The Power of Wine and Cheese

It could be argued that this story should be filed under "Only In America". However, I think this news item about the redemptive power of a good red wine and a piece of cheese holds out hope for us all!

One Man's Meat...

Sometimes a particular second-hand bookshop will call out to me. Maybe I haven’t been there for a while. Sometimes I just get a feeling...

I was in the Traid shop in Holloway Road when I found this…




I get the feeling that Welsh Dog already has a copy, but if you don’t, you can find it on Amazon here.



It has somewhat mixed reviews…

“I've sent copies to several of my friends as Christmas presents and I'm sure they will find it just as funny as I do.”

Contrasting with…

“Never before have I waited with breath so baited, only to have every dream, hope and wish crushed. This book is nothing of what I had heard. The prose is uninspired, and lend the book a pompous and smug air, not unlike that Jamiroquai Rowling what writes kids books except treats the kids like idiots incapable of keeping a single thoughts in their head. Except this is worse; the witless and insipid text positively inspires vomiting (projectile) from every reader, sucking out the very essence of what makes a good read and replacing your heart with a heavy grey twilight. I do not recommend buying this.”…

One may guess which review, if any, was written by the author:-)

.

Ever Get The Feeling Someone Is Looking Over Your Shoulder?

I was trying to finish my book yesterday, stretched out in the garden in one of the rare dry spells of the last two months.

Then I became aware....





I was not alone...

Man at Work!

Apologies for the lack of new writing. I am still at work behind the scenes!

Coming tomorrow - An Interesting find in a charity shop, and a new take on reading over someone's shoulder...

Tinkering Under The Hood

I'll be upgrading the Template for this blog in a minute. So, just in case all goes horribly quiet here, at least you will know why!

UPDATE 23:00

Mmm. Not bad if I say so myself. Getting There!

Just About Dried Out.

Yesterday's trip to Hampton Court Flower Show was as rain-soaked as we had feared. Large area of the showgrounds were already looking like the Somme and this was only the first day of the show!

Highlights in the show gardens were this, inspired by the idea of a Miller's plot



And this garden, where the designers actually got right to the construction stage before someone said "'ere, It looks like the bleedin' Tellytubbies"



And, at the end of the day, as we trudged muddy and weary through the sodden fields that form the car parks, the sun came out, and we all looked for the plant pot of gold...

And The Rain It Raineth Every Day.

The photo above was taken on our trip to the South Bank on Saturday. As you can see it rained somewhat.

(It wasn't really that bad, my better half was actually standing inside a water sculpture).

We found the book exchange hut, took a couple and left a book of our own. I ended up being interviewed on video for a film project on Bookcrossing. I guess they were probably on the lookout for someone suitably eccentric looking, then I turned up, wearing the T-shirt.

We finished the afternoon with an excellent lunch at the OXO Tower Brasserie. After the last few days it was lovely just to slip into the world of the beautiful people, the ladies who lunch, and just indulge ourselves and be somewhere else for a while.

I'm writing this on the laptop, slowly getting a crick in the neck, and cramp in my typing finger. I would sit properly and type with both hands, but Visiting Cat Bernard has me pinned to the sofa by using the simple feline tactic of lying on his back, paws up in the air, whilst lying along my legs.

The look of sublime joy on his face would not look out of place on a ceiling angel in the Sistine Chapel.

Tomorrow we are off to Hampton Court For the Flower Show. Normally one of the highlights here are the water gardens. I wonder if we will be able to tell one from the other. The forecast is for heavy, thundery showers. In defiance, the Legal Eagle and her Beau are going to be taking us there in the convertible. I hope they have been practising getting the roof up quickly. I fear they may end up with the only Volvo to boast an in-car swimming pool.

News and photos soon!

Life Goes On

Things are pretty grim at home. My Mother-in-law has not responded much to the treatment she has had so far. Repeated trips up to the hospital are wearing my wife out. At home there is always an anxiety. Always the phone going. Always the doorbell ringing.

Friends and relations mean well, but they don't appreciate the collective drain they impose upon the immediate family.

We need to get out and away for a bit, time to refresh our batteries.

My wife and I will be attending what is billed as the biggest Bookcrossing event ever held in the U.K. It's part of a literature festival on London's South Bank (Or Southbank, as I believe we are expected to call it). It's this Saturday, details here.

Even if we don't find any books (I fancy the Blake) It will be good to be in the fresh air. We'll probably go for a walk, and see if we can spot any metal men.

