Archive for October, 2007
Back to another of my families, the work one, and some fairly momentous news. Not only are we finally gaining one new post (or rather, half the time of two different people), I get to give away some of my work…
It’s been pretty full on for the last three years, one way or another. Former devotees of my birthday parties may have noticed there hasn’t been one for a while, partly due to the combination of work deadlines around the same time…and so on.
Finally, it seems, we’ll get to stop running a big course we normally do in July, I’ll stop doing my Ireland work (and so avoid hanging out with demob happy teachers over a weekend in early February…), and even give away probably around a third of my workload of students.
Two or three days on from the announcement of the work plan by my manager, I’m getting used to the concept. Less time away from home. Fewer deadlines hitting me all at the same time. Hopefully no budget to run for a while.
There is a loss to these things too. It can become too easy to base your image on what you do, and when you show you can cope with silly amounts of work, it can also become an identity, even if not a very healthy one.
However, it should hopefully mean, among other things, that I can become a little friendlier to our students again, because there’ll be a little more of me to share around c. 500 of them than there is around c. 750. Still too many, really, but more people to take the strain, which should be really good.
I will miss having an overview of all the countries we work with. But I can finally do some of what I’ve been asking to do: start offering opportunities up to new people coming in, gain a bit of enthusiasm back from them as they start to get to know the work.
Maybe I’ll do some new stuff. There’s plenty of communications work that I can see needs doing. But perhaps I can work out how to keep a bit more of a balance. In the past, I felt compelled to do stuff because I ’saw it needed doing’. The last few months in particular have made me more wary, more keen to conserve energy for other things.
This evening we went to see the film ‘Ratatouille’ at the cinema. It was funny, it was clever, all that great Pixar stuff. But it was also about passion, about the things we love doing, and are good at, and doing those whole heartedly.
I love cooking, so the film was a happy message as far as I was concerned. But I also love writing. Music. Reading. Being with family. Going for walks in the sunshine on autumn days (as we did this morning with my parents). Because there is time for these too. There should be. And thankfully, it looks like there will be.
October 20th, 2007
It’s my new regime - although I’ve now broken it by starting a new post after already writing one.
Getting my laptop, I decided that moderation would help in my first forays online on my own computer. So: one blog post a day. One friend invite a day on Facebook. All very sober and self-contained.
Except there are days when the writing juices flow a little more, and this seems a little constricting. But then, I think it’s probably good. Having said I want to write more, and got myself a laptop to make myself do so, having some regular daily writing habits helps me get beyond any notion of writer’s block that I might have. (It does happen. But not much. My last performance appraisal notes that I do ‘at times’ express myself in a rather lengthy way. Perhaps the managers have just been tuning the rest of it out.)
Given that I’d like this writing game to be a longer term one, it’s probably good however to start with good habits. I’m not sure that Facebook is a good habit, but at least it gets the fingers moving on the keyboard, which can be a problem in the morning. So far, have NOT been looking at Facebook in the morning - far too tempting to keep checking it - but you know, should I manage to work from home and need to do some light typing to wake up to, it could be helpful…
I’m sure there’s other useful one a days that would keep me going. I could learn a new word a day. I used to write a new quote a day in my diary, when I kept a daily diary - although I didn’t remember them, I have to say.
Perhaps it’s worth continuing to do at least one nice writing thing a day that is just for me - beyond blogging etc. I’ve started some ideas for a cookbook cum food memoir, and am adding new categories fairly regularly. Maybe I’ll add a new category on the blog, and start it off there.
One a day. One way to a writing habit.
October 17th, 2007
It’s not much of a choice is it? Hopefully neither, in my own case, but it makes for a good title.
The reason for mentioning this is a collection of mugs in a little shop which has just opened up on Canongate (lower reaches of the Royal Mile), with a cafe and a selection of goods. This is great, given the large numbers of touristy shops on the Royal Mile and the limitations of trying to get more interesting cards or presents.
So, I check out their window displays on the way in to work. Craftily, they do update them, and have a collection of mugs with these kind of titles on. I’m quite tempted to get ‘darling mummy sausage’ for myself (I’m sure it’ll come in useful some day), but the selection is at least a little more interesting than wee angel/wee devil on the T-shirts in a shop further down the road…
It brought me to thinking who buys them, and for whom. There are some mug messages where you kind of hope for the individual that they chose it themselves, and are being ironic. (Dan had a tutor whose mug message was ‘old fart’.) But clearly people must buy them for others - and should you be given ‘yummy mummy’, for example, hopefully you could feel slightly smug using this.
There’s also the category where celebrities wear t-shirts with other celebrities names on. I thought this was quite fun when Nigella started wearing tight t-shirts that said ‘Delia’ on them, given how much celebrity cooks/chefs seem reduced to first name only.
