pumpkinstrokemarrow

Having done the rock scene, down to town to visit the book scene. Started off with a heavy haul from the Oxfam shop, new Kindle notwithstanding. So I get a fairly new Collins two way French dictionary for £3.99. The lady explained that they got plenty of dictionaries so they were priced to move, so it has now displaced my 35 year old Harrap's Shorter, very much the same sort of thing but with rather tired layout and slightly smaller in size.

Item two, a two volume history of the Anglo-Saxons by Hodgkin. First published in 1935 and this edition in 1952, so probably a good bit older than my Myres (1986-1988) and a bit older than my Stenton (1943-1971). On the other hand, despite being produced at a time when rationing was not long ended, it has a good number of fold out maps in several colours, the sort which you can consult while continuing to read, something which modern books seem to go in for very rarely. Plus plenty of figures and plates. Maps, figures and plates all helpfully listed along with the table of contents. A Thames & Hudson job before its time.

A pleasant read in an easy going style. I learn, for example, that contrary to what I had thought, the British Isles were not covered in forests at the time of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Far less of them than there were in Germany at about the same time. Also that the biggest single forest was the Weald in Kent and Sussex (from the German wald for wood). And that in both Kent and Sussex there were laws to the effect that if you were a stranger in an area, strayed off the road and failed to announce your presence by blowing on your horn, it was assumed that you were up to no good and could be speared on sight, with no wergeld payable.

Perhaps the quaintest find so far is a map showing the distribution of nigrescence in Britain. Nothing to do with either African Africans or African Americans, rather all to do with the survival of the darker Celts among the lighter Anglo-Saxons. Which according to the map was mainly in the west, although there is an odd clump of dark in north western home counties, the counties, that is, to the immediate north west of London. The distribution was obtained by reading the records of 13,000 deserters from the army and navy. Hodgkin does not trouble with statistical detail but the interested reader may consult the work of J. Beddoe, published in 1885.

The only fly in the ointment being that I paid Oxfam slightly more than I would have had to have paid Abebooks for the same thing.

Carried on down to Hall's, a very traditional sort of second hand bookseller. A grand version of the sort of thing still to be found in Cecil Court off Charing Cross Road, complete with outdoor bookshelves for the cheaper offerings and ladders to reach the higher offerings inside. Here I was able to buy a copy of the plays of John M. Synge, this copy being reprinted in the year of my birth, which I thought a good omen. The reason for this rather obscure - for me anyway - purchase was our upcoming visit to the Old Vic to see his 'Playboy of the Western World'. Which on a first reading ought to be good, although there will be scope for turning the thing into slapstick. Let's hope they manage to restrain themselves and retain the native fun of the thing.

Before we go I shall have to find out what a loy is. Here there and everywhere in the play, used for bashing one's father over the head when he comes over a bit strong. My OED can do no better than a sort of Irish spade. But I think I know someone in TB who can do better than that.

Moved onto a closing down carpet shop where we discovered that the pattern of the carpet in our bedroom was Turkmen something. The shop had a carpet with the identical pattern, but slightly smaller, slightly older, rather poorer condition and made in the badlands of Afghanistan rather than in Brussels. It cost about five times what we paid for our version maybe 35 years ago. Perhaps in a few years time I will set sprog 1.1 the task of trawling through the many sites devoted to these carpets to run down what the something was. In the meantime I offer the following from somewhere in ONS: 'the table shows that over the third of a century since 1970, prices overall rose ten times, with food prices rising more slowly, by a little over eight times. This compares with an 18-fold increase in average earnings and a 36-fold increase in house prices. Looking at individual commodities, of those listed, only cod has exceeded the growth in average earnings. At the other end of the scale, the smallest price increases were recorded for tomatoes and onions, each of which rose by less than five times'. Not evidence that we were done when we bought our carpet, probably from Maples when it was still in Tottenham Court Road.

Closed the visit by finding a nut tree carrying filberts, something we do not do in Epsom. A filbert, in my book, being a long rather than round sort of hazel nut, named for St. Philibert (his tomb can be found at Saint-Philibert-de-Grand-Lieu, which survived being ransacked by the Vikings in the 9th century, but I have not yet found out what the chap was made a saint for). Collected a few, just for form.

Back home, the Kindle fights back with several mentions of something called a glckstritter in 'Women in Love'. Being several mentions, one assumes that it is not a misprint. Not in my German dictionary and takes a few minutes to run the thing down in Google (through a big haul of references back to 'Women in Love') and as far as I can make out it means an adventurer, knight errant or freelance (in the medieval sense), despite the literal rendering being luck (glück) knight (ritter). Other spellings might include glückstritter and gluecksritter. Other finds include a computer game and various bloggers with the first of these as names. I think that what I saw on the Kindle is probably a misprint, but one possibly reproduced from whatever text the Gutenberg people scanned in.

One oddity was the presence in the hit lists of a number of sites which appeared to be able to pretend to Google that they contained the search term, but which did not really. No apparent connection. Do such sites contain huge lists of words to confuse the search crawlers? Don't usually do any harm because they come well down long hit lists where they are not visible, rather than well down short hit lists where they are.

Picked another gallon of blackberries into the second demijohn this bank holiday afternoon, having paid a second visit to Wilkinsons this morning. Handy thing this bank holiday shopping. Blackberries from Horton Lane rather smaller and harder than the last lot, perhaps the result of picking on the eastern rather than the western side of the lane. Didn't notice any spiders this time. On the other hand, a certain amount of honking, presumably chaps from the TB. Who pointed out after the last lot that it was much easier to get one's blackberries from Sainsburys, a proceeding which has the additional advantage that you can buy other fruit, raspberries for example, while you are at it. As far as I can make out, picking fruit down Horton Lane is a minority sport.

We then moved into construction. Having decided (see previous post) that 'twas nobler in the mind to make sloe gin out of gin.

First take two bottles of gin, one Gordons and one basic from Sainsburys ('taste the gin, not the fancy labelling'). Fetch up an further empty bottle of gin, two empty half bottles and one bottle of mineral water from Blenheim Palace. Empty water and rinse out the bottle, which is not far short of a half bottle: 33cl to the half's 37.5cl.

Add sugar to empty bottles at the rate of 75g to the half bottle. Stab sloes with our handy short bladed knife from the kitchen devil people, the only people who seem to make a kitchen knife with a really short blade. Just the thing for peeling oranges or stabbing sloes, although being hollow ground has not held its edge very well. Fill all the bottles with sloes. Tamp down a bit to get in as many as possible. Top up with gin. Shake about a bit and file in the cupboard under the stairs. Got the quantities about right here: a cup of sloes left over (discarded) and half a cup of gin left over (transferred to small jam jar for consideration later). A little bit of fiddling about with an empty plastic water bottle to liberate space in the two gin bottles which started full; hopefully the plastic will not do anything unpleasant to the flavour.

Second, add 1lb or so of sugar to the second demijohn. Take 1.5l bottle of Sainsbury's finest blended whisky and pour most of it into the demijohn. Maybe a couple of cups left (also for consideration later). Add bubble seal, wrap in brown paper, label it No. 2 so that we know which is which in months to come and place under study table.

Two snippets to share. First, Savills will be running an auction of redundant prayer booths this autumn. The one illustrated here is relatively new, includes a bungalow in addition to the booth itself and occupies a site of more than an acre, formerly occupied by world leaders in toxic waste. I was a bit puzzled by the guide price of less than £1m, slightly less puzzled when I found that the booth is located between Sutton proper and St. Helier and not puzzled at all when I flipped through the helpful letter from the planning people. Ten pages of it, listing all the relevant rules, regulations and forms involved in making productive use of the site. Various previous attempts have failed. I wonder what they would think if I applied to turn it into a luxury town house in a high walled compound, after the style of dodgy dictators or terrorists on the run? Just the thing for a footballer wanting to slum it a bit. No trouble on a site like this about building the latest thing in underground gyms; there might even be some underground bunkers left behind by the toxic waste people.

