Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Call centres
Following a query about the contents of Carling (the popular UK lager, not the fancy gear from Canada), I thought I would try sending in a query about ingredients to the (elaborate) Carling web site. Quite impressed to get an answer within a couple of days. Not a very elaborate answer - not a dietician's breakdown of the ingredients - but an answer none the less. It looks as if the reactions which prompted the query in the first place may be down to the stuff having wheat in it. I presume that the gluten in wheat survives the brewing process for lager - although I am told (by a denizen of TB) that it does not survive that for distilling whisky. So at least one coeliac can drink barley sourced whisky without pain.
Observed a trial of sucking pig over the weekend. So I thought I would ask the people in Cheam, who can indeed procure such an animal. Quite expensive they say as most of the cost of a pig is getting it to the sucking pig stage. All the weight put on after that is cheap. Be that as it may, they say they can do them for around £20 a pop at around a week's notice. Maybe we shall take them up one day. An entire pig on the table would be quite impressive - assuming, that is, that it fits in the oven. Wouldn't be quite the same chopped in half. With an apple in the mouth, naturally.
Two good shifts at the allotment over the last couple of days. On the first occasion, dug a six foot square seed bed. Three rows of leeks, two rows of summer cabbage and three rows of carrots. I won't attempt to transplant these last - although I am told it can be done. I will just be pleased to get some. Fenced the bed in with some of the copper wire stripped down a couple of weeks ago. Found that it does not come off the reel as well as it ought and resorted to untangling it - which only seemed to make things worse (as I ought to have known in the first place) - so had to cut it where I was not intending to. Got enough in the end and twisted the three strands together to give a rather springy result so had to stretch it round securely planted corner posts (sometime frame for a frame tent) and peg it down in the middle. Looks quite neat from ten feet. We will see if it keeps the slugs away. There was at least one quite large snail in the vicinity - the first I have seen this season.
On the second occasion, finished the second digging of the North Western corner of the Northern allotment. Now all ready to complete the two rows of perpetual beet sown previously in an adjacent patch. Dug up rather more large whites than I liked, maybe a couple of pounds, missed from last year's crop. They seemed sound but I was not sure about eating them having been in the ground for so long, so put them on the compost heap. Dug up the business end of a pair of secateurs - but with handles missing which was a bit odd. I don't suppose that handles have been made of anything that rots for ages. In any event, did not recognise them, so they must have come in with the leaf mould that I would have put under the potatoes. Dug up lots of worms which have suddenly reappeared after their winter absence. Some of them quite big, so where have they been hiding? I wouldn't have thought that they get down into the subsoil, nothing down there for them to eat. And lastly, threw (originally keyed as 'through') lots of very small white mites into the air. They may be a result of the bit of ground being dug also having been a cabbage patch until very recently.
The waste of these pototoes plus the probably waste of excess seed potatoes clearly got into the soul, as I had a dream last night involving much anxiety about where to plant potatoes. Which seemed to result in their being planted in trays in kitchen cupboards (amongst other inappropriate places) and I was not at all sure (in the dream that is) that this was going to work. I do not recall being concerned that the BH might take a dim view about finding rotting seed potatoes in her cupboards.
Then woke up to a rather unpleasant dream fragment about opening my laptop (somewhere public) to find screen and keyboard carpetted with a layer of small grey bugs, maybe a couple of millimetres long, pointed oval in shape with lots of very short legs - instead of the usual dandruff. Tried to brush them off but they were sticky and I did not like to brush too hard in case I scratched the screen. This last probably a result of the fact that the screen does have a lot of sticky finger marks on it (fortunately not visible when screen up and running) which I have not got around to getting rid of, my supply of screen wipes having dried out.
Observed a trial of sucking pig over the weekend. So I thought I would ask the people in Cheam, who can indeed procure such an animal. Quite expensive they say as most of the cost of a pig is getting it to the sucking pig stage. All the weight put on after that is cheap. Be that as it may, they say they can do them for around £20 a pop at around a week's notice. Maybe we shall take them up one day. An entire pig on the table would be quite impressive - assuming, that is, that it fits in the oven. Wouldn't be quite the same chopped in half. With an apple in the mouth, naturally.
Two good shifts at the allotment over the last couple of days. On the first occasion, dug a six foot square seed bed. Three rows of leeks, two rows of summer cabbage and three rows of carrots. I won't attempt to transplant these last - although I am told it can be done. I will just be pleased to get some. Fenced the bed in with some of the copper wire stripped down a couple of weeks ago. Found that it does not come off the reel as well as it ought and resorted to untangling it - which only seemed to make things worse (as I ought to have known in the first place) - so had to cut it where I was not intending to. Got enough in the end and twisted the three strands together to give a rather springy result so had to stretch it round securely planted corner posts (sometime frame for a frame tent) and peg it down in the middle. Looks quite neat from ten feet. We will see if it keeps the slugs away. There was at least one quite large snail in the vicinity - the first I have seen this season.
On the second occasion, finished the second digging of the North Western corner of the Northern allotment. Now all ready to complete the two rows of perpetual beet sown previously in an adjacent patch. Dug up rather more large whites than I liked, maybe a couple of pounds, missed from last year's crop. They seemed sound but I was not sure about eating them having been in the ground for so long, so put them on the compost heap. Dug up the business end of a pair of secateurs - but with handles missing which was a bit odd. I don't suppose that handles have been made of anything that rots for ages. In any event, did not recognise them, so they must have come in with the leaf mould that I would have put under the potatoes. Dug up lots of worms which have suddenly reappeared after their winter absence. Some of them quite big, so where have they been hiding? I wouldn't have thought that they get down into the subsoil, nothing down there for them to eat. And lastly, threw (originally keyed as 'through') lots of very small white mites into the air. They may be a result of the bit of ground being dug also having been a cabbage patch until very recently.
The waste of these pototoes plus the probably waste of excess seed potatoes clearly got into the soul, as I had a dream last night involving much anxiety about where to plant potatoes. Which seemed to result in their being planted in trays in kitchen cupboards (amongst other inappropriate places) and I was not at all sure (in the dream that is) that this was going to work. I do not recall being concerned that the BH might take a dim view about finding rotting seed potatoes in her cupboards.
Then woke up to a rather unpleasant dream fragment about opening my laptop (somewhere public) to find screen and keyboard carpetted with a layer of small grey bugs, maybe a couple of millimetres long, pointed oval in shape with lots of very short legs - instead of the usual dandruff. Tried to brush them off but they were sticky and I did not like to brush too hard in case I scratched the screen. This last probably a result of the fact that the screen does have a lot of sticky finger marks on it (fortunately not visible when screen up and running) which I have not got around to getting rid of, my supply of screen wipes having dried out.
# posted by Jim @ 12:09 AM 
