I name this ship . . .

Boaty McBoatface.

                                             
Hooray for the British public - and what do the persons suggesting such a naming competition expect from an island steeped in Monty Python, Reggie Perrin, Armstrong and Miller, Eddie Izzard, Reeves and Mortimer, and the like?
Ice queen, The Majestic, Red Prince, Great Explorer? No - rather, Notthetitanic, What Iceberg, and the superb, Boaty Mc Boat Face.
Something has certainly changed in the 'general public', not just added absurdity in humour, but a general mocking of authority - and is it any surprise after the all the money scandals of the past decade or so? People would once believe their pension to be safe because they were told it would be; people at the top of huge corporations who earn bloated salaries must be right, yes? Seems not . . .
I vaguely remember the naming of the sleek, white aeroplane in the 1970s - Concorde - a sensible enough name, but I don't remember any huffing and puffing from the organisers over names such as Plany-plane-head, or Mr Pointy White Thing. Did anyone suggest anything wonderfully stupid? Maybe not; maybe it was before super-ironic comedy hit our screens, or maybe we just believed everything we were told back then . . .

                                                       

                                                                 Mr Pointy White Thing

Food

It's good isn't it? - I mean in so many ways: colour, taste; funkily arranged on a plate, or slammed in a bowl and shovelled away in front of the T.V while the rain pisses down outside . . . fuel for life, you are what you eat, etc.
I suppose food takes up about thirty percent of an average day in The Hothouse; whether it be discussing what to eat, searching in cupboards, cycling down to the local shops or driving a bit further to the scary planet of over-consumption, and finally cooking and eating the amassed molecules.
We stayed with a family in Cuba years ago. They probably spent about the same amount of time over food, although it was usually chasing up some rumour that someone had a stash of oranges; or sitting for hours picking over rice to take out the unknown mysterious bits, or trying to vary the statutory stew by adding a larger portion of yam in relation to carrot, or whatever was available.
At the other end of the scale exist places where you can spend about the same amount of time eating one meal . . .
Yesterday I was alerted by Trip advisor that the World's Best Restaurant had been nominated.
In order to avoid dealing with some annoying bit of office work, I investigated and discovered it to be in Spain, which then led to some tangenty behaviour of looking at daft menus of the Top Ten restaurants with meal prices that would buy you two weeks shopping: a head.
Why would anyone want to spend five hours eating twenty-two courses?
Is there not something completely obscene about this behaviour when most of the planet's inhabitants are concerned with trying to find anything vaguely edible, let alone a square, round or otherwise, meal?

    A chocolate and gold sundae, created in New York, at a cost of round about 25,000 dollars - but it does have diamonds in it . . .

Ooh, two please. Actually, no, think I'll re-roof the house and update the car. Hold the order, thanks.

We once visited a chateau in the Lot Valley and were shown the banqueting room. On the vast table were an array of tableware from that epoch: lethal looking knives, a few bowls and an odd, metal tube with a sort of plunger on one end.
The tour person elaborated:
    "Eet is somezing zat was used to make more space in ze stomach of ze revellers - after so many courses, it was possible avec ce thing to 'how you say' make some more room in ze bowel."
    "What you mean, an enema?" I said, and retched into the moat, or whatever it was surrounding the building (almost).
But is this so different from the twenty-two course business? - just a little 'waffer' thin mint, Mr . . . whoever it was in the Monty Python film.
Reading on, my jaw hit the desk at one reviewer's comment on, I forget which Michelin-starred eatery from the top ten.
    I usually find myself completely unsatisfied when leaving a Michelin-starred establishment, blah, blah  . . .
Hang on - usually? How often do you eat in these places? and why bother if you find them unsatisfying?
I have never yet had the opportunity to discover if I would be unsatisfied, completely, mildly or otherwise, and probably never will as there are so many wonderful and characterful places in wish to slake one's food-lust in, without having to re-mortgage anything

Cushions

                                       

Our sofa is undoubtedly a pit of filth, and it will remain thus until at least the old dog shuffles off and the crumb-creating boy is in his own den of nastiness for at least most of the year.
I still cling (unwillingly) to the stylist ideal of tweaking the sofa here and there - to camera as it were, a throw placed over the worst bits, the cushions arranged just so, bit to the left, thanks, and another cushion just there, good - polaroid.
Cushions: womeny things mainly, I think. Scatter cushions, what a horrible phrase: brings back all those flowery sofas of the 80s with hundreds of meaningless matching frilly edged square fabric . . . things.
Actually, any decade come to think of it. Now it's rather more a line of anally-retentive beige/cream/brown cushions standing to attention on something leather and cuboid, with an occasional foray into something made of uncomfortable beads or impossible to clean corkscrewy wool that I can't recall the name of at the moment.
The cushions are very rarely used on our sofa. The boy throws them on the floor, I might stuff one of them into the small of my back when settling to watch a film, the runty dog might make a nest in the velvet brown one if no one's looking. Others include, two favourites from a vide grenier (boot sale) a few years back - absurd 1970's orange, mustard and black, washed almost to threads; two musical instrument patterned ones our cousins sent, two small useless red velvet ones the size of a seven inch record (if anyone can remember those) and yes, the brown one.
I plump them up every day when I sweep up before the day starts. It looks all right for a few minutes until it's covered with discarded coats, books, guitars, electronic projects etc. But I think to live in a house where the cushions stayed firmly where you put them all day might be a bit worrying.
Above, a still from a favourite Monty Python sketch, involving cushions oddly enough.