Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Porcine affairs
Affair with roast rolled pork belly continued over the weekend. Hot Sunday with rice and curly cabbage. Maybe half a pint of fat leached out this time, compared with a spoonful last time. There was not much bone either. Maybe different end of the belly. Cold today, with rice and curly cabbage. In between, soaked some pearl barley in the stock made by washing the roasting tin. Simmered for 90 minutes or so. Added the remains of the chopped dry cured bacon from Devon. Simmered some more. Added a good portion of finely chopped curly cabbage. A surprisingly tasy dish for a cold wet day: possibly so because of an unhealthily high salt content? Maybe salt goes well with boiled grain and porridge?
Affair with the DT resumed today after some days' absence. Rewarded by a clutch of splendid items. First, the banning of vans selling bacon sandwiches on Surrey roadsides unless they also sell things deemed to be healthy by Surrey's chief environment health officer, no doubt after expensive and well fed&watered consultation with James Oliver. Will there ever be a pause in this relentless interference in our daily lives? Second, I see that the UK is appointing a full blown vice-admiral to lead a small, multi-national and motley collection of ships to combat Somali pirates. When one thinks that Nelson himself was a vice-admiral and he had a full blown battle-group, one can see that there has been a huge grade inflation. But the peice confusingly suggests that the admiral will be based at Northwood, so maybe there will be a mere rear admiral actually in command on the water. Third, we are told that President Bush used an anti-bacterial sanitiser after shaking hands with the president-elect. Maybe in this health conscious age the president does that after every hand shake. Or perhaps every so many minutes if he is doing a walkabout involving hand shakes with the great unwashed. I believe that hard-core, professional hand shakers, like monarchs, could get blisters on their hands on busy days and so wear gloves instead. This might avoid the rather uncomplimentary use of sanitisers.
I learn from a differant source of a wheeze from Belize. They send you a postcard purporting to come from the UDS (Universal Delivery Service Corporation) telling you that they were unable to deliver a package due to your absence and asking you to ring a number to arrange for another attempt at delivery. You ring the number to find that you have spent £15 or whatever on some special tariff phone call. So I go into reverse and start to wonder how one might regulate this activity, far more pernicious than failing to sell yoghourt in bacon sandwiches on Surrey roadsides. I suppose the mechanics of the thing are that I use my phone company A to phone entity B. A charges me for the basic connection. B is then allowed to make an additional charge on A, which A then recovers from me by adding it to my phone bill. This sort of arrangement would not work very well with letters. I buy a stamp from mail service A which then puts my letter through the door of entity B (with sensible no-charge reciprocal agreements between mail services in the case that entity B is somewhere not covered by A. No computers and no bills) . It would be quite hard for B to pull the same stunt.
What about if I phone entity B by mistake? Is it reasonable for B to levy the surcharge? What if my fax machine phones entity B and thinks that it is have a meaningful interchange with it all night? Thinking with my fingers (or at least two or three of them), maybe there should be an interupt on any call which involves an additional charge asking you if you wish to proceed? Can't think of any snags in that just yet. A protocal to be enforced by all telephony service providers. Perhaps I should drop a postcard in the suggestion box of the Office of the Regulator General of Telephony Services.
Affair with the DT resumed today after some days' absence. Rewarded by a clutch of splendid items. First, the banning of vans selling bacon sandwiches on Surrey roadsides unless they also sell things deemed to be healthy by Surrey's chief environment health officer, no doubt after expensive and well fed&watered consultation with James Oliver. Will there ever be a pause in this relentless interference in our daily lives? Second, I see that the UK is appointing a full blown vice-admiral to lead a small, multi-national and motley collection of ships to combat Somali pirates. When one thinks that Nelson himself was a vice-admiral and he had a full blown battle-group, one can see that there has been a huge grade inflation. But the peice confusingly suggests that the admiral will be based at Northwood, so maybe there will be a mere rear admiral actually in command on the water. Third, we are told that President Bush used an anti-bacterial sanitiser after shaking hands with the president-elect. Maybe in this health conscious age the president does that after every hand shake. Or perhaps every so many minutes if he is doing a walkabout involving hand shakes with the great unwashed. I believe that hard-core, professional hand shakers, like monarchs, could get blisters on their hands on busy days and so wear gloves instead. This might avoid the rather uncomplimentary use of sanitisers.
I learn from a differant source of a wheeze from Belize. They send you a postcard purporting to come from the UDS (Universal Delivery Service Corporation) telling you that they were unable to deliver a package due to your absence and asking you to ring a number to arrange for another attempt at delivery. You ring the number to find that you have spent £15 or whatever on some special tariff phone call. So I go into reverse and start to wonder how one might regulate this activity, far more pernicious than failing to sell yoghourt in bacon sandwiches on Surrey roadsides. I suppose the mechanics of the thing are that I use my phone company A to phone entity B. A charges me for the basic connection. B is then allowed to make an additional charge on A, which A then recovers from me by adding it to my phone bill. This sort of arrangement would not work very well with letters. I buy a stamp from mail service A which then puts my letter through the door of entity B (with sensible no-charge reciprocal agreements between mail services in the case that entity B is somewhere not covered by A. No computers and no bills) . It would be quite hard for B to pull the same stunt.
What about if I phone entity B by mistake? Is it reasonable for B to levy the surcharge? What if my fax machine phones entity B and thinks that it is have a meaningful interchange with it all night? Thinking with my fingers (or at least two or three of them), maybe there should be an interupt on any call which involves an additional charge asking you if you wish to proceed? Can't think of any snags in that just yet. A protocal to be enforced by all telephony service providers. Perhaps I should drop a postcard in the suggestion box of the Office of the Regulator General of Telephony Services.
# posted by Jim @ 9:15 AM 
