Technology

There we were, motoring gently through the Ashdown Forest, when ping! on came the tyre pressure warning light.  On with hazard flashers and hi-viz weskit, and out with the pump, which has a pressure gauge.  It goes without saying that the problem was with the last tyre I checked, as the arthritic knuckles of the right thumb and forefinger bear witness.  The electric pump made shortish work of it, but when I checked it again five miles on, the pressure had dropped slightly.  We were trying out our new GPS map reading contraption (my Christmas present from Martyn) for the first time, and, once instructed, it navigated us to a well-known brand of tyre shop in Uckfield.  The tyre had picked up the steel tip of a high-heeled shoe, unfortunately through the shoulder of the tyre.  But for that it would have been good for at least another 5000 miles.  Oh well.  We were back on the road inside 45 minutes, lighter by close on £180.  But the warning light has stayed on, so that means a trip to the much-loved VW shop (if they ever condescend to return my phone call).  [Later: to its credit, the VW shop rang back inside the hour, and politely explained how I could reset the warning set-up myself.] 

Next techno-challenge was setting up Barbara's internet access in her new flat.  The flat is very smart and efficently laid out - except that her kitchen cupboards and bathroom mirror are set too high on the walls.  It's a bit of a mess of boxes at the moment, a situation I know well from so many removals.  Still, we've bagged up a lot of newsprint to bring away with us to the local tip.  That has gained her a bit of floor space, and a few more cartons are now flattened out ready for collection by the removers in due course.  The internet set-up was a very simple job, but since Barbara's new flat is not cabled for TV, she's had to change internet service provider - or has elected to, in any case.  This means, of course, that Branson and henchmen have closed down her email access.  We've set her up with a yahoo account that she can use independently of service provider.  I changed over to a web-based email account 13 or 14 years ago to avoid having to change addresses each time my employer sent me off to a new country, and it has proved a good move.  I probably have dozens of email addresses with various service providers, and haven't bothered to link them all to my yahoo address.  Since 90% of incoming email is deleted unopened, I don't feel the need to multiply the process.

Wind-down day

Nice day yesterday with Sandra and Michael.  The catering worked well, we think: blinis with smoked salmon and fake caviar, open prawn and ham sandwiches, sausage rolls, Spanish fizz (with orange juice for them as likes).  A little later, my learned Branch Chairman's mince pies were much appreciated, specially when helped down with a nip of sloe gin!  I'd taken time the night before to work out what needed to happen when, and used the oven timer to remind me when the next step was due.  Time well spent, since it removed a lot of the stress from the day.  It turns out that the blinis, even when dressed with cream cheese and toppings, freeze well, so we'll do them again.  We'd some batter left over, so I'll fry the remaining batch later and open-freeze them for future reference.  The leg of lamb was delicious.  We'll buy from Higham Farm again, I think.  I cooked it a fraction too long, unfortunately, but it was still just dripping a bit of pink juice when it came out.  Martyn (who is the absolute champion when it comes to roast spuds and parsnips) had spotted a Nigel Slater tip about standing the joint on a trivet over water.  That worked very well: on top of the rack we put a leek, quartered lengthwise and some rosemary, and plonked the joint on top thereof.  It made the gravy-making a lot easier.  The good old 1950s pressure cooker pan did a good job on the carrots, beans and sprouts, and a separate steamer saw to the kale.  Today, apart from a bit of laundry, we're taking it easy.  At lunch time, Martyn introduced me to the joys of bubble and squeak, using up yesterday's left over veggies as an accompaniment to left over lamb.

I strolled down to the post box while Martyn was preparing lunch, and on the way back bumped into our resident virtuoso organ recitalist, Simon Preston, who was going to see if the village shops were open.  I introduced myself, and we chatted a little about a couple of his recent performances, and about some of his Hindemith recordings that I admired back in the 1970s - he thinks they have found their way on to CDs, together with a bit of Reger, but I haven't managed to track them down yet.  Needless to say, the 33 of his Hindemith interpretations was below the water line in the 1999 floods.  Perhaps I'll wash them off and transcribe them to CDs, clicks, plops, mud, sewage and all. 

