Archive for January, 2008
Maybe it’s another birthday. Or maybe it’s just Facebook. Here are all the ways to try out new cars, pose, acquire a car that suggests there’s a crisis of some kind, or just enjoy beating other people…
It probably doesn’t sound terribly healthy. But the Facebook option - aka Petrolhead - does mean that you have a few big advantages to trying to do these things in real life:
a) no cost of car - in any way
b) change your mind and switch to another car in the same kind of group - apparently at whim, but certainly with no car dealer involved
c) no petrol, no pollution, no driver tiredness either, as you’re only allowed ten races every day
d) you can’t cut out road rage and general obnoxiousness in driving, but at least you are not personally directing it at others. Perhaps the fact that many people race their peers makes it easier to be good. (Or maybe not. Competition can be sweeter when you know who you’re beating.)
e) yes, your car choice still says something about you. But it can be a more interesting car, or one you would never hope to own, but like the look of. I was quite chuffed to ‘drive’ the Morgan Aero, new car in the Morgan range, having previously lived up the road from the Morgan factory.
(If you don’t know about Morgans, look them up. You may need to get on the waiting list now. There’s another six years to wait meanwhile, but that’s plenty of time to get your Facebook rankings up.)
Sensible mid-life crisis is in fact one of the categories of car, as you make your way up. I’ve moved on from sensible, but am not in the flagrant ‘couldn’t care less’ category of the Millionaires Club, which Daniel has reached.
Meanwhile Eric is racing happily too - in as yellow a vehicle as he can find each time. Happy days.
January 31st, 2008
Eat leftover cake at as many meal times as is decent.
Continue enjoying high quality bread made by friend: olive, seed, walnut etc. Yum!
Leave book boxes and toy boxes accessible for a while longer.
Enjoy sitting room in new format; lack energy to put things back as they were.
Sit at dining table and admire birthday tulips - and feel that spring might even be somewhere at hand.
Has anyone got an extra weekend I could tack on to the start of this week??
January 28th, 2008
It’s that post-Christmas time when you are allowed, nay encouraged, to do some thinning of your possessions. Spring may feel far off - it certainly did this morning when I was soaked by hail at the bus stop - but it is clearly never too early for spring cleaning.
Charity shops have long been on our high streets, and certainly within my sights for second hand books. Now they seem to be getting bigger business, or perhaps rather, understanding how to make things easier for people to donate.
This week saw two different bags put through the door to encourage us to donate items. Usually it’s clothes, shoes, linen. You can safely watch any amount of clothes shows that encourage you to have a good sort-out of your wardrobe, smug in the knowledge that you didn’t need prompting.
The second was one of a newer type - they are open to you putting in other items, and even include the fateful words ‘bric-a-brac’, just in case you were in doubt as to how much in the way of household junk you could include. They also included a useful bag design so you could a) get lots in and b) tie the handles at the top. all for the good in encouraging you to put in lots.
I’m starting to think that, for all of local councils encouraging recycling, charity shops are filling many of the remaining gaps. I’m not saying that we should give them our dross - we shouldn’t - but there are always items that are not quite packaging for regular recycling, but that could find a new life somewhere else.
However, the key touch today, when I came home from work, was finding a card through the letterbox from the charity which did today’s collection. They said thank you for the items, and they indicated just what a local charity shop could hope to achieve in a day, week, month, year, through our contributions.
Importantly, they encouraged me to keep going. I’m sure I could choose to sell some of my stuff on eBay, but I’m now all the more excited to find out how much of a PhD I am indirectly funding to help with cancer research. That’s better than a quality seller’s record - and much easier than all those trips to the post office to send off the items.
On the principle of awarding merit where it’s due, support Cancer Research, folks. They know what they want, they declutter you better than an article in a woman’s magazine will do - and they remember to tell you why it matters.
January 24th, 2008
Hurrah for a half day on my birthday! I left early today so that I could fulfil a small ambition of mine, and browse the shops on Broughton Street on the way home.
