BB's behaviourism lab

PORSCHE PREPARATIONS Once I’d driven it (see What’s a Good Present for a Hooligan?) I was regaled with stories about the difficulties of organising the project. Like the day Mrs BB inexplicably asked me to come out into the garden to see a withered dahlia while Younger Daughter rifled my wallet indoors, taking away my driving licence needed by the hiring company. And did I realise, I was asked, that my wallet lacked a driving licence for over a week? The two of them crowed about my inferior powers of observation.

Younger Daughter who was due to spend a couple of days with us, drove her Seat to the hirer to pick up the Porsche but was disinclined to take her cairn with her for reasons that can be imagined. Which meant that my first task was to drive YD to her home, 45 minutes away, in the Porsche to pick up the cairn. There must be something anti-canine about Porsches because the cairn appeared to suffer a nervous breakdown during the return.

CAKE QUESTION Elder Daughter and Peter stayed with us over my birthday celebrations and I was getting ready to take them to the bus station for their return to Luton when I was suddenly visited by a question I needed to put to Mrs BB.

How long does it take her to create those little cakes/buns that are done in paper cups?

Such questions arrive randomly but it’s no use telling Mrs BB that; she prefers to read between my non-existent lines and look for non-existent reasons. Thus I drove to the bus station (less than two miles), called in at Tesco’s filling station to pick up The Guardian, found they’d run out, drove back across the road to the main store, bought one there and then drove home. And you can guess what lay gently steaming in the kitchen when I opened the door. (Enhanced only with raisins I should add; the picture above came from Google).

“Have one while it’s hot,” said Mrs BB triumphantly. Delicious. But I must insist – however futile my insistence – that self-interest played no part in the question. Such questions crop up in my mind almost daily and the answers are filed away for random use (often in the novel) weeks or months into the future.

The answer is, by the way, twenty-five minutes

A car, a knife and a vet

And why, you may ask, is Works Well sporting a photo of a BMW Isetta bubblecar? Because an Isetta played a mildly memorable role in our family history and younger daughter (Occasional Speeder) bought me the model as a souvenir.

I was working on MotorCycling in 1962 and our first daughter (Professional Bleeder) had just been born in Charing Cross Hospital in London. Despite its name the magazine also road-tested bubblecars and I was able to borrow an Isetta to pick up Mrs BB and the infant PB and take them home. The vehicle had a front opening door. Child-in-arms my wife sat on the bench seat – but on the wrong side! I closed the door to check she was comfortable and the steering wheel (attached to the inside of the door) began gently crushing the baby. But not fatally. As I say, a memorable moment and one regularly referred to on bibulous evenings.

GRANDSON Ian is staying with us. He does a lot of cooking for his mother PB (see above) and partner and has just broken his favourite kitchen knife. This 12.5 cm Taiku is the replacement which he chose and I paid for. He proved to be incredibly picky. Could have had a Sabatier but rejected it because the tip of the handle curls inward slightly and this he found unsuitable for his sensitive hand. Never mind. He cooks well.

THE LOVE PROBLEM 54,441 words. What is the most lovable male profession? As previously recounted I opted for veterinarian hoping this would take me halfway there since I find it difficult doing lovable men. Even so it’s hard work. Certainly I don’t love him yet.

The year of the spoon

These secondhand serving spoons were a gift from my father about fifty years ago. They are silver and when struck ring out with a distinctive light “ping”. Two are plain, one carries a set of initials, the fourth a date – 1818. Despite their age and potential value we have used them for what they were intended and they travelled to the USA and back when we lived there. I Googled the dated spoon’s birth year:

Born: Karl Marx, William George Fargo (co-founder Wells Fargo), Amelia Jenks Bloomer (feminist reformer; must have been tough with that name), Emily Brontë (in Thornton, three miles away from, and 117 years before, I was born), Lucy Stone (suffragist and feminist), Richard J. Gatling (inventor of eponymous gun), James Prescott Joule (experimental physicist; gave name to unit of energy)
Published: Frankenstein, Endymion, Northanger Abbey (posth.).
Written: Hammerklavier sonata.
Events: Thomas Bowdler becomes infamous, George IV orders boots for left and right feet, Bernardo O'Higgins establishes Chile's independence from Spain, Australia Day celebrated.

