Frost

Taken yesterday at midday in Fife, where the frost was as thick on the ground, the trees and on my car as it had been when I first looked out the window at 7.30am. I don't know how low the temperature went, but it felt pretty damn cold all day.

At least the sun was out and afforded great views of the hills to the sides of the A90 as I drove back from an overnight stay after a Thanksgiving dinner with my friends D and M, accompanied by G.

Thanks all, for a lovely time.

There would have been more pics, but my camera is seriously misbehaving. I'm not sure what to do to sort it as I'm not keen on buying a new one, but I suspect that the price of getting it fixed is more than it is worth. I hate this throwaway culture!

North eastern curries

Veggie food is still hit or miss in the Aberdeenshire area. Most small hotels and pub food caters primarily for decaying dead stuff consumers. (Put the emphasis on the words in that sentence any way you wish).

Plentiful venison, game, rare breed pigs and assorted brown shapes drenched in gravy but no respect paid to vegetables. Predictably poor choice of veggie burger, macaroni cheese, and in a completely non-ironic throwback to the 70’s, cheese and peach salad. That last offered in an establishment boasting a vast range of fish, game and other abattoir products.

Mercifully, the fates have located some terrific Indian restaurants in the area. Of all the odd places, Peterhead has one of the best Indian restaurants I’ve ever been in. Their vegetarian Thalli seemed to be served in a steel container nearly a meter wide – an exaggeration, it just felt like the most intimidating amount of food ever placed in front of me. Over an hour of steady munching interspersed with pauses for air, made hardly a dent in the food mountain. Reluctantly submitting to the inevitable, more was left than eaten. I mourn those leftovers yet.

Huntly has if anything, an even better, if less fancy, Indian restaurant. The food is so full of flavour and just all round yumminess, but again comes in improbably hearty portions. The price is in inverse proportion to the portion size. Overcome with greediness, and in order to taste their veggie Samber and the bindi baji as a side dish, along with rice and a chapatti, there was little hope of getting more than half way through.

This run of scrummy Indian food comes to a full stop in Fraserburgh. For somewhere that claimed to have won an award, I was left pondering exactly what the award was for.

The standard of food and the prices in Indian restaurants in Edinburgh is dire, or at least the one’s I’ve tried recently; with the honourable exception of the two veggie ones. On the other hand, perhaps it is just as well that the local take-aways’ nasty habit of adding sweetcorn to their veggie dishes saves me developing a worse curry addiction. Thankfully, I often go to the "curry mile" in Manchester where there is almost infinite choice of regions and cuisines. It will take many more visits before I have sampled them all!
http://www.restaurantsofmanchester.com/rusholme.htm

Aberdeenshire visit

Before winter sets in completely, I decided to travel north to Aberdeenshire for two or three days. I really like this part of the country. The scenery is varied between hills and coast as well as the winding Spey Valley. Previous visits have seen me do the castle trail and the delights of family attractions when my daughter was wee and could enjoy the parks in Aberdeen and the fun of Storybook Glen.

http://www.storybookglenaberdeen.co.uk/aboutus.html

I came up to Huntly during the summer and returned via Glenshee to admire the scenery and in the passing saw a red squirrel run across in front of me - the first time I've seen one! On this occasion, I decided that as last weekend these roads were cut off by snow, it was best not to risk it. I stuck to the main roads and drove that right angled road up through Perth, Dundee, and at Aberdeen turn right out to Huntly.

Huntly itself is an attractive wee town with some interesting shops the like of which are only found in towns but not in cities. I nearly bought a kitchen table and chairs, but remembered in time that nothing of that size will fit in my new car.

This area has some really good B&B’s. I stayed with Doreen who “only takes clean people.” Not sure how she makes that judgement by the voice on the phone booking it, but I was allowed to have a room. Her large Victorian house is comfortable, warm and appears as neat and tidy as if it has just been unwrapped. But, Doreen has a minor vice. She has a weakness for frills and ribbons and crystal.

