From green to blue

• Tall glass
• Add 1 measure blue curaçao
• Top up with orange juice to desired chromatic effect and/or taste
• Admire strange iridescent green colour, much the same as a Warragamba algal bloom
• Serve with pasta, topped with frozen creamed spinach fried up with garlic.

I'm assured by most of the humans in the house (all bar my own, but then again he's untrustworthy) that this is the standard way of drinking blue curaçao and that to drink it plain or mixed half and half with clear sambuca (thus getting a colour resembling Bombay Sapphire, but a very different taste) is a cruel and unusual act.

Poppycock, I say: we are already short enough on blue foodstuffs and beverages without turning them green with orange juice. That said, I did like the shimmering effect that the photo just can't do justice to, but wanted it in blue.

Ergo:

• 1 measure blue curaçao
• 1 measure pastis

Surprise at first: it doesn't stay blue but turns a rich emerald green.
Mindful of earlier posts about the explosive nature of undiluted pastis, I added some water, and hey presto, a wonderfully cloudy light blue colour, not so much iridescent as metallic.

5 parts water to the above mixture gives a colour very close to the much-loved VW Karmann-Ghia of my youth. Sadly can't find a photo of the actual car (this photo isn't far off; the actual paint colour was from a Volvo 1800), but I'm very pleased to note that it continues to send us postcards via its new owner.

To serve with?
Methinks roquefort risotto, or if it's cold some sort of blue cheese fondue, in which case one could add curaçao the pot in place of some of the white wine.

Will keep you posted once I manage to invite some victims for dinner.

The times they are a-changing

I'm wondering about the etiquette of borrowing halos--in this case belonging to the lovely Greta, kind co-hostess of myself and the pet human for an exciting weekend in the city of light.

The four-way halo, I know, is more Sgt. Pepper than Bob Dylan--but the song seems appropriate as the assembled Antipodean humans were all terribly excited about the last vestiges of the 1950s being purged from the strange institution they call Parliament.

I'm just visible as a tiny speck in the middle of this photo, taken outside the Australian embassy in Paris on polling day by my equally kind and lovely other co-hostess Steph:

I hope Howard and his crew of misogynist God-bothering lunatics appreciate the irony of being ousted by the forbidden fruit of Granny Smith, in the hands of none other than the sinuous, snaky, sine wave of the ABC! I spent most of my formative years in a plastic box in the electorate of Bennelong, so this [I] was [think] a [I] particularly [love] sweet [you] victory [Maxine]!
Dancing in the streets indeed...

Technology is a wonderful thing: thanks to the internet one can now watch TV footage of a drunken Bob Hawke on the commentary panel from the comfort of a Parisian living room. But even he didn't look as pleased as the old feral abacus who resurfaced to comment on the demise of his old archnemesis.

The way the Liberal party are going I'll soon have to dub them the Knights of the long knives... Coconut tapping anyone?

Thankfully, I didn't have to put up with human company all weekend, as Paolo the Seal and Paddington Bear kept me warm and entertained.

Still no luck on the châtelaine/heiress front so it looks like the human will be migrating south some time around January.

Pre-travel comfort food

Well I'm not looking forward to being wrapped up in my pink and white striped sock and stuffed into a bag to catch a train tomorrow (assuming it's running, that is), but at least the human has decided to feed me before doing so.

Cooking directions are as follows:

1 packet merguez sausages (4 for the meal, the remaining 2 for sandwiches to eat on the train)
an onion
150g or so green lentils
2 tomatoes
salt, herbs, stock cubes etc to taste.

Prick the raw merguez all over, fry on very low heat in a heavy saucepan until fat renders. Then remove three sausages, and cut remaining three into 1 inch pieces. Add chopped onion, cook till soft, add lentils. Cook for a few minutes, then add chopped tomatoes, water, remaining ingredients. Cook until a stew-like texture is achieved.