Now Broughton Street may be known for various things, but I’d suggest, increasingly, food. It has the long-established RealFoods at the top, which does health food and much more, but also some brand new places that have opened up in the last few months.
So, started with RealFoods. They are doing all the Gillian McKeith type stuff - lots of alternative grains and so on - but the shop must be a godsend to anyone with food allergies. You name it as an alternative flour, they have it, plus masses of oriental ingredients, along with all the dried fruit, muesli to scoop out of a sack, and so on. I came away with linseeds, and ful medames beans - the latter are very popular in Egypt, so I’ve read, and there’s a recipe I’ve been meaning to try with them.
Broughton Street also has Crombie’s, the high class butcher, well known for its sausages. I decided to play fairly safe, and came away with some very smart beefburgers, which should be good to try.
I missed out the fishmonger at the top of the street, also long established - Something Fishy. I thought it might take too long to finish my shopping and head home, by which point the fish might be complaining a bit. But it is an aim of mine to try proper butchers and fishmongers this year, so I can see what the difference is between supermarket stuff and the specialists.
So, now, to the two new arrivals. Artisanal coffee, chocolate and honey can be had in a fairly new shop that also sells takeaway coffee. Their owner only sells the coffee beans that he likes, but will happily recommend and let you sniff them to see which you like. I made off with some Sumatran coffee which I think is meant to be his favourite. My bag certainly smelt wonderful all the way home.
The other newcomer is a shop selling all the things you might need for cocktails. Again, its owner is chatty, and knowledgeable. He didn’t seem put off by me saying I wasn’t too good with drinking spirits, but told me more about fruit syrups, and so on. He also has glasses and all the other kit for making cocktails. I am hoping he will stock some fruit purees so I can finally try a Bellini (prosecco and white peach pulp).
I didn’t go around explaining it was my birthday - thought that might be a bit obvious - but it was nice to have time to browse, and equally to chat with the shopowners. Certainly RealFoods has so many different lines of stock that you need a good forty minutes just to look round and see what they have.
I should add that it’s been a happily foody morning too - my colleague who does her own bean sprouts, and has been coaching me with my first attempts, gave me some mung beans to try sprouting. My manager found a couple of mini bars of dark chocolate to slip inside my birthday card. And the piece de resistance was battenburg cake, brought in or for another newer colleague who shares the same birthday. (Can’t resist marzipan and cake combined.)
Meanwhile, it’s now about time for a cup of tea. Nice thing about birthdays - the everyday pleasures as well as the special treats.
January 23rd, 2008
For those who have been waiting for their next fix of sci-fi on TV, there is relief. Even light relief.
January saw the return of both “Primeval” and “Torchwood”. As each was new last year, their return is meant to offer both more of the same, and better…
Generally, so far, so good. There are still plenty of dinosaurs in “Primeval”, and this time they are getting to roam around larger venues: shopping centres, office complexes. I think there’s a theme park next week. As a holiday company is supporting the programme through advertising - “holidays for you and your little monsters” - Dan and I are speculating whether the theme park is belongs to the holiday company and is therefore a further version of advertising…
Meanwhile, “Torchwood” seems to be aiming to be both darker and, well, lighter. Doing an adapted version for children so that it can be shown before the watershed, as well as the original after 9pm, it’ll be interesting to see what is offered in each version. I anticipate that the violence will stay, in most, but I don’t know quite how much of the relationship jumping between the characters will get to stay.
However, there is also monster-lite. Digital channels allow you to see ever increasing amounts of Star Trek, and all its variants. At the time of writing, you can watch Deep Space Nine at 8pm every day. With a repeated version at 9pm in case you got distracted the first time. Clearly you can tell I know whereof I speak, but we try not to base too much of our lives around this. Honest.
Why bother with monsters? There’s other sci-fi that refuses to use them - “Firefly” has just humans, and the only monster-like characters are gradually revealed to be humans that have gone bad at the edge of space. But there again, surely we have enough humans gone bad in real life?