The above graced the ensuite. Such objects were a fixture of a 60’s childhood, but not seen since. Has Doreen captured all such sub-antique objects because whole generations have grown up without seeing a frilly doll with a toilet roll under its skirt? The theme continued in the wardrobe with sumptuously padded and frilled coat hangers, and complimented with the frilled tissue box cover.

Attention to detail is a feature of breakfast. The poached eggs were precision cooked and the butter cut up in regimented squares. My only complaint, and this goes wherever I stay, the coffee needs to be stronger.

Deans Shortbread factory is a must see. Started by Helen Deans in 1975 it has grown into a fair sized family business in Huntly. The factory shop is a source of goodies and a reasonable priced way of trying out new flavours of shortbread, (I’m trying not to gorge myself on their butterscotch flavour as I type). A local person mentioned their bags of shortbread crumbs which when sprinkled over fruit make a luxurious crumble, but there were none available when I popped in.

http://www.deans.co.uk/index.html

Forth views

Some photos I took yesterday standing in a laybye overlooking the River Forth and the bridges. It was sunny when I drew up in the car, but the sun got shy and disappeared when I took out my camera.

The hills have a little snow on them, but mostly this far south, we missed the beginning of winter.

Fake food and fatuous reminiscences

Recently I heard about vegan black pudding. In a trivial bout of synchronicity, I found it in a farm shop in Lancaster some days later and promptly bought it. It is called V-Pud and contains beetroot and herbs as well as other meat substitutes.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/first-vegetarian-black-pudding-has-lancashire-meat-lovers-spluttering-424652.html
The article is brief, but the comments are worth scanning as clearly, this has divided views in the vegan/veggie world because it is made by the producers of meat products. Some people have expressed opinions that to buy this is to prop up the animal slaughterers while others are simply glad to have an alternative to a food they liked before becoming veggie. I can see both sides of this argument and have felt that before in regard to McSween’s veggie haggis. In that particular case I don’t have to act on any philosophical beliefs as although I quite like the product, it really doesn’t like me. In fact I prefer Hall’s veggie haggis as it does respect my digestive system, but Hall’s also make vast quantities of food out of dead animals.

There is also the illogical argument from some carnivores who fail to think through why some veggies would want acceptable substitutes for common foods. In our culinary tradition, it is just easier to cook sausage shaped stuff and to continue with some form of non-meat and two veg.

I had no inspiration for a recipe with the V Pud, so cooked a full vegan breakfast for my daughter and self. This consisted of hash browns, baked beans, V Pud and fake bacon. It was fine and my daughter who has never eaten non-veggie black pudding enjoyed it, although she said it was a little bit minty tasting. Her other comment was that she'd prefer to have a veggie version of Lorne sausage. I never liked that, so had never thought of it. I can't see this happening as Lorne sausage is probably only eaten locally hereabouts so there wouldn't be much of a market for a meat free version.

On the whole, the V Pud was ok, but unless I was doing brekky for a vegan I probably won’t buy it again for some time.

Daughter graciously pretended to listen to my reminiscences about black pudding while eating. I recalled buying black pudding suppers from the local chippy as a teenager on the way home from the youth centre disco’s in the 70’s. These were ideal snacks as they were halved puddings deep fried in batter and cost 10p.

10p was half of my pocket money in those days, the other half being spent on entry fee to the youth club disco. My friend E was given 50p for her allowance. I’m not sure if that underlay some of the adolescent conflicts that frequently arose between us, but it did not help!

E and I were either “awfy, awfy close” or “awfy, awfy in the huff” throughout the mid 70’s. In time we drifted apart, aided by her marriage to an Eastern European missionary and their eventual settlement in Scandinavia. Is it cynical of me to comment, that if you fancy being a missionary, selling your god in Scandinavia is more comfortable than some other places? But wherever she and her family are, I wish her well.

Postcard from Oz

M., who kindly comments at times on this blog, is off touring exciting places right now. I received a postcard from her this morning, which on looking at the picture I recognised as San Fransisco. When I turned it over I saw the stamp was Australian.

