Jamie Shiers

Another flip - this time to Hamburg. Not even 10 years since I was here last, but certainly several lifetimes ago... Early 'training' in Munich allows me to explain why Weissbier is so called (and its not because its (not) white...). Did it always taste of bananas? Meet up with SMNP - not a new protocol or a typo but an old school friend from 'Hogwarts', with whom I went Interrailing, ending up in Zurich, eating Spago for the first time, after a small 'disaster' in Italy... Forgot to ask if he remembered Hagrid...

First visit here was at the time of the 1980 CERN School of Physics in Malente. For some reason, we were desperate to get a computer account here - on the striking red IBM mainframe - but this was only possible on Thursdays, in the afternoon.

Many visits since - particularly in the 'years of Fat', and early ODBMS days.

So everything seems related to everything else, max two hops away?

So a great breakthrough in physics has been made - something that puzzled Richard Feynman himself - namely why spaghetti breaks into more than two pieces:

"Richard Feynman—maverick physics genius, Nobel laureate and father of modern quantum theory—could not work out why, when a strand of dried spaghetti is snapped, it almost never breaks in half but instead fragments into three or more pieces." (from the Economist Web edition)

A much more important question is surely - where did all the long spaghetti go? Over the years it has gradually been disappearing. I never found it in French supermarkets, but it was sold in Swiss ones until recently. I sincerely doubt that it was all bought up by physicists for their experiments. Certainly the shorter stuff - 24.1 cm apparently - is easier to shift about. But it doesn't 'taste' as good. At least not to me. Even scan barilla.com and pasta.it Just seems to have been wiped off the face of the earth.

Anyway, here's a sauce with a difference... Make your arrabiata sauce as you normally do (I tried kumatoes once - I guess this is the correct plural - but they were pretty mince). I currently use a spice mix I bought in Rome airport - previously I used dried chillis from Arizona :-) Just toss in a few not-overripe figs. Greatly softens the taste so that you can use more chilli :-) :-)

As its stuffed full of garlic, guess it wasn't the kindest thing to eat before going to the dentist. Talking of which, why is it - no matter how late or early you turn up - you always have to wait for a few minutes in the waiting room, reading the same magazines that were there the first time you ever went to said dentist?

Back to my spaghetti quest - I'll track it down sooner or later. Just like Dominic Hide... And the book about Turks & Caicos with the most unfortunate title (ask me...)

(One of my searches uncovered a description of how to build a toad-proof frog pond!)

I guess enough has been written about BA's catering woes. Hit me 3 times in 3 business days, which is not bad going (first by all flights being cancelled, 2nd & 3rd by trip to Oslo, via Heathrow).

Upon passport control at Geneva (the 2nd, BA one), turns out you can get a 18SF voucher if you run after someone making a fast exit. This - even at inflated airport prices - you can exchange for something far better than I've had on a European flight since the good old days of Swissair, when breakfast on a mainly empty Airbus to London was a pleasure.

Things at Heathrow are a bit stickier. A bag of crisps, some dipping sauce, an apple and a couple of biscuits. Wonder what they get in Club? (A choice of apples?)

Coming back is even more fun. I ask if we're leaving on time - why I don't know as you can never believe the answer. Plane is arriving soon - and it touches down on queue. Boarding time passes, departure time passes. What is happening? Turns out the crew are stuck in traffic (obviously they don't listen to the 'friendly' in-flight announcement saying you MUST be at your gate 1/2 hour before departure). When we take off the story has changed to 'late in-coming aircraft'. ?? Turns out the person next to me was due to leave the day before - on the plane I came in on. Apparently it was cancelled due to 'a bit missing'. Wonder if it was missing when I was on it? Guess so... No food, no voucher, nothing. Same onto Geneva, but managed to get a bag of crisps after explaining that I was unable to arrive at the airport early and provision myself due to - late in-coming aircraft... (well, it works for me...)

