Budapest is burning

The New European Environment – starring my brother Craig Young

An Emotional weather report

So, as usual after coffee and various salves I began my day with a check of the headlines and see Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard has called a snap election which she’ll probably win. Speaking of woman premieres, it seems Margaret Thatcher’s family are appalled by the idea of Meryl Streep playing Mrs T in a movie.

Speaking of …ecological disasters BP think they might have finally put a cap on the leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But I see also an oil pipeline has exploded in China and is keeping 2000 firefighters busy, which sounds like a pretty big blaze to me. The phrase “It’s a wonder these kind of things don’t happen more often” is fast becoming redundant. We’re all going to have to be brave to make it in this scary new world. Meanwhile, the environmental update from the Hungarian capital is that it’s hot… How hot? Well, it was 85 degrees Fahrenheit last night at 11pm in Budapest and this evening it is, as I like to say in a voice like Sam Elliott’s, still “hotter than a snake’s hide in a wagon rut” now at 7pm CET.

And I’m sitting here in the living room of this rather suitable-for-one apartment, trying to write with the television on. Christ, the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. CNN is the only English language channel I can get in my otherwise well equipped and well appointed gentleman’s quarterings in the 7th district, the oh-so boho old Jewish quarter of Budapest. Well, I can’t complain but sometimes I still do. I go to sleep every night in a bed fit for a Transylvanian Prince, in a heavy, antique furniture filled and airy apartment, equidistant to practically everything I need.

Finding gainful employment has been as slow as Continental drift, but that all seems to change around September, when the weather will also be agreeably cooler. Tomorrow, at least according to Wunderground, Budapest has a chance to cool down in the wake of a few welcome rainstorms that’ll wash the streets clean(ish) and give us all some relief. The so-called Jet-Set Hobo (might be time to hang up those spurs) is not cut out for this kind of heat – Not unless I’m near a beach with a pile of good books and someone nice to rub in the sun screen lotion. The position is open by the way, so if you’re glamorous and amorous, drop me a line. I make a good dry martini, I’m a good conversationalist and er, well that’s about it really I suppose.

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‘At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.’

George Orwell

Lunched today with my friend Kiki today and not quite all we could talk about was the Mel Gibson affair.

I'm still here

Good times and bum times, I’ve seen them all and, my dear, I’m still here. Plush velvet sometimes, Sometimes just pretzels and beer, But I’m here. I’ve stuffed the dailies In my shoes. Strummed ukuleles, Sung the blues, Seen all my dreams disappear, But I’m here.

Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Well quelle surprise, the ‘Jet-Set Hobo’ is still here blogging away when just a few weeks ago we all thought this whole enterprise would be shut down and moved on. Like a gypsy caravan in cyberspace.

Vintage quality Bill Bryson – and it's brand new…

Image via Wikipedia

Bill Bryson: The secret life of your home

Ever wondered why forks have four prongs? Or why we choose salt and pepper over other spices? For his new book, Bill Bryson took a trip around his own house to find out why we live the way we do.

via Bill Bryson: The secret life of your home | Life and style | The Guardian.

In one passage, describing the original owner of the house in Norfolk where he and his family now lives, Bryson writes:

“If it was Thomas Marsham’s goal in life to make as little impression as possible upon history, he achieved it gloriously.”

We’re in the presence of a master here, possibly the most informative and yet funniest non-fiction writer of our times. In the wake of that kind of writing, I know when I’m outclassed. So just read the rest of the article, and marvel again at Bryson’s gift for finding such wonder in the seemingly commonplace and mundane. Still on top of his form, after a long run including A Short History of Nearly Everything, the man shows no sign yet of slowing down. It’s enough to make you weep.

Every ash cloud has a silver lining

Image by Getty Images Europe via Daylife

Just out on the wire with Associated Press, a story by one Slobodan Lejic to the effect that volcanic ash from Iceland has cleared over the rest Europe again – and airports here can operate normally once more. This week anyway.

Flights between North America and Europe are still having to change their flight plans though, to avoid contact with the frightfully active volcano and all of its works.

Unless of course it happens to be one’s own travel plans that are messed about with, it is impossible not to sneakingly admire the majestic indifference of the volcano with the unsayable name, the name that looks like the Hungarian alphabet shuffled through a William Burroughs cut-up machine. That’s right. Eyjafjallajokull.

Aye, jaff, yella, jokel I suspect it sounds like, but irregardless, it certainly makes quite a commotion.

