54 Posts 53 Days

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Coffee and blueberry muffin in the garden

I suppose the title gives it away, but if my counting is correct, I have published 53 posts in the 53 days of this year. This one is the 54th and puts me one ahead of the count.

I’ve done a bit, but should have done more. It’s a familiar feeling. That’s why I’ve just been looking at my emails and am now baclk blogging six hours early.

TESCO has everything for me apart from buttermilk, so they are sending ordinary milk. It’s not really an acceptable substitution and as I have plenty of milk, I don’t need more. They obviously don’t realise that buttermilk nd milk don’t do the same thing, just as they tried to substitute oven bottom muffins with English muffins once – again, two different types of bread. Yes, Americans, bread. What you call a muffin is just a big iced bun or a fairy cake. I can understand why many of our linguistic differences occur but I’ve never understood this one.

So I looked it up.

It seems, according to the hugely reliable and incomparably knowledgeable internet that the “English” Muffin, like so many things, is an American invention. It was invented in the mid=19th Century by a man called Samuel Bath Thomas. He was a baker who wanted a flagship product and decided to call this product the “English” muffin.

Flatbreads ready to go

Where did he get that idea? I hear you ask. Well, it seems he got the idea from a recipe his mother had always used for muffins. She was from England, and by coincidence, so was he. So all he did was move to America and start making muffins. That’s not quite the same as inventing them.

In England the muffin can trace its history back to the tenth century. Other bread products, of course, can be traced back even further.  Tenth century? That’s about the same time that the Vikings arrived, having hopped over via Greenland. That, I think, was the last time anyone actually invaded America via Greenland, despite recent fears over security.  Or, if you are more comfortable with dating by Disney, it was about 500 years before Pocahontas.

At that time, although there was no wheat flour available in the Americas there were other grains (maize, amaranth and quinoa) and a variety of other products which could all be made into bread-like products.

So, to summarise. English muffins were invented somewhere and were widely known in England, where they were known simply as “muffins” for centuries. The recipe was taken to the USA, the name was changed and nobody seems to be able to say why a muffin changed from a small bread product to became a cake covered in calories.

They exist today in bakeries, but mainly in McDonalds at breakfast time. Sweet muffins have, meanwhile, invaded the nation and are available everywhere.

Anybody in the USA or Canada know? Or anywhere else in the world.

That will do for now. I’ve wasted enough time and need to get back to going through my list of jobs.

Remember to look at the first blog post of the day, and check to see if there is a third.

McDonald’s Breakfast

 

Progress . . .

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My Orange Parker Pen

An hour ago I sat down to write a short blog post. It started by saying that I made good progress yesterday and had high hopes of solving many of my writing problems by he end of today.

Then it became introspective, which is not good. I was unable o break out of the cycle of introspection and successive rewrites put me in mind of something circling round a plughole.

And that is why it has taken me the best part of an hour and around a thousand words to come up with the ninety words I have here. Dull, I admit. Unproductive too. But at least, by cutting them severely I have avoided introspection, self-indulgence and whiney.

That’s all OK as far as it goes, but it leaves me with half a blog to write and needing something interesting to say. That’s only 125 words so that’s not a problem. I can fill that with a few sentences about the ease with which I can fill the space – look, the word count is already up to 176 and I’ve managed to keep you reading without actually saying anything.

Today I intend writing a second post in the evening to detail what I have actually done. Yesterday was quite productive but didn’t come up with many results. By the end of today I want to have made at least three submissions, maybe more.

I have a list of finished items, and a list of almost finished items. I have a list of submissions I want to make. All I need to do is match them up, but at hat point I sar to worry about whether I* am sending the right things to the right people. I got hat wrong lat month and ended up with a rejection that should not have happened.

Writing poetry is only part of the art of getting published.

 

I thought I’d go for pen photos again, as the subject is writing. I’m surprised how few I seem to have.

As part of my ongoing commitment to procrastination I have already added another post when I should have been finishing off submissions.

 

I’ve Done It Again

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It’s now seven days until the end of the month and a large number of submissions still need work. I also need to get my first draft done for the talk, so I can check the USB works this time. Last time, I was lucky as I had plenty of examples. This time I don’t have so much to pass round. I’ve had two years to sort this out and I am still not sure if the USB will work – this is poor organisation of the highest order.

