pumpkinstrokemarrow

This morning, in New York, or at least a version of New York. Bound out of some conference to get the subway to the hotel. Now, in the small number of times I have visited the place, I have not got the hang of their subway. All terribly confusing compared with ours. In the dream, not helped by their idea of a tube map not coding lines by colour. Rather they were coded by symbol, in the way that Ordnance Survey maps code footpaths. So rather than a simple coloured line you get dash symbol dash symbol and so on. Where the symbol might be, for example, a solid diamond or a hollow square. An arrangement I found, in the dream that is, entirely inferior to our own.

On the way home this afternoon we were privileged to see a bicycle using one of the cycle racks provided on Southwest Trains for the very first time. Posh bicycle it was too, nearly new and called Specialised - which was the name of the shop I got my Trek from. Fancy looking thing with very hard core looking caliper brakes. But then I started looking, and I became convinced that the front wheel was slightly bigger than the back wheel. This seemed a bit silly, but on further inspection it turned out that the front wheel had been spoked in an entirely different way to the back wheel. The spokes certainly looked rather different. Different patterns among and between them. So on the front wheel, the spokes ran in from the rim, directly toward the centre, onto the hub, with the whole spoke on a centre line. But on the back wheel, the spokes ran onto the hub, on a tangent, with the central endpoint a couple of centimetres or so off the centre line. I thought that this was maybe to enable the back wheel to better take the shock of two hundred pounds of person bounding up and down on it over the various humps and bumps of the metropolis. It would also account for the back wheel looking slightly smaller than the front wheel. Maybe by a centimetre or so. Must ask my all-knowing bicycle person whether I am anywhere near the truth.

Yesterday was the day of the fatty lump stew, more properly a Lancashire Hot Pot made with neck of south downs lamb raised on organic grass. Usual drill with onions, water, lentils and potatoes. Very good it was too, although I thought that a budding vegetarian might have found it a bit challenging. All very anatomical with lots of interesting bones, tendons and pipes on display. A very fat tendon running down the back of the neck and a very fat pipe (nearly 1cm in diameter) running up front the neck, in particular. Did all the meat in a sitting; the remaining broth will serve for supper today. Big decisions to be made about whether to liquidise or not and whether to scrape off any of the fat or not.

Being a bit short of cooker space the other day, I thought I would try a one ring version of the usually reliable lentil soup. So cook up the lentils in the usual way. About half an hour before consumption, add some carrot. And then, instead of doing onion and bacon in butter, separately, and adding in at the end, just put the onion and some chopped Cheam ham straight in with the carrots, thus saving one ring. Product quite eatable but not as good as the regular version. Texture slightly grainy, presumably because there was less fat to smooth things down. Ham did not do as well as bacon. Bacon comes thicker and fatter and cooks to a loose but lumpy texture with a strong taste. The ham was too firm and just stayed as what looked like pink flecks in the soup without all that much taste - despite having a good strong taste in sandwiches. Nevertheless, despite defects, FIL thought it was OK and we finished it off at the third time of asking this lunchtime. Although I should say that on the third and last occasion I saw fit to gee it up by adding the left over brussels sprouts from yesterday.

Google Chrome continues to update itself on my PC - without any of the prompts asking permission that you get from some other products. (Although it does go in for rather chatty, youth style comments from time to time. Which I find rather tiresome. MS is a bit more neutral in tone and much to be preferred). So just how intimate is the connection between Google and my PC? Should I have actually read the terms and conditions which, somewhere deep inside a whole lot of small print, would probably tell me? Meanwhile, the hard disc on the PC is very active for maybe ten minutes on boot up. Is is Norton doing something tricky? Or Microsoft or Google? Or is the PC simply sick?

After a holiday of some weeks, if not months, done some chores this week. Or at least three. Start with the easy one, topping up the three ponds, which seem to lose level at quite a rate. Not taken measurements, but it is maybe of the order of a centimetre a week. The black plastic pond tubs shouldn't be leaking so presumably some is down to evaporation and the rest is down to livestock taking refreshment. I hope they like chlorine as our tap water has been smelling and tasting a bit fierce recently and I can't be bothered to carry any up the hill to the ponds from our rainwater tub.