Pedantry revisited

There was I thinking I'd caught Sandy McCall Smith out using the doubtful expression aides-memoires.  But surely, I thought, the plural of aide-mémoire is aide-mémoire.  Well it is, but only in French.  In its migration to English, the expression has not only lost its accent aigu, but also its potency as a verbal phrase.  The Oxford dictionary offers alternative plurals of aides-memoires and aides-memoire.  But the real news is that the book I have been reading, The Charming Quirks of Others is a delight, and I think there's a more recent one in the Isabel Dalhousie series, which I shall pull down to the kindle once I've dun rantin'.  And by the way, I think the pronunciation 'Dalhoozie' that I've heard from radio pundits is wrong.  Dalhousie was one of our school houses, and it's pronounced 'Dalhowzie'.  Thought your minds should be put to rest about that.

We're back to a full complement of heaters in the sitootery.  Gary was here yesterday to fit the new one.  the remaining task is to fill and repaint the wall where the old, larger bracket used to be.  For the time being, the scars are hidden by the Christmas tree.  Which, a poor, mishapen thing though it is, is now in its third year.  It was the last live tree available when we bought it.  I suppose we warmed to its plight because, back in the days of the institutional torture known as 'games', we were always the last ones standing on our respective touch lines when the teams were picked!

Pedantry

I'm in favour.  I'm reading an Alexander McCall Smith book at the moment, and enjoy the precision with which he sets out his prose.  And as a Scottish-educated lawyer, he knows his Latin as well.  His heroine has just received an envelope of cvs forming the short leet (Scots for list, and the normal expression in that context).  He refers to them as curricula vitarum, which is absolutely correct.  But is it a case of flaunting his erudition?  If so, I'm not guilt-free either. 

We firmly believe the Atlantic Ocean to be empty.  As I drove to where I practise my unmentionable hobby yesterday, I'd to slow to a crawl a few times to ford standing water that was approaching axle-deep.  The river at Penshurst has flooded acres of farmland.  Our weed patch is completely sodden, not helped by the pond overflowing.  Still, there were a few rosebuds to pick the other day, so we should have some home-grown flowers at Christmas.

Comfort and Joy

On switching on the computer yesterday – nothing.  Tried a lamp on the same socket outlet – nothing.  Uh-oh.  Went down and opened the fridge – dark.  Climbed up to get to the circuit breaker - it had tripped.  This is the circuit that was extended to the North Wing, so I switched everything off, and reset the circuit breaker.  On turning on one of the convector heaters in the sitootery, the circuit tripped out again.  Cutting a long story short, our cleaner put us on to a local sparky who plays snooker with her husband, and he has been round today to confirm, as we thought, that the heater is ever so slightly defunct (I believe that’s how I heard a broken-down vehicle described once by an infantryman).  It is now ever so slightly scrap metal along at the tip.  Four years old.  But then, since the conservatory people installed it with poor grace, I imagine they will have installed the cheapest possible model.  Checking with the timer on the Christmas tree lights, the power seems to have gone off around 3:00 am – no doubt when the frost protection thermostat kicked in.  Well, I found the problem at 7:00, so I think the freezer will have maintained a safe temperature – no gooey messes on the floor, anyway.  But if you hear we’ve gone down with botulism, kindly advise the appropriate authorities of the foregoing.

Needless to say, there is no longer any trace of the particular model on the internet, so our hopes of unclipping the old and clipping on the new (see under shower head some months ago) were quickly dispelled.  We’ve bought a replacement that seems a bit more robust – and blagged 5% off the price by saying our sparky had sent us, and would be back to fit it in a day or two.  It would have been a shame if we’d been unable to heat the sitootery sufficiently for the entertaining that attends the festive hostilities, seein’ as ‘ow we’ve coughed up for new covers for the sofas.  (My next thesis will be on Christmas, manifest and latent costs of.) 

I see that a local UKIP candidate has made national headlines by calling for an NHS review to look at compulsory abortion of foetuses with Down's syndrome or spina bifida, and that, somewhat belatedly, he has been suspended.  He also called for such a review to address legalisation of euthanasia, and free advice for the over-80s on how to do it.  As to his comments on ‘immigrant riff-raff’ and statutory suppression of parts of the Qur’an, I’ll leave you to do your own googling  I’d hesitate to endorse any utterance of our current Prime Minister, but I wouldn’t stir from my elderly armchair to attack his description of UKIP as a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.  Not that I could possibly express a view myself, of course.