Second, one of the larger public schools in the area is hiring this week. They want a part time rugby coach for irregular term time hours, self employed, wages on application. To be considered you need to share their passion for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and to pass muster with the criminal records people. They forget to mention the need to share their passion about sport. To my mind, a bit poor that such a place should be staffing itself up on such a basis. And a bit poor that we find it necessary to give safeguarding such prominence. What is the world coming to?

Back at home the harvest continues with just over 4lbs of sloes, Horton Lane naturally. Very early this year; already starting to burst with all the rain, so no question of waiting of first frost. But now we have a bigger question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to make sloe gin, in the same sort of way as last year, or whether 'tis nobler to do what we have just done with the blackberries and do it with sugar and whisky. A question which will keep us occupied over the Sunday cow chop, upcoming.

From where they sit, we have an extra million people (say) who are soaking up resources, particularly housing and jobs at the bottom of the heap. Housing and jobs which might otherwise have gone to our own young, bumping along at the bottom, on benefit and without qualifications or prospects. Jobs which might have carried a better wage if there were not so many people willing to do them. Good wheeze for the forruns who are better off than they might otherwise be at home. And a good wheeze for those of us who are not at the bottom of the heap because it means that lots of the goods and services that we buy are cheaper than they might be otherwise; especially the sorts of things that have to be grown at home, rather than grown in China. At least it seemed a good wheeze until the riots started.

Not that any of this is particularly helpful. As long as we are in the EC, in which free movement of labour is a founding principle, people are going to gravitate from poorer parts to richer parts, thus effecting a healthy levelling. But as I keep on saying, we also need the sort of levelling which means rich people do not earn thousands of times more than poor people earn. A multiple of ten should be quite enough to provide incentive and status.

Talking of housing, the business of backland development reared its head again yesterday. The business of buying up the large gardens which many houses have around here and turning them into small housing estates; something which makes the nimby blood in many of us boil. I am slightly more relaxed in that I recognise a demand for new housing, housing which has to be put somewhere, and with Epsom not being awash with brownfield, that somewhere either means in the green belt or in back gardens and I am not sure that one is particularly more obnoxious than the other. So if someone wants to sell their back garden, so be it. I just hope that the someone is nowhere near me.

All this prompted by a someone in Manor Green Road who wants to sell off a bit of their large back garden. This being the second time around, they have gone to a lot of bother to try and meet all the objections. The new house will be barely visible from the road. There will be no vehicular access, at least not until the dust has settled. There will be solar panels and houses for butterflies. Much respect for the rights of the trees. Someone has spent a lot of money with various kinds of consultants to prove how ecological and organic the whole thing is going to be. Plus there is a £16,700 douceur for the council on account of not having included an allocation of 28% of the living space of the proposed development to affordables; calculated according to some splendidly bureaucratic formula. I would be inclined to let them get on with it. In any event, it will be interesting to see how it all goes. Have the winds of development change advertised in the DT reached the Epsom & Ewell planning committee yet?

Last but not least, I have now actually finished reading something on my Kindle, having fought down the tendency to flick, just like on telly with a remote control. The something in question being the Demos report on suicide. Apart from the facts mentioned yesterday, the main conclusion seems to be that there is not all that much information about suicide in this country and that it would be better if there was a lot more. Bring on the databases! A further point being that because assisted suicide is illegal, primary carers might often turn a blind eye, and numbers may be bigger than they actually are, although I doubt if this would amount to much, make much difference to the big numbers. But I was irritated by the attitude of the authors that suicide is only to be regarded as a disease, something to be managed out of existence. No recognition that it might be a reasonable thing to want to do. No recognition that being depressed might be a natural & proper part of becoming old & ill; not necessarily something to be zapped with a suitable dose of prozac.

The Kindle was not too good at pdf files, of which this was my first sample. Its default mode of display was fit page to screen, which with the screen being fairly small, strained the eyes a bit. The alternative was to have a scrolling window on a larger page, which was legible but not a comfortable read. I guess a pdf file is too close to an image file for Kindle to be able to do much with it, Kindle being most comfortable with more or less continuous text which can be blown up and down to suit screen and eye, without having to bother much about layout. So maybe my opening position that the thing was not going to be much good for technical books was the right one.

PS: not unreasonably, this post prompts Mr. Google to tell me about a rival outfit to dropbox who advertise themselves as better than dropbox. See http://www.box.net/. But I don't think I am moved enough to read all about it. Dropbox serves my modest needs well.

First there was an how awful piece about the plight of families who are awaiting removal from this country. Some of whom are being accommodated in a secure facility in Sussex with 29 staff to look after up to 9 families. Now this is all very sad, but I do not see what else we can do. It is generally thought reasonable not to allow all and sundry to come and live in this country. Given that there are plenty of people who want to do just that (some of them from parts of the world which have had the benefit of our military adventures), we have to have control, control which is inevitably rather unpleasant in detail. But to try and maintain some kind of reputation for decency, we allow the special case of asylum to people who are apt to have a bad time if repatriated. But special cases have to be policed and some people who apply are going to be refused, perhaps on the grounds that they are just trying it on. They are just wannabee economic migrants. It is a bit hard on the younger members of the family, but if a family come here under false pretences, why should they expect a soft landing? They are going to have to be held in a secure facility while we arrange for their removal. At a time when we are hard put to find money to throw at home grown baddies, how much can we afford to throw at the extras? And if they really don't like the idea of a secure facility, they could always get a flight home before it came to that.

One would have more time for the Guardian if they gave a bit more air time to the difficulty of being nice about all this sort of thing.

Then there was another how awful piece about the propensity of old people with unpleasant conditions & diseases to do themselves in, possibly because not enough has been done in the way of palliative or other sorts of care. Towards the end, to be fair, it does give a few lines to the thought that doing themselves in might be an entirely reasonable response to an unreasonable situation.

What surprises me about all this is that there are so few health related suicides, not that there are so many. National Statistics say that there were of the order of 500,000 deaths in England & Wales in 2010, of which something less than 5,000 were suicides, of which perhaps as many as 10% had something to do with health. So numbers are very small compared with the number of people taking their time, perhaps in a drug induced fog, to die of something unpleasant. The good news is that I have now downloaded the relevant Demos report (see http://www.demos.co.uk/) to my Kindle, where I find that it can indeed read pdf files. Not the greatest with such a small screen but readable, and more likely to be read than if I were simply to leave the thing, along with sundry other worthy reports of the same sort, on this PC.

So today we revert to the DT to read on the front page that we have sent in the chaps from Hereford to assassinate the former head of government of Libya. The very chap with whom Mr. Blair was hobnobbing not so very long ago. I think it would have been far better if we had not. As Wellington is said to have observed to an artillery officer at Waterloo who thought that the Emperor of the French was just about in range: 'it is none of my business to be taking pot shots at my opposite number. My business is to win the battle'. Different standards at that time.

But at least that brushed away the remnants of a disturbing dream about the best way to deploy MS Excel to build the biggest and best database ever about ichthyosaurs. Inter alia, a record for every ichthyosauran fossil ever turned up. Would this record be a worksheet or a line in a worksheet? Should I have one worksheet or several? Should I have one workbook or several? Should I used Windows file management facilities to help things along or should I try and contain things within Excel? In short, all kinds of detritus from my days with databases called into play. Interestingly, no thought about collaboration, either in the construction or in the use of the thing. A very private venture.

But as the remnants were brushed away, I was left thinking that the data normalisation that was all the rage twenty years ago is maybe not as easy as we thought then. It is very hard to confine any one piece of information about a complicated something to just one place in a system; important things have a nasty habit of popping up all over the place.

