pumpkinstrokemarrow

This morning another trip around the all weather path around Epsom Common. Did not come across many birds or any deer, but I did spot a bunch of people in the undergrowth. A lot of them were wearing high visibility jackets and hard hats. Some of them were wielding chain saws. Maybe a chevauchée by one of the chain saw gangs organised by the ECA (see http://www.epsomcommon.org.uk/) combined with a seniors' nature stroll organised by the community centre at Sefton Road?

I decided not to go and explain to their leader that I did not like what they were doing on the grounds that I do not have the knack of doing such things nicely. Instead, a ditty came to mind, with apologies to the anti-war demonstrators of the late sixties:

Perhaps I shall start pinning 'leave our trees alone' notices to trees which appear to be under threat. Or hiding tape recorders in the bushes to chant the ditty to passers by.

Lunch was the third go at roast oxtail. See 9th December for the second attempt. This time, did not bother with boiling up the smaller bits to make gravy. Just put an oxtail and a half in the pyrex dish, bits big and small, covered the dish and popped it in the oven on slow at 2200 hours yesterday. Stirred at 0800 this morning. Added some slivered onion and perhaps half a pint of water at 0900. Turned up from slow to 110C. Stirred again at 1200 and eat at 1300. Served with a perforated spoon so as to leave the fatty water behind. I think I have got it about right. The right balance between succulence and chewiness. Positive remarks from the BH, no chewy remarks from FIL.

Turning over the pages of the NYRB after lunch, was pleased to see that the humanities are alive and well in the US. So if they get closed down in our universities in favour of soap studies and such like, someone will be carrying the torches over there. The first torch was the LOEB classical library which publishes hundreds of classical texts in Greek and Latin in parallel text format. An operation of the university press at Harvard. And the second torch was the Tatti renaissance library which publishes rather fewer renaissance texts in Latin in parallel text format. Plus welter weight academic apparatus. Also from the people at Harvard. To think that there are enough people out there wanting to read renaissance texts in two languages at once to justify publishing such a library. For the fainter hearted, the same issue of NYRB offers no fewer than 24 lectures, on DVD or CD, which will enable you to discover the secrets of artful reading from Dr. Timothy Spurgin, Bonnie Glidden Buchanan Professor of English Literature at Lawrence University at http://www.lawrence.edu/. A curiously US sort of offering. Don't see too much of this sort of thing over here. Another facet of their admirable thirst for learning and self-improvement.

PS: à propos of my labour costs, got through to the HMCR help desk yesterday. Five minutes conversation with a pleasant young operator from up north somewhere cost me 30 minutes sitting at the telephone listening to their idea of soothing music. Luckily BH turned up in the nick of time to tell the pleasant young operator that I was fully authorised to talk about her tax affairs, otherwise the call would probably have been entirely wasted. As it was, we established that the forms and instructions that we had been sent in the first part of last year had never turned up. With the result that we never knew that they had ever existed. At least now we know better.