We have been puzzling about Franklin's thin state for some time now. Owner has been alleging all along that there is nothing wrong and that he gets fat again in the winter. Well indeed he is. Looking much fatter now that the autumn is setting in.

Some time ago I interupted my reading of Miers on regulating commercial gambling (Oxford, 2004). Chancing to be glancing at it again this morning, I came across the assertion that between the first and second world wars of the last century, in this country anyway, smash & grab, prostitution and horserace gambling were the activities in which organised crime, of which there was plenty, favoured participation. The last two of which were more or less illegal, and with enforcement focused on the working class, then still in existance. Both activities carried on more or less regardless, at some cost in law enforcement and more cost in loss of respect for the law. The toffs, collectively quite fond of both activities could largely get away with it. The working classes were harassed. When will we learn? Much the same position as now, with most recreational drugs illegal, consumption more or less untouched and the toffs (aka celebs) doing it more or less in public. But maybe there is hope yet. A member of the Cabinet no less is suggesting that maybe we should give heroin addicts heroin on the NHS, rather than having them buy dodgy substitutes from crims on the street.

I believe that on the occasion of the Budget, the Treasury publishes something called the 'Red Book', as an accompaniment, but although perusal of their website reveals the existance of both a 'Financial statement and budget report' and an 'Economic and fiscal strategy report' at Budget time, downloading does not reveal the colour of either cover, which seem to be missing. And the site does not talk of red books. But I plump for the first of these two reports being what is known in the trade as the 'Red Book' as it contains much red trim. All this prompted by finding a red book dating from the early years of the reign of Henry III, that is to say in the first part of the 13th century, compiled by one Alexander de Swereford. A comprehensive collection of material supporting the collection of tax. So while red, and prepared in an ancestor organisation of the Treasury, not really doing the same job as the red book we have now.

Yesterday to the shrink wrapped Troilus & Cressida against which I prepared this crib. As with presentations, preparation a wonderful way to organise thoughts. Product sometimes useful too.

Worrying about ginoche, I arrange to cycle back past the tea room yesterday. A very slight detour to find that it is not ginoche at all, rather ganache, for which Mr G. now finds a lot more hits. Including the tea room visited at the last post (in various listings sites) and various sites for chocophiles. The tea room does not seem to have its own web site but it does attract favorable comment. I learn that ganache is a sort of goo made of cream and chocolate used for putting on cakes or in chocolates. And a fairly well-used name for chocostablishments of various sorts.

Also been pondering about the Tory scheme to abolish nearly all benefits in favour of a universal benefit. Now, without going to the bother of actually reading their scheme, I have been thinking about the dreaded poverty trap, into which many of the finest schemes vanish. So, a eureka moment. I offer the suggestion of the year from a disgruntled tax payer in Epsom. We invent an office of the minimum wage. Maybe staffed up with 10,500 bureaucrats of the better sort. This office, for each person, defines a minimum wage which we donote M. We leave the office of the tax, aka HMCR, in place. Now we suppose the gross income of this person to be I. Then the net income of this person, that is what he or she gets to take home, is M + R*I where R is the tax rate. Say 0.5 for starters. Now for low income people, that is to say where I is less than M divided by (1 - R), net income is bigger than gross income and they are on benefit (old speak). For high income people, net income is less than gross income and they are paying tax (old speak). A big benefit is that the marginal tax rate is the same however much you earn. Poverty trap vanishes. Another benefit is that it is additive. If you have a herd of benefits people making up one household, once you have decided what their aggregate M is, it makes no differance how you divide up the M among them.

If we feel strongly about fleecing the rich, we could have bigger R's for bigger I's.

