Ivied Feet

On the road north from Bogotá to Tunja, there's a place we regularly stop for arepas, the corn flour and cheese patties that are a staple of Boyaca cuisine. "The National Arepa Factory", it is humbly named, although there is a stretch of about ten kilometers that is completely lined with restaurants and cafes selling arepas, so I suppose you have to try to make your mark one way or another. On Saturday they decided to push the boat out and make a very special welcome for their vegetarian customers. A severed cow's head hung by the door, its tongue sticking out at a bizarre angle, blowing a belated and futile raspberry in the face of the slaughterman. Still fancy an arepa, or have you suddenly lost your appetite?

Once the truly perfectionist arepa maker has cooked the arepa  on both sides, he or she then plonks them down onto  little rotating platters next to the charcoal, so that the edges get browned and crisped up.

So, it's been a good while since anything went up on this blog. Don't think I haven't missed you all, or missed the chance to stand tall and proud on an icy, inhospitable, unvisited little outcrop of the internet and shout my deliriums to the four winds. The words don't stop echoing round inside my head, and there are certainly plenty of words, so perhaps it's for the best that some if them find escape onto the pages of Ivied Feet, at least it'll take the pressure off the shunt.

The truth of the matter is that I have buckled in the face of modern society's imperative that I compensate a soulless existence with the trinkets that late capitalism conjures up in exchange for our salaries. A new phone has been had, and what a trinket it is. It has a shiny screen that moves when you touch it (not like those Blackberries), it has a bit that downloads the internet (not like the last Nokia), and it has Google inside, so not a bit like those cheapie eyefones. Yes, I've fallen back into the arms of HTC, and this time it is personal (cos Google already synced all my data). There is even an applification for writing duff blog posts. So you've been warned. The frequency of mindless spew coupled with blurry cameraphone pictures is about to go through the roof. No one is forcing you to read this though, are they?

Or as my mum commented, "what's the point of a phone that needs you to have an armed guard with you if you're going to take it out of your pocket on the street in Bogotá?" Mum clearly got the hang of Bogotá. The Play Store doesn't seem to have an armed guard app.