Long Gone Dated But Still Vindicated

Cider Crumble Cake!
I remember making this years ago, and making a pencil note next to the recipe - "flat and heavy - shouldn't it be self-raising flour?" since the recipe used plain (and pencil notes in the margin are perfectly normal, like talking to yourself).

Well, daughter is not so interested in the dry cider I got her, so I decided - don't bin it, use it in cider crumble cake.  I checked out the recipe in my newer edition of the 1,000 Recipe Cookbook, and hey presto - "self raising flour".

A small thing, but I take credit wherever I can.

Cider Cup
Righto, that's the cake baked.  I've also made "Cider Cup" since it registered as a drink that Churchill shared with the King when he went a-visiting one day - must have read it in his History of the Second World War.  It is currently chilling in the fridge.

I also made Tomato and Basil Risotto, neglecting to pay attention to how many it would feed.  Now I know what I'll be having for lunch until Thursday.

Bitwa Warszawska 1920!
Or - "Battle of Warsaw 1920" for those who don't speak Polish.  Finished watching this last night, with the TV screen having to sit two feet away - the subtitles are tiny.   An interesting film, showing how the Polish army in the immediate aftermath of World War One was composed of those who had served in the German, Austrian and Russian armies.  The hero is a bit underwritten - I liked the Polish Commissar, who was crude, ruthless but also amusing.  Natasza Urbanska is also quite easy on the eyes.  One curious scene comes near the beginning: the interior of Leon Trotsky's train carriage, where everything is in primary colours.  Odd and rather jarring given the realistic cinematography otherwise.
     The CD cover art is an inaccurate mish-mash, though - all the background stuff is from WW2 <goes into military pedant mode and the world switches off>

Well, time to go, that Zombie novel's 177,800 words need a bit of adding-to.

Pip pip!

The Triumph Of Today!

Yes, I'm sorry, more banging-on about ice-cream.  Sadly for You The Audience, the creation of my blog coincides with my purchase of an ice-cream maker.  Yesterday, after it had been gently suggested that I try making a nutty ice-cream, I found a pistachio one by Nigella Lawson that was very easy to make, and which went down very nicely.  Thank you Nigella*!

 * As a gentleman notice I focus entirely on Nigella's culinary achievements.  Thank you.

Raison d'etre
NO!  Not an ice-cream flavour!  It's French.  Go look it up.
     Becca, one of the Bright Young Things I work with, and who incidentally inspired me to start BOOJUM!, asked what my Blog was about.
     "Anything that comes into my head" was my instant response.
     But! Now I begin to worry.  Should my blog have a theme? A thread?  A particular goal or audience or aim?  A target demographic?  Who or what am I writing it for?  Do I expect feedback and comments and input and reciprocation -
     At which point I realise work has invaded the left hemisphere of my brain.  Bugger off, work!
      "Anything that comes into my head" is to be the defining factor.  If you prefer statistically-monitored blogs that interpret visitor metrics and deliver accordingly-crafted posts - this is not the blog you're looking for.

All Is Well with Faber-Castell
     I just dug out an ancient drawing board that's been in the family for at least 25 years.  It has a latitudinal clip for holding paper steady, and a small longitudinal clip for A3 sized sheets, is gridded in 5mm squares, and used  to come with a clip-on cursor that probably disappeared two house moves ago. The top right and bottom left quadrants of the grid are worn away to nothing - this is because I used to perch the board on the handlebars of my exercise bike and use it to move my PC's mouse around; the combination of friction and sweat for 30 minutes eventually swept all the grid lines away.  It has deep cracks across half the underside that were only stopped by a rubber foot, or the whole thing would have fallen apart.
     Why is this significant?  Well I remember using a considerably less-abused board 25 years ago, trying to design a hex-and-counter wargame for the Russo-Japanese War.  Now I'm using it to draw counters for a hex-and-counter wargame for the Passchendaele campaign of World War One.  What goes around comes around, eh?
    
Plus - an eerie coincidence - I Googled to see if Faber-Castell are still in business.  They are.  Not only that, one of their current lines of colour pens is branded "Gelato".  What is the brand name of my ice-cream maker?  Yes.  "Gelato".


 


    

How is it that -

You can have "decrepitude" but not "crepitude"?



Decrepitude.  I mean, what else can it be? "Luxurious North Korean beach homes?" 

VS.

