pumpkinstrokemarrow

Paid a visit to the second hand bookshop at Earlsfield yesterday and acquired a nice little collection of Maupassant stories. Part of an ancient CUP series of French texts. Nicely done with an introduction and with sparse footnotes giving translations of odd phrases which one might otherwise have difficulty deciphering. Only let down by the lettering on the spine, fortunately hidden by the elderly dust jacket, which is fine. How did they come to choose such an inappropriate font for the spine? Makes the book look very cheap. Maybe we were still in the throws of austerity book production when the second reprint of this thing was knocked out in 1952.

Nostalga'd by finding a Bowes & Bowes sticker inside, this being a shop of my youth. I think there is still a bookshop on the same site but I don't think it bears much resemblance to the slightly stuffy academic bookshop of my time - although it was never pleasantly fusty in the way of the late lamented Heffers. Much more up-to-the-minute sort of place.

Reminded by the introduction of my blockage with "Boule de Suif", which I had not known was his first best seller. Most of the time I read this as ball of fat or ball of suet - and only occasionally render it as dumpling, which I suppose to be the correct translation. The one which gets you a point in a GSCE translation. Illustrating one of the things which is hard about translation: neither rendering fully captures the spirit of the original. And that is only three words!

Read "Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme" on the way home. Very affective under the influence of a couple of Bombardiers and a couple of ordinaries. A level of directness, brutal directness even, about family life in the country not matched by English realist novels - my understanding being that George Eliot was considered, or considered herself, a realist, in opposition to the romantic tosh which had been poured out before her time.

All in all, a very good £3 worth.

Broadband went awol again some time in the middle of the day. Required the services of the helpful people from Bangalore to poke it into life again this morning. Slightly differant routine with slightly differant operative. This time it is the local engineers who are promised to ring me back within 48 hours. We will see. And for the moment we have a service.

Pleased to see in yesterday's DT that someone in authority is questioning the eco-wisdom of all these compulsory eco-collections. The someone has the temerity to suggest that all this collection might be burning a bigger hole in the omega 3 layer up above than just chucking the stuff into a landfill site. Even more heretically, he suggests that the answer might be to incinerate the stuff and generate some electricity. Are those busy ladies from New Labour going to get onto the case and issue a whole new lot of regulations?

Bit of a puzzle to me why we don't just pay the Russians to bury the stuff in Siberia somewhere. They have pots of space and, now the globe is warming, we could send giant killer waste container ships there direct through the now mostly open north east passage. Eco-costs of getting the stuff there would be very modest. Plus it would be a tactful way of giving the starving global ship owners a bung, now that the global slowdown has indeed reduced them to starvation, or at least penury.

Yesterday, amongst other events, saw a visit to Teddington to see how the weir and sluices looked after all the recent rain. River seemed very high but otherwise unspectacular, barring a couple of ducks that we do not see in Epsom. But, for the first time in our twenty years in Epsom, we did make it into the inside of the church of St Alban, a very large ecclesiastical folly from the the second half of the 19th century. (Although nowhere near as large as the red brick one in Liverpool). This one built, it seems, to accommodate all those people sucked into Teddington by the new railway station who did not fit into the rather more modest church of St Mary (very firmly locked yesterday, despite being of some interest itself, in a more modest way). Sadly the folly ran out of rich old ladies and they only got around to building the eastern half. Perhaps they hoped that some more would come along, as they blocked off the half completed nave in a very crude and temporary looking way. Nevertheless, rather impressive if one stands at the bottom of the block and look towards the altar. Now, having been made redundant by the parsons, used for various events, art shows and toddlers, and looks as if it struggles to make ends meet. Heating bills must be humungous.

And someone with a digital camera could easily improve on the pictures turned up by Mr G.; the place is really rather impressive, despite being a folly. I would post FIL's effort but wary of knocking my broadband out again.

Most important, the urge to eat pearl barley has surfaced again. Firstly, soaked about four ounces of pearl barley during the day, bringing to the boil once. Then added some chopped cooked chicken and some chopped cooked green (but not curly) cabbage. Stir, heat through and eat. Excellent stuff which did one portion for supper and another for breakfast. Simple, homely fare which I am sure the food descriptions consultant at Waitrose could work wonders with. Secondly, turned the remains of Sunday's giant roast chicken (remaindered by Mr S.) into stock. The onion skins turned it much more brown than usual. Strain, add six ounces of pearl barley while still warm. Leave to soak. Bring to boil, simmer for half an hour. Add some chopped cooked chicken. Add about half a slivered white cabbage. Simmer for five minutes and you have enough soup for two for supper and breakfast.

Lots more stunning bird pix today at http://hsienwildlife.blogspot.com/. Plus the still present dial up connection pop-ups whenever I upload pictures to blog from this computer. Which I suspect to be the source of some of my problems.

Having now consulted the record, it seems that the broadband last went awol just about a month ago. So a much shorter time between failures this time than last time.

Just had another conversation with Banglalore, this time with an efficient lady who was very apologetic about my not having been phoned back before. But we are all learning. She says have you done the moving the cables about thing? Have you done the changing the microfilter thing? And rather than taking me through it all again, she just ticks that one off. Then she does another line test, just to make sure. The DSL light, having been mostly off and out for the duration, springs into life. We get a connection. Make the mistake of opening up Internet Explorer and it vanishes again. The DSL light keeps trying. After a few minutes it gets there and goes steady, along with the internet light. Efficient lady says not to be impatient and go into Internet Explorer. Give it a few minutes to settle down, which we do. And now all is well and has been for the last half an hour. I am to leave the router on all day to allow it to be monitored and efficient lady will ring me back tomorrow morning to confirm that all is well. All in all, everything a help desk call should be. And it is one o'clock in the afternoon in Bangalore and she has just come on shift. Maybe that is why she was all bright and cheerful!

Nearer home, FIL is well into his second jigsaw now. The first, a Christmas present to him from sprog 2, was a cunning aerial photograph centred on his house in Exminster. We first thought that such a thing would be easy if one knew the area, but this did not prove to be the case. Some days before we finally got there. I think it would be a lot harder in a solid area of suburban housing; at least in a village you had the edges of the village which were easier and in this case there were enough odd buildings - like former mental hospitals - and bits of green space to get a grip on. Plus a couple of big roads running across the whole scene.

Then we got to wondering about how the thing was made. Understand the aerial photograph bit. Those on Google Earth probably good enough for this sort of thing - although you would not want the joins between pictures that you sometimes get there. But how do you cut the thing out? Does the jigsaw company have a single steel die which stamps out the jigsaw in one go, every jigsaw the same? That is what I deduce from looking at the edges of the peices. But then, how do you make the steel die? Perhaps nowadays you can have some computer controlled grinding tool to make the thing out of a blank from a digitised drawing. Sledgehammer to crack a nut but it would work. Perhaps you make a plasticine one, take a cast, take a cast from that, clean it up and job done. I learn in passing that plasticine is the name of a particular product from a particular company, rather than the name of a particular material, which has been generalised in general parlance, rather like hoover. Used to be made in a factory in England but now made in a factory in Thailand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasticine). The plasticine version would need to be made a bit bigger than the finished product so that you had material to grind and polish down. But how would you get the thing as neat and regular as most jigsaws are, with a regular rectangular array of essentially quadrilateral peices, all meeting at the corners? I think I would find it a bit hard to do that in plasticine. Maybe somebody has posted the answer to wiki.

