January 2005

January 31st, 2005. The cookery caper

A lot of cooking has been going on over the weekend. Well, a lot for me, at any rate.

It all arose out of cake. As it's my birthday at the end of the week, I wanted to bake myself a cake. I didn't want it to all go horribly wrong, though. I wanted to try a new recipe, and wanted to make sure it worked. So, that means baking a Test Cake just to make sure.

"Well, if you're going to be cooking," said The Mother, "then you could make us dinner too."

Now, The Mother often suggests that I should cook the Sunday lunch. However, the usual time that she suggests it is at about 12 on a Sunday, when she gets back home from church. And, as she hardly has anything in the cupboards,* I always give her the same answer: "if you ask me a few days beforehand so I can get some stuff in, I'll do it. But if you ask me an hour beforehand, I won't." I'm not one of those great cooks who can rustle up a delicious dinner for three from four random ingredients lurking at the back of the fridge.

As I was going shopping for cake necessities anyway, though, I agreed to look for something for lunch. And, inspired by this I Love Everything thread and what I found in the supermarket, I managed to put a quick pasta dish together: penne with smoked salmon and capers. It was surprisingly good, although rather over-salty, because I forgot to rinse the salt off the capers before throwing them into the pan.

I would tell you all about how the cake went, but it hasn't actually been tried yet. The frosting hadn't set solid before I got to bed, and I didn't want to try any before it was properly ready. I didn't exactly want to have cake for breakfast, because it's just a little too decadent.** So, the cake is still sitting in the kitchen, untried. As it's made with lots of strong dark chocolate, there's no risk of the cat tasting it first.

The mixture tasted damn good, though. Licking the bowl out is still the best part of cake-making.

* especially at the moment, as we had to chuck out an entire couple of cupboards of stuff after little beetly things got in everything. I wonder if they were weevils.

** The official list of things that are decadent: wearing velvet smoking jackets (men) or black cocktail dresses in the daytime (women). Smoking using a cigarette holder. Eating cake for breakfast. Playing roulette.

12:44 Comments (2)

January 28th, 2005. Office conversation

The co-worker is very proud of his big, new, long dark winter coat. Fortunately, the weather is terrible, so he has a good reason to wear it all the time.

"It makes you look like a rabbi," said Big Alan, of the Department of Whinges. "A rabbi wearing a dress."

"A dress!?" he answered.

"Yup," said Big Alan. "A dress."

"I know the Smiths knew a vicar in a tutu..." I said.

"They did!" interjected the Office Crush, in a slightly excited voice.*

"... but I've never heard of a cross-dressing rabbi before."

* Now, of course, I'm trying to think of subtle ways to find out if the Office Crush is a Smiths fan.

12:43 Comments (1)

January 28th, 2005. More service information

Comments are being slightly odd at the moment. You can submit new ones. They get emailed to me, and they appear in the "Recent Comments" box on the editing menu. However, they don't seem to appear when editing individual posts, or on the site itself. Hmmm.

UPDATE: except, it clearly doesn't apply to *all* comments, because the one I just put on this post worked. Hmmmm. Brian, have you been fiddling around again?

I've re-posted the comment that went missing, and it seems to have appeared fine. A temporary glitch or something?

07:56 Comments (2)

January 26th, 2005. Little England

Time to do one of those not-very-regular posts where I point and laugh at people who write letters to local newspapers. Now, normally when I do this, I gently make fun of the great Tim Mickleburgh, who - even though he writes letters to the Grimsby Telegraph every other day - is quite well-meaning, harmless and lovable really.* Today, though, I'm going to point and laugh at someone rather nastier. Ms Jane Birkby of North Somercotes, who is so far to the right that she's off somewhere in the North Sea. She's one of the louder voices in a local far-right-nutter organisation called UK BETRAYED (they insist on the capitals, apparently), and is also a frequent star of the Grimsby Telegraph letters page.** Yesterday, she wrote in on the side of Prince Harry, saying that you can't blame him for being a bit stupid. I've picked out the best bits:

"Prince Harry and many of our youngsters today will not have been taught about the horros of the Nazi era, because the EU has had influence over curriculums in schools for 30-odd years. ... [Biased teaching] has always favoured the EU and left out any other content, including the teaching of our British Constitution, Medieval English history, or any history which shows Europe in a bad light. Heck! Even the Celebration [sic] of Trafalgar Day has not been allowed on BBC Television because of EU influence. ... [The Fabian Society] is cowardly for it attacks the Queen's family because it knows that to openly attack the Queen is against our Consitutional Law."