Now, that's class! Buying the card in San Francisco and posting it from Australia. Thank you M and I hope you enjoy the rest of your tour and come back ready to share your adventures with us stay-at-homes.

Heteronormative phallocentric piffle

Heteronormative is my word du jour, having recently learnt it from reading radical feminist websites. Unsurprisingly, Word spellcheck doesn’t recognise it, so here is a definition:

HETERONORMATIVITY (heteronormative): Those punitive rules (social, familial, and legal) that force us to conform to hegemonic heterosexual standards for identity. "

This explosion of polysyllability was induced during a visit to the Manchester Art Gallery to see the Holman Hunt exhibition. Hunt was a prominent figure in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and this exhibition gathered together a range of his work. The Pre-Raphaelites used to be a favourite but the more varied art I view, the less I find to praise in this movement. I can appreciate the quality of the artistry, but the subjects are too sentimental for my current tastes. Hunt’s are of particular interest because of his religious overtones. For example, in the Awakening Conscience, he depicts his interpretation of a “fallen” woman.

The quotes below are from a deconstruction of the painting.

"The Awakening Conscience is a fine example of popular Victorian painting. It tells a story. Its theme is the fate of the fallen woman. Many details are intended to be read symbolically. The moral message is stern and strongly disapproving.
There's a ring on every finger except the "wedding finger". She is a kept woman, entirely dependent on the support and whim of the man. If he rejects her, she is likely to resort to prostitution in order to survive.
The soiled, discarded white glove on the floor symbolizes the woman's fate if she stays with her lover." Ref: Robert Cumming's Annotated Art , DK Publishing, 1995

It is fair to say I was most Victorianly not amused by this.

Other Pre-Raphaelites in the Manchester Gallery include Rossetti (the bloke, not his more admirable sister). Some of the notes beside his paintings gave me the distinct impression of a sleazy over-entitled male, which I'm sure was not the intention. For example, his Astarte Syriaca has these comments:

"Astarte was an Ancient Middle Eastern goddess, an earlier, more malign version of Venus, the Classical goddess of love. Above her head is her emblem, the eight-pointed star, and behind this the sun and moon meet. These are symbols of her power over nature. In legend, Astarte's girdle made her an irresistible force and Rossetti has conveyed this by cramming the picture space so that it seems as if Astarte might stride out of the painting and confront you, half-threatening, half-alluring. Astarte has idealised feminine features that recur in Rossetti's paintings: soulful eyes, sensuous rosebud mouth and luxuriant, flowing hair, based during this period on the features of Jane Morris, his friend's wife."

Not a Pre-Raphaelite painter, but hanging opposite Astarte Syriaca is Sappho by Charles-August Mengin which has this explanation on the card beside it:

"The painting has an intense sexual charge intended to appeal to male viewers visiting the officially endorsed Paris Salon exhibition. Its eroticism was legitimised for them by the meticulous finish of fine brushstrokes and the scholarly reference to Classical history."

So much for heteronormativity and the male gaze; could these descriptions not have alternative notes written by informed radical feminists? I'd really enjoy myself reading those but instead, public art galleries remain places of mild disgust to me, owing to the preponderance of pudenda and nipples parading as “high art”. It is the basic dishonesty that is so insulting; these are paintings for men by men, often with the explicit double standard of female objectification and moralistic control of women's agency. And yet, we are expected to admire this as 'art' and to swallow an extremely slanted patriarchal analysis of what we are looking at. More erudite feminists than I have expounded on this subject, notably the Guerrilla Girls.
From their website:

"In 1985, (in the USA) a bunch of female artists, incensed by an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that included 165 artists but only 17 women, founded the Guerrilla Girls. Dubbing ourselves “The Conscience of the Artworld,” we started making posters that bluntly stated the facts of discrimination and used humour to convey information, provoke discussion and to show that feminists can be funny. We assumed the names of dead women artists, and began wearing gorilla masks when we appeared in public, concealing our true identities and focusing on the issues rather than on our personalities."

http://www.guerrillagirls.com/admin/moreherstory.shtml

Manchester Art Gallery has a painting by the first woman to be admitted as an associate of the Royal Academy - Annie Swynnerton, a Manchester lass. The gallery has one of her paintings on display, although disappointingly, no image of it on their website. However, below is their description which differs from my perception of it. In fairness, I didn’t warm to this particular painting, but some of her other paintings which are more to my taste.

