Animal Crackers

Until recently I hadn’t spent all that much of my life around animals.  My parents had two cats, consecutively – Scrap, who was a black adopted stray, evidently much loved, and Sandy.  Scrap died when I was about four, so my memories of him are almost entirely vicarious; and Sandy was a fat ginger neutered tom for whom I can’t remember ever feeling a scrap of affection.  (It was reciprocal, I’m sure.)  Then there were two dogs, again consecutive, both called Trixie, both Pembrokeshire corgis.  Trixie I died after only a few months in the family, and was immediately replaced by Trixie II.  I’d guess this was around 1953, when corgis had suddenly become quite fashionable.  I had to take this dog for walks, which worried me.  My fears were justified, because on one occasion a local male mongrel took advantage on my watch, fortunately without outcome.  I think Trixie II was ‘done’ shortly after this incident, thus becoming as fat and lethargic as Sandy the cat. 

Much later, I had two German shepherds, or Alsatians as the British public were trained to call them during WWII.  Again, these were consecutive.  The first was too friendly for his own good, wanting to socialise boisterously with every dog or human he encountered, which didn’t always work the other way.  He died of a mysterious virus at about two years, and was replaced with his temperamental opposite, a shy, nervous creature who was hard to get to know.  I loved him, but he scared me – not for myself, but for other people.  He was lucky to get away with some transgressions.

So my early experience of  animals wasn’t particularly special.  Recently, though, all that has changed, so over the next few posts I’ll tell you about some of my new friends, acquaintances and, dare I say, potential adversaries.

To kick off  with, then, cattle.  Or bullocks, to be exact – although I’m told that one of the seven is in fact still a bull: I haven’t attempted to verify this yet. As readers of Z's blog will know well, they visit the meadow every summer.   They’re placid creatures, but naturally inquisitive, and they don’t play to human rules, as I found when I incautiously went too close to one, just trying to be friendly, and he decided that my jacket looked like a tasty morsel.

They’re not stupid, though.  The other day, we found that they’d managed to remove the galvanised cover on the header tank of their water trough and hide it somewhere in the field.  This was the first move in a cunning plan.  They then unscrewed the ball from the ballcock, thereby causing the tank to overflow onto the surrounding ground and form a nice muddy lake, from which they were able to drink without having to raise their heads from their other important business, eating grass.

In which I celebrate A Memorable Lunch

We needed to use up an hour before the clarinet-repair shop woke up from its lunch break, so decided to have lunch ourselves, fetching up at a reasonable-looking pub a few miles outside Norwich.  They had a lunchtime sandwich menu, and I selected (I quote from memory) locally cured honey-roast ham, Dijon mustard and tomato on granary bread, with salad garnish and chips.

What eventually arrived, served by the charming and extremely efficient but overloaded barmaid (who was the only person on public duty, the other member of the bar staff having called in sick and the management clearly not having come across the concept of ‘cover’) consisted of two inch-thick hunks of (admittedly fairly decent) bread, enclosing a single wafer-thin slice of fairly ordinary ham (sourced, I suspect, from the Tesco Express just down the road), a scraping of English mustard and two slices of tomato (probably Dutch to judge by the flavour, if that’s the right word), accompanied by a handful of lamb’s lettuce, one leaf of what might once have been rabbit’s lettuce, two more slices of the same tomato, and exactly three – I counted them - potato crisps.

I mean, really!  There ought to be an EU regulation about that sort of thing, oughtn’t there?

To be fair, the beer was nice.  So were the napkins.

Caravan diaries 2016 #1

The journey down was longer than it should have been, partly due to an entirely inexplicable traffic jam between junctions 16 and 17 of the M4.  The warning signs were lit up right from Reading (junction 12), a good 35 miles earlier.  Sure enough, as soon as we passed Swindon, we slowed down to a near standstill as the signs got more and more alarming.  It took about half an hour to get to about junction 17, when the traffic miraculously cleared and we were back to our normal speed – there was no sign of what had caused the tailback, and I ranted yet again along the lines of “it’s the bleedin’ warning signs that cause it, rant rant rant”.

The caravan had once again survived what was actually a fairly hard winter for Pembrokeshire; in other words, it hadn’t rolled down the hill into the sea, and was only partially covered in green gunge, which will have to be washed off next time – I couldn’t be bothered to do more than the glass door this visit, on the basis that that particular patch of gunge was visible from the inside, and that it was more important to show Z the ropes, and the view.

The other good news is that the lawnmower fairy had called and cut all the grass, even the bits that are usually left for me to delight in.  I can only wax optimistic – has this become a new site policy?  Or a gentle hint about general tidiness expectations?  Time will tell.

On Saturday we went and shopped in Narberth (or Arberth as it’s named in Welsh; couldn’t they agree on at least that minor international difference?  Evidently not.)  It’s still a delightful town, surprisingly thriving for what likes to see itself as a depressed, deprived area.  Staycationing might have had an impact, of course.  Good to see that the best butcher, Andrew Rees, is still vigorously trading, selling local wet fish as well – we bought a turbot, not a beast you see often in the shops these days.  And a local genuinely free range chicken, which we’ve only just consumed the last of, four good meals’ worth.  And the slightly quirky greengrocers’ (or greengrocer’s) cum deli had very new Pembrokeshire new potatoes – easily the match of Jersey Royals, especially for not having been over-marketed and so over-cultivated.  This shop is called Wisebuys, which of course years ago got renamed Wise Boys.

On Sunday the east wind did blow.  The caravan site, unusually for the Welsh coast, faces east (which confused Z slightly until I explained the shape of Carmarthen Bay, without even having to resort to a map – she’s very quick on the uptake…), and when there’s a good blast from that quarter we feel it.  The caravan trembles and strains at its anchors, making for mild excitement and pretend trepidation, always good fun.  And the sea, of course, was churned up beautifully, as these pics show. 

We weren’t as brave as those folks, and didn’t venture onto the beach.  Next time.  Z tells me she loves rock pools, so she has a treat in store, as do I – this particular chunk of my childhood is indelible, but does benefit from the occasional refresh.

Ou sont les pois-nieges d’antan?

