Monthly Archives: April 2022

Day 110 (part 2)

The soup plan took place and I decided that today was a day for lentil soup. First call was the cupboard where keep the pulses, but on the way I took a quick look in the fridge. There was a packet of vegetables I wanted to use for hash for tea. It’s not a sophisticated dish but it is easy and it keeps. Soup tonight and hash tomorrow, or vice versa – an easy meal plan, as the veg for hash can also become vegetable stew if necessary.

When I looked at the ready-cubed vegetables I realised that they were too small for the hash, so they became soup. Carrot and swede (rutabaga) soup with leeks, garlic and a stock cube. It’s quite orange, and slightly sour, and it’s still in the pan as we decided on hash. Tomorrow is soup with salad and quesadillas, though the seasoning needs work. It’s likely to end up with a large helping of curry powder. Lentil soup will be next week.

That, in turn, meant that I had to cut quite a lot of vegetables, which isn’t fun with stiff fingers and sore knuckles. I wimped out of cubing swede, as it’s a hard vegetable to do and the knife I use is capable of removing a finger if you get it wrong. With my fingers as they were this afternoon, there was a good chance of getting it wrong, so common sense prevailed. We made do with carrot, parsnip, potato, sweet potato, leek and cabbage. The corned beef was a bit of a problem as the key was missing. I cut most of the base out of the can with a can opener, but had to finish off with a knife. (See previous comments about fingers . . .)

I will rest my fingers for the next few days and see how things develop. They do tend to get stiff every so often so I’m hoping that rest, and possibly a hot water bottle will do the trick. I did the shopping online. This Friday I will pick things up from TESCO as you can order fewer items if you pick it up in the car park. Next Friday we have a full shop from ASDA – again ordered with a single click. It will nee a bit of work to alter it, but not much compared to ordering from scratch. I will be ordering more pre-cut veg, to save my fingers.

When Julia came home, I decided to ask if she would like a drink using Makaton. She did and she indicate she would like tea (a drinking gesture featuring a raised little finger – like a posh lady drinking tea). Coffee is indicated by a drinking gesture and fingers held to give a C shape. e went through some of the other signs later in the evening, where I discovered that stiff fingers make sign language tricky.

I really hope that rest and warmth does the trick. I would say “fingers crossed” but it seems wrong in the circumstances.

Stephen Hawking 50p

Day 110

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I’ve been reviewing my soup making. The celery was disappointing, but apart from that the others haven’t been too bad. However, at this point I have to admit that “the others” generally means root vegetable soups, and they are difficult to mess up. I’ve also done mushroom, pea, broccoli and cauliflower, which have all been passable. The roasted squash soup I did last week was very good, but by the time I’d finished roasting the frozen squash chunks they had shrunk to almost nothing, and I ended up with just two portions. I know that roasting the veg adds to the flavour, but I feel guilty about using the oven just to roast in a bit of extra flavour.

I really need to extend my repertoire, but that would mean buying ingredients specially and that isn’t how I view soup. Soup is mainly what happens to stuff you have had too long. Yes, the pea soup and the roasted squash soup featured specially bought ingredients, but all the rest were just things I had too much of.

It’s my day off today and Julia has gone on a course to brush up on her Makaton so I am faced with a long boring day. I could look up some interesting soup recipes . . .

Or I could look at some Makaton videos and surprise her tonight by asking her if she wants a cup of tea by signing. Perhaps not. After a day of training she can probably do with a cup of tea without additional difficulty.

Soup recipes then . . .

Day 109

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When I got home tonight the first of the orange poppies was out. They have been developing buds for the last few days, so this was good to see, I am going to try to keep a count this year and see how many flowers they produce. They do well for a self-sown flower growing from cracks in the concrete.

We had the customary crop of vexatious calls and emails from people who shouldn’t allowed out without a carer.

One buyer, who gave us a thorough grilling before purchase, has already sent his purchase back. We found this out from eBay as he didn’t have the courtesy to get in touch. We are waiting to find out what was wrong with it, as we are certain it matches the description we used to sell it.

Someone rang, as is usual, with an enquiry about whether we bought rare coins. And as usual it turned out to be a 50p piece that was worth . . . 50p.

And so it went on.

When I had a few minutes during the day I had a go at pushing the levers on my new chair. It is, when properly adjusted, much more comfortable than the old one. That’s a measure of how far we have advanced – everybody seems to have swivelling office chairs now. I only tried one when I started at the shop, until then I’d just had chairs with four legs.

Traffic was strange on the way home. I got halfway home with no traffic on the road, a rare, but welcome event.The second half was absolutely blocked solid – and I have no clue what caused it, as there was nothing there once it started moving again.

