pumpkinstrokemarrow

A fine sunny morning here in Exeter. A pleasure to poodle in along the canal. New livestock in the form of a herd of black and white cows along the way and a large black cormorant flying over the weir at the entrance to Exeter docks. Oddly, despite the recent freak rain over the way over the Otter, the weir was not flooding. Maybe they pitch the neighbouring sluice gates so that it doesn't when there are trainee canoeists about - which is most of the time.

Also reminded of the time when I asked a South African jazz musician, on him telling me of his cows back home, what colour his cows were. I think he thought I was making a crack at his colour - but, then, fortunately, decided that, having taken on some beer, I was just interested in his cows. It turned out that he had black and white cows just like ours: no exotica from the veldt.

Noticed an obituary the other day of a lady who, so the headline claimed, spent twenty years of her life as an agent of the powers for good in the heart of the powers for evil, that is to say the British Communist Party. Leaving aside the question of whether it is not time for the securocrats to move on to a new target, it must be an odd business spending a good part of one's day for twenty years pretending to be someone that one was not. One would, presumably, make real friendships or more over that sort of time. One would be deceiving people that one had worked and played with for years on a continuous basis. A grubby, if arguably necessary, business which cannot be good for the soul. Not helped in my case by lack of belief in reward for the soul in the hereafter in the glow of the Lord who understands all. I wonder if people carrying on such trades are brigaded with the untouchables in India - always having had a sneaking regard for the honesty which recognises grubby and isolating trades (like slaughterhouse men and funerary beauticians) for what they are and does not try to pretend otherwise.

For similar reasons, must be an odd business being an actor. To spend one's quality time pretending to be a succession of other people; inhabiting cardboard cut outs of other people, cut out by still other people. Perhaps coupled with a gap in oneself, or with a desire to hide from oneself? Certainly coupled with the greed for the sound of clapping hands.

Getting on well with L Durrell, the four volumes of whose Alexandrian quartet are on loan from Gallivan's Tooting lending library. Have dispatched Justine and Balthazar and am now getting into Mountolive. Starting to come around to Huxley in the sense that Durrell, around twenty years or so older, derives much of the quartet from his own life and is prone to inserting lectures on this and that into the mouths of his charectars. And the interest for me lies in the emphasis he puts on the very partial view we have of any other person. A partial view which is apt to be very differant from someone else's partial view. How idea of a person having a stable and coherent charectar is perhaps convenient and comfortable, but essentially untrue. Perhaps an artefact of its narration from one partial point of view.

But there is a much stronger streak of violence in his writing that there is in Huxley - although, for such a civilised person, it is by no means absent in this last. The story, for example, of a minor diplomat's wife who went missing from her car out in the desert one night. The police got around to making enquiries in a Bedouin tent where any knowledge was denied - when suddenly an old lady slipped and a head rolled out of her apron. The inference being that the minor diplomat's wife had been killed for the gold that could be bashed out of her teeth. The various severed heads, deaths and murders in the heart of posh Alexandria. The story of the tortoises which were loaded live into barrels which were then used as ballast for ships on the way to London. There, if dead, the tortoises were dumped in the dock, presumably stinking; otherwise they were sold as pets. Also much talk of niggers and nigger music (presumably jazz): he is not being prejudicial, unpleasant or intentionally rude, but it is not language which would get past an editor these days.

Blogging from Exeter Library again. A much bigger and better facility than that available at the Epsom Library, I suppose as befits the regional capital. Getting to like the cycle track from Exminster into town. Good flat surface all the way, with canoeists, birds, bees and dogs to admire. Only let down by steep hills and cobbles once one gets across the Exe at the quay. Forced to dismount.

No milk floats, as on my last run to Cheam. Tiresome things which go slower than me on the flat, but fast enough to be a bit of a puff to overtake. The run before that it was an ancient green car, sufficiently ancient to be built after the manner of a trap - if that is the right name for a small horse drawn passenger vehicle. Two proper seats in front with two jump seats at back, with rear access so as not to disturb the nobs in front. Interesting brass bottle down among the feet at the front. Noisy gear change. Foul smelling exhaust - perhaps because the thing was a two-stroke. Now I could pass this thing going uphill but it could easily pass me on the flat. At which point I observed that its number plate was in very small letters. I am sure this is in flagrant violation of the relevant directive from our European colleagues, that is to say article 16(1) of directive 89/391/EEC.

But I have to admonish myself on that front. When fiddling with a strange central heating device this morning I had occasion to read the instructions. Bearing in mind that the device in question was about the size of a large box of cigarettes, was fixed on the wall with no wires coming out of it and powered by two small batteries, I was forcefully reminded to make sure that I was wearing the right protective clothing before starting work: boots, gloves, apron, goggles and all the rest of it.

But the good news is that Epsom Council have so much money to spare that they are going to issue every resident with four new bins, two wheelie, irrespective of whether they make their own compost or not. I understand that we are to check their web site weekly to make sure that our instructions for their use are up to date. Maybe there is a training course for us older people who are a bit slow on the uptake.

Now finished the book by Barney White Spunner, noticed above (18 August). Good read, all the way to the end. Apart from being good history, it contains a good selection of factoids. For example, the subject of a lady's painting, posed above, was one Corporal Clay, a prize fighter, amateur model and hero of Waterloo. He took part in the famous charge of the heavy cavalry which finished off the charge of the French infantry - one of various necessary conditions for victory. Sadly he died of wounds in the mess that followed our cavalry's failing to stop and overunning. Interestingly, Spunner, a cavalryman, thinks that Wellington fought the battle in the wrong place and would have done better at Quatre Bras, partly because Wellington's battle map for Waterloo did not cover quite the right area. Even more interestingly, my other detailed account of the battle, in a bigraphy of Wellington by one Sir Herbet Maxwell, Bart., places much less emphasis on the charge of the heavy cavalry and makes something of the careful choice of Waterloo for a defensive battle, the position having first come to Wellington's notice the year before.

Another factoid was the finding, on the Household cavalry's return from the second war, a couple of old soldiers in the Knightsbridge barracks who had spent the entire war sharpening swords for the final push, on horseback, into Germany. And another was the capture by HCR of something which became known as 'Cavalry Bridge', exploiting a weakness in German staff work to break through their line, 'a turning point of the [1945] campaign in France'.