Yesterday I decided to show off by cooking my legendary prawn stir-fry with noodles.  It needs green peppers and, ideally, pak choi; but pak choi was an ask too far for Yagnub Co-op, so we settled for mange-tout, or snow peas as they’re sometimes called, and I lobbed a pack into the trolley.  Come evening, they were nowhere to be found.  A certain amount of historical reconstruction, including inspection of the Co-op till receipt,  proved that they had indeed not been purchased.

I’m making a habit of thieving from supermarkets.  Only last year, as (the) dedicated reader(s) of this blog will recall, I nicked a tube of Polos from Waitrose.  So I felt suitably guilty as well as perplexed, and tried to work out what had happened, or not happened.

The best conclusion is that the pack of snow peas had accidentally spilled over the barricade into the next customer’s shopping.  I do hope they were as perplexed as I’d been, and I rather hope they decided to keep them and incorporate them into a delicious prawn stir-fry with noodles, unlikely though that is.  One can always dream.

The main rationale for this post is, of course, its title.

The Laws of Sudoku

I was seduced into these puzzles a few months ago, and now I divide my meagre residual leisure time between them and crosswords, which makes me an expert.  I’m sure that no-one who reads this blog is unfamiliar with Sudoku, so I won’t patronise you by spelling out the basic concept or the fundamental techniques.  I can, however, share with you a few tips I’ve registered during my (ahem) several hours’ in-depth experience:

1. When all the obvious and less obvious connections have been detected, stare at it for at least twenty-five minutes.  Then do the quick crossword.  Then stare some more.  Then go and get a drink.
2. The drink will have the immediate effect of revealing the bleedingly obvious link your eyes had meticulously swerved around throughout the pre-drink epoch.  Also the fact that you had written ‘4’ twice in the same nine-by-nine box.
3. I always print it out from the Garduain website, for two reasons: a) there’s just about room on an A4 for the demented aides memoires I need as a memory surrogate; and b) erasers don’t work more than twice on newsprint.  (Actually, my confidence levels have risen to the point where I can start with ink rather than pencil, safe in the knowledge that I can always screw it up, screw it up, and print it again.  It’s surprising how differently take 2 can turn out.) 
4. When the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains must be, er, equally impossible.  Guesswork should not be resorted to – but occasionally pays off.  Only today, I had to downgrade a ‘hard’ Guranaid Sudoku from ‘impossible’ back to merely ‘hard’ as a result of an inspired guess, which turned out to be wrong but unveiled the (rather subtle) right approach.
5. As an alternative to breaking down into uncontrollable metaphorical sobs, if it’s at all feasible, ask Z.  This never fails.

Five* Have Fun At The Dentist

*That being approximately the number of nearly intact molars I seem to have left in my mouth, not counting caps.

Ray, my dentist of thirty-odd years, retired at the end of last year, shortly after I’d made my appointment for yesterday’s check-up.  (I’d like to think this was a coincidence.)  So I was a bit nervous when I turned up ten minutes early.  Usually I grit my teeth and let them do the necessary, but a new, unknown dentist is bound to be a challenge.  The fact that the surgery didn’t open for another ten minutes didn’t help either.

I needn’t have worried.  He was charmingly camp, in an eastern European way.  The first thing he said was ‘I won’t ask you how you are, you’re well enough to get here and I’m not a doctor.  So, how are the teeth?’

I told him.  Unlike doctors, dentists can’t be lied to.  The next thing he did, after counting them and explaining very objectively the condition of the five worthy of mention, was ask me if I had time for him to repair the two most urgent.  The other three, he explained, could wait.  I asked how much time.

‘Depends whether you want anaesthetic,’ he replied.  ‘That takes a bit longer, obviously.’

By now I’d got the hang of this guy’s drill-side manner, so I swiftly decided to be equally honest with him.  ‘I’ll take the chance, but if I can’t bear it I’ll let you know.’  He smiled behind his mask.  ‘Shouldn’t be too bad.’

It wasn’t.  A few minutes in, he asked if I was okay: ‘don’t lie to me, now.’  And towards the end, ‘are you still with me?’  When he’d finished practically rebuilding the tooth that, it seemed, had been about to fall to pieces without my noticing, he filed a bit off a back one which had been nagging at my tongue.  The entire process took about half an hour, and was miraculously painless.  I cannot praise this man’s skill highly enough.  Or his entertainment value.    

And the whole performance (for that was what it was) cost me just £51.30.  I couldn’t help wondering what the one pound thirty covered, but thought it best not to ask.

Fantasy Brexit Cabinet

Prime Minister: Boris Johnson

Home Secretary: Nigel Farage

Foreign Secretary: George Galloway

Chancellor of the Exchequer: Nigel Lawson

Work and Pensions: Alan Sugar

Health: Jeremy Hunt

Transport: Ranulph Fiennes

Energy: Joan Collins

Education: Michael Gove

Culture: Tim Rice

Justice: Ian Duncan Smith

Minister Without Portfolio: Jeremy Corbyn

 

 

There and Back Again*

Flann O’Brien tells, in The Third Policeman, how a road differs depending on whether you are coming or going.  When you are coming along it, the road can be inviting, enticingly undulating, gently pulling you towards your destination.  When you are going down the same road, it can be dreary, achingly hilly, frowningly forbidding.  In O’Brien’s novel, it is the road itself that changes, not the traveller, but we don’t need to stretch the metaphor quite that far.

I was, however, planning to stretch it in another direction.  My yesterday was a ‘going’ day.  Today has been a ‘coming’ one. 

The metaphor has, of course, just nearly snapped, because days don’t run in opposite directions.   Only nearly, though, not completely.   My whole life recently has been a-coming, not a-going.

*Quiz question: locate this fictional unfinished tale.

A Study Suggests

There are a lot of academic Studies out there, aren’t there?  Or putting it another way, there is a lot of academic Studies out there, isn’t there?  I’m sure someone has published a learned Study on the subject of The Collective Singular in Modern English. 

In fact I’d be amazed if they/he/she haven’t/hasn’t.  My own Study suggests that the academic study industry, in its broadest encompassment, is set to outweigh all other industries put together.  Nary a day goes by without at least two catching the media’s attention.  And they (the reported ones, that is) seem, mostly, to fall into one of two categories: statements of the bleeding obvious, and pure gibberish. 

