Friday 30 November 2012

I once dated a man who's name I didn't know

True story.

It happened about five years ago. I saw him every day when I was at work and thought he was utterly beautiful. When I was at work I had a name badge on.

For about a year, I smiled and tried to start conversations. For a year, he smiled politely but didn't respond. Then one day I went to get some photos developed and he was standing there in the shop! Thankfully, the photos were of friends and I at a party so I looked presentable enough.

When I went to pick them up, he finally responded to my advances and chatted a little. The chatting developed over the next few months until he finally asked me to go for a drink. He'd been saying my name when talking to me for quite a while by this point. Obviously, having a name badge on made it easy for him. But by the time we were going for a drink, I realised I didn't know his name and we had been flantering (flirty bantering) for too long for me to now ask him.

When he gave me his number he just wrote it on a peice of paper, without his name. Before our date, I tried going online to the website of the shop where he worked but there was nothing about staff names. And so I went for a drink with a man who's name I did not know.

When the man gave me a gentle kiss goodnight at the bus stop, I still did not know his name. When I saved his phone number under 'Man,' I still did not know his name. When we text back and forth to arrange a second date (which we did not end up going on), I still did not know his name.

When he disappeared off the radar altogether for a year or so, then showed up back at my work needing someone to talk to and saying he'd been married and divorced in the past year and struggled with alcoholism, I still did not know his name.

When he cried a little so I took him somewhere quiet to sit and gave him a hug, I still did not know his name.

When he asked me what he needed to say to prove he was still interested (I, unfortunately, no longer was), I still did not know his name.

And now, while I'm remembering how odd that all was, I still do not know his name!

Thursday 29 November 2012

In honour of a special birthday

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It is one of my favourite people's birthday today. She is 5 years old and probably one of the funniest people I know. The funniest thing I remember her doing is on New Year's Eve last year.

Because Mummy had said she could stay up until the final countdown to midnight, she was told her and her younger sister must have a nap during the day. She agreed but obviously the excitement of the whole day made sleep difficult. They went upstairs and promised to go to sleep. For the next fifteen minutes, the sound of footsteps dancing about was all too clear on the ceiling. Giggles trickled down the stairs and the little singsong voices were quite clearly awake and playing a game.

After the fifteen minutes of fun, they both descended the stairs, serious faces on, and announced to Mummy, "Mummy, we've been asleep for ages. For TWO HOURS!"

"Have you really?" asked Mummy, suspiciously.

"Two hours!" she repeated, putting up two of her fingers, for emphasis.

"Ok," said Mummy.

The day continued on and it came to the evening time. We were watching Ice Age, everyone cuddling on the sofa. And that's when the tiredness-induced meltdown happened.

There was this scene where we see some eggs, unguarded, in a corner somewhere. There are big booming sounds, footsteps of an approaching dinosaur. And my favourite little birthday girl had an utter freak-out.

"Ah! Ah! I'm scared! Turn it off! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!"

We said soothing things like, "It's ok. We've turned it off. Look, it's just the normal TV. Oo, Spongebob Square Pants is on. We like him. It was only a silly dinosaur, he can't hurt you."

It didn't matter! It didn't matter that the dinosaur was inside the TV, she was scared and that was that. She wasn't interested in Spongebob Square Pants. In fact, she wanted the television off altogether. She was terrified! She cried uncontrollably and as we all watched in confusion, cuddles from Mummy eventually soothed her a little. She gulped big sobs down and rambled on, the words hardly decipherable, until suddenly, in a fit of confession, she sat up and announced to her mother:

"MUMMY! WE DIDN'T GO TO SLEEP FOR TWO HOURS! WE WERE PLAYING GAMES! I'M SORRY!"

Probably the best voluntary confession I've ever witnessed.

Shortly after this, at 9.15pm, we sneakily wound the wall clock forward and said it was midnight soon, then all stood, counted 10 down to 1 and had a big 'celebration' before sending poor tired child off to bed.

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Wednesday 28 November 2012

A walk in Woolton (part 2)

Good morning all! Today it's time to get back to Rambler5319's walk around Liverpool. Enjoy....


You remember we finished last week (21.11.12) having come along the narrow path called Mill Stile and were just about to turn right into Church Road.

There wasn’t time to visit but, if we’d turned left and walked just over a quarter of mile up the hill, we’d have come to Reservoir Road. No prizes for guessing what is there – yep a storage reservoir, one of a number around the city. Liverpool’s water requirements, like many other expanding & industrialising cities, grew substantially during the 19th century.

Sadly, in this case, the residents of the village of Llanwddyn in North Wales were forced out of their homes in 1889 to help satisfy that need. They’d had to watch the dam across the River Vyrnwy being built knowing the end was coming.

The reservoir formed behind the dam was named Lake Vyrnwy which then became a water source for the city. Calling it a “lake” makes it sound just like a natural feature of the landscape. It gives no hint of what had been sacrificed in the name of progress: the village parish church, 2 chapels, 3 inns, 10 farmhouses & 37 houses had disappeared under the water. (The 1851 Census shows there were Welsh people living in the area including stone masons from North Wales. I wonder if any worked on the reservoir building and its tower not realising the background to it.) The lake can hold 13 million gallons of water when full and its surface area covers the equivalent of 600 football pitches; and it still supplies the city today. If the water in the lake was petrol and you got about 35 mpg you could drive from Venus to the Earth and all the way out to Jupiter and still have some left over! Anyway, back to Earth, and after turning right, a little way down the road we come to St Peter’s Church.
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A chapel was first built on the site in 1826 but, after population growth over the next 60 years, a number of wealthy merchants gave the money for a new church building which opened in 1887. Sandstone from the quarry was used as it was literally on their doorstep.

We’re visiting the church hall across the road first as this is famous for being the place where, at a church fete on 6th July 1957, Paul McCartney met John Lennon and the Quarrymen.

There are a couple of photos from that date (showing the group on the back of a lorry) at this website http://www.beatlesbible.com/1957/07/06/john-lennon-meets-paul-mccartney/.

Here’s the Church Hall:
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And here is a close-up of the plaque under the middle window. This is the actual place where the two guys met:
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Now cross over the road to St Peter’s Church. It is also famous because in the graveyard is this headstone:
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Just read down the names on the headstone. Can you see it? Now you know where they probably got the idea for the name Eleanor Rigby which appears in the lyrics of the song. McCartney later admitted the choice of names in the song was probably a subconscious remembering from the times spent in and around the graveyard. This was half of another Beatles double A-side with Yellow Submarine on the other. It reached No.1 in Aug 1966 and stayed there for 4 weeks.

Can you see the name John McKenzie in this next picture?
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(There is no suggestion that he was a priest but I think poetic licence took over when McCartney wrote the lyrics.) If you know the song Eleanor Rigby, there are a few lines in it about a Father McKenzie:

a) Writing the words of a sermon that no-one will hear

b) Darning his socks in the night when there is nobody there

c) Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave.

You need to look left and up slightly, in between the vertical stems of two crosses, for the lightish brown stone. (It’s 3 rows back and the only other one you can see with an inscription.) That stone has the Eleanor Rigby name if you can enlarge the pic.

Continuing down the hill the first turn left is Mason St. Here we find a cinema called the Woolton Picture House. You can just about see the name above the doors although the protruding metal framework prevented me getting a clear pic of it:
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It has a very interesting history dating back to 1927. In the world of films, The Jazz Singer released in Oct 1927 (starring Al Jolson) is considered the first talking picture film; and the first words spoken were, “Wait a minute, wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” I wonder if it was shown here in Woolton after the place opened in Dec. Here’s the close up of the plaque on the wall just to the right of the cinema entrance:
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It is one of the old-fashioned style single screen cinemas and as you can see from the pic, “the oldest surviving cinema in Liverpool.”

Downhill again from here and turn right at the bottom. Just along on the right is something which looks a bit strange. Here it is:
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It seems to be a sunken car park but the sign, just inside the sandstone post at the other end on the left of my pic, tells us we’re in what is called Lodes Pond. It did have water in it at one time which explains the stone banks around the U-shaped floor. Apparently, after a dispute with the Lord of the Manor the local district council ordered that the water had to be, “kept in perpetuity for the use of cattle”. So essentially it was a huge cattle watering trough.

Check out the pic on Flickr from 1936 (taken from a similar position) when it was full of water: http://www.flickr.com/photos/68767304@N03/8121915910/sizes/l/in/pool-1435847@N20/

I noted one of the small terraced houses behind where I took the photo from has called itself Lodes Pond View. With the absence of any water in the “Pond” I suppose its added value potential in any future sale will be somewhat limited as it actually looks out on to a car park.

