You're fired!

Thank you America for delivering us from the unspeakable nightmare of "President Palin", a woman unqualified to run a hot-dog stand, never mind the free world. A woman who could not name the countries which make up North America, a woman who thought that Africa was a country and who thought that South Africa was the southern part of that country. A woman who kills wild animals for fun, a religious fanatic, a woman who is prepared to wield the power of her office to settle petty family disputes. A woman, contemptuous of science and proud of her own ignorance. What was McCain thinking?

Why he must win

Sarah Palin has never left the USA. This is Barack Obama with his grandmother, outside her house in Kenya.

Dancing 2008

This guy seems to know how to have a good time...

Cats Who Eat Runner Bean Plants

Google has rarely let me down. A few weeks ago I used it to successfully diagnose a neurological condition in a friend which was of such rarity that the senior neurological consultant in Nottingham had only seen it twice before in his career. And I am not a doctor.

Google is silent however on the matter of cats who eat runner bean leaves. Either Ernest (pictured) is unique in this respect or nobody else has thought to document this remarkable phenomenon. I'm therefore committing this information to the blogosphere, partly as a service to other bewildered cat-owners (you are not alone) and partly to see how quick Google is to pick it up.

Every year I grow runner beans in some pots in the back yard and every year the young plants are systematically murdered by our supposedly carnivorous friend. At first I suspected slugs or some exotic pest of the insect tribe but Ernest is now exposed as a secret vegetarian.

He doesn't just nibble the leaves round the edges - he is quite capable of taking nine or a dozen whole, fully formed, leaves at a sitting and polishing off the lot. I have never seen him take an interest in any other plant in the garden.

I am now seeking an exceptionally fast growing variety of runner bean which, if it can raise its main leaves to 24" off the ground (Ernest's height at a full stretch) in a single day, may stand a chance of survival and a fruitful life.

Higoi

I remember when Higoi first opened my thoughts ran as follows: A classy Japanese restaurant in the heart of Studentland? - I give them a month, tops. Tonight, twenty years later, I decided to go back and find out why they are still there.

The Japanese are masters of miniturisation and in the compact Higoi we were served a multitude of tiny dishes by a very small waitress. We went for the Kaiseki set meal at £27/head which seemed to cover a fair ammount of ground from the a-la-carte. The menu is somewhat cryptic, offering dishes such as "steamed food", "simmered food" and even "vinegar food." At our asking the waitress did attempt to elaborate, but sadly all the Japanese I learnt by watching Shogun could not help me.

The food is beautiful to look at, as you would expect. It's more interesting than the standard conveyor-belt, shopping-mall sushi that has become ubiquitous. But it's just too damn small. I saw a television programme recently which attempted to explain how to live to 100 years old. Apparently the Japanese have a tradition that one should "eat until you are 80% full" which accounts for their extraordinary longevity. Anyone who ate at the Higoi every night would probably live to 200, or perhaps it would just seem like it.

The vegetable tempura with the main course was probably the highlight, though the main dish itself was a thumbnail-sized piece of salmon. Dessert was fresh fruit and ice-cream, vanilla ice-cream. I mean, they could at least have gone for green-tea flavour or something a little bit different, but no...

£27/head was shockingly bad value for money. I am at a loss to explain their success.

Alan Silitoe at the Broadway

After Lawrence I suppose Alan Silitoe must be Nottingham's most famous writer so it was pretty much obligatory to go and see him in conversation at The Broadway followed by the film of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. At 80 he cut a sprightly and dapper figure full of good humour and interesting anecdotes.

The story of how Saturday Night and Sunday Morning came to be written was startlingly at variance with the image in my own mind. I had Silitoe scribbling by candlelight in a back-to-back Radford terrace after a hard days grind at his lathe. The truth is that he received a handsome pension from the air-force at the age of 21 and retired to Majorca to write among the orange groves.

It must be twenty years since I last saw the film and what struck me on this occasion is that I never previously noticed what a superb piece of cinema it actually is.

Polish Sourdough - 1.1

I followed the recipe exactly this time and it was a complete failure - not even a hint of sourness. For 1.2 I am going to feed and warm the little beastie until it goes off. And if that doesn't work I'll make it with milk and leave it on a radiator until the whole place stinks. I've also bought some rye flour to try, though I suspect that will only affect the texture and consistency.