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Thoughts of New Recipes

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We’ve not had pilaff for years and I, personally, haven’t made it for probably 40 years. It just faded out of my repertoire and never made it back. A lot of things are like that. At any one time I probably only use about half a dozen recipes, with a few variations to ensure we don’t eat the same thing too often.

We tend to eat a similar menu most weeks, with just a gradual change as the seasons move on. I have just started cooking quiches again now that summer is here, and vegetable stew has disappeared from the menu as root vegetables don’t seem so appealing in summer. We did have carrot in the coleslaw we had with the quiche earlier in the week, but that’s about it.

I’ve been looking up pilaff recipes today, as they seem to be a useful way of making a rice dish that uses stuff up. It’s a bit like Chinese rice, but over the years I’ve finally begun to get bored with it.

One of the recipes involved exotic mushrooms, dried mushrooms and mushroom powder. Another involved whatever mushrooms you had to hand and a stock cube. Guess which one we are trying next week?

Malta

Part of the problem is that every time I try something new, I fail to adopt it, even if it is nice. It’s much easier just to go into autopilot and make the same old thing, or a version of it, rather than doing something new.

Yes, I did make Chestnut and Mushroom Pie, and enjoyed it, but it involves dried mushrooms and chestnut which I don’t normally have in the cupboard. And the Woolton Pie was good, but the stew version is easier.

I really should try to do better.

But then, I should try to improve my blogging and poetry writing too.  They are both more interesting than filling quiches and steeping dried mushrooms.

Cactus hedge Malta

 

How Do I Do It?

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I missed posting today. I’m not sure how. I just got down to work and suddenly, the day was gone. Got up a bit late, correspondence, breakfast and back to work. Julia went out to take a dress for alteration for the coming wedding and I prepared lunch ready for her return.  This included the coleslaw left over from a couple of nights ago, baby tomatoes, olives and the last of Tuesday’s quiche. Back to work (if pushing words round paper can be classed as “work”) then TV quizzes. Cook tea. (Julia is suffering with her back so I am trying to be a good husband). Watched the last episode of Fringe, a sci-fi, time travel, police procedural, and I felt able to relax. Left to myself I would probably not have carried on past episode 2 or 3 but Julia liked it and it began to make more sense. Then it introduced the parallel dimension, then the time travel and at that point It stopped making sense again. I struggled to the end as Julia liked it but feel it would have been better with a run half as long.

Then we started watching The Marlow Murder Club. We’ve been waiting to start it. I look on it as a reward for sitting through Fringe. I’m much happier with this – small town in UK, murders that don’t include melting faces or alien animals, good quality detective plots and time progresses in a linear fashion.

It’s not ground-breaking or cutting edge and it merges with many similar programmes, but it’s a nice relaxing watch with a lot of good actors.

Photos are from Julia’s 2018 visit to Malta when she and No 2 Son went to visit No 1 Son, who was working there. A hand holding a small bird is an ironic image for a Mediterranean island famous for slaughtering migrating birds in great numbers.

Unseemly Seriousness

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Stained Glass Museum – Ely

Did you know that there is such a thing as Information Warfare? You probably did, but you just didn’t know it had a name.

I was listening to the radio yesterday and the subject cropped up. That’s BBC Radio 4 in case you might be under the misapprehension that any other station is worth listening to. I listen to it for the 15-30 minutes it takes me to queue in traffic jams after dropping Julia off at woodturning. Otherwise, noise does not feature greatly in my life. I don’t need it to function and if I want to listen to the inane chattering of barely evolved humanoids (sometimes called DJs, presenters or, for phone-in purposes, “listeners” I can go and listen to monkeys in a zoo).

Sometimes I listen to music on You Tube, in case you are thinking I completely lack culture, but mainly, I don’t. I also like the words more than the music. And I like them to be English so I can understand them, so that cuts out classical music and opera. I suppose that’s why I’m a poet rather than a musician. Being tone deaf also plays a part.

Anyway, I digress. I have two ways to go now. One is to carry on discussing “malign influence” and the undeclared war between Russia and Europe. The other is to discuss the picture in my head, which is J D Vance as a monkey. I don’t really know why.

