Monday, 9 November 2009

Pollock Saratoga















Fish - three good sized ones and a wee for good measure - gutted and cleaned
Garlic - crushed
Parsley - chopped
Tomato - sliced
Green Pepper - sliced
Wine Wine - glug glug glug - splash
Olive Oil - glug glug
Plenty of Salt and Pepper

Stuff the fish - add the wet, season, bake in sealed container/foil.

Bingo.

Why this recipe should be Saratoga - the site of one of the worlds most important battles ever - no really it sez so on Saratoga.org - I've no idea. I found it on the web, but refined it through the addition of green pepper. Naturally the freshest fish - caught by yer own fair hands, is imperative - and I'd suggest serving it with rice cos the sauce turns out to be one of the deliciousist ever and needs a bland carrier.

I'd recommend fishing on one of those beautifully crisp and still winter days, and take your camera with new batteries, following the advice of an esteemed blog reader.

We fished with two new spinners - I caught three fish on five casts with the first - then The Girl tried and the spinner was snagged......and then lost. Then I cast once with the other new spinner, caught a fish - then The Girl tried and the spinner was snagged.....and then lost.

Good sized fish, so even with the cost of the spinners it was a reasonably cheap meal, but The Girl was a bit despondent.















Check the tide tables, this tide was only about 3m - any higher and I think The Girl might get washed away.




Friday, 6 November 2009

Tasty recipe of the day

Hold me back hold me back hold me back.

Bug yer minister

Follow this link to write to Alistair Darling (or equivalent if you're not a UK voter) and ask him to discuss climate change at tomorrows G20 finance ministers meeting in St Andews. You need to do it today or tomorrow (November 6 & 7th).

G20 managed to find £600bn to stimulate the economy after the financial crash last year. Groups like Avaaz are only asking for £150bn climate change package. Well it would be start.

Add your voice:


(when I wrote this they had got just over 5000 signatures, they are aiming for 25000 - how many have they got now?)

Sunday, 1 November 2009

Saturday night

Yay! We went to the pub!

Totally spontaneously we got the opportunity to spend nigh on three hours in the pub on a Saturday night. FAB-U-LOUS. And not only was it an excellent little birthday treat but it was Halloween and therefore an excuse to lay on a dance in the village hall and for the locals to get dressed up for it. The pub was rockin'. Lots of young uns, not too many inebriates and plenty of high spirits. We had babysitting duties so couldn't get to the dance - one day we will, for better or for worse.

Our Saturday night excursions were fueled by a black forest gateau that I'd asked Jussi to bake for me. A fantastic treat - I think only the second bfg I've had in my life, the first being on my 19th birthday when I was too pissed to notice.

And it was all washed down by an unfeasibly large mug of tea from those nice people in Bonaly. This is a 1.5 pint mug - over 800ml - two tea bag sized. Phenomenal.




Saturday, 31 October 2009

Happy Birthday Simon

I also get emails from Ed Milliband. He sent me one this morning. It was a link to this. Cheers Ed.


Friday, 30 October 2009

Bloggers junk mail

Bloggers get junk mail. Usually it comes from some twerp who runs a dubious-looking health food store in California - and in exchange for a link to their website they promise a free prize draw for an organic cotton T shirt. I don't succumb.

But this time I will. The email is copied below so you can pursue the links if you wish. When will people realise that buying unnecessary stuff, such as that sold at Nigel's Eco-store, is no way to save the world? How disappointing to see Caroline Lucas as chief judge, and various other luminaries of the green world who really should know better - allowing themselves to give credence to this poorly disguised advertising gimmick for Nigels Eco-Store. Cos that is all it is. If Nigel was really green he'd never be running a shop like this.

So I've nominated this blog, and this post, in the hope that the judges might get to read this and wake up to how cheap they really are. Here's the email:

Hello Simon,

My name is Diana, the intern at Nigel's Eco Store. I am trying to raise awareness of our Green Web Awards, now in its 2nd year. You can find info about the Awards at http://www.nigelsecostore.com/green-web-awards/ - any chance you could mention it in your great blog?

Of course feel free to participate by nominating some of your favourite green websites (which could include your own!) http://www.nigelsecostore.com/green-web-awards/nominate/ . Last year it was a great success, you can see the winners in its 12 categories at http://www.nigelsecostore.com/green-web-awards/2008/

I hope that through people like me and you we can push it one step further.

Please check the website and feel free to forward it to everyone who you think would want to participate or have any interest in green web.

You can also follow the progress of Green Web Awards on Twitter or Facebook :
twitter.com/greenwebawards
facebook.com/greenwebawards

Thank you!

--  Diana Office Assistant  Nigel's Eco Store www.nigelsecostore.com Office Tel: 01273 710770   Nigel's Eco Store 55 Coleridge Street, Hove, East Sussex BN3 5AB

Up yours

If the sun was the size of a man and located in the Glasgow Science Centre, Uranus would be in Thurso and would be roughly the size of a small coin. It's worthwhile pausing here and thinking - all that space!

It just so happens that astronomy clubs throughout Scotland are roughly located where planets would be, so we have a Scottish Solar System.

I went to a talk last night where I learnt this stuff. It was very good.

But more interesting were the audience which included a couple of old dears whose parents ran a local post office when they were kids. It was great back in those days (I suppose we're talking 1930s, 40s & 50s). Grandad ran a bakery (you can still see it's chimney down by the harbour) and another relation had a lorry that used to pick up groceries off the train in Thurso then drive round Sutherland selling them on. Few people had cars and children were plentiful and happy.

In the post office the post used to come in around 11pm. The worst time of year was Christmas, because all the local crofters would send friends and relations chickens. You killed a chicken by wringing its neck. Then you tied a label around its neck with the lucky recipients address on it. One year they sent out 16 sacks of chickens 'wrapped' in this way in one day. The stench was awful.......

