Sunday, August 30, 2009
Cooking times
On Friday, to the Leather Bottle of Garrett Lane. One of perhaps four Young's houses on or in the vicinity of that lane. This one now a gastropub with smoking dens front and back. Must have spent a fortune on umbrellas. Does H. Harman have shares in their manufacturer? On Friday, mainly home to bright young things, a noticeable proportion with (old) colonial accents. However, they also did snacks. So instead of pie or cheese & onion roll, one had a choice of three platters at around £10 a pop. One cheesy, one fishy and one ducky. We elected for ducky and were soon presented with a very fetching slab of tropical rain forest - which could have graced an art gallery if one had bothered to erect it on a tasteful stand - with duck on top. Hot duck leg to be precise, presumably fresh from the freezer via the microwave. Plus one pot of slivvered cucumber, one pot of slivvered green pepper and a rather large pot (without spoon) of plum sauce. Plus six cold pancakes. Plus a special knife to get the duck off the bone. All very nicely presented. There was also a squareish white plate for each of us, with good quality knife and fork. Restaurants are getting much better as regards cutlery; mostly it is quite decent these days. All in all, an interesting snack. A bit exotic, while easy on the kitchen. But let down by both quantity and quality of pancakes, which were a little thick by Chinese standards and a little rubbery in texture.
On Saturday, to the Cricketers at Stamford Green Pond, where they do quite a decent line in Greene King IPA. Plus native rats scampering around outside. BH not too sure about these last. Are they ecological for preservation or vermin for extermination? The barman thought that, give the proximity of the common eco-preserve, ecological had the edge over vermin. But, more important, more interesting grub. It seems that Ember Inns are going in for charity stunts this weekend, and the Jamaican cook at the Cricketers offered some Jamaican grub as his contribution. So we had jerk chicken with pink rice (the pink coming from a modest admixture of beans) and Johnney cakes. The chicken was good, although I doubt whether it had ever been jerked. My understanding is that meat is jerked by tearing the fresh meat into thin strips then drying it in the sun. One then has a chewy product which lasts more or less indefinately provided it is kept dry. A technique for preservation favoured in the South West of the US according to Cormac McCarthy (born Charles. Changed, presumably, to something thought more catchy). The Johnney cakes were something else. A bit like cheese scones in taste and texture, but looking more like dumplings and actually made of corn meal and flour then shallow fried. Somehow they got to be brown all over. Excellent. But cutlery neither nice nor clean (see above).
The DT also excells in ranting over the last few days. First there was the piece about the national scandal of some deserving middle class family being ripped off to the tune of perhaps £100,000, as their contribution towards the care of their demented relative. It seems that there is an emerging rule whereby if you are old and demented the cost of your care is met by central funds whereas if you are just old the cost of your care is met by you or your family. DT announces which much gusto that this case will open the floodgates of people suing for restorative action. Approving quotes from the lawyers who will make hay from this flood. But not a flicker of interest in the rather tricky issues involved here. Who should pay? Why is being demented more deserving than being blind or deaf? Why should someone previously feckless now demented be treated for free while someone previously careful now demented have to pay? Standard of public debate remains feeble on this, as on most other matters.
At some point in the past, I feel sure that I have promoted the idea that the financial services sector gobbles up rather more corn that its contribution to the nation would suggest was appropriate, prompted by a review in the TLS. But I cant' find it; in the process becoming convinced that the search blog facility is rather capricious in its workings. Can't find financial services and can't see the logic in what it does or doesn't find. Have to poke around the help pages. Maybe it only indexes words which it judges to be important, rather than all words.
Anyway, yesterday the DT saw fit to publish a prominent piece sourced from one Lord Turner (Jonathan Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell), previously a grand fromage in Merrill Lynch, now a public servant, presumably in a final salary pension scheme, about how, maybe, we need to cut the financial services sector down to size. That maybe the parasite element was getting a bit big relative to the useful element. The peice was decorated with some very large graphics telling one very little, certainly nothing bearing on whether these people were really earning their oats or just coining them. Which reminds me that coining used to be a very serious offence. Hang draw and quarter job if memory serves. I had thought to make enquiries about Merrill and their contribution to the world, but it seems that their web site is not Chrome friendly. So that will have to wait.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Troilus
Troilus and Cressida now turned up from Newton Stewart and pleased to find that I have got a hardback of the 1982 blue series, not a paperback at all. Late of the Department of English Literature in the University of Sheffield and complete with extensive if discrete annotations in pencil. Perhaps the Department of English has moved on from the bard and has no further need for Ardens.
Having finished the current crop of Fred Vargas, moved back to Churchill on Marlborough, volume 2. Came across a pleasant story about life at the source of democracy as we know it. Back in 1701 there was a chap called Henry St John. His father had been fined £16,000 for killing someone in a brawl and he was the right honourable member of parliament for Wootton Bassett (pronunciation Barset). He took after his father and was known for keeping the most expensive lady in town, one Miss Gumley. Miss Gumley was what was then called a demirep (a contraction of demi-reputation), the English not caring to use the French term demimondain. Mr John, when not entertaining Miss Gumley, used to go in for stunts liking streaking in the park while drunk. He was also well educated and a formidable public speaker. Plus he was ambitious. So he needed to pick an issue with which to make his name. So he picked on something called occasional conformity and waxed eloquent upon the iniquity of people in high places who only attended service occasionally. Possibly, even, attended chapel in between times. The issue being a big deal at the time, with the boozing Tories being all for ecclesiastical conformity and the sober, hard working Whigs being more relaxed. All of which makes me think that we have not moved on that much in the 300 years which have elapsed since then.
And then there was the story of Marlborough being captured by someone working in the French interest - as it happens, an Irish deserter from the Dutch service. It seems than when the campaigning season had been declared over, a bit like at the end of the football season, the generals liked to go home. This might well involve passing through land fairly much in the hands of the enemy. So the custom was that generals of one side would apply to generals of the other side for passes for safe passage home. But some generals, like Marlborough, did not like to be beholden to the opposing generals in this way and took their chances with an escort. In this case, Marlborough's escort came adrift and he fell into the hands of the Irishman. But his genius surfaced and Marlborough managed to talk&bribe his way out of captivity. It seems that this lucky escape was the subject of great manifestations of joy in the streets of The Hague.
The day before yesterday another go at the neck of lamb stew. This time with Royal Norfolk Potatoes from the rustic car boot sale in the field opposite our hotel in Old Hunstanton. These potatoes were the easiest to scrape that I remember scraping since I left the parental home: I have never managed to grow or buy potatoes that scrape easy, however new they might be or claim to be. Popped them into the stew, more or less entire, for just the last half hour of the two hour cooking process. Perfecto. An easy and reliable recipe.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Ecclesiastical affairs
Took in various churches on our recent swing through North West Norfolk. Started at Little Walsingham, our Lady of which we were told was the next best thing to Jerusalem for those of the middle ages who couldn't afford the fare east. Parked in the village itself, then down the pilgrim way, in the wrong direction, to the Slipper Chapel. (The idea of the slipper chapel being that that was where one removed one's shoes before completing the journey to Our Lady barefoot). One supposes that the pilgrim way had been rerouted to take advantage of the disused railway which happened to run between the two places, in order to get the many pilgrims off the country road. Rather than the other way around with the railway hijacking the pilgrim route as the best available, back in the eighteen fifties or whenever, when railways were probably far more important than pilgrimages by Catholics, despite emancipation.
I did not find the Slipper Chapel, the attached candlarium (rather warm and aromatic) or the church very holy. The whole place rather reminded me of a holiday camp with its extensive provision of car parks, seats, drink, grub and toilets for the large number of pilgrims. Very few of whom were actually present on our day.
