Gins and Genes

ZTw Return S2 E45

It has been 12 years since I wrote a post here about gin. It was to say that a gin and tonic is the perfect drink to enjoy while watching the film “The Tree of Life”.

Since I wrote that, I have noticed a horrible change in gins. Yes, it’s true, there is a wider variety of brands to choose from, and they are all easy to get your hands/lips on, but… have you noticed? They are all moving away from what gin is all about, they are straying from their essence, they are becoming less ginny.

Gin bottle labels today love to boast about the herbs and spices their drink is infused with. Of course, most gin is made from grain, although there are some delicious exceptions made from grape (Xoriguer, G’Vine, etc.) and the predominant ingredient has to be juniper berries or it can’t call itself gin. So far, so good.

Sadly and stupidly, gin manufacturers all over the world have engaged in a sort of arms race, adding more unnecessary bits and pieces to the mix. Citrus peel, OK, that’s standard; the essential oils of lemon and orange embrace the juniper and add that magical dimension to any gin. Go any further and we start to tread in very uncomfortable territory, dear readers…

Here is a partial list of those superfluous herbs and whatnot that have started creeping into our gin:

Angelica

Cardamom

Thyme

Star anise

Nutmeg

Sage

Chamomile

Basil

Szechuan pepper

Lavender

Tarragon

Clove

Liquorice

Cinnamon

Rosemary

Cumin

Coriander

Heather

… and various other local herbaceous weirdities depending if the gin in question is from Greece, Iceland, Australia, Brunei…

Do we need all these? Did we ask for all of these? Surely if we have a random seven or eight of these, we can’t tell what each one is doing to our gin, we just notice a blurry distraction that doesn’t taste of gin at all. I declare myself a fan of liquorice, I am quite liberal when applying cumin or coriander to my dishes,  I have nothing against tarragon, sage or any kind of pepper. But I don’t want them messing up my gin, all right?

How do ginmeisters decide which spices and herbs to add to their distilling? I propose another method: eschew herbs and spices altogether, and go for other flavourful additives based on character and personality.

So here at Zaragoza Twins we are working on DNA-based additives, to save the gin industry from becoming a botanical soup. We are researching human DNA elements that can be incorporated into the distilling process. It’s about isolating gene sequences from certain individuals and creatively recombining them with the juniper. (It becomes a “geniper”.)

One of these gin types could be based on footballers. We are working on the genes of Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland, to begin with, looking for that perfect blend of aggressivity  and resourcefulness, athletic strength and mental resilience. This will add a hell of a kick to our gin!

Yui

Kaki

The other gin is, I will confess, a pet project of my own. I am using the DNA of Kaki Haruka and Yui Imaizuma, two Japanese idols whose smiles and demeanour exude charm and elegance beyond all others. When I close my eyes and sip my gin, I am having a religious experience surrounded by cherry blossom.

One type of leader

Another type of leader

I am toying with the idea of a gin that contains the essence of political leaders, but this is proving more challenging. It’s not a question of sympathising with the politics of the said leader but rather identifying and distilling chunks of their personality that can enhance the taste of the gin. It’s a trial-and-error process and I have to say we’re not getting very far. Leaders whose DNA we have dabbled with: Donald Trump, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, Tony Blair, Park Geun-hye and Dilma Rousseff. Unfortunately, their political selves too often get in the way of their genetic essence. We may have to discontinue this line of research.

It’s going to take time. Rome wasn’t built in a gin lab.

Meanwhile, be careful with what you drink. Check out the label and if you see more than let’s say four suspicious-looking herbs and spices, put the bottle back on the shelf and look for something simpler, neater, smarter, easier. Streamline your gin. Less is more, as the bishop said to the actress.

• Heen Martínez, Zaragoza Twins, with my mind on other things but my finger always on the pulse. April 27, 2024.

Socks

ZTw S2 E44

I didn’t expect to find much, it’s true, but I did find an old pair of woolly socks I hadn’t worn for years. They had a pattern or a picture or a design on the side that looked like antlers or a menorah, it was sort of blurry because the socks were so old and worn out and woolly. Anyway, I couldn’t make out the motif very clearly, certainly not clearly enough for me to actually feel comfortable wearing them in public.