But, as ever, there is some detail. Can't simplify everything away. Do we calculate M on a weekly, monthly or annual basis? Do we let people choose? Do we let people change their minds about their choice if their circumstances change? Is the position of self-employed people and business people any differant than it is now? Then what do we do about transition? Short of throwing a lot of money at a new scheme, there are usually winners and losers. Need to do something about the losers who might otherwise complain. Some sort of transitional deal. So it would probably be the case that a chunk of the efficiency gains of abolishing most of the benefits will be swallowed up in the costs of change. But it would be good if the Tories gave it a shot.

I learn in the course of this post that blogger seems to do a meltdown in the face of the slash which is usually used to denote arithmetic division. Gets into a right pickle. Unpleasant error messages. First time I recall it doing such a thing. Hence the use of words to avoid said pickle.

Yesterday was the day of the film for the lady. We had intended that this should take the form of a viewing of 'The Duchess', but due to a misconception about the time of the viewing, wound up at 'Julia and Julie' instead. Which turned out to be a film about foodies and a blog. It rapidly became apparent that the film was two stories, from differant decades, interleaved; something which I do not usually care for. I like my films to go steadily forward without too many changes of scene. So, for example, the latest incarnation of 'Miss Marple' does indeed go mostly forward but there are far too many changes of scene. Not very restful viewing at all. However, in this case, it did not seem to matter too much, perhaps because each scene was of reasonable length, almost an episode. A good bit of feel-good froth. But I was slightly puzzled by one of the recipes which appeared to involve boning a duck, wrapping the duck around some sort of stuffing, then encasing the whole in a pastry shell. Baked, the thing looked fine, much the same as a pork pie. But what about the duck? At Epsom, our ducks are normally brown and crispy, but inside a pie they are going to be white and soggy, albeit cooked. Plus, all the fat that usually falls out and is poured warm onto the compost heap, is captured inside the pie. Doesn't sound like my thing at all. But they did say at the beginning that the whole secret was butter, more butter, never enough butter. So perhaps this maxim is sometimes translated into grease of duck.

Having closed the last post with a French factoids, it seems appropriate to open this one with some elderly farinaceous factoids, both derived elderly G-words. The first is groat 1, not to be confused with groat 2, the latter being derived from gross (see also the foreign groschen) in the sense of thick, meaning a thick penny, worth four pennies. Groat 1 has some quite differant derivation and is a slightly vague word, only used in the plural, meaning a coarsely ground hulled grain, usually oats but also barley, wheat or maize. By extension a porriage made of same, this last explaining the origin of the grits hailing from the southern states of the US of A. Something it seems which George Bush II could get down with aplomb on the hustings, while poor old Al Gore gagged a bit, being brought up on a fancy east coast diet. Maybe it cost the latter the election. The second G-word is gruel, one meaning of which is to exhaust or punish, and so onto gruelling experiences, but the more usual meaning of which is also farinaceous, viz. a fine meal or flour, generally oatmeal. By extension a porriage, pottage or broth made of same. Possibly with any or all of chopped meat, almonds, onions, sugar, butter and spices added in small quantities to give a bit of flavour.

Tried out the story about the young lady who killed the cat with a crossbow (see above) in TB yesterday. Both those interogated on the subject, admittedly animal lovers both, voted for incarceration. As did the BH when quizzed on return. Am I really in that small a minority on this one? Do people really care about cats that much?

My days for these sorts of hills are done, I think. Much as I can do now to get up Epsom Downs. Ex http://www.javiermaya.com/.

Fragments from a bookish dream the other night. I was in the building which used to be known as GOGGS - Government Offices Great George Street - and had acquired charge of a whole lot of old books. One of the shelves on which they were held had a old paper label stuck to it, a long thin thing, old enough that the paper was brown and on the point of falling apart. Carefully remove the label and trundle off to the GOGGS' library with it - an open plan library with lots of brown bookcases around the walls and lots of old fashioned librarians sitting at desks in the middle. Not a computer or internet cafe in sight. Perhaps a bit like the library which used to be in the Cambridge Guildhall when I was little. The librarian's eyes light up at the old label and he says that he certainly does want the books. So I go back to my den and start to fashion a sort of sledge with which to move the books. Sheet of chipboard or some such, maybe 6 feet by 2 feet. Fix a block of wood at one end as a stop and a couple of bits of 2 by 2 as handles at the other. Load the thing up and start trundling around the building. Lots of dark stairwells to navigate with the sledge. Then break to a new scene where I am making a rather more sophisticated contraption to move another lot. And that is about all I can remember, rarely having the energy to commit these things to non-volatile memory properly on waking.