Crepitude in concrete.  Glass and steel too.
 

.
Enquiring minds want to know!

It's June, It's Raining - It Must Be Glastonbury!
Walking to work yesterday I spotted several dozen people kitted out for what must have been an outward-bound adventure course, all morosely gathered at Dantzic Street.  Later on the penny dropped - they're all off to that giant mud wallow in - what county is it? - oh yes Somerset.  I wish them well!  I like my home comforts far too much to want to fester in a filth-filled field for four days, under the iron sky.  One of my memories of an earlier Glasto is live camerawork from the rear of The Who on stage, showing rain coming down outside in rods, endlessly.  Grim stuff! 

Of course if you have a camper van it makes life a little more civilised - Sadie, ex-work colleague, had an old camper van which meant not having to worry about people looting your tent, and it had an inside toilet, which festival-goers have been known to kill for.  Rosie and Phil, pub quiz partners, took the cannier step of booking an hotel in Glastonbury itself.  They could walk to the site, have their inner muso fulfilled and then walk back to a nice comfy bed after a decent meal.

Middle-aged Rob is quite happy to experience the whole business by watching the BBC.  Besides, I never did like the Rolling Stones.


"We're the British.  You can't crush us!  You think this is bad?  You should have seen the Western Front in 1917!"

The Cars Hiss By My Window -

 - mainly because the road outside is wet, thanks to the rain that has also encouraged a silent army of mucus-shedding slugs to emerge into the darkness.  I encountered these slimy urchins on the way back home from the pub quiz (no win tonight!  Daughter's boyfriend is a quiz curse!).

The Grand Architect and Designing the Limax
I feel that God must have forgotten about the slug after designing it as the Snail, Mark One. 

"I want a small, slimy creature that coasts along on it's belly.  Purpose in life: to consume excess vegetation.  Hmmm.  Lookee.  Well, that's pretty disgusting.  I know!  Give it a hat.  There.  A far higher Cute Quotient than something resembling an ambulatory turd.  Now - ' except at this point the Grand Architect's attention is caught by one of his practical jokes escaping into the wild.  He then forgets to backspace and delete the slug.  End result: the duck-billed platypus and slugs.

Redundancy, Alcohol and The Future Of Food Labelling
I notice that Kopparberg are labelling one of their countless flavoured ciders as "apple cider".  OXYMORON!  By definition cider is made from apples.  If you want to extend this vapid classification further, Perrier (are they still going? Googles, yes they are, phew, strained anecdote doesn't collapse instantly) - where was I?  Oh - yes - Perrier will be marketing their wares as "Bottled H2O Water", Galaxy will call their bars "Cocoa solid Chocolate Bars" and MacDonalds will be selling "Mechanically Recovered Meat Burgers".

Quiver in fear, multi-nationals, at the satire of BOOJUM! 



"We don't give a rat's ass, Booj."

Typical! You invoke a Muse -

 - and which one turns up?  Terpsichore, in a tutu.  I asked her to run along, this is a Blog and I don't do dancing.

FOOD
Yesterday's blog having been astronomical in nature, today I feel a bit earthier and less ethereal, probably something to do with the huge meal just guzzled at the carvery.  My own daughter was suffering from what she described in me as "Old Man's After-Dinner Nap".  That'll larn 'er.  Earlier at work I'd had a tub of date-expired Indian dips with half a baguette, and a persimmon and three Kiwi fruits and a tub of Chicken a la King and a tin of sardines and more stale baguette dipped in Marmite and a small tomato and mozzarella flan, so most of the blood in my body was circulating round my stomach.  And I've just had a bowl of ice-cream (why yes it was home made, actually).
 
ART
Grrr!  Still baffled by mobile not registering when attached to PC.  I tried shouting at it, with no success.  This blog being heavy on text, it could do with a picture or two and what better than my daughter's A2 art display which I've been to see this evening.  The photos of this exhibition are on my phone - hang on - <shouts WORK! loudly at phone> nope still the recalcitrant.  Lots of big artworks that she'd done,  including a pot that is a) Enormous, b) Heavy and c) Fragile, and which will be tremendous fun for the hapless chauffeur who has to bring it home, eh?  Also a charming little sculpture of a mole just begging to be stolen as it's small enough to fit in a pocket.

