pumpkinstrokemarrow

On the first principle, easy enough for those responsible for children to keep them out of smoke's way. Perhaps the government ought to issue personal smoke detectors, accurate to 10 particles of smoke to the cubic centimetre of air, so that parents can make informed judgements about whether they need to move their children further away from the source of contamination. Councils might have rules about the proportion of their air space which is allowed to exceed some smoke particle per cubic inch threshold. Government could issue targets for attainment and improvement. The same detectors would also be useful for detecting noxious levels of allergy or asthma inducing particles and for non-smokers concerned about the level of smoke in the garden of a public house. That both introduces a whole new field of endeavour for the bisease, to be stockpiled in case the proposed offensive on fat people fails to lift off, and deals with the second principle. The third and fourth principles are just waffle, fit subjects for television campaigns, which might or might not succeed in putting us off the evil weed. Perhaps they will relax the rules on advertising to make space for them, perhaps taking advertisements up to 33% of the time, from the 25% or so they seem to occupy at the moment.

Which reminds me, that in the land of the free, advertisements on television are so frequent as to make the programme going on between times more or less unwatchable. At least that was my experience in hotels. It is a wonder that anyone watches their boxes at all. Perhaps the answer is that they don't.

Interesting new cabbage recipe the other day, courtesy of the DT. Shred white cabbage. Place in baking dish along with some butter and cumin seed. Cover with foil and cook for three quarters of an hour or so. Not the most slimming item but a pleasant way to whack down the white cabbage.

And an interesting foodie event of a different sort today. Yesterday, boiled up the remnants of the weekend chicken for soup, along with some onion, carrot and celery. Boiled, or rather simmered for maybe four hours, mashing with a potato masher occasionally. Strain. Then today get around to adding the pearl barley on return from Guildford with the newspaper. Decide on six ounces. Maybe an ounce at the bottom of the jar, top up from the new packet, the one with all the icons (see above). Shoot the six ounces into the stock. Only then do I notice that the bottom of the jar has a thickish layer of sticky grey dust with pearl barley adhering to it. On closer inspection I see small black movement. Ticks or mites or something. Much panic. Can't bring myself to sling the soup but I do remember dark tales of nasty diseases being caught by grains with fungal infections. Ergotism or something. Can one catch nasty diseases from mitular infections? So bring stock to the boil, which should kill off any livestock. Much careful skimming off of black specks large and small. Take off maybe half a pint from the two or three pints I started with. My chicken soup has never been so skimmed. Simmer for forty minutes then add three ounces of cooked chicken. Follow up with a third of a slivered white cabbage. Simmer for a further three and a half minutes and serve. No black specks in sight and we are still standing. Further report tomorrow.

The question is, where did the bugs come from? Perhaps the eggs are always there in the pearl barley, but they do not usually hatch, the product being dry and being turned over fairly regularly. Maybe we failed on one or other count. Bugs rushing in when the lid happens to be off sounds a bit unlikely.

While we were in Guildford, we thought we would continue my tour of Victorian stained glass in churches. First we tried St Nicholas down by the river, an Anglo-Catholic establishment within the Anglican communion, with lots of stained glass and other decorations. Sadly, they shut their doors at 1230 so we missed out. So we fell back on the ancient and interesting Holy Trinity, where there was also a lot of stained glass. Sad to report, the west window contravened one the principles of the Pugin who set me off on this particular tour. The stained glass patterning was allowed to leap across the mullions of the window, thus breaching the structural integrity of the window. At least in appearance. Pugin would not have approved at all. But I rather liked the southwest window.

Lunch at Olivetto (http://www.olivo.co.uk/). Very pleasant and good value it was too - although surprised how set lunch for £10 for one moves up to £50 for two, the time one has had the odd beverage and extra.