Watty blows the dust off...

Yeah, yeah, I know.

There's something about eggs, and something about Mastermind, although that's probably passed its relevance now, and perhaps I should rant about IBM engineers, but perhaps not.

Also I may have some news about the British Library, which is exciting.

Oh, you want me to spell this stuff out? Well, don't get too excited. It's just random blog stuff. Oh, but I have been writing again; there's a medium-sized story in the works, and I'm quite pleased with it so far. So that may serve as an excuse, if you feel the need for one.

So, eggs. I was thinking about eggs one night, because I saw some on a cookery programme. I'd like to explore my relationship with eggs, since it's an odd one. Over the years, I've found it easiest to simply tell people that I'm allergic to them, which is plainly not true, but keeps things manageable. The truth is more complex than that. I remember that as a child I would happily eat the yolks of boiled eggs, provided that they were heavily salted - but then, as a child, everything I ate was heavily salted - I remember being a student, and too poor to own salt - the astonishment I experienced on discovering that food had lots of different flavours.

So, perhaps I am allergic to egg whites. But that's not true; I can eat meringues, and any number of other things made with egg, as long as I can't taste egg in the finished product, then I don't care what went into it. So what is it? Well, I can't really explain - I suffer a physical revulsion when faced with any kind of cooked egg. Raw, no problem - I can happily break eggs to make cakes and so on, even doing that juggling thing to separate them, where half the white goes over your hands (OK, my hands.) is no problem. I wouldn't eat a raw egg, but I don't believe I'm unusual in that. But start cooking them, and my stomach turns. It doesn't matter how they are cooked, if there's an egg smell in the house, I have to go outside. And I accept that they probably don't taste the way they smell - except, of course, that I know they do. They just do. I have accidentally eaten egg - in sandwiches, for example - and felt fine afterwards, so what exactly is my problem? If it's psychological, I think I'd rather not know what underlies it, if it's physical (and it certainly feels physical) then how come it doesn't seem to affect me if I can't see that it's an egg I'm eating?

No, I don't know the answer, I just felt like writing this all down.

Hey, you come here, you get what you get. What can I say?