Each side of the quadrilateral having the option of lump in or lump out, giving a total of five permutations if I have done my sums right. At the end of a jigsaw, when I am doing a stretch of sky perhaps, I tend to sort the relevant peices into the five types and get methodical about the whole business.

The second jigsaw is a painting of a heritage street scene, properly but informally borrowed from Epsom Library, for whom jigsaws in part of the service. By informal I mean that there is no checking in and checking out. You just take the thing away and take it back when you are done with it. Remarkably simple arrangement for a local authoritarian.

Horse drawn carriages and gas lights. I am finding this a lot easier than the photographic equivalent, the painting having been chosen for its profusion of visual clues. Easier perhaps in the way that a diagram of an amoeba is easier to understand than a photograph of one. Half the work has been done already. And I have been reminded how important colour is. Finding a peice with a colour that matches the bit one is working on is often quicker than finding a peice with this or that feature on it - which often turns out to look rather differant on the peice than one was expecting. Well on the way to becoming a jigsaw bore. That apart, not a bad way to spend a winter's afternoon. Keeps the brain ticking over in a pleasant way.

At the eleventh hour the haddock hash was vetoed on the grounds of salt. Had to settle for plain steamed smoked haddock with leeks and mashed potato. Will be working on the matter and hopefully have resolution in time for next week's visit to the man from Hastings.

And then, to add to the misery, lost broadband sometime on Sunday and am still off the air, despite one of those interesting conversations with the people at Bangalore. So this from Epsom library; not quite such a flashy facility as that at the Western regional capital, but not bad. And not fully populated at 1000 this Tuesday morning so one does get in. But it does share a dislike for Mr G's security certificates. Must be something to do with the software used to support banks of public access PCs at public libraries. But we get there or you would not be reading this.

Nearer home, have finally finished reading my banned novel from 1929, 'Sleeveless Errand'. I am sure I have mentioned it before, but various searches fail to bring it back into the light of day. Written by one Norah C. James and published by Babou & Kehane of Paris because it had been banned for immorality by the (late lamented. I went past their building the other day; it looked unused. Whatever will happen to it? It must be listed by the heritage folk so they won't be able to knock it down...) Bow Street magistrates at the instigation of one Sir William Joynson-Hicks. A sorry tale of a sorry lady in her twenties in the twenties who commits suicide by driving in a hire car over Beachy Head. There is some talk of booze and sex, but all fairly mild compared with Lady C - also published in Paris at about the same time, along with that other book of notoriety, Ulysses. Maybe we English were going through a fit of puritanical blues after coming down from being on the winning side on the first war; something the French and Germans managed to avoid having been on the losing side. Well OK, the French were not formally on the losing side, but they did not do very well. The Germans were still in occupation of large chunks of their land when the ref. called time.

Not a very good book, but an interesting and well used peice of book production and an interesting observation peice on the mores and morals of the time. Including some stuff on concert parties. Now we had been reviewing Brighton Rock the other day, courtesy of either the Daily Mail or the DT, in which one of the main charectars is a lady in a concert party. She is a tawdry, plump blonde with a heart of gold. They are a gang who have a makeshift stage on or just off the beach, dress up in white clown costumes (pierrot?) and belt out tacky songs to small numbers of punters in deck chairs. Looked absolutely awful; but I suppose that is what people did for entertainment in those far off days when neither film nor vinyl were widely available. And it just so happens that Norah C. describes a very similar outfit, and quite apart from being grim to watch, it sounds like it was grim to live. Performing in all weather through an English summer, not making much money, living in smelly theatrical digs, drinking too much, thrown in with a rather dodgy crowd... One might as well be on the building.

And, last but not least, a surprise from the TLS. It seems that the prolific A. N. Wilson has written a book about our times. Now I always thought, on the basis of very little knowledge, that he was an educated chap with manners. Worked away in the BM reading room when he was not knocking out his column for the Evening Standard. But according to the reviewer of this book, a scribe of biographies of eminent Conservative politicians, Wilson spends a lot of time in this book being crassly offensive about people he does not like. There is also a lot of sloppy writing. Maybe Wilson was having a bad month, lost a bundle in the crash and so whacked out something in a hurry to keep the wolf from the door. For some reason I have faith in the reviewer and will not be enquiring further. Wilson's reputation irretreivably besmirched in these parts of Epsom.

Or perhaps of four fish. I fully expect, by close Monday, to have had four and a half fish meals in four days. Baked cod from Hastings, smoked haddock hash reprised, sardine sandwiches (the half) and two cracks at Superfish.

The two cracks at Superfish prompted me to ponder about what sort of an outfit they were. The first was at Waterloo and appeared to be a Chinese flavoured operation with a headquarters in Worcester Park. The second was at Ashstead (Surrey), a Yorkshire flavoured operation, and their headquarters appeared to be in East Molesey, with maybe half a dozen branches dotted about Surrey - not including Worcester Park or Waterloo. BH says it must be a franchise; her evidence being the fact that the menus vary from place to place. Same format and general idea, but they do their own details. Brand of furniture, menu and so on.

Then make enquiries of Mr G. Superfish is listed as a franchise along with all kinds of other operations -some household names and some not - at http://www.franchiseworld.co.uk/catering,hotels.html. But they won't reveal details of the franchise operator without parting with some of the folding stuff. From which we deduce that it must be some kind of pyramid scheme. There must be a Mr Big lurking at the centre of the web, dishing out franchises on the Superfish name. But one option must be the option to dish out sub-franchises. We deduce this from the BH observation that the menus for the East Moseley shops are not all the same. There must be a degree of local discretion, suggestive of sub-franchise rather than a centralised operation.

The Waterloo shop was, as it turned out, a better deal than the Ashstead one. Proper fish which, we were told, came from New Billingsgate daily, fried with the skin on without too much batter. Big portions. Whereas as Ashstead I suspected the rather smaller skinned portions of having been lifted out of the freezer the day before very extensive battering. Freshly fried and decent but fish a bit soggy - which haddock certainly should not be. Although one could not be sure that it was haddock without the skin. Would certainly have passed for cod. Chips at Waterloo better too. Ashstead won on mushy peas, which turned up. Waterloo won on clientele, locals and taxi drivers rather than the peripatetic blue rinse brigade (of which, to be fair, we are now honourary members). Draw on waitresses. Pleasant and personable at both places. Maybe that is one of the tougher clauses in the franchise agreement. Both places did sliced rather than entire wallys. Maybe that also in the franchise agreement.

Last but not least, Ashstead won hands down on web site - http://www.superfishuk.co.uk/home.html. Must have spent a bit on it and they even have a button to press if I want to register my interest in becoming a sub-franchisee. But why did Mr Big let them have the internet site? Did they just get in first and he missed a beat? Or is the clue in the 'uk' suffix to the main part of the URL. Are there other superfish sites in .co.uk, with differant suffices?

