pumpkinstrokemarrow

Epsom has just been flooded with brown wheelie bins. I think the idea is that we put our garden waste in them. What I want to know is where the sums that show that this is a good idea are. To my mind the cost in fossil fuel of making thousands of large brown bins plus that of large lorries trundling around our streets (knocking chunks out of our roadside trees while they are at it) to collect the contents of these bins must be large - although it does help make work for the bin factories and for sundry central Europeans. Some of whom are so primitive as to want to smoke while on duty - at their workplace, on the street, even. So what are Epsom council doing with all the stuff that they are so laboriously collecting? Spending more fossil fuel to mince it up and spread it over municipal flower beds? As reported previously, my vote is to pour it into a large hole in the ground, laying down the fossil fuel for some future life form. Furthermore, we ourselves try quite hard to contain our garden waste in our garden - although it has to be admitted that a suburban kitchen and garden can generate more waste than one can comfortably handle. The soft stuff is OK but the hard stuff - all those trees we have to get permission in triplicate to prune (despite the fact that one might have planted the thing in the first place) - is not. It would be OK if we were content to let everything grow and to live in the resulting wood, which is what I guess the climatic climax vegetation (if I remember my eco-jargon correctly) would be if we let it. But the BH is quite keen on getting some sun from time to time so that is not a runner.

In the same vein, I gather that some worthy of central or local government is encouraging us to remove the plastic windows from window envelopes so that the plastic window can be placed in the plastic recycling receptacle and what is left of the envelope can be placed in the paper recycling receptacle. Ditto those all those cereal boxes which have sprouted windows so that you can view your luxury meusli (enhanced with sugar full dried fruit for greater palability) before making a purchase decision. Perhaps the government should lean on the various meusli trade associations and get them to persuade their members from putting windows in their boxes.

And talking of palatability, I decided today that what I needed to kick start the morning was a peanut butter sandwich. Reading the ingredients list I find that oil, sugar and salt have been added to the peanuts to make them palatable. So maybe what I was really after was a sugar and salt fix.

And on the economic front, slightly puzzled by all this talk of short selling. So people are betting on the price of shares falling and maybe some of them are spreading rumours to encourage such falls - this last practise being distinctly unsporting. Chaps have been chucked out of the Garrick for less. Short selling in large volumes is said to be upsetting the market, to be causing unhelpful fluctuations in share prices. My puzzle is that the people doing this have to find someone to bet with. If I held lots of shares in Lemon Bros (for example) why would I lend them to you in the knowledge that you believed that their price was going to fall. Presumably because I am happy to take your borrowing fee because I believe the price was not going to fall. Otherwise I would sell and have done with. So all I have got as a third party, is that one lot of people think the price is going to fall, and another lot think that it is not. Granted, in this story, there is not a third lot of people who think that the price is going to rise, so there is down vote of sorts. But it is really enough to generate a panic?

Now completed my third Simenon novel, not counting the autobiographical 'Pedigree'. Unlike the first two - 'The snow was dirty' and 'The widow' - this one does not contain any psychopaths. I was starting to worry about the state of the late Simenon's own psyche, but worries now put to rest by 'Maigret and the old boys' which only contains the sort of peccadillos that Inspector Barnaby might turn up in Midsomer Multravers. It does not even contain a murder although it does contain a corpse.

Having a small portion of left over baked cod and a small portion of left over boiled newish potatoes yesterday, the obvious thing to do with it was to add them to the lunchtime lentil soup. That is to say, add to the lentils after they have been simmering for a while but before adding the bacon and onion. The fish and bacon flavours melded well - with the soup having a surprisingly fishy flavour given that it was indeed a small portion.

The other culinery event of note were the runner beans from a neighbour's garden. Very bright green after cooking - rather like the frozen ones one suspects of being dyed - and completely string free. His only excuse was that they were planted rather late after the failure of something else and so these, despite the lateness of the season, were actually quite young. Very nice they were too.

In the margins of these important culinary matters, I have being pondering about the existance of a god. So, an apple exists. I can see it, touch it and throw it about. Now suppose I have believed in a god over a long period. He (we suppose a male god for the purpose of this discussion) will have some sort of an existance in my brain. Perhaps to the point of living in some identifiable bit of storage and using some identifiable processes. What the object people call, I think, a package. That package might come to have some sort of independant existance, rather in the way of a computer virus. A parasite certainly, but it would not be not silly to think of it as an entity other than me. In the same way as, for example, a tapeworm. Just a bit harder to see and I certainly couldn't throw it about. Suppose further that a bunch of other people believe in the same god. Then the god will exist in their brains too. Now we come to stretching things a bit. Providing that these god entities inside peoples' heads are similar enough, that they talk using the same language, it is conceivable that they could communicate with each other in some way. Perhaps the brain can function as some sort of low power radio, or perhaps the gods could use normal interactions between people to carry their covert messages, rather in the way that hackers can get target computers to send their messages for them. All this would no doubt be helped along by more or less elaborate collective worship. In some sense then, this collection of gods would actually be a collective. Be a single god. It might even have agency; that it would make sense to talk about it doing things.

And even if I was an unbeliever, as a close observer of religious affairs, I would have an unbeliever's version of this god in my brain. Perhaps with the same sort of powers of those of the believers, but a low power version. He wouldn't have the heady fuel of my belief to keep him going. So the god would be able to get under the skin of unbelievers as well as that of believers.