Back at Burke's peerage, was challenged to find the gentleman in Jane Austen for whom it was favourite reading. The result of this was that I learnt that I knew her novels a good deal less well than I thought. However, while I had thought he was in an interior, he was run to ground on page 1 of 'Persuasion', Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch-hall in Somersetshire. Burke's peerage is not referred to specifically, but there is a reference to the 'Baronetage' being his only reading, so I think I can claim the point. Sir Walter, however, is either a member of a fictitious Elliot family or an extinct Elliot family. The best Burke can do is an ancient Eliott baronetcy of Stobs, a Scottish rather than a Somerset family. Perhaps Jane did not take the baronetage as seriously as her creation.

And back in the kitchen, have found out a new cut-prive version of kedgeree. Take four ounces of cold, boiled white rice. Take twelve ounces of smoked haddock. Cook this last in a little butter and milk. Flake into the rice, return to the cleaned pan with a little more butter, heat through and serve. Very satisfactory - and without all the cholesterol in all those eggs that we would usually have used. Very handy for a quick breakfast dish.

Upper picture from a ladies' drawing class circa 1810. The alternatives were needlework or cookery. See following post.

It seems that I misdirected myself (this being 2005 mandarin speak for being economical with the truth) with regard to Debrett's peerage. What I actually have is Burke's peerage. And I find from http://www.burkes-peerage.net/ that I could buy a second copy for £399 plus £9.95 to have it posted to me. The puzzle is, what sort of a person would pay £400 or so for such a monster? I would have thought that a professional person - perhaps the chap who writes the court circular in the DT - would prefer to have the thing on a CD. Perhaps with something like XMLSPY to make the family trees a bit more intelligible than they can be on the printed page.

So far, not having got as far as volume II which will do Norfolk, have only got as far as trying to decypher the relatively modest lineage of one Sir Valentine Robert Duff Abdy, 6th baronet, with addresses in both the Channel Islands and France. Now they are not really that posh. It seems that the first baronet of the first creation was created on 7 July 1641 and so was sufficiently ancient to count as posh. But, sadly, this creation lapsed with the 7th baronet on 16th April 1868. There was then a nouveau creation, involving some shennanigans with some Nevilles and a parson, the odd thing about this nouveau creation being that it was dated before the oldeau creation lapsed. Clearly not quite got the hang of all this yet. But perhaps one could get into it. Something to browse during the adverts on telly? And I do seem to remember that something of this sort was the reading of choice of at least one of Jane Austen's elderly gentlemen.

Rolled belly of pork went down very well today with a 2007 Bordeaux. Good crackling and oddly modest amount of fat from what one might have thought was a fairly fatty joint. About 2 hours at 180C for 5 pounds of the stuff. Mashed potato, mashed swede and crinkly cabbage. And for once in a while revived the gravy dipping custom - at least after a fashion, remembering just in time not to contaminate the gravy with gluten. But made in the proper way. Pour fat from roasting dish into saucepan. Roux with corn flour. Pour a litre of water or so into roasting dish and stir in all the gubbins which has accumulated there. Add back to the roux and stir vigorously to get savoury, custard thick, brown sauce. Dip bread in then eat to test the flavour. Salt had been rubbed into the pork skin to make it crackle so there was no need for any additional seasoning. In the olden days we used to get through quite a lot of bread, just before the off, in this way.

Thought that this looked a bit fanciful. But it comes - at http://terri922.blogspot.com/ - with photographs which suggest that it is not.

We finally saw off the last of last week's Sussex pie today. That is to say what was left of the stock and gravy went into today's soup. We thought that a week old was about enough. Soup was made by boiling up the sheet of ribs taken out of the rolled pork belly that is to be our Sunday roast. Take the meat of the bones, chop and return. (The meat from between the bones is a bit pipey and connective tissue full but ther is plenty of it and it eats OK). Add stock, gravy and liquidised left over vegetables from yesterday. This brings the emerging soup up to the right consistancy; wet but not watery and without involving flour, currently off the communal menu. Add some coarsely chopped potatoes and some finely chopped celery. When the potatoes are cooked and finely sliced savoy cabbage. Just before serving add some thickly sliced mushrooms. The three of us - mainly me I guess - did maybe a gallon of the stuff in two sittings. Balance of a couple of pints chucked in the interests of dietary hygiene.

Thus fuelled up been pondering about eco-matters. Triggered by my posting two used cartridges from my printer back to some HP base in France. How does one justify sending two small and dirty plastic containers back to France? This was a bit too tricky to deal with, so I turn to wind power, which does indeed have plenty of web coverage, some of it quite fancy, presumably reflecting the large amounts of money at stake. I learn, for example, that the unit cost of wind power has fallen a lot in the last few years and is now a bit cheaper than coal or gas, with nuclear being a bit dearer (although I guess this last depends a lot on tricky assumptions about waste disposal). The big catch seems to be how to build enough of them. The answer at http://www.yes2wind.com/ seemed to be that we could maybe do 40% of UK energy this way - a serious contribution. The site, which I thought rather good, was built by Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and Friends of the Earth - gangs whom I usually find rather tiresome. Perhaps they are not all bad. I'm a convert!

To my own personal mountain of triva I have been able to add some Polish snippets. First, despite having Scandinavians to the North with saunas and Russians to the East with bath houses, the Poles do not go in for either. It seem they have bathrooms. I wonder about the Russians. One can certainly read about bath houses in, for example, Dostoevsky, but I do not recall reading about them in the Russia of today. Maybe they have moved into bathrooms now. Second, at their Christmas Eve meal, their version of Christmas dinner, Poles will partake of twelve dishes, one for each of the apostles. There is some measure of agreement as to which twelve dishes. And third, despite having a French name and having lived in France, Chopin was a Pole. Odd, that while it had never occurred to me that Chopin was French, it had never occurred to me either that he did not have a Polish name.