Moving back to pedantry, it has just occurred to me that the phrase '& etc' is a tautology. The etc being short for 'et cetera' which is the Latin for 'and other things'. So no need to the leading '&' at all. But I am sure I am not the only offender here.

Moving on to lunch, did very well yesterday with BH knocking out one of her excellent Quiche Lorraines (although perhaps not quite up to the standards of whoever writes for http://www.quiche-lorraine.com). Served with salad, boiled potatoes and a pleasant young Sancerre from the cow herd's estate. Or at least that is what the label seemed to be saying. Followed by an adequate goat's cheese from Swaledale (£24 or so a kilo) and an interesting date and walnut slice. I did not like the cheese as much as the Swaledale I used to get from the cheese shop in Upper Tachbrook Street, but which is a lot further away than our local Waitrose. Date and walnut slice good; must have been more or less solid date and walnut with just a touch of glucose syrup to bind it together. Must have packed some calories.

We pondered about variations on the Quiche theme. Some people think that calling it Quiche Lorraine is pretentious and that the things should be called bacon and egg flans. Regular country fare anywhere decently to the west or north of London. No need to go to France, let alone Lorraine. The catch with this to my mind being that one of our cook books talks about a bacon and egg flan which is made with entire eggs. Presumably you wind up with a flan with what look like four fried eggs sitting on top. Not sure I like the sound of this too much; certainly a very different animal to that with which we are accustomed.

Craster kippers, again from Waitrose, followed later in the day. Funny how kippers from street markets are generally greatly inferior, despite the high class flannel & banter which comes with them.

I think also that I can see a place where he and Huxley met; to wit a shared interest in some state of consciousness beyond the individual, but not not a merging of individuals either. Somewhere in between. I guess a reasonably common interest among people around the time of the first world war (and all its destruction) who worried about the recession of holiness, communal and otherwise. Parallels the contemporary interest in spirits and ouija boards. Goodness what I could of made of it all when 17 when I first read the book - at which time I wrote a learned essay about it for the school magazine - which might make embarrassing reading now.

Confidence sufficiently boosted that I have now recycled a total of 3 Lawrentian paperbacks.

On another plane I came across a book called 'Where children sleep', perhaps one of my weekly tips from http://www.stumbleupon.com/. A handsomely produced picture book, published at 78 Arbuthnot Road, SW17 and http://www.chrisboot.com/. Photographs by Mr Mollinson and words (I think) by Mrs Mollinson. Sponsored by Benetton, so in my book they have made up a bit of the ground they lost with a bunch of offensive advertising hoardings a few years back.

What you get is around 50 pairs of photographs, the first of each pair the child in question and the second his or her bedroom. Or at least, where he or she sleeps. Plus a short description of the child's circumstances and background; a description in a properly neutral tone, without judgement or comment. And while the authors make no grand claims, you get get an interesting selection from around the world, rich & poor, white, yellow, brown & black. They achieve their aim, which is to provoke thought. About whether it is healthy for children to be driven to hard core competition or to own lots of things. To be very keen on (real) guns. What it might be like to be brought up in extreme poverty. I was certainly reminded in no uncertain terms that there is plenty of this last about. A coffee table book of the best sort.

Available from Amazon.

A few hours later, BH turns up a snippet from the weekend DT where the head gardener at River Cottage suggests doing it with whisky. Blackberries, sugar and whisky then leave for a year. Despite the fact that River Cottage is up there with Jamie Oliver on my hate list and my amusement that River Cottage has moved on from being an idyll by the river to having a head gardener, we decide that this might be the way forward.

First step, the demijohns bought many years ago to make beer having passed over, off to Wilkinsons to buy a demijohn and one of those bubble contraptions to seal it - just in the case the brew takes it into its head to bubble. Cost £8.22.

Second step, a rather desultory sterilisation. Seems a bit pointless given that the thing is going to be stuffed with stuff from the great outsides.

Third step, off to Horton Lane to fill the demijohn with blackberries. This takes about an hour and a half and includes a fair number of small spiders, various varieties. By the time the demijohn is full of blackberries, the water line is about a third of the way up. Messy things ripe blackberries. It also took a while to work out the best way of getting the blackberries out from the collecting tub and through the neck of the demijohn. I had thought that filling the demijohn in-situ, on the road side, was the way forward, so being sure that one had the right amount of blackberries; now not so sure. I should also report that while I was fiddling around at the road side,I was almost run down by a lycra looney who neither thought to ring his bell or pull out a bit. Not enough brain cycles left over from driving his legs to drive his cycle as well.

Fourth step, shake the blackberries down a bit and add a pound or so of preserving sugar, well past its sell by date but with added pectin. Will the brew set?

Fifth step, off to Sainsburys to buy some cooking whisky. Settle for their own brand, which actually costs pretty much the same as Bells or Teachers. Cost of a litre £16.23.

Sixth step, add the litre of whisky to the mix in the demijohn. Witness death throes of some of the spiders. Seal the demijohn.

Seventh step, wrap the demijohn in the brown paper thoughtfully provided by Wilkinsons on the grounds that BH believes that this sort of thing ought to be kept in the dark.

Eighth step, sit back and wait for a year.

So we have now spent of the order of £25 on what might turn out to be three of four pints of a sort of alcoholic version of Ribena. Will it turn out to be worth the candle?

PS: pleased to report that for the first time in a few years, frogs have returned to the centre pond (the one with the marigolds), with two of them there this afternoon. Frog homing had probably been disturbed by pond replacement (see February 16th 2009).

So on Friday off to Jack & Jill, a pair of windmills up on the downs above Brighton. For some reason I thought that one or both of them might be working. We get there to find that the mills do not work and are certainly not open on a weekday. By way of compensation, a spiffing view over the Weald to the north, otherwise known as the forest of Anderida. Buzzard drifting in the wind, somewhere below us, maybe miles away. Certain amount of buzzard like mewing to be heard but we could not spot the source.

Unfortunately, at this point FIL takes a tumble, and winds up on the ground, slightly the worse for wear. Which could have been a bit of a disaster, but all worked out OK in the end. First off, two young people in charge of a special needs bus rush over and take charge of the situation, this including a pow-pow with someone at the ambulance end of 999. Second off, about 10-15 minutes later, ambulance turns up with two very competent ladies on board. They take over, whisking FIL into their vehicle for a once over. From which, after a while, he emerges shaken but not stirred. We are advised that proceeding to Brighton is fine, which we proceed to do, faith in human nature and national health restored.

Get to Brighton on what has turned out to be a fine sunny day, along with thousands of others. We patrol the entire seafront, from Portslade to the nudist beach, before finally finding a parking slot on the Marine Parade, just to the east of the pier which is still working. On the way, noting the various licensed premises in Portslade for later checking against the memory of the TB'ite who was brought up there. In order of passing: the Victoria, the Whistlestop, the Blue Anchor and the Blue Lagoon. I believe that this last was satisfactorily disreputable in the days of mods and rockers. Don't know about now.

Lunch at the Bristol Bar mentioned in an earlier post and then into Kemptown, not previously visited. So we have Hove High Street with all its stuff to the west of the pier and Kemptown High Street with its to the east; roughly as Hampstead is to Camden Lock. A very grand Catholic church to St. John, the exterior in the form of a Greek temple. Rather inappropriate one might think. In good condition for a building of its age. A even grander Anglican church to St. Mary, one of those high Victorian brick jobs. Inter alia, the interesting roof illustrated. A bit testing for the trusty Nokia. Various people were getting the church ready for a jumble sale the following day but it was hard to see how one was going to get enough prayers to fill the place up on a Sunday.

Followed by the purchase of some very decent salami from Naples and a white loaf from somewhere near Brighton. Served very well for dinner later.