A colleague at work has one of those ‘lines’ mugs ie with the sentence repeated. Hers is ‘I must not kiss the boys’, which I understand was a wedding present. At a time when our former director was enforcing a branded mugs only policy (ie with an office logo), she stuck to her guns and kept using her mug. In this case, we had to applaud her intention to have a distinct identity, rather than a general one that was selected for her.
It’s tricky, this ‘identity on a mug/t-shirt’ thing. Have been experiencing forms of it on Facebook, where you can compare and rate friends. A school friend asked me to compare her to others, but the application then brought up a series of questions, where you had to rate other random combinations of friends as to which was likely to be more successful, sexy etc. I felt I just couldn’t make any such comparisons, and skipped every one of the ones it brought up, but it still suggested that I had rated 10 sets of friends. So I removed it pronto, and settled down to loading up favourite books on the Facebook application instead.
I then sent my friend a message, suggesting that she had certain skills in making microwaved custard. You can’t get a mug for this yet, nor a t-shirt, but it’s surely just a matter of time.
October 17th, 2007
I promise I won’t write too many posts that start ‘the joy of…’ Because we know what the original was, and that’s one thing I won’t be writing about here…
But anyway, leftovers, because as ever, my mind turns to food, and what to do when there’s more ingredients in the house than are scheduled to appear on a menu that week. (Yes, I do plan meals for a week. It’s a lifesaver when you both leave work at 7pm and can’t make any decisions by the time you get home.)
Dan’s brain is well tuned to come up with completely new options. I find I probably do better with a bit of input - in this case, a few assorted ingredients, around which I can turn out variations. Many of the things I cook regularly - risotto, vegetable casseroles, omelette - are interesting to cook, and eat, at least in part because they aren’t the same every time.
So, today, this meant I could cut up and freeze a parsnip for future use (probably a risotto), make some carrot and caraway soup, and finally, the new recipe, make some pomegranate icecream…This because we took several attempts to buy cream for another recipe, Dan bought some and brought it home after we had then got cream elsewhere, so of course it had to be used up…and the Coop was kindly selling pomegranates cheap…etc.
I was chatting to a friend on Sunday about mammoth cooking sessions (yes, we’re both a little obsessional in our devotion to cooking), and the fun of actually cooking that flows from day to day. By flow, this isn’t where the food is sliding off work surfaces or out of compost bins (hopefully), but where there is enough time to make use of leftovers.
I had a time like this around Easter last year, where I was meant to be gardening and painting. In fact, the other family members did these, I cooked for them all, and everyone seemed to be happy…It felt like there was enough time to be a bit more flexible, experiment with new ways to use things, different leftovers suggesting new combinations, and so on.
I’m not sure why I have such a strong need not to waste things - it’s part of a generation’s advice that has (until relatively recently) seemed very out of date. Now we’re all meant to be saving the planet by every small decision, being frugal with food, planning ahead, it’s actually quite trendy. I think. It’s strongly supported by Nigella, anyway.
In the meantime, talking to the same friend and her husband, we think we’ve come up with a new group for Facebook. It’ll be ‘Look what bargain I got at the Co-op’, or something similar, as they heard through our breathless excitement at the treasures marked down day by day. They are moving to another town, but will be near a Co-op. What comparisons to come, eh?
October 16th, 2007
So I wrote a lovely post, linking my enjoyment of our (relatively) new bathroom to contentment, world politics, and St Paul, and then it didn’t save. Typical. I actually manage to write about world politics, and nothing’s kept. I should have gone back to the default of setting of writing about food, and all would have been well. Or I could have turned it into icecream. Or something.
Aha! I wrote one paragraph, uploaded it, and it’s still there. So there’s time to expand my theme, considering the many little things we see day to day, that our minds and brains take in, but we don’t think are there any more. It’s said that actually we do retain amazing amounts more than we know we do.
Reading an article about a couple who go around th UK, taking photos of all kinds of random things. The best one they showed in the article, I have to say, was a poodle dressed (I kid you not) in a brown shell suit, tethered outside a shop. I have a certain respect for people who set out to look for things that most of us don’t notice, or don’t think we’ve remembered.
I remember visiting a museum in Gloucester, the Pack Age, I think sadly no longer there. It was set up by one of the Opies, Robert if I remember, who collected (and still does now) lots and lots of packaging, I think mainly from the UK. It was said that the older you were, the more you enjoyed the visit, because there were so many things that you would recall, that you had no idea you had filed away in your brain until you were presented with them again.