A comment in a cafe the other day reminded me of this bit of Joyce. It can be found using the zoom tool, but for those who can't be bothered, the relevant bit reads: "... And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my anti-macassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady.". I particularly liked the talk steady bit at the end. But how many of today's youth have the faintest idea what an anti-macassar is or was and why it is so-named? I think I only know because BH told me, a propos of something or other. Maybe because FIL is or was a Brylcreem man. But not sure about the website (http://www.brylcreem.com/) for this last - doesn't look like a place one would buy grooming materiel from at all. But I have taken the spelling.

From page 410-411 of the Bodley Head edition of 'Ulysses', reset in 1960 and acquired from Graham York books of Honiton in 2008.

The DT has been sitting in the temple of doom for months now. Any excuse is good enough for a stonking great headline. But yesterday, or the day before, they seemed to be hedging their bets. Half their commentators were saying that what the government was doing was terrible and half were saying that they had got it about right. Painful but necessary sort of thing. But the editorial had the cheek to have a go at the government for not building confidence. The whole sorry mess was a result of a massive loss of confidence. Brown & Darling should get out there and rebuild it. Never mind about tinkering with banking rules and regulations. So will the DT be taking a dose of its own medicine following their saccarhine coverage of events over the water? Have they got the saccarhine habit?

I have done my modest bit of confidence building with a modest punt on RBS shares, presently worth one fiftieth of what whey were worth a bit more than a year ago. According to the DT their bad debts account for a modest 1% of their balance sheet so maybe the all knowing market has overreacted a bit on this occasion. The first time I have done such a thing - which has become very easy with the advent of (HSBC) internet banking. It seems to be as quick and easy as putting a bet on at the bookies, with the charges not looking too bad. Better than those which are applied to the occasional but not singular lapse of vigilance which results in a shortlived informal overdraft.

These came with a surprising amount of flannel about how we could complain if we were not satisfied. And how we could get in touch with an HSBC financial advisor to help us through the maze of managing our own money. Presunably they have lots of customers who moan about their charges and lots of customers who find managing their insufficient monies difficult. For myself, the charging arrangements for informal overdrafts seem a bit capricious - and out of all proportion to the cost of the money involved for the period involved, which was pence rather than pounds. I suppose their angle is that penal charges for informal overdrafts are a more customer friendly way of getting paid for their services than bank charges. Overall, they get less whining and more custom.

After the unsuccessfull hunt in Kingston, unexpected conclusion in Epsom's upper high street. Happening to be in the foodie shop there ("Cook in thyme": a shop devoted to the supply of domestic cooking and eating equipment (excluding cookers) rather than materials), happened to notice an entirely satisfactory clock. Perhaps intended for the kitchen and so not tricked out with Latin, Gothic or any other odd numerals. Not cased in a Sylvanian oaken box. Generally rather smart and sensible; according to label a product of Sweden but the package carried a small symbolic version of the Swiss flag. So, given that the Swiss do, undoubtedly, make clocks, we are not sure where it actually came from. Retired to the Vestry to pore over our purchase, which we found to have no accompanying leaflet, guarantee or anything at all beyond a screw and a plug to attach the thing to the wall with. Screw, as is often the case with these sorts of things, too short. Hole for battery, but no indication of what sort of battery to use beyond the intials 'ABS'. No indication of which way around to insert the battery beyond what looked like a small symbol of a head at one end of the battery hole. Maybe there is a standard direction of insertion? Should I enquire of Directorate XCVIIIa(1) at Brussells?

Went back to the shop. Not a clue, so they got a ladder out, leaned over their front window display and fetched theirs down from the wall. They were using a common or garden AA battery which they said had been working without a problem for the 18 months since they opened up shop. Noted down which way around it had been inserted. (Having now lost the note, must remember to do the same when I come to take the battery out of our clock). They then presented me with 5 AA batteries (no extra charge), one of which seemed to do the business.

Back home, short dispute with BH over placement of clock on the wall. Should it be exactly half way between the two radiators (I won't go into the reasons why this might not have been a good idea) and how high up should it be? Having got this out of the way, pushed the drill into the wall - no effort at all required to go through modern plaster and blocks. Let's hope they do better on a spread load than a point load. Being in a thorough mood, cut a nice pine wooden plug about a quarter of an inch in diameter and two inches long. Hammered it home with the aid of some wood glue to lubricate it down and hopefully to then lock it down. Drilled small hole in plug. Screwed large screw into plug and hung up clock. Everyone now happy and the clock showing invisible time has now been retired to somewhere else in the demesne.

Now get around to investigating what ABS might be with Mr G.. On the first attempt learn that there are lots of outfits using the intials A.B.S., including for example, the Architects' Benevolent Society. On the second attempt, learn that ABS and batteries are indeed mixed up. To the extent of there being an advance battery systems incorporated (http://www.advanced-battery.com/about.html). They appear to be a rather specialised outfit, but who also make things which look rather like AA batteries. But why should a Swedish (or Swiss) clock specify one of those? Something else to make enquiries about at TB over the odd Newky.

A modest bit of gardening yesterday morning, clearing the oak leaves away from some of the plants in the wild patch. Reminded that wildness is a rather wobbly concept, like organic. In this case, what I am pleased to call my wild patch is wild to the extent that it is a very low maintenance patch - but all the bigger plants and some of the smaller plants were put there by people, some of them do get pruned and now I am into leaf clearing. We are never going to get to what used to be called climatic climax vegetation, even allowing for the small area effect.

Franklin was very interested in all this. Sniffing around me, sniffing around the plants I was clearing, sniffing around the compost bin (maybe he will deal with the newly arrived mouse (not, I think, a shrew)), sitting in the wheelbarrow. Shortly after that he went off for a scratch and look terrified when the wheelbarrow sprang into life about 10 feet away from him. Shot up the neighbouring hawthorn tree - which he found to be rather prickly and not the sort of place for a self respecting cat to be at all.

I then began to wonder why it was that on the one hand we are told that cats, unlike dogs, are solitary animals. On the other hand, they are very cuddly and like being cuddled. Or cossetted. So I consult my puss-shrink book by that former Freudian, Jeffrey Masson. I recall that he was expelled amidst some publicity; in any event he now appears to be living in New Zealand with his cats. In the preface to his book about the emotional life of cats, he points out that cats and humans have indulged in this unusual cross-species affection for millenia. Dogs and humans do it too. He does not give a reason why, but perhaps it is not that difficult. Humans like the uncomplicated affection of a domestic animal. Domestic animals like the uncomplicated attention of humans. Uncomplicated in the sense that we do not want to eat them and we are not in competition with them. Plus there may not be any other animal around to be attentive. Perhaps the puzzle lies in which animals this works for. You can make a pet of a tiger, after a fashion, but it is a rather risky business. Need to be intelligent enough to relate to an animal of another species, and enough smaller than that animal not to think of eating it. So a hamster qualifies on the second count but not the first.

Must read up what the correct drill is when the cat brings you a present of a dead and possibly mangled pidgeon. Perhaps he or she would be traumatised by one's throwing a wobbly. One is supposed to accept the offering with grace and do something important with it. Like cook it and eat it.