Fry the remaining three merguez to complete cooking (NB: black on the outside, frozen on the inside). Periodically pour fat from frying pan into lentil mixture, weather depending. Reserve two to slice for sandwiches (wrap in paper towel, god these things are fatty!) and serve remaining cooked sausage on top of stew.

Garnish with pickled vegetables left by nonconformist party guest!

Am I turning carnivorous?

According to the usual authoritative sources, hippos are generally vegetarian, with reported incidences of meat-eating and even cannibalism "likely caused by aberrant behavior or nutritional stress."

It must be getting cold then, or have something to do with the boring lentil-potato-pasta diet the stingy humans seem to so delight in: I'm starting to get more and more of an urge to eat meat.

A recent boeuf bourgignon left me still hungry when I came back for seconds, but got me thinking about the unexploded, and as-yet-largely-undrunk supplies of self-made stout sitting in the pantry. Yes, beef and guinness pie definitely on the menu, doubtless to be improved by the je ne sais quoi of the herbes de provence, a cliché anglo-saxon that forms part of the rêve de consommation in whose geographic vagaries my pet human insists in indulging. Can anyone send me a decent recipe? As long as the pie (that's a terrible four-and-twenty joke, slap on the paw Hugo!) is tasty I won't even complain if the text is in unadorned English.

On the same note, I was both inspired and terrified to encounter this blog on the Guardian Food Monthly Website, penned by the author of the even more inspiring and terrifying blogjam dot cow--think Marinetti's Futurist Cookbook meets Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal. I can only applaud the concept of home charcuterie--and can only hope that the spineless human can come to an amicable arrangement with its flatmates about using our cellar for something other than storing junk and bicycles--though will be interested to see how the alphabet progresses.

Ants, Blesbok, Crocodile...as I write this I'm impatiently awaiting the letter D. Do yummy, plummy South Australians served with Mayo count as fair game? H could be more problematic, of course. If humans threaten to eat me I'll have to eat them, endangered or otherwise. Unless, of course, we can compromise on finding a tasty recipe to serve up this dry and tasteless morsel, who (fingers crossed) should soon be stripped of his parliamentary immunity from the garlic crusher:

I await your serving suggestions!

Snow falling on hippos

Serve me right for nattering on about the weather. I ventured out this afternoon in search of cheap wine in bulk and naively assumed the caviste would have a few empty goon bladders or other receptacles available.

To add insult to injury it unexpectedly started snowing on the way back: the human wouldn't stop complaining about trying to cycle with flakes landing in his eyes, and he hadn't even thought to wear a waterproof jacket so I got cold and wet in a woefully inadequate outside pocket of unlined tweed.

Returning without the main ingredient for mulled wine, which had been the purpose of my excursion in the first place, I had to make do with hot chocolate and gingerbread before retiring to my nice warm sock, recently donated by a generous benefactor.

Thankful as I am for my lot, I like to think that my stripy winter abode shares some sort of common spirit with the red tents of Les Enfants de Don Quichotte (The Children of Don Quixote), an association that set up camps of bright red tents around France last winter to protest against inadequate housing and the precarious conditions in which many unfortunate humans are forced to live.

Descartes would have been proud: the government responded last winter by announcing a "droit opposable au logement"--meaning that the state, theoretically, has an obligation to house its citizens, and can face legal action (how useful!) if it fails to do so.

The effect of this law is best described as theoretical; and when not busy trying to break up strikes, the police have been busy removing more recent protest encampments from in front of the Paris stock exchange. A building which, come to think of it, symbolises how great an effect purely abstract propositions and values can have when people suddenly lose confidence in them.

If only more stockbrokers and less illegal migrants were to feel the need to jump out of windows in fright at the first whiff of bacon, the world might be a fairer place.