I probably do tend to hoard, rather than to live a clear and unfettered lifestyle. Moving house a lot growing up, things changed a lot, and it was attractive to keep lots of things, as a way of holding onto who I was at a particular time. I would even keep items on my dressing table the same, because if I changed them, what record would there be of them ever having been like that? Thankfully I have moved away from this, and am probably swinging the other way, identifying what’s tying me down, what isn’t really worth keeping.
I could attempt a happy little homily about things that are saved having some value. And I guess that’s often true, although if we were to open our cupboards, we’d be amazed at how much we save that we don’t value. My musings now in this blog are mainly a kind of brain dump, or virtual sharing of something that’s made me laugh, or think, or realise something new. Perhaps I need to lay them down for a while, to mature, even to gain some dust around the outside, in order to see if they become more valuable.
So perhaps after all, save it…you never know what it’ll turn out to be later.
October 15th, 2007
So, like many others (allegedly 50 000 in Edinburgh, which I can’t quite believe), I joined Facebook…
It’s a good job I’m trying to do social emails etc at home only, because the temptation to go back on and see what’s changed is clearly quite strong. It’s a bit like a soap opera - but starring you and your friends! Genius.
I’m aiming for the gradual transition approach, which involves adding one new friend a day, and gradually getting used to some of the other functions. Today got more used to reading profiles of those who’ve agreed to be friends.
What was especially nice was seeing other people’s photos easily, particularly when these are people living in other countries from me. In some ways, you can feel involved in their lives again, just seeing the pictures. In other ways, it can feel a little sad - they’ve clearly been getting on fine, and those lives that were quite entwined at university time soon alter as people marry, move away…and one way or another, move on from the selves they used to be. It’s very normal, no doubt, but a little disconcerting to see it so clearly through someone’s profile.
However, the whole point of doing the Facebook thing was to get back in touch with people, and that does seem to be going OK. As with Friends Reunited before it, the people you’d really like to find out about are not on Facebook either (a couple of key school friends), but these things are never going to do everything for you.
There is a temptation to spend a lot of time making up new ‘Alison is…’ comments, but I will ration myself, honest. One friend has clearly done well for himself in this respect - his one liners would not go amiss on late night BBC2 arts documentaries. And when Facebook rises to such heights, it can’t be all bad.
October 12th, 2007
I didn’t cadge one, officer, I paid for it fair and square. I just wanted a title for the post…
Moving on from bargains to gadgets - you wonder how much brain activity lights up when you find a truly exciting gadget. Even though it may be said that men are keen on gadgets and tools, women don’t mind a good gadget either, and for this reason Lakeland was invented. Or something like that.
I am never quite sure of what to make of a visit there. One woman’s gadget is another one’s pernicketiness, I suppose, and sometimes I despair of those who must care so much about teabag drips that three separate items have been put in the catalogue. ( I haven’t actually counted. But I wouldn’t be surprised.)
A gadget is a bit like an ongoing bargain, because you continue to be impressed with yourself for having it. There can be a certain excitement in more esoteric gadgets that really do do what you want them to. I have a jam funnel, and it is very exciting to own one, even if it’s not pressed into service all the time.
Lakeland probably brings out the perfectionist in us. It’s designed to feed the idea that if we do get the perfect gadget (or preferably several, for different parts of the house), life can be controlled. Your pastry will never crack. Your windows will always be shiny. Your guests will never lack for carafes with matching tumblers to have at their bedside. And so on.
So, where’s the fine line between the gadgets that do help (three cheers for the ones that help those with arthritis, or example), and those that help with our kitchen illusions?
It’s just interesting that in these times of growing obesity, yet more ready meals (even if they are organic etc.), Lakeland clearly still has these customers who do cook, bake, nay bottle and preserve. Or perhaps, as is said of cookery programmes, we watch the programmes, we buy the books, and then we sit back, happy or even smug in the idea that we have an idea of what to cook and how to do so. But no one is visiting to check that we actually do.
I saw an article at the start of the year one time, probably relating to spring cleaning, urging people to confess how many kitchen gadgets they had. I started reading through the list, and let’s just say I had more of the items on the list than not. Clearly I don’t use them all, all the time, it’s true.
But perhaps the chief joy of a gadget is that it can have an occasional use, and still be worth having. I know I’ll make some marmalade once a year, most years, and so my jam funnel can keep a place in the kitchen, safe in the knowledge (do jam funnels have knowledge? Perhaps not, given the hole in the middle) that at the critical time, it is invaluable. And above all, I enjoy using it, enjoy a little proficiency in my kitchen dabblings.
So, today’s confession purchase: cleaning cloths that you can put through the washing machine lots of times. And the catalogue. And the other catalogue - though you get them free. Hmm. Cunning, these gadgeteers.