The only other point of note today was that my fingers are giving trouble five fingers from eight are stiff and several are painful. I’m hoping it is on of those temporary glitches and not a sign that the drugs have stopped working.

Day 108

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I just read an amusing quote from Stephen Hawking. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what it was as it was accompanied by a note.

The quotes of Stephen Hawking used are protected by copyright owned by the Estate of Professor Stephen Hawking and may not be reproduced without permission.

There is also another note.

STEPHEN HAWKING is a trade mark of, and is used by the Royal Mint under licence from, the acting executors of the Estate of Professor Stephen Hawking.

This is something that has caught my attention before, as I’m not quite sure where it takes us. At what point does someone else called Stephen Hawking lose the right to their own name. Not a great problem for most of them, but if a second Stephen Hawking came along and designed a superior type of wheelchair, what would happen then?

It’s the first time I’ve heard of quotations being copyrighted. Normally we throw quotes around as if they are free to use, and nobody minds. As far a I know you are still allowed to quote excerpts from a work so I’m not sure where these two things square up. It reminds me of J K Rowling when she became rich and famous and started suing people for infringing her copyrights. This was, I felt, strange, as Harry Potter seemed to be a lineal descendent of various boarding school stories and The Worst Witch stories. It’s a difficult area, but if you draw inspiration from other people, perhaps you should allow people to draw inspiration from you. Like God and the big battalions, the Law seems to be on the side of the people with the expensive lawyers.

I looked up the exact quote on that subject but found it wasn’t quite as good as I remembered. I also, ironically, in view of my previous comments on copyright, found the contents of this link used in a blog post, without attribution.

Day 107

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This is a picture of a coin that were are often asked about. It’s a single metal £2 coin. They were produced between 1986-96 and although they were supposedly for circulation you rarely saw one and they didn’t really catch on. They were replaced by the bimetallic type, originally planned for 1997, but not actually released until 1998.

We often get phone calls from people, who think they have a rarity because they have never seen one of the older sort. This is easily explained by the fact that the old type is at least 26 years old and even then you would need a good memory fro a coin you rarely saw.

However, I cannot explain the fixation some people have for the “solid gold” version. They ring up, they tell us they have the solid gold version, they won’t accept that it is extremely unlikely and they invariably demand that we tell them where to go to get it confirmed. The truth is that there were very few of the gold proof versions made. They were expensive and it’s unlikely that anyone ever took them out of their box, threw the certificate away and spent it as a £2 coin.

There were millions of them minted. Mintage figures for the 1995 Dove of Peace coin is 4,391,248. Mintage for the gold version is 1,000. So, even if all things were equal, the odds are 4,391 to 1 against it being a gold coin. If you allow for the fact that it is extremely unlikely that any were taken out of their packaging (let’s say this happened to 10 of them – bearing in mind they cost about £1.000 and people are going to be careful with them) the chances are 439,125 to 1 against it being a gold coin.

If I were to get one call a day about this, the chances are that I will die of old age several times over before someone rings with a loose gold coin.

However, this doesn’t stop people ringing, convinced that I’m an idiot because I don’t believe their brass coin is gold.

The coin in the picture is gold. It is, as you can see, in a plastic capsule inside a box, with a certificate. And, no, I don’t know why a coin with a mintage of 1,000 needs a numbered certificate with a number over 2,000, but I’ve seen it before

Gold £2 Coin 1995 End of WW2 Obverse

Gold £2 Coin 1995 End of WW2 Reverse

Day 106

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Just a quick post so I can say I have posted, but it’s just a placeholder and no brain cells will be harmed in the writing of this post.

I sent a parcel to the Ionian Islands today, which was a first, followed by one to Canada. That was as good as it got. No more than average stupidity was demonstrated in the phone calls that came in and all the customers who called in person seemed fairly normal.

That is a mere 79 words. I have already drifted into sleep once whilst writing them, which tends to suggest that they lack grip.

We had home made mushroom and thyme soup for lunch and there is enough left over for tomorrow. (it was my turn to have a half day today). For tea we had veggie burgers again, with a little salad. It’s convenient that way as I can order cobs with the Friday shopping delivery and they are still fresh on Saturday night. The veggie burgers were a bit too big and overlapped the buns. Like eucalyptus trees, they adopted a self-pruning strategy and several bits dropped off as we ate them in front of the TV.

I see that the Russians have imposed travel restrictions on a number of our politicians and will no longer allow them to visit Russia. This has a bit of a tit for tat look to it, and slightly misses the point. For one thing, doing it second just makes you look like a child in the school playground, and for another, who cares? Compared to the number of Russian politicians who have had their options for foreign travel drastically trimmed, this really is a very small ban.

Day 104

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I fell asleep in front of TV. The fire was on and the chair was comfortable. What more can I say?

