Category Archives: personal

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 47

Well her we are at week 47 in my experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful.

And what a week! I’ve not had time to turn round this week and the next two don’t look any better; I’m feeling seriously stressed and lacking “me time”. But it serves me right for volunteering!

So anyway, to my five things. This week I give you …

  1. Family Reunions. On Monday I met up with my father’s three half-sisters. The eldest I have met once before when I was 10 and she was 18. The younger two (both within a year of my age) I had never met. My grandfather’s illicit liaison, which started during the war, ended up splitting the family as my father was always seen by his brother & sister to be on grandfather’s side against grandmother, and grandmother wouldn’t give grandfather a divorce. Frankly my father was trying to be fair to everyone (even if somewhat heavy-handedly) and give his half-sisters a chance in life, especially the younger two who ended up in Barnado’s — after all their predicament wasn’t their fault. Anyway, yet again I’ve managed to put a broken piece of the family back together. My half-aunts were overjoyed as they thought their father’s side of the family was lost to them forever. We spent a great afternoon with them and a couple of my half-cousins, sitting in a London pub just catching up of family things. And here’s the photo to prove it …

    Family Reunion

  2. Norwich. It was Noreen’s birthday on Thursday and she chose to spend the day in Norwich. Fine by me as we both love Norwich. We took one of our friends and spent the day revisiting old haunts, and discovering one or two new ones. Then on the way home we dropped in to see my mother briefly. Yes, it was a good day, and even almost dry! Photos on Flickr when I get some time!
  3. PayPal. One of the things I’m doing for the literary society is building a decent online shop. And in the process we are trying to move our credit card merchant facility away from the current provider (who are charging us too much) to PayPal. After much to-ing and fro-ing PayPal finally accepted us this week! Now I just have to get the shop pages to work properly!
  4. Pork & Apple. See here.
  5. Sunshine. After a dismal start to the week we’ve had several sunny days and i even managed to spend an afternoon in the garden — actually repotting houseplants. Lovely crisp sunny autumn days!
personal

Five Questions, Series 2 #5

OK, so slightly later than planned let’s look at the last of the five questions (series 2) I posed a few weeks back.

Question 5. What places would you have pierced on your body and which parts would you never have pierced?

Well there’s a very easy answer to that: Anywhere and nowhere!

But like all generalisations it isn’t entirely true as I already have a piercing.

[The squeamish, or anyone who doesn’t want too much information, should skip the following paragraph and rejoin at the next set of square brackets.]

The piercing I have is a Prince Albert with a 5mm surgical steel ball-closure ring. It had been trickling round my kind for several years but suddenly became the right thing to do about 2½ years ago, just after I retired. No I don’t know why either, but it was a sort of rite of passage. And no it wasn’t especially painful — yes, it hurt for about 10 seconds — and it healed up well. Having it stretched (necessary with this piercing; but how and why would be just way too much information) to take a larger gauge ring was more painful than the initial piercing, but even that was only for a minute or so. The key to all this is a good piercer and excellent after-care and hygiene. (If anyone wants to know more, like if you’re thinking about having this done, contact me directly — this is a family show and I don’t want to unduly frighten the unprepared.)

[The squeamish can rejoin here.]

Once you’re had cold steel stuck through bits of your body, it loses it’s fear, although not the adrenaline buzz. In consequence I would have no problems with having almost anywhere pierced, although I don’t see the point of a lot of it.

So yes there are places I would never choose to have pierced — and maybe surprisingly that isn’t at all gender-based. I would have no problem with the more girlie things like ears, navel or nipples. But I’m no great fan of metal in eyebrows and I detest both nose rings and nose studs, on anyone — somehow they always look so naff.

However I think probably the only place I would never have pierced is my tongue. I can’t think of anything worse, or actually more painful, especially as it is one piercing that is known to heal badly and slowly. Yeuch!

Just a quick word for anyone thinking about getting a piercing. Pay attention to these 6 tips:

  1. Find a good piercer, with a good reputation, who you trust.
  2. Ensure you check out your piercer’s hygiene certification and (if appropriate for your area) their licensing.
  3. Ensure the piercer always uses all new equipment and jewellery from sealed packets (just as you would with medics or acupuncture).

