Tuesday 27 January 2015

Was It You?

Alright you 'orrible lot. Who gave me this cold?


I am Snot Factory.

If snot was a saleable commodity I could be bottling this stuff and getting rich. But it's not, it's just my own body deciding to make me more dehydrated by leaking essential water out through my face. Dear body, faces are for putting food in, and very occasionally crying at the movies*. On the system diagram that is my face, there should not be an output arrow labelled "snot". 

I'm treading that delicate line between sniffle-y and miserable and still just functionable enough to go to work. Which has made me feeble. Drinking my tea through a straw feeble. I have made it home, changed in to my onesie and eaten last night's reheated leftovers. I absolutely intend to keep it short, listen to the rest of I've Never Seen Star Wars and sod off to bed. 

So there was a Burns' Lunch, and a Burns' Supper this last weekend. Saturday was a little busy, shall we say. Both were awesome. 

First up there was this poem, told by none other than the Minister's Mum. Copied and pasted here in it's full glory.

TAE A FART

Oh whit a sleekit horrible beastie 
Lurks in yer belly efter the feastie 
Jist as ye sit doon among yer kin 
There sterts tae stir an enormous win' 
The neeps 'n' tatties 'n' mushy peas 
Stert workin' like a gentle breeze 
But soon the puddin' wi' the sauncie face 
Will hae ye blawin' a' ower the place 
Nae maiter whit the hell ye dae 
A'bodys gonnae hiv tae pay 
Even if ye try tae stifle 
It's like a bullet oot a rifle 
Hawd yer bum ticht tae the chair 
Tae try an' stop the leakin' air 
Shify yersel fae cheek tae cheek 
Prae tae God it disnae reek 
But aw yer efforts go assunder 
Oot it comes like a clap o' thunder 
Ricochets aroon the room 
Michty me a sonic boom 
God almichty it fairly reeks 
Hope a huvnae s**t ma breeks 
Tae the bog a better scurry 
Aw whit the hell, it's no ma worry 
A'body roon aboot me chokin 
Wan or twa are nearly bokin 
A'll feel better for a while 
Cannae help but raise a smile 
Wis him! A shout wi' accusin glower 
Alas too late, he's jist keeled ower  
Ye dirty bugger they shout and stare 
A dinnae feel welcome ony mair 
Where e'er ye be let yer wind gang free 
Sounds like jist the job fur me 
Whit a fuss at Rabbie's party 
Ower the sake o' wan wee farty

The Minister's Mum. And there was a moment where the pianist nearly had kittens when the wee mannie up to sing announced a different song from the one on the piano. 

Then there was our Burns' Supper. Which was awesome. The planned hot mulled cider/juice welcome drink turned out to be a somewhat lukewarm welcome drink, but hopefully accompanied by a genuine warm welcome. The last dregs that I tasted many hours later when clearing up were really really tasty. Maybe next year we should just go for fizz? 

Despite how terribly obvious this is, I hadn't really given much thought to how many darn people there are at one of those things. There was a point where I had to sit and drink my juice whilst not making eye-contact** for a few minutes to rescue my blood sugar before I could go join the end of the haggis queue. But then there was haggis, amazing whisky sauce, lots of cheese, coffee, and all was well. 

I then spent most of the night behind a microphone. There was a scary moment when I realised that I was exactly half of the band (one quarter of it was fiddling with the big-black-box-of-twiddly-knobs and another quarter had wandered off to join in the dancing) and I had the wrong music in front of me. I did in anyway! Yay me. I did that thing where someone gives me a mic and I get carried away and find myself being more "in charge" than I was expecting, and things still seemed to go ok.

Definitely going ok.
Yet somewhere along the line, one of you stinky things gave me this cold. Your generosity is not appreciated.

There were hilarious speeches. There were pretty songs, and funny songs. There was audience participation and there was committee participation. There was much spinning around and sinking to the bottom of the sea. There were some very stylish tartan trousers, something I think I maybe investigate investing in for myself. I can pull off tartan breeks, right? Heck, right now I could go for Royal Stewart and they'd match my nose perfectly.

So thank you to all of the people I arm-twisted in to doing things. You were amazing.