MACHINE BETTER Everyone complains about dealing with machines, recorded voices, etc, rather than humans. But there are advantages. Throughout Hereford’s film festival we needed change for parking meters. Even counter operators at the Tesco filling station frowned when I repeatedly bought a paper with a £20 note. But the automated check-outs at the supermarket proper didn’t grumble.

THE LOVE PROBLEM 47,971 words (ie, almost half way). Jana’s student, Didi (a woman), goes solo. Her other student, Matthieu (a fella), struggles.

Tagines, etc, are crushing us to death

Plutarch was recently in his local Lakeland shop (predominantly kitchen equipment) while I’m flipping through the catalogue. A fanciful thought arises. Lakeland is not supplying the kitchen it’s in competition with it.

For the first time ever the BBs have a sufficiency of work surfaces in the kitchen (the above isn't ours, I fear) but Lakeland seeks to make us uncomfortable again. Much of the equipment represents options (different sets of pans, mixers, knives, etc) but suppose in a moment of madness we decided to acquire one item from every category: a pasta maker (with a lasagne attachment), a wooden gripper board, a garlic press, a granite pestle and mortar, a cast-iron trivet, and so on.

Very quickly all that delicious open space would run out but that wouldn’t be an end to the matter. Problems of memory and location would emerge, I’m about to handle toast so hand me my magnetic toast tongs; I’ve done that and now I need my StemGem to hull some strawberries. Tiny tasks each with a specific tool,

How many items of equipment does a competent kitchen need? How many bought, now moulder? Answers by email.

THE LOVE PROBLEM Just finished Ch. 4 (5688 words) taking the total up to 22,549 words. Again a child has entered the story as in Gorgon Times, yet I confess children are not an instinctive subject for me. There may be a subconscious reason. Half of GT was a woman’s story and all TLP is. A story about a woman, whether she is a mother or not, seems incomplete without this reference. Or am I now anticipating a feminist thunderbolt? GT went to the agent in early January and is still there.

Cakewalk to freedom

Freed in 1959 from weekly newspapers (and destined ecstatically for a magazine in London) I swore I would never again attend entertainment put on by amateurs. Call me elitist, an intellectual snob and I say phooie. But recently the threat loomed. I was asked to publicise a Christmas Concert on the website I run (Fine.) To ask “my lady wife” if she would bake a cake for the event (That quote brought powdered teeth to my mouth corners.) To attend in person (I sought the seppuku sword.)

Mrs BB dislikes the quote too and was minded to refuse. But the proceeds were for the local hospice and both us can be guided by self-interest. So the cake equipment was mobilised reluctantly (see pic) and suddenly I saw clear skies. I delivered the cake an hour ago and when asked about my evening plans I was no longer shackled, the price had been paid. I said, simply, no, without any awkwardness. As I drove away I reflected on an unexpected benefit of being married. To a cake-maker, for one thing.

ANYONE HOME? Once you brayed (a good Yorkshire word) on the door with your fist. Later there were knockers. Then bells which you wound up like clockwork toys. Followed by electric bells which depended on cumbersome batteries. And now the above. What you see is a radio-frequency push-button transmitter with its exposed circuitry and a tiny battery sufficient to release an equally tiny signal, insufficient in itself to activate the ding-dong. Power for the ding-dong is derived from the wall sockets into which receivers are plugged and which respond to that infinitesimally small pulse of electro-magnetism. You might well ask whether this is progress.

Painless delivery for corned beef

I’ll brook no argument (a silly verb I grant you). The best tin-opener in the world is the Brabantia Profile. No longer available in this form the model name is still retained and I can’t believe Brabantia has lowered its high – and frequently expensive – standards. It costs £9.32 and passes the ultimate test.

What test? The traditional corned-beef tin is a symmetrical trapezium in frontal elevation, thus one end is smaller in area than the other. OK if you have tag and twisty key; if not you need the Profile. To ensure the contents can be pushed out neatly in one piece, you need to remove both ends and it’s the short-radius corners on the smaller end that test cheapo openers. Easy with the Profile and no jagged edges. One caveat: even the Profile suffers wear, notably the cutting disc and the sprocket that “drives” the tin. Be prepared to replace the Profile in a dozen years or so. But then perhaps you don’t eat corned beef.

BEST WURST Mrs BB is back from her continental Christmas market visit: last year Prague, this year Munich. My prezzie is a Steirische Burgsalami in a dinky hessian sack resembling a bucolic Xmas cracker. Huge flavour, even a huge bouquet. But so, so hard. Denture wearers needn’t apply.

