Monthly Archives: July 2024

Daydreams of Soup and a Troublesome Spellchecker

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Generally Green Soup – broccoli, cauliflower and cauliflower leaves

I made soup today – it’s Bean Soup. Julia has a joke that goes with it, but I will spare you the agony of hearing it again. It contains onion, celery, garlic, red pepper, tinned tomatoes, water and beans. So far I have used chilli powder and Italian herbs to flavour it.It is not so much a recipe as a list of things that came to hand while I was standing by the cooker.

My latest dietary resolution is to eat more soup. This should help me maintain my new lower weight. As a result I have been listing my normal soup recipes. It isn’t really a long list.

Bean Soup 

Now we can get parsnips again, Spicy Parsnip will be on the list, plus Broccoli, Sweetcorn, Generally Greenish Soup and Mushroom. I must resurrect some of the others which I no longer make, including Pumpkin, Sweet Potato and Nettle. That’s three sorts, not one combination, though I have been known to mix various combinations of Sweet Potato, Carrot, Parsnip, Pumpkin and Squash to come up with an Orange Soup.  I’m going to have a try at lentil soup too. I keep meaning to give it a try but never quite get on with it. And Pea. I used to make Pea Soup from frozen peas but the blender tends to leave a lot of pea skins at the bottom of the pan. I tried sieving it but it isn’t really worth the effort. I may try dried peas next time.

To dd tp my frustrations today, my WP spellchecker seems to have resorted to an American format. It’s like the English one but every so often it tries to correct a word that needs no correction. I’m not sure how this has happened, but it has happened before and I have managed to get it back. I ill have to have a look at it tomorrow.

Cauliflower Soup

 

 

One More in a Shortening List of Days

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Another day chalked down to idleness. However, much of it was spent in the car chatting to Julia so it wasn’t wasted. Sometimes I think the car is the only place we really talk. When we had the kids at home there was no chance for quiet conversation and since then Julia has developed the modern tendency to keep looking at her phone or work on her laptop.

I did have a list written for today, but the trip out stopped me carrying out any of my plans. It’s not a problem, but it will become one if I don’t get a grip and actually start doing something.

My writing is slowing down and my knees have gone again. They do this from time to time, Sitting on a low chair whilst having coffee this afternoon I was unable to get up and had to shift round a bit until I could position myself correctly to haul myself up using conveniently placed furniture. If I ever decide to write a novel from the point of view of a tortoise lying on its back, I now have some insight into the problem.

Heron, scratching

It became clear today, as i gave Julia a running commentary on the poultry farms we were passing, or the sites of antique shops which have now closed, that I am living in the past. The countryside I used to travel is now peopled by retired, or dead, versions of people I used to know and housing developments and artisan food shops have taken over the places where poultry and antiques used to clutter up the place. We passed a crystal shop today. I presume that a lot of their business is done on eBay, as I don’t see much call for crystals amongst the villagers or the few cars that constitute “passing trade”. This, I feel is good, and an example of online trading helping us keep minority interest shops alive.

We also saw a number of thriving local shops, including some community initiatives, and a community pub.  It’s good to see local communities getting together to do things, though I know many of these initiatives, particularly the pubs, don’t always thrive. There’s a reason why these things shut down and community spirit can’t always solve all the problems.

While we were out we saw men putting up banners to protest about the building of a new solar farm. I’m not in favour of NIMBYs and I am in favour of clean renewable energy. I have no problems with onshore wind farms, but am conflicted by solar farms. The amount of good farmland taken up by solar farms is something we cannot afford to lose, as we need to grow food. However, we do have hundreds of cres of factory units and similar things which could house solar panels. I would favour using this roof space, and make solar panels a compulsory feature of all new buildings.

Hoverflies on a poppy

 

Lightweight Political Commentary

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Poppy

What is different today compared to yesterday?  Well, the new government rhetoric is dying down a bit as I expect the excitement is dying down and the reality of the task becomes clear. After all the speeches and promises of the last few days we had a new minister on TV, and that new minister began the familiar pattern of dodging questions and refusing to talk specifics. This doesn’t make him a bad man, or his party a bad party. What it does do is reveal that no matter how enthusiastic and positive a party may be, they are still constrained by reality. We have an expensive war on the doorstep, we have a broken society (which isn’t a new thing) and we don’t have enough money. Welcome to government, all you happy, smiley people, and welcome to reality.

