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.

food+drink

Peppers with a Haggis Stuffing

1 January 2022 Keith

For some reason, which I never understood, it was a semi-tradition with my parents to have haggis at New Year. And it is something which Noreen and I have mostly continued.

Why is it that so many people dislike haggis? I wonder how many have actually tried it! Yeah, OK, it is made with sheep’s offal, and many are squeamish about eating offal. For me it is tasty, peppery, and good, filling food; there’s nothing to dislike. I won’t say it is a staple in our house, but it’s something we eat several times a year, and there’s always on on stand-by in the freezer. And you don’t have to eat it with the traditional bashed neeps (swede) and mashed potato. Why not try it as the filling in a “Shepherd’s Pie”?

Anyway this New Year I decided to try something different.

Peppers with a Haggis Stuffing

You will want …

medium or large bell peppers, at least one per person (I used four)
a 500gm haggis
a packet of stuffing mix
2 “banana” shallots or a medium onion
as much garlic as you wish
2 soft tomatoes
(optional) some flavouring, like 1-2tbsp HP sauce, or a good slug of Worcester Sauce, or a double whiskey
olive oil and/or butter
freshly ground black pepper

This is what I did …

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/fan 180°C.
Finely chop the onion, garlic and tomatoes and sweat them in a little olive oil and/or butter until translucent and getting sticky.
Meanwhile halve the peppers (I find they cook better halved); remove the stalks, seeds and pith. Set aside.
Put the stuffing mix in a large mixing bowl and rehydrate with hot water according to the packet instructions.
Remove the skin and chop the haggis into smallish pieces. Add to the stuffing mix and work together well, breaking down the haggis further.
Add the onion & tomato mix, flavouring and some ground black pepper (to taste). Mix well.
Fill the pepper halves with the haggis stuffing and put on one side.
Grease an oven-proof roasting dish, and if there’s any haggis stuffing left over (there probably will be) put it in the dish and sit the stuffed pepper halves on top.
Cover with foil and bake in the oven for about an hour. Remove the foil for the last 15-20 minutes to lightly crisp the stuffing.
Serve accompanied by an alcoholic drink of your choice (beer or whiskey work well) and optionally some green vegetables.

Any leftovers will make a nice cold snack lunch (or even sandwiches).

This was tasty and tangy but not overpoweringly haggis-y – I reckon you could serve it to many people and they’d not know they were eating haggis.

amusements, topographical

January Quiz Questions

1 January 2022 Keith

This year we’re beginning each month with five pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. They’re not difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers, so hopefully you’ll learn something new, as well as have a bit of fun.

January Quiz Questions: British Geography

What is the westernmost settlement in the UK?
Which city is the further west, Bristol or Edinburgh?
Which river forms much of the border between England and Scotland?
Which headland on the Kent coast is formed mostly of shingle?
On the London Underground network, which is the only station to begin with the letter “I”?

Answers will be posted in 3 weeks time.

personal

Happy New Year

1 January 2022 Keith

Sorry 2021 you didn’t deliver what we ordered,
so we’ve bought a brand new 2022!

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year.
May your 2022 be much better than 2021!

amusements, thoughts

A Thought for New Year …

31 December 2021 Keith 1 Comment

Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!

[Ogden Nash]