To be reminded what service is, just visit Switzerland. Car up on the ramp - all four wheels changed in parallel. As fast a change as a pit-stop. On your way as fast as you can say "toblerone".

We all came out to Bellevue
On the lake Geneva shore
To ride out see the fireworks
We've seen them all before
The fireworks at the fete
Are about the best around
Some stupids talk of others
But they're the best I've found
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky

Fetes de Geneve - August 2005

(whilst having a 'Douglas Adams' experience lying on the roof of a boat and gazing up at the stars)

Where do they dream up the names of airports? Take Fuhlsbuettel for example. Sounds like an over-dose of Tolkein. Or Malpensa - clearly a bad idea. John Wayne International airport is better. "Get off your house and drink your milk." Or John Lennon International airport - above us only sky. But Robin Hood? (Nottingham / East Midlands).

Why not James Marshall Hendrix airport? (Seattle?) Or Frank Zappa? (Baltimore?) A bit more exciting than London Luton... (or do I mean Lorraine Chase International?)

Sunday afternoons in the basement of the Music School. We dreamed of Marshall stacks, Stratocasters, Les Pauls, EB3s and so forth, whilst the reality was 2nd hand Vox amps from Joe Macaris musical exchange in Shaftesbury avenue and cheap Ibanez copies. Nevertheless, long extended improvisation sessions, playing Cream, Hendrix, The Doors, Led Zep, Iron Butterfly...

"Badge" often sounded more like "bodge" and its pretty hard to do a "Ginge" bass drum roll with only one bass drum...

Now repeated trips to Silicon Valley and elsewhere have allowed me to build up my musical menagerie - a Strat, Fender Precision bass, Sax from Japan, pocket trumpet from Prague, mandolin from Ireland...

Managed to revive the Jazz club - a la Dead Poets' Society - to allow frequent visits to the Rainbow theatre in Finsbury park: 80p to see Miles Davis, West Bruce & Laing, Chick Corea, Eric Clapton...

Mind you, then there was the famous "Wheeley pop festival" (in an off year when the Isle of Wight was cancelled). Berkley James Harvest playing Mocking Bird late at night, Rod(?) and T-Rex(??!) No Janis or Jimi...

Stayed at a B&B in SFO where the latter used to hang out - actually in the Janis room.

Waiting to board a plane in Hong Kong and I read about the Cream Reunion concerts in the Albert Hall - my old haunt, just opposite Imperial College. Is there any way I can make it back in time?

When it gets tough, just put on Goodbye Cream, crank up the volume to max, hang the Gibson round the neck and play
this

I guess like for many ex-public schoolboys, Hogwarts brings back memories. We didn't have a Tom Riddle, but we did have a Ridley - also the local brewery. No Malfoy, but the prep. school motto was 'garde ta foy', the school itself having been setup by that great benefactor Lord Richard Riche (sic). Other 'houses' (leagues) in the junior school being named after e.g. Cromwell... Breakfast was normally huge bowls of real porridge - with salt - then half a slice of fried bread + a rasher of bacon, then toast and marmelade. Other treats included the whole skin off the custard bowl and even rice pudding. And a fear of spaghetti (as it was the Heinz tinned kind) that I was sure had worms in and took me many years to get over. (I finally did so at Zurich station whilst inter-railing and then, with shades (again) of the Tin Drum proceeded to eat it almost every night for at least 10 years...)

Unfortunately, things were not quite the same at the senior school - food that I wouldn't (and don't) give me dog.

The school porter too reminded me of Hagrid - or vice versa. And those years of carpentry lessons mean that I can fit an Ikea kitchen like a snap. Mind you, after 6 years of Latin, I can't even remember "Caesar adsum jam forte, Brutus aderat.." correctly. Although I do remember he seemed to spend lots of time attacking ditches with arrows.

But it was there that I read about Mr Tomkins in Wonderland and other books by George Gamow. Which somehow started me on the meandering path that led to Geneva, the birth of the Worldwide Web and later the Grid...

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

-- J R R Tolkien