Have you noticed how nobody says splendid anymore? Or rather (in the sense of something being “rather good”)? I tried them out a few times today, but nobody noticed, which was sad. It was in the context of cricket, so perhaps that’s somehow more acceptable.
Quintessential is another word people hardly ever use anymore, “essential” typically being taken to mean “Absolutely necessary, indispensably requisite” rather than being derived from “essence” (thanks to the OED for the definitions). For a long time I thought “essential oils” where oils that were required for a given task. 🙂
Also been devouring books recently – obviously Half Blood Prince, but a couple of fab books;
The Other Boleyn Girl / The Queen’s Fool. Both are about Tudor england (and both deserving their own review) – great reads. (see them on Amazon)
The Time Traveller’s Wife (amazon). Lest we forget – but this book deserves its own review.
Camelot’s Shadow was ok.
Oh yes, and I did get Mortal Engines in the end too – jolly good it is too.
My in-waiting list includes Attention all shipping and another Sally Vickers – Instances of the Number Three. My to-be-added-to-my-in-waiting list still has Philip Pullman’s trilogy, but also now the Shadowmancer series. Too lazy to do all the links!
Incidently, forgot to mention – found the wonderful SharpeMusique, a iTunes compatible client for Linux, on nanocrew.net.
Took a little bit of hacking to find it, and then even more to get it working, but once it is working it’s ever so fab – and yes, my first purchase was Hayley Hutchinson (79 pence – bargain!!) 🙂
Had a lovely weekend with Penguin, lots of chatting, catching up, and solving puzzles. We also talked a bit about ‘blogs and the like, and this conversation was enough to tip the balance for me from the title Letters from Leeds being a bit kooky/ironic into being sad/self-important – so I’ve renamed it to plain and simple “James’s Journal” (and it’s only not “diary” because I couldn’t resist the alliteration). It is, and always has been, essentially a diary, so why not just call a spade a spade?
But it got me thinking; one aspect I’m not wild about is the archive thing – especially now I title my entries. When one goes to “2005”, do you really want a huge page of all my journal entries? I think not! But I can’t decide what would be better. I guess the options are:
Just the titles, click to read
Titles and a short excert, click to read
“Page” based viewing, with 10 entries per page, or something
Something else, or a combination of the above
Then there’s the question of how you navigate from an entry – back to the list, or is there a “forward” button?
Not that I’ve got time at the moment anyway, but it’s something to mull..
I got into Su Doku in Cornwall – both sets on in-laws get The Times, which of course prints 3 every day. It’s a very pleasing puzzle to do; not too taxing but yet still stimulating. So I got to thinking about how one would write a computer program to solve ’em, and have now finished version 1, which only has a pretty basic rule set, but non-the-less managed this Tuesday’s easy, mild, and diffcult. I was surprised it managed the difficult, actually, as I thought the rules I’d pogrammed were not sophisticated enough. I’m pretty sure it will trip over fiendish puzzles until I add the rules to do with when you don’t know exactly where a number goes, when the options left open for it tell you something else. H’mm, that’s not very clear, is it? 🙂
Another holiday thought was about this nanny who got the sack because she was keeping a blog. I find it extraordinary how indiscrete a lot of ‘bloggers are – I always work on the theory that friends and colleagues may read this, and so I don’t say anything that I would mind be printed in a newspaper. I guess if you’re writing an anonymous blog that’s one thing, but to tell your employer about a ‘blog (complete with URL) and then procede to (a) post when you should be working, (b) admit regular hung-overs (and as good as admit to throwing the odd sickie), and (c) generally diss the family and the appointment is barking. Any one of these is bad enough on their own, but to effectively and blatantly shout them from the rooftops…
Made it home. Phew. Was a lovely time – as you’ve noticed I didn’t quite get around to writing a LfL on t’beach, mainly because I didn’t fancy taking my phone+PDA into a wet, salty, sandy environment! Weather was gorgeous, and we had lots of fun (went to a Donkey park, plenty of swimming and sun-bathing, some nice walks), and I managed to fill up the memory card of my camera (in the order of 300 photos, I think). Course an awful lot of those are dups and/or duds, many of which I could have deleted in Cornwall.
Great excitement when Half-Blood Prince arrived, although I shall refrain from sharing my thoughts as they would all be spoilers. Read it twice; once at full speed, second time a bit more slowly looking for clues. I personally think it’s one of, if not the, best Potter book in the series – and the reactions to the various ‘shippers’ at what seems to be the shakedown of the relationships is really quite amusing. Will try and get round to a review.
And, of course, Here’s the Love single has been released – think I might try out this iTunes thingy (79p can’t be bad, especially compared with Amazon’s 3.99 or something). It’s a shame about all the DRM stuff though – I just want to pay her/her record company the money and download an MP3. 🙁
Speaking of money, I’m a bit depressed about my toy budget. It would seem to be Feburary before I’ll have saved up enough for a new GPS, or April if I save up a bit longer for a PSP. Reason is that various widgets for the ‘ol PDA (memory card, WiFi) don’t come cheap. Ah well. Still, I think I might ask for Jem’s album for Christmas.
Well, that’s it for me – off to Cornwall for a fortnight, for what I hope will be our first proper holiday since before Ben was born. If we can twist granny and grandpa’s arms sufficiently, that’s potentially up to 10 days of sleeping in; possibly as last as 8.30!!
Nearly all packed now – the important stuff (camera, battery chargers, GPS) was all ready at the start of week; last night was throwing boring stuff (clothes, etc) into a bag – tonight it’s loading the car, then hit the M1.
