for their neighbours. Jim nodded sadly.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Face it man - you're obsessed with the woman. Bet you were looking at yr watch all through that lecture, thinking Will I be home in time for Nigella? Nothing wrong with it, of course - a perfectly healthy obsession...
ReplyDelete'At the age of eighty-eight, after four children and a long and respected career as one of the twentieth century's most influential scientists, James Lovelock has come to an unsettling conclusion: The human race doomed.'
ReplyDelete'Lovelock looks at me with unflinching blue eyes. "Some people will sit in their seats and do nothing, frozen in panic. Others will move. They'll see what's about to happen, and they'll take action, and they'll survive. They're the carriers of the civilization ahead."'
i predict our extinction within the next couple of generations. The lucky will perish relatively quickly. The 'survivors' will be those wretched few doomed to struggle against fate for a few decades more.
ReplyDeleteThey too will succumb to death, and they shall leave no remnant.
The secret is to keep on eating tortillas. Nigella knows this.
ReplyDeleteI think you're Nigella, the names are just too much of a coincidence. Why is it just you me, Dave, Vince and Elberry today? Like a very poorly attended cocktail party.
ReplyDeleteCreme de la creme is the phrase you're after, surely?
ReplyDeleteA wish to spend the rest of one's life eating tortillas is the kind of thing that may well have interested the sadly departed Prof Clare. Of his guests, I wonder if even Jimmy Savile dared to that far. Any self-respecting bandido is looking for a little more from the blue planet.
ReplyDeleteIf I recall, Nigella was actually talking about quesadillas, a kind of toasted cheese and ham sandwich using a tortilla as a wrapper rather than good bread. OK, I have confessed to watching this stuff, I am infinite, I contain multitudes, etc.
Everyone else is on hold waiting to order tortillas.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Mark, It was qesadillas. Even more weird because of the name.
ReplyDeletea kind of toasted cheese and ham sandwich using a tortilla as a wrapper rather than good bread.
ReplyDeleteSomeone please remind me not to order any Mexican food while in Britain next June.
Exactly what I was thinking, Randal! My idea of a quesadilla is also vastly different -- and of course we have Mexicans who make them here in the U.S.!
ReplyDeletesusan b wrote: Exactly what I was thinking, Randal! My idea of a quesadilla is also vastly different -- and of course we have Mexicans who make them here in the U.S.!
ReplyDeleteWell, these ones are made in the UK by a sex goddess! You can't trump that, imho.
Last time i had anything like tortillas was after reading All the Pretty Horses. i laid hands on a bottle of whiskey, cooked up some beans and had me some extremely cheap cowboy food, pretending i was in the New Mexico desert with a gunshot wound, a broken heart and a pony.
ReplyDeleteIn fact i was in Huddersfield on the dole.
you are a funny boy, elberry. long may you prosper. or fester. or whatever it is you're doing!
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