Well, indeed, it is against the law to attack the Queen. Under the Treason Felony Act, it's a very serious offence*** to even think that a British republic might be a good idea. On the other hand, that particular clause of the Treason Felony Act itself is, nowadays, rather shaky-looking, so you're very unlikely to get charged with anything for criticising her. In fact, let's try it.

The Queen smells! Of lorries! We should elect a powerless figurehead every five years instead!

...

See, the police haven't beaten a path to my door. And they're not very likely to.

As for the EU conspiring to make sure that British schoolchildren only get taught the positive bits of European history: well. It's rubbish. It's nonsense. I say this with confidence, as someone whose GCSE History course consisted primarily of a) the First World War b) inter-war Germany. Jane Birkby is talking bollocks. She's clearly not bothered by such obscure concepts as "evidence". She also seems to have forgotten that Prince Harry went to a rather expensive private school, which - being a private school - is free to teach its pupils whatever the hell it likes. She's clearly some kind of paranoid, anti-European monomaniac. I should write in to the paper myself to complain. I should. Someone should, at least. The Fear is: I've already done it once before.**** If I do it again, I'm going to turn into a Local Newspaper Letter-Writer myself. Before I know it, I'll be buying a new pen and thinking "Hmmm ... green! That would be a good idea."

* On my first day in my current job, as I was on my way to work, I bumped into Tim Mickleburgh coming out of a newsagents, and managed to snap a stalker-style photo of him on my phone. I like to think of it as a Good Omen.

** And she also writes letters to the Yorkshire Post, saying things like "Mr Blair is a disgrace and I am ashamed he heads this country."

*** I believe the mandated punishment is still Transportation. I'm not sure where you'd get Transported to, though.

**** When the local Bloody Nasty Party organiser had an equally-nonsense letter published.

21:30 Comments (3)

January 24th, 2005. Insinuation

There are lots of reasons to dislike Tony Blair.* Lots and lots and lots of reasons. He always looks either smug or virtuous.** He's devoutly religious. He is always positive that he's right. He tries to mislead people.*** He's a politician. These are all very good reasons not to like him.

There are lots of good political reasons, too. He is at one with George W. Bush. He tries to attract Daily Mail readers to his cause. I'm sure that, deep down inside, he's obsessed with Margaret Thatcher.**** He started a war, and hasn't finished reforming the House of Lords yet. With so many very, very good reasons for not liking him very much, though, you don't really need to invent your own.

Yesterday, I read Richard Ingrams' column in yesterday's Observer, which speculates as to how the Blair family might be affected by falling house-prices. Which is fair enough - they have a few million that we know about invested in property; or, at least, they would have if they weren't mortgaged. The article goes further, though. It tries to suggest and insinuate that there's something dodgy about their investing. It compares them to Peter Mandelson, famously brought down over a slightly dodgy mortgage. Of course, nothing is said, but the column tries to give the suggestion that there's something similarly suspicious in the depths of the Blairs' accounts. The general tone is: "How can they afford to buy so much? Where are they getting their money from?"

Now, I'm not saying that there definitely isn't anything going on. For all I know, their accountant might be more bent than a very bent thing.***** After all, plenty of politicians have done that sort of thing in the past. It seems pointless to speculate about it, though. If there's hard evidence, come out and say so. If there's soft evidence, go out and dig around, look for more. If it's just a nasty rumour, attack him for something that he deserves attacking for instead.

* although, let's face it, it's a good thing that he's still probably going to win the next election.

** Or both!

*** By saying things like "these rumours are just tittle-tattle!" Note the rather big gap between 'tittle-tattle' and 'not true'.

**** If he resigns of his own free will before November 2008, I'll be very suprised.

***** Memo to self: please find better metaphors

12:46 Comments (7)

January 20th, 2005. Support Information

Comments are currently disabled. I'm working on it, so hopefully they'll be back up soonish.

UPDATE: Well, they look to be working again. There's an extra are-you-really-human? security check to go through to add a comment, now.

07:54 Comments (4)

January 18th, 2005. Just one theory among many

Following a Channel 4 News* report that a school board in Dover, Pennsylvania has ruled that all pupils should be read a statement that evolution is only a theory, not fact, I'm going to start campaigning for the following to be read out in schools during physics lessons:

"Although your textbooks generally assume that one thing happens after another, we must state that this is only a theory, not fact. It has not been proved that one thing happens after another, and there are many other competing theories in the field, which provide equally convincing explanations of the available evidence."