I wouldn’t want to give offence, for a start. And I wouldn’t want anyone to leap to conclusions. “Oh, so he’s a big game hunter, now, is he?”, I expected people would mutter, as they saw the deer’s horns on the side of my ankles – a trophy of my exploits.

How could I defend the actions of the hunter, the murderer. He who moves in for the kill, he who occupies the territory of others and claims it as his own because he is stronger, richer, more powerful.

Atrocities upon atrocities, year after year, while the world looks the other way. The whole place has become a hunting ground. Desolation and misery.

The hunter has the right to defend himself, they keep saying. “Those animals started it”, they even dare to say. So they turn the place into an abattoir.

I stand barefoot in my rage.

Zaragoza Twins, April 2024.

When I can’t talk about what I really want to talk about.

ZTw S2 E43

A number of widely distributed H. erectus sites dating from about 1.8 million years ago during the early Pleistocene Epoch manifest considerable regional and temporal diversity. Upper Palaeolithic sites are numerous in northern China. Thousands of stone artifacts, most of them small (called microliths), have been found, for example, at Xiaonanhai, near Anyang, at Shuoxian and Qinshui (Shanxi), and at Yangyuan (Hebei); these findings suggest an extensive microlith culture in northern China. Hematite, a common iron oxide ore used for coloring, was found scattered around skeletal remains in the Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian (c. 10th millennium bce) and may represent the first sign of human ritual.

“It seems odd now: that someone like myself, who knew so little of
the world, and who longed, in one secret but tumultuous corner of his heart,
for love, fame, travel, adventures in far-off lands, should also have been
thinking of a figure who stood in such contrast to these desires: a man born
two and a half millennia ago, who taught that everything in the world was
impermanent and that happiness lay in seeing that the self, from which all
longings emanated, was incoherent and a source of suffering and delusion.”

In the cowboy, Beyoncé finds her ideal figure of the American West and South. She cites the rodeo as the first place where anyone who loved country music and culture could gather and mingle and feel welcome. It’s an image that runs counter to the experience that inspired the album: performing her song “Daddy Lessons” at the CMA Awards in 2016, where she has said she “did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” The Cowboy Carter character exists in conversation with the history of Black cowboys, the loaded meaning behind the term and its function in the American imagination.

For all its many complexities, rugby remains a simple game in essence. Points will be scored when a player is put into space and when an attacking team out-numbers those in defence. As such, rugby’s holy grail lies in the creation of space. There are many tactics geared towards this, but primarily it’s about winning quick ball to move the passage of play away from a concentration of players while injecting pace and creativity in attack to make space for a player to score.

• Heen Martínez, Keeping His Mouth Shut in Zaragoza, April 5, 2023

Science Fiction For People Who Don’t Like Science Fiction (Taylor’s Version)

ZTw Return S2 E43

Everybody likes science fiction, don’t they. Well, actually, no. There are lots of people all round the world who consider themselves consumers of culture (books, film, TV…) but who turn their noses up at the idea of science fiction. Far be it from me to set myself up as a defender of the Sci Fi faith, far from it; it is a genre I only dip into now and then. I am rarely moved by creatures from outer space, mad scientists with special powers or intergalactic fantasy civilizations.  

However, as I always enjoy a good series on TV practically regardless of the genre, I recently came across a British production on Netflix that caught my eye and after 8 episodes I have to say I feel my time was not wasted. And when I say “time” I have to be careful, don’t I, because if you can travel through time, it’s never really wasted, is it…

Anyway, here we go: The series I’m talking about is Bodies, with a choral cast headed by Stephen Graham (who always looks like a cop), and it’s about four cops at different times (end of the 19^th century; During World War 2; Nowadays; 30-odd years into the future) all unwittingly trying to solve the same case, starting with the identification of the same body. There are several layers of grimness, exploitation and manipulation at all these historical times, with a nasty air of mystical madness pervading the whole thing. It’s not really until the end that the viewer unravels what is going on – time travel is never easy to digest credibly, and you need several hours of training your head to realize that, uh oh, maybe it is possible after all…  

The body that stumps the police belongs to a character called Gabriel who, angelically, whispers silent information through strange markings on his body and a hole where his eye should be. We know for sure it is the same guy but of course how could a 19^th century policeman know that it’s the same body that appears in 2023?