And a promise to the rest of you. Next year it's your turn. C & C - I've got you down for that song we didn't fit in. S - time to see those breakdancing skills of yours in public. Everyone else, what's your party-piece, your secret talent?

12 months to get practising!

As


*Lilo and Stitch, every time.
**A skill I have been working on for a while.

Tuesday 20 January 2015

How To Mull Appley Things

Like by adding spices and heating them up, not just thinking about them quite hard for a while.

Double-whammy tonight:

How to make Hot Mulled Cider

How to make Hot Mulled Apple Juice


I've already had my first haggis supper of the year. There are going to be many more.

This is a picture off the internet. Thank you, Internet. There might yet be a way of making a haggis dinner look pretty, but I sure ain't found it.

Next Weekend is Burns Weekend. Sunday to be precise, but Burns was rather more of a Saturday night man, by all accounts. This Saturday I'm looking forward to a Burns Lunch, followed in very quick succession by a Burns supper. Two rounds of haggis, neeps and tatties in one day. Stay upwind of my house on Sunday.

The Lunch is a Church thing, so I think my remit is show up - try not to swear too much - eat - and leave.

The Supper is a rather more involved affair. Amongst the jobs I've volunteered for is providing the Welcome Drink. The main purpose of offering this welcome drink is to use up the case of cider that's been hanging around since the summer when no-one drank any of it.

8.8 litres of the stuff.

So on the menu shall be, an alcoholic Mulled Cider, and a version using Apple Juice and cutting out the booze.

I am planning a test round at these to get an actual handle on quantities, to then scale up without having to keep tasting it. But that hasn't happened yet. It might happen on Friday, this week is rather full. We'll see. For now, and guessing from our many past exploits in to the world of whisky punch, here we go.

Cider


  • Cider
  • A little Apple Juice
  • Ginger wine, if we have any in. [Ed - L checked, we do. Phew]
  • Splash of Drambuie (boring cheapo medicinal whisky would be the proper thing here, but we have a Drambuie backlog)
  • Honey
  • Spices: Cloves, Cinnamon sticks, cardamom and allspice
  • Chopped up apple or pear if I get a chance to go shopping before the weekend.


The Apple version


  • Apple Juice
  • Ginger beer or ginger ale. There's currently a whole bottle of frozen* ginger ale in our fridge, maybe I'll whack that in somewhere?
  • Maybe some of this ginger stuff L and I got for Christmas. 

Hello - Did you buy us this? If you did, thank you - it looks very exciting. Please reveal yourself, oh mystery ginger-giver.

  • Honey
  • Spices: Cloves, Cinnamon Sticks, Cardamom and Allspice
  • Chopped-up apple or pear

All prepared. Yes, that is our spare bed, a totally normal storage solution.

Instructions: 


  • Stick it all minus the honey in a slow-cooker, or in my case two different and very clearly labelled slow-cookers, 
  • Turn it on to medium and wander off. 
  • Remember about it after a bit and come back add some honey, tasting for sweetness as it goes in. 
  • Get someone else to taste it for sweetness just before you think it's quite sweet enough. 
  • Serve up through a sieve** in to a 4p Poundland paper cup, and enjoy. 


My next question: giving alcohol to "the Public". Now this is a fairly in-house event. 50-ish people, and if I don't know someone, I'll know the person who has brought them, so it's not quite "the Public". Either way, I'm giving them alcohol, and I want to be responsible about it and give it out with an idea of either the percentage or the units in a glass.

How much alcohol will be left in that mulled cider once it's been in a hot slow-cooker for an hour?


The cider starts out at 4.5%. I guess I'm aiming at about 4 parts cider to 1 part juice to a splash of Drambuie and and slightly bigger splash of ginger wine. The Drambuie is damn well near as strong as whisky and comes in at 40%, and ginger wine is normally about 6%. Actually, let's swap out the ginger wine for the Rochester stuff - that cuts out a bit of booze. Averaging those things very roughly I would call the whole cold mix in at about the same as the cider itself, 4.5%

Given that as a start point, if I've got this stuff warming in a slow cooker for an hour before anyone gets a sip, am I able to take anything off that number?