Done a fair bit of heritage over the last few days, both official and unofficial on the occasion of the European World Heritage Weekend.

A strange peice of stone which has flaked off a gravestone in Wotton, Surrey. See below.

Still trying to puzzle out their search algorithm. In my last post I referred to a blog about a housing association. Going at it the hard way I find it to be from August 15. The phrase 'rent book' finds it whereas neither 'housing association' nor 'bigger family' do. Do they have some list of words and phrases on which they index? And if so, why rent book but not housing association?

Or to be more precise, cabbage whites. Bought some large curly cabbages over the weekend which were very disappointing. Pale green exteriors, white interiors and a wet, feeble taste, quite spoiling the texture. Luckily, by Wednesday (yesterday) the man at Cheam had taken delivery of some more pointy green cabbage. So got some of that and topped up with a double cow chop weighing in at 4.85 pounds. Which looked as if it had been hanging for a while. Boiled sliced pointy cabbage for about 5 minutes. Baked the beef for 90 minutes at 180C. Rested somewhat as recommended by TB for about 5 minutes. Boiled white rice and forgot the carrots, these last lurking at the bottom of the refridgerator at this time of year. But cabbage and beef both superlative. The latter loose, mainly a pale brown with just a hint of pink. Absolutely spot on. Had it in sandwiches later, fresh white bread sliced maybe 1cm thick, no butter or other additives. Maybe even better. There is no doubt that fore rib makes very good sandwiches when cold - although preferably not chilled. This last not being so easy to manage in this fly-blown Indian summer.

Followed up lunch with a spot of heritage garden at Hampton Court. It must be some while since I have been there in high summer, if I have ever been. The herbaceous borders were a touch past their prime but very impressive just the same. With the much more highly coloured beds out on the grass providing good contrast. We decided at this point that the flower gardener at Hampton Court knows his stuff. Then around the corner to the seriously heritage gardens, the ones on the way to the vine. Two sunken gardens looking almost as good as the beef had taster earlier. Lots of heritage people (apart from ourselves) billing and cooing over them. Plus they had provided a sort of botanical garden in pots. All sorts of intersting hot country plants. Oranges, lemons and prickly pears to name but a few. Altogether well worth the £5 we were charged (£4 for concessions), a total of £9 more than we would have been charged when we first started going to Hampton Court - at which time one only paid to get into the building proper. Sadly, we failed to find the garden shop where we would have been able to purchase some Hampton Court grapes. I wonder whether wine buffs would approve of making wine from grapes from a vine which is hundreds of years old? My understanding is that commercial grapes are like apples, ripped up every so many years. In the case of apples, the so many being about 40. Old trees not good. Tend to be full of disease I should think. Although it is also my understanding that pear trees go on for much longer for some reason.

Which brings me onto a pearlet. If you look at an elderly French fruit book, for example in the excellent RHS garden library in Vincent Square (honourable members of the public may view but not borrow), you find 10 pears for every 3.2 apples. Perhaps the warm climate does something for pears which does not run in our wet climate. English fruit books tend, more or less, to reverse the proportions.

Day washed down at TB, where I was pleased to learn that the local housing association had not ejected an elderly surviving brother from one of its houses quite as summarily as I had previously been told (vide supra). It seems that the dead brother had been claiming housing benefit for years without declaring that he had his possibly solvent brother living with him. So while it is possible that the surviving brother is dim but innocent, one can see why the housing association have taken a dim view of the whole tenacy.