Recent actual eating includes a fine peice of beef on Sunday. Fore rib, just on six pounds, with bone and unchined. Some fat. Good bright red. Tie it up a bit and cook for 2.5 hours at 180C and it was just the ticket. Damp with a pink tinge. Accompanied with much trimmings and palava, including a steamed jam sponge served with an ancient pudding wine from Hungary. Fastest known way to get down the calories known to man. Much more successfull than the last attempt when BH, against my better judgement, attempted to cook the thing in the microwave rather than in the traditional saucepan.

And yesterday a variant on the mushroom soup I have been making since first taught it by a very hairy Irishman, one Phil O'Reilly, on section 1 of Westway, just north of White City, just about forty years ago. So according to the variant, take a large onion and slice into thin slivers, orange segment wise. Gently fry in a little butter and well pounded black pepper. Separate mushroom caps from their stalks. Thinly slice the stalks crosswise. Add mushrooms and maybe half a litre of water to the onions. Simmer until mushrooms cooked. Serve with fresh white bread. The variation lies in having onion and extra water. A way of padding things out a bit - a relic of the days when mushrooms were expensive - and of providing a bit of textural variation. We judged the variation an improvement.

Very sunny in the morning yesterday, so the world was a bright and cheerful place to fall into from out of the sack after the moderate intake of the night before. On the other hand, low flying sun a nusiance on certain stretches of the twisting road to Cheam. Must invest in those fancy sunglasses which incorporate your spectacle lenses - if I think I can bring myself to be seen in such things. The other hasard is the strobe effect one gets from the sun through the hedge when heading towards the newish St Paul's Church. Can be quite disorientating at times; even to the point if wondering if something worse could happen.

In this case, when pegging back up Howell Hill, an important postcript to yesterday's postscript came to mind. Firstly, there is the celebrated case of the brides in the bath. It seems that a modest number of brides died in their baths, towards the end of the 19th century, in various towns in Northern England, shortly after their weddings. Some relatives were a bit suspicious but nothing definately untoward was uncovered. Then, by chance, it turned out that the same gent. was the husband in every case. In a celebrated legal ruling, perhaps by a court of appeal, it was ruled that the circumstances of the first deaths were admissable in the trial of the last. While the crimes were indeed differant, the fact that the same husband figured in a number of similar cases was too much to put down to coincidence. As the adage goes, losing one bride in this way is bad luck, two is careless and three is felonious (in the older sense of the word). This ruling was one of the main planks on which material from one crime was admitted to the trial of another. But the Bryn Estyn case is rather differant: we are not talking about established facts about established crimes. We are talking about allegations on both counts.

Second, I have fallen into the same trap which I spend so much space here fuliminating upon. That is to say, the civil servants' cast of mind which says when there is a problem, dream up some rule to make it illegal. So in this case I am tinkering with the rules governing the conduct of trials. But the reasons for the trials occurring in the first place were cultural, perhaps anthopological, rather than legal. We were in the grip of a collective hysteria about abuse and needed scapegoats. Evildoers on whom we could heap our spleen and be cleansed. No tinkering with the rules was going to stop this, although, to be fair, it might have mitigated some of the effects. I don't know if the English are peculiarly prone to collective hysterias of this sort but I do remember the particularly bad attack at the time of the untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

But arguing the other way, I have always found it hard to know how much of such things truly exists in the minds of the populace at large and how much exists in the pages of newspapers. Newspapers rant and rage about the ranting and raging out in the country about this or that event - but how much of this are they making up? Large headlines have the virtue of occupying a lot of space which one would otherwise have to spin words into.

A propos of the recent haddock hash, BH turned up a recipe from one Lindsey Bareham. All rather pretensious. It seems that I should have used Belle de Fontenay or Charlotte potatoes rather than Basics Whites from Mr S.. I should have cut the bacon into lardons, rather than just chopping it up. I completely missed the flat leaved parsley and the evenly coagulated free range eggs. Nor did I remove the bones from the fish with tweezers. So all this from someone who probably doesn't bother about the bread she eats.

More seriously, have now finished 'The secrets of Bryn Estyn' by Richard Webster, up to and including Appendix II, all 596 pages of it. Mainly a saga of events following allegations of abuse, mostly made many years after the alleged events, in a childrens' (disturbed young adults) home in North Wales. As noted before, I felt the author missed a trick in not offering a proper balance sheet of allegations, charges, convictions and what have you - Excel would be the place for it. Notwithstanding, come away from the book rather shocked: the story appears to be that there was far more abuse during and as a result of the various investigations than there ever was in the first place. A lot of innocent people have been put in jail for long periods of time as a result of said disturbed young adults being paid substantial sums of money to make allegations.

Webster offers three remedies. The first one is that judges should resume warning jurys about the dangers of uncorroborated allegations - they stopped doing this because it was proving too hard to get rape convictions when jurys were encouraged to doubt the veracity of complainants in this way. The second one is that we should stop paying people to make allegations - payments which are made after trials by the criminal injuries compensation board. While in this case the practise was pernicious, not so clear how one can stop it, without dumping the principle of compensation altogether. Perhaps one could dream up some rule which said that no compensation in cases where the fact of the crime rested solely on the word of the person making the claim. Or perhaps we really should dump compensation and start to edge away from our increasingly litigatious habits. The third one is more technical, all to do with split indictments. There used to be a principle that a trial was about one crime. It might involve more than one charge and more than one criminal but the thing being tried was, in some common sense way, a single crime. There used to be another principle that you could not admit as evidence in the trial of one crime, allegations about another. The reason here being that such allegations were known to be prejudicial rather than evidential (I think probative is the lawyer word here), however much one wrapped them up with warnings. In the present case, care workers were being sent to trial for clusters of alleged crimes, perhaps over a long period, a long time ago, at a number of differant places, on the basis of clusters of allegations collected in trawling operations. That is to say, the alleged victims did not go to the police and say a crime has been committed. The police went to them on a fishing expedition, waving the carrot of compensation. The result was exactly what the two principles were designed to avoid. Judges, lawyers and juries were overwhelmed by the volume of unpleasant allegations (it seems the amount of paperwork in these cases is huge. Well beyond the capacity of your average provincial sollicitor) and decided that there was no smoke without fire. Send him down. So the third remedy is to restore the status quo ante with regard to these two principles.

All very difficult. While it is clear we have a problem, the remedies involve undoing changes which were made with the best of intentions. I shall have to try and get legal opinion.

There is also the wonder about how Webster can get away with making very serious allegations about two of the people that fired this whole thing up in the first place. Does the whole world now know that these allegations are true and that libel actions would get no where? At least in this country where a statement which is true does not count as a libel. I think in some other jurisdictions you can sue for a true libel if it defames.

In the meantime, moved on a rather lighter history of the gunpowder plot by Antonia Fraser. A slightly irritating, chummy rather than plummy style, and one supposes that she has filled a lot of gaps with plausible narrative, rather in the way of a docudrama on telly - but a reasonable read if one skips a bit. A thing which makes me feel guilty. Books are to be read not skipped! I wonder how much better I would have liked the book had it been a decent hardback edition rather than a rather mean and cheap paperback edition in two mean and cheap volumes, ex charity shop?

