Sunday, April 27, 2008
Garden time
Another seed bed prepared and seeded on the Northern allotment. Two rows of Bulgarian wheat, two rows of Autumn Giant leeks, two rows of Primo cabbage and one row of radishes. Second and last items courtesy of Tompson and Morgan courtesy of a former employee courtesy of a denizen of TB. Fenced in with three strands of copper and red and white incident tape. The former for the slugs and the latter for the deer. And, given that there are signs of slug activity on weeds round about, scattered a few handfuls of slug pellets around.
The first lot of Bulgarian wheat (see 24/7/2007) coming up quite well with the tallest around a foot high now. Maybe two thirds of them survived the winter, the slugs and the grazing deer. Probably not a good time to plant some more but it is supposed to be tough old stuff. We will see whether it comes into ear before the weather turns in the Autumn.
I mentioned a bad loaf from Waitrose the other day. Not only was it bad to eat, it did something very odd to the bread pudding. Something that the BH makes on a regular basis and which varies quite a bit according to the exigencies of the moment. Dearth of raisins, milk with any fat in it and so forth. But with this bread made a pudding of most unusual finish. Very flat and yellow. Clearly something very wrong with the best organic flour used by Waitrose. The loaf was one of those with a cooked on (rice paper?) label - so beware!
Returning to Ely, our visit included a visit to the cathedral - our annual tickets proving a very good buy - where we focussed on the carving around the stalls of the lady chapel. A tropical exuberance, albeit on a fairly small scale. All sorts of strange animals, vegetables and minerals. Several green men lurking above in bosses. All much damaged, partly age and partly the reforming vandals of the reformation. Maybe we should persuade some rich person to build a new one, painted stone and all (using original (animal, vegetable or mineral?) pigments, naturally. None of this modern stuff. Church Commissioners to audit), to give us an idea of what it would have looked like when it was built. Assuming that it was ever finished as an integral design - which the cathedral itself probably was not, although this lady chapel might well have been.
Sadly, too many people about to test the accoustics on this occasion.
The carving of the windows, arches and so forth of the chancel was fairly exuberant too. Made that of the earlier nave look very stolid - although very fine in a differant way.
Perhaps the replica should be in Dubai to grace the new offshore housing estate being built for people with more money than sense (see yesterday's Guardian). Why on earth would one pay lots of dosh to go and live in a house on a sandbank in 45C or whatever it is in the summer? Where as well as feeling hot and uncomfortable, you can feel guilty about the probably dreadful conditions of the Bangladeshis who built the place. Maybe it is for the company - such a place selects people of a feather who are going to get on well with eachother. Who love playing my bank account is bigger than yours all day. But then again, maybe they get to dislike the place so much that they hire resting actors to impersonate them, while they themselves relax in pleasanter climes.
The first lot of Bulgarian wheat (see 24/7/2007) coming up quite well with the tallest around a foot high now. Maybe two thirds of them survived the winter, the slugs and the grazing deer. Probably not a good time to plant some more but it is supposed to be tough old stuff. We will see whether it comes into ear before the weather turns in the Autumn.
I mentioned a bad loaf from Waitrose the other day. Not only was it bad to eat, it did something very odd to the bread pudding. Something that the BH makes on a regular basis and which varies quite a bit according to the exigencies of the moment. Dearth of raisins, milk with any fat in it and so forth. But with this bread made a pudding of most unusual finish. Very flat and yellow. Clearly something very wrong with the best organic flour used by Waitrose. The loaf was one of those with a cooked on (rice paper?) label - so beware!
Returning to Ely, our visit included a visit to the cathedral - our annual tickets proving a very good buy - where we focussed on the carving around the stalls of the lady chapel. A tropical exuberance, albeit on a fairly small scale. All sorts of strange animals, vegetables and minerals. Several green men lurking above in bosses. All much damaged, partly age and partly the reforming vandals of the reformation. Maybe we should persuade some rich person to build a new one, painted stone and all (using original (animal, vegetable or mineral?) pigments, naturally. None of this modern stuff. Church Commissioners to audit), to give us an idea of what it would have looked like when it was built. Assuming that it was ever finished as an integral design - which the cathedral itself probably was not, although this lady chapel might well have been.
Sadly, too many people about to test the accoustics on this occasion.
The carving of the windows, arches and so forth of the chancel was fairly exuberant too. Made that of the earlier nave look very stolid - although very fine in a differant way.
Perhaps the replica should be in Dubai to grace the new offshore housing estate being built for people with more money than sense (see yesterday's Guardian). Why on earth would one pay lots of dosh to go and live in a house on a sandbank in 45C or whatever it is in the summer? Where as well as feeling hot and uncomfortable, you can feel guilty about the probably dreadful conditions of the Bangladeshis who built the place. Maybe it is for the company - such a place selects people of a feather who are going to get on well with eachother. Who love playing my bank account is bigger than yours all day. But then again, maybe they get to dislike the place so much that they hire resting actors to impersonate them, while they themselves relax in pleasanter climes.
# posted by Jim @ 3:34 AM 
