A Domino Effect

Have I ever told you guys about the two weeks I worked as a Beetroot Inspector?  Strictly speaking, the job title was “Process Operator”, but Beetroot Inspector sounded much more fun, and it was also far more accurate a description of what I actually did.  Yup, I inspected beetroot.  For eight hours a day, I stood at a conveyor belt wearing rubber gloves and a white coat, armed with a vegetable peeler and the grimmest of expressions.  My task was to weed through thousands upon thousands of steamed beets as they trundled past me, their destination pickling, then packaging, then distribution to all of the UK’s major supermarket chains.  It was serious stuff.

My beetroot days came fresh out of uni: I was poor, living with my parents and desperately in need of something to tide me over financially while I waited to start my graduate research post in the Autumn.  And despite the obvious downsides – the 5am starts, the factory politics and the fact that I could almost physically feel my woefully underused brain rotting itself into oblivion – I actually had a really great time.  One of my best friends worked on the line next to me and we’d laugh constantly at each other’s factory attire, or we’d carve smiley faces out of individual beets as they passed us by.  Then, as soon as the clock struck 2pm, we would cast off our hair nets and drive home, the air in my tiny second-hand car thick with the putrid stench of industrially-steamed root vegetable.

A charming picture, right?

Anyway, I’m digressing.  Prior to my employment as a Beetroot Inspector, I absolutely loved eating beetroot.  Couldn’t get enough, in fact.  Post-employment, however, and as much as it was fun while it lasted, I couldn’t even look at the stuff without feeling physically sick and attempting to leave the room.  It wasn’t until I started having a fortnightly farm box delivered  a couple of years ago that beetroot began to appear in my life once again.  Every box in a while there would be three or four of them, freshly pulled from the ground, covered in dirt and sniggering at me from the bottom of the crate.  It was only then, when my inbuilt aversions a) to being mocked by vegetables and b) to throwing away perfectly edible food kicked in that I realised it was just about time beetroot and I fell back in love.

And we have.  As it turns out our relationship is even stronger than it was before my inspecting days.  Back then, I had a blinkered view of what beetroot had to offer me: I only had eyes for the pickled kind that comes in jars and tastes great in salads or as a quick post-work snack.  A mistake, friends.  Beetroot is massively flexible in its uses: transformed into fritters, baked into chocolate cakes, stirred into dips – the possibilities seem endless.  I made this rather neon dip effort tonight (grated beetroot, chopped coriander, sea salt and natural yoghurt) and ate it stuffed into wholegrain pitta breads with falafel, cucumber and avocado.  I’ve since been popping back to the kitchen every half hour to scoff some of the leftovers straight from the bowl.  Totally delicious, and so amazingly good for you it hurts.

So.  If there is a moral to this long-winded tale, I suppose it would have to be this:

Good things really can come from working as a Beetroot Inspector.

Worth knowing, right?

What are your favourite beetroot recipes/embarrassing-yet-hilarious jobs?

Absolutely love this, mainly because it captures my Monday morning state of mind so perfectly (the dog on the right, not the left, that is).  Happy start of the week everyone – let yours be blessed with caffeine and full of other good stuff too.

Image above from here.

It somewhat surprises me that, for all I like to think of myself as a culturally astute young lady, until yesterday I’d never once been to see a ballet.  I used to go to ballet classes when I was young but, as my ever-encouraging teacher was so fond of telling us, we were “about as graceful as a herd of elephants” (in case anyone ever needs to know, this is exactly the right way to make a bunch of five year-olds despise ballet dancing, if not develop group eating disorders).

But childhood scarring aside, I think the main reason I’ve never been to the ballet is that I have a bit of a thing about story lines.  I like to follow them near-obsessively, somewhat like a devoted sniffer dog at a baggage carousel.  If I become even temporarily lost or confused by a book or a film I’m liable to crossing my arms and huffing.  I’m definitely not the best at sitting back and letting something wash over me.