The internet seems to just be bickering with itself on this one. There's this table, that the Americans have come up with, suggesting that if I get this mix hot enough to call it a simmer, it might loose some of its strength.

I'm a bit of a "Can I count it?" scientist. I do big stuff like rivers and glaciers and peat (also little stuff like pollen and fossils, but still very much in a "find it, count it" style). So I'm putting this question to my more chemically-minded friends out there. Do I play it safe (my inclination at this point) and tell folks that this comes in at about 5% and to think of it as a grown-up alcopop***, or can I mentally subtract a tiny bit for any "burning off" that might be happening?

This time next week, I will be able to report back, maybe even with pictures on my Burns adventures. The rest of this week features a cinema trip and a quiz night and as ever, no room for catching my breath, so I'll be blogging again before I can blink.


*Yes, frozen. Yes, in the fridge. Yes, this is a problem.

**Because I have tried to chew a clove before, and while interesting, it's not the sort of thing I'd want to creep up on someone with. 

***Remember those? Smirnoff ice and that red/purple-y WKD one. All drunk through spikeys because, well, Sunderland. 

Tuesday 13 January 2015

A Devious and Ingenious Plan to Abolish Mondays

Evening one and all!


I just made tea then got so distracted by reading absolute crap on the internet that it has gone cold. I'm now so wedded to the sofa that I'm drinking it cold rather than getting off my butt to go to the next room and microwave it. I'm also waiting for this exciting-looking programme to become available on BBC iPlayer. [Ed - it might be there now, but when I'm going to get to watch it is another matter]

What have I become? Lazy and over-privileged is probably what I've become.

I am sitting on the sofa drinking my cold tea, because I am (quite obviously, now that I come to mention it) not out. For right now, as I type these very letters, it is Monday. Shock Horror. You promised us Tuesday Blog Time, how dare you palm us off with the poor approximation that is a Monday. Tuesdays are for congratulating yourselves on being 40% of the way there*, going to bed early and eating Dominos pizza, right. Monday is a horrible "ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-it's-not-the-weekend-anymore-and-it's-bloody-ages-till-the-next-one" tease of a day, and just not worth it. I'd do away with it, if you asked me. A 6 day week and a 61-week year. 2 weekend days to 4 week days. Heck what would that do to our fragile economics? We'd all burn and die, right? Or get more efficient, be equally as productive and have a better play:work ratio. Either way, vote for me and I'll abolish Mondays.

There are probably ways I could be pro-active and not have Mondays be quite so painful. Niggling at the back of my mind is the idea that our body clocks get used to getting up at alarm O' clock for five days, and then Friday evening comes round and we let ourselves socialise, or antisocialise** as is more often the case, and then we stay up too late, and then we let ourselves have weekend lie-ins and get all out of sync, like a cheap mp3 player. Mondays are effectively a minor case of self-induced jetlag. There's an experiment in there, but I'm not yet committed enough to sacrifice that beautiful Saturday lie-in. Not even to do Science. One day there might be children, or a weekend job, or God knows what else, and Saturday lie-ins could be gone forever.

I tangented. Woops. It's Monday and I'm not out, which is out of the ordinary because Monday is Swimming/Pilates Night, in which I go for a swim, manage about 4 lengths and then spend half an hour in the sauna, while L spends the best part of an hour trying to balance on her nose and wiggle her pinkytoe at the same time, or whatever actually happens at a Pilates class. This is our routine, or what passes for one. Tuesday's place in the routine is Blog Night, but has this week been kidnapped and replaced with a Committee Meeting. A meeting of a Committee I really rather enjoy being on, as it happens (at this point any street cred I (n)ever had leaps out of the window) but a thing which will fill a precious evening. So here I am, blogging on a Monday, when I have not a single drop of original thought juice in my brain.

This photograph is almost totally unrelated.


So I'm making a New Thing. Would you like to see it?
If your answer is "no thanks" or along those lines, then thank you and see you next week.

Here is a Thing.




At the moment it looks a lot like it could be used as a trivet, or a modern twist on a Tam O Shanter. I'm rather tempted to make another to actually keep as a trivet, on account of how there might be new kitchen worktops to get excited about, but this one has a bigger purpose than that.