This idea of being the same person at different moments in history is, of course, happening all the time. But we don’t realize it because we only pay attention to our own historical momentariness. We aren’t aware that we also lived sixty years ago, six hundred years ago, six thousand years ago, whenever. And that after we’re dead, we will live again, who knows when.

I’m not talking about reincarnation, our “soul” migrating to another body. The most beautiful and fascinating account of this is in Yukio Mishima’s tetralogy “The Sea of Fertility” when Honda discovers the different reincarnation of his friend Kiyoaki – the people he recognizes as his friend are separate individuals, despite their having Kiyoaki’s soul.

No, I’m talking about people being born again.

Not long ago there was some fuss in the news when somebody unearthed a family link between Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson. Who are these people and why do they matter? Do I really have to explain who they are? I’m going to pass. The thing is, according to some genealogical forensics, Taylor and Emily are distant cousins, even though Emily died in 1886 and Taylor is still alive and kicking. But, actually, if you keep digging, you will find that they share exactly the same finger prints and DNA. What does this prove? It shows that Taylor Swift has been born at least twice and we know this thanks to the fact that both time she has become famous (albeit with a different name). Yes, people, Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson are the same person.

Here at the Zaragoza Twins Genealogical Fabrications Center for Spurious Knowledge (ZTFCSK, pronounced “truth”) we have established, after many hours of painstaking research, that Taylor Swift was actually born in 1573, in Edinburgh, and again in 1714 in Boston, and again in 1830 in Amherst (just down the road from Boston – no coincidence!) and then in 1989 in West Reading, Pennsylvania. Those are her lives so far, as far as we can tell. Our futurology division (Clairvoyants ‘R’ Us) has also established that Taylor Swift will be born again in 2097 in Bogotá, and then again in 2143 in Lytham St.Annes, England, although this last birth is shrouded in mystery and may, in fact, be a hoax. Truth be told. We wouldn’t want to lead anybody on a wild goose chase, would we.

The fact of the matter is, it’s all science and it’s all fiction. You live, you die, or you become immortal like Elias Mannix from Bodies or Taylor Swift.

• Heen and Sheen Martínez, Swifties on the Edge of Time, Zaragoza, March 2023.

Run Away

(ZTw Return , Series 2, Episode 42)

I can’t remember where I first heard (as a child) that Black people run faster than white people because of so many generations having to run away from slavery and oppression, white men with guns and sticks. Thus, so many basketball players and track athletes are Black, descendants of the cotton pickers in Georgia. It makes sense.

No, it doesn’t.

And yet I found myself thinking about the idea of Blacks running (away) the other day while I watched the film Queen & Slim, directed by Melina Metsoukas in 2019 and the TV series The Underground Railroad, directed by Barry Jenkins in 2021. The eponymous Queen and Slim are on the run after shooting a cop in self-defence. They are barely a couple (they were a Tinder date) when they start out on their run, they have very little in common, apparently, but become closer as their law-dodging journey for survival goes on. Their hare-brained scheme to fly to Cuba falls through, obviously and pathetically. They are seen as innocent victims by the Black community and indeed by any empathetic viewer, as they meet their end, inevitably gunned down by the police they are fleeing from.

Some critics call the movie a Black Bonnie and Clyde. Definitely not! Queen and Slim are not criminals, they do not glorify their shooting and fleeing, they are victims of racism who want and deserve justice (and Queen is actually a lawyer).

Another victim who wants and deserves justice is Cora, the main character in The Underground Railroad. Now, I should point out that a while back I read the novel The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and I loved it; I was a bit wary about watching a TV series based on it for the main reason that the magic realism in the novel might not come across on television without appearing fantastical and preposterous and yet… Behold my delight when I saw how the magisterial production encapsulates and reprocesses the literary magic so that the viewer is swept along this horrific and beautiful journey, Cora’s journey, fleeing from the plantation after killing a white boy. She flees north, first with Caesar (her “Slim”, who is killed early on) then alone, pursued by the slavecatcher and his boy, in an intolerant landscape which at times looks as dystopic as The Handmaid’s Tale but which does have moments of respite. She runs for her life as a Black woman, resourceful and resilient, overland and underground and, although we are not privileged to see her reach the end of her journey, we know she is going to be safe.

The only thing that Bonnie and Clyde ever taught us is that you don’t need to be Black to be a runaway. You can learn a lot more by reading and watching The Underground Railway and/or Queen & Slim.