SEX
This is the 21st Century.  The Chinese have manned a space station in orbit, I can book car park spaces for a month online without having to display a permit, and cassette tapes have gone the way of the Dodo.  Why, then do some folk swell up like toads, bristle like porcupines and spit venom* when the subject of same-sex marriage comes up?  Consenting adults and all that.  Remember - 2013, not 1850.  You get further with tolerance and compassion.


* like a snake, except three animal examples would be too much, and the Spitting Cobra is actually more like the Spraying Cobra, and yes, Valeria, it is real.



"Fear me! Fear m - oh.  Glasses."

22 Light Years Away ...

- there could be another Rob, albeit one who massed at least 250 kilograms and who was 16 feet tall, typing out a blog entry about a puny midget living on a planet 22 light years away 

What I mean is  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23032467


Summarised (if you fear the link will instead send you to a phishing porn'n'meds-flogging-spamsite) three new super-earths have been discovered in orbit around Gliese 667C, 22 light years away 


Now, the youth of today - yes, that means you - are all very blasé about extra-solar planets.  What they don't realise is that before 1995 we - all humanity yes including the delusional "I was kidnapped by space aliens" clan - did not know if our own Solar System was unique.  Well it ain't!  There are bloody hundreds of extra-solar planets out there: great big gas giants that are easy to detect, and planets only a few times larger than Earth, which are far harder to detect.  In my lifetime I predict we will have orbiting telescopes a quantum level beyond Hubble that can image the atmospheres of these super-earths.  And some of these planet's atmospheres will contain water.  And be in the "Goldilocks Zone".  And may thus harbour life -




And, being human, we will probably decide to go and conquer them (see my earlier blog about sunshine and conquest)



Then again, maybe not.  By that time we will of course have a One World Government run by the sole world superpower, India, who will adhere to Ghandi-esque principles of non-intervention.  And they'll be too busy running the OWG colony on Mars, anyway

High Definitions

"Pulchritude" - what does it mean?  A question that popped into my rubbish-tip mind earlier today.  Apparently it means "having great beauty and attraction" which is an oxymoron, because it sounds like a stew made from fish guts, to poison wasps with, and delivered from a septic sock.

"Oxymoron"'s another woeful definition.  It ought to be an ultra-insult, in the sense of "You're not just a moron, you're an oxymoron!"  and yet what does it mean?  A contradiction in terms.

"Procrastination is the thief of time" - yes, well so is Empire film magazine, thank you very much.  I sat down for a quick flick through it and an hour had unaccountably vanished.

And where does "Procrastination" come from?  I know there was Procrustes, an innkeeper from Greek antiquity, who would not have got any stars at all from Egon Ronay, and more probably a visit from the ancient Greek equivalent of the Murder Squad.

Well, got to go after my sub-GCSE English ramblings, that zombie novel won't write itself.

Sunday. Except no Sun.

 - and no daughter, either.  She's off with her boyfriend.

ITEM THE FIRST

Bad puns aside, tomorrow is Midsummer's Day.  What's the weather forecast?  Let me guess without checking - cloud, wind, rain.

<checks BBC website>

Yes.



I think bad weather must have driven us to acquire an empire overseas.  It's no coincidence that the places we conquered were sunny and hot, surely?  Britain never tried to conquer Norway (and it's only a hop, skip and jump over the North Sea) because it is Cold And Snowy.  No.  We sailed around the world and got ourselves settled in India - which by reputation was sunny and hot, with interesting cooking.  And along the way we got lots of Africa - again, sunny and hot - and America.  Which is mostly sunny and hot.  I think the conquerors got a bit too enthusiastic and carried on too far north and thus we acquired Canada, and then nobody else wanted to take it off our hands because it is - join in on the chorus here - Cold And Snowy.  What is the very definition of A Tropical Paradise?  The Caribbean.  Who conquered the Caribbean?  Us Brits.  We even snaffled Caribbean islands the French had gotten to first, because the French have the Riviera to fall back on after all, and us islanders cannot console ourselves with the thought that Brighton is on a par with Bermuda.  Then there's the Antipodes.  Australia is a giant baking-hot blue-skied sun-filled hot-spot, and you can always nip next door to New Zealand to cool off in summer.

So there you have it:  Connolly's Interpretation of Colonisation and Conquest.

The Rest of the World watch out - two miserable summers in a row, if we get to three those British SAD* genes might get triggered ...


* No, not "Seasonal Affective Disorder" - "SEIZE AND DESTROY!"


