Pink Sauce

Several people expressed curiosity about that delicious concoction I invented for my pasta, so here is a little piccie so that said people get a better idea. ok, it looks more orange than pink, here but that's because I didn't put quite enough cream in (it's normally shrimpish pink). Give it a go... go on, you know you want to. (for those wondering, the yellow rectangle at the back of the plate is Emmental)

It was announced this week that Gordon Brown has officially invited Pope Ratzinger to visit UK. This he will do next year. Already, protests are announced ( in Brighton, tomorrow ) against the invitation and a Facebook group has been created for longer term action. Today Tanya Gold has published a damning summary of the Catholic Church's actions in the Guardian. Ignore the bells and the smells and the lovely Raphaels, the Pope's visit to Britain is nothing to celebrate. Gordon Brown is 'delighted', David Cameron is 'delighted'. I am 'repelled'. Read the full article here . In the meantime, the Vatican has come out with a little gem of hypocritical bad faith (!), stating "that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger." I suppose that makes it ok, then. right?

(Part of) the view from my window: Palace of Westminster's Victoria Tower in the sunset

As of tonight, my blog Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog , that "place where I can vent my frustration, express ideas and generally open my big gob without bothering too many people" which will be 6 in a couple of months, becomes Pink Sauce . While the URLs zefrog.blogspot.com and www.zefrog.eu are still valid to access this page, the main URL now becomes www.pinksauce.co.uk. There is a vague plan to create a proper website for www.zefrog.eu to which the blog would be linked. Why Pink Sauce , you may ask. It is both simple and complicated. For several years, I have grown out of love for the name of the blog. It felt a bit cumbersome and clumsy. That said, I never really looked into changing it, seriously. Tonight, for dinner, I had pasta with a special pink sauce of my concoction ; single cream and ketchup. I know most people while feel nauseous at the very though of the mixture but trust me, it's gorgeous. Don't knock it till you've tried it. After having had my platte...

Something extraordinary happened on the way to Oxford Circus yesterday, and in my life. I got there first! At the end of May, my contract with VisitBritain came to an end (it had been originally a six month contract and had already been extended). Since then the hunt for a new job proved rather unfruitful and sometimes frustrating . In the first three months, I was only invited to one interview, for a small charity based in Shoreditch. Although the feedback was very positive, I wasn't hired. I had only come second. Not the first time this had happened to me for an interview. Unusually perhaps, though that was certainly welcomed, I was recommended by this first charity to a second one that was looking for someone in a similar position. I duly submitted my application and was invited to an interview. This took place on Tuesday. Though that was apparently unplanned but not unforeseen, a second round of interviews had to take place to differentiate between two remaining candidates. And...

The following has appeared in PinkNews under the title Comment: Brown's apology to Alan Turing is not good enough . The readers of this blog, who know how militant and political I can get, may be surprised to hear that I did not sign the widely publicised petition for an official apology to Alan Turing . Of course this campaign is in many ways a very positive thing. It brought a dark page of the history of the LGBT community to the forefront, making the wider public aware of what some of us (many still alive today, no doubt) have had to endure from their own country. It also served to highlight the way LGBT people have been treated by historians simply because of their unorthodox sexual orientation; how they have been prevented from taking their rightful place in the history books and have instead been firmly kept into the historical closet, regardless of the scope of their achievements. As the news that Gordon Brown has taken the highly unusual step to actually grant the demanded ...

We all know (or hope) that flea markets will offer hidden treasures. And sometimes they just do. A lucky find in Deptford market, a couple of years ago, has made me, for the grand old sum of £5, the happy owner of a photo album with some very interesting shots. Although there are virtually no annotations in the album, it seems that the pictures were taken between 1930 and the late 1940's. Some may even be earlier. Most the pictures are of groups of young people involved in camps and excursions organised by the Crusaders Union but some show views of the Queen Mary and sailing boats, of Stratford Upon Avon and other unnamed places, and of steam trains. Those about London - there are only seven of them recognisably of London itself - can be viewed in the Londonist gallery dedicated to them here .

This is the full-length version of my review for Londonist . Regular readers will also know that this is my first book review. Imagine looking at a picture of a place you know well in a mirror. Everything you know seems there but somehow it's not quite right, it's not quite the same. This is how it feels reading Up West by Pip Granger. The street names and the landmarks are all there, though many have also now gone. The busy and diverse crowds are also livening up the streets but the colours have gone and everything has the drab greyness of post-war Britain and its pea-soupers. The smells are different too. Stronger and earthier. As Granger points out herself, there has been many books about the area, some are general histories, some are focusing on certain communities living there. Many are about the famous "boozy chums" of the author. "At once a history, a memorial and a love story" (p21), Up West is all of these things as it draws on the lives and testim...