Autumn gloat

The above picture is basically gratuitous, simply reflecting my success on Sunday in inducing some humans to drive me to the Gorges de Verdon in the mellifluously-named département of the Alpes de Haute-Provence, to which the French have inexplicably (superstitiously?) attributed the number four. Had we walked the other side of the gorge, in département 83 (the Var), I'm not sure I could have fitted enough adverbs into an English sentence.

There is much, it must be said, for autumn scenery, very much lacking in my adopted homeland where nature remains red, yellow and brown for most of the year. As I mentioned in a previous post, the season also matches my colour scheme, and that is important.

Much as I may technically be a river horse, more closely related to whales and cetaceans than to terrestrial even-toed ungulates such as Fidel the Pig (Where is Fidel?!), I spent most of the day in the comfort of an overcoat pocket eating hazelnut chocolate. Yes humans, that was me, though I did enjoy listening to you all argue over who ate the last piece!

It wasn't so much the cold that put me off swimming as the warning signs with elaborate pictographs warning of dire consequences for swimmers of someone suddenly opened the spill gates of the nearby hydroelectric dam. A few more years and there will be no more snowmelt and nice warm rivers to wallow in year round...

Hippopost!

I am most flattered to discover that the most enlightened Republic of South Africa has issued postage stamps in my honour!
Being vain, I would be most grateful if readers could send me any other such artefacts and/or the whereabouts of Fidel the Pig.
I can only hope that hippo post is more reliable than the form of communication represented below--I'm [humph] still waiting for my residence permit. The fact that the molluscs in question appear to be heading in the wrong direction is not encouraging!

Cheese, wine and fireplaces

I was lucky enough to be invited recently to visit an exceptionally friendly group of humans and observe more of their customary practices of an autumnal Friday evening.
The observed ritual--for so I feel that it should be called--appeared to be a modern yet nostalgic variant on that most perverse of human geometries, the Holy Trinity. Added anthropological interest derived from the fact that it employed an obvious mixture of mythologies:

1. The fireplace (out of shot), with obvious pagan symbolism. The burning of tree branches representing nature; that of wooden pallets (also making up the table in question), a post-industrial aesthetic. Customs observed in the course of the evening showed an obvious but complex relationship with the other three fundamental elements: the ashing of cigarettes into the fireplace representing earth, the opening of windows to let smoke escape representing air, and the requirement for pastis to be drunk in its mixed, bright yellow state to prevent nausea, symbolising water.
2. Wine: converted, by a process of cannibalistic transubstantiation (commonly known among humans as a "hangover") into blood, in much the same way stale crackers become flesh. As far as I can see this is yet another reason to disapprove of the violence associated with Christianity: it should be noted that despite their fearsome appearance hippos are committed vegetarians. However, as an engaged observer I felt myself unable to refuse to partake.
3. Cheese: a more mysterious mythology, extensively documented in but not confined to the hexagonal geographical zone known as France. The picture above provides for a number of possibilities: the form of the cheese I found myself sitting on (trois laits: cow, goat, sheep in the same cheese, mmm!) suggests an analogy with the Wheel of Fortune, while the rounded shapes most cheeses points to a gender contrast with the phallic orientation of most wine containers--logs of goat's cheese and wine in a cask providing an exception that proves the rule.

It would be unfair of me to describe over-indulgence as a peculiarly human trait: Dionysus has been known to bestow sentient status on many inanimate objects, as well as greatly improve the seductive and linguistic prowess of lego hippopotamuses. Witness, at a late state of the evening, my animated yet decorous conversation with a rather attractive mature-aged shoe, whose tongue-tied shyness had been cured by the removal of several rows of stitching:

P.S.: Would the human belonging to this shoe be so kind as to supply me with its name and phone number?

Facebook will be punished!!!

Nothing makes my blood boil more than blatant discrimination against hippos, and the latest antics of Facebook really take the cake. I didn't really want to join the blasted site in the first place anyway, but was persuaded to do so to help out some friends running an online publication
in whose pages I hope one day to appear.

