Mythical beasties

I spent a few days in the highlands last week partly seeing how far north I could manage to travel from my base in Dornoch, but also to entice some shy beasties out to play.

The first night was spent at Fort Augustus which is on the Caledonian Canal as it runs into Loch Ness. Nessie was present only in the artistic interpretation shown above. Neither did she turn up as hoped when I stopped at Castle Urquhart on the shores of the Loch.

I was miffed, as I’d grown up hearing about my grandfather’s sighting of the monster some 80 years ago. Sig Other commented acerbically about family traditions of visits by mythical beasts, at which point I harrumphed and shut up. Loch Ness

Despite travelling a fair bit around and about, no dolphins appeared to me either. Lots of cavorting seals by the shores of numerous firths. Those photos are still in Sig Other’s camera.

Although the wildlife was largely in absentia, the sun was out and the beaches were as advertised with foamy surf and few other humans around.

However, I did achieve one goal of my trip and that was to find an old friend whose address I had lost in a long ago house move. I am quite proud of my amature detective efforts as I nipped into the public loos in Tain and asked the women guarding the facilities if they knew of my friend. Delightedly they said yes, and pointed me in her direction. (Tain is a small town.)

Even better, B seemed happy to see me despite the shock she must have had at me arriving out of the blue after some 14 years of silence. Kettles were boiled, high-speed gossip exchanged and I left with her contact details.

Although I felt some trepidation at boldly knocking on her door, I was reasonably confident of a welcome. We’d long ago agreed that as neither of us were any use at keeping in touch, that no matter how long it was, we’d pick up our friendship when we met again.

She said something rather touching … that “I carried a part of her past and she carried a part of mine”. We met in our first careers more than thirty years ago. This was a turbulent time for both of us professionally and personally, thus we were important supports to each other during these years. I no longer have anyone else in my life who knew the highs and lows and neither does she, so a renewal of our contact means some good/bad old stories can be dusted down and reappraised in the light of maturity and distance.

But this is also a reminder to me to trust in the bonds of real friendship no matter how stretched these might become.

Er, I’ll stop now as I suspect I'm beginning to channel Francis Gay's* column.
http://www.sundaypost.com/frangay.htm

*Another mythical beastie!

Visualising summer

Can I have my money back? This is not the summer I ordered online last month. No, what you’ve sent is wet, thundery and miserable. I want the blazing hot sunshine I was promised by that there weatherman. And by all the foolish optimists who spent the whole of May telling each other that the summer would be long and hot.

I suppose I’ll have to make do with a virtual summer. One that happens in my mind, or in memory.

To start this off here is a pic of a BBQ, the one and only so far this year that Sig Other and I have managed to create. We are a bit out of practice, so some things got closer to the charcoal than planned!

I adore veggie BBQ food. I used to like non-veggie, but that was a quarter century ago or more. I got hooked on BBQ food when, as a teenager I went to Canada for a stay. There, on the spacious balcony of a distant cousin’s penthouse flat on Yonge St in Toronto, we BBQ’d every night. This was BBQ at its most civilised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonge_Street

It continued during my stay in some other distant cousin’s cabin on Lake Kashagawigamog. There are no pics of this lake as the interwebby thingy is not a suitable place to display my first and last attempt at fishing. It was a traumatic event, sitting in a small boat in the middle of the night in the middle of the lake being eaten by insects and dangling live bait off a line into the water. Most hideously, I can never forget being accidentally slapped in the face by a wriggling dying frog with which one clumsy fishing companion had baited his hook. Fortunately, I managed not to catch anything, so never faced cooking and eating something I’d killed myself –shudder!

Eventually I had to come home, leaving behind sun and BBQs but I soon invested in a small BBQ for Dad’s next birthday, so I could convert the family to this way of eating. They were happy to be converted, but we never managed the level of civilisation of my first BBQs. And rarely has the weather managed to stay hot enough to provide optimum BBQ conditions either.