He might even be able to take over his hosts. To get them to do things for him. But he would not really be up to the standard of a proper god. He would not be all powerful. He would not be all knowing. He could not create the world and he would neither be nor able to give us immortality - although he might last as long as there were humans - a long time by our standards but a short time by geological time. Clearly going to have to work on him to get him up to scratch.

In the meantime I start to wonder about in what sense the famous theorem of Pythagorous exists. Clearly been touched by the sample of Speckled Hen that I took on Friday at TB. Not that I liked it all that much; a bit too strong perhaps. Not up to my regular Newcastle Brown at all. Odd really, as the Hen was much more like a proper bitter (which I do like) than the Newcastle. Tendencies towards one of those posh bottled bitters (flat and to be served at room temperature) which have started to appear.

The fad continues, with one posh outing and one not so posh. Posh outing involved boiling up the barley with celery. Frying some diced tenderloin in butter, then adding finely chopped onion. After a while stir into barley. Just before serving stir in some button mushrooms: stalks finely chopped, caps segmented. No E numbers. Looks very pretty: interesting composition of greys: deep porriage, dark porriage, porriage crush, sunset porriage and grey. Tasteful even. Like many things, better on the first outing than the second, by which time the goo has emerged from the barley and has a tendency to set into a grey jelly. Not so posh outing was much the same thing, but with pork mince rather than tenderloin. Not quite as good but still good gear. Now down to the last packet of pearl barley. Will the fad run to replenishing supplies? Kilo bags rather than 500g bags?

Moving away from the nose bag, there has been a bit of a go at heritage. First outing to an ancient stable known as the Durdans. A collection of ancient stables plus a large indoor riding school. It seems that stables of this sort do not make much money, even in horsey Epsom, and his Lordship of Halifax (this, I think, being the current owner), thought he might turn a quicker buck by having the stables refurbished as houses, a sort of urban barn conversion, and having the riding school refurbished as offices on two levels - ground floor and mezzanine - in this way not having to mess about with the structure too much. I thought the riding school might do rather well as a Tesco Suburbo - a sort of hybrid between the Tesco Centrals and the mega Tescos we have already. But most of the older, middle classes of Epsom are very firm that all this is very bad. The stables should stay as stables. Bit like those people who bleat about pubs and shops closing without ever putting the money their way that might keep them open. All very sad that this anachronistic way of being carried about should struggle, but the world has to move on. And on the plus side we can also think of all the grain we would save if all these unnecessary horses were abolished. Think how many more starving Africans one could feed.

Second outing to Clandon Park and to the house in the park. Rather a handsome affair, said to be something to do with Palladio who, according to the guide book, was rather severe about the placement of internal doors. Lot of rather fancy old ceilings, some rather florid with large unclothed ladies and gents in high relief. In one room, the gents even needed to get a foothold on the cornice to keep themselves aloft - one foot in the middle of each of the four sides of the square, properly Palladial. The most interesting items for me were the Chinese china birds. Lots of them, never seen anything like them before. I asked if a pair of large china fish were Chinese and was informed rather fussily that they were majolica (some of the rather posh trusties even sported Italian accents when talking about Italian products). I learn from the trusty OED that majolica is just china which has been coloured up with enamel. Not too interested in the Italian figures from Commedia dell' Arte. All very clever, but I would sell it straight away - although the monkey orchestra is worth a mention in dispatches. Take the cash alternative. We also noticed that posh people go to IKEA too. Some of the lamps I recognised from my last penance at Purley.

Outside, we find that when the place was first laid out, they were very into lots of trees laid out in lines and grids. Lots of avenues. All over the place. But Capability Brown took one look - I suppose he might be thought of as the Delia Smith or Gordon Ramsey of his day - and had the lot down. Fake natural was in and lines were out. And so things have remained to this day.

Started the evening's proceedings at an interesting establishment, near the Elephant and Castle, which I had never visited before, called the 'Hampton Court Palace'. A very grand establishment which also functioned as a hotel, rather after the fashion of the 'Mitre' in Tooting, this last being best known as one of the southern endpoints of the 88 bus route. HCP ran to a very decent pint of London Pride, despite its probably being the first that had been pulled for a while. Lager joint really. Then on to the Globe, of which more shortly.

Getting a bit late after the theatre, so hoof it towards Waterloo. Spurning the Youngs' establishment on the river, try two establishments en-route, both of which were doing a bit of trade but with only one very tired person behind the jump. A very tired person who was not going to run around for anyone. So got tired of waiting and moved on. Quick one in the 'Fire Station' then onto the platform where, having forgotten the detail of the recent Boris ruling on this or a like matter, I enquire of a blue clad station trusty (the human bean with a sense of humour) whether it is permitted to drink on National Rail premises in this good year of our Lord, 2008. He peers at me doubtfully. Well sir, sezzee. There will be a problem if you drink on the platform because there are no litter bins in which you can dispose of the empties. Pause. On the other hand, sezzee, I know it for a fact that there be people who do drink on the platform. He continues to peer at me doubtfully. I take this as a no but yes and head off to the off-license at the top of platform 1. 2 tinnies for £4 or 4 tinnies for £6. Weakly, I settle for 2 and by Raynes Park wish I had gone for the more economical option. Various other people (some fresh from the 4 nil thrashing of Bordeaux by Chelsea. I learn that you can do Stamford Bridge to Chesssington in under an hour on a good day) peered at me doubtfully during the proceedings but no-one challenged me for illicit boozing.

I also learn that my projection powers are returning. Starting to get visions on the white and light blue spots on a dark blue ground. Didn't do so well on the adjacent panel with dark blue and white spots on a light blue ground. See above.

