pumpkinstrokemarrow

Yesterday, being a Wednesday, was another cow chop day. Four and a bit pounds of it. Served as usual with boiled white rice and pointy cabbage (Portugese pointy cabbage of the spring rather than the possibly English crinkly cabbage of the winter). But the cow chop, while entirely edible, was not quite up to the usual standard. Had rather a watery taste (texture?) to it. Cooking was entirely standard, so where lay the differance? Not sure how the butcher would react to starting a discussion on the point, so I don't suppose that I will. But, thinking further, the problem may have been the gravy. This was made by frying some elderly, finely chopped garlic in butter, then adding a couple of chopped onions and fying some more. Then adding a few mushrooms, coarsely chopped. Then adding some juices from the cow chop. A very brown and garlicky concoction which served well enough to flavour up the boiled rice but may have spoiled the palette for the more delicate flavour of the beef. Maybe we will know the answer after cold beef for lunch today.

A reasonably busy day at the garden ponds. That is to say still no sign of the water lilly and although its pond is clear of green froth, it is clearly biologically active in some other way. Rather murky looking with some bubbles. Topped up two of the three ponds with rain water from the butt, probably rather colder than the water already in the ponds, the butt living on a relatively shady side of the house. Try to pour it in slowly so as not to disturb things too much. Shortly afterwards, newts made their appearance in the marigold pond. And they were busy, with two of them making heroic efforts to jump out of the pond onto the rim, something which was possible with the pond now being full. But jumping out did not seem to be the point. They seemed to be balancing on their front paws on the rim while other newts were up to something below. Were they mating? Were weak males being chased out of the pond by strong males? In any event, they both dropped back into the pond after a while. Must ask Mr G. what newt eggs (assuming that that is what they do) look like. Plus the sedge pond contains quite a lot of egg shaped speckled black things, maybe 1mm by 2mm. They might be the eggs of something, but then again they might be something fallen off a neighbouring tree. Need to keep an eye on them.

Begining to feel that I am making progress on the matter of scales. It seems that for melody to work, one needs to use a limited group of related notes which span an octave, which last seem to be hard wired into our aural machinery. Such groups were called modes. Gradually modes with seven intervals, five tones and two semi-tones became popular, the division of octaves into twelve semi-tones being something to do with physics and numbers. Gradually one particular arrangement of tones and semi-tones known as the Ionic mode became popular as our major scale and another arrangement, a bit more tricky and known as the Aeolian mode became our minor scale. So, to a large extent, all twelve (or more, if one allows more than one name for any one scale) major scales are the same and all twelve minor scales are the same, apart from the differance of pitch which most of us are not too clear about. With these twenty four scales doing more or less all the business which counts, leaving aside folk music and other exotica which do their own things. And the whole story woven into the equal tempering business, about which I have noticed at least two entire books. To get this far, seems to require me to jump between the fat book and the thin book (undated, but by one Hilda Hunter, B.A., L.R.A.M.). One has a good way of explaining some things, one a good way of explaining others. I suspect that where I will get to, is that the thin book does a jolly good job of summarising the whole business, providing that you know it all already. Maybe another way of saying that the book is intended to be used with a teacher.