How Quickly Life Changes

On Wednesday afternoon, during my lunch break, I booked our summer holiday. We could both do with one. It has been a tough spring. My wife and I were planning a lovely meal for the evening, and everything was good.

Then my wife got a phone call. Her mum (who lives with us) had collapsed in the street, and was in the local hospital Accident and Emergency unit. We were not too worried. They said she was OK. We figured it would be three for dinner while we pampered her a little.

When my wife got to the hospital it turned out that my mother-in-law had had a "massive" stroke, was paralysed down her right side, and had lost the power to speak.

We have since learned that she has developed a chest infection. The next few days will be critical. She is in her eighties, and things could easily get worse quickly.

But in the middle of this there are still moments that bring a smile to our lips.

Tigger, one of our visiting cats, has good reason to like the old human with the white hair. She opens the patio doors for him most mornings and gives him his breakfast long before my wife and I are up and about.

Yesterday, I let him in. He wandered around the kitchen, sniffing. Then he strolled off very casually and went upstairs.

After ten minutes or so I went up to check where he was, but couldn't see him anywhere.

Then I looked in my mother-in-law's bedroom.

No sign of Tigger anywhere...

Then I saw the duvet on the bed moving ever so slightly, rising up and down with the breathing of a very contented Tigger, under the covers, fast asleep in my wife's mothers bed....

Safety First

After my problems with the main PC at the beginning of the week, I have decided to take some preventative action. I have just bought a 120 Gigabyte portable hard drive. It comes with software to automate a back-up procedure whenever the user specifies. At least this way, should the main hard drive fail, I will always have a back-up ready to copy over. The thought of all my music and pictures just disappearing due to component failure is horrendous.

If we are to live in cyberspace, we always need to keep a spare!

Technical Problems Update

And the hot news is that the techies could find nothing wrong, I took the PC home and now everything is hunky dory!!

One can only assume there was a loose component somewhere in the PC. They took it apart, dusted it, and put it back. I am writing this on the very machine.

All-in-all the £15.00 minimum fee seems very reasonable as long as the problem doesn't return.

Of course, the moral of this tale is

***Always Back Up Your Data!!! ***

I had all my music safe on my Ipod, and all of my photos are on CD or still on the digital camera. After dinner though, I am going to go through the files on this PC and see what else I need to copy. Before it is too late!

Isn’t Technology Wonderful?

Just heard from the computer technicians who have had my ailing PC since yesterday morning. They have checked it over, but can find nothing wrong at all. The finger of suspicion now points to my LCD flat screen monitor. (Which I did not take to the tecchies). If I was Welsh Dog, I would just reach into my pile of old monitors and plug one in. Me, I don’t have any spares.

So, I will have to collect the main PC unit and then plug it all back together again, plug in the screen, and switch on. If it still doesn’t come on, it’s probably the monitor.

I’ll be hoping it is. The alternative, an intermittent fault, is too wearisome to contemplate.

Excuses, Excuses.

I was going to title this blog "The Rumours of my Death have been Greatly Exaggerated".
I googled the phrase just to check that it was Mark Twain that said it. Google produced 2,020,000 hits. They confirmed two things.

1. It was Mark Twain.
2. Practically every blogger under the sun has used it as a blog title, usually when returning to the blogosphere after an extended absence.

I've not posted in about three weeks, for which I offer my apologies. My period of silence was mostly caused by going back to work. I've only been doing half days, but it has taken it out of me. (Other things that were taken out of me can be discussed with the consultant who did my hernia repair at the beginning of May).

Work hasn't got any easier either. A couple of work colleagues are moving on to new posts and that means I'm having to take on new responsibilities. It's been busy to say the least.

It hasn't all been hard slog though. I've released a few books in the last few days as part of my drive to promote Bookcrossing. While I was off-air I found my first wild release, and had one of my wild releases journalled. Do check the site out, it's a great idea with over half a million members.

I have plans to add a few widgets onto the blog, such as a link to my Bookcrossing home page and my Librarything catalogue. However, I think my antipodean friend Welsh Dog has spread his technical curse over on this side of the planet. My main PC has gone on the fritz (technical term) and the screen is dead. Well, that's tomorrow morning gone already whilst I try and work out if it's the monitor, the graphics card or, (God forbid), the hard drive that has failed. We had a power cut a few days ago - lets hope it wasn't a power surge or the whole kit and caboodle could be fried!!

More soon.

Boy Do I Know The Feeling!

After the last few weeks of recovery I had to include this link. Many thanks to my Best Man, Welsh Dog, who is very big Down Under!

Feeling Lonely (2)

My wife and I go back a long way. God Willing we will celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary in less than four months time.