At the Globe for 'Timon of Athens', a play of doubtful parentage of which I had known nothing previously. I think I turned down an option on an old Arden edition when last in Ryde. Pity. It turns out that the play was a very suitable text for the day, it being, amongst other things, a tirade about the corrupting power of filthy lucre - or rather gold in this story. Freud and his lot could no doubt have a fine time poking around in the filth and gold: this production, at any rate, making the connection very explicit. It was also a tirade about false friends. Perhaps in the early 17th century people still believed in signing up to things for life. They read and believed stories about Harold's thegns who stood and fell for him at Hastings: death before dishonour. Stories of Romans who went in for much the same sort of thing on behalf of their res publica. And romances about all those knights in armour who went in for much the same thing on behalf of their king, or perhaps their loves. But maybe the early 17th centurians knew that those sort of certainties had all been smashed up by the Wars of the Roses. Another sort of certainty, that in the Lord, had been smashed up by the defection of Luther and his gang. Perhaps those early 17th centurians were trying to replace those lost certainties with trust in love and friendship - at an individual rather than corporate level - without really believing that it would work. Hence the great wealth of material on the subject of fidelity and the sad lack of it.

A four sentence summary might also describe Lear: "Old fool gives away his substance. Recipients behave badly. Old fool goes nuts in the wilderness where he has visitors. Old fool dies". The differance might be that this old fool is merely a misfit rather than tragic.

The stage manager clearly had the shout for the production as a whole, which was extensively larded up with song, dance, music and circus stunts. From where we were sitting, up and to the far left as you face the stage, we had a fine view of the heavy duty netting which had been hung up in the roof for the acrobats to bound around in and to jump from. Being occasionally distracted by the noises arising from the acrobats hooking and unhooking their various safety contraptions. Two such were needed, for example, to descend the not very high ladder from the net to the stage. But no smoking: I had thought it was de rigeur for luvvies to exploit the exemption which allows smoking in charectar on the stage to the full. And it would certainly be in charactar to smoke at an orgy, although perhaps anachronistic. Taken as a whole though, far too much of this sort of thing. Plus an explicit coarseness which I would have preferred to be a bit more implicit. The words are enough: no need to act it out. A bit of son-et-lumiere to set off the poetry is all very well for a play like this - but it should not become the main business. I shall make a point of going again - but maybe not to this production.

On exit we pass the large shop, an essential feature of any modern tourist attraction, which this place is, I suspect, in large part. I must tell the Qualifications and Carriculums Authority (www.qca.org.uk) about my new idea for an A level sociology project. Visit lots of visitor attractions at school expense. Catalogue the contents of their shops. Compare and contrast the catalogues. What things occur in every shop? What things mark the customers of that particular attraction? And so on. Graduates of this type of project will know the drill.

One last thought for the day of the lemon. Perhaps appropriate that some twat should think it worth paying £10m for a pickled pig. And that the price of some other art object should collapse in the face of doubts about whether its manufacturer had a proper contract - or even a memorandum of understanding - with Warhol Inc.

The recently awakened interest in pearl barley has scored another outing. Add three ounces to some water. Bring to boil. Turn off heat. Stir from time to time, making sure that the water continues to cover the barley. Some time later, add to the left over sheep mince, in equal proportions, barley to mince. Warm up. Once it is heated through place chopped left over spinach (from somebody else's allotment) on top of heated mixture, to one side and certainly not stirred in. Leave until the spinach is heated through then serve. Did very well for a lunch time snack. Maybe, given the ingredients, the sort of thing that hill country shepherds ought to have for tea, during whistling winter gales, while huddled in their wheeled huts.

We are also running a fad in pink salmon, a large tin of which can be procured from Mr S for 80p. Open tin, drain and then spend maybe five minutes removing the various bits of skin, bones and fat. Mash up the remainder to a pink, fishy pile. No need for dressing although I dare say a bit of oil and vinegar would work OK. Serve in a salad or perhaps a sandwich. Good gear - certainly hugely better value than higher grades of tinned salmon. Maybe in this age of nicely prepared packaged food, not so many people can be bothered with removing the nasty bits from cheap salmon.

And then how many eat fish paste (another fad, past its peak). Or spam. We don't yet have a fad for the stuff, but I don't suppose it is very much differant from the cheaper end of French and German sausage - the latter, I believe, being the origin of Spam's recipe. Brand image a bit of a problem with the word having been largely highjacked by the email fraternity. Bit of a job to sue them for breach of copyright or damages.

On the Cheam front, have found that my shiny new (and for me, hugely expensive) bicycle tyres are apt to skid on road markings. Particularly new or refurbished white ones - of which we seem to have quite a lot at the moment (see above). Quite an unnerving feeling when the back tyre slides an inch or so underneath one. Maybe the answer is not to pedal when crossing areas with lots of markings - and hope that this does not leave one without power in the middle of a heavily marked junction.

And lastly, I find that the central and local government fad of some years standing now for new second world war memorials has not worked its way out yet. In that the other day I found a new-to-me memorial to the SOE on the embankment, somewhere near the entrance to Lambeth Palace. Now while the SOE were a heroic outfit with the sort of life expectancy which results in medals for survivors, I am not sure what is gained by placing a rather nondescript memorial on a rather nondescript embankment. Few members of SOE can be in a fit condition to come and see the memorial - and who else has much of an interest? Isn't it time to let the war go now?