But ever since I saw The Artist a couple of weeks ago I’ve become slightly more open to the idea that you really don’t need to have dialogue, or a narrator, to follow something.  That actions really can speak louder than words, if you’ll mind the cliché.  The Artist was incredibly easy to follow as it turned out – the music, the facial expressions and the movement all played their part in ensuring the audience wasn’t left in the dark.

And the same, by and large, goes for the ballet.  Although there were a couple of moments yesterday where I found myself thinking, “but wasn’t she…?” or “but why is he…?”, on the whole, I got it.  And small pockets of minor incomprehension were not even remotely capable of spoiling the fun I was having overall.  Because therein lies the other thing about ballet: it’s just so pretty to look at that it doesn’t really matter if you’re just a wee bit lost, some of the time.  In fact, the storyline almost becomes irrelevant, so profoundly enjoyable is it to sit in front of a live orchestra and to watch colourful tutus, lithe limbs and pointed toes as they leap and float around a stage.

I was amazed by how much I loved it.  Ballet?  A. Good. Thing.

What new stuff have you tried recently?

Image above from here.

I was pondering updating my What I’m Reading page earlier, and in doing so got to reminiscing about all the many books that have come into and gone out of my life over the past year or so.  I love to keep a note of the books I’ve read, mainly because I seem to use them as a means of mapping out my life.  Last year, for example, I remember finishing New Europe by Michael Palin on one of the windiest days we had, when going outside wasn’t even an option.  I also vividly remember reading Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert on the grass in front of the leaning tower of Pisa in May, when the sun was so hot I couldn’t possibly have walked anywhere other than the nearest gelato kiosk.  Books are to me what I guess diaries are to people who use them properly: a record of one’s life, and a reminder of the little things that have happened that we might otherwise simply forget in our haste to keep moving forward.

With all the free time I had last Summer and all the many bus journeys I seem to have taken since starting my new job, I seem to have managed to read an impressive pile of books over the course of the past 12 months.  So in case you find yourself looking for a little literary inspiration this January, here are some recommendations based on what I’ve read and enjoyed recently.

If you want to read a classic but you dislike ‘the classics’, read Jane Eyre.  The writing is digestible, the characters aren’t annoying and although it’s a love story at heart it’s not sickly sweet and schmaltzy.  I read this during the first couple of weeks at my new job last September.  It was welcome respite at the end of busy days full of new faces and things.

If you want to laugh really hard until you think you might pee a little, read either Bossypants by Tina Fey, or Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby.  Either one will produce the desired effect.

If you want to be gripped, read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I blame this book (and its two sequels) for many a groggy-headed morning in October and November.  I literally couldn’t put it down.  Not even for sleep, or to finish making a cup of tea.

If you want to learn things you’ll remember and that will make you sound knowledgeable, read A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich.  This is definitely in my top 3 reads from last year.  It’s full of interesting stuff, but it’s also written in such a way that reading it doesn’t feel like learning.  In fact, reading it feels like drinking hot chocolate in front of a roaring log fire while it snows outside.  It’s perfect.

If you want to escape, read His Dark Materials trilogy.  There are enough ideas in these three books to keep you thinking for months, and enough magic to rival the whole Harry Potter back-catalogue.

If you want to cry (sometimes I genuinely do want this from a book), read Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.  This quickly became one of my favourite books of all time, and I read the whole thing in one evening.  It’s brilliant, and heart-breaking, and all kinds of life-affirming all at once.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.

If you just want to be entertained, read Boiling a Frog by Christopher Brookmyre.  This didn’t change the way I see the world, and it didn’t cause me profound, deep thoughts or the loss of any sleep.  But it was funny, it was intriguing and it really did entertain me.  And sometimes, when it comes to a book, that’s really all you need, isn’t it?

What have you read recently that’s worth recommending?

Image above from here.

This weekend I’m visiting friends, so I expect to be working on more tea, more laughter, more dreaming and more fun.  Not so much on the more sleep, but there’s always next week!  Happy Fridays everyone.

Image above from here.