One of our little traditions is to wish each other happy anniversary every Friday evening at around 8.20. This goes back to our first date, which was at this time and on that day.


This Friday my better half is on a training course which won't finish until nine this evening.

I know it's not long, but I miss having her to say "Happy Anniversary" to.


It makes some people cringe, others rush to throw up. We think it is a lovely reminder. Relationships change over the years, no one is identical to themselves twenty years before. This is our way of reminding ourselves about the passion, the excitement and the strength of the feelings we had all those years ago.

Feeling Lonely

It's not often that I get to feel lonely. I'm a pretty self-contained individual. I guess it's the legacy of being an only child. But the last few days I have felt something or someone was missing. I'm afraid to say it is this book:



Regular readers may have noticed that it appeared as my "On The Bus Book" for quite a while. This was because Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, is a book and a half. Actually it's three books. And even then it's only the first part of a trilogy! (The Baroque Cycle).

It's a historical epic anchored around real people such as Isaac Newton and King Louis 14th of France. It's a Fantasy, a philosophical work-out, a primer in Cartesian geometry, a pirate story. I could go on. It even had a Wiki devoted to it.

In short, it's a brilliant book, which I feel bereft of now I have finished it. To actually get 900 pages through and feel sad that it has ended says something for the quality of the experience that Neal Stephenson provides.

I already have the second volume of the trilogy sitting in the bedroom, but I'm making myself wait a while before I dive in. I'm like a smoker in a non-smoking area, glancing at my fag-packet every now-and-then for reassurance that I can get a hit later.

Veg Box Day Soup

Today I found tired spring onions and some lackluster carrots glaring at me resentfully from the veg rack.Friday is the day of the Phantom's Veg Box delivery. A day of "out with the old, in with the new". So it was use it or lose it time.

I had some stock left over from last night's supper, so soup seemed to be the natural thing to make. I made this today while my wife was in the garden cutting the grass and generally daring the rain to start.The recipe below doesn't take long to make or cook, and is ideal for lunch.

I refer to a "seed-toasting pan". This isn't some special gadget. If you ever have a small old saucepan that has lost its non-stick, or seen better days, don't throw it. Use it for dry toasting seeds such as coriander and cumin for curries, or pine nuts for salads and pesto.

I also refer to a mortar and pestle. Obviously not everyone will have one. I didn't feel up to rummaging for ours. As I am still taking things very easy I just used the end of my rolling pin and a large bowl!

Carrot and Coriander Soup.

10 small carrots, 5 medium or 2 or 3 monsters
3 small or 2 medium onions, or 2 large bunches of spring onions
2 heaped tablespoons of split red lentils
2 pints chicken stock
2 level tablespoons of whole coriander seeds.
2 cloves garlic
Olive oil

Peel carrots and onions. Chop both roughly to the size of Dolly Mixtures.

Wet the bottom of a medium saucepan with olive oil. When hot add onions, and let soften for 5 minutes or so. Then add carrots, stir, and continue to cook gently for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Try not to burn any of the onion.

Meanwhile, put the coriander seeds into the dry seed-toasting pan and heat over a medium gas, shaking the pan every so often. The seeds will darken slightly and give off a nutty smell. This should only take a minute or two. Pour the seeds into the mortar to cool, then grind with the pestle until fairly fine.

Chop the garlic coarsely, and add it and the split red lentils to the veg pan and cook for a further couple of minutes.

Add the crushed coriander to the veg pan, stir, and cook for a minute.

Add the stock, stir, bring to a simmer and cook, covered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to stop the lentils from catching.

Cool slightly, then whiz in small batches in the liquidizer or pass through a Mouli.

Red and Blues (Part 2)

I have to confess that I had never been to the Albert Hall until this week. It seemed strange actually being inside an auditorium that I have seen so often on television, and “heard” so often on the radio, crackling over the ether on the shortwave, whilst sitting in the moonlight in Greece listening to the last night of the Proms on holiday.

We had excellent seats for the concert, just to the side of the stage and only about three rows back. Ms. Armatrading played with a trio of bass, drums and keyboard in support. There was a well-judged mixture of classics and new stuff, with a distinct bluesy feel to the new album (hardly a surprise as it is called Into The Blues).

She played for a solid hour and forty minutes and I am pleased to say that her voice is as strong and clear as it was back in the ‘Eighties. An excellent evening all round. For a sample of her new stuff, click here.