Crossing the road and heading towards the traffic lights we come to a pub called The Coffee House. On the side facing us is a date stone showing 1641 as you can see in this photo below. Jeremiah Horrocks, the famous English astronomer, with connections to Liverpool’s Otterspool Pool Park (just 4 miles away) died the same year it opened; the future Charles II was just 11 years old; The English Civil War started the following year; and Liverpool itself was under siege by the Royalist Prince Rupert in 1644 so perhaps Woolton’s two known Catholic supporters at the time would not have gone in for a drink.
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We continue walking a little bit further and on the left we come to a small shop on the corner called The Liverpool Cheese Company.
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Naturally it sells cheese but there are so many types it’s hard to know what you might like. Here’s just one of the display cases.
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Some years ago the owner recommended a particular type for me to try. Now I’m not a blue cheese person especially after trying some Danish Blue once but he convinced me to try a piece of Shropshire Blue. It’s sort of not quite what you expect a blue cheese to taste like and I was pleasantly surprised. Anyway I tried some and have returned a number of times to get more of it.

Here’s the piece I got today:
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In addition to cheese, a number of other products are available. A few years ago the shop posted an order for me which was a present for someone. It was a piece of a cheese called Stinking Bishop. The Telegraph newspaper reported it had been voted Britain’s smelliest cheese in 2009. It was mentioned in the Wallace & Gromit film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit(2005) and apparently sales rocketed by 500% following the film’s release.

The shop also can make up presentation baskets with wine, cheese & other items they stock. Check out their website: http://www.liverpoolcheesecompany.co.uk/. It’s really worth a visit to see everything on offer including advice on how to wrap & store cheese.

Click on the cheese section and there are 13 pages of the different types on sale. There have got to be loads there you’ve never heard of. Anyone know these: Allerdale Goat, Snowdonia Pickle Power, Sykes Fell Ewe, Inglewhite Smoked Goat, Gabriel Blue EweorShorrock’s Strong Lancashire Bomb?Just looking at the names conjures up a desire to try them. Imagine that after dinner conversation when you say, “Have you never tried Snowdonia Pickle Power?” and, following blank looks all around, you then launch into a glowing report of how wonderful a cheese it is.

Btw I wouldn’t recommend the Stinking Bishop variety unless you have a very strong constitution. Also it needs careful storage as the smell can affect (infect?) other items in the fridge as the person to whom I sent my gift told me what some other items tasted like after the cheese had been in there.

Despite the presence of a large supermarket just at the back of this shop and another one close by there is a dedicated bunch of loyal customers who keep coming back here for the service they receive and the varieties on offer which they can’t get elsewhere. I have on occasion had to queue outside on the pavement as it’s been packed inside.

Over the road, just beyond the traffic lights, we come to the village cross. Local history records say the cross was erected around 1350AD by the Knights Hospitaller; they also built a water mill in the area early in the 14th Century. These men were a group of monks and knights, recruited from Western European nations, who protected the routes to Jerusalem used by pilgrims to the Holy City. They took the monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. However, they added a fourth vow which bound them to protect pilgrims and fight any attackers.

They had been given the village of Woolton and its lands, around 1180, by the constable of Chester under whose control the area was. This land was rented out to tenants but upon their death the heir would have to pay the value of one third of that person’s “moveable” possessions; that would be stuff like cows, ploughs, stools and cooking pots.

Basically it was a form of death duties but at 33%; and all, even the poorest, had to pay them to the Knights. It’s interesting to note from history that in 1187, following the siege of Jerusalem and its eventual surrender to Saladin, they and a number of inhabitants were allowed out of the city provided they paid a ransom. The Hospitallers & the Templars led the first two columns of people to leave having been given a promise of safe passage by the conquerors.

Here’s the cross:
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Just across the road in the window of a newsagents shop was this sign:
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I wonder how much you were paid when you did your paper round. I bet it wasn’t anywhere near £20 ($32) for 6 mornings (7am-7.45am)! Would be interesting to see what the paper boy/girl rates are like in other countries. Anyone from US/Canada or rest of the world help with info to compare with UK?

We continue walking along Speke Road until we turn right into School Lane. Keep walking along the lane until you come to a place where it narrows. You will see this building on your left although I had to go to the other end to take the picture looking back the way I’d come. Unfortunately undergrowth and tree branches obscured both ends:
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What is interesting is the inscription over the door and here’s a close-up.
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If you can’t make it out, it says: “Much Woolton Old School. The Oldest Elementary School Building in Lancashire” with the date of 1610 also inscribed in the stonework. It is believed that the actual building may pre-date 1610 as there is a reference to a bequest made in 1606 to provide a schoolmaster at Woolton. However this and other tangential refs don’t identify this particular building just the area; records from 1608 suggest an estimated population of 130 (29 households) so I’m not sure how many pupils there might have been when it was up and running.

From here it was back into the village and out on the road which would return me to my start point. On the way I saw this establishment:
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Now I confess I know almost nothing about spas; I’d never even heard of one of these. Have you got one near where you live? The website for one in Bangkok advertises a number of treatments that work out to about £60/hour so I guess the UK rates could be higher.

They also offer what seems to be a most luxurious treatment called The Botanical Refresh lasting, if you can spare the time, 5 hours 15 mins!! It consists of the following: Pebble Foot Bath (10 mins), Herbal Steam (20 mins), choice of Let’s Relax or Body Reviver (120 mins), Reviving Foot Massage (30 mins), Two Course Healthy Spa Cuisine & Healing Drink, Aromatherapy Facial (60 mins), Spa Manicure or Spa Pedicure (75 mins). (And yes, it does add up to 315 mins or 5 ¼ hrs.) In Bangkok it will cost you 14,500 Baht (that’s approx £295/$473, so again roughly £60/$96 per hour).

And that was the end of the visit to Woolton – time to head home and a bath (not a spa) for the tired legs. It had been a good walk and a good day. Woolton is definitely an area of great historical interest. Even one guy I met who’s lived in there all his life didn’t know about 2 or 3 things I’d found. There’d been stuff from the 12th century to 1610, from the Victorians to the Beatles sites and right up to the present day. I’ll definitely visit again.

Tuesday 27 November 2012

The virus and I

O, virus. You thought you could bring me down, didn't you? You thought you could ruin me. You spent weeks ruining everyone around me before you got to me.

Well, virus, you had your work cut out with me! As soon as I felt a little tickle and a cough, I ate so many throat sweets, I forgot how to even spell sore throat.

On the advice of work colleagues, I got some echinacea tablets and took three a day to subdue you.

When the blocked nose arrived, I swore off dairy and took decongestant tablets and just about kept it under control. One morning I awoke totally unable to breathe through my nose but that was the only time you managed to interrupt my sleep.

I remembered people saying "feed a cold" and ate incessantly, from morning until evening.

Who knows if any of the old wives' tales were true but I put my faith in them anyway. With a little help from some Beechams medicine and a bottle of cough syrup, I got through the worst of it without ever properly 'having a cold.'

I transported all my medicine around with me constantly and whenever you appeared, in even the mildest form, I kappowed you with vitamins, I thwacked you with lemon and ginger tea, I karate chopped you with Strepsils throat sweets. The fight was on. And I was winning.

And now, virus, little sad virus, it is you who is regretting our meeting. You should never have arrived here. You should never have taken me on. For, instead of ravaging me, keeping me awake at night and making things unbearable before moving on to your next victim, I have stopped you in your tracks and struck you down.

Virus, your reign of terror stops here! I am equipped with echinacea and you shall not take me!

Monday 26 November 2012

On chocolate

More Nanny Rhino today...

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I'm not one of those girls who's mad on chocolate. I like it, don't get me wrong. But whenever I think of chocolate lovers, I think of a girl I went to secondary school with, Gwen, who would go around the common room in sixth form, asking if anyone had chocolate with them and could she buy it from them. She'd be brandishing a fifty pence piece to back up her request and asking around desperately. At the time, I was a bit young to wonder why she had such a thing for chocolate. I just thought it was a little strange.

 

Alternately, a girl I went to junior school school, Louise, was allergic to chocolate! Allergic! It'd be a pretty sad existence if you couldn't give in to the odd chocolate moment.