This afternoon to a book sale at Walton. Not particularly high grade stock, despite it being a fairly posh area. Not as high grade as, for example, the annual book sale run by the Epsom methodists. But it was cheap. I was able to pick up - if that is the right word for a three volume tome coming as a 10 inch cube - a branch new copy of Debrett's Peerage for £2. Rather annoyed not to be able to find any relatives in it. Must write to publisher. But first project is to try and work out the twists and turns of the Norfolk dukedom, interest in same being triggered by Kate Blanchette (whom I thought a bit feeble as a queen) and a biography of Elizabeth by a Mrs Somerset. This last, at 800 pages, is twice as long as the long established biography by Neale. And with Somerset being one centimetre shorter and one centimetre narrower than Neale, albeit this comparing a paperback with a hardback, the paperback has a rather skimped and mean feel to it. If one had great time and energy, it would be interesting to do a serious comparison of the two works. But so far I have found that Somerset brings to life life in the royal ladies' marriage market, an inside view, in a way that I suspect Neale - not read for some years now - does not. And I have been reminded how hard it was to be a queen. Being in charge was a business better suited to men in those days.

An important new recipe today. For reasons of weight and other health, the BH has taken to buying red top milk from Mr S - this being one short stop away from fully skimmed milk. That is to say, more or less coloured water. Now when I am in Indian tea mode, something which happens from time to time, I prefer a bit of proper milk in it. So the solution is to pour a small quantity of red top milk into a jug, add some single cream, stir and add to tea. It seems to work fine. Tea tastes like the real thing, with the only catch being that one gets an impressive brown stain in the cup. This may be due to hard water (having gone off the boil on our Brita water filtration system), but it any event is easy enough to remove while still warm. Needs some sort of scrubber otherwise.

Not needing bread yesterday, decided to have a go at Epsom Downs. Something I have not tried for some time. Managed it to the top although it did make me puff a bit and I did have to move as far up as the penultimate gear on the outer driver. That is to say, one gear higher than I usually go. Consulting the map I find the reason might be that while we live at maybe 50 metres above sea level and the top of Howell Hill (the biggest hill on the way to the baker) is maybe 70 metres above sea level, the top of Epsom Downs is maybe 160. So not a big hill, but many times higher to climb than usual. Visiting the same place later in the day with FIL, discovered the reason why we did not see Heathrow. There are two viewpoints from the top of the Downs and Heathrow is only visible from the one near the golf course, not from the one at Tattenham Corner. At the golf course one, we got up to a maximum of three planes on the glide path to landing. It was a clear enough day, but low cloud was obscuring maybe half the potential viewing area. Must see if I can get beyond my record of four claimed for Clapham Junction. Good view of Wembley Stadium, which must have been forty miles away.

Next time must take compass and map (both viewpoints, tiresomely, being just off the bottom of the West London OS map) as well as the binns. Maybe we get to pick out Windsor Castle. We did pick out a fairly steep hill in that general area, maybe a hill dropping down into the Thames. Contours are not too easy to follow in urban areas but maybe next time we get to find out.

Been reading away at Durrell's 'Justine'. Good stuff despite being a bit deep for me. Amused by an observation on cocktail parties of the time. "The cocktail party - as the name itself indicates - was originally invented by dogs. They are simply bottom-sniffings raised to the rank of formal ceremonies". In the intervals of reading, was further amused by the contents of the Faber paperback list of 1961, or at least that portion on the back cover. Durrell himself scores 7, Eliot 4 and Golding 3. The list also includes the titles 'Contract bridge made easy', 'Modern bodybuilding' and 'Best ghost stories'. Clearly an eclectic lot.

While we are on lists, the map of Dublin does not do badly either. A strange list of suburb names - although it may be that the suburb names of London look odd enough on first sighting. But in Dublin we have 'Irishtown', 'Fox & Geese', 'Clontarf, 'Chapelizod', 'Booterstown', 'Goatstown', 'Windy Arbour', 'Dolphins Barn' and a good sprinklings of bally this or that. Bally being to me a rather old fashioned slang adjective of mild abuse. Drat the bally thing sort of thing.

I thought I had acquired a shiny new factlet from FIL yesterday, very much in tune with our on-going love affair with red lentils. He claimed that red lentils came packed in balls, about the size of a small melon. Rather in the way of, say, pomegranite seeds or brazil nuts. This sounded rather fun. But, sadly, Wikipedia knows better. It seems to think that a lentil plant is like a small pea plant with the lentils growing in pods, two or three to the pod. The picture looks very like the chick peas I got a year or so by planting some chick peas from Balham in the allotment. It also seems to think that a good proportion of those for sale come from Saskatchewan. I hope they have some machine for threshing them or someone is going to be a very long time at filling the kilo bags I get from Mr S.

A propos of various other matters, I have been reminded recently that there are lots of things it is better not to know. Which reminds me in turn of the exchange recorded in chapter 49 of 'Seven Pillars of Wisom'. Lawrence, one Auda Abu Tayi (well cast in the famous film by David Lean) and others were gazing at the clear night sky of Arabia with Lawrence's army binoculars, presumably a toy of quality. They were gazing with wonder at all the stars which could not be seen with the naked eye. Auda was rather puzzled as to the point of bringing all these stars into view. And he says: "Why are you Westerners always wanting all? Behind our few stars we can see God, who is not behind your millions. ... Lads, we know our districts, our camels, our women. The excess and the glory are to God. If the end of wisdom is to add star to star our foolishness is pleasing". A peice of homespun - perhaps fake homespun given that Lawrence spins a good yarn - which has stuck with me over the years - and given the date of the quote - perhaps 1916 - we can perhaps forgive the order in which he mentions the things which are important to him. But stuck with me without much effect, as I have always been one myself to add star to star.

Back at the compost heap the mouse hunting season is going well, with the count now standing at eight. Perhaps one for every two settings of the two traps. The thing is, are we having any effect on the population in the compost heap or anywhere else? Are we just doing the culling which would have happened naturally, organically as they say, over the next few winter months?

And I was pleased to see a review in the TLS by A N Wilson of a book about Dostoevsky by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The reviewer actually did the author the courtesy of reviewing the book, maybe even reading it, in addition to grandstanding his own views. He also claimed that the Archbishop brought special insight, as a religious, into the important religious element in Dostoevsky's writings. And pointed out that as well as writing novels, D held some fairly unpleasant views and wrote some fairly unpleasant journalism - and these not just being the product of intemperate and impecunious youth. He did it all the way through. Whether all this will propell me to having a second attempt at the nice copy of 'The Idiot' I got hold of a year or so ago remains to be seen. I have found him rather heavy going in the past and the pending pile of books on the bedside locker is already rather high. And BH was not sure that Archbishops ought to have time to write learned tomes when their church was falling apart.

Have a slight dose of pedagogitis this morning, so I will share it. A tautology if ever there was one.