I’ll go with malign influence. It’s about the propaganda war between Russia and some of its neighbours, specifically Finland and Sweden. The Finn’s developed a policy of teaching their young people to distinguish between truth and misinformation by showing them how to evaluate information. Of course, we would never do it in this country because it might teach the population to think for themselves and spot political chancers.

It was part of a group of reports about how some countries are making progress in the modern world – updating medical systems, looking after the elderly in a more cost-effective way (or simply just looking after them at all), building better social housing and (in the case of Finland and Sweden) accepting that we are at war with Russia and that young people need to be taught to resist unreliable information.

That, of course, gets me onto one of my favourite subjects. Countries with low levels of raw materials and industry (like the UK, these days) have traditionally been big on education.

I’d like to see the UK getting to grips with educating people. I’d also like to see them teaching them how to use social media properly. That’s not by banning them from using it. How will you learn if you can’t use something. All you will learn is that there are ways of getting round things and that you don’t need to obey the law.

That’s not helping build a responsible and progressive world.

Sorry, I will try to avoid unseemly seriousness in future posts.

Angel with Spear, 1860s. By N H J Westlake or J M Allen. St Michael’s and All Angels, Derby

Feeling Pleased with Myself

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I am sitting here, and I admit that I am feeling smug, I have just sent off a first free verse poem since spring 2023. In some ways it isn’t a long time, but it was long enough for me to lose the knack and it has taken a couple of months to get back into the swing of it.

I must have spent a month or so wondering if the skill was ever going to come back. But if you keep writing, even if it is rubbish, you eventually get back to something usable.

This, however, is as far as it goes for now. There is a lot more competition for space in traditional poetry magazines than there is in the word of haibun and tanka and it could be some time before I see anything in print. At least I’m pushing up my number of submissions for the year.

It’s important to submit as part of the process of learning to do better. As I have said in earlier posts, I am poor at writing haiku. I’ve always struggled and although I don’t particularly like it as a form, I feel I should practice haiku to improve myself, and to improve my haibun. You don’t improve at anything by only doing the easy bits.

This one is The Prince and the Orange Toad. I have two characters in mind. One will be a handsome Prince, willowy and thin. The other will be squatter, and with an immense self-satisfied grin. I’m not sure how it’s going to progress yet, but that doesn’t matter, because we all know I talk about more projects than I ever begin.

Finally, three views of a small bowl that Julia has done using a piece of wood that somebody gave her.  It’s her first bowl, it’s quite small and it is designed for putting rings in at night. It has turned out to have a very interesting grain pattern, and the inside reminds me of the Time Tunnel.

 

Notes from a Small City

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Blossom at Wilford

Got up, cooked breakfast, discovered I have ordered the wrong bacon this week, had coffee from the cafetiere (made by No 1 Son, who is a coffee aficionado), sat, redundant, while he and his mother muttered about wedding plans and played with their phones. Nobody holds conversations anymore.

It took 13 minutes to get to the station, as there were no hold-ups and 19 minutes to get back using a longer route as I try to relearn the geography of the area. If I’m being picky, it actually took 19 minutes to get there, but six of them were spent on the drive waiting as Julia discovered a couple of last minute jobs which, of course, took priority over punctuality.

Blossom at Wilford

There are no trains to Norwich due to work on the tracks so it is down to the good old “replacement bus service”.  Today’s “bus” is a luxury coach, so it isn’t too bad.

It is a pleasant morning, with a plentiful, and varied, supply of blossom and a variety of birds, including a pied wagtail, several lustrous blackbirds and the usual magpies and pigeons. It’s he sort of morning that makes you think you should write a poem. Later, I probably will.

I was reading some William Carlos Williams last night. They are quite short poems and I could probably write a lot of poems that length. I just need to have a range of suitable subjects and something interesting to say about them. That might be more difficult. As I’ve said before, there are plenty of words, and they aren’t the problem. Learning to put he right words in the right order is the skill, and that only be learned by laying down a lot of poorly selected words in the wrong order.

Try this for a poem about plums.

Reflected Plums – Victoria

I’d better get on with that now. Half an hour of poetry followed by getting lunch made for Julia before she goes to work in the tea room, and I will have several hours more to write before she returns home.

