All posts by Keith

I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.
photography

Weekly Photograph

This week’s photo is another from the archives. It is a superb piece of medieval stone carving of a woven pattern at Rochester Cathedral. The stone is not only carved but painted as well. I took this so long ago that I now cannot remember where it is in the cathedral or even if it is in a wall or floor.

Click the image for larger views on Flickr
Rochester Cathedral Woven Stone
Woven Stone
September 2008, Rochester Cathedral

quotes

More Quotes

Our occasional round-up of interesting, inspoiring and amusing quotes (in no special order) …
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
[Leo Tolstoy]
Insanity in individuals is something rare — but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.
[Friedrich Nietzsche]
The big blue wobbly thing with mermaids living in it.
[Actual description of the sea, overheard in Brighton by my friend Laura Jane Stamps]
The West behaves towards the Islamic world like a monkey with a grenade.
[Dmitry Rogozin, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia]
and when the world around you is in a moment of panic and chaos
and parents are hanging onto their kids
and people are falling to their knees and praying
and people are gathered around screens in bars and saying OH MY GOD
and the noises overhead are either threateningly loud or deafeningly silent
and the fingers start pointing in every direction
and some are shaking in fear
and some are stabbing in anger
and you
may find yourself …
doing what you did as a child
saying hey
have you ever noticed
that
THIS
looks like
THIS?
[Amanda Palmer; http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130529/]
we can only write about what we can see.
we can only connect the dots we collect.
which makes everything you write about you.
what you write is you. what i write is me.
my neighbors, my thoughts, my paranoia, the frightened conversations i overhear, what i read in the news, my childhood drama, my understanding of shakespeare, and odysseus and the wine dark sea, and of the brady bunch, and bukowski. MY connections all go into the stew. that’s all you ever have. you can disguise it in any style, but it’s still you.
[Amanda Palmer; http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130529/]
Anthony Powell said much the same thing but in somewhat different words!
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
[Dalai Lama]
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
[WB Yeats]
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
[Laurens Van der Post]
This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.
[Abraham Lincoln]
Clothes make the man, but nakedness makes the human being.
[Scott Adams]
To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]
If not for sex, much of what is flamboyant and beautiful in nature would not exist. Plants would not bloom. Birds would not sing. Deer would not sprout antlers. Hearts would not beat so fast.
[Olivia Judson, Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation]
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
[Jimi Hendrix]
Childhood is an extended apprenticeship in thinking. We learn both what to think and how to think.
[Tim Bayne, “Thought”, New Scientist, 21/09/2013]
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
[Douglas Adams]

food+drink

Tangy Lamb in a Pot

I declare another culinary triumph!
Yesterday we procured a boned and rolled large leg of lamb at the supermarket. English lamb and reduced as it was approaching its “end by” date. Thinking quickly what we could do with it, when we didn’t want to eat it that evening, I said “marinade it overnight and we’ll cook it tomorrow”. And so we did.
So I give you …


Tangy Lamb in a Pot
We used a 1.5kg boned and rolled leg of lamb.
For the Marinade (adjust this to taste):
tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp of Worc. Sauce
wine glass white wine vinegar
wine glass olive oil
1-2 tbsp garlic paste
1-2 tbsp tomato paste
wine glass tomato ketchup
end of a bottle of HP sauce washed out with white wine
1 tsp very hot chilli sauce
tiny amount of salt
good grind of fresh black pepper
For cooking the lamb you also want:
large onion roughly chopped
several cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
12 olives
good handful chopped fresh herbs (whatever you have; I used parsley and basil)
salt & pepper
olive oil
The day before you want to eat this:
Mix all the marinade ingredients together well.
Put the lamb in a box or other container and stab it well.
Pour the marinade over the lamb and work it around a bit, cover and put the lamb in the fridge for 24 hours.
On the day:
Pre-heat the oven to about 160C (with fan).
Sweat the onion and garlic in a large pan (preferably the cast iron casserole you’ll cook this in) until the onion is going translucent.
Take the lamb out of the marinade and hold it to drain for a moment, remove the string holding it together if you wish, then add it to the pot and brown it on all sides.
Add the marinade, herbs, olives, and some salt & pepper.
Stir well and bring up to cooking heat.
(If necessary now transfer to a casserole.)
Put the lid on the casserole and cook in the oven for about 30 mins per 500gm plus 30 minutes (less if you like your lamb pink).
Take the lamb from the sauce and carve at the table.
Serve with vegetables of your choice, potatoes and some of the sauce — we had roast cabbage (I’ve not perfected this yet; recipe when I have) and small, new season, jacket potatoes.
It was tangy and tomato-y and really melted in the mouth. It shall be done again!

food+drink

British Food Fortnight

British Food Fortnight runs from Saturday 21 September to Sunday 6 October, timing which is deliberately chosen to coincide with Harvest Festival.
What do apples, venison, blackberries, oysters, crab, parsnips and runner beans have in common? Yes, they’re all in season during British Food Fortnight.


