Monthly Archives: October 2025

Where do all the Goldfinches go?

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And suddenly it’s Thursday, and what have I done? On Monday I slumped. On Tuesday I had two vaccinations. I spent an hour in a pharmacy crowded with people because the appointments system had broken and we were over half an hour late going in. Many of the people looked ill, so I don’t know whether I am generally under the weather, suffering from the vaccinations, or caught something while I was there. O don’t usually react to vaccinations, though my arms were a bit sore after these, so it might be that. On the other hand it could be some sort of illness as it’s hanging around. And hanging over it all, last time I felt like this I ended up waking in the middle of the night with sepsis and ringing for an ambulance.

I try not to be a hypochondriac, or over-dramatic, but it’s stuck in my mind as a permanent worry now. Fortunately I know that as long as I get down there early enough it needn’t be too bad.

Recently we seem to have lost all our Goldfinches – we saw two last week, which were the first for a month, and we haven’t seen another one since. They are what is known as partial migrants. They don’t have  agreat drive to go, but depending on food and weather they may go to France, Spain and Belgium. I don’t know why Belgium is more attractive than the UK in winter, but that’s just how it is. I imagine we have others coming down from Scandinavia do ours have to move out to make room.

It seems that their main motivation is food. If they find a good food source they may just migrate a couple of miles, but if they can’t, they may do the full 900 mile trip to Spain.

So far, without a lot of thought or planning, I have managed to eat 24 sorts of plant this week, probably 24 or 25 if you include all the garlic and the spices. We will easily do 30 again by the end of the week and I have decided to stop counting. I’ve managed to hit target just by using our normal shopping, ingredients and menu, so I don’t see any point in making a  chore of it. I will check in a few months but it seems as if it will take care of itself.

In terms of acceptances, I am now on 48. It’s tempting to cut back and just coast in to the end of the year – 48 will do, 50 is just a psychological thing, However, at the back of my mind is the idea that this is where a real writer gets going and signs off with a flurry of activity. I have one more thing to send off this month – to a magazine that always wants progressive and exciting poetry. I may just do that. I doubt they will appreciate it. They want the sort of poetry I call “ocelot in the wardrobe” poetry. I called it after a poem I once read that featured an ocelot in the wardrobe. All I write is dull autobiographical stuff.  I’ve sometimes done something vaguely ocelotish but the one that were published were dreadful. It would be fun to develop a different persona and write deliberately dreadful poetry to see how many people will publish it just because it is stuffed with new and fashionable stuff.

After all, I don’t have enough to do already.

A few nights ago we had a flock of 30-40 parakeets fly over. Not one of them paused to have a look at our garden feeders. One day it will happen. One day . . .

 

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

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Lime Avenue – Clumber Park, Notts

And finally, for Sunday, Lazy Sunday Afternoon by the Small Faces. My era,  my sort of lightweight listening, and a perfect description of my Sunday afternoon. Web lunched on a cheese scone with onion relish, a pear and, in my case, the last of my home made pickled eggs. It had matured nicely and went well with the scone. After Julia left for the cafe, I sat down to watch Fake or Fortune and fell asleep. I often fall asleep watching this, which I attribute to its relaxing qualities, rather than boredom.

I woke up when Julia returned, springing into action as the key turned in the lock and having the kettle on by the time she had removed her shoes and asked “What have you done this afternoon?”

I’d planned on Banana Cake, cheese scones and pickled eggs, but it had not, of course, worked out like that. Looks like I may be making Banana Cake tomorrow. If I don’t, the “very ripe” bananas required by the recipe (which I have been nurturing for a week) could be a little over the top.

The TESCO delivery has arrived, so time for me to go and look useful.

Clumber Park – October 2018

Later . . .

Turkey tonight – it’s last year’s back-up, which has been in the freezer a while. We will be having Vegetable Wellington for Christmas dinner and probably buy a turkey crown for the week after as Julia likes traditional food.  In truth, I don’t rally like turkey, but I do like turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwiches. Some years we don’t actually get round to cooking the turkey at Christmas,, which is why we have turkey today. It has made quite a gap in the freezer. I suppose I will have to fill the gap with another turkey crown. I note from the ingredients that only 90% of our turkey crown is turkey, the rest is water, milk protein, salt and a couple of other things.  That water is probably more expensive than Perrier. I really should check. It will give me something else to moan about.