Manchester Art Gallery has this to say about the Swynnerton on display:
"Montagna Mia means 'My Mountain'. Natural features in a landscape are often personified by the humans who live near them. The painting may show a protective mountain 'spirit', but breasts and arms metamorphosing into peaks create an ambiguous, erotic, perhaps symbolic image. Is Montagna Mia waiting to be conquered?"
http://www.manchestergalleries.org/the-collections/search-the-collection/display.php?EMUSESSID=eeb6690341ca67e575aba7014dbe44de&irn=3904 Above is a Swynnerton painting I do like.

Here is a link to the Society of Women Artists history page which discusses the difficulties of women being admitted to the Royal Academy. Other pages on their site contain glorious art by women.
http://www.society-women-artists.org.uk/History.html

Holman Hunt Exhibition http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/index.php?itemID=45

Moggy Bloggy

I’ve spent the last several days living with a brace of cats. Judging by many people's blogs, it appears almost obligatory to do a blog extolling the delights of feline friends accompanied by pictures of unbearably cute cats artfully posed to maximise their attractiveness to cat aficionados. This post has the photo, but a combined lack of photographic ability and disinclination to pursue these moggies until they decided to drape themselves in an appropriately cute display of teeth and claw, means they are not representatively as cute as they are in real life (in their owner’s eyes, anyway).

I’m not a cat person. I’m marginally more a dog person, but owing to an affliction of sneezing caused by mutt & moggie hair, I do my best to avoid hairy beasties. This makes prolonged space sharing with other people’s pets an increasingly difficult experience. A few hours is fine, otherwise I have to resort to dosing myself with hefty amounts of antihistamines thus dulling my senses enough to live with my friends’ beloveds.

However, when I’m feeling especially uncharitable I find myself referring to these companion animals as furry parasites. With this attitude, I decided to take the cats in question in hand and sort them out. My aim was to turn them into productive members of the household and credits to society.

I cornered them in the kitchen, (without resorting to bribery with food), and gave them their instructions for adding to the sum of human knowledge. They were told they had until the end of the week to crack the secrets of nuclear fusion. Time passed, but no scientific progress was forthcoming. The cats never even bothered to go online and access the Journal of Nuclear Fusion.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/toc/0029-5515/45/10A

Perhaps I wanted more of them than they could achieve, and on my next visit their task should be more meaningful to the average kitty-brain.

Liquid Nitrogen and Arthritic Digit

“LHC, The Universe and Everything” was the title of a lecture giving an update on the Large Hadron Collider and CERN. Dr David Evans of Birmingham University outlined the physics behind the LHC in an entertaining and comprehensive, but adequately basic manner for this non-academic would be physicist.

He illustrated his talk with fascinating PowerPoint and gratuitous use of volunteers who followed his instructions to manipulate magnets and demonstrate particles moving through tubes representing the collider. Then he explained about the cooling process needed for these particles which are superheated to many times the temperature of the sun. They need to be cooled to lower than the temperature of outer space.

He used liquid nitrogen and rubber tubing to discuss the type of cooling needed. Rubber tubing inserted into liquid nitrogen becomes friable and can be smashed easily against a table - a great effect during a lecture. In reality, CERN supercools with superfluid hellium. Liquid nitrogen is safer in a lecture room.

