pumpkinstrokemarrow

I see from yesterday's DT, that there is a problem somewhere in the south of England. That is to say that the health people want to add flouride to the water to stop their customers' teeth rotting. Or at least stopping them rotting to the extent of 31.4%, as I recall. The catch is that the customers themselves are alleged to have declared themselves by a margin of 7 to 3 to be against adding flouride to their water.

Now, I have been convinced that adding flouride to the water does indeed stop teeth rotting. And it is always possible that the same flouride causes cancer of the big toe - but that is true of practically any intervention of this sort. Hard to prove a negative. I have also been convinced that our system of indirect democracy is the best way to organise things. We give power to our representatives to run things for us. Sometimes this involves them deciding to do things that we do not like, the death penalty being a good example. Legislatures over most of the world think that the death penalty is a bad thing, the public over most of the world think that it is a good thing. In such cases, I think legislatures should tread carefully. It is true that they are usually empowered for a period of years and there is no obligation to submit this or that decision to referendums or opinion polls conducted by the Sun or the Daily Mail. On the other hand, their making a habit of doing things which the public clearly does not want, will, over time, erode their standing. But it is not a good thing for legislatures to be held in disrepute by the public. So they should not do something that people do not want unless they have good cause.

Therefore, without knowing the details of this case, if there has been some clear and credible vote against by the public, I do not think the health people should push ahead and invoke the 2002 Water Act (or whatever obscure bit of legislation has given them these powers) for the good of our teeth. We know that flouride is good for our teeth but we don't want it. I think that should be up to us. Those that are keen on flouride should use one of the many toothpastes which contain the stuff. But it is odd that the people who get into a lather about flouride in the water never seem to get into a lather about flouride in the toothpaste.

Clear and credible vote a bit of a tricky one. Not sensible for the people who run the country to have to ask us every time they want to do something. But they should be sensitive to public opinion and they should consult when they know they want to do something a bit tricky. This has to include dealing with situations when public opinion is little more than agitation whipped up by red-tops to sell newspapers. All very tricky indeed. But to force through flouride in the teeth of clear opposition seems wrong. It is not worth it. And anyway, with peoples' teeth being so much better these days, all those dentists that joined up for the excellent dosh (hard to see why else one would be a dentist. Peering into possibly smelly mouths all day not my idea of fun), now need the dosh.

Nearer the ground, another fine example of mushroom soup this lunchtime. Taken the onion initiative on the last occasion a little further. Started by gently frying a lot of onions in an ounce or so of butter toether with some finely ground black pepper. After a bit add the chopped mushroom (around £1.30 for a box containing maybe a pound of the things, from Mr Tesco on this occasion) stalks. In the meantime take maybe a pound of crinkly cabbage and sliver it. Including root and stalk finely sliced. All good fibre. Boil for a few minutes in a couple of pints of water. Add onions, simmer for a bit, add the mushroom caps entire, simmer for a bit and serve with white bread and butter. People who live of fast food don't know what they are missing - not least the fact that soup like this can be knocked up quicker than the pizza delivery man is going to get to you.

I think I learn from http://acalzonquitadoepri.blogspot.com/ that smoking has just been banned in public places in Guatemala. The bisease have been busy, although one might have thought there were more pressing problems there for them to be busy about. Perhaps a no-smoking ban has become an icon for the sort of government that such places aspire to. Good luck to them!

I am betting on fatness being the next target for our own bisease. It will be interesting to see how they will go about banning it. Computerised scanning contraptions in all places selling food to ascertain whether according to the manual of fatness you are in a fit condition to eat whatever it is you fancy on the menu? Denial of all kinds of service to people who can't squeeze through the chipboard fatometer? One could have them, for example, on buses and built into the turnstiles at railway and underground stations.

Yesterday to a performance of 'The view from the bridge' at the Duke of York's. A two act affair which smelt a little of a) creative writing school and b) old left politics, perhaps not surprising as the young Arthur Miller had been poor enough to need the prizes offered at creative writing schools, albeit twenty years before writing this play. Must have been a precocious talent, as the programme tells us that he won two such. Good stage design, which worked well for me. First act seemed a little slow, second act much better. I thought afterwards that this may have been because the lead (Ken Stott) was on stage pretty much the whole time and was saving himself for the second half. Must take some discipline to knock it out night after night. The programme also told us that the play runs frequently on GCSE syllabuses which is presumably why there were lots of school parties there, entirely females as far as I could tell. Modest amount of giggling and squealing but pretty well behaved. I wonder if the writers of syllabuses get free tickets or other kick backs?

One thing, however, was quite clear. The play was on a differant plane of consciousness than Slumdog. A serious business about matters which remain serious. Some real people with some real problems. Rather than a social worker documentary about a poor country with glossy trimmings. (Which started life, I learnt yesterday, as a television film which got spotted and so got a free upgrade to the global market).

One additional, minor beef about the film. At one point the slumdogs are riding a train and using a rope to facilitate their activities. Point 1, the rope looked a bit unlikely. Rather new and fat. Point 2, the slumdogs did not appear to have been shown how to use it, and made no use of the rails on the tops of the carriages to belay.

To round off the evening, on the way home on the train, I was surrounded by a small gang of what sounded like gilded youth, that is to say youth with well off parents. They started off by having a serious discussion about their parents' drinking habits which was slightly unsettling. Then they moved onto the business of visiting parents. When, where, how often. What's the point? Quite oblivious that I might well be a parent. But even more unsettling, they rounded off the session with a discussion of the choice and duties of god parents. They were quite serious about this too. Perhaps I had, inadvertantly, stumbled on a church youth club outing to the big town?

Started off the week by feeling a bit sorry for bankers. Must be hard to run a business in the full glare of the public eye and with arrogant young Treasurocrats breathing down your neck. Second guessing whether corporate hospitality at the Chelsea Flower Show is a good idea or not. Telling you to lend more money or else - when the whole problem started by your doing just that. But then I remembered that if they had not got us into a pickle there would have been no need for the public to get in on the act. And rounded off the week with the late boss of RBS declining to give back most of his outrageous pension. Other bankers must be hopping mad that he is not falling on his sword and doing the scapegoat thing. I would have thought that the scapegoat thing would have done wonders for the public image of bankers and their greed. Puzzles me why someone who is clearly very able and who I presume to be comfortably off, finds it so hard to do it. He presided over a monumental c***-*p and ought to take some rap, along with all those shareholders whom he trashed. Napoleon got packed off to St Helena with a just couple of servants when he lost his last throw. Just about honourable retirement. Why should this banker expect more?

I learn today that I missed an important demonstration about global warning. The Surrey Police insisted that it stuck to the car park at Headley Heath (a well known national trusty beauty spot) and they forgot to invite the DT. Ergo, little coverage.

Investigating the bottom of the garden this morning, find that the snowdrops are starting to keep over. Unlike those we saw the other day at Nonsuch Park. Something called Herald Copse, the most impressive display of snowdrops I have ever seen.

Next to the snowdrops we had a chap showing off (by wearing shorts) his false leg. An impressive contraption, presumably made of stainless steel or titanium or something. Substantial and sleek looking affair which looked as if it had been built to a generous standard. Unlikely to collapse under one.

Next to him, and indeed he may even have been part of the gang, was a large gang of older cyclists. The Nonsuch Park cycle club or some such. Generally rather thin people all done up in mainly black lycra and chatting vigorously about chains and sprockets. Not spending much money in the neighbouring cafe. Not really my sort of club.

Not at all like the chap who reports (in English) from the site noticed in my previous post. He reports turning out in the frozen dawn on workdays to get his training in, so that he is in good shape to perform with his club on Sunday. So that he can stomp up and over those hills with panache. Or using a word from the subject of the post on 7/8/2007, to sprackle up and over the hills. To get such a hit from it all that he does not turn on his car radio on the way home lest he breaks the spell. Redemption through excessive exercise. It is a long time since I was anywhere near that sort of fit and while I was never in his league, it is true that one does get interesting psychic (?) experiences through exercise at height. The view from the summit looks much better when one has climbed up than when one has been driven up.

Yesterday evening we saw redemption of a differant sort, redemption through love, at Slumdog at the Epsom multiscreen. The multiscreen being a much more banal sort of place than the huge monoscreens of my youth, the ABC at Turnpike Lane being a good example. Odd sort of film, as it happens covering the same sort of ground as Tsotsi noticed earlier in the week. Rather too long, rather noisy both visually and aurally, risible plot but it does manage to build the tension and the emotion in the run up to the climactical end. Generally speaking I like films which tell the story in a straightforward, linear way. Don't care for chopping and changing, backwards and forwards. Which this film did in spades with the new trick of having two framing stories, a television programme and an interogation. Maybe, like other films before it, it is justified by making a wider audience aware of things that they might otherwise be unaware of. But I would like to think there was a better way.

