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.
amusements, natural history, photography

Squirrel

In the latest episode of photos from my Flickr, we have the local squirrel and it’s hunters – finally captured on film this morning thanks to my new Canon 90D and a mega-long zoom lens.

[Click the images to get a larger view on Flickr]

Squirrel 1

We have this grey squirrel around the garden who has almost no hair on its tail. It looks very odd, especially when he sits around doing that squirrel thing of waving its tail. It’s been around all winter and otherwise looks to be in good health, so there’s no obvious reason for the hair loss.

Squirrel 2

As this next photo shows he’s male, and has been observed knocking up the ladies!

Squirrel 3

While he’s happily devouring our bird seed, Tilly cat approaches from starboard …

Squirrel Hunt 2

… and Boy cat undertakes a blocking manoeuvre to port, while desperately hoping the squirrel falls off!

Squirrel Hunt 1

Needless to say, the squirrel won with a good six foot leap from the top of the feeder pole to the apple tree. But it needs to be careful as Tilly is known to have caught a squirrel in the past.

And notice the wildlife-friendly, aka. unkempt, bottom half of our garden. It is sort-of half intended to be woodland floor!

food+drink, history, links, science

Monthly Links

Yet once more a month has passed and we come to my collection of links to items you may have missed and didn’t want to.

Science, Technology, Natural World

If we found extraterrestrials, why should we expect them to look like anything we know?

Rather surprisingly many genes are not necessary for survival, and some species have lost quite a few.

Plants have unexpected ways to communicate, problem solve and socialise – indeed a whole secret life!

Blue Tits in Germany are dying and no-one knows quite why.

What’s in an Antarctic lake? Travel down a borehole Lake Whillans.

We live on a planet. But just what is a planet?

With clearer skies and time on our hands, here are a few tips about stargazing from your backyard.

Environment

A speculative drill in Cornwall for a souyrce of lithium has uncovered a potentially important copper deposit.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

The earliest known skull of Homo erectus has been found in South Africa.

Melting ice on a Viking-era mountain pass in Norway is revealing some spectacular artefacts.

In another story of ice, this time in the Alps, it seems that the record of lead pollution may reflect the murder of Thomas Beckett.

The mystery of the medieval sweating sickness.

Renaissance Europe was beset with paranoia about the pox leading to the rapid spread of guilt, scapegoats and wonder-cures.

And a bit more up to date, there has long been a puzzle over the early April sunrise shining through Brunel’s Box Tunnel near Bath.

Food, Drink

When do we need to adhere to expiry dates and when can they be flexed?

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Hints and tips on how to clean 10 annoying things around your home.

And finally, in our only concession to Coronavirus, here’s our favourite Zen master on dealing with what might happen – or it might not happen.

Be good, and stay safe!

food+drink, ramblings

Ingredients

2 Comments

Being idle as I am, I fell to thinking about food. Well who doesn’t?

Now there are very few things I really will not eat. Oysters and tripe are two which immediately spring to mind.

But there are quite a few things which, if you show me a recipe or a menu item containing them, I’ll pass on by. Pretty much top of the list are:

  • Sweet Potato
  • Butternut Squash

however they are rapidly followed by:

  • Pomegranate
  • Pumpkin
  • Gnocchi
  • Polenta
  • Tofu
  • Sourdough
  • Spelt
  • Cavalo nero

Those top 10 are followed by a few lesser horrors which will be considered under duress:

  • Beetroot
  • Goat’s cheese
  • Kale
  • Cranberry
  • Sweetcorn
  • Egg custard

And there are a few cuisine choices/combinations I will avoid:

  • Anything sweet with meat – I can’t abide jam with meat!
  • Anything which is unnecessarily vegan
  • Pretty much anything that I don’t know what it is – why do all chefs have to always include something which no-one has ever heard of?

And I am sure there are others I’ve forgotten.

But why is this? Well obviously it is in part because I actually don’t like many of them them and sometimes that is down to texture as much as taste. I’d eat them if I had to but I’ll never choose to if there is a half-decent alternative. But it is also partly because many (though not all) are/have recently been trendy and fashionable, which I find an immediate turn-off – I’m resistant to jumping on bandwagons and following the herd: thank you, I’ll decide what I eat, drink, like, think, believe; I don’t need you to decide for me!

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. What do other people refuse to eat not necessarily because they dislike it?

environment, ramblings, science

Much More than Environmental Reform

My friend Ivan had recety started a new blog, Restored World. In Ivan’s words:

I have created this website to share my thoughts and reflections on how we might respond in new ways to the needs of our damaged, ailing world. What has led me to speak out here is my belief that our current way of thinking and doing things is not only inappropriate but continues to harm us.

It is clear from our collective struggles to even begin to address the climate emergency, the mass species extinction, increasing inequality, or other challenges such as the present spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, that we appear trapped … within an outdated mode of thinking that determines our functioning, a mode no longer appropriate to the immense challenges we face in the present global crisis.

We collectively all need renewal, myself included, if the world in which we live is to be restored. My hope is that this website, which is a personal account of my search for that renewal, can be a small contribution to our collective effort in imagining how we will restore our world.

Although Ivan and I are coming at the problem from different perspectives (and this blog is more wide-ranging) we seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet. Ivan is a thinker, and as a professional writer is much more eloquent in expressing his views than am I.

One thing reading Ivan’s thoughts has done is to goad me into finishing something I started long ago: encapsulating the way I see the complexity of environmental reform in a diagram.

Environmental Reform Diagram

Environmental reform isn’t easy. As the above diagram shows it involves a whole interdependent network of actions and effects which revolve around three core necessities:

  • Reform of Agriculture and Fisheries
  • Reform of Natural Resource Usage
  • Reform of Energy Production.

There are a number of obvious entry points to the network, although starting anywhere one can is better than not starting at all.

What this doesn’t show is the necessity to reduce our reliance on product, and reform both our dominant capitalist hegemony and our broken political system. Each will be another complex network and connecting these reform networks will be yet another level of interdependent network – and I haven’t thought about any of that, yet! We could start on this anywhere, in any of the networks, and hopefully actions in one place will flow through into the other networks.

None of this is easy. But we have to start somewhere and hopefully the current Coronavirus pandemic will trigger the paradigm shift we need, which will flow over into real action on climate change and global reform.

Wish us luck!

amusements, quotes

Monthly Quotes

Here be this month’s collection of recently unearthed quotes, amusing and thought-provoking …

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fish-hooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no.
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in ancient culture was a femur that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts.
[Aleta Pearce on Twitter; 20 March 2020]

One cannot usefully legislate against an attitude or a belief, but one can legislate against criminal behaviour that might result from an attitude or a belief. Strong human rights protection in constitutions and laws [are] mechanisms to contain extremist tendencies.
[William Saunderson-Meyer; Thought Leader]

It is the duty of governments to protect their citizens from harm. It is not government’s task to protect its citizens’ sensitivities, however justifiable and acute, from peacefully expressed views, however bizarre.
[William Saunderson-Meyer; Thought Leader]

To censor thought or opinion is to limit our understanding of the world. If one cannot look critically at … historical events, the past remains frozen at an officially sanctioned moment in time. For history to credibly illuminate the present, it has to be open to continual academic revision.
[William Saunderson-Meyer; Thought Leader]

To help us all work together, remember that you have created your own reality and so has every other person you meet. Be willing to be curious about their story and to reflect on why this might be different to yours. Better still, try considering what you really know about the current situation and use this information to create several different stories.
[Prof. Patricia Riddell; The Conversation]

The whole experience of paying someone to inflict pain on you by pulling your pubic hair out by the roots is undeniably bizarre – but it’s also completely normalized and a fairly regular part of grooming for lots of women in the developed West. In plenty of cultures, pubic hair is seen as a symbol of fertility – some women in South Korea even have hair transplants on their vulvas, so celebrated is a thick and full bush.
[Lynn Enright; Vagina: A Re-Education]

Over tens of thousands of words, I have argued that we should all be much more open, much more honest, much more vocal about our vaginas and our vulvas and our genitals generally.
[Lynn Enright; Vagina: A Re-Education]

The virus doesn’t move, people move it. We stop moving, the virus stops moving, the virus dies. It’s that simple.

Sourdough starters are just Tamagotchi for early middle-age.
[Eric Lach on Twitter]

Having a great deal of expertise in one field does not prevent you from being a crackpot or menace in another. Let your studies teach you humility and an appreciation for hard-won knowledge, not intellectual vanity.
[Katie Mack on Twitter]

“The sun’s coming back again,” Moomintroll thought in great excitement. “No darkness, no loneliness any more. Once again I’ll sit in the sun on the verandah and feel my back warming …”
[Tove Jansson; Moominland Midwinter]

If Buddhism is true, it’s true because it offers us a way to take a look at a truth that existed before there was any Buddhism. If it doesn’t do that, then there is no reason to study Buddhism except, perhaps, as an academic discipline or a hobby. If Buddhism is all about believing in Buddhism, then Buddhism isn’t worth believing in.
[Brad Warner; Letters to a Dead Friend about Zen]

We can build peace through the revolution of small things, recognising the value of every human being … Yesterday, peace was our grandparents’ dream, today it is our responsibility to build it.
[Sophia Vinasco-Molina]

The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Things are kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervenes but because of a general tacit agreement that “it wouldn’t do” to mention that particular fact.
[George Orwell]

[The people] have abandoned the old, decent style of long, full garments for clothes which are short, tight, impractical, slashed, every part laced, strapped or buttoned up, with the sleeves of the gowns and the tippets of the hoods hanging down to absurd lengths … Women flowed with the tides of fashion in this and other things even more eagerly, wearing clothes that were so tight that they wore a fox tail hanging down inside their skirts at the back, to hide their arses.
[James Tait (ed), “Chronica Johannis de Reading et Anonymi Cantuariensis 1346-1367” in Rosemary Horrox, The Black Death; quoted in Going Medieval blog]

food+drink, ramblings

Recipe: Fruit & Frangipane Tart

Like many others during these times of woe I’ve been cooking more. Today was a baking day: as well as the headline Fruit & Frangipane Tart, we put together a small “jam” tart (using half a jar of very sticky mango compote), pineapple crumble (using fresh, rapidly ripening, fruit), and put some “spare” bananas in the dehydrator to dry. Anyway here’s the tart recipe …

Fruit & Frangipane Tart

This makes enough to fill a deep 23cm quiche tin (preferably one with a removable base) with a bit of pastry left over for the “jam” tart.

Ingredients: Pastry
400gm plain flour
200gm butter
50gm caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
Milk
Pinch of salt

Ingredients: Fruit
1-2 coffee mugs full of pre-cooked “stewed” fruit of your choice (I used stewed rhubarb)
Extra sugar to taste

Ingredients: Frangipane
200gm ground almonds (I ground up some flaked almonds in a coffee mill)
200gm butter
180gm caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
Zest of a lemon or orange
Generous tbsp vanilla essence

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 175°C.
  2. Make the sweet pastry according to your usual method adding the minimum amount of milk to make it bind together. Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
  3. Roll out the pastry and line the greased flan tin. Blind bake for 15 minutes.
  4. While the pastry case blind bakes, get the fruit and frangipane together.
  5. If necessary, drain any excess liquid from the fruit (I put mine in a sieve for 5 minutes and drained out an eggcup of juice) and sweeten to taste.
  6. To make the frangipane put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat together until they form a smooth paste. As I need the exercise I did this by hand (the end result will be quite stiff) but with the right attachment you could do this in a food processor.
  7. When the pastry case is ready, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before removing the baking beans. Turn the oven up to 180°C.
  8. Put a good layer of fruit in the pastry case and then a generous layer of frangipane (ie. all of it!).
  9. Return to the oven for 45-50 minutes until the frangipane is firm to the touch. If the frangipane is browning too much cover with a piece of foil.
  10. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before trying to remove the tart from the tin. Serve as either cake or pudding.

