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Author: Kim du Toit
Hidden Gem
I am, as Regular Readers are aware, a huge fan of gloomy Scandi detective shows. My latest binge was The Killing (on Prime), which I devoured, all twenty hours of it, over a couple days last week.
*Disclaimer: I know that Denmark isn’t regarded as a Scandi country. As far as I’m concerned, any country on the western shores of the Baltic which has damp, freezing, miserable weather, gets dark at about 4pm, and features actors speaking a language which sounds like a chicken with its throat half-cut, is a Scandi country. Also, if the heroine detective — they’re all heroine detectives; all the men are idiots, clowns or bad guys — is halfway between plain and ugly, and the plot is dense and contains about five different story lines, then it’s a Scandi detective movie.
As was The Killing, in absolutely every respect.
However, in this show I saw something out of the ordinary: a woman with quite a large part, who was not halfway between plain and ugly. Let me introduce you all to Marie Askehave:
In the TV show, she has coal-black hair which shows off those startling blue eyes to perfection:
Also, she’s one of those women who doesn’t do well in still photos — in a movie medium, though, she’s captivating.
The show’s good, too.
Lest anyone thinks I’m going overboard about plain-to-ugly Scandi female detectives, here’s The Killing‘s lead, Sofie Gråbøl:
…and that’s a studio pic — she looks far worse in the show.
Tormented By Beauty
Last Saturday I was in the throes of passion over an old Purdey shotgun. Not to sound too romantic, but my heart today has been captured by this vision of liquid steel, namely:
1954 Jaguar XK-120 SE
But wait! It gets worse!
And how did it reach this speed? Why, through its 3.4-liter inline-6 engine:
As with most Jags, it has a truck (boot) capable of holding a couple of shotgun cases.
No prizes for guessing which shotguns I’d carry in it, either:
For more pics and its back story, go here. What the hell, why should I be the only one to suffer?
Strange Foods
We’ve all had some fun in the past as we marveled at the various eclectic (ahem) dishes enjoyed by Brits (faggots, toad-in-the-hole, black pudding etc.).
Among these was the “chip butty”:
…which of course is just potato in a sandwich — carbohydrates squared, so to speak.
So if we carry the concept one step further, we get the “crisp sandwich”:
(made all the more confusing because of the chips/fries/crisps nomenclatures that divide us).
Actually, the latter sandwich is not too bad, simply because unlike here in Murka, Brit “crisps” are sold in a dizzying array of flavors — prawn, chicken, lamb, beef and so on — along with the various sub-groups (chicken tikka, steak, hamburger, sausage, lamb & mint sauce, etc.) as well as the staples such as cheese & onion and salt & vinegar.
Sometimes the crisp sandwich is not a stand-alone — you can add your usual sandwich fillings like cheese, salami and so on — with the crisps added for both flavor and crunch*.
Needless to say, this being Britishland, a whole bunch of !SCIENTISTS! decided to explore the latter to see which made the best option. And here are the results:
Now you know.
*By the way: the combination of bread, butter, BBQ brisket and jalapeno-flavored “chips” is a pretty tasty dish.
Quote Of The Day
Got to say, I missed that one.
Let The Market Decide
We often hear that mantra from free-traders and staunch capitalists, but sometimes the situation isn’t that simple. Take this example in the exquisitely-beautiful town of St. Ives, in Cornwall, Britishland:
Landlords and businesses have been buying up properties in the area and converting them into summer homes, meaning there is nowhere left for locals to rent.
Jasmin cannot find a new place to rent and her tenancy is due to end on May 10. She has exhausted letting agents and spare room sites, and fears in three weeks she will be sleeping rough.
And from the local council:
“The boom in house prices and the demand for holiday accommodation is causing a significant reduction in the availability of homes to rent. It matched sudden escalation in rental costs.
“Private landlords have been moving away from long-term letting and instead moving towards the short-term holiday market.”
Read the whole thing.
I know that many towns in rural counties Over Here have had the same problems — transplanted Californians, ’nuff said — to where locals with jobs in those towns have to find a place to live in further-off towns, sometimes as much as an hour’s drive (or more) away.
Jackson Hole in Wyoming, when I first drove through there back in 1987, was a one-horse town that had nothing to recommend it other than proximity to Yellowstone and a couple of ski runs; now, it’s the place to find Hollywood types and other California scum in their vacation homes, with all the foul side-effects: expensive housing, expensive eateries, empty streets out of season, and so on.
I don’t have any solutions — at least, not free-market solutions — so maybe it’s up to the local governments to step in; although getting government involved usually if not always seems just to exacerbate the problem.
I welcome discussion on the topic, in Comments.