I have been a bit busy....

Between being the sole person looking after the house while the bosses are away to helping a friend move some furniture.........

My poor friend has been royally screwed over by these people,see here also. She needed to move her personal stuff out of the pub on a very small budget,so a mutual friend who runs a very small coach company drove and four of us helped with the lifting and stuff......I thought a couple of pictures might amuse you.Boy did we garner some attention on the roads,we looked like time travellers from the seventies..............

Waxing lyrical and a moan.

Just occasionally I have the soul of a poet.I was walking down the street in my little hamlet t'other day,the sun was shining,the breeze was  just a breath and the trees were shedding red and gold confetti,today I walked down the street,it was dull and damp and the trees were crying yellow tears for the end of summer.......

Now for the moan,even allowing for the muddy footed moggy how does a single person manage to accumulate four ruddy hours worth of ironing? and what the heck was I thinking when I took the covers off the chair and sofa for washing,do you think I could have old timers?

add on bit of blog
Maybe it was a good job today was soggy, I went to get in the bath and discovered I had been wearing my tee-shirt inside out all day,then I fell asleep in the bath only to wake frozen,so now I am off to my electric blanket,mind you after the way today has been I will probably wake up dead.............

You may have to watch this tomorrow.

Because so many people are watching it that the streaming is failing........An absolutely brilliant piece of editing from last nights QT.
The Griffin scum finally speaks his truth.
You can even give him a virtual slap.

Yup,the whole family are mad as hatters.......

My Mother has been ringing me at odd times and leaving cryptic messages on the answerphone saying"please don't call back I don't want Dad to know I have spoken to you"
I haven't panicked,it is, I had assumed, Mothers usual weirdness or Father has been nagging her about running up phone bills ringing chums.........but no it is really weird........she is ringing me frantically now,to see if I can cater their fiftieth wedding anniversary in..............2012...............in fact October 20 bloody 12,whatever is that woman on ?
Does she still think I am that dithering, stroppy, useless fifteen year old,she kept saying things like "are you sure you can manage?"
I explained very politely and patiently that yes,I can do it standing on my head with a blindfold on and one hand tied behind my back,what do you think I spent all those years in a restaurant kitchen doing?
I am sure I see my girls as more adult than my Mother sees me.

I have some things to say,controversial things.

I have just watched last nights Question Time programme,the famous one with Nick Griffin,Jack Straw,Bonnie Greer ,Peter Hain and Baroness Warsi........
Now I have a question or two to ask before I place myself firmly out of reach.
What or who is a racist ?
Do you have to be white to qualify or do those minority groups in our country who only let their kids marry within their own racial/religious/ethnic groups count too?are Nick Griffin and his ilk any worse when they preach anti-miscegenation ?
Why is all the debating about people with darker skin than me,is it because thanks to our halfwitted government we have no choice but to accept all incomers from the EU ?(My friend Petra the Czech girl is of course excepted from this question).
Why did no-one but me pull up my ex who is of African Caribbean descent when he referred to the 'Jew man' in a more than derogatory manor,is it ok to be racially biased if you aren't white ?
We have the MOBOs, we have a black police officers association,we have gay rights,we have rights for the disabled,why aren't everyone's rights just plain bloody equal ? I think that what I am actually trying to say is that positive discrimination can be as bad as plain good old fashioned discrimination.You can see why the unthinkers do go and vote for a political party who claims to espouse their rights.
Before you now all slam me for saying these things,I really do think every person is an individual and should be treated as such,I am that_woman not some racial,/ethnic/religious statistic I am also from poor farming stock so don't need to be apologetic about the past,my ancestors were probably all serfs or worse anyway..
In case you are one of the unthinkers,here are some videos showing why we really don't want the BNP scum getting any more power.
1)
2)
3)

Of mice and money.

