Early Risers.

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

The serpent right hand grip looked uncomfortable

 

Its all down to the spread of the holes to get the harmonics.  The Cornett is short enough to have almost recorder sized fingering, while  the tenor of the family is more sinuous, resulting in its name, the Lysard, to get the holes within reach.  The Serpent takes things to its illogical conclusion.  I've never tried to play one myself, but I think its easier to handle sitting down.

 

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[Tony_S]

53 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

The serpent right hand grip looked uncomfortable

I have never heard a serpent before, though I was aware of what they looked like. I had lost touch with a university friend after we got jobs as teachers. He had always been musical but his main instrument was a double bass. Eventually I traced him through the internet but unfortunately it was his obituary. He become rather keen on playing the serpent. 

[zarniwhoop]

3 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

She also grew up eating Vegemite for which I have now forgiven her. Largely because she converted to Marmite.

I recently got p155ed off with the aggravation of trying to get everything out of a marmite jar, so I thought I'd try vegemite because of its straight-sided jar. After trying it for a few days - I like celery, but I don't normally want to spread it on toast. And at least I understood the passages in Sir Pterry's 'The Last Continent'. I've now relegated the vegemite to "use when making veggie casseroles, or perhaps pommes boulangères", and gone back to low-salt marmite which spreads more easily and might be easier to get out of the jar (or might not, but at least it tastes better).

[Tony_S]

7 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

I recently got p155ed off with the aggravation of trying to get everything out of a marmite jar,

I believe there is a special marmite spoon to extract and spread it. I probably read about it on RMWeb.

[zarniwhoop]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

In 1973 you could  buy almost 4 porterhouse steak meals for the price of one modern choko.

 

Spaghetti on toast ? Yeughh!

 

As for the 'Rossmoyne Remembered', google only found a farsebook page and a link to the Daily Fail suggesting nobody knew what it was.

[monkeysarefun]

8 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

Spaghetti on toast ? Yeughh!

 

As for the 'Rossmoyne Remembered', google only found a farsebook page and a link to the Daily Fail suggesting nobody knew what it was.

 

 

Its the watermark that the  Facebook group put on it to claim ownership. 

 

 

AS for spaghetti on toast, cold  tinned spaghetti was a staple in every schools canteen sandwich options:

 

Edited February 11 by monkeysarefun

[jjb1970]

2 hours ago, The Lurker said:

My direct report is from Hong Kong - she can’t stand “the Chinese” or more realistically the Party. She and her English husband took part in the umbrella marches til someone pointed out that a white man marching was not the most politic thing.

 

The rivalries and enmities between the different groups of Chinese are legion. Which is probably no different from the Anglo-shere really, the most intense rivalry and ill feeling is often between people who share much more than that which separates them. The most vicious wars tend to be civil wars.

 

The comment about the ladies husband amuses me as I think it is genuinely lost on many British, French, Spanish and Portuguese people especially that telling people about freedom and democracy when they visit their former colonies might not be entirely well received. 

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

The first 10 seconds of that was enough too!

I knew better than to do even that.

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

in every schools canteen sandwich options

Except that it was peanut paste north of the border.

[TheQ]

Option at school dinners?

It was take it or you WILL take it at my schools.

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, zarniwhoop said:

Spaghetti on toast ? Yeughh!

Spaghetti (Heinz) on toast was something I was served as a child as an occasional alternative at teatime instead of jam sandwiches. 

[Tony_S]

7 hours ago, TheQ said:

Option at school dinners?

It was take it or you WILL take it at my schools.

I left school in 1971. There was no choice, other than go without.  By the time I started teaching in 1975 there seemed to be an element of choice. 

Edited February 11 by Tony_S

[Ozexpatriate]

Fun factoid for today: A 30 second advertising spot during tomorrow's Super Bowl will cost $7m.

 

There are entities that will blow most of their annual advertising as a 'one and done' during the Super Bowl. More attention is paid to commercials during the Super Bowl than at any other time.

[jjb1970]

7 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Beijing doesn't have an implacable, existential threat about 25 miles away with whom they are (technically) still at war.

