Friday September 29, 2006

Ice Cold in Alex

This is a truly excellent film. I mentioned it before when John Mills died. I am still trying to catch a version on the TV having missed a recent showing again. The film follows Mills and his fellow passengers in their efforts to get to Alexandria and escape the pursuing German army in World war Two. They are in an old ambulance hardly the vehicle of choice to go over the desert. The passengers include Mill's sergeant, and a chap they offer a lift to played by Anthony Quale. One of the two nurses also in the vehicle dies soon after they set off but the remaining one is played by the pretty Sylvia Sims who falls for the alchoholic Mills. It is soon clear Anthony Quale is up to no good and they do find out he is on the German side in some capacity. Mills gets his beer in Alex after several dramas which include

They have to crank the ambulance backwards up a steep sandy hill using the starting handle as it is not powerful enough or has the grip to drive up the hill. An accident means the ambulance rolls down the hill and they have to start again.

Anthony Quale has to be rescued from quicksand after a trap to try and work out why he goes for comfort break late at night turns out badly. Turns out he was contacting his German peers over the radio in his rucksack.

Anthony Quale saves the ambulance when it falls off its jacks during repair work. He uses his back to hold it up so they can get the jack back under it.

At the end of the film they have that long awaited beer in Alex after which they have to hand Anthony Quale over to the authorities. Just as they do so Mills spots a German Id badge hanging from his neck. He rips it off so ensuring Quale won't end up being tried as a spy.

An excellent film.

Thursday September 28, 2006

Flying to save lives

As a result of the Hamster's accident last week the profile of the UK's Air Ambulances has been raised to a new level. All the English and Welsh flights are funded by charity. In Scotland they have had the hindsight to fund these by Government. The Yorkshire service has had so much money donated to it as a result of this high profile incident that they will be able to start a second service and reach about three hundred people they can't help now as the helicopter was already on a call. For the Hamster the service may well have saved his life, he was in a hospital in twelve minutes which has specialist facilities that he needed to ensure he survived. Even with a blue light no road based ambulance could ever provide that turnaround - it was has been estimated it would have taken such a vehicle forty five minutes to do that journey. The service these guys offer as well as being quick can mean they cna get to places where no road based service can reach, mountains fields - in fact after road accidents horse accidents are the second most common incident. Our next door neighbour who is retired spends a lot of him time helping our local service raise money and we buy Xmas cards etc off them to do our bit.

Wednesday September 27, 2006

Time for lunch

Tuesday September 26, 2006

A trial for the world

Last night was the first of four programmes about the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. This program specifically went over the trial of Albert Speer who ended up with twenty years in jail and made himself into a celebrity after writing a book. The program featured interviews with the people who were involved with the trials, film footage of the event and re-enactments of the trials. It is clear to me that the many people decided Speer got away lightly with his twenty years in jail given one of his co-defendants who he got to employ slave labour from countries Germany had overrun to work in the armaments factories under Speer's control, recieved the death sentence himself. The program made much of the fact that only Speer admitted to the atrocities the regime inflicted on its own people, Jewish people and others and the fact that only he stood up to Hitler in the end refusing to flatten Germany and destroy its infrastructure ,maybe helped him avoid being given a death sentence. Either way the program is good and I learnt a lot about the trials.

Things are getting smaller...

Well as most of this years crops are now gathered in, I can asses the effect of this years weather on this years produce. Apart from the heatwave the main problem has been the lack of rain in the the soil which is usually dry in this part of the UK but has not had any significant moisture in it for most of the summer so shallow rooted plants have suffered. The stuff that was harvested early seems to have been affected less - as you would expect, shallots, garlic and onions. All are smaller but not significantly so. The potatoes have been affected the worst, same number of tubers but a fraction of last years crop. The bin above is the full crop. That bin was full last year . The leeks are about half the size they should be but if we get some rain now and it stays mild they will catch up I think. Beetroot did ok, but as I only had small rows with a few plants it was easy to give them a good soaking once or twice a week. My first attempt at a pumpkin resulted in one healthy fruit slightly smaller than a football. As one might expect courgettes did very well and everyone I know who had a garden was asking everyone in sight "do you want some courgettes". The sweet corn another first also did well despite the lack of water.