The film was itself framed by calf's liver. Although not sure about the calf here. Should one be bringing in calves and where exactly should the apostrophe be, if anywhere? To resume, having been reminded of the merits of simply frying calf's liver with bacon (rather than dusting with flour before frying without bacon), decided that I had better give it a go myself and bought some from Cheam. First teaching point, the liver the butcher pulls out of the white plastic bucket it comes in is very big, the size of one of our large saucepans. Does it really come from a calf? On return, FIL explains that livers are indeed very big organs and that that from a calf might really be that big. And BH recalls that in our penurious youth we used to buy ox liver, a much coarser sort of food, which we used to stew in gravy with carrots and onions.

The first portion of this liver was, however, fried with bacon in olive oil for lunch. Served with fried onions, boiled white rice and boiled crinkly cabbage. Very good, despite the rather odd smell given off by the olive oil. Nothing wrong with the oil, I had just forgotten what it smells like hot. The second portion was fried by itself in cooking oil and made into sandwiches for breakfast. Good gear. Got me sprackling up Howell Hill with no sweat at all.

A serious bike persons' blog, a fair bit of it English. http://vcsenlis.blogspot.com/.

DSL light dead all last night from what I saw of it. Dead this morning. But phoned up by Banglalore around 1000. Phone went dead in the middle of our conversation but the line was up again about half an hour later and has been up since. Let's see how long it lasts this time. Today's verdict: they are not doing too well on reliability at the moment, but they do seem to have a proper call tracking system.

Monday was a tap day. BH had been complaining about the kitchen tap dripping for some months (not sure how many, not in double figures) and we had been making desultory attempts to do something about it. In the past, we had been able to get a next day spares service from the manufacturer over the phone but this does not seem to work any more. One has to go onto the internet and supply a part number for the tap which we can't do. This being a 15 year old mixer tap which we bought from Peter Jones. Two stumpy tap handles angled at 45 degrees with a swan neck outlet rising up on a swivel between them. It being the swivel which drips.

So finally crank myself into action, allocating one valuble morning for the purpose, a morning when BH was out and would not want to use the tap. Remove grub screw and take outlet to Cheam with a view to visiting the hard core plumbing counter behind Mr S. at Kiln Lane on the way back from the baker. The outlet appears to have three washers: a broken white plastic washer, one rather loose O-ring and one damaged O-ring. The man behind the counter more or less laughs and sez: "you want washers for that? That white washer is well done for. Anyway, we don't stock O-rings anymore. Too many dodgy suppliers using funny sizes for it to be worth our while keeping up. You might try Halfords. Or you might try this place in Sutton (helpfully printing off an address slip from his computer). Otherwise you're stuffed. And no, you can't buy a new tap like that either". Off to the nearby Halfords where I buy a gift selection box of O-rings for £6 odd. Only slightly more than buying a couple of sachets. Nothing on the white washer front.

Get home to find out that none of the selection from Halfords actually matches what was on the outlet - although I can't remember whether they are original or not. One small one is near enough so fit that. Try putting the outlet back on and water gushes out of the swivel nicely. At this point it dawns on me that the white washer is split for a reason: the idea is that the point on the end of the grub screw goes through the gap to register on the pipe underneath, thus holding the outlet onto the body of the tap. So a bit grubby but sound. Try again, after a bit of fiddling around to get the gap in the right place. Water now oozing out rather than gushing out.

Then decide that the loose larger O-ring which I have not changed is perhaps the culprit. The smaller one is more about holding the whole thing steady, rather than stopping it leaking. Burrow in the collection of plumbing bits in the garage and emerge with half a dozen O-rings of various large sizes. Try one which is not right but which at least is a bit bigger than the one there. And hey presto, we have a rather stiff swivel but we seemed to have stemmed the leak. Brownie points all around.

So clearly time to take tea with the DT. Tea, on this occasion being Earl Gray with lemon. I seem to be quite unsettled on the tea front at the moment, moving restlessly from Indian tea (shamefully, from a bag) with green top milk, to green tea (gunpowder), to Earl Gray. Maybe I will settle down again at one point.

DT has yet another report of yet another decent citizen challenging yobs being given a criminal record. Whose side are the bisease on? And two intriguing royal snippets. First, royal watchers will be delighted to learn that we now have a pedestrian (no slur. As opposed to equestrian) full-size statue of good old' Queen Mum gracing the Mall. A monument to her glorious contribution to the upbringing of her daughter's children. Second, Fergiville in Surrey has been sold to some dubious central Asian for considerably more than it is worth, having been empty and unsold for some years, and is now still empty and unmaintained. The RSPCA should know that there is green slime growing in the horses' swimming pool. And OffWin should know that the Duke of York has so much cash in his piggy bank that he can afford to have a large asset sitting around doing nothing for years. And what exactly is his relationship to the central Asian in question? Hardly a good example to the rest of us decent folk, trying to rub along on 0% interest.

Can't resist wandering into a passing library, in this case on Lavender Hill. Large red building from the glory days of local authorities in London. Presently sitting in something called the Exchange Group, some kind of a training outfit, which also provides public access for £2 an hour. Trusting people; no log-on pack drill, just sit down to a running PC and get on with it. Pay on exit. And rather more comfortable than your average internet cafe, quiet with bags of space. No prams up your elbow. In a large room at the top of the building, open to the roof and complete with large skylight and a balcony with fancy wooden balustrade running around the whole, about 10 feet from floor level. Wonder what the idea was originally?

Some development back at Epsom. By lunch time the DSL light on the router was flashing slowly but continously. Even managed a connection once but it dropped out as soon as I tried to fire up the PC and did not come back again. And our next door neighbour has Orange for half what I am paying.

Caught an interesting film called 'Tsotsi' on BBC4 the other day. A channel which from time to time shows interesting foreign films, usually at around 2200. So a few months ago they did a series of three films from the Middle East and this one was from South Africa. Just the one white chap in the cast, in a fairly minor role. Very affective film after a few bottles of Newky, with life in shanty towns looking really grim. Story of a young man with a terrible upbringing who turns into a terrible, murderous young man - but who is redeemed, after a fashion, by the accidental acquisition of a baby - this last being eventually returned to the owner in good condition.

Finished an interesting book called 'The White War' shortly afterwards, being the story of the Italian efforts to grab a chunk of the Austro-Hungarian empire during the First World War. Interesting business of a nearly brand new country looking for war to build up the nation. Also the business of natural boundaries; they had done alright in the west and the north with the border running along the top of the Alps but the situation being more complicated to the east - with lots of people who were either not Italians or not wanting to be part of Italy already living there - rather more people than were involved across the water in Palestine. The war was a very bloody business in spectacular (and very cold) country with some tremendous ups and downs towards the end. Italian war aims did get toned down by the other winners but there were a lot of losers in the lands allotted to Italy from the carcases of the Austrian and Turkish empires and the whole business seems to have opened the way for Mussolini. Good book with lots of good background for those, like me, who know next to nothing about recent Italian history; only let down by very poor maps. My atlas (from the Polish army cartographic service via Robert Maxwell) did not have a big enough map of Italy to fill the gap, although it did help. The book was new from Epsom library and I was it's first customer, picking it up from the handy new book stand, from which I have plucked decent books before, some even previously reviewed by the TLS. We deduce that Surrey has a decent acquisition budget. Maybe I should try ordering something really high-brow plucked from the NYRB.

Time to name and shame as it is only two weeks since BT Total Broadband (or whatever they call themselves today) have let me down again after the last week's outage - line went dead just as I was getting excited about spending £9.95 for six months' subscription to some family heritage website - jeans reunited or something. And no, the BH was not poking the equipment with the vacuum cleaner at the time in question. And yes, I am paying BT rather more than other people say they are getting their service for.

I am slightly consoled by the symptoms being new. That is to say rather than there being silence on the middle two lights of my Voyager 210 router, the DSL light is flashing in bursts, separated by about 5 seconds. But it is not holding after one or two goes - which is what is supposed to happen - and the Internet light is completely dead. Phone the Help Desk at 0800 yesterday. Lines very busy. Try again at 1800 and get through. Usual business with plugging and unplugging microfilters. No change with the lights though. Problem passed to the engineers who will be in touch within 48 hours. Very sorry for your inconvenience. Phoned me back at 0800 this morning. The desk has been in touch with the engineers. Can I try again? No change. Now awaiting the next development.

