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Summertime Cook-out

Monday, June 4th, 2007

I haven’t been around much lately, but that’s because nothing much of interest has been happening. Except for the odd weekend, travel is pretty much over with until we’re going to Japan for Nippon 2007.

That’s even though flights to Central Europe are so cheap that some of them are free.

Why? I hear you cry.

Because getting to either Stansted or Luton from Tadley is an expedition in its own right, and would cost about as much as a week’s package holiday in Ibiza.

And because, in the Summer, England is one of the best countries to be in. I have no particular desire to go anywhere for the time being.

And finally, because at long last I’m working on that novel. I hardly dare mention it, in case I’ll dry up again, but it’s kept me on my toes for the past month and that’s what I’m doing whenever I’m not procrastinating (the technical term for that is ‘cat-vacuuming’, but the neighbours’ cats have been avoiding me recently).

Well, today is one of those days, because today I’m having a cook-out.

With my hubby working late and weekends otherwise engaged, we haven’t had any fresh ingredients in the house for about two weeks. Only when I threatened to serve up spaghetti hoops on toast from the Co-op across the road, did hubby agree to take me shopping on Sunday.

It was the occasion of the bi-monthly Basingstoke Farmers’ Market. —That’s living in the sticks for you: what should be a twice-weekly occurrence for people to buy seasonal and local produce has still not quite penetrated to these parts, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Basingstoke Farmers' Market

[read on]

Posted in 'Round the World Recipes, Tadley Times, Travel | Comments Off on Summertime Cook-out

Springtime Flowers

Monday, April 30th, 2007

Spring in the South of England is beautiful. We have no bluebells here (the soil in Pamber forest is acidic. It’s carpeted with blueberries, but alas no bluebells) but there are flowers everywhere and the air is perfumed with their scent.

Spring Flowers

A week from now, we’ll be on our way to Canada. It’s crazy to travel in May—which is the best month of the year—but this time around April has been better than May in most years. We’ve already had at least twice our total springtime sunshine.

Flowers

I’m still not on any hurry to go anywhere, but I have heretic thoughts about skiing making a change from all this greenery and flowers. I also have the sneaking suspicion that, if I was living in a sunny country, I may never have travelled at all. Or maybe that’s just old age talking.

Wild Flower Bouquet

Posted in Tadley Times, Travel | 1 Comment »

Knitting for Peace

Monday, March 19th, 2007

Knitting for Peace

I’m not gonna live this down…

There we were on this freezing morning, sitting by the entrance of our very own Friendly Neighbourhood Atomic Weapons Facility, knitting.

Parliament voted last Wednesday to replace Trident. We knew—the building work for the new Orion laser and supercomputing facility started a long time ago.

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Slow Cooking Day…

Monday, March 12th, 2007

So I let my husband do the weekly shopping as I was away on a writers’ meeting on Saturday. Naturally, he returned with a joint of pork, bacon, sausages, a red cabbage, a bag of green kale and—an oxtail.

Sheesh.

Try as I might, green kale and red cabbage clash, horribly. But I’m currently slow-frying one of the butcher’s enormous sausages (they take a good half-hour to cook) and it gave me an idea. Colcannon is essentially mashed potato with green kale. It complements sausages and onions perfectly. To underline the slight bitterness already present in this dish, I’d colour ordinary onions instead of slowly caramelising the red kind to the consistence of jam. I’ll be boiling the kale shortly, but this dinner will actually happen on Wednesday, after we’ve finished the roast pork and that damn oxtail that was taking up too much room in the freezer. So, first the oxtail.

(It is my hope that eating fatty dishes with mashed potatoes for three days in a row will put off my hubby from buying more stodgy winter food during this beautiful spring we’re having. Roll on steamed fish and salad…)
[read on]

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Red Moon

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

Photo by Photoshop-Master Mute

Whoopsie, I changed the photo because my first choice wasn’t CC licenced—don’t shoot me! The above shot is more awesome anyway! I wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t searched for CC only shots, so there.

Yesterday saw the best lunar eclipse in three years and, as if by miracle, the skies over SE England cleared.

For a brief moment, I wondered what all those funny white dots in the sky were. But then I turned around to face the moon, which was passing slowly into Earth shadow, taking on a red hue as its light was diffracted through the atmosphere. The final glint of undiffracted moonlight around the rim gave it a sheen, like a pearl. I felt strangely disconcerted by the lack of the familiar white, lunar face. Suddenly, the moon looked round, a ball suspended in space. It was like looking at another planet in an alien sky. The dim light made the maria stand out like continents on another world.

It was a haunting experience; wonderful but a little scary. Part of me was relieved when the moon passed out of Earth shadow and, soon after, the clouds drew back in.

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Winter Wonderland (briefly)

Friday, February 9th, 2007

Weighed down by Snow

Heavy snowfall of about 4cm meant that the country ground to a halt yesterday.

From what I heard on the news, about 3000 schools were closed nationwide. Slow Down!

Makes one wonder how the kids in Switzerland ever get an education…

Anyway, the weather meant that I got to take some nice photographs for about 2 hours, after the light improved and before the snow melted away. By early afternoon, all the pretty sights were gone and only a few white flecks remained on the lawn, with the roads covered in grey slush.Cottage in the Snow

Mysteriously, our nice neighbourhood snowman had also disappeared without a trace—as had the ones across the road. Could it be that the fun police removed them as they might clog the drains when they thaw? I don’t think so—it wouldn’t make much sense either, as Ernie here was erected right next to the brook:

Meet the new Neighbour!

Posted in Tadley Times, Travel | 1 Comment »

Tadley-Web

Saturday, January 6th, 2007

A year ago on this day, I arrived in Maumere, Flores. I wanted to write up my travels to (and including) the Komodo National Park, because it was a beautiful trip through stunning scenery and filled with interesting encounters. However, there are two problems: I can’t read my photocopied scribbles very well (most of the writing was done on ricketty buses!) and Tadley-web is down. Again.

