Sunday, June 24, 2007
Goose paste
Finally got around to sampling the tin of goose liver pate today by way of pre-roast afternoon tea. Not bad at all; a slightly more sophisticated version of the paste we buy in little bottles from Shiphams. This last having the advantage of coming in various flavours and colours.
Sampled Wiggers a couple of days ago - it being the first time that I have heard the Chopin Preludes live - the last time I heard them at all being the night of the disaster. Played by a Japanese gent with a good stage manner - Hiromi Okada - neither too stiff (as I find Pollini) or too flambouyant. But the program as a whole perhaps a bit overweight with a sonata and 15 variations from Mr B plus a stocking filler (which I rather liked) from one Artur Malawski. For the first time that I remember we were sitting on the keyboard side only a few rows from the front - and watching the hands made it a whole new experience for me. Plus a slightly odd noise - not the sort of dying note noise that I am used to - from the piano whenever it got to the end of something. Perhaps that is what happens when the foot comes off the pedal but I couldn't see clearly enough to be sure. A rather thin audience - but with good Japanese representation and very enthusiastic. Three encores - which I find three too many after something as highly wrought as the preludes. The wrong way to bring me back down again. Guiness - there being a pelican bar quite handy - being much more suitable.
Harvested some more potatoes today. Very good size but managed to spear rather too many of them. Shouldn't matter too much if we eat those ones today. Plus the first of this years beet spinach.
And lastly more pub talk, prompted by the affairs of our Moat House Garden Centre, adjacent to what was one of the Epsom mental hospitals and partly staffed by the mentally handicapped. The affair in question being the question of whether or not the handicapped should be paid for their gardening. One school of thought - which the unions brought to the fore in the sixties of the last century - was that people doing such jobs should get the regular wage. They had a point, but I think the effect was that virtually all such jobs disappeared: one could not afford to run a business paying for four cylinders and only getting two. So the handicapped were back into the OT units doing jigsaws. Until recently the deal at the Moat House was that these gardeners got three pounds a day. Not much, but perhaps enough to pay for their fags and to give them a bit of self respect. The council - or the NHS - is now taking the position that they are volunteers and not entitled to any payment at all. All seems a bit mean to me. It is not a lot to pay to help these people feel they are contributing.
Sampled Wiggers a couple of days ago - it being the first time that I have heard the Chopin Preludes live - the last time I heard them at all being the night of the disaster. Played by a Japanese gent with a good stage manner - Hiromi Okada - neither too stiff (as I find Pollini) or too flambouyant. But the program as a whole perhaps a bit overweight with a sonata and 15 variations from Mr B plus a stocking filler (which I rather liked) from one Artur Malawski. For the first time that I remember we were sitting on the keyboard side only a few rows from the front - and watching the hands made it a whole new experience for me. Plus a slightly odd noise - not the sort of dying note noise that I am used to - from the piano whenever it got to the end of something. Perhaps that is what happens when the foot comes off the pedal but I couldn't see clearly enough to be sure. A rather thin audience - but with good Japanese representation and very enthusiastic. Three encores - which I find three too many after something as highly wrought as the preludes. The wrong way to bring me back down again. Guiness - there being a pelican bar quite handy - being much more suitable.
Harvested some more potatoes today. Very good size but managed to spear rather too many of them. Shouldn't matter too much if we eat those ones today. Plus the first of this years beet spinach.
And lastly more pub talk, prompted by the affairs of our Moat House Garden Centre, adjacent to what was one of the Epsom mental hospitals and partly staffed by the mentally handicapped. The affair in question being the question of whether or not the handicapped should be paid for their gardening. One school of thought - which the unions brought to the fore in the sixties of the last century - was that people doing such jobs should get the regular wage. They had a point, but I think the effect was that virtually all such jobs disappeared: one could not afford to run a business paying for four cylinders and only getting two. So the handicapped were back into the OT units doing jigsaws. Until recently the deal at the Moat House was that these gardeners got three pounds a day. Not much, but perhaps enough to pay for their fags and to give them a bit of self respect. The council - or the NHS - is now taking the position that they are volunteers and not entitled to any payment at all. All seems a bit mean to me. It is not a lot to pay to help these people feel they are contributing.
# posted by Jim @ 9:23 AM 
