pumpkinstrokemarrow

Today cold, with mashed potatoes, a very small number of brussels sprouts, a rather larger amount of savoy cabbage and a rather less faded entire swede. Plus patent gravy as follows: melt some beef dripping in saucepan. Gently fry a finely chopped onion until brown. Stir in some corn flour and cook for a bit. Add well bashed black pepper (keep bashing until you can smell the stuff from 3 feet). Add blood from beef from day before, at least that portion not drunk up by the BH. Add water from the boiling swede. Add well bashed coriander seeds. Add finely ground beef to taste.

Don't think that I will bother with King Edwards from Waitrose again. The ones I got were fairly well damaged and there was a fair bit of waste. Serviceable but I would hate to think that I paid extra for them.

Yesterday evening I passed for perhaps the sixth time a pair of boots which had been abandoned on the approach to Epsom Station. They looked as if they had been there since before Christmas. On this occasion, I decided that it was time to pick the things up and take them home. They looked a bit small but there was a chance that they would fit. They are now cleaned up a bit and drying out nicely. In a day or so I will give them a coat of polish.

The good news is that they are nearly new pair of quite serious boots from a gang called Uvex - a contraction of the German for ultra-violet exclusion. I had never heard of them before but they look to be good gear. See http://www.uvex.com/ and/or http://www.uvex.co.uk/. A serious undertaking with ambitions to be the Mercedes of the boot world. They even have a philosophy, and just to be on the safe side, there is also a statement of their attitude towards the environment. The boots in question are a pair of Uvex Ultras. All kinds of interesting features are mentioned on the web site, things such as Cambrelle lining, whatever that may be, but, oddly, it does not actually say that there are steel toe caps, although inspection of the boots themselves would suggest that they do have them. Perhaps you cannot be called a safety boot without them so that is assumed. In any event, you can get a pair for yourself for something under £70.

The bad news is that they are size 43. Which I find out means 43 Paris points in length; a Paris point being two thirds of a centimetre. Uvex ought to know that we measure our shoes in Barleycorns; a Barleycorn being one third of an inch. Another complication is that continental shoe sizes are simply the length whereas in our case the size is the length minus a start point, with different start points for different sorts of people. After some fiddling with the calculator and an assumption that an inch is 2.54 centimetres, I work out that my fine new nearly new boots are size 9 while I am size 11. I can get them on but I do not think it would be a good idea to wear them for real. Might do awful things to the toes.

So the present scheme is to clean them up and take them down to TB to see if I can find them a decent home there. Free to a good home!