The latest to catch my eye is the one suggesting that, in various life choices, we tend to favour the option located on our dominant side.  That is to say, right for right-handed people, left for lefties.  As an instance of this, the authors state that we’re more likely to vote for a candidate on the right-hand side of the ballot paper if we are right-handed, and vice versa.

Now, this is an American study, and America is a democracy (let’s assume) in which the right not to vote is constitutionally, albeit not explicitly, enshrined.  So it’s possible that these authors have never seen an actual ballot paper.  To be fair, I’m not particularly familiar with the details of the American electoral system, except that it involves things called chads, which may be hanging; but I reckon it’s safe to assume that candidates are, as here in Britain, listed from top to bottom rather than left to right.  Er, was this the best example they could think up?

No.  They also suggest that, at an interview, you should sit to the interviewer's right, or left, in order to make the best impression.  Now again, have they ever attended an interview at which they were given the choice of where to sit?  And at which they knew in advance whether the interviewer was right- or left-handed?  And have they considered that, whilst this technique might just improve your chances of getting the job, it might also put you off it?

Gubbish.  Gobbledegook.  Anyone got any other examples of this sort of pseudo-scientific codswallop?

Country Ways

Not strictly true: Z doesn’t really live in the country in the extreme rural sense, it just feels like it, as those of you who’ve visited her will vouchsafe (and be able to confirm at her next blogfest on 16 July).

But I had a small initiation.  As you know, one qualifying feature of ‘country’ is lack of mains drainage.  Modern septic tanks take care of this with minimal maintenance and, when it all runs (ha!) according to design, rare problems.  It just so happened that my visit coincided with not one but two.  (I firmly deny any complicity…)

Roses, who lives next door, had noticed a bit of a pong, which she’d very easily traced to the feed to her tank.  Well, two of the five senses were quite enough.  So Z’s trusty BMWF (as she calls him) was summoned to the rescue.   BMWF has, I learned, been an energetic tower of strength (if you can have one of those) around the Zedary for more years than there are.  He rapidly ascertained that R’s tank flowed into Z’s, so the latter had to be investigated as the fount (?) of the effluence.  This proved to be untrue, but fortuitous.

Because it turns out there were in fact two separate, quite unconnected, blockages, one for each (entirely unconnected) tank.  This proves how easy it is to build a course of action on a false assumption – as Kingsley Amis memorably epitomised it, the ‘inverted pyramid of piss’.

Of course, once this had been established, the rest was easy.  Just scoop the water and sludge out of Z’s pit, so as to find the outlet pipe; dispose of the sludge; rod the outlet once found; all will then be well.

Except that it wasn’t.  I’m tired now, so I can’t go into the details of how BMWF eventually discovered that R’s problem was easily solved whereas Z’s requires a whole new run of outlet pipe to be laid.  I’m dwelling on my small country life initiation, which consisted of disposing of many gallons of sludge, in a wheelbarrow, down a couple of rabbit holes across the field.  Right, that’s enough dwelling on that.

The sole reason for this post, actually, is to report that, when told this story, Z’s friend apparently remarked “sort of Watershit Down, then?”

Instruments of Tortuous Delight

I seem to be being drawn towards musical participations of various sorts, some more likely than others.  I’m not the musician I once was, due to lack of practice, in turn due to a combination of physical difficulty (my right arm doesn’t strum very well any more, and certainly can’t fingerpick), distraction (so much else going on in my life), and indolence.  I have five guitars – I had a picture of them all, but can’t find it and certainly lack the energy to recreate it – only two of which (the acoustic and, inevitably, my beloved Telecaster) I ever pick up nowadays.  Shame, really.

So I’ve gathered together all the other musical instruments I possess (with one exception, a mouth organ which I suspect is lurking inside one of the guitar cases).  Here they are.

Half of them, as you’ll see, are percussion.   The others are my old school recorder (which I can still tootle a bit); a mandolin that belonged to Viv, who never played it  (it needs restoration, really – the lack of tuning pegs, which doesn’t really show in the picture, makes it, erm, untunable); a duck, given to me as a birthday present by my brother: it took me ages to realise that you had to put your fingers on some holes and blow into its backside, whereupon it would emit up to, ooh, at least a pentatonic scale; and some little bells, which fall on the boundary but which I’ll count as not percussion, because you can do things with them other than shake and bang.  (I realise I’m on, ah, shaky ground here, categorically.)

I love percussion.  I have a great sense of rhythm, which sometimes even makes its way down the ever-lengthening neural pathways to my hands and feet.  I could have been a drummer, if I’d had the energy. 

My best ever percussion instrument was a Fiat 850 van we used to hire when Bessie, our Transit, was on one of her frequent rest cures.  But that’s another story. 

Brains

There was a supposedly interesting programme on BBC4 about how the human brain works, which I almost watched, until the irritating presenter, the pseudo-psychedelic graphics and the usual portentous music turned me, and the TV, off.

But it reminded me of a little story from about forty years ago, which I will now tell you.  I’d issue one of those ‘this might bother you’ alerts if I could remember what they were called.  But anyway, here goes.

One of the many things I learned when I lived in Italy was an appreciation of all sorts of offal.  Brain (pigs or calves) was one of these.  [Treat it like sweetbreads or very tender calves’ liver, a dusting of well-seasoned flour and flashed in hot butter, delicately delicious.]

So one day it was decided that the local butcher would be put on the spot.  I can’t remember exactly how the question was posed, but he rose to the challenge.  It turned out that he had a pig’s head in the back room, which he’d be happy to split open for us.  (This must have been in the days when butchers bought in whole carcasses and did the business on the premises.)  The head was duly fetched out, carefully split open, carefully, with a gently wielded cleaver, and – I can picture it to this day – the brains drawn out and presented, on the palm of his hand, for our inspection.

“Hmm,” I remember saying.  “Not much, is there?”

The butcher gave me one of those smiles that say ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for years’.

“If ‘e ’ad any more, it’d be ‘im eatin’ uz.”

My front door

I’d never have expected to find myself in sympathy with that security company (you know the one) whose sub-contractors inadvertently painted all their doors in Middlesbrough red and then allowed asylum seekers to live behind them.

