Gifted Musician

Here's a gifted young man who should be better known: Michael Christian Durrant. Last week I heard him playing the exquisite Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra) at my two friends' wedding anniversary bash held in the beautiful Dunsley Hall Hotel near Kinver, in the west midlands of England. If I get a book launch in London, I'm requesting him!

Mongolian Food

There was a giant tongue on the table yesterday, only the second time I've seen such a thing. The first time was two weeks ago in Choer on our way to the Gobi. I've managed all my life to avert my eyes in butcher shops not to see the glossy heaps of internal organs and the neatly folded pink tongues, but these lads could not be avoided. Having already eaten my body weight in meat here, I am reverting to my vegetarian default setting. This baffles Mongolians who, like Spaniards and Tibetans, are raging carnivores. We three Irish got very excited about the potatoes yesterday, served for the first time. (You can't help your background.) Mongolian spuds are indeed delicious. Not floury, but tasty nonetheless. I have also observed something else. Mongolian people can be horsey-looking - brown, dark eyes, long features, black manes - and many Irish people do look like potatoes.