Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Kräftskivor - Crayfish party


Grövelsjön, northern Dalarna, August 2006
Originally uploaded by marielinder.

Kräftor är ett litet djur som ser ut som en hummer. De har två klor och hundretals av ben. Svenskarna äter dem i augusti men värför vet jag inte. Kräftor innehåller nästan ingenting som man kan äta. Det finns ett stycke kött samma storlek som min lilla tå vid svansen och två stycken i klorna, men det är mycket små. Man måste dra ut köttet från den hårda skalet med fingren. Man behöver bra syn och ljus. Därför är kräftor inte mat. De är ett roligt spel.

Igår kväll satt vi tillsammans i ett stort rum på Göteborgs Nation. Gardinerna stängdes och det fanns levande ljus. Det var ganska mörkt. Det fanns massor av kräftor på bordet. Vi hämtade kräftor och åt dem. Vi drack mycket öl och snaps och sjöng många studentsånger. Men det var svårt att äter kräftor. Det smakade ganska bra men det fanns också bra ost och knäckbröd som var bättre så jag åt det istället. Jag åt bara ett halv dussin kräftor därför att de var för besvärliga.

Senare hade vi druckit för mycket och då stod vi på stolarna och när vi sjöng. Sedan sjöng vi högre. Men sångerna var inte melodiska. Egentligen fanns det allt ingen melodi. Därför kunde man inte lära sig melodin.

I slutet var vi ganska fulla. Det är konstigt därför att Svensk smaker liksom myggorkiss, som vi säger i England, och snaps smaker som medicin. Usch! Men i alla fall hade vi en rolig tid.

Men gourmetmat var det inte. Jag skull hellre har åt fisk och chips. Och jag skulle hellre titta på kräftor i akvarium än på tallrik.

THE CRAYFISH PARTY

Crayfish look like a small lobster. They have two claws and hundreds of legs. The Swedes eat them in August though I cannot imagine why. They contain almost nothing one can eat. There is a little bit of meat in the tail, about the size of one’s little toe, and there are two tiny bits in the claws. These tiny bits of meat have to be pulled out from the hard spiny shell, using fingers. It needs good eyesight and a bright light. And so crayfish are not food. They are a game.

We had a crayfish party last week. We were all sitting together at long tables in Göteborg Nation (a student union building). The curtains were drawn and the were candles on the tables. It was quite dark. There was a stack of crayfish on a table. We fetched the crayfish and ate them, drank lots of beer and snaps and song student songs. But it was hard to eat the crayfish. They tasted quite nice but the crispbread and cheese were better so I ate that instead. I only had a half-dozen crayfish because they were so troublesome.

Later on, too much had been drunk and then we stood on the chairs and sang. Then the singing got louder. But the singing was not melodic. In the end there was no melody at all. So nobody learnt the tunes, which I think is what they were meant to do.

At the end, a lot of people were really drunk. This is strange because the Swedish beer is gnats’ piss and the snaps tastes medicinal. Yuk. But all the same, we had a fun evening.

But gourmet food it was not. I would rather have had fish and chips. And I would rather have watched the crayfish in an aquarium than on my plate.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...