| Thu 1 | Well that really was a bit of a slog. But we pretty much got there. |
| Fri 2 | #000000;" />Last of the proceeds from the smokery. Smoked duck breast. In salad with lettuce, tomato, asparagus, pine nuts & croutons; served with a lemon & olive oil dressing. Followed by raspberries and cream. Washed down with a bottle of Falanghina. A passable Friday evening repast. |
| Sat 3 | Just watched a 10 minute film To Scale: TIME on YouTube demonstrating the age of the universe. And one has to wonder what really is the point, and why do we bother? |
| Sun 4 | What a lovely day. And the gardener came. So the place looks a bit tidier, except for the deliberately unmown lawn which looks like what it is: a scruffy meadow. Pottering in and out and took a few photos.  |
| Mon 5 | Oooo … next door’s marmalade cat so nearly got that squirrel – despite looking heavily pregnant. |
| Tue 6 | Mid-afternoon and the garden is awash with juvenile tits, some still being fed by parents. They were going everywhere; continually flitting hither and yon; and little clubs of then in a couple of places just hanging out. Half a dozen Blue Tits and as many Great Tits – and that’s just what I counted; there could well have been twice that. Plus a couple of sparrows joining in. |
| Wed 7 | Somewhere in the house there are three cats. But I’ve no idea where as I’ve hardly seen anything of them all day. Rosie appeared for a share of our lunch – no change there. Tilly and Boy have put in the odd guest appearance but no more. Other days they’ll all three be in and around all day. |
| Thu 8 | I blogged about the roses in our garden, but having walked round today I realised that we have both wheat and barley growing amongst the unmown lawn. Just a couple of ears of barley and a couple of dozen wheat, so not enough to make bread or beer. But they’ll not go to waste; if they don’t feed us they’ll feed the birds or mice. I guess they’re seed that got lost from the bird feeders last autumn. |
| Fri 9 | So why are there feathers on the dining room rug? Which cat is the villain? They’re dark and small, so probably sparrow. But there’s no sign of a corpse. |
| Sat 10 | It’s a wonderful hot sunny day, but sadly annoying on several counts. First I can’t sit outside because of my hayfever, even having had my usual antihistamine my eyes are streaming; guess that’s some part down to the unmown prairie called a lawn. There’s continual noise of someone, somewhere strimming or the like. And of course the neighbours are all sitting outside talking. One in particular never stops; never draws breath; it just the rivers of babble-on. |
| Sun 11 | Bad light stopped play this afternoon, and despite much stomach rumbling in the gods, nobody thought to provide any rain. |
| Mon 12 | Another hot and sticky day; lots of thunder in the afternoon and about 30 minutes light rain. And for once nothing in the schedule which had to be done – not that this stopped the day going tits up fairly early on. |
| Tue 13 | A new book available from the literary society. So I spend all afternoon consolidating payments, packing and posting. It’s a thankless job, made worse when Royal Mail’s online postage system doesn’t work properly. |
| Wed 14 | It’s uncomfortably hot, even for me. So I spend the day indoors without clothing (not unusual). Can’t sit outside as the pollen gets my hayfever going withing minutes – itchy, watering eyes mostly, despite daily antihistamine and regular eyedrops. Very annoying, especially as I’ve had hayfever since I was about 6 years old. |
| Thu 15 | The gardener comes this morning. Oh! No, the gardener comes after lunch. I see … The gardener comes not; he’s tied up sorting some leaky plumbing for another customer. I wonder if Saturday will bring more luck? |
| Fri 16 | Phew! What a day. Who would think that a trip to the hospital to get new hearing aids would be so tiring? OK, so it was a hot day; but audiology appointmnets aren’t invasive or threatening, they’re actually quite benign. It’s all the hassle around it that’s so draining: from middle of the night hypos, to early supermarket deliveries and getting taxis. But we won! |
| Sat 17 | The gardener actually got here this afternoon and did some planting and tidying. At he same time we spent a nice few hours outside as well, doing some potting, fixing the watering system, and getting some sun (but not sunburn!). Sent the gardener away happy with a couple of chilli plants and some homegrown coleus. |
| Sun 18 | Weatherman speak with forked tongue, again. Instead of thundery showers, we managed just 30 minutes desultory drizzle, which is no good at all for the garden. |
| Mon 19 | A day marking time; no physical or mental go. |
| Tue 20 | Today is Tuesday 20 June 2023, and that’s not something you can say every day. |
| Wed 21 | Day 3. Hill. Jelly. Treacle. Toothpicks. Rinse and repeat. Why are washing machines so endlessly boring? |
| Thu 22 | Last evening there was a lovely crescent moon (apparently 14% illuminated) and Venus in the western sky just after sunset (like my sketch below). More please! |