ITEM THE SECOND



USDAW advised, in one of it's online communications, that employees ought to beware of posting their opinions about work on social websites.  This is a real issue and I have known people who were dismissed due to posting negative stuff that was subsequently discovered by their employers.  The implication is that posting negative material can get you sacked.

What about positive posts? 

I like my job.  It's a challenge and forces me to think, with different situations and scenarios on a daily basis.  My response to colleagues looking for work elsewhere was "They'll have to carry me out of here in a body-bag!".  I like the people I work with - clever and diligent.  I even like my managers and am sad to see one moving on into a secondment role away from our team.  Now, if this post ever comes to the attention of my employers (and I have been scrupulously vague about who they are) will I get big fat  cash bonus?

Probably about the same time our weather improves. Well, got to go - that zombie novel won't write itself.

Pip pip!

Progress to date, mate.

Well after - hang on what's this? ah now Trebuchet, that's better.

Okay, as per yesterday's Chiselled In Stone agreements, I have written up 1200 words of my Zombie Magnum Opus.  Which came quite easily, so yah boo sucks to Writer's Block, ta very much.  I have also been puzzling about my hex-and-counter wargame, adding more detail to rules and dragging a big MDF over to the drawing desk to create some counters.  The ice cream is still pending - got to go sort out the strawberries in a bit - and I am now 60% through "The Fire Engine That Disappeared" - which was written in 1968 and has occasional background verisimilitude to verify just that - not sure if any readers today would remember the Greek Colonel's coup of 1967.

What else?  Hmmm. 
 Greene King IPA does not compare at the same level to Cain's IPA.  Greene's is more like a conventional ale than an IPA. 

Not that it's bad, per se, just not what I expected.



Okay, time to go hull those strawberries.

Tomorrow:  either The Death Of Nelson As Wall Mural (in 3D) or - Sunday Laundry

In Anticipation a.k.a. Friday Night Promises

Yes.  I should sternly schedule myself this weekend.  The Rob of Friday night looks at the forthcoming weekend and decides he shall:

1)  Write more of his zombie manuscript.  "Year Three: The Combat Bicycle" to be the chapter in question.
2)  Carry on plotting rules for the Third Ypres campaign hexgame.  Also perhaps create some counters to play through rules and scenarios.
3)  Make some strawberry ice cream.  Before this blog I'd not bothered with ice-cream making, but now I have an ice-cream maker and YOU WILL PAY ATTENTION TO MY ICE-CREAM MAKING!
4)  There's a choice of dozens - and dozens and dozens and dozens - of books to read, but primary choice has to be "The Fire Engine That Disappeared" by Sjowall and Wahloo.  This is because it's a library book and is only in-loan for the next 5 days.
5)  Watch purchased DVDs.  "End Of Watch" and "The Battle for Warsaw".  Then check out website for free - free! - Bollywood fillums as informed by Manisha.

My daughter took part in "2.8 Hours Later" in central Manchester last night, and had a blast by all accounts.  I have a photo of her and her boyfriend in their zombie make-up, and may even uplode it if I manage to negotiate the data-sharing protocols of mobile phones and Blogger.

In other late-breaking news, "Dark Side of the Moon" is 40 frackin' years old this year.  I remember breaking someone's copy of this "LP" at school in the mid-70's, by accident.  This leads on to what an "LP" is - See Under "Turntable Revolution Rate".  33, 45, 78.

Post-Prandial, Pre-Pub

The brownies are baking, ready for Claire's last day with her team tomorrow.  Surprisingly, this is only the fourth or fifth time someone has specifically requested a cake from me, after 15 months of baking.  Perhaps I should draft a menu of cakes and ask for requests, the catch being that you pay 50p for me to make the cake of your choice.

Ahh!  Necking a cold tin of beer whilst enduring our disgustingly humid and overcast summer weather helps to handle the hardship.  This is in preparation for the pub quiz, except my prep should also include cruising tabloid tat websites to brush up on vapid celebs and their irksome activities.

<thinks>

Nah, not worth it.  Instead - I have to craft a rhyme for Claire's goodbye.  Okay muse, hit me with inspiration.  Right here.  Left temple.  Quick as possible.



Still waiting.



Yup, still waiting.



Meanwhile - James Gandolfini has died, coming rather as a shock.  This has brought "The Sopranos" back into discussion.  I watched the first season, then gave up.  Horrible nasty people doing horrible nasty things to other horrible nasty people - rather like a James Elroy novel.


