current affairs

They've never had it so bad?

The headlines are saying

Thousands of people took part in a demonstration in London on Saturday to protest against the Government’s austerity measures

And it’s true they did march in their thousands. In London. I saw some of them in Piccadilly.

But I have news for them.

If they think this is austerity they’re in for a very big shock; so are we all. GOK what they’re going to think when the real austerity hits. Which, unless I’m very mistaken, it surely will.

As a country we’re still living way beyond the means of our crippled economy. And printing more money ain’t going to fix it.

Just go and ask the Greeks. Or the Third Reich.

quotes

Quotes

Recent interest or amusement from my reading …

Education is the proper way to promote compassion and tolerance in society. Compassion and peace of mind bring a sense of confidence that reduce stress and anxiety, whereas anger and hatred come from frustration and undermine our sense of trust. Because of ignorance, many of our problems are our own creation. Education, however, is the instrument that increases our ability to employ our own intelligence.
[Dalai Lama]

Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It’s called ‘rain’.
[Michael McClary]

You may delay, but time will not.
[Benjamin Franklin]

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
[Aldous Huxley]

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
[Bertrand Russell]

Common sense is like deodorant; those that need it don’t use it.
[Thoughts of Angel]

I ask her if she would like a cup of coffee. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want you to go to all that trouble.  I’ll just have half a cup.’
[Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van; quoted by Katyboo]

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.
words

Word : Alectryomancy

OK, guys & gals, time for another unusual or interesting word. Today we have:

Alectryomancy

Divination by means of a cock (preferably a white rooster) with grains of corn, usually by recording the letters revealed as the cock eats kernels of corn that cover them.

From the Greek ἀλεκτρυών (alectryon) cock + µαντεία (manteia) divination.

amusements

TW3

So that was a week, was it? No actually it’s been a fortnight, and the next one bodes to be the same again. Here’s roughly what it’s been like:

Oh, much like normal then.

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!

photography

Gallery : Yellow

2 Comments

I don’t recall the subject of Tara’s Gallery last week, but whatever it was it didn’t excite me. But we’re back with a submission for this week’s theme: Yellow.

Almost inevitably yellow means flowers, but I’ve tried to find something else as well.

Water Lily
This water lily was in the Water Lily House at Kew Gardens.
Isn’t it delightful?

Waiting for Tea
For something different I spotted this guy on the beach at
Beer in Devon a few years ago, surrounded by all the debris
of a family day out, including his grand-children’s float.

Yellow and Red
Again at Kew, a couple of flowers in their garden centre shop.
But you know, it’s very odd. I really don’t have that many shots of outstandingly yellow things. Lots of reds, greens and blues, but very few yellows. Maybe I just lead a dull life?

links

Things You Might have Missed …

Another selection of links to items you may have missed, and will wish you hadn’t. In no particular order …

Worried about Friday 13th? Or scared by the number 7? Seems that 13 July is the least safe day of the year.


And now they reckon watremelon might be the next super-food. Hmmm … sounds like a load of round things to me.

An interesting article on the pointlessness of Page 3 and the pointlessness of trying to ban it. So it’s another load of pointless round things!

Interesting suggestion that psychedelic drugs, including LSD can cure depression. Not sure I’m ready for that yet!

Well if you British men are feeling depressed, this might cheer you up. Apparently (on average) we’re better endowed than many of our rivals.

So from stiff things to … prosthetics. Ancient Egypt never ceases to amaze. Apparently they not only had prosthetic toes, but they were actually functional for walking.

While in the ancient world, underwater archaeologists are to revisit the wreck the Antikythera machine was found. That could be very interesting, especially if they manage to find more pieces.

And still on the ancient world it seems they now think that Orkney was the centre of the (British) neolithic world. Was there really nowhere less godforsaken?

Finally a different aspect of body adornment. It seems there’s a lot more to tribal tattoos than I had actually realised. I’m still not tempted though.

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!
food+drink

Recipe : Pork Escalopes with Apple, Onion and Sage

More experimental cooking tonight. We had some pork escalopes, so I tried a variation on Normandy style.

Pork Escalopes with Apple, Onion and Sage

I used …
Enough Pork Escalopes (about 5-10mm thick)
2 slightly under-ripe Cox’s Apples
Bunch of Scallions
Handful of fresh Sage Leaves
Half glass of Armagnac (Calvados would be better)
Salt, Pepper and Olive Oil
Large knob of Butter

And this is what I did …

  1. Clean the scallions and cut into roughly 7 cm lengths, using as much of the green top as possible.
  2. Peel and chop the apples into quarters, then each quarter into four lengthways slices. Toss these in the liquor (to stop them browning) and set aside with the scallions.
  3. Wash the sage leaves, bruise them slightly and add to the scallion/apple mix.
  4. Heat some olive oil in a good frying pan and sear the pork on both sides.
  5. Add the apple/scallion/sage mix and any remaining liquor. Don’t worry if it flambés, it’ll just improve the flavour (and test your smoke alarms).
  6. Cook, with a lid on if you wish, turning the pork occasionally until it is done — probably 5 minutes for thin escalopes.
  7. Season to taste and transfer the pork and most of the apple/scallion mix into a warmed serving dish to keep warm.
  8. Add the butter to the remaining pan juices (plus a bit of apple/scallion) and quickly reduce to a thicker sauce. Pour over the pork.
  9. Serve with steamed new potatoes and a mixed salad.

Comments …
It tasted good, but it didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped.

The apple was good and stayed in whole slices which, with the scallions, were slightly sweet and tangy on the plate, setting off the pork nicely. That was what I wanted, hence why I had used Cox’s; something like a Bramley apple would be more tart (nice for me) but would also disintegrate.

One apple might have been enough for two of us. The apple/scallion mix made quite a lot of juice; too much to reduce quickly and thicken with butter to a thick sauce. This also meant that neither the pork not the apple slices browned at all, as I had hoped. Next time I’m inclined to cook the apple/scallion separately so it might caramelise slightly. And having ended up with too much liquid it needed a little cream, rather than butter, to make it into the right Normandy-style sauce.

An alternative approach might be to breadcrumb the pork — using sage & onion stuffing mix would work well! But then you definitely don’t want much juice so you’ll need to cook the apple separately.

And it would work just as well with any other style of potato and with hot vegetables rather than salad — depending solely on your preference at the time.

Verdict …
Not quite what I had hoped for, but by no means a failure. As Noreen so politely said: I’ve eaten far worse in restaurants!