It’s common for communities to have covenants about this sort of thing, which have to be obeyed.  As far as I can tell, the company in question weren’t conforming to any such rules, but merely got hold of a few cheap tins of paint and decided to put it to good use.  Perfectly reasonable, I’d say -  how were they to guess that a shitstorm of sanctimoniousness would burst over their heads for this breach of a newly-minted set of retrospectively made-up correctitude?

No, I have no problem with any of that.  Nor, given the way things are, do I have a problem with the meeja’s handling of the story.  I expect nothing else from them.  They need targets, and will be indiscriminate in selecting them, especially on a slow local news day.  The Mudroch press don’t care much where they point their paint-guns, as long as they splatter something.

No, my problem is that nobody seems to have gone to any lengths at all to identify, name, shame or prosecute the sub-human wazzocks who kicked the whole thing off.  Imagine the thought-process (if that’s not over-glorifying it): we hate immigrants; red doors identify immigrants; so let’s terrorise red-door-dwellers.  That seems to be taken for granted.

For so long as those mentalities – thuggery and blind-eye connivance with thuggery – exist, never mind persist, in this land, goodness and decency are, I worry, doomed.

My front door is painted white, by the way.

Well did you evah?

A cynical churl writes:

Swell?  Huh.  No sex, illicit or otherwise; hardly any flirtation; no falling over; only one small red wine spillage on the carpet; no appallingly tasteless music, not even background sort; no dancing; no drunken insults...  All you did was eat brilliant food, drink about a bottle of wine each (on average), and sit around having funny, stimulating conversations about everything from speed bumps in the Avenue to the lesser-known works of Terence Rattigan; and it was all over by 11.30 , a mere six hours' worth ...   Call that a swell party?

A gratified host replies:

Yes.

A drink is still a drink. Innit?

In preparation for tomorrow's Neighbourhood Watch party, to give our livers a head start, Z and I are having an alcohol-free day, or at least part of one.  It's possible that the very last droplet of wine last night was consumed after midnight, and we might be forced to have a small glass of sauv blanc with the halibut steaks and boulangere potatoes later on.  But in the meantime we're enjoying a new cocktail:


Crush some juniper berries and infuse them in a small quantity of tonic water.  Add a few drops of angostura bitters, stir well and strain over ice and a slice of lime.  Top up with tonic to desired level.
This is called a Ginless Wonder.

Party Time!

No, don’t get too excited, it’s a local Neighbourhood Watch party, not a blog- or birthday- one. 

I haven’t had a party here for over three years, the last one being my 70^th in July 2012, which a couple of my blog-chums attended.  My house is, I’m told, the right size and shape, and also, in the words of my friend and neighbour (and fellow-co-ordinator of the Watch) Nigel ‘has a good feel for a party’.  I’m not sure quite what he means by that, but I’m happy to go along with it .  I always think a party is made, not by the location or even the food and drink, but by the people.  I must know some pretty good party people on that basis, because in twenty-seven years here I can’t remember a single bad one.  (Party, that is; person neither, actually.)

Anyhow, taking no chances, the following notice, suitably framed and embellished, will greet attendees as they arrive.

NUNC  EST BIBENDUM,

NUNC  PEDE LIBERO

PULSANDA TELLUS

If a quotation from Horace in the original Latin doesn’t get ‘em going, nothing will.*

* Look it up if you need to.  Oh all right, the loose translation from my Oxford quotations book is: ‘Now for drinks, now for some dancing with a good beat.’  Old Horace was clearly on the right track.

Here’s a useful thing

I used that blog title, or something like it, several years ago for a post about my pineapple slicer, which is a marvellous piece of technological design that exactly conforms to the cliché ‘fit for purpose’.  Or ‘does what it says on the tin’, or box in this case.  A box which says ‘pineapple slicer’ and contains a device that slices pineapples is a good box.

This morning’s discovery didn’t come in a box, and didn’t have an obvious purpose, though I didn’t know that at the time of its discovery.  I have a drawer in the table beside me which I think of as my ‘useful stuff’ drawer.  It’s full of stuff, some of which I use.  To be more precise (or rather, less imprecise), there is an assortment of pens; two or three old notebooks (kept because they possibly contain information that might prove useful at some point – indeed, one of them did just yesterday, reminding me of the HTML needed to embed a link in a blog comment…); a refill for my Cross pen; a device for fixing studs to golf shoes; a calculator; several pairs of defunct spectacles; a bumper sticker for Fender amps; a magnifying glass (4” diameter); much else.

The other day, I needed a rubber (that’s an eraser, for any Transatlantic readers) to facilitate my new passion for Sudoku, instilled in me by the awesome Z.  She can do it all in her head, but as a novice I need to write the candidate numbers in the cells, so a rubber is essential.  Eventually, I found one, which I’ve been using to varying effect, but it was a bit of a delve.  So this morning I decided that drawer needed a good seeing-to.

It still does, because one if the very first things I uncovered was this:

I inherited this curious little object from a distant relative-by-marriage about twenty years ago when his wife died and the family home in Narberth was cleared out.  Ivor was a taciturn Welshman whom I hardly knew but liked, perhaps, better than those closer to him.  When I was first introduced to him, in 1988, by his niece (later my wife), who had obviously had previous relationships, he was politely non-committal, but I later learned that his considered opinion consisted of a sniff and the words ‘Not bad.  Better than the last one, anyway’, which I took as unconditional approval. 

I knew that he repaired watches, whether as a hobby or a profession I never learnt.  So I’d always assumed that this tiny magnifying glass was a tool of that trade, though I couldn’t work out how it would be used in practice.  I stuck the picture on Facebook this morning, and was advised by my several expert friends there that it is, in fact, to quote Mike, ‘an inch glass, for a material worker to count the number of threads per inch in woven material’.  It should contain an insert in the base for calibration purposes, which is obviously long lost. 

So I’ve learnt something not very useful, but nonetheless fascinating, today.  Not, as you might suppose, the original purpose of this piece of early 20^th century fit-for-purpose technology; but that people were expected to use it as the tool of their living.  Not all day long, I don’t suppose; but still.  I can’t imagine that.  Or perhaps I can, but I’m not straying into that territory this evening.

