pumpkinstrokemarrow

The TLS advertised an interesting post last week. Someone is looking for extra-mural PhD level tuition from a holder of a doctorate in feminist studies on twentieth century women writers. Rather a clumsy way of saying you want someone who has done a femmy take on twentieth century femmy writers, but one gets the general idea. The duties involve, each month, reading five texts (of unspecified length), doing a face-to-face and doing some email. Who would want such a person and why? How much are they paying?

Alternatively, if you are into hiring rather than being hired, you may be interested in hiring a wood-dwelling wild-life photographer who can be found on THUNDER64@02.CO.UK . I had heard of wood-dwellers in the Surry hills before now, Shere to be precise, but I had never heard of one in the London Borough of Merton, let alone met one. This chap seems to be doing very well for himself, with a warm tent with all mod-cons, hard-core outdoors type clothing and a couple of places where he can wash up and recharge the batteries for all the mod-cons. Craftily hidden in the woods to avoid unwanted attention from passers by. Generally seemed to be in very good shape and having a good time. Finds the life very economical.

Spent a happy half an hour yesterday doing battle with the cancellation part of the Travelodge site. I may have been pressing the wrong buttons, but most of the site didn't seem to think that I had a booking to cancel. I then found a place in the site which owned up to me, but then declined to play when I pressed a cancel button. Eventually managed to battle through to what seemed like a successful cancellation, but got a cancellation email addressed to someone called Kirsty - although most of the time they seemed to know my proper name. We will see if my refund turns up. Not sure yet what to do if it does not: the site seems to be completely bereft of any number to telephone, short of making a complaint about the treatment accorded, which I do not want to do quite yet. Although, if other people have the same fun as I did, perhaps they do complain. And tripped up with the parallel cancellation of a bus journey with National Express. In my innocence, I had thought that the compulsory insurance was to do with cancellation. But no. Insurance was to do with if they ran over your leg or lost your baggage. Sorry sir, no refund on your sort of ticket. But to be fair, there was a telephone number to phone and I was able to get through to a real person very quicky, who was as helpful as he could be.

Another new soup today. Boil carrots, onion and a bit of bone from belly of pork. Strain of the stock after a few hours. Add a large segmented onion (cut, that is, after the fashion of a segmented orange). Bring the stock back to the boil. After a few minutes add some sliced button mushrooms. Good, light, soup for a lunchtime snack, the carrot having given the stock a pleasing sweetness and the bone having given it some body.