So what to do to minimise the effect of dryer/hotter summers ? Well for onions you can plants autumn crops so they grow a bit in the autumn then overwinter and are harvested earlier. Potatos I could plant just early croppers but you have to protect them from any late frosts you might get. Another idea will be to plant the crops further apart to allow them a better chance of getting a decent amount of moisture.

Eagle eyed among you will have spotted my left foot in the bottom left of the shot...

Monday September 25, 2006

A bag of culture and flour

We visited a friend who lives near St Albans last weekend. On arriving we wizzed off to a nearby watermill that was going to be open for a few minutes more on the Saturday before closing. RedBourne Mill is a lovely old mill that mills local corn to produce flour and bakes its own bread in a nearby building. I bought a nice bag of malted grain flour for the breadmaker and we popped in to see the bread being baked. The baker on his own bakes around five hundred loaves which are at he moment sold in Farmers Markets. The smell as we walked in was wonderful. He was reasonably impressed that we baked our own bread albiet in a breadmaker and suggested we bake it in our oven after allowing the machine to make the dough. He of course had the proper thing and he showed us a tip to get really nice crusty bread. After he has put the bread in his oven he pressed a button that released steam into the oven. This makes the bread really crusty. For domestic users a mister spray does the job just give it a good misting and quickly close your oven door afterwards he said.

In the afternoon we went to see George Bernard Shaw's house in Ayot St Lawrence. It is called the New Rectory and was built in 1902. He lived there from 1906 until he died in 1950. In his will he left the property to the National Trust. He added a few modern touches like running water but his wife was not keen on the idea and used an old fashioend bath filled by hand by servants. He was a vegetarian and teetotaller. The rooms are rather spartan and it must have been a very cold house in the winter. He died in the dining room and in it on the mantlepiece is a very odd selection of photos of Stalin, Gandhi and Lenin and a few others I did not recognise. The workroom had his old typewriter and other items that he used to use in his writings. Upstairs the couple had separate bedrooms - his was intact but hers was stripped and turned into a museum she did not want the public to see how she lived and slept it seems. She died before GBS of a very painful illness related to a bone disease. He used to play the piano to her which was in the entrance hall. The garden is very nice and looks over open countryside. In it was a shed that could be turned to face the sun. It was used by GBS for writing and had a small bed in it too. It was linked to the house by a phone and electricity. One thing I did not know about him was his idea for an easier English Alphabet which has not really caught on.

In the evening we went to Milton Keynes to see a new production of the The Hollow by Agatha Christie. I wrote about this book before and this new version kept to the book quite well. A new agreement with the Agatha Christie Ltd means a new theatre company called the Agatha Christie Theatre company will hopefully be acting out several of her books in the future. The only change to the book was the lack of Hercule Poirot in the production. It featured one set, an odd room in a house with the walls and ceiling slanted to one side. As each scene progressed a large branch in the background moved farther to the ground - not sure why. Lots of TV actors were in the production and Kate O'Mara was excellent as the dotty Lucy Angkatell.

Friday September 22, 2006

An old fashioned broth

If perhaps you want a light dinner because you are feeling a bit guilty having pigged out earlier in the week then this is the answer for you. It is simple to make - can be made beforehand and I imagine you could alter the ingredients to suit what you have in your fridge/cupboard. We have being using my leeks that I had to dig up this spring and freeze in ths dish.

The quantities here are for two people. Two chicken breasts, two leeks sliced, two carrots peeled and sliced. One and a half pints of chicken stock ( you can use an Oxo cube. Herbs, like thyme, parsley etc and finally three handfulls of any pasta you like.

First of all add the leeks, carrots chicken and stock to a pan and bring to the boil. Add the herbs to the boiling liquid and salt and pepper to your liking and simmer for thirty minutes. Remove the chicken and once cool cut into small pieces. Add back to the pan. At this stage you can leave it until you want to eat it. The final stage is to bring it back to the boil, add the pasta and cook until it is how you like your pasta cooked. Let it cool down and serve with fresh bread. You can add a little parsley to garnish it if you like.

Thursday September 21, 2006

Ha Ha

I hope you find this funny, Tim did when I told him this story..

