Supertentacular

I do have to say, of all the useless instructions discovered in recipes, "Take care not to break the ink-sac" must be one of the most useless, where it comes with no further guide as to where the ink-sac might actually be found.

However! I was twice protected in this instance: once by having spent inordinate amounts of time with my hand inside octopodes, so that I do actually know where the ink-sac is, and once again by the fact that the ink-sac in this instance had burst en route, so that actually there was nothing I could do about it; I just had to be a bit scrupulous in the washing dept.

Oh, and endure the terrible tedium of over-attentive cats. Who got splashed and trodden on and still kept fussing about my feet, in their determined expectation of octopus they did not get. And were never going to get, which you would think they would have figured out by now.

Still, we got there in the end. I have octopus in the oven, roasting with potatoes and onions and wine and suchlike. Very shortly, I shall go to eat it.

That is all.

In which I fail at movies

This weekend has tried - unsuccessfully, and unexpectedly - to be all about Tom Hanks.

Tonight, I did try to watch The Da Vinci Code. I made an honourable effort. Thing was, though, I got so bored in the first half-hour that I fell asleep, and when I woke up I just, y'know, couldn't be bothered any more? It was dreary. Even the self-flagellating albino was dreary, and there's a sentence I never thought I'd type.

Whereas yesterday I started watching Philadelphia just because I kinda wanted to hear the opening music again - and then, I dunno, I stayed for a while. What it is, I've never rewatched it since release because my memory of it was all about courtroom drama, one slick lawyer suffering discrimination from other slick lawyers, oh noes! - and who cares? Not I. (They said, "But Chaz! It's AIDS discrimination!" and I said, "Yes, but why? It doesn't have to be. It could be race or gender or any other kind of prejudice, the story remains the same. And there's no leeway: we know from the off who's guilty here and who's innocent, because we see it, so we know whose side the movie's on, we know the movie cares, so I don't have to...")

What I'd forgotten, of course, is that it is also an AIDS movie on the side, albeit superficial and transitory; and I Tiresias have foresuffered all. I remember those dashes to the toilet, dashes to Casualty. Collapsing veins and enduring friendships, all of that. I got caught up, a bit. Tho' I did still miss most of the second half; there was cooking to be done, and I'm not so good at sitting through the whole of a movie undistracted, unless I'm actually at a cinema.