Thursday November 30, 2006

So where does the Blue bottle go?

I had a puzzling problem when visiting the glass recycle site at a local supermarket yesterday. It caters for Green, Clear and Brown glass - each colour has its own container. I had bought with me an empty bottle of Marks and Spencers Kaituna Blue Sauvignon Blanc from the North Island of New Zealand which came in a Blue bottle. So which container to put it in? I decided the Green was the closest and hope it does not mess things up down the line....

Press a button and save your family's lives?

After the fire alarm in the living room beeped a couple of times for no good reason I decided to give it the Button Test . It passed. Despite this I decided to change the battery and brought two home the other night. When I came to swap the landing one it had no battery in it. I quickly inserted a battery feeling much ashamed. So I have decided I am going to test these devices once a week. So if you want to read more about fire Safety give this it could save your life.

Wednesday November 29, 2006

Citron tarte

While my wife was in London for the day I made the above tarte. She said that it was the lightest tastiest Lemon Tart she had ever had. It is from a recipe from Gordon Ramsey's "Sunday lunch and other recipes from the F-word" book. The base was a Sweet flan pastry mix and the filling a mixture of two eggs, four egg yolks 180g, caster sugar, 200ml double cream and juice of two lemons. I found a couple of problems with the recipe both which nearly ended in disaster - the first being the pastry which just kept falling to bits when I tried to get it into the cake tin. I ended up making a pastry base that looked like a patchwork quilt afterwards. The second panic was the cooking time. I think the filling was meant to be a lot stiffer than it turned out it was almost like water when I poured it into the tin. It took almost one and a half hours to set. But the final verdict as it all got eaten was that it tasted very nice - so it was worth the effort.

Tuesday November 28, 2006

Fareful to Fluff

Thanks for all the Pop pickin' Fluff not Arf !

A new/old Henning Mankell book

The man who smiled has just been published but in fact is an older book in terms of Inspectors Wallender's history compared to others that have been available for ages. The deaths of two lawyers one an accident, the second clearly murder are puzzling the police these two are father and son. Wallender is currently on extended sick leave as a result of depression having shot a criminal in a previous book. Before the second person is murdered the victim visits Wallender and pleads with him to investigate his fathers death. Guilt felt by Wallender for not having followed that up which results in the son's death is what sends him back to work again. It is soon clear to Wallender who is guilty of the crimes and also of two attempted murders that take place soon after. He has to work hard to get permision from his chief and the Swedish equivalent of the Crown Prosecution service to allow him to investigate this high flying businessman. The book is good up to this point but there is a slightly farcical ending where Wallender tries and succeeds in stopping this businessman leaving Sweden for good and out of reach of the Swedish law. A good holiday book to read though.

Monday November 27, 2006

A three Counties weekend

Last weekend we visited three counties. A walk in Essex, an overnight stop at a B+B in Suffolk and a visit to Cambridge on Sunday. As we set out rain fell so a walk later was a questionably sensible thing to do. We drove to pretty Wendens Ambo and had lunch at the Bell pub. I had a very nice Sausage baguette. Meanwhile the rain had abated a bit so we decided to do the three mile version of our walk starting by the gate to Audley End. We walked by the side of its tall brick wall and entered the grounds by way of a big metal gate. A short while afterwards we started getting into the town of Saffron Walden passing pretty Almshouses and then a church.

Saffron Walden was very prosperous in the Middle Ages as a centre of the Cloth Industry. It was also the main centre for the production of the Saffron crocus grown as a dye and a medicine. It has a wonderful church almost out of proportion to the size of the town built between 1450 and 1525. The spire was an addition in 1832.

We left the town after a good look around and re-entered the grounds of Audley End retracing our steps until we took a right fork across a meadow. In the distance the Palace of Audley End started to appear. We entered a farm with lots of yappy dogs in kennels and met a road. Here we turned left and followed the brick wall of Audley End on the other side could be seen an orchard. Eventually we came up to the main gates of the building where we got our best view of it - sadly closed for winter. On the right was a minature railway also closed.