On an adjacent pitch, properly a rose bed, someone had seen fit to plant sunflowers around the edge. They had done reasonably well, maybe getting to 8 feet high, but a bit on the skinny side. It would have been better had they been proper municipal sunflowers (which I suspect they were not) and allowed to take over the entire rose bed. A block of sunflowers would have look a bit more impressive. And the men from the municipality could have been tasked with food and water to ensure that impressivity.

The BH was not happy when I mistakenly told her that we were running out of pearl barley, with the result that we now have more than a kilo of the stuff in our not enormous cupboard. So, I have to think out of the box. How are we going to shift the stuff? Now, it being Friday, it was a baked cod day. So I thinks to myself, pearl barley is a cousin german to rice. So why not have boiled pearl barley with the cod, rather than rice or mashed potatoes - these last being our usual form. So pearl barley it was. Soaked the stuff (4oz per portion) for several hours and simmered for one, tasted somewhere between oatmeal porriage and easy cook brown rice. Entirely satisfactory and thought to be slightly cheaper than rice. I suppose the complication is that it takes a good while to cook. Not exactly fast food.

Then, having some barley and cod left over at breakfast time, thought again. Fried the cod, skin side down in a little butter and water. Remove cod from pan, skin, bone and flake. Stir into the cold barley. Return the whole lot to the frying pan to heat through. This time one gets a version of kedgeree, again entirely satisfactory. At least that is what I am saying to the BH. But will I ever do it again?

But an entirely unsatifactory experience on the way home from Tooting. Usually, with the aid of a few jars of the warm, flat, amber liquid of choice, if I gaze at a mottled surface like a railway platform, the surface of a road or the floor of a Southwest Trains passenger carriage and lose focus a little, I am able to project all sorts of interesting and very realistic images onto said mottled surface. There are enough random features onto which one can hang realistic images. Now while I think projection is the technical term for this sort of activity or experience, the word has too active a ring. One does not call up images to order, rather they condense, out of the ether, on suitable features of the surface. And once locked on, it can be quite hard to shake the image off. Most commonly but by no means exclusively, more or less grotesque human heads. One can also do the same trick gazing at one's shoes or the clouds. But on this occasion it was not working at all. Maybe I had taken on the wrong sort of amber liquid.

On the same occasion, I learn that the facilities management team at Raynes Park station must have decided that the shiny new railings installed at the time of privatisation needed to be trespasser friendly, unlike those at most other stations. That is to say, at most other stations the railings are made out of pressed steel strips, maybe 6 feet long, with the top cut into three unpleasant looking spikes. I would think that forcing the strips apart - twisting a bit of rope around them would do the trick - would be a lot safer than going over the top. Here, the railings were only about four feet high, made out of 1 inch tubing rather than pressed steel strip, and with a nice rubber bung, finished off hemispherically, to protect any trespasser who might be legging it over from any damage from the rough end of the pipe. So why so thoughtful?

Any why have a fence at all? British Rail in the bad old days had managed for a long time without them. Was it all part of a drive to keep revenue up and free-loaders down? Was it part of a drive to discourage youth from clambering around the line and hurting themselves? Did the insurers of the new owners of the stations insist on their being fenced off as a condition of providing cover? Was the wife of the chairman having an affair with the fencing contractor and was wanting to throw her fancy man a few bones? I don't suppose I will ever know. Far to lazy to mount the sort of effort I suspect would be needed to find out for sure - particularly, as with many decisions (or at least the sort of decision I was involved in, when in the world of work), the decision emerged out of a cloud of consideration with it being hard to say exactly which consideration had what impact. Rather like when gazing at the railway platform earlier in this post: the mood of the meeting suddenly locks onto a decision, the force is with it and that is the end of the matter. One writes the story up after the event, nice and tidy, but the story does not always bear much relation to the discussion at the meeting.

Contrariwise, I used to work for a chap who always liked to have one hard reason for doing something. One nice, clean reason that was either true or false. Or being pedantic, condition A being true was necessary and sufficient reason for doing action B. So if A was true you did B and if A was false you didn't. A nice clear path to decision. Not more than half a side of double spaced A4. I have rarely liked reducing decisions in that way. So much seems to get left out.

In the course of investigating whether the regional airline due to take us to Florence is still in the land of the living - there having been sundry deaths in the business recently - I learn that the share price of United Airlines took an awful wollaping the other day when Mr Google accidently recycled some 6 year old news about them filing for bankruptcy. It seems that this old news went the rounds and lots of investors panicked before anyone got around to checking whether the story was true or not. Not the best advertisement for the all-wisdom of the market place advertised by our friends of the right.

Then the other day I saw a good advertisement for the way words drift. I was passed by a long box lorry on the way to Cheam, with the word 'Wincanton' in big and the words 'Provider of delivery systems' or some such in small. Now many years ago Wincanton was the name of a haulage business which specialised in milk and you used to see a lot of their tankers on and around the A303. Well, this box lorry was clearly not delivering milk. But the logo did suggest that it was delivering delivery systems.

The day before that, I saw an interesting way to get scaffold boards down the side of a building. That is to say, the chap at the top of the building drops the board down to the next chap down, who drops it down again, and so on to the bottom of the building. None of them appeared to be wearing gloves. I certainly wouldn't fancy catching a falling scaffold board without them - but maybe eastern Europeans have tougher hands than I do. I would have thought one would have got some very nasty splinters by the end of the day - clearly they did not.