Was buttonholed over dinner at Hunstanton by an older GP from up North. A John's man, so he must have been OK. But he was very angry about a gang called nice - not the biscuits rather http://www.nice.org.uk/ - who had the temerity to issue directives about what he should and should not prescribe. He claimed first that they often got it wrong, second that they did not balance the cost of the drugs against the savings in hospital costs that might follow from their use and third that young doctors ignored guidance from these people at their peril. Alright for him, well past retirement age and not a big disaster if he got struck off. He went on to claim that crew nice were just of bunch of doctors who couldn't hack doctoring so went in for management - at which they were not much better. A bit like the people that go in for inspecting teachers at work. I was reminded me of a policeman from Scotland, flying a desk near Whitehall, who had explained to me that policemen still doing police work out in the sticks were rather contemptuous of those of their colleagues who plumped for the quick promotion that went with flying desks in the central bureaucracy.

Following Beevor, thought to take a peek at Southwick House yesterday. So we located it on our trusty Ordnance Survey map, just north of Portsdown Hill and just east of a power line, a location which answered the description in Beevor. Fiddle and wriggle our way off the A3(M), via the A3(proper) onto Purbrook Heath Road, where all we can find on the site the map called Southwick House was the lodge to a fairly grand house called Purbrook Heath House. Complete with a serious and shut gate, CCTV and other electrical contraptions. Had the place become something furtive and been renamed to deter the curious like ourselves? FIL thought that the house was in Southwick proper, a couple of miles to the west, with a big avenue, a place which he used to cycle past in his youth. We said no, the map never lies and failed to push onto Southwick proper. However, back with Mr G., it turns out that he was quite right. The D-Day Southwick House is presently part of something called HMS Dryad, a large clump of naval buildings just to the east of Southwick proper. The old house, with pillars and what-have-you serves as ward room to the officers. It looks as if there might well be tours on heritage days. But why did the Ordance Survey map give the name Southwick House to the wrong place? Not like them to make mistakes. Were there several Southwick Houses? Mr G. seems to think there is one in downtown Portsmouth.

Small peice in the DT about a dermatologist who carelessly (or crassly) used the phrase 'negro skin' in a letter which the subject got to see. Subject much upset. Threatening to sue for insult and injury. To my mind, while the phrase might have been a little tactless, it is also the case that if one goes to see a doctor about a skin complaint, it may well be that the fact that one has a red skin rather than a blue skin is actually relevant. Most parts of the body are skin colour blind, but it seems quite likely that the skin itself is not. And in a saner world, 'negro skin' would not be so charged with angst. Negro, I believe, is only an anglicised version of the Spanish word for black. It did not start as an insult, even though it became one. Notwithstanding, maybe the doctor should have dreamed up some euphemism. Perhaps 'skin exhibiting the ribophospholate factor'.

A slide of something pulmonary with something unpleasant wrong with it, that is to say oedema. From http://patologiaunifenasbh.blogspot.com. I wonder how many of us would have known that without reading the label. Not sure why the link is not highlighting in the proper way.

Decided to resume the napkin ring hunt in London yesterday, so off to Tottenham Court Road via SouthWest trains and the Northern Line. Manage to commit the crimefare of buying Travelcards for Southern Trains rather than for all trains, thus saving 80p a ticket but which meant that when we got off the train at Waterloo the machine rejected our tickets. Had to get the man to let us through, not that he bothered to check our improper tickets carefully enough to crime us. But if he had, I should have pointed out that I saw no options about carrier on the Travelcard option on the machine at Epsom Station. This particular machine is also in the habit of generating tickets which fail at Earlsfield. Man behind the window at Epsom not very interested in this last, having caught me out on the Southern Trains point.

Dreamt last night that in the closing months of my career I had been transferred back to the Department of Employment. The place which was once the Board of Labour and is now part of Dept. of Work and Pensions. Maybe the Board of Labour is a mistake. Mr G. finds a whole raft of Labour Relations Boards in Canada, but no Boards of Labour for England. Further Googling turns up http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/ which reveals that we did indeed have a Ministry of Labour through the first half of the last century. Why did I cross over to Board? There was a Board of Trade, which included some predecessor outfit to the Ministry of Labour. Was this the connection? Maybe it will come to me one day, but meanwhile back to the dream.