Moving, just keep moving...

I don't even like that song. Sorry if I have now earwormed you.

Just to say that I am moving to wordpress for no particular reason.

Twitter promised me that it would be better.

I blame @MmeLindor in particular

Weeeeeeeekeeeeeends

Oh how I love a bit of pottering. A bit of not-going-anywhere-ness. I've been deprived of a real weekend for the past 3 weeks by having to do stuff.

Okay, so it was in theory nice stuff (going to a wedding, away for the weekend, hosting a party) but it wasn't very weekendy. "Weekendy" means not setting an alarm. It means looking at the clock when you wake up and thinking "I could get up, or I could not". Weekendy means drinking coffee in pyjamas. It means doing everything quite slowly. It means spending time contemplating the next cup of coffee or picking a tomato from the plant or watering the chillies or maybe even putting a wash on. Weekendy is not about not doing chores, it's about doing them in a leisurely manner with no feeling of rush.

So here's my weekendy day today. Feel free to call it boring, or to bitch about my laziness in an envious manner. Perhaps you are the sort of person for whom getting up late equals "wasting the day". Fair enough, I say. Some people like to play football, or crochet, or research their ancestors online, or bake cupcakes with 3 inches of perfectly-sculpted icing. I like to get up late and mess about on the internet before getting dressed. I don't criticise your hobbies so leave me in peace with mine.

A note: I hate the word "hobbies". Why should people have hobbies, and what is it about some activities that they are promoted to the status of "hobby" whilst other activities (mostly things that I like to do) are referred to as just "doing stuff" or occasionally "doing nothing"?

My proper weekendy day so far has included:

• wake up lateish
• make coffee
• potter about in kitchen tidying things while coffee brews
• drink coffee while looking at internet
• go back to kitchen for more coffee, look at recipe book regarding dinner tonight
• drink more coffee while reading paper (yesterday's - remember I'm not dressed yet)
• shower and dress
• cut labels out of new top - who puts white labels in a black top anyway?
• look at chilli plants - be pleased that some chillies are turning red
• make brunch, or whatever it is that you call a meal eaten at lunchtime on a Sunday that serves for breakfast and lunch
• look at paper while eating
• come and mess about on internet some more
• write blog

That's it. It's 2pm now and that sounds like a lot of stuff to me.

I know the internet likes pictures of food, so I'll tell you that breakfast was a bit like this

That's not the actual picture, the one today had mushrooms as well, but I wanted to eat it and didn't take a picture. What you see above is black beans/chorizo/tomatoes with scrambled egg on a tortilla. It's my approximation of huevos rancheros.

The recipe I was looking at for dinner tonight is this

That's Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food - chicken with parmesan and "posh ham".

Mmmm. Posh ham.

Anyway, I've got a bit more pottering to do. Enjoy your weekend.

----
This post inspired by my friend's new blog on which she is posting all the bloody time. Be nice to her, she's very pregnant.

Not your usual party preparations...

We've having a party tomorrow.

Not a dinner party, not a soiree, just a good old-fashioned booze-up.

The homebrew has been brewing for a few weeks now (it's nice, I promise), a big grocery delivery made up of mostly bottles came this morning, and do you know what I did on my lunchbreak today? I made soup.

Soup. Not very rock and roll, is it? Not exactly debauched. It doesn't scream "P-A-R-T....Y? Cos I gotta"

There's no excuse for that picture, it's just that I've been told some people hate blogs without pictures, and I wanted to illustrate the quote. I used to really like Ace Ventura when I was younger. Then I grew up. Now I only like Jim Carrey when he's not being Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is great).

In fact, I'm so grownup that I make soup when planning a party. It stems from university days, eating in halls and encouraging friends to load up with carbs and stodge to avoid "throwing plums" later. (I may tell you that story another time). So now when we have large drinking planned, and friends visiting from afar who will arrive early, I make soup.

Here is my soup. It's very simple.

Roughly cut up some leeks and some garlic, fry in a bit of oil. No onion. If you add onion it will taste of onion and not leek, and since leeks are more expensive than onions if you have bothered buying them you should really try to be able to taste them in the end product.

