I call it The Vile Salad

In a desperate attempt to get people to pay attention to me, I am now a food blogger. This is my dinner. I made it myself. It's a mix of the classic Greek salad with a middle eastern influence, while recalling traditional British carbohydrate rich meals.

Of course, colour is an important part of my design: food must be a semiotic as well as a sensual pleasure. The surface, which moves away from the architectural mode of presentation towards organic contours. In the range of levels, it suggests the seven hills of Glasgow, where it was born.

The colour pays respect to multi-cultural Scotland - not a melting pot, but a delicious bowl that allows every item to retain its own identity.

However, a literal reading of the colours reduces the semiotic impact. They suggest rather than insist (yet a feta cheese will always evoke fair Hellas, and so comes to perform a memorial to my friend Eric (he's not dead, he just pissed off to Athens). 

Delving deeper, each individual ingredient has its own history. Apart from Feta's association with Greece, we have pine nuts. A firm favourite since the Paleolithic Era, they are the victims of poor ecological protection in both China and the USA, reminding us, in their delicious nutty taste, that we must respect the planet. Coupled with the brazen green of the avocado, perhaps this is a subtle message that we ought to vote Green in the upcoming election.

And Patrick Harvey does look a bit like a pine nut, what with his baldy and all.

I really ought to stop on the Patrick Harvey hate. It's not his fault that I remember David Icke, and Tommy Sheridan, and have a distrust of left-wing men. I mean, the Moby lookalike jokes are on thing, but I am sneering at him. 

But rather like my salad, it is the mixtures of flavours that matter: the tartness of the cheese, the almost bland texture of beetroot and avocado, combining with the deliciously sharp piquancy of the mango and chilli dressing: without the odd bit of shade, writing is bland.