FANCY THAT I write a lot and take a physically active break now and then. Hence the piano keyboard. No big deal, often just hymns. Did you know the seventh and eighth lines and one note of the ninth of Ye Holy Angels Bright:

Or else the theme,
Too high doth seem
For…

are a C-major octave plus one? Makes things easy.

A cold-weather pot-pourri

PROFESSIONALISM Members of Mrs BB’s painting group are concerned about her eye op. One is visiting us this morning “elevenish” and as I left to pick up the paper Mrs BB had started making little cakes. Such casualness

CLICHÉ STUFF The forecasts were gloomy last night: hard frost. It was mild and sunny when I set off for the paper, cold and windy when I returned. The walk lasts six minutes.

BABBLE Deafness. The problem is distinguishing what people are saying against a noisy background. The supermarket check-out for instance.

VALUE Currently the best quality bargains in French wine (ie, in the £8 - £12 bracket) are Coteaux du Languedoc AC. Of those look for villages with their own AC, especially Montpeyroux. Also Faugères and Picpoul de Pinet.

HORRIBLE The first motorbike I owned was a 125 cc BSA Bantam (see pic). Wretched. Note lack of rear suspension and pillion seat - but then it further lacked the power to tote two people.

DQ I’m 48 pages from finishing the 760-page Don Quixote. Would I recommend it? Yes, and for the same reasons I would recommend that every male youth in the UK does military National Service. Now I’ve done mine.

BROS K Plutarch suggested I read The Brothers Karamazov so I’ve bought a second-hand copy via ABE Books. It’s 985 pages. In the past I’ve made three attempts, the most recent failing at page 150.

LONG WAIT I am replacing my car with another of the same make and model. The waiting list was initially three months. Now it’s twenty-two weeks. Various reasons for the delay are offered: rarity of DSG automatic gearboxes and (the much more likely) rarity of RHD.

Not exactly cuisine minceur

New mincers are still available. Not as versatile or as speedy as food processors they are built to last a thousand years, invulnerable to power-cuts, easily washed, and digest everything served into their maw. Even bones. I operated my mother’s mincer and I can hear the sinister tearing noise even now. She was always at it, but why?

Why did immediate post-war cuisine demand so much grinding destruction? We ate a lot of what we called Shepherd’s Pie (I know, I know, we were misinformed. South-easterners call it Cottage Pie.) which required mince but surely butchers supplied that. I recollect much bread passing through the mincer’s alimentary canal but did we consume bread-crumbs on an industrial scale?

She may have mashed potatoes this way, I can’t be sure. And I have an even dimmer memory of bread and meat being ground simultaneously, perhaps for rissoles or an unsatisfactory – and unwisely extended – meat patty. Speculation on this has lead to a fierce argument with Mrs BB and I am now temporarily denied her input on the matter.

Soup? My mother’s soups were not her forte and the constituents were readily, and lumpily, identifiable. Certainly unminced.

QUIETLY FLOWS THE DON Part Two of Don Quixote is less anecdotal and I have reached page 467 (out of 760). Could it be your thing? Here’s a sample:

“Whoever undertakes a long journey… (seeks) an agreeable companion. How cautious should he then be, who is to take a journey for life, whose fellow traveller must not part with him but at the grave; his companion at bed and board and sharer of all the pleasures and fatigues of his journey, as the wife must be to the husband.”

THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE (SEE BELOW)

Watched Mrs BB prepare Sticky Ginger Cake with Ginger Fudge Icing and was disturbed. I'm Virgo, needing control and tidiness, and recipes don't allow for me. This one required 87½ gm of black treacle (halved from the original) which Mrs BB table-spooned from the tin. Tolerances must have been ±50%. More precision with the butter since the paper packet had lines indicating popular fractions. Worrying work.

NOVEL Dr Plutarch has auscultated and biopsied the MS, done an MMR scan, cardiogram, endoscopy, X-rays and Rohrschach, measured blood pressure and sugar. Vital signs detected. Two months remedial.

FINE DESIGN I stuff the washing machine when I arise. The blue stuff is conditioner, function unknown. However, I approve of the bottle cap. Note the "moat" round the measure. It acts as a catchment and it's almost impossible to spill the liquid.