The day before that, having failed to find any Durrell in the library, I took out 'Aaron's stick' by D H Lawrence, a book I had not read before. Interesting read, which amongst other things built a link between Huxley and Lawrence (see above). That is to say, they both wrote autobiographical novels in which the charectars do a lot of preaching - the novel drifting in the direction of an essay. And both authors published a relatively small number of novels plus quite a few essays, poems and plays. They both painted. They both write about the trials and tribulations of clever boys who manage to climb out of their native sties into the literary world of London: while Lawrence was such a clever boy, Huxley most certainly was not - but the growth of education must have made the breed visible at about that time. They both write about older women. They both write satire about the inhabitants of said literary world. They are both interested in achieving some kind of elevated state, dressed up in fancy language, above the normal run of things. (I should say that I do have some sympathy with the fancy language. It is very hard not to sound silly when talking about higher planes - but some people do have interesting things to say about them).

But Lawrence, unlike Huxley, seems to take a curious view of women, a view in which they are very predatory. He sometimes writes as if he was afraid of their power. That apart, I have been reminded, how hard he works at describing the forces and tensions in our everyday relations with each other. Something that nobody else that I know has really tried. And most novelists don't preach - the only other example I can think of apart from Huxley, is Tolstoy in War and Peace where he sounds off a good bit.

Something which Lawrence did in this book which was new to me, was have some veterans of the first war talk about their experiences; this novel being very aware of the war which had just finished - both in England and Italy. (Coincidentally, I learn from this week's TLS that the Italians took a terrible walloping in the first war from the Austrians, losing 750,000 men). I don't think Huxley, Joyce or Simenon do it - despite being of more or less the same generation.

Chapter 1. I think I am with a mixed group of colleagues from OPCS, a gang for whom I used to work in the distant past. We are wandering about in some very remote part of the country, like Skye but for some reason I know it is not Skye. We come across a rather dowdy collection of huts. Half cylinder, corrugated iron, second world war barrack hut sort of thing. Reminded of an old naval site near Alverstoke near Gosport near Portsmouth. We go into one of the huts.

Chapter 2. We find ourselves in a rather crowded and untidy office with lots of new books packed onto shelves. A find we think. These offices have been abandoned and we can browse on the books. Enter efficient, business suit dressed lady librarian. This is my office. No browsing here if you please. Follow me.

Chapter 3. We find ourselves in a very large room with a very high vaulted wooden ceiling. An island in the middle where all the staff, catalogues and what have you live. Lots of books around the very large room. All most impressive.

Chapter 4. Cut to small and untidy hotel room. I am by myself. Feverishly trying to write a novel on the back of paper which has been scribbled or printed on one side. I seem to have a lot of it.

Maybe the chap who said, and about whom I have complained in the past, that dreams were just the scraps and refuse of the day's mind work, had a point. Can't see any cause or thread in this lot. But it was quite important at the time.

Yesterday to London to learn all about the Tunguska event at the RAS (http://www.ras.org.uk/). Not a bad lecture, although the content a bit thin for my taste. I was also reminded how easily I start to nod off when at any kind of lecture or training course where one is required to sit still in receive mode for more than about 15 minutes. The ease does not seem to have all that much to do with the quality of the lecture. But it was interesting to learn how much one can learn about a UFO which exploded above Siberia from the record of the damage done to trees. All one does it construct a model of how the UFO works, run the model to get it to say what happened to the trees and then compare that with what actually happened to the trees. Wonderful things computers.

In the margins, bought some bread from Fortnum and Masons. A large bloomer - rye with carraway seeds, regular white bloomer not being possible in such a posh establishment - cost about twice what a regular white bloomer would have cost me in Cheam. Inspecting it from a Green Park bench, not too impressed. Smelt like something from Mr S and looked like something which has been steamed (after the fashion of the ABC, formerly in a large factory near Kentish Town somewhere) rather than baked. But it tasted a lot better than it looked or smelt. Fresh, good texture and the taste nicely livened up by the carraway seeds. And what was left of it, sliced thin, made very good toast this morning. A noticeable number of vagrants in the park. And one whippet which made a dash for a grey squirrel. Some male passers by looked very disappointed when the whippet was called off by his or her female owner. Maybe they had a bet on whether the squirrel would make it to a tree or not. My bet was that it wouldn't have.

But today, just to be on the safe side got a bloomer from Cheam. And it was my lucky day as I was able to get a nicely cooked one without flour or seeds. Far and away the best sort. Nice bit of sirloin steak and we had hot meat sandwiches for lunch. Then our regular lentil soup with bread for dinner. Good stuff. Slightly wetter than usual but none the worse for that given the bread to dip into it. Interesting factlet on the carrots. They were organic from Mr S and I took a chance on what they had been washed in (perhaps it is the inorganic ones that get washed in some nasty disinfectant. See large machine from New Zealand plugged somewhere above) and did not peel them before I chunked them crosswise. Not being peeled seemed to mean that when cooked they had a much better texture than the peeled sort would have had. More entire, more like one was eating a root rather than a chunk of anonymous sweet orange gear.

The complaint is directed at the designers of blogs. I don't know how typical this one is, but it does not read quite right. That is to say the entries are arranged in a push down stack and one reads from the top. So, fair enough, one always get the last entry first. But one moves from the end of one entry to the beginning of the one before which is a discontinuity. It should be that the beginning of one entry flows into the end of the one before, rather than the beginning of the one before. And then, in a book, one can say 'see above' or 'see below' and it is perfectly clear what one means. Not quite the same here. I suppose one is stuck with this in an entry orientated format. Not the same in Pepys's day.

