beliefs, current affairs, people

Professor Edward Schillebeeckx RIP

Yesterday’s Times carried a full page obituary of Professor Edward Schillebeeckx, who died just before Christmas at the age of 95.  Schillebeeckx was probably the greatest Christian theologian of our time and one of the influential thinkers behind the work of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

Although I’m now a non-Christian atheist, I was in my younger days for a while close to the Roman church and Schillebeeckx was certainly an influential thinker amongst more liberal and intellectual Catholics along with the even more controversial Teilhard de Chardin.

I am unworthy, indeed insufficiently knowledgeable, to make further comment and will leave you all to read the Times‘s most interesting obituary of Professor Schillebeeckx.

memes, photography, pleasures

Animal Lovers' Meme


Animal Lovers’ Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week the Flickr meme is for animal lovers. We were asked to choose our favourite (or in some cases scariest) animals:

1. favourite animal of all time: cats (all of them)
2. favourite pet: cat (I’m convinced they’re magic and know where the 7th dimension is)
3. favourite zoo animal: meerkat (pure comedy)
4. favourite farm animal: geese
5. favourite animal from where you live: brown hare (they’re even more magic than cats)
6. favourite creepy crawly: hymenoptera (bees & wasps)
7. scariest animal: (wo)man [fx: big grin]
8. scariest creepy crawly: maggots (they really turn my stomach)
9. most fascinating animal: cephalopoda (octopus & squid)
10. favourite endangered species: tiger (just so majestic and so powerful)
11. favourite carnivore: all big cats but especially leopard an jaguar
12. favourite herbivore: parrots

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Sleeping time, 2. Ginger pussy cat wants another drink please bar keep, 3. Meerkat Lip-pursing, 4. Amsterdam Goose, 5. Brown Hare – mg_6330, 6. Ready to land, 7. I love being nude, 8. Fat 8 Maggots, 9. Untitled, 10. Hungry Tiger, 11. Leopard – Panthera pardus, 12. Hyacinth Macaw Cracking Brazil Nut

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

personal, quotes, thoughts

Where Am I?

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Here, I guess …

There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit’.  It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over and let it go.  It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives.  It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.

[Ellen Goodman]

books, food+drink, medical, nudism, personal, photography, pleasures, quotes, science, thoughts

Outlook for 2010

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Jilly over at jillysheep has prompted me to think about what I might want to achieve in 2010. This is not something I normally do, as I have always been content to drift with the tide and see what washes up.

But in 2010 I would like to:

  1. Win the lottery jackpot (minimum £2m)
  2. Lose 50 kilos (I keep telling you I’m hugely overweight)
  3. Do all the cooking (like I used to)
  4. Get the bathroom rebuilt (probably requires as a prerequisite)
  5. Get the house rewired (also requires as a prerequisite)
  6. Get the whole house tidy, uncluttered and clean – and keep it that way
  7. Get the two-thirds of the house which badly needs it redecorated (another that requires as a prerequisite)
  8. Go on at least three 2-week holidays, one railway-based, one to Europe and one naturist in the sun
  9. Travel from Thurso to Penzance by train.
  10. Have a good sunny summer and be able to walk skyclad all summer around my garden

That list was a joke! Yes, I would like to do all those things but the chances of achieving them are at best 1 in 14 million (ie. the chance of winning the lottery at any one attempt. If I win the lottery (odds over the year probably 300 in 14 million) all except , and #10 become relatively easy.

OK, so let’s be realistic. What do I stand some chance of achieving?

  1. Lose 15 kilos
  2. Get out to the shops (even the dreaded supermarket) at least once a week (ought to be easy now I’m retired)
  3. Cook 3 meals a week
  4. Go out to take photographs at least once a week (also should be easy)
  5. Write 2 weblog posts a week
  6. Get the heating fixed (like Jilly, we have an annoying intermittent and unsolved problem)
  7. Grow a year’s supply of chillies – on the study windowsill (given that we use a lot of chillies and said windowsill space is limited this will need a very prolific variety)
  8. Get my Anthony Powell Society work up to date, and keep it that way
  9. Get the sitting room and dining rooms properly tidy and inhabitable
  10. Rejuvenate my fish tanks
  11. Go away on holiday for 2 weeks
  12. Make some major progress on my family history (yes that’s vague; first I have to take stock of what I’ve got)

And if I actually manage to achieve half of that lot I should be satisfied.

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions – that’s just setting oneself up to fail, because they are always so unrealistic – so I’m not going to start this year and I’m not even going to commit to trying to achieve any of the above. They are what I would like to achieve. It’s a “wants list”, not a “must achieve or else list”. One reason I took early retirement was to get away from the incessant round of unachievable “must achieve or else” objectives. That way come madness and depression. 2010 is about relaxing and finding a life again.