And the drawer, of course, remains un-decluttered and full of useful stuff.

Of Red Cabbages and Things

It has been proven impossible to cook braised red cabbage for less than sixteen people.  D. Smith’s recipe calls for 2lb of cabbage, 1lb of apples and 1 lb of onions.  She claims this serves four.  Even allowing for cooking reduction, that’s going on a pound per head.  Even without any other dishes, that’s a big eat, and you wouldn’t want a plateful of nothing else, would you?|

As it turned out, it served the three of us on Saturday, twelve or so on Sunday (not everyone chose it from the vegetable selection on the table), and there was still some left over. And, I understand, over again.  It’s a shame, because it’s a brilliant dish.  Trouble is, you can’t buy less than a kilo of red cabbage, and if you use a quarter of one, to serve three, all you can do with the rest is pickle it.  Which is fine, but not necessarily a job for the morning of a great big, great family post-Christmas/New Year lunch.

I know, it can be frozen.  But making too much of something and then freezing the remainder is all very well, but you don’t want it forced on you, do you?  Especially when your freezer is already crammed full.

In other things:

I saw a sign on my way to Norfolk, outside a café, which actually said ‘NO ARTICS’, but which I read as ‘NO ANTICS’, which momentarily put me off.  And coming back into Reading, one of those sanctimoniously patronising homilies they display when there’s no real traffic information asked ‘ARE YOU VISIBLE ENOUGH?’  You have to think about that, don’t you?

And, I’ve had my first try at Sudoku.  Or three tries, to be honest, all at the same puzzle, all ending in failure.  I’m good at deductive logic but bad at spatial connections, which means that, in this case, the latter frustrates the former.  So I’m going to persevere, in order to improve the latter.   I’ve gathered together the essential ingredients – a pencil and a rubber.  Oh, and a functioning brain.  One thing I’ve learnt (or re-learnt) recently is that one must keep on learning.

 

Christmas Card Audit 2015

I was going to blog about my post-it stickers, which read ‘claret’, ‘crisp horse beans’ and ‘eels’, but this is much more interesting, isn’t it?  Isn’t it?

Executive Summary:

Note: An audit was not carried out for 2014, for reasons of indolence.  Comparisons are therefore with the 2013 figures.

The most significant trends this year have been:

·         The Animals and Birds count has recovered encouragingly.  Indeed, I have thought it worthwhile to give a full breakdown of this category.  Robins remain consistent at 1.

·         Cute Children have, thankfully, been eliminated.

·         I have retained the category ‘Santas/Reindeer’, although there is only one card depicting a sleigh being pulled by reindeer, and Santa is not visible in this.  Indeed, there are no Santas at all!  What does this mean?  There are, however, several free-range reindeer, which are included in Animals’Birds.

·         Glued-on glitter is everywhere. 

The full figures (2013’s, where applicable, in brackets):

Snow/Snowmen/Snowflakes:               2 (6)

Santas/Reindeer:                                  1 (4)

Animals/Birds:                                     13 (4)

of which

Robins:                                     1 (1)

Free-range reindeer:                 4

Baby deer:                               3

Horses:                                     1

Dogs:                                       1

Ducks:                                     1

Owls:                                       1

Hedgehogs:                              1         

Landscapes:                                         4 (7)

Boats:                                                  1 (0)*

Nativities/Wise Men/Angels:                6 (4)

Christmas trees/Baubles:                      6 (5)

Comical:                                              2 (1)

Puddings:                                             0 (0)

Cute Children                                      0 (4)

Totally Abstract:                                  3 (0)

*To be fair, an RNLI card.

Special categories:

Homemade/designed:                          4 (4)

Cards with glued-on glitter:                  12 (3)

Ecards:                                                 0 (1)

Wonderfully weird:                             0 (3)

The Card of the Year award this year goes to my niece Georgie for a bauble card constructed from old buttons.  I haven’t illustrated it because it only really works in 3-D. 

Head-, Hands- and Heart-first

They say changing residence, changing relationship and changing occupation are three of the most stressful events one can undertake in one’s life, and should be kept apart, entered into with caution, etcetera etcetera.  We say: how do they know?  Have they tried it?  Where’s the experimental evidence?

So, in the interests of science, 2016 is going to be the year in which I’m going to put this theory to the test by doing all three.  It’s not going to be a very meaningful experiment, mind you, because we already know the outcome and will not permit anything to get in its way.

A Happy and Adventurous New Year to you all.

 

 

The best service I've ever had*

11.30 last night: noticed that the cistern in the downstairs loo was overflowing.  The overflow pipe was leaking, which is how I spotted it.  Took emergency precautions and went to bed.
9.00 a.m.: called Homecare.  They answered after one ring.  Booked an 'all day' callout (i.e. by 6.00 p.m.) for today.
9.05: Matt the plumber phoned.  He'll be with me in 10 minutes.
9.10: Matt rings the doorbell.
9.40: Matt leaves.  Problem fixed.


* Now now, keep it clean...

Don’t Do Don’t

I was toying with doing one of those reviews of the year, but Facebook has beaten me to it, by selecting pictures I wisely posted there – a moth (or butterfly; there was a heated debate); a snail traversing a hose; a frog; some dead tomatoes; a book; some orioning (that’s too good a typo to correct, innit); a spider's web; did I mention a book?

So instead, as a lesson and a resolution, I’ll just stick with the post title.  To put it another way, ‘do do do’.  (As Frank Sinatra almost said.)

Happy Festives everybody.

The Blog of Proverbs

I dug out my Bible and had a look, and some of them are almost comprehensible, and may even be wise.  I rather liked 26: 16, ‘The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason’, though please don’t ask me to explain why.  (Something to do with Z’s policy of short bursts of efficiency enabling long stretches of laziness, maybe?)

But few if any biblical proverbs, at least from the Book of them, have made it through to everyday usage, so I’m going to deconstruct a couple of non-biblical ones that have.  They have two things in common: in deference to the season, they’re both culinary; and, as metaphors, they’re both crap.