Sorry Mr Steinbeck I stole and altered your title.
I was wandering the webisphere when I came across this article, I read it and chuckled in a very unhumerous fashion,BT have been doing this to me for yonks,they charge £4.50 a quarter if you pay in cash for 'processing your payment' and then they stick an extra fiver on your next bill if you don't pay within a few days.In fact this quarter they have excelled even their usual money grubbing standards,it seems they have renewed my contract with them while I was looking the other way,in the process they have added an extra weeks debt to my bill to take the piss "covers your broadband from when you took up the service right up to your next bill".All because I am a poor person who daren't hold plastic etc.
While I am having a good old whine about money,my boss had an episode of gall bladder pain at the weekend and thanks to private healthcare has already seen a surgeon and had a scan.............
Now for the smelly yucky bit of my blog,somewhere under my bedroom floorboards is a deceased mouse,I can smell it,I have taken up any loose boards I can find  and I still can't find the body,I am not a happy lady.I cannot disguise the smell,if I use enough air freshener/incense to cover it I shall die of asthma,hopefully it will soon ruddy mummify.Maybe I should send a cat mummy after it ?
Oh by the way,pop over to digital cuttlefish and read this little amusing poetic piece about that stupid man, his weather-balloon and the not floating away kid.

Are you a believer in global warming

This post is in honour of Blog action day.

Are you a believer in global warming ?
Does it really matter whether or not you do believe ?
In my opinion no it doesn't matter.A strange thing for a green old hippy type like me to be saying,but it is true,believe or not I don't care,but I do care about the state of our world,we are messing it up in a grand way,we are seriously overpopulated(I did my bit of wrecking there,I had four kids before I had ever thought deeply about our Earth).everything is now disposable,what happened to fixing things and things that lasted like my 1979 chest freezer ?When did we stop fixing our clothes when hems came down or seems came apart?Nowadays we waste everything,from energy to fabrics even the governments car scrappage scheme seems iffy at best to me.One day the fuel on our planet will run down,what then,how are we preparing for this,forget about global warming be selfish,consider your children's futures,what about when fresh water is no longer so easy to come by ? will you kill your neighbours for a drop or expect that your own kids will.What about when essential minerals and metals become scarce or almost impossible to retrieve? shall we mine our landfill sites then.When the air is so murky we go back to smogs or food plants die from acid rain,what then ?
Even if global warming isn't man made,even if the trend changes and temperatures start to drop we have to do something and soon.Otherwise, like fleas on the back of a dog, the earth will surely itch and scratch and shake a lot of us off,be it with famine or cold or heat or thirst.
I personally believe we may have something to do with it,even if only as a historical leftover,perhaps we all need a bit of poverty,not a lot, but enough to make us wonder if we really need to replace that gadget with the latest model,whether sewing some edging on that skirt will make it last another year,does a car really need to be put through the carwash weekly,do we really need meat everyday or even twice a week..........the list goes on and on,a few simple steps by everyone rather than attempting a great show of doing would make all the difference.
Now that I am a little better informed and a lot poorer I have learned,if you can fix it ,do,if someone is chucking out something useful grab it,I own three sewing machines,one is my mothers 1960's Singer,that sews only heavy fabrics,the Toyota my friend was chucking out only does zigzag stitch(the Singer doesn't)and an old but very useful Elna that does embroidery stitches and very fine fabrics,swapped for some no longer used wine making kit.I keep chickens in the garden,they make lovely engaging pets,they also supply eggs and fertiliser.I pick wild berries and mushrooms,grow a few veg and ride a bike everywhere.You don't have to do much,eat some locally grown food,go for a walk instead of a drive,use less water and none that comes in a bottle and finally turn some shit around the house off,do you really need the company of a television set all day long?...................

Take-away chicken anyone ?

I had thought that our Sid(chief mouse eater) had stopped laying about four days ago,having searched the garden endlessly and found no eggs.But no,she has been sneaking under some makeshift fencing   into my supposedly chicken free  barn laying her eggs and going back under the fence into the garden,I know because I caught her today  .She had found a carrier bag of bits and pieces and nested in it.What is it with these girls and the refusal to use real nest boxes.......but hey ! what would I do with my time were it not for the daily great egg hunt ?

Blankies...