My first is that, on checking in OED, I learn that pedagogue, pederast and paedophile all share the same pedo root from the Greek for boy.

I then move on to to saving the world and my second is hubris, also from the Greek. Although, by way of a diversion, I find on inspection that its present meaning - the falling that results from too much self confidence - is not an old meaning. Neither Chambers (encylopaedia not dictionary), OCD or OED (granted not the relatively recent second edition) have an entry for the word at all although OED manages hubristic for which it has a very short entry of seven lines, giving the meaning as insolent or contemptuous. Wikipedia is on the case, pointing to ate, but without mentioning that Ate, according to Hesiod, was the daughter of Strife and rather prone to acts of hubris in the modern sense. She also gets a walk-on part in episode 19 of the Iliad where Homer alleges that she is, inter alia, the eldest daughter of Zeus and that she interfered with the birth of Heracles. Can't be right all the time, even if you are Homer. Other ingredients in the mix are the proverb 'pride comes before a fall' and the famous quote from Lord Acton of 1878: 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. Before checking I had thought it to be 1778 or so rather than 1878, so once again, not so old after all. I think I first heard the quote on the way to acquiring a second class, old-style O-level in history. Perhaps the weakness on dates accounts for the second bit.

Moving back to saving the world from the recession, people who are in power for long periods of time often fall prey to hubris. Maybe it is partly for this reason that in the US they have the sensible rule that you cannot play president more than twice. So we should learn from this example, and have a bigger rule that says that no-one should be in any position of any importance for more than seven years. I choose seven as this is a magic number which really is of considerable antiquity. Such a rule would probably have saved RBS from its fate at the hands of its late leader, who bought a big bank in a big act of hubris.

My third item, is the building of much social housing with taxpayers' money. This would create employment and do something useful, something which goes to one of the roots of the present crisis, an excess demand for housing. This strikes me as a much better wheeze than spending taxpayers' money on things which are not useful. Things like Olympic games and Trident replacements. Why the government persists with this last, a relic of the now long gone days when Britannia ruled the waves, is beyond me. On the other hand, perhaps in this unstable world, having a couple of modern aircraft carriers is a good thing. It is not healthy that the US should be the only free world purveyor of world law and order.

My fourth item, is to find some way of curbing the gloom and doom purveyed by the DT. The present crisis is in some large part a matter of perception, in a matter where, perhaps, perception is fact. Or, as we used to say in the world of work, if you think there is a problem, we have a problem, even if you are wrong. So it does not help to be laying on the gloom and doom day after day. And the DT is such a pompous paper; the standard bearer for all that is decent and sensible in the country.

Not quite sure how one could make a rule about this - although they have so many experts on rules in the world of New Labour, they ought to be able to think of something. Maybe they should put the chaps they paid to draft the no smoking regulations onto the case. Or maybe we just have to wait for the DT to acquire some of the community spirit about which it bones on about at such length.

After that lot I think I am cured and can move onto breakfast.

First, the Microsoft Corporation invite me to allow them to take over the PC for ten minutes or so while they intall a flashy new version of their media player. After the ten minutes or so it announces that is has failed and invites me to do it again. No explanation of failure and I make little use of the media player, so I have declined the invitation for now.

Second, the baker at Cheam is having trouble with his currant buns. When I first used to buy them they were light and fluffy with plenty of currents. Latterly, they have become less reliable. They have not been light and fluffy and the currents seems to have been replaced, in part, by rather generous dollops of liquid sugar on the top. That said, on Saturday, they were OK.

More important, I wonder whether I have reached the apogee of the fad for Sussex Pie. On Friday, visited the Cheam butcher to buy half a lump of stewing steak. That is to say, the butcher gets the stuff in as a shrink wrapped 10kg lumps of which I had half a lump. Boned leg of cow, I had thought; but judging by the Wikipedia diagram of a cow in their entry for corned beef, perhaps shoulder. Now, the usual drill is the wrap the thing up in foil in such a way as the juices can collect in rather than leak out of the bottom, put it in a covered pyrex dish and cook at 120C for a long time, accompanied by onion, port and mushroom ketchup. In the present case, wrapping the thing up was a bit of a challenge and I had no idea how long to cook it for. In the end, brain clicked into gear, and rather than wrapping it in foil just put it in the giant saucepan (which I bought a year or more ago as a retirement present for myself), add onions and so on, then cover the whole with foil, jamming the lid gently down on top of the foil. Put in oven at 0200 hours and eat it at 1400 later the same day. Oddly, I woke up at 0150 before the alarm went off; clearly the brain managed to retain the importance of the occasion despite being in sleep mode. Oddly also, a lot more gravy collected in the saucepan than I was expecting. Maybe two pints of the stuff. Perhaps the new arrangements for wrapping resulted in less leakage of steam rather than more. We did about two thirds of it at the first sitting, accompanied by boiled potatoes (some funny brand, all the rage presently in Mr S, small thin things, maybe two inches by three quarters of an inch), swede and crinkly cabbage. Plus mixed wine from Aldi (or perhaps Liddl. Can't tell them apart). All very good, although I think that when I next do a peice this size, maybe strain and stand it for half an hour before serving. Maybe 11 hours rather than 12.

Today we have it cold for lunch. So, remove from fridge about an hour before the off to let the thing thaw out a bit. I do not care for cold cold meat. Like red wine, should be at room temperature. BH prepares mashed potato, crinkly cabbage, braised celery and gravy. The gravy made by taking some the fat from the original gravy, rouxing it with some corn flour, then topping up with more original gravy. All very good again. The texture of the beef reminding me somewhat of that of (tinned) corned beef. And Wikipedia reminding me that the corn part of corn beef is nothing to do with corn, rather a sort of salt. And I went through my childhood thinking that the corn was corn, possibly part of the white stuff you get in corned beef. But Wikipedia is certainly right in so far as the colour of corned beef is very much the colour of salt beef. Which last I have not been happy about since the demise of the splendid cafe that used to live in Upper Windmill Street.