After questions, dominated as per usual by volubly egotistical elderly blokes who appeared to be even more wannabe physicists than me, Dr Evans offered the audience a chance to play with the liquid nitrogen. Yippee! I love to experiment, so I moved toward the front to stand in line to get a polystyrene cup of liquid nitrogen to pour over my palm. In order not to give yourself a freezer burn, it is best to hold your palm at an angle so that the liquid nitrogen can slide off onto the floor where it evaporates harmlessly (without damage to the flooring). I tried this a few times, expecting to feel whatever it was that caused some hulking great brutes who’d pushed ahead of me to squeal. I felt nothing; maybe my hot little palms were too superheated to allow the liquid to get close enough to do more than give a faint tingle.

In a corner of the room, some opportunistic student types had drawn back the curtains to expose a broad window ledge where they were engaged in their own experiment: throwing small amounts of liquid nitrogen along the ledge to watch it fizzle, pop and evaporate. Some reminiscences were shared about antics in labs by those of us a little older, but clearly not wiser.

I was left with the consequences of my own inadvised playing with the cup of liquid nitrogen; I stuck my rather arthritic forefinger into it and, while, again feeling nothing, was left with a persistent ache for the next day, as the joint swelled a little as a result of the low temperature. This is a warning to myself to think before doing this again and to remember that extreme cold is the wrong environment for arthritis.

For more scientific discussion look up CERN.

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightCool-en.html

Keep right on to the end of the road …

Today is Armistice Day and poppies are in evidence in the media, but not much in real life. I have a white poppy, but have never worn it as I’d prefer not to get into heated discussions or to terribly offend anyone who misunderstood what the white poppy symbolises.

http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/

It is now 90 years since the end of the ‘Great’ War. Much is being made of this anniversary, not least because only the last few people to have lived through or even fought in it are still lingering on, and chroniclers are seizing this limited time to record first hand memories.

I grew up hearing stories of that war and even in the 1960’s it did not seem like ancient history to me. My grandfather and his contemporaries were drafted into the services to fight in the war to end wars. I’m reasonably certain that I only exist because my father’s father survived the trenches.

He was born in the fading years of the nineteenth century and would not have been old enough to volunteer at the outbreak in 1914, but would have joined the army in his late teens. He and his relatives probably survived because they were not in the trenches all the time. My grandfather was a dispatch rider; as the family story goes, he was Hitler’s opposite number.
On the other hand this could be somewhat incorrect, although it is recorded that Hitler was a messenger and was at Ypres amongst other places.

My great uncles were stretcher bearers, and although they too survived, it was not without seeing unspeakable sights and facing great danger as unarmed, they went into No Man’s land to recover bodies, both dead and alive.

When I was ten, we went on holiday to Belgium and France and visited Ypres and a small museum where trenches had been preserved and artefacts from the surrounding area collected and displayed. I could not bring myself to go into a trench, with that awareness of the tragedy symbolised in those few yards of mud. The vision of the grisly displays in glass cases, including skulls from unidentified soldiers, remains vivid.

http://www.ypres-1917.com/hill_62.htm

Nowadays, I can appreciate far more the horror of those years and the waste of human life on all sides. But even at 10 years old, I could understand that there was no nobility, no glory, no damn point to it.

Then, as now, proportionately more Scots fought and died for ‘their’ empire/monarch/ ‘country’. Then, as now, what they come back to is not adequate to their needs for recovery of physical and mental health. Then, as now, we hear that their equipment is not good enough. What is the point of getting involved in warfare and setting up your own troops to struggle, maybe even fail, for lack of money. Is it not simpler to take a pacifist view and avoid conflict?

On Sunday, Radio Scotland profiled a CD of poetry, songs popular during the first war both at the front and in the music halls, as well as music written by contemporary artists whose brief was to create music reflecting what WW1 means to them. Of the traditional music, I found the Piobaireachd MacCrimmon's Sweetheart most moving, as was Dick Gaughan’s Why Old Men Cry for the more modern selection. The website describes the CD thus: “The album has a more Scottish perspective than any of its predecessors, but when one considers that Scotland suffered the most soldiers killed (per head of population) of any nation that fought in the conflict, such an album is greatly overdue.”

http://www.musicscotland.com/acatalog/Far_Far_From_Ypres_.html

I’ll end by saying that I am appreciative of the stories my family shared about my grandfather’s war experiences and that he returned and was the gentle man I remember until his death at 73. However, I am grateful also, that I have access to information about the conditions he and other’s on all sides existed in for these lost years fighting a useless "war to end wars". And the opportunity that I have to believe in peace and to speak out against the war criminals in our government who have embroiled so many of today’s young people in theatres of conflict in other people’s countries to the detriment of local women children and men.