Some neighbours think that it is all down to the PC being three years old; I am suspicious about the lingering evidence of a previous dial up connection. But the symptoms are all the BT side of the router and the help desk are not suggesting that there is anything wrong at my end. So we sit on credit card and wait.

On Saturday, back to Dorking for the second course of the Brodsky quartet. Well designed programme with two starters - AM Wolfgang and Puccini - primo piatti Borodin's second quartet, secondi piatti Beethoven 59.1 - and for desert a peice of piano music adapted for strings by the quartet themselves. I forget who it was by originally. Borodin slightly anti-climactical - maybe I should not have heard it twice before going - but Beethoven just what it said on the tin. First violinist recovered well from losing a string as the thing built to a climax at the end. Must be a real pain to get back into it after that sort of thing.

The bar understood about sherry, which is more than can be said for many pubs these days. But slightly miffed to be paying slightly less for two sherries than the bottle would have cost at Mr S.. But we got our own back at the interval. The barman on that occasion did not know what sherry was and I got a large wine glass full of the stuff instead of a thimble full. So the score is now about half a bottle for the price of a whole bottle from Mr S.. Not so bad after all.

This and other striking shots to be found at http://fotorutan.blogspot.com/.

Paid two visits on waking up today. The first was to a ground floor flatlet in what was essentially a large bedsit house, somewhere in London. Run by a lady. This is a place which today associates to the bedsit we lived in at Harringey West when first married, many years ago, but the location is wrong for the place visited this morning. This is a place, somewhere else in London, which I visit in dream from time to time and which I am fairly sure is fictitious. Draws in elements from real life but is not real.

Maybe the visit today was because yesterday's lunch was a cow chop (that is to say, a one rib peice of fore rib; served, as on the last occasion, for lunch for two, with new style mushrooms with beef dripping from the chop as well as butter to tart up the boiled rice). This links to the butcher at Harringey West railway station, a butcher who was, I think, a Greek Cypriot, and who introduced us to various interesting cuts of meat which could be accommodated in the Baby Belling with which we cooked at that time. One of them was the excellent top rib of beef, which even the butcher at Cheam now finds hard to source. This links to the bedsit at the same location, albeit on the other side of the large railway cutting (the main line north out of Kings Cross) which links to the fictitious flatlet.

The second visit was rather fleeting and was to a restaurant. A place which we have visited a number of times over the years, although not recently. Not sure whether it is real or not. A small restaurant, occupying a premise about the size of the sort of single shop you used to get on London high streets, say Tooting High Street, although I associate to Queensway. Arranged on two levels, with the inner level below the outer level and with the two levels separated by a balustrade. Maybe a piano? Rather posh place, which did a nice line in luncheon. Reviewed in the foodie section of newspapers. We could only just about afford to eat there. Maybe more will come back to me during the day.

In meanwhile, checking the spelling of 'premise', I find that this premise is the same as that which is the premise in an argument or a chain of reasoning. My OED has to break into Arabic to explain all this - something which must have been a considerable printing expense in the first part of the 20th century and would cause a bit of flap in the first part of the 21st century. Not at all sure how to call up Arabic script in Word. The link being that the word first appeared in 12th century translations into Latin from earlier Arabic translations of Aristotle, the Greek route presumably being blocked at that time.

On a more serious note, the LRB of my last posting also contained an interesting article about torture, a propos of three books on the same subject. The article starts off by explaining that philosophers have trouble demonstrating that torture is bad. Causes all sorts of philosophical wriggling. Which struck me as a bit odd. I had thought that the point of philosophy (in this connection anyway) was to tell you whether or not torture was bad, not to provide a handy proof of something you had already decided about. Evidence to fit up the chap you knew was a villain but was too clever to leave his prints anywhere. (As I have reported before, I do not think there can be an absolute bar. There will be times when torture, while unpleasant, will be justified). Then, via China, the article gets onto the recent goings-on in and around the US. There is no doubt in my mind that these amounted to torture. It also appears that the lower ranks who did some of the dirty work were dumped on and that the higher ranks who allowed, encouraged or winked at it got off. Then it goes into the various legal shennanigans in the legal parts of the US administration as to whether torture was legal or not. It seems fairly clear that the US is party to international conventions, the intention of which was to outlaw the practice altogether. But, as always, the devil can get into the detail. It is possible to mount an argument that the current generation of terrorists are not covered. Part of this is about reciprocity: one does not extend rights to people who have no intention of affording you the same rights. As one indignant US general put it, 'they chop our heads off'. But the overall impression was that a lot of effort was put into providing a legal blanket for something which had already been decided on. I wonder what the argument against being more honest about the whole business is? At least one reasonably important person in the US wanted to bring torture into the net. If we are going to do this unsavoury thing, let us at least bring it into the net and manage it properly. At least reduce the risk that the thugs who like bashing people will be able to let rip in cellars. Reduce the risk that the whole business gets out of hand, which is what I believe has happened in this case. A lot of innocent and reasonably innocent people have been badly bashed about - some fatally - without sufficient cause.

So I think I vote for bringing in due process, which the LRB article is a bit sniffy about. I read recently that even in Elizabethan times, in England, you really needed the signature of the Queen herself to torture someone, at the very least that of a Privy Councillor. And we used to have something of the same sort for other unpleasant practises, like listening in to peoples' phone calls. The case for protection of this sort is much stronger in the case of torture.

Following the giant chicken on Tuesday, started to make the soup in the ordinary way. That is to say, put bones and the bits and peices in saucepan. Add onions in their skins and some celery. Simmer for a long time, mashing from time to time with a potato masher. Strain while hot. (I have the idea that straining cold leaves a lot of the goodness with the solids). Then came the brainwave. Instead of geeing up the soup with a little pork, why not use chicken instead? So I acquired a couple of chicken breasts from Cheam and diced them into 1 centimetre rhombii. Peeled some potatoes, cut into large chunks and add to stock. Bring to boil and simmer for a bit. Add the chicken and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add some finely sliced white cabbage. Add some mushrooms right at the end. Despite the potatoes being slightly overcooked, result very good. Interesting how differant - and better - freshly boiled chicken in soup tasted from recycled chicken. Wouldn't know it as the same animal as that which inhabits packets of chicken noodle soup mix.

Followed up later in the day with a second visit to Super Fish at Waterloo Road, Waterloo. Takeaway was the order of the day and I had a truly excellent peice of haddock. Large, fresh and firm. Chips good too. The only catch was that the park was shut so we had to sit on the pavement by the gate to eat them. Not done pavement chips for a while but it did not seem to disturb the flavour.

While we are in a large animal vein, readers of the DT will no doubt be pleased to hear that the DT web sites waxes very lyrical about plans to erect a very large white horse somewhere in Ebbsfleet Valley, somewhere in Kent. In rolling prose (which betrays its origins in the arty magazine called Apollo, see http://www.apollo-magazine.com/) about touching the inner core of our national being (and which manages to drag in both Hengist and Tolkein ) and connecting via the North Downs to the Epsom Derby, we also learn that someone is stumping up £2m for the thing. It seems that us southeners have an urge to compete with the montrosity of the north. I suppose we are paying the price for pumping so many people through art colleges of one sort or another. Every so often, one of these beauties is going to have what it takes to foist some large lump of junk on us. Emperor's new clothes sez I.

Turning for once to a more learned mag, the LRB, I was interested to find that the ancient Greeks made quite sophisticated civil servants. It seems that they went to a lot of bother to devise civil systems to maintain the reputation of their currency, known as the silver owl, presumably from the owls stamped on it. A lot of bother which would do credit to the bizease (to rhyme with disease) who rule our roost. The key element were people called approvers whose job it was to look at owls and detect fakes. This work was both boring and difficult which meant it was best done by slaves who could be whipped if they got it wrong. They were supported by sophisticated protocols and procedures and the upshot was, it seems, that faith in the currency was restored. Commerce could march on.

Unlike the service systems that we have to manage the movements of our nuclear deterrent. How on earth do two nuclear submarines on the same side, if from differant countries, manage to bump into each other in the middle of the Atlantic ocean? It is a rather big place and one might have thought that there was room for both of them. And then why do we have the things at all? What are we getting for all those billions of pounds? What is the threat that they are intended to deter? A few home-made missiles lobbed over from somewhere in the Middle East? Why do we want to punch above our weight? Maybe we will grow up eventually and leave these expensive toys to the big boys. On the other hand, the billions of pounds rather pale into significance when compared with the cost of baling out the banker boys. Maybe that is where the real threat lies.

and gold is the way forward for the bold. In which connection I find that the people in South Africa have clearly been reading Tom Wolfe, but instead of buying Guiscards, you can buy Mandelas. See http://www.sacoin.co.za/. I liked this shot of what I presume to be their HQ.

