Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Impending doom
According to a recent DT, having two or more senior moments a day is not just getting older in a calm and decent way. It might well be a harbinger of dementia. Act now to take remedial action (whatever that might be). All very worrying as in the last 24 hours I have had two and a half of them.
The first, the one which I am counting as the half, was in the 'Red Lion' in Crown Passage, off Pall Mall, an establishment which I remember as being where we used to be taken from time to time by a company called Origin before it got swallowed up in Atos-Origin, taken in fact to an upstairs room where they provided a very decent lunch, of the sausage and mash variety as I recall, this before everywhere did them. I also recall the very decent beer being supplied by Courage. But paying a quick visit yesterday, the pleasant lady behind the bar was not having any of this. She had been running the place for 18 years, they had never done Courage and she had never used the upstairs dining room. She thought that maybe her predecessor might have done. Perhaps time has passed quicker than sir realizes and sir was actually here more than the 10 years ago that sir is owning up to? I can't think of any way of checking; maybe she was right. All a bit disconcerting though.
The second was rather more serious. Later the same day, at TB, a chap buys himself a drink, calling for it by its full name, 'Stella Artois', a full name which is only rarely used and so which one might have thought would have penetrated the grey matter. But no, when it came to my turn to buy him another one and he had turned away to talk to someone else, I could not remember what his drink was. The chief barman on the fringes of all this piped up fast enough with the requisite full name, pointing out that one would remember this unusual call. Well this one didn't. Much more alarming the the incident in the 'Red Lion'. But there was some amusing compensation: the pretty young barmaid thought that she would help herself to a coke. So she reaches for the bottle and opens it. She then reaches for a glass from the shelf and gives it a jolly good wipe with some kitchen paper before she pours her coke into it, this in full view of the assembled company, whose glasses certainly do not get the same treatment. Much hooting all round.
The third was this morning when I completely forgot that I had dough rising in the airing cupboard. With the result that it rose for 4 hours, double what I had intended. The long rise dough seemed OK but we will see if there is enough puff left in it for the second rise.
This omission may have been result of irritation occasioned by coming across a bunch of people from the Lower Mole Heritage Jubilee Trust hacking down a perfectly innocent patch of scrub, perhaps 400 square metres worth of triangle on the eastern side of Horton Lane. Looked like older people, probably mostly retired like myself or otherwise underemployed. Perhaps I should have challenged them and explained that some people would rather the scrub was left as it was. But I could not face some solemn type banging on about newts or bring the countryside back to life and desisted.
At the same time I was over cooking the day's oxtail stew, it being stewed rather than slow roasted in deference to older tastes in these matters. But it was a long time since I had stewed oxtail and I was not going to do anything like looking it up in a recipe book, so I have learned that 5.5 hours simmering is probably 1.5 hours too long. But the gravy, thickened with orange lentils & corn flour and coloured with brown dye was good. What little remains will do well as oxtail soup, if nothing much like the stuff you get in tins.
And the day had started so well. Warm sunny November morning with assorted mushrooms (or perhaps toadstools) sprouting nicely in the verges.
The first, the one which I am counting as the half, was in the 'Red Lion' in Crown Passage, off Pall Mall, an establishment which I remember as being where we used to be taken from time to time by a company called Origin before it got swallowed up in Atos-Origin, taken in fact to an upstairs room where they provided a very decent lunch, of the sausage and mash variety as I recall, this before everywhere did them. I also recall the very decent beer being supplied by Courage. But paying a quick visit yesterday, the pleasant lady behind the bar was not having any of this. She had been running the place for 18 years, they had never done Courage and she had never used the upstairs dining room. She thought that maybe her predecessor might have done. Perhaps time has passed quicker than sir realizes and sir was actually here more than the 10 years ago that sir is owning up to? I can't think of any way of checking; maybe she was right. All a bit disconcerting though.
The second was rather more serious. Later the same day, at TB, a chap buys himself a drink, calling for it by its full name, 'Stella Artois', a full name which is only rarely used and so which one might have thought would have penetrated the grey matter. But no, when it came to my turn to buy him another one and he had turned away to talk to someone else, I could not remember what his drink was. The chief barman on the fringes of all this piped up fast enough with the requisite full name, pointing out that one would remember this unusual call. Well this one didn't. Much more alarming the the incident in the 'Red Lion'. But there was some amusing compensation: the pretty young barmaid thought that she would help herself to a coke. So she reaches for the bottle and opens it. She then reaches for a glass from the shelf and gives it a jolly good wipe with some kitchen paper before she pours her coke into it, this in full view of the assembled company, whose glasses certainly do not get the same treatment. Much hooting all round.
The third was this morning when I completely forgot that I had dough rising in the airing cupboard. With the result that it rose for 4 hours, double what I had intended. The long rise dough seemed OK but we will see if there is enough puff left in it for the second rise.
This omission may have been result of irritation occasioned by coming across a bunch of people from the Lower Mole Heritage Jubilee Trust hacking down a perfectly innocent patch of scrub, perhaps 400 square metres worth of triangle on the eastern side of Horton Lane. Looked like older people, probably mostly retired like myself or otherwise underemployed. Perhaps I should have challenged them and explained that some people would rather the scrub was left as it was. But I could not face some solemn type banging on about newts or bring the countryside back to life and desisted.
At the same time I was over cooking the day's oxtail stew, it being stewed rather than slow roasted in deference to older tastes in these matters. But it was a long time since I had stewed oxtail and I was not going to do anything like looking it up in a recipe book, so I have learned that 5.5 hours simmering is probably 1.5 hours too long. But the gravy, thickened with orange lentils & corn flour and coloured with brown dye was good. What little remains will do well as oxtail soup, if nothing much like the stuff you get in tins.
And the day had started so well. Warm sunny November morning with assorted mushrooms (or perhaps toadstools) sprouting nicely in the verges.
# posted by Jim @ 6:55 AM 