    4. If you’re in doubt about any of the above three, go somewhere else.

  4. Follow the after-care & healing instructions diligently or better — extra after-care attention is unlikely to go amiss.
  5. Do not pull, twist, tweak or otherwise play with your piercing, at least until you know it is fully healed. (However the after-care instructions probably will ask you to turn it carefully every so often.)
  6. At the first sign of any problem, talk to your piercer before you do anything else; they’ve seen it before and are trained to know what to do (doctors generally don’t know).

The Association of Professional Piercers website has lots more good advice.

— o O o —
So there you are. Five more questions asked and answered. I’ll maybe do another set of questions in a few months time, probably after Christmas. Let me know if there is anything you would especially like me to answer.

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 46

Welcome to week 46 in my experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. Why is it that some weeks I really struggle to find anything much which has stood out from the crowd, and other weeks it seems everything has been special. I do try to keep a quick memory jogger of special things as the week goes along; some weeks I get to Friday and already have a list of 12 items; but in weeks like this one by Friday I have just one thing on the list. I guess it’s called “life”, which is probably why I don’t understand it! Anyway here’s some sort of list for this week.

  1. Apples. As befits this time of year this has been an apple week. I love apples when they are crisp and crunchy and juicy — but they have to be fresh and in season.
    First of all at the beginning of the week one of our friends brought us a big bag of Bramley cooking apples (below left) from a tree in one of his friends’ gardens. It seems that near us Bramleys are about the only apples that have produced any sort of crop this year; our tree has produced about half a dozen small scabby specimens due to the appalling weather in the Spring.
    Secondly our weekly Waitrose trip turned up some English apples varieties. We indulged in some Blenheim Orange (below right) — sharp, tart, almost cooking apples — and some large under-ripe Cox’s — juicy, sharp but slightly sweet, just as they should be; I can’t abide all this over-ripe pappy stuff!.

  2. Haircut. Remember how when you were a kid you hated having to go for a haircut? Well certainly all the young lads I’ve ever known have hated the barber. Earlier in the week I went for a (several weeks overdue) haircut. I quite enjoy seeing Mr Clive, my barber; he’s a cheerful sort, it is good to set the world to rights and you occasionally get interesting snippets of local gossip.
  3. £10 off at Waitrose. For some reason best known to themselves Waitrose have sent me a couple of vouchers for £10 off my shopping (as long as I spend £100; easy on a weekly shop). One for use now and another for later in October. I don’t mind if I do! Thank you!
  4. Mince Pies. ‘Tis the season of impending Christmas and there are now mince pies in the supermarkets. They seem to be cropping early this year. I will likely have eaten a regiment’s worth of them by the time we get to New Year!
  5. Chillies. My chillies continue. We’ve already had a good crop of the yellow “Hot Lemon” and the tiny red “Explosive Ember” (which I leave to dry and use as crushed chilli through the winter). And this week we have the first two ripe Scotch Bonnet type, a variety called “Yellow Mushroom” — stingingly hot in curry! And there are more of all yet to ripen, although the supply of flowers is drying up now it’s got a bit cooler. Next year I think I might grow just the “Hot Lemon”; they’re definitely the favourites; the Scotch Bonnets never do hugely well (they prefer more heat and light than even my study windowsill can provide) and I don’t need more small chillies as we have a goodly supply of dried chilli in the cupboard.
amusements, memes, personal, ramblings

I've Never Seen Star Wars

Tim over at Bringing up Charlie has started something new. It may even turn into a meme.

As a result of some new-fangled programme on the wireless, which seems to be called I’ve Never Seen Star Wars, Tim has come to realise that there are a collection of things he’s never done or which have somehow passed him by, but which everyone assumes everyone else actually has done. And guess what? The summit of his list is never having seen Star Wars.

Tim then goes on to challenge the rest of us to document the things we’ve never done but which might surprise our friends. Being as I like memes, and I’m insatiably curious about other people, it would be churlish of me not to join in. So here’s my list of a dozen (apparently common) things I’ve never done.

  1. Seen Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Clockwork Orange or any of those other iconic films. (See, Tim, you aren’t the only one!)
  2. Eaten oysters or tripe
  3. Worn a dinner jacket or a cocktail dress
  4. Been skinny dipping

  5. Played strip poker or strip pool
  6. Taken recreational drugs
  7. Driven a car or ridden motorbike
  8. Watched Eastenders or (again like Tim) Friends or Downton Abbey
  9. Lusted after Jennifer Aniston or Pamela Anderson
  10. Been to the races (horses or dogs)
  11. Been on a package holiday
  12. Broken a bone

Interestingly only one thing on that list bothers me not to have done. Anyone care to guess which one?

