Christina's Five Questions

I am a bit of buzzed raccoon for this kind of thing, and should probably cut down ...

1. What's your favourite item to cook in October?

I think this will always remain spaghetti bolognaise. I am a stickler for cooking and eating real meals, and trying to cut out processed food.

Spaghetti bolognaise is the treat of my childhood, one of about two dishes that my parents could cook well. My mother is a prodigiously terrible cook and the butt of merciless ribbing for her cooking, which broke out into open rebellion one Christmas in front of old family friends. But her spaghetting bolognaise was wonderful, as was this very Australian thing she made called tuna mornay, which is basically a cheese toastie the size of a shower cubicle's floor.

My own bolognaise now runs to including mushrooms and red wine, and is well regarded. I picked up Mum's antipathy for garlic, onions and mushrooms at an early age and it is only in middle age that I've got back into eating and cooking mushrooms, partly thanks to some mad Instagrammers who promote mushroom picking on my timeline.

The other thing I've had to learn is the cooking equivalent of the distinction in software between "progamming in the small" and "programming in the large", the latter concerning itself with testing, revision control, documentation, specs, negotiating with other parties. "Cooking in the large" is what I call the business of organising one's cooking week-by-week and month-by-month: can I re-use some of today's leftovers and ingredients tomorrow? What should I buy in bulk, etc. Tonight's sauce will last us three or four days in various guises.

2. What films have you watched over and over again?

I saw Z several times and it changed in the watching.

This is *literally* so and figuratively so: I misunderstood the film the first time I saw it, and by the third time I saw it, they had updated the subtitles. Although it's an Yves Montand film, Montand is only on screen for a few minutes as a Greek politician before he's assassinated, and the rest of the action is about the incorruptible magistrate investigating his murder, Χρήστος Σαρτζετάκης (Christos Sartzetakis). The epilogue of the film shows the various protagonist's fate of lenient prison sentences and assassinations, and the first time I saw Z, it sounded like Sartzetakis himself had been assassinated, but on second viewing, he had just been taken off the case.

... but by the third time I saw it, they'd had to update the subtitles, as the film is based very closely on a true story. And that story, for once, had a happy ending: after a coup d'etat and a revolution, Sartzetakis ends up not bumped off, but President of the Hellenic Republic. Sometimes the good guys don't come last. He died just a few years ago aged 92.

But I guess in descending order of rewatching, those rewatched films are:

• Sister Act (I saw this six times, including once in German, due to it being shown on the plane to and from Germany)
• The Gods Must Be Crazy
• Grand Budapest Hotel
• Z

3. Have you ever meditated for spiritual purposes?

No.

I'm very skeptical of woo, but I appreciate there are things that haven't been adequately explained yet, so I'm open to the possibility that meditation does some good. (It always bemused me that the UK's drugs assessment body, NICE, would consider alternative and traditional treatments semi-seriously when evaluating pharmaceutical products; and of course, you'd have to, because some of these remedies are effective, and sometimes for reasons currently unexplained)

4. What objects from your childhood have you saved?

Almost nothing, as I emigrated when I was a teenager. I have a fuzzy toy bought because we couldn't have a *real* cat as we moved around too much, some books, and one or two items commemorating my own birth that it feels weird to discard.

5. When you feel sad, what do you do to find comfort?

I'm lucky not to get sad very much; I do get annoyed, and very consciously channel that into "do something about it or live with it".