 

When my brother and I were younger, I distinctly remember being a massive fan of Yorkie bars. It was always my favourite. If we got given 50p by a generous relative, we would scuttle off to the sweet shop around the corner and giggle excitedly, while we looked at all the sherbet sticks and flying saucer sweets and fried egg sweets and Mr Freezy flavoured ice sticks. A lot of the time, though, I'd get a Yorkie. Now I think about it, I fear I may have been wasting a fantastic opportunity for potential sweetie-induced happiness. I just wanted a big bar of solid chocolate. Then Yorkie brought out these adverts on TV which said, “Yorkie! Not for girls!” So I had a little-girl-tiff and stopped buying them. I switched my allegiance to Dime bars, which were about half the price anyway, and shook my proverbial fist at the the Yorkie makers, knowing they'd notice my missing custom and regret their silly no-girls advert.

 

Speaking of chocolate, actually, there are lots of new weird and wacky things happening with chocolate, which take inspiration from it's original use as a savoury drink, mixed with chilli, when first discovered and drunk in South America So chilli chocolate bars abound the shelves of high end delicatessens or your local Whole Foods. I like the idea of liking chilli and chocolate together. I have tried, and failed, to get myself to like it. I just cannot stand the prickly heat in the back of my throat after I have swallowed a lovely mouthful of sweet melty chocolate. My senses scream at me to stop. It is just wrong, I'm sorry for those of you who love this combination.

 

Another thing which doesn't work for me is chocolate pasta. I had originally thought that it would be great with something savoury. A friend told me he had it with a veal dish. Great, I thought, let me be gourmet and get into this chocolate pasta scene! Then someone told me that I had it all wrong. Chocolate pasta was a dessert and I must warm some cream up, add walnuts, cook my pasta and then add it to my warm cream and walnuts, mix around and then serve up, as my dessert. Ok, I thought, that sounds interesting, I can do that.

 

And I did it.

 

And it tasted like.... pasta with cream and walnuts. Normal regular pasta with cream and walnuts. In all honesty, cream and walnuts are not my usual accompaniment to pasta so I put it aside, disappointed. All that anticipation, all that planning... and it just tasted like regular pasta. Maybe I got it from the wrong company. Maybe I should have looked around for a really great quality one or asked for recommendations. Anyway, that's the end of the road for my chocolate pasta journey, I think.

 

Now, another chocolate thing that I have reached the end of the road with is chocolate mousse. Not eating it! No, I am of course still eating it. Making it myself at home though, no more! In the early days of cooking in my kitchen, I didn't have an electric whisk so I whisked my egg whites by hand. I would get severe arm ache and give up before it had quite finished being whisked. I'd just keep on with the recipe, in blond hope that it would be fine. It wasn't. It would come out to dense and hard, instead of soft and fluffy. I tried it a second time, having convinced myself that the eggs must have been rubbish or something. The same thing happened. So I stopped making chocolate mousse. Maybe that's silly, because now I have an electric whisk so I could try it again. I think I have a mental block with chocolate mousse now though.

 

I did go through a stage of drinking unsweetened hot chocolate not too long ago. It was an unexpected pleasure which grew on me. I used Bournville cocoa powder, steamed milk and vanilla or almond extract. I occasionally used orange oil but it tended to overwhelm the whole thing. Peppermint did the same and almost tasted toothpaste-ish. So I stuck to vanilla or almond. Because it's bitter, it takes a few times to get used to it but I started really looking forward to my evening vanilla hot chocolate after a while.

 

Another of my favourite things to do with chocolate when I have guests over is a kind of help-yourself thing. I grate a load of dark chocolate, finely chop some mint, mix them together and put it in a small dish. I grate some more and zest an orange in with it and put that into a dish. Some times I do one of plain dark chocolate grated. You can play around with what flavours you want to add. Then I get loads of those mini pots of icecream and tell everyone to pick a pot and top it with whatever they want from the dishes of chocolate. Or you could go even simpler, get a huge bowl, half some strawberries and throw in some cherries, then get some dark chocolate and break it roughly into pieces and throw in aswell and get get nibbling.

 

With Christmas approaching, I am guessing my chocolate intake will increase drastically. Not because there is far better chocolate around at Christmas and I will be unable to control myself. It's more because it will be there, freely available and right in front of my face (of course, I could choose not to stand directly in front of the Christmas chocolate and sweeties aisle at the supermarket but I like it there, ok?). So I will eat it. Because I can see it. Advent calendars, not a favourite or any special memories but a nice reason to eat chocolate first thing every morning. A selection box, again no amazing memories, just that my grandfather used to get us one every year, without fail. But if I bought all those individual chocolate bars in a shop and ate them all in one day, people would judge me, quite harshly I should think. Wrap it in a plastic packet with a fun Christmas picture on the front and call it a 'selection box' and it's suddenly fine! Eat them all, no problem!

 

In Namibia, my friend Lucy and I, used to get a chocolate bar called Top Deck, if we had any spare money. This was an exciting time for us, when it happened. It was white chocolate on the bottom and milk chocolate on the top. It looked beautiful and we loved it, although I've no memory of how it tasted.

 

Sunday 25 November 2012

On mushrooms

Yesterday, I found an old skirt which had little pictures of mushrooms all over it and so I wrote about mushrooms for my Nanny Rhino. I am going to share my mushroom chat with you as I wrote ten thousand words yesterday catching up on the days I missed with Nanny Rhino so I am all written out for a day or so.

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There are so many things to do and places to go with mushrooms that it's hard to know where to start. I'd love to start in Rome, where any restaurant worth it's salt would be proudly displaying a wooden crate of porcini mushrooms on one of its tables outside. Since this visit and my mass consumption of the fantastic porcini mushrooms, I am struggling with eating them here as they are all of the dried variety, which was fine and nice and lovely, until I saw the fresh ones in Italy. Now I feel differently about dried porcini. I feel a bit sad for them as they are trapped there on the shelf, in a little jar, moisture-less. Without any fresh porcini of my own, I am simply not eating porcini mushrooms. It is a sad state of affairs. Dried porcini are great for risottos though, as you can use the soaking liquids to hydrate your rice. It's still not quite the same though, is it?

 

My next favourite mushroom is probably an oyster mushroom as I love their shape and texture. I love how wild and uncouth they look, all misshapen and not at all uniform like their little cousins, the button mushrooms. The problem with this could be that people may mistake your oyster mushrooms in your stir fry for a slab of fat off the meat (as happened to me when making a duck stir-fry), so it's your decision whether you want to run the risk of being thought of as a 'fat-cooker'.

 

Shiittake are my next favourite, for similar reasons to the oyster mushroom. It is kind of irregular and a dark mysterious colour. They have a great flavour that I love cooking with beef in a stir-fry.

 

Enoki mushrooms, so long and thin and tiny are great for throwing into dishes last minute, for an extra bit of flavour. Their size means they don't need much cooking before they soften and taste lovely. I love putting them onto a pizza last minute before quickly oven baking it as it adds another element to something with relatively few ingredients.

 

Next we have the portobello and the chestnut mushrooms, larger, meatier and better for roasting than their smaller counterparts. They can also hold their own quite well in a pie or vegetarian lasagne with spinach and ricotta.

 

Lastly we have the humble button mushroom, great for general use, fabulous fried in a breakfast, but with less of the qualities that draw me so well to the other mushrooms.

 

Actually, I have a less-than-fantastic memory connected to a portobello mushroom. I was seeing a guy for a few months and we could both see that things were in steady decline. In the height of our excitement while things were great, though, we had booked tickets to go to a literature festival somewhere in the countryside. The ticket had been quite expensive and I had booked the day off work so I was reluctant to give it up. Also the gentleman in question didn't seem that keen on letting the relationship go, although I knew he knew it was over.

 

He was all up for driving there and giving me a lift and acting like things were fine so I took the lift, slept all the way there and planned other similar tactics of avoidance once there. I thought I'd just potter off and get lost in the crowds. He wasn't so easy to shake though. It took him hours to finally say he fancied seeing something he didn't think I'd like and wandering off in the other direction.

 

I found the furthest away corner and went for a long walk among the trees, where none of the fun was happening. I saw a group of people open water swimming and got chatting and generally just soaked up the lovely day. I eventually got back into the foray of people and book stalls and performances and fun and watched an old work colleague doing performance poetry. Here, I had solace. Should the gentleman wander along and want to sit down, I could say I was busily engaged in supporting my friend and paying attention to his performance and apologies but I wasn't able to have a chat right now. The gentleman did not appear though and the next performer was hilarious so I stayed there. At one of the food stands nearby, I ordered an amazing portobello mushroom burger with halloumi cheese and red pepper. I sat down with my burger, deep in thoughts about life and this tasty mushroom burger. It was such a great moment, there, sitting on the ground, with people milling about, books in hands, intelligent discussion being had all around me, a performer on a little stage not far away and these beautiful purple flowers lining a little garden wall to my left.