So now I dare everyone else to tell, their darkest, secret, “I’ve never dones” — either in the comments here or on your own blog (with a link in the comments), so we can all have a good snigger. 🙂

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 45

Week 45 (just 15 to go) in my experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful — and it’s been another strange week where I’ve totally lost all notion of what day it is. Anyway here’s my choice for the week.

  1. Eton. On Monday I had to go to a meeting at Eton College. I always enjoy going to Eton, it is such a civilised place even if one does feel somewhat out of one’s depth. The school itself rambles across a large area, which isn’t surprising as it has to house, teach and entertain over 1200 boys. It includes some wonderful architecture — the old College buildings; the early 16th century Lupton’s Tower and the 15th century chapel are just a delight. What’s also nice is that the town still has something approaching an old-fashioned high street of small shops (many in late Regency properties) although sadly they are now more tourist orientated than domestic. One thing I noticed on this visit was that the whole place was adorned with huge hanging baskets of red, white and blue flowers; the white was a petunia (actually blushed with mauve) which had a delightful scent of jasmine. Somehow Eton always seems so much more friendly and inviting than Harrow.

  2. Sunshine. Yes we actually saw the sun a few times this week! Yesterday (Saturday) was so glorious, even if not hugely warm, it was a shame not to be out in the garden.
  3. Beef Curry. Just for Sue I have to include something about food; and we’ve had so much good food this week. Should I mention Friday’s pan-fried lamb with whisky? Or yesterday’s most excellent sausages with linguine in a spicy tomato sauce? No I think I shall mention Tuesday’s beef curry. Yummy beef having been marinaded all day in curry spices, garlic, ginger, lemon juice and gin; cooked with spinach and served with Noreen’s very lemony rice.
  4. Orchids. My orchids just go on and on. The first ones in flower have now finished and the later ones are following on behind. But on Friday I succumbed to another: a pretty pale yellow slightly blushed with pink, very like the one on the right — a colour-way I’ve not seen before. And I have two (one mine; one my mother’s) which are already growing flowing spikes again. These plants are mad!
  5. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. We are especially enjoying Italian wines at the moment; the reds especially seem much richer and fuller than the French, and I think one is getting much better quality wine for the same money. We first had this Montepulciano at one of our local Italian restaurants and subsequently found it being sold by Majestic Wine. It is a lovely soft but full-bodied red, just right for accompanying those sausages and pasta. Indeed one could sit and drink it all evening.
personal

Five Questions, Series 2 #4

So yet again, somehow, another week has gone round and it’s time to try to answer the fourth of the five questions (series 2) I posed a few weeks back.

Question 4. What are your top five personal values?

As usual; this is a lot harder than it might at first appear.

The Best Year Yet methodology for personal development provides a long list of personal values which one is supposed to categorise under five headings: Very Important, Important, Quite Important, A Little Important, Not at All Important. The idea being that one’s goals should be things that support one’s most important personal values. The complete list is:

Abundance
Achievement
Autonomy
Belonging
Challenge
Closeness
Competition 
Contact
Contribution
Creativity
Excellence
Excitement
Fitness
Freedom
Friendship
Fun
Growth		 Health
Helping Others
Honesty
Independence
Influencing
Integrity
Involvement
Justice
Kindness
Learning
Love
Loyalty
Making a Difference
Order
Passion
Peace
Perfection
Power		 Recognition
Respect
Responsibility
Risk
Security
Self-Expression
Self-Respect
Serenity
Spirituality
Spontaneity
Stability
Status
Success
Tradition
Trust
Variety
Wealth

Now I’m not convinced there’s a whole bunch of difference between some of those, nor am I convinced some of them are actually personal values. Moreover it seems to me that groups can be encapsulated into more meaningful values.

But then another way of looking at the whole question of personal values is to understand the mottoes which resonate and by which one tries to live. Now I’ve talked about mine before, most recently in this series last week. And in fact when I thought about it many of my my top personal values do come out of my mottoes. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising; indeed one might be worried if they didn’t.

So what did I come up with as my top five personal values?

1. Respect. Basically this amounts to Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself. And it must include at least: Self-Respect, Recognition, Respect, Responsibility, Freedom and Kindness from the list above.