Then into the local flea market where I was pleased to find a 16 piece dentist's kit, at a very small fraction of what it must of cost new. Heavy duty stainless steel, maybe fifty year old. Added to what I had already (Dad having been a dentist), all I need is a few probes - the long thin jobs they used to poke around in your teeth for holes, cracks and crevices - and I will be able to set up shop. I even have a bit of novocaine left in the ampoule in the hypodermic. But whoever sold it was very proper and sealed it in.

From whence down to the beach to enjoy the sea, the sun and the crowds. Splendid day for such a place.

PS 1: Google says that novocaine is a relative of cocaine (as the name would indeed suggest), is made from same raw material and bought from the same suppliers. That is to say Columbian drug barons. It seems that coca will only grow in that part of the world; nothing like as versatile as the poppy. I wonder.

PS 2: on the shaken not stirred front, tried to watch our Oxfam version of 'Casino Royale' last night. Slickly made but content free, so only managed about two thirds. Rather like an advertisement but stretched out to 30 times the proper length. Maybe with more drink on board I would have managed the whole lot. To think that this is what most young people will remember Dame Judi for. The DVD will be returned to Oxfam tomorrow, along with the now redundant, 2 volume, new to us, second copy of Anna Karenina (see July 30th). Kindle forever!

Now looks a bit gastro..

Just finished an entertaining if depressing canter through this short memoir by a dissident new labour MP - one Bob Marshall-Andrews (BMA), a chap of whom I have no recollection and who is a lawyer by trade. Perhaps I would have if I spent more time with programmes such as 'Any Questions' on which he seems to have been a regular contributor.

First impressions not too good. That is to say, the book did not have a good feel to it. Like most modern books it would not stay open at the page one was on unless held open. Then the page design, particularly that of chapter pages, was not very good and the proof reading was not very good, this last meaning that I could quite often not work out what he was trying to say. Maybe it is me but I prefer to think that it is the proof reader.

But it gets better. While BMA clearly had a good time as a new labour MP, he does not have much that is good to say about new labour.

It all got off to a bad start when Tony & Cherie blacklisted him for making a fairly mild joke at some lawyers beano at the expense of their mate Derry Irvine, the chap whom I think achieved fame for being responsible for the taxpayer buying the most expensive wallpaper ever to grace the walls of the Palace of Westminster. The blacklisting was permanent; BMA never even made it to a committee, never mind the payroll, despite his being well qualified to contribute. A spiteful business, but one which told of the unhealthy concentration of power at the centre. And as a lord once said, all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Entirely appropriate that the remark was first made about a pope.

Part of the good time is that BMA enjoys debating. He likes a scrap of that sort, to the point whether you wonder whether he likes the fight more than the cause. But then I wonder again. As a criminal barrister he will often be dealing with cases where the truth is uncertain. No-one can be sure whether the unpleasant drunk was the chap who bashed the chap behind the jump at the pizza parlour, and a learned debate in front of a jury is the best way we know of getting at the truth. The point that is relevant here being that the learned debaters, who while in the heat of debate have a passionate belief in their cause, will also know that sometimes they back the right horse and sometimes not. They know (or at least they should know) that they do not have some divine gift of knowing the truth before the trial; the truth is what emerges during the trial. The public debate, with rules of engagement and procedure, is the core of the process. Saying that the debaters might enjoy debating is no more telling than saying your carpenter enjoys woodwork. And so it is with parliament: the public debate is important, and has, on evidence presented in this book, been degraded.

That said, one always suspects barristers who are passionate about jury trial of being in it for the money. Jury trials are a good thing for barristers. Jury trials are a good thing too, but criminal justice has become very expensive without becoming very satisfactory and barristers should recognise that politicians have a point when they try to fix the machine. There is also the point that good debaters will beat bad debaters; the quality of debate can override the quality of the evidence. So given that we need debate, we need to be able to trust the debaters to be proper and decent. Not to knowingly back a dodgy horse. To be good sorts. Something which I believe to be getting harder. Generally speaking, I believe that we have less moral fibre than our parents.

JMA objects greatly to the vast output of criminal justice legislation which poured from the new labour presses, most of which he regards as unnecessary or worse and the main result of which has been to cause immense muddle and confusion in what might already have been thought the sufficiently treacherous waters of criminal justice. Much of the worse stuff flies under the banner of the prevention of terrorism.

He observes that the new labour tenure saw the prison population getting on for double. No mean achievement at a time when it was claimed that crime was falling. (I am trying to look into this. But although I can confirm that there has been a big increase and that the prisons statistics chaps do produce bags of stuff, they don't seem to believe in simple graphs of the prison population over time. But I will keep looking).

He has much to say about the whipping system, which he believes to be much abused, with the result that there is far too much power in the hands of the prime minister and his mates. Why does so much government business have to be whipped? Why can't our elected representatives vote as they see fit, in the light of discussion and debate, rather than voting for whatever the government line of the day is - while rarely being afforded the courtesy of participation in the determination of that that line is to be. I can see that where the issue is an important manifesto commitment that there is an argument for MPs toeing the party, that is to say the manifesto line. But many issues are not like that. Do we need to have 200 people on the government side baying for the line decided by some inter coterie of former tabloid journalists and 200 other people on the opposition side baying against? Is this a good way to work out what is best? Issues which occupied some of the best minds of the day at the time when our present party system was emerging from the mists of history. Or one could go back to the Romans: they knew all about the issues here too.

Perhaps I overdo it a bit. On most of the few occasions that I have seen a bit of parliament on telly, the place was more or less empty. Which is a rather different point.

But he reserves his greatest anger for the new labour penchant for military adventures, most of which have resulted in great loss of life among the largely innocent populations of the countries concerned and at least one of which was started on the basis of a big lie. (JMA also records a small lie from the government side during debate about some aspect of jury trial (or not). The lie might have been smaller but it was still deliberate, and wrong).

Overall, one comes away with the impression that all is not well in the mother of parliaments. We have perhaps become complacent with the idea that we are good at democracy (and keen on thrusting it upon others), when actually our democracy is in a bit of a state. And it seems unlikely that things will get better any time soon.

By then I also had a user manual, which thus constitutes my first Kindle accessory, although the £9.60 it cost went to the helpful print shop on West Hill, rather than to Amazon. Much more convenient and probably cheaper than printing the thing myself on my entry level printer.

Thus armed, got to work. The good news is that I now have a decent selection of George Eliot, Conrad, Lawrence, Tolstoy and Joyce on board, courtesy of http://www.gutenberg.org/. Once I got the hang of it, I could get hold of the core Eliot oeuvre in about 5 minutes flat. Taken together, quite enough for standby reading on holiday if nothing else. And now that I have turned the font down to as small as it will go, you get enough on the page to be sensible. It is a bit irritating with the larger fonts, but now the thing works fine. One soon gets used to the feel of it and for reading in bed it is certainly most convenient. (Not checked, but I think you need the light on at night). Our second copy of Middlemarch is already in the recycling bag. Others may follow.

However, there are some niggles.

Despite signing up for the fine looking BT FON service, said by their map to be alive and well in the right part of our road, signal not strong enough to the Kindle to climb onto. So no wifi connection yet to the Kindle HQ and all the good things that that brings with it - including, according to the manual, the ability to lend something to another kindler. Or download your stuff onto your new kindle when that comes along.

The version of 'Women in Love' that I am trying has the irritating feature that odd words are capitalised. I'm sure that did not happen in our Penguin versions. When FIL is out one day I will check. But it seems quite likely that various errors are going to creep into texts of this sort, presumably scanned in from the printed page. On the other hand, spell checkers and such like, not available to old-style printers ought to be a plus.

