pumpkinstrokemarrow

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.