Run!

• Zaragoza Twins, Never Stop Running, February 7, 2024.

Travels in a Very Ordinary Country (ZTw Return, S2 Ep. 41)

 (excerpt from the notebooks of Simon Blush, 20^th century travel writer and often credited with the invention of “fake news”)

— I got off the train in St Guillaume, for no better reason than the fact that the train stopped and nobody moved, so I thought I would justify the driver’s decision to halt the train by picking up my rucksack and being the only person to alight on to what would immediately seem to be the essential déjà vu platform: I was sure – and I am sure today –  that never before had I been on this train platform and yet it was as if I had used this self-same train platform not once before, nay, but on many occasions, to the extent that I could almost have said, “This is the train station of my home town and this is the platform I use every day to go to work just as I used it on numerous occasions to go to school”.

An aside: I am of the understanding that schoolchildren rarely take the train to school today. Why is this? I may be wrong. In fact, I almost certainly am wrong because not only do I have zero children but also I practically never take the train at what could be considered “going to school times” or “coming home from school times”. So please take this paragraph as having limited scientific relevancy.

Did I say, “This is the train station of my home town and this is the platform I use every day to go to work just as I used it on numerous occasions to go to school”? You don’t know, and neither do I. Take my word for it.

Back to St Guillaume, the station and indeed the town. Despite the fact that not a soul other than myself actually got off the train, the station was fairly busy. There were people waiting for trains (and signs informing of their arrival and departure) and station employees doing typical things done by station employees the world over. There is a lot more to do at a station than just sell tickets to travellers, needless to say, so the number of people engaged in whatever activities their job description affords is inevitably higher than what we might at first glance imagine. I have done the calculation for you, suffice to say. You do trust me, don’t you? As if!

At St Guillaume most people seemed to be shall I say working class and not very well turned out. Now, this was a Monday, and as a result people were not wearing their Sunday best, had not spruced themselves up nicely for church or for a stroll on the prom, and were simply going about their menial workaday lives, and I would like to stress that I mean nothing derogatory or demeaning when I say that. I am but a humble observer, and if I see a 40-something, sweaty, overweight slob in grubby clothes suddenly pull out a sword and decapitate another man, execution style, and then kneel down by his side and start singing what sounded like a hymn, my duty is to write down what I saw, to bear witness to the horrific event.

Not that this happened, of course. I didn’t say it did. But it could have, and if it had, and I had been on the scene, on the platform, so to speak, I would have recorded the facts as best I could. You know it didn’t happen, and so do I. I like the fact we’re both on the same page. Of my notebook.

In these digital days of Instagram and Tik Tok and what have you, perhaps it’s hard to appreciate the job of the travel writer who doubles as a kind of social commentator in a very different way to the “influencer” or “YouTuber”. We are writing of a time way back in the middle of the 20^th century; there was TV and radio and printed news and maybe most of it wasn’t particularly exciting but it’s how we learned what was going on. Telephones, of course, we had in our homes and in those quaint red boxes that you can find in London even today. Telepathy wasn’t as frowned upon as it is today, I might add; my father was a remarkably gifted telepathist and was able to converse, if that’s the word, perhaps “communicate” would be more exact, with other talented telepathists. Alas, I inherited none of his telepathicity and had to rely on postage stamps and the telephone.

There was nothing going on in St Guillaume that day so I decided to walk to the nearby cliffside village of Fujikawa. It was a lovely sunny day, I had just finished a hearty meal consisting of a ham sandwich and a bag of crisps, and I adjusted my sou’wester accordingly, and set out, throwing caution to the wind, swords or no swords. It was going to be a grand day.

• Simon Blush, 1971, as revealed in his scratty little notebook unearthed by Heen Martínez in 2023, and published here for the first time, online, in the Zaragoza Twins WordPress blog in early January 2024.

That Nuclear Feeling (ZTw Return: S 2, Ep. 40)

That Nuclear Feeling 1/3

I get up fairly early and am glad there’s a rug

By the side of my bed because it’s nippy these days

And I can see daylight

Through the curtains so the sun must be up.

These are the things I used to take for granted

But this morning they’re a gift

Because last night I dreamt of a nuclear explosion

Well, several, really.

Everything was destroyed and so many people were killed

And the sky was dark and full of ashes.