The Audley End house is Jacobean built in the 17th century by a Lord Howard of Walden on the site of a medieval abbey. Charles the Second bought it in 1669 but returned to the Howard family in 1701. Amazingly parts of it were demolished in the 18th century and it was remodelled with some of the rooms designed by Robert Adam. The park was of course landscaped by Capability Brown - who else.

We then drove to Cavendish and had a wander round there. It has two pubs and a shop called Duck or Grouse.

Our B+B was at the end of the village the excellent Embleton house Bed and Breakfast . We were in the Butterfly room full of 1930's furniture. We were lent a torch to walk into the centre of the village where we had an excellent meal at the Bull pub before walking back. With so little light pollution we could see the stars which makes a welcome change from home.

On the Sunday after a very nice breakfast we visited a friend in Cambridge where we used to live many years ago. After a nice lunch we drove home. A very nice weekend.

Friday November 24, 2006

Something he ate disagreed with him...

Postcard from Parkgate

Many years ago my parents in law moved to a village called Parkgate on the banks of the River Dee. This is one of the villages and towns that are on what is called the Wirral peninsula near the historic town of Chester and not far from the city of Liverpool. Years before they moved there the Dee came up to the front as it is called and I imagine they used to get tides like any seaside town. Old black and white postcards show this. Now the Dee has silted up and the area is all marshlands. The Dee does flood the marsh at high tides perhaps twice a year. The BBC program Coast featured a visit to Parkgate where they showed the high tide coming in and the havoc it caused to wildlife living on the marsh. Very often you will see lots of bird watchers looking through binoculars at birds that have moved in on the marsh. On the other side of the marsh and the river is the country of Wales and you can see the Welsh mountains during the day and in the evening the lights of the houses and street lamps twinkle across from there making a pretty spectacle. On the front there are many pubs and restaurants that we visited when we went to see my inlaws. The Boathouse is at one end a half decent pub, then there is the Red Lion one that we never visited much. Further along is the Ship Hotel which was a favourite and finally the Old Quay. From a restaurant point of view the Marsh Cat which is an excellent place to eat but you must book in advance. There is a Chinese place and a couple of fish and chip shops.

A lot of places in the area try and build upon the fact the Lady Hamilton lived in Parkgate and as Nelson went up the Dee she would have a candle in the window to show him where she was. The fact is she left the place aged six months. Oddly enough the most famous thing most people know about Parkgate is its famous ice cream. As usual there is more than supplier who claims to make the famous ice cream and very often even on cold days you will see people wandering along the front eating the stuff.

All in all a nice place to visit.

Thursday November 23, 2006

Two stupid things I am glad I no longer do.

On the drive home I nearly bumped into a cyclist. Why? Because he had no lights on his cycle. It reminded me when in 1976 I took to the road in Cambridgeshire for the first time on a cycle. I had lights but they were not working. I was fined thirty pounds - a lot of money in those days - but I am glad now I was caught.

Stupid thing number two is I used to smoke. I gave up before I got to being twenty one. This cyclist was smoking. Perhaps he thought with the cigarette glow he could see and be seen by other road users. Stop smoking and the money you save go and buy yourself a set of lights and be safe is my advice to this person.

Henley - A rather nice jigsaw

This is an excellent jigsaw of somewhere local to me. It is of Henley the town famous for hosting the Boat race first before it moved to London and of course its Regatta . The jigsaw as shown features a look at the town from the other side of its lovely Cotswold coloured stone bridge. The famous Angel pub with its black and white walls looks great by the river and slightly in the distance the tower of the church where Dusty Springfield's funeral was held and where she is buried. The only critism of the puzzle would be the amount of blue sky in it - mitigated by the cloud that breaks up the monotonous effect. It is a pity the maker of the puzzle Ratzenberger don't sell other ones of local interest for us jigsaw puzzlers.

