Fergus Murray

Author: ferrous

  • Chocolate and Chestnut Risotto

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    Sometimes I get seized by a vision of something I think I could cook, that I’ve never heard of anybody else cooking but which feels to me like it could be really, really good. Every now and then it turns out that I’m wrong, and my crazy ideas don’t add up to something delicious after…

  • Climate change animation – it’s much, much later than you think

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    Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo. My brother, Leo Murray, is an animator as well as an activist. He made this film for his animation master’s degree at the Royal College of Arts, and I was very impressed indeed with the job he did of communicating the…

  • Ice and Frost

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    I think most people don’t pay nearly enough attention to what they’re walking on, especially in cold weather. The richness of the patterns that ice forms is staggering, and provides an intriguing glimpse into the physical processes going on both at a molecular level and on a much larger scale. Some of the most fun…

  • Treebike

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    One day, many years ago now, I was taking my dog for a walk on Hampstead Heath when I met two men who had just hauled a bicycle up into this tree. I think that’s as far as their plan went – they didn’t have a camera to record the moment for posterity, or anything…

  • Gyokuro

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    I finally got to try Gyokuro green tea at a beautiful little salon de thé called The Tea Caddy, in the Latin Quarter of Paris. It is never a cheap tea, but they had it for around half the price I’ve seen elsewhere. The leaves and the infusion are remarkably green, quite vividly so, and…

  • North Calcutta

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    We get up early in the morning to meet Sunayana and Kenji from Calcutta Walks, at Shovabazar ((Best pronounced ‘Shobabajar’ – Bengali doesn’t actually have any v or z sounds, but they’re often used in transliteration of words and names out of deference to their Sanskrit or Persian origins)) Metro station ((I’ve written about my…

  • Caustics

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    I have been fascinated by caustics for a long, long time. I still remember the first time I noticed them – a bright, ethereal form dancing in the shadow of my mother’s wine glass. I was entranced by the way the light moved when the wine swished in the glass, and disappointed when my usually…

  • Tea Tasting

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    On Tasting Flavour perception is a deceptively complex thing. Human taste buds are capable of sensing salty, sweet, sour and bitter (the four classical elements of human taste) plus umami (the savoury taste of glutamates such as MSG, found in things like mushrooms, soy sauce and meat) and probably fat (the jury is still out…

  • The Cloudspotter’s Guide

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    The Cloud Appreciation Society was founded by Gavin Pretor-Pinney in 2004, to ‘fight blue-sky thinking’, with the motto: ‘Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds‘: Sound advice if I ever heard it. The Cloudspotter’s Guide is its first official publication, and the author’s first book. Pretor-Pinney…

  • Skywatching

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    I recently finished reading The Cloudspotter’s Guide (see review), and have concluded that it is one of my all-time favourite books. I have made skywatching a hobby for as long as I can remember, but the book has raised my awareness of the skies above us to new heights. As it happens, this has coincided…