personal

Unblogged December

31 December 2021 Keith

Wed 1	What happened today? Not a clue. Spent the whole day doing admin-y stuff. Yawn!
Thu 2	Spent a large chunk of the afternoon trying to work out what in my life I want to monitor and/or achieve next year. All somewhat depressing, but I know if I don’t do it I’ll get nowhere.
Fri 3	Yay! The supermarket delivery actually got everything right this week, barring the handful of items that weren’t available. And the chatty, friendly driver was well on time.
Sat 4	Surprised that it was quite foggy in the middle of the nght; enough that I couldn’t see the top of the road from the bedroom window. But it was clear by the time I got up at 9.
Sun 5	I should have photographed my desk this morning: it was an absolute riot of of muddy paw marks. It’s an enigma to me how a cat can come in, cross the kitchen, hall, stairs, landing and study (all carpeted except the kitchen) and still have wet muddy feet!
Mon 6	Actually managed to look at some family history stuff this afternoon. I was looking at Austens in Tenterden and hoping to find a (very distant) connexion to Jane Austen. But no luck so far.
Tue 7	I’m a terrible correspondent, so no surprise that it has taken me weeks and even months to get round to writing some letters to friends and family.
Wed 8	Ho! Ho! Ho! Welcome to the new Christmas lockdown. But phased in over a week. FFS. Yet again much too little, far too late.
Thu 9	04:30. Sounds of cat(s) playing with something. Ah yes. Small dead wood mouse at the foot of the bed. Both junior cats in attendance; I wonder which is the guilty party? Boy Cat looks the more likely.
Fri 10	Waitrose are selling their usual Crément de Bourgogne for £10.99 (it’s normally £14.99). It’s as good as many Champagnes (well it’s the same method, but not the right district). Buy 6 and get another 5% off. Good everyday fizz. What’s not to like?
Sat 11	That worked pretty well. No chance of the usual literary society London pre-Christmas lunch again this year, so I organised a sort of party tea over zoom. More overseas members (mostly US) than Brits, and it’s great to see them. Seemed to be enjoyed by all.
Sun 12	Afternoon spent writing Christmas cards, letters and wrapping presents that have to be posted. Finished the cards, but not the packages.
Mon 13	So today, between two GP patient group meetings, we managed to get all the Christmas cards & presents packed up and in the mail.
Tue 14	Someone left an unlabelled bag with tea bags & chocolate on our doorstep. Thing is one doesn’t like to assume it wasn’t left there by mistake, especially after several recent attempted deliveries of parcels not for us. But in this instance it turned out to be a friend playing “Secret Santa”.
Wed 15	Did today exist? I suppose it must have done. But I’ve no way of telling as I seem to have done nothing – certainly nothing of any substance beyond a few minor website updates.
Thu 16	Night was falling fast when N discovered a problem with the pond: it was nearly empty! Water drained down to ground level (top of the original tiny sunken pond). Water not spewing from hoses etc. so must be a hole in the liner. Too dark to do anything more than minimal damage limitation.
Fri 17	A difficult day. Tom came round to help assess the pond situation. Tom & N rescued the fish; moved to cramped temporary accommodation – hopefully pending a better solution over the weekend. Didn’t like having Tom here, however necessary it was; I’m petrified of getting Omicron.
Sat 18	A day spent waiting for a delivery that didn’t materialise. Gah!
Sun 19	Up at 06:30 after a bad night and much too little sleep. No wonder I was cold, falling asleep, and good for nothing all day.
Mon 20	It’s been a long day of bits & pieces; odd jobs; doorstep pressie swap with a friend. Couldn’t settle to doing anything.
Tue 21	Trying to eat up the freezer to make room for Christmas meat. Tonight a couple of portions of frozen cooked chicken fragments; put together with leftover roast Mediterranean veg from Sunday and used to stuff some peppers. Tasty even if not fine dining.
Wed 22	A day of two results. Goldfish finally moved to their new long-term temporary home. And tasty home made tomato soup for evening food; very thrifty using a quantity of over-ripe surplus tomatoes and stock from the freezer.
Thu 23	An interesting day topped by a product recall on the goat butter we have in the fridge – all of it. So need to source more butter (goat or otherwise) PDQ.
Fri 24	Christmas dinner part 1 this evening: roast pork, baked potatoes, red cabbage, sugar snap peas, rainbow carrots, leek sauce and apple sauce. Washed down with some good cider.
Sat 25	It’s Christmas morning. The rest of the house is asleep. But what am I doing? Working, of course; rewriting a document. Festivities later.
Sun 26	A grey and soggy Boxing Day, which meant a lie-in, lunch of cold meat with bubble & squeak, and not a lot else done – as it should be.
Mon 27	Anthony Powell sums up today rather well: “It was that prolonged, flat, cheerless week that follows Christmas. Those interminable latter days of the dying year create an interval of moral suspension: one form of life already passed away before another has had time to assert some new, endemic characteristic.”
Tue 28	The first of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on BBC4 TV. Very topical; all about viruses, how they infect us and how we test for them. OK I followed along easily, but I suspect many of the kids struggled with some of the bits that were glossed over or assumed.
Wed 29	Today is the Feast Day of Thomas Becket, St Thomas of Canterbury. Saint and martyr he’s venerated by the Catholic and Anglican Churches. Having found conflict with Henry II over the rights and privileges of the Church, Becket was murdered by followers of the king in Canterbury Cathedral on this day in 1170. He is my patronal guardian and we have much in common: not least being a pain in the posterior.
Thu 30	Last of the RI Christmas Lectures. They’ve been quite good in an understated way; no dramatics; and quite a lot assumed/not explained. But it’s hard to know how to make virology fun for 12-year-olds, especially when constrained to just three lectures.
Fri 31	This old year is ending as it began … with us swimming underwater: we close our eyes, hold our breath, and keep kicking in a vain attempt to resurface. Here’s hoping we can resurface in 2022. HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

amusements, pleasures

Amusements of the Year, 2021

31 December 2021 Keith

Here’s my usual round-up of things which have amused me during the year. Unsurprisingly this has not been a vintage year for amusement.

