Thursday, February 26, 2009
Snowdrops
Investigating the bottom of the garden this morning, find that the snowdrops are starting to keep over. Unlike those we saw the other day at Nonsuch Park. Something called Herald Copse, the most impressive display of snowdrops I have ever seen.
Next to the snowdrops we had a chap showing off (by wearing shorts) his false leg. An impressive contraption, presumably made of stainless steel or titanium or something. Substantial and sleek looking affair which looked as if it had been built to a generous standard. Unlikely to collapse under one.
Next to him, and indeed he may even have been part of the gang, was a large gang of older cyclists. The Nonsuch Park cycle club or some such. Generally rather thin people all done up in mainly black lycra and chatting vigorously about chains and sprockets. Not spending much money in the neighbouring cafe. Not really my sort of club.
Not at all like the chap who reports (in English) from the site noticed in my previous post. He reports turning out in the frozen dawn on workdays to get his training in, so that he is in good shape to perform with his club on Sunday. So that he can stomp up and over those hills with panache. Or using a word from the subject of the post on 7/8/2007, to sprackle up and over the hills. To get such a hit from it all that he does not turn on his car radio on the way home lest he breaks the spell. Redemption through excessive exercise. It is a long time since I was anywhere near that sort of fit and while I was never in his league, it is true that one does get interesting psychic (?) experiences through exercise at height. The view from the summit looks much better when one has climbed up than when one has been driven up.
Yesterday evening we saw redemption of a differant sort, redemption through love, at Slumdog at the Epsom multiscreen. The multiscreen being a much more banal sort of place than the huge monoscreens of my youth, the ABC at Turnpike Lane being a good example. Odd sort of film, as it happens covering the same sort of ground as Tsotsi noticed earlier in the week. Rather too long, rather noisy both visually and aurally, risible plot but it does manage to build the tension and the emotion in the run up to the climactical end. Generally speaking I like films which tell the story in a straightforward, linear way. Don't care for chopping and changing, backwards and forwards. Which this film did in spades with the new trick of having two framing stories, a television programme and an interogation. Maybe, like other films before it, it is justified by making a wider audience aware of things that they might otherwise be unaware of. But I would like to think there was a better way.
The film was itself framed by calf's liver. Although not sure about the calf here. Should one be bringing in calves and where exactly should the apostrophe be, if anywhere? To resume, having been reminded of the merits of simply frying calf's liver with bacon (rather than dusting with flour before frying without bacon), decided that I had better give it a go myself and bought some from Cheam. First teaching point, the liver the butcher pulls out of the white plastic bucket it comes in is very big, the size of one of our large saucepans. Does it really come from a calf? On return, FIL explains that livers are indeed very big organs and that that from a calf might really be that big. And BH recalls that in our penurious youth we used to buy ox liver, a much coarser sort of food, which we used to stew in gravy with carrots and onions.
The first portion of this liver was, however, fried with bacon in olive oil for lunch. Served with fried onions, boiled white rice and boiled crinkly cabbage. Very good, despite the rather odd smell given off by the olive oil. Nothing wrong with the oil, I had just forgotten what it smells like hot. The second portion was fried by itself in cooking oil and made into sandwiches for breakfast. Good gear. Got me sprackling up Howell Hill with no sweat at all.
Next to the snowdrops we had a chap showing off (by wearing shorts) his false leg. An impressive contraption, presumably made of stainless steel or titanium or something. Substantial and sleek looking affair which looked as if it had been built to a generous standard. Unlikely to collapse under one.
Next to him, and indeed he may even have been part of the gang, was a large gang of older cyclists. The Nonsuch Park cycle club or some such. Generally rather thin people all done up in mainly black lycra and chatting vigorously about chains and sprockets. Not spending much money in the neighbouring cafe. Not really my sort of club.
Not at all like the chap who reports (in English) from the site noticed in my previous post. He reports turning out in the frozen dawn on workdays to get his training in, so that he is in good shape to perform with his club on Sunday. So that he can stomp up and over those hills with panache. Or using a word from the subject of the post on 7/8/2007, to sprackle up and over the hills. To get such a hit from it all that he does not turn on his car radio on the way home lest he breaks the spell. Redemption through excessive exercise. It is a long time since I was anywhere near that sort of fit and while I was never in his league, it is true that one does get interesting psychic (?) experiences through exercise at height. The view from the summit looks much better when one has climbed up than when one has been driven up.
Yesterday evening we saw redemption of a differant sort, redemption through love, at Slumdog at the Epsom multiscreen. The multiscreen being a much more banal sort of place than the huge monoscreens of my youth, the ABC at Turnpike Lane being a good example. Odd sort of film, as it happens covering the same sort of ground as Tsotsi noticed earlier in the week. Rather too long, rather noisy both visually and aurally, risible plot but it does manage to build the tension and the emotion in the run up to the climactical end. Generally speaking I like films which tell the story in a straightforward, linear way. Don't care for chopping and changing, backwards and forwards. Which this film did in spades with the new trick of having two framing stories, a television programme and an interogation. Maybe, like other films before it, it is justified by making a wider audience aware of things that they might otherwise be unaware of. But I would like to think there was a better way.
The film was itself framed by calf's liver. Although not sure about the calf here. Should one be bringing in calves and where exactly should the apostrophe be, if anywhere? To resume, having been reminded of the merits of simply frying calf's liver with bacon (rather than dusting with flour before frying without bacon), decided that I had better give it a go myself and bought some from Cheam. First teaching point, the liver the butcher pulls out of the white plastic bucket it comes in is very big, the size of one of our large saucepans. Does it really come from a calf? On return, FIL explains that livers are indeed very big organs and that that from a calf might really be that big. And BH recalls that in our penurious youth we used to buy ox liver, a much coarser sort of food, which we used to stew in gravy with carrots and onions.
The first portion of this liver was, however, fried with bacon in olive oil for lunch. Served with fried onions, boiled white rice and boiled crinkly cabbage. Very good, despite the rather odd smell given off by the olive oil. Nothing wrong with the oil, I had just forgotten what it smells like hot. The second portion was fried by itself in cooking oil and made into sandwiches for breakfast. Good gear. Got me sprackling up Howell Hill with no sweat at all.
# posted by Jim @ 3:44 AM 
