Kvarg! Arrrgh!
THIS WEEK: Weird protein yoghurt and Lily Allen and David Harbour's Brooklyn townhouse
THING: Lindahl’s Kvarg
As I stared into the chiller cabinet the other day, looking for something different, something new, something to make me FEEL ALIVE, I found this was on offer.
It’s not often I come across a pot of yoghurt and wonder whether I’m having a stroke, but I couldn’t understand a single thing about it. What is Kvarg? Is it like Hygge? Or Yarg? Who is Lindahl? Is he like Limahl? White chocolate yoghurt? Can my mind cope with this amount of CRAZINESS? Just shoot me down like a Chinese spy balloon - I’m done!
Of course, it’s one of those protein yoghurts, like Skyr, which I do not trust an inch, due to an intense personal yoghurt-based experience I had in 2016. I flew back from New York on Icelandair and was seated next to a slightly tipsy, very handsome Icelandic stonemason who made charming conversation for a while and then the minute the lights went out for take-off, fell fast asleep like a parrot with a tea towel over its cage, and didn’t wake up for 5 hours.
I didn’t want to wake up the comatose stonemason by ordering a full elbows-out meal on board, and as Icelandair is a budget airline you have to pay anyway, and I wasn’t in the mood for spending £12 on a curry. So by the time the plane arrived, I was starving, and while waiting for my connecting flight home, I pounced on the nearest food I could see: some traditional Icelandic skyr. Is there an Icelandic word for the sadness you feel when you’re eating a horrible yoghurt in a cold airport at 4am? Skyrmordordottir? Flogvölljógórtsorg? Whatever it is, I had it. It was the single most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted, like curdled milk matured in a sock next to a gas fire.
Then, almost to the day I got back, Skyr was introduced to Britain, and is now a ubiquitous part of the yoghurt scene. I looked it up and in Iceland Skyr is actually classed as a cheese - which explains a lot - but surely the UK version can’t be the same stuff? I’m pretty sure British people aren’t known for enjoying cold pots of sock parmesan, but who knows anymore? We are all protein machines these days, and probably nobody thinks twice about necking cheesy Icelandic yoghurt on a treadmill in the 24-hour gym.
ANYWAY. Turns out Kvarg isn’t Skyr, it’s Swedish, and there’s a slight fromagey aftertaste, but it’s not too offensive and it’s fat free. I actually liked it but then I’m on a no biscuits diet, so I’ll do anything to fill myself up, including eating packing nuggets and toilet paper. I will never touch Skyr again though - not even if a hot Icelandic stonemason covered himself with it and offered himself up as a smorgasbord.
VERDICT: Not too arrg, and actually a bit of a barg
THING: Lily Allen and David Harbour’s house
People are losing their minds about Lily Allen and David Harbour’s Brooklyn townhouse, which was recently featured in Architectural Digest. But these people have obviously never seen anyone’s nana’s bedroom, or peered through the leaded windows of any middle class suburban street in the 80s. It looks like the set of Acorn Antiques, yet this chintz-a-thon is now being lauded as a brave new era of interior design. Is this where we’re at now? Ah well, let’s pause our dusting of our Capo di Monte figurines and take a brief tour.
The garden room
LOVE the extremely expensive hand-painted wallpaper and that double sided mega sofa. But those awful festoon blinds look like Rose West’s bridesmaids dress and the gold accessories are PUREST DUNELM. Also, did Handy Andy make that fireplace from MDF?
VERDICT: Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen woz here
The kitchen
This shiny white kitchen is supposedly modelled on the kitchen from Godfather, but I’m pretty sure I can see Mrs Doubtfire running around this with her tits on fire, or Kevin home alone in here, rigging up the chandelier to fall on Joe Pesci. What’s Italian for ‘naff’?
VERDICT: Revenge is a dish best served cold (because there’s no way any actual cooking happens in here)
The ‘Den’
Normal people have living rooms they all have to crowd in to watch the Masked Singer, but celebrities have dedicated spaces with cinema-sized screens and sofas like tanks. This dubious safari-themed room has outed Lily and David as the generic celebs they are, with trashy animal print, bamboo blinds and that most coveted of all household items …a leather deckchair.
VERDICT: The Katie Price Suite
The bedroom/bathroom/God knows what
David really, really DID let himself go in this room, which is like if Barbara Cartland fell bloomers-first into the Upside Down. I’m glad David is comfortable with his masculinity to this degree, but also if there are any rumours further down the line, we can’t exactly say they were unfounded.
VERDICT: A godawful bathroom in a provincial B&B
The bedroom
This sleeping area is off the bathroom, and in the YouTube tour, David coyly refers to this as a place where they do ‘adult activities.’ (Does he mean paying cripplingly high energy bills and looking bleakly into the middle distance, thinking about what could have been?)
Fair play to them, though. Personally, I wouldn’t be able to get in the mood in case the ghost of Sophia from the Golden Girls decided to pay a visit.
VERDICT: Flamin’ go
Kvarg! Arrrgh!
And still I can't remember where I saw the pictures, dirt.com? And thinking why they were taking so long to load.. heavy stuff 😂😂
I honestly thought, at first, that the townhouse was purchased from someone who decorated it in the 80s. Everything looks like pre gut job. Holy 🐄