While standing out in the sun waiting for the wedding photos to be taken there were some children near me by a sunken barrier between the hotel garden and a field. One of the children pointed to the barrier and said "do you know what that is?" He proudly announced to them all - quite correctly "It is a Haha". A short period of silence followed and then the attention focused on the cows in the field. One child said "that cow is much bigger than the others and its udders are different"

The cow in question was in fact a bull and in front of the children and the wedding party it took an interest in one of his wives rear end - sniffing it. I thought "please do nothing else, we don't want any funny business going on now please". Luckily the bull decided that the green grass was more interesting and left his other exploits for another day. As Tim said the idea of the Bull's antics in the field accidently getting on the wedding photos was just to terrible to contemplate..

Wednesday September 20, 2006

A new (old) book from Ian Rankin

The Flood Ian Rankin's first book has been republished so we can get an insight into the writer in his early times as an author. It does not feature Rebus but you can start to see where Rankin's current style comes from in this book. There is no detective story it is just a about people who live in a small old coal mining town in Scotland. It is in three parts the first where we meet Mary Miller who after an accident ends up with silver coloured hair. Soon after the lad who pushed her into the pit where she had her hair colour changing experience meets his death in a coal pit accident. To make matters even worse she ends up pregnant and has a baby boy. Her brother - assumed to be the father of the child also leaves for Cananda. The second part catches up with mother and son as he takes his final year exams at school. He meets up with a gypsy girl who he falls in love with much to his mothers annoyance. Things comes to a head in the last part of the book titled the same as the book where Mary Miller is faced with reliving the events that led to her becoming pregnant with a dramatic end. It is a good book but I think Rankin's other pre Rebus book Watchman is a better read - although I had trouble putting this one down.

Tuesday September 19, 2006

An accident waiting to happen

So the threatened use of the hard shoulder as a real lane has finally been rolled out It will be found on the M42 between Junction 3A for the M40, and junction 7 for the M6 and is called Active Traffic Management. When it is operational a 50mph speed limit will appear above the hard shoulder and a maximum 50mph speed limit will also be applied to all lanes on the carriageway. The Highways agency claim safety is a priority and if a motorist develops a problem with their vehicle, they should pull into the emergency refuge areas which have been provided beside the hard shoulder approximately every 500 metres. If the driver cannot get into one of these safe places they say comprehensive CCTV coverage means that Traffic Officers in the control room will be able to spot any incident or break down in a carriageway and close the affected lane by displaying a red X above it.

For me it is an accident waiting to happen. I don't use that road and will make sure I avoid it in the future taking the M42 the other way to skirt around Birmingham

Monday September 18, 2006

Restoration winner

The 2006 final of the BBC's Restoration program was on last night. The winner surprisingly for me was Chedham's Yard. This year the emphasis has been on villages and buildings were picked that were at the heart of these small communities. There were others especially in poorer parts of the country that seemed more appealing from the community and ensuring normal village life continues but that does not take anything away from the folks who have worked hard to make Chedham's yard a winner. If things follow their usual pattern the other finalists might end up getting funding from other means but with an average of two million being needed for each this is going to be tough. The other interesting this about winning this program is that they just do not get given the cash after winning - they have to show that the restoration will result in something that is sustainable after the work is completed and in the future - so the Chedham's yard folks will be even busier before they get their cash.

A wedding, a visit to Rutland and a truncated walk in the Chilterns

We were kindly invited to our friends daughters wedding that was held in the Peak District last Friday. The wedding, meal and party afterwards were all in one place and we had a room there for the night. The place was an old country estate Hassop Hall near Bakewell. It was a great day with wall to wall sunshine all day. The only problem I had to deal with was having to make myself look presentable in a suit not somethng I have to wear normally and also do a John Travolta impression after the bidding of my wife to make an appearance on the dance floor. It was great to meet our friends daughters again and share their happy day with their friends and family. It was a late night or early morning as we got to bed just before 2am.

After waking up at 11.30am the following day we got up quickly and headed down the M1 to the smallest county in the UK Rutland. My father was evacuated here in the Second World War. The county is in fact only twenty miles across, has two towns and forty pretty villages that remind one of the Cotswolds with their yellow stone walls. The area has Europe's largest man made lake ( for supplying water ) which covers over three thousand acres and has twenty five miles of shoreline is in the county too. We stayed in a small village pub in Harringworth where there is large railway viaduct. It has eighty two arches each of forty feet span. On average each is fifty seven feet high. They used twenty million bricks, and twenty thousand cubic yards of concrete and ninteen thousand cubic feet of stone. It took just over two years to build starting March 1876 and completed in July 1878. The railway line is now closed to passengers but is used for transporting industrial items. After arriving at the pub we set of to visit a National Trust property called Lyvden New Bield and its garden.

