pumpkinstrokemarrow

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.