This celebration was conceived because although there are numerous food initiatives, projects and events across Britain, there was no overall flagship event bringing the whole of British food together. So the fortnight promotes all that is good about our home-grown food: more types of cheese than France, 350 types of potato providing a range of tastes and textures, and seasonal vegetables that provide just what we need at that time of year.
As always there is a lot more information and a list of events over on the British Food Fortnight website at www.lovebritishfood.co.uk.

photography

Weekly Photograph

There’s no story to this week’s picture except that Noreen has ancestors who come from Chipping Norton. Coincidentally I have ancestors from just a handful of miles away at Churchill and Kingham.
This is the 17th century gateway to the almshouses, complete with wonky gate (which looks to be of the same sort of date as the stonework!). And as you can see the almhouses and gateway are on a really wicked hill down from the town to the church.

Click the image for larger views on Flickr
Almshouse Gateway
Almshouse Gateway
September 2011, Chipping Norton

food+drink

Herring

Another really nice evening meal; as always made up as I went along. We had Baked Herrings, vegetables pizzaiola and jacket potatoes with a bottle of really lovely Austrian hock. Apart from the wine, it was really super cheap meal too.
The potatoes were new season, small main crop Charlotte** — about the size of two hens eggs. Allow two per person. Bake on a baking sheet in the top of the oven at about 180C for an hour.


The herrings^^ we bought fresh this morning. They were really plump and meaty. They were done in a foil parcel in the oven with half a chopped onion, some chopped garlic and chopped fresh ginger and a good sprig of parsley. Add a couple of knobs of butter and if you wish a drizzle of white wine or lemon juice; salt & pepper. Cook for about 30-40 minutes.
Vegetables pizzaiola is dead easy too and a good way to use up left-over veg. I used some leftover roast carrots and some broad beans. Sweat half a finely chopped onion and some chopped garlic in some olive oil until the onion is going translucent. Add a small tin of chopped tomatoes, a good dash of Worcs. sauce, a good pinch of dried herbs, a tiny amount of salt and some pepper. Bring to the boil and add the vegetables. Cook for 10-15 minutes to reduce the tomato sauce and ensure the veg is really well heated through. If it is still a bit slack, or bland, add a squeeze of tomato purée.
Job done. Very easy. Quite cheap. And very tasty.
— oo O oo —

** Yes, potato varieties do matter. They aren’t all the same and it isn’t even as simple as “reds” and “whites” as it was in my childhood. We like Charlotte, which are a waxy variety; Estima are horrible and Maris anything are bland and boring. Try different varieties and see which you like. You will be surprised how different the varieties are.
boat

^^ What do you mean you’ve never eaten herrings? What not even a kipper? They were once the staple of the country: until we over-fished them. They are now plentiful again and not expensive. Herring are good clean fish because, unlike mackerel, they are not scavengers but feed on plankton, krill, etc.; and being oily fish they are good for you too. What is herring like? Try a cross between trout and mackerel. Or perhaps a slightly less pungent and oily sardine (to which they are related). Properly cooked they really do melt in the mouth.

medical, personal

Aren't You Dead Yet?

Yes, that is a serious question!
Average life expectancy has roughly doubled in the last 150 years. Whereas life expectancy at birth 150 years ago was around 35-40 years it is now around 80 years. (See Why are you not dead yet? which is an interesting read.) Well OK they’re figures for the US, but the UK and rest of the developed world isn’t much different. According to Wikipedia medieval life expectancy in the UK was 30 years, and was still only 31 years in the early 20th century. Indeed (according to World Bank data, via Google Public Data) UK life expectancy has risen 10 years in the last 50!


Forget airplanes, cars, nuclear weapons and the internet. This increase in life expectancy is probably the most important difference between our modern world and life 150 years ago.
Before the advent of modern medicine — and a lot of that has happened since World War 2 — infant and child mortality was incredibly high. And many of those who survived into adulthood were killed by accidents or disease which would be easily vanquished today. Just as an example, one of Noreen’s relatives about 100 years ago died in his mid-30s of erysipelas (St Anthony’s Fire), a bacterial skin infection which today would be quickly cured by antibiotics.
Remember that just because your direct ancestors lived into their 50s, 60s or even 80s, there were many children who died before puberty and hence are no-one’s direct ancestors. In the 19th century families of 10 or 12 children, with only one or two reaching adulthood, are not uncommon. And it was a lucky family which didn’t lose a single child even well into the 20th century.
In fact there is a good chance that you — yes, you reading this! — are already on your second or third life. And that is almost certainly down to either modern medicine or modern safety (think things like seat belts and air-bags).
In my late 20s I had appendicitis. It grumbled for a year or more until the medics decided what it was and removed the offending organ before it blew up. Without that medical intervention I would likely have died of peritonitis within a year or two. Noreen has similar stories — blood poisoning from an infected toe injury; a shattered left elbow (which would have been at least disabling). And we have both been extremely lucky with our health!
We all forget how common such diseases and injuries are and how much we have come to take for granted that they can be fixed. We also forget all those illnesses (smallpox, polio, whooping cough (aka. pertussis), measles) which we never or seldom see because of vaccination.
So tell me, please, why are you not dead yet? Without modern medicine what would have killed you? I’m curious to know.