More Speed than Usual

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Flying Scotsman at NVR

10.45. This is the crossroads of the day. Yesterday I chose to research and write articles, interspersed with reading blogs and replying to comments.  A poetry book arrived, which I skimmed and found to be good. I collected Number One Son from the station – we had tea and watched TV and caught up. At midnight I found myself lacking a blog post. Such are the choices we make. However, I did find time to read some articles on writing haibun. I have made notes as part of my new self-education attempt.

Unfortunately Mallard is not at NVR.

Today I have choices to make again. Julia and No 1 Son have gone off to town. They are travelling by steam railway, as the NVR passes within a few hundred yards of the house and goes all the way to Peterborough.


Photograph is borrowed from Country Life magazine website and Courtesy of The Estate of Steve McQueen/ Sotheby’s.

So, do I fritter my time away or do I set to work and produce something useful? Whilst searching for the NVR site I already browsed and found some new information. Checking the link for the book I noted a couple of openings for poetry submissions. Then I noticed that Sotheby’s are holding a sale of important watches. They don’t seem that important, though they are all well beyond my budget. One, worn by Steve McQueen in Le Mans, comes with a filing box of correspondence and provenance and the upper estimate is $1,000,000. That’s a lot of money just to tell the time. And it’s a lot of money for an undeniably ugly watch.

However, as a piece of film history, and part of the story of a 20th Century icon, it is also a priceless relic. Pricing, as we always said in the antiques trade, is as much art as science. Well, I did, I’m not sure about the rest of them.

Give me a million dollars and I’d be happy to go on a round the world cruise with a £10 watch. The cruise would be so much more relaxing if I didn’t have to worry about losing my watch or having it stolen.

The next post of the day will be a haibun on the subject of auction sales. (Sorry, the day got away from me and it was posted in the early hours of toady, which would have been “tomorrow” when I originally posted about “The next post of the day.)

Photograph is borrowed from Country Life magazine website and Courtesy of The Estate of Steve McQueen/ Sotheby’s.

A Pottering Sort of Day

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I completed my research on Friendly Societies of the 19th Century today and tidied up my piece on the 1882 Preston Guild Medal worn by members of the Independent United Order of Mechanics. They were prone to schisms, sometimes over doctrine, sometimes over money, and a government report of the time says, with the air of a disappointed parent “it is very difficult to distinguish the different orders of Mechanics”. Tell that, I thought, to the members of the Free and Independent United Order of Mechanics, who were mainly based in the Lake District. Is it me, or are the words “Judean People’s Front” drifting in you mind now?

When I say “completed”, I mean completed it enough for the purposes of writing an article about a medallion. The full story of the Friendly Societies will probably never be known.

I’m now researching the 1914  medal issued by the town of Northampton to the children who had fathers serving in the Army or Navy. It’s associated with the Poor Children’s Dinner Fund and I’m having trouble disentangling the two things. They made 3,100 medallions for distribution, but they were lost by the railway company and not given out until mid-January.  There were 2,914 children who qualified, including 80 who, by 1914, had fathers who were either dead or “missing”. Considering that many of the early recruits were unmarried, this is a lot of kids. It would, of course, get considerably worse.

There were 879 Christmas hampers for the Fund to distribute in 1914, about 500 less than in 1913. The boot trade (Northampton’s main trade) had picked up in 1914 due to the need for military boots, so there were fewer poor people needing help. Seventy percent of British Army boots used in 1914-18 were made in Northampton, with one manufacturer doubling in output and many women involved in the wartime trade. they also made boots for the Russian Army.

This is a multi-purpose article, as it will do, with slightly different slants, for several different places. I’ve already used it to fill half a blog post. It will go on the Numismatic Society Facebook Page as an example of a medallion and on the research page of the Peterborough Military History Group. Peterborough was in Northamptonshire in 1914.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marx, Opium and a Senior Moment

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Refillable Pilot V7 – another of my doomed attempts to profit from product placement

Yesterday I missed posting and had to do it in the early hours of the morning. It had, as the post reveals, been a vexing day. When I tried to link to the post I found I had managed not to post it, and although it was on my list when I checked the posts, it was still a draft. I have just posted. A senior moment, and today looks like it may be a vexatious day too.