Another irritating feature is the screen saver which clicks in when you power the thing down. Rather unattractive pictures with a literary theme. OK so the thing is presently kept in what used to be the bag for my cigar impedimenta, itself an offcut from the manufacture of a BH Welsh tweed skirt, but it still irritates on the odd occasion when you do see the pictures. Maybe there is a way to turn them off but I can't find the bit in the manual which says how. Although it does suggest that once wifi'd I might be even more irritated by advertising screen savers.

For me, the whole device might usefully be bigger, say 50% bigger. I dare say the thing is a marvel of miniaturisation but for me bigger would have been better. Bigger screen and bigger keys. OK so you do not need to use the keys very often, but when you do they are a bit small. OK for rioters used to typing messages on their Blackberries in the dark but that is not something that I am into.

All in all, a satisfied customer at the moment. It will be interesting to see how much use I make of the thing. Will BH get on board? I suspect most of the stuff that she reads will have to be paid for, being rather more modern than the fiction that I usually read. Not proposing to use the thing for non-fiction just yet.

PS: the electronic ink screen intrigues. Excellent for this application, but presumably not good for moving pictures and not good for colour.

Virginia Water a fine place with lots of good trees. We saw some of them, including some big beeches and some big sweet chestnuts - probably getting near their passover dates so it was good to see some newer planting. There was also a handsome house on the far shore, a house which brought to mind a wood engraving we used go have on the wall, to the point that I thought that maybe the house on the far shore was the original, the artist having lived not too far away at one point. Back home I turn the thing up to find that it is about as completely different as it could be be while still being a house on the far shore. Funny thing memory. Must get back soon to see more of the trees.

On the way home, having decided to have a steak night, we stopped at the deli in the station parade, probably http://www.winecircle.co.uk/, who sold us a holy mother camembert and a couple of slices of apple strudel. Both excellent, the cheese improved by our happening to have some white bread - don't believe in brown bread with soft cheese. White bread was one of those frozen dough bake in the back of the shop jobs from our local Costcutter. Not much flavour but quite eatable when fresh and entirely suitable as a vehicle for a camembert.

The meal had started with a couple of sirloin steaks from the butcher next to the Costcutter and for once they were spot on. Neither too fresh nor too cooked. Served with newish potatoes and runner beans. We continue to be puzzled as to why the runner beans we have been buying quite a lot of over the last month or so don't have strings in them. The beans I grew nearly always did.

Steak helped down with the Gevrey-Chambertin mentioned on August 13th. A limited edition of 7,660 bottles from Vougeraie back in 2006. So another puzzle is where the 7,660 comes from. Label entirely in French. But it was a fine wine, worth the extra dosh. The adjective which comes to mind is clear. A very clear taste, reminding one of the note of a small bell or that of a cut glass. No hints of raspberries for us.

Off this morning to harvest some of the Horton Lane hazel nuts. I was able to pick 7.5lbs in about an hour off of just one clump of bushes in the hedgerow. Mostly green rather than brown. The nuts seem to be of more than one variety and to vary a great deal in size, up to around half an inch in diameter. We have learned that the shell grows before the nut, that is to say that one can have a full size nut shell, some of them getting of for perhaps an inch long and more than half an inch across, with a very small nut embedded in a hard white stuff filling the rest of the shell. Hard white stuff not looking very edible; we did not try it anyway. Most of them now spread out on an old sheet in the garage to dry; natural drying producing a much nicer nut than the kiln drying practised by commercial growers.

Probably be better to wait a bit before picking any more, seeming to remember picking them brown as a child. Take a chance on someone or something else having a go.

So maybe three years ago, I dug the L-shaped bed in question over and bought a dozen or so plants from our community nursery - a place which doubles as a garden centre and occupational therapy unit. Plants looked fine when bought but stubbornly refused to thrive, despite occasional watering.

Then last year bought a replacement for a fatality from a proper garden centre and this one did rather better. It also cost rather more. I suspect the difference may have been that the initial batch of plants were recently rooted cuttings whereas the replacement was a more serious plant with more serious roots and so stood a better chance in the rock hard soil. Better but still not good. Whereas the violets seem to do all right. Not a spectacular plant but they do cover the ground.

And there the matter rested until FIL decided that it would be good to buy some more bulbs: daffodils, snow drops and winter aconites, the first two of which are getting shaded out at the bottom of the garden and last being something we had noticed at Hampton Court in the spring. From there but a small jump to deciding to put the bulbs in the spotted lilac bed where there should be plenty of morning sun in the spring. Should get a much better job in a clear dug and manured bed than by popping them in an established one.

So the bed is now dug over, to a depth of around 6 inches. Dug three barrows of rotting tree chippings & so on & so forth into half of it, mostly the product of the once splendid willow tree in the next door garden. Then this morning thought to take a north London pick axe - an odd thing with unequal prongs - to the other half to see if I could get any deeper than 6 inches. I was quickly reminded how tiring swinging a pick is. A dozen well delivered strokes and one finds oneself short of breath, perhaps because in order to be well delivered one is using most of the upper body, muscles which I do not get to use that often. But I am pushing down, more rock is getting broken, so maybe I will try again later.

In the meantime amused by the assault on Blackberry by our securocrats reported in today's Guardian. Social networking sites are the spear head of the free world when they are used to fuel riots against regimes with whom we have fallen out; we take a slightly different line when they are used to fuel riots nearer home.

So yesterday afternoon, off of to the roundabout at the southern end of Horton Lane to pick some more blackberries. Very variable in size and ripeness but the three of us managed about 6lbs in an hour. Not quite as carefully graded and placed as the ones you buy by the quarter pound, but infinitely cheaper.

BH had frozen half of them for use as flavour for falling cooking apples through the Autumn when it suddenly dawned on me that one could make jam with the things.

It turns out that we had some preserving sugar - thought it prudent not to check the best buy date - and we had three very unripe cooking apples from a neighbouring tree. Some of the sugar had added pectin and I think unripe cooking apples are fairly pectin full so that promised a good set.

Poked around and rescued four jam jars, two large and two small. Wondering the while how many jam jars we must have chucked away over the years. Washed them and then popped them in the oven to warm.

So three apples, 2lb 4oz of blackberries, 2lb 4oz of sugar and half a pint or so of water. Boil for hours. Oddly, no scum. Also oddly, the apples fell apart as if they had a skin. Although I had quartered, cored and peeled them, when cooking they crumpled up from the inside, with the outer layer floating about for a good while after the contents had dissolved. Tested drops for set on a plate from time to time and eventually the jam, having now acquired a very deep red colour, rather splendid, started to sputter a bit, with flying drops of jam arriving on the surrounding surfaces. I decided that we were probably in business and decanted the stuff into the warmed up jars. Two full small, one full large and one half full large.

BH has a rummage and finds a supply of slips to put directly on the jam when hot and covers to put on the jars when cold. Even the odd mob cap for jars in progress (see illustration).

So this morning I could move onto a truly heart warming, healthy and organic breakfast. Water from our own tap, guaranteed not to have passed through more than 7 people since it was last rain. Bread of my own making and blackberry jam with a touch of apple, also of my own making. Blackberries and apples grown nearby and definitely touched by human hand. Finest way of mainlining sugar beet known to man. Both set and texture spot on.

Along the way, I find out that my nice but battered, red leather bound Peters edition of the score had originally been bought by or for one T. Ogilvy of Eton in 1890. Google finds a T. Ogilvy Esq. of the Bombay Civil Service, but the date is not right. Other Ogilvys lack the T, so perhaps the owner of the score was not a sufficiently famous Ogilvy.

Having dealt with Ogilvy, resumed my ponderings about Kindles. The thought from Friday was that if I could get a Kindle and get all the classics on it for free as they are out of copyright or something, I might have a solution to our book shelf problem. Several metres worth of said classics could be passed onto Oxfam, secure in the knowledge that if I ever wanted to read them again they would be sitting on Kindle. I would then be able to get the various piles of other books dotted around the house onto shelves and out of the way of the vacuum cleaner.