Finished phase 1a of pond refurbishment today, just before hands gave out. Dug out about six barrow loads of yellow clay flavoured with black gunk from the bottom of the old pond. Sticky gear which I had to cut off the fork, making it a slow job. I can see how it might have been made into bricks down the road, down Kiln Road in fact, presently the site for our local Mr S.. Easily lost the six barrow loads on top of the chippings from the willow tree that was chopped down next door last year. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for lumps (say irregular five inch cubes) of yellow clay to start to break down and harbour some plant life. Not visible from house and not obtrusive from the path to the compost bin at the bottom of the garden, so not a problem.

During this proceeding, three newts made into the new tubs. Not sure where they came from or whether getting into the tubs was really a very bright idea. Fished one out. Sat on the edge a bit comatose for a bit, then got lost in the rocks somewhere. Then what looked like the pupae of some large fly or beetle made it to the bottom of a tub. No idea how it got there. Dropped by a bird? And last but not least a frog, liberally painted with liquid yellow clay, hopped across the clay and hunkered down under the rim of the centre tub. Maybe he will survive if the warm weather continues.

Planted tasteful line of limestone rocks along the northern perimeter of the new pond area, separating it from the existing beds containing heather, ornamental grasses and bulbs. Then dug out the front of the compost bin and used the resulting four barrowloads of well rotted, dark brown compost to cover the yellow clay, bringing the compost to the edge of the old pond area. Should look well when FIL has planted it up. Now we leave it for a few weeks to see how much it sinks. If necessary, get a bit of topsoil from a garden centre to top it up. The idea is that the soil comes up to just underneath the rims of the three tubs, but not to re-use the stones which used to encircle the old pond. Apart from the bother, I think it would look a bit fussy around three black tubs. But we will see. There may, it is just possible, be other views.

Franklin had a good nose around the new tubs. Let's hope he doesn't fall in one dark night. He would probably be able to get out but he might be a bit cold until next door woke up and let him in to dry out.

We learn on the way that pyramidal white candles do not rot down. Some signs of rodent gnawing but none of rotting. Chopped the thing up and chucked it back into the compost for a second go.

And we learn from the DT that the late partner of a leading Blair Babe has been caught with his nose in the trough and has been sentenced to a spell in an Italian jail. A spell, it seems, he will be able to wriggle out of. The Italians must be really chuffed to have a close relative of the BBB (Blair-Brown bunch. Vide supra) on the block, having had it up to their oxters with the BBB droning on and on at international gatherings about how good law and order is in the good old UK and how awful it is in wopland. Nice to have the boot on the other foot for once.

Also that good old Stella R, late custodian of a very private part of government, no doubt with a very fat pension, continues to bang on. And of all people, she, according to the DT, is warning the great British public that their establishment is turning the country into a police state. She might be right, but a bit rum coming from her. I would be a bit cheesed off if I was the Home Secretary. On the other hand, a bit of fresh air in private parts of government might be no bad thing, and who better than the former custodian to knock a few holes in the levee (aka dyke)?

But the most interesting snippet from yesterday was from the rather engaging autobiography of a Duke of Bedford, snapped up in a charity shop somewhere. Apart from the standard of care in his family when he was a child being well up to today's standard of child abuse, well worth a visit from the social services, I learn that an ancestor of his pioneered the cultivation of colza, in or around the New Bedford river. This, as is well known, being a relative of the cauliflower, the seeds of which were pressed to yeild a popular lamp oil in the 17th century. No doubt, one of the foundations of the family fortune. And the word might come in very handy in Scrabble. Wow the inmates of your local day centre with it on the triple word!

Started off with the pond, finding that you get very interesting effects if you drop a small drop of liquid yellow mud into clear still water. It balloons out and looks, to all appearances, like one of those strange underwater animals you get in places like the National Geographic. If I was industrious, I could follow up by adding small amounts of dye to the small amount of mud to get a three dimensional version of the sort of pyschodelic effect that used to be obtained with coloured oils, bubbles, and overhead projectors in the discos of my youth.

Then off to the Wigmore Hall to hear a very slender Russian lady play Bach on her violin. Very impressive stuff; a mystery how someone so small and weedy looking can pack so much punch for so long. At times I had aural hallucinations, thinking that I was hearing several instruments playing, rather than one. Sell out with a proper Wigmore Hall sort of audience, with a reasonable number of older people who looked as if they took their music quite seriously.

Followed up with a visit to the Canadian High Commission in Trafalgar Square to see an exhibition of the photgraphic work of a Croatian lady domiciled in Canada about women in Afganistan. I learn that the High Commission started life as a club and a very grand club it must have been too. Built in 1825 or so but refurbed for the Canadians in the 1920s by one Septimus Warwick, according to Wikipedia. Ground floor full of large pink marble pillars and the remnants of fancy brown woodwork. Exhibition scattered around the ground floor a bit disappointing. Very few shots of Afganistan itself but a lot more portraits of eminent Afganistan ladies. Directors of this and that. What few shots there were made the place look a bit bleak and barren. No wonder it has stayed so rugged for so long. Bit like the wilds of Scotland 300 years ago or the wilds of Wales 500 years ago. I also learnt, from a pamphlet about their reconstruction work there, that the Canadians could relate to winters in Afganistan - so perhaps they have the edge on our chaps, in that department at least.

Wound up with a visit to the South Korean cultural centre to see some work commemorating many years of something or other by an artist who specialises in using recycled materials. This illustrates the tricky divide between objects of art and objects of household. A floral theme and some of the peices were good fun, it not exactly fine art.

Last but not least, having defected from the baker at Cheam for the day, bought a very fine small round white loaf from the Italian grocery, I think in Brewer Street. Just along from the white marble place which used to be a near-French charcouterie and is now a near-French fish resaurant. The odd thing was that this loaf was only 70p or so - significantly less than I pay in Cheam. Very light, white fluffy bread; quite differant from my normal fare. Goes very well with butter.

1200 Sunday. Never mind the Google clock which seems to have no regard for local sensibilities.

Day two of the pond continued more muddy than the first. Second tub floated in OK and settled down level, about a quarter of an inch adrift from the first. But third caused problems. Maybe I was getting tired. The bottom of the appropriate hole coincided with the layer of stones - flints on closer inspection - that I had come across the day before. But this day, the hole was not waterlogged and the stones were hard to move. To save on mud, I thought, rather than use water, to use club hammer and cold chisel. This worked but it was easier to pick the loosened stones out by hand than to get them out with the spade, so did not really win on the mud front.

So, get the third hole to the right size. Add some water to soften it up. Add some ballast to line the bottom of the hole. Add tub. Start to fill the tub with water. Just thinking that all was well and that I could tea-break while the tub filled, when it keeled over. Not right over, but far enough that one side was one or two inches higher than the other, which would not do at all. Then embarked on much fiddling about. Pushing gravel down the low side, spinning the tub, generally trying to shake it into position. Got there in the end, although, sadly, wound up one inch above tub number two. You wouldn't think an inch would show in this context but it does. Also odd how the tubs do not look level - although you know that they are because the water is up to the brim. Clearly the eyes are not under proper control from the centre. Made a start to packing wet clay around the tubs. Not too much at once, so that as it gets really soft I can tamp it down.

By this time covered in mud. Two spades, one gadget for cleaning the spades, trousers, boots and hands. Starting to penetrate.

At which point I am reminded of Mr. J. Joyce. It seems that, for a short time at least, he acted out infantile fantasies with his long suffering wife. According to Brenda Maddox, the author of the biography from which I get this tit-bit, such goings on were not that unusual among repressed and complex-full Edwardians. Dodgy upbringing you know. Be that as it may, I suspect that Joyce was very taken with the infantile fantasies unearthed by his contemporary Freud and decided that he owed it to himself as an artist to try them out. To plumb the depths and then to record the authorised version in Molly's monologues. This despite the claim I found in Ellmann that Joyce was rather averse to Freud. Perhaps they had too much in common, on this point at least, which scared Joyce off.

Reverting to the tub, I think the problem is perhaps that the third tub was high for its width compared to the other two. So the weight of the water in the tub levelled the first two but did not do the trick for the second. Tall tubs unstable.

A striking image, but in this case, not from Samuel Butler, but from http://maninkitchen.blogspot.com/.

