If Silence Is Golden...

Then this blog should be worth quite a bit more than it was...

Apologies and many thanks for coming back to check on things.

I will never take the mickey out of the 'Flu again. I can see why it killed more people in 1918 than died in the first world war. I still haven't shaken it off properly.

I have gone back to work twice; the last time the boss made me sign a note saying that I wouldn't return until I was fully fit!! (I do have a great boss though, and no, she doesn't read this).

Worse thing was, I was supposed to be having a hernia repair operation on Thursday last. The Anaesthetist took one listen to my chest and he sent me packing too.

Nobody wants a Phantom with the Flu.

The Difference Between Flu and a Cold…

Is about three days of total feeling-like-shit.

I have had the Flu….

I have managed to miss

World Book Day,

St. David's Day

and The First Birthday of This Blog.

Moan, Whinge, Wheeze...

(Coughs Again....

More Tomorrow, If Spared....

Tomorrow England and Ireland, Next Month The World!!

Oh, the decline of Empire!

Tomorrow is World Book Day. In England. And Ireland.....

Err...

That's It...

Pink Bits on the map, where are they now?

Apparently The Rest of The World celebrate WBD on April 23rd. This has been deliberately chosen as it is (probably) Shakespeare's Birthday.

It takes little imagination to see why Ireland would not wish to have a major celebration on the birthday of England's greatest writer. A day which also happens to be the feast of St. George, patron saint of England.

But why don't the English celebrate it then?

I feel a campaign coming on....

Spring is Springing

In our part of London last week was half-term, a chance for students and staff alike to gather their wits and strength for the exam season to come. I spent many (too many?) years as a student, and it is only recently that the thought of June has ceased to give my stomach a sick lurch. (Now working in the education world I can enjoy watching the discomfiture of others without the sleepless nights that always accompanied my exam build-up).

Last week passed too quickly, and today's back-to-work feeling is only just wearing off. It isn't that I dislike my work; just that being away from it for a week reminded me that I rather like not working. This is different from being unemployed. (Being unemployed is miserable. I should know. I had an enforced career change that left me jobless for a year and a half.) Not working means being able to play with the visiting cats rather than pushing them out through the door in the morning. It means being able to make bread for the next day's sandwiches, to be consumed with a flask of tea at Kew Gardens in the spring sunshine. It means having the time to print and frame some of the digital photographs you have taken.

Mind you, it also means tidying the bedroom and cleaning the oven out, but you cant win 'em all.

Tonight, after a week not a work, I really noticed that I was arriving home in daylight. Spring is definitely here now.

A Happy New Year To All Our Readers (Part Two)

Last night found the Phantom, Mrs P and nine carefully selected friends enjoying the lights of London's very own Chinatown...



Mind you, as it was Chinese New Year we were far from alone. Gerard Street was shoulder-to-shoulder, jam packed. People were queueing in the streets to get a table in the restaurants. Luckily we had booked ahead, about three weeks before. We hadn't actually realised when we booked that it would be New Year... Why had we gathered?

To celebrate a very important Birthday!

I won't say how old my wife is, but it rhymes with Shifty, Nifty and Thrifty. (Two out of those three adjectives could even be applied to her.)

Our gathering had all the makings of a joke - amongst others we had a nun, a lawyer, an accountant and an insurance salesman. Good job nobody had to change a lightbulb....

To everyone who made last night such a special and enjoyable occasion, Thank You.

And Cheers!!

Today's Sandwich Selection for Sixth Formers

The Phantom will let you know if he starts leaping into phone boxes and wearing his pants on the outside!!

Talking Turkey

Last Friday, as the Bernard Mathews turkey scare gobbled up even more headlines, our college caterers excelled themselves with the half-price dish of the day, turkey burgers.

To say that the first appearance of turkey on the menu this year was ill-timed is an understatement. Today however, our caterers excelled themselves. Our students were proudly offered pre-packed turkey salad sandwiches, each one bearing a sticker - "Turkey - A Superfood,".

AAARGGHHH!!!

Thank You New Blogger. I know my laptop needs upgrading, Windows '98 SE is not supported anymore etc etc. But old Blogger worked perfectly with it, no problems. With the new Google-powered blogger I have to log in to GoogleGroups and then sneak in sideways. Logging in through the front door seems impossible. Well, I spent about three hours trying to do it over the weekend - three hours I would have much preferred to have spent bloody blogging.

Forcibly Moved!

Against my will I have been forcibly "Migrated" to the Blairite New Blogger. I have read an awful lot of things about it, none good. I offer my apologies now for any unsightly changes to the appearance of this blog, and any gaps in posting. Blogger managed to lock me out totally yesterday. I am still not sure if I can post from my laptop! Time will tell...