Next stop Google, where I find that Kindles only work off wifi, something which we do not have. Bit of a downer.

Next stop Staples, where I find that Kindles are very small indeed. A very clever bit of kit I dare say, but a bit small for comfort. I don't need to be able to tuck the thing into my jacket pocket, so miniature does not do much for me, apart from strain the eyes and my hand-eye coordination. Furthermore, so small that there was no USB port. I deduce that the only way to get books onto the thing is to wifi them. And even had I been tempted, Staples were out of stock.

But this morning, a second wind. Ask Google about wifi and after a bit find that while my BT Broadband does not come with wifi, as a valued customer I could have access to something called BT FON. It was alleged that there were two FON points in our very road, very near us in fact.

At which point, I decide that this is probably enough for a bit of kindling, and take the plunge. The device should arrive in a few days. Elected not to spend half as much again on a snappy leather case. BH can now doubt knock up something suitable out of a bit of surplus curtain.

I close with something for slug lovers. Yesterday, on Epsom Common, the rain had brought out the largest slug I have seen for ages. Green-brown job and it must have been at least four inches long, not counting the horns. Not all that fat, but long. Which some way to making up for the present poverty of slugs in the compost heap: not absent but not many.

On the second occasion, just a stroll down the river - Hampton being the nearest convenient place for us to do that - then back over the road for tea and cake, oddly failing to find the Dish Café which we had found and liked on 15th May. Have they changed the layout so that we did not recognise the place?

Yesterday to Tooting to make sure that it was still there after the week's disturbances. Off the train at Earlsfield to find two young men in some sort of uniform and large motor cycle helmets issuing someone with a parking ticket and who appeared to be driving around on L plated scooters, for all the world like pizza delivery men. I prefer my enforcement officers to be in proper uniforms - something which even the police do not always manage these days. Plus they ought to have removed their helmets to write out the ticket.

Carried on down a quietish Garratt Lane, but the quiet may just have been that it is the school holidays so the lane was not full of children leaving school, as it usually is when I visit. Only came across one shop which had felt the urge to install shiny new shutters.

Demonstrated my solidarity with Broadway Market by buying two more Jamaican cucumbers - short fat jobs - and was pleased to find that Pandith Ganapathy was still taking on new patients. A bit further on came across two large policemen with blue cannisters strapped to their legs. On enquiry it turned out that the cannisters were nothing more sinister than water bottles. We also learned that they were part of a contingent which had been bussed down from Newcastle and who were being put up at some police training facility in Gravesend, so they had plenty of time sitting in buses. A bit further still came across two more policemen, from Tooting this time, who claimed that a lot more policemen had been sent down from Newcastle than were really needed. Aha think I, a wheeze to help the Northumberland police accountant balance his troubled books out of HMT emergency funds.

As promised on 5th August, took a further peek at the interesting floor of the Antelope. I think the brown squares really are some kind of mahogany. Sort of thing which ought to be a listed floor, but I did not think any of the young team running the place would have any idea at all about heritage flooring so I did not enquire. Good pint of Tribute and a good pork pie though. A pub which sells a pork pie without feeling the need to drape bits of salad and potato crisps all over it. Brilliant!

Interesting find at the Wetherspoon's Library, in the form of 'Répertoire IV' from Michel Butor. A chap of whom I had not previously heard but who appears to be some sort of high brow cultural essayist. From Les Éditions de Minuit on very cheap paper and with very cheap illustrations; not something I had associated with this particular publisher, certainly not in 1974 when this book was printed. There is a book plate in the book saying 'EX LIBRIS UNIVERSITATIS BRISTOLLIENSIS' and a stamp further on saying that the book had been presented to the British Library Document Supply Centre on 15 April 1986. Something else of which I had not previously heard. One of the essays with title 'Les sept femmes de Gilbert Le Mauvais' caught my eye so, as a dabbler in Proust, maybe I will start with that one. Then after that I can have 'La spirale des sept péchés', which does something with Flaubert, in whom I also dabble. Very high class books you can get in Wetherspoon's. Much better than your average charity shop.

Back home to TB, in time to join in a lusty rendering of 'Happy Birthday' at the sixtieth birthday party for one of the stalwarts. Plus a bit more pork pie while I was at it. As it happens, the previous day, watching a Bollywood version of the Othello story, we had been amused to have 'Happy Birthday' in English in a film which was otherwise in one of the Indian languages, presumably Hindi. Would people who speak Hindi at home really sing 'Happy Birthday' in English to our tune?

We might then go back with some steps. My understanding is that if your fruit has passed over your boundary it is no longer yours. It might well be that it becomes the property of the council in this case, as the owner of the pavement, but I do not suppose that they will complain. They ought to be pleased that we were reducing the amount of mess arriving on the pavement.

This morning a rather different kind of fruit. Quietly making my 55th batch of bread, this one mainly with Hovis Super Strong Premium White Bread Flour (FEB 2012 1139 05:59 RL, ex Sainsbury's), when I came across my second bug. The last one was in the same brand of flour, back in March, but was white and dead. This one was roughly the same size, say 3mm long, but brown and alive. Shiny brown wing case covering most of its back; maybe some kind of beetle, while the last one looked like some kind of wood louse. It turned up in the sieve and I had hoped to preserve it alive for presentation to the customer service desk at Sainsbury's, but sadly the salt which was pretty much all that was left in the sieve by then, apart from the bug itself, seems to be killing the bug. Still alive as I type, but moribund. At least I tried.

After a brief fight with the H&S part of myself, decided to press on with making the bread. Dough now in the airing cupboard.

Now finished my read about the Indian Mutiny reported on 9th August. I offer three concluding snippets. First, some British officers allowed that it was entirely right, proper and honourable for an Indian to fight the British for his or her country. A true Brit. would do just the same in the same circumstances. But it had to be understood that if you played the game and lost, you were apt to be hung - as a great many Indians were. Many with perfunctory if any trial; well maintaining the standards of Butcher Cumberland after Culloden. A few years later I think that Mr. Gladstone has progressed far enough to wonder whether we had any business stealing Zululand from the Zulus, but unfortunately he was in opposition at the time so we stole it anyway. Second, Surendra Nath Sen argues that the Hindus and Moslems got on fine with each other until we went in for divide and rule, stirring up one lot against the other. I think I need a bit more evidence on that one. A line to take in the immediate aftermath of a bloody and destructive partition, but I do need more than his opinion. Third, another case of reading the preface and introduction for a second time after finishing the book proper. Which I have often found to be a good way of bringing the whole thing together. One goes away from the book feeling that one has a story which might stick for a bit.

PS: BH now ruled that the bug could easily have got into our flour after it arrived in our cupboard, where it has now been for several weeks. Not clear that I have grounds to harass the customer service people at all.

Less topically of an ex-banker who was rather shocked to find that putting ex-banker on his CV no longer did him any favours. Even in the financial services industry being an ex-banker has the same kind of allure that being fat has elsewhere. Not just youth with neither prospects nor much to lose (apart from membership of their gang) who are cheesed off with bankers continuing to lord it over the rest of us.

However, probably OK to work for a bank, provided that you are not a banker, so I have been reading a statistical report about the world getting old from one. And as usual, I am moved to share a few snippets.

Perhaps most important, the elementary truth that if the level of economic activity falls - if the proportion of people in work falls - the standard of living falls. And if an increasing proportion of the inactive are expensive oldsters, the standard of living falls even faster. We have to get more people into work.

One easy way of doing this was to get even more women into real work, something which the Germans are still rather bad at. They still believe in housefraus, along with some people in this country who believe that having a father at work and a mother at home is the best way to bring up decent children.