It's going to be the floor. Or rather, it's going to be a sort of rug/carpet/mat/flooring solution for el Bell Tentio. It's a washable, insulating, cheap, soft, squishy round thing, and as such will exactly serve the purpose I have in mind for it. Which is to grow and grow and grow until it reaches out for maybe a metre and a half to each side. The tent is 4m in diameter, and I'm not that bothered about the absolute edges. This could take some time.



So it starts with some scraps. In this case tiny scraps of polycotton tartan which some of you might recognise.

They get torn in to strips. This is most satisfying. Man, this stuff tears nicely.

These strips get tiny holes in each end and thread together like a daisy chain. A bit like a daisy chain. Like this:


Ta-da, we have yarn.



Then we dig out the biggest crotchet hook we own and we begin.

It's mahoosive.

This is roughly the way but as I've mentioned before I am a crochet illiterate, and therefore mostly reduced to making it up. I know I started with a big old loop and put about 12 stitches in it. It's not exactly 12, most likely either 11 or 13 but I can't work it out and I don't really care.

Then we keep going.

I have a similar project on the go for a big round blankie, using bits of yarn I have either bought off ebay as off-cuts, or begged off friends. It's doing better, having been aided greatly by accompanying me home for the sitting-around marathon that was this Christmas. It's in a bag in another room. I'll take a picture next time it's out.

On Saturday I'll be off for a round of the charity shops, looking for cotton bed sheets to tear up to feed the monster. Charity shop shopping with me is a careful art of good luck and constant refuelling. Much food and coffee is consumed. If any of you would like to join me please shout, it'll be fun.

I wish you a happy rest-of-week. You are 0.4 of the way to Friday clock-off time. Feel free to mark this great milestone by consuming some Christmas chocolate. If you have none I do and will share. Please wish me happy committee-ing. The remainder of this week looks set to include much dancing, pork and apple sausages, and the aforementioned charity shopping, so I shan't write it off just yet. Wish me luck and I will report back on the size of the Thing in a week's time.

Till then!


*45% of the way there if you're a smug 90% person like L

**I am trying to make "antisocialise" happen as a word. It'll be in next year's edition of the OED, at least if I get my way.

Tuesday 6 January 2015

Birthday Alert - Invitation Time.

Happy New Year! 


God bless the Dutch, and their amazing deep-fried foodstuffs, a major high-light of my Hogmanay celebrations. 

This post is sponsored by Paracetamol, Caffeine and Phenylephrine. And then probably some more caffeine.



I wrote it in bed last night, on a tiny scrap of paper as I was falling asleep. This is all of it.




For most of us this week is all about the massive culture shock that is the return to our own mundane lives. My job is fine, but it's a far cry from all of the sitting around doing nothing that I've been getting rather good at of late. And I have a cold to boot. Two weeks of healthiness, even in a house which is home to two fluffy mobile allergen machines, and then I return to Aberdeen and L swiftly gives me all of the finest lurgies that Hertfordshire has to offer.

Back at our desks, decorations back in their boxes. I even had to put the tiny Jesus back in his plastic box last night. It was really rather distressing. I had to eat a big bowl of jelly and watch Miranda to console myself. And dare I say it, finding ourselves in need of a little cheering up. Especially since the fridge is buggered so the jelly was half liquid and half frozen and didn't really match up to my expectations for it*.

Forget about Jesus**, it's time to celebrate me! Now obviously I am not the messiah (neither am I a very naughty boy) so we should probably tone it down a bit in comparison with the whole Christmas Fandango, but I think I might get away with a quiet little party or something of that ilk. Christmas is over for another little while, so now I can invite you to my Birthday Party. I always like to be planning the next thing. You could say I was wishing my life away but I can't help it. The next things are (1) the Aurora Burns Supper, (2) the Aurora Weekend Away, and (3) IVFDF, which if you don't know about you should go google right now. Very excited about each one of these things, so I'm not allowed to think about them all at once or my head will explode***. Notice how I'm not getting excited about planning to do useful things like going to the bank and tidying my room and doing laundry and all the other little jobs I've promised to do. Yes, they will get done, honest. I did some cleaning this weekend and three whole rooms were simultaneously presentable. I felt like this was an achievement, which is probably symptomatic of me not being a grown-up.