In other news, literary theorists have suggested that quarks may obey different physical laws on June 16th, and the town of Power Cable, Nebraska,** has ruled that gravity is unconstitutional.

(more seriously, there's a threat that a couple of Grimsby area schools are to be turned into state-funded Faith Schools run by the Oasis Trust, an evangelical charity founded by Guardian Diary Vicar Steve Chalke. He's not as worrying as most evangelical Christians - many have effectively said that he's not one of them, and more extreme ones have accused him of heresy. He's not as scary as the Vardy Foundation, and doesn't personally believe in Creationism. I still don't like the idea of religious schools, though. More on this some other time.)

* The story itself doesn't appear to be on the C4N website. A quick Google News search brought up this page, which I was loath to link to because it's better-written than this post.

** If Power Cable, Nebraska actually exists then I'm going to be a bit embarrassed. I suspect that if it did, then Terry Pratchett fans would have found it by now.

20:58 Comments (3)

January 15th, 2005. Black dog

Not a good day yesterday. I think I might be coming down with whatever Winter Disease is currently spreading round the office.* There are other things, too; yesterday was one of those days where you just want to curl up in bed and cry for a couple of hours. File under "things I get hopelessly optimistic about, then crash right down when the slightest bit of reality intrudes".

Hence, why I'm up and about** at this sort of time on a Saturday morning. I'm going to try to go out, go for a nice long walk, and maybe take a few photographs.

* Two people - the Mad Secretary and the Office Crush - have already been off sick with it.

** though fuzzy-headed

08:40 Comments (3)

January 12th, 2005. Educational

My old school, Waltham Toll Bar,* is in the news today, for introducing metal detectors to detect, well, metal. They're advertising how useful their detectors will be to prevent pupils carrying knives or drugs,** but careful reading shows that their main purpose is to catch pupils breaking the rules by bringing mobile phones into school with them. No doubt, if someone does turn up carrying a bloody huge knife, the teachers will do what they always used to do back when I was there - barricade all the doors and phone the police.

The headmaster, when I was there, had three main concerns as a teacher. Firstly, make sure he looked like a professional businessman instead of a teacher.*** Secondly, jump on whatever political bandwagon was passing.**** Thirdly, grab any publicity going. No doubt he's loving being in the national press right now. I'm also suspicious that there might be a little local rivalry going on, in the publicity stakes.

About a year ago, you might remember, a local schoolboy was stabbed in a school corridor. That school's headmaster, coincidentally, was a former WTB teacher. Unsurprisingly, he was on the news a lot. His school was on the news at the time, whilst they had to cope with it. It all came back again when the killer was on trial, and again for the anniversary of the event. Their school has been trying to cope with what happened, without introducing draconian security. WTB, on the other hand, has been introducing fiercer and fiercer security measures ever since, each one getting a big front-page article in the Grimsby Telegraph.***** And now, they've made a breakthrough. In terms of column inches, WTB has won the School Security Fight.

UPDATE, 13th January: Checking my stats, I've noticed that in the past week I've had 88 requests from tollbarschool.com - about 20 hits, at a rough guess - and I'm sure they can't all be from the middle of last night. So, if there's anyone at Toll Bar who happens to read this, feel free to leave a comment on what *you* think about the publicity stunt policy.

* Although they now claim to be called Toll Bar Business and Management-Speak School, or something like that. Sorry, I mean Business and Enterprise College.

** Because drugs are metallic nowadays, apparently.

*** With a nice big suite of offices for himself, and Executive China that the rest of the staff weren't supposed to use.

**** When I was there: endless futile attempts to become grant-maintained. Now: being an Enterprise College rather than a boring old Comprehensive.

***** My next Big Project - get a front-page article about myself in the Grimsby Telegraph. Let's see how easy it is.

20:20 Comments (4)

January 11th, 2005. Bon voyage

Am I the only person who, on seeing all the pictures of flooded Carlisle on the news, thought: "ooh, I really must find my copy of The House That Sailed Away"?

I am? Oh.

12:27 Comments (3)

January 10th, 2005. Omnipotent

My mother's thoughts on The Tsunami and acts of God. Maybe this will give you a clue as to where my own religious views come from; particularly, what they are a reaction against.