And then, talking of expense, there was a chart that showed that old people in the US spend maybe a third of their income on their health, spending which would fall on the taxpayer in most developed countries. So other things being equal, a $ of pension in the US is worth a good deal less than a $ of pension elsewhere. Or put another way, the young do not subsidise the old to the same extent in the US as they do elsewhere.

I was impressed to read that life expectancy at birth in darkest Africa (as a whole) is 57 - some way short of where we are but still some way ahead of where I thought they would be. Things can't be that dark after all. But then I got to wondering about the small print, recalling that there are wrinkles involving whether you count people who are born dead or who die very soon after birth. Or before full term would have been. I wonder how much difference that sort of thing would make?

More worrying for a person of my age was the emphasis placed on uncertainty. We might be living longer on average, but we are very uncertain about how much longer any particular one of us is going to live. Hard for any particular one of us to make suitable provision. So who is going to take on the risk?

Enter the banks with lots of shiny new products and services... Something for the quants to get their teeth into now that old style property based derivatives are out of fashion.

On this particular occasion Flora had some difficulty explaining why is was unlikely that something that was a mammal should not also be a duck.

Having got that off my chest, the first thing of import today was a dream about being slated to appear in a duel. The duel was to be held in a rather small room and while waiting there while a bit of space was made, I rapidly lost my nerve. Apart from anything else the hilt of my sword no longer seemed to fit my hand and in any event was longer attached to the blade. My opponent looked very calm and collected. Plus he was a good bit younger than me. No-one that I knew. Perhaps it is as well for my pride that I woke up before the point of no return; I don't think I am made of the same stuff of all those chaps who got themselves killed by professional duellists rather than lose face.

Then, after I had woken up a bit, BH told me that she had found some nuts on our lawn, underneath our nut tree. I wondered why she was picking them up as I have only ever seen them with small holes in the side where the grey squirrel which knocked the things off has checked that there was nothing inside. On this occasion, no small holes in the side but there were some small nuts inside. So, somewhat later, passing the clump of hazel bushes outside the main entrance to Hook Road Arena, notwithstanding my remarks of 8th August, I thought I would try picking a handful, from the quite reasonable crop there. They were quite small but they were starting to turn brown. We opened them up after lunch today to find quite reasonable nuts inside. A little damp for my taste but if one kept them that would soon go. Shall we leave them as long as a week?

All credit to the council for thinking to plant such things. An interesting experiment in urban nuciculture.

We then moved onto the day's post which included an important communication from an outfit called 'Life Line Screening', a communication which was so important that they had got their computer to address the letter in something like the handwriting of an old person so that we would know not to drop the thing straight in the bin. But while each character was suitably old-style, to the point of illegibility, each instance of any one letter was the same, something of a give away. As was the ink with which the address was written being very like the ink with which the accompanying bar code was written. In case we needed further encouragement, the screening was to take place in that well known watering hole, the British Legion Club in the bit of West Street running up towards Rosebank. This bit of today's post has now passed on, through our shredder on its way to the compost bin.

I close with a suggestion for the powers that be. They should investigate the possibility of turning mobile phones and other such devices off in areas where there is trouble. A cheap option would be to have jamming devices installed on the top of police landrovers (see http://www.landrover.com). The sort of thing that you used to be able to buy in Tottenham Court Road. A smart option, but one which I would think could be organised in a week or two, would be to turn them off after they have been picked up by an aerial. Maybe one could be quite picky about exactly what area was to be blacked out. Maybe good phones could be excluded from the blackout. Maybe one could target particularly bad phones.

Various new things on Sunday. Started with the new extension last reported on July 11th. On this occasion there was a light breeze which resulted in much crackling and much flapping. The crackling was a result of the woven plastic material from which the awning was made; rather tiresome. The green awning which it replaced, being made of cloth, didn't do it. The flapping was, in part, a result of not tying the thing down as well as I might and we ended the afternoon with a couple of lengths of 8 by 2 holding down the loose side. Luckily no-one got brained or even bashed by the things. 'Made to measure tarpaulin' gets lots of hits in Google so perhaps that is the way forward from Wickes' finest. Maybe http://tarps.cunninghamcovers.co.uk/.

Moved onto crab salad, using a formula - nothing so grand as a recipe - tried for the first and last time in Paris getting on for thirty years ago. A catch was that a key ingredient was the endive last mentioned on July 16th. Worked through the Sainbury's salad department, worked through the Epsom market but with no luck. So settled for a couple of cos lettuce with a spring onion to gee it up a bit. Slice the lettuce cross wise, one centimetre slices. Slice the spring onion cross wise, one millimetre slices. Flake the meat from around 1kg of crabs' legs. Stir the whole lot up and serve. Very satisfactory and not particularly dear. I suspect that tinned crab would do at a push but would not be as good.

Followed up with leg of pork. Crackling excellent but meat rather overcooked, at least to my taste. Started off by deciding that the 10.5lbs from the ankle end of a leg was better looking than from the hip end. Rub salt in. Put in oven at 180C for 4 hours, with the oven not being opened during the proceedings but turned off for the last half hour. This time was calculated on the Radiation method, 25 minutes to the pound less 15 minutes for a joint of more than 6 pounds. Equals 250 minutes plus 12.5 minutes minus 15 minutes equals 4 hours in round numbers. So I actually did it for rather less time than they said, but I perhaps failed to allow for the fan oven 180C being rather hotter than A. N. Other oven at the same temperature.

Closed with a jelly made of fruit and stuff rather than from a little box. Good gear although it was a little reluctant to leave its mould. Maybe we make the thing in half pint sleevers next time. Plenty of them to be had at car booters.

Rather appropriately, given the news from London today, started the morning off with the next episode of the Indian Mutiny according to Surendra Nath Sen (see July 30th), helpfully supported by my Cartographia map of India, bought for my previous foray into Indian affairs on or about October 21st last. The help includes marking most of the forts mentioned with little fort symbols.

The author is surprisingly sympathetic about the doings of the British Indians; perhaps of the generation of Indian Indians who had to fight to keep the various bits of India from flying apart at independence and so who had some sympathy for the British endeavours to impose European ways on a complicated and in many ways backward subcontinent, with much of it, in the first half of the 19th century, if not later still, being given over to the sort of feuding which we had largely left behind us after the Battle of Bosworth. (We should not be smug though: we had the considerable advantage of being a relatively small island (including here a few even smaller islands, mainly to the west and north) with a temperate climate. And even then, we are still having trouble with peripheral parts).

But the British did not help themselves by being careless or worse about the various dietary fads of the Indians, by allowing bible bashers to push bibles down Indian throats and by much well meaning interference in internal affairs. There was also much resentment amongst Indians in British service at their poor prospects & pay compared with those of the Europeans. All of which was no doubt compounded by a nasty dose of racism and greed in some - I like to think not most - of these last.

He gives the impression that Indian component of the Indian Army was a lot larger than the European component and that many in the Indian component were more or less mercenaries who had no particular compunction about fighting other people with varying shades of brown skin. Perhaps a Hindu fighting for a Moslem officer was not so different from a Hindu fighting for Christian officer. But who mostly did have compunction about shooting their white officers; the drill often being to invite them to leave with the wives before any mutiny got under way.

However, once the mutiny got under way across India, the outnumbered Europeans got very nervous about the mood of the armed Indians all around them and were rather apt to go in for trying to disarm them, the prospect of which seriously upset the Indians - part of this being the hurt caused by the lack of trust from people with whom you had lived and worked for years - and quite often triggered the mutiny in any particular place. A process which would feed on itself. Chain reaction even. Go viral. Have not yet found out what proportion of the Indian part of the Indian Army stuck with us throughout - but the impression given is that it was a good bit.