 

That's when the gentleman came along, greeted me in surprise and sat down next to me, ruining my moment. My excuses for silence were none, apart from the tasty mushroom burger in my hands, which required all of my attention. We were stuck together again then, for the rest of the afternoon, until it all became too painfully obvious and, in a quiet late afternoon moment, sitting on the grass, he fell asleep and I sneaked away, got my bag and headed for the nearest main road to find a train station and scarper off back home, away from this awful awkwardness that I should never have embarked upon in the first place.

Saturday 24 November 2012

Another exciting award

Last week, a fabulous blogger Kindredspirit23, included me in his list of nominees for the Blogger of the Year award! Scott writes a brilliant blog, with fantastic perspectives on life, given his recent serious health issues. There is always something lovely to read there.

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This one is especially fabulous because there are no guidelines on having to give it to a certain number of people. You just give to the people you feel deserve it, which I like. The rules are as follows:

 

1 Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award
2 Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.
3 Please include a link back to this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award – and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)
4 Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them
5 You can now also join our Facebook page – click the link here ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Award and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience
6 As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

 

Now for my post about why I have nominated the people I have. It's mainly because they are some of my favourite blogging friends and I'd love to circumvent the ocean that divides us and have a cup of tea together. These nominations are like a virtual cup of tea, if you use your imagination....

 

Fitness and Frozen Grapes - The healthiest plates of food I have ever seen, for starters. And because reading about all that running and swimming and cycling kind of makes me feel fit by association.

 

Someone Fat Happened - Because there is nothing that I don't like on this blog. Plus, I'm trying to get her to say she'll wear my big ugly purple crocs at her wedding and I figure this nomination might persuade her it's a good idea.

 

The Waiting - Because the insights of a new mother can be very amusing. As can pictures of babies in funny costumes. And posts called 'Gingivitis Friday' - what's not to love?

 

Eat, Move, Love - A great new blog on the fitness scene. After reading it, I decided to try the yoga class which prompted this post.


The Good Greatsby - There is always space for a nomination for this blog. I often check it for advice before making big important life decisions.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Friday 23 November 2012

The worst photo of myself

Ok, I feel that I am at a stage in my blogging 'career' where I can share a few things I normally wouldn't share with strangers. But we are no longer strangers to one another. So yesterday whilst having a nose bleed, I remembered the last time I had a nose bleed, which was during my hospital stay, post-big-scary operation.

Because what happened to me was quite unusual (they had never seen it in that hospital before), there was no ward for me really so I had just been put on a ward where there was space. I slept intermittently during the day and was awake at night, when the lady in the bed opposite me would cry out things like "Ohhhh... The squire! He's starving to death!" in her sleep. It was a bit random. The lady next to her had bowel cancer and wore a colostomy bag and talked about not being able to go on public transport because she always had to be a few minutes away from a toilet.

This one night, I had a little nose bleed. I pressed my button for a nurse to come and got a tissue. Which the blood soaked through. Then another tissue. And another. And another. We couldn't figure out why it wouldn't stop. Then I remembered that they give you blood-thinning medication sometimes, don't they, if you're lying down a lot. So that you don't get blood clots in your legs from not moving them. And, as we saw in a previous post, I was not too keen on going for a walkies!

Thus, my nose bleed went on. And on. And on. Because my blood wouldn't clot! Every time, I thought it would have stopped and took the tissue away, it started flooding out again. I felt like my brain might come out through my nostril if it didn't stop.

Eventually the nurses just rolled up two of their little square spongey pad things that they use to clean wounds up with, and shoved one in each nostril and hoped that would stop it and force it to clot.

Quite amused by the whole situation, I waited until they'd cleared up and left then took a photo.

Bear in mind, I couldn't get my enormous ten inch stapled wound down my front wet so hadn't showered or washed my hair in about five days.

Are you ready?

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Lovely, isn't it?.......

Don't answer that.

Thursday 22 November 2012

Search terms 4

It's been a while and yesterday I saw 'evil flab man' come up so I knew it was time for one of these. I also really love that famous poet Cloreidge, he was good, hey?

is revising in pyjamas ok
du cane court mummified baby
first hot yoga class
i've lost my passport and i am unable to travel
wet myself in ballet class
im falling for my trainer
gelatarias
defrosted freezer door now hissing
"alex jones" "truffles"
does george michael live at the grove in highgate
maisey italian restaurant in luton
south east aslan rain forest
35 st mary's walk scarborough
chihuahua egg cup
strange doll photographs
picture red wine mess
rowley lane dance mat
danda
dont want to finish stories
coubotin tv
lucille ball
june bride pig
truffle butter london
famous public apostrophe mistakes
how to make dolls out of eggshells
when do kingston call for pgce interview
thai kitchen green curry
chan man sin v ag of hk
unlawful act manslaughter revision
things to know about first outing on holiday
things to remember in swimming
salt museum, eua
new weaver hall built in 1960s at the bridge
academy awards donald duck
james bond moment
aslan's mountain
butcher three bird roast
how do i withdraw from my first challenge
lazylauramaisey
men stupid face
highgate jb priestley
evil flab man
the flask cloreidge
the girl said to me
goji berries muffins
ode to my tooth

Wednesday 21 November 2012

A walk in Woolton

It's Rambler5319 today with a really interesting walk around Liverpool. Enjoy!


I decided to do a walk in the Woolton area of Liverpool. There turned out to be far more of interest than I expected so will split and do a part 2 next week. It is probably one of the oldest areas of Liverpool. Some believe the name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon Wulf’s “Tun” (Tun can mean farmstead) although the earliest written records date from the Domesday Book (1086). The area had a quarry and the sandstone from it was used to build a number of local mansions. However the most famous building for which it supplied the stone is Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral located near the city centre.
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There are a number of interesting things to see in Woolton. However we’ll start the walk with somewhere we’ve been before (invisible blog 4.7.12): a house at 20 Forthlin Road.

And here’s the sign outside. Yes it’s where Paul McCartney grew up.
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From here it’s about a mile and a half (30 mins walk) into the Woolton area and our first stop is 251 Menlove Avenue. The house is called “Mendips” and some of you will know why it’s famous. For those that don’t here’s the pic with the info.
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The house itself is here.
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Due to the bright sunlight the blue plaque is only just about visible above the middle window of the 3 in the downstairs bay. The wording says: John Lennon 1940-1980, Musician & Songwriter, lived here 1945-63. (John was born in 1940 and moved to his aunt’s house in 1945.)

Next stop is just 5 mins away, round the corner and up the hill (Beaconsfield Rd) a bit. And here it is:
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Some of you will recognise the name on the gate posts. The original gates were taken away in May 2011 by the Salvation Army and put into storage and just inside the current red ones is this sign:
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The manufacturers of the replacement replica gates donated them to the Salvation Army but also advise on the sign that they can make you a set to order to fit your own driveway/garden. The original stone posts as you can see have been well and truly graffitied over many times. Although it has a history dating back to the 1870s, Strawberry Field didn’t open as a Salvation Army Children’s Home until 1936. The annual garden party which took place in the grounds was eagerly attended by the young John Lennon. Its name was made famous when Lennon wrote the song Strawberry Fields Forever in 1967. The song formed half of a Double A-Side Beatles’ single with Penny Lane. The record reached No.2 in the UK charts, being kept off the no.1 spot by Engelbert Humperdinck’s ballady type song Please Release Me!

From here we go further up the hill to the first turning on the right. This is Quarry Street.
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You might also remember in blog 4.7.12 I mentioned John Lennon’s School being Quarry Bank so with Quarry St and the quarry in Woolton it is not hard to see how one of the pre-Beatles groups he formed was called The Quarrymen; McCartney joined in 1957 & Harrison in 1958. Incidentally, since 1998, after reforming in 1997 for a 40th anniversary performance, there are still 3 members of the original Quarrymen line-up performing under that name.

A bit further down Quarry Street we pass a hairdresser’s shop. I mentioned in blog 8.8.12 that I like the way hairdressers “pun-ify” their names and this one in Woolton was very good. Here’s the pic:
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Do you see what they did there? Mane-iacs! I liked it anyway.

Just a few yards further on and there was another old sandstone building, this one erected in 1873:
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Next to it in the same stone was another door with “Police Office” above the entrance. Definitely harking back to a bygone era.