| Fri 23 | How is it that a friend you knew as a teenager when you were newly married is now celebrating their 60th? Even if I accept that I’m a geriatric, the friend in question certainly isn’t 60 already. Tempus fugit velociter. |
| Sat 24 | Sad to be missing the friend’s 60th birthday bash – and her younger son’s 21st too – but N and I still don’t feel comfortable and safe in large indoor gatherings. And although it’s only been 28°C today, with the humidity thrown in, it is just too hot to get dressed up. |
| Sun 25 | Shortly after 06:00 this morning our resident fox was still on the prowl. And right up by the trail camera so we got a good shot of the top half as he/she was so close. We’ve had this fox around all year, and I think it may be the only one we now have; at most we have two; whereas we did have at least three individuals (although they’re difficult to differentiate from poor night-time trail camera images). And boy are they a good disposal system: put out a plate of scraps (chicken carcass, cold baked potato, disliked digestive biscuits, lamb bones) and it all magically disappears during the night. |
| Mon 26 | I’ve been saying for some time that I’d revamp the Anthony Powell London tour I originally did as part of the 2011 conference. I started on the rewrite a couple of months ago and put it down, as one does. Today was the day to find all the ends and tuck them in. Several hours later and the tour notes are done, complete with street-by-street navigation. At 20 pages this version is twice the size of the previous one, and is definitely not a coach tour as it includes places you’d not want to try to get a 50 seater coach! The notes have been sent off to my friendly local black cabbie (who does lots of tours of London) for comment. It’ll be interesting to see what I’ve got wrong! |
| Tue 27 | Technology. When it works it can be a real benefit and a time saver. When, all too frequently, it doesn’t work it’s a complete PITA and wastes so much time. Spent and unhappy afternoon fighting with Royal Mail’s on line system and, separately, the phone system. I think I won the former but definitely didn’t win the latter. Came away feeling totally smacked. |
| Wed 28 | So in the end we did something we’ve not done since the before times and ordered in pizza. |
| Thu 29 | Still at least I didn’t drown in the shower. Had I done so it would have been all of a piece with the rest of the day. |
| Fri 30 | On a wonderfully damp evening I’ll leave you with something cheerful: the flowers on our recently acquired scented geraniums. |
All posts by Keith
Monthly Links
And yet already we arrive at time for our monthly round-up of links to items we thought interesting, and you might too.
Science, Technology, Natural World
A new dinosaur species has been discovered on the Isle of Wight.
There’s a crack squad of hunters keeping the island of Jersey free of the invasive Asian Hornets (above). And no these aren’t the “murder hornets” which are invading the west coast of North America which are even nastier.
Scientists are taking another look at just when animals like foxes started living alongside humans. [££££]
A new study is finding clues to when masturbation evolved in primates – because it isn’t just humans that indulge.
Palaeontologists believe that Homo naledi in South Africa may have made etchings on cave walls and buried its dead. [££££]
Well now this (isn’t) surprising … it seems that air quality filters are picking up airborne DNA which reveals what species are nearby.
Changing tack somewhat … the US is being urged to reveal its UFO evidence amid (more) claims it has intact alien vehicles.
Meanwhile the “gateway to the underworld” megaslump in Siberia is revealing secrets from 650,000 year old permafrost.
And back to humans … there’s a myth that we use only 10% of our brain, but it is just a myth. [££££]
Health, Medicine
Here are nine things you probably didn’t know about saliva.
Also from the Zoe Health Study, here’s a look at the importance of bile.
Sexuality
Some curious scientist has taken an in-depth look at the condition known as “Blue Balls“, and discovered some interesting things about sexuality.
Who knew that until fairly recently many countries officially provided whores for wartime soldiers near the battlefield? No, it isn’t much known and talked about. And it wasn’t just in wartime.
Social Sciences, Business, Law, Politics
England is apparently going to trial providing a “universal basic income“. The trial will be in just two places with a very small number of people for two years, so don’t hold your breath.
One historian is suggesting that we’re on the brink of civil war – the US in particular but the Western world in general – but that we can avert it if we wake up. [LONG READ]
Art, Literature, Language, Music
So who actually knew there were officially many shades of black? [LONG READ]
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
Archaeologists have found evidence of plague in Britain 4,000 years ago. And it is being suggested this might be the reason the culture and people who built Stonehenge suddenly vanished from the record.
A stunning 3,000 year old bronze sword (above) has been found in a Bronze Age grave in Bavaria.
Cricket clubs don’t generally expect to be the custodians of several Roman gods’ heads.