GOOD READ Finished Wolf Hall. An excellent primer on how to govern a country. Newspaper jokes suggest the book is an intellectual challenge. Not so, it's a good easy read. But the initial pages ominously list the characters. Stuck with the names of real people Hilary Mantel risks confusion since there are several Annes, Jos and Marys. Other than that, dive in (Most commenters to Works Well already have) and thank goodness that a free press, capable of scrutinising rulers, developed two or three hundred years later.

LINGUISTIC STIGMA (Finally it works) Recording my voice to forewarn those hearing it au nature brought unexpected reactions. I felt my accent had virtually disappeared (and good riddance). Others talked about cosy northern tones. I've recorded someone else's sonnet, rehabilitating the accent. Click here for UNCOSINESS

Here's a hymn to Hob Brite

This is the Neff hob, bought for hundreds of pounds years ago. Mrs BB swears by it. Thermal reaction is the equal of any gas ring but its inestimable value is its cleanability. No wretched grease-tarnished cast-iron birds nests. Just a quick wipe with a dab of Hob Brite.

When I contemplate shelves of cleaning stuff a word springs to mind – fraud! I refuse to believe there are chemical distinctions between something said to make kitchens sparkle and one which does the same for bathrooms. Hob Brite is the exception. As well as rendering the Neff worthy of Home & Garden it removes heat-lacquered stains inside the oven’s glass door. More remarkable, given the vessel’s pimply orange-skin surface, it cleans the Le Creuset casserole. And the coffee stains in my favourite china mug disappeared in a flash. It could be based on something inimical to human life – sulphuric acid in cream form. But what the hell.

NOVEL EDITING Names. Hatch is Hatch, an immutable. But I see Clare just as clearly and she just isn’t a Lowther (always remembering this is her husband’s surname). Using Word’s find/replace I changed all 36 references to Kepler, the German mathematician, astronomer and (I’m mortified to admit) astrologer. An improvement but somewhat anonymous. Not there yet.

Dialogue. Christopher commented he wasn’t tempted to write novels because dialogue is difficult. I agree. The first awful discovery is that it isn’t spoken English it’s much more rarefied. A spoken sentence may start with “So” or “Well” but not a dialogue sentence. And here’s another

“The magazine hasn’t let you know?” asked Hester.
“No they haven’t. But I do have an interview…”

“No they haven’t.” must go.

Byproducts of Spring

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris.
I wonders where the birdies is.
They say the birds is on the wing.
Ain't that absurd?
I always thought the wing was on the bird.
So says Anon (no it isn’t Ogden Nash nor e.e.cummings). So it’s time to get into the garden and perform familiar acts of self-flagellation. Or should I say it’s time for someone to mortify themselves. Here at Chez Bonden our thoughts are on higher things – literally. Both of us sit at our computers on the first floor and watch our neighbour Brian attack weeds in our garden with self-confessed enthusiasm. Brian will be paid but believe me we have no complaints.

A spring clean-out revealed two items which, like boomerangs, are hard to throw away. It would not only be irresponsible to toss these cutting devices into the dustbin it would be illegal. One of us must transport them to les flics. But that in itself opens up risks; being in possession on the public roads is also illegal. Perhaps I’ll have to use my angle grinder and render them anonymous, like the verse.

The knife dates back to Mrs BB’s dad – a chef – who used it in his kitchen. There’s a touch of sentiment but it’s surplus to requirements. The herb-chopper (I’m sure Lucy will know the French word) looks charming but is being discarded because of its ineffectuality. For one thing it requires a special wooden bowl to work properly. But even then it must bow the knee to a combination of a pair of scissors and grandson Zach’s Melamine drinking cup.

Novel progress 13/4/10. Ch. 20: 913 words. Chs. 1 - 19: 85,903 words. Comments: Hatch bollocked for over-writing.

The sausage fork - an update

Sausages curl when fried, making it difficult to brown them on four sides. The Bonden Sausfork, knocked up at a cost of £15 by a local fabricator, solves the problem. The sausages are slid longitudinally on to the fork tines; no extra piercing is needed since the sausages already have a hole at each end. To rotate the sausages use a pair of wooden spatulas.

The Sausfork shown is Version 2. It differs from Version 1 in that the tines are wide enough apart to take bratwursts. Should one brown four sides? From a gustatory point of view, possibly not. Aesthetically it’s essential. Take-up is unlikely to be dramatic. Virtually everyone who comments on Works Well already has too many kitchen appliances.