Date of birth was the first hurdle: it didn't seem to like the fact that my last reanimation dates from 2006, so I decided on 1949, the year Lego first switched from wooden to plastic building blocks.


That one cunningly solved, I then discovered that the site didn't think Hugo the Hippo was my real name -- though it did patronisingly offer me a link at which, as the proprietor of an unreal name, I could plead my cause. No thank you! Hippos, unlike humans, are creatures of honour.

I will have my revenge: a human strike force is in training as we speak, and Facebook's goal of world domination will soon be mine.

It's time to show your true colours, humans: in the words of the greatest leader of the Free World, you're either with us or against us!

Of psychiatrists and saucepans

I'm actually glad the image here is a little out of focus as the experience itself was quite surreal. One moment, out for a lovely ride through the autumn countryside, the next, my human of burden claims to be in need of a coffee and just happens to be passing the driveway of some supposed friends. A likely story!

It's hard to describe the indignity to which I was submitted--surely normal share houses don't have a spare saucepan containing a few hibiscus flowers and a Hugo-sized psychiatrist, all partly immersed in a liquid that appeared to be water but tasted quite different.

Was this meant to be some sort of tasteless joke, an inversion of Ophelia's suicide from Shakespeare's Hamlet, on an inside-out stage made from scratched aluminium? Or worse, was this some kind of psychiatric experiment, a sort of Casserole of Dr Caligari? I still don't know. Psychiatrists worry me more than dentists, whom I can at least knock out with my hippo breath. It would have all been ok if someone had given me substances to alter my depth perspective, or possibly composed an edgy jazz score in my honour.

Eccentric I may be, but I prefer my follies to be architectural. Which reminds me of the human of burden's latest mutterings in his sleep: should he shack up with a real damsel in a Gothic pile (he always goes for dark hair for some reason), does he need to be worried about hermits?

That sounds all too much like the third book of Nasier's chronicles, though I never did quite finish it so can't tell you how it ends.

On lending a cup of sugar

I was busily bottling my home-brewed beer the other night , very proud that I had managed to locate or improvise the various bits of equipment and a sufficient supply of empty bottles. The only mishap occurred half-way through: due to the resident humans' nasty habit of drinking hot chocolate in bed late at night, there was hardly any sugar left. You need to put a bit of sugar in each bottle before screwing the lid down, as this is what gives the beer its bubbles.

Anyway, this dilemna provided the ideal opportunity to test out a well-worn cliché on the goodness or otherwise of one's neighbours. And sure enough it worked: put on slippers, down one flight of stairs chez Fred with a mug with a broken handle, and I was graciously offered the choice of brown or white, lump, or caster. The latter in each category having been decided upon I thanked Fred, promised to invite him for a tasting, and completed my task.

The mouthfuls of beer I got from sucking on the siphon hose were interesting: a strong dark ale, probably in the region of 7-8%, not too many hops but quite a kick from the infusion of herbes de provence that my pet human insisted in adding in order to live out his Anglo-Saxon cliché about region in which we find ourselves--claiming, of course, that his desire to call the beer "Peter Mayle ale" is ironic!

My only regret relates to the choice of neighbours: I had no doubts about Fred in the first place, and it occurred to me afterwards that it would have been more fun to ask the neighbours across the landing. They seem very nice even if (because??) the humans have nicknamed them the Flanders family. Though there have been dark mutterings that it is they who may have invited a group of Christians to visit the building last week, whom I had to eject by mustering all my hippopotamical ferocity.

I suspect that asking to borrow a cup of sugar in order to bottle my homebrew could well have helped further my studies into the strange ways of humans--much like the experiment I couldn't bring myself to perform, namely asking the local winos to hang on to their empty bottles for me in return for a refilled one.

Such are my neighbours.

Seeking courtly love

I'm a little embarrassed to write this, but here goes...