Clumber Park October 2018

Saturday Night

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Nasturtiums Wilford Mencap Gardens

Actually, it’s Sunday morning, but I needed a Saturday song to keep the series going. Initially I thought of Elton John, but Saturday night is not alright for fighting now that I have grown up and become sensible, so Whigfield gets the spot with Saturday Night.   It was a  good, cheery song, but hardly a heavyweight classic. A bit like me in fact. Well, apart from the weight, I am cheery and heavyweight. With time  I may become a classic.

Talking of weight, I had scones with marmalade tonight. It was OK, but I’d rather have had apricot jam. I am going to have to get my eyes tested, as those oranges really did look remarkably like apricots on the label.

1995 Robin stamp – it will soon be Christmas

I’ve recently been experimenting with writing multiple articles in one go. I was trying that last night, writing one that I intended using on the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire Facebook page and the website of the Peterborough Military History Group. They have two different memberships so I’ve often covered the same subject on both both sites. I thought it would save time to write a longer article (as required for the website), and to cut it down for the Facebook page, which requires less. I have often trimmed articles to do this, though it often surprises me how long it takes.

Anyway, I can confirm that the new approach doesn’t work. It took a long time and produced something that wasn’t right for either use. As I considered the wreck of two hours writing, I realised that I needed to get on with another project as I have promised to help with some minor editing on a book written by my ex-boss. That took two hours too. It may be minor but it needs to be good and accurate.

Then I realised I was supposed to be sorting books to be given away. I had instructions from Julia on this subject.

Michaelmas daisies

The moral is that you can’t do two things at the same time. I have difficulty listening to You Tube whilst I write – music distracts me and anything factual ends with me grinding to a halt as I listen. I can’t do two jobs in different rooms at the same time either, but I feel I should be doing both and focus on neither.

So I’m going to try and concentrate on one job at a time. Let’s see how it goes.

Vine leaves at MENCAP

 

 

 

Friday I’m in Love

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Tearing, sharing cheese and seed scones

We go to The Cure for this one – not my natural territory, but the song seems to have hovered at t5he back of my mind for years, a truly haunting song. After posting the Thursday post, I had second thoughts about the baking plans. I had enough trays to bake scones, I decided, and the oven wouldn’t be on for long. Above all, Julia had said when would like scones and I always think that it’s a good thing to do what your wife wants.

It turned into a bit of a disaster while I was getting the ingredients out of our badly stacked and over-stuffed cupboards. They are very deep cupboards and hard to stack in an accessible manner. It’s not helped by the fact tat we are starting to buy the Christmas staples The first problem was a jar of cranberry sauce fell out. I could feel the vibrations from impact, but it, fortunately, missed my toes. The jar also survived. The same spillage meant we ended up with curry powder spilled on the floor. The dustpan doesn’t meet the floor well and fine powders tend to miss the pan so I went to get the small vacuum. This needed emptying before I could use it. Twenty minutes later, needing a new bag of flour after making the fruit scones, I needed more flour.

Scones at Minsmere

An open bag of sugar came off the top shelf as I took a new bag of flour. It hit one of the lower shelves on the way down. It split, and opened up, somersaulted, and came to rest on the floor. There was sugar in the cupboard from the shelf collision, sugar (extensively) on the floor and the small vacuum came into play. For a moment I toyed with the idea of putting teh sugar back in the bag as Julia had cleaned the floors that morning, but civilisation won and I hoovered it up and emptied it into the bin.

Now, I employ a simple system when baking. I put the bowl on the scales, tare it back to zero and add the ingredients. Liquid measurements, in the metric system, are easy and I just change millilitres of liquid into grams. I jsut keep adding stuff until it is all in the bin. Sometimes I use mental arithmetic to get a cumulative figure, sometimes I tare the scales again. However, after cleaning up the sugar, I found the scales had automatically switched off and I could only vaguely remember it was on about 160 when I stopped. Though it might have been 180. They look similar whe you aren’t really watching. Added to the uncertainty of the recipe (I’d altered the fruit scone recipe to accommodate cheese), I ended up adjusting the dough with a little more milk at the end.

Scones – John Lewis

And I had to use made mustard instead of the powder. That actually mixed well and worked better than the mustard powder.