Whoops, got to go see those brownies.  Come on, muse!

BOOKS
Collected another 8 books from the Post Office Sorting Depot, which came in two giant parcels that most definitely would not fit through the letter-box.  This means my military history collection now approaches 400 books, as opposed to the 500 I had before the Giant Book Cull of 2010. 

What's that?  Of course I haven't read them all!  Collecting them is an end in itself!  The bitter fork-prod of irony is that now I'm working I can afford to buy the books, but don't have time to read them; whilst on the dole I couldn't afford to buy any but had ample time to read them. 

There are people who go into a decline and turn into urban fossils when they finish working because they have nothing to fill their empty haunted lives with; well I have hundreds of books to read, thanks, so bugger off anomie!

ICE CREAM
If anyone read yesterday's post (I don't flatter myself that this figure =>1) then let it be known that the ice-cream turned out rather successfully.  Extremely solid but without a lot of ice-crystals.  Sophie, wise lady catering consultant at work, states that adding liquid glucose prevents the mix from becoming an utterly immovable block.  I shall try this next time.  First, of course, we have to finish this lot of ice cream.

DEATH
In other late-breaking news, Ambrose Bierce is 172 years old.  Mr Bierce has successfully cheated the Grim Reaper for over a century now.  Speaking from his New Mexico canyon hideout, he refused to share the secret of immortality with the rest of us, because the rest of us are, in his words "jackasses".  Thank you Ambrose.  I baked this cake for your birthday but you aren't getting it now.

Toodle Pip!

The Iceman Cometh. Literally.

You Know You're Middle-Aged When:

1)  You get childishly excited about your new Kenwood Ice Cream Maker
2)  Your mobile died a week ago and you never noticed
3)  You write your clocking-in times in a diary instead of Outlook
4)  You associate the word "Kindle" with something to be thrown on a fire
5)  You don't recognise any single-name "Celebrities" on the BBC's "Entertainment" page
6)  You do simple arithmetic faster than the youths around you (they don't have the app!)
7)  Your pile of Books To Be Read, stacked one atop the other, is higher than your house
8)  You realise that, sadly, you are never going to make it as an astronaut - ever
9)  Your savings account is actually a scruffy tin pot containing £2,500 in cash
10)  Some kind soul gives up their seat on the tram for you  :(

On the plus side, I am now past my half-century, mostly corpus intact, so yah booh sucks to those who said I'd never reach 30!

RIght, I am off, trembling with glee, to put an ice cream mix into <cont. Page 96>

Suburban Life at 625

"Boojum", I should explain, comes from Lewis Carrolls "The Hunting of the Snark" and was chosen simply because I like the way it sounds.  Apologies to any Carrollophiles who have been cruelly deceived.

Next, a little experimentation.  What do the fonts look like?

What do the fonts look like?  What do the fonts look like?  What do the fonts look like?  What do the fonts look like?  What do the fonts look like?  What do the fonts look like?  What do the fonts look like?

I think - excuse me -
Trebuchet.  Again, because of the name.

A Trebuchet.  Obviously.  You wouldn't mistake it for an ironing board, would you?

 

What domestic pottering shall I get up to tonight?  Ironing, and picking socks out of the dryer, and prepping some food for tomorrow, and getting the ice-cream maker ready!  This time tomorrow we shall see what I can concoct.  Oh yes.

 

In other late-breaking news, I've read about 1/3 of the way through my zombie Opum Magnus, which is about 3/4 done.  114,000 words.  Whether it's actually any good or not - hmmm.  Hmm!

 



First post on this newly-created Blog.

I feel like a four-year old riding their new bicycle without stabilisers.  I am, after all, 51 years old and much more familiar with pen and paper - make that fountain-pen and paper - than all this new-fangled digital mummery.

Where were we?  Oh yes, Father's Day.

Drove over to Richard's* to play a pseudo-Franco-Prussian War wargame.  Over the span of 6 hours I got beaten by Andy, playing the French.  Not that he got by cheaply or easily, oh no.  Casualties were high.  And the game turned out to be more balanced than I had first feared; sitting back and crushing the French with awesome Prussian artillery might be historically accurate but my! it would make for a boring game.

*Richard's charming ex-chapel is located in a location so remote it makes The Middle Of Nowhere look like Times Square at rush-hour.