I became rather adept at creating homemade dead-burgers, but have never managed to find a way of making a veggie meat-substitute burger. Until recently!

TVP burger

Soak TVP (textured vegetable protein) in water for ten minutes until it is swollen but not at all runny.
Prepare breadcrumbs (I used gluten free wholemeal bread, as it is so much lighter than ordinary)
A small amount of tahini
Very finely chop spring onion
Very finely chop a little fresh herbs of your choice
Beaten egg
Seasoning

Mix all together adding whatever extra is needed to make the mix fairly sticky and shape into very small patties. Large sized ones will crumble too easily.

These are still too delicate to grill straight onto the BBQ, so use a vegetable basket or fish griller or some other tool to contain the burgers and so that they can be turned over easily.

The easiest way to cook veggie BBQ is to skewer a selection of veggies on bamboo skewers and baste with BBQ sauce. My favourite vegetables are aubergine, which is great, sliced lengthways and brushed with marinade, as is courgette.

Halloumi cheese is substantial enough to withstand the BBQ treatment as long as you avoid the low fat one, which is too watery, so shrinks to nothing.

But actually, the very best thing about BBQs is the social aspect. It is great to share food outdoors and to take ages over cooking, chatting and enjoying a small bottle or two of Peroni, and leaving the clearing up till some other time.

Beyond the Cathode Ray Tube

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1937-BairdT14.JPG

My telly died. I ordered a new one on Wednesday and whaddayah know? It arrived this morning.

I am jinxed on the whole TV front. I have lost count of the TV's I've owned since my first black and white portable which my folks presented me with for my 18th birthday. That was fairly unusual at that time as most families sat around the one TV and watched whatever was on one of three dismal channels. Now, I have umpteen dismal channels, I-Player (or Play it Again Sam, as I labelled it) and goodness knows all what such as DVD and video. Still not a lot to watch.

But so many people live in households with more than one TV, even I with my pretentions to soft focus greenness feel the need for a portable TV and freeview box in my bedroom - not that I ever watch it, but habits die hard. However, I am unlikely ever to have a screen embedded in the bathroom wall in order to lie in ass-milked splendour while peering through the steam at Corrie.

Mother tells the story of their first TV. Grandfather, who was the original Inspector Gadget in many ways, decided to order the parts and assembled his own TV set in time for the Coronation of the Windsor Woman. According to mother, all the neighbours crowded in around this tiny screen to see the historic event. No doubt grandmother was proudly entertaining them all throughout the day. It obviously had a lasting impression!

As my previous two TV's have obligingly (from TV manufacturers viewpoint) keeled over soon after the guarantee ran out, I now have a five year warranty. At least that way, I get five years out of the goggle box instead of one or two.

Because it is not a colossal screen, I reckoned I could assemble the mount myself then wire it into the various boxes that lurk under my TV stand. I did this, for once, following the instructions and was quite pleased with myself when I noticed a bit left over.

Damn!

Inventory

It’s Burns Day today and across the world people are celebrating the 250th anniversary of his birth. The Scottish Sunday’s are featuring the anniversary, and a swift look through the online versions produced this from the The Sunday Herald's article about what Burns means to some prominent Scots.

http://www.sundayherald.com/arts/arts/display.var.2484323.0.0.php

‘Jings, crivvens, help ma boab'

Alex Salmond approached DC Thomson’s Sunday Post, about appearing in The Broons as a way of promoting the Homecoming 2009. Oor Eck is joined in 10 Glebe Street by that Brown laddie from 10 Downing Street, for Ma Broon’s Burns Supper.

There is no link to this as it’s not online, and it might go too far against the grain to buy the Sunday Post and view it in person, but I may give in and pop out the newsagent later.

My own experience of Burns today is summed up by his lines penned “in answer to a mandate by the surveyor of taxes, requiring a return for the assessed taxes.”* In other words, self assessment looms in this final effort to make bureaucracy's deadline.

The Inventory

Sir, as your mandate did request,
I send you here a faithfu’ list
O’ guids and gear, and a’ my graith,
To which I’m clear to gie my aith.

Burns

I’ve enjoyed my explorations of his oeuvre and thought it worth while recording a few words about the book I’ve been using. I was given this book, along with several others, by my great aunt and uncle when I was learning about Burns at primary school, (as probably everyone of my age group did at that time). The book had belonged to their daughter Alice who won it for coming 1st in the Burns Competition of 1933.

Tragically, Alice was killed in a road accident before even reaching her teens. I felt privileged then, and still do, to have been entrusted with her small library and have always treasured it.

This old book was part of a series published as the Chandos Classics and despite a bit of a search online, only one reference to it turned up in the catalogue of an American bookseller: http://www.gsbbooks.com/cgi-bin/gsb455/9845.html?id=cykysWMP

Description
London: Frederick Warne, [ca. 1870-1885]. 8vo, contemporary red morocco, gilt turn-downs, gilt lettering, a.e.g., 614 pages. Frontis portrait. Published in Warne's Chandos Poets series.

The print is tiny and almost defeats the magnification of even my strongest reading glasses, but for all the squinting and peering it has been worth investigating Burns in more depth for this month.

I cannot help but reflect on what the long deceased Alice would have made of my use of her book for a blog as that very likely would have been unimaginable to a 1930’s Edinburgh girl. All the same, as a relative, I'd like to think of her as a bit of a kindred spirit, as her parents were certainly not conformist or stuffy in any way even though their (to me) genteel Scottish background would have suggested otherwise.

*This is the introduction to The Inventory in Alice's book.

Bah! Humbug: the analysis

Have I mentioned my aversion to routinised, mandatory make-fests? Yeah, well, feel free to just switch this off, jump to another post or otherwise skip over my prolonged mutterings and move on to the youtube video at the end and appreciate a song and video that is as relevant now as when it was released.

What follows is a brief analysis of some of the reasons I find the whole thing more than a little daft.

1. I’m not a pagan
My awareness that what we know as xmas is a handy transplantation of a dominant religion grafted onto a traditional festival stretching back millennia to ensure the return of spring, has failed to convince me to go with it. I’m as unlikely to wander in the woods druid-like as I am to join the local Baptists who have sent round their xmas agenda which includes carol singing from their roof next Sunday.

2. I’m not a capitalist
That’s just a barefaced lie of course. I have begun buying pressies and I have bought myself a gratifying amount of smart new clothes in the John Lewis sale. This is what always happens when I attempt xmas shopping. My entirely plausible excuse is that I know what I like, but I haven’t a clue what anyone else likes, so it is easier just to achieve shopping results by buying stuff for myself.

But there is more to the anti-consumer aspect. It offends my sense of prudence to spend money buying things that are not actually needed and receiving things I don’t need. And, most importantly there is a limit (linked to my credit card) to how often I can go shopping and end up buying things for me.

3. I hate decorating the house
What is the point? All these things gather dust, and take up space. I’m not artistic, so efforts to decorate a tree in years gone by were frustrating as I knew it just all looked incredibly tacky and a month of fiddling with tinsel to get it ‘just right’ never produced satisfactory results, so again, what is the point?

I listen with amusement to earnest discussions about whether it is greener to buy a real tree or to buy one small plastic one and keep it forever. If you are that bothered, go (druid-like or otherwise) into the woods and pick up a fallen branch, bring it home and stick it in a pot of sand and dangle some home baked gingerbread decorations from it and polish your green halo.

4. Who has time for this?
I can fully understand that mediaeval peasants really enjoyed their religious feast day. They had time to prepare for it as midwinter was a slow time in the agricultural year, so it gave them something to look forward to.

Who in C21st has time to fit this in if done ‘properly’? And why does it all fall on women? There are parallels with foot-binding here. It is damaging to stress levels and to the pocket, but if not done eyebrows are raised and the policing of female behaviour by other females ratchets up many gears. This is highlighted by all these TV programmes showing how to do it all without getting stressed and each and every one is addressed to women. This can easily be stopped by simply disengaging from it, especially if you are someone who gets stressed and caught up in it all and feels responsible for the whole day.