WANT TO WRITE A NOVEL? Then you could face this sort of problem. Hatch, at a moment which will change his career and (if I feel like it) his life, designs and creates a fairly simple mechanical system. The system’s components, their function and their raison d’etre are open to scrutiny by the plot. Should I describe the system in detail so that the reader understands it fully (and thereby risk inserting a passage that could have been ripped from an instruction manual) or take an arty-flighty approach which may leave the reader in the dark? The answer is I should be writing about a poet or a teacher rather than a production engineer.

Novel progress 17/3/10.Ch. 17: 2299 words. Chs. 1 - 16: 73,302. Comments: Clare admits to a dark side.

Alas, some are for the freezer

Kefta is a rare dish Chez Bonden because Mrs BB hates making “the little meat balls”. So imagine my delight when I found her engaged in the Herefordshire equivalent of what lady cigar-rollers do in Havana (but not between her thighs). When I left for the Sunday paper she’d done thirty, when I returned she was finishing the one-hundred-and-fiftieth. Already I was slavering, only to be told some were going into the freezer. There are limits to her indulgences.

Which reminds me of a previous post. In the sixties I was cycling home from London to our cheerless flat in Stoke Newington and saw a chalked-up sign: “Polish eggs, 1s 10d a dozen.” (That’s about 10p now.) I bought a dozen and asked Mrs BB to make me a dozen-egg omelette – a lifetime’s ambition. She refused but after much pleading finally conceded an eleven-egg omelette. Even now I still feel incomplete.

WORKS WELL, DOESN’T LOOK WELL. The plug for our kitchen sink can, if inserted skew-whiff, jam in the hole, requiring huge efforts to yank it free. The original chain broke long ago and my solution, as always, followed the principle: If it does the job who cares about the aesthetics? Mrs BB uses it under sufferance







BIKE PROGRESS My present bike, a nondescript, non-sporting job that cost about £200, nevertheless incorporates a feature that was a luxury item fifty years ago. That’s a quick-release hub which means I can take out the front wheel without resorting to spanners. Alas, for a variety of reasons, there’s no QR for the rear wheel. Guess which tyre is always the one that punctures.
Novel progress 10/2/10. Ch. 14: 3833 words. Chs. 1 - 13: 58,239 words. Comments: Clare transformed, steps into the future

Unbridgeable

Sonnet – An infinite distance

Oh look how close, a little handsbreadth out.
Stretch! Yet again! And see our comfort touch
This suffering, this low’ring cast of doubt,
Drawn by a need to prove we care enough.
The need is real, supported by belief,
That we can reach and touch and calm and heal,
That sympathy and power will placate grief
Thus warm ourselves and show proof of our zeal.
Delusion feeds this notion of a bridge
Between the selves that form these different poles
Our poles repel like magnets which begrudge
Affection flowing from our kindred souls.
But separation that prevents this flow
Defines the you and me we’ll not forego

Wanting to encourage The Crow, who's had problems, I was struck by the difficulty of writing anything useful (not exactly an original discovery) and so tacked on this sonnet in explanation. Crow has kindly allowed me to reproduce it here.

WARMING THE COCKLES 1 Mrs BB was not well over New Year and when she finally fancied some nourishment asked me to prepare Písmenková polévka. Which I did.

WARMING THE COCKLES 2 The strains of JSB's greatest cantata Wachet auf come stealing up the stairs to my self-imposed, radiator-turned-off computer room

Novel progress 6/1/10. Ch. 10: 3211 words. Chs. 1 - 9: 41,171 words. Comments: Metallurgy and memories of the transient woman mingle.

And now for something unseasonal

Betrayal is a handy domestic concept and I delight in its nuances.

CAR MANUFACTURER I favoured German cars: several VWs, an Audi coupé, a BMW 3-series. When I retired I bought a VW Passat diesel station wagon, believing it would be economical and would last for ever. A rust bubble developed on the A-pillar within the warranty and I took it in. Had I replaced the windscreen (US: windshield)? I was asked. Yes. Then that invalidated the bodywork warranty. Even though VW do not install windscreens and might well have used the same specialist I did. My next four cars were Japanese. Finally I returned to VW but not those arrogant swine in Wolfsburg, rather to a foreign subsidiary.

