About Me
Download the album: fivefishfingers.zip
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Fishsticks first came about as a result of Clarence Birdseye's invention of the plate froster in 1929, the first quick freezer. To ensure rapid freezing, food needed to be in slim rectangular slabs. A suitable candidate for this freezing method was fishsticks, slivers cut from large fish then dipped in bread crumbs for frying. However, it was Gorton's who introduced the snack initially.
In Britain in the 1950's, most of the herring catch was pickled and exported to other North European countries. In an attempt to make herring more appealing on the home market, companies tried to present it in a new way, creating herring fishsticks called 'herring savouries' and were tested on the market against a bland control product of cod sticks, sold as 'fish fingers.' Shoppers in Southampton and South Wales, where the test was conducted, confounded expectations by showing an overwhelming preference for the cod. Cod fishsticks were first produced in Great Yarmouth and introduced in Britain on 26 September 1955. They became immensely popular after television advertising began in 1958.
On modern production lines, headless fish are processed through a machine that removes a fillet from each side of the backbone. The fillets then pass over a wheel and a blade that separates the skin from the flesh. Machine filleting leaves a few pin-like bones in the fillet, so the flesh containing the bones is cut out.
Fillets are formed into frozen blocks. A conveyor sends the blanks through batter and breadcrumbs, doubling the thickness of the fishstick. Then each is passed through a hot vegetable oil bath for about one minute to seal the coating and allow the fishstick to be grilled or fried. Then the fishstick is frozen again, with the center reaching -4°F/-20°C in less than 20 minutes. After packaging, it is stored at -18°F/-28°C, ready for distribution.
Wikipedia contributors, "Fish finger," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fish_finger&ol
did=151152406(accessed August 22, 2007).
Download the album: fourtales.zip
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I knew of nothing. Of no skies nor lands. No birds nor people. But myself in all eternity and only herself in kingdoms lonely, my heart lost to dreams and wantings ever-lasting.
My porch was covered in the dust of forgetting. Memories piled up thin, waiting for the wind to carry. I rubbed my finger along the cracked wooden railing, brushing up a layer of those memories on its tip. So delicate, then washed away by a wet drop of sorrow.
And quite suddenly, like the morning Sun, she was there again. White scarf around her head, flapping in the breeze. The simple cream dress she wore so often, effortlessly showing her femininity, without ceremony. Sly wrinkles wisening her eyes. A hastily packed leather suitcase eager to let go its contents. She smiled.
"I'm sorry James. I was wrong. To leave."
Dust unsettled itself as I ran to her.
Short story by Kristoffer Lawson
Download the album: threetimes.zip
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I thought of him just every day. The little sailor boy I knew. His shirt so white, his cap so blue his trousers so straight and smart. Along he travelled, the world o'er and o'er and never would he stop. This sailor boy I knew, I knew. This sailor boy I knew.
I met him first in the park above. Way, way above. The clouds below like waves of snow. Oh, waves of snow and a boat. The sailor boy and his crew.
I held his hand and skipped along and he grinned at me with his smile so true. The sailor boy with his smart black shoes and his walk a clip, clip, clip.
Spiralling buildings we left behind as I stood upon his ship so fine. The waves of clouds of snow sublime. My sailor boy of my desire.
And on we went into the night. The owls waved up as we went by. The grounds below a running, a running. Faster we went on. Speeding along the skies we went in our sailing boat so fine. Pink and blue and green we see, how everything falls between, our journey round the world, we so liked to leave.
A ruin greets as the clouds depart. An ancient civilisation, hello! Tied to themselves we think again, of civilisation once so great. I stand beside the sailor boy and forget those long-gone souls.
He took me to the end of the world. A drop of gold and mounds of dirt. We sat in them to play all day, my sailor boy and me. Full of joy and full of games, so innocent as we were. The end of the world, they all do say, is really no fun at all, but we danced around without dismay in the pits of dirt and clay. Black smoke rose from every hole. Up and up it went, to build the world on which we must live. Just a place where everyone lives. Our weird old globe, with cities above, amongst the clouds, and sailing boats without a sail and people with nowhere else to go. And sailor boys who hold my hand, and never do run away. Who never, ever once escape and who are always mine oh mine.
With sailor boys who're mine oh mine.
Short story 'Of Contraptions and Things' by Kristoffer Lawson
Download the album: avaruusmies.zip
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Far away, John and his robot were sailing on the backs of star-beams. Fifty light-years or so in their cylindrical spaceship. Robot said he liked the way the star's light bounced off the red planet, a giant one, on the port side. Like shimmery little fairy dances circling around their travels through the void. John smiled and lifted his glass of space-juice in an ancient gesture of comradeship. Aye, that's life at it's best, he reckoned.
After three more days of travel John and his robot arrived at Destination 34. A large moon around the fourth planet of the system. A jolly wee bouncy kind of rock with scampering little bacteria and small fish-like creatures swimming in the deep dark lakes. Some of them had fluorescent colours and shone brightly and merrily. Some of them were mating, some of them were jiggling, some of them were just having a party. Robot blinked his lights in response and several of the lifeforms twirled round him, curious. He did not seem like a proto-fish. He was all hard and jagged. Like a rock of some kind. John patted him. They'll understand one day, he reassured.
Inside one of the caves was a dark slithery plant, waving slightly with the drifts, as if to a distant melody. She beckoned to the travellers and they floated to investigate, transfixed. Her many hands swayed erotically. Her deep colours changed with every move. She gently touched John's cheek as he looked closely, with robot soon behind. He kissed her leaf-wrist and bid her good bye, for their journeys must go on.
Back in their spaceship John sighed. Robot was a good companion but still his life missed something. A home to come to. An arm to stroke. Lips to kiss. Hair to feel. Of all the wonders in the universe he had seen, no wonder would replace that simple existence. Robot shut down for the night. The computers rattled on. John looked out into the deep, deep darkness and its millions of sparkling lights. Lives. He fell asleep holding their hands as the spaceship zoomed on and on into the empty unknown.
Short story 'Adventures of Spaceman John' by Kristoffer Lawson
Cover painting by Mikael Backlund