Earlier in the day I had notice of how it is not always sic transit gloria mundi. I read in the TLS of volume 5 of the collected letters of one Katherine Mansfield, weighing it at 376 pages or 60 pounds. This is the last volume and it seems that it has taken more years to publish the whole lot than it took to write them in the first place. I suspect that they are a lot more bulky than her published oeuvre - which I imagine, is, in any case, long out of print. Now, in the 'Oxford Companion to English Literature', the lady rates exactly five lines, which is about as small as entries there get. So her importance in the academic world is growing, while that in the reading world is shrinking. Strange how academics in literature departments (or perhaps media studies departments?) can devote such enormous amounts of time and energy to minor, if interesting, writers. I read a fair bit, and I do not recall reading anything of hers, or even owning anything. Perhaps the interest is that she was probably part of the Bloomsbury set. Knew Ottoline and all that sort of thing. Tricky love life. But more tricky, before she died young of TB, she left clear instructions that her correspondance should be destroyed. Is there really a public interest case to disregard those instructions? Clearly need some newky brown before I can opine further on the matter.

Said to be an airfield somewhere in Quebec. Maybe not suitable for Ryanair winter breaks.

Copyright of one T. Vecellio.

The white pudding from Moretonhampstead turned out to be very good, despite coming out of the wrapper a bit white and slimy. The whiteness was down to the skin being something intestinal, rather than plastic; the contents of the pudding was much the same colour as that from Slomers, via Cheam. (All Mr G can say is: Slomers Sausage Factory. Unit 17, Capital Industrial Estat, Crabtree Manor Way Sth, Belvedere, DA17 6BJ, Kent. Tel: 020 83123066. Number of Employees: 3. A foodie outfit without a web site). Sliced and fried in lard went down very well. Slightly more artisanal appearance and flavour than the Slomers model. For example, small pink bits. And less spice which was an improvement. On the other hand, the portion cooked at Epsom in our otherwise excellent non-non-stick frying pan stuck rather a lot. Which the Somers model does not do.

At the lunch preparation following, committed the grave sin of doing something else while preparing lunch: fish soup made with cod, potatoes, onions and butter. And was duly punished by the fish being overcooked in the skinning phase and the fried onions catching somewhat, rather than being soft and golden. The resultant soup was entirely eatable but not quite up to usual standard.

Which may have brought on some art historical bubblings or burblings, bubbling up from the recent trip to Florence. We observed, amongst others, three important strands of painting: crucifixes, madonnas and triptyches. Presumably, in the beginning, churches had real crucifixes and real, dressed statues of the Madonna (reading Romola reminded me that Madonna is or was the Italian meaning something like our 'Mrs'. With the special one being recognised by context). The dressed statues lived in more or less elaborate stone tabernacles. Not that differant really from the anathematised golden calf, so maybe the Muslims have a point when they ban images altogether. And then there were the portable folding triptyches used for travelling devotions by the rich. From crucifixes, we move to paintings of crucifixes, some of those in the Uffizi reminding me of orthodox icons and some reminding me of the art of the early 20th century. From Madonnas in tabernacles, we move to paintings of same. Presumably on the same wavelength as the saints in tabernacles you find in stained glass windows in our English cathedrals, noted somewhere above. And then the paintings of Madonnas in tabernacles get to be put in tabernacles of their own. And at least one such painting contained a picture of a reliquary decorated with a picture of a Madonna. Things are clearly moving on when we get pictures of pictures. The Madonna pictures start to be elaborated with snatches of landscape and narrative picturelets around the edges. Gradually become more realistic, with, amongst other things, the use of perspective. And then, within a very small number of years, we have moved onto entirely realistic pictures of naked ladies, more or less the pornography of the day. I am thinking particularly of the 'Venus of Urbino' by Titian. Reproduction to be posted shortly. This picture has the interesting property that if viewed from the bottom right, the body of Venus becomes the rather lurid face of a man with something in his mouth. The effect works much better with the real thing than with the reproduction, but there is just about enough of it left to see it. I wonder if Titian did it on purpose?

"I'm Jonna. I had a house but sold it to avoid future foreclosure. I lived in a parked converted school bus for over three years. Now I live in an old travel trailer (no tow vehicle) on land that belongs to my family". A lady with oompf: only from America, as the saying goes: http://verysimplebeadworkpatterns.blogspot.com/

Not only having to grapple with failing cooling systems in our not very old vehicle, as two of the three computer screens in our house are starting to misbehave. Is it a coincidence that the two in question come from the late lamented Evesham Computers? Did they go bust over selling dodgy screens? The cathode ray screen is going through odd patches of displaying in odd colours. The basic picture is OK but with a red tint or something. Then it clicks back to normal. The laptop screen is starting to have strange red patterns - perhaps a 1 centimetre band of pink pattern across a more or less idle portion of screen. Or perhaps a pink circle about 5 centimetres across. I suppose if I was in the world of work I would junk the thing. But as it is I shall soldier on and perhaps lose a few hours work at some point when the screen gives up altogether. The recession is making me feel mean!

On which topic, got a Guardian for the first time for a while yesterday. We also had a DT so the comparison was interesting. The Guardian, presumably the newspaper of choice of the public sector salariat, is fairly relaxed about the whole situation. Such salaries get paid whatever, and while promotion prospects might be a bit dented, redundancies are rare. The meltdown of tests for 14 year olds is a lot more important than the meltdown of banks for grown ups. This last is the subject of reflective peices on business cycles and the inevitability of banks going over the top from time to time. Starting with our own Edward the something reneging on his Florentine loans back in the middle ages, triggering the banking crisis of his time. Through the Dutch tulip crisis, the South Sea Bubble and so on. Whereas, back at the DT, panic headlines continue, although their height (or is point the proper word?) is not quite what it was at the height of the crisis. Presumably the newspaper of choice of enterprising and share-holding folk who do care about the state of the financial world. Will HBOS pull in that loan I took out to finance the new organic yoghourt factory? Will there be moves to repatriate all those Balinese virgins I hired to stroke the fermenting yoghourt?

The Guardian continues with its rather po-faced series of enclosures. Yesterday was the turn of some poster about people of colour. All worthy stuff but I remain irritated that part of the purchase price goes on it. I am buying a newspaper not a home improvement pack. It also continues with its splendid series of public sector job advertisements. Always good fun to play spot the silliest job description. One even wonders if some of them are not a bit tongue in cheek. Some clerk having a pop at his or her most PC masters. I could, for example, be a multi-systemic therapist in Barnsley. And some health outfit, I presume one of these now all-powerful primary care trusts, is wanting three senior officials - the £50,000 a year sort - to worry about various aspects of patient safety. Or I could be the (service development manager (self directed support(adults))). Whatever that might be. I guess not knowing means I am not qualified. And I am invited to help build pride in Cumbria. This last looking to be something to do with working with troubled youth.