Firstly: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”  This is used to justify harming, or sometimes killing, other humans in the interests of a greater objective.  In other words, the end justifies the means.  But whereas most of us will agree on what an omelette is, and that it’s a good thing, the argument from the particular to the general never works.  If I said, for example, “You can’t construct smartphones without starving people in China”, I doubt I’d get much support.  (Except from smartphone makers who starve people in China, of course.)  And eggs aren’t human beings.

Secondly: “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”  In other words, “trust me and don’t interfere.” Now broth, or stock as I tend to call it (in Italian, it’s ‘brodo’) is very easy to make, as any cook kno.  You bung your ingredients (e.g. chicken carcass, vegetables, etc.) into a pan, add water, bring to the boil and immediately reduce to a near-simmer, and then leave it alone for hours.  The key to not spoiling it is not to touch it.  It doesn’t matter how many cooks don’t touch the broth.  If they do, then by definition they’re not cooks.

“Too many cooks spoil the omelette”, now that I could go along with.  But it doesn’t work very well as a proverb, does it?  Or as a metaphor.

Velcro

Isn’t it wonderful stuff?  It was invented as a by-product of the early space missions, supposedly, along with non-stick frying pans and computers that sometimes work …  And Principia is without doubt going to yield comparable benefits, in healthcare, metallurgy, nutrition and other areas that will probably slip in through the side door unnoticed and unpredicted, just like Velcro did back then.

And it’s also yielded a rather splendid metaphor.  Each of the two sides of a Velcro connection exists in its own right – they’re different and self-contained.  Yet they are incomplete until they join together and seal the gap.  A bit like two humans.  Z and me, in this case.

Dead giveaway?

Business minister Nick Boles is quoted, in connection with the Spurts Direct sweatshop scandal, as saying "In general, I don't often welcome an investigation by the Guardian newspaper, but ..."


Why not, exactly?

Words on Words on Words

We were talking, as we seem to, about language.  Zee wondered why hair is singular, though there are lots of them.  This isn’t the case in other languages, like French, where they quite cheerfully say ‘I washed my cheveux’.  If you say that in English, it sounds a bit risqué.  I pointed out that there is a number of these sorts of confusion.

On my way back here through the drizzle and tyre spray, I reflected that I used to wonder whether I was the only one who did that.  Now I know I’m not.  There are at least two of us.  And there is a pair.

The Book Wot I Wrote

That’s ‘Dave Anthony’s Moods: This Obscure Group’, just in case you were wondering.  Also just in case you’re still wondering, here’s the back cover blurb:

In the summer of 1965, Dave Anthony’s Moods, an eight-piece band from the musical cauldron of Bournemouth, were confidently poised to take over the world of jazzy, brassy, bluesy, popular music and rule supreme. 

No such luck.  Four years later, they were a backing group for a second-rate Italian pop singer and the band fell painfully apart. Nobody but a few dedicated fans remembers them today.

This is the story of how that fiery ambition arose and how it developed and mutated - and how it descended in fits and starts into final failure. Dam is Tim Large's account of an amazing journey of peaks and troughs, hilarity and boredom, triumph and occasional tragedy, all seen through his inspired, time-distorted prism. He saw it all, from before the beginning until after the very end.

This is his version and he's sticking to it.

Anyway, it’s now written, published and available!  An ideal stocking filler, except that even if you order it today, you’re unlikely to get it for Christmas, for reasons I shall now explain.

It’s available on Amazon (just search for ‘Dave Anthony’s Moods’ and you’ll find it), but they print self-published books to order rather than laying in a stock, so there’s a lead time.  As I write, I’ve no idea exactly how long this is (they say ‘a few days’, but only experience will tell).  So if you do order it from them, you’re a pioneer at this point in time.

Alternatively, you can order from the publisher, YouCaxton, who have done a brilliant job for me.  Here’s the web page they created for me: http://www.youcaxton.co.uk/dave-anthonys-moodstim-large/  I suspect the lead time will be a bit longer than Amazon’s, though.  And the cost is the same.

Finally, I have a small stock myself, which I’m happy in principle to let you into.  It’ll be cheaper, because I don’t have to pay the retailers’ mark-up, but I can’t handle significant mailings, so this is really mainly for local custom.  If you’d like to explore this option further, please do contact me directly.

I’m new to this game, so it’s all experimental at the moment.  Of course, I fully expect it to go viral and the proceeds to enable me to retire – oh, no, I’ve already done that, haven’t I?  Seriously, it’s been a labour of love, and I just want to share it. 

 

Chacun à son

I’d had a mild version of something similar a few weeks ago, and put it down to an unnoticed collision or whatever, so I was a bit surprised to wake up last Monday morning with the area of my big toe, left foot, sending me signals.  Ah well, I thought, it’ll go away.

By Wednesday morning, it hadn’t.  Instead it had developed in size (cherry tomato), colour (ditto) and, of course, pain.  I realised I’d spent much of the night half-consciously finding sleeping positions that avoided any contact with the bedclothes, which had taken on the texture of over-zealous emery paper.  Uh-oh, I thought, and went to NHS Choices in search of something beginning with ‘G’.

Now the good news (to adapt a Bob Monkhouse punchline) is that I’m not a hypochondriac.  So I was ready for what I found.  It seemed that they had snuck unnoticed into my house, taken a hi-res photo of my foot, and published it.  And I could have written the list of symptoms myself.  So I have gout. 

Interestingly, it can apparently be caused, or exacerbated, by over-consumption of beer, fortified wines (including, yes, port) and neat spirits – none of which I indulge in to any extent – but not wine.  It didn’t say how much wine didn’t cause it, though.

It’s gone away now, just like doctor internet said it would.  There’s no point in my going to my GP and saying I think I had gout last week, is there?  They’ll just tell me to come back when it does.  Then there’ll be yet another pill to add to my collection.  Meanwhile I have an old Flanders and Swann number worming away in my ear, to compete with the Rodgers and Hammersteins left over from yesterday evening.

Silence

Frances, in her heartfelt post here, alludes to an essay she was made to write on this topic.  I doubt it was preserved, so I’m taking the liberty of writing my own version.

