Funfare for the Common Man

History really does repeat itself. It wasn’t funny then, it isn’t funny now, but has reached theatre-of-the-absurd proportions. For long-time loyal readers, this is all familiar ground, covered multiple times before. But let’s start from the beginning. Or rather, now: as most of you know, I am here in Ukraine. You might be aware that Ukraine is in the news rather a lot these days. Or rather, these hours. Let’s rewind: I spent much of my childhood, much of the 80s and early 90s in Europe, where a slowly simmering Cold War was fizzling out. I didn’t grow up with any type of existential fear, but there was always that looming concern that something might kick off between the US and the Soviets. I grew up in an American military household, and my old man’s mantra was ‘better dead than red’. The Soviet Union, and the lurking threat of communism on our doorstep, was the big enemy. In 1984, just before going on air to give his weekly radio address to the American people, Ronald Reagan said, i...

Part IV on my Reflections of 10 years of Teaching: How students annoy us If you missed parts I, II and III, you can easily find them on the right of this page, from April, May and July. What started out as a monthly series of ‘this time 10 years ago’ teaching reflections has hit a lengthy hiatus – at least I’m consistently optimistic even if I can’t deliver on my promises. Forgive me – I’ve been busy. But this has turned out to me one of my most pondered-over, drawn-out posts. I started writing this almost 3 months ago. I wrote a draft and put it aside, to be polished up a day or two later. But then I remembered one or two more ideas and then put off adding them for a week or two. And then I thought of more…and more…and then it started to get out of control and I could barely stop myself. I’ve probably updated this, re-ordered some of the points, added a few, deleted a couple…I don’t know, about 9-10 times now. I’d make a lousy journalist – I’m undisciplined,...

I know my loyal and faithful fans and readers are waiting on tenterhooks for the next instalment of my World Culinary Cup extravaganza, and I certainly don’t want to disappoint. But as we’re leaving on holiday in a matter of hours, I’ll have to rush this one a bit. (Although I’m the king of leaving things till the last minute, I did have to wait until last night’s final quarterfinal match before I could write this…obviously…) After the group stages, things started to fall apart on the cooking front. Perhaps it was the initial euphoria that wore off, perhaps we lost momentum, and we certainly lost a bit of inspiration. Doing it the right away became pretty time-consuming and a wee bit stressful at times, rushing around like a blue-arsed fly trying to get the ingredients I needed. I should have just kept it simple and done something like a World Cup Beer Odyssey, as a former colleague Jonathan has been doing (impressively tracking down a Sam Adams for the US, as well). How t...