This looks ok.

Then you add one big potato chopped up roughly, some water or stock (or water with a stock cube in like a normal person), a parmesan rind if you have one kicking about, and boil it for a bit.

This is less attractive.

When everything's soft you do the blendy thing. I prefer to let it cool for a bit (less chance of boiling-hot spatter) and whizz it up with a hand blender. Mine was about £6 for Argos. It's not important.

 Now this looks more like soup.

Add salt/pepper/some cream or something. I had creme fraiche in the fridge so stuck in some of that.

Eat with bread/cheese/ham and be pleased that your stomach is now lined and you can embark on the drinking.

I would have laid out the cheese/ham/bread/soup all nicely, but we're not eating it til tomorrow so instead here is a picture showing you that the loaf of bread is bigger than my computer.

Optimism and commuting

"Commuting won't be that bad, I'll have all this TIME, I can do productive things on the train and I'll be SO well-read".

Not sure that writing a blog counts as productive exactly, but it'll be a step in the right direction from sitting and reading easy books because my brain needs a rest.

So here we are, on the train, with a seat and everything. I still haven't worked up to getting out my laptop but that's ok because it doesn't have Internet. Either tethering to iPhones cannot be done or it can be done with difficulty - either way I am not doing it. In consequence I am typing this from my iPhone, which likes to capitalise itself and also the word Internet. My typos are likely to be of similar frequency but with higher amusement value. Damnyouautocorrect shows predominantly iPhone screens for a good reason.

The woman sat next to me is writing code. On her laptop. On her actual lap. Whilst travelling backwards on a train that goes through ear-crushing tunnels that make you feel as if you are underwater. She is a hero. I don't envy her the feeling of "must keep working", but o do envy the cool with which she undertakes intellectually taxing tasks in a decidedly suboptimal environment.

The man opposite me is fiddling with his phone. Work emails? Perhaps. He is wearing office gear. Organising a stag weekend? Maybe. He's about the right age that a lot of his friends might be tying the knot. Some kind of game? If it is then it's a slow one, not a virtual button-masher. I won't know unless I ask him, which I am
Not going to do.

The woman in the 4th seat is more intriguing. She is doing nothing at all. Her only entertainment is inside her head. No book, no computer, no mobile device, no music, not even a crappy free newspaper. She states ahead, slightly to the right and down. Her face looks sad but so do most faces when their owners are focused inwards. I'd look sad if I were on a train with no book to read, but I would BE sad if I were on a train with no book to read.

I long ago reached the point where my phone refused to show me what I was typing and instead displayed about 2 paragraphs above. Good handling of text boxes there Apple! So I will see how ridiculously short this is. And try to load up some Twitter for entertainment.

Adventures with poached eggs (part 2)

Part 1 is here

Oh yes you lucky people, you get to read more about the excitement that is poached eggs, "the most difficult of ALL eggs to cook. FACT." (so says the comment).

Today is the test of the second method for making poached eggs. I say method, but really it's no method at all. Put eggs in hot water (no typhoon this time) wait til they look cooked, take them out again.

So let's do it.

Here they are, two eggs in a pan. Yes, this is the selling point of method 2 - you can cook more than one egg at a time.

They're looking a bit foofy though aren't they? Don't you think? A little bit less cohesive than might be preferred?

Hey look, another picture that looks exactly the same. Sorry. The point was going to be that the eggs began to rise up in the pan.

Here is one on the way out of the pan

 And here they are looking pretty on the plate. Not too bad eh?

Method #2
Pros

• You can cook more than one at a time
• You get an edible egg (or two)

Cons

• Much more egg left in the pan, where the white decided to go all airy-fairy
• Actually is that even a con?
• Better yolk: white ratio

In conclusion - do it like this, the typhoon is fun but I am hungrier than 1-egg-at-a-time.

Hangover

I was going to write something today. It may even have been poached eggs part 2. But instead I am sitting on the sofa in pain (a smaller amount of pain than earlier, but still some pain).

