Hi there!
Happy Wednesday to you fine folks who find yourselves reading The Curio.
First things first, I just want to say a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to a very good friend of mine. You know who you are and we hope you have the best day! 🥳
This week has been full of writing, baking, and visiting yet another medieval fair.
Bananas
We had a glut of bananas going brown all at the same time so I got to baking that lockdown right of passage - banana bread! This one had copious amounts of chocolate in it and the whole loaf was gone before the sun rose the next day. I’d call that a success! 🍌
Revell HQ has the remnants of a haphazard and tiny orchard with apple, pear, and nut trees dropping fruit from their heavily burdened boughs. It would be rude not to pick a few of these early autumnal jewels and turn them into something nice.
However, summer hasn’t got the hint and is still hanging around and I’m not quite fancying the usual fruit crumbles just yet. So I’ve peeled, sliced, and stewed a fair few of the fruits and frozen them in perfect crumble-sized batches.
We aren’t exactly living independently off the fat of the land but it does feel cool to eat something free and homemade.
Let’s not even talk about my tomato plants.
Les Médiévals de Bouliac
On the first Saturday since the schools went back, we packed the kids into the car and set off in the direction of Bordeaux. A nearby village called Bouliac had a pretty decent-looking medieval fair and it did not disappoint.
There was music, axe throwing, traditional wooden games, a falconry display (with a kookaburra!), hobby horse jousting, balance beam wrestling, food, mead, fighting knights, a human manuscript, and a giant wooden toy castle with tiny knights for the kids to play in.
The boys and us grownups had a lot of fun and couldn’t imagine a fair this awesome would be allowed back in the UK. I mean even the kids were allowed to have a go at the axe throwing.
Once we had peeled the kids off the wooden castle and got fleeced for a toy horse each, we left after several happy hours.
I did, however, probably ruin everyone’s vibe by insisting on a flyby visit to Ikea on our way home.
What I’ve been loving
X/Twitter
The Cultural Tutor on X/Twitter is a superb account that you can dip in and out of for a daily deep dive into some aspect of culture.
Every day he puts out a Twitter essay or a thread on anything from ‘Why is the color of Communism red?’ to the history behind ‘Why houses in Amsterdam are so narrow.’
A very good account to browse on your tea break.
Ps! While you’re over on Twitter having a look why not give me a follow here!
Podcast & YouTube
I’ve been listening to Steven Bartlett’s podcast The Diary of a CEO on and off for a while. He interviews a whole host of different media personalities, doctors, experts, and other big thinkers including Rita Ora, Ant Middleton, Mo Gawdat, Rio Ferdinand, Richard Branson, and many more. He also doesn’t shy away from asking big questions of controversial figures such as Piers Morgan and Jordan Peterson. Worth a listen or watch for sure.
His words when he was recently promoting his book on another podcast were quite inspiring. He was chatting about health being the foundation of everything, had many wise words to say about the route to success, and how sometimes quitting can be good.
Also good on Dragon’s Den!