Soda bread with spring onion and cheese. And possibly garlic, I can’t tell from a photo. No new photos of lambs or puppies so I am falling back on bread.

So, here I am. A talk needs writing and testing, a month’s poetry needs submitting and I have other bits and pieces to do. Plus, I am still not feeling 100%. The good thing is that I know it’s all my fault. No external circumstances, no excuses, nobody else involved. It’s the best way, because I don’t need to waste time on excuses. I am going to get going and a week from now I will have amazed myself by all the work I have done.

This may not include reading other blogs as time and energy are limited, but I will catch up the week after.

It is better, I think to peer into the future and see a bucket of writhing eels which all need taming, rather than to look into a bucket and see a solitary pond snail in my future.

It may not be the best selected metaphor, but I’m warming up for poetry and these things creep in. However, I’m sure you get the gist.

And, as the first casualty of my need for industry is word count, I will cut it at 250 and go to do something else.

Plain soda bread with butter. The addition of butter doubles the size of my repertoire.

A Red Letter Day

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The two pens together. The third proved to be a faulty piece of wood and broke on the lathe.

Furious does not begin to sum up exactly how I feel after once again losing part of the post when trying to insert a photograph. This happens more and more and even though I take care with it, it still seems to happen. I am left with the impression that each year I pay more money for a slightly worse service. 

It's the same the whole world over,
it's the poor that gets the blame,
it's the rich that get's the pleasure,
ain't it a bleedin' shame?

I woke up twice in the night with snatches of this post ready written. Once it was a chorus from a music hall song and the second time it was the word “mephitic” though in both cases they were also accompanied by searing prose. Of course, on waking properly, the prose had become less searing and after several attempts I gave up. Actually, when I think about it, I may have dreamt the prose.

Compared to my normal Parker

The skill I need to develop is not the ability to write hard-hitting political blog posts, but the wisdom to know I can’t write them and shouldn’t try.

The first good news on WP was that Laurie Graves came back a while ago. She had gone over to just posting on Facebook, which is always a problem. I am on Facebook for the numismatics but as I read some of the stuff that people post (not Laurie of course) I feel my intelligence slowly leaking out. Why is it that idiots always want to share their opinions? 

Then, a few weeks ago, Clare Pooley turned up. I don’t, of course, have favourite bloggers, because you are all good in different ways, but Clare does live in a particularly attractive county. The clue is in the blog name. Not saying Suffolk is nicer than Maine, where Laurie comes from, but the winters are shorter and the snow is less deep, both qualities I admire in a winter.

This is the one I chose. It sits nicely in the hand.

Finally, today, I find that Charlie Robinson is back. Writer, runner, reprobate and raconteur. Just published his second novel, blogging again, it’s good to see him back. I always admired his haircut and now have one to match.

So, with three classic bloggers back in the fold, that has given me something cheerful to write about. I will do pictures of the famous pen in a minute and see what you think.

The pens are the two that survived the penmaking process, the third blank proved to have an internal fault, which was annoying because it didn’t show until it was almost finished. That’s wood for you. Mine writes nicely and fits well in my hand – I am enjoying using it.

 

The Line of Peas

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Hake and Chips in Cromer

I fell asleep in my chair last night, slept for nearly three hours, got up. went to bed, didn’t stop to look at emails or anything, and slept five hours more. At that point, just after 5am, I got up and started “work” as I call it. It’s taken me just over an hour to read blogs, comment and read emails. It’s 5.24 and I’m beginning to feel tired again. I also feel hungry. The diet must be working.

Overnight, I have had an acceptance for a haibun, the one I thought was likely to be refused. This is good.

Haddock Special at the Dolphin Fish Bar, Sutton on Sea

I also have a new pen. Julia made it during wood turning yesterday. She actually made three but one had an internal fault in the wood which, at a certain point, snagged on the cutting tool she was using and almost snapped it. Fortunately she survived without damage or injury, though the kit of pen fittings is now useless as some was already fitted and is not salvageable. That still leaves two – one for me and one for Number One Son’s birthday present. She’s getting quite good at it now and I have a pen and a pen pot to show for it. They are in the living room at the moment as my office is too cluttered to display such things.