Am I getting old? Or is it just that I have gotten used to a better quality of booze?

I'd like to blame the cheap wine drunk in a field by a river, and the even cheaper lager than followed it.

I am too old for this shit. From now on I must imbibe only high-quality beverages.
I need gin and tonics and locally-sourced ale and perhaps some champagne. Actually I am not a champagne snob, cava or prosecco or nice English or New Zealand sparkling is fine too. This is very nice, although if you offered me a nicely-chilled glass of it right now I might have to say no.

Yes, that's definitely more like it.



So... hangover cures. No raw eggs here, and no magic, what you need is a good dose of each of the following:

• water (or any liquid)
• caffeine
• salt
• sugar
• painkillers (this won't cure anything, it'll just make life more bearable while the other ingredients do their work)

In the meantime, think pleasant thoughts - this can be aided by a look at the lovely website Tea and Kittens.

Aaaah.

Adventures with poached eggs

Finding myself with more time than usual to have breakfast this morning I decided to do something a little more exciting. Not exciting in a strict culinary manner, but something with a sense of danger.

I decided to make a poached egg.

This may not sounds dangerous to you, but think for a second. You are boiling an egg without the shell. There's nothing to keep it together. You could just end up with slightly eggy water. That wouldn't be very tasty. It'd be a pain to clean up too.

So here we go. Living life on the edge. Making a poached egg. Rock and roll.

There is conflicting advice on how to go about this, but one of the stop suggestions is to get the water to nearly-boiling and stir it very very fast until you have a vortex of water that will keep the egg in the middle.

Oh no! It's going all over the place! The vortex is not pulling the egg into the centre but instead spreading it everywhere.

But wait... the egg slowly brings itself together. I'm not sure this is anything to do with the swirling water or if eggs just have special egg-magnetic properties.

Here it is. Sorry for the blurriness, that'll be steam. It actually looks like a poached egg! Success!

So in conclusion, swirly stirry water method.

• Pros:
• you get an egg to eat
• it looks like a poached egg

• Cons:
• the FEAR
• only one egg per pan, could get tiresome

Mmm, yellow

This is why you are fat (me, not you)

When I am 40 and I ask myself why I am not as slim as I was at 20, I don't want any platitudes about ageing and how it's natural to change shape.

I want you to say "prawn crackers".

I believe that the discovery that you can make your own prawn crackers will turn out to have been a turning point in my life.

I love prawn crackers you see. They used to be rare, coming with chinese takeaway, to be eaten once you are stuffed full of other food. They are so full of air they practically dissolve in the mouth, while stil being crunchy and savoury and mmmmmmmm. The fact that each of those little pockets of air comes with a thin coating of oil can be ignored.

But now, now prawn crackers are an every day occurrence. Well, not every every day (although I wouldn't complain), but everyday as in common, not special, just-have-a-few-while-dinner-is-cooking. Because I can make them myself. They've always been available pre-cooked at exortionate prices from Sharwoods or Blue Dragon or similar, but those dry imitations just don't have the same appeal as a fresh tasty prawn cracker that has recently been submerged in smoking-hot oil. Admittedly they don't have quite the same effect on your kitchen walls either, but all pleasure comes at a cost.

I must admit that when I say I "make" prawn crackers, what I mean is that I go to the Chinese supermarket (I happen to live in the "most ethnically diverse area" of a really unethnically diverse city), buy strange solid translucent discs, and throw them into hot oil. A deep fat fryer would be great for this, and a friend recently held a let's-fry-everything party to celebrate the purchase of a deep fat fryer, but all you really need is a wok or small saucepan with a couple of centimetres of oil, and song tongs to fish out the crackers as they puff and spin and expand. It is a thing of beauty, truly. The Crackers expanding, not the pan that I keep specially for making them. The pan is a mess! But the crackers expand and twist and spin and puff up and turn inside out like a flower blossoming or those girls who dance with ribbons. (OK, so neither of those turns inside out, but if they did it would still be beautiful)

So there, my ode to prawn crackers. They are tasty, quick to make, and they will (probably) make me fat.