On a more serious note, the trip to Florence stimulated a re-read of Romola, a book I found a bit heavy going on the first time around. But its Florentine setting certainly helped to pull me through the second time around. One scene, for example, involving the Porta San Gallo, the termination of the Via San Gallo, just off of which was to be found our hotel. We were walking up and down said Via most days. (Oddly, San Gallo does not seem to be a saint. Rather the name of a famous family of Florentine builders. At least, that is what Mr G seems to think). Romola suffers a bit from being a book with an agenda. That is to say, one gets the impression that George got her theme - the growth of evil in a person through habit and laziness - and then built a charectar around the theme. Rather than letting the theme emerge from the charectar. But who is to say which is the right way around? I also get the impression that George is also interested in rich, bossy, educated and rather difficult old men who want to keep an iron grip on some younger protege (doesn't look the same without its accents but I have yet to learn how to do that here). We have one such in Middlemarch and no less than two in this book. Maybe she suffered in the grip of one herself. Must turn up Haight again and check my theory. All in all, a much better read this time around. Apart from higher endeavours, I now feel I know a lot more about the life and times of late 15 century Florentines than I did before. Perhaps an easier trick to pull off in a book than in a film. In which connection, I find the ancient block busters like 'Ben Hur' oddly more compelling than the moderns who have a go at ancient times. These last suffer, perhaps, from too much information.

Back out in the country again - the place now dignifying itself as a regional capital (whatever one of those might be), bright and earlyish on Tuesday morning. For the first time in many years I have sampled cycle tracks, which were a bit bumpy on the rock hard miniscule tyres on my No.2 bicycle. One, the one back from the Turf Hotel, was crawling with small airborne flying objects. I even managed to eat a few. On the other hand, also had a ride out in the country, in open fields and what have you, something else I have not done for many years. Very pleasant - and very warm considering we are getting towards mid October.

Yesterday, back to the fancy church without visible means of (financial) support at Tavistock. Took the opportunity to take a closer look at the elaborate stained glass, occupying most of the large windows. Interesting close to, Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite, but not too impressive taken as a whole. The place did not seem, yesterday in the noon light anyway, particularly holy. Some of the stained glass work was strangely intricate. In particular, in one rather geometric panel with a lot of black frame work, with just one saint in the middle, the artist had gone to the bother of cutting out each frame and embedding each one in black lead work. There were lots of them and they were quite small, and I imagine that inserting all these small frames in lead made the whole weaker rather than stronger. And one could not tell without looking fairly carefully, so what was the point? Artistic integrity of the peice or something? Or am I just mistaken (remembering the statistical dictum that an interesting fact is probably a wrong fact) and the thing was not leaded up in this odd way at all?

There was also a lady saint holding an anchor (not a toy, but of usable size), next to a gentleman saint with a very large sword. The gent. might well have been Saint George, but not a clue as to the lady.

Then, the good weather holding, on to Cox Tor. Panoramic views down the Tamar Valley from the (unmarked) car park and super 360 degree views from the trig point at the top. That is to say, the nearest horizon was several miles away and the furthest horizon was a lot of miles away. Must have been good for lots of other people as there are pots of hits on Mr G. Then, on the way down, quite startled to find how easy it is to end up, after a couple of hundred yards, a couple of hundred yards off course. On this occasion I could see where I was going so not a big deal. But clearly could have been in the mist. Having gone to the bother of taking the compass to Florence - and used it a couple of times for urban navigation - I had not gone to the bother of taking it up the hill. Must be more careful in future.

Managed to get back to base without the car overheating again. The radiator sprung a modest leak last week and we ground to a halt a hundred yards short of the Exter tip, so have taken to carrying water and keeping an eye on levels, so far without scalding my hand. Having tried to make sense of the pipework below the reservoir, I have decided that my chances of doing anything about the leak are about zero. So will we take a chance and limp back home to London for professional attention there or will we get a country job done here? I have about 20 hours to make my mind up.

Having bought some shoulder pork in Moretonhampstead, turned it into soup on return. Coarsely dice the pork, add to boiling water. On this occasion using a pressure cooker with a glass plate on top, there not being an ordinary saucepan of appropriate size. Let's hope we do not catch anything unpleasant from using the banned aluminium to cook in. Add some cross sliced celery. Some time later add a few ounces of red lentils; enough to colour and thicken but not to the point where there is any chance of sticking. Some time later add some potato lumps and segmented onion. Towards the end add the smidgeon of thinly sliced crinkly cabbage we had to hand. All went down very well - but oddly did not taste so well in the morning, after a night in the fridge. Either it did not stand, it had absorbed something unpleasant from the fridge, or the soup did not go well with my toothpaste (oranges certainly do not). Not been a problem in the past but then it was the first time I had made this particular soup.

From the same establishment in Moretonhampstead, bought a white pudding. A bit thinner and a lot whiter than the white pudding from Cheam. Report further in due course.

Nature lovers living in Kingston-upon-Thames must be very happy with the state of the mouth of the Hogsmill these days. Twice now we have seen a shoal of reasonable sized fish, clustered on the north eastern corner of the bridge over same, by the law courts. Also a pair of very colourful and sprightly grey wagtails - at least that is what looks most likely from the RSPB idenfication site. But the site does not mention the grey and white chevron stripes on the up side of the tail nor does it talk of bits of green. Not a terribly sophisticated tool for what is, I believe, a very rich charity these days. Gets all the spinster money that used to go to the church.

At the same spot I have seen herons and, on one occasion, a kingfisher. Clearly the a spot for tweeters - although I never seen anyone else peering down.

But life not so good in classics departments these days. I see from the TLS that it is no longer enough to read and love Virgil. You have to write books on what they call receptions through the ages: that is to say how successive generations have viewed and used the classics. Rather like the Roman villa we visited earlier in the year where the display spent some time on displaying past digs rather than villa. All good stuff I dare say - but it is not quite the same as reading the stuff for its own sake. Beginning of the end. Or perhaps the end of the beginning of the end. One could go on.

A few days ago the DT carried a peice about the dreadful number of deaths - 300 or so a year in GB (we suppose) - attributable to people who had only recently passed their driving test. In consequence, there was said to be all-party agreement about the need to do something about the driving test, which had not been reorganised for some disgraceful passage of time. There was even talk of abandoning the dreaded reversing backwards around a corner (something which almost scuppered me ever so many years ago) and relying on driving instructors to do that sort of thing. I then start to wonder how all this cross party agreement was justified and turn up what turns out to be a very helpful ONS web site (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/) and rapidly learn that in 2002 (the last year for which data was available in this form) there were about 3,500 deaths from road accidents in GB. So less than 10% of these involve these recent passers? So what proportion of road traffic users are they? Is this an excess proportion? Does the DT or anyone else know?

Perhaps I should have stayed with OPCS - one of the outfits which merged into what is now the ONS - and participated in this great web development!

As a consolation prize, I participated yesterday in the revenue protection scheme operated by Transport for London. Having forgetten to carry my oyster card and not having change smaller than a fiver, the bus driver eyed me very suspiciously. After a suitably impressive pause, during which time I thought my options were either to cough up a fiver or to get off, he comes up with a pad of yellow forms and laboriously checks one lot of boxes and then invites me to check another lot, in this way recording my name and address. I then carry off the yellow counterfoil into the bowels of the bus, a counterfoil which invites me to send £2 to the revenue protection department of Transport for London. My cheque now awaits my daily trip to Cheam to be posted. I am pleased that such a quaint and trusting scheme is still operated - despite transaction costs which much far exceed the amount involved. So as a good citizen I must remember to carry my Oyster card.

I was impressed by the much lower-tech solution operated on Florentine buses. While, as an alien, a bit vague on details, there appears to be a flat fare scheme operating within the Florence area. You buy tickets at a tabacconist (which action is not, in Italy anyway, construed as aiding and abetting the evil tabacco industry. Tantamount to advertising sale of same to under age persons). You get on the bus without any form of control or turnstile and you cancel your ticket by sticking it into what looks like a very cheap machine, of which there are two or three in the bus. Your ticket is then good for 70 minutes. You get off the bus without any form of control or turnstile. We presumed that if you got caught without a cancelled ticket you would be in deep trouble and it was alleged that there were teams of undercover agents roaming the bus system hunting for villains. All in all, it looked like a simple low cost solution, one step short of simply making the buses free. Why did it take us so long to arrive at the vastly more complicated oyster card solution?

I think it may also be the case that the buses were run by the municipality for the benefit of their citizens, rather than by Southwest trains for the benefit of their shareholders. Maybe these Italians do know a thing or two after all.

BH excelled herself yesterday with a very fine toad in the hole. The hole part of the operation well risen, crusty without being burnt, around the edges and soft in the middle. Only slightly marred by Mr S thinking it necessary to put herbs in his posh sausages, despite putting a reasonable amount of meat in. A recent custom, which seems to have been adopted by even posh sausage makers, which I would do without. A good sausage needs no E-numbers, herbal or otherwise.

As far as culture went, Florence was just what it said on the tin. There was pots of it. And pots of it outside of the crowded Uffizi. Although the crowds in this last were much ameliorated by it being laid out with picture hanging rooms being arranged off big galleries - long and wide - in which one would recuperate. Rather like an Elizabethan long gallery. They even had seats. (I find in the OED that of the 12 main meanings of gallery, most have to do with the long gallery sort of gallery and only one was an art gallery, the dominant use of the word today. Presumably by extension from the days when said Elizabethans used to put their family portraits in such places. I think the Italians use museo indifferantly for an art gallery or a museum).

Perhaps the most notable single work, was the Madonna in the box in Orsanmichele. A painting of the Madonna, in a full-on tabernacle, in what was not but what has become a holy place. A holy painting in its proper place - something which was missing from the warming up experiences in the National Gallery. One could see how one might have a religious experience while confronted by such a thing. We learn afterwards, from an extremely fat guidebook (perhaps half a cubic foot), that it is the most perfect example of such a thing extant.

And the second, was a small church in Pistoia, I think called 'Cappella del Tau'. A very old place which had fallen into disuse, then private hands, but which has more recently been turned in to a museum of modern sculpture (not my sort of thing) with the frescos restored. I felt I was really getting a sense of what a full fresco chapel might have looked like when it was new. Tremendous use of the recently invented perspective painting to make the rather spare vaulting blend into a far grander and more fantastic architectural whole. There was a lot of this sort of thing in Florence, but for me, this was the best example.

Both these places, like nearly all the churches in Florence, were free. Makes up for what seemed like heavy prices in bars and restaurants.

Pistoia, for a relatively small place, had a lot to offer. The cathedral, for example, had a tremendous apse behind the altar. A blue domed affair with arches. The best example of its kind that I have seen. Achieved a lightness that our own St Pauls comes no where near.

Resumed baked cod yesterday. Following today by the bit we did not eat - maybe a pound of the stuff - being part fried in butter then blended with 5 ounces of cooked pearl barley and two medium onions, finely chopped and fried in the fish pan after removal of fish. So we have resumed the pearl barley fad too.

Now the place for cooks in Florence is the central market, a block or two north east of Santa Maria Novella. Large two storey affair with lots of meat, fish, cheese, veg and what have you. Maybe a little past its peak, although we never found or even saw a serious supermarket. They must be about somewhere, given the socking great newish build suburbs - swathes of middle sized apartment blocks rather than suburban villas of the Epsom variety - to the north west of the old city, on the way to the city airport.

Big fish stalls but very little white fish. (The fish man from Hastings tells me that he blagged his way onto a Cypriot fishing boat one time to find that very few large fish were caught at all - all fished out). I didn't see any shell fish either. But there was plenty of octopus and squid and odd-jobs of that sort.

Big meat stalls with lots of good looking beef - some of which looked to have come from bigger cows than we are used to. And accompanied by some heavy duty tripe stalls. One of which appeared to stock about twenty differant sorts - including some of the odd bits of cow that one could have boiled and doused with vinegar on top of the excellent chips that used to be sold in Yarmouth market. One of the tripes seemed to be a mixture of red bits and white bits, and was sold in red stew form in the excellent and busy market cafe at one of the entrances to the market. Sort of place which was intended for market traders and other legitimates and sold cheap, hearty and meaty food. But I suspect that in not too many years time the place will have been completely taken over by tourists like ourselves and we will be buying the bag rather than the food. Rather in the way that the formerly excellent cheese shop in Jerymn Street has gone downhill. The market people will have to find somewhere else. Not too keen on the tripe stew though; good to have tried it, but I think I will stick to the meat lump stew next time.