Meanwhile the French are rioting in the streets again after a coalition of moderates managed to avoid a move to the extreme right, a Turkish football player is under investigation for making a fascist  salute as part of his goal celebrations, and a German poll reveals that 20% of the population would like to see more white players in the team. Looks a bit like the whole of Europe is broken, not just Britain. Strangely, as Europe moves to the right, the UK has just moved to the left.

Welsh Poppy

Those few superficial observations on politics. I looked into the world of the Grey Wolves and the Armenian genocide and decided not to delve deeper. I have enough anxiety without adding to it. To save you the trouble of looking into the links, I will summarise by saying that this is what some Turkish youths supposedly does in search of national identity (note I am not saying that this is more than a small minority, as I try not to exaggerate or stereotype). This is what the British do in search of their national identity, when they aren’t drinking warm beer and chanting “Football’s coming home.” in an effort to make it come true. (I linked to an article about the song rather than the song itself, which I’ve always found a bit arrogant, particularly as it’s now nearly sixty years since we have won a major trophy.)

Poppy and chamomile

A Blink of an Eye

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Boy Scout gallantry Cross – awarded for rescuing a child from a canal.

Suddenly a week has gone. I have posted five times in that week, once managing twice a day. It isn’t just a week that has gone, my enthusiasm, energy and organisation all seem to have departed too.

Briefly I could feel them returning after a couple of acceptances, but it all seemed to fizzle out again.

Factory ID disc for Chilwell Shell Filling Factory

If anyone else had written this I would now be shouting at the screen about showing some self-discipline or making the NHS sort things out, but in real life the solution is seldom as simple as that. Added to that there are all sorts of things happening such as a request to display medallions at the Numismatic Society tonight. They would like me to take down the  medallions I have used as the inspiration for the Facebook posts I have done.

The 1982 Chilwell medallion – end of an era

I really have enough to do without searching them all out and working out some sort of display, but that’s life isn’t it – a succession of tasks, often requested by other people, that have to be done before you can do what you really want to do.

I’m going to call an end to this post now. It has reached a natural finishing point. Three times I managed to get over 250 words, and three times I have pruned it drastically because I didn’t like the way it was going. It’s near enough 250 words and will be even nearer by the time I have concluded this ending. Pictures are the medallions that I have written about on Facebook.

Chilwell Tank Fund badge – raising money to fight WW2

An Election, a Result and a New Government

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Despite my deeply held belief that voting for either of the main parties in the General Election was like being asked to chose between Cholera or Typhoid, and knowing that the result was a foregone conclusion, I still found myself unable to tear myself away from the TV as the results came in.

The Greens, my party of choice, managed to land four seats, an increase of three. It may be a false dawn, but it may be the start of something good. I started voting for them in General Elections about 20 years ago because I lost patience with the main parties and the electoral system. The simple fact is that if you put a a red rosette on a baboon in this constituency it would get elected, so the only way I could think of making my vote count was voting to encourage the Greens. Eventually I seemed to become a convert. This is strange as I find most of their policies to be more like Pollyanna’s wish list. The only one I really like is the one about saving the world from destruction, which I think is quite a good one.

Stained Glass from the museum at Ely

I was pleased to see that Jeremy Corbyn was elected as an Independent after his expulsion from the Labour Party. It’s an example to politicians everywhere that a personal connection to your voters is far better than rhetoric. We would, I’m sure, hate each other if we ever met. as we are not politically suited. On the other hand, I like politicians with convictions and courage who will do the inconvenient things.

The old Prime Minister nipped round to see the King this morning and offer his resignation. The new Prime Minister, invited the form a new government by the King later in the morning,  is hard at work now. I’m waiting to see how long it is before the honeymoon ends  I’ve experienced life under both parties, and seen my mother nearly die after spending a year on a waiting list for the NHS under Labour. They both, I’m sure, try hard, but neither of them can really do much better than just keep going in the face of world conditions. Personally I can’t see much difference between them. Nor can I see many places where I have much in common with most politicians.

And just before I go, they had Peter Mandelson on TV last night talking about sleaze and lack of morals in the Tory government. That’s right, Peter Mandelson. You can read more about the many controversies and accusations surrounding his career by following the link. Me, I’d hate to comment, but it does raise a mental picture of pots and kettles.

St Mary Magdalene and Jesus after the resurrection by John Hardman Powell c 1852, from St James’s Church, Clifton, Oxfordshire

I thought we’d have some stained glass for today’s pictures as I have nothing suitable for politicians – no toads, no undersides of stones, no snakes . . .

