Friday, August 12, 2011
Low hanging fruit
Moving on from rather prosaic blackberries and hazel nuts, came across a fig tree near Bourne Hall yesterday. Overhanging someone's substantial garden wall and covered with fruit in various stages of ripeness. Some sufficiently ripe that it had fallen onto the pavement. I managed to gather five figs, this being all that there were in reach. Two of them were taken after lunch - reminding me that I am not that keen on fresh figs - much prefer the dried and sugary sort - and one was planted to see if any of the many seeds germinate. None of us had any idea about how to germinate fig seeds but the fig tree must have done whatever it was going to do given that the thing was about to fall off. So the ripe fig has just been planted entire and point down in a pot of some sort of garden centre potting compost. Maybe one of the several hundred seeds present will do something. We will now see what happens to the remaining two figs.
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.
# posted by Jim @ 1:51 AM 
