do the bistro grind

You may have picked up a vague theme running through my ramblings over the last couple of years - yes, I'm into my third year of blogging, believe it or not - of a bit of an obssession with kitchen gadgetry. Well, here we are again.

I've always been quite clumsy.  To be perfectly honest had educationalists in the 1960s given a toss I would probably have been diagnosed as dyspraxic (as well as borderline Tourette's and slightly ocd) but then you were just considered as clumsy (and naughty and a bit odd for the other two conditions).  However, clumsy I am, indeed.

Several times over recent weeks the Pepper grinder we've been using - a Bart's if you must know - has fallen apart whilst I've been grinding pepper over my food.  This, of course, is hilarious to observers, especially my son.  I have to stress that this only ever happens to me. A while back it exploded over a joint of meat I was preparing.  Something had to be done.

Yesterday, whilst hobbling around Sainsbury's I noticed this rather fetching gadget.  It's called a Bistro Grind which sounds like some improbable dance craze like The Strand or Locomotive. Or even The Stanley for Stackridge fans.  Anyway, it's a remarkable improvement over the Bart's exploding pepperpot. The salt is kept at the top and the pepper is automatically ground by depressing the handle on the side.  A marvellous piece of kitchen kit which I've been proudly using at every possible occasion. No more dumping of whole a whole jar of peppercorns and wrecking my food anymore.

I'm currently nursing the start of a cold which is annoying as I only got rid of one a few days ago.  I assume working in a school is to blame with all those pesky kids being ill all over the place. Anyway, I took quick action and looked up a suitable way of getting rid of colds.  Or at least, a way of getting rid of them. It's called The Micheladas Cubana.

Equal measures - say half a glass each - of Clamato and dark beer mixed with 8 or so drops of Tabasco and a twist of lime juice. Yes, that's what I thought. But I made some anyway.  Or at least a version of it.

Clamato appears to be, believe it or not, a mixture of tomato juice and clam broth.  Obviously I couldn't find any so I used a spicy tomato juice called Big Tom which doesn't have clam broth in it.  Not to be deterred I duly poured some into a glass with some dark beer.  Now, I'm not sure if by dark beer they meant stout or not.  I used some Hobgoblin which is a ruby beer - darker than normal bitter. It's evidently the Tabasco and chillis that cut off the neurotransmitters that trigger headaches, whilst the chillis are supposed to help clear mucus from one's nose and lungs. I know it sounds disgusting, gentle reader but I am doing this so nobody else has to.

It is quite disgusting.  Almost foul.  Mind you I've never been a fan of tomato juice but I thought I should try it as it sounded ridiculous enough to work.  Perhaps I should have bought some clam broth too.  Maybe that's the magic ingredient. It's so horrible that I've had to open a can of Abbot Ale to take the taste away.

Ah well, I'll let you know if it works. But don't hold your breath.

the tale of ale

Back in my halcyon days - the early seventies - we spent much of our time going to parties as young people are wont to do. Nowadays I spend most of my time trying to avoid them.  Generally I find parties quite awful affairs, I think I did back then too. Don't get me wrong, I'm a very sociable person and I love spontaneous get-togethers and, as one or two readers may be happy to agree, I'm in my element as mien host.  However, parties have always instilled some general feeling of misgiving, a feeling that I would be better off somewhere else.

Anyhow, I haven't been to a party for ages and will continue to try to wriggle out of one if it comes along.  So why mention them? Well, I'm sitting here next to a "mini cask" of Adnam's finest which I bought for Christmas and never got round to opening - well, until about half an hour ago, anyway. It is full of a flavoursome ale that I am enjoying as I write.  The quality is excellent.  But it is having a similar effect on me as Proust's Madelaines had on him. My mind has whizzed back to those awful angsty parties we used to gatecrash - actually, sometimes we were invited.

Of course, when you go to a party you are expected to take along a bottle of something or some cans of beer.  This is only polite.  What we did was to take along a Watney's Party Seven. I think we bought one for one of our own parties (obviously ours were the exceptions to the awful parties we endured) but somehow never opened it. Now, young men and a large amount of beer, why on earth had we not opened it? Well, for the simple reason that it was disgusting. To be perfectly honest, its very existence probably single-handedly kick-started the CAMRA movement.