It can be suggested (which really means I’m parroting a certain amount of writing about sci-fi in the newspapers) that when we have more ‘monsters’ around us in the world, we invent more in fiction or entertainment as a way of dealing with our feelings about the real-world ones. In this current climate, where working out who is a ‘monster’, and who is not, is getting harder to do, having more ’rounded’ monsters in film etc may be a way of dealing with the difficulties of this situation.
Perhaps the one certainty is our monstrous appetite for scaring ourselves - in a safe setting…Contradictory. But then, these days, so are the monsters. “Battlestar Galactica” has made a reputation out of developing the characters of sensitive ‘baddies’ and ’goodies’ who are none too moral in their dealings with others.
And if monsters show us what we are capable of, with all our own contradictions, then perhaps we need to remind ourselves occasionally what that is. If only to fly our spaceships in the opposite direction.
January 22nd, 2008
Starting preparations for a joint party with a friend. We have birthdays around the same time, and we have seized on the idea of soup and bagels to feed the multitudes. Jesus had loaves and fishes. We will hopefully have some loaves too, although the fishes have regretfully been left out (smells) in favour of large quantities of carrots.
I like a spot of bulk catering, but I’ve not made soup for 25 before. I’m quite looking forward to the challenge, which is really only making double a normal quantity, times three pots of soup. I can make use of my enormous ladle (a wedding present which doesn’t get much use for quantities under 6 people), large cooking pots, etc.
We are probably feeding 30 at the cake stage, but as both of us are making cake, that’s only 15 each. 3 cakes a-piece should do the trick. Mine all seem to be fruit related, but it’s also a case of seeing what I want to use up. Time to defrost the overripe bananas in the freezer which are kept for such purposes (a helpful tip from a former flatmate).
The last time we did one of these joint parties, Dan and I were still living in Inverleith Terrace. A very large sitting room made parties fun. Now we have more, but smaller, rooms, so a bit of ingenuity is required. Hopefully the kids coming will agree to play in one room, and we’ll keep the soup etc in the other. It may be just as well we don’t like our sitting room carpet that much…
In these days of ever more scrutiny of diets, ever more opportunities to point the finger at us as consumers - and over-consumers - bread and soup strikes a fairly quiet note, I feel.
Cake doesn’t really get excused…but then I am a firm believer that cake should be encouraged. Not daily, true, but it is a sure-fire way of filling up lots of people. And I learned that lesson as a student. Should you want to feed the multitudes, trying to feed 3 guys, one of whom was running triathlons at the time, and a girl with a ‘healthy appetite’, is no bad place to start.
I’ll give you the line-up of cakes on another occasion.
January 21st, 2008
Mid-January appears to be a good time to do many things. Bump your car (18 Jan being day of most traffic accidents in the UK). Be depressed (24 January coming up for that one - evidently the day of the year that is most ‘difficult’ for people). Do your tax return (for the self-employed - I think that’s another one to avoid if you can). Beyond that, there’s braving the ‘really honestly end of the sales big savings now!’ sales.
Out and about today looking for some shoes for Dan. I think I was probably aware previously that part of the ‘buying a lifestyle’ that affects our society today extends to the rest of the shopping experience. But today, as after Christmas when we looked round some clothes shops, I increasingly realised how much the music played in shops is part of the deal.
If you want to live in a ‘hood, you may find that Schuh is the place to buy your box-fresh trainers. I can’t quite remember what the outdoor shoe shops offered…which is perhaps the point. They could have played “I’m a lumberjack”, but then they would have to sell high heels, as the song goes, which would make it harder to climb mountains. (I’m sure they could get round that by discounting ski poles at the same time.)
So where did I feel more at home? Rogerson’s shoe shop, which sells Ecco and various other ranges. They played soundtracks. I didn’t have to look cool in front of the sales staff. In fact, Dan commented on the soundtracks, and was told they have three or four albums on rotation, including Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, and a classical one.