Bon Voyage

Further to my preceding post. Yesterday I released my first book “into the wild”. I had given it all the advantages I could. It was lunchtime, and I chose a park which has a pretty high through-traffic. I protected the book in a waterproof see-through zip-lock bag, and a big yellow Post-It proclaimed “I’m Not Lost, I’m Free!” on the cover. I even included a bookmark which explains more about the bookcrossing idea.


I had sat down on a bench in the middle of the park. I took the book from my bag and placed it on the bench next to me. Mental images of John le Carre novels washed over me. Even though my heart was racing I tried to look nonchalant. I guess I rather ruined the cool approach by reaching into my bag for my camera and taking a last photo before I walked off!




I moved into cover about a hundred yards away and ate my lunch, deliberately not looking over to the bench and its package.

About ten minutes later, lunch eaten but not remembered or really even noticed, I couldn’t resist walking back for a look.

My book had gone. Flown into the wild.

Only about a fifth of books released ever get “journaled” on the website, but at least mine had rapidly found a new owner. News could arrive at any time, an email to say the book has a new entry on the website.

I wish the new owner happy reading.

The Guardian recently had an article concerning bookcrossing. As always, the Phantom is just ahead of the crest of the wave!!

Making the World...

One of the first posts on this blog was about World Book Day. It will be coming round again in only a few weeks.

I would like to mention two book related sites that I have been spending some time on recently.

The first is Librarything.com. Put simply, it is a site that will catalogue your books for you. All you need to do is just type in the ISBNs. Pretty soon you will have a searchable catalogue database, all held on the web and accessible from wherever you have a connection. Librarything allows you to label books with your own tags and search among other user's collections.


The second site is Bookcrossing.com.

Bookcrossing is all about "making the world a library". You find a book you like, register it (for free), and let it go, releasing it on a park bench or in a waiting-room. The next person who finds the book and likes it enough to take it away is invited to go online and look the book up. Just by going to the site and typing in a short number (written inside the book) they can see where the book has been, and what other people ("Journalers") thought of it. The idea is to make a new Journal entry, and then, after reading the book, leave it somewhere for someone else to find.

Such a simple idea, but it is already building a real community of booklovers.

I will be putting sidebar links up very soon.

Blogging Goes Mainstream

It had to happen eventually! Bloggers have finally become accepted into that epitome of Little Britain, The Archers. Ambridge has always been at the forefront of the techno-revolution. The village has its own website, and the local pub, The Bull, even has an internet cafe.

Now, Ian and Adam, recently "Civil Partnered", have set up a blog on which to document their honeymoon trip. Mind you, they are the only gays in the village, and therefore allowed to be a little avant garde.

A Month Since Christmas

It’s hard to believe but it really is one twelfth of a year since Christmas day. It’s been a long month, tiring. Going back to work always takes an effort, but especially so when the mornings are still dark, and the cold nights make a warm duvet even more difficult to throw off.

It doesn’t even seem like a week since gales were sweeping the country. Yesterday brought the first of the winter’s snow for those of us in the south. I had to rush into work for an early start, but I couldn’t resist snatching a photo of our garden.



The snow works a silent magic every time.

With time seeming to speed up, now is the moment to start planning for the coming summer in our garden. The pyramid on the right in the photo is a mini greenhouse, a Growmate. A few years ago we got organised, sowing seeds and growing petunias, bizzy-lizzies, salvias, chillis, basil and tumbling tomatoes. Recently we have let things slip, and the Growmate has been more of a storage space. (Though Bernard, one of our visiting cats, was using it as an highly architectural litter tray until we discovered what he was doing.)

This year will be different. (Do we say that every year?) I have learned my lessons. After our first successful year I got over-ambitious, planting seeds too early when the days were still too short. The resulting seedlings grew spindly and fell over, or succumbed to damping-off. This year I will plan ahead, but bide my time…

English – The Language of Uncertainty

If the purpose of a newspaper headline is to convey unequivocal meaning quickly, this headline singularly fails the test…



When I first saw the above headline (on the current edition of Eastern Eye) I thought it concerned a vigorous debate about reincarnation! It turned about to be about a man released from prison in Pakistan. I link to the Guardian’s article here.

Before and After

This was the proud, three storey high billboard which used to face our college.




After today's Gales this was all that was left to clear up...



It looked bloody heavy too. Luckily nobody was hit, though the debris closed one lane of the road for the afternoon

An Ill Wind

I wrote the previous item in my lunchbreak. It was only when I went out for a stroll later that I realised quite how bad the weather is here in London.

Just outside our college a large advertising hoarding had been blown down onto the road. The park just down the road had been closed because a number of trees had been uprooted.