My pet human, whose residence permit expired on Thursday, finally seems to be worrying about his long-term financial future. He also claims to want to remain close to sources of moderately-priced goat's cheese, and continue cycling around Provence.

With this in mind, he has charged me with finding him a partner.

His ideal soulmate is:

• Intelligent and humorous
  
• Not too thin (he's a big fan of 19th century Impressionist portraiture)
• Tolerant of strange hours
• In possession of:
• A fortune sufficient for two
• An EU passport (provisional member states will be considered on their merits)
• A château.

Period and architectural style are negotiable, but the following example is intended as a guide:

Bonus credit will be awarded to applicants who enjoy mushroom risotto, and dislike W. B. Yeats and/or George Orwell.

Permission would be sought to consume fermented and spirituous liquors upon occasion while in bed (say no more than twice per week), though it is envisaged that this aspect of domestic life could be the subject of mutual negotiation.

Other than that, my human is quite flexible, and happy to experiment with cooking of all kinds.

Applications below.

The Laughing Cow

Say cheese everyone!

I'd like to introduce you to my good friend the laughing cow. We have a lot in common, but she tends to betray her national origins a bit too much, being a little bit two-dimensional and obsessed with geometry. Just imagine opening her up to find sixteen identically-sized pieces of cheese inside, each cut at an angle of...let me see...22.5 degrees.

I love her self-referential earrings--in fact I'm thinking of getting a pair done myself. Note that there's not just a single mise en abyme (picture inside a picture) but two in each frame, so every time you look into an earring the number of images doubles. This just goes to show that cows knew about computers long before humans did.

The only thing that worries me is that she's gone on a diet since we last caught up--please, Laughing Cow, I don't want to see you doing down the dreaded légère (light) path please. Remember that your country has laws proudly displaying the fat content of every cheese.

Watch out, or next we'll be hearing about low-fat frozen hamburgers.

NEWS FLASH -- Revenge of the Penguins!

Some of you may remember Mr. Flart Analsen (for this was his name), the stalwart inflatable penguin who stood guard over the first floor balcony of my house in Ultimo until disappearing one night in mysterious circumstances.

I am pleased to report that he has returned with a vengeance, news video to be found here.

Let this be a lesson: inflatable penguins may be softer than plastic hippos, but they aren't just full of hot air.

Hippo History

It has been pointed out that I have Latin and Greek, and indeed Egyptian roots, though I'm not sure what to think. I particularly like the patronising comment about being able to premeditate which part of a field to lay waste the next day. Good thing my skin is thick enough to make shields and spears out of -- those humourless humans still haven't gotten over the joke my old mate the Trojan Horse played on them all those years ago.

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, VIII.42:
maior altitudine in eodem nilo belua hippopotamius editur, ungulis binis quales bubus, dorso equi et iuba et hinnitu, rostro resimo, cauda et dentibus aprorum aduncis, sed minus noxiis, tergoris ad scuta galeasque inpenetrabilis, praeterquam si umore madeant. depascitur segetes destinatione ante, ut ferunt, determinatas in diem et ex agro ferentibus vestigiis, ne quae revertenti insidiae comparentur.

The Nile produces the hippopotamus, another wild beast, of a still greater size. It has the cloven hoof of the ox; the back, the mane, and the neighing of the horse; and the turned-up snout, the tail, and the hooked teeth of the wild boar, but not so dangerous. The hide is impenetrable, except when it has been soaked with water; and it is used for making shields and helmets. This animal lays waste the standing corn, and determines beforehand what part it shall ravage on the following day; it is said also, that it enters the field backwards, to prevent any ambush being laid for it on its return.