(Most of the images etc. are clickable to display larger views or source information.)

Product
There are three contenders this year, but the winner has to be these Danish Wine Gums (left below) and Salt Liquorice Pastilles (yeuch!).

The runners-up were this Ziplock Bag Thong with Goldfish Crackers …

… and a new (I think) product Waitrose Christmas Chicken Wing Lollipops …

Headline

I think this year’s winner has to be:

Motorist fined after CCTV confuses his number plate with woman’s T-shirt

But it was a close contest with these four runners-up very close behind the winner. (All are from the Guardian.)

Ohio man charged with stealing 58ft pedestrian bridge

Monkeys thought to have escaped private collection on loose in Cincinnati

Old Irish goats return to County Dublin to protect hills from wildfires

Camels enhanced with Botox barred from Saudi beauty contest

Twat of the Year

Leaving aside the whole Tory party in Westminster … the only serious contender for “Twat of the Year” has to be this disreputable scumbag:

I may not be the snappiest of dressers but I’d be mortified to leave home looking this scruffy. I wonder if they found the hole in the hedge before the sheep escaped?

Book Title

Oh dear, there really is only one serious contender this year:

Is Superman Circumcised? by Ray Schwartz

Auction Item

Two superlative auction items stood out for me this year. First, from our local auction house, was this unprepossessing item:

It was described in the catalogue as:
A late 19th century Swiss Black Forest wooden musical coat hook, carved as an anthropomorphic dog with glass eyes, and with gun and powder flask bearing the Swiss cross, with chamois horn feet, fitted with a musical movement with 6cm cylinder numbered 12 223, with applied circular metal label inscribed “C. Spiess Schloss Laufen Patent 16870” and remains of paper label, 39 cm high

As a wonderfully desirable alternative eBay were offering …

Vintage empty tall RAT BAIT TIN … RACUMIN.
Size 8 1/2 inches tall, cardboard tube with tin top and bottom.
Made in WALTHAM CROSS, HERTS.

Not surprisingly it didn’t sell.

Nominative Determinism

Nominative determinism is where people end up in jobs which suit their name. There are many examples but these stood out this year:

Will Welfare, Public Health Incident Director, UKHSA
Marcus Scriven, journalist
Prof. Roger Kneebone, a surgeon
Superintendent James Pigg, of the Metropolitan Police

Organisation Name

The prize for the “Organisation Name of the Year” must go to the Old Irish Goat Society which you’ll recall was also implicated in one of our “Headlines of the Year”.

Animal

Every year we seem to encounter strange, new (to us) animals. This year we’ve met:

Occupation

Just one winner here this year:

Paper Folder – “People are amazed I fold paper for a living, then they see it”.

Sport

Top of the tree in this category is something I would never have thought of, let alone considered a sport.

Decorative Camel Grooming.

Apparently it can take years to create the art on a single camel.

Epigram

Two, almost priceless, epigrams popped up this year.

The first is from the Irish Goats again:

Goat herding is a timeless profession

And secondly from Emma Beddington who was caught describing our expected Christmas excesses as:

mulled Dickensian jollity

I couldn’t disagree with either of those descriptions.

Marketing Slogan

Earlier in the year we came across a brilliant piece of the advertisers’ art; I can’t call it “marketing bollox” as it is but a simple slogan for Fox’s biscuits:

More yum per crumb

It seems they’ve been using this slogan for quite a few years; I’d just not noticed, but that doesn’t make it any less good!

Word

Our “word of the Year” (which could equally well be “Food of the Year”) comes courtesy of @WhoresofYore on Twitter. It is:

Piss-Quick
Described as (19thC) A hot gin-based drink drunk from a jar, in the morning to warm yourself. Piss-quick contained a mixture of gin, marmalade and hot water.

Folk Custom

Thanks to two modern artists we’ve discovered a folk custom which was previously not known to us. Called Hat’s On, Tits Out and it appears to happen in random places (and often unannounced) most summers. The artists have even provided us a couple of illustrations.

First from tilloodesigns on Instagram:

hat's on, tits out

And secondly from Peter Collins (1923-2001):

hat's on, tits out

Medical Discovery

In a surprise discovery, medics have found that we’ve had both male and female genitals wrong all these years:

Public Service Announcement

And the winner here is a poster reminding us that it is forbidden to season the pigeons.

pigeons

Photograph

We have three winners in the “Photograph” category.