2. Freedom of thought, word and deed. Essentially I should be able to think what I like, say what I like and do what I like with only the absolute minimum of constraint by society’s overarching values (aka. laws). From the list this would, for me, include Spirituality, Self-Expression, Creativity, Freedom, Independence.

3. Honesty. Be honest and truthful in all that you do, which is actually quite hard as we are programmed at least to tell “white lies” as it has been shown that they do oil the wheels of personal relationships. This has to include both Honesty and Justice from the list.

4. Trust. Nothing works without some level of trust between people. Without it there is anarchy and/or violence. I should be trustworthy and trusted by others and should be able to trust them in return. Again this seems to include a number of items from the list: Integrity, Loyalty, Closeness, Friendship, Kindness, Love and of course Trust.

Actually I suppose both Honesty and Trust could really be included under Respect.

5. Sex and nudity are normal. Although this is the value which I espouse, it actually goes a lot deeper. It is all tied up with attitudes to Health, to Respect (especially Self-Respect), to Honesty (why can’t we be honest about these things?), Freedom and Growth.

Looking at that the one thing that seems to be almost all-pervading is RESPECT. Your respect for others is key. But to have their respect you likely have to do most (all?) of the other things too.

Now does anyone dare tell me their top five personal values?

personal, ramblings, science

On Hairiness

Now here is a mystery. Well at least it’s a mystery to me, and I can’t quickly find anything about it on the intertubes.

I’m one of those hairy males; I always have been. Fortunately I’m naturally mid-brown-ish of hair for if I were black haired I’d have to shave twice a day or spend more of my life looking like a villain.

As a child my hair was light brown; it got thicker and darker and wavy as I got to puberty. I ended up with something akin to a coconut mop on my head. Now I’m past three score years it is almost completely grey (the front is actually white), much finer, less wavy and thinning — though I’m nowhere near approaching going bald or even really receding.

But it isn’t head hair or beard that is my immediate interest, but body hair.

(No, no, I’m NOT going THERE!)

We know that as men get older their patterns of hairiness change. As I’ve said, head hair greys and gets thinner even to the extent of baldness; and apparently leg hair also decreases. Annoyingly though eyebrows, ears and noses sprout extraneous tufts of fur, which may also go grey.

(As an aside it’s also interesting that ears and noses continue to grow throughout life, with ears apparently growing at a rate of around a couple of millimetres every decade. Noses also appear to grow with age, hence the caricature of the old man with a large warty nose.)

But in the last few years I’ve noticed something else strange. I’m sure that the hair on my forearms and chest, maybe also my back, is getting longer as I get older. Not thicker, coarser or darker, but longer.

Now it does seem that men do go on growing body hair well past puberty, even into their 30s, and apparently most men over 35 are a lot hairier than they were in their 20s. But I’m talking about something I’ve only become aware of in the last few years, say from about age 55.

Now I can’t prove that my impression is right. I didn’t start measuring the length of my body hair at the age of 18 and don’t have a series of regular measurements throughout my life. (Just see what joys I’ve passed by!) Several searches using “a well known search engine” haven’t turned up any tufty hints.

Not, you understand, that I’m complaining. Inasmuch as I think about it at all I quite like being hairy; it’s part of me and it doesn’t bother me; I certainly wouldn’t shave or wax it. Ouchy!

Am I imagining things? Am I going mad? Do I have hairs on the palms of my hands? (No, not yet!) Does anyone know? If not, why not? — this is a vitally important research topic!

PS. No, no picture of my chest hair; you really didn’t want that much information, did you!?

personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 2 #3

Time to cudgel the brain with an answer the the third of the five questions (series 2) I posed a few weeks back. So …

Question 3. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be?

That ought to be easy. But is it? Well, I guess it probably is actually, at least for me.

I would immediately narrow down the options to one of the personal mottoes by which I try to live. (Yes, I know! I usually fail!)

Nude when possible, clothed when necessary

If it harm none, do as you will

Sex and nudity are normal

Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself

Say what you mean and do what you say

Don’t worry about things you can’t change

Of those which are the most important? Well I guess that without too much mental contortion several can be combined.

Nude when possible, clothed when necessary and Sex and nudity are normal are really only aspects of If it harm none, do as you will. So too is Don’t worry about things you can’t change if doing harm to no-one includes oneself, as it should.

And I would suggest Say what you mean and do what you say is really only an aspect of Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.