The cheese scones were very good and rose quite well. The fruit scones didn’t rise as they should have done. I’m not sure what happened. The old recipe I used had oil in it and worked fine. I have to use oil because I can’t work butter in with arthritic fingers, so I don’t want to look for a different recipe. I did see one on a website that reputedly produced nice light scones and used oil but it’s an American recipe and will need converting from cups. IT also uses twice as much flour and will make too many scones. Two pensioners and a visiting sister don’t need that many scones and I don’t want to start freezing them as I always forget to defrost in time.

More did happen, but will leave that for another post. Or forget it.

Before batching – Date and Stilton Scones – like the seeded cheese scones in the header picture, these were from the Homegrown Cereals Authority recipe booklet I have mislaid and were baked together so they formed a batched scone suitable for “tearing and sharing”. They were quite easy to form by hand and I am thinking of going back to that as using cutters can cause problems.

Scones are from previous posts.

Mrs Thursday

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Julia by the Canal

The secret, it seems, to finding a decent Thursday song is just finding a better list. The list I eventually found started with Jess Glynne, but the song that came up turned out to be slightly less cheerful than Leonard Cohen, and that’s not exactly what I wanted for Thursday. It’s not my favourite day. It lacks dynamism and energy and, let’s face it, hope. Thursday is not a good day.  It has, however, given me the inspiration for a poem title – It Always rains on Thursdays – though I don’t have an actual poem to go with it, but it always seems to be a bit of a dip in my mental graph of happiness during the week. I don’t know why, it just is.

Anyway, I managed to find a cheerful song – Mrs Thursday by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. There are, I’m sure better songs, and more mature choices, but it takes me back to the days when I used to be more interested in music, and bands didn’t take themselves too seriously. It’s a bit like football these days. I’ll listen to a bit of music, or watch (if I have to) a bit of football, but I really don’t want to listen to pop stars and footballers talking about politics and social issues. That’s why I try to avoid politics and social issues on the blog – it’s just an opinion, and like most opinions it has little value apart from to the person speaking. However, it does have the capacity to start a needless argument and offend someone.

Julia on the patio

Having been married for 36 years, I know I don’t need to bother writing a blog if I want a pointless argument.  I could start one now if I wanted. All I need to do is shout through to Julia and she will reply that she can’t hear me and I will ask her what she just said and she . . .

About thirty five years ago someone asked us why we got married seeing as we were always arguing. It isn’t actually arguing, it’s more like the pinging sounds that Long-tailed tit make as they fly round, or the noises kittens, or puppies or piglets make,  make. We’re just letting each other know that we are still around. In fact, now I think of it, I might just go and tell her she reminds me of a piglet.

In case you are wondering, I have shelved the baking for today, as neither of us can remember where the other loaf tins are. We haven’t actually used them since we moved. It doesn’t matter – Thursday and Friday are much the same when you are retired.

Long-Tailed Tits – they make pinging noises to keep in touch. These two appear not to be talking to each other at the moment. He probably said “You remind me of a piglet.” and she probably replied “You remind me of your father.”

 

 

Wednesday Week

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Mince pies – time to start testing

Yes, it’s Wednesday, sometimes called “Hump Day” according to the internet. This may be true in the USA but here we just call it Wednesday. It wouldn’t be accurate for me anyway, as a lot of my working life has encompassed Saturdays and Sundays. The track is Wednesday Week by the Undertones. It’s one of those songs that you remember when you put it on.  Otherwise it just slips you mind.

Not much happened today. I did a few minor bits and pieces and looked for my motivation. Unfortunately I couldn’t find it, but I did find some cheese on toast and two boxes of junk to sort out. I now have just one box of junk, so it hasn’t been a wasted day. However, do not fear – I still have plenty more to sort out.

Foodwise, I am on 22 plant based food sources, with four of them being things I didn’t eat last week. I’ve not made such a thing of it this week as I did last week. Avocado for lunch and a decent helping of veg for tea tomorrow night should see me most of the way there. I haven’t planned as well as I did last week so I may have a few things less than last week but it will still be over 30. It feels a bit like failure, but you can’t keep finding new things to eat without proper planning. This week I thought I’d just coast along and see what happened, so I’m not too disappointed. I have still done 30.