Back along the road to take in the church of Houghton St Giles. A much more holy place which, amongst other attractions, had a very ancient rood screen, complete with medieval painted panels. It seems that there a number of such screens in Norfolk, and we were indeed to see another later in the weekend.
And so back to Walsingham for tea in one of the many tea rooms. Ours was clearly one of the better, as the lady of the house was spotted coming in with a very large swede to go with the Sunday roasts. Proper veg.. Although we made do with tea and cake. Then onto the relatively newly built shrine proper, presumably on the site of the one done over by Henry VIII. Another large facility designed in red brick for lots of people. Which included a rather impressive church, although we were not able to inspect it properly as a service was in progress. The sort of service that seemed to consist mainly of a catalogue of various frightful complaints together with honourable mentions for the various Toms, Dicks and Harrys who had them. The catalogue recited in a North American accent. I suppose the place has become a English Lourdes.
The next day, to the church at Old Hunstanton, where we saw another rood screen. This one had been quite extensively restored, but the paintings looked original enough. Another feature of the church was a semi-detached entry porch with elaborately carved round open windows to both sides. Something else of which we were to see more later in the weekend. Outside, something entirely new to me. A stone gate, a stone version of a wooden farm gate, lying on its side and doing service as a grave stone. Inscription about being the gate to heaven. Looked at least a hundred years old. Rather expensive thing to make, I would have thought. The village surrounding the church, such as it was (neither shops, pubs nor bus stops) was very twee and constructed in an eclectic mix of low grade red stone, flint, chalk and rubble. Would have looked a bit tatty new but age had calmed it down nicely.
The day after that, to the giant church at Snettisham, apparently the model for the cathedral church at Fredericton, although I am not sure I would have known from the picture at http://www.christchurchcathedral.com/. There was also the second coffin trolley that I remember coming across, the first being somewhere in the Somerset Levels. Complicated but lightweight wooden contraption with iron wheels and leather straps. But the church was most notable for us in that, it provided a public toilet, something parish churches rarely do. With the lavatory basin more or less on top of a black stone marking the grave of someone from the 17th century. BH tells me that parochial councils can get into a bit of a twitch about this sort of thing. Clearly the priest needs facilities, on the other hand one does not want to mix the sacred with the profane. Some sort of sensible compromise needed. But that might well be the pointer to why such things are not generally available, or at least visible to the public. Which reminds me of something in, perhaps, George Elliot about how people who work churches, either as priests or lady volunteers, are far less precious and holy about them than the rest of us. Must try and track down the reference.
I am punting for her, given her youthful enthusiasm for the church and the fair amount of church in her novels. Not Austen but I guess Trollope is a possible. He did churches too.
The last church was the second Norman church at Castle Rising. That is to say, the first Norman church had got buried in the castle embankment. Another rather impressive place with some interesting carvings on corbels, capitals, the ribs of arches, the blind colonnades worked into the faces of walls (which I think have a proper name, but I can't bring it to mind) and around doorways. Some of it was probably quite old and some of it reminded me of older English strapwork. I suppose the Normans had to put up with their Saxon masons reverting to type from time to time if they wanted to get the job done at a reasonable rate. Plus there was another rather elaborate semi-detached porch.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Lampreyland
BIL the fisher (the billfisher?) claimed that he had never come across lampreys in all his hours on the dykes. Which I thought was odd. However, later in the day we were calmly esconced in the back bar of the Ancient Mariner Inn, an inn which appears to be an annex of the Le Strange Hotel, when we noticed one of those wall posters of fish on the wall. Lo and behold, in the bottom left hand corner was a lamprey. Opposite the poster was another couple, so I took a chance and asked the gent. what he knew about lampreys. Which was that, top whack, they grew to about half a metre, that they lived in the mud of the mud flats of North Norfolk and that they were used for bait by fisherman, rather than being caught on their own account. There was also, I think, something about only using fresh water bait to catch fresh water fish and salt water bait to catch salt water fish. Or possibly vice-versa.
Have now checked in my fish book, and I think he was about spot on in his description of larval sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus), which do indeed live in the mud for some years before emerging to mature and spawn. Not to be confused with river lampreys (Lampetra fluvialitis). Book also claims that lampreys are of no angling value. Not sure whether this means that they are not to be caught with rod and line or that one doesn't. The Swedes still catch the things in nets and eat them, while we do not, although it seems that one or two of our kings died of eating the things back in the middle ages, at which time they were considered a delicacy, the dying possibly because the royal cooks did not know how to draw the toxins from the lampreys' skins. Bath in salt is the thing, it seems. This draws mucus from the skin, the toxins coming along too. The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, generally reliable, does not mention lampreys at all. Dorothy Hartley denies ever having cooked or eaten the things herself although she does provide two recipes. Must ask the Finn of our acquaintance whether they do.
On the other hand, even if we do not eat them, mature lampreys on their way up river to spawn are much eaten by larger seagulls, otters and mink. I don't suppose any of these charectars bother with the salt bath, so we presume that they have more robust digestive systems than we do.
I conclude this chapter with one last lamplet. It seems that the things are a major pest in the great lakes of North America. Linking the lakes to the sea with canals let the things in where they fed enthusiastically on the local fish. Rather wastefully, in that they bore into the thing, have a bit of a munch and then let go. The partially eaten fish then expires and the partially satisfied lamprey moves on to the next one.
Next stop, hunt the Le Stranges. Or the L'Estranges. The top family in Hunstanton for hundreds of years, who gave their name to various licensed premises, who achieved baronet status at the very least, but who appear to be missing from Burke. Perhaps they only now exist in the female side and have been swallowed up by some other mob. Perhaps the Burke people are very fierce about expunging extinct families in order to keep the volume of the thing down, considerable as it is at about 12 inches in three volumes (see above).
Confused along the way by the strange attitude to sorting taken by the Burke people. Names like 'Le Plod' are sorted in the index as if they were spelt 'Leaplod'. The 'Legge-Bourke's appears between 'Legge, Barbara' and 'Legge, Charles'. Odd, but one can see what has happened. The only L'Estranges appear between Leseux and Leslie. Can't see what has happened here at all. And these L'Estranges only get a mention as the spogs of a male Brisbane L'Estrange who married into the Tyrwhit family. I wonder if the publishing software presumably used to produce Burke allows user interference with the sort order of odd names of this sort? Do you just have to go with what it does out of the box? Not really good enough if you care about names, as the Burke people presumably do.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Road woes
Just back from East Anglia, having been delayed somewhat in both directions at the Dartford Crossing, as far as I could make out, a direct result of having to been processed through the tolling gadgets which relieve you of £1.50. Almost a complete waste of space as far as I am concerned. The gadgets concerned, apart from causing delays, must have cost a fortune to install and a small fortune to run. Their existance does nothing to deter me from using the crossing, as any other route across the river would be time consuming in the extreme, quite apart from creating nusiance on the suburban roads onto which I would divert. There is a modest incentive to use the thing at night when it is free, but that is only going to make a very small differance, if any, to my behaviour. So my vote is that such things - crossings, that is - should come out of general taxation and be free at the point of consumption, rather than contributing to the profits of bankers through the private finance initiative. Not sure that they are a very deserving tribe just at present.
