Patat-poem

Last night we headed out with friends to Patatboem, billed as “A culinary concert”. “The stage is a kitchen. The concert is cooking. Tasting is the final act.” Jazz riffs mingle with industrial-scale cooking in their percussive and melodic preparation of a meal for the 184 people in the audience, who are fanned out at sloping tables around the stage. Music is not merely interspersed with the food but intermingled—a hollowed cucumber becomes half of a short-lived saxophone, while part-filled bottles of water, tuned wine glasses, and mashing, grinding and crashing are half the notes and beats of the music. A synaesthetic experience for the rest of us.

On the way home we visited a local fair, where after winning a zebra and having the obligatory ride on the dodgems, I found myself sharing a ride that must have been called The Intestinator. It had the usual elements of the platform rotating and going up and down, while the pod we were sitting in was spinning. The real kicker was the guys running it, though, who through miracles of basic physics were able to calmly wander round the platform while it was rotating, flicking our modules to give them extra spin. Just when you thought you'd obtained maximum speed, that you'd be coming to a quiet part now, and that they'd gone away, they would spin you still faster till you were doing about 4 Gs, your neck was dialling a chiropractor, and blacking out seemed a reasonable lifestyle choice. After a while I tired of screaming and so did a haka at the top of my voice instead, though over the noise only my pod-mate could hear me. Ahh, to be young and have all your serious injuries ahead of you...

And lest you think the day was all fun, we also went out seeking Sky and watched the All Blacks vaporise and inhale the English rugby team in what the BBC charitably called New Zealand's 36-3 “rout” of England. Also helped said friend above spend oodles of electronic cash in a digital camera online shopping expedition. Oh yes, and in a fit of balancing productivity, cut my bloated ("tedious") 13,000 word manuscript down to below 8,000 and counting, no doubt to the ultimate relief of co-authors, editor and reviews. Vivat academia!