Sadly, I have not managed to uphold what I promised myself when I set out to write this post – to not have a rant, but I feel passionately about this, so maybe I needed to go ahead and rant.

A wedding

Yesterday a good friend got married to her ‘forces sweetheart’. I use the old-fashioned term deliberately ‘cos my friend is an old fashioned girl. Her wedding was the most traditional I have been to for as long as I can remember.

She was lead down the aisle of the church by the proudest father possible, to be wed to her soldier boy newly returned from Afghanistan. Family had flown in from various other continents to celebrate her day.

I was one of a group of six friends also attending, and I hope we too did her proud in our finery. Her sister was bridesmaid and looked just as stunning and as happy as the bride. The groom was tall and dignified in his uniform, which as the day and then the evening wore on he kept correctly buttoned up even though that stiff collar must have been tiresome.

The frock! The most beautiful dress I have ever seen. Diamante and pearls and a full veil.

The ceremony over, we were fortunate enough with the weather to be able to take pics outside the pretty old church at the edge of the city, before moving to the reception in a gracious old wood panelled building overlooking panoramic views of the city. The weather stayed clear and dry for more photo opportunities.

Inside my friends and I reunited over the champagne and canapés in an enthusiastic catch up of news old and new as some of us had not met up for some years. Then it was time for the speeches and cake cutting and the meal.

We were treated to wonderful entertainment with what has to be the best wedding band I have ever heard. The bride’s present to the groom: a fireworks display in the grounds. Absolutely terrific!

More food, to warm us up after the fireworks: hot soup and wedding cake to follow. More, much more dancing, then the final Auld Lang Syne finished off with stirring Scottish songs while the band packed up and taxis were ordered.

But the highlight was seeing the angelic little ring bearer in her sticky outy white frock with little furry cape, scooting around being the centre of attention the whole time. Only falling asleep when the bride and groom departed at midnight. All of the children were incredibly well behaved. The little boys in their kilts and the girls in their glamorous party frocks running around in separate tribes until one friend got them together and taught them the Dashing White Sergeant.

As is traditional with me and this particular group of friends, we were last to leave, having been of stalwart assistance in pouring the father of the bride into a taxi, and (failing) to mop up the tears of the overwrought bridesmaid. A wedding would not be a wedding without family fall-outs, and if the father of the bride cannot rely on his daughter’s friends for a tipsy dance or two, then it would not be a normal occasion.

I've played about with the images here as my camera took a naughty turn and produced lots of blurred pics, so these seemed appropriate for the blog.

Continental Drift

Plate tectonics is a fascinating subject and it seems that parts of Scotland, our mountains in particular, are extremely old. Dating as far back as the Ordovician or early Silurian, around 450 Ma. (Ma = mega-annum which is one million years.) There are brilliant animations of plate tectonics online.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/anim1.html

SCT (signifiying Scotland) is in the middle of the top map and is below the equator. The second map (below) is from a later paleogeologic era when Scotland has moved nearer to the equator. I'm not sure I want to be as hot as that, but in its drift northwards this country should have stopped further south than it did!

These two maps are from this site:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/globaltext.html

The Scandinavian, Scottish, Appalachian and Moroccan mountains once formed part of a single chain which joined together to close the proto-Atlantic 400 million years ago before being split apart after another couple of hundred million years by the Atlantic we know today.

Above is a view of the High Atlas mountains in Morocco which I visited on holiday a couple of years ago. I've not been to the hilly part of Scandanavia or the Appalachians, but I imagine those are just as different from the Grampians as the picture above.