Good old IKEA

Well, it looks a bit brighter.  When we bought the sofas, we went for plain blue denim covers, which looked fine for three months.  Since then they have rubbed and faded badly, as denim does, so we were starting to find them a bit embarrassing: the sitootery's where we do most of our entertaining.  The problem with stripes is matching them of course, and sure enough, one of the cushions doesn't come close to aligning.  Still, it's better than last time, when dear, sloppy old IKEA sent two sets of loose covers of totally different designs.  I'm really not sure why I can forgive them so much - I suppose the firm's a bit like an old retainer.  I've been buying stuff from them for over 20 years in several countries, and by and large it's smart and hard-wearing.

Of today's news, there's little I can add to the worldwide outrage.  The baddies are always going to be able to find firearms, but perhaps some tighter controls would restrict the nutters' access to them.  Some can justify owning shotguns (though I struggle with the idea of shooting birds and beasts as 'sport'), and some get pleasure out of target shooting, which requires skill and concentration.  In our system, all firearms must be licensed, and licences have to be renewed at intervals following checks on the applicants and their security arrangements.  Handguns are banned (who needs a Glock other than as a means of killing people?).  Shotguns and rifles can be licensed, but applicants must show good reasons for owning them, and must be members of clubs.    Licence applicants must provide two referees (though the last time I gave a reference, it was not followed up).  Unfortunate analogy, I know, but it's time the Untied States of America bit the bullet.  The relevant part of the Constitution was enacted as a means of defending the country through a part-time militia, and is an anachronism.

Christmas shopping - for us.

For the annual ramblings, please scroll down 

to the post for 2 December

When we furnished the sitootery in 2008, we looked round for furniture dite for conservatories, and finding most offerings shoddy and badly upholstered, opted instead for a couple of sofas from Mr Kamprad's ubiquitous blue and yellow shop.  We went for loose covers in blue denim, piped in the backside of the same, and four years on, they have, predictably, faded.  Well, the winter fuel payment is in the bank, and I just won £25 on the premium bonds, so it was off to the IKEA at Lakeside this morning to get a new set of covers.  We'll think about putting them on tomorrow.  Stand by for a slightly jazzier sitootery.

Needless to say, we returned not only with loose covers, but also paper napkins, a couple of extension leads, a bag of frozen köttbullar, a couple of sachets of gräddsås and a box of pepperkakor.  Regulars will know that I'm a veteran IKEA shopper.  During a Bavarian episode, I went up to the the Eching shop to get some of the predictably missing parts for whatever I'd trekked out there a few days earlier to buy, only to be told that I was 45 minutes down the queue for IKEA's world renowned and spectacularly awful customer service.  Suggestion was that I go and grab a snack in the cafeteria.  Good marketing, eh?  Up I went, and said to the chef, ich hätte gerne die Köttbullarna, last word pronounced à la Suédoise.  I couldn't quite deal with the enthusiastic gush of Swedish that came back at me.  Oh, and the parts I lacked for the bookcase were those little metal studs that you shove into the uprights to support the shelves, which I asked for by describing their function, knowing not the German vocabularly therefor.  Nippel, brauchen Sie?  enquired the nice Bavarian lady, with a straighter and less blushing face than mine.  

Talking of Eching, there are nearby towns called Aching and Attaching, and sundry other perfectly honorable -ings that just happen to look startling to your average anglophone.  Remind me sometime to recite the litany of changes read out over the PA as you come into Stuttgart on the train.

Main impact of today: the amazing skies as we drove up through Kent and into Essex.  From the top of River Hill, the sky was a watercolourist's dream of duck-egg blue, ivory, coral and mauve.  On the way back south, we drove under a leaden sky with an angry orange slash across the horizon.  

The bird life changes constantly with the seasons.  Whereas we were seeing a lot of nuthatches, finches and tits a while ago, we see few small birds now, apart from robins and dunnocks.  A young male blackbird is much in evidence, but the biggest customers at Café Forges-L'Evêque are this year's woodpigeons and a bunch of jays.