Tag Archives: Salmon

Pruning Emails and Eating Salmon

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Sorry, I have been neglecting my readers. If it helps, I have also been neglecting myself and all sorts of things I should have been doing. Two days ago I deleted 31 emails. and left another six to be looked at later. I have just done 33 more and this evening I will no doubt get a few more. How many do you get?

Over the years I’ve whittled things down so I don’t get many, and I will be looking at them critically in the next few weeks to cut more out. Same goes for my postal deliveries – there are things that need to be stopped, and now that we are moving this seems like a good time to do it.

I’ve intermittently sent money to disasters and such, and bought via mail order, and some people just never seem to give up. I don’t mind helping people who are in trouble, in the short term, but it isn’t my responsibility to finance refugee camps in the long term. If governments can afford the bombs to create refugees they should be made to finance the care of the refugees they create. I have supported two charities for children for the last 20 or 25 years. I pay by direct debit and I pay whether I am in work or out of it. It’s not a great deal, but it has seemed quite a lot at times when business has been bad. Once I went to the shop and was paid a reliable wage, I was able to manage it quite comfortably. Even things I am interested in often go unread. I’m interested in nature but, to be frank, I’m less enthralled by details of the AGM or the latest request for extra money.

Fortunately spam filters have got better over the years, because things seemed to be a lot worse when you look back. I had a bad patch a few years ago when I went on a South African genealogy site. I had months of spam emails and pop-ups, presumably because my filters had to educate themselves about South African spam sites. The email box on the farm used to have frequent requests for help from the widows of African politicians. I presume, as with all things, there is a science behind spam and it is probably big business.

This isn’t the worst of the job. I have emails in my inbox which date back to 2011. I’m currently going through them at the rate of a couple of hundred a day to get rid of them. They relate to junior rugby and various similar things and most were kept as an archive in case I needed to refer back. Of course, you rarely do, and at the end of the season you can’t be bothered. Suddenly you have a few thousand surplus emails and you lose the will to do anything about them . . .

The sifting process is a mixed blessing. Some good times to remember, some low points to forget and a lot of things and people I have forgotten, or never thought about, in the last 13 years.

Modern life, eh?

The pictures are baked salmon with broccoli and asparagus. And mangetout peas and red peppers, soy sauce and sesame seed oil. Healthy oily fish with veg and a lack of carbs. It’s sort of a recipe from the internet. The salmon, broccoli and asparagus were bought specially but the rest was adjusted based on what was already in the fridge. It worked and it was easy, so I will probably do it again next week, or something similar.

By my standards, I find this quite impressive. It would, of course, be better with chips , or when battered into a chunky soup, but sometimes you have to make concessions to elegance.

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Soup, Salmon and Cheesy Comestibles

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More soup. Carrot and Lentil today, plus a few bits of parsnip, sweet potato and chickpea that were hanging about after being surplus to to other recipes. My favourite soups all seem to be orange.

In the evening we had salmon with stir-fried veg. I am not fond of fish, and the oily fish I am supposed to eat for health reasons is amongst the worst of the fish, well, except for rock salmon, hake, basa, sardines and kippers. And eels and pike. Actually, it’s not too bad when you think about it . . . Tuna is no longer an oily fish, according to the NHS, though it is still listed on other sites. Typical that the only palatable oily fish has been removed.

I have never particularly liked fish with bones in, like sardines and kippers, and after the incident with the fishbone in my school dinner I have always tried to avoid them.

The Winter Menu starts tomorrow, with multi-vegetable corned beef hash. This year I will not be slathering it in brown sauce as I am cutting down on pickles to reduce my salt and sugar intake. I have also ordered cheese footballs with the TESCO shopping on Saturday.  It’s more expensive and less efficient than ASDA but there are some things I specifically want from them.

Christmas cannot proceed without cheese footballs,, and once they are ordered Christmas has officially started. It’s a bit early, but they are in, and I don’t want to risk the smooth running of Christmas.

Political Limericks and Other Poems

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Warning, this post may include tedium. This is particularly true for overseas readers who may not recognise any of the names.

I was intending to write some political limericks last week, but haven’t been firing on all cylinders after being ill. A limerick, with five lines, two rhymes (AABBA) and anapestic meter is trickier than it looks. Even when my brain is replete with fish and purring like a sardine-stuffed cat, questions of metre have a tendency to take the shine off my day.

The answer I adopted, in line with my normal policy of lowering standards to match results, is to cut out all the difficult bits. That would suggest a clerihew, a form often used to make fun of famous figures. The rhymes are easy (AABB) and it has a sensibly easy-going view of line length and metre.

Theresa May

Gave a poll lead away

She lost her majority

and offended her sorority

or

Jeremy Corbyn

Rhymes with next to nothin’

A beardy, weirdy smarty

Who leads the Labour party

To be fair, I’m not sure how smart he is. As long as it isn’t libellous (and I’m pretty sure that accusing politicians of intelligence is not defamatory) I think I’m in the clear as accuracy doesn’t seem too important in clerihews.

Nicola Salmon

Has a tendency to bang on

About places north of the border

That sound a bit like Mordor

Other parties are available, but I can’t remember the names of any of the leaders.

I then had a look at senryu. They are like haiku but without the rules –  no cutting words, no season words and no nature. Seventeen syllables or less. You can include humour and human foibles. They are almost the limerick of Japanese poetry and, apart from throwing a selection of words on the table to see what happens, there can’t be many easier ways to write a poem.

Ripples of applause

A political speech

The sound of lyres

Sorry, it’s a cheap shot but I couldn’t resist.

As for my comment on throwing a selection of words on the table, there is a poet who does that at workshops. I forget her name but she was on Radio Four a couple of weeks ago when it was National Poetry Day. She travels the world with a big bag of words running poetry workshops in a career that makes professional cuddler look almost mainstream.