We were in two minds about whether to go halfway down tonight, or just spend the whole of Saturday travelling. We plumped for the split journey, as much as anything because our car has no air-con, and we didn’t think we could hack 7 hours in a baking hot car with a screaming toddler.. Turns out this was an extra smart move, as it’s the British Grand Prix this weekend, so the Silverstone area will no doubt be heaving tommorow. So it’s a service station on the M5 tonight, then the Cornish coast tommorow, hopefully by about 11am.
Of course, my new E2 plays very nicely with my K700, and will let me browse the web over bluetooth/GPRS, so I guess I might not be able to resist the urge to blog from the beach (just as long as A. doesn’t see me). Which reminds me, A and I have a little wager afoot. I reckon on at least one morning I’ll go out for a jog before breakfast. A says she’ll eat her hat if I do. I will report back who wins…
Here’s the Love, by Hayley Hutchinson (my current favourite track) continues to end up pretty high on my playlist. Had a go at playing along over the weekend, and it would appear that there’s no minor chord in it! I might be mistaken – and was certainly surprised – and there’s definitely one point when you could squeeze in a minor, but it’s basically a major chord song. It’s just so fab though; puts a smile on my face everytime I hear it.
The other thought I had is that it’s just screaming to be put into a film – probably over a “falling in love/courtship” montage.. hopefully some movie mogul listens to Terry Wogan and has had the same thought.
Oh yes, and I’ve realised why there’s been such a flurry of activity on here… Nothing like the possibility that someone might actually be reading to hot-wire creativity. Got readers to keep happy now; no good leaving it months between entries.
Today’s excitement – our new shredder arrived. Aint no-one going to nick our identities, oh no. Apparantly if one’s compost heap is getting filled up with grass cuttings (which end up as sludge), you can add your shredded paper which helps fix the consistency of the compost!
Been pondering – it’s a fair bet that one day I’ll no longer work in Leeds, and then what do I call these missives? The rather tacky Letters from Life would enable me to keep the initial letters, but is just too cheesy, even for me. I’m sure something will come to me.
Anyway, got a rabbit update.. was watching Man on Fire this evening, when there’s a BANG BANG BANG at the door. I rush to see what the emergency is, and a young lady with baby on hip is standing there.
“Sorry to disturb you,” she says. “But there’s an escaped rabbit on next door’s front lawn and we wondered if you knew who the owner is so you could let them know?”
So I explain to increasingly wide-eyed lassie that it’s a feral rabbit that’s been on the scene for probably 5 or 6 weeks now. She explains she lives around the corner, and her babe was making a fuss, so she was taking it out for a walk. I explain we quite like seeing said lapine, she wondered if it ate our flowers. She carried on her walk, I went back to the film.
Although this is not the only wildlife excitement we’ve had today. At about 4 ‘o’ clock, we were lounging in the sitting room watching Live 8, and A. squeals and points out the window. Lo and behold, there’s a tiny hedgehog snuffling across our patio!!!
We both thought that they were essentially nocturnal, so wondered why it was out in the heat of the day; although it was a very little one (it would have comfortably sat in the palm of my hand, at least as far as its size went), so may have been a lost baby hedgehog. Ben was very excited, but hedgehogs are not only prickly they are also flea-ridden, so in this instance we didn’t let him out of the patio doors.
It snuffled into our flowerbed, and we didn’t really see it again; chances are it nipped under the fence and through to next door. H’mm – actually next door also had the rabbit on her lawn this evening, must be a veritable wildlife haven.
I can barely remember the last time I saw a hedgehog in the flesh, it’s just a shame it didn’t linger. Perhaps we’ll put out a saucer of milk…
I’m getting in lots of entries before we go to Cornwall! 🙂
Anyway, my top favourite pud:
Raspberry Yum Serves approx 4-6
You make it straight in the serving bowl; I like using a trifle bowl that’s around 1.5 litres or so.
Ingredients:
2x 400g tins raspberries
175g Sponge fingers
250ml double cream, whipped
Dash of sherry/rum/.. (optional)
Method:
Drain the rasps, keeping the juice, and put to one side.
Dip the sponge fingers in the rasp juice, so that they are saturated but not soggy, and line the bottom and sides of the serving bowl. The easiest way to do this is to dip each finger and put it straight into the bowl. Make sure you hold back a few sponge fingers for step (6).
Throw 2 or 3 tablespoons of juice of the juice over the fingers for good measure. If you are using alcohol, throw it in here too.
Put in half the raspsberries, and level-off to form a layer.
Make another layer using just under half the whipped cream.
Make a second layer of dipped sponge fingers, with a bit more juice/alcohol thrown over
Use the remaining raspberries to form another later.
Finish off with a covering of whipped cream.
Leave in the fridge for long enough for everything to soak through – probably an hour or two will do it.
Comments:
It is the yummiest pudding ever, and the precise construction doesn’t matter. I personally think it doesn’t need any spirits in it, but a dry sherry or even rum might just add a nice tang. Other options include using Marscapone instead of whipped cream, in which case you’d stir the drained raspberries through it, and put in half and half with a layer of sponge fingers between.
Update 2/7/2005
H’mm – the above isn’t quite right; I’m not sure the layer of cream in the middle really works, and the sponge fingers that line the side of the dish didn’t really end up integrated properly. Perhaps a longer soaking in the juice would have helped? It was still yummy, but not quite right, somehow…
