As is my habit, i’m posting the Saturday Morning Kitchen late. One week and one day late to be precise as it’s Sunday evening here in Basel. Basel, no, that’s not where i’m normally to be found but i’m here taking a break with the future Mrs Turner. Actually, we only arrived in Basel yesterday, so to recap – Monday we flew into Geneva. This involved going into London and navigating the Tube and the DLR[Docklands Light Railway] on a Monday morning during the rush hour. Not the best thing to be doing but it went okay. We only had Monday afternoon/evening in Geneva. Eating turned out to be an expensive proposition. Still, when I saw escargots on the menu, I couldn’t resist (I have a thing about trying anything, that isn’t detrimental to health, once).

The next day we took a five hour journey to the Graubünden in South East Switzerland. With three connections I really didn’t expect to make it there at the time shown on the itinerary. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy Swiss transport is to navigate. Second class on the inter city trains is nicer than anything you’ll find on a mainstream train in the UK. Also, you can buy your tickets online and print them out. They have a funky barcode thing that the hand held computers the train staff use will read. Note to UK railways – get in the 21st century. Barcodes have been around a while now!

Moving on, we spent the new few days at a small place called Alvaneu Dorf ‘playing house’ as Doug so eloquently put it. Here I was subjected to the ‘Disney Distortion Field’ at work as the future Mrs Turner insisted we took down the paintings on the wall. “They’re creepy and they look like the Haunted Mansion”. So they had to go down and hidden. I will admit the one of the young girl was kind of creepy, though I saw no problem with the old geezer smoking his pipe and others.

Then yesterday, Saturday, we got back on the wonderful railways to head for Basel. We didn’t have a itinerary for this journey, we got off at Chur, a connecting station, and our train was right there waiting for us on the adjacent platform about, oh, five seconds walk away. Swizterland is the only country i’ve been to that really implements integrated public transport. When we arrived about 2 minutes late on the train going towards Alvaneu, the Postal bus was there waiting for us. Oh yes, UK, every tiny middle of no-where in Switzerland still has a post office and the bus service generally connects them.

Okay, really moving on this time, we got to Basel yesterday and didn’t do a whole lot. This morning we went to Basel Christian Fellowship. I found them searching for ‘reformed’ churches on the web. I knew we would be in for a bit of a mixed bag when along with the hymnal we were handed a hymn sheet with ‘Shine Jesus, Shine’ on it. The guy leading the service was a little… he was alright, he was just a bit weird. I’m sure if he hadn’t done a stupid little clapping thing during our Shine Jesus, Shine, no one would have felt compelled to do so. Also, I would like to add that putting visitors on the spot by asking them to stand up and say where they’re from and how they found the church should be banned!

Thankfully we wasn’t preaching the sermon! That was left to an American gentleman who was preaching through the Daniel. We were looking at the verses immediately preceding Daniel being thrown into the Lions den from when King Darius signs an edict making it a crime to worship anyone but him for 30 days to when the King is forced to throw Daniel to the Lions. The thrust of the message was the necessity of trusting in God and how the situation was taken out of everyones hands.Daniel, he was in breach of the law – Darius, he had to adhere to the law of the Medes and Persians. Daniels fate, therefore, was solely in God’s hands who used the event to confirm his power to Darius and us, as readers.

Tomorrow we’re leaving Switzerland and flying to Manchester to spend a few days with my brother. Hopefully next week’s Saturday Morning Kitchen will be a little more timely.

Awesomeness Originally uploaded by mattyturner. Today was a big day. The future Mrs Turner graduated from Mills College with an English B.A (emphasis in creative writing, minor in history!) Needless to say everyone was proud of her, lots came round for an open house afterwards where buffet food was eaten, presents given and so on.