Now, at afternoon break time, our college is empty and, for once, silent.

A glass roof at the front of our building has been bucking and twisting, threatening to shatter at any moment. It is right in front of our main entrance (and exit) and is our main fire route out of the building. Naturally that exit can’t be used, so all the students have been sent home. There are just three of us in the library now, and the place feels like a cross between the Titanic and the Marie Celeste….

Lowpoint of the Year

There is definitely something in the air at this time of year. A miasma of malaise seems to hover just above everyone you talk to. Although the days have been getting longer for nearly a month now, they still seem pinched, grey, drab and dismal. The mornings are still dark and oppressive. I normally wake up a few minutes before my alarm goes off. In the last week I have slept clean through the alarm three times.

January 2nd may have been the worst day
for staff sickness generally, but in our library we have had 20% sickness rates all week long. Half term is only a month away, but it feels like forever to wait….

The last few days all I have felt good for when I get home is just crashing out on the floor in front of the TV and the paper, or falling asleep in the armchair with one of our visiting cats.

Still, things aren’t necessarily better when the sun is shining. Check out this article
from my friend Welsh Dog over at Opinion Australia.

After reading that, the rain and greyness doesn’t seem so bad after all!

The GJP

The Grilled Jacket Potato is one of the few items in my culinary repertoire that I actually feel I have invented. I say "feel" because in the kitchen very few ideas are new. All i can say with any honesty is that I don't recall seeing the idea anywhere else.

One of the most common uses of the microwave must surely be making a jacket potato. They certainly cook quickly,but they can be somewhat unsatisfying. The very speed with which they cook seems to deprive the spud of flavour. Cooked in a traditional oven the outside skin crisps up, providing depth of flavour and contrasts in texture. The nuked spud seems soft and pallid in comparison.

My technique is designed to give the potato back some some flavour and texture. It is still quick, and the gain in flavour is significant.

1. Prick potato with fork a couple of times and cook as normal in the microwave.

2. Cut potato in half through longest axis.

3. Score cut sides of spud lightly in a diamond pattern.

4. Cut a piece of butter about an inch square from a fridge-hard block.

5. Spear butter with a fork and run gently over the cut surface of the potato, allowing as much butter to melt as your waistline or conscience will allow.

6. Grind plenty of black pepper and salt onto the now slightly roughened, buttery surface.

7. Place under a pre-heated grill until golden, brown, and irresistible.



I came up with the idea as an alternative to full-on roast potatoes. You get some of the crunch without so many calories!

The Last of the Christmas Veg Box

It is amazing how dependent one can get on a vegbox. Last night we used the last vegetable from our enlarged order delivered the Friday before Christmas. We are counting the days…

We had ordered an extra cauliflower, and it was still lovely and fresh when we had it last night, to accompany roast chicken and our special invention, the Grilled Jacket Potato. (More on the GJP tomorrow.)


Now, spuds, cauliflower and chicken could end up being a plate full of grey. However, we still had some double cream left in the fridge, and plenty of cheese. So, feeling indulgent, we decided to have cauliflower cheese. The gratineed top lifts the whole meal.




Doesn’t this look delicious?

The secret to a good Cauli Cheese is simple, steam the cauliflower for just a few minutes and then allow to cool, uncovered. This make sure the cauli is dry, preventing the cheese sauce from being thinned down by watery juices, and still leaving the veg with some texture.

The sauce was made with ½ pint milk, ¼ pint double cream, a couple of tablespoons of plain flour and roughly a quarter of a packet of butter. The technique was Delia Smith’s all-in-one white sauce method.


I used extra flour for a thicker end result. Once the sauce was made, and off the heat, I added a goodly amount of grated mature cheddar, and a small amount of freshly grated parmesan. The mixture was assembled in a greased gratin dish, the cauliflower given a dusting of nutmeg before the sauce was put on, and finally finished with a further sprinkling of parmigiano on top of the sauce. Twenty minutes in a hot oven did nicely. You can give it a flash under the grill to finish colouring the top if needed.

This dish is so good, you could have it as a main course with just a salad and some crusty bread.

Happy New Year To All Our Readers

Wherever you are in the world we both hope you have a Happy and Healthy 2007.

My fellow Finsbury Park blogger a.c.t. posted a photo of her family Nativity scene.

Over here at Phantom H.Q. the Health and Safety Inspectors decided that straw and our passion for night-lights was a bit of a risky combination, so we had to give the hay the old heave ho.

We like a slightly non-traditional twist, so see if you can spot the odd-one-out in our crib scene...




This just happens to be post 101. It seems appropriate to hit a turning point like that on the first day of the New Year. Phantom's Resolution? Keep Blogging!!