Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Looking again, passion fruit, micro-kite

Heidi and I look more closely at the bicycle rack, in the form of two minimalist bicycle sculptures, outside Tunbridge Wells town hall, which I spotted a few weeks ago. How did it get there and why is it there? An inscription on the saddle of one of the bikes gives the answer. It reads: "A gift from our twin town Wiesbaden to mark the 400th anniversary of Royal Tunbridge Wells in 2006." Heidi says that she remembers, as a child, visiting Wiesbaden to see her grandmother who lived there.

Passion fruit is much better than it looks and quite as good as it sounds. If the brown skin is smooth it is not ripe; it's best to wait until it becomes wrinkled and even less appetising in appearance. I have been scooping out the edible seeds in their yellowy-green jelly-like coating and using their sweet-and-sour aromatic flavour, to add zest to the rest of our breakfast fruit.

In Calverley Place a young man is flying a two-tailed kite the size of a christmas card. He is sellign them at £3 a piece, and manages to take the money and dispense the packed kites while keeping his sample aloft.

No comments: