Category Archives: personal

personal, photography

Gallery: The Eighties

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Bravery. That’s what’s called for, at least for many, to do Tara’s Gallery this week. Because the theme is The Eighties. So there’s megatons of opportunity for embarrassment.

Not from here though, as I don’t have much by way of photos from the 80s — at least not scanned or readily to hand — and besides we’ve never been ones for taking loads of snapshots of each other. However I have found these …

kcm76 and Parents, 1984
This first (from 1984) is me (centre left) with my parents at the private view of Jolly Hockey Sticks, an exhibition centred around girls school stories curated by Noreen at what is now the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.

Note my already spreading waistline and the Young’s brewery tie. I’m only surprised I don’t obviously have a glass of wine: I would have needed it because this was time when we were paying 17½% interest on our mortgage (3% above base rate). But we survived and even paid the mortgage off several years early. Oh for the “good old days”, formerly known as “these trying times”!


This is the little terraced house I was brought up in during the ’50s and ’60s. It’s seen here in the estate agent’s mugshot from when my parents sold it and moved to Norwich in 1988. Built around 1937 these were the late-30s equivalent of the Victorian “2-up, 2-down”.

Note the state of the garden wall! Those walls were forever falling down as they had poor foundations and were apparently built on an old field ditch!

Floss Cat
And finally this is the first cat Noreen and I had. Well Floss (not our choice of name, he was a rescue) and Pickle came at the same time almost as soon as we had our own house in 1981. This is a serendipitous capture from sometime in the early/mid-80s. The cats didn’t wear collars for very long: they rubbed the fur off their necks and the bells were useless at stopping them chasing birds as they just learnt to run with their chins down to muffle the sound!

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 52

Through the haze of whatever lurgy is trying its best to sink me at the moment here’s my contributions for week 52 of my experiment in documenting five things each week which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful.

  1. Autumn Colours. Although the leaves are beginning to fall quite quickly now we’ve had a frost or two, there’s still some glorious autumn colour around (and a surprising amount of green too) — which looks wonderful on a nice sunny day like today. These photos were taken earlier today in our garden.

    2. Acer Leaf

  2. Baked Ham & Red Cabbage. Earlier in the week we had a baked gammon joint. And delightfully flavoursome, tender and succulent it was too! |To accompany it there was red cabbage: sliced and braised with some onion and cooking apple and then simmered slowly with a glass or two of red wine. Add pepper, caraway seeds, garlic to taste. A most excellent winter warmer veg.
  3. Wasps. Yep we’ve still got our wasps around. Not so many now it is colder, but still the odd few in the house, with more in the attic. They’re mostly a mix of queens and workers, although I’ve seen at least one drone this week.
  4. Rump Steak. Also earlier in the week we had a couple of really juicy and tender pieces of rump steak, courtesy of Waitrose. They have to have been some of the best pieces of steak I’ve ever had, they were just so tender.

    5. Rose Hip

  5. Squirrels. And finally our resident squirrel, we discovered this afternoon, actually is resident — it has build it’s nest in the ivy at the top of our hawthorn tree. While in the garden we saw it running through the trees and Noreen spotted it sitting in its drey, a pair of ears and a beady eye poking over the edge! I like squirrels, despite that they are only tree rats, and I feel honoured to have one nesting in the garden.
personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 51

So here we are at week 51 of my experiment in documenting five things each week which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. It’s been a busy week, not helped by the fact that I was knocked out last weekend and the beginning of the week by my annual ‘flu jab.

Anyway, just for Sue, here’s this week totally non-foodie selection.

  1. Golden Leaves. Many of the trees are still green, but there are also a lot of wonderful golden-yellow autumnal colours as well.
  2. Clear Dental Check-up. We had our twice yearly dental check-ups this week. And we both got away with nothing needing doing — though we had to run the gauntlet of the hygienist as well.

    AA20

  3. Vintage Cars. Yesterday was our quarterly Anthony Powell Society London pub meet (always enjoyable) and one of the nice things about going into central London this day is that there are often vintage cars driving around getting ready for the London to Brighton run the following day. Although there weren’t many around yesterday I did see the one above receiving some attention near Lancaster Gate, having just been pushed out of the traffic. I managed a quick squint at the engine as we passed, and the cylinder block was tiny — little more than half the size of a shoebox.
  4. Sunshine. When we see it, as we did a couple of times this week, I always feel much better.
  5. Top Hat. I bought a top hat this week. You know, the way one does. It isn’t really for wearing but more to provide a fun hat to be passed round at AP Soc. gatherings.
personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 50

Week 50 of the experiment, and just ten weeks to go documenting five things each week which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. This week we have … Oh God, it’s going to be a foodie week again!

  1. Pickled Onions. I don’t eat pickled onions for months at a stretch, and then I decide I want them, which is what happened this week. Why I don’t eat them all the time I don’t know, ‘cos I always really enjoy them. Unless you’re going to the fiddler of doing your own (which I used to) then Garner’s are the best available by a long way.
  2. Lime & Chilli Prawns. This was the last thing I did before collapsing with the after-effects of the ‘flu jab. King prawns, with the juice and zest of a couple of limes, a chilli, some onion, garlic, tomato and mushroom; sautéed and served with pasta, à la mode d’ici.
  3. Queen Wasps. Just as blogged earlier in the week. And I can confirm they are indeed Vespula vulgaris as I suspected.
  4. Chillies. The chilli crop is nearing the end; there are just a handful left to ripen and the flowers have almost ceased. Even the prolific tiny red Explosive Ember are petering out. But earlier this week I picked a magnificent collection of about 10 each of the large yellow Scotch Bonnet Yellow Mushroom and Hot Lemon.
  5. Thicker Duvet. It’s got noticeably colder this week — and you know it’s cold when I say it is because I’m normally a warm mortal. Although I’m not sure we really need it yet it is nice to snuggle under the heavier weight duvet. The cats like it too!
medical, personal

Humanity Restored?

Bastard! One year I’ll learn not to put anything in my diary for at least two days after I have my ‘flu jab. Yep it always gets me, usually for only 24 hours.

This year it hit me hard. GOK why it should.

I had the injection about 9.30 on Friday morning. By 9.30 that evening I was huddled under the duvet feeling like death — the full ‘flu symptoms: fever, aching bones, crashing headache, don’t like bright lights, unable to stay awake but sleeping fitfully and just so depressed.

Saturday’s plans had to be abandoned. But heroically Noreen managed to mop up the couple of bits we couldn’t entirely avoid. Meanwhile I slept the day away. And although I felt rather better by the evening I then couldn’t sleep last night. That’s pretty normal for me when I’m ill: sleep well all day and badly at night.

Humanity is present again today, but only just. I’m still weary and aching; still depressed. Still not functioning properly in the brain department. (Yeah! OK!)

Hopefully normal service will be fully restored tomorrow; there’s too much to do for it not to be.

It’s true what they say about ‘flu, even the after-effects of the injection: it hits you fast and hard, and floors you. If the symptoms come on gradually and you can still function at all, then what you have isn’t ‘flu. If you get hit by a train and can’t function even if you need to, it is ‘flu.

Yes, I usually get some reaction to the injection. I never expect it! But it isn’t usually as bad as this. The only previous year I remember it as bad as this was two years ago when the inoculation contained swine ‘flu (or was it bird ‘flu?) vaccine. That knocked me out for a week! Clearly my body hadn’t seen that before.

What’s interesting though is that not everyone reacts the same. On Friday morning in the supermarket we met a couple who also go to our doctors and who had their jabs several weeks ago: they both said they had had no after-effects at all; not even a sore arm. And my mother says she never gets any after-effects. But I do, and I know several others who do.

Lesson: In future keep at least a couple of days clear after the ‘flu jab, and be prepared to be hit hard. I did neither this year and have only myself to blame. Even Noreen tried to warn me! But did I listen?

But the after-effects of the inoculation, however horrid, are way better than actually having ‘flu properly. One really doesn’t need that, especially if you’re at all immune-compromised (elderly or with a long term condition like diabetes, respiratory problems, etc.) or a carer because ‘flu can really knock you out, possibly even terminally.

So if you’re offered a ‘flu shot by your doctor, I’d say take it. Yes, it may make you feel rough for a day or so, but that’s better than the 1-2 weeks real ‘flu will last.

books, personal

Books that Changed My Life

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Really major life-changing events (marriage, an influential chance meeting) aren’t common but we all have them and usually several in a lifetime.

What I suspect is more common, at least of those of us who read, is to realise that one has a series of books which have been sufficiently influential that they’ve significantly changed the tone or direction of one’s life.

And reading Mrs Worthington’s entry “Books that shaped my life” in Tara’s Gallery this week I realised that I too had such a list. So I thought I’d document it. Here are some of them in roughly chronological order; I’m sure there are others.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass. I remember these from an early age. They started me thinking about language. Later re-reading it as a student I saw and became fascinated by the unexpected logic, something which has stayed with me. This was later enhanced by Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice.

TS Eliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. This is something my father used to read to me at bedtime when I was probably about 7 or 8. I especially remember, and still love, Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat. I knew it off by heart and I still remember chunks of it. This was in the late 1950s, long before Cats, the musical. To this day I love cats and I love railways.

WE Johns, Biggles books. I read as many of these as I could get my hands on, probably from the time I was about 9 or so right into my teens. Yes, they were fantasy adventure, but they were also a world into which a repressed (even depressed) child could retreat from the world.

Boy Scout Association, The Chief Scouts’ Advance Party Report. This was the 1966 set of proposals for modernising the scouting movement at the time I was transitioning from Scouts to Senior Scouts. I realised it was important and read it. I didn’t agree with it. I saw it for what it turned out to be: the beginning of the emasculation of the Scout Movement as I knew it and as I believed then, and still believe, it should be. It was thus one of the 3 or 4 straws which directly led to me leaving Scouting; somewhere I would have liked to remain.

John Betjeman, High and Low. I don’t recall what impelled me to buy Betjeman’s latest slim volume of verse in 1966, but it soon became a firm favourite. As a late teenager it lived by my bed and if I awoke, sleepless, I would dip into it until sliding into slumber again. Why would a teenage boy in the late ’60s find a volume of poetry comforting? Isn’t that rather worrying? It didn’t so much kindle in me a love of poetry but an awareness of the changing world of architecture and railways.

Havelock Ellis, The Psychology of Sex. My parents had a copy of this and it was openly available to me on the shelves from a very early age. I read it, and learnt a lot from it, as a teenager. It kept me one step ahead of my girlfriend in our joint exploration and development of our sexuality.

Florence Greenberg, Jewish Cookery. No I’m not Jewish. I picked this up as a student because it is such a great cookery book. It covers all the basics and provides a wealth of interesting recipes. It wasn’t the only cookery book I had as a student, but probably the one I used most often. And I still have it and use it!

David Hockney, Photography. I’m unable to remember now which of Hockney’s books on photography it was that I recall seeing, but it was one of the early ones where he was experimenting with “joiners”. The book was probably his Photographs (1982) or just possibly Cameraworks (1984) although I had thought it was a late-70s book. But whichever it was I found the “joiner” technique fascinating and it is still something I experiment with from time to time. It has definitely been a factor in the development of my photography.


Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time. If there’s one work (it’s actually a series of 12 novels) that changed my life this is it. There are comments elsewhere herein (for instance here) about how I was recommended to read Dance by our friend Jilly, and how that simple recommendation led to what is now the Anthony Powell Society and such a large part of my life.

personal, photography

Gallery : Books

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I’ve not partaken in Tara’s Gallery for a couple of weeks. This has been partly due to the lack of available hours in the day and partly as the last couple of subjects haven’t grabbed me.

But I have to do this week’s Gallery as the subject is something dear to my heart: books!

And yet I find I have no photos of books. Except for this one.

Work in Progress

This was my home office, my desk, about three years ago.

For the last several years I was working I was lucky enough to be able to work from home much of the time. Despite being a project manager much of what I was doing could be done remotely: I had email, a mobile phone, a fax, a laptop. And because my teams were geographically spread meetings were held by teleconference. It actually worked well, and saved the company huge amounts of cash and travel time.

A couple of years into retirement it doesn’t look a lot different. The laptop isn’t there so often, and the fax machine has gone.

The books have been reorganised but are largely the same. These are my working books; the ones I use every day; just a couple of hundred of the thousands in the house.

Here it is today; when I was in the middle of writing this and even with the image above on the screen!

Desk 2012

See still lots of books, bigger geraniums and chillies creeping into the top right corner — not a whole lot different!

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 49

Week 49 of the experiment, and it’s been another manic week. Indeed it has been so manic I’ve had to scrub a couple of things I wanted to do; one needs a certain amount of elbow room and breathing space. Anyway here are my five picks of things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful.

  1. Productive Meetings. I’ve had several meetings this week and at least two have been really good and productive.

    Yesterday was the Anthony Powell Society AGM; as a charity we have to do things by the book. Like all these meetings it is seldom hugely well attended although, as yesterday, we normally get 20-25 members present (as well as a tranche of proxy votes). This makes for a productive meeting with some useful discussion and excellent ideas from the members to keep people like me on our toes. And somehow I always manage to find an interesting speaker; yesterday was no exception so thanks to John Blaxter.

    And on Monday I had a really good meeting with our doctor’s Practice Manager and his deputy working through how we’re going to organise and run the Patient participation group which I have now been fingered to chair. Another extremely productive hour.

  2. Cold Sausages. I love sausages. Almost every sausage from plain British bangers to Bratwurst in a bun. But cold sausage always goes down well in a sandwich for lunch.
  3. Adnam’s Ghost Ship. Naughty child that I am I’ve had a couple of pints twice this week. One of them was Adnam’s Ghost Ship, a very pale, light, beer with a delightful fragrance and a citrus-y flavour, almost like a clear Wheat Beer. Here is Adnam’s own description:

    This beer has good assertive pithy bitterness with a malty backbone and a lemon and lime aroma. Ghost Ship is brewed with a selection of malts – Pale Ale, Rye Crystal and Cara. We use Citra, and a blend of other American hop varieties, to create some great citrus flavours.

  4. Left-Overs Risotto. One evening during the week we had accumulated several bits of left-overs: the end of the beef joint, some dressed salad, some spare veg and a couple of steamed potatoes. Thrown together i n a p[an with some Arborio rice, some stock from the freezer and a good slug of red wine it made a really hearty rich risotto.

  5. St James’s Church, Piccadilly. As I mentioned above yesterday was the AP Soc. AGM which we held at St James’s Church, Piccadilly. But “Arrgghhhh!!!!!” there’s the TUC Anti-Austerity March going along Piccadilly exactly when we need to get the car there to deliver stuff; not a hope due to road closures. So we had to go early in the morning and waste time. I asked the church if I could leave our boxes there for the morning (we had the room from 1pm). Not only did they oblige but they let us have the room for most of the morning, to guard our valuables and set up at leisure. They even evicted the TUC stewards who were using another of there rooms as their coordination point and squatting in the adjacent room! Excellent service and way beyond what I’d even dreamt of. They are also extremely good value; room hire is so much cheaper than almost anywhere else in London; and it’s an historic church with many associations, which does good work and is well worth supporting. Oh and Tuesday through Saturday every week they have a super antiques and/or craft market in the churchyard — well worth visiting for those special presents.
personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 48

At week 48 we’re now 80% of the way through my 60 week experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful.

Yet again it’s been a busy week, but a week crammed full of good things, so here are my top five picks fro the week …

  1. Lunch with Friends. All this really isn’t good for my waistline or my blood sugar levels. Twice this week we’re had lunch with friends. First on Monday we had one of our 3-ish times a year get-togethers with a few former colleagues. Then on Thursday we were in Norwich (again) to see my mother whose birthday was on Friday and we again had a superb gastro-pub lunch with a friend. All most enjoyable.
  2. Smoked Chicken. I think it must have been Wednesday evening we had smoked chicken breasts with salad. The Rannock Smoked Chicken comes from Waitrose. Surprisingly isn’t any more expensive than the regular stuff, but a whole lot nicer. In fact it’s so good we always keep a couple in the fridge.
  3. Online Shop. At last, after weeks of work an d endless head-scratching, I managed top get the Anthony Powell Society online shop up and live. It’s been a lot of work, not because it is inherently difficult but there was a lot of it and there was a coding bug I just could not find — but which I did find on the third minute read-through of the code. And it is already proving it value with a number of unexpected orders flowing in.

    Sunday Morning Lay-in

  4. Sunday Lie-in. With such a busy week we’ve had a number of early starts and I haven’t been sleeping well. How lovely then to not only sleep pretty well last night but also sleep late. I know I came to a couple of times in the night (that’s normal for me) but I didn’t even begin to surface properly until almost 9 this morning, and didn’t manage a vertical position until 10. All done naturally, without alarms etc., so I felt rested and relaxed (so relaxed I’ve done nothing much today).
  5. Roast Beef. One of the two major things I’ve done today is our roast beef dinner. A melt-in-the-mouth double rib of beef, nicely rare (actually a bit too rare for Noreen — sorry!) with jacket potatoes, and steamed cabbage, broad beans and fennel. Roasting beef never was one of my strong suits, but hopefully I now have it sorted, although I still can’t be bothered with the faff of doing Yorkshire puddings.
personal

Happy Birthday, Mother

Happy Birthday to my Mother who is still going strong at the excellent age of 97! OK she’s very deaf, fairly frail and needs a frame to get about — she’s entitled to at 97! — but she is all there mentally still. She spends her days reading, painting, knitting and sewing. She makes endless soft toys and the like for anyone who wants one. We went to see her yesterday; we popped in mid-morning and left with her an orchid of hers which I have nursed into flower again. Returning after lunch she had already done a little painting of the orchid! As she says, she’d rather wear out than rust out.

Here she is enjoying the care home garden in Summer 2011, just before her 96th birthday.

[31/52] Mother at Nearly 96
I’ll be delighted if at 80 I’m as good as my mother is at 97!