For a start, whoever said it was ‘golden’ (The Tremoloes, was it?) needs to be sent back to school for an English lesson.  Or what was called, when I did O levels, ‘Use of English’.  (Now there’s a subject ripe for revival, Ms Morgan, are you listening?)  If you had to come up with an adjective to qualify silence, is that really the best available? 

Of course, it wasn’t ever meant to be descriptive, was it?  It was designed as a control mechanism.  Children would have been processed into believing that gold equates to reward, therefore be silent and you might be rewarded – probably by not being punished. 

Next: there’s no such thing.  (I mean no disrespect to profoundly deaf people in saying this – some of you are musicians, aren’t you?)  Try and find it; I might have done so about twice in my life, and it shocked me, until I realised that there was a lot of noise still going on: my heart, my breath, even my bloodstream.

Third and last: it’s sometimes used as a verb.  To silence.  If I were into control mechanisms, this would be near the top of my toolkit.  As I’m not, it’s near the top of my ‘misuse of English’ kit.

If it has a colour, it’s black.

Tim is all over the place

I’m in the business of filling in time, which is not the same as wasting it.  I never waste the stuff, whatever appearances may suggest: there’s always an outcome of some kind, however inconsequential or trivial it might appear to uninformed outside observers.  For example, writing that last sentence filled in several minutes, which obviously weren’t wasted, otherwise I’d have deleted it, wouldn’t I?

So it was that this evening I found myself browsing through some old notebooks.  This was very interesting.  I discovered, for example, that in 1983 I went through a demented phase of serving up Chinese banquets: to whom, or why, I have no idea.  Here’s the list of ingredients for one such (provide your own punctuation* if you will):

Walnuts sesame seeds star anise mooli yellow bean sauce squid red pepper mangetout oyster sauce dry sherry mushrooms water chestnuts spring onions (lots!) beef chicken breast aubergine watercress pork eggs lapsang tea

I also, some years earlier, apparently became briefly obsessed with reading the Chambers Dictionary, from which I noted several definitions that amused or intrigued me.  Here’s just one:

Musique Concrète: a kind of mid-20 C music, made up of odds and ends of recorded sound variously handled.

Well, that was fun!  And the plumber’s coming in the morning to fit my new taps.  Isn’t life joyous?

*My fingers typed ‘punchuation, which I rather like.

There's no answer to that

A neighbour was holding forth about the need to support local shops and businesses.  I observed that she actually had her main weekly shop delivered to her by Ocada.


"Well," she replied.  "I don't even leave the house.  You can't get more local than that, can you?"

Unmakeupable

Willie Walsh, the CEO of IAG, which owns, amongst others, British Airways, has opined that the best way to fund the third Heathrow runway is to introduce toll roads around  the airport, because otherwise it'd be unaffordable.  'There is no point in having infrastructure if people won't use it because it's too expensive,' he is quoted as saying.  Walsh doesn't specify which roads, but it must be the M4 and the M25, because there aren't any others.  Clearly, this will encourage rush-hour commuters to get value for money by catching aeroplanes instead, won't it?
I imagine, however, that Mr Walsh simultaneously subscribes to the published Airports Commission declaration that this runway will bring some £211 billion of benefits to the British economy by 2050, although it isn't stated with any precision where this bounty will come from.*
Like I said...


* Not, presumably, Sharm el-Sheikh, at least for now.

Paris

The first time I visited Paris was in the late summer of 1963.  I’d just finished at University, and was at a loose end, so when my friend Brian invited me to join him and his parents on a three week camping  holiday in Europe, I jumped at it.  I had just inherited £200 from an aunt: what better way to invest it?  We took it in turns to drive fairly directly as far as Sorrento, and then meandered back northwards.  I can’t honestly remember the details (I vaguely recall visiting the casino in Monte Carlo), but I do know that we had planned in a two day stopover in Paris.  We camped in the Bois de Boulogne.  The idea was, obviously, to catch the sights, but that didn’t happen.  Brian and I spent the entire two days in the Louvre.

My second time was in about 1992, for a business meeting.  I flew over in the morning, had a very long lunch at which our French hosts insisted on serving roast lamb with mint sauce (very good at diplomatic manoeuvring, the French), possibly conducted a bit of business for an hour or two in the afternoon, and missed my flight home.

The last time I went to Paris, about twelve years ago, it was the full four day tourist circuit.  We walked and Metro’d for hours, ate andouillettes and fruits de mer and I forget what else, oh yes, a marvellous pizza; and, please, don’t believe that canard about the Parisians being unfriendly.  Rude, yes, but unfriendly?  Not in my extensive experience.  I loved it, and them.

Did I say ‘the last time’?  No way.

MAD

Am I alone in thinking? 

Jezza has got into trouble for saying that he’d never ‘press the button’.  Well, of course, it’s not his to press anyway – he couldn’t do it without the say-so of America – but leave that aside.  My question is: who would?  I think they are obliged to stand up and fly their mad flag. 

(Of course, not having the damn things in the first place, putting ourselves on a level footing with, say, Germany or Sweden or Australia, would help with any moral dilemma that deluded people like  General Sir Nicholas Houghton might believe to exist.  But leave that aside too.)

Corbyn may be saying that he would, if in control, refuse to retaliate.  Quite reasonable, I'd have thought.  Pressing it second isn’t really an issue, because the Destruction part of M.A.D. has already been achieved, so it becomes a bit academic.   “They killed us, but we killed them too, so we’re quits, and everything’s hunky dory, no harm done” isn’t a position I can imagine any political leader, even the maddest, taking.  And it would be particularly academic for most of us, because we’d be dead.

The plain truth is that the only real moral dilemma is: would you press it first?  So if Mr Corbyn is stating that he would never, under any circumstances, be the first button-presser, then I’d be surprised to find any of our leaders, current or aspirant, disagreeing.   So can they please just say so?  It’s time somebody broke this MAD vicious circle.

Cutaway lugs

A chance encounter with a Claud Butler bike has untapped a torrent of memories.

I learned to ride a bike when I was about nine (which was rather late for me).  I have no memory of the bike on which this took place, but I do remember the process.  My father insistently taught me, and I doggedly refused to be taught, until one day when I was on my own I got onto the thing, in the back garden, and taught myself.  After that there was no stopping me.

