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.