And then there was the rather unsatisfactory refreshment experience at Bishops Stortford, aka Birchanger Green. Greeted by very confusing signage on entry. Followed by an unpleasantly noisy area for the buying of tea, coffee and so on. So on out into the smoking den to consume tea away from the noise. The other thing that went wrong, I can't put down to the service area operator. That is the provision of full strength milk to add to your tea. This caused me much confusion, being much more used to the rather feeble green top stuff which behaves quite differantly in tea, having virtually no active ingredients. More confusing signage on exit, but we did manage to get back onto the southbound carriageway on the first attempt, without being honked. In fact, I managed the whole trip with only one honk - which I earned when stopping to let a lady out of a side turning, while rolling along in very slowly moving, thick traffic. The lady declined to be let out - no idea why not - and somebody behind me thought fit to honk his or her displeasure.
In between times, intrigued by an entirely new sort of container lorry which included a two part contraption for lifting the container on and off the lorry - one part of the contraption at each end of the container. Must be quite an awkward thing to do with an on-board crane - which might be why I have never seen such a thing before. But then, if I take delivery of a container in my small yard - perhaps I import furniture from the Far East - how I am supposed to get the container off the lorry? Presumably people in a small way who cannot afford the sort of gear you have at container ports do take delivery of containers, but I have never seen it done. Perhaps the lorries concerned have rams like the lorries which carry the big rubbish containers which are about the same size as the containers I am talking about here. Must keep an eye out.
And then there was the smart white lorry saying Guardian, which looked as if it was custom built to carry in a very secure and private way a very large roll of kitchen paper. I wondered whether the Grauniad was into shipping its own very special rolls of newsprint about the country. But the lorry also said http://www.guardian.com/ which appears to be the web site of a glass manufacturer from Michigan - nothing to do with the Grauniad at all. So I remain intrigued by what this lorry was doing. Clearly take the odd newky to come to a decent solution.
And then there was the rather unsatisfactory refreshment experience at Bishops Stortford, aka Birchanger Green. Greeted by very confusing signage on entry. Followed by an unpleasantly noisy area for the buying of tea, coffee and so on. So on out into the smoking den to consume tea away from the noise. The other thing that went wrong, I can't put down to the service area operator. That is the provision of full strength milk to add to your tea. This caused me much confusion, being much more used to the rather feeble green top stuff which behaves quite differantly in tea, having virtually no active ingredients. More confusing signage on exit, but we did manage to get back onto the southbound carriageway on the first attempt, without being honked. In fact, I managed the whole trip with only one honk - which I earned when stopping to let a lady out of a side turning, while rolling along in very slowly moving, thick traffic. The lady declined to be let out - no idea why not - and somebody behind me thought fit to honk his or her displeasure.
In between times, intrigued by an entirely new sort of container lorry which included a two part contraption for lifting the container on and off the lorry - one part of the contraption at each end of the container. Must be quite an awkward thing to do with an on-board crane - which might be why I have never seen such a thing before. But then, if I take delivery of a container in my small yard - perhaps I import furniture from the Far East - how I am supposed to get the container off the lorry? Presumably people in a small way who cannot afford the sort of gear you have at container ports do take delivery of containers, but I have never seen it done. Perhaps the lorries concerned have rams like the lorries which carry the big rubbish containers which are about the same size as the containers I am talking about here. Must keep an eye out.
And then there was the smart white lorry saying Guardian, which looked as if it was custom built to carry in a very secure and private way a very large roll of kitchen paper. I wondered whether the Grauniad was into shipping its own very special rolls of newsprint about the country. But the lorry also said http://www.guardian.com/ which appears to be the web site of a glass manufacturer from Michigan - nothing to do with the Grauniad at all. So I remain intrigued by what this lorry was doing. Clearly take the odd newky to come to a decent solution.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Composting
I thought it was time to share some pictures of the refurbished compost bin. Note the two layers of concrete. We need to work harder at generating kitchen waste because at the present rate of knots it is going to be nothing like full when the time comes for the Autumn distribution.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
PC catches piglet flu
Surfing away on Chrome in the blogosphere yesterday and tried to visit a blog I have visted from time to time in the past. The address of what looks like a porn blog - of which I had no prior knowledge - appears in the address field and promptly vanishes again. PC - or at least the Chrome part of it - seizes up. Close Chrome and try again. Appears to start OK, but all sites unavailable. Close the PC and try again. No change. Close the PC and try again with that old product called Internet Explorer. Same sort of thing, in that it starts up OK, but cannot reach any sites. But then it kicks the recently installed BT Total Broadband Desktop (or some such) into life, which then proceeds to trundle through various diagnostic activities. And, lo and behold, after a while everything springs into life again. So plus marks to Internet Explorer for knowing about and firing up the BT Desktop and plus marks to the BT Desktop for sorting the problem out. As intended by the publishers of the thing, no need to talk to Bangalore on this occasion.
I wonder if the transient porn site was trying to have some improper relationship with the non-porn site I was trying to visit?
HSBC have redeemed themselves after my new credit card performance last week. New card turned up very promptly, perhaps in the morning of the third working day after the performance. And I managed to go through the activation sequence without accident and then went on to make a purchase. Which happened to include some kippers from Craster via Waitrose. Very nice they were too. Although we wonder where exactly in Craster they came from. Our recollection of Craster is that it is a fairly small village containing a tar covered smokery which was reported burnt down some years years ago. Where have they put something big enough to feed Waitrose? Do the things pass through Craster on their way down south? Rather like the cows that pass through Scotland on their way to our tables, thus entitling them to the moniker of Scotch beef.
Yesterday was the day of the last red cabbage from Exminster - where a neighbour appears to have got red fingers. BH delegating its preparation to me, I turned up a recipe in our trusty Radiation cook book. Fry some chopped bacon and onion in dripping while some other ingredients are being collected. Grate potato. Ounce of sugar. Couple of peeled apples. Half a finely sliced red cabbage. On my own initiative, I add a tomato and a half thoughtfully left out by the BH. Chopped. Maybe a pint of water. Stir the whole lot up and simmer for an hour so so. Not bad at all, although it might have been even better with a bit longer. The non cabbage ingredients would have had time to break down into a red goo. The recipe said that it would do well with fatty meat so we did it with toad in the hole, which we thought probably involved enough fat to qualify as all the fat in the sausages finds its way into the hole, rather than being poured off at the end of the cooking period. Spent the rest of the day feeling rather full.
Last activity of the day was attempting to buy an Arden edition of Troilus and Cressida against a shrink wrapped performance of the same at the Globe. In the course of which I make the interesting discovery that the only two hardback copies for sale in the Abebooks world were printed in 1935 or so and swung in at $140 or so. Sadly, I had to settle for one of the many paperback versions - which are OK but not so easy to handle. You have to hold them open rather than their staying open at the right page of their own accord. But they swung in at the more manageable $10 or so. Plus postage. Checking the Ardens I have already, I find that plenty of them were printed well before 1935 and that I paid nothing like $140 for any of them. Maybe I am sitting on paydirt, the word perhaps being appropriate to their somewhat scruffy condition.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Energy crisis solved!
There is a casual claim in last week's TLS (a propos of a review of book about how we got to the moon), that a single shuttle load of some moon gear called helium-3 could supply the US energy needs for a year. On initial investigation, it seems that there have been sci-fi films on this very topic. By way of further investigation, ask Mr G. and he knows all about the whole business. So I plump for http://www.technologyreview.com/ which says it is published by MIT and so ought to be respectable. Assuming that it is not some arms-length or off-shore media operation which simply pays MIT to use the name. Can't be bothered to check up on that just now.
Anyway, on the basis that it is respectable, I find some interesting stuff. If mining the moon were to become interesting, we would be likely to have four players: the US, Russia, India and China. Would we manage to come to some sort of arrangement for shared access? Could the US bear not to be the only player? Our record on such things in the last few hundred years not too inspiring. Plus, sadly, it seems to be a fairly big if. One needs a fusion reactor to burn helium-3. Now we do have such things, coming in various shapes and sizes, but most of them do not burn helium-3, despite the various theoretical advantages of same. We look to be some way off - decades - being able to show a profit on these things.