Baking tomorrow – Julia wants cheese scones, I want banana and walnut loaf and I’m thinking of doing an apple bread pudding. Then maybe a rice pudding, fruit scones or a ginger cake. It’s a case of using all the oven space. If I’m going to have the oven on I may as well fill it. The main problem will be finding enough energy to eat it all.

Ruby Tuesday

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Marigolds at Mencap Garden

Second day of the song titles posts and it’s a classic from the Rolling Stones.  I was going to make a curry tonight and then discuss the rhyming slang “Ruby Murray” but my sister is coming to tea and we are having Chinese style rice instead. I was thinking of making a multi-layered Angel Delight dessert, as I have some in the cupboard, but Julia’s last words on the subject as they left this morning was “Don’t you dare.” She’s not a fan of 1970s convenience food.

I can’t actually think of any other songs with Tuesday in the name, but I don’t need to because this will do. This is in direct contrast to Thursday, which is worrying me. I might have to write one myself. It can’t be that difficult, not when you hear some of the stuff that gets played. You just need a few rhymes (I can already think of six rhymes for “Thursday”) and a subject, which is generally love, alcohol or heartbreak, or love, alcohol AND heartbreak. Bung in some choruses and the job’s done. I have no musical talent, but since the 1970s this has not been so much of a problem.  Musical talent is obviously quite useful, but it isn’t as important as it used to be.

Mooring ring

It’s a bit like honesty in politics. Though I consider it to be important it doesn’t seem to be necessary these days. The sight of the President of the USA telling the Knesset to give their Prime Minister a pardon on multiple counts, shows the depths to which world politics has sunk. The “cigars and champagne” Trump referred to are allegedly worth $195,000, and are only part of one of three cases being brought.

The world is not a nice place at the moment, and it pains me to see the UK sinking down the corruption rankings from 11th to 20th in the last five years. I how we might be able to do something about it but I’m doubtful. If you lie with dogs you will end up with fleas.

I Don’t Like Mondays

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I said i had a title prepared. This is therefore part one of a week of song title blog posts. So far I have four of the seven nights covered. Linking to the posts will involve a change to the planned menu tomorrow evening, and a bit of violence on Saturday, but Sunday is well in hand. I just need three songs and I’m done. Looks like Wiki is going to be getting a hammering.

I just tried that – there are a lot of Monday titles I hadn’t thought of. There is also a dearth of Thursday songs – I have found three so far and despite David Bowie doing one of them they are universally dreadful.

So it’s the Boomtown Rats for Monday. It could have been Fleetwood Mac, but the addition of “I Don’t Like . . .” makes it much more accurate. In addition, Fleetwood Mac start with Monday but are soon on Friday.

Green Woodpecker

I’m tempted to do a French Revolution on days of the week and change all the names. This was 1792 to 1806. It clearly didn’t catch on. However, they didn’t link them to music.

If you made the first day of the week “Roxette” I think you’d find that feelings towards Mondays changed and there would be a lot more energy about for returning to work.

Grantham Gingerbread

I’m working on the rest, but I’m thinking of replacing Christmas Day with Wizzard Day.

Actually, it’s not a great idea for blogging as I have spent far too much time listening to music and trying to select my new days of the week, when I should either have been engaged in witty banter or [lotting to bring down the current regime. When I sweep to power it’s a toss up whether I sort out the economy or the days of the week first. probably the days of the week because they are important. The economy is a mystery and never seems to improve whatever happens. We always pay too much tax, there is never enough money to run the country and rich people always get richer. There is clearly something wrong with  economics and they need redesigning. Or, taking the example of do many modern leaders, I will just leave office much richer than I entered it, and do nothing to improve life for anybody apart from my family.

I think this will be my Friday choice. the optimism and energy of Roxette has been dissipated by the working week and the reality of despair is setting in . . . But possibly, just possibly, there is a little hope at the end of it all. Personally, I’m looking forward to the end of the week.

Poppies and corn wreath

Photos from October 2016

The Final Countdown

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Sorry, I have never really mastered the art of cutting and pasting from a table. There are 36 items here, all of which count towards my 30 a week. Unfortunately I don’t seem to be able to get them to transfer in a compact manner. I will write the post and if you want to look at the things you can look down the heavily spaced list.