I reported breaking concrete in my last post. I should perhaps explain, in a little more detail, that we have a plan to replace the existing pond in our back garden. The pond was of irregular shape, perhaps 7 feet by 10 feet overall, with a pond liner. There were three main problems with this. First, because of the irregular shape of the pond, there were lots of creases in the pond liner - a thick black rubbery material - and animals were able to eat chunks out of the creases. This mean the thing leaked in dry weather and did interesting things in wet weather when lots of water got underneath the liner. Second, we are infested with duck weed as a result of having been given a pond plant some years ago. Third, we don't seem to be able to get the water lily right. The first one took over the pond and the second one, while of more modest size, had a large fat root which insisted on floating lead bud uppermost, with the result that a good proportion of the lily leaves are sticking up in the air rather than floating gracefully on the water. So, one fine day we decided that it had to go, to be replaced, as it turns out, by three heavy black round plastic tubs of various sizes and depths. (Maybe there is a more felicitous order of adjectives here. Maybe I should have turned one sentence into two). And having done the concrete lump last week and the two layers of liner being entirely removed, yesterday we decided it was time to plant a tub.

At which point I learn a modest something about what it might have been like in the trenches in the first war. Digging out a hole perhaps three feet across and two feet deep when the bottom of the hole is six inches in a muddy soup. Boots sinking slowly into the edges of the hole. Great sucking noises when you try to move them. Small risk that your foot will come out of the boot, leaving the boot in the mud. Trousers covered in mud. Spade handle covered in mud - which makes it most unpleasant to work with. Have to climb out of mud hole and go and wash it down using the freezing cold water from the rain water tub by the back door. Gets harder and harder to get anything out of the bottom of the hole, partly because of the depth and partly because of hitting a layer of flints in the soft yellow clay. Spade not the best implement for the job; perhaps I should have invested in the sort of trenching tool you can buy in shops which cater for people who like playing army and which used to be stocked by the army - army surplus stores. At least the clay was soft: in the summer it goes rock hard and one would need a pneumatic drill to make a hole this size in less than a day.

Eventually, bite the bullet, and climb into the hole, standing on one of the stones which used to line the edge of the pond. Digging now rather easier on back, the only catch being that one winds up standing on a stone island. How does one move the stone so that one can dig away underneath while still standing on it? Or not otherwise getting wet feet?

After an hour or two of this have a hole of about the right size. Off to Wickes - which despite my dislike of the place - is probably the best place around here to buy sand after midday on a Saturday. Back with 10 bags of the stuff at £15. Probably a better deal for us that one of those half cubic metre carrier bags you can get for about £40. The latter would have got one more sand for one's buck but would have meant having the stuff on the front lawn for days if not weeks and having a lot left over at the end. And, anyway, no-one was going to deliver a carrier bag at that time of day. Had to get on while the force was with me. So 25kg bags had it. Poured three of then into the mud hole. Floated the largest black tub in the now sandy soup. Quite level as one's school physics suggests it should be. Fill with water to bed it down and make sure that it does not gently float upwards. Pleased to find it stays level. Chuck more sand into the soup surrounding the tub, the idea being that bedding in sand is better than bedding in clay.

Then onto the next tub, this one being slightly wider and a lot less deep. Roughly dig a hole of the right sort of dimensions; much drier this one. Most of the water must have gone into the deep hole. But plenty of stinking black ooze to make up. Decide that I have done enough for the day and retire to bath.

The big shallow tub might be a bit harder to get in. There won't be the same weight of water to bed it down, nice and level and there is the additional problem that we want all three tubs to finish at the same level; this being a key part of the design. But a key problem for the second and subsequent tubs. How can you be sure that a tub is going to finish up level with its neighbour when you are floating it in liquid mud? Further report on this point in due course.

Must have had a bad day yesterday because I woke up this morning to a bread dream. It seems there was a parade of shops on the East side of a square of shops, this last a bit like, but not, the square of shops at Cowick Street in the regional capital of the west. In the middle of the side was a shop that I had been using regularly, I think for a drink - coffee or tea - but which I did not want to use today, electing to go to the baker in the corner instead. Sneak past the shop, trying not to catch the eye of the young girl that usually serves me but fail.

Get to the baker where the bread is arranged on large trestles, like a market stall, rather than the shelves more usual in a proper baker. There is a variety of bread, some of it the white sort that I want. The bloomers are very large and fresh and look as if, although good, they will squash very easily, particularly if I get a bigger one.

I wait while someone is served. The a lady comes in, perhaps 35. I notice later that she is quite heavily pregnant. The baker busies himself about the shop, doing anything rather than serve us. Eventually, the pregnant lady pushes herself forward and gets herself served, despite the tatty fiver I am waving to establish my priority. I give her a short lecture about how it is odd but that it is nearly always ladies who push in in queues. She leaves. The baker continues to busy himself about the shop, ignoring me. Eventually I ask him if he is going to serve me, which he does without batting an eyelid, being quite pleasant, just as if he had not kept me waiting for ages for no reason. He breaks the large white bloomer in half for me and is quite sollicitous about how wrapped up it is going to be, given that he only has fairly small paper bags. I leave the shop quite unsure about whether I have paid him, or whether I have paid him the right money, the change in my pocket not seeming to be quite right. Wake up.

Maybe it is all down to the excess of manual labour. First job was breaking up the concrete lump in the garden pond, which had been cast there to stem the leaking from the large hole in the liner which had been bitten by one or any of the fox, the squirrel (gray) or the birds. An irregular cubic foot. When I was young, I would have levered it out of the pond and disposed of it whole, but as an oldie settle for smashing it up in-situ with a club hammer and a cold chisel. Which takes a while. Hands in a bit of a state from the banging and gripping by the time I have finished, not having done this sort of thing for a while. Quite impressed that I managed without smashing a chunk of hand in the process with a slipping or badly aimed hammer head. Probably helped that I was using a large, long cold chisel, about a foot long. Surprised that the sharp end of it chipped; I had forgotten that steel can do that, but I suppose that the sort of steel used for a cold chisel has to be very hard, tendencies towards cast iron which certainly does smash. Reminded of hitching lifts, when you stand for ages. Then sink into a sort of torpor without much hope. Then all of a sudden, when you are least expecting it, someone stops. Breaking the concrete seemed the same. Pounding away. Hands tired. Making no progress. Then all of a sudden a great lump slowly breaks off without fanfare or fuss. The lumps now piled up next to the pond in case I decide I need them when backfilling the new black plastic tubs which will form the replacement water feature. FIL has been designated OIC black plastic tub plant population. Hopefully, many a happy hour.

Second was removal of the BH's pampas grass, the one she insisted on burning down each spring, a proceeding I did not think was well suited to our poor ground. Anyway, we agreed that its time was up. So I head down the garden with bush saw, mattock and spade. Bush saw to remove what growth there was: the foliage not being of the saw tooth variety of the allotment pampas grass (the new owner will have fun removing that one, if that is what he settles for. Much bigger and healthier than the garden one) so I don't get cut hands. Mattock to take out the stump. Fearsome implement which deals with the stump in fairly short order. Axe head to cut down; flat head to undercut the loosened lump. All out in about half an hour. I had been told by a Swindonian that pampas grass roots were an absolute menace to remove, travelling far, wide and deep from the stump, but that did not prove to be the case here. There were some fibrous roots under the stump, but unless I am missing something, not many. We will see what comes up after I have dug the rest of the bed over.

It seems, from the Guardian, that the animal rightees have a problem. We used to have a lot of red squirrels which were cute and cuddly once they had been discovered by Beatrix Potter and Beatrix Potter had been discovered by us. Then a bad person introduced gray squirrels. Now they are cute and cuddly too, but they are also foreign and therefore bad. They are also slightly better at being squirrels than their red cousins. I imagine that this is mostly about their being slightly bigger but competing for the same niche. So when it comes to a competition for a nest or a food supply they are going to win, and, slowly but surely the reds are going to cop out. This, without the wholesale slaughter which usually accompanies humans when they do the same sort of thing. And even without that consideration, it is hardly the grays' fault that some bad person brought them here.

But now the animal rightees are saying that the reds have a right to existance, even though they are dying out of more or less natural causes. So lets kill as many of the grays as we can in order to make a bit more space for the reds.

Not at all sure about the morals of all this. Killing a much larger number of pigs or chickens in order to eat them is one thing. But killing gray squirrels because red squirrels are more cute is quite another. So I think the animal rightees ought to appeal to some higher authority to adjudicate on the matter. Perhaps the Pope would take it on, on one of his afternoon's off?