The pigs' hearts had been languishing in our freezer for some time and the BH thought that their time was up. Prepared much in the same way as cows' kidneys but with some key variations. Maybe the most important was that they were cooked for around 6 hours rather than around 2. Then there were no carraway seeds. Maybe I should try with them in. But there was the left over gravy from the Sussex Pie - which appeared to contain a good deal of sludge from the bottle of that famous mushroom ketchup from Mr Watkins. All turned out very well, excellent texture (an aspect of food I am rather fussy about) served with white cabbage and easy-cook brown rice. The extra chewiness of the rice went well with the rather bland flavour of the hearts - compared with kidneys that is. One is rather reminded of squid - all chew and no flavour.

I was then moved to ponder about tomatoes. For the purposes of hearts, kidneys and the like, I am firmly of the belief that one should use fresh tomatoes rather than tinned ones. I have trained myself to detect a tinned tomato at a hundred yards. There is a sort of metallic taste about them which is a complete giveaway. But the pondering is more about the dislike itself. From where did it come? I have trained myself to both detect and dislike tinned tomatoes but I suspect that the dislike has little to do with appearance, taste or texture - although it is true that I do find chopped cooked fresh tomato visually more attractive than the tinned equivalent. The dislike comes from elsewhere. Perhaps I had a meal, very bad for some other reason, which involved tinned tomatoes? Perhaps MIL habitually cooked with them?

From the deconstruction of taste, we move onto the mouldering of authors. I start with Lawrence Durrell - an author I believe my mother made much of and whom I believe to be well thought of in literary circles. But I go to the local library to discover there is exactly one book by either Durrell brother in the whole Surrey libarary system. And that appeared to be some kind of a picture book. Off to Waterstones - trying both the small and the large Epsom branches - where neither brother has any presence at all. Any they really sinking with so little trace? Their fame has hardly outlasted their headstones - assuming they were the sort of people to have them.

Then this week's TLS has an interesting peice about a poet with a nom-de-plume of Cornwall. Hugely more successful in his day than his contemporary Keats. And now the tables are turned (not that I read poetry) and while I have heard of Keats, I had never heard of Cornwall. But it does seem that Cornwall did honestly strive to promote his rival.

It all goes to show that gloria mundi do indeed transit - even supposing you are lucky enough to get hold of them in the first place.

On a more cheerful note, the DT has redeemed itself by unearthing another bunch of nannies. It seems that farmers are no longer allowed to harvest their wheat when they please. First, they have to consult the regulations concerning the passage of heavy machinery over wet ground. This because heavy machinery can do serious damage to the structure of wet soil. Now this may well be so, but I do not think the government has any business issuing regulations about such matters - which are private between a farmer and his land. The government can issue as much advice as they can afford (although as a voter, I might complain about that too), but regulations are quite another matter. I wonder if there are on-the-spot fixed penalty notices? Does the evidence of a policeman have to be backed up by two signed affidavits by two materials' scientists? Perhaps (following up the DT exposee of local councils recruiting children to shop people who drop litter), new labour could train special pigs to shop farmers? Or badgers could escape culling if they were to demonstrate zeal in this matter? Or we could exile Harriet Harman to the country with a pair of pink wellies? The DT did not mention a wet ground transit authority (WGTA sounds rather well) but maybe that will come. Or maybe the DT, careless about truth as it is, has mistaken advice for regulation?

Lastly, I myself spotted a threatening looking green van in Garrett Lane sporting the description 'WASTE ENFORCEMENT'. It all reminds me of the closing days of the Austrian empire, as decribed in Svejk, as, amongst other things, drowning in a sea of pettifogging (an interesting word which has been around since the mid 16th century. The fog bit of uncertain origin) rules, regulations and regulators.

Prompted to turn up this bit of the good book - a bit that, for some reason, my father used to read more often than other bits. Today I focus on chapter 2, verses 14-20. All quite impressive for something written thousands of years ago.

There was a time when one could rely on the DT to take a reactionary line. The paper of choice of retired military men (officers not men that is) and of disgusted from Tonbridge Wells. But the other day it was bleating on about a drop in the number of women in very high places. To my mind, this business is drifting towards that other new labour nonsense that we can all be better than average. So, in this case, to my mind and putting it reasonably crudely, it is evident that there are, in this selfish era, three main concerns in peoples' lives. Work, play and family. And that, on average, a woman will put a relatively bigger percentage of her effort into family than a man will. A biological differance which we should not want to try to squash. Therefore, she will put a relatively smaller percentage of her effort into work, and, as an elementary consequence, on average, she will not climb as far up the greasy pole. All this being so, one should not get over excited about statistics which confirm this interesting fact.

From nonsense statistics, we move to oral history from TB, of which I offer two snippets. First, once upon a time, in the sixties, in the days when the environmental waste engineers were called dustmen, the occupation was known as being on the dust and the dustbins were made of steel, there was a dustman in Epsom. One day, his dustcart was going down the road and the dustman noticed a rolled up carpet, in its plastic bag, neatly perched on top of two dustbins. Ah ha, he thinks. Someone is trying to pinch me for pinching carpets. So he knocks on the door and the lady of the house explains that she does not want the carpet and here is a fiver to take the thing away. At which, as quick as you can say Jack Sprat, the carpet is on the top of the dustcart. Some days later it is covering the floor of the upstairs bedrooms of the dustman's house. At about the same time, the man of the house is lodging a complaint at the town hall that the dustmen have pinched his carpet. Big interogation. The lady of the house is summoned and, to the relief of the dustman, confirms his version of the story. The man of the house retires hurt, muttering something about no more surprise carpets. And the carpet has been in the upstairs bedrooms ever since.