 

The crazy thing is that there were no restrictions on cellphone photography, my phone has a 10x (230mm focal length equivalent 35mm film) and with digital zoom and imaging software it can reach much further. The optical quality is nothing like as good as my camera for photographing aircraft because of the difference in lens resolving power and limitations of a fixed aperture but it's more than enough to get acceptable telephoto images. I suspect intelligence agencies have phones with special optics to exploit sensor capability. Given a lot of interchangeable lens cameras never get past the 24-85 (or similar) kit lens shipped with the body I suspect my phone is far more capable than most DSLRs out there.

[BR60103]

I just checked my maps and I found Washington about 40 km away. Not on a road I'm likely to use. About 1/3 of the way to London.

 

[jamie92208]

4 hours ago, TheQ said:

Option at school dinners?

It was take it or you WILL take it at my schools.

That's the reason that I hate rice pudding to this day after being forced to eat it at school. I left at the end of 1970.

 

Anyway good moaning from the Charente.  Market this morning then lunch at some friends a few miles away. 

 

Jamie

[jjb1970]

The reason I still dislike milk is the memory of being ordered to drink lukewarm milk using a paper straw when I was at primary school. Maggie had my lifelong gratitude for knocking it on the head.

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Fun factoid for today: A 30 second advertising spot during tomorrow's Super Bowl will cost $7m.

 

There are entities that will blow most of their annual advertising as a 'one and done' during the Super Bowl. More attention is paid to commercials during the Super Bowl than at any other time.

 

 

I hope Taylor Swift has booked a couple of slots.

 

Let the MAGAs explode.

Edited February 11 by monkeysarefun

[jamie92208]

24 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

The reason I still dislike milk is the memory of being ordered to drink lukewarm milk using a paper straw when I was at primary school. Maggie had my lifelong gratitude for knocking it on the head.

Yes, Milk Snatcher Thatcher.  I remember walking through London shouting that in 1971.

 

Jamie

[Hroth]

6 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I believe there is a special marmite spoon to extract and spread it. I probably read about it on RMWeb.

 

I dispense with having to buy a special implement to extract marmite by leaving the cap firmly screwed down, and the jar on the shelf*!

 

We called Heinz sphagetti "tinned worms", served on toast they were "dead worms". Sphagetti Hoops and Alphabetti Sphagetti were also served up on toast, the latter to prevent individual letters being fished out of the primordial mess and used to create rude words on the edge of the plate...

 

* Preferably in the shop.

 

[TheQ]

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

The reason I still dislike milk is the memory of being ordered to drink lukewarm milk using a paper straw when I was at primary school. Maggie had my lifelong gratitude for knocking it on the head.

Ah yes, the  1/3rd pint bottles of milk brought in frozen from the cold out side in the morning and left leaning against the hot radiators to defrost in time for morning break by which time they were near yogurt... 

I think our school rice pudding was improved by being very burnt on top, my main hatred is for fish, being put off by the specially bred lump of grey matter, packed with bones that they served.

 

Mooring Awl,

Another poor nights sleep, aches and pains at maximum due to the extreme soggyness outside.

 

Ben the i need out Collie took me on patrol, he was happy on patrol following a scent all over the place. Ground extremely Squelchy, even on the highest areas it's close to splashing around, on the lowest areas it's up to 6 inches deep in water limited by flowing out onto the road. 

Large lumped but light rain, must have been much heavier earlier, skies dark grey. The radar shows we are coming to the end of the rain.

 

Plans for today,

Sailing.. by which time it's supposed to be no longer precipitating.

 

Time for breaky.

[DaveF]

It's always good to hear other peoples memories of school food.  We used to have pilchards in tomato sauce at least once a week, they were edible unlike most of the gristle which passed off as meat.  Mashed potatoes always seemed to have stringy bits in them and the vegetables had clearly been cooked overnight.  Like others the rice puddings had burnt skin.  Does anyone remember tapioca and semolina as school puddings?