I mentioned Bargain Hunt yesterday, then realised there may be people who don’t know what its true place in society is. It basically fills the place that religion used to hold for many of us in the UK, and the political space that Marx claimed for religion – being the opiate of the people (or opium of the masses or whatever translation you prefer). Well, it is for those of us who are retired.

Pilot V7 – I wonder if a box of free pens is heading my way? You do hear stories . . .

There have been some heated discussions in the antiques world , I admit. I’ve been in some of them. But antique dealers have  never declared war on anyone just because they prefer Clarice Cliff to Susie Cooper, or consider Christopher Dresser to be the anti-Christ.

I looked for a new pen on Amazon yesterday as I sometimes like to use fineliners like the Pilot V7. I have a couple that are on their last legs and was wondering about buying some more. The trouble is that they are a little pricey for what they are, and they aren’t very ecological. Well, I found one on Amazon tha is refillable and, according to the card, is 72% recycled plastic and has 56% less CO2 impact. They don’t saw what it is actually 56% less than but it is a pen, not a politician, so it is probably not a downright lie.

Yes, not buying a new pen would have 100% less carbon impact, but it’s a start.

An advertising claim that is not as clear as it could be . . .

 

Oh dear, missed a post! Or a day. Whatever . . .

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It’s been a day of bits and pieces. Visit to the nurse this morning – all going well.  Bit of writing, indexing poetry. Lunch. Bargain Hunt. Wash up. Bit more writing. Unfortunately, nothing very useful. More indexing. Then my sister called and took me to hospital for my scan. Nothing major, just a foot. In fact just one toe. And only the tip of that toe. It’s already been X-rayed and pronounced clear, but the sent me a letter so I felt I had to go.

It’s probably an example of NHS waste, but it’s better to try to do too much than to do too little. Not that it mattered. They have a lengthy safety questionnaire before you have a scan. They also have a lot of other questions, which weren’t on the questionnaire, and it turned out that I couldn’t have a scan. I have to go back next week. I can’t keep asking my sister to give me a lift so that, like the extra (unnecessary) trip last week, is another £16 for taxis. Another hour and half out of my life.  Another evening spent feeling like my life is pointless and that I count for nothing. Another half hour spent lying uncomfortably in two badly fitting gowns. They make me wear one at the front and one at the back because, apparently, I am the only fat person who ever goes to hospital.

And then I checked my emails. I have had a rejection. Not only that, I have had some advice from the editor. It is very good of them to take the time to do it, but once again, as so often, the advice is basically to read some articles (links enclosed) as I am missing the whole point of haiku and haibun. The problem is, of course, that I have read much on this subject and had thought  I was doing it right. There’s a very fine line between being helpful and depressing.

However, I bought myself a new pen, which always brightens a day. More of that later. Time to post and go to bed.

Tomorrow, as they say, is another day . . .

On the other hand tomorrow is actually right now as it’s past midnight, and I need some sleep.

Note: Actually I then went to bed and forgot to post, so here it is, posted at 9.54 when I discovered I couldn’t link to it and found out it was still in drafts.

The Drudgery of Organisation

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Sign from the trackside between Grantham and Notingham

I have listed 44 published poems, with dates and details of first publication. I have been through them again, and they are now mainly in alphabetical order. There are several other lists to go through, then more searching to find the unlisted ones. I wish I’d been more organise. At least I was organised at times, which makes it easier than it might have been.

As a result of this month being so light on possible submissions I now have six weeks to get things organised. With any luck I may be able to submit some things as soon as the window opens in May. This was how I used to do it. In fact, I used to do all my submissions on the first day of the window instead of leaving it until the last minute. It was more relaxed and though my poetry probably wasn’t any better, it was at least edited properly.

Brick Train at Darlington

Experience tells me that I should not fritter this time away, and I am going to try not to do this. I have four minutes left, at which point it will be time o cook lunch for Julia before she goes off to help in the tearoom.

One thing I notice with my index of poems is that I have a lot of poems starting with the word “The”. I may have to try to be less formulaic.

To make the index more interesting I could, of course, index “The Banana in the Road”, an editor’s choice in Cattatils Spring 2022 edition as “Banana in the Road, The”.

It’s a thought . . .

Mallard at the National Railway Museum – looks fast even when she’s standing still.