And the point of this is?

Because I live in a country, some of whose citizens yesterday voted for:

• ID cards
• Foreign controlled weapons of mass destruction next to our largest city
• Scottish banking jobs to go to a competing capitalist capital
• Continued illegal wars that devastate women and children and destroy their rights, education and health

And too many other abhorrent policies that adversely affect our society (with the notable exception of Equalities legislation). I am tempted to say that remaining attached to Scandinavia and the Appalachians would have been preferable to EWNI, (the political entity, not the subjects of these countries).

It may take longer than we’d dared to hope over the last 18 months, but tectonic shift can still happen. Obviously I’d prefer to unhitch us at the Border and tow the whole place back to warmer climes while we get on with our lives building a fairer and more just society.

Remember, remember ....

From the London Evening Standard.

Sometimes politics gets interesting, even in Westminster, even in November. And I know I'm a little early, but I can hear fireworks outside as I type this, maybe because the forecast is for rain tomorrow.

Moon Views

I took this photo of the moon just as it was getting dark this evening. The twilight sky was of a colour and clarity that could make poets of the most mundane of us.

I've begun to take my camera about with me, which is easy enough as it is a small digital and fits into most handbags. I even manage to remember I have it with me, and to keep a lookout for interesting views and scenes. However, I remain shy about standing in the road taking photos in public, so it will be a while before I can whip out the camera and ignore any funny looks (assuming anyone cared enough to stare at me in the first place.)

My creative buddies encourage me when I look at their photographs on their websites. They are professional photographers and innately artistic, but I can aspire to one day becoming 'amateur'!

Here's a closer picture of the north pole of the moon.
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMMH029R9F_index_0.html

And looking back at us from up there.

Taken by the Terrain Mapping camera (TMC) on board the Chandrayaan-1, the first Indian unpersoned space mission to the moon. Chandrayaan-1 means ‘moon craft’ and is orbiting the moon at a distance of 110km.
http://www.moontoday.net/news/viewsr.html?pid=29658

Food before I forget

Before I forget what interesting, and usually tasty things I’ve made recently I am writing them down. This is partly why I created this blog as I seldom remember what I cook or bake and then can't repeat the good things. Although I get very bored eating the same food too often, but there are times when it is easier just to repeat rather than invent. And there are times when beans on toast is easiest of all.

Lemon curd pudding
Ginger bread I’d baked a few days ago was getting stale. I sliced it thinly, spread it with lemon curd and steeped it in egg custard mixture before baking in a low oven. It made a lot more than I anticipated, so I’ll be eating it for a while, as I don’t think it could be frozen.

Corn bread
Mix ratio of 1:4, SR flour and quick cook polenta with a small handful of finely chopped sun dried tomatoes. Then whisk one egg with some milk and a Tbs ground nut oil. Combine all before baking in a moderate oven in a liberally greased pie dish.

I made it drier than I’d have liked, but the good thing was that it lasted ok in the fridge for a couple of days. I ate it hot with yellow courgette ribbons sauted in olive oil with roasted pine nuts, fresh herb pesto and Grand Padano shavings.

The fresh herb pesto was easily made from flat leaf parsley, mint and coriander, with a clove of garlic, and seasoning, moistened with olive oil. I used my mezullina to chop it all, which can be a bit of a faff, but at other times is a productive use of aggression.

Adzuki beans
One of my favourite pulses is adzuki beans. They are apparently very yang (or do I mean yin?), which makes them very good for you. I boiled them up till softish and added black cardamom pods (2 or 3), one kaffir lime leaf and cooked till done. Then I added veg stock and coriander seeds. I topped this vague approximation of a shepherdess pie with parsnip and carrot mash seasoned with fenugreek seeds.

The most surprising aspect of this culinary adventure, was Sig Other’s reaction; it seems this was one of the best things I’ve ever cooked him. I considered it merely passed muster.