A bit further down and I came to the rock face which was clearly the perimeter of the old quarry. The sandstone wall had been unstable at some time and has been strengthened by having rods driven into the cliff face with a flat plate bolted on the end to try and prevent it giving way. I’m not sure I’d like to live at the bottom of it. Here’s a close up of one of the strengthening rods:
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Just beyond the wall are some steps leading right up to a path running across the top of the cliffs.

Because of the high walls on the path it was difficult to get a pic of the houses actually inside the old quarry but here is my attempt. You can see the vertical walls going down and the roofs of the houses below.
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The path is actually named as Mill Stile and used to lead to Woolton Mills. In 1863 the Corn Merchant and Millers partnership using the site was dissolved and I’m not sure what became of the buildings after that. Residential accommodation now occupies the area but obviously the street namers decided to look back in history for something to reflect its historical usage. Well done them!
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Here’s the sign:
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After coming to the end of the path we turn right along Church Road. A little way along we will come to St Peter's Church but I'll leave that till Part 2, next week, when we'll finish the walk with some more pics of interesting stuff around the village.

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Danda and the Masterchef challenge

Danda has been ill lately. It's this cold that has been going around which is accompanied by persistent all-consuming coughing fits. The doctor says you just have to stick it out and it should be gone in about a week.

I had started buying a few Christmas presents but when he was all sad and ill, yep, you guessed it, I gave him the presents to cheer him up. One was a balloon powered helicopter which I played with for hours.

So anyway, we were watching my favourite yesterday, Masterchef. Danda was watching too but was very distracted by his constant coughing. He was also quite tired from not sleeping that well because of his cold. He had opted for a small nap on the sofa before Masterchef started. I think he was perhaps still a little sleepy.

So there was a challenge on Masterchef where they were given seven ingredients and had to create a dish in an hour. The ingredients were chicken thighs, bacon, tarragon, brandy, chocolate, grapes and something else, I've forgotten now. My mind got working. What would I make? Chocolate mousse? Some kind of roasted chicken thing? Most of the chefs started making chicken ballotines with tarragon mousse etc. They created some lovely food out of such limited ingredients. As I marvelled at their skill and tried to pick up tips from them, I asked Danda who was still coughing and spluttering at regular intervals, what he would have done for that challenge.

His answer?

"I'd drink the brandy, eat the chocolate and throw the chicken at the other chefs."

Monday 19 November 2012

My James Bond moment

Firstly, I would like to know, as a newcomer to the world of James Bond, if they have always been such terrible films. I watched one last night and it was like watching a comedy. The English girls have such terribly, terribly English accents, yah! And they're so stiff-upper-lipped that it looks like they've had Botox. Daniel Craig is great in cool-calm-and-collected way but even his pout is ridiculous. Even mid-death-defying-car-chase, his pout is firmly in place.

The times when I did try to get caught up in the action and stop sniggering at everything, I couldn't actually follow it because it's filmed so close up that when Bond is chasing someone across a rooftop or climbing some rickety scaffolding which then collapses, you can't actually see what's going on. They need to zoom out a little. It's just lots of glass smashing and gun fire, really close up.

I just felt I needed to get that out of my system. I haven't really followed James Bond films at all and then I finally sat down and watched one and it was utterly ridiculous and I am very puzzled about why people love it so much.

And anyway, a little while ago I had a James Bond moment which was actually way more superhero than any James Bond film.

I was waiting at the train station in Liverpool, for my train back to London. It was evening time, about 7pm. I was sitting on a bench, minding my own business, when I heard a bit of a commotion. A young man, while leaving the M&S Food shop, had been stopped by some people with M&S uniforms on.

He struggled against them and started trying to pull away but the M&S people called out to a security guard standing close by, who started to run over. In the struggle, two bottles of wine fell out from under the young man's coat and smashed on the ground. The commotion attracted some people who were working in the McDonald's next door, who started to walk over. As the young man broke free of the M&S workers, the McDonald's crew got hold of him and tackled him to the floor. He had struggled out of his coat in the process.

The security guard arrived, got the young man off the floor and held him tight, bringing him back to the M&S. Things calmed a little and in the chitchat with the M&S lot about what had happened, he saw his moment and broke free, running for the door.

It just so happened that the bench I was sitting on was on his route to the door. I would stop this petty thief! He needed to learn the rules of socially acceptable behaviour! And theft from a shop is incorrect behaviour! I would single-handedly teach him that he had to pay for his wine, just like everybody else.

Cue the James Bond theme tune....

Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. DUH NUH, DUH NUH NUH!

Being the quick-thinking gal that I am, I put my leg up as he ran past, to trip him up and gave an extra little kick, right on his shin, as he ran by me. Grrr. I was getting nasty. See? I'm way tougher than James Bond.

Then he dropped to the floor, gripping his leg in agony, which I'd basically broken, because of my extreme toughness and strength. I leapt up and made a Citizen's Arrest and was later awarded numerous medals for my bravery.

O no, wait, sorry, that was me daydreaming. What actually happened was he kept running as though I hadn't done a thing and got away.

But still.... I was very brave, don't you think?

Sunday 18 November 2012

Rubbish captions, boobs on the loose and wellies on hangers

I can't wait to show you guys what is in Chat this week. It's got some real gems. Firstly, the obligatory animal photo inside the front cover with some extremely weak puns.
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This time the pun is 'he's going bananas!' And I am then asked 'orang-you jealous?' Poor. Even for Chat, that's poor.

Then the worst man-to-woman transvestite photo I have maybe ever seen in my entire life.
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I'm sorry if you are reading this and you recognise yourself. But really now. A little bit of work needs doing on that get-up.

Then we have some photos of things that no-one cares about apart from the people who sent them in - a girl and a dog, someone on their wedding day, a carrot that looks like a pair of legs, someone's cat, someone's granny etc etc.

Then my personal favourite, the 'Blimey! That's clever' page. The top tips are fabulous, as ever. The best one is this. It's basically, store you wellies upside down on a hanger.
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There's no real reason why, apart from it saves space. Does it? Does hanging a pair of wellies on a wall which looks, from what I can see, quite silly, really saving so much space that it's worth it? I'd rather just have a little less room on the shoe rack and keep the wellies there, thanks.

Another tip is, keep the little dregs of paint in a small jar rather than in the tin it came in. It's not even worthy of a response, is it?

A bit later, there is a story about a little boy who didn't have a belly button. I don't know why. I dost read the story. My eye was immediately drawn to the inset photo and the caption...
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There is also an info box about a condition called bladder exstrophy. The title says 'What is bladder exstrophy?' This is followed by the words, "This congenital defect affects around 1 in 50,000 births and is more common in boys than girls, and the risk of having a second child with the condition is approximately 1 in 10. The problem occurs somewhere between the 4th-10th week of pregnancy."

So I'm sorry, what's bladder exstrophy again? I'm still none the wiser. That info box contained zero 'info.' If I find out I've got it and I rush to grab my nearest copy of Chat, something I do whenever a crisis occurs in my life, then I've actually no idea what's wrong with me or what to do.

Next is an atrocious photo of a woman who's had loads of surgery on her body, yet still can't make sure her boob fits in her bikini before she has her photo taken for a magazine.
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The next thing, which might make some of you laugh is a reference to the a previous time we checked in with Chat. Do you remember the story of the odd unsettling horror dolls a lady was collecting and sending as gifts? A lady has written a letter in to Chat to say she also has a collection of horror dolls and felt a real connection when reading the story. Fab.

The recipe this week is bangers and mash. O, sorry, that's wrong. It's actually called 'Sausage Mash-Up!' Cause they is well cool, innit.

Lastly, we finish on a disturbing story about a woman who collects rubber ducks. There is a huge, rather unflattering photo of 43 year old, slightly overweight Charlotte, in a bath surrounded and covered by some of her ducks. From her little naked knees poking out among the ducks, I think we are supposed to believe that she is naked and that it is an arousing thought. It is not arousing. Not at all.

Saturday 17 November 2012

My new yoga enemies

Today, I was going to finally deal with a Leibster Award I was given a few months back and was looking forward to it as I remember the questions being quite good. I had also planned who I was going to pass the award on to. It all promised to be very exciting. As I have the morning free, I was going to sit here and dedicate myself to it with gusto.

So I went back to the day I was given it, in early September, rifled through the comments and found the one which said I had been given the award. And I clicked on the link, all excited. And the link went to a generic Wordpress start-up page with nothing on it. There was one post from 13 November which said Welcome to your new Wordpress site. And nothing else. It totally threw me. I know I took a few months to deal with the award... but enough to make her pack in her entire Wordpress career?