I am sitting here at the pooter eating my Sunday dinner,Gypsy toast,for anyone interested,how good is that,whatever I fancy I can have,no having to produce a huge meal for a herd of squabbling offspring,oh life is so tough  :-)
I have spent the day working on the hippy-trippy blanket for middling daughters winter solstice gift,I was giving myself a headache with all those busy colours,so I have taken a break and been looking on-line for any ideas for youngest daughters pressie.She has requested a memory blanket,basically a quilt with memories of childhood on,so being a pauper or near as damn it,I have to do this on a tight budget.The plan is thus,instead of mega-money batting it will be stuffed with a soft fluffy blankie as the batting,lets be honest with today's quilts the blankie will be just ornamental anyway,I will cut out and stitch to it lots of silhouettes of kids and a dog,assorted cats and birds and chickens throw in the odd flower and apple and it should be done,I have found a really good tutorial for bias binding,which if made to the right size will be fine for quilt edging,along with that lot I am also making youngest a couple of tabards, to wear when she starts her new nannying job,from some lovely vintage looking teddy bear fabric,ideal as the kids are both under a year and a half.

So........more work to do.

A quickie.

I am finally starting to feel a little better after my bout of 'not quite flu',I think it may have been related to pigbola,I am dog tired,from the moment I woke this morning until now.I think the cat may have made me better,having curled up first on me and then having snuck into the bed with me.Do you know how unnerving it is to wake with a cat's head on the pillow next to you? Thanks to http://icanhascheezburger.com/   for the silly picture.

Ah memory lane and electric dreams.

I am a bit wishy-washy and useless with this bug thing I have.So I have been perusing the beebs iplayer site.
There is currently an electric dreams series running on BBC4,it brings back so many memories.First I watched this,bearing in mind I wasn't ten until december 71 it was a real memory stirrer,so I then went on and watched the eighties programme,followed rapidly by this brill little docudrama on Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry and the start of the home computing revolution in the UK.
I did my first ever programming in BBC Basic,just simple maths programmes and stuff that played rewarding bleeps to the kids when they got answers right,but it was the start of my eternal love affair with computers.Through the seventies and eighties I had a veritable shoal of machines coming and going through my house from the atari,acorns bbc machine,to the electron,the zx80/81 and the Commodore 64,there is still a machine in my loft with twin 51/4 inch floppy drives. I even have a circa 1980 dot matrix printer that would still work(it does in some of the older unix flavours) except you cannot get windows software for it any-more.
It was all so simple then................
A little add on here.......
The favourite game in our house in the eighties was Repton,written by fifteen year old Tim Tyler.......if you have kids who program keep an eye on them,Tim appears to be a nice enough chap but he is absolutely barking if his home page is anything to go by.He has made a small on-line Java version of Repton called Rockz...........

Pigbola Paranoia or swine flu psychosis.

Pigbola Paranoia is what I have,I have watched and learned about various influenza strains for years now,since 97 in fact when I first heard about H5N1 entering the human population and causing sickness and death. I may not be well educated,but I like to think of myself as reasonably smart/intelligent/sensible...........
But I seem to have a problem,surely if you know it is in your head it goes away ? obviously not........
Mr and Mrs Boss and the sixteen year old son all have quite nasty cases of pigbola,I do their laundry,wash their dishes even scrub the loos,so you would expect I would catch it,not so far,I do however have a 'psychological throat' I have a bit of a cough and cold at the moment but all I can imagine is the start of a sore throat,I spend all my time poking glands and test swallowing just to make sure nothing hurts(yes Grubby,in just the same way I poke any bruises to see if they still hurt) I go to bed each night with a bloody thermometer.........I know how daft this is and that even with my bit of asthma the chances of major illness are slim to none,but still I prod,poke and fret right before poking a probe under my tongue..........As an aside,I really wonder whether some people have a super innate immunity to flu,as far as we are aware my mother, grandmother nor I have ever had anything even remotely resembling influenza,of course now I have said that....... knowing my luck,sometime next week reports of my demise may not be greatly exaggerated.

For common sense flu advice,science,news and general info I offer you a series of links.
The NHS who are handing out tamiflu like it is going out of fashion or maybe date.
A brilliant and interesting epidemiology blog,aimed at health care pros but understandable to most lay folks.
An endless source of H1 and H5 news from around the globe.
ProMED-mail, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. 
Trying to understand a potential influenza pandemic and all that a medium to severe pandemic would mean.
 A forum where you can find pro and amateur flu discussions.

How do we fix this ?