Or perhaps a shrink? The risk there is that he might divine that animals is only the surface agenda of animal rightees. The real agenda is something quite differant and getting to find out about that might be even more unwelcome than being told that if the grays can roll over the reds, they should be allowed to get on with it. In the way of natural selection since the time the Lord got cracking on separating the earth from the sky (Genesis I.1.i.a).

The bunch of rightees from Greenpeace have a differant problem with whales, and they are making a nusiance of themselves down in the southern ocean. They think they have the right to barge around in their boat, right next to the boats of those awful whalers from Japan, in complete disregard of the ocean going highway code. Now while I do not much care about whalers, I do care about maintaining civility, in this case maintaining the ocean going highway code. So I will not knowingly give any money to Greenpeace while they carry on with this kind of stunt.

I dilated recently on another kind of ocean going stunt, that is to say piracy. And I am now the proud possessor of HC 1026, being the eighth report of session 2005-06 from the Transport Committee of our very own House of Commons. Your House of Commons as they would say in Marks and Spencer. A committee which was chaired at that time by the late Gwyneth Dunwoody. I recall very mixed reviews at the time of her death - bit of a loose lady cannon - but the notice I find on the BBC site today glows. It seems she comes from Labour aristocracy and thought that being a backbench MP should still count for something. Be that as it may, HC 1026 makes interesting reading. Tastefull cover with a pompous start, as befits an institution which has been around for a long time. Then it transpires that what happens is this. The committee announces that it is going to do something about piracy. They summon some people who know about this sort of thing to appear before them one day in March 2006. Their rather small staff then write a 40 page report plus a couple of rather silly annexes. The first, amongst other things, tells us what the Royal Navy is, or rather was. The committee then, to all appearances, nod it through when they meet in June 2006. Lo and behold, we have HC 1026; the encapsulated wisdom of the House of Commons on this matter of piracy. Consigned to the vaults of the House of Commons and other libraries.

So is it surprising, that while one does learn a bit from the report, it is all a bit feeble? Spends a lot of time going on about how the lack of agreed definition of piracy is hampering the various efforts to curb it. But I did learn some things. For example, that the merchant shipping trade organisations seem to be against the routine arming of merchant ships. That the merchant shipping unions think it is all down to cutting costs and institutionalised under-manning. There did seem to be some force in this. Huge merchant ships have gotten used to cruising about, more or less unattended, and their owners are loath to change this arrangement. That the naval people want to get permissions for hot pursuit and proper arrangements for bringing apprehended pirates to justice. It seems that some of the countries where there is lots of piracy are both very touchy about their sovereignty - and so are not keen on hot pursuit - and very feeble in the matter of justice. So there is a bit of a problem there.

I wonder if Congress does a better job at this sort of thing? It ought to, representing a much bigger and richer country. Perhaps their committees have proper staffs. All on defined benefit, index linked pensions, of course. Or the French or the Germans?

Note in passing that it is no longer possible to buy Harley Davidson motor cycles in Dorking. What used to be their large showroom - perhaps a car showroom in some former life - is now boarded up and adorned with the stickers of a demolition company. Did they get stuffed by the bank pulling their loan, the bank pulling the products with which people financed the purchase of their motor cycles or has the market for big motor cycles simply collapsed, along with that for cars? Or maybe some property company had already terminated their lease with a view to sticking a block of flats on the site before that market collapsed. A little while since we have been to Dorking, so this last entirely possible.

On the other hand there is another shop which sells rather fancy looking telescopes. Black or white or black and white jobs, up to five feet long and a foot wide. Mostly with Newtonian optics and equatorial mountings, these last with built in motors and devices to drive them which look rather like the remote control for a television. Where were the batteries? I think the stands were mostly tripods rather than pillars, suggesting that telescope people like to be mobile. I wonder who they are? Who are the people who like to stand around on a cold night and peer at the sky? Part of the fun has perhaps gone, with these new telescopes probably being very reliable and needing very little attention; and far too tricky to need any serious attention. Not so much fun to be had tinkering with them for months in a warm shed before braving the great outsides.

Today we tried another Superfish type establishment, this one called Seine Rigger in Pork, to the southeast of Epsom. Same sort of drill as Superfish places; that is to say fish and chips with trimmings, including alcohol. Fish small but good (and with skin), chips adequate, ambience good. Like the road to Cheam, the snow seems to have found out the road to Pork, with the result that there are lots of rather unpleasant holes in the road. Very unpleasant if you hit one on a bicycle and not too clever in a car. But the council are on the case. On the way to the chipper, we were held up by a council lorry mending a hole. This consisted of stopping the lorry so that it blocked the road. Jump out and tip a bit of black top in the hole from a large white tub. Pat it down gently with a shovel and drive on. Bit of a mystery what they thought they had achieved. An optimistic view would be that they had half a tub of blacktop left over from something else and they though that they might as well chuck it in a snow hole as chuck it away.

A charity shop a few doors down from the chipper with interesting stock - both of things to sell and customers. For the princely sum of £1.50, acquired some Bach violon concertos, Shostokovich symphony number 1 and a string trio by Schubert. Perhaps all from the same music lover as they were all 'Music for Pleasure'. Which Wikipedia tells me is a once big brand which did well out of cheap editions of middle of the road music. And I did well out of the concertos. Symphony and trio to go.

Given pearl barley another outing after a bit of a break. Usual sort of drill: take four ounces of barley, add couple of sticks of thinly sliced celery (cross wise) and water. Bring to the boil. Simmer for a bit. Stand for a bit. Add chopped left over roast should of lamb. Bring to the boil and simmer for a bit more, keeping an eye on the water level. Sticks good if you let it go dry. Good nourishing stuff which was more than enough for two sittings; supper and breakfast. But not as good as the chicken version which was the flavouring for barley's last outing. Maybe this is not the way to make mutton broth.

And to close, I ought to report that my Broadband connection has been behaving itself for a week now, following the week of discussions with Bangalore before that. At the end of this first week, the fault tracking people announced that the engineers had tweaked my connection and it has been fine since. Let's hope they do better than the month or so between failures that they managed last time.

Just made it down the garden for the first time since the snow. The pond, from which I had removed the leaking liners (the new on top of the old), remains resolutely full - despite the fact that leaking through bird or animal bitten holes in the liner being the reason for removal in the first place. The ground must be completely waterlogged. The small yew tree in the middle of the wild patch badly bent by weight of snow it had been carrying. Hopefully it will spring back before BH feels the need to lop lumps off of it. The small leaved evergreen hedge at the back of the wild patch completely borne down. May need to cut it back so that it can shoot again from the base in the spring. Thought required. The exotic grasses - thick shiny green leaves - perhaps up to two feet long with a pronounced fold in the middle - with lots of pendant flowers on long shoots - perhaps two feet long again - looking rather unhappy. I suspect they originate from a climate where frost and snow are unusual. Quite common in woods in this country but never gotten around to finding out what they are called. On the other hand the snow drops look rather well, poking through what remains of the snow and the daffodills are pushing.

Yesterday to Battersea Park where we found the snow mostly gone. On the other hand we came across a young lady riding a very fetching folding bike, illustrated in the previous post. A folding action I had never seen before and a proper Brooks leather saddle, none of this hard foam business. Other unusual features included a rubber (aka Kevlar) chain, no gears and what looked like disc brakes. But not sure I am going to stump up the £400 needed to get to know the thing better. Also came across a lot of odd trees which we were unable to name, the lack of on-tree leaves drawing attention to their oddity. We learnt that the chief parky keeps some sort of a catalogue of the odd trees for those interested but we did not come across his den. Festival fountains turned off and the Temple of Peace looking well. Bit of a mystery that this 20 year old temple remains looking so smart and new. Not a hint of a graffitti anywhere. Maybe someone comes out at the crack of dawn each day and scrubs the thing. We managed to get lost on the way back to the car, coming out on Albert Bridge Road instead of Prince of Wales Drive. Which meant that we must have rather badly lost our sense of direction coming out of the sub tropical garden and probably completely misdirected, with great confidence, a couple who wanted to know where the river was. Hopefully they got there in the end, they had an hour or so before it got dark.

Rather put down by a short note on the back of this week's TLS. A propos of a book aimed at budding writers, it explains that the explanation mark is the most widely misused punctuation mark. Guilty as charged I think! It then goes on to say how terrible it is to have wandering points of view. Should not have more than one to the page. It gives as an example: "Nunavit sighed as she saw the ragged band of her fellow Eskimos returning exhausted from another failed walrusing expedition". Now this is an invented example so one ought to be able to see the point of the complaint loud and clear. But I fail miserably. A rather dead bit of prose but I can't see what 'L.D.' is on about. So I presume I must be doing this one all the time too.