Basically, we kept it hanging around for months on end purely just to take to parties.  Normally you would leave the booze you took to a party at the host's house, it is simply the polite thing to do.  Well, except in the case of  a Watney's Party 7.  The hosts usually asked you to take it away with you - its reputation was that poor!

Eventually, we tired of lugging this rather large tin of beer that nobody wanted around with us so we decided to get rid of it.  Now this all happened getting on for forty years ago so my memory is a little hazy on the particulars. What I do remember is that after a discussion about it we decided to get rid of it forever. No we didn't just leave it at someone's house and let them deal with it.  Oh no. That would have been far too simple. No, we took it outside of whoever's house we were partying at and buried it in the garden.  A far better idea.  A sort of buried time capsule if you like.

So at some stage, some poor sod was digging the garden with a garden fork and most likely pierced the said can and was sprayed with stale 1970s beer.  That must have caused a few scratched heads wondering how that got there. 

So, apologies to whoever that poor soul was.  They probably still wonder about it to this day . . .

Confession over.

is this all there is?

I really don't understand how people can become moist of eye and feel nostalgic for such an awful time as the sixties. I mean just think of all those long hot summer days when we had to sit around with nothing to do because nobody had bothered to invent mobile phones yet. All we had to do was go out and play with our friends.  Blimey, I even had to walk round to my friend Graeme's house to see if he was in and wanted to come out to play. All that energy expended when I should have been able to just text him instead.  Then we needn't have bothered going anywhere, we could have then gone onto Facebook and written messages to each other in our pidgin English and not actually have spoken at all.  That's if someone had bothered to invent computers, an internet system and a social networking site.

I used to have to sit around my bedroom just looking at all those boxes of Hornby railways, Minic road system (I didn't have Scalextric), Airfix soldiers and models, Action Men and clothes, books, original Marvel and DC first edition comics, Corgi cars, Britain's farm and zoo animals and (more) soldiers and knights on horseback. If Graeme or someone else came round we had to get all that stuff out and play with it.  If he didn't I would, out of sheer boredom, set up a whole made up warzone of railway, cars, models scenery and plan and fight huge battles on the scale of Ragnorak.  Sometimes these battles would last for days.  That's how bored I was.

Sometimes I would get so bored I would cycle off around the villages surrounding Stevenage for hours. And, of course, because nobody had invented iPhones yet I couldn't be contacted by my parents.  They had no idea where I was.  Obviously I am the product of a dysfunctional family.  Social Services never came round once to check on me and see how little I was cared for.  I had to look after myself for hours - right up until teatime, of course.  My parents were unaware that I was off re-fighting the First World War in the trenches that now lie under Grace Way, or building tree houses in the Bluebell Woods, setting fire to ants with my magnifying glass.  Or just birdwatching with only an I-Spy book and a jam sandwich for company.  Or even that I was regularly being beaten up by the bully boys that lived around Whitesmead Road. Oh for Asbos to be invented!

Just myself for company sometimes! I could wander far and wide and barely see a soul - certainly hardly ever a car - and just enjoy my own company.  Much as I still do today, actually.  I'm more than happy to go off on long walks alone.  My lousy childhood did that to me.  Because of the times we lived in, we weren't allowed iPhones, MP3s et al, so we had to make do with humming to ourselves - remembering words to songs to keep ourselves cheerful.  Which brings me to another thing, music.  I didn't really get into music until 1969 by which time I had to listen to Progressive Music as it was called then.  That means that I was thirteen before I had any choice over what I listened to - on vinyl of course. 

Another thing that was denied to us in those days was decent television.  We only had two channels until BBC2 came along.  And, what is more, we could only really watch anything that we might be interested in from about 4:30 pm until about 6:00pm.  No all day tv stations, no satellites, no nuffing.  What on Earth did we do? I was fourteen before I got a guitar.  Okay, it was impossible to tune and had strings like cheesewire but it looked good propped up in the corner of my room.  It was a few years before I could afford to get one that didn't make me cry when I tried to push a string down onto the fretboard. Not for us the immediate gratification of a beautiful Yamaha or Squire electric guitar for barely a hundred quid and devices that make you sound instantly like your guitar hero for mere pocket money.