Second, at about the same time, a lady of the house came rushing down the road after the dustcart, in tears and explaining that by some awful mistake she had put her jewellery box in the dustbin. Dustcart stops and dustmen gather around and make sympathetic noises. But, unfortunately, since doing her house, the dustcart has been tipped up and any jewellery box will be well mixed in with everything else. So, down to the waste transfer station (I forget what they were called in that benighted age), past the weighbridge without weighing (an omission which does the team's bonus no good) and shoot the rubbish out onto a patch of clear concrete. The dustmen start sifting. The lady of the house snivels and watches. They keep at it for about an hour and, then, the driver of the dustcart finds the rather grimy box. Exit left one very happy lady. A few days later a cheque for £300 arrives at the town hall, for distribution to the crew of the dustcart concerned from very happy lady. A few days after that, the dustcart happened to be passing her house again. They see a marquee in the garden so that carry on past, not wanting to disturb her party (this was in those far off days when dustmen went around to the back of the house to collect dustbins). Lady of the house comes rushing out. I'm throwing a thank you party for you. Can't do that lady, says the driver. More than my job's worth to abandon a round. Ah ha, says the lady. I've arranged with the town hall for you to be relieved. And, lo and behold, a second dustcart draws up behind the first, on relief. So the dustmen enter the marquee, meet all the neighbours and have a jolly good time for the rest of the day. And there was beer as well as cucumber sandwiches. Now would such a thing happen today?

Mysteriously, Norton fires up today. Big yellow box on the task bar reappeared. Thought maybe I ought to take a peek and came across the information pasted above. What does it all mean? Has someone been poking around at this computer for some reason? Go for a full system scan which chugs away for about four hours. Finds and removes three viruses and invites me to remove a bunch of tracker cookies. Which I did. But how long had the viruses been there? Unfortunately, the similar problem - egg timer on double click for a few seconds then nothing - with HP Director not fixed. But at least I am not in rebuild land which I thought I might have been last night.

I was also thinking that the human race has not made all that much progress when the sort of clever people who are capable of hacking, also think that causing large amounts of damage is clever. Graffiti for geeks. So as far as I am concerned the 40 year old geek who broke into lots of computers in the US can get over there and take the rap. I dare say they will throw the book at him being a foreigner.

In addition to computer engineering we have also been having a spell of bicycle engineering. First item, get the oldish blue Olmo, property of S2, back on the road. Sub contract this to the bicycle shop up the road. Now the proud possessor of a proper racing bike, the only concession to normal people being a bicycle bell. Which, in this enlightened age does not come with a spring so one has to push the lever one way to get a ring, then pull it back to get the next. Nor is it mounted on the handlbar where you can work it without moving the hand. Bit fiddley but I dare say I will get used to it. I suppose I should not complain: when I bought my other bike I was a bit put out that I couldn't have the gear change on the down tube - it had to be incorporated into the brakes. But I got used to that fast enough. A light bike with very narrow and hard tyres which gives a harsh, if fast, ride. Destined to be the bike for use when visiting FIL in Devon. Thinking about whether it is worth the bother and expense of sourcing a saddle bag - not something which people seem to do these days - and changing the saddle for a Brooks which will have the lugs to hang the saddle bag off. The Brooks would be more comfortable than the moulded plastic thing there is there now. We shall see.

Second item, suddenly noticed that the back tyre on my regular bike was getting very worn on one side. A Bontrager tyre which had had no punctures in more than two years and quite a few hundred miles. Maybe even up to a few thousand. Why should the thing wear on one side? Not on the central bearing surface but on the next strip of half a centimetre or so, down to the underlying canvas in some large part. The wear maybe because I did not keep the tyres pumped up enough, but why just on one side? So back to the various bicycle shops in Epsom. None of them can do Bontrager and not many of them can do the right size, despite having finally moved metric from imperial. So back to the bicycle shop up the road who suggests a pair of very fancy hand made Continentals at the princely sum of £30 or so each. I think the last tyre I bought was nearer £10 - but that was quite a long time ago. He got them in in a couple of days which was fair enough - and, luckily as it turned out, they came with an inner tube, which meant that they were not as expensive as first I though. But, being a bit out of practise broke one tyre lever and punctured one inner tube (twice) in the process of fitting the two tyres. But now have two very solid and smart looking tyres. Decided that I could not be bothered to mend the two punctures so chucked the tube. Long time since I mended an inner tube with glue and patch, under a railway bridge, in the rain! Perhaps I was poorer then as well as more handy and better sighted.

So, with a bit of luck that will be it for tyres for two or three years.

Norton failed to open at all yesterday. Try to open it by hand, egg timer for a few seconds then nothing. Told that this is the sort of behaviour might see if one had a virus...

This two year old Evesham desktop starting to show its age. Having successfully moved onto Windows XP service pack 3 a few weeks ago, we are still getting the occasional crash, usually on starting up. And today the ugly yellow Norton tab on the bottom right of the task bar goes missing until I poke Norton using it's self diagnosis tool - which then appeared to go to sleep after about 10 minutes, despite the progress bar continuing to flicker in an encouraging way, and had to be closed. And the screen - an antique cathode ray tube affair - occasionally and temporarily takes on a rather pink tinge. Not too clever really. A PC from what was a decent company (now gone bust) should last for more than 2 years.

