Pulsating

Sweethearts, shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic does NOT pay.

Better keep rinsing pulses and chitting potatoes after today’s consortium’s inspiring offerings. Not that I didn’t enjoy Magpie’s history lesson – particularly the link between Columbus bringing potatoes to Europe in exchange for a spot of STD to America. You might call Christopher the father of today’s globalization. Also liked Conrad’s subtle, yet snide, remark about the Senate.

gaelikaa always likes to tell a story, ususally another chapter in the art of perfecting patience; from Grannymar, considering that she comes from a large family and spuds are an Irish staple, I expected something on the joys of peeling potatoes to stuff many mouths. Oddly, it was one of the jobs my mother used to think me most suitable for – neither did she believe in swivel peelers.

I am sure all your recipes are delicious (depending on what your mother’s cooking was like and your own culinary expectations since) though – if I may say so – there are more imaginative things one can do with both potatoes and beans other than cooking them. Still, I am not here to piss on anyone’s parade, or am I?

Sweet gaelikaa, in the dark of what my current predicament is, recently urged me to phone the Samaritans to save me from throwing myself off an imaginary cliff. I am afraid there is no Samaritan (other than Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Charles Saatchi, any of you or myself) who can rescue me in the short term. However,  for those of your friends who do weep, for clinical reasons, quietly into their daily bowl of lentil potage look no further than a book titled “Potatoes, NOT Prozac” (‘Prozac’ being the generic term for anti-depressants). Makes you think, Magpie, doesn’t it: First Americans export the mightily useful potato to the greater good of the rest of the world, only to then flood us with pharmaceuticals. One of my friends rattles with pills, keeping the whole of Bayer in profit. I have offered him many a baked potato – to no avail.

To add humility to my humiliation here is a potato about your very own Ursula (aged nine): At the time we lived in deepest country side (north of Hamburg); my best friend, a farmer’s daughter, invited me to help her and her family with a day’s potato harvest. Oh, the anticipation of  it! I was so excited. My mother doubted that donning my very best WHITE shirt for the occasion was a good choice of clothing.  And yes, my friend’s father did laugh out loud when he saw me turn up in my finest which did make me blush momentarily. Not for long: I so did enjoy pulling out the potatoes out of the dark sandy soil with my bare hands, filling buckets in the blazing sun, the fire  lit on the field in the evening. Never tasted a potato better. Neither was a white shirt dyed black more efficiently – ever. I didn’t care. It was a great day. Whether I’d made a fool of myself or not.

U

PS I still have magnificent gift to dress inappropriately