I am a regular reader of a blog called Benefit Scrounging scum,she isn't scum or scrounging by the way.....
Well her posting here raises some interesting questions.I personally know of several families in my little village who are taking the mickey out of the system,I found that due to a back condition, that cannot be fixed, I was unable to do a previous job,so I went out and found one I could manage,a neighbour on the other hand,with way less wrong than me,he has that magical catch-all diagnosis of 'soft tissue damage',which means they cannot find anything wrong,but he says it hurts,which it may well do on occasion,but when he claims he needs help tying shoe laces and bathing,yet can build effing great sheds, ride a motorbike and sneak off doing painting and decorating for people, I really doubt he is incapable of any sort of work.Which brings me to think that without the likes of the real scum there would be more help available for people like this young lady( did I tell you she is also highly amusing ?).....So how do we go about fixing this without harming those in genuine need of help? I have no idea.........

Pectin test,the infallible method and other foody science.

After stewing your fruit for jam,jelly,marmalade etc and before adding any sugar place three tablespoons of methylated spirit in an old glass,add one tablespoon of the juice from your fruit ,wait one minute and then take a look,one firm gelatinous blob in the bottom shows you have a very high pectin content,such as you get from apples, lemons, blackcurrants or quince,two or three not quite so gelatinous blobs is a medium content,and runny fruit juice in there means either boil it up a lot more or add something to it with more pectin.Make sure to throw away the contents of your testing glass,not only is it flammable it is also extremely toxic.

Why do white fleshed quince turn that lovely lush colour anywhere from amber to red when cooked ? for the same reason autumn is full of rich ambers and reds,the colour of autumn leaves is down to production of chemicals called anthocyanins,produced in a deciduous trees leaves once chlorophyll production halts for the winter,when you cook and even more when you cook them with sugar the colourless phenolic compounds in quince turn into anthocyanins.Some wild and crab apples contain the same chemicals although not to the same degree as quince.
Did you know that in Tudor times quince paste was cut into squares and wrapped in edible gold foil in the houses of the nobility,it was also flavoured with what at the time were exotic spices from the Arab world such as rosewater,testicle juice musk or whale pukeambergris.

The quince has gathered every pleasing taste,
Thereby the queen of fruits she has been crowned.
Her taste is wine, a waft of musk her scent.
Her hue is gold, her shape, like the moon, round.”
—From The Arabian Nights,  p 130.

Ongoing quincing !

Following on from yesterdays blog,the flesh of the quinces is in one pan with a half dozen Japanese quince for the fragrance,the peels and cores (minus seeds) are in another pan with half a dozen Japanese quince for jelly.
They have been simmering in enough water to cover them for the past hour,not bad going considering it is only 6am now.
I have kept the seeds from the 'proper' quinces,I am going to attempt to grow them.

More dead bodies and some quince.

The evil one(AKA Lucifer the cat) has murdered a robin in the night and left it as a gift for me,I have also just found a pile of not robin coloured feathers,so am going to have to check he doesn't have a spare snack stashed somewhere.........ruddy cat,I wouldn't mind but my animals eat better than I do,well mostly,which is my segue into quinces....

My friend was at her sons school harvest festival yesterday, she spied a half dozen quinces in a little handled basket and made a donation for them,and brought them to me as a gift(ok friend you are forgiven for the last pc fixing session I had to do for you)it is so long since I had anything more than my tiny Japanese quinces that I wanted a memory refresher for membrillo and quince jelly recipes,while looking around the web I found some amazing foodie blogs,all well worth a peek a boo.......and if I get it just right I can make membrillo with the flesh and jelly with the skins and cores...........

That's torn it........and some good news.

Moaning middley was on the telling-bone this evening,I made the mistake of asking if just once a year she could ring and not moan..................you would think I had called her a mass murderer or something.......
The good news is, it is grand daughters and youngest daughters birthday bash tomorrow.......if I can keep my mother at bay there may be some cake for me to eat.

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Is it international blood and gore day ?

Well Cleo the cross-dressing hen has now decided to become a stripper,she is in the most major moult I have ever seen,I have seen newly saved battery hens with more feathers.
Now the gore bit,I got out of bed this morning and almost stepped in a headless mouse obviously very deceased.........walked onto the landing and tripped over a very dead and chewed baby collared dove. I got to work this morning to do the post dinner party laundry,all the white linen,except there is a problem with the plumbing and the washing machine is sucking up yucky slime from the outlet pipe..........Now for the gory bit,which I am putting after the jump as it is really a woman thing and delicate boys might not want to read...........