Note in passing that I am in good company. One Sir Roger Penrose, of whom more anon, is also very fond of exclamation marks.

But encouraged by the discovery that there is now a sub-discipline in university departments of literature called forgery studies. Aka cultural forensics. It seems that deception and detection are among the central preoccupations of such eighteenth century philisophers such Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Well I never did!

Image from http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/strida/strida-50/ . Took a while to find it among a profusion of sites doing folding bikes.

To be found at http://liquenesdealmeria.blogspot.com/.

Get home yesterday to a Franklin who was very concerned to get in. Put on a full scale performance. Winding himself around one's legs. Elaborate sniffings and prancings in front of back door. A very affecting performance; but remembering something I had been told earlier in the evening, I wondered whether what I was seeing as cute was actually an unhappy cat. How many houses besides ours does he visit? Does he get fed in any of them? He is certainly rather thin compared with the other marmalade cat that I know, but maybe that is down to his being old.

The greengrocer at Cheam scores full marks for being open this week, having been open all six days and having got to the market at Nine Elms first thing Monday morning. Apparently there were not all that many customers there that morning. But Mr Cheam got through, as did the supplies to the various nursing homes and what have you on his books. I guess, like the butcher, he needs to supplement his walk in trade in order to make a decent living. All very differant in Epsom market today which, according to the BH, was more or less missing. Why did they not turn out? Saturday must be a big day for a market trader.

Today to Dorking to hear the Brodsky quartet - who despite being trained at the Royal Northern College and not having odd names, must be foreigners as three of them with wedding rings wore them on their right hands. Excellent start with a Chaconne by Purcell. Then the bull fighters' prayer from Turina (a Spaniard of whom I had never heard before), then Beethoven Op. 18.1. Quite unlike its near relation, the 18.4, for which I had a fad a couple of years ago. A stirring Shostakovich No. 3 after the break. Pleased to find out that Schweppes tomato juice does not contain Worcester sauce - which I do not like in that context. Not so pleased to find that, by volume, tomato juice costs only slightly less than wine. Excellent evening and home comfortably before 2200, so we even get to make our cocoa on time.

Last time I wanted to buy a French book - a Simenon - got Grant & Cutler to get it for me and it took some weeks. So made a useful discovery earlier in the week. That is, that it is much quicker to go to http://www.amazon.fr/. Book not turned up yet but I dare say it will next week; the 7 euros or so postage being the only catch. And in the unlikely event that I want something in German they have one too. But neither Spain nor Russia do. What is the Amazon policy in such matters? A good feature was that my UK credentials were good in France, so I did not have to go to the bother of typing it all in again.

And lastly, I notice that a nurse was suspended for some weeks for offering to say a prayer for an old lady. Now while I do not hold with prayers or bossy low church types, the hospital seems to me to have massively overreacted. It is not going to hurt the old lady to have a prayer said for her. She might even have been touched or pleased. And if the hospital felt so strongly about the matter, surely a quiet word in the tea-break would have been quite enough? Do we not have any room left for a bit of private enterprise in such matters? Does our whole life have to be patterned by the busy custodians of political correctness?

So I wonder whether we are only hearing part of the story. Maybe the nurse in question is not liked by her bosses because she pushes her bible a bit strong. Or maybe for some quite unconnected reason. Bad time keeper or something of that sort. One more thing I shall never get to the bottom of.

Three culinary events to report. First, the BH has discovered or possibly invented a liquid form of bread pudding. Take stale bread. Add milk, sugar, butter and sultanas. Maybe some other dried stuff. Warm through and serve. It should be fairly thick. More or less the ingredients of bread pudding less the egg. Much quicker to prepare and tastes surprisingly similar. Good gear in cold weather.

Then yesterday a simple little cow chop, served with white rice and crinkly cabbage for lunch. Cow chop being a one-rib version of fore rib. Weighed in at about four pounds and cooked for a little under 2 hours at 180C. Very good it was too, although nothing like the cow chops we had in Florence, made from a very similar cut of beef. The main differance in cutting being that they leave the thin end of the chop rather longer, a bit like one of our lamb cutlets, large size.

And started off today with the first of three Craster kippers from Waitrose - a purchase on Wednesday, when we did not venture out as far as Mr S. at Kiln Lane. A little bigger than Craster kippers usually come and grilled was a little strong. May try simmering the next one. Came in an interesting foil sealy - if that is the name for a square envelope of foil, sealing up your fish on the counter. Amongst other virtues it was said to significantly reduce fishy smells in one's refridgerator. Must tell the man from Hastings about them. Perhaps he can install the necessary contraption in his van somewhere.

Yesterday evening tried a train for the first time since the snow. All seemed to be well and got to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in time to take a little refreshment before the concert. Pleased to find that the irritating in-foyer platform was not occupied. That is to say we were not warmed up for our concert by some young people whacking out some of their stuff. Went to the concert for the Chopin preludes which I have not heard live before. Surprised that it took the first half of the bill but found that the answer was that most of the people there had gone for the Couperin and Ravel, which, interleaved, made up the second half. Quite a few young French people turned out to hear this young French pianist and the one in front of us at any rate was something of a pianist himself, even if the young lady leaning gracefully on his shoulder was not. The Ravel was something I had never heard of before called 'Couperin's tomb' - although I learn this morning from Wiki that tombeau might better be translated as memorial. I think the idea was that the six movements of the tomb were interleaved with five, six or seven (depending on the detail of the interleaving) peices by Couperin, in order to show how Ravel drew on the French Baroque. Unfortunately I was too mean to buy a programme (at £4) and I cannot now found out what it was I heard, let alone in what order, the relevant entry having already been deleted from the South Bank web site. But I do find that I have a boxed set of Couperin on the shelf, so I think I shall have to crack it open - because I liked the second half a lot better than I was expecting to. Even if the Ravel sounded rather jazzy at times.

Good to go to a live concert again as I quickly forget how much better they are than my elderly hi-fi. One is in the temple for an occasion, rather than lolling about on one's sofa. The quality of the silences is quite differant. One gets a much stronger texture to the music. The dynamics are much better. I wonder if all this is as true with music which is composed for the CD, in a recording studio.

I think the caption might be loosely translated as 'Alert! Squatters in sight!'. From http://paparruchas1.blogspot.com/ where more of the same can be found.

Got through to Cheam again today. Lower Hill Road and Manor Green Road a bit bad with frozen snow to cycle on. Bigger roads more or less OK, although the carriageways a bit narrow for overtaking cars - or cars overtaking bicycles for that matter. Everybodys' manners very good. I am pulling over so that cars can overtake me when there is a bit of space and cars are pulling over so that I can overtake them when there isn't. But for some reason the traffic into Epsom is backed all the way back to the railway bridge just before Cheam. Just about moving but certainly backed up. Not really accounted for by the modest hole in the road at East Street. Bit of a pain to get past it all on the way back. Reduced to cycling on the wrong side of the road.

My snow pillar is more or less down to a stump now and the largest of the snowmen next door is leant over at a surprising angle. Can't see the head staying on for the rest of the day.

BH spending part of the day taking note of who bothers to clear the pavement in front of their houses. Quicker to make the list of those that do, rather than the list of those that don't, these last being in the majority. As I have remarked before, standards of civicity are slipping. Too many people think that someone else, possibly the council but certainly not me, should be doing this sort of thing. As part of my fight against the trend, I am becoming a litter bore. That is to say making a big performance of picking up litter along the road on the way home for ceromonious deposit in our great big dustbin.

To mark the cold we have been having oxtail, or to be more precise two of them, finding along the way that oxtail is not cheap, particular if one takes into account the high proportion of bone, gristle and fat. And so we were reminded how little oxtail tastes like oxtail soup (the sort from Mr Heinz that is). One supposes that this is due to traditional flavourings and colourings being added by Mr Heinz, but we were not any clearer when, having turned the remainder of the oxtail into soup by liquidizing it together with the remains of some stewing steak and its gravy, that soup tasted more like oxtail soup than the oxtail had done before it.