Hence, I am now a little stumped. I don't have anything prepared for a post. But never fear! In my massively exciting world, in which I am constantly doing and saying really interesting things, I shall serenade you (serenade?) with a tale of what happened at last night's yoga class.

I have been doing yoga on and off for about ten years now, sometimes at home from a DVD, sometimes at classes, sometimes just from a book. So I'm familiar with the yoga 'scene.' My friend (the one mentioned in this post) and I decided to go to a beginner's yoga class last night, as she has never done it before. I called up that morning and booked us in and at 5.50pm, we arrived, legging-clad and ready to go.

We walked into the room and saw a bench in a corner, which had a few bags on it, so figured this is where we were supposed to leave our stuff. We approached the bench, put down our bags and were chitchatting while we took our socks and shoes off.

"Are you new to the yoga class?" an older lady asked, as we were taking our shoes off.

"Yes," we said, thinking she was perhaps the teacher and about to welcome us in a friendly manner.

"Ok. It's just that usually we go here."

We were confused. Did she mean that the yoga class was happening over the other side of the room and she and the man standing next to her were doing something different there and we had accidentally left our stuff in the bit where they have a different class? But they had mats down as though they were about to do yoga.

"Sorry, what's... Is this bit not the yoga?" I asked.

"Yes, this is where we have our mats."

Let's just get this straight. An older lady, one who should have known better, perhaps in her fifties, was telling us, in a rather condescending manner, that as 'new' people to the class, we should learn that this is 'their' corner. Like the naughty boys who wanted the back seat of the bus and woe betide anyone who sat there mistakenly!

I was clearly quite annoyed as we had not even made any moves to give the impression that we were trying to stay in that spot for the class. We were clearly just putting our stuff on the bench next to everyone else's stuff and taking our shoes off. We weren't even trying to put mats down or anything. We hadn't picked mats up yet!

"Yeh, we're just taking our shoes off," I said, irritated.

She sensed my annoyance.

"O, I'm not being rude or anything, I just, it's just that we usually go here. I'm not being rude." And she smiled politely. As though I wouldn't notice that she was being rude, simply because there was a smile on her face. I'm not fooled, lady! You're still being rude, even if you're saying "I'm not being rude" and smiling! You're still being really bloody rude!

So we said, "Yeh, we're just taking our shoes off," and pottered off to get mats. We put them in the other corner of the room but we were still quite near them as the room wasn't that big. Everyone else was sitting or lying down, doing a bit of relaxation before the class, being very quiet and concentrating on their breathing. The rowdy 'naughty boys on the bus' older couple stayed standing and discussing something or other quite loudly, considering everyone else in the room was silent. I caught snippets of conversation.

"...had sex for the first time in six weeks.... yeh, six weeks.... yeh, she's not been well... had that fall...."

I mean, really now? You kicked us out of the corner spot that we weren't even trying to go in and now you're discussing sex at an unnecessary volume in a room full of silent people, trying to be silent and relax prior to their yoga class. What's wrong with you people?

So the teacher comes in, she greets us and is saying that she can see a lot of new faces and doing the general 'hello' stuff and this silly couple, the 'naughty boys at the back of the bus who love talking about sex' couple, keep talking, right over the teacher. As if they're trying to show everyone who's really in charge here. It was honestly ridiculous.

So I shushed them.

That's right. I shushed them.

ssshhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

It started small but they didn't take any notice so it built until I was almost hoarse from shushing. It felt good.

The teacher joked that it was like a cinema. I presume she meant people shushing other people for talking through the film or being loud with popcorn. So I admit it. I am a shusher. I also used to do it at uni if people were talking through the lecturer's teaching. That's just me, ok? I'm a shusher!

So then the class started and I forgot about my new yoga enemies but as I'm writing this, I'm remembering all over again and am re-flabbergasted. So my friend and I have made a plan. Next week, we will arrive really early and TAKE THEIR SPOT IN THE CORNER! Mwah ha ha ha ha! We live on the edge. And if they say anything to us, we will say, all innocently, "O, sorry, we're new, we didn't realise. Well, we're here now. That space there is just as good, try going there."

Friday 16 November 2012

Nanny Rhino and the three bird roast

My excuse fobbing you off with my Nanny Rhino entry today instead of writing a proper blog entry?

I woke up late.

Feeble.

So anyway, today it's about duck. Enjoy.

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Duck has been a recent revelation to me. My interactions with it have been few but all extremely enjoyable. I first ate duck at a small restaurant near a yoga class I used to take every week. It was Bikram yoga which, for those of you who don't know, is like yoga on acid. It's in a heated room and is like a fight to the death, a struggle between good and evil, between you and the heat, to win and make it to the 90 minute mark without having passed out or vomited. If you make it to this 90 minute mark, you feel invincible. Shaky on your legs, but invincible. And really damn hungry! I would wobble out of the class, change and leave, wide-eyed, looking for the nearest place I could get food. I would have taken anything on offer but thankfully, the nearest thing was actually a really great little restaurant. I'd order about four things off the menu, blinded by my intense hunger, not even sure what I'd ordered.

 

Quite often, a total surprise to me, a duck stir fry would arrive and I would consume it in one inhalation. It was so amazing. Inspired by this, I would occasionally buy a duck and hoisin sauce wrap so my mind had started to pair the two together.

 

Then last Christmas, a neighbour had recommended I buy a turkey crown for Christmas Day lunch as a full turkey is really too big for two. So off I went to Waitrose, on Christmas Eve, to buy my turkey crown. Surprise of the century when I got there – no turkey crowns! Well, who would have believed that on Christmas Eve, the shop would have sold out of turkey. Clearly, my forward-planning skills have much improvement to make.

 

I looked sadly at the shelves, which were mostly bare, and spotted two candidates for Christmas lunch. One was a stuffed duck crown with a pork and orange stuffing. The other was a three bird roast; a pheasant, stuffed into a partridge, stuffed into a duck. Noticing all the wide-eyed panic around me, I grabbed both, held on tight and called my other half.

 

I've got stuffed duck crown or a three bird roast! Which do you want? There's not much time! I might not make it out with anything!”

 

The, uh, the three bird roast! The three bird roast!” he yelled. “Good luck!”

 

Throwing the crown back on the shelf, I made a mad dash for the tills, holding my three bird roast protectively. A few people made eyes at it, longingly, but I pulled my jacket around it and kept my head down until my money was handed over and I was out of the shop, on the home straight.

 

That duck was one of the best meals I have ever eaten. I made a simple carrot and turnip mash on the side and we used the roasting juices to make gravy and we just ate and ate and ate. I couldn't believe how amazing it was.

 

The following recipe is another thing I made to impress my brother and his wife when they came over for dinner. It's a guesswork version of the first duck I ate, post-yoga.

 

Duck stir-fry

Olive oil

8 mini duck breast fillets (or two large, with the fat removed)

A few spring onions

A handful of oyster mushrooms

1 orange/red pepper

Hoisin sauce (plum sauce will also be fine)

1 white onion

1 garlic clove

Thick egg noodles

Sesame seeds

Put some hot water in a pan to boil.

Put a splash of olive oil into a wok and add the garlic clove and the onion, finely chopped. When everything has warmed up, add your pepper, sliced into long batons and mix everything around a bit. Add your duck fillets in, depending on the size, you can slice them smaller, if they look a bit too large.

While the duck is cooking, put your egg noodles into your pan of water, which should be boiling by now and give them a few minutes to cook. When cooked to al dente, drain the noodles and let them sit for a second.

Add the chopped oyster mushrooms to your pan with the duck and check your duck to see if it is cooked through. If it is, give the mushrooms a minutes or two to soften. Add your hoisin sauce in and stir immediately so everything gets coated. Then add your noodles in and mix again, so the sauce is evenly coating everything. Lastly, add in the spring onions, finely sliced, toss everything around a bit and serve, finishing with some sesame seeds, sprinkled on top.

I must just add a little aside to this Nanny Rhino post because my brother, having eaten the whole thing and the main and the dessert, asked, as we were sitting chatting, what was in the duck starter. As I listed the ingredients, he went "O! Mushrooms! I thought that was just bits of fat off the duck and I didn't want to say anything."

 

So I apparently come across as the type of woman who would serve up a stir-fry which had slabs of fat in it. I don't know whether to be a little depressed over that.

