A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Beauty and Ideas

I just transcribed this sketch for use in one of my assignments. I had to do it myself as there seem to be very few already written transcripts of this fantastic show on the web. However there are ample videos on youtube, this particular sketch can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RQzRhH67Q0 and I highly recomend you watch it if you have never seen any 'Fry and Laurie' before. I hope my transcript might be of use to someone, if you want to use it it would be worth re-watching the sketch to check the intonations etc as this was a relitively rough-and-ready transcription, enjoy:

Sketch: ‘Beauty and Ideas’

Speakers: Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie

Series: ‘A bit of Fry and Laurie’

Air Date: 13^th April 1990, BBC

SF: so in a sense in a sense in a sense Duncan, err, we are left with those two, err two none other nary another not one other more err we have on one side of the gulf the chasm the dividing line if you please we have the beauty of ideas, and on the other we have the other term of the equation if that’s nicer we have the idea, of beauty, am I sensing thrill am I connecting?

HL: err we’re busy discussing the idea of beauty and the beauty of ideas

SF: hold the thought Jeffery, would you, I’m going to give you a thought and I’d like you to hold it for me, would you do that for me please

HL: I’m going to hold a though now

((audience laughter))

SF: if beauty is only an idea a form a pattern a template a paradigm and ideal an idea, if you like with an ‘l’, then what is the beautiful? Beauty is unattainable but the beautiful surrounds us err we return to language Phillip, we make a return to language, that’s the idea that I’d like you to hold for me if you’d be ever so splendid

HL: we’ve made a return to language

SF: listen to me, listen to me lovelet, language

((audience laughter))

SF: circumscribes beauty, err, confirms, confines, limbs and delineates it colours and contains, yet language is only a tool, a tool that we use to dig up the beauty that surrounds us and is we take, our only and absolute real

HL: I’m in trouble now

SF: umm, hush, tish, vibble, err, I’m streaking ahead let me explain expound expand and exposit

HL: would you ha ha ha

SF: I find you beautiful, but you are not beauty

HL: woops

SF: therefore you contain a property of beauty therefore the substance of which you exhibit a property must exist. Where is it?

((HL looks behind the sofa, audience laughter))

SF: that is language’s task, err, err, err who was it who said ‘my language is the universal whore that I must make into a virgin’, who was is?

HL: pfff, Kate Adey?

((loud audience laughter))

SF: I think it was Karl Krauss but it needn’t have been, it needn’t have been, now, tell me it’s time to ask you to give b-back to me the thought that I bade you hold

HL: umm, I was holding the thought that we’d made a return to language

SF: correctly correctington, language pursues beauty, harries it hounds it, courses across the rough-lands of inquiry and in so doing can itself BE beautiful ripple on ripple, image on image wheel on a wheel like the circles that we find in the windmills of our mind

((audience laughter))

HL: Noel Harrison

SF: Noel, as you so rightly, Harrison. Now, language can be beautiful and Madeline asleep in lap of legends old plenitude, dishes, her breast tumble, emolument, forage, smitten, plenum, vulva, words that have their own sonority and beauty which is extrinsic, extrinsic to their connotational or denotational referends

HL: I think he said vulva

((audience laughter))

SF: so, Timothy I’ll leave you with a thought a breath a fruit that drops from the bows of my imaginings, think beauty, but be beautiful, say beauty, but say it beautifully, beauty is duty and duty beauty so there, goodnight I don’t feel quite so well now

((audience laughter))

((HL makes worried face))

Mackerel

So here it is, my first foray into the world of recipe blogging, and before I share with you my dinner for this evening, I'd like to invite you to take a look at what are, in my opinion, some of the best food blogs on the net. First my all time favourite:

http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/

which has wonderful recipes such as refried beans, Quesadillas, ginger pancakes and many more Tex-Mex delights.

Next, and also highly recommended:

http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/

giving every gluten/wheat intolerant new hope and a new joy for food.

I'll be sure to update the minute I find other food blogs which are really worth shouting about. And now, Mackerel. I have to confess that I have never cooked a fish in my life. Dash, my boyfriend, thinks they're smelly, slimy and disgusting, and I'm OK with that, he's very unfussy about most other food so we can have exciting meals, sans fish. However, today he left to visit his parents for four days so I decided to have a little culinary adventure. I popped to Sainsbury's, chose the cheapest fish - a mackerel, watched; I have to say with some dismay; as it was "topped and tailed" before my eyes, and then asked the man on the counter if it had any bones in, he said "no", he was lying.

It was when I got home that I was so glad I have watched over the years hours and hours of what Dash fondly refers to as "Lizzie porn" - I'm referring to Ready Steady Cook, Saturday Kitchen, Master Chef, Chinese Food Made Easy and the whole host of other food programmes which I insist on watching, to the exclusion of all else, any time they are on (so long as they don't feature bloody Nigella Lawson!). I have to say, "thank you Ainsley Harriet for teaching me how to bone a fish" because I needed it today!

Ingredients - to feed 1

• 1 Mackerel
• real butter (salted) - about 1tbsp
• 1/4 lemon
• salt and pepper
• frozen sweetcorn and broccoli
• few sprigs fresh parsley
• 1 medium potato

The fish and the veg cook very fast, so it's best to prepare the potato first, I peeled mine and cut it into bite-size chunks and put them to boil in salted water. Then I put about 2tsp butter into a griddle pan and put the fish, cut into fillets with bones removed, skin-side down, I then dusted the flesh-side with salt and pepper (in hindsight, not quite enough, but it's better to under-season and add more later). When the fish was cooked about half way through I turned it over so the flesh-side was down, it was at this point I put the broccoli and sweetcorn on to boil and chopped the parsley finely. A chef would probably say that I overcooked the fish, but I like it crispy, when it was golden brown on both sides I turned of the heat and let it rest while I drained the veg and potatoes. I put a little butter over the vegetables and potatoes and seasoned them with salt, pepper and parsley, I also scattered a little parsley over the fish and finished it with a squeeze of lemon.
Bon appetit!

A very successful experiment, though perhaps I will remove the skin next time as I did find it a little too greasy as Mackerel is a very oily fish.

It begins...

I can see this becoming my new online hobby, replacing my current addiction to 'Farmville' and 'Cafe World' on Facebook... yes I'm sad, I know, and perhaps even replacing my current obsessive checking of my two Deviantart profiles (check out my amateur attempts at photography at http://scoutingforgeeks.deviantart.com ).

Currently I am sitting in on 'Research Methods' an English Literature seminar I'm going to because I have a gap in my exceedingly un-busy schedule, actually it has turned out to be really interesting, I wish there was an official module like this for the Language side of the course, oh well.

Anyway, I will try to keep my blog entries short, sweet and eclectic, spanning my many interests in technology, photography, literature, linguistics and cookery. Hopefully I can share with you some of my favourite blogs, my favourite recipes and my musings on the latest research in linguistics.