Happy New Year to everyone!
Please don’t go out celebrating and get frostbite. 🙂

arts, environment, history, photography, pleasures, topographical

Lowestoft Tiles

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Lowestoft Tiles, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This is a mosaic of shots I took when Noreen and I were in Lowestoft for the day in September 2008. Round the edge is a selection of tiles used as part of the paving in London Road, Lowestoft. There is a line of tiles each side of the street (which is pedestrianised) some 10 feet from the shop fronts and spaced a few yards apart. Some were extremely dull; these caught my eye. The local planners, despite all the other dire things they’ve done to an interesting Edwardian seaside resort and port, should have credit for these tiles as they certainly are an unusual and interesting touch to an otherwise boring shopping street. All the tiles appear to have local themes: Lowestoft pottery, fishing industry, holiday resort, marshland, boating, etc. These are just round the corner from the decaying railway station (shown centre). It’s original buildings are approximating to semi-derelict (although still in use) but they retain some of the old decorative arcading and the original 1950s(?) BR station sign overlooking the “town square”.

You’ll get a better idea of the tiles if you follow the links to the individual images:
1. Tile 1, 2. Tile 4, 3. Tile 7, 4. Tile 6, 5. Lowestoft Central Station, 6. Tile 8, 7. Tile 2, 8. Tile 5, 9. Tile 3

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

books, current affairs, memes, natural history, personal, photography, thoughts

2009 Meme


2009 Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is: For this coming New Year how about 12 pictures, one for each month of the old year (ie. 2009) to represent something about what happened to you that month. Here is my year in 12 pictures.

January: A new project boss; there were no prisoners taken
February: Snow
March: Daffodils; there’s hope at last
April: Spring blossom
May: Anthony Powell Society Collage Event
June: Attended the Garter Service at Windsor, thanks to our friend Richmond Herald
July: The company pension crisis broke, which has led me to early retirement from 5 January 2010
August: Was taken up with preparations for the conference and writing my conference paper
September: While in Washington DC for the Anthony Powell Conference we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary — eeekkkkk!
October: Anthony Powell Society AGM at which Patric Dickinson (3rd from left in this old photo) spoke interestingly about Dorothy Varda
November: Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivée; an antidepressant is definitely required
December: More snow coincides with my last real working day
All in all an interesting year but a demanding and, at times, a stressful one.

As always the photographs are not mine (except for 3, 5, 10, 11 which are mine) so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Umm, Jack Hanna sure tastes good !, 2. Snow in the Chilterns, 3. Daffs, 4. Spring in Pink, 5. Power Collage, 6. Img0051768, 7. House of Cards, 8. Balloons just waiting to be blown up, 9. Flower Candy, 10. AP Soc Members at Wysall, 11. Anti-Depressant, 12. gloom, with more sheep

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

beliefs, food+drink

Recipe of the Day: Almond Biscotti

No, I don’t intend to write a recipe every day but I have long wanted to do recipes more regularly than I do – as I try things out and they work well. And now that I’ve retired hopefully I will have the time to return to cooking more frequently.

Original photo and recipe by madstfri

Biscotti (which is only Italian for biscuit) are the nice little almond morsels one sometimes get given with coffee or with a dessert, especially in continental cafés. They are dead easy to make and I suspect may become a Christmas tradition in our house.

For 25-30 biscotti you will need:

2 large eggs
175g sugar
50g butter (preferably melted)
200g blanched almonds (toasted if you can be bothered)
250g plain white flour
30g ground almonds
1 teasp baking powder
pinch of salt
2 teasp vanilla essence
1 teasp almond essence

Blend together the eggs and sugar.
Add all the other ingredients except the almonds and blend to make a sticky dough.
Now add the almonds and mix them in.
My recipe says to let the dough rest in the fridge for an hour; but I don’t bother.
Cover a couple of baking sheets with baking parchment.
Spread the mixture onto the baking sheets making a long shape about 6-8cm wide and 1cm thick. Don’t worry if it is uneven; no-one will even realise.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 175°C for 25 minutes. (If you have a fan assisted oven, you’ll want to use the fan if you have used more than one baking sheet/shelf.)
Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for 10-15 minutes.
Carefully remove the baking parchment and cut with a sharp knife into approx. 1cm slices. Angle the cuts to get the authentic look.
Now return the slices to the baking sheet, with one cut side down, and re-bake at 175°C for for 10-15 minutes.
Cool and store in an airtight box.
Serve with coffee or ice-cream desserts; or use as presents.

Notes:
You can use a food processor for all the mixing, it’s much quicker.
If using a food processor go gently when mixing in the almonds as you don’t want them smashed up.
Do not be tempted to over cook or you will get a hard result.
The biscotti will be a bit soft after the first bake so you will need to cut them carefully.
How long you make the second bake depends on how crunchy you like the end result. I find 10 minutes is about right: crunchy when cold but not too tough on the teeth.
There are a number of variants on this: some add a small amount of instant coffee, or citrus rind. Or you can leave out the ground almonds (if so add just a small amount more flour), the vanilla essence or almond essence.
For a really rich result you can part dip the biscotti in melted dark chocolate. Personally I think they are scrummy and rich enough without.
The end slices, which may not be good as presents, could be used for that Christmas Day trifle.