After the Pea Soup yesterday, I moved on to reading some of the history of pea soup. I used to make pease pudding for Living History events and yesterday’s pea soup brought back many memories. Its modern descendent is, of course, mushy peas, as seen on many of my pictures of fish and chips. It’s nice to be part of a tradition.

Haddock Special at the Fishpan, Scarborough

 

The Brain Cells v Old Age

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Ham, cheese, mushroom, spring onions

Yesterday, whilst writing the blog post, I had three ideas for prose sections to haibun/tanka prose poems. In my mind, though I am probably wrong, the two things are interchangeable.

Anyway, with three ideas in my head, I thrashed along through the blog post, added photos and tags and a title and sent it on its way into a world of pixels.

At that point I realised I had only two ideas in my head so I immediately set to, wrote one and hoped the elusive third idea would come back. It didn’t. Instead, I forgot the other one.

Three ideas. Two forgotten. One remembered. I really must remember to use a notebook.

And so I made my way to the kitchen. I did not, if I’m honest, fancy the cleaning, so I didn’t do a soda bread, just a couple of quiches, a rice pudding and yellow split pea soup. The quiches involved ready-made cases (mine always do) so it was just a case of filling them. One is Stilton and Leek. We had that last time too, but we do have quite a lot of Stilton left. The other is ham, mushroom, cheese and spring onion. As regular readers will by now have realised, it was filled with what I had knocking round in the fridge.

Stilton and Leek. Stilton does not photograph well.

The yellow split pea soup is ana amalgamation of several recipes as there are some very strange recipes out there for what is essentially a bowl of cheap peasant food. Mine has celery, carrot, sweet potato and spring onion in it along with the peas. It would have been carrot, onion and celery, but it’s another of those leftovers things. I could have started a new carrot and a new onion, but I have wilting spring onions and half a sweet potato left so what am I to do?

Later, I will move on from this very plain version to something slightly more fancy. Perhaps. If it’s OK I will stick with this version. It takes a bit longer than usual because the peas need around an hour to cook down, so I will have to see if it is worth it. Otherwise it’s back to red lentils.

Latest news – the timer went off and I got to the kitchen just in time. The soup was very thick and the water was gone, but I got to it just before it started to burn. I have mashed it so far and it seems OK, though will probably need diluting as it’s more of a thin porridge than a thick soup. I don’t think it needs the hand blender as that will take the texture and the orange speckles out of it.

The rice pudding meanwhile, a slightly fine-tuned recipe, is done too.  All that needs doing now is for Julia to come home, congratulate me on my industry, compliment me on my cooking skills and enjoy a yellow pea soup lunch. Tonight we have the pasta bake and tomorrow we start the quiche and salad lunches.

Veg for the soup

The only fly in the ointment (an expression which, Wikipedia tells me, comes from the Bible) is hat I have to finish cleaning the kitchen before she gets back. Then I have to do some of the actual writing I was planning. So far I have written what is going to be the second post of the day (I will have to do something else for tomorrow) and one part of a poem. It’s a start, but a poor one, and I need to do better.

Yellow split pea soup, or porridge. It needs more water.

Wednesday Once Again

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I had another acceptance for a tanka last night. I’m currently running at four acceptances and three rejections for last month. Two editors have yet to reply – I’m hoping for one acceptance and expecting one rejection from those. The rejection will be annoying as it will be coming from an editor who, at one time, had taken eleven pieces from 12 I sent him, then started turning everything down – he’s rejected everything I have sent recently and now stands at 11 from 16. I can’t work out if I’m going wrong somewhere or if he has changed his requirements.

I also have three competition entries in. I don’t generally enter competitions because my results have not been good over the years and entry fees can be expensive. However, this year I thought I’d enter more as a way of sending more work out. I expect all three entries will disappear without trace.

Julia had a special session at woodturning yesterday where someone demonstrated various finishing techniques. It left her a bit lost as there was a lot to take in. Today she is doing a specialist class – the U3A is coming down to see the group and run a session in the workshop.  If I were a good husband I would be able to tell you all about it. I’m not, but I can say I think it is for making pens. I know that making pens came into it somewhere.