Thursday, 29 October 2009

Postie

It will be my birthday on Saturday. You've still got time.

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Relax

If you've come straight from reading that last post you'll need some relaxation. Here, from cheapskate jazz collections is an amusing little ditty to sooth away all that pent up angst.


I have a prejudice against guitars in jazz - this works fine though, and I love the games with the time signatures giving a weird kind of syncopated syncopation - especially in what I guess might be the middle 8, though it's not in the middle and I've no idea how to count to 8. Or as someone else put it:

"The music of Zevious shrewdly juxtaposes order and its opposite: structural intensity pushed to its breaking point in the most appealing way. These boys are brilliant and fearless." --Vijay Iyer


Lose lose situation

F****** W** C***s crop up in all walks of life. Depending on the situation F****** W** C***s can take on a human form, be animals - especially obstinate animals, or they can be inanimate. When inanimate the F****** W** C*** is most often associated with machinery of some kind - however simple. Whatever manifestation it chooses, the F****** W** C*** delights in springing surprises, and revealing itself unexpectedly and turning a simple job into a trial, a quest of mythological proportions.

When confronted with a F****** W** C***, a good tactic is to scream "F****** W** C***" at the top of your voice, repeatedly and with abandon. The act of screaming in this way has the effect of encouraging blood flow to the region of the head and will, eventually, induce a state of calm (or, I guess, a lethal brain haemorrhage) and one can then take stock and seek to overcome the F****** W** C***.

If the F****** W** C*** is worth it's salt it will hide for a few moments before revealing itself in a slightly, oh so slightly, different form, and scuppering one once more. If this happens one should revert to screaming "F****** W** C***", it must surely be that the F****** W** C*** has returned because one didn't shout it with sufficient feeling and venom in the first place.

If this still doesn't seem to be scaring the F****** W** C*** away, try varying the emphasis, for example:
"F****** W** C***" or
F****** W** C***" or
"F****** W** C***" or even putting multiple stresses in the sentence:
"F****** W** C***".

If still thwarted one can add a musical element by varying the pitch of the screams. This is most effective when the pitch is raised, and can also be combined with the use of multiple stresses for advanced F****** W** C*** combat. For example
"F****** W** C***".

Caution should be exercised if considering expanding the sentence being screamed. So for example, it may be tempting to progress to something along the lines of:
"You F****** W** C***y Sh***", but such progressions risk exhausting one, and once one is exhausted the F****** W** C*** has most definitely won.

Yesterday I was confronted by a F****** W** C*** manifesting itself as a wheelbarrow wheel. Verily it was a cunning wee blighter.
1. It began by making it impossible to fit the new tyre I'd bought over the wheel.
2. Then it shifted to making it impossible to feed the valve of the inner tube through the wheel rim.
3. Once this was achieved it was impossible to attach a pump to the valve to inflate the tyre.
4. When this was eventually achieved the tyre deflated most rapidly, thus indicating a puncture.
5. Cleverly (we are talking advanced F****** W** C*** here), it was then impossible to remove the tyre and inner to locate the puncture and fix it.

Unusually at this point F****** W** C*** took a break and decided to have all the tools required to progress readily available. But it was a ploy to lull me further into the cunning F****** W** C***'s trap.

6. Once located and fixed and tested to ensure that the repair was sound, one must return to step one above. So to aid understanding and in the name of brevity I will adopt a notation whereby 1 is the step and in brackets will be the number of times the step has been executed. So we've fixed the puncture and must now reassemble the wheel:
1(2), 2(2), 3(2), 4(2), "Steady on" I hear you cry "You've gone back to having a puncture again". How astute of you. But I was not to be defeated:
5(2), 6(2), 1(3), 2(3), 3(3). Not finished yet!

4(3), 5(3).

The problem was that the puncture was beside the seam of the inner tube and at a point where for some reason the manufacturer had decided it would be really cool to give the inner tube some texture, in this case ribbing. This ribbing made it very difficult to create a smooth enough surface to get the whole patch to stick down. As for testing the repair, well I guess I was just too much of a Jessie to inflate the inner enough to really test the repair. I found it kinda scary inflating the inner outside the protection of its tyre.

So so far I've patched the puncture, and then over-patched the repair with a bigger patch. But those pesky little ribs in the inner tube are doing a superb job.

7 So next I rip off the repairs to date and try again. 6 (3) This time I use a super new-fangled glueless plastic patch.

1(4), 2(4), 3(4). PHEW!
4(4). Shite.
5(4), 7(2), 6(4) returning to the good old rubber patches. 8 - give the whole area a really good sand down so that this patch will really stick man.

1(5), 2(5), 3(5)............................................
............................................
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............................................
............................................
............................................
............................................
............................................
............................................
............................................
............................................wait for it
............................................
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............................................seems OK huh?
............................................
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Yay! I won. Hah! Take that ya F****** W** C***!!

So then, at last, it was a simple matter of fixing the wheel back onto the wheelbarrow, tidy up and put away all the tools and get on with the things to be done. The whole small matter of fitting a new tyre to the wheelbarrow had taken over 2 and 1/2 hours. First job was to use the newly serviceable wheel barrow to








4 (5)

F****** W** C*** !!!!!!!
















































Edinburgh vision

Phew err eh? Never mind all that trams nonsense* - what Edinburgh really needs is this, running up the Mound beside the Waverley Steps.

Thanks to Town Mouse for the link.

* Eeek - more footnotes. Oh well - according to people I know in Edinburgh there are very few who have any patience left for the tram project. Which is a pity really, although I've always wondered why so much money is being spent developing and connecting riverside Edinburgh to anything - it'll be underwater in a few decades.