All I could hear was screaming, shrieking, wailing and I thought

Oh my God, it’s the end of the world

But I wake up before I die

And get up slowly, carefully, looking around.

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That Nuclear Feeling 2/3

The bluebird soars, my heart leaps and sings

On this, the most beautiful day on this most beautiful planet

Of golden honey, love, roses and music.

The joy of being alive

Today and everyday

Surrounded by harmony, magic and bliss,

What more could I wish for,

Everything is perfect, inside me and around me,

Nature embraces me and I embrace her back, crying.

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That Nuclear Feeling 3/3

I’ve been waiting for this moment for such a long time

And I’m so looking forward to what’s going to happen

Which I’m only going to catch a glimpse of

Because I’ll be dead straight after.

I just need to press this button

And all my worries disappear

Along with yours

And everybody’s.

and it’s not science fiction and it’s not ancient history

it’s still very much on the table

even if we don’t care to look

• Heen Martínez, Zaragoza, December 2023, just before Doomsday.

Let’s Talk About Walls (ZTw s2 e39)

I dared to ask what on earth was going on in Gaza and was met by a wall of silence

Why didn’t the free kick go straight in?

It really stood out in Berlin, I’m telling you

They get in the way. They separate us from each other. They come between where you are and where you want to be.

We keep building them, though.

You can jump over them, tunnel underneath them, blow them up, sometimes even go round them altogether.

They’re called walls for a reason.

The reason is the wall itself.

They’re better than holes, though.

• Heen & Sheen Martínez, the original Zaragoza Twins, November 2023, from the Ebro to the Med.

ZTw Return! S2 E38

HALF PLUS SEVEN

Is it weird / acceptable / immoral / advisable / creepy to engage in a romantic/sexual relationship with another person whose age is not close to one’s own?

How wide would you consider unreasonable the gap in years between your age and the other person’s age in said romantic/sexual relationship?

What exceptions would you make to this rule and why?

Compare and contrast the relationship between Lucy and Joseph in the Nick Hornby novel Just Like You and Nancy and Leo in the Sophie Hyde film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, using no fewer than 5,000 words.

Sheen: The biggest difference between the two situations is that Lucy and Joseph enter into the relationship voluntarily whereas Leo is a sex worker hired by Nancy. For me, that’s what stands out.

Heen: But Lucy does pay Joseph at first.

Sheen: Yes, but not for sex. She pays him for babysitting.

Heen: She pays him to stay close before she makes her move and seduces him.

Sheen: Huh? That’s not what happens.

Heen: Think about it. He wouldn’t have attempted anything if she hadn’t made it happen. He wasn’t attracted to her, at first, but she was attracted to him.

Sheen: No, no, no, it was always mutual.

Heen: Well, in that case, the sex between Nancy and Leo was mutual. They both agreed to it; there was no coercion.

Sheen: That’s not the same thing, come on, you know it’s not the same.

Heen: And Nancy is much older than Leo whereas Lucy is just a bit older than Joseph.

Sheen: Not much difference there, I’d say.

Heen: Nancy is played by Emma Thompson, who was 62 at the time, and Leo was played by Daryl McCormack who was 30, OK? In Just Like You, Lucy is 42 and Joseph is 22, if I remember rightly, so the difference between the two age gaps is ten years.

Sheen: Yes, but if you’re a sex worker you don’t choose your client’s age.

Heen: The client sort of chooses the sex worker’s age, though.

Sheen: Yes, Nancy knows that Leo is much younger and it makes her feel uncomfortable but Leo doesn’t mind.

Heen: He’s a pro.

Sheen: Joseph isn’t uncomfortable having a girlfriend who is 20 years his senior but it takes Lucy a long time to feel OK about it.

Heen: True.

Sheen: It’s odd that in both couples…

Heen: Leo and Nancy aren’t a couple.

Sheen: You know what I mean.

Heen: A prostitute and a client? Not a couple. In fact, not a romantic/sexual relationship.

Sheen: Whoa… You don’t think Nancy and Leo have a relationship?

Heen: A transactional relationship, that’s all.

Sheen: No, no, no. They are practically starting a relationship when they realise it’s impossible.

Heen: What? Where do you get that from?

Sheen: And anyway, as I was saying, it’s odd that in both couples the younger man is black, and the elder woman is white.