On the culinary front, sampled a free range, barn fed shoulder of lamb from Cheam last weekend. One day hot, one day cold - but neither in the pot nor nine days old. Settled for a second day cold - but geeed (?) up with some fancy potatoes, a sort of cut-price version of dauphinoise. Or a cut down version of potato pie - a firm favourite here at Epsom. On the basis of all of which, I have decided that shoulder of lamb is a better bet, for us anyway, than leg. I never seem to be able to manage to cook leg very well, whereas shoulder, the fresh English variety that is, seems to turn out OK pretty much every time. The odd failure usually being down to undercooking, something I do not care for in lamb. Frozen not so clever. To my mind, freezing does neither leg nor shoulder of lamb any favours. Goes a bit tough and stringy and loses its sweetness.

Having polished off 'Jesting Pilate', now nearing the finishing post on Ellmann on Joyce. Excellent biog of a very queer fish. I learn, amongst other things, that someone organised a fancy edition of Ulysses, and the someone, Joyce being quite the avant-garde thing at the time, persuaded Matisse to do the illustrations. Joyce, helpfully bustled around trying to put some material together for Matisse to work on. But, in the event, the illustrations turned out to be entirely Homeric in flavour, rather Dublineric. When challenged on this point, Matisse explained that he didn't bother to actually look at the book. I wonder if he took the same tack with all his illustrating commissions? Perhaps he thought he was more important than Joyce and could get away with it. Bit insulting all the same. Bad mannered big egoed arty type.

Given that Joyce was only ten years or so older than Aldous H and lived in some of the same countries, I checked the index of my Bedford on Huxley and find just three entries, two for the man and one for a book. It seems that Joyce came to lunch with the Huxleys a few times at Suresnes (then in the northwestern outskirts of Paris and home to the large Fort du Mont Valerien (which one learns by looking at the site de web de ville)) in the late twenties or early thirties and that their Parisian literary circles overlapped. (Joyce it seems, despite being a literary gent, sometimes claimed (according to Ellmann) to hate literary conversation. He would rather talk about turnips). Huxley found him a very strange man. Two snippets, first: ' a great deal of Ulysses seems to be taken up with showing a large number of methods in which novels cannot be written'. Despite which, he read the thing at least twice. Second: 'Joyce seemed to think that words were omnipotent. They are not omnnipotent'. I don't understand what Huxley meant by either snippet - but I was moved to see whether Freud figured in the index, which he did not. This I do find odd. Must ponder further on that point.

The road marking team have now moved to Howell Hill. That is to say, a number of cars, vans and lorries plus an appropriate number of road marking engineers were there yesterday, busily installing cones and noisily grinding out white lines so that they could paint them again. Today, maintaining the traditions of those long-lost council chaps whose jobs they have taken, they were firmly esconced in their vehicles, doing nothing. Given the state of the weather they had probably been so employed for some time. I forgot to check whether they were smoking in their workplaces.

They are clearly in for the long haul. So those happy souls being transferred from the wheelie bin inspectorate to the road marking inspectorate had better be given permanent transfer terms, rather than detached duty terms.

Perhaps one could make some kind of an Olympic sport out of it, or at least a competition. Which country has the most imaginative road markings? Marks for quantity, quality, humour, colour and all the rest of it. We could take real pride in that, in addition to having the finest golf courses, we also had the finest road markings. What a splendid, more or less harmless, way to waste time and resources and to find employment for all those graduates from interesting universities who might otherwise be flipping burgers, an activity entirely inappropriate to their graduate status. Would this be a better sport than synchronised diving? On which sport, I was puzzled to see that the English mens' team (or perhaps just one of the teams. Perhaps this sport has lots of events) consisted of a 15 year old and a 25 year old. I find it hard to imagine two people of such disparate age, working so hard at such close quarters. I would have thought that they would have got on each others nerves after a bit. Big time.

On return from Howell Hill, finally finished reading 'Jesting Pilate' by Aldous Huxley. A good read, which has worn well in the 80 odd years since it was written and which is well up to the various puffs printed on the back cover. This morning, by way of example, I discover many of the plants in 'Brave New World' come from seeds germinated in the California of the hectic twenties. To be found in the rhapsody in five movements on Los Angeles.

Which, demonstrating his expensive Eton education, includes the couplet: 'nunc uterum vitiat quae vult formosa videri/Raraque, in hoc aevo est quae velit esse parens'. My own rather less expensive education not being up to this, I ask Mr G. It turns out to be a well known quote from Ovid to do with abortion and which he (Mr G that is) translates from the Spanish as: 'Now corrupts your belly you want to be beautiful, and is rare in this era, which wants to become a mother'. So it is good of Mr G to offer this translation service, but, sadly, I am not any the wiser as to what the quote means. Perusal of my mini-Lewis confirms that Mr G has got the right words. Maybe the sense is: '... and now the belly which most want svelte is swelling. Rare indeed it is, in these days, to want to become a mother ...'. Contributions, as ever, welcome.

I imagine that the Aldous H breed is more or less extinct. Can we do better than Clive James or Christopher Hitchens? Do we have room or time for such exquisitely civilised people?

Although I sometimes wonder how civilised he was at close quarters. His books include all kinds of rum types, good parts of which look to be drawn from himself. Or is it rather, as someone put it, that he expresses all the nasty bits of himself into his books so that he did not have to express them in real life. Would one like someone better who did not dump all his garbage in the public domain? And odd (to me at any rate) that he and his wife were very close to D H Lawrence and his wife, in the last years of DHL's life. From a distance they seem very differant - and DHL, unlike AH who had manners, could be very difficult.