Thursday 15 November 2012

Rubbish acronyms

BGR

A friend and I were on our way home from a night out. It hadn't been a particularly raucous night, in fact I think I'd been on apple juice all evening. We had been waiting in Trafalgar Square for ages and finally the bus came. We got on and sat down. Three boys got on after us who had the distinct appearance of computer nerds. Now, I don't have a problem with computer nerds but I think it goes a long way to explaining what happened if we understand this fact about them. They were very excited, as though they had only just discovered a world outside of computers.

"BGR!" one of them was saying. "BGR! Huh, huh, huh."

"What does that mean?" one of the other boys asked.

"Bloody good result!" he replied.

The other two loved it! They grinned and started going "Yeh, totally! BGR! BGR!"

And that, my friends, is a true story.

VLT

It may not definitely have been this. It could have been VBT. Anyway, I was watching a programme the other night about telescopes and space etc and they kept on talking about a VLT and how powerful it was, etc etc. By the time someone said the actual words, I'd figured it was some sort of telescope and was imagining maybe it was named after someone or something important, like the Higgs-Boson.

No. What the acronym actually stands for is 'Very Large Telescope,' (or possibly Very Big Telescope).

How uninspired. A very large telescope. So they just call it that. The VLT. The very large telescope.

DLF

Now I love Narnia. Every Christmas (December 16th, to be exact), I get out my box set and get reading. I love Aslan. I get frustrated by Edmund in book 2 but by book 3, he's back on my good side. Susan is endlessly boring and mumsy but her total destitution in book 7 still seems harsh. Lucy is fabulous and never a disappointment.

Apart from once. In book 4, Prince Caspian, they are on a journey by boat and Trumpkin the dwarf, who was sent to find them calls them 'little children'. Lucy returns the insult by referring to him as her 'dear little friend', which then becomes 'the DLF.' And they keep calling him it through the whole book. The DLF. I just think it sounds silly.

BFBFF

Are you ready for this one?

Best Facebook friends forever.

Hilarious.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

The once magic washing machine

Good morning all. It's Wednesday and time for my guest blogger to take over. Enjoy!

 

The day started as any other would. The previous night’s moon had waned; I’d missed it. The sun had risen; I’d missed that too. The alarm went off; I’d got up. I’d begun pottering about as usual pondering which of the household tasks should be top of the priority list. It quickly became apparent that tripping over the overflowing washing basket gave me a big clue!

 

Ok, so switch brain into washing mode: pick up basket, descend stairs and load into the trusty Bosch WFL2260. (Btw my second German washing machine; the first one, an AEG, lasted 14 years with a few repairs along the way. The Bosch will have done 12 years in just over a month’s time without any repairs or parts failing. The Germans definitely make very good washing machines! Their extra cost is worth it in my opinion. And just in case you’re wondering, I am not an agent for either manufacturer nor have I been paid for praising their products!). A full load of stuff went in including the double duvet cover which was turned inside out. (Remember it’s a double we’re talking about all the way through this, although you can do the same for a single.) Now you may remember LLM’s Top Tips (8.11.12) well here’s my first one to add to that list: always put your duvet covers into the washing machine inside out. (You know why don’t you? If you don’t I’ll let you into the secret later on.) The dial was set (see diag 9 in the pic below); the start button was pressed, active light came on (see diag 12 in the pic); the familiar sound of water being drawn into the machine meant I could start task no.2 – the shopping & running around on a couple of errands.


I returned to the house about an hour and a half later and as expected the “End” light (see diag 9) was illuminated. I opened the door and was somewhat surprised to see just two items in the machine which had been nearly full when I left: the duvet cover and one sock! Strange I thought, what’s happened here. Now I have to say that occasionally a sock or handkerchief will disappear but not most of the stuff I put in. Oh well I thought, I’ll retrieve what’s left first and then investigate. Of course you know what had happened – all the washing, bar one sock, had found its way inside the double duvet cover and I had to huff & puff to get the lump of damp washing out. I then had to get all the stuff out of the cover before I could put it on the maiden and then hang the cover up to dry. Ok so that sounds fair enough but then as I went to hang the duvet cover over the maiden I noticed it was right side out and the stitching side was inside as it is when it’s in normal use (with a duvet in it). Now here’s a real mystery: how had the “inside out” duvet cover turned itself “right side out” AND gobbled up all the rest of the washing bar one sock? And all in that tiny space inside the machine!


Remember one of the Five Voices from the blog on 5.9.12 was Lesley Duncan; she wrote the song Old Friends which begins with these words: “Standing there in disbelief, although you look the same…” And there I was standing in disbelief and the washing machine looked the same. I was considering “unfriending “ the machine at this point. (Having previously “unfriended” the freezer, about 2 years ago, when it stopped working and actually died 3 months outside the guarantee period I’d had some experience of what to do. More recently, I was forced to unfriend the kettle 7 days ago as it also died though only a couple of years old (but it was very cheap). One cup of tea made in the morning – fine; by lunch time just nothing, completely dead. (Usual checks found nothing.) Now, back to the w/m; I checked the 3 diagrams at the end section at the bottom of the picture called “At The End Of The Programme” and what a good job diag 3 showed me that I had to open the door before I could get the stuff out! I began singing the LD song to myself as I struggled to empty the duvet cover of its contents, without tipping them on to the floor, so I could hang them up to dry. Once done of course I had to then turn the cover inside out again so, when dry, it would be ready to put the duvet into. In case anyone is wondering why, it’s to do with how you actually get the duvet inside and into the corners of the cover if there’s only you to do the job. (With two people it’s obviously much easier doing a double duvet & cover.) Now for those of you who know this method please skip to next para and Top Tip No.2. With the cover inside out you simply put your hands into the two corners on the opposite side to the entry slit and grab the duvet corners nearest to you; then hold the corners through the cover and lift and shake so that the cover falls down over the duvet. As it falls, the inside which was showing outside when you started will now go inside if you see what I mean. If the slit is not a full side the last bits can be done by just pushing the last corners inside and into their respective places and re-shaking from there.


Now here’s Top Tip No.2 – when you put your duvet cover in the washing machine make sure all the press studs are fastened so there will be fewer items that can “disappear” inside. Now come on hands up, how many of you already do this one?


Top Tip No.3 – a bit extreme but the safest solution: fit a zip to the slit instead of press studs. Let the machine try that for size!
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Now I couldn’t resist a couple of closing comments on the Quick Reference Instructions sheet above. The numbers correspond with the diagrams in the picture.


No.1 – A bit obvious, but very necessary. Top Tip here: Don’t leave paper tissues in pockets, they make a real mess.


No.3 – Why does underwear get to wash at 30 degrees but everything else hotter.? Surely soiled undies might have “difficult things to remove”. Think of the kids who didn’t quite make the toilet in time!


No.4 – Very handy this one: Open the door. Doh! Of course you were going to try and load the machine through the glass weren’t you?


No.6 – Close door over the black arrow which makes a “Klack” sound.


Despite these “pops” at the instructions I will say again it’s been a fantastic machine, for 12 years, but now it has attained new heights – it has really become a “Magic Washing Machine”. I have to say, apart from various items finding their way inside covers and pillow cases, it’s never done this before. However, it won’t catch me next week when I put the cover in! I’ll let it have its 7 days of fame but it won’t be magic - ever again. (That’s why the title of this blog is “The ONCE Magic Washing Machine”.) I’ve learnt my lesson. Oh and, due to its long trouble-free service, I did let it stay “friended”.

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Nanny Rhino and the law of tea

Yes, that's right. I'm fobbing you off with something from my Nanny Rhino, rather than writing a proper blog for you. Again. Apologies. I have been busy (for 'busy,' read: lazy).

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Tea. What a wonderful wonderful beverage. Not much beats a tea. As a non-drinker (of the alcoholic variety, I of course, do drink other things), tea is as wacky as it gets in my world. Well, apart from when I occasionally drink coffee.

 

I do get quite wacky with my tea sometimes. When I first moved to university and happened to have a peppermint tea at someone's house, a whole new world opened up in front of me. And it was very exciting indeed. I used to have a small travel kettle in my room which just brewed enough for one cup. I also had a rubbishy student job at a coffee place inside a train station. They would open at the crack of dawn to get the early commuters and close late at night to get the drunken husbands desperately trying to sober up with espressos before returning home to their wives.

 

I was often on the early shifts, which meant arriving at 5.30am. Whether cycling or taking the bus, I needed to leave myself about twenty minutes. So my alarm would go off at 4.15am and I would grumpily throw back the duvet and force myself over to the desk to put the kettle on. A mug with a tea bag would be waiting, having been placed there the night before. The kettle would boil, the water would go in and while it brewed, I would gripe about early starts and it surely being against the Human Rights Act and I could possibly sue my employers. Then the tea would finish brewing, I'd ditch the bag and, depending on which tea it was, I'd add milk and have a sip.