October 11th, 2007
We’ve got into a bit of a habit of visiting our local Co-op after 7 in the evening, when they are starting to discount stock. Clearly we’re getting known for it by the staff - one of the cashiers offered us a very low price on some biscuits that we’d looked over in the queue…
Thing is, we all like a bargain. My excuse is that I’m stopping food going to waste, as well as getting a good price. Sometimes the discounts are really good - Dan got some packs of salmon fillet that were going at 20p each…But it’s not always best for the waistline.
Most people are used to bargains one way or another - market stalls, buy one get one free offers, checking out the high street sales, that kind of thing. Yet there’s watchdog type programmes that check up on stores which seem to put their products straight to sale. It’s a competitive world, I guess. But I do have to ask myself, would I be interested in getting something if it weren’t in a sale?
The ‘Body and Soul’ section of the Saturday Times ran some tests on what happened to people’s brain patterns when they were shopping, and particularly when they got a bargain. When it was deemed to be a particularly good bargain, some chemical went sky-high, in a way that would happen to you if you went bungy-jumping, even though people are not aware of such a surge of positive feeling. So maybe we’re hard wired to it. Or maybe we need to guard against it, if marketing people are going to use such awareness to get us to buy yet more stuff…
We’re also a society which is swamped by consumer choice. So maybe by choosing bargains only, we’re making life easier for ourselves, cutting down the choices. Or maybe we’re giving away our choices to someone else, who has profit margins, peaks in stock, and other market forces to guide their decision making, rather than what we want to choose.
Thankfully, the dieticians will back me up in saying that it’s always good to choose vegetables. I think.
October 10th, 2007
Nothing like something for nothing, especially when you can eat it. There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there is thankfully some free food to be found, usually around hedgerows etc.
Last year we discovered great bramble bushes (aka blackberry for those unsure) on the cycle path near us. Even though last year was sunny in the summer and this year was not, still gathered quite a lot. The attempt at making bramble jam was less successful, losing not only the brambles (by now in a solid lump) but also the container they were in, which they refused to be parted from.
Last weekend’s excitement (apart from choosing my laptop) was elderberry picking. We seem to have gained an elderberry bush at the bottom of the garden, which has been conveniently hanging over our side of the fence, so picked most of those, and hope to turn them into icecream. They are probably the only thing in the garden benefitting from our compost heap, which gets added to, but sadly not yet used on plants…As the elderberry bush is on the other side of the fence from the compost bin, we can only assume conditions are good, as it wasn’t there last year.
Final bit of plunder was only from the Co-op, really, so doesn’t really count (although when they discount their veg at the end of the day, it’s almost as good as hunter gathering). Bought beetroot for cooking with for the first time, turning out beetroot soup and some beetroot to go with a roast chicken (which was particularly good!). Having tried lots of other soups earlier in the year, beetroot was a gap on the list.
Reports will follow on how well these work out. Besides, I promised friends overseas that I would write about some Edinburgh stuff, and brambling etc is part of the picture. (So is washing floors, but I will spare you all that.)
October 9th, 2007
Ages since I last wrote a blog post…but hopefully that’s about to change. I am now the proud owner of my very own laptop…Many thanks to Dan who took my list of what I wanted it to do, read up for me, made recommendations, and even collected it today.
The title is an attempted play on Virginia Wolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own”, esentially arguing for women to be given status as writers. The notion is that a woman who wants to write needs somewhere to call her own. In Wolf’s view, it was having a room, somewhere to go, and in her terms, to write fiction.
Now, with the internet, there’s plenty of places to go to write, and plenty of things to write, too. But having the means to write…that’s the key.
Years ago when I wrote lots - a daily diary, regular poetry, as well as lots of school work - it was pretty much all long hand. Paying attention to my English teacher, I learned to touch type as a skill he said was really useful - and this really before computers were making much of a presence in schools.
Turns out that now, as he described, it really is just as easy to compose when typing as when writing by hand. Easier in some ways, faster, with a certain happy rhythm to it. Not that I don’t like writing by hand, but I found that the words don’t flow in quite the same way now.
So, here’s to my own laptop. In time, maybe I’ll lower my standards, even use it for work in the 9-5 sense. But the big reason for getting it is finally to have a computer to play on, to do fun stuff. The writing, the surfing etc, is meant to be for leisure, rather than justified by performance or to do lists.
Talking to a few other women, it does seem to continue to be the case that the men rather hog the computer in evenings and weekends. Mine has the excuse of running his own business, and working from home is a perk in this case. But I thought there could well be a reason why there’s more men writing their own blogs than women, and time on the computer is probably part of it…
So, some rom - even some ram - of my own. Here’s to making the most of it.
October 8th, 2007
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