Notes

  1. As I’m not a good pastry cook (hot hands and not enough practice) you may wish to follow your own preferred method for the pastry.
  2. The jammier the fruit is the better it will set in the cooked tart.
  3. I found this made about 25-30% too much pastry. Use the extra to make jam tart(s).
food+drink

Recipe: Aubergine Canoes

This is a typically Zen Mischief take on the much loved Imam Bayildi – although no self-respecting, Muhammad-fearing imam would touch my version!

As so often with my recipes, it is very forgiving and you can swap things in and out to a large extent – except maybe the aubergines! So it’s very much a “use what you have” dish and can easily be made vegetarian.

Oh, and sorry, no photo as it got eaten too quickly!

Serves 2 as a main course, or 4 as a starter

Ingredients
2 aubergines
1 small red onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
3-4 medium sized mushrooms, roughly chopped
2-3 soft tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 slices thick cut ham (or 4 slices of thin), roughly chopped
1-2 handfuls pine nuts
2-3 handfuls breadcrumbs (I used 2 chunks of day-old bread, blitzed in the food processor)
1 egg, beaten
generous handful chopped herbs (mint is best)
half small glass white wine or dry sherry
1-2 handfuls cheese, finely grated (I used ends of parmesan and cheddar)
Olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C.
2. Trim and wash the aubergines and cut in half lengthways. Scoop out a trough in the flesh (keep the flesh!) to make aubergine “dugout canoes” and brush with oil. Place in a greased ovenproof dish, cover with foil and put in the oven for about 20 minutes while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
3. Sweat the onion and garlic in a little oil in a frying pan until the onion is translucent. Add the chopped flesh from the aubergines and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add the mushrooms and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Finally add the chopped tomatoes and cook for a further 2-3 minutes. Add the pine nuts and continue cooking until the tomatoes are breaking down.
4. Tip the tomato mix into a mixing bowl and add the ham, breadcrumbs, egg, herbs and wine. Mix thoroughly and season.
5. Take the aubergines from the oven and fill the “canoes” with the stuffing mix. You can pile up the stuffing; if there’s still too much then pack it in the dish around the aubergines. Replace the foil and return to the oven for about 30 minutes.
6. Remove the foil, and check that everything is cooking well. Sprinkle the grated cheese on top and return to the oven, without the foil, for about a further 15-20 minutes until the cheese is melted and browning and the aubergine is cooked.
7. Serve hot with crusty bread (if you feel the need for more carbohydrate) and maybe some home-made tomato sauce.

Notes
1. Optional additions to the stuffing mix: Worcester sauce, chopped olives, chilli flakes (or finely chopped fresh chilli).
2. This will also eat well cold.

amusements, memes

Ten Things: April

This year our Ten Things series, on the tenth of each month, is concentrating on things which are wackier than usual, if not by much. From odd road names to Christmas carols by way of saints and scientists. So here goes with April; and for Easter I thought we should have …

Ten 16th Century English Composers

  1. William Byrd (born c.1540) (right)
  2. Thomas Tallis (born c.1505)
  3. Christopher Tye (born 1505)
  4. Orlando Gibbons (born 1585)
  5. Thomas Weelkes (born 1576)
  6. John Wilbye (born 1574)
  7. Peter Philips (born 1560)
  8. Thomas Tomkins (born 1572)
  9. John Shepperd (born 1515)
  10. John Dowland (born 1563)

If you’re interested to know more, all have Wikipedia entries.