What sort of a world were we entering? One where people only ever dreamt of owning a computer that you could carry around in your pocket, communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, sit and watch films all day and all night, type endlessly to our (virtual) friends, play games with people we'll never meet.  Even pornography was just a few photos found in a tatty old copy of Parade magazine.  Unusually, always found in a hedge.  Not sure why.  No wonder we responded in droves to such adverts as this one found in an old copy of Eagle comic.  What an exciting world that offered us.  A golden future definitely.

Unfortunately we were sold down the river and now we find ourselves living in a science fiction world.  The sort of world we were promised by those cheery souls at Eagle.  And now we can, at last, sit around doing all of those things denied to us all those years ago.

Yes, when I mentioned the other day in a class of twelve year olds that we didn't have these things one of them blurted out, "Omigod! I'd die!"  I agree because I wasted so much of my youth sitting around waiting for someone to invent all these wonderful devices because I just had nothing to do.  "What on earth did you do?" they cry.  I just think back to those times and realise how unfortunate we were.

exit wound

there are things that I don't want to talk about
things I don't want to say

It is with great sadness that I report the death of Jackie Leven. What was really shocking is that I only found out yesterday in the February 2012 issue of Uncut.  The self-confessed extremely violent man passed away on November 14th 2011 from cancer.  Ian Rankin was quoted in the article as being shocked that Leven had only been given 24 hours to live.  Rankin had Rebus listen to Leven in one of the novels.  He had also made an album and toured with Leven a year or so back.  The album was called Jackie Leven Said which is a pun on a Van Morrison track.  Leven was often compared to Morrison mostly for metaphysical lyrics or somesuch. He was a large man - one of those "larger than life" types.  Read the obituaries in the quality press, but read the Uncut piece by Graham Thompson for a more enlightened view.

I said in my post on Single Father that I haven't really listened to him that much over recent years.  That isn't quite true, songs from the two or three album I have by him regularly come up on my iPod. Ironically enough, I Think I'll Move to Paris, a duet with David Thomas has just come on as I type.

I learned of the writing of the American poet Robert Bly from Leven.  This led me to reading Bly's Iron John which was essentially about trying to re-masculinise American men (or something).  A few years back a student wanted to study Fight Club which I have always found to be a difficult film text to work with.  He was a bright student and after having read the original novel he wanted to discuss the film in detail.  I pointed him in the direction of Bly's book, which to his credit, he read.  I am reminded here of my own attempts to educate myself whilst at school.  Fearing I was basically hopeless at Maths but not a totally hopeless case, my teacher Doug Ross, leant me a copy of Titus Groan.  I gained far more from that than I ever did from attempting to study Maths.  Hopefully my student will one day be able to show that some wider reading has helped him have a deeper understanding of a film than just some ridiculous postmodernist veneer that the film seems covered in. Evidently the rise in Men's Clubs in America were a direct response to Bly's book - or both were part of a general zeitgeist, perhaps.

Anyway, in a roundabout way, Jackie Leven helped me help a student by passing on something that I had learned.

I don't really believe in life after death - we live on in other's thoughts and memories.  So I don't really envisage Jackie Leven joining some "choir invisible".  So I'll just raise a glass of whatever I'm drinking (Adnam's Gunhill at this point in time I'll perhaps raise a glass of Jura tonight.  Much more in keeping) and just say cheers.  Thanks for some excellent music and some poignant songs. Your life seemed to be a restless one. Rest in peace, finally.

it says your journey's over
it's time to sail away

here we come a-thomasing

The plump Russian doctor peered at me over the top of her laptop and pronounced cheerfully in her broken English that I had fractured a bone in my foot.  I hopped out of her surgery feeling less like a character in a wintry Solzhinitsyn novel and somewhat a little happier.

I had woken on Monday morning with a painful left foot which I believed I had somehow bruised or "strained" - a term my mother used to use for any unexplained pain.  That or what she called "growing pains".  I'm fairly sure I've stopped growing, although I suppose "growing old pains" could be the reason. We had ordered a load of seasoned wood which was delivered on Sunday.  As we have no back entrance to our property, it was dumped unceremoniously on the street about 9:30am and I had to wheel it around in a wheel barrow whilst Mrs Dave put the said logs into the new log store.  This is when I assumed I had "sprained" my foot, possibly by pushing the barrow too heavily up a small ramp.  I definitely didn't drop anything on my foot, nor did I kick anything.