Since i’ve been in California a couple of weeks now I thought it was about time to upload some photos. I did this last night, head over to http://flickr.com/photos/mattyturner/ to see Californian stuff, I expect graduation photos will go up tomorrow. As you can see I uploaded some photos of the organ console at Oakland FCC. After some internal deliberation I uploaded a pretty rough performance of some Bach (Prelude No. 5 in G Major, BWV 557 (sans fugue)). This was just from my laptop sitting on top of the organ so it sounds nothing like it did in the Church with the beautiful reverb. Please note – timing unsteady, fingering unsure, feet painfully missing the right pedals and arpeggios clearly missing the right notes. Still, sometime in the week after June the 12th when the future Mrs Turner returns to America I’ll record a better performance complete with the fugue. Here’s the link: http://mtcodex.net/media/prelude-gmajor.mov

Yes, I should point out, the future Mrs Turner will flying back to the UK with me on Tuesday for a few weeks. We’re going to spend quite a bit of time in Winchester I imagine, spend a week in Switzerland, a few days with my brother Martyn near Chester. We’re also going to spend a day in London with two friends neither of us have met in person before Deejay (Sp?) and Helen. And hopefully also some days out at Kew Gardens, Oxford and Alney. Speaking of the future Mrs T, she just got out the shower and completely unexpectedly, I was in my own little world listening to Bach here, handed me a margarita.

Margaritas have led me to the belief that one can acquire a taste for just about anything, with one categorical exception. The first time I tried a margarita I thought “wow, that’s bad” a taste of salt followed by some yucky sour orange lime stuff spiked with tequila. I mean, what’s right about that? Well, with time, a whole lot! Anyway, what’s the categorical exception to acquiring a taste for anything. It’s tacky.. no.. sweet.. no trashy well, things that are easy to like the first time you try them. Like a catchy pop tune or a sweet tasting thing. You think – yeah, I could like this, but pretty soon you’re sick of them. Things worth acquiring a taste for – classical music, great literature, fine art and yep, margaritas too keep tasting good. I don’t think I’m going to get tired of any of the things I just mentioned whereas I can think of plenty of embarrassing things I enjoyed the first time round that I would not want to experience again – Asia (The Band), McDonalds, Maryland chocolate chip cookies. These things are sweet, tacky, shallow and ultimately unsatisfying.

Okay, that’s all for this Saturday. Martyn, hang in there and one day you too can enjoy sea food.

Now, I realise it’s Monday, not Saturday. So in lieu of SMK I present you with a one off “Monday, where’s my coffee, is it too early in the week to start procrastinating, review”.

For those of you who don’t have the BBC, Saturday Morning Kitchen is an informal cookery show with different guests each week. I don’t know why, but this show struck me as the kind of thing I wanted to do as a weekly blog. Not about cookery, necessarily. Just a chance to put in all those bits and pieces that don’t belong but I’d like to share into my blog.

I plan to do this weekly, I recommend you enjoy with coffee.

This past 10 days or so, since talking about California and Coffee, I have been in California with the future Mrs Turner. She’s nearly ready to graduate, I’m sure there is more than enough on her own blog about that. I’ll just share one funny moment at a reading she did last Monday at Mills College (all girls undergrads) where she studies. I was sitting next to Jeff, her brother. The presenter was asking in turn students, friends, family members and lastly boy and girl friends to raise their hands. I raised my hand. Jeff looked around and leaned over towards me to whisper “Matt, you’re the only guy with your hand up”.

Also Thursday Night. My world was rocked for the second time since being here by the organ at Oakland First Covenant Church. A real pipe organ. I will get the full details later, along with photos, but to sum up there are three manuals, a 32 note radiating pedal board, approximately 50 stops (I’ll have to count), 8 pistons for each manual including pedals, 8 general setting pistons duplicated above the pedals, as far as I can tell everything can be linked and there are are swell and choir expression pedals and a crescendo pedal which can be customised. It really does have all the bells and whistles and is so much fun to play.

I have struck a deal with the future Mrs Turner that if I get her a cello and lessons I can have an organ at home. This seems like a totally fair deal to me, though it might be a little while. First of all we have to get a home… oh, and a Bechstein!