blue cheese – Observations and Misunderstandings

I was going to talk about something important, as always, but I’m currently wallowing in the post breakfast euphoria of this…

Focaccia eggy bread, with blue cheese, wild smoked salmon and a ‘garnish’ of rocket

I’m so painfully middle class I’m not even fighting it anymore. I also managed to remember that I was going to talk about different and uncontrollable paths in life. I realised last night that had this virus not become a thing I would have just been departing an Easyjet flight from Edinburgh to Athens, ready to say hello to some old faces and getting excited about a summer sailing around Greek islands drinking beer and wine, and eating too much of the world’s best cuisine. Yes I just made that statement. But that was what could have been.

I’m currently making pizzas as previously mentioned. This won’t go on forever and the lifting of lockdown will have an affect upon it but at most it’ll be a summer gig until the schools go back and the tourists disappear. This was never meant to be the plan as I said but it’s just what I’m doing now. Maybe in July I’ll have had enough of it and realise I’m wasting my time but that is something for future me to deal with. The point is that we clearly can’t control life’s ever evolving patterns. We can influence certain elements of it but let’s be honest in most things we’re pretty powerless. If you can’t sail, you just do something else. You meet other people, make other bonds. And you go with that and see what happens.

The truth is that while undeniably I’m longing for a holiday sitting on a beach somewhere in the sun and waking up whenever it pleases me, I’m perfectly content with this version of existence and how it’s unfolding. Maybe something will ruin that contentment, maybe something won’t. The point is not to tell you I’m living some kind of perfect life because I’m not, there’s no such thing, but there’s a good chance the whole world is doing something completely different in this Covid-19 version of existence and I just enjoyed the fact that last night I was sitting there and had a fairly good idea of exactly what I would have been doing. That I think is a rare pleasure, and a pleasure because I’m not longing for either. If we make the most of whatever we do end up doing we’re less likely to long for anything else.

And that goes for my breakfast too. It is Sunday today and while I love to think I would be in the Koukaki district of Athens looking for some little hipster brunch place, most likely I would be grabbing a spanakopita from the first bakery I could find from the few that open on a Sunday in Greece before driving to Preveza and fixing up a boat. Yes I desire that, but I’m pretty happy with whats sitting in my belly currently too.

As I read over that I felt at one point I wanted to vomit on myself. Don’t get me wrong the sentiment about uncontrollable existence and riding it’s wave still stands. It’s just I’m painfully aware that the two possible versions of existence I know of are pretty decent and there are plenty out there who don’t even have one decent version. “If you can’t sail, you just do something else“, I mean come on, what a wanker. But I don’t feel guilty, I don’t feel bad and I don’t feel I want to give up my blue cheese, what would that achieve. I’m just aware I’m incredibly lucky. Maybe I should find a way to share my blue cheese instead.

I tried cutting up a big frozen roll of black pudding (blood sausage) this morning with a bread knife. It didn’t work. I tried other knives. They too didn’t work. I even tried a small hacksaw for cutting metal but because it was too fine it’s also didn’t work. Eventually I gave in and got my handsaw that is usually reserved for planks of wood. This virus is a trying time for all of us, our worlds have been turned upside down and we’re having to approach the world in ways we wouldn’t have even contemplated in the past. I’ll be honest I probably wouldn’t have bought a foot long fat black pudding in the past even though I love the stuff and the French version is partly responsible for me not being a vegan anymore, but I did. This series of new and trying circumstances led me to that moment when I found myself in my kitchen this morning sawing congealed pigs blood and dropping blood and fat on the floor like some kind of gruesome sawdust. It was ridiculous and disgusting, also quite amusing and with blue cheese really tasty in a croissant. I just discovered it is apparently a superfood. This lockdown is great for people. They have to experience their more creative sides and whatever bizarre parts of them that rise to the surface as a result. You can’t escape yourself if it’s all you’ve got.

In other more serious news, I just read a report from Iceland that only has 218 reported cases of the virus. Iceland apparently is a very interesting case for giving a better idea of the spread of the virus as apparently they have been testing large swathes of their population. With a population of less than four hundred thousand this is seemingly quite straightforward. What they discovered was that half of those who had tested positive had absolutely no symptoms of the virus at all and that there are at least forty mutations of the virus in Iceland itself. What is important about this is that it means we could and probably are far more likely to be spreading the virus as many more of us who have it are completely unaware. It does show the importance then of social distancing to protect those more vulnerable. It also though highlights the fact this virus is far less dangerous than we are being led to believe and that the death rate will be far lower than previously thought. The fact we even have a death rate for something that hardly anyone is being tested for in the first place is completely ridiculous of course. Also if there are at least forty different mutations the report suggests we may see the virus develop into a more contagious but less dangerous mutation. It would explain why some people are barely showing symptoms while some fit, young and healthy people are unable to survive.