As can be seen the place us a ruin but it was in fact never completed. It was built between 1595 and 1605 by Sir Thomas Tresham to represent his Catholic faith but work on it finished after he died in 1605. His son's involvement in the Gunpowder plot meant it was left as it now stands for four hundred years. Frieze work around the exterior tells the story of Christ's crucifixion. Religious sculptures in special numbers of three, five and seven surround the top of the building. We went inside and the rooms are described and are all in good condition but no floors, ceilings or roof. In the gardens are two snail spirals which were designed so ladies could walk up them and be admired by gentlemen. The orchard which was planted in 1597 but the trees were lifted and sold in 1609 for a new house in Hatfield. During World War Two the field when looked at from above still showed the holes left when the trees were removed. The trees have all been replaced using original old types that would have been planted there originally.

Afterwards we drove to the nearby pretty town of Oundle with its very attractive school . This is a lovely town with lots of original real shops. It has a pretty church with the date of its build on its spire.

On the Sunday we drove further down to Aldbury a place we have visited before. We had lunch at the excellent The Valient Trooper and started a walk that took us past the old pond and Stocks.

However very soon we got lost and only partly completed the walk. Still a very nice long weekend.

Friday September 15, 2006

Aberfan forty years on...

Excellent program on this disaster last night. It told the story interviewing people who survived the incident - many talking about it for the first time. The shocking engulfing of the local school by tons of waste from the local coal mine was well told. It then described the inquiry and how the village campaigned to have the other heaps of waste removed - although the government at the time had the village contribute 150,000 pounds to have this done. This amount was paid back by Tony Blair's government but as 150,000 no interest or any attempt to make the amount relate to its value today.

A week in Ceredigion ( Part Three )

On getting up on one of the later days on our holiday we found all the houses along the harbour front had sandbags left for them. Clearly winter was on its way. Own penultimate walk had us start from the nearby Welsh University town of Aberystwyth. We went along several roads round towards open countryside, passing a very modern nice looking schoool after passing by a railway track. Up above us on the left cound be seen the National library of Wales and behind it hidden from view - thankfully the University itself. We past the pretty church of St Padarn a contemporary of St David this church having been destroyed by the Vikings was rebuilt in the twelfth century and is one of the largest churches in Wales. After passing through more houses we finally got to open countryside. After passing around a hill we had a lovely view of the sea.

Above us we could see a tall monument to the Duke of Wellington which sits atop an old Iron age fort one of many monuments to him in the UK. Eventually after pasing thorough a tall hedgerow we got the the pretty harbour of the town and then went for a stroll along the pretty front.

Our final walk had us start from the town of Cardigan. The name of the town has nothing to do with the woollen industry which the name might suggest but to the Earl of Cardigan renowed for his gallantry at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean war. We had lunch in a local pub and headed out under leafy hedgerows and came out at a very Austere Blaenwaun Baptist chapel by a graveyard. We then followed more hedgerows eventually dropping down into a small village where the smell of fish and chips had us pop in for last orders and a nice chat with the local owner of the shop. We then munched our way through the chips while wandering around the ruined St Dogmaels Abbey which was the daughter house of the French Abbey Of Tiron founded in the 12th century.

We then left the Abbey and followed the road back into the town.

Our last night had us having a couple of drinks resting on the harbour wall watching the summer sun go down. Lovely holiday.

Thursday September 14, 2006

Don't use your garage

I have always been proud in the fact I put our car in the garage. The garage is stuffed full of things, bicycles hanging from the ceiling, onions, wood ,paint all sorts. In the winter while everyone burns fuel warming their cars up and scrape the ice off their cars I just reverse out and I am off. Last night while on a conference call which I took in the room above the garage I heard a rumble then a crash. I pretty much knew something had falled off and landed on the car. After the call I opened the garage up. A shelf with wood on it had fallen off and the wood was over the car and floor of the garage. This morning in the light of day I have a broken windscreen, scratches and three small dents. Time to reconsider where I store of all this stuff and wether I should follow everyone else's lead and leave the car on the drive...