Montreux II
The picture below I took of a couple chilling out this afternoon…
Possibly after having visited Uncle, below…
“Hello, sir. Kebap? Bon soir.”
And here’s another one. I like this town.
Montreux I
The view is of the mountains that appear on the Evian bottles, from the rear. Welcome to Montreux, Switzerland. The roar of London is exchanged for the thundering calm of this beautiful corner of Lake Geneva. Beautiful because as well as being home to breathtaking nature and spellbinding silence, next-door does great kebabs. Meet Le Palais Oriental. With its impressively intricate interior and tasty lamb, the Palais dishes up the usual tagines and couscous and – being owned being Iranian-owned, also the Persian staple chello kebab.
It’s safe to say that out of fifteen restaurants, one or two will know how to treat both meat and customer. That Le Palais gets in right in this picturesque location is remarkable. Next time you see an Evian bottle turn it around see if you can see me having a kebab.
Sign of the times
Picture: Hackney, east London
Given the rise in oil prices, I guess your car has to run on something
Through the blinds
This was the scene outside my house on Sunday. There are always police sirens going off and occasionally helicopters. This blog will be updated Monday.
Negative advertising
Angry Whopper? I should think eating it would make you angrier. This being London, the Whopper pictured is no doubt tired of seeing darkies everywhere, wonders what happened to the real England, the sense of community that used to be here, blames it all on the immigrants and thinks fast food and Nazis are the answer.
Aren’t burgers German? Did Hitler not come to power with their support. It’s fitting that negative human traits should sell junk food. Below is a photo from Kentucky selling Wicked chicken. A reference to how the poor birds are treated and culled? No chance. Both these photos were taken in Whitechapel in east London last week
What next — Arsehole McNuggets? Wanker French Fries?
City Road, London EC1
Spotted these on the way to work yesterday. The morning commute is all about bodies, being squeezed together on the Tube, bumping into each other at the ticket gates and going home alone to makes sense of it all. Out of shot, across the road, a window cleaner is abseiling down a building. In the rush of the morning, we could see an elephant showering itself with hippos at the traffic lights, the moon could fall out of the sky and wouldn’t notice.
A humble update
Today summer arrived early and I went to Richmond park, a nature reserve in south-west London. There were bunnies. Hares or rabbits, don’t know, but one was munching buttercups. There was also a wedding. Everyone in the wedding was white. I wondered if the bride and groom knew any members of an ethnic minority. Not that I’d hold it against them. The sort of weddings I go to I wonder if we’re in England.
At this picturesque cafe, there were quite a few seniors. And one Iranian woman with silk shorts. She and her friend did not know how to dress summer without looking like they were in Monaco or somewhere where people were shiny shorts. I was behind her in the queue to buy a coffee. She shuffled in her bling bag, embarrassed that she could not find her dough. A hefty clutch of notes emerged she made sure we all saw.
There was great view of the south-west of London from the top of the hill. Planners had clearly made sure no high-rises were built to spoil it.
Today’s intake: Banana for breakfast, then a tuna sandwich my sister made me. Then, after my several hours of relaxing in Richmond Park, a chana masala curry, dal, a little bit of rice, grilled chicken and sag paneer from a curry place near my sister’s. We made sure to ask for use little oil because my brother has a heart problem. I don’t, but I will if I keep guzzling the oil Indian restaurants drown their food in.
My sister caught me listening to the victory speech of a Nazi who got elected into the London assembly last week, on YouTube.
“Why are you watching that,” she said. “No wonder you’re depressed.”
What do you watch on YouTube? She pointed me to a video of the Muppets singing what was a cute song about time being in a bottle. She had a point.
Richmond Park and I are going to spend some time together this summer. My locale is simply too inner city to allow you to relax. People always seem to be shouting at each other and cursing. Either that or they are talking to themselves, probably rehearsing for their next row.
Thoughts on Amstetten and Israel
- The BBC and pretty much every outlet has, in reporting the Amstetten incest story, consistently used the word ‘fathered’ — as in Josef Fritzl has fathered seven children with his daughter. The word has irritated me all week but I thought if all of the English-language media can’t think of a better word how can I? Then I came across this story in Der Spiegel’s English service. It found the word that had eluded the BBC and me: Fritzl sired children with his daughter. Ah, doesn’t that feel better
- The only good news about the Amstetten story is that Josek Fritzl is not a Muslim. Note how the media doesn’t report ‘Christian man keeps daughter under locks for 24 years’. Had he been a Muslim so-called expert after expert would be offering amateur dissections of the ‘Islamic’ mind and how it is predisposed to such barbarity. Had Fritzl been Muslim, consumers of Westerner media could rest assured that such barbarity belongs not to Us, but Them, the darkie orientals. But no, Fritzl is white and as far as I know, Christian. Phew.
- Rightly, the people of Amstetten are reporting to be soul-searching and wondering how such horror could be going on under their noses. On the day this news arrived, news also arrived that Israel had killed four Palestinian children. Gaza, like the basement in Amstetten, is ignored by its neighbours while Israel’s policy of collective punishment carries on unchallenged, as it has done since its inception 60 years ago. How can four children be killed in one day, a people deprived of fuel for basic needs, how can they suffer zero healthcare, and poverty and how can we allow the Fritzl’s that are Israel’s spokesmen to spout their bile, while Palestine’s children pay the price? Perhaps it is their fault that they were not born in Tibet and that their cause is not as fashionable as it is morally upright. Boycott China in today’s world say Happy Birthday to Israel. It’s okay for a state to be a torturer and a murder, if not an individual.
soul bean café 