I am reminded of once reading about how much legal people loathe expert advisors. It seems that the legal view is that experts never agree among themselves, are always changing their minds and are generally a apain in the backside. Bit like geeks. Although you might think that this would be a useful generator of barrister chargeable hours. Maybe the legal people in question are the judges rather than the barristers; the people who want to get the right decision, quick and on the cheap. But, reverting to fusion, what about the poor old politicians who have to decide whether to bung a few more billion at fusion research? No chance of getting it right at all.
The TLS also tells of another interesting endeavour, namely the publication of the correspondance of one Sir Joseph Banks. He must have been a very busy chap because this installment runs to seven volumes and 3500 pages with the promise of more to come. First thought was, what a terrible waste of energy. What can possibly be so interesting about an 18th century botanist? Is it really so important what he wrote about magnolias? Who is paying for all this stuff? But then, I notice that the interesting endeavour is being undertaken by Pickering and Chatto (http://www.pickeringchatto.com/), once of Pall Mall but perhaps now of Bloomsbury Way. As far as I know they have not been nationalised and they do need to turn a pound. But then one thinks that the pound they turn must be virtually all generated by the academic libraries who hoover up one copy apeice of everything they produce. 1,400 universities in the US, 2,300 in India and 21,789 in China would make for a respectable print run. Although it may be that the Chinese have not signed up to the appropriate copyright agreement and only buy a single copy for reproduction nearer home. But, for books of this sort, a print run of 3,701 might be quite respectable. And that is not counting the 132 universities in this country. My point being that this is all public money. So while Pickering and Chatto might look like a private sector operation, they are a fully integrated part of a scam by university librarians to extract money from the world's taxpayers. I'm sure the late P. Larkin would have heartily approved.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Rotund thoughts
Have been turning over the business of the various people who like to see photo ID these days, usually, I think, in the form a a new driving license (mine does not run to photos) or a passport of any age. They have had photos for at least as long as I have had passports. Now the point is, at HSBC, they only glanced at the thing in a very cursory fashion. So I imagine it would be easy enough to make a forgery which could stand up to such examination. Would not stand any kind of proper check against central records but most of the people checking such IDs do not have access to central records, although I suppose that might well come with time. Ditto driving license. So is there a whole cottage industry out there of people making low grade forgeries?
Next question is, what evil things could I do, armed with a passport with my picture and someone else's name? Evil enough and long term enough to make getting the passport both worth while and practical? Item 1, I could sign up with a solicitor and sell the someone else's house, supposing the house to be empty and the someone else to be absent, perhaps abroad, in prison or in some other form of residential care. Item 2, if I also had a bank card which had yet to be stopped, I could go into a bank, have the PIN number changed and acquire funds. For this to work, one would have to target the person and organise the passport. Then pinch the bank card in such a way that the owner did not notice for a while.
I dare say I could dream up some more items. So I think there is money in this for someone.
Getting more rotund, I have been pondering about the business of the MP who, with his wife, walked out of a constituent's wedding, on the grounds that it was segregated and that, in consequence he would not be able to sit with his wife. Now I am no Muslim, and their rules on women generally and segregation in particular are not for me. But that is mainly a matter for them and if I chose to go to a couples' wedding, I am agreeing to play the game their way. It seems astonishing that a Minister of the August Crown would not know this. BH's first thought was that as a Labour MP, it was most unlikely that he would have gone to a public school and learnt some manners. I was not so convinced, as I have come across plenty of public school types who can be very rude when they choose, although to be fair they have also learnt to be charming, even smarmy, when they choose. I learn from his web site (http://www.jimfitzpatrickmp.co.uk/) that he is a fireman from Glasgow, who has clambered the heights of New Labour on the back of the Fire Brigades Union. So what have we learnt about firemen?
Two Chromo (the newish browser from Google) snippets. First, for, I think, the second time, it has failed when playing the HSBC banking game. Had to revert to Internet Explorer to get the job done. Second, I worry slightly about how much Chromo seems to remember about web sites I have visited. So, for example, as a good citizen, I was logging my electricity meter reading online. Relevant utility site temporarily out of action, a fact which it did not manage to impart until I had gone through half the login rigmarole. But, some time later, Chromo had thoughtfully remembered the login rigmarole and only needed a gentle prompt for it to fill them it in again for me. Now assuming that it is Chromo doing this, rather than the utility site, do I really want Chromo to remember all this stuff? What happens if my PC falls into the hands of bad people. Will they be able to recover my electricity logon credentials from somewhere deep inside?
Monday, August 17, 2009
Eblazer
Readers will no doubt be pleased to hear that we are now eblazers of 8 days standing with one purchase through paypall to our credit. The first time we tried this, some months ago, completely failed to register. System having a bad day. Perhaps it is very busy after lunch on Sunday afternoon and there is no football on. Anyway, the second time we tried, sailed through without any problems at all. I forget how much pack drill there was so it can't have been too bad. And then we started our first purchase. Tell us about travelling cots with 10 miles. There turn out to be several, one with a starting bid of about 10p and a closing date of a few hours later. Acquire cot for about 175 times the opening bid. Master the paypall logon. BH trundles over to Coulsdon to collect the thing the following day. Everybody happy. Particularly impressed with the speed with which the eblazer emails reach google. Practically instantaneous. One presumes that there is a very big pipe between the two organisation.
I wonder how long it will be before I am moved to make another purchase? All very convenient when you actually want a specific something, but not as much fun as Hook Road Arena on a warm summer's morning. I suppose one could have a differant sort of fun devising and applying all kinds of cunning bidding strategies, but not the same as herds of people of all shapes and sizes milling around junk of the same sort.
Moving on, for some time now, I have had two clear plastic covered seed trays as window boxes. The idea was stick a bit of wet compost in the base of the tray, cover, leave and see what happens. Lesson 1 was that whatever happens, happens fairly slowly. The stuff growing looks healthy enough, but it grows very slowly. The stuff included grass, several kinds of moss and various small weeds. Plus some odd small green plants, with something like the shape of a daffodill flower, but entirely green and growing up to about 1cm across, sessile.
However, I made the mistake of thinking that as long as there was condensation underneath the lid, there was water. Lesson 2, this is not the case. The compost can be pretty dry even when condensation is present. As a result most of the moss has died off, although the grass seems to be doing OK. So much watering over the last couple of days. Maybe the moss will take off again. In the meantime, the trick is to water the things through the access holes without taking the lid off and without making a prodigious mess. Once the lids were off it would be quite a business to get all the plants tucked back inside again in order to put the lids back on. A proceeding to be avoided.
But the most important event of the weekend was the test driving of a new-to-us carving knife. It seems that many years ago, FIL collected lots of coupons from Symington's table creams - still obtainable from the better food shops, although I don't think Symington has been around for some years. As a result, he was given a carving knife made by one John Turton of Sheffield, established 1800. Rather a handsome thing with a white handle, presumably either bone or some elderly imitation. Most important, old enough to have a blade made out of steel, rather than stainless steel. So although the thing has been resting, very blunt, at Exminster for many years, it is now in Epsom and with a bit of elbow work with the oil stone the thing now has quite a decent edge. Better than I can usually manage with stainless. So tried it out on the Saturday fore rib and both it and the rib did very well. This last weighed in at around 10 pounds and we more or less did the lot in one sitting, the first time such a thing has happened. Just a little corner left over, enough for a snack when the fresh bread was in the following day. Now was this the beef itself, the cutting of the beef, the cooking or the new knife? Or a combination? The cutting was novel to us in that as well as sawing through the chine, the butcher also cut most of the way through between the meat and the large sawn bone - not the one he had just sawn through though, rather the one sawn through by the wholesaler, this being, I think, the one that is vertical on the live animal. Before tying it all back together again. It certainly made carving easy, but there is, I think, a significantly increased risk of the thing coming apart in the cooking. Which it did not on this occasion, but the risk is there. And the whole point of fore rib is for it to look entire, large and splendid. I shall ponder before buying another.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Terminal letter
Only one French thought this morning. To them, while chef originally meant head and one could talk about the chef of John the Baptist, chef more usually means chief and is used in all sorts of contexts. Chef of division, chef of field gun, chef of building site, chef of family, chef of this that and the other, and last but not least chef of kitchen. I think, if one is in a restaurant, one can contract to chef and will be understood, but the word clearly has a much wider range than it has in English.