Meanwhile, back at Monday.  We had to do some dreaded shopping for the current seasonal reasons on Monday afternoon and my aching foot got worse.  By yesterday it was agony at times.  So after a night out in Ipswich last night with some friends, where the general consensus of opinion worryingly confirmed my own suspicions, I decided I had better go to see a quack and get it diagnosed.  Hence the visit to Dr Olga.  Our usual doctor was on holiday, which he seems to have a remarkable amount of.  That's rich coming from a teacher, I know.

Still, I was lighter on my (one good) foot after leaving the surgery.  Although doubtful, Mrs Dave guessed why immediately. When I texted one of the aforesaid friends to inform him that it was good news as I had only fractured a small bone in my foot, he replied, "and that's good news?"

"Well a fracture is only for Christmas, not for life. Unlike Gout."

Yes, all my friends and Mrs Dave all assured me that I had gout.  A life-changing infliction I am assured.  However, it appears to be a mere fracture which the sawbones seemed to think was something  you can do just by walking.  I spent my whole childhood avoiding fractures and breaks only to start breaking things in my fifties.  A double shoulder break about four years ago and now a fractured bone in my foot.  Great.  Still, it could have been worse.  It could have been the dreaded gout. 

Cheers.

The night out in Ipswich was excellent.  A real drinker's pub, The Fat Cat was the scene.  Not only do they brew their own beer but they supply cutlery and plates and takeaway menus.  They wash up, all you have to do is turn up and drink loads of beer.  Which we did. Beer and a very decent Indian takeaway and a lift there and back too by a sober friend.  A good evening all round. 

Proof that Jesus may not have been totally confident in
walking on water - notice life ring attatched to his head.

As I'm sure every one knows, today is both the Winter Solstice and St Thomas's Day.  It was traditional to go Thomasing, or Gooding, and was recorded in my home county of Hertfordshire by Thomas Grey in the 1870s.  Essentially this was a form of begging by poor women for charity around their local village where a dole was expected. During the 1870s in parts of England, many farmers started to get together to stop the begging and began to send money to the Town Halls to allow charity to be shared out to the genuine needy. St Thomas was the doubter, the last Apostle to believe that JC had risen from the dead and needed to stick his fingers into Christ's wounds.  Evidently he was  a builder. You can imagine him sucking air through his teeth saying, "yeah, but anyone can cut themselves like that.  Go on, tell me something only Jesus would know about me."

"Er, you've got gout because of all that red wine."
"Okay, you're Jesus."

I hope you all enjoyed St Thomas's Day and did something charitable.

a whiter shade of pale

Over recent years many students have been diagnosed with Scotopic Sensitivty or Irlen Syndrome as it now seems to be called.  This seems to be a perceptual disorder where readers have problems with tracking their reading. The white paper we've used in education for the last century and more, books, newspapers, magazines etc cause no end of distress to many people. It's a kind of dyslexia, evidently. This has meant that an empire has risen within education to help sufferers - evidently 12-15% of the population.

By empire, I mean that there are many 'specialists' in Special Needs Departments that test students and then devote a lot of time getting coloured overlays and special lenses in glasses. It would appear that The Promethean Trust based in Norwich are the main source of such lenses and overlays. The glasses cost around £90 which seems to me an awful lot of money.  Many of the sufferers are in the poorer sections of society,so nearly a ton for some glasses with plastic lenses in is presumably out of many people's reach.

There is, however, an alternative.  For reading a plastic filter is useful but when it comes to writing, that's obviously more difficult.  Bring on the coloured paper! We now have what seems like hundreds of different coloured paper booklets being sent around to the different departments for these kids to use.  These are sheets of coloured paper put through the photocopier to print lines onto. It's a bit like having a Dulux paint chart.  We've got Royal Blue, Cardinal Yellow or is that red? The problem now, though is that some of us poor old teachers who have to mark these booklets - and exams - can't actually read them very well.  I mean, dark red certainly isn't an easy colour to read scruffy writing on.  Every few days some new booklets come through into our pigeon holes (trays) and this week was no exception.  One of our pupils has been diagnosed as needing white paper.

That's right.  White paper.  Er, actually, isn't it white paper that causes the problem? Aren't all the normal exercise books we have actually white paper? Hmmm . . . something not quite right here.