 

Cynical Reflections on Modern Life

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Did I tell you I’d had a second acceptance? I’ve checked back on my posts and don’t seem to have done. It’s a good feeling and to a large extent I seem to have dismissed the jaded mood of the last couple of months. Am I really that simple that my entire mood can be lifted by two editors accepting poems? It seems so.  I’m hoping that this moves on into the writing of cheerful poetry as the general tone of the last round of submissions was fairly depressing.

The car repair went smoothly and didn’t cost as much as I was expecting as the £130 seems to hve included VAT and fitting seems to have been cheap. maybe it was, as they said, just a case of clicking one out and clicking one back in again. It’s still not cheap at £130 and I am still annoyed. There is a lot of choice out there in cars and I feel that VW may just have been crossed off my mental list.

I have had two repairs on this car. One was for a part that wore out. It was a part of the system that sets off the engine warning lights. Years ago you didn’t have this system, so you never had to repair it. Same goes for the latest switch – years ago you just had a handbrake with a cable. I once snapped a cable. It was cheap to replace. It didn’t cost £130 for a cheap plastic switch that you didn’t need in the first place.

A cynic may say that car designers are simply designing in features which aren’t necessary and which generate work for car makers and mechanics.

Imagine a world where the government passes a law to say all writing instruments must be fitted with safety guards (because pens are dangerously pointed) and that this equipment must be tested every year. Suddenly Pen Safety Tester ill become a job, there will be qualifications to be gained, Continuing Professional Development course to be taken every year and failure certificates will be issued (leading to large bills for replacing cheap plastic parts.  Soon a multi-million pound industry will have grown up around the provision of pen safety guards . . .

Far fetched? Is it?

Just wait until Dyson gets involved and develops a part with needs replacing regularly, just like those bloody hoover filters. The cost of writing will goo up, the size of pens will increase and Sir James Dyson will add another zero to his bank balance. I had the same Hoover for twenty years, reused the same bag for most of that time and  was persuaded to replace it with a more modern version. The modern ones aren’t built so well and require more replacement parts – result – my floor is no cleaner but vacuum cleaner companies make a lot more money.

Photo by Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels.com

The List 02.07.2024

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I got home, blogged about my inability to type the letter “i” in certain circumstances and talked to the garage. The electronic handbrake button fell off my VW. It has been faulty for some years but long experience with cars has taught me to put certain things off as long as possible. As I sat in the car and looked at the gap where it used to be, I wondered why I hadn’t had it fixed before. And why I always let these things build up.

The answer, when i spoke to the garage, was plain. It is going to cost me £130 plus VAT at 20%. I love VAT. After taxing my income using Income Tax and National Insurance the Government then charges me 20% on a lot of the stuff I buy with what remains.  That’s without all the other hidden taxes. And if you save money, despite all this tax, they will tax the money you leave, even though you have already been taxed on it. Yes, we do get some good services for our money, though if you save your money (see above) you do lose out as you are expected to pay for things that are given free to people who haven’t bothered to save. However, “stand for election on a tax reform ticket” isn’t on my list today.

So, to buy a shoddy piece of plastic, which broke with only light use, is going to cost me £130 plus £26 which the Government will doubtless squander on things like nurses and policemen and my pension, plus extra for fitting, and VAT on that cost too. No wonder the Government is loath to legislate on things being durable and repairable – they would lose a fortune in hidden tax.

I am now going to explore the fridge to see what sort of soup I am having for lunch and will think about what is for tea. It’s cool today so I’m not thinking salad.

This afternoon, when the telephone queues are shorter I will ring the doctor and make my blood test appointment for next week.

After that I will spend ten minutes making more plans. At least they haven’t found a way of taxing plans and dreams yet . . .

Soup features high in my plans for the day

I just remembered, it is cauliflower cheese for tea. The cauli is looking a bit jaded and needs using. My memory is shocking these days.

 

The Letter Between “H” and “J”

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Warning: it sounds like it could be one of those posts about teambuilding (there is no I in team, etc) but it isn’t. What you see is what you get with me. No subtlety, no metaphor, just a blog post about a missing letter. And how bad technology is – but most of my posts eventually get round to that anyway.

Churchill once talked about Russia being “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. Computers are the same for me. I first used one when I was 29 and less than a year later finished my computer education, such as it was. Eventually I bought an Amstrad word processor then, after a few false starts, what now seems like a massive desktop computer. I never did learn how to use one properly.