Which leave us a choice of two:

If it harm none, do as you will

Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself

But is not the latter encapsulated within the former? I think it arguable that it is. By treating others as we would wish to be treated is surely doing harm to no-one. Isn’t it?

So we are reduced to giving our hypothetical newborn the basic tenet of Gardnerian Wicca:

If it harm none, do as you will
And if we extend none/no-one to include the environment (Mother Nature if you prefer) that’s a pretty good rule to work to, nurturing both people and planet. What’s not to like?

Hmmm … interesting. I wonder how Gerald Gardner came by the idea?

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 44

OMG it’s now week 44 (of 60) of my experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. But I’m still trying to work out where the last week has gone. I seem to have been running in a blur of circles all week with little to show for it except stress and losing all track of what day it is. Ably assisted the while by having a cold and sinus infection — thankfully it seems now on the wane.

So I have to come up with my five picks for the week. Hmmm …

  1. Pak Choi. Yes that strange cabbage-y oriental veg. I rather like it’s slightly nutty flavour and its crispiness and it is full of vitamin C. As it has been good recently so we’ve eaten it twice this week.


    And I’ve made my own way of cooking it (probably not original): slice the pak choi in half along it’s length and pan fry it in olive oil and flambé it with a slug of whisky or brandy. (I nearly managed to fire the kitchen doing this last night!) Serve when it’s beginning to brown but still fresh and crunchy.

    What I hadn’t realised is that it is very closely related to the common or garden turnip. But don’t eat too much of it as it contains some toxic glucosinolates.

  2. Bastourma. We’ve eaten out twice this week as on both Tuesday and Wednesday we ended up near a favourite restaurant in the early evening. On Tuesday, as we left a meeting about 6pm I asked Noreen what we were about to do. She said “I’m taking you out for dinner”. Well who am I to object? Especially when we were but a few hundred yards from one of our favourite Italian restaurants.

    Then on Wednesday I had another meeting which was scheduled right across evening meal time and which I knew wouldn’t finish until 8pm. So afterwards I met Noreen in our favourite Greek Cypriot restaurant. I just had a quick main course of Bastourma, a smoked spicy beef sausage, with a couple of beers. They weren’t hugely busy, so we had time for a chat with the lady of the house too.

  3. Boarding the Loft. Regular readers may recall we’ve been slowly trying to clear and organise our loft. This week we had James in to lay boarding in the second (of three) areas we’ve cleared. Job well done and lots more usable storage space. Now we just have to clear the final third!
  4. Roast Pork & Apple Sauce. This week’s other treat was a large joint of pork from our trip to the supermarket. Succulent roast pork, with Noreen’s tart apple sauce (just Bramley apple stewed with butter) — and a naughty bit of crackling on the side!
  5. Completed Tax Returns. What a wonderful job for a Sunday: filling in the income tax return! Like most people it’s a job I hate; I remember my father swearing about it every year. But it’s worse now I have three tax returns to do: mine, Noreen’s and my mother’s! But with a decent PC application, last year’s return as a basis and all the data in the file ready it doesn’t take too long. Mine and Noreen’s have been sent in; just my mother’s to finalise during the week. And it is such a pleasant relief when it is over for another year!
personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 43

OK, so it’s another week down in the experiment: week 43 done and 17 to go. Here are my five picks of the week.

  1. Wedding Anniversary. As I mentioned, yesterday was our wedding anniversary. I worked it out; a mere 33 years! I make that pearl (30) and leather (3), so we invested in some fancy dog-collars shackles. 😉 But … Eeeekkkkk! We’ve been married much longer than we weren’t. And every year we look at each other and say “How did we do it?”. And we still don’t know! But it’s a good week for it; we have several friends with wedding anniversaries this week.
  2. Summer Weather. This week has been another of glorious late summer weather: clear blue skies, hot sunshine, warm nights — just like summer should be — but also quite humid. It seems the first week of September is so often good weather, which is one reason we often used to go on holiday in early September. All of which has meant we’ve enjoyed several days of …
  3. Eating in the Garden. Well at least on the terrace, aka patio.

  4. Plums. Our next door neighbours have a small Victoria Plum tree. Like all fruit trees It hasn’t been prolific this year (we’ve had no apples worth eating), but earlier in the week they gave us a couple of pounds of delicious ripe plums; just right for eating.
  5. Duck and Blackberry. See my recipe from yesterday!