Choco tofu pud
Being easily seduced by any brown powder designated cocoa, I much preferred this inspired experiment to the above: silken tofu (bought in error), rather more date syrup than calorifically wise, two vastly overfilled tablespoons Freetrade, organic and otherwise saintly cocoa powder, oh, and a little butter for sheen. Melt date syrup, cocoa powder and butter and whizz together with silken tofu. Top with chopped nuts – hazel nut for preference. Cool in the fridge until your willpower gives up. The good thing about this is that it doesn’t last; therefore it is wasteful not to eat it all within two/three days, thereby absolving you from all calorific sinfulness.

Baked Samosas
Sublime! I used a pastry made from 50:50 plain flour and gram flour with a teaspoon of turmeric. Cut into rounds, and fill with potato, red onion, fresh coriander, mint and ginger with spices such as mustard seed, amchur, garam massalla and anything else you fancy. Seal the edges of the samosas and bake in a medium oven for not very long.

I had intended these to be my contribution to a visit to my mother and daughter, but I ate one to test as soon as they came out of the oven, and sort of kept going. However, as my daughter called to inform me she’d made an After Eight cheesecake no one is going to notice a shortfall in the samosas.

Non-Pythean Anarcho-syndicalist synchronicity

Edinburgh is such a wonderful place to live, well, some of the time.

In the past week I have had so many opportunities to attend discussions on racism, sexism, masculinities, early socialism and the Chavez revolution.

Today I went to the radical Book Fair to listen to Sheila Rowbotham talk on her latest book which is about Edward Carpenter, a campaigner on diverse issues including vegetarianism and women’s rights. Principally he is known for his work on adult education and to gay historians.
http://www.word-power.co.uk/viewEventList.php?category_id=1

He was often regarded as a British Walt Whitman, but his fame did not last, possibly because of his avoidance of joining in party politics and a socialist distancing of his sexuality. For example in the 1880’s he helped form a secret society to teach sex education, and he promoted along with Bob Muirhead, a contemporary socialist, ideas of a citizen’s income which today is only mentioned by the Green’s.

What I personally found curious is the occurrence of the concept which, in my Artists Way group we termed synchronicity. Sheila Rowbotham described Carpenter’s links with socialism, anarchy, Advanced Women, even anarcho-syndicalists.* The synchronicity took the form of the attendance at the talk following my reading of John Buchan’s Castle Gay in which there is a delicious description of a by-election in south west Scotland where the heroes attend the Communist rally and hear about the Anarchist's movement in Europe, (although Buchan seems to refer to Anarchists in the previous book in that series too) as well as the Bolsheviks.

In the normal course of my life, I rarely hear people talking about such far leftist groupings, so it is easy to forget that for substantial parts of the global population there is total rejection of the capitalist western belief systems.

The synchronicity persisted with my reflections on the current by-election in Glenrothes and how that was a place of radicalism as the voters in days past, returned communist representatives. I can only imagine the whirling in their graves of the old activists on hearing what has happened to those who once claimed affiliation with an internationalist sister/brotherhood.

But referring back to Castle Gay, the hero engages in conversation with an ardent voter who is looking forward to there being some heads broken between the various political factions, as this was the way that some Scotsmen did their politics at that time. (I am not sure when the story is set, but it is soon after the end of WW1, so women’s enfranchisement may not yet have been secured).

For my own views, I’d rather not have it come to head breaking next week at the poll. Maybe the Scots have calmed down in the last 90 years, or, unfortunately much more likely, have lost that edge which marked our national traits of radical political analysis and allegiances, to say nothing of our underlying sense of fairness and inclusive internationalist nationalism.

Oh yeah, and I began today by picking up the car I ordered last week.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/22/women-highereducation-sheila-rowbotham-feminism
http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk/
*This was a learning point for me as previously I had only come across this term in the scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail when King Arthur approaches the peasants who turn on him with blandishments about democracy claiming to be an anarchist syndicalist grouping. I had to investigate this, and found the website listed below. I will make time soon to look at this further.

http://www.syndicalist.org/


DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.


http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/mphg/mphg.htm#Scene%204