Yesterday was the day of the listening bank, in this case HSBC. The man in the off-license discovers that my plastic is slightly split and is not working in his machine. Luckily, there is a plastic 2 which is still in one peice and which works. But in town, so off to the bank to ask them to get me a new one. Yes sir, three bags full sir. Why don't you go and talk to that nice red telephone over there. Red telephone connects me to a talking computer which starts interrogating me. After a while, it sez, key in your security number. So I turn the card over and key that in, like one does when buying something over the phone. Not that one, silly, it sez. The security number I want is not printed anywhere on your card. I want your internet security number. That very long number which you are not supposed to write down. Umm. If you do not key in your security number now I am going to suspend your account. Well, I can no longer memorise numbers of that sort and I certainly don't carry it around with me. So, account suspended. Back to the lady at the front desk. Oh dear. Perhaps you would like to wait for someone to attend to you. I start to get irritated by the piped music. After a few minutes, I am led off to a cubby hole where I explain what has happened. Oh dear, he sez. We can't get any further unless you produce some photo id. What have you got? Well, in the same way that I don't carry secret numbers when I go to the offy, I don't carry photo ids. Sorry sir, but that is the way it is. Stuck until you produce some photo id. Luckily, nothing better to do that afternoon, so I cycle off home, dig my passport out of its very safe place and then back to the bank. After a few more minutes I get led back to the cubby hole. Cursory glance at passport. Rather oddly, he tells me what my address is and asks whether he has got it right. None of this mother's maiden name stuff. He phones up the central bunker and get them to do something to the account. Asks them to send a new card to the address we have just agreed on. Assures me that the account is now fully unblocked and we are back where we started, except that in up to 7 working days I should be getting a new card.
All in all, rather long winded. Why could the lady at the front desk not just have asked her computer to send me a new card? What would have been insecure about that? Why did neither she or the telephone explain that once you started on the telephone without your secret number you were stuffed?
Slightly scary how cross I got when invited to produce some photo id. Luckily I stopped short of abuse - for which I understand from TB that there is now a standard charge. We will see if anything appears on my statement. Wasting red telephone time or something.
I also learnt of a new problem from the TB. Supposing two brothers having been living in a house for forty years. Now around seventy apeice. Once a council house, now a housing association house. Just one of the brothers appears on the rent book. That brother is very ill. Might pop off at any moment. It seems that the housing association have told the other brother that, in that event, he would have to be out the week after. This seems to me to be quite wrong; one can only hope the story is untrue or materially incomplete. But, on the face of it, one would have thought that as a state-subsidised-not-for-profit-provider of social housing, the housing association should simply transfer the tenacy to the surviving brother. Perhaps, in the course of time, gently suggest that perhaps he would like to live in a smaller property to make room for a bigger family. But that could be done in slow time. Out in a week seems oddly brutal. What on earth is going on?
Friday, August 14, 2009
French letters
Continuing to find much early morning diversion in the vaguaries of French vocabulary with respect to our own. So, for example, we learn that while the French have an entirely differant word for mole to ours, taupe, the meaning extends to the sort of cold war mole beloved by Le Carre, in the same way as ours does. A person burrowed into an organisation while really working for the opposition. Does this arise from the felicity of the usage, simple copying of the anglo saxon usage or a mixture of both? Or did the French use of the cold war sort of mole come before our own? I had rather thought that we were more into spy novels than they were and that the word would have come from us rather than them, but who knows?
I then moved onto phoques, which M. Littre told me were amphibious, hairy quadrupeds with very small feet. I shifted from amphibian to frogs and toads and was stuck to think of a hairy one. Had to resort to Harraps which told me that the thing was a seal. From all of which I deduce that the French have just one word for amphibious and amphibian, a word which can be applied to vegetables as well as animals. Perhaps the problem is having the little Littre rather than the big one. The big OED talks about aquatic carnivores with flippers, short tail and thick fur, which I think much more helpful. On the other hand, while we conflate seals with fur and seals for sealing Magna Cartas, the French have separate words.
Third and last we had the story of the daggers. We start with a murder weapon called a poincon. Which appears to mean variously a punch for punching holes, a bradawl, a graving tool, a tool for punching out coins and a stout vertical timber binding to together other timbers at the apex of a roof. Kingpost would be one English word for this last. And, appearing from nowhere, a sort of barrel. The Engish word puncheon has more or less exactly the same range of meaning, including the stray barrel. And there is another French word for dagger, poignard, which one might have thought more appropriate for a murder weapon. Perhaps poincon has extended into some modern bit of slang, not known to M. Littre or Harrap. Along the way we find that a poignard is an 'arme d'estoc', meaning a weapon which is mainly used for stabbing with the point, which leads us onto estoc and all kinds of other interesting complications. Closely related to our word stock.
All adds up to full marks for M. Littre. Much more fun using a good French-French dictionary when trying to decipher a French novel than using a French-English dictionary. French-French is open and leads you up all kinds of fascinating garden paths while English-French just give you a one word answer, quite often the right answer, and leaves it at that. No garden paths at all.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Stew time
I had been about to buy kidneys yesterday, but seeing a sheep's neck on the display, thought it was about time we had a hot pot, something, for some reason or another, we have not had for a while. Despite it having featured regularly in the past. So I get several pounds of neck, chopped at a rate of three peices to the pound and costing about £10. So not the dirt cheap item I remember from the days of youth and breast of lamb - these last coming in at that time for a shilling a pop. Add neck to boiling water which just about covers it. Add a couple of medium sized onions, finely chopped. Add a couple of handfuls of red lentils. Simmer for an hour. Add potatoes, sliced into slices perhaps two thirds of an inch thick. Simmer for a further hour. Meanwhile, prepare cabbage. Serve. Excellent grub and very easy to prepare. Gravy spot on, white and thick enough without having turned into custard. All without the benefit of flour, gravy browning, stock cubes, mixed herbs, salt or pepper. Plus, as it turned out, I was right not to follow the instructions in the book, which I thought I had better consult not having done the thing for a while, but which advised me to add the potatoes at the beginning of operations. I think they would have disolved had I done that. The only real catch would be the amount of fat one is whacking down, given that we finished off what was left of the gravy and the potatoes for tea.
After all this excitement, off to NESCOT (http://www.nescot.ac.uk/) to investigate what they offered in the way of IT training for the retired. Quite a lot as it turns out, and FIL is now signed up for a free assessment of his IT training needs in a training facility near us and, which, as it happens, is a lot nearer our tip. So we will not have any bother finding the place. But much more fun, it turns out that NESCOT includes a serious osteopathic training operation. And, like a hairdressic training operation, they are happy to treat you at very reasonable rates. Provided, of course, you do not mind being attended to by a small herd of students. FIL, having done his time in a related trade, quite happy about that and more than quite happy about his two hour session which came in at the modest sum of £10. About a quarter of what an osteopath on the way to TB charges for a session.