Red and Blues, (Part 1)

Being a boring, stay-at-home sort of guy, the Phantom always finds going out in the evening slightly problematic. Most public entertainments, be they on the stage or the cinema screen, tend to start around eight in the evening and finish a couple of hours later. The quandary is always the same – when do we eat, and where?

At home we naturally gravitate to eating at seven-thirty or eight. This is, of course, the time when most shows start. Factoring in travelling time means that eating at home before the show is rarely a realistic option when you are heading out for your entertainment.

I find it difficult to enjoy a meal out if I am more than a few minutes away from my ultimate destination. Seeing a show in the West End therefore tends to mean dining in Chinatown beforehand. A gig at the Hammersmith Apollo will probably mean a cheap and cheerful burger and chips at the local Wetherspoon pub.

Tuesday presented new challenges. We were headed for the Royal Albert Hall. The area around South Kensington is very much Terra Incognita for my wife and I. Our forays into Hooray Henry land tend to be limited to visits to the Victoria and Albert Museum or Chelsea Flower Show. I find the wide, embassy-ridden streets somewhat intimidating. You can walk for miles without seeing anything but grand houses and 4x4’s, people in pearl twinsets, au pairs, and poodles. Corner shops are rare, there are few pubs, and absolutely no kebab shops. Bereft of the familiar sights and smells, a north London lad can feel quite unsettled.

I had done some research the day before. I used the Time Out restaurant guide to give me a rough idea of what was on offer, then checked out reviews of a shortlist of places from there.

The winner, and our culinary oasis for the night was Moroccan restaurant Pasha.

The restaurant was enchanting, glowing with rich ochre and dark carved wood, burnished brass and copper, twinkling lamps, the floors and tables strewn with fresh rose petals.

The food was finely flavoured, scented with cumin, coriander and saffron. From the starters of smoky aubergine puree and home pickled-vegetables right through to the dessert of fresh fruits and pastries, nuts and sweetmeats the food was full of flavour and generous in quantity.

We had allowed ourselves a couple of hours from arriving at the restaurant to taking our seats at the concert. Another half an hour would have been good, to nibble on Turkish delight and drink some more hot, sweet mint tea, (poured in Moroccan Style from over the waiter’s head, like a spin bowler delivering a googly).

Five minutes walk away lay our main destination for the night. The Royal Hat Box, where Joan Armatrading was to perform. Of that, more later…

More Loafing About

My Learned Friend the Legal Eagle has requested the recipe for my picnic loaf, as featured previously.

Your wish is my pleasure.

Seeded Sandwich Bread.

I developed this loaf for picnics; the mixture of flours gives a loaf that holds together well, - the seeds add extra flavour and texture.

Apologies for the Imperial measurements, they just work better with these ingredients.

(For a 2lb loaf tin)

12oz Strong Stoneground Organic Wholemeal Flour

12oz Strong Organic White Flour

2 Tablespoons of poppy seeds

3 Tablespoons of sunflower seeds

1 Teaspoon of table salt

11/2 level teaspoons of Dove’s or Allinson’s Easy Blend Yeast

2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil, plus extra for oiling bowl.

5 fl oz Boiling water, made up to 15 fl oz with cold water

Mix the dry ingredients well in a large bowl. Pour in the olive oil and most of the water mixture, which should feel hot to the fingers but not uncomfortably so.

Stir with a large spoon to mix together, adding the rest of the water as needed. A small amount of unincorporated flour is fine.

Dump the proto-dough onto the worktop, incorporate all the bits (the seeds will try and escape - do not let them.), and knead for about seven minutes. (You will get this down to about five minutes kneading with practice). Form the dough into a ball.

Pour a small puddle of extra oil into the bowl, drop in the dough, wiggle it about to coat lightly with oil, then cover loosely with clingfilm. Leave to rise until doubled in size. This is best done slowly, at room temperature.

When doubled in size, drop the dough back onto the counter and knead lightly for a minute to ensure there are no large air pockets.

Preheat the oven to gas 7, placing a rack in the middle of the oven.

Lightly oil or butter the loaf tin. Fold the dough into the tin, shaping the top slightly domed. Leave to “prove” (rise) until the dough rises to just above the top of the tin.

Make two evenly spaced cuts an inch or so down into the dough, running lengthways. This will allow the bread to rise evenly without tearing. Sprinkle with a dusting of wholemeal flour. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 30 – 40 minutes. You will know the bread is ready by the wonderful bready smell! Turn out of the tin and check it is cooked fully by tapping on the bottom of the loaf. It should sound “hollow”. (If not, put back in the oven for another five minutes or so, without the tin).

Cool on a rack, wrapped in a clean tea towel to help keep the crusts soft.