It’s not that I don’t listen, or that I’m not interested, it’s just that my hearing isn’t as good as it once was, and I find it increasingly difficult to retain everything. There’s probably a research project in there somewhere – the role of declining hearing in marital disharmony. Or, considering that you need clear speech as well as good hearing to communicate properly – the role of muttering. It cuts both ways and everybody seems to mutter these days instead of enunciating clearly.

I will stop here, as I have a feeling that I may be turning into my father . . .

 

 

A Fault Found, and Marmalade Musings

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Marmalade Hoverfly

Marmalade Hoverfly. Misleading name, they are not good on toast

I made an interesting discovery on my voyage of self-discovery and organisation yesterday. I’ve been doing quite well at doing the basics of my daily plan – emails, comments, read blogs, write a short post. In fact, I’ve done them every day. However, it suddenly occurred to me that these are the things I would have done nearly every day anyway, because they are the time-wasting displacement activities I was trying to avoid. Yes, I now only do them once or twice and then get on with something else, but they are still there and still wasting time.

However, I need to check emails, comments etc, and I need to write a bit for practice, so I can’t stop doing them. What I can stop doing is congratulating myself for doing them as part of my plan. I’m now not allowed to congratulate myself until I’ve done something useful.

Here’s a link to my new article on Cromwell’s Head on the Peterborough Military History Group Website.  I can’t seem to link to it directly, but if you go to the website and then the Research Page you should get it.

Of course, the posthumous misadventures of the head of a regicide/political visionary (other interpretations are available . . .) may not be your sort of story, in which case you can move on to more mutterings about things that don’t matter.

National Trust jam

The lack of quality standards for marmalade, for instance.  A couple of times a month we need marmalade. There are currently 14 types of marmalade available from TESCO. Some are basically clear orange jelly with a hint of orange and a lot of sugar and chemicals. They can be as little as 85p per jar. Or they can be up to £3.30 a jar. The cheap jar, by the way, is 454g and the expensive jar is only 370g. Some are only 340g. Surprisingly, all the marmalades, regardless of price, seem to score highly in the reviews. The ones i think of as better quality, which have big pieces of orange peel in them, do not last as long, because of the big chunks of peel.

There should, first of all, be a standard jar, so you can compare them properly. Then there should be a grading system. There are standards. The UN Standards are here, for instance. However, I’m not convinced they are mush help when shopping for marmalade. I’m sure the marmalade of the world is in safe hands, but the definitions don’t help with establishing value for money.

Some of the expensive marmalades seem nutritionally almost identical to the cheap ones when you look them up. The only difference is in the flavour (which could be produced artificially)  and the size of the orange peel pieces.

Toasted Teacakes

You can tell me it’s from Dundee or Oxford (these seem to be favourites), that it is bitter and/or chunky, though, to be fair, so am I, and that it is “Finest” None of these have any real meaning or legal standing. Dundee marmalade appears to be called that because it originated in Dundee. Oxford Marmalade originated in Oxford and uses some brown sugar in the mix. hardly rocket science is it?

I generally go for a mid-price marmalade, deluding myself it is better quality and that I am getting good value. I’m probably half-right on both counts. However, I am suspicious that it is actually the one with the highest profit-margin for the retailer, as that’s how this sort of thing seems to work.

And having tinged my breakfast with cynicism, I will go.

Did you know that one slice of toast and marmalade will take approximately 50 minutes to walk off. I do. I looked it up to stop myself going to the kitchen for toast and marmalade.

Plum Jam, I knew I had some (badly labelled) pictures somewhere

 

 

The Blog of an Old Friend Pops Up to Torture Me

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Healthy Breakfast

I’m now on an 8 Day Streak according to WP. It’s always tempting to see how far I can extend it, but it also doesn’t really mean much and I am tempted to break it deliberately. Yes, I’m feeling iconoclastic, and much better.

Apart from the last post, what did I do today? Well, I published before I had all the bits and pieces added, so had to add tags and photos after the event. Not that the photos were much good – just a a dull bronze medal from several angles.