Wednesday November 22, 2006

Safely to the Grave - Margaret Yorke

In my efforts to find new authors to read I am trying some of my wife's books. This time it is Margaret Yorke. The book has a rather nasty person called Mick Harvey who likes to frighten people. As he gets older the acts he does become more extreme and after a tustle with another car where he inflicts a bit of road rage things get very nasty indeed. A complaint is made against him and he decides to get his own back on the occupants of the other car. The book is quite good in that it has lots of other details about all charecters in the book , their backgrounds and so on. I think it needs this because the raw hate this guy reveals in the book would be too much to bear on its own.

Mick has a wife and two kids and her life is made a misery thanks to him but he is fond of his kids especially Cliffie his son. The book is convincing - the sad bit about it is out there in the world are many folks who act like Mick which is very depressing. The only thing I would say is it would be really interesting to know more about how he turned into someone like this that is perhaps the difference between Margaret Yorke and Barbara Vine the latter would expose more of the physiological background to why this person became a bad lot. Not a bad read though.

Tuesday November 21, 2006

Artichokes harvest

In error I dug my artichokes up. I read afterwards I could have left them in the ground, having trimmed their six foot high stalks to ground level. So I have had to put them in compost to stop them drying out. I was given small tubers last Autumn that I set in the Spring and they did very well as you can see. I have kept some small ones off this years plants for next years crop. So what to do with this crop? I made some soup with Carrot, Onion, Celery and some Artichokes which tastes reasonable. I also roasted some at the weekend to have with our Sunday roast dinner - again not a bad taste. I think the taste is a bit like asparagus - we will see how quickly they are consumed before I firmly decide to grow a crop of them next year...

Footnote

Yesterday I found out why this vegetable is not popular. I developed terrible flatulence. By lunchtime it was so bad I decided to WFH as our study has a toilet within handy reach. It took the rest of the day for my stomach to settle down....

Monday November 20, 2006

A closer look at Fingest

After a very wet Friday where we had very heavy rain and it got dark by three PM so we had to be careful where we choose to walk. On Saturday it was a nice sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky as we set off off the Chilterns to do a walk I have written about before here and here .

We set off from the pretty village Turville and went up a path with its famous Windmill to the left of us. The path then divided a narrow strip of woods and then came out into an open field. This was then crossed and we came out into Fingest. It has an unusual twin gabled tower and the church dates back to the 1200's.

This time we went inside and took a look around. A brass plaque on the wall lists the vicars the church has had over the years. By the entrance are two other plaques that listed the generosity of two people the first who's property was sold and the rent was divided up to the poor of Fingest yearly and the second person who left a yearly sum to the widows and poor of the village. Opposite the church is the Chequers pub where we had lunch. We then left the village by a long fairly steep hill that follows the line of woods on the right. Here the leaves were falling off the trees like confetti.

You enter the woods and pass through them leaving them briefly and then re-entering them to now follow what becomes a sunken path down towards Skirmett. A quick pit stop at its well known pub The Frog and we were climbing again with a view of the Turville Windmill, Skirmett and Fingest around us. This climbing path never seems to end but it does and then its downhill again over several fields back to Turville. We never saw the deer that other walkers told us about it seems there was a stag and his wives wandering about. I imagine the number of walkers on this popular route had scared them off to quieter parts of the countryside.

On the Sunday there had been a sharp frost but it was going to be another clear day. This time we started our walk at Hurley the route taking us to Marlow also on the Thames and back again. We left Hurley passing beside its AD1135 Ye Olde Bell pub and then between gardens before passing a caravan park. A field nearby had two Llamas in it - I don't know why people keep them. We reached the river and crossed it by way of a recent bridge which meant the Thames Path is now complete I think. A ferry used to take people across the river but the service had been suspended many years ago. We went passed Temple Lock and then turned away from the river to follow a pleasant path parallel with the river. Eventually we reached Marlow and had a pleasant lunch in the hidden away pub The Two Brewers. After this we followed the riverside path all the way to Hurley. Before leaving Marlow I took this shot..