Herodotus, Histories, II.71.1:

οἱ δὲ ἵπποι οἱ ποτάμιοι νομῷ μὲν τῷ Παπρημίτῃ ἱροί εἰσι, τοῖσι δὲ ἄλλοισι Αἰγυπτίοισι οὐκ ἱροί. φύσιν δὲ παρέχονται ἰδέης τοιήνδε: τετράπουν ἐστί, δίχηλον, ὁπλαὶ βοός, σιμόν, λοφιὴν ἔχον ἵππου, χαυλιόδοντας φαῖνον, οὐρὴν ἵππου καὶ φωνήν, μέγαθος ὅσον τε βοῦς ὁ μέγιστος: τὸ δέρμα δ' αὐτοῦ οὕτω δή τι παχύ ἐστι ὥστε αὔου γενομένου ξυστὰ ποιέεσθαι ἀκόντια ἐξ αὐτοῦ.

Hippopotamuses are sacred in the district of Papremis, but not elsewhere in Egypt. They present the following appearance: four-footed, with cloven hooves like cattle; blunt-nosed; with a horse's mane, visible tusks, a horse's tail and voice; big as the biggest bull. Their hide is so thick that, when it is dried, spearshafts are made of it.

Liquorice liqueur

There are now three official liquorice lovers in the house, counting me and two of the three humans. The third human is in any case a fan of pastis (pictured), but I decided to take things into my own hooves and hit Google.

The recipe I found called for:

50 grams liquorice root
5 grams coriander seeds
20 grams cream of tartar
200 mL pure alcohol, or equivalent
5 L water.

Method: let the solid ingredients infuse for a few days in the alcohol and 1 L of water, before topping up with the other 4 L and storing.

My method:

Someone gave me a 20 g piece of liquorice root in an inspired moment at a party a couple of weeks ago. I remembered I'd brought back a litre bottle of food-grade alcohol from a trip to Italy a few months ago. There was, oddly, a jar of coriander seeds in the kitchen, presumably left by a previous flatmate.

Cream of tartar apparently can't be found in this strange country, so I decided to do without. You know you're stuffed if a recipe has footnotes suggesting ingredients may be found in a good pharmacy...but I digress.

The alcohol concentration of the original appeared altogether too weak, so I've combined in an empty Martini bottle:

20 g liquorice root
3 g coriander seeds
200 mL alcohol
top up with water.

I suspect it might need sugar as well, but I'll keep you posted.

Missing Pig Alert

I'm getting quite worried about my comrade and mentor Fidel the Pig, last seen in this catwalk shoot from June 2006. Rumours abound -- kidnapped by Jebediah the Giraffe, deposed by his supposed brother Raul the Rhino, or worse still trapped in a dark corner of a Darlington share house.

The guilty parties know who they are and will be punished -- Socialismo o muerte!!

In the mean time I shall send oil to comfort his grieving people: cold-pressed extra virgin is a righteous step in the path to true socialism!

Proper of the man?!

Defining humour is hard for a plastic hippo.

That's not to say that humans have done much better, even though they keep claiming to enjoy a good laugh.

Take my late friend Alcofribas Nasier, who had a strange habit of writing in sixteenth-century French about a bunch of drunken giants:

"It's better to write about laughter than tears
Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme."

Alcofribas had better have been joking, or perhaps I'm losing something in the translation.

What on earth could he have meant by saying "rire est propre de l'homme"?

• laughter is proper of the man -- impossible, meaningless. Nothing is proper about laughter.
  
• laughter is clean(er) than man -- quite possibly. Not to say that laughter can't be filthy, but it's certainly less so than most humans.
• laughter is the owner of the man -- sounds like an Ionesco play based on language method tapes. Or a parody of a Greek tragedy. Or that the man is stoned.
  
• laughter is the property of man -- the traditional interpretation. I don't like it. Everyone knows humans have no sense of humour; I contend that plastic hippos do. Wrong on two counts. All this goes to prove is that property really is theft.
  

This, I fear, isn't getting us very far. Such weighty matters may well be beyond my feeble hippo brain. And I've completely forgotten why I wanted to define laughter in the first place.

It seems really that that's the sort of thing that only a humourless human would want to do.