This is the place where the music seems designed to make you go ‘ahh’, in the same way that you go ‘ahh’ when the shoes are comfy - and potentially a bit pricier than you might go for. Whereas if you want to get something tight-fitting, and need to go ‘ow!’ at the same time, head for somewhere that plays Prince, perhaps. At least you’ll be following in his (high heeled) footsteps.
January 20th, 2008
You know what they say. Even nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. But when does nostalgia start?
It’s been a week where The Times has been including tokens to collect DVDs of children’s television. Mr Benn. The Flumps. Even the Wombles. But what have they called it? Nostalgia children’s TV.
Is this a sign that I am getting older, or that nostalgia is getting younger? Not so long ago, programmes like these had their own special place on Cult TV, a separate section of the main BBC site.
Call them cult, call them classic, even call it retro. But nostalgia to me suggests a bit more of a pipe and slippers approach. And while I have regaled you with the joys of cardigans, I don’t feel that children’s TV of the 70s, which in many cases is still being replayed every so often, is in the nostalgia department.
Nostalgia is the underpinning of novelty radios in inserts for the weekend papers. It’s adverts for products that weren’t that attractive in 1940, and are now more amusing for what they suggest about the period.
I wouldn’t want to suggest that all 70s TV (or indeed 80s, as “Willow the Wisp” is part of the collection) is tremendous. You may also note they are not selling us Bagpuss, or the Clangers, the ‘big guns’ of that era - spin offs and linked products for that time are clearly already well looked after in the marketing department.
Myself, I’m hoping for some ‘Ivor the Engine’. I think it’s time to reacquaint the viewing public with a dragon that slept on the coals of the train. You could even call it part of the ongoing Welsh renaissance. I’m sure Russell T. Davis will come up with something.
January 19th, 2008
A bit of a breakthrough. Having tried to track down a plain black cardigan for what seems a long period of time, I finally found one today.
Now I know this is not exciting reading. Cardigans. Socks a couple of days ago. It’s just a good job we don’t have thermal vests as well.
Jasper Carrot once talked about signs of aging. Interest in lawnmowers was one. Going past a shop window and going back to comment “Nice cardi!” appeared to be the nail in the coffin.
A couple of years back, as a course we ran for the students we work with, one of them was worried about whether she had to go out and buy a suit in order to do her teaching placement. I suggested no, and that a top and a pair of trousers that she could move about in comfortably would do the trick.
The problem was the next line when I said “Something like this”, and pointed to what I was wearing, which fitted the description. The look I got back from the twenty year old suggested I was firmly in the nice cardi brigade.
It’s all very confusing, when tank tops and parkas that were no-nos in my generation become cool again. And puffball skirts (only had one friend who could actually manage to look good in one).
Even the fashion writers concede that much of current fashion is really suited for very thin (and possibly only teenage) girls. It also seems to help if you like loud prints, judging by the clothes rails today.
So maybe a plain black cardi is a rebellious statement in this day and age. It’s a good job we don’t have to select which lawnmower to wear to work as well.
January 17th, 2008
When it’s a snicket? More viewing the Urban Dictionary slang website last night.
My normal test for these dialect search things is to put in the word ‘ginnel’, which is what I grew up with as a way to describe a small path or alleyway. It worked! It also offered ’snicket’, and I in turn offer back ‘wynd’, which is the one you tend to see quite a bit in Edinburgh, particularly for the narrow streets off the Royal Mile.
A further option is a twittering, which was one my Latin teacher at school used. However, let’s just say the Urban Slang site doesn’t deal very well with that one. But it does offer ‘flutester’, which is evidently a small ginnel. It’s good to be prepared for every eventuality.
I’m sure there are other regional variations - so if you can think of any, add a comment.
I had thought about titling this post ‘citrus ginnel’, as an alternative to ‘lemony snicket’. But then I might have looked a bit of a daft wazzock. You might have felt like a numpty if you hadn’t known. And muppets everywhere would be none the wiser.
January 16th, 2008
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