In any case, this so-called Jet-Set Hobo hasn’t got on a plane in over two months, and is thinking of hanging up his spurs. It’s an ill wind that blows no good.

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Editors Note: You need to look at and comment on whether there is any text we could add here. Could we say more on ‘Arriving by Boat’? Is there anything else we could talk about?  Don’t forget to consult the guide as we may have covered other things in the following survival guide pages.

This spread is likely to be reworked as we should have all of the trains/railway info on the same page, and the map on p.235 relates to railways/trains. We may move text on car and boat to the previous spread…it might be an idea to assess this spread at the same time as p.232-233 when you look at what could be added.

'Smart salad dressing' could save Venice

Venice could be saved from sinking into the sea by releasing fat globules similar to olive oil into the water that are ‘programmed’ to form limestone reefs, say architects. The novel solution for the threatened Italian city, built on silty islands on the Adriatic coast, uses experimental technology that they have dubbed “smart salad dressing”. It would work by releasing oil droplets into the water that are chemically programmed to react with carbon dioxide in the water, precipitating an artificial limestone carbonate. Two British architects at University College, London, are among those behind the Future Venice project.

Rachel Armstrong, from UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture, explained the “protocell” technology. She said: “This technology is based on the chemistry of oil and water and has the special property of transforming carbon dioxide into a limestone-like substance.” The globules would form “solid pearls” of artificial limestone that could protect buildings from future damage, she argued. via ‘Smart salad dressing’ could save Venice – Telegraph.

This might just be the first post I’ve added to this site which comes under the environmental category. Doubtless it has to do with my all encompassing belief that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket anyway. But some things are worth preserving, and a few of these are man made.

Keith Floyd's farewell: bananas, bow ties and the Stranglers

The TV chef’s coffin, made from banana leaves, is carried away after the service. Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters

The flamboyant life of Keith Floyd, the pioneering TV chef and restaurateur, was celebrated at a typically unconventional funeral in Bristol yesterday. Floyd, 65, who suffered a heart attack last month after treatment for bowel cancer, was cremated in a coffin made from banana leaves and draped with sunflowers, a reminder of his beloved Provence. Mourners at the humanist service – some wearing colourful bow ties in honour of his sartorial trademark – heard reminiscences not only of Floyd’s reckless vivacity and love of good food and wine, but also of the pain his reliance on alcohol and sometimes selfish behaviour could bring to others.

via Keith Floyd’s farewell: bananas, bow ties and the Stranglers | Life and style | The Guardian.

If you search YouTube, you’ll find roguish Keith Allen’s complete documentary on Keith Floyd. Then again, maybe you’re better off not watching it, if like me you were a fan of the most entertaining of television cooks. Too much reality can spoil the broth sometimes. At the time of the filming, he was sixty-five, but looked frail and at least ten years older. It quickly became clear that he was not merely the happy-go-lucky lush we all loved on the telly, but a full-blown alcoholic.

And the last time I checked, none of us are perfect. It doesn’t diminish the pleasure he gave to millions, and specifically to this correspondent. Bon voyage sir, you were missed before you had even really gone.

My dossier with the US State department

You meet some peculiar types on the fringes of filmmaking’s wild frontiers, I’m here to tell you. Apropos of nothing I fished up an old email today from one of the oddest I’ve encountered.  It was when I was busy putting together my little arthouse number A Cafe in the Sky that we met online. He’s this American-Hungarian guy who lives in Indianapolis and posts adverts on The Budapest Sun and such, claiming for instance he has a 5,000,000€ investment pool to spread around. I was a bit more gullible five years ago than I am now, but even then I always had my doubts. You know, if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

This guy, whom we’ll call Drew Kovacs, because that’s what he called himself, did however keep me guessing for several weeks, and many other people for much longer. He did this simply by telling us what we wanted to hear; always claiming that as soon as a federal court judge released his funds, he would be bankrolling ‘Forever Young Pictures’. This would start with ‘Flux Inc’ underwriting the cost of flying my crew out to California, for a meeting with Francis Ford Coppola, no less.  When the day came the tickets were supposed to arrive, Kovacs disappeared off the radar for a month or so. When he resurfaced, it was with another loony-tune email to everyone on his email CC list about another Flux Inc new ‘business venture’, ‘Globotron Intermodal Connectivity’; or some such nonsense. Well, I’d had just about enough. I blew my stack and sent an email to everyone on his list, letting them know Kovacs was regularly in the business of talking up investments he was in no position to make.

His response, as I later found out, was to write to the US Ambassador to Hungary, an edited version of which follows after the jump…