Eat your greens!

London Uyghur Ensemble, originally uploaded by eat your greens.

Having some problems with Movable Type on a shared host, so I’m giving Wordpress a go instead. It’s all very strange and new.

Musical excellence, I think, from mjhibbett.com

Pure brilliant white, originally uploaded by eat your greens.

So, in the end, I skipped SemanticCamp this weekend to concentrate on working on the flat. After five years of thinking “I must do something about the polystyrene ceiling tiles” I have a new ceiling in the hall. Photos of the work, so far, are on flickr.

Andy Budd - shark wrangler!, originally uploaded by eat your greens.

Just back from a refreshing two days in Brighton, where work sent me to a couple of workshops run by clearleft. Excellent, and inspiring, stuff from Andy Budd and Jeremy Keith.

Now for some rest before heading off to Devon on Monday…

Spanish tortilla, originally uploaded by eat your greens.

6 xl eggs
1 largish onion, diced
about 1/3 kilo potatoes, sliced very small
1 bell pepper, diced

Salt the pieces of potato in a bowl. Mix in the chopped onion. Heat about 100 ml of oil in a large frying pan. Turn the heat down to its lowest setting. Gently stew the potato and onion mixture in the oil for around 15 minutes. Stir in the chopped pepper and leave to cook for another 15 mnutes or so. The secret here is to cook slowly over a very low heat and wait patiently. Stir occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick to the pan.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs very lightly in a large bowl. Just beat them enough to break up the yolks and mix with the whites. Drain the oil from the cooked potatoes and stir them into the eggs. Heat some butter and a little oil in the frying pan, then turn the heat back down to low again. Pour the omelette mixture into the pan and leave to cook slowly.

After about 15 minutes, there should be very little uncooked egg left on the top of the mixture. Take the pan off the heat, cover with a large dinner plate and deftly flick it over to drop the tortilla onto the plate. Put the pan back on the heat and slide the tortilla off the plate back into the pan. Leave for another 5 - 10 minutes or so, still at low heat, at which point it should be cooked through. Flip it onto a plate again and serve!

A friend pointed out that Control, the Ian Curtis biopic, was still on at the Curzon this week. So we went to see it on Thursday, and I’m very glad that I went. It’s a beautiful looking film, shot in black and white by Anton Corbijn, based on Deborah Curtis' biography of her husband – Touching From A Distance. The music is excellent. I thought that the actors were miming to Joy Division songs but, it turns out, they played their own instruments for the live scenes. They really do sound like Joy Division. I love Unknown Pleasures, so it was great to hear Disorder and She’s Lost Control.

The story isn't 100% true to life, which might annoy the more pedantic Joy Division fans. Stephen Morris wasn’t actually the drummer for Warsaw when Ian joined the band, and their first TV performance wasn’t Transmission. These are minor niggles. The main story of Ian and Deborah's marriage is well told, although his manic depression is glossed over. If you’ve seen 24 hour Party People, you might remember a pissed-up Joy Division doing a drunk version of Louie Louie at a Factory party. Then there’s the story of Ian ending an argument with Rob Gretton by sticking a bin on his own head and screaming. Neither of those aspects of him come across in Control, unfortunately. Incidentally, the bloke who plays Gretton does a great job. It's worth watching the film just for him.

That said, I thought it was a moving film. I used to think Ian Curtis was a self-absorbed, cheating twat, to be honest, but perhaps I was too hasty. A very troubled bloke, desperately in need of help but who isolated himself from the very people who could help him. Probably my favourite film of 2007. Definitely one to see, even if you aren’t a Joy Division fan yourself.

“He didn't commit suicide because he had marital problems. He had marital problems because he wanted to commit suicide.”

Deborah Curtis

Dancin' with Manson has been stuck in my head all day. Nice to find a video on youtube, complete with flying V guitar.

Amnesty book sale 17th November 2007, originally uploaded by eat your greens.

We made over £9,000 in June, but we still have thousands of books left to sell. Come and buy some books. We can’t store unsold books, so anything left at the end of the day will get dumped in a skip.

You can get the flyer from flickr, and a full event listing on upcoming.

Still a great song, 20-odd years after it was first released.

He never talked about it.