For a healthier you-can-make-it-yourself snack try edamame (and if you want to know more about the pleasures and dangers of edamame click here). You can buy them frozen in-the-pod at the above-mentioned Chinese supermarkets, and they just need boiling and sprinkling with salt. They're more expensive than prawn crackers, but they come with an aura of virtue that no greasy fried thing can ever achieve.

Why do men always...

Yes, I know it's terribly boring to talk about a forum on a blog, or to talk about a blog on twitter, or to talk about twitter on a forum, or any of that.

I came across a number of threads today asking questions along the lines of "Why are men useless?" "Why do men never empty the bin?" "Why can't men multitask?"

To which my answers are no they aren't, yes they do, yes they can. Perhaps one man in your life is currently fulfilling your expectations of men as useless, but there is no reason at all to think that all or even most men are like this, and certainly no reason why they should be.

I want to emphasise that this kind of lazy generalisation is just as sexist and just as damaging to society and just as unhelpful to feminism as the traditional "Women can't park" or "Women don't understand politics". If you repeatedly tell people that they are bad at something it is likely to become the case. If you tell people that they are incapable of doing something when in fact they have not had the same opportunities to learn then you are a fool. If you say that men cannot do a task, you are claiming that task for women (and vice versa). Why is it that we want to claim bin-emptying, while men claim politics?

For those who want to say "oh but men can't multitask" or "everyone knows women have worse spatial awareness" I strongly recommend Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine (ignore the horrible cover). It's sociology/neuroscience/behavioural psychology applied to gender differences and it manages to be very entertaining. A couple of key experiments: men do better at empathy tasks after reading that men who are empathetic get more girls; women do worse in maths tests if you remind them that they are women and women are expected to do worse than men.

Apparently it's Feminist Friday.

So I should write something feministy.

I am a feminist. Obviously. So are you, probably.

Here's a handy cosmo-style quiz to help out:

1 - Do you think that how people are treated, valued, and respected should be equal, regardless of their gender?
a Yes, of course
b No, people like ME should be treated better than people who are not like me
c No, people like me should get less good treatment

2 - Do you think that people generally are treated, valued, and respected equally, regardless of their gender?
a Yeah, pretty much
b Not completely
c Not at all and I am ANGRY about it

3 - Assuming you answered #2 correctly - do you want this to change?
a Yes, of course
b I told you, I like things being unequal
c Yes, and I try to make it happen wherever I can

Answers:
1
a - Correct, this is an essential point
b - That's not very nice, is it?
c - You need to work on your self-esteem until you switch your answer to a

2
a - Maybe you should look around a little more, because they aren't
b - This is also a key realisation - you don't need to be angry, just aware...
c - ...Although the more you think about it and look around and see sexism the more likely it is that you will become angry (sorry)

3
a - Congratulations, you are a feminist
b - Sounds like you are sexist, well happily for you the world is too. Enjoy it.
c - You're a feminist too, but you already knew that

I am older and wiser now

Last night at the gym (actually on the way back) my ipod decided to play me Avril Lavigne's "Nobody's Fool" (apologies, couldn't find an official video), followed by Blink 182 "What's My Age Again?"

I might've fallen for that when I was fourteen
And a little more green
But it's amazing what a couple of years can mean

Clearly Avril at 16/17 felt that she was much more worldly-wise than she was at 14.



Nobody likes you when you're 23
...
My friends say I should act my age
What's my age again?

And this guy is being accused of acting too childishly for the grand old age of 23.

It made me think that there is only a very small window in your life where you can seriously say Feeling twenty-two, acting seventeen (Katie Melua "Closest Thing to Crazy") before you scoff that 22 and 17 are so close together you can barely remember the difference.

It also reminded me of Stuart Baggs (of Apprentice 2010) in his "You're Fired" follow-up interview, claiming to be much more mature than he had been during the filming of the series. Either the presenter or another guest mocked him, saying "oh yes, now you;re 22 you're much more grown-up than when you were 21." (this part is from memory)

So at what point does it stop? Is there a time when we stop looking back on how we've grown?
When I was 20 I was naive, but now I'm much more wise.