Amid the general gloom in the world according to the DT, there is a little ray of sunshine. Two rays in fact, in the form of job opportunities for the regulation industry. Firstly, on the best available medical evidence (paid for at public service contractor band 9b rates, plus first class travel and subistance), serious consideration is being given to extending the no smoking regulations (themselves tacked onto some other bit of health legislation. I forget which) to cover those miscreants who wear smoke contaminated clothes in public places. As before, this is defined to include any vehicle, including one's own, being used for getting to or from work or in the course of work. Another morsel for the lawyers that write this stuff and the herds of others who enforce it.

Secondly, even more serious consideration is being given to extending diversity regulations to include class. So that, if I get sacked for wearing smoke contaminated clothes at work (for example), I can take my employer to the tribunal on the grounds that he only did it because I went to Eton. Persons of colour were left alone. What is good is that this is a very inclusive proposal. In the olden days, generally speaking, large sectors of the population couldn't play. I couldn't do the one sort of sex discrimation if I was straight. At least I could in theory but it never seemed to work out in practise. I couldn't do the other sort of sex discrimation if I was male. I couldn't do race discrimination if I was white. But now, under these new proposals, anyone can play the class discrimination thing. He did me because he was working class and I came from Eton. He did me because he came from Eton and I am working class. He did me because we are both middle class and he has got quotas to fill. And furthermore, I fully expect class to be defined in some very tricky way which requires the services of zillions of lawyers to test the various tricky angles in court. Justice must be seen to be done.

Much more important though, yesterday was the day for hunt the clock (failed). I had decided that I needed to be able to see the time when watching telly, or when waiting to watch telly, and that the clock sitting on top of the electric fire did not qualify. Thin gold hands on a black ground not visible from six feet. So we decided to take advantage of the dying days of the excellent Kingston shopping bus to hunt the clock in Kingston. Where found that, despite the huge numbers of young people being processed through art and design courses of one sort or another, design has not percolated through to the clock factory. We made a proper hunt of it, visiting Heals, Bentalls, John Lewis and TK Maxx amongst other establishments - but found standards to be poor. Many of the clocks were far too big to put in our extension. Others were ugly. Some looked cheap and some were cheap. We will have to go to the big town to see what can be done there. Or maybe we will settle for a retro alarm clock, with clockwork, and sit it on a nice oak niche to be attached to the wall. Bit like the sort of thing one might otherwise sit a devotional statue or a crucifix in.

Also thought that the designers who designed the Bentall centre were a bit of a mixed lot. You can sit in the shiny new Bentall's cafe on the second floor and look down the length of what amounts to a 20th century version of a cathedral; the differance being that it is devoted to mammon rather than the divine. On the large scale, well done. A big space, long and high, with an impressive roof and with enough variation - for example, in the postitioning of stairs and escalators - to make it interesting. But the detailing very weak, especially of the mock stone cladding. The man - or woman - had no idea at all about that sort of thing. And worse still outside, from where the whole thing is clumsy, big and ugly.

Another bunch of designers had had some fun at the new Holiday Inn which we inspected at Chessington, on alighting from the shopping bus on return. I had noticed it on the way out and thought it rather good for a hotel, with the exception of the porch which was a bit too big - although it did serve to take the eye away from the world of adventure sheds to the side. But now we went inside to find that the ground floor public areas had been zoo/jungle themed. So the porch was lined with bamboo. There were various animal flavoured sculptures dotted about. Various large pot plants. A vaguely zebra flavoured colour scheme; lots of dark wood and leather. All looked rather well in the electric light, although it might have looked rather silly by daylight. Perhaps the place has been arranged so that that never happens.

Now my experience of eating at Holiday Inns has not been that good - boring, adequate and dear. Notwithstanding, we have promised ourselves that we will give the jungle restaurant a go. I wonder if it has caught on as a night spot for the up and coming Chessingtonian youth yet?

In sum, the hunt failed to turn up a clock. But we did buy a thirty year old second hand table, all the way from G-plan, remarkably like the one we have already. And we did buy a hundred and thirty year old Prescott on Peru, in two volumes with five maps. (I vaguely remembered that there was something odd about the chap, so checked with Wikipedia which tells me that he was nearly blind having been at the receiving end of a bread roll when young. At least (A) Huxley was nearly blind for a more respectable reason). And, furthermore, we very nearly achieved a first: buying a book at TK Maxx. A natty facsmile paperback picture book of Egyptian antiquities. About the size of a Penguin paperback but two inches rather than half an inch fat. Name began with T and sounded German but the thing apparently originated in France in the 19th century. Very tempted at £4.99 but managed to restrain myself.

Having moved on from the frosts of last week, one would think spring is here. Seems balmy compared to last week - but maybe just about right for the time of year. A testimony to the speed of adaption. Good that it is so much easier to get out of bed and out of the house. Maybe even have a window open. Cranked the cycling gear back down to acryllic sweater and cotton windcheater. Ski jacket back in the cupboard for a while (hopefully).

Baked cod last week very good. Maybe cold is good for cod. It also yeilded the largest cod bone that I have come across for a while. Maybe 1.5mm across at the base and 4cm long, tapering to a point and gently curved. Maybe two bones fused into one at birth for some reason? At the same time as buying the cod, got some smoked haddock which was turned into a new dish. A hybrid of corned beef hash, chowder and cullen skink. This last we first came across, I think, in Mallaig - warm fish stew being just the thing on a bleak January day in the frozen North. But Mr G. informs me that the name comes from Morayshire, where a skink originally meant a soup made with shin of beef.

Boil a couple of pounds of potatoes for about ten minutes. Add a couple of haddock fillets - maybe a pound and a half of fish - to the potatoes. Continue for about five minutes. Remove, skin and flake the fish. Drain the potatoes, retaining the cooking water. Coarsely chop. In the meantime, fry up some streaky bacon and three medium onions in a little butter. Cook until soft. Stir the whole lot together. Add back a little of the water in which the potatoes and fish were orginally cooked. Place in covered dish in the oven and cook for a further 60 minutes at 180C. Serve with white cabbage. Good gear; everything intended at creation. But FIL thought it was 'interesting' and BH thought that it was 'salty' so it remains to be seen what they say when I offer to make it again. Maybe I shall have to wait for a time when they are out.

After that, knocked off the biography of Earnest Jones by Brenda Maddox, spotted in the TLS and helpfully provided by the Surrey Libraries reservation service (fee £1). I found her style a little tiresome at first, but one gets used to it and trundled through the book at a good speed. Left me slightly unsatisfied; would like something a bit more substantial. Maybe that is good; a book that leaves one wanting more has done its job. Jones clearly rather an odd bird, as were most of the early Freudians. Perhaps the old adage of never looking to an accountant's own accounts for a model account applies here. It also seemed that the chattering classes were much fewer in numbers in those days. They were all interconnected. That is to say, having first read about Frieda Lawrence in Sybil Bedford's biography of Aldous Huxley, where she gets a bad press being described as stupid and as a hopeless nurse (this at a time when hubby could have done with a good one), have now come across her again in psychoanalytic circles. It seems that she was the mistress of a very wonky Germain psychoanalyst, before moving onto a Nottingham professor and after that onto DHL himself. Jones reports her as being both beautiful and intelligent - but maybe as a scholarship boy from darkest Wales he was more impressed by the sister (or something) of someone who could put 'von' in front of his name than Huxley, born nearer the silver spoon. The von in question being the Richtoven (Richtofen?), the Red Baron of first world war fame.