For my twelfth birthday I was given a proper bike, or at least my parents’ notion of proper.  (They were overprotective of me, I now know.)  There was some subterfuge involving, I think, a cricket bat, which somehow couldn’t be unwrapped until I’d been taken down to the garden shed under some pretext, there to be unveiled this gorgeous Raleigh, in a colour I’d now call magenta but then saw as very displayable red.

It wasn’t, of course, my dreambike.  That would have entailed full drop bars, alloy rims, 10-speed Derailleur gears, many other features I can’t remember:  all mounted on a Claud Butler racing frame with, crucially, cutaway lugs.  These latter were supposedly designed to reduce weight, which was ridiculous – they were an early manifestation of teenage designer bling, and hence heavenly.

I didn’t have any of that.  My bike had semi-drops, chrome-plated  rims which rusted if not oiled weekly, a sprung saddle, three-speed Sturmey-Archer, old lady mudguards and, most dreadfully, a chain guard, in matching colour trim!  But it was still near the top of the local game, and I loved it.

Customisation rapidly followed, of course.  The chain guard was the first to go.  I can’t remember the other tweaks I snuck in behind my parents’ backs.  I do remember the parentally approved water bottles, and can still taste an aluminium-tinged warm sip through a plastic straw.  We discussed the feasibility of taking a hacksaw to those clunky lugs to make them look like cutaways; even, I think, drawing fantasy designs. 

It was never going to be the racing bike I craved.  But I can remember, quite vividly, the short and long expeditions it carried me on.  That was my first taste of real freedom, granted me, intentionally or not, I’ll never know, by my parents. 

I’ve no idea what happened to the bike.  

 

Gentleman? Moi?

Country Life magazine has published a list of 39 characteristics which define a modern gentleman.  I’ve always wondered whether or not I'm one of those , so I printed it off and scored myself, using a three-way marking system – ‘Yes’, ‘No', and ‘?’ (don’t know/ sometimes/ not applicable/can’t remember/not saying).

Here are my self-scores:

Yes: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8-10, 14-17, 21, 23-26, 28-30, 32-33, 36-38

No: 3, 18, 20, 22, 31, 34

?: 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, 19, 27, 35, 37

I left out 39, because it’s meaningless.

There are, of course, some qualifications, which you can have hours of harmless fun matching to the answers:

• Except Paris-Charles de Gaulle.
• I did once train a dog, not very well.  One’s gardener trains the roses, surely?
• Tweed suit?  Only worn by cads, surely?
• Nobody has yet died from eating one of my omelettes, as far as I know.
• What, pray, is the distinction between an emoji, an emoticon and a sticker?  Insufficient information.
• Rooks exist only in the plural, crows in the singular.  Or the other way round, I can never remember.
• What does a gentleman wear on his feet in Puerto Rico then?  Oh, no, sorry…
• I tend not to wear flowers, it’s not 1967 you know.

 

Constitutional Crisis? Bring it on!

I had a fantasy, many years ago, that I’d switch on the telly at six o’clock, the credits would roll, and Reginald Bosanquet would announce “Good evening, here is the News at Six.  There isn’t any.  Nothing of any importance has happened today.  Good evening.*”  And then we’d get a rerun of an old episode of The Good Life** instead.

I wish the same thing would happen to politics occasionally, or even frequently.  Politicians, quite naturally, see it as their role to change things.  After all, if nothing needed to be changed, they’d be out of a job: and the prime purpose of being a politician, as for any job, is to stay in it.

I’m not suggesting that there aren’t things that need changing – I could offer up quite a little list of legislation that could usefully be created or, even better, destroyed – but every so often, we could do with a rest.  I don’t know about you, but I struggle to keep up with what is or isn’t legal as it is, without a dozen or so new laws coming along every week. 

So I rather hope that the House of Lords will have another crack.  The politicians can then usefully get themselves bogged down in the aforementioned constitutional crisis, shrinking their already wilting bubble in on itself, while the rest of us can just get on with real life for a while.

 

*Come to think of it, Reggie may well have done that once, given his track record, but if so I missed it

** Preferably the one where Barbara forgets to put her bra on, but …

The Blue Car Moves

It’s a Citroen Xsara, quite elderly, with threadbare tyres and a scrape or two down the offside.  It had been parked nearly opposite my drive since May.  It usually didn’t cause me any actual inconvenience – I could reverse round it without having to make more than three points, even in the worst sloppy-parking configurations, of which there are many out there – but it irritated me.

So I checked it on the DVLA.  It was taxed to next April, but had no MoT.  So a few weeks ago I shopped it to the council.  Last week, an abandoned vehicle sticker was attached to the windscreen.  Ah, progress, I thought.  And sure enough, today progress has been made, though not quite the sort I’d anticipated.

I’d been down to pick up a prescription, and was passing the end of the Close when a voice hailed me.  I couldn’t make out the words, if there were any, but I saw the blue car stuck diagonally across the road.  A burly, bald man with a grey ponytail was waving madly at me.  He looked angry.  Normally, in such situations I avoid eye contact and hurry on, but this was personal.

This man was apoplectic.  By means of body language and smiley gestures, I managed to persuade him that his immediate predicament – car stuck across the road – wasn’t my personal fault, whereupon he gradually dissolved into tearful contrition.  He’d been in a bad place (I didn’t ask where), desperately wanted to save his car from getting towed away, was trying to move it until the spare part he needed arrived from Plymouth or somewhere, had got stuck, could I give him a push please?

Well, I didn’t believe a word of it, but what would you do?  I put my shoulder to it and together we manoeuvred the rusty old wreck into a less obtrusive location.  This took some of my managerial skills, especially when it transpired that the concepts of left and right lock were novel to him.  But we managed it.  He was embarrassingly grateful, and I had to tear myself away.  As I left, I heard him mutter something like:

“It was that cow down the end what reported it, wasn’t it?”

I thought it best not to correct him on this point.

If it’s still there this time next week, I’m going to report it as dumped.  Again.

 

I'm really stupid!

Either that or someone else is.


I've just started using my iPhone as a camera.  I have a bunch of photos on there that I'd like to transfer to my computer, for obvious reasons. 


Can I work out how to do this?  No I can't.  Can anyone help?