Also with the Romans, a stunning mausoleum has been discovered on a building site in Southwark.
Here’s the story of St Ursula and the 11,000 virgin martyrs. [LONG READ]
Minstrels played an important role in medieval society, and it is now being appreciated that their work could be mad, bad and bawdy.
A pair of shipwrecks full of Ming era porcelain in the South China Sea are telling us a lot about the historic Silk Road trade routes.
Myths based in medieval goings-on are not always accurate. Here’s the case of the Fowlmere Tunnel. [LONG READ]
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
And finally for this edition, here are 13 signals all cat owners should recognise. [LONG READ]
Fox in the Grass
So there we were, about 19:15 this evening, eating out chicken and chips.
I spotted a dark russet-y shape appear way down the garden and disappear behind the philadelphus bush.
“Good evening, Reynard.”
A few minutes later it strolled across the lawn, to the upper lawn were we put out food. Sadly the plate there was empty – so we’ll just mark it with a dose of pee.
It wandered back down the path, stopping for a while to sit and look, and have a good scratch. I thought it had then disappeared beyond the philadelphus again.
At this point the white front of Boy Cat appeared on the path down by the pond. And waited.
He crept a couple of feet closer. And waited.
Is fox still trotting around down by the pond? It’s too shady to see, especially from the dining room.
Boy Cat creeps forward another couple of feet. And waits. Looking nervously to his left. Who’s he watching. Presumably another of the neighbourhood intruder cats.
He creeps forward again. And again. Still watching his left flank. And again.
Finally having made it some way past the silver birch he breaks into a slow trot. And he’s now clearly past the danger and on a home run.
Some minutes later, when I come upstairs and look out of the study window, the scenario becomes clear. Fox has not gone away but is curled up in the long grass almost in front of where the old apple tree was. This was about 19:45.
Grab camera. Oh bugger that’s an awful place to try to get a decent shot. Big, long focus lens, on full zoom, and a wide open bathroom window provide a handful of reasonable shots.
Fox snuggled down for a doze. It’s now 20:50 (as I type) and fox has just woken up having had a good hour’s doze; had a mighty stretch; a scratch and is generally attending to regular maintenance. Another big stretch and a shake. Rinse and repeat.
And at 21:00, off we trot.
Unfortunately the animal looks a bit mangey, but there’s nothing one can really do.
I got a good shot of a fox on the trail camera yesterday, but this is a different individual.
Nice that fox feels comfortable here (although the cats wouldn’t be too pleased); and something which probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t left the grass grow.
Seven Haiku Words of Me
Now here’s a little challenge for you!
Some while ago I came across someone suggesting we should describe ourselves in seven words.
Hmmm … I wrote down a list of almost 30 without trying – and they were just the polite ones!
Then I thought it should be made more interesting (translate: difficult). Hence was born …
written as a (correctly formulated) haiku.
Here are my first two efforts:
|
Spectacled obese Deaf diabetic depressive Grey geriatric. |
Deaf geriatric Grey liberal scientist. Devil’s advocate. |
It isn’t easy. I tried to find some more last evening and got no further.
What can you do? Please share your haiku seven word descriptions in the comments.
Monthly Quotes
Here’s this month’s collection of quotes …
What a con these “so-called” cats are. They’re supposed to have been domesticated since 7500BC. In that time, we humans have come up with the wheel, medicine, aeroplanes, art, the internet and much more. Yet cats are still shitting in flowerbeds and bringing us half-chewed mice as gifts. You’d think that with the thick end of 10,000 years of living with us under their belts, they’d have learned to occasionally bring us a nice bottle of wine or even an Amazon voucher or something to show their appreciation.
[Private Eye?]
The air in a man’s lungs contains 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, so that sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has ever lived – Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses.
[Jacob Bronowski]
We need to reduce production of private jets, SUVs, commercial airlines, mansions, industrial beef, fast fashion, advertising, arms, cruise ships – there are huge chunks of our economy that are mostly organized around capital accumulation, and are wasteful and destructive and totally irrelevant to human well-being. We can also ban the practice of planned obsolescence and introduce policies to expand product lifespans. When products last twice as long, we will need half as many. Finally, we urgently need to cut the purchasing power of the rich, using basic sensible policy tools such as wealth taxes and maximum income ratios.
[Prof. Jason Hickel]
Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class – the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn’t want you to know something, it won’t be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up.
[George Carlin]
If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?
[Carl Sagan]
The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
We ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the universe. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the skies so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
[Johannes Kepler]
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
[Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy]
Quantum mechanics describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as she is – absurd.
