Summertime...

Slow boat to nowhere... (Sea Mills at low tide)

We were in Bristol last week, and will be in Dorset next week – we get around in the summer, but not too far these days – so I won't be posting much more until September rolls in: a month which, even after all these years, still trails anticipatory vibes, good and bad, of the start of a new school year. Besides, everybody who bothers to read these posts is also likely to be away on holiday, and will have better things to do and to read. True, I should also remind myself that it is in fact winter in the Southern Hemisphere (hey, A-level geography wasn't wasted on me) but any readers down there – yes, I do have a few – will have to bear with us up here as we complain about unprecedented temperatures, drought, and dodging the wildfires. You'll get your turn soon enough.

When it comes to holiday reading, from my perspective a break from books may be more to the point. The idea of packing a single annual dose of carefully-chosen literary entertainment into your suitcase has never really made sense to me. Does anyone actually pay any attention to those "recommended holiday reads" lists? The ones in the TLS, at any rate, tend to be either stiflingly tedious ("the diaries of former minister Lord Duffer-Dullard of Boring will be my beach read this year") or alarmingly high-minded ("I'll be catching up with Latvian experimental auto-fiction of the 1920s"): there never seems to be anything as readable or as entertaining as the latest from Lee Child or Jo Nesbo ("I'll be getting into bone-crunching altercations and plot-driven Scandi-noir"). I made those first examples up, obviously: they're never really quite that bad; it just seems like it. But then I'm probably no longer a serious person, if I ever was.

If you're inclined to make visual "art" of some sort, then the pictorial felicities you have enjoyed in the work of others tend to stick in your mind as prompts and patterns. Perhaps particularly as a photographer, though, a lot of the cues you pick up on as picture-worthy "out there" in the real world have almost certainly been partially pre-installed in some part of your brain in this way. How could it be otherwise? This is not the same thing as imitation, but more a case of predisposition. For example, I was pleased with that last photograph, taken on our customary visit to Clevedon Pier last week, but had a nagging sense that it reminded me of something. Once I'd printed it, though, it came to me: it could almost be one of the prints of Nana Shiomi, who has a thing about floorboards.

That's not a frog btw, but an inflatable fish in a net hanging from a ceiling. Don't ask me; it's summer, and someone must have thought it was a good idea; something to do with fishing in the Bristol Channel. I doubt anyone else will have photographed it quite like this, though, if at all, unless they too have Nana Shiomi's work stashed away somewhere in their unconscious repertoire.

In the end, I think the essential trick with photography is to try to see everything that's in the viewfinder or on the screen, and make it all work together as a satisfying picture, not just as a document of the Nice Thing you saw, that ignores everything that was behind and around it. Compositional "rules" don't help; looking at lots of good pictures does. Admittedly, I could pretend that I saw that green tote bag coming into frame from stage right, but that was really just the gods of serendipity giving me a little nod. Thanks, guys! But next time, though, maybe make it red?

Have a great summer / winter.

What's That Smell?

The readers of this blog being a sophisticated, well-travelled bunch, I was not surprised to get a number of more or less instant replies to my post about my son's encounter with some emetically-flavoured ice cream, Durian. Typical was this response from an old friend, Dave, who has family in Malaysia:

It is, to be sure, an acquired taste - one that I have, after 26 visits, yet to acquire. I have been advised to pinch my nose and simply taste, but that didn't work. In markets across Malaysia you'll find specialist durian vendors, with heaped stalls that announce their presence from far away. In the posher hotels you'll find notices that read 'No Durian, no Mangosteen': the former stinks, the latter stains.

Well, you can imagine that hoteliers wouldn't want their overseas guests complaining that some serial killer appeared to have been concealing dismembered body parts somewhere in their room. And, dear god, what's that on the sheets?

As it happens, I have no sense of smell. Or rather, I have virtually no sense of smell, but can detect a very few smells in an untypical way. For example, cucumber is repulsive to me – I pretty much have to leave the room – but I usually find that most "bad" smells are either undetectable (inodorate?) or inoffensive to me. Whether this counts as a disability or a superpower depends on the circumstances, of course, and I have yet to test my negative capability against the extreme durian challenge.

But it's the taste of durian that seems elusive. I'm hearing "rich custard", "sweet and melon like", "strawberries and cream sitting on a toilet", etc. It is curious how imprecise our language becomes when describing tastes: AFAIK there is no gustatory equivalent to, say, Pantone for colours ("Yes, durian is Uniflav 4573E"). Not surprising, really, given the many variables in play. The best Wikipedia can do with the highly-esteemed flavour of the mangosteen fruit, for example, is "slightly sweet and sour", although the fruit's aroma is a different matter:

Often described as a subtle delicacy, the flesh bears an exceptionally mild aroma, quantitatively having about 1/400th of the chemical constituents of fragrant fruits, explaining its relative mildness. The main volatile components having caramel, grass and butter notes as part of the mangosteen fragrance are hexyl acetate, hexenol and α-copaene. Ethyl octanoate, ethyl hexanoate and 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol were detected as aroma components in mangosteen wine.