JOURNALISTIC ACQUAINTANCE Invited to dinner he arrived saying he hadn’t brought wine because he hadn’t passed an off-licence. He’d passed three. The excuse entered the family pantheon of character-defining phrases. He invited us to a vegetarian dinner and gave us sprout somosas, suggesting Mrs BB cook her famous Beef Wellington for his return. But the camel’s back-breaker occurred after a few moments’ reflection: he never initiated conversation, only reacted tiredly. I made it known, through a third-party, I’d had enough of him. He pleaded to be rehabilitated for several years. In vain.

MY DAUGHTERS A judgement both were capable of: “Dad I saw a super film/heard a pop tune/etc, last night. It was really good.” BB: “How good was it?” Daughter: “Really good.” BB (with increasing sternness): “How good?” To describe an enjoyable experience casually is to betray its value. Both daughters still use “really” but preceded with the faintest of pauses.

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Note for Plutarch. I was given Carol Duffy's poems, Rapture, for Christmas, the first time I have ever warranted poetry as a gift. How can this be?

Novel progress 2/1/10. Ch. 10: 1285 words. Chs. 1 - 9: 41,171 words. Comments: Hatch now more fun again.

Christmas - the same old thing

Evolution of a Beef Wellington. Contained within the pastry case is a duxelles of mushrooms with virtually all the moisture removed, as recommended by Gordon Ramsay. This is held against the 2½ lb fillet steak by strips of parma ham. The steak is seared then flamed (using Tesco Value French brandy at less than £10 a bottle - ie, (to foreigners) couldn't be cheaper). When cool the steak is encased in pastry decorated with "My luve is like a red, red rose..." by Rabbie Burns. Cooked in the oven for 20 min. at 200 deg C and 15 min at 160 deg C.

Served with Sauce au poivre, as mentioned.

YSABELLE IN FLIGHT Mrs BB has been doing this at Christmas for thirty years with a short break which so outraged granddaughter Ysabelle. And it is Y who should have the last word or the last act. In her youth she was the pickiest eater known to man and many a French waiter has she enraged: BB: Et pour la petite, une assiette de frites. C'est tout. Waiter: Mais, monsieur, un peu de chou-fleur, peut-etre? Une saucisse? BB: Comme j'ai dit, une assiette de frites. Waiter: Mais monsieur....

However a year at uni, and an unremitting diet there of pasta, has sharpened her sensitivities. In the phot0 she is on her fourth slice of BeefWell.

Novel progress 28/12/09. Ch. 9: 2190 words. Chs. 1 - 8: 36,852 words. Comments: Edited and re-edited Ch. 8. Still not right. Opting for a little writing instead. That was yesterday and I'm still writing.

Oh come all ye techies

Christmas is the season of unacknowledged technology – streams of binary code and £1 toys that would have cost thousands if they’d used yesterday’s electronics. BB puts on a silly Santa hat and rings a few chimes.
CONTROLLED FLASHING The lights on the outdoor Christmas tree flash alternate white, blue and red too quickly – I think – to be mastered by a thermocouple. So there must be some logic circuitry close to the step-down transformer. A multi-wire harness ensures reliability and neatness. Those that don’t know what I’m talking about (No more self-deprecation!) can go and eat a mince pie. Meanwhile I bend the knee before the ubiquity and cheapness (about £5) of electrical ingenuity.
SKILLED CHEMISTRY It will be Beef Wellington again because granddaughter Ysabelle insists on this thirty-year-old-plus tradition. Equally traditional is the accompanying Sauce au poivre to a recipe from the Mrs Beeton we received as a wdding present. This luxury liquid impressed me from the start because to make it you first have to make Sauce espagnole. A sort of culinary Ponzi scheme.
MORE DIGITAL WONDERS Events in the Bonden connubial bed have been timed for two decades by a simple plug-in digital clock which bust a week or so ago. I wanted a clock-only replacement, not a clock radio with its unnecessary extra buttons. In the end, grumbling, I made do with the latter but was more than mollified when I plugged it in and it immediately showed the correct time, date and year. Radio-controlled of course.
QUALIFIED APOLOGIES I have got up a number of people’s noses this year via comments rendered careless, contumacious and carping as a result of switching too abuptly from and to novel writing. Unfortunately there is no guarantee this won’t continue.

Novel progress 22-23/12/09. Ch. 8: 4094 words (finished but not edited). Chs. 1 - 7: 33,000 words. Comments: Over past three days suffered a small attack of writer's block, the most boring malady known to man. Discovered a cure, wrote through afternoon then returned to the keyboard at 1 am and worked until 2.45.