There is, however, an alternative to all this.  Firstly, as a teacher I think it would be far better if students all had lenses in their glasses so that they can read on their prescription colour - and interactive whiteboards wouldn't need changing, either.  I mean, if three students are all in the same class and all need different coloured screens and non-Irlen students (the other 27 kids in the class) prefer white anyway, wouldn't lenses be the best solution?  Also they would then write into normal exercise books which would make our jobs easier for marking. It all seems so obvious.  However, it's the cost that seems to be the sticking point.

Now, as these prescription filters and lenses are only different coloured plastic sheets, I'm not fully sure why they are so expensive (empire building/making a killing on other people's suffering?) but here's my alternative.  Why don't we just use cardboard glasses with plastic lenses - just like the 3D ones people are being hoodwinked into wearing* now? I had about thirty sets last year when they were given away free by Sainsburys to tie in with some Royal celebration or other.  They put some programme on tv about Brenda in 3D.  I wish I'd kept them now.  I only got them because I was going to screen Coraline in 3D for my classes at Christmas until I discovered that not all 3D is the same.  They were useless so I threw them away.  Just think, I could replace the red and green lenses and glue in some different coloured ones.  Job done.

I wouldn't charge £90 each for them, I'd do them altruistically.

Ah well, I'm off to Hitchin Folk Club to see John Tams.  I know it's a two hundred mile round trip but if Spielberg's War Horse is as big a success as his normal films, I don't think Tam will need to work again too much.  He only needs a couple of songs in it and he'll earn a fortune, and I know that Spielberg is going to use some of them from the National Theatre production that Tam wrote the songs for.

* The only reason that so much money and hype has been put into 3D is because they can't can't pirate 3D films.  Yet. Read Mark Kermode's The Good, The Bad & The Multiplex. Well worth a read and very funny.

the deserter

walking round in circles, holding up the sky
falling amongst thieves, laughing till I cry

It seems a long time ago now but about five years ago I broke my shoulder in two places. That's two breaks on my shoulder, I don't mean I carelessly broke it in Austria and then again when I got back to Blighty.  Yes, an argument with a small hump in the snow lead me to falling rather spectacularly in front of a beginner's group of skiers the very first time they were being brought down a "blue run", which was probably quite disconcerting for them.  They all managed to get down unscathed unlike the trip organiser, yours truly.

Anyway, whilst sitting around at home with a (possible) month off but unable to do much but watch tv, I decided that I was fed up with the appalling service the East Coast was getting from the various broadcasters. Freeserve, or whatever it was called,  wasn't an option then (still isn't). The only way, it seemed, to get a fairly decent reception was to get a satellite dish.  So, we had to take Murdoch's shilling.

We'd been looking into it and noticed that there was an offer for about £70 to have it all fitted etc. So, one day sitting watching some awful daytime rubbish as though through a snow storm, I called Sky.  Interestingly, when I phoned them they told me that it would be fitted free.  Free?  Blimey.

A few days later the men arrived.  Now, gentle readers, some of you may be aware that I live in a three story town house with a gap of about a rizla paper between our house and next door's. "Sorry, mate, we can't get the cable over the house.  We'll have to get the heavy mob in."

Ah, here we go . . . the catch.  "So, er, how much is this going to cost?" I enquired fearing the worst.

"Oh no, it won't cost any more because it's our problem.  See you next week." Off they went. No such thing as a free lunch, I thought.  Bound to be a wind-up.

Anyhow, the following week they came back with the "heavy mob" - or three men with a longer ladder as I perceived it.  And it was all fitted and off they went and I spent the last week in my incapacitated state watching Sky - lovely pictrure blah, blah, blah.  Except it was Sky.  Murdoch and all that.  We've put enough money his way with even the basic monthly package we have.

I've always been uncomfortable about it and especially recently with all the News of the World shennanigans going on. So, a change was needed.  Not being one to do things in too much of a hurry (my motto is why put off until tomorrow what you could put off until the next day?) I finally got around to contacting our local tv chappie.  He came round today to fit our spanking new Freesat+ box in (plus new satellite dish and double cable etc) and so, we have finally shed our allegiance to Murdoch's insidious empire. Mrs D is watching Strictly Come Dancing and we're now able to record programmes and series if we want to - don't ask about dvd recording.  It's a long sad story.  By now you'll have guessed that me a digital things are only on nodding terms.  Still, it all seems okay. Nice clear pictures and the smug feeling that RM isn't going to get any more money from me.