Postcards from paradise

Meanwhile back on the hot rock ...

Whilst slowly developing the attention span of a thirteen year old zombie I have found myself back on the hot rock with a large memory gap. I am sure I have not been abducted by aliens but used as a cobaye by the Umbrella Corporation, who although are fictitious have various nefarious and dubious means at their disposal to play hell with my neurons.

So, what is new ? The volcano is a rumbling but only like Mr Creosote after his hors d'oeuvres. There are more cars, more concrete, more supermarkets and more consumerism. More consumers as well and it is not all the Pope's fault. And, all that after only a few months.

Went out to supper last night at a rather jolly and termite eaten "cas creole" resto. These are becoming few and far between and if the fact that France, or rather the French, are Ronny McD's second most devoted fans Réunion has gone a long way to help. Not that I'd wish to turn the clocks back but just speed them up a little so that some apocalyptic catastrophe will arrive and (1) please all those religious fruit cakes and (2) wipe humanity of the face of the Earth so it can start again, or not...

... back to supper. Boucané ti-jaques with "graines" , rice and some spitefully warm rougail mangue. Needlessly, I should explain all these exotic culinary delights, but being both lazy and pretentious it is needless. Reminds me of my sulky youth trying to read Huxley (proto-pretentious period) and not being able to understand all those foreign phrases. Why couldn't he write in English for us poor peasants ?

Supper rinsed with a cold bottle of Bourbon beer - the beer is bland and fizzy but the marketing is sublime so one believes one is enjoying it and some exotic island culture !




and then ...

You can get free postcards here. Usually stupid marketing ploys or not too bad self promotion glitz. The island as a national park for instance, or art shows or ...

... plenty of ellipsis for emphasis , or, postcards of the latest main road, the route des tamarins only opened this year like an appendectomy scar. So, I am no longer sending idealised snaps of tropical volcanic isles but pics of concrete, tarmac and other crud. So this is the future ? No wonder that I am depressed.

Pollen - the snows of summer.

Dusky may well be the tendrils of the vine, but dusty, bien sûr, are the mandibles of the bee.

Summer has installed itself and the world has come to gawp. Except, that is Minou the famous cow cat who is more intent in becoming a threadbare rug.


Ponder for a moment the souls of myriads of insects humming along to the sounds of eternity in their short lived lives.


What music compared to the cacophony of human existence. Man that bloated, bleating megaphone of destruction.


There, I'm feeling better already. More mopané worm vicar?

The thorny question of the last bean ..

Summer may well be here but I have that feeling that Spring has only just finished as I have just podded and cooked the last broad bean. Afflicted by a plague of blackfly and stunted by a rather cold winter they performed rather well really.



Blend them in with a squirt of olive oil, garlic, onions, courgettes and tomatoes from the garden and voila ! Not quite, don't forget the essential chilli, fresh coriander, curcuma and cumin. Well, I'm going to eat this with a fine, if left over, "rougail tomate" from Saturday night's epicurean boucané.


Why should I mention this ? No idea, better get back out into the garden before I miss the Summer ...

Waiting for the great sky spiders of summer.

Everything is looking skyward.


Dragon's breath in the valley and there follows an enigma.



I posed the question to a friend who replied that the above photo was of "le sexe d'une femme". A rather Bauhaus interpretation but unless you can come up with anything more concrete and original it shall remain a great 19th century brick edifice consecrated to women, a Victorian Sheela na gig.

Oh ... I'm feeling all Freudian.

Pigs might fly ...

... or have they already flown ?





... or flew ?

Too late to contain swine flu ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8021384.stm

Looking backwards

In the past year Chinese women have discovered that breast milk does not contain melamine and that there is a great difference between feeding the future on an ingredient of kitchen worktops and milk. It is a shame that it happened in China as the Western world will just shrug, smirk and continue slapping big fat plastic tits in their babies' mouths.

Ladies, bosoms are for babies. They maybe objects of male adoration but they have a sublime function other than to excite and titillate a potential mate.

If the Chinese are becoming more aware of their bodily functions the Americans are rediscovering the function of bodily colour. Nothing is any longer black and white in the US, for there are many shades of Obama in between. Of course it is nonsense, even if he were "black", he 'aint poor.

We have also come to realise the most amusing fact that the world financial system does not contain anything at all, not even melamine. Bail out the banks, bail out the car industry, bail out, even, the tobacco industry. Let's bail out everyone who had a stake in perpetuating this obscene myth and the rest of us can go begging as always. Or, if not begging we can always head off down to Woolies.

Back on Réunion and the chavs have succeeded in reducing the price of petrol. The authorities have succeeded in raising the price of alcohol in a bid to reduce alcoholism. They have even decided to ban the sale of the Pile Plat (a small bottle of rum). This is laughable because as any one will know and you might have read it here several years ago, it has already been banned.

Last Christmas lunch I spent with the Black Virgin, this with a diabetic dog. The difference ? The dog smells. However, I am fortunate to be gazing out over distant yet rolling surf. The volcano is getting more excited and a storm on Christmas day took out all the instruments on her slopes. Fortunately, they are back working and the eruption has increased - look here.


I did go to a "soirée" a week or so before Christmas and most people avoided the tuna carpaccio because of the high levels of mercury found in pelagic fish around these isles. Everyone, bar myself, was smoking profusely. May as well have been eating Melamine Yoghurt.


The big scare today is that someone might have seen a shark at Etang Salé. This is the same Etang Salé where the life guards seriously injured a surfer with the propeller of their boat. Six hundred people (how many?) were evacuated from the water on the off chance that the supposed shark may still be hungry even after that huge Christmas dinner. Last year alcoholism killed nearly three hundred people, cars a lot more. Sharks killed no one in that time.


I have a car and I drink, so I don't think I'll pass away in the jaws of a shark, especially as I don't surf.


If anyone actually reads this one will have noticed that it is a disjointed, incoherent psudeo intellectual rant. I am so pleased to have rediscovered my muse.

Abolished or Pardonned ?

Yesterday was the "fête de l' abolition d'esclavage" as slavery was finally outlawed on the island the 20th December 1848. One hundred and sixty years later one would have hoped that things have changed. For most of us they have. But, on the French island of Mayotte - soon to be a department - some would argue otherwise.

Centre de rétention de Mayotte: la vidéo qui accuse
Uploaded by liberation

Meanwhile, Carla has won her case against Pardon and will donate the 40,000 € to a charity. Pardon are appealing. Forgive the cynicism but ...


Carla's court case came and went within a week. Was this a serious case of the abuse of law or what. There are far more pressing problems and far more flagrant abuses of rights other than that of public individuals who are famous merely for being that and rich.

Let's get back to slavery. It has been abolished. We are all equal. Of course.

... unless you are a woman, poor, not the same colour, don't own a rolex, or are taller than me. The list is endless as are the abuses.


We the public are far more concerned about current affairs and this is why on the one hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the abolition of slavery the intellectuals' TV channel Antenne Réunion chose to broadcast ...

The finals of "Star Academy" !

If you are for the abolition of slavery text "1", against, text "2" - texts charged at 2 x 0.50 € + cost of SMS.

The great and late anarchist, P J Proudhon, should be looking on in despair. Property certainly is theft. But wasn't he a misogynist ?
"I deny her every political right and every initiative. For woman liberty and well-being lie solely in marriage, in motherhood,in domestic duties..." Proudhon.

... and didn't he support slavery in the Deep South ?

Our wealth and so called freedoms are essentially based on the misery of others. Our whole percept of the world is wrong and celebrating the abolition of slavery or watching Star Ac won't change a thing.

Shouldn't you be out shopping ?