What must be the Worst Sofa Ever …

Some absolutely brilliant Zombie Munch Cakes (© Waitrose Weekend paper; 28 October 2021) …

And a strategically placed European paper wasp colony on a wayside shrine in the South Tyrol.

Trivia

I’ll leave you with our final “Trivia” category where we have perhaps the best comment this year on the UK’s appalling government:

You’ll want to click the image and appreciate it full size.

All of which leaves us scratching our head in bemusement.

We’ll be looking out for brilliance again next year; contributions are always welcome. Let’s see if we can make it a really vintage year!

Meanwhile remember Yogi Berra’s words: If you come to a fork in the road, take it..

arts, history, links, medical, natural history, science

Monthly Links

29 December 2021 Keith

So here for the last time in 2021 is my compilation of links you may have missed the first time.

Science, Technology, Natural World

The simplicity of Occam’s Razor was seen by a medieval monk. [£££]

Chemists are finally beginning to get to the bottom of marijuana’s skunky scent.

It has become recognised that plants are interconnected via a network of underground fungi, and now there’s a project trying to map that network.

Scientists investigating a restored coral reef in Indonesia have recorded many sounds (not yet tagged to specific species) to a backing of snapping shrimp.

Still with fish, the tiny Batman River Loach* (Paraschistura chrysicristinae, above), long thought extinct, has been rediscovered in SE Turkey. [* It’s named after the Batman River!]

Meanwhile back on dry land, scientists working on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have identified 14 previously unknown species of shrew.

Between 2014 and 2018 there were many cats found dead especially around south London, and the perpetrator was long thought to be some warp-headed human. However research by the Royal Veterinary College has shown the cats died due to a variety of causes and were subsequently scavenged by foxes. This had long been suspected by some of us, despite being vilified by vigilante groups.

Art, Literature, Language

Artists have long been doing battle with the censor (in many forms) over the depiction of pubic hair and nudity, and photography is no different. [LONG READ]

Those much-loved kids TV characters The Clangers were not a anodyne as we all thought.

Here’s a video about an incredibly fragile instrument: the Glass Armonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin. [VIDEO]

Writer Alan Garner talks about books that have been important to him.

This lady makes a living folding paper: it is sculptural, absolutely incredible and way beyond origami. [VIDEO]

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Palaeontologists have found some ancient footprints which suggest that there were at least two hominid species living alongside each other in East Africa around 3.6m years ago.

Really quite modern by comparison, a 5700-year-old tomb in the Cotswolds has revealed a surprising family history of the occupants.

Around 700 years later a start was made building Stonehenge, the subject of a 2022 exhibition at the British Museum.

There is now evidence that some while after the building of Stonehenge there was a mass migration into Britain which accounts for around half of British peoples’ genetic make-up.

Still in Britain, and gradually coming closer to our time, archaeologists believe they have now found physical evidence of Roman crucifixion in Cambridgeshire.

Lastly in this section, Historic England present highlights of captivating historic site listed in 2021. [LONG READ]

London

London blogger Diamond Geezer reminds us quite how big London actually is. Well it needs to be to accommodate almost 10m people!

Food, Drink

Clare Finney in the Guardian explodes some of the biggest myths about cheese.

And in a similar vein (ouch!) Alison George in New Scientist looks at how microbes create the flavours of cheese. [£££]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

It seems that in these plague-ridden times there’s a thriving cottage industry in dream analysis.

And finally, I leave you with the magical and restful miniature world of the terrarium.

amusements

To Keep You Amused …

25 December 2021 Keith

Just in case anyone is at a loose end over the holidays, once again we bring you one of the year’s great events: the King William’s College General Knowledge Paper 2021-22.

According to Wikipedia: Since 1904, the College has set an annual general knowledge test, known as the General Knowledge Paper (GKP). The pupils sit the test twice: once unseen on the day before the Christmas holidays, and again when they return to school in the New Year – after spending the holiday researching the answers. These days, however, pupil participation is voluntary.

The quiz is well known to be highly difficult, a common score being just two correct answers from the list of several hundred. The best scores are 40 to 50 for the unseen test and about 270 out of 360 for the second sitting.

The quiz is always introduced with the Latin motto Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est, “To know where you can find anything is, after all, the greatest part of erudition.”

You can find this year’s GKP on the King William’s College website at https://kwc.im/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Questions-2021-22.pdf.

As usual I shall not be getting 100% as tonight’s bedtime reading.

personal, photography, pleasures