Alderman & Sheriff Professor Mainelli prepares to blow
Connecting with other people via video conference (VC) is a fact of life at the moment. I reported some surreal conversations during our youth club reunion last week…
…and the surreal nature of some conversations continues unabated.
During the week most of my VCs are business ones, but we have implemented a programme of short “water-cooler” type gatherings for the Z/Yen team; one or two a day at the moment, to help people punctuate their working days with a bit of social interaction if they wish.
One topic which dominated the conversation last week was lentils. Linda, who has been laid low with suspected Covid-19, mentioned that she had made herself a pan-full of lentil soup for sustenance.
Janie picked up on this idea mid-week – her research suggested that lentil soup was almost certainly both a vaccine and a cure for Covid-19 (and many other ailments). So Janie promptly gathered together the necessary ingredients and made a large consignment of concentrated lentil gloopiness, good for many portions of soup and/or savoury breakfast mush with yoghurt.
I mentioned Janie’s research at the Z/Yen gathering on Thursday.
On Friday, presumably not wanting to risk being out-lentiled, Michael Mainelli showed us a 5kg sack of red lentils, which he had just procured during his “one-a-day” walk; on this occasion down Brick Lane.
Given the quantity of nutritional lentilly substances that Janie managed to conjure up with just 250g of lentils, I should imagine that a 5kg bag will keep the Mainelli family going, as it were, for quite some time.
I suggested that London might replace Chicago as the “Windy City” if we carry on escalating pulse purchases at this rate.
But these Z/Yen virtual-breaks are not all talk about legumes. Oh no. I mentioned my early music playing hobby the other day, only to learn that Juliet enjoyed seeing Joglaresa recently and wondered whether I knew the medieval song about the killer rabbit.
In truth I was unfamiliar with both the band and the notion that there might be a killer rabbit song, but the idea did remind me of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, so I told Juliet about Ian Pittaway’s version of the song about a miraculously animated pork chop:
Indeed, my suspicions were well-founded. The Joglaresa song in question…
…is one of those Cantigas. In truth, not really about a killer rabbit but about a glutinous pilgrim who nearly chokes to death on a rabbit bone but is saved by the Virgin Santa Maria’s intervention – click the link for a more restrained version of the song with a good translation of the words.
In my opinion, the animated pork chop is more miraculous than the non-fatal rabbit bone one, but my opinion on Santa Maria miracles is really neither here nor there.
Anyway, all this talk of rabbits brings us neatly back to BBYO youth club virtual gatherings, as we regrouped on Sunday.
We discussed many things, of course, not just a continuation of the brace of rabbits saga from last week.
Mark was able to join us on this occasion, whereas Ivor was not; nor was Wendy. Nine of us, there were. Martin ran two sessions for part of the meeting for some reason, but that doesn’t count as two people.
We learnt that no rabbit has been spayed since we last gathered but that the pair were being kept socially distant for their own sakes. This felt to me like a societal metaphor in these days of lockdown.
We then had a macabre conversation about furry mammal morbidity, with several inappropriate suggestions about carnivorous possibilities, tales of burying various furry mammals at various stages of rigor mortis, Fatal Attraction style possibilities…
…I mean, really. Shouldn’t we all have grown out of this sort of thing by now?
No.
We’re going to gather again next week. One of the more disciplined among us really should draw up an agenda and some etiquette guidelines…I’m not volunteering, just suggesting that somebody ought to…