I had three non-acceptances yesterday – one from a magazine and two from a competition. After doing well in competition last year I had hopes again for this year, and my entries were, I thought, better than last year. The winning entries, unfortunately for me, were also better, and far better than mine. Such is life. The magazine rejection was not unexpected.

That leaves me at nine acceptances and three rejections for the year, which is still satisfactory. Even better, I have a number of poems which are now free for resubmission to other places – this is my writing system and it is good to get it back into operation. After the double illness last year the system stopped, as I lost the continuity. It’s good to have some material in reserve again.

Beach Huts – Southwold

I think I’ve probably covered this before, but a lot of my acceptances have had several rejections before they succeed. Many of the successes, to be fair, are very different from their original form – forged in the heat of rejection, if you like.

Inevitably they become shorter and often assume the form of a short prose piece followed by a haiku. I don’t remember the proper Japanese term, but it has developed over the years, even over the few years I have been writing them seriously, and is almost the standard form.

I find it a bit dull, when there are some many other structures, but that’s just how it is. Sometimes it seems like it’s impossible to be published in an American magazine unless you adhere to this form, and to several other fashionable ideas. What were guidelines a few years ago, are almost rules now.

On Dunwich beach

Of course, the older rambling prose interspersed with multiple haiku can be pretty dull too. They used to be known as “pearls from mudbanks” haibun – flashes of brilliance concealed in a heap of words. I’ve read a few of them this month too, and they can be great, but often aren’t. That was the style I used to write fifteen years ago. None of them were published. After a twelve year rest I came back ith shorter haibun. I’m now trying to make them longer.

And thus we come to a crossroads. Do I alter my writing style to fit fashion, or do I carry on doing what seems right and wait for fashion to change?

I have ambition to improve, and write better, but no particular inclination towards fame and fortune, so i can afford to wait. After all, as I’ve said before, I write because I enjoy it and only submit to magazines because it’s a form of quality control. It’s nice to know that I’m writing to an acceptable standard, but I try to take a balanced view of rejection. A couple of years ago I used to compose acerbic replies to editors in my head. These days I just shrug and edit.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Day 103

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Sometimes I think, and sometimes I don’t. Today I was thinking that we’d have been lost during Covid without postmen and bin men. They are two overlooked jobs, but without post and regular rubbish collections civilisation would soon break down.

The NHS put my dad on a ventilator and kept him sedated as he slipped away. To be fair, there wasn’t much else they could do, but for this, and many other acts like it, they have had praise heaped upon them. The bus drivers and bin men, the posties and shop workers all did a lot more for me than the NHS, and for lower wages, but nobody seems to say much about them. Bus drivers and postmen died during the pandemic as a result of contact with infected people, and representatives of the other services probably did, but their deaths weren’t reported on TV.

After the first lockdown, Julia went in to work for the other lockdowns and even had an official government badge to show she was an essential worker. Despite this, and working face to face with people who had Covid (and thought that it was acceptable to come to the centre despite the positive test) she has yet to be given the thanks of a grateful nation.

She hasn’t even had the thanks of MENCAP. They gave the workers in the residential homes a cash bonus. The staff at daycentres were given nothing and told their job was not as difficult as in the homes.

I’m not saying that the NHS didn’t do a good job, all I’m saying is that the praise and rewards don’t seem to have been distributed equally amongst everyone who helped us through the pandemic.

You can add police, fire services and teachers to the list too, and probably a few others. It’s sometimes difficult remembering how many people we rely on the live our lives.

I did have some other thoughts, but it felt like a day for writing something serious, so I did.

Daffodils

Day 102

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Nothing much happened.

In the world outside my limited range of vision, someone destroyed a bit more of our remaining atmosphere by flying away on holiday, someone bought a new handbag produced by child labour in the Far East and yet someone else painted their face to resemble a doll, which makes me wonder about the nature of relationships in the modern world.

Whether these events are better or worse than “nothing” is up to you.

In Nottingham someone probably got divorced, someone else had a car accident and someone died. All these things are bound to happen, and mean someone had a worse day than mine.

In Ukraine, innumerable awful things happened today. I can’t even begin to understand what that must be like. In parliaments around the world politicians with shares in armaments companies made decisions that put millions on the value of their holdings. And our seedy Prime Minister was exposed as a liar by the police when they issued a fixed penalty fine for attending an illegal party during lockdown.

Of course, we then got the same old tired calls for resignation. So, should he resign so we can replace him with someone else from a selection of second-class weasels?

He isn’t much of a leader, or much of a man, in my opinion but in a world where hypocrisy is widespread, which is better – a man of integrity or a man who has been named as the most anti-Russian western leader by the Kremlin?

As I said, nothing much happened today, and I didn’t even call for a politician to resign.

Todays photograph is my workspace. It probably says a lot about my life.

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm