Just The Right Number Of Cooks

‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’, the saying goes. Maybe these cooks are not too many, though, because they are at cooking school. Not that I knew that then when I photographed them.

I was heading for ‘The Classic Camera’ shop, which is in a courtyard very close to The British Museum. It specialises in Leica cameras and although I am not in the market for a Leica, I am kind of interested in the little D-Lux 8 mini Leica.

The Classic Camera’ a nice shop to in which to browse. And the man in the shop was interested in talking about the transition from film to digital.

As soon as I came into the courtyard off the street heading to the shop, I saw lots of white coats. I couldn’t see them clearly but it was enough for me to get my camera out and ready, because who knows.

And when I saw they were all cooks, well I was surprised.

And here is a lesson for you dear reader. First, I had my Ricoh GRIII with me. It has a fixed 28mm lens, which is good for getting in on the action and making the viewer feel they are in the scene. But it also means getting close, and I was somewhat nervous because I thought maybe the assembled cooks might take offence.

At that time I didn’t know they were all at school leaning to be cooks. And I don’t know how much difference it would have made if I had known.

All I could think of what that I was not on a public street. And that is a big factor in the right of a person under UK law to photograph strangers.

Now, let’s say there had been a parade or a protest march on the street and I had been shooting constantly for the previous hour. Then I would have been hot to trot, freer and more intoxicated with the feeling of photographing. But this was not how it was and I was a bit hesitant.

So I took a couple of shots and then went into The Classic Camera. When I came out, the cooks were gone.

A waitress was picking glasses and asked her if she knew who they were. Oh yes, she said, they were at the cookery school in Le Cordon Bleu – where she worked and outside of which we were standing.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – I suggest you don’t read this until you have seen the film.

In an interview published in the Radio Times, Christopher Nolan said that for him the most significant part of the film was the conversation between Odysseus and his wife at the end. He tells her how he is appalled and saddened by the bitter realisation of his own savagery, at who he is and who his men are.

There is a hint of something disturbing all the way through the film, but we don’t know what the revelation will be. The hint is that Odysseus is accompanied sporadically by a young woman who plainly only he can see.

When Odysseus is confessing to his wife, there is a long flashback of the sacking of Troy by he and his men.

We see Odysseus and his men cutting their way through the Trojans. And we see him looking at the young woman of his visions, and now she is on her knees begging, as one of his men slaughters her.

We see that this is the beginning of his awakening.

All the way through, Odysseus has been hearing about the dreaded Sea People who bring terror wherever they go. Now he realises it is they who are the Sea People.

The writing was on the wall when Odysseus foils Circe, when she tells him that his men are savages, and deserved to be turned into the pigs they are.

Does Odysseus’ recrimination get through to the audience no mater how little they might know of the Odyssey story?

Well if it does, it is undermined by the fact that in the end it is a shoot-em-up. Imagine if there had not been a big fight at the end, and Odysseus had talked the suitors into going home.

No fight, no crescendo, no release? Oh how we would have been disappointed.

And in that case there is no real moral to the tale at all.

Where the film differs from films like Shane or A History Of Violence is that in those stories the hero is reluctant to fight until the fight is the only way forward.

Of course, even there, we are watching and waiting for the spectacle, for some version of the Roman arena that will give us the release that makes the experience fulfilling.

Here in the Odyssey, Odysseus doesn’t seem to doubt for an instant that the fight is the proper course of action. There’s no soul searching about whether it is OK to fight in these circumstances.

Either way though, we get our bloody fulfilling of our bloody lust.

And that is really the bottom line – that for all the recriminations, it is still a fight – the fight, any fight – that we want.

Will we as a species ever not want that?

And

I read an interview with Matt Damon’s stunt double. She is very small and she and friends were pitted against big men – and that is how it looked to us in the audience that Odysseus and his men were fighting giants.

As a film, there are a couple of bits that didn’t carry me with it. Three times we watch the Greeks running back to the boats to escape some evil. Once is dramatic, three times begins to look more like Monty Python.

The final scene of the crowning of Telemachus and of Odysseus and his wife Penelope sailing off into the sunset and their self-imposed exile was so disjointed and rushed that I had to smile.

As a side note, the film was worth seeing just for long scene where Circe turns the men into pigs.

I asked a friend who knows Classics what he thought. He says that in the original poem all the suitors are killed, and Odysseus has absolutely no problem with killing them all. And it is the suitors’ relatives that Odysseus persuades to go home when they come for revenge the following day.

These are members of the Jonesboro Majestic Marching Cardinals from Arkansas performing in the London New Year’s Day Parade on January 1, 2026, in central London.

The musical instrument is a sousaphone, which is a tuba designed for marching bands.

It is coiled to wrap around the musician’s body and rest on the left shoulder, to make it easier to carry while marching compared to a traditional concert tuba.

The forward-facing bell projects the deep bass notes to the audience over the heads of the band.

About The Photo

Early this morning I was reviewing image quality from the Fuji X-T50, and this photo that I took with the 55-200mm lens. The lens is really too long to balance well on this small camera.

Now, half a year after I took the photo, I still recall that the camera and lens combination isn’t very pleasant to hold because the lens weaves about and the body is too small to control it, but out of all this, I like the composition.

As you travel east along the south coast of South Africa from Cape Town in the west, you see mountains rising abruptly from more or less sea level. They are quite a sight as you travel, a sheer stop as you travel along and your eyes look north. I have never seen anything anywhere else quite like it. It is not just a mountain range, it is a mountain range that goes on and on, sometimes nearer, sometimes further away, but always there.

So yesterday I was looking through the photos I took with the Nikon D500 I had then, and this shot from a lake to the mountains captures what I mean.

To see a larger version, click on the image.

Saint George and the Dragon: The information panel next to the painting says it is one of the earliest paintings on canvas in the National Gallery.

Blood is flowing to the ground from the would inflicted by St George’s lance.

But then the dragon seems to be pacified and tamed already because the woman standing there calmly is holding a leash or chain around the neck of the dragon.

So why the need for George to attack the dragon at all? And George looks too young to be fighting dragons. He looks like he knows what he is doing though and his horse looks very capable.

But what is it with the grass laid out in a pattern of rectangles?

All in all, one of my favourite paintings.

Artist

Paolo Uccello (about 1397-1475) Painted about 1470