Last night I read some blog posts and tried to leave a comment on one by LA. It went OK but I noticed the “i” wasn’t working. So I didn’t leave a comment and changed keyboards. Still no “i”.

Missing letters are a constant hazard in my typing because I use a home-made docking arrangement for my laptop since the desktop froze up on me.   Unlike those sophisticated set-ups you see on Amazon, mine uses several yards of USB cables, a keyboard balanced on a tupperware box and a scattering of junk. This often causes what I call “differential pressure” on the keys. Or in other words, it wobbles.

If you subscribe to the view that a cluttered workspace is a sign of high intelligence (I know this is true because I read it on the internet) I assure you that my workspace is close to genius. However, if you believe in order and cleanliness and self-discipline you will be deeply alarmed by what you see. Best just to gloss over this and move on.

For those of you with nothing better to do than look at badly taken pictures of untidy desks (the lighting is “all wrong” as we professionals say) I have enclosed a shot at the bottom of the post.  The top shot is Cromer Pier, which is tidier and more sophisticated.

I checked it out on Google, and found that I was able to write “i” in the search box. So I tried Open Office, and writing a post on WP. They all allowed me the use of the “i”.

This morning, reading a post by Paol Soren, I found I was still unable to type “i” in the comments. As you can tell, I have no difficulty in writing it once I get back into my post.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Does anyone have any idea how to fix it?

That’s a slightly sanitised view – I removed the pile of letters from bank, and NHS as they warn you about displaying this sort of stuff online. OK, and the screwed up food wrappers. But apart from that and the fact that this is just, like an iceberg of chaos, the tip, it is a fairly accurate picture. 

A Pause, Some Thoughts and a Conclusion

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I just finished making three submissions. I wavered between six submissions and two, so three is a compromise.  The three I sent off involved five poems, which were more or less complete when I started looking for poems earlier in the week. The three I didn’t make would involve fifteen tanka, and I have none written, apart from a few that have already been rejected several times. When I was in this position a few months ago I rushed some into existence and got two rejections from the three. It doesn’t seem worth rushing to submit something that makes it look like you can’t write decent poetry. I will wait and apply myself to gradually getting back up to speed.

The truth is that I prefer writing about collectables, even if the results are only seen by a few members of the Numismatic Society on Facebook.

We had breakfast out yesterday. It was partly to avoid doing something else and partly to establish a pattern of me going out. Julia thinks that I need to go out more. I don’t.

Breakfast at Harvester is not the all you can eat blowout it used to be.  I’d been looking forward to a touch of fruit and cereal, a moderate Full English and several slices of  toast with honey. They don’t do it like that now. The big breakfast option (three sausages, three rashers of bacon, two eggs, half a poorly cooked tomato, one watery mushroom, beans, three hash browns, one tiny slice of black pudding  and a couple of slices of toast, was big and, at £9.99 was reasonable value by today’s standards.

In terms of quality it wasn’t as good as it could have been. Same goes for the experience – it used to be quite a leisurely and relaxing way to eat breakfast but now, wit6h no honey or marmalade and the other changes, it isn’t so relaxing.

I could have done with the smaller breakfast option but the only way to get black pudding was to order the larger breakfast. To pay £2 for an extra sausage, extra rasher of bacon, tiny black pudding slice and, I think, an extra hash brown. I just checked – yes you do get an extra hash brown. You are supposed to get two tomatoes and two mushrooms, which I didn’t get. Cheapskates. Though considering the poor cooking of the mushroom and tomato I may not have wanted more.

The moral of the story is that as prices rise quality,  whether of food or service or relaxation, seems to go down.

Note too how they say the toast is free, as if it is a special bonus offer. Sorely it is a normal part of breakfast, as are the preserves to put on it.

Anyway, there you go. Went to Harvester. had a late breakfast, didn’t need to eat again until we had soup and a sandwich in the evening. Probably good value by modern standards but too much food for me as I try to lose weight, and deficient in far too many ways. Will be giving it a miss in future, unless I am seized by a sudden desire for boiled mushrooms and half a lightly warmed tomato.

I just looked at my emails – I already have an acceptance. It took 34 minutes and is a new record. I am now officially feeling more enthusiastic about writing poetry.

This is Julia’s breakfast – I had scrambled eggs. It is, however, my elbow that you can see across the table.