By way of a bonus, while I was waiting, I was reminded of one of the reasons why I am glad to be out of the world of work. That is to say I learned from a wall board that the NESCOT senior management team is made up of a principal, a deputy principal, two vice principals and a bevy of assistant principals. Ladies well represented. Arranged in a natty little hierarchy, the job titles on which did not suggest that any of them did anything so lowly as teaching. Indeed the job titles would have done one of the many government offices which regulate the sector proud. Presumably the place is far too large to have anything like an old-style staff meeting. Perhaps each department has a fortnightly management meeting, attended by its senior management team and supported by a management consultant expert in the latest management wheezes. Rank and file get dealt with in cascade briefings after school.
Good work has continued today with the somewhat delayed delivery and fitting of a new continental rear tyre for the bicycle. Hopefully this will clear the buckled wheel problem - about which so far two people have advised me - and on which the thought was that bulging tyre was the root of the problem rather than bending rim. One person accosting me in TB and the other leaning out of a van window as the van overtook me on the roundabout by St Paul's church, Cheam. No privacy at all in the world of cycles. But refurbished back wheel seemed alright coming back from the cycle shop, and we will see how it bears up on tomorrow's fish run. Odd how irritating a throbbing seat is, and I think it is more than being irritated that a new wheel is not right. The fault irritates in itself.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Bearing witness
Something I am not as good at as I thought I was. The other day I reported on an interesting waste water by-pass made out of large plastic pipes, white with yellow stripes. Now while the by-pass was taken down quite quickly, most of the pipes are still there. And despite my clear recollection of them being white with yellow stripes, they are actually yellow with brown stripes.
Another bunch of people who are supposed to bear witness are surveyors. Now, despite all the noise and waste paper associated with HIPs, the underlying idea is attractive. You collect all the stuff up about a property to be sold and make it available to all comers, up-front. That way you only have to pay once and there are fewer unpleasant surprises. Otherwise, there is a collection every time someone tries to buy the property. Which is presumably, on average, something more than once. Plus the unpleasant surprises. Surveyors and such like people in clover, ordinary decent citizens out of pocket.
So, enter the HIPs, which on plan A were to include a structural survey. But this has fallen by the wayside and so the HIPs are far less useful than they might otherwise have been. Although we do get pretty graphs about the latest eco-fads. So the question is, how did the surveyors get away with it?
One story was that a surveyor produces his report for a client and is responsible for that report to that client. He can't be responsible to everyone and his (or her) dog. But I do not see why not. If the report is materially or unreasonably defective, and it would be easy to devise reasonable procedures for deciding whether a report was materially or unreasonably defective, the surveyor should be liable, whoever it might have been who found the defect or suffered the consequences of the defect. The liabilities could be covered by some sort of insurance - as it is now - and the reports could be filed at the Land Registry for public posterity.
One catch might be that sellers would drift to surveyors who were known not to be too hard on properties. But that could be dealt with by an Offsurf which could regulate the industry. Maybe capped at 500 FTE employees to keep the bureaucracy under control.
Another might be the business of price, against the present background of surveyors playing very safe and giving low valuations, which frighten buyers and the backers who are lending them the dosh. Is it reasonable to include a valuation in a more or less public survey report, remembering the old saw that a house is worth what it fetches on the day?
Another concerns defects in the property, rather than in the report. Suppose there is something in the property which is a bit odd. The seller has had the oddity thoroughly investigated by his surveyor and they decided that all is OK. But we suppose that there was an element of judgement here. Another surveyor might have taken another view. Does the seller have any duty to declare the oddity, only to claim that it is not an oddity? Would such a declaration make the property rather hard to sell? Would prospective vendors see the qualification on the report, shake their heads and move on? Would declaration of everything odd make people very cautious about being odd? Stifle all innovation in the building game?
Moving on from oddities to minor defects, should the seller have a duty to list them ad nauseam, in the way that the buyer's surveyor does now? Where does one draw the line? I do see something of a conflict here. It is up to the seller to explain what is right about a property and it is up to the buyer to explain what is wrong about a property. That is the way buying and selling works.
Furthermore, if I buy a footballer for lots of dosh, I certainly do not take the selling club's word for it that he is OK. I get my own doctor to give him a going over.
I wonder if all this has its roots in our adverserial legal culture. Each lawyer fights his corner and may the best man win. Us anglos are convinced that this is the best way to get at the truth. Every strange and ingenious line of argument gets bashed down to the truth. But buying all those lawyers to do the bashing does not come cheap. Which brings us back to where we started, trying to save some money. Value for money rather than the best possible result on all occasions. So getting the seller to do a survey and to make it available will do most of the time. There are no big issues with most properties. And if the buyer has some big issues, he can always pay another surveyor to do some more. The point is to buy the right house, not to sue surveyors, and most people will be sensible most of the time. So after all this rigmarole, I vote for a survey in the HIP until someone can make a better fist of the argument against than I have.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Outstanding mystery
On at least three occasions (18/8/2008, 8/11/2008 and 18/11/2008) I have mentioned a mystery plant. BIL, I think, might have thought that it was rice. But now, a propos of something else entirely, I came across a picture of common millet (Panicum Miliaceum L.) which looks to be the answer. Mr G. passed me onto http://chestofbooks.com/flora-plants/weeds/Fodder-Pasture-Plants/Common-Millet-Panicum-Miliaceum-L.html where the picture was even more convincing. It seems that the stuff has been grown for thousands of years, but these days, in this country, more as a fodder crop than as a food crop. The only niggle is that the leaves of a millet are said to be hairy while both the photographs and my sketch are agnostic on that point, although the sketch clearly shows the stalk to be hairy. Memory no use at all. But I think I will close this file until and unless something turns up to wobble this identification.
I should say that only niggle is not quite the whole truth. There is another niggle, namely the time it took me to track down the relevant entries in the blog. OK, so there is a search facility which I used with single words and which eventually came up with the sketch, from which I was able to page forward to find the other two entries, happily not too far away. But how could one do better, well short of the bother and bore of adding keywords to every entry? And would keywords have helped? Would one need a controlled vocabulary to make them useful?
I used to use a bulletin board product called Collabra Share (from California. Now, I think, deceased) which had a very whizzy threading capability: maybe that is the clue to a way forward: let one entry refer to another in a clickable sort of way. Then at least the three ancient millet entries would be linked together, and then, if at some point in the future I wanted to add to it, further linkage would be possible. And, maybe it would be easier to find the cluster of three entries than any one of them singly.
While we are on the subject of blogging software, while surfing blogspot, I came across something called wordpress. Said to be a big competitor to blogspot. So I take a look. Big fancy web site. And while you can clearly do all kinds of fancy things with it, including hosting serious sites for serious operations, it looked completely out of my league. Entry cost in my time far to high, while with blogspot entry cost more or less zero. So I am not quite sure why it was bracketted with blogspot. In any event, I think I shall stay put for the time being.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Triffids, episode 2
After a day yesterday with little or no rain, the triffids have all shrivelled up this morning. But I dare say they will reappear when we get some more rain. Current theory is that they are slime moulds, a bunch I had come across in a book about first life. A little poking around with Mr. G. has neither confirmed nor denied the theory. But we do learn that they normally grow on organic waste, for example logs, which is not quite what we have here. I also learn about something with the splendid name of dog vomit mould - a bright yellow spongy looking affair - and I do think we have some of this in the compost heap. A yellow, circular patch about 2 inches across. Must be tolerant of lack of light.