Consider swapping the gender in all these adverts and advice programmes to show the boys rushing around doing it all while women sit back playing with the kids and having a wonderful time. Nice, isn't it? But is it ever going to happen?

5. Family aspects
Add in the ‘family’ pressures and the toxic ingredients are all there.
However, I will agree that the whole thing is magical for baby’s first xmas. But the law of diminishing returns sets in after the first few, and I have clear memories of harassed trips between competing sets of grandparents alert for discrepancies in who got to see only grandchild first or longest on each 25th Dec. This followed with the sacrifice of idiotically large oven-bursting fowl and accompanying obscene indulgence.

In recent years, daughter (who is not a veggie) has almost always chosen The Turkey over her mother. This means I do not feel guilty about lack of dead protein and can plan the only part of the day I do enjoy, which is creating something entirely different to eat from any other day in the year.

Remember! It could all have been avoided if the Christians had kept control of their festival as a holy day and not allowed all the commercialism to take over.

Having said all that, strange as it may seem, I sometimes even enjoy Christmas, but it is inspite of myself.
Stuff I do like:
Crackers and reading out the lame jokes
The food, especially xmas pud
Mistletoe – on condition there are kissable blokes positioned under it
Nights out with friends/colleagues
Presents that are carefully thought out and actually what I want
Lots of the events that go on in Edinburgh’s xmas/Hogmanay

"Hallelujah! Noel!, be it Heaven or Hell,

The Christmas we get, we deserve."

Greg Lake

http://www.greglake.com/newsite/html/discpops/disc11.html

Coincidentally, the 'B' Side is called Humbug!

Here's the youtube video:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FqOfXumI18A&feature=related

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.

Teeny tiny surf and shrunken heads

Such is the outcome of a saunter along the beach this morning. In a wholly unusual burst of enthusiasm I went to Portobello for an amble beside the waves.

I wanted to try out some things with my camera. I have a basic digital camera and have never read the instruction book, so everything is a learning experience with it. It doesn’t help that most of the time I can’t see exactly what I’m photographing in the screen at the back of the camera.

My aim was to capture the little wavelets rippling up the beach rather than my usual expanses of sky and sea with a thin strip of land on the horizon. I produced the picture here, using Picasa which gives a collage option I’d not tried before. I like to think it gives a whole lot of otherwise boring pics more emphasis together rather than individually.

I walked up towards the far west end of the beach past the back of the car salesrooms and the cat and dog home. The returning tide scrunched the wet dogs, the weans and the winching couples into an ever decreasing patch of dry sand. I moved off the beach and decided to walk a bit further along the prom until I got hungry enough to turn back and go home to hot kale and coriander seed soup.

This was the first time I’ve ever walked along as far west as this, even though I’ve been going to Portobello all my life. My great grandfather had a large house near the beach and I was taken there for short holidays from birth. There are tatty old photographs of me shivering in the paddling pool and chasing great grandfather’s old Boxer dog in the large walled garden at the back of his house.

The house was still in the family into the late 1980's. When I took my daughter to see my, by then, elderly great aunt, this was the fifth generation of the family to spend days out at Portobello beach followed by dinner in the wonderful old kitchen, still with its black and white floor and probably original fittings.

Various members of the extended family lived in the rambling rooms in that house, and I have a curious memory which I need to check out with my mother, about a second cousin. I recall being taken into his bedroom when I was young, probably around 7 or 8, (when the cousin was a young trendy hippie in his 20’s) and being shown the weird objects he had gathered. I have a distinct vision of a pair of shrunken heads he had on display.

This was a considerable number of years before it became accepted practice to return human remains to their rightful lands, but I have to hope these were not real artefacts. On the other hand, who makes fake shrunken heads and what conceivable market could there be for them? Also, that cousin did work for a museum, so perhaps ….??