I may not get back online until we fly off to Australia, since these things can take days to resolve while the ISP and BT pass the bug to each other (when they’re both finally done with blaming the customer—which can take an entire afternoon of automated phone calls!) Since we are no longer the only ones on Brookside Walk with a broadband connection, I could just wait for the neighbours to deal with the hassles, like I did last time. The problem is that they think the same and so it becomes a war of attrition. Which is fine, because we’re off on holiday 🙂

—In short, don’t expect to hear from me until then!

But Maumere makes me wonder. It is a small town, about the size of Tadley, at the tip of the island of Flores. This makes it about as remote as the Outer Hebrides, with the important difference that TV reception works better in Maumere. A ship calls perhaps once a week, but otherwise you’ll have to take a bemo or minibus to the next town to get anywhere. Yet, on this day last year, I stood in an internet café that was hidden in a site-street, and there were rows upon rows of gleaming computers, all with fast internet connections.

Tadley is the village opposite Britain’s Atomic Weapons Establishment. There is another, smaller nuke base nearby (as well as a helicopter base) and Greenham Common is just down the road. The village is half-way between Reading and Basingstoke and half an hour’s drive from Heathrow, but if you want to go anywhere, you have to take a bus to Reading or Basingstoke first. TV reception here is shaky (no Channel Five), DAB radio is fraught with interference, mobile phone coverage varies and every time I connect to the web, I have to cross my fingers.

Yesterday, as on so many occasions, I was unceremoniously thrown offline, and I haven’t been able to get back since.

I’ll see you again in Australia!

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I’m Back

Friday, December 1st, 2006

The NaNoWriMo madness is over for another year, and I’m rejoining life 🙂

Meanwhile, things at the bomb factory Friendly Neighbourhood Atomic Weapons Establishment are hotting up. A White Paper on the future of Britain’s nuclear deterrent is due to be published on Monday. I’ve just emailed Tony Blair and pointed out that not replacing Trident/building new nuclear weapons does not appear to be among the options to be discussed, seeing that the new supercomputing facility and Orion laser are already under construction. Such a shame that I never received the message which I needed to confirm my email. The website blames my email filters—of course the Number 10 website does not filter out incoming messages with troublesome keywords.

Pointing out such omissions matters, because parliament is only allowed to vote on the options set out by the government.

Looks like all I can do is show up at the site yet again. I missed a big demo last Monday, but I only heard about it on the news. Well, I know for Dec. 11th.

****

NaNo Digest

30/11/2006:

I ended up at just under 51250 words, and that’s where it has got to stop for now.

For those who are crazy enough, there is always NaNoFiMo, but I’m not that much on a roll. Plus I’m stuck—again—on the verge of big shit hitting the interstellar fan when my starship AIs (and the other level I AIs in the Sol system) are dragged into meatspace conflict as the Nephos being, to whom they are linked, gears up for a battle for survival.

To the AIs, humans are tools for interacting with meatspace. Meatspace may just turn on them.

’nuff said. If this doesn’t sound completely preposterous by January, I’ll continue with it. And even if it does—I’ll rewrite it.

My major problem is that the characters still lack soul. This is purely an ideas-driven piece, and that may be its death knell.

Whatever.

What irks me now is that I can’t get a nice purple bar and a WINNER’s ICON, dammit. I want one! Not having one feels like I’m not really part of NaNo—boo-hoo.

Well, I wasn’t really part of NaNo. I have expanded an existing work and I haven’t completed it either. I reckon that makes me even more of a winner than last year, because last year’s effort didn’t get as far as this year’s already has done (being submitted and rejected, natch) and will do (ditto, by a publishing house).

Now I will go offline and try to forget this NaNo madness until midnight is gone, or else I’m going crazy, staring at that wordcount validator.

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Autumn Colours

Thursday, November 9th, 2006

My sister is visiting today. It means I won’t get anything written, but it doesn’t matter. This morning, we had glorious sunshine (now it’s 4 pm and already getting dark) and we went for a walk in the woods.

Here are some of the colours.

Fern in Autumn Forest

Fungus on branch

Green and autumn shrubs

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Surveillance Society

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

Britain is `sleep walking into a surveillance society’. We now have a CCTV camera for every 14 inhabitants. We also have creeping surveillance on every level. We’re in the bottom five of a 36-nation survey on privacy protection, along with China and Malaysia.

Nice one.

I just had to comment on that on the BBC ‘have your say’ website . Too many people have the ‘I’m innocent, so I have nothing to hide/fear’ attitude—which is just staggering in its naïvity.

Look back a little on this blog, under ‘Tadley Times’, and you might come across the odd entry about demonstrations at our Friendly Neighbourhood Atomic Weapons Establishment (which quietly works on replacing Britain’s ageing Trident system—non-proliferation treaty or not. Such things make it hard to speak out against nations such as North Korea and Iran who have similar ambitions).

Attending peace marches and similar activities can be covered by anti-terror legislation.

We all have something to fear. They will come for you, one day, if we let them.

Incidentally, I had to give my full name and town (fair enough), email and phone number before I could place my comment. Hands up anyone who reckons that this comment won’t appear on the site, because I used a spamgourmet address ;). Yep, thought so. Another comment I made (as an ex-user of Seroxat) also never appeared.

****

Look over here for continued NaNoWriMo madness. I hope to eventually get back to moderating. For now, the story’s under control, but in the mornings, writing takes precedence because just looking at the boards would mean I won’t get back to it in a hurry. If it wasn’t for the brilliant Free Dictionary, I wouldn’t even dial in.

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