Also been having another go at Burke's Peerage, another book to hand for the advertising breaks. Where we read all about one Sir Patrick Alexander D'Estoteville Skipwith, 12th BT. of Prestwould. Now, apart from having a long name, he also has a long pedigree, starting with the younger son of a companion of the conqueror. (Something, as it happens, that he shares with the BH, although, sadly, from a cadet twig in her case, so she does not figure in the good book. That apart, I assume that to count as a companion to the conqueror one has to both accompany and be posh. Bakers taken along to feed the posh persons don't count). I then wonder why, if his pedigree is so long, he is only the 12th BT.. Ploughing through the pages devoted to the Skipwiths, I find that the 1st baronet was created on 20 December 1622, the baronetcy being invented as a wheeze to raise money by that careful Scottish monarch, James I. Notionally, to raise troops to fight in Ireland, so for some of the history of the order, the Red Hand of Ulster figured in a baronet's device. Prior to that, one did indeed have knights but it seems that that sort of knighthood was something conferred for valiant deeds, either done to be done, and was not hereditary. So one might knight someone after a long vigil in a church before a battle, or one might knight someone after a battle for stirring deeds. And the ability to make a knight was not confined to the monarch. But just to keep things confused, Ireland ran to three hereditary knights, the Knight of Glin, the Knight of Kerry and the White Knight. So there.

As it turned out, FIL was right and the snow tower did fall over. Took a little time about it, slowly bending over until the top bit was more or less horizontal, at which point I intervened and the top half fell off. Emergency repairs in the gathering gloom, but never quite the same again and the snow this morning did not look so inviting.

After two phone calls, a wait to let the router cool down (in case overheating was causing the connection problem) and then a wait while 'we will call you, don't call us', back on the air at 1430 today after an 18 hour outage. I wonder if there is an element of there only being so many slots available in the public infrastructure (as opposed to that bit which is private to me) to make these connections and their running out of slots at busy times?

I did not make it to the baker yesterday, but it seems that the baker did. Overwhelmed by people who never usually use the place and were a bit put out that he had run out. However, I made it today and supplies were fine. Maybe he had been up all night getting supplied for what he hoped would be another rush. The roads were worst leading out of our estate and then got progressively better as one got nearter London. Sudden improvement as one left Surrey for the London Borough of Sutton. Rather looked as if the London snowplough simply turned around at the boundary marker.

Current buns very good today, well risen and not overcooked. But nothing like the current buns obtained from Crouch End last week, possibly from a shop which used to be a proper baker which I used to use nearly 40 years ago and which has now transformed into a nifty little patisserie cum coffee shop. Their current buns were a sort of hybrid drawn from the English currant and Chelsea buns and a continental croissant. Very nice they were too.

Interested to hear that the National Trust is adding to the store of political correctness and banning the use of the word deaf on their signage and by their trusties. They now have to use persons with hearing impairment or some such other long winded euphemism. I wonder how many deaf or partially deaf people could give a toss? And then another branch of the heritage industry is making some poor sod who happens to have an ancient windmill on his land, pay for repairing it. Some £30,000 or something. Now supposing he has had the land since long before the heritage folk got underway, this seems rather unfair. If the country at large wants to go nuts about heritage, fine. But they should pay for it, not dump the costs on unsuspecting people who have become heritage owners through no fault of their own.

And interested to see a couple of bits of Hamlet in an entirely new light, during an advertising break on telly, after a few libations at the BH. Firstly, the bit where Hamlet has the chance of doing for Claudius, but does not because he is praying and would therefore go straight to heaven if murdered at that point. What I had missed before was that the chap really was repenting as well as praying, or at least there were tendencies in that direction. The man was not unmitigated evil. So what about a bit of Christian forgiveness? And the famous speech about being or not being. What I had missed there was that one might as well cop out of all the troubles in this world - if it were not for the risk of catching it in the next. Whole argument falls if one is not bothering about the next world. Maybe the trouble is that these hard core episodes have become so iconic that one doesn't actually listen to the words any more. In any event, reminded that the original audiences must have been very quick to take very much of all this stuff in on the hoof. A good deal quicker than me at any rate.

I think this is the tallest snow tower in the street, although not the prettiest. FIL thinks it is about to fall over.

Back from Epsom to a phone call from the Total Broadband technical support people. Once again, the line, having been dead for near 48 hours, springs into life as I speak with them. But we agree that the call is still open.

Having finished the previous post, find out that the Internet part of the library is doing normal business but there are very few other customers. Clearly the need to surf is greater than the need to read. Or perhaps the differance is far simpler: if you already have a book you can always read it again. But you can only surf at the library. After the library, a short cruise through Epsom town centre, also mainly inhabited by young people. Witherspoons about to open at 1100, only two hours late, having swept one of their various entrances. The market place boasted a couple of quite respectable snowmen and several snowball fights; the road home several large pine trees well bent down with the snow.

In the warm, pegging on with Babbitt by Upton Sinclair, courtesy of some charity shop or other. First time I have read the man since reading 'The Jungle' in my lefty youth. This one seems rather more mainstream, more about the life of a suburban man in Middle America in the prohibition twenties than the iniquities of capitalism - although he does get a few swipes in. Quite a funny book really although the heavy slang takes a while to get used to and can be a bit tiresome at times. An experimental book in that things like newspaper advertisements and newspaper articles are included, in a sort of display format, in-line. I wonder how such things would be handled today with the printing facilities we now have? Full colour inset? Illustrated novels - that is to say with illustrations crafted, perhaps by the author, to the text, do not seem to be the thing. Last time I recall seeing anything warm was the rather crude woodcuts for the chapter headings in the US edition of an Everest climbing book called 'Into Thin Air'. I think Ian Fleming used to include some display text in his Bond books. And there used to be woodcut illustrated books in the thirties of the last century; pretty but perhaps a touch precious. Furthermore, while those pictures were keyed to the text after a fashion, they tended to be full page pictures. No attempt to integrate with the detail or layout of the page. And, of course, childrens' books are usually illustrated. But full blown illustrated novels for adults in my time, no.

In this part of prohibition Middle America drink was reasonably available. No self respecting host would put on a dinner party without something. But one had to talk with unshaven people on the wrong side of the tracks to get it. On the other hand, the suburban men who are the subject of the book appear to do a lot of cigar smoking (and Babbitt spends a fair amount of time giving up cigar smoking, indulging in various familiar dodges along the way) and a lot of pipe smoking with cigarettes not so much in evidence. A very most amount of chewing tobacco.

with no proper connectivity, despite the efforts from Bangalore. On Saturday morning, presumably their busiest day, the telephone system overloaded. Played music, which it has not done before. Then grade 1 message about how my call is important. Then music. Then grade 2 message about how my call is very important. Then music. Then continuous playing of grade 1 message, over and over again. Then line breaks. Telephone system fixed by Sunday but still no resolution. Now been passed to the engineering department with a special telephone number and my own PIN number. Have been assured for several days now that it will certainly be fixed today. Plus they are not even bothering to poke the line into temporary life any more using their remote test tool. Perhaps they have marked my card as impatient customer - but at least we have been nowhere near rude land so far. Everybody is being very polite to each other.

Starting to wonder what if anything I have got in the way of a service agreement. Can I deduct 22.3% of the monthly charge for loss of service plus penalty points?

Given that most of the country seems to have ground to a halt after last night's snow storm, rather surprised to fing Epsom library up and running, together with their Internet lines. I had rather thought that this non-revenue generating activity would have been stood down along with the schools. So here we are.

Yesterday struggled through the biting wind to the Chinese New Year festivities in and around Trafalgar Square. Very flash entertainment on the stage - maybe from China itself - but I hope they had some space heaters because some of the entertainers were not wearing very much, at least by comparison with me. And the recession must be getting here because the Metropolitan Police had parked a recruitment bus dressed up as a dragon on the edge of the square and had a huge queue of people queuing in the cold to make enquiries, if not to sign up then and there. Culinery highlight of the day was a sort of yellow cup cake filled with a sweet and savoury red goo. Said to be bean something, but very good.

Back in Epsom, warmed up with boiled smoked haddock with white cabbage and mashed potato. Having forgot to make hash (having obtained permission on this occasion), thought instead to beef up the potato with a good ration of chopped bacon (proper smoked streaky from Cheam that is) and onion fried in butter. So the overall effect of the meal was not that differant from that of the forgotten hash. Warmed us up to the extent that visiting TB no longer seemed like a good idea.

Struggled through the heavy snow to the library, having decided that cycling to Cheam might be a bit silly even if practical. Which it might have been if one did not mind walking in the side roads. Oddly, no tracks in the snow from birds or animals - although we did see one long tailed tit. Snow of snowman quality and we managed a wheel on Court Rec. Got up to about two feet in diameter when it started to crumble. Should have gone for a spherical rather than a cylindrical job which was too thin to support its weight. Some other people had managed a ball about a metre across. Their problem was not so much collapse as the thing getting too heavy to roll. Maybe we will do the snowman thing on return to town after joining the run on our local Waitrose.