I once turned up the three volume biography of Freud by Jones and passed it up. Now I ask Abebooks and find that, despite being a best seller in the fifties of the last century, getting a three volume unabridged job in one go is not on. I can get the three volumes peicemeal but that is not quite the same. Now although I pride myself on being a user of books rather than a book collector, not too happy about having three mixed volumes! In the meantime, off into Brenda's biog. of Nora Joyce.

Awoke this morning to a low humming noise from the road side of the room. Being only somewhat awake, very concerned to find out what it was. Peered out of the window. Nothing. Went out onto the landing. Nothing. Nothing from FIL down below: no strange noises from television or hearing aids. Back to bedroom and hum resumed. BH eventually thought that maybe it was her radio, used the day before for the Archers. It then transpired that the radio was off at the radio but on at the wall. Turning it off at the wall turned off the hum.

Which triggered off much dozy pondering. Thinking that other chunks of electrical machinery hum, I think of the transformer which is presumably between the mains and the business part of the radio. My recollection of A level physics says that a transformer has two coils on a core. One coil is connected to the input power, the other to the output power. In this case input being the mains and output being the radio. Alternating current being necessary to make the input drive the output, with the ratio of the two voltages being equal to either the ratio of the number of turns on the two coils or its reciprocal. First guess, more turns on the coil makes for more volts, that is to say ratio not reciprocal. Second guess, that the radio power switch was on the output power coil. So there is still, on the face of it, an open circuit on the input power coil. So the electrons whizz around, which, in the absence of an open circuit on the output power coil, results in a balancing current being induced on the input power coil, effectively turning it off. But all the whizzing around makes a hum, but a hum too quiet to be heard if the radio is actually radioing something. Next time I have access to a suitable textbook I shall check.

Frost all melted now, but before it did, a walk around Epsom Common, still frost laden in the middle of the afternoon. Intrigued to see the leaves of the holly bushes fringed with frost bristles - little clusters of ice daggers growing out of the edge of the leaf, rather like little clusters of very small pine needles. And in some cases the little clusters had elaborated into something like a small spider's web spanning the leaf. So all very jolly and frosty until we came upon one of the various patches of the common where the trusties have been busy. That is to say they have been hiring contractors to chop chunks of it down to return it to some mythic past. Mood drops.

Which triggers off more pondering. What would I have to do to stop the trusties spoiling the common for me? I have sent off a survey form to the people who seem to have the management of the common. But this, as one would expect with a survey form, has vanished into the ether. Now I imagine that there is some voluntary committee somewhere which meets once a month to govern the common. A collection of a dozen worthy types, retired, middle class types like myself, but who happen to have a bit of spare time and nostalgia for committee work. Maybe a few retired union chaps; they seem to be keen on committees too. Maybe under the supervision of some worthy, enthusiastic young person (probably male) from the council. A fully paid up member of the 'Time Watch' fan club. The catch is that committees have to do something, that is what committees are for; they can't just leave the common alone. And they have all bought into this mythic past business. Let's make the common like it was in the middle of the 19th century. So I spend some time and bother and get myself co-opted to this committee. I'm very much the new boy so I have to keep fairly quiet for the first few meetings. This means sitting through hours of drivel about charcoal burning and sustainable woodland business. Not to mention the hobby horses of the various bores who are the bane of such committees. Get more and more grumpy. Eventually pop off. Get consigned to the bore bin by the rest of the committee, having achieved nothing. Shot my bolt. All in all I don't think it is going to work, so I sha'n't bother.

Yesterday to Nonsuch Park where another committee no doubt agonises monthly about what to do with the big house. Again, I have my pet solution (knock it down), but I don't have the patience and other skills needed to prevail on committee. Hopefully whatever they eventually come up with - and this may take a good while - will not be too ugly or intrusive.

It remains very cold outside, with hoar frost up all the trees, even the big ones, and looking as if it will not lift all day. Still white all over and near noon. Franklin, liking the great outsides even less than usual, is working hard at getting in and then being very cute so that he gets to stay in. Today this takes the form of, having been told not to sit directly in front of the screen of the PC, taking a great interest in the workings of the printer. Tried to get his nose up the slot the paper was coming out of, accompanied by all sorts of interesting printer noises. Then gazed down the slot for a while and then, not making much sense of it, tried peering round the back, while sitting on the top. All too much for him so he returned, temporarily that is, to sitting in front of the screen.

I'm sorry to say that there has been some damage. The shed has been home for a couple of years or more to a clear glass jar, the sort one used to keep chemicals in. It has been mentioned here before. The duck weed on the top was still there, although showing signs of dying down for the winter. The various very small animals had vanished, hopefully into some dormant form for rebirth next year. But then the thing froze, freezing from the outside in, with the effect that the plug of ice at the top jammed in the narrow neck and the bottle shattered. (Milk bottles used to freeze, but it must be that with their not so narrow necks, the ice can force it's way up enough to accommodate the expansion). Glass now in dust bin, hollow ice plug still sitting on the patio table, more or less in the same state as I found it. Freezing is clearly a resonably complicated process because the sludge at the bottom of the jar has risen up and frozen into a ball. The base of the ice contains lots of tear shaped voids, point down and out , as if a bubble of air was trying to escape from rather viscous water. Have to scour the car boot sales for a replacement. Maybe get a bigger and better one this time, supporting a rather bigger range of animals and vegetables.

Having lost the jar, decided that I ought to do something about the outside tap (in the garage, that is). Having had a freeze one year, despite being sort of inside, I made an insulated wooden box to keep it warm in the winter; but then, having installed one of those nifty little shut offs in the kitchen, scrapped the box. But the nifty little shut off was behind the washing machine and so much too much of a pain to get at. So wrapped the tap in a blanket instead. Nervous that a nylon blanket would not really do the business, set to, moved the washing machine and turned the tap off. That was me done for the morning. Time for tea and a doze.

Some weeks ago was moved to moan about a review of a book in the TLS which was not a review at all. So I record today, that I came across a much better example of the genre in the edition of 12 December last, a review of a zoologist's (this word seems short of an 'o' - but looks very wrong with it) tale of the Congo, name of Kate Jackson. The reviewer was another zoologist and the review struck me as striking a good balance between introducing the subject in hand to a lay reader, grandstanding (is this word of abuse still current in the world of work? Latest thing when I left it) and reviewing the book in hand. But while I liked the review, not quite moved to buy the book. Partly because we are full up of books, too many unread, partly because of relatively impecunious retired state and partly because we have rediscovered the library and the fact that its stock goes well beyond Stephen King and Mills & Boon, all the way, usefully for us, to jigsaws which one is allowed to take out on indefinate informal loan.