I’ve also had black pepper, Henderson’s Relish, soy sauce, vegetarian sausages (which should count as a sort of fungus), cinnamon, mixed spice, nutmeg, fresh ginger, crystalised ginger (bought by mistake, but nice to eat), garlic, garlic paste, lemon juice and zest, curry sauce and seasoning from a kit and mango chutney. Using the suggested quarter point method for spice and stuff like that, I’m claiming two points for the combined condiments and a point for the sausages which are some sort of fungus. That comes to 39, using the points system. I’m going to stick at 36 as I don’t want to start splitting hairs. They already let you have red and white cabbage as separate things, for instance, so it’s not that difficult, and it seems rude to quibble over the seasoning.

Poppy Brooch – beads and safety pins

Next week starts tomorrow and I will be keeping my target a 30, but trying to have ten things that I didn’t have this week.  That will include courgette,  2 colours of pepper, wholemeal pasta, wholemeal bread, cashew nuts, avocado, sweetheart cabbage, red lentils and red kidney beans. That’s ten. I’m buying wholemeal now, where I often had processed white bread and pasta, so the counting is already altering my diet for the better.

Now I’m off to look at the colours of my diet.

Pictures – October 2018

 

 

Apple
Apricots
Bananas
Beans, baked (haricot)
Beans, green
Blueberries
Broccoli
Brussels Sprouts
Cabbage, red
Cabbage, white
Carrots
Cauliflower

Chickpeas
Coffee
Lamb’s Lettuce
Leeks
Lettuce
Mixed dried fruit
Mushrooms
Nuts – Brazil
Oats
Onions, red
Onions, spring
Orange
Parsnips
Pear
Peas, Garden
Pineapple
Potatoes
Strawberries
Swede
Sweet potato
Sweetcorn
Tea
Tomato
Wholewheat TESCO “Weetabix”

Thirty! Forty six!

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Something strange happened this afternoon. The day, having started as Friday (I even wrote about it being Friday) but by lunchtime it had become Saturday. I even started planning for “tomorrow” thinking it was Sunday. This has never happened before. I have sometimes struggled with what day it is, and have needed to gather my thoughts, but I do not remember changing days in mid flow.

This would be just another amusing anecdote, but after the cabbage episode I am beginning to have some serious doubts regarding my mental capacity. The advantage is that after having one “Saturday” I am now able to have an extra day at the weekend. The disadvantage is that, being retired, the concepts of “weekend” and “extra day” now have little meaning.

On a more fun note, I tried a pickled egg today. They have been in the fridge for two weeks now, which is the minimum time suggested by the Hairy Bikers in the recipe. They are OK. I will check again in two more weeks, as they did say a month was better. The vinegar is diluted with water in the recipe, and has some sugar in it. Currently, the taste is slightly sweet and the vinegar lacks bite. I will do another lot without water or sugar and see how they go. After that I may need to look at the quality of vinegar. I’m currently using the cheapest, and it may be false economy. However, it does cut the grease effectively when wiping down the hob.

I’ve had two acceptances today, so I’m quite cheerful. One needed a minor edit and a discussion on quotation marks. I was cheery and cooperative and pretended to care about punctuation. This brings the number of acceptances up to 46 for the year and I’m happy that I will probably make it to 50. In artistic terms this doesn’t matter. Forty nine or 51 are much of a muchness, but 60 has a psychological value. Total submissions are 70 so far with another 10 planned. It is significantly short of my  target of 100 submissions. There are several reasons for this, including a patchy work rate, a number of magazines cutting back on publication frequency and the fact that I haven’t written any non-Japanese style poetry this year. I may not make it next year either, as I am doing more numismatic writing. If you take them into consideration I’m on target to do about 70 more, but as they are all for societies there is actually no quality threshold and I have a 100% acceptance rate – that’s not really proper writing.

Finally – food. I made a mushroom biriyani tonight. Well, I used a spice kit for biriyani. The actual ingredients and outcome were non-traditional. However, I used sweet potato, onions, peas, rice and mushrooms, so it was healthy. Of those, the red onions, sweet potato and peas were making their first appearance this week. That makes 30. I have the veg prepared for tomorrow, with swede and cabbage, so look likely to manage 32, possibly more if I eat some nuts.  I am happy with that, and happy I was able to source over 30 plant-based ingredients in the house without doing any special shopping.

And that is that for today. Pictures will be from October 2018. Many are from Clumber park in the days when they weren’t charging fro entry and I could actually walk.