When I was 30 I was idealistic, but now I'm much more pragmatic.
When I was 40... when I was 50... when I was 60... I was <adjective>, but now I'm much more <opposite adjective>.

Sorry for the absence

Been quiet recently, because I'm well aware that there could be "real life people" reading this, and the main thing I've been thinking about is the fact that I'm going to be changing jobs, which I wasn't ready to tell everyone about.

If you are one if those RL people, by the way, feel free to keep quiet about it. I know intellectually that I don't do the best job of anonymising, but I prefer to think that I am talking to Internet sprites who only know the virtual me. 

I don't usually capitalise Internet. I'm writing this on my phone in the doctor's waiting room. They have restored the magazines that were for a while banned on germ-spreading grounds, but in the meantime I have discovered other forms of entertainment. I have also decided that I agree and old magazines that have been handled by ill people are a bit yuck. Dentists surgeries are ok, because everyone is extra clean when they go to the dentist (and unlikely to have a caold, becausse can you imagine the horror?).

Oh no, not another food blog!

There are too many food blogs in the world already, I know.

You can look away now if you are sick of them.

But this post is going to be a food post. I love food. I love reading cookbooks (preferably chatty ones like Nigella rather than simply lists of instructions) even when I don't get around to making the food inside. I love reading menus, even after I have chosen my meal. Cocktail menus are fantastic too, and I love to watch cocktails being made, whether the barman looks like Tom Cruise or not.

In a previous life I was a scientist, so the idea of measuring things out, mixing them up, spinning them around, heating up or cooling down, this all is very familiar. And unlike science, what you get at the end is FOOD!

So tonight I am making dinner for some friends. You can call it a dinner party if you must. Really it's an excuse to spend the afternoon in the kitchen, spend more money than usual on ingredients, and try out some recipes. Whenever I watch Come Dine With Me and a contestant says "I haven't tried this before" I always scream at them "Nooooooo! You are being judged! Do something tried-and-tested!" (although when they say "I've done this a million times before" it is generally a sign that this will be the time it goes wrong). Luckily I am not being judged. Except perhaps by you. I am having dinner with friends who will treat my efforts kindly, and if all doesn't go well the Indian takeaway round the corner is open til 12.


Here are the two untried recipes:
Thai pork patties from the lovely, funny, and slightly sweary Esther Walker

Thai green curry from Jamie Oliver (actually from a book but this is where I could find it online - don't worry it's a safe link).

As you can possibly see, I didn't follow either recipe 100% to the letter, but tasty food came out at the end so I will call it a success. The curry could have been creamier but that's easy to fix - just add more coconut milk!

How do I know thee? Let me count the ways.

Prompted by a conversation on Twitter that went something like this (details removed so we don't have to discuss the actual issue itself)

Journalist - Link
Journalist - Joking/sarcastic comment about link
Me - Another sarcastic comment

Journalist - I was being sarcastic! Don't believe I think that.
Another human being (who I assume doesn't know the journalist personally) - I was worried for a second.
Me - I was joining in with the sarcasm - I didnt think you meant it!
Journalist - Phew!

I realised that I had assumed that the journalist knew that I "knew" her well enough to know that she would never say anything like that seriously. Which is of course madness. She doesn't know me, I don't know her, neither of us knows the third person, and yet I assumed that she would know I was being sarcastic, and she cared when she thought that we had misunderstood her joke.

When you communicate with people online, do you feel that you know them? In the online world I can feel that I know a lot about people's opinions without knowing very much about their lives at all. Age, location, marital status, children, even sex in some cases. All of these are secondary to what someone thinks about a new TV series or the best way to mix a cocktail or whether crocs are the work of the devil or comfy enough to override the ugliness.

In real life the opposite is true, when you meet someone the first things you find out about them are the externalities, the house/job/children, but in order to get to know someone, to know if this is someone you want to meet again, you need to chat about what you think about things, not what you have or what you do but how you feel about issues.