Took a while to get the hang of Italian menus, but I did manage a couple of other star turns. The first was a cow chop - about 3cm thick and cooked very rare. Big enough for two and the waiter, correctly working out female tastes and appetites in these matters, had the wit to give me the half involving the bone. Spectacular presentation and tasted very good. Not sure that I would chance such a light cooking myself. We learn afterwards that this is something of a Florentine speciality. Very good and very dear - despite our having travelled north of the ravine of the Magnone torrent to try and get into Italian country, out of the tourist centre. The second was a house special pizza. Which came in rolled up form, more than a foot long and maybe two inches in diameter. Again, spectacular presentation and tasted very good.

Not clear that one needs to disentangle these two effects: good presentation certainly makes things taste better. But does it matter where the good taste comes from, provided that it does? Is good presentation a necessary or sufficient condition? Back in the land of saloon bar pontification, my call is that it is nearly both. That is to say that one does have a good meal which looks or sounds bad - perhaps on the first presentation, while one gets used to, for example, the tripes' pipes - from time to time, but not very often.

Should end with an honourary mention for Ruth's kosher restaurant, to be found at http://www.kosheruth.com/. Good food - including fish - in a calm and peaceful atmostphere, despite being busy. Change from the more usual Florentine carnavoria. I got one lunch, BH two.

It was next door to a newish synagogue, a rather grand place built to celebrate the acquisition of full civic rights after the unification. Rather struck by the serious security on getting in (finding the same sort of thing later at the Uffizi. It seems that Italy has unpleasant nutters too). Shown round by two very earnest young ladies who were quite strong on all the various currents within their faith. Like so many things, seen from a distance it looks like a monolithic whole, at slightly closer quarters infused with the same humanity as everything else. And despite having had it explained how the building differed from a Christian church in design and layout, as an outsider, on my first visit to such a place, I was struck by how like a Christian church it was. Much more so than the only mosque I have ever visited, that at Regents Park.

Culinary equilibrium has been restored after a week of foreign cooking. Knocked up a lentil soup which has barely survived today's breakfast and lunch. Lack of carrots meant that I had to use a chunk of coarsely sliced white cabbage in their place - but the result was OK. This including the first proper bread for a week; not having found Florentine bread all that great - a bit hard for my teeth and with a slightly odd flavour.

And we did not find any Florentine cabbages at all - although we did see a few in someone's garden from a train. They don't seem to be into our sort of vegetables at all although some find their way into soups and stews and they are keen on salads. But green mush, even fresh green mush, is not quite the same as meat and two veg.

Nor did we see much in the way of cows. We came across two large ceremonial cows waiting to pull a cart about, extravagently decorated with bottles of Chianti, as part of a Chianti growing village's promotional visit to Florence. Complete with half the village dressed up in TV Jane Austen. But, despite a train ride to Pistoia and a walk in the country there, we did not find any other cows. Or even sheds to put cows in. Or sheep, goats or any other farm animal. I think I heard a cockeral once, I did see a small lizard and a few game birds.

These last were in a large field or park, roughly grassed with large and small trees scattered about, rather in the manner of a park for an English lord, and which might have been to do with a nearby experimental station of some sort, which might have been to do with http://www.vivaistipistoiesi.it/. But it was not the sort of field or park that one might find in England.

From the train, we also saw great swathes of ornamental tree nurseries. There must have been square miles of the them - one might have thought enough to provide ornamental trees for a big chunk of Italy. After all, there were not that many in Florence itself.

But, not only were there no animals, there did not appear to be much agriculture apart from the trees. A fair bit of what looked like set aside. One field with drying maize. A few small fields which had been cultivated and were presumably waiting to be seeded or planted. Some vines. Some kitchen gardens. All in all, not too much in that line at all, down on the Arno flood plain where might have expected it. But there was plenty of industry, including what appeared to be a railway locomotive manufacturing facility, complete with railway locomotives wrapped up in white plastic and parked in the yard outside. We also came across a depository for dead railway locomotives of various shapes and sizes, all rusty. Last time I have seen such a depository was in Snoqualmie, rather bigger than that in Pistoia and a lot more scruffy than swift inspection of http://www.trainmuseum.org/ would suggest.

Back in Epsom, two factlets have already caught my eye. First, one of the lagers recently come into the frame at Wetherspoons in Tooting is called Zywiec. I now find that it is brewed in a place of the same name in what used to be a large estate belonging to one Wilhelm Franz von Hapsburg-Lothringen, a strange princeling of the late Austrian empire, who dreamed of being king of a Ukrainian state under Austrian suzerainty. I think he bothered to learn the language. Maybe it all went wrong when his bit of the Ukraine wound up in Poland. Second, that a potter's field is a name for a place for the burial of unknown or indigent people. The term is taken from a story in the Bible and a big example is a place called Hart Island in New York. Perhaps appropriate that such a godly people should use such a godly term. Wikipedia knows all about what must be rather a grim place, home to some 750,000 graves.

This from a Arabic or Turkish flavoured internet cafe just north of the Duomo, just to prove it can be done. Quiet and peaceful Wednesday morning, cool and sunny and more staff than punters in the cafe. 1.5 euros for the half hour or there is the annual subscription option. Required to show your passport for copying prior to kick off. Quite handy for students of which there seem to be lots around here (Via San Gallo).

Being in the cafe has also provided the opportunity to ask Mr G about the many tortoises which are built into the monuments around here. I very soon find out that they are the heraldic animal of Cosimo I, first Grand Duke of Tuscany. They are not, however, as plentful as the Medici balls which really are everywhere. Show-off parvenus compared to Cosimo, I dare say. Mr G finds the following: "One outraged contemporary of Cosimo il Vecchio declared that "He has emblazoned even the monks' privies with his balls."" Five plain balls and one fancy one, arranged in a hexagon on a odd shaped shield, with 10 seconds with Mr G not revealing much detail, although there is a suggestion that there may be a connection with the three plain balls of the pawnbrokers.

More when I get back to a proper keyboard in good old Blighty. Although to be fair this keyboard is no where near as hard to work as the one I tried in gay paree.