The bad news is that while there was decent behaviour on both sides, there was also a lot of savagery. On the Indian side, various massacres of men, women and children. Numbers probably not very large. On both sides, much of the fighting was done on the basis of no quarter. And on the British side, reprisals after the event sound pretty savage. The British had had a bad scare and were not, at least in the heat of the moment, inclined to clemency. Perhaps things will look better as I get nearer the end.

So it is hard to make a living at many arts & crafts. We have the case of the trestle table recently built by yours truly with the materials costing more than the finished table would probably cost at IKEA. So even allowing for a considerable speeding up if I was doing this sort of thing for a living, I would not make much of a living. I could not possibly charge the £60 or more an hour commanded by car mechanics around here. I heard recently about the plight of tailors and dressmakers: very few people are prepared, for example, to pay for the labour which goes into their new suit, perhaps a week's work, at the car mechanic's rate. Much rather go to Marks & Sparks for which they only have to pay at China factory rates and blow the balance on booze. Then we have artists proper. How many people are prepared to pay for the two days it takes to produce an original piece of modern art? The sort, that is, which involves a bit more work than emptying litter bins onto unmade beds. So these sorts of arts & crafts don't work very well because people are not prepared to pay what it costs. Too much craft chasing too little money. Factories possibly producing inferior goods, but at a superior price. Other sorts of arts & crafts are hard because there are too many people at it. How many of the dancers pumped out by our stage schools wind up getting paid to dance? How many of the musicians pumped by by our music schools wind up getting paid to do that?

Whereas we do not seem to be able to deliver the quite modest skills required to keep our verges neat and tidy. This is not unskilled work but somehow the council never seem to wind up getting people with any skill to do it. Let alone care or sensitivity. They just whang their sit and ride lawn mowers around with gay abandon, rarely troubling to adjust height or pace of the cut to the condition of the ground or to the condition of the grass. Often bumping into young trees, with the result that the bases of many of the young trees planted at some considerable expense along Horton Lane are badly, in some cases, fatally, damaged.

The same thing with the flails that they use to trim the hedgerows. Plenty of young trees down the same road carry scars large and small from being hit by a carelessly manoeuvred flail. And then why do they use a flail for mowing suburban hedges at all? They would get a far less ugly job done by using a hedge trimmer.

Last but not least, we have the chaps that lop branches off trees. To be fair, the ones who work for the people that call themselves tree surgeons, do seem to understand that you cut a branch off at its root, where it joins the parent branch. This both looks neat and heals over. Whereas horns look ugly and are apt to die back. Something not understood at all by the verge chaps. With the worse case I have seen recently being a tree lopped to facilitate the construction of a temporary bridge at Earlsfield Railway Station. I can understand that the chap doing the lopping might not know or care, but one might think that at least one of his or her colleagues did.

Here, we have no craft at all. Just cheap labour. But I suppose another aspect of the same problem: collectively, we are not prepared to pay for quality in our daily lives. We focus of quantity rather than quality. Two pints of rubbish ice cold lager are better than one decent pint of warm beer.

The good news is that for the first time since I gave up my allotments, I have picked some hazel nuts. There are quite a few hazel nut bushes down Horton Lane, enough that the squirrels have not stripped the lot, well before there is anything inside them. Which is what happens to the hazel nuts in our garden. So, the other day, I picked three rather green looking hazel nuts. One contained a nut about the size of a large pea, one the size of a small pea and the other small. The first two tasted OK. So we shall go back in a few weeks and see what we can do. Seems a bit of a waste to pick them when they are so young; better to take a chance and leave them for a week or two. Hope that neither squirrels nor humans catch on. I shan't wait until the Autumn which is when we picked them when I was a child. Global warming no doubt.

For some reason last night I was on a business trip to Turkey. Not clear who I was working for or what I was doing there.

So I arrive in some large town, not Istanbul or Ankara, where I have been booked into a hotel for the first night; the idea being that after that you should be able to fend for yourself. I have a rather spare, but large and clean room. For some reason I abandon it and by the time I realise that perhaps I should have kept the room, I am too intimidated by the rather harassed young manageress to try and get it back.

I manage to find another hotel which has a room but for some other reason I don't take it. Perhaps it seemed too expensive.

Abandoning ship, decide to make tracks towards the place I am due at in the morning and so catch a train to Zig-Zog, a place on the south east coast, perhaps somewhere near Fethiya. The carriage consists of a number of compartments, without corridor and with each compartment perhaps 10 feet square with a bench down one side. My compartment has just one chap in it, sitting on one end of the bench. I sit down at the other and all is well until we reach the next stop when another half dozen people get into the compartment, rather more than the bench can take. I get squeezed at my end of the bench by a couple of bony nuns and the chap at the other end winds up stretched out on the floor.

Eventually we arrive at Zig-Zog and I find myself in the concourse area of the railway station. Usual sort of thing, if a touch foreign. I buy myself what looks like an AZ with which to find a hotel - not that AZs are actually any help in that department - only to find the thing completely unintelligible, appearing to consist of pictures aerial and otherwise, rather than of maps of the town.

Push on out of the station and it all looks a bit strange. A few big old buildings, churches and such like, to be seen. Lots of middle sized, modern blocks. A bit Parisian. Someone gives me some general directions and I head off up what turns into a narrow, high walled alley. Some clambering over steps and rocks needed. I pass a very English looking parson who is sermonising so I give him a wide berth - but somehow I know that I will get to know him well, much later on.

Break out into the open again and find another very English looking person, this one in a business suit, who is able to give me directions to the only area in town with hotels - while explaining that despite being a seaside resort, Zig-Zog is very badly equipped with them. He also explains that the trick with the AZ is to look through the windows in the pictures of buildings onto the maps behind. The trick seems to work.

Dive into another alley and come up underneath the veranda of a seafront, seafood restaurant, populated by sweaty locals. No holiday makers in sight at all. But the waiter gives me some more directions and eventually I find myself outside a hotel of rather far eastern appearance catering for English and German tourists. Clamber up the rather grand stairs - Duke of York steps sort of thing - to get into the very busy reception area. Rather old fashioned. Get told by a reception clerk - a plain, thin, middle aged and dowdily dressed lady - that the place is most certainly full. It has been raining and I am starting to look a bit dishevelled: she seems rather amused at my predicament. A bit malevolent in her amusement, to boot. Unkind.

Starting to panic a bit at this point. 2200, starting to get dark and nowhere to sleep. Weather not too clever. Shall I try and sleep in a restaurant? In some suburban doorway?

Somewhere along the way I meet someone who is into Polaris submarines (SSBNs) but who is not allowed to tell me about what he is doing in Turkey as it is secret.

Interesting that as I was waking up, I was able to get back into the edges of the dream, but not back into the dream proper. So I was getting related images but they were disconnected. Not part of the flow.

And them I got to thinking about how one would fare if dumped in London needing a hotel. When I was young, hotels meant flop houses in Kings Cross, floppish houses in Victoria and rather more expensive places in Bloomsbury and Bayswater. I used to use a rather odd place in Palace Court which doesn't seem to be there any more - although I don't seem to be able to get Streetview to work to check. Has it been turned off?

Apart from that you were a bit stuck and could wander around for a long time without finding anything that one could afford. Which is still true in some parts of London, particularly once you are out of the centre, but things are getting better. Plenty of hotels on the western outskirts of the city, some of them is disused insurance factories. For example the 'Mad Hatter' in Stamford Street. Not an old insurance factory as it happens, but I don't think it has been a hotel for very long. And there is a reasonable sprinkling of chain hotels - Premier Inn sort of places - in the suburbs. We even have a couple near us.

PS: glancing through the post, I see that there are rather too many rathers. Ought to thin them out a bit really but can't now be bothered.