I can't see any way to change this, however, without sounding like a deranged quizmaster.
Nice to meet you, now what do you think about MSG? Which is more important, a good haircut or good shoes? Which Beatle do you like best and why?
I can't see it going down well.

The Pepsi(Max) Challenge.

Inspired by a BBC programme called Business Nightmares, I decided to do the "Pepsi Challenge".

You'll be familiar with the phrase, but the footage within the programme (still available on iplayer) was charmingly low-budget. Pepsi started the marketing campaign in 1975; members of the public are asked to try two unmarked glasses of cola, and after they express a preference a cardboard box (I told you it was high-tech) is moved, revealing the bottles from which the beverages were poured. "Which drink did you prefer?" "Pepsi!".

My own Pepsi Challenge will be not between standard Pepsi and Coke, but between the two new players. Pepsi Max and Coke Zero. These are diet drinks branded not as 'diet' but as 'no sugar', perhaps in an attempt to make drinking a diet drink seem more masculine. Both brands have certainly learnt from the New Coke disaster covered in the Business Nightmares programme - instead of updating their diet drinks they have . To my mind Coke Zero is what Diet Coke would taste like if it had been invented in the noughties rather than the 80s. (2006 and 1982 to be precise, Pepsi Max and Diet Pepsi were launched in 1993 and 1964 respectively).

So, onto the tasting. Two cans, put into the fridge at the same time, poured into same-sized glasses by a helpful volunteer, and I poured for him, so that neither of us knew which drink we were tasting.

I believed that I knew which was which instantly, and I was right. My assistant also guessed the identity of the drinks correctly.

• Pepsi Max
• is sweeter
• looks fizzier but tastes flatter
• tastes "of America" according to my test subject
• Coke Zero
• is more acidic-tasting
• "sharper" in the mouth
• preferred by both of us (maybe not surprisingly since they had 13 more years to work on the formula)

So I know which I should be buying - although knowing me it is more likely that I will go for whichever is on special offer!

Which do you prefer? Do you know?

If BA offer you a flight that is actually run by American Airlines...

... and it's the same price but at a more convenient time, so you take it thinking 'well it must be pretty much the same or else they wouldn't offer it', don't say I didn't warn you.

It is not the same.

You can't check in online, which means that you get to the airport to find that everyone who booked via AA has already taken all the good seats.

When they come around with the drinks trolley and you ask for a gin and tonic they say 'we charge for liquor'. "Liquor"? What a judgemental and puritanical word! I am going to sit in this very small space for the next 11 hours, and you seek to deny me gin? I have paid for a service with gin, as all Englishmen deserve. We didn't build an Empire on denying people gin! (I'm not technically an Englishman, but it scans better than saying I believe that everyone deserves gin if they are taking a long flight).

Then you turn on the little TV, searching for something to take your mind off the fact that you have no gin, because you have no cash, because you have spent all your dollars and were going to go to the cash machine at the other end, and discover that the selection of films is rather more sparse than on the BA flight, and that they don't start when you ask them to. No, they start whenever they feel like it, and you have to plan your time around them. If you wanted to watch <forgets names of all the films that were there because they were rubbish> Film A then you have to wait around for half an hour watching the no-booze trolleys go past, or deliberately wake up from your nap. If the crew ask you a question during a critical bit of dialogue that's it, it's gone forever. What century is this? Even the BBC has iplayer. I don't wait around for the time that a show is actually ^on TV^ at home when there are other forms of entertainment, and yet you make me do so when I am stuck in a seat and have nothing else to do?


Rant over. Ish. I know it all comes under First World Problems, but really if you are paying for BA make sure you get your booze and your telly.

On a more serious note, do vegetarians book special meals on flights? I figured that since there was always a vegetarian option for the main food that veggies would just choose that and not worry about it. Don't do that if you are flying with American Airlines. I chose the vegetarian because it sounded nicer and the label said "Allergens: Fish". Not very veggie at all then.

11.11 again?

I opened my eyes this morning and the clock said 5.55. Don't worry, I closed them again pretty sharpish. When I regained consciousness again I thought "That's pretty unusual", then realised that it probably wasn't.

So here's my attempt at some maths. You can stop reading here if you like.


The clock is set to 12 (rather than 24) hour display, so there are 12 x 60 = 720 different numbers it might be showing. How many of those would make you think "Hey, look!"?


All the same number: 1.11, 2.22, 3.33, 4.44, 5.55, 11.11
Hour and number the same: 1.01, 2.02. 3.03. 4.04, 5.05, 6.06, 7.07, 8.08, 9.09, 10.10, (11.11 already counted) 12.12.
Counting up: 1.23, 2.34, 3.45, 4.56, 12.34
Counting down: 2.10, 3.21, 4.32, 5.43, 6.54


Any more suggestions? I count 27 numbers that would make you look. 720/27 is 1 in 27. That's not very unusual. If you look at a clock about once every half hour during your waking day you'll see a "hey look" time about once a day.

--

I realise some times are more visible than others - I expereince many more hours-beginning with-9 than I do hours-beginning-with-4, but it's Saturday and I'm not actually that good at statistics.

Why I ignored a wedding list request

It took me until age 21 or so to realise that I wasn’t growing any more. I’d been buying my own clothes since about 14 and had not got out of the mindset that expensive clothes were not worth it because I would grow out of them. I still stick to that principle sometimes, only now it is the realisation that I will grow out of a fashionable item not physically but mentally.

So here is my mantra that I will (attempt to) live by. If you intend to use something a lot, or over a long period of time, or both, get a good one. A good one will be pleasurable to use, and will actually withstand heavy use. This is why I have an enormous heavy garlic press. The last one couldn’t take the pressure. The thing is never in the drawer, it is used more days than it is not used and half the time I have to wash it up specifically to use it, because the normal washing-up flow has not yet gotten to it before I need to use it again. Yes, we don’t wash up after every meal. We are slatterns. Let's move on.

“Where’s the wedding list?”, I hear you cry. Or I would if a) I could hear forwards in time and through the internet, and b) I believed that anyone would read this. The wedding list, or in fact lack of one, is here. I attended a wedding last week for a grown-up couple who requested that “as we have plenty of pots and pans, if you would like to give us a gift we would appreciate a donation towards a honeymoon”. I don’t object to this. I know some people do, they consider it rude to ask for money. I don’t see it as asking for money so much as saying that if we would like to spend money on them, here is the way to do it that would be most appreciated. The things that I do very slightly object to is that the couple concerned do not have plenty of pots and pans. Not good ones anyway. Last time I visited the groom was struggling to make scrambled eggs in a nasty burnt-bottomed pan that’s probably 20 years old and not very good when it was bought. They are twice my age and haven’t learned the lessons above, so I have taken it upon myself to be very sanctimonious and annoying make their lives easier by giving them a nice non-stick pan. If anyone wants a recommendation for an inexpensive but super non-stick pan, these are the ones. Food just slides off. It’s like magic.

I am contributing to the honeymoon fund as well, I’m not that self-righteous that I have decided that they must have the pan instead , but they can have the pan as well.

I do remember a joke...

Equating Islam with terrorists is like...

equating all Christians with kiddly-fiddlers

or saying that all Jedis are like a bloke being kicked out of Tesco for wearing a dressing gown and carrying a lightsaber

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(from Andy Parsons)
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But better than that, he messed it up, and said "all Jedis are like a bloke being kicked out of Tesco for wearing a lightsaber and carrying a dressing gown", and started to crack up halfway through. "Now we are all thinking of a naked guy carrying a dressing gown, and we don't know where he is wearing that lightsaber". I imagine that he was wearing his "dressing gown" and Tesco staff told him that he wasn't allowed in wearing nightclothes, at which he said "OK then" and took it off.

Does the ban on shopping in your pyjamas extend to other dressing-gown-like clothing too? What about a karate gi? That looks dressing-gown-ish.

Andy Parsons and acting like a tourist

We went to see Andy Parsons last night. He can best be described as the little bald one from Mock the Week. Why did we go? He's not my favourite comic, it wasn't a particularly convenient day, but he was in town and I have resolved to make better use of the opportunities/facilities available in my town. He was good, actually, although he made sure that no-one would remember most of his jokes by telling us about the time that he found a pair of underpants inside a jar of mayonnaise and Hellmann's wrote back saying that there was no way they could have gotten there in the factory and so he must have put them there himself.

I have lived here since 2002, but this was the first time (I think) that I have been inside the venue - it's certainly the first time I had paid for tickets to go inside. It's not as if I live in Londond with a myriad of theatres and venues, there's pretty much just this place, a more play-y theatre, and the amateur dramatics place. I haven't been to the other theatre either. London is a good subject to bring up, as friends who have lived there say that they did less "touristy stuff" while they lived there than they ever did while living an hour's train ride away. Does familiarity breed contempt? Or is it just that we get stuck in our little routines? Living in our own little circles, with the places we go and the places we don't go separated by nothing but habit.

So, today's resolution is to go and see more of the things that are there to see, go and do more of the things that are there to do. But first I must drink coffee, sit on my sofa, and maybe do some washing. I fear that the only real incentive to see and do all of the wonderful things that are available will be if I have a time limit. "Since 2002" is a long time, but the future is long too, and it is only when I know that I will be leaving that I will worry about having missed out.

Caitlin Moran and why I pay for my news

I was going to muse on the nature of anonymity on the internet, but I got distracted by Caitlin Moran winning TWO journalism awards last night: Critic of the Year and Interviewer of the Year. Given that for 2010 she was Columnist of the Year, she’ll need to branch out into something new this year because she’s won an award for everything that she does: interviewing, criticising, and columning.

At this point I would love to link you to her interview with Jilly Cooper, which shows that meeting your childhood (or teenhood) heroes can be as amazing as you imagined, but it’s behind a paywall. And I haven’t yet figured out how to link neatly. Suffice it to say that they get “tight” on champagne, and Jilly really does use the word “tight” to describe inebriation. I wonder if it implies a certain level of drunkenness, or if it only applies if said drunkenness has been achieved with champagne? I need a Jilly Cooper dictionary, and in fact my Amazon wishlist does currently hold Class (written in 1979, it has to be hilarious). Top quote from the interview: “I am, essentially, being given a dirty tour of Bath by a pissed Jane Austen.”. I won’t gush on any further about how much I love Caitlin Moran, but it is a lot. In my mind I am about 13 with braces and she is 15 and has cool hair, but she is not one of the bully-ish cool girls, oh no, she is the sort who will occasionally say “nice bag” when someone has a new schoolbag, with no clue that she has caused an incremental rise in that person’s social standing by means of her approval. She just thought it was a nice bag.

The paywall, yes. I can go behind it, and you can’t, because I have sacrificed a virgin at the altar of Rupert Murdoch. Or alternatively I have set up a £2/week direct debit and mentally allocated £1 to Caitlin Moran, 50p each to Robert Crampton and Sathnam Sanghera (spelled right without looking, yes!), and I get everyone else for free. Writers have children and cats and expensive haircuts to support just like everyone else, and I like to feel that my money says “Hey, you, you’re doing good, keep doing it and here’s some cash so you don’t have to quit it to go work in Tesco instead”. In an ideal world I would prefer the site to send my money magically to the writers of the pages that I spend most time on, thereby really rewarding the best writers, but I can imagine how complicated it would get even for a teeny tiny 10-page website, let alone a behemoth like The Times.

So, in summary, Caitlin Moran is great, the paywall is not so evil, I use too many commas, and no-one is going to read this anyway.

I don't have a blog

Really, I don't.

Why would I?

Just because I read other people's blogs and think they are interesting, why would anyone read mine?


I heard that the average number of messages/posts/tweets from a Twitter account is 1. Let's hope this doesn't go down the same way.