The cooking business has moved back into regular channels after the tsunami of festal fare. Started off with a visit to Pinnegar's where I was pleased to find that the supply of black and white puddings had been resumed after the rude interuption occasioned by the dioxided pork scare in the Republic of Ireland. So one white pudding, plus some bacon. Then moved onto the main business and settled for a couple of tenderloins of pork - each, I think, a single muscle which lives in life under (as the pig stands) the ribs, next to the backbone. One on each side, each a good sized portion for one. Detached entire from the rack of chops before chopping up the chops. I learn in passing that tenderloin is the piggy equivalent of fillet steak - there being three racks of cow chops lying behind the counter on which to make this teaching point.

Tenderloin stewed for maybe ten minutes in butter. Plus brussells sprouts. Then the novelty, needing to do something with the rather large supply of left over mashed potato, from the day before and the day before that. Now the trouble with left over mashed potato is that, while one does not like to waste food, it tastes stale. It taints the fresh potatoes one might try to hide it in. So on this occasion, coarsely chop some onions and bacon and then cook them in butter until barely cooked. Add with a little milk to the mashed potato and stir in. Press into a dish, so chosen that the potato is about 2 inches thick. Top off with a few slices of bacon, trimmed to cover in a neat way. Bake at 180C for an hour, serve with the other two thirds of the meal. Did very well; a change from our more usual bubble and squeak, not possible on this occasion as we had no left over crinkly cabbage to go with the potato.

Then, well insulated by heavy lunch from the continuing cold (although not so cold as it had been a few hours earlier), set off with FIL to Westminster Abbey for a quick tour. Not too busy, mainly foreign rather than home grown tourists. Found tombs for all kinds of people, including Mary Queen of Scots, but not Mary Tudor. Henry VII did himself very well with the largest coffin in a very fancy chapel, which the verger assured us was not covered in plaster (which is rather what it looked like) but genuine stone. Not sure how or when Mary Queen of Scots got there, having been executed for treason or something, at the very least for reasons of state. But then I am reminded of a snatch from some book in French or about the French, where person A happens to say conversationally that, as far as he knew, none of his ancestors had been executed. Person B follows by observing that this is not really suprising as person A is not really a gentleman. Another angle might be that you get to the abbey by being notorious, not by being good. This is certainly the line taken these days with newspaper obituaries, with all kinds of notorious scum being given space. I am sure this did not happen when I was little. An obit. in a posh newpaper was a serious mark of respect, only accorded to the great and the good.

But the tombs were all a bit of a lottery. In two senses; first, that the size of monument that you can afford for yourself bears only a scant relation to your fame in later years. Buying yourself a big monument might buy you a big future in the world to come but it is no guarantee of a big future in this one. Second, that you might have bought yourself a good spot, but there is no guarantee that someone is not going to park his or her monument in front of yours, once the dust has settled. Or that the bit of the abbey containing your spot is repurposed - perhaps to make the RAF chapel. Perhaps one ought to say recycled in this eco-age. In any event, a right old jumble in some parts of the abbey. Rather like an indoor version of one of those walled outdoor cemetaries you get in Latin countries. Appropriate, given our cooler weather.

On exit we add a further wrinkle to the media coverage of Twelfth Night and the need to take decorations down beforehand. Or onhand. Observing a rather elaborate crib, I foolishly suggested to the lady trustee that perhaps the crib should have come down on Twelfth Night, along with the Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square. (Not right down, but I think the lights were turned off to mark the occasion). Lady trustee explained that cribs were quite differant from decorations and subject to quite differant regulations. Decorations came down on Epiphany and cribs came down on some other important festival, later in January. But she could not remember the name of this other festival and unusually my Filofax, usually very good at matters of this sort, was silent. So I don't suppose I will ever know.

Or maybe they are storks. But rather striking whatever they are. From http://hsienwildlife.blogspot.com/.

Twelfth night just being past, we are now leaving Christmas for another year. The two Christmas trees are heading for their boxes for another year in the dark. The Christmas turkey soup has long been finished. The Christmas boiling beef has been gone for a day or so. The Christmas gammon will come to an end today. Christmas pudding and mince pies gone. All that is left is a substantial proportion of the Christmas cake which I expect to go on for a week or so yet. A good thing too, as to my mind, the things improve with standing. They can be a little dry when first baked, but seem to sog up a bit standing.

Celebrated the passing with a rather heavy lunch. Not wanting another turkey, had a chicken. A chicken, which, so the label said, had led a full and happy life prior to being strung up for our consumption. A warming thought. And given that it was such a posh chicken, we had all the bits and peices - bread sauce (this time much better without cayenne pepper), sage and onion stuffing, brussells sprouts and syllabub (this last with the blackberry and apple crumble to follow, rather than with the all consumed Christmas pudding). Managed to consume enough that I did not eat again until a couple of minutes ago, that is to say some 18 hours later.

Celebrated the evening by finally finishing 'Tender is the Night' - another Fitzgerald after doing 'The Great Gatsby' last year. Now while I thought the latter rather an odd book, it was short and one got through it quickly, without strain. The former is another odd book but I found it quite an effort to get through it. But work ethic wins. Once picked up, it grates to put a book down unread, particularly if it is a case of returning it to the library unread. This seems like a defeat, while putting one's own brand new book back on the shelf for later is merely a postponement. A book which did not compell, despite the impression that the author knew all about the subject matter - the interior of private clinics for the mentally ill, excess drinking, and pretty people in the south of France after the first world war. I don't think I shall be trying any more from Mr S G.

But I am admitting defeat on another library book, a rather heavy history of the Spanish part (as opposed to the Wellingtonian part) of the war of liberation in Spain in the first years of the 19th century. It seems that it was rather an unpleasant business in what was, in many ways, rather a backward country, its glory days then being some time in the past. A interesting business, but somehow made dull in a book with irritating design which did nothing for the leaden prose. Maybe I will try again one day.

More fun with Burke though. Once I had got the hang of his numbering system again, having thought that I had got the hang of it before. Maybe the bottles from Lidl (I have got straight between Aldi and Lidl in Kingston and Leatherhead, if not elsewhere. Helpful mnenonic from the BH) clouded the vision. But eventually I got there. The initial digit indicates how many generations down we are from the head entry. So 3 for grandchildren. The following letter indicates the parity of the child in question. So 3a for the eldest grandchild. The bit which took some working out was that the men children and the women children are both numbered from a, the women after any men that might be present. Perhaps a hangover from the days when women did not hold peerages and only figured in books such as these for the purposes of establishing lineage.

I learn that you have to be careful in other ways. One peer, the peerage having been around from the while, married a lady in Ontario. According to the splendidly stuffy phrasing of Burke, the marriage was valid in Ontario but did not satisfy the requirements of the College of Heralds, or whomsoever it might be that polices such matters, for a marriage fit to carry a title. Any children would not be eligible to inherit. Sadly I forget the name so I cannot quote chapter and verse.