Heen: That’s how the class system works.

Sheen: What are you talking about?

Heen: White guilt, blacks working for whites, ageist discrimination and unempowered women.

Sheen: Unempowered? I’d say both Nancy and Lucy are empowered! Lucy throws caution to the wind going out with Joseph, and Nancy makes a brave decision for her own sexual liberation.

Heen: Caution to the wind??

Sheen: She’s from a completely different background to him, she risks losing her friends and family by going out with a young black working-class guy, but she decides it’s worth it because they’re in love.

Heen: And Nancy? Paying for sex is empowering? Really?

Sheen: She’s not paying for sex. Well, she is, ok, but she’s not exploiting the sex worker.

Heen: Oh, because she’s a woman and he’s a man. I see, I see.

Sheen: And anyway, Leo the prostitute…

Heen: You mean “sex worker”.

Sheen: Leo the sex worker is the one who wants to continue the session when Nancy says she doesn’t want to go on with it.

Heen: So he forces her to have sex.

Sheen: No! You know fine well that’s not what happens! He sees that she’s shy and confused, and he gently insists, for her sake, not for his.

Heen: You really should listen to yourself, you know… Imagine it’s the other way round and Leo is the older white man and Nancy is the young black girl.

Sheen: But it’s NOT the other way round! That’s why it’s about empowerment. Nancy and Lucy defy convention, see?

Heen: By sleeping with black men half their age.

Sheen: Which brings us back to the age gap thing.

Heen: Do you know the half plus seven rule? It says that you shouldn’t have an erotic relationship with anybody who is less than half your age plus seven.

Sheen: How does that work?

Heen: Say you’re 40.

Sheen: Thanks.

Heen: Your partner can’t be younger than half, which is 20, plus seven, making it 27. That’s the cutoff point.

Sheen: Who says so.

Heen: It’s common knowledge.

Sheen: So if I’m 30, can I date a person who is 60?

Heen: Would you want to?

Sheen: Why not? Why do I have to wait till I’m 37?

Heen: You won’t be able to go out with them when you’re 37, because by then your partner will have reached the age of 67 so you’d have to be 33.5 + 7 = 40 years and six months.

Sheen: How cruel! That’s why I’m rooting for Lucy, who happily breaks this half plus seven rules.

Heen: And that probably explains why sex workers and their clients ignore the rule, too.

Sheen: Because men make the rules.

Heen: I don’t know where you get your ideas from.

Sheen: Is that 5,000 words?

Heen: No, but we can include quotes from the film and a few extracts of the dialogues in the book to fill it up to 5,000.

Sheen: You’ve done this before, I see.

Heen: Yes, unlike Nancy.

Sheen: And Lucy.

• Zaragozatwins, October 2023, as always.

ZTw Return! S2 E37

SATSUMA

Just because you call it a satsuma doesn’t mean it isn’t a clementine. And many a tangerine is nothing but a mandarin with or without an e, yes, you can spell it mandarin or mandarine but that won’t help you differentiate it from one of the other little oranges out there.

Some people, especially Brits, use satsumas as fuel to get them through the winter months when temperatures frequently plummet to minus 30 degrees. The skin of just one satsuma is a miracle of energy efficiency, producing no carbon waste and capable of providing electricity for two or three small villages. In the North of England it’s very common to find a “satsy” in every living room – a satsuma burner, about the size of a curled-up border collie, on which the inhabitants drop the peelings of their fruit and instantly a lovely warming glow seethes through the house, and the house next to it, and the house next to that, and so on, till all the neighbourhood is basking in satsumation.

You can use clementines and tangerines, of course, but it’s not the same, even if it is exactly the same, if you see what I mean. There is no difference between one or the other, they are exactly the same fruit, irregardless of what your encyclopaedia says. At least that’s what some people think. Other people say that “mandarin” is a blanket term that covers all of them, and satsumas are bigger, and tangerines have looser skin, etc., oh yes, there are titchy little differences but between you and me, they’re all the same, they’re satsumas if you’re British, tangerines if you’re not, and clementines if you are a Danish hipster.

Satsuma isn’t always what you think, mind you.

There’s not much else to say on the subject. Did I mention that October 12 is World Satsuma Day? How ironic.

• Heen Martínez, Zaragoza, October 2023