Perky Polkadot Penguin
The Army Reserve advertisements used to say it took "one weekend a month, two weeks a year" - you could sign up and still have enough leave to take a holiday each year, too. This popped into my mind when recently thinking about blogging. Keeping up a blog can take (at least) as long as one weekend a month plus two weeks a year (albeit dispersed across countless late nights, weekend afternoons and random snatches of time here and there). Not only that, but almost every job in the civilised world gives you the ability to take a few days off. Perhaps one of the differences between a job and a compulsion passion is whether you do take that break.
So, after starting {Penguins and Parentheses} on the 21st of March last year, as a quiet little repository for occasional thoughts, and gradually turning it into a slightly-less-quiet repository for rather more regular thoughts that are very frequently about food, it was time for a short break. No leaping celebratory blogiversaries just yet (although I'm certainly hoping for many more happy returns), just a quiet fortnight to draw breath (after posting very nearly Every. Single. Day. including scheduling posts for six odd weeks of traipsing hither and yon through Paris, New York and untold numbers of bakeries).
And now {Penguins and Parentheses} is back, with extra polka dots and the promise (after today's brief detour into navel gazing) to be more sticky and penguin-y than ever. Hopefully with more recipes more often, better photos more often, and lots of capricious ponderings in between.
While I was away I tidied up, too. Hope you like the new look! After much muttering and gnashing of teeth, I've come closer to HTML and CSS than I ever thought either possible or wise. And that was before almost reaching the end of a redesign and then changing my mind and starting all over again. There are still a few corners to be dug into, so it'll be a work in progress for a little while to come, but I decided it was time to take the plunge and unleash a shiny new penguin on the interwebs. Please let me know if you encounter any glitches, or have any suggestions for things you'd like to see...
In the meantime, there's a pairing that just suits the new look of the place, starting with this Damien Hirst painting...
Which inspired this fabulous cake...
Although I do like this modification by Banksy - it seems to link the original work with the cake, in a madly domestic sort of way...
Can a penguin change its spots, I wonder...