But I can on the G's. There is, for example, a 13th Earl of Galloway who is also Lord of Garlies, 12th baronet of Carsewell, and the 10th baronet of Burray. The first listed ancester was one Sir John Stewart, who married the daughter and heir of Sir Alexander de Bonkyl of that Ilk who was killed by the dastardly English at the battle of Falkirk back on the 29th July 1298. After 1298, the Galloways rate more than four pages of close print. Then, after even more pages about some old Galways, we get a two inch entry for a new Galway. Who started out at a secondary modern school in Belfast, then was flautist with the wind band of the Royal Shakespeare Company, then principal sole flute with the Berlin Philarmonic Orchestra - perhaps the pinnacle of the fluting world - and created a knight in 2001. A real rags to riches story. I have never heard of a flautist being ennobled before.

Hardest frost so far last night. Very white world when we emerged at 0830 or so. BH tells me that the weather forecast tells her that this part of Southern England was down to -9C last night. I wonder if it drove Franklin back in through his cat flap?

It was not as cold as that yesterday morning, but I did, prompted by BH, try some sartorial innovation for cycling to Cheam. Forty years ago, when I used to cycle from Hambledon to Titchfield and back every day, it was enough in the winter to wear a cotton shirt (office variety), a good wool sweater and wool gloves, not getting on with the leather variety. Used to warm up OK after a few minutes. Then when the Cheam business started, moved up to thick cotton shirt (casual, if not smart, variety), acryllic sweater and a cotton overgarment of the sort that used to be called a windcheater. But one does not seem to hear the word these days. Plus home made gloves, or at least Exminster made. This works well enough but it takes most of the way to Cheam to warm up on a cold say. So BH sez, sezshe, why not try the ski jacket you bought for visiting a ski resort (not to ski however. Far too old for games of that sort). First thought was that it would be far too hot, being a puffy red affair branded 'Animal'. But second thought was give it a go, without the acryllic. And it was fine. Does what is says on the tin and kept me a reasonable temperature throughout. Only starting to get a bit hot by the time I got back to Epsom. Spent a portion of the intervening period wondering what colour the thing was. Basically red, but not crimson, vermillion, scarlet or carmine. The best I could do was deep pink which seems a bit naff.

A few days ago reminded of the power of capital. That is to say I thought it would be a good wheeze to mark the visit of sprog 1.1 by making a stair gate, this being the sort of thing that one can buy from Argos, in any one of ten varieties, from £17.99 to £39.99. Now it took most of the day to make such a thing and fit it, not glued or as well finished as I would have liked, given that I only thought to do this before the day of the visit. So, if I was to make a living at this, using the quite decent hand tools I have already, I would have to charge around £100 a pop. Which given that the average mother is going to prefer the job from Argos, never mind the price, is not going to sell. The power of capital being the fact that if I spend out on some workshop machinery, I can knock out stair gates for hugely less than I can knock them out by hand. The same, I am told is true of small cranes. £1,000 might sound a lot to hire a small crane for the morning, but it can move the RSJ from the back of the lorry onto its' piers a lot quicker and safer than the expensive gang of ten men it would take otherwise.

Which reminds me in turn of the contradictions of capitals mentioned a few days ago. I find it very odd that at a time when we are very rich, awash with refridgerators and hair dryers, that we are told that the world as we know it is coming to an end because we might actually make 1% less refridgerators and hair dryers this year than last year - as opposed to making 1% more, which is the more usual story in the recent past. One would not have thought, given the glut of such things, that 1% one way or the other ought to make all that much differance.

Perhaps it is all related to the way the prices of things like oil and bacon futures swing around alarmingly, when the consumption and production of such things is really quite steady.

From http://aventureflo.blogspot.com/. A reminder that there is a lot to see in Mexico. Not least the churches, which are rather differant, on the inside anyway, from ours.

First, from the Guardian. The very first sentence under the main headline on the front page says: "Ministers are planning to force GPs to improve their performance by posting patients' comments about them on an NHS website". The Guardian seems to have fallen for the performance management fad which is overwhelming the professional world, or rather for that sub-fad the adherents of which believe that all good flows from performance measurement, in this case the sort of measurement dished out by the great unwashed who frequent GP surgeries. Or rather that sub-set of said great unwashed who have made it down to Comet for an Internet (aka porn) capable laptop and who have the time to play. Also bearing in mind that a large proportion of the visitors to GPs are seeking help with issues that one might have thought not worthy of expensive GP time. Like being lonely or having a sore throat.

Now while it is reasonable that we manage the performance of GPs, I am not at all sure that having all and sundry post stuff on the Internet is the way forward. If I was a hard working and conscientious GP, I would not want to have to spend time dealing with unfounded and frivilous tripe in the public domain. I became a GP to heal people, not to do publicity. An occasional thank you letter would nice, and I hope I would be sensible about the occasional letter of complaint. But to have all comers at it in public is another matter. When I was in the world of work, my annual report was private between me, my management and the people, if any, with whom I cared to share it. Plus, of course, all those lovely people in the HR department. And that is how I think it should be. Discussing corporate performance in public is one thing; discussing the performance of individuals is quite another. Highly paid CEOs of public companies in trouble excepted.

So my take on all this is that Ministers might force GPs - or perhaps their PR assistants (all to be paid for out of the NHS budget, already so depleted by the GP settlement and the untold millions on IT systems (good money for the IT service providers for as long as they can get it)) - to spend more time footling around on the Internet. Whether or not that leads to a better service is another matter. But you are not going to force GPs to deliver a better service, and certainly not like this.

Second, from the DT, where there is a suggestion that New Labour are sufficiently careless about the acquisition of powers with which to boss us all about, that they do not have clear authority for the thousands of speed cameras which infest our roads. It seems that they had authority for experiments with them, many years ago, when they were new, but they have not gotten around to getting authority for going into mass production with them. Leaving aside whether one thinks that they are a good thing, it is not a good thing for a government to be careless about powers. With a pomposity, possibly born of excess consumption of something called whisky matt, something which we have not tried, let alone had in the house, for a long time, I would say that one of the piles on which our civil society rests is the notion that we are all equal before the law, including here both persons and corporate entities - like Tesco or HM Government. I thought we more or less did for the idea that there was a Royal Perogative when we topped Charles I. Therefore, if the government expects us governed to read, understand and obey all its rules, it should take care not to exceed its own powers. It is not that hard, with the docile House of Commons we have these days, for them to create more powers. So let them stick to the rules of their own making.

In the meantime, Franklin has still not got the hang of the cat flap in his house, but he has progressed to sitting rights in a large proportion of the downstairs of our house. He has tried walking on this keyboard, at which point I had to be firm, but he is presently content to be lying on FIL's dining chair (one of several FIL chairs) while grooming himself. But attempting to sit between me and the keyboard provides a bit of fun from time to time. He also seems to have lost his collar, so we no longer get a friendly jingle advertising his impending presence. I wonder how he came to lose it.

And now time to return to the cooking of the special wholesome lentils from Waitrose which the packet assures me can be used in place of puy lentils. They look like a rather shabby version of the things simply sold as puy lentils. Same size, shape and colour, but a little shabby. The idea for them to be the vehicle to use up some of the festive gammon hanging over from the recent festivities. We have had two or three goes of it cold now; time to move on. And soup, in this cold weather, albeit not so cold today as it was earlier in the week, is always a good thing.