This while we continue to poke around matters taxonomic, which gave rise to a demonstration of the dangers of obtaining books unseen. On the basis of a title in the Surrey library catalogue, found by keyword search, get a book called 'an introduction to plant taxonomy', one of rather a small number of books on taxonomy. But just the ticket. A short monograph introducing the topic to botanists. Not part of its purpose to actually exhibit a tree, but it goes far enough for my purpose. I then pull 'the animal kingdom: a guide to vertebrate classification and biodiversity'. While about the same volume as the first book, this second book turns out to be a childrens' picture book. Probably suitable for a junior school. I do think the title is a bit misleading, although perhaps the biodiversity bit of the title should have triggered a warning signal.
Having got tired of that one, moved onto French vocabulary. Now I had known for some time that some idoms translate word for word, so 'honey moon' is 'lune de miel'. But others do not. So 'deadend' is 'impasse'. One gets the gist but it is not a word for word translation. Moving on, I learn yesterday that 'crane' works like honeymoon. That is to say the French word for 'crane' means both the bird (which I guess are a good deal more common in France than they are in England - which makes our usage a bit odd) and the thing you have on building sites for humping stuff about. There is also a vulgar meaning of a common prostitute, slag or slut. They also have a water crane which appears to mean the things you used to have on railways to get water into steam engines and a water castle which appears to mean a fancy fountain. A model of Mont St Michel in a pond or perhaps the Trevi fountain.
Perhaps this was all triggered by the excitement of finding a temporary waste water by-pass at St Paul's church the other day on the way to the baker. Two large holes in the ground, maybe twenty yards apart. Large supply of heavy duty plastic pipe. Maybe a foot in diameter, white with narrow yellow stripes running along it. Presumably a colour coding for something or other. Various people standing about in high visibility jackets to make sure you knew that the council was on the case. A long stretch of said pipe with a pump on wheels in the middle. I assume the idea was that you poke one end of the pipe down one hole, the other down the other, turn the pump on and isolate the underground stretch of sewer inbetween the two holes. Not sure whether one would need to prime the pump, or if one did, how one would do it. It would take a lot of buckets of water to fill the thing up. In all events, the whole contraption was being taken to peices the following day, so a quick job, whatever it was they were up to.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
The day of the triffids
Strange plants appearing in the rubble which passes for a path next to the shed. Scattered over maybe half a square metre. Each bubble like thing maybe two thirds of a centimetre in diameter. Maybe the result of being a spring, draining the back garden which slopes up as it goes back. How does one find out what they are? Upper left hand shot a close up of the lower right hand shot. Both done with telephone. Maybe I should have used FIL's Olympus for a higher grade botanical shot.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Visit to the southern capital of the western region
Down to Exminster for a few days. Did not make it to the regional capital of the west - a place also known as Exeter - but we did make it to the southern capital - a place also known as Tavistock. A phrasing copied from the Chinese, whom I think used to have northern and southern capitals. Found some new things in the church of BH's special Saint Eustacius. To whit, one very small white mouse carved into the end of a pew by way of signature by the carpenter who made them. One rather bigger white friar made into the bottom of the stained glass of the northeastern window for the same purpose. We learn that the posh chaps - W. Morris and E. Burne Jones - who knocked up the northwestern window between them - might have been arty but did not know much about stained glass. Their effort is in a bad way compared to the efforts of their contemporaries, which look brand new if rather less arty. I had learnt, some years previously, that the craftsmen who make the engines for posh cars make their marks on them. And I learnt, from someone passing the white mouse, that the craftsmen from up north did something of the sort with the new Wembley stadium by tying their Middlesborough scarves into the steel work (from Dorman Long and others) holding the roof up. Middlesborough will always have a peice of the action there! (Going back via Widdecome, we found a large church there, a smaller version of that at Tavistock. The same white barrel vaulted nave & aisles, with sparse black timbers with interesting bosses. (Those at Tavistock including the odd green man, although not as outlandish as those at Ely)).
Having pondered about the absence of buzzards on the way over Dartmoor, was rewarded by the sight of two of them very high over the weir on the river Tavy at Tavistock. Never seen buzzards so high above the ground. Also rewarded by a sight of the expensive looking contraption guarding the entrance to the hydro electricals there actually doing something. It turns out to be a robot for scraping the detritus off the screen which stops the fish getting into the hydro electricals and dumping it a bit further down the river. The thing looks as if it cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, which would have paid some unemployed graduate in mixed ecosciences from Princetown Uni. to do a spot of training on the job with hand tools for some years. I wonder who does the sums on these things?
Excellent fish and chip shop at Tavistock. Very well fed for the second time running, in my case on haddock, chips, mushy peas and two slices. Every bit as good as anything which could be obtained in the metropolis - and about the same price as it happens.
The bookshop in the pannier market did not do so well. They were offering me a rather old red everyman edition of Rousseau's confessions for £6. No comparison with the far smarter modern everyman edition I had bought from Epsom library for 40p the week before, complete with white dust cover and clear plastic dust protective cover (vide supra). All in all, rather expensive for a stall in an indoor market. There was another stall which did everything for a pound, including two two volume sets of War & Peace (one pound for each volume). But no buy, already having a perfectly good copy already. Don't read it that often that I need to get a spare in. Reminded of the moan in the DT from the secondhand book trade about how they are being done in by all those Oxfam bookshops. Not fair that they don't have to pay proper rent or rates. Don't think I have a view. Oxfam bookshops are quite well stocked, if a little pricey, and the profits - I assume there are some - do go to a well intentioned cause. On the other hand, secondhand bookshops are a very mixed bag and a lot of them, to my mind, have rather grand ideas about what their stuff is worth. Used to do well at car boot sales but their books seem to have drifted down-hill. Still cheap but not interested.
On the other hand, in the Oxfam shop in Tavistock with the huge collection of vinyl, I did get some duplicates, vinyl being quite hard to get these days. Two discs of Dvorak for £3.99 and one disc of Brahms for £4.99. Rather odd pricing policy, but giving me three piano quintets, two being duplicates and one new. Keen on piano quintets, so it is good to go in for belt and braces. I could have had a whole lot of Chopin by Rubenstein which I suppose would have been a good thing, him being a very big cheese of yesteryear, but I am not sure my ear is good enough to justify that amount of duplication and so I abstained. Maybe it will still be there next time we visit.
Along the way, rereading the first of my new Fred Vargas, from which I share two snippets. First, it seems that the French police are organised a bit differant from ours. So in Paris anyway, you have a number of detective brigades, each in their own house, with a commissioner in charge. Members of the brigades are called brigadiers. With ranks lieutenant, captain and commandant. There are also drugs brigades, known as 'Les Stups'. It seems that there is not much love lost between them.
On reflection, I suppose the English and Welsh equivalent is squad. (No doubt the Scots do something differant, being differant in these matters). On television anyway, we have flying squads, fraud squads and drugs squads. But we don't call the people in charge of them commissioners and we don't call the people in them squaddies. Perhaps the French usage reflects a closer link with the army. In the way that some foreign fire brigades are spun off their armies, rather than being a purely civilian operation. Although, that said, I think both policemen and firemen regard themselves as non-civilians in this country. Don't know about the ladies.
Second, it is claimed that if a properly trained archeologist digs out a hole which someone dug previosly, and then got filled in, he can tell you things like how many people worked at digging the hole, whether they were left handed, how tall they were, that sort of thing. Everyone leaves a trace like a fingerprint when they work a pickaxe in a hole. Now Fred Vargas was an archeologist in her previous life, so perhaps she knows. But it seems a little far fetched. Perhaps it only works in certain soils.