We might be getting a new Kitchen! 

Eek.
Me to L: "Will we have a new kitchen before my Birthday"?
L: "I'd be very happy if we did have"
So if you're really lucky this will work out quite nicely on two fronts: #1 - there'll be a nice kitchen for you to come see and generally hang out in (because all the best parties wind up in the kitchen), and #2 - I'll have been able to make cake in an oven that isn't on a slope.

It was at this point that my lunchbreak ran out, and I wandered off to trade in this little beauty for a nice big cup of office fuel.
A sight for sore, computer-strained eyes.
So now I'm home, and rushing a little to publish and then get on with a number of grown-up jobs that I've promised myself will get done tonight. Talking to you lot is much more fun.

So Christmas happened and many things were lovely. And it strikes me that some of the loveliest things were little parties, in people's own houses were everyone was welcome and knew they were amongst friends. If you were one of the people who had one of these parties, you probably know who you are, and I think you're awesome. It's a really special thing to make someone welcome, and for them to properly feel welcome. And that got me thinking about the word. My late Grannie was someone who believed so wholeheartedly in making a space for the stranger. I still don't know whether it's an old scots thing or just a "my Grannie" thing, but I remember at New Years day dinner each year she'd count who'd be there and set an extra place at the table. That stuck with me so strongly. The idea that at any moment she would have been happy to welcome a stranger to our family table. I guess I think it's important. Which brings me back to kitchens - I have a notion that someone feels at home in your house as soon as they've made their own cup of tea there. I want other people to feel welcome to wander in to my house and feel at home, to wander in to my kitchen and make their own tea. And one for me while you're at it please.

Anything on our teapot shelf is fair game. Help yourself.
And then there are times when a welcome falls short, and people remember those too. I once spent a whole evening delivering Church invites with the words "Come As You Are" splashed across them. Then on the first Sunday the Church invited a speaker from "Scotland For Marriage" who I personally didn't find overly welcoming and who made it clear that you could actually only really "come as you are" if what you happened to be fitted within a very specific set of constraints. I guess I want my own personal space to be a place where people can genuinely come as they are.

We live here, anything goes.

Heck, I'm getting a bit deep here. Quick, here's a bunny. 



Everyone ok? Yes, phew.

So this is my chance to find an excuse to invite you all round. This year I am going to have a Birthday****, not a particularly big one or anything, but I haven't really celebrated any of my recent biggies so this is catch-up time.

Open House, at our house, Saturday 21st March, from 1pm.


Get it in your diaries. Bring the kids (you know you're a grown up when your friends are having children that didn't happen by accident), just let me know and I'll tidy away the powertools and knives and stuff. If no-one comes I will have a clean house and lots of party food all for me. If you come in your droves then you better all get on with each other. I'll promise I'll tidy my bedroom, and you can pretend the day-bed is another sofa and have an alternative party. If alcohol's your thing, you can help us get through the backlog, just as long as you don't mind drinking some strange things. There will be food, the sort of food that you'd have to feel guilty about***** if you ate it at home because it's so unhealthy there should be a special reason. I will be your reason. I promise not to put anything odd in the cake.

Diaries out. Sat 21/03/15. Party at my place. Get in touch if you need the address, this is the internet after all.

Happy Birthday to everyone who has one this year! 


Till next week.



*Which weren't anything out of the ordinary. I just wanted some jelly in my life. I have recently accidentally stockpiled quite a number of packets of strawberry jelly because I get all stressed out and become really bad company if I'm worried that we might not have jelly in the house. I can blame this quite wholeheartedly on our new Minister. Hutton - all your fault. Long story short, I'm gonna be eating lots of jelly for a while. Mmmmm....

**Or rather, just put him to one side for a minute. He won't mind. Or if he does he'll forgive you.

***And I'm at work, so the cleaners would complain.

****As will you, I can guarantee it. 

***** I wouldn't, but I don't believe in feeling guilty about eating.