 

I stopped having school meals when I moved to Harrogate at the start of the 6th form and could go home for lunch.  The only problem was that Dad was head of a boarding school so it was still school food but with a difference.  Mum appointed the cook and always made sure she got someone who could produce good food as we had to eat it!  

 

David

[iL Dottore]

13 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

** I once had a pasta Carbonara dish in the UK with English bacon. It probably violated all of Flavio's / @iL Dottore rules about this dish and tasted quite wrong.

 

Harrumph!

Don’t get me started on carbonara - it’s one of my funny little peculiarities to religiously and obsessively insist that there is only one way to make spaghetti alla carbonara.

 

Like all idiosyncrasies, this can be traced back to family. My mother (English/Irish) met my father (Italian) in Rome, when she was on tour with a British dance troupe. Mother was a dancer and Father worked in the Vatican library. Anyway, my mother never learned to cook from her mother so all her Italian girlfriends took pity on her, took her under their wings and taught her how to cook proper Italian (mostly Roman) dishes. As young marrieds, as is often the case,  money was not abundant so most of the dishes my mother prepared for my father were cheap and cheerful. And back then spaghetti alla carbonara, was very much cheap and cheerful. And from those days spaghetti alla carbonara became a firm family favourite. Pasta, eggs, Guanciale and black pepper, what could be simpler?

 

In early and mid 60s Britain Guanciale could not be found for love nor money, but an alternative was found by buying German or Swiss speck which makes a very reasonable substitute for Guancialei (speck is a bit like streaky bacon, but it is cured in a way that gives you an end product very similar in texture and quite close in flavour to Guanciale*). And acquiring speck back then meant an enjoyable excursion with my father to a German deli in Soho to pick up the speck (always cubed or in one solid piece, never sliced). And from my father, I got the insistence that if you are going to do something, you do it properly with the right ingredients or the right tools – depending on what you are doing.

 

Like very many “simple“ dishes, spaghetti alla carbonara, requires quite considerable skill to get right. The creaminess of the dish does not come from using cream, nor does the saltiness  come from adding Parmesan**; the creaminess comes from the eggs just setting (a bit like moist, scrambled eggs) and the saltiness and sweetness comes from the Guanciale. 
 

Unfortunately, in Switzerland they dump cream and cheese in to what they claim is “spaghetti alla carbonara” (probably because Switzerland has an awful lot of milk, cream and cheese to use up); it’s sort of OK, but it certainly isn’t spaghetti alla carbonara.

 

* properly cured speck should be quite hard when it is in a large piece, like Guanciale. “Soft” versions are best avoided.

 

**there are some Romans who claim that you can add a little grated pecorino (never Parmesan) to your spaghetti alla carbonara. This however is contentious, and the debate on this matter is quite emotionally partisan (think Celtic vs Rangers).

[DaveF]

This morning on the Northumberland coast is wet and dismal at 5°C and a very light breeze off the sea.  Sitting here in the house I can hear the sea along with the engines of at least one ship in the harbour and cranes working, with the occasional clatter when a container makes a heavy landing.

 

I have not gone to church today as yesterday I was moving things in the house, reaching into cupboards and so on. I have upset Mr. Hernia who is a bit sore this morning and standing during the service, especially while giving people wine from the chalice would be too painful.  I don't think I'll be going again until around Easter.  Fortunately the only thing really left to do is to make sure that the stuff I am going to eat after surgery is easy to get at which means tidying up the kitchen freezer and bring stuff in from the garage freezer.  That is not too big a job.

 

So the next few days will be short gentle walks, simple cooking for my meals, doing photos and reading/watching TV.

 

I've made the usual early phone calls, done some emails and so on.  There is one letter still to write and a phone call to make this afternoon.  I may also have a nap because I slept badly as I was uncomfortable.

 

I shall  not be able to go to the AGM of the model railway group while I recover.  I note someone is proposing a number of changes, not enough to make me leave but it would change things more than I would like.  Judging by the comments in e mails I've been copied into others feel the same.

 

This afternoon if I stay awake I may watch some video of things moving around in Switzerland, probably from the seat alongside the driver.

 

David