[Richard Feynman]
The physical act of passing through a doorway is the reason why you often walk into a room and completely forget what you were doing. Because going through a door signifies the beginning or end of something, this creates an “event boundary” within your mind. Basically, every time you go through a doorway, your brain starts filing away thoughts from your previous location to make room for a new group of memories in the next.
[unknown]
In the Ramtop Village they believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock he wound up winds down – until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.
[Terry Pratchett]
Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.
[George Whitman]
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying – lying to others and to yourself.
[Fyodor Dostoevsky]
It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
[Voltaire]
Every child needs to learn how to cook, learn how to cultivate a garden, plant seeds, learn about sustainability, be taken to a garden and be able to put their hands in the earth.
[Alice Waters]
Baths, wine, and sex ruin our bodies. But what makes life worth living except baths, wine, and sex?
[Ancient Roman saying]
Culinary Adventures #100: Summer Pudding
This Summer Pudding is definitely worthy of being post number 100.
As usual I hacked up someone else’s recipe as I went along; in this case a recipe by Sophie Grigson for the BBC at https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/summerpudding_90295.
Sorry no picture because we ate it! But it was just as good, and just a yummy as the one in Sophie Grigson’s recipe (below). Indeed it came out far better than I had expected.
Ingredients
- 400g punnet Strawberries
- 225g punnet Raspberries
- 200g punnet Blackberries
- 150g punnet Blueberries
- 160g Granulated Sugar
- ½ wine glass very sticky blackberry liqueur
- Loaf White Bread
- Sunflower oil or Butter for greasing
What to do …
- Wash the fruit. Hull the strawberries and halve any large ones
- Put all the fruit in a pan with the sugar and liqueur.
- Simmer very gently for about 5 minutes to get the juices running, then turn up the heat and cook for another 2 minutes. Take off the heat and allow to cool a bit.
- Meanwhile, grease a large pudding basin.
- Cut the bread into 1cm slices and remove the crusts.
- Cut a piece of bread to fit the bottom of the basin. Then cut pieces (rectangles, triangles) to fit the sides of the basin without any gaps. Remember to cut a piece to make the lid.
- Carefully strain the juice from the fruit; be careful not to mash the fruit.
- Starting at the bottom, dip one side of each piece of bread in the fruit juice and put in the basin, juice side out. Continue until you’ve done all the pieces of bread. If there are now gaps (the bread may shrink slightly) fill them with more slivers of juiced bread.
- Now tip the fruit into the basin.
- Dip the lid in the juice, and pour the remaining juice in with the fruit.
- Put on the lid.
- On top of the lid place a plate or saucer which fits closely, and weight it down with 1-2kg weights (or use tins of soup, beans, etc.).
- Leave to fully cool, then put in the fridge overnight.
- The next day, remove the weights and the plate/saucer. Run a thin blade around the edges, then invert the basin onto a shallow serving plate.
- Cut into thick slices and serve with double cream.
Notes
- You can use any summer fruit. Blackcurrants are especially good and in my view preferable to blueberries; redcurrants and white currants work well. You could also use sliced peaches, nectarines or apricots.
- So you don’t have blackberry liqueur? Use Cassis, which is more traditional anyway.
- Don’t worry if the fruit doesn’t come to the top of the bread case – as mine didn’t because I used too large a bowl. Just turn the sides over and cut the lid down to fit the remaining space.
June Quiz Answers
Here are the answers to this month’s five quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.
June Quiz Questions: World Geography
- Until 1930, what was the Turkish city of Istanbul called? Constantinople
- What country has the most islands in the world? Sweden, with 267,570.
- What is the largest desert in the world? Antarctica
- What country is located between France and Spain? Andorra
- What is the smallest country in the world by area? Vatican City at 0.49 sq km
Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2022.
Roses (2)
Having written a couple of days ago about our roses, they were the ones in the back garden. What I omitted was the wow display in the front.
Like the back, our front garden is allowed a certain degree of licence. Amongst the understorey there are some Apothecary’s Rose. Officially it is Rosa gallica officinalis. It’s a very old rose – Peter Beales says it dates to before 1200 – with large, semi-double, fuchsia-coloured flowers and a pure Old Rose scent; very free-flowering, creating a mass of colour. It mostly just grows as a mass of single stems, which creep and sucker their way around.
We were given a couple of off-shoots many, many years ago, and it is now rampant around the front garden. It is currently a mass of saucer-sized, shocking fuchsia-pink blooms. Sadly it has only a short season and will pretty much be over by the end of the month, but it is stunning for a few weeks.
On this Day in 1923
Our monthly look at what happened 100 years ago.
This day, 12 June 1923 saw …
Self-Portrait, June
[Click the image for a larger view]