Monday, May 30, 2011
Booked out
Pleased to be able to report the retiring 3lbs 4oz of books to the Oxfam book bucket at Sainbury's - of which I only paid a proper price for 6oz. Some free from the Wetherspoon's library and some near free from the county library. Two of the books (Duteurtre & Houellebecq) were too porno. for me, the porno. not being sufficiently sanitised by being literary and in French. Two of them I did not get on with for other reasons. And the fifth was the 'New Arabian Nights' by R. L. Stevenson. This book was the prize for the 1st position in the Laira Green Senior Mixed School in Plymouth in 1927. A school which appears to have been downgraded from senior mixed to primary (see http://lairagreen.com/). That apart, the odd thing about the book was that stuck at the inside bottom of the inside back board there was what looked like a postage stamp, marked 'R L Stevenson Copyright' and priced at the rather unusual sum of 4.2 old pennies. On a quick peek, Mr. Google was unhelpful, so one can only presume that this is some quirk of early 20th century copyright law - in which case it is odd that I do not recall coming across such a thing before.
Moved onto perusal of the voting for our borough elections. I find that Epsom boasts two political dynasties. The Dallen dynasty which fielded three candidates, all of whom got in, and the Carlson dynasty which fielded three but scored just one. Don't really approve of this sort of thing in local government any more than I do in central government, although I suppose the locals have the excuse that it is not always easy to come up with the candidates. Indeed, one of those elected for Labour is a 20 year old, first year student of politics at the University of Surrey. Let's hope that he is a lot more mature than I was at that age.
We thought to celebrate our return from the seaside with a bit of steak. Two half pound slices of mature Scottish rump steak from Mr Sainsbury. Very nice they looked too with good body and colour. Grilled for a total of about 10 minutes and turned out very well; something of a surprise as I do not associate Sainsbury's with fresh food. Not escaped from their grocery origins as far as I am concerned. Served with chard, carrots and newish potatoes, all boiled; it being nice after a week away to have a bit of simple veg. with neither butter nor garlic in sight. Washed down with a 2006 Barossa from some antipodean outfit called Henry's Seven. Or perhaps Barossa is the name of the place and Henry's Seven is the name of the wine. Not at all clear but I dare say one could work it all out at http://www.henschke.com.au/. Originally dear but marked down. Very nice it was too; perhaps we should get some more while it remains marked down, a practise I was recently wised up to. French cherries for pudd..
We have not had chard for a while, it being something I used to grow on the allotment but do not see in shops very often. This shop was one of those large farm shops with large car parks which sell a good range of frozen ready meals, a good range of expensive groceries and a sprinkling of local produce. In this case chard and potatoes from darkest Kent. The chard really had been picked the morning we bought it so we ate it when just 36 hours old. Not sure that even the Waitrose supply chain could beat that.
# posted by Jim @ 6:56 AM 