On the way back to Hurley on the opposite bank we saw Bisham Abbey - twelfth century, Temple Lock again and then after crossing a bridge to jump on Hurley lock island one more bridge had us back in the car park. A nice five mile walk.

Friday November 17, 2006

Hong Kong Holiday Day four -Lamma Island and Aberdeen

Our last day we decided to get away from the city again and took a fast ferry to nearby Lamma island. This was the birthplace of one Hong Kong actor I do know and that is Chow Yun Fatt. We arrived at the village of Yung Shue Wan and after walking through its narrow streets we came to a temple to protect the fishermen. This village is at the Northern end of the island. Opposite the village is a large power station. The path rebuilt recently was to take us over to another village at the other end of Lamma. The path wound up and down and it was hot with hardly any breeze. We went past a nice beach Hung Shing Ye and then higher up.

In the hills were a couple of highly ornate and large monuments or graves perhaps. Every mile or so a pavillion gave you a chance for a break from the heat of the day. The island is extremely lush but suffers from fires at this time of the year.

On our route we past places where vegetables were being grown and just before entering the second vilage Sok Kwu Wan were tunnels in the rock that the Japanese were to use in World War Two. These were named Kamikaze grottos. In the second village another temple was present, modern this time with an enormous Oar fish inside in a large aquarium pickled for posterity. We then took the ferry back to Central. Another bus journey had us in Aberdeen this time on the South Western side of Hong Kong. This place used to have lots of fishing boats hardly any remain now. A large resturant boat sits in the river and is a popular place with tourists. We returned to Central by way of the Aberdeen tunnel. In the evening before dinner we had cocktails in the Sky Lounge of the Sheraton hotel the bar being on the fourteenth floor of the hotel offering lovely views of the neon lights on the island. At eight pm every night there is a light show that lasts fifteen minutes. Prices in Hong Kong are not expensive food and drinks were average prices we thought. You do end up paying a Mandatory services charge of 10% however. One other thing we noticed was the Xmas lights were being fixed to buildings across the island. When I was last here in 2000 it was a very special year and buildings like Plaza had fantastic neon decorations showing a dragon.

The following morning at four thirty am a bus took us back to the airport. As we drove back a few neons were still illuminated and a few stragglers who had been out all night were returning home. A few food stalls were also serving food. The city that never sleeps was waking up for a new day. Good night Hong Kong.

Guide book used Rough guide to Hong Kong and Macau. There are many free maps and leaflets to be had at airports and tourist information sites.

Thursday November 16, 2006

Hong Kong Holiday Day three - The Peak

On our way up to Hong Kong's must do tourist attraction we took a further look at Central. We went past Norman Foster's inside out building for HSBC which has the lions that stood outside its predecessor by its entrance, one still showing shrapnel wounds from World War Two. We had also wanted to go to the market at Central but this was closed. You have to be careful at Chinese markets the food is really fresh and they also act as the places were animals and fish are killed before being cut up for sale... We then took this tram which is more like a railway up to the Peak.

Th Peak as it is known was the place where the rich folks lived to get away from the heat and malaria which was rampant in the hot seasons in Hong Kong. The ride is smooth but you are at forty five degrees to the buildings as you climb that look crooked. At the Peak you are not at the summit and another steep climb - which you have to do on foot takes you up Austin road to the real summit. Here was the site of the original Governer's building torn down by the Japanese in World War Two. There are gardens up there now. We then went down the road back to the visitors centre and then did the circuit of Harlech/Lugard Roads. At the end you get some amazing views of the skyline even more impressive in the evening.

Up here we noticed how green the island really is and the large pretty butterflies that flew around us. We got back to the centre and had lunch outside it which is known by the locals as the flying wok.

We returned down to central and took a bus to Causway Bay hoping to see the Tiger Balm gardens or Aw Boon Haw gardens named after the chap who made his fortune selling this balm. After a long walk uphill we asked a local how far to the gardens. She told us it was a great shame but they had been flattened and a sky scraper stood in their place now.

In the evening we had a great Chinese meal at Spring Deer 42 Mody street right near our hotel. Last part tomorrow.