Ah, right, got it now... It was the "grass" and 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol that had me confused (I prefer to call it prenylthiol!). I thought we were talking about skunk-flavoured popcorn.

But perhaps the most relevant response came from another old friend, Rob, who has also spent time in South-East Asia:

I was on a 42 hour bus trip from Vietnam to Laos. In the remote mountains, it was hard to find villages to get something to eat. We had a stop in Dien Bien Phu early in the morning where I bought some snacks and a packet of sugary fruit sweets. They were fine until I tried one of the Durian flavours. It’s probably what you get at the gates of Hell and tasted nothing like the fruit. It had a slightly sulphurous taste.

So it seems that however (and from whatever) "durian" flavouring is made – I assume it's not "natural" in any meaningful sense – it ends up tasting like shit. It's as if "banana" turned to ashes in your mouth when used to flavour a milkshake or toothpaste. Why anyone would choose to put this substance into an up-market ice cream is a mystery. Although it has to be said that I feel much the same about most chemically-enhanced snacks: a deep-fried extruded potato-dough shape is bad enough, but that spray-on fake tan of MSG-dust is a step too far, and I (luckily) can't even smell the horrible things.

Although, who knows? Maybe "durian" will yet turn out to be the new "pulled pork". In a well-known phrase or saying, there's no accounting for taste. After all, as that same well-travelled friend added:

The worst is Surströmming, a Swedish dish of fermented fish in a can. You have to open it under water because the smell makes Durian smell like Chanel N°5. I tried it in a friend’s kitchen which opens onto the street. As soon as I tried some, I bolted to the door to spit it into the street.

Smells bad and tastes bad? Yum! From Wikipedia again:

German food critic and author Wolfgang Fassbender wrote that "the biggest challenge when eating surströmming is to vomit only after the first bite, as opposed to before".

Hmm, Surströmming ice cream in a well-sealed tub... Why not? But please don't attempt to open or eat it on the premises.

Durian

We met up with our two grown-up children and their partners yesterday for a meal and a visit to Tate Modern, in celebration of our daughter's upcoming birthday. In the course of the meal our son shared a recent experience which I am simply going to steal for your amusement and edification.

So, have you ever heard of durian? I've certainly known about it for ever – I think I must have read about it in a book by either Gerald Durrell or David Attenborough – but have never actually eaten or even seen one in real life. Essentially, the satanically spiny durian fruit stinks to high heaven, but the soft inner flesh is supposed to be ambrosial: comparisons are generally made to custard or cream.

Now, both of our children live in fashionable parts of East London, where a wide-range of cuisines are available, and culinary "fusions" of many sorts take place. As it happens, both are adventurous eaters – which is hilarious, given how picky they were as kids – and prepared to give pretty much anything a try. So our son was recently at what he described as the biggest ripoff "gastro" event ever. They were charged £20 to enter some premises that were usually free, where various food vans and counters were offering the usual artisanal fusions of foods and flavours that appeal to the sophisticated young these days, but all at a price – absolutely nothing was included in the entry charge – and delivered at that leisurely artisanal pace that leads to long queues.

So, spotting some ice creams were for sale in an upstairs spot, his partner went up to buy a couple, while he stood in the line for some gastro-treat or other. As you would expect, various flavours were on offer, some of them exotic combinations; you don't look for vanilla or plain chocolate at an event like this. One of them happened to be "durian". His favourite flavour combo not being available, and knowing his adventurous nature when it comes to foodstuffs, she thought it sounded unusual enough to be tempting. "Um, are you sure?", said the vendor. "Look, if he finishes it, you can come back for a free one, any flavour!" Unfortunately, these are words that, to an open-minded foodie, are not a warning but a challenge.

At the word "durian" our daughter exploded with laughter: she'd already been there. Expecting ambrosia, the taste was instead compared to "licking out the juice from the bottom of a bin bag"; quite the most disgusting thing either of them had ever tasted, by some margin. In an ice cream, no less.

So someone, somewhere is having a laugh. Or perhaps they're using the wrong part of the fruit to make what they imagine to be "durian" flavouring? Or maybe it's a typo for "drain"? Whatever: take heed. This is not a challenge to be risen to, but a zero-stars, nul-points red alert not to be ignored. Although... I bet some of you are durian-curious now, aren't you? How bad could it be?

Well, bad enough "to make you contemplate cutting out your own tongue", apparently. You have been warned.