'suffering in Paradise'

I worked three long days in a row this week. The first I went to Belgium and back in a day via Eurostar train, a long 18hr day. It was to interview the best banana expert in Europe. A Flemish professor who genetically modifies all sorts of bananas in various labs and green houses. He reckons the Cavendish type, the only distributed type that we all eat worldwide is at great risk of extinction, but he's going to save it! The gros michel was the only banana at the turn of the last century that everybody ate, and that became extinct midcentury. So they found the Cavendish to replace it.

The next day wasn't so long. Horsham, Surrey, I filmed some old musicians from the skiffle era, the music movement that preceded Blues and Rock'n'Roll. Having lunch at a round table the boys shared old stories of Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard et al. One of them was Bruce Welsh of the shadows who was once engaged to Olivia Newton John, apparently. One story was of a 'band' of fellas that went to a hotel after their gig, and were all offered a lady to sit with. One man said his offered partner (the other guys declined the offer because they knew it would be expensive!) was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, and said he loved her. They met often during his stay, but she said she would only charge for the first sitting since she felt the same way about him. Only at the end of the week when they were leaving did he realise his mistake when he saw his bill was ten times that of his colleagues!

Yesterday was a marathon run of interviews, amounting to a 15hr day. It was a very interesting day, all the interviewees were intellectuals commenting on food in one respect or another. I never knew that Ghengis Kahn's strength as an armada was that they had an incredible advantage that no other army had during the era. They survived because they depended on their horses for everything. On transport, on carrying the army, and on nutrition. They drank their milk, and they drank their blood. They would make a small cut at the jugular vein in the throat and drink from it immediately before it would coagulate. Then they would seal the cut quickly afterwards. This is how Kahn managed to conquer more than half of asia so rapidly.

It wouldn't be so tiring if my body still wasn't recovering from the first long day in Belguim. One of the contributors we interviewed yesterday said something that provoked me to write this entry in this blog. I think he's a university lecturer in Oxford, possibly in food history or sociology. Upon hearing that I had two young girls, and my comment that it isn't easy work especially when they're young he said, 'parenthood is like suffering in Paradise'.