Can't see it; haven't got it

I have three roles in Mrs BB’s kitchen: to wash up, to lift things down from high shelves and to observe. Recently I observed blind baking beans in action, preventing that culinary solecism whereby pastry case and tart contents combine. I recognised their function but couldn’t remember having seen this procedure before. It turned out Mrs BB had bought the beans two years ago. And before? Real beans, but “they’d begun to look a little secondhand”.

I wondered if cooking beans end up in that destination I identify as the Food Processor Bermuda Triangle involving tools for comparatively rare but very specific tasks (eg, a melon baller). So rare that when the need arises one bodges rather than look for the tool. The phenomenon reaches its expensive apogee when a food processor is “put away” rather than being left on the work surface. “Not in a well organised kitchen,” replied Mrs BB a trifle frostily.

I AM NOT SEDUCED by perfumed toilet products. My preferred shampoo is Head and Shoulders which has a chemically smell and an in-yer-face aim (gets rid of dandruff). My favourite soap is Wright’s Coal Tar. If I could find a tooth-paste flavoured with petrol I would buy it. Yes, I know, it’s a man’s thing and its finest expression is a deep love of Swarfega (alas, now newly packaged). Used by garage mechanics for cleaning oily hands it is a luminescent green gel which feels excitingly slick to touch and has a hypnotically techno smell. It’s at its best when taken from an industrial-size container and it not only works well but better than you could ever expect. Welcome to this blog.

Novel progress (Working title: Bloggers Unite). Chapter one: 3420 words, Chapter two: 3806 words. Chapter three: 698 words.

Chillis and the Voice of Doom

In what my elder daughter referred to as “the often times” there was just one TV channel and the BBC filled up gaps between programmes with film of a rotating potter’s wheel and a speeded-up train journey covering London to Brighton in sixty seconds. This post may well fulfil the same function, for I am presently otherwise engaged.

The chillis have nothing to do with technology and merely serve as a reminder that my lack of faith in received religion should not be allowed to extend to horticulture. They came from a single plant sown by Mrs BB and which, despite my deepest foreboding, went forth and multiplied. They will be dried and/or frozen. The purple plastic bag has Internet links since it came from Purdy’s, a shop I believe to be located in Vancouver, BC. No prizes for making the connection.

AS I STARE into the monitor, involved in the aforementioned other work, a crisp didactic female voice says: “You have reached your destination.” I deserve this since I’ve dribbled on rather too much about mortality in recent posts. But this is not condemnation from a surrogate Grand Seigneur. It is my satnav, triggered by computer activity, possibly the optical mouse. I reflect briefly on the persistence of horticulture, and resume.

TO MY FOUR COUNSELLORS The rewrite is two-ninths complete and may be up to fifty percent at the end of the day. This is gratifying though judgement will be what counts. I thank you all but end on a note of authorial caution: rewriting is sixteen times easier than writing.

Onions deconstructed

In a kitchen the onion is second only to the potato in importance; in the wider world it seems a limited basis for entertainment. Hence an investigatory visit to the Newent Onion Fair.

We could easily have missed the onions. The streets of this little Gloucestershire town were host to carousels, a Ferris wheel, slides, stalls selling cheese, wine and sausages and stalls run by charities and local organisations. “In the community hall,” we were told.

Stepping inside I stepped back fifty years to my weekly newspaper days when vegetable shows ruined many a Saturday afternoon I’d have preferred to devote to rock-climbing or motorbiking. This was the original nucleus of the larger event in Newent: a gardening competition based on onions. Produce arranged in a layout as far removed from nature as possible. Rosettes had been awarded; condemnation too. Against one exhibit was attached – rather cruelly I thought – a note saying that one onion’s diameter had exceeded 30 mm and was therefore disqualified.

Zach slid, rotated and consumed a whistle made out of sweetmeats. He also climbed enthusiastically into a fire engine. This reminded me of our local fun fair intended to gather data for a parish plan. I quote from the newsletter: BARRETT BONDEN. General dogsbody. Accosted at 11.30, and then every 20-minutes by a ten-year-old who wanted to know when the fire engine would arrive. Told the ETA was 2 pm, he showed up at 2.05 pm to register what was clearly an official complaint. “The engine might be attending a fire,” BB said. The lad’s frown suggested this wasn’t a plausible excuse.

Kids love fire engines