I had an email turning down a haiku submission, but that’s par for the course. I only send them to show willing and to ensure I stay tough in the face of repeated rejection. They were good enough to be polished and used again, so that’s all for the good.

It was a two injection night, so those are still stinging as I write this. They aren’t bad, but sometimes they are painless, so this is not quite as good as it could be. However, it’s a long way from the days when I used to have ten pills that upset my stomach and an injection fro something like a stirrup pump tipped with a six inch nail. In other words, things are going well, but I do love a good moan. It’s the sorry of modern life – things are really quite good for those of us who have a roof and four walls, the trick is appreciating it.

Sunday fades, the sound of snoring is heard and night passes. It is now Monday morning and I am up and eager. I had a welcome arrival in my WP today – a post from a man who appreciates breakfast. He also used to be part of the Bread Group on the farm.

Proper Breakfast

So there you have it, a Monday morning blog containing a bit of dislocated Sunday and Sunday and a touch of Monday morning. I’m hungry now, and thinking about potatoes for breakfast (an idea my new focus on weight control quickly quashed) and soda bread (ditto). I may well do soda bread later, but it will be to go with the ratatouille for tea, not just because I’m peckish.

If my new plans for weight control go well there’s a possibility that I may merely be overweight by the end of the year. Who can tell? At the moment I have the desire for a full English, I have the ingredients for half of one (ran out of bacon and black pudding over the weekend) and the sort of calorie target that will allow me to have five flakes of cereal and a sniff of the toaster. It’s going to be a long, hard year.

McDonald’s Breakfast – my downfall

On the Brink of War – Surbiton 1936

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Surbiton Charter Day Medallion 1936 (Obverse)

This morning, I woke from a dream which featured a computer and I checked the time on the computer as I woke – 2.20. When I woke properly , I realised this was an imprecise way of checking the time so I looked at my phone. It was 2.21. It looked, at that moment, as if I had finally discovered a super-power. At one time I was able to wake at a specified time (varied by about five minutes) but as I grew older and bought better alarm clocks I neglected to use it. Had I rediscovered it?

I toddled off to the bathroom, went back to bed, set myself a target of waking at 5.20 (no point in being over-ambitious – 3 hours would do nicely) and woke up at 3.40. Clearly I had not rediscovered my old super-power. Nor had i found a way of improving my sleep. It looks like my ragged sleep patterns are here to stay.

Rising some hours later, full of energy, I set to checking emails and comments, then moved on to completing an article about Surbiton Charter Day in 1936. It was a day full of good cheer, civic pride and hope for the future. The newspaper said that hordes of eager schoolchildren listened to speeches from civic dignitaries, though I fear they may have erred on this point. The children were given packed lunches and small bronze medallions before setting off for a day of sports.

Surbiton Charter Day Medallion 1936 (Reverse)

That, I always find, is the problem with medallions from this period. A way of life was about to end, and a number of lives would be changed forever. The writer of this short memoire found that his life changed direction abruptly in 1939. For those of you not familiar with the term, here is a link to the Bevin Boys.

The war memorial at Surbiton holds 469 names. It is unusual, because that is more than were lost in the Great War, but it can be explained by he expansion of the Borough between the two World Wars. There are, as far as I can see, no names of civilians who were killed in the bombing. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission listed, but I know from various sources that 32 High Explosive bombs were dropped in the early part of the war and that 22 V! bombs hit the Borough in the latter part of the war. At least 12 people were killed in one attack, including four members of one family, the Scriveners, the youngest being 2, and the  two Gale sisters. They are listed on the Commonwealth War Graves site but not on the War Memorial.

St Mark’s Church was bombed in 1940 and not rebuilt until 1960 – stones from the bombing were used to make a cairn at the War memorial outside the library. There is a picture of the memorials here – WW1, WW2, Civilians of WW2 (no names) and the St Mark’s cairn. The CWGC gives 52 names from the Borough, including a variety of couples, family members and siblings.

I will add a link when my article on the medallion is published on Facebook. Sorry it’s a bit of a depressing post, but after finishing the original one about Charter Day, it seemed incomplete to leave it in 1936.

With a penny for size comparison