And by-the-by I learn that silex is French for flint. But missing from my mini-Littre and I kept guessing it was something to do with willows, a meaning which fitted some of the time. A dictionnary which does not often let me down. And I should of remembered that willow is salix not silex and that it was unlikely that the French would shift the vowels of the Latin, this last being nearer to them than it is to us. But I suppose I was clutching for straws, as one does when struggling with the vocabulary.
Monday, August 03, 2009
Fishtails
Something new about the cod from Friday, consumed on Saturday. Being a smaller quantity than usual, cooked it in a white enamel pie dish, rather than the much larger glass dish. In fact, just the sort of dish that would have been used to hold the fish for the family when I was a child. Clearly eating a lot more than we need now. Covered fish and etc with foil rather than the butter paper that would have been used when a child. But what was odd was that, cooking for about an hour as usual, there was very little juice at the bottom of the pan. Normally we get half a pint or more; on this occasion virtually none, even allowing for the smaller quantity of fish to get it from. The only significant differance was the use of a metal dish rather than a glass one, with the lower specific heat (a term which has miraculously and correctly surfaced from the O-level physics of the distant past) of metal meaning that I was getting more cooking for my money and so more evaporated juice. Against that, the fish was not overcooked, so all a bit of a mystery. Maybe it was a dry fish?
Yesterday was the turn of Sussex Pie. Take four pounds of stewing steak, cut across the grain and which appeared to be arranged in three muscles, two close coupled and the third more loosely coupled. Place at bottom of large glass dish. Add a single onion cut into eighths. Add three tablespoons of port and three tablespoons of mushroom ketchup, which I am allowed to use on this occasion, FIL being away for a few days. Cover with a double layer of foil (too small to be able to make a parcel with it) and cover again with the dish's lid. Cook for six hours at 120C, then one and a half hours at 90C, then drain of the pint or so of gravy and rest for half an hour. Liquidise the onions in the gravy, work in a little glutened flour to thicken a little and return to heat in a saucepan. Add some coarsely chopped mushroom heads and more finely chopped mushroom stalks. Simmer for a bit. Meanwhile, cook mashed potatoes, cauliflower and carrots. Remembering not to peel the carrots, it making so much differance to the flavour and texture of the product. Take solid ingredients with a little Amarande, this last courtesy of Odd Bins. All very good. Sauce excellent. But might have been even better had I cooked the meat for another couple of hours.
As it is, what was left doing quite well cold in the breakfast sandwiches.
All this to accompany my new read. Last week, the French amazon invited me to buy some more books like the last one I bought from them. So I did, and so I now have two more Fred Vargas policiers. It turns out, quite by accident, that one is the sequel of the other. But I did not know this until I was well into the sequel first, a tale involving, amongst other things, three stags killed in an inappropriate way. Don't suppose reading the books in the wrong order matters much. But a good read, once one gets back into the vocabulary. Every author seeming to be differant in that regard. Not something that I notice when reading books in English. Much verse, some from Racine, some from Corneille and some, I think, invented.
I deduce this last by typing some lines from the book into Mr G. and drawing a blank. I then get out my midget edition of Racine, from the King's printer at Paris and Briere, dated 1824 (found in a now defunct secondhand bookshop at Sunbury), and try typing in a few lines from that. Mr G. finds two out of three. From which we deduce that someone has seen fit to digitise some, but not all of Racine. Although the missing one might have been a misprint in my copy of Racine, a misprint or a typo in theirs. I assume that a quoted search requires an exact match after ignoring punctation, accents and capitalisation, a procedure which leaves plenty of room for error. But searching for strings like this without quotes gives too much noise to be of any use at all. I wonder what would happen if I were to try Shakespeare? Or Conrad? Or speeches from the collected works of Mickey Mouse? Altogether a fertile field of enquiry.
The book pulls the same stroke as Dan Brown in his code book, if my understanding of this last, unread, is correct. That is to say you build your story (2006 for Vargas, against 2003 for Brown) around some medieval nonsense, in this case a recipe to make an immortalising potion, involving all kinds of mysterious and dodgy ingredients. For the story to work one does not have to believe the nonsense, but just to believe that some nutter could. Works very well.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Treating ourselves with the same consideration that we treat our pets
It seems that euthanasia is finally on the move in this country, with the ruling, one of the last made by our much loved Law Lords in their present guise, that the DPP has to set out prosecution guidelines for those assisting the suicides of others. Something that one might have thought would have come much sooner given that A. Huxley had hospitals for the dying in 1932 (Brave New World) and E. Bowen had euthanasia centres in 1946 (Gone Away). Not to mention the same sort of thing in Soylent Green in 1973. Maybe now that us baby boomers are coming into the frame, having had largely comfortable lives, largely free of physical misery and pain, perhaps the first generation for which this was true, they do not propose to put up with same at end of life. So not only the nurses (who have moved from anti to on-the-fence), but the law also is on the move.
But the Grauniad made the good point that instructing the DPP to write some guidelines is not a very good way to make the law, if pragmatic at the present juncture. In this country it is the function of the Houses of Parliament, so ably assisted by the European Court of Human Rights, to make laws. The job of the DPP is to apply them, not to make them. If you get the DPP to make law in this field, why not others? Where would it all stop? But I suppose, given the snail's pace at which legislation quite properly moves, a sensible interim measure.
Two lady snippets today. First, I was standing behind a lady in the queue at the baker. Shape, dress and back of the neck said thirty something. Then I noticed her ankles, the tone of which did not go with the tone of the back of her neck. Then I noticed that the roots of her thick dark hair were close to white. Then she turned slightly and she was revealed to be nearer fifty than thirty. At least that was the impression left by the mixed messages. Not a mixture I particularly care for. Second, I was buying the Saturday Grauniad in what used to be our local spar, now anonymous. A saturag which contains rather more news than the Saturday DT and rather less supplements. In the background, ringing voice of small lady: why are you buying beer Mummy? Voice of older lady: because Daddy asked me to. Voice of small lady: why does Daddy drink beer all the time Mummy? Wry smiles light up the faces of the queue. No secrets safe with children of a certain age.
Back at the back garden, and remembering the splendid flowers at the Hampton Court flower show, pleased to find that we have mysteriously acquired a really beautiful gladiolus from somewhere. Not terribly big and the plant itself a bit ragged, but with absolutely super pastel pink flowers. Not too flashy and the flowers not too crowded on the stems. Wonderful things. So in ones and twos we can cut it, even if we can't manage the hundreds need to cut a splash at Hampton Court. The other natural event was a middle sized spider's web (of the wheel variety) hanging outside the kitchen window, about three feet out and six feet up. Highlighted by the droplets of rain it had captured and with a very curled up spider at the centre. But can't work out what it is hanging off. Eyes not up to finding the guy ropes in today's rather dull light.
Continuing to get on well with the Dickens' biography by C. Hibbert (see 29 July) and finishing post now in sight. Clearly rather a strange bird who, I think, in later life, ran to two households in quite close proximity, allowing him to shuttle between them in comfort. This book, about the first of half of his life, suggest streaks of cruelty, mania and exhibitionism in his make-up. Also bursting with energy. Maybe all things which you need if you are going to make the grade in the literary jungle. And I cannot think of anyone famous who is reported as being lazy, maybe barring the odd musician. I can recall hearing of a pianist so gifted that he hardly had to bother with practise. Just flipped the pages of what he had to do in the taxi on the way to the concert hall. Him excepted, I think you have to have pots of energy to make it up the greasy pole. A necessary but not sufficient condition. But Dickens was also very fond of his children and they all had great fun together. At least so far. So not all bad. I must be getting a taste for literary biography, something which I have only been reading at all in the last five years or so. Earlier view being that such biography was a parasitic business. The proper thing to do was to read the book, not the book about the book.