 

Things slowly seemed kind of nice then. I could hear the birds singing and see the sun rising. I would put in headphones and listen to I Don't Know Why by Norah Jones (always the same song, because of the line “I waited till I saw the sun.”) and write. I was doing a joint honours degree and one of my subjects was Creative Writing. The lecturers had advised us to write for twenty minutes every morning. I realised what I always realise at that time of day, when my grumpiness has slid off and down under the floorboards some place and all the nice things about being awake in an empty world while everyone else sleeps become obvious. There's just me. Me and my cup of tea. My day feels nicer when I start it that way.

 

Yesterday morning, for example, even though I didn't have time to have tea at home, I managed an earl grey and a scone in between all the breakfast and coffee orders at work. It helped.

 

I have been known to branch out quite spectacularly when making tea. I went for milk-less tea for a long time, which led to forays into the world of fresh mint tea (plucked from my own garden), cardamom concoctions and licorice infusions. When living abroad in Namibia, my friend, Lucy, and I, in our poverty, drank a lot of rooibos tea, to keep our tummies full! It was dirt cheap for a box of fifty and every evening, we would stand at our window in our kitchen and watch the sun set over the water. We were living on the coast, our little house looking out over the Atlantic ocean, and got the most beautiful skies I have ever seen in my life. Colours I didn't think belonged in a sky – greys, oranges, pinks, reds, blues, purples. Rooibos tea will always mean beautiful African sunsets to me.

 

Careless brewers, who throw the bag in walk away from it, then return later in the day to add milk, should be publicly reprimanded for killing tea. Teabag squeezers also need the same level of punishment.

 

Don't just leave it there for ten minutes! It shows you don't care. It comes out like black coffee and is far too bitter. And don't go the opposite direction and try to brew it too quickly by taking a teaspoon and squeezing your bag against the side of the cup! What's wrong with you? You're suffocating it. Let it brew gently. Unless you have so little respect for yourself that you don't mind drinking tannin, then please do not squeeze. 

Monday 12 November 2012

Lazy Laura and the big hospital strop

Almost two years ago, as mentioned in C is for..., I had a bit of an emergency. Like a life-threatening, I-thought-it-was-some-mild-food-poisoning, extremely-rare colon thing.

It was a Wednesday, any old Wednesday, no forewarning, nothing out of the ordinary. I ate my dinner, felt a little ill, it got worse and worse til, by Friday, I hadn't slept in two days and was becoming a little delirious. By 3am on Saturday morning, it dawned on me that it wasn't going to be ok and I got scared and went to hospital.

It was supposed to be my first day back at law school after the Christmas break. I had all my books ready. I was hoping they could just give me a little painkiller and send me on my way and I could still make classes at 10am.

Then things went crazy. I didn't have any time to prepare myself for it. I honestly thought I was going home in a few hours. Then all of a sudden, there were things being jabbed into me with liquid painkillers, there were x-rays being taken, I was in a ward full of people waiting for operations and, wait a minute, I was waiting for an operation! And they were talking to me about my colon and I couldn't hear them properly through the haze of fear that was throbbing in my ears.

Anyway, I woke up from the operation later that day and proceeded to spend the next three days in bed, sulking over why I had become ill, "why me?" etc. Doctors and nurses would come round and be nice and friendly but I had turned into Little Miss Grumpy. I was having a tantrum at 'Life' and that's how it was going to be!

I spent all day asleep, too terrified to eat anything so sleeping through meals or refusing them, then spent all night awake, with my headphones in, watching Supernanny or Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen on my little TV, gently weeping to myself like an idiot.

I was allowed visitors but mostly just watched while they talked. I think I had convinced myself that I was quite legitimately 'depressed' and that was that.

Then Danda came to visit.

"Try and get her up and about," they had said to Danda. "She lies in bed all the time, she needs to be a bit more active if she's going to recover."

So Danda came to my bedside and shook me awake. I was sleeping, as usual.

"Come on, Laura. Let's go for a little walk."

I looked at him with my No Face.

"Come on. It's been four days since the operation. You need to pick yourself up a bit. Don't you want to get well so you can leave the hospital?"

I did my best quivery-lip, I'm-so-sad-and-ill face, which he ignored. What?! My sad face wasn't working?! Panic set in. I'm busy sitting around feeling sorry for myself here! You're interrupting me! Don't you get it?

"Come on. Put your little slippers on. Let's go for a little walkies," as though talking to a child.

That was it. I had had it.

'Danda, can I tell you a secret?"

He nodded and leaned close so I could whisper in his ear.

"I don't WANT to go a walkies!" And I stuck my bottom lip out.

And suddenly he was laughing uproariously. He had to sit down and clutch his stomach. I heard what I had said and realised what a baby I was being and put on my little hospital-issue slippers and went for a walk down the corridor, which tired me out for the rest of the day.

But that, that little strop, that was the beginning of the recovery period.

These days, if I don't want to go a walkies, I at least come up with a more decent excuse, like "It's a bit cold," or "I'm far too busy making this cup of tea" or "Family Guy is on."

Sunday 11 November 2012

Nanny Rhino and the Thai green curry

I have been writing my NaNoWriMo for the past ten days and yesterday, when I was telling Danda about it, he was nodding and smiling encouragingly, saying 'mm' and 'yes, dear' in all the right places. Then, after a few minutes, he waited for a pause, looked at me quizzically and said, "Who's Nanny Rhino?"

So, in honour of Danda and of Nanny Rhino, I present to you, the story of the homemade Thai green curry, from way back at the beginning of my Nanny Rhino adventure, on the 1st of this month.

(That thing in the bottom left hand corner is her knitting and the more astute among you will have noticed her lovely frilly cardigan. The square by her chin is an old person's bus pass. Danda would like it to be known that HE drew this picture and he would like to be credited for it when I become a world famous writer.)

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Chillies are a subject close to my heart. I have chilli plants in my garden so whenever I cook with it, I feel a little sentimental. If I pick them at different times in their growth, I use them for different things. When they are young and green, I can load them into a mild green curry for flavour and a bit of kick. When they get older and become red, they need treating with more respect, de-seeding to save my head from blowing off, and adding in small quantities to beef chilli.

 

Although, having said that, I was once trying to impress with dinner. It was the first time I had ever cooked for my brother, a few years ago. I wanted to appear like a grown up. Being the younger sister, I always feel a bit little, no matter how old we both get. I had recently discovered Thai green curry. In fact, it was the second thing I ever cooked when I started cooking properly. You know what I mean, the period in which first really discover food and explore a new world.

 

I had decided this was the dish to show off with and I would cook it completely from scratch. I was going to make my own curry paste and everything. So I went gaily a-picking in the garden and returned to the kitchen, my basket bursting with large green chillies. Feeling brave, I threw about seven into my food processor, seeds and all and got whizzing. I whizzed in bits and pieces of everything Thai that I could lay my hands on in the kitchen. I think was growing basil at the time and lots of those went in. Lemongrass, peppercorns, lime leaves, shallots, everything. Whizz, whizz, whizz. I took the lid off to check my curry paste progress and caught a whiff of something fabulous-smelling. I put my face over the paste and sniffed deeply.

 

Therein lay my mistake. I can't even describe to you what happened next. It felt like my face had been hit with a sledgehammer. Such pain! The section inbetween my nose and top lip stung like a million wasps had attacked me. My eyes watered uncontrollably and I just let my nose run without wiping it. The slightest dab was more pain than I could handle. Even my chin and forehead were on fire.

 

I sat down at my kitchen table, in shock, blindly trying to continue on with my curry. Time was tight and I didn't have time for this nonsense. It seemed like something childish and silly, to be having a reaction to a few little chillies. It would surely pass, I thought doubtfully.

 

It did not pass. For approximately forty minutes, I sat, trying to stay conscious and just about remaining on this side of the calling-the-emergency-services fence.

 

The rest of the curry passed by in a chilli-intoxicated blur, my brother loved it, ate all the little leftovers and was impressed by my efforts. I jokingly mentioned my near-death experience in passing, something along the lines of, “O, I accidentally smelled the curry paste as I was making it. It was so strong!” I think I came across quite casual and not like the panicked maniac this curry had turned me into.

 

To this day, I'm not sure whether he knows what I risked to make his dinner.