"I was thinking about that tsunami the other week, and about people saying it's an Act of God and how can He do something like that, and whether He's upset with us or something. The way I see it, it proves that He must exist. Because, if you think about it, this has affected everyone. It didn't just hit one religion, it hit everybody, people of every different religion. It just goes to show - He must be trying to send us all some kind of message."

12:31 Comments (4)

January 8th, 2005. In Hell

Normally on Saturday nights I'm stuck for something to do. Tonight, though, it seems obvious: I feel obliged to stay indoors, put on the telly, and watch Jerry Springer: The Opera. I feel obliged, not because it's an Edinburgh Fringe and West End hit that's on TV for the first time, but because of the invented controversy that's surrounding it.

If you believe all you read in the papers, putting this show on the telly is leading to national uproar, with thousands of people complaining to the BBC, to Ofcom, and burning their TV licences in shame. If you believe all you read in the papers, it has one swearword every 1.1 seconds. Unsurprisingly, this isn't actually true. The controversy has been largely invented by one man, presumably in the hope of getting his own opinions in the news. His name is John Beyer, High Priest Of The Cult Of The Sainted Mary Whitehouse.* He - or his minions - have stoked up hatred by posting on Christian websites and newsgroups encouraging people to send in form-letters of complaint, and full of exaggeration and lies.** His friends in the media - such as Daily Mail writer Tara Conlan - have pushed the "story" heavily, not just grossly exaggerating the amount of swearing, but apparently inventing statements they have attributed to BBC management.*** Conlan has since claimed that BBC staff have been receiving death threats as a result of the furore she has largely stoked up.

(UPDATE, 11th Jan: for a full, with-the-benefit-of-the-doubt explanation of what is definitely true and what is supposition in the above paragraph, read this Bloggerheads article)

So, with all that going on, I feel like it's my duty to stay in and watch the thing, whether I enjoy it or not, just to get Mrs Whitehouse turning over in her grave. I'm also wonderiing how easy it really is to get people complaning about things they've never seen. If I go off to a right-wing message-board and encourage people to send in complaints about some anti-patriotic TV series, will they do it? Even if the series in question is a figment of my imagination? It's very tempting to try.

Another thing that irks me is the tone of the original "let's all complain to Ofcom!" posts, along the lines of "they wouldn't dare blaspheme against Mohammed, so why should we let them insult Christianity?"**** It's probably a good thing that I'm not***** a Top Scriptwriter - or even a Bottom Scriptwriter - because I'd be completely happy insulting any religion you care to name if I was going to be paid enough. I'm personally convinced that anybody who thinks they are hearing messages from God - Jesus, John the Baptist, Joanna Southcott, anybody - is hearing nothing more than the voices inside their own head. I'll willingly say that Islam has its good share of narrow-minded bigots, just as Christianity does. From where I'm sitting - as a vaguely-pagan fundamentalist-agnostic - we're all the same, and we're probably all equally wrong.

* or "Mediawatch UK" as they are usually known in public. Their website is terrible, by the way.

** such as, claiming that Ofcom can act on complaints received before programmes have been broadcast.

*** All of this stuff, incidentally, is explained in full detail at Bloggerheads, which is where I read most of it. Go and read it there too - there, now I feel less guilty about blatantly lifting the story.

**** I can't actually remember the exact words.

***** yet...

20:39 Comments (5)

January 6th, 2005. Unknown Error 2455

Work is slowly getting back to normal, after the week's hectic start. Back to the usual grind of problems. I spent most of the day wondering what "Unknown Error 2455" means. It must, surely, be a Known Error somewhere. I tried searching the internet, but mostly came up with the kind of 'support' websites that say "If you want to know the answer to this problem, give us your credit card number now!"*

Haven't been keeping up with the news lately, because I've been spending most of my spare time ploughing through The Baroque Cycle, the Neal Stephenson novel-sequence. At 900 pages per volume, it takes a while to read; and to do it justice it has to be read rather more slowly than I normally bother to. It's worth the effort, though.

* I did eventually work out the problem. If your computer says "Unknown Error 2455" when you try to connect to a network server, it's because the server should be running the Net Logon service, but isn't. So there. With modern versions of Windows, it shouldn't happen anyway.

22:07 Comments (2)

January 4th, 2005. Eternity

As predicted, work was hell. The phone ringing constantly, and - when I did go to help people - endless snide remarks such as, "oh, we thought you'd decided not to come". Personally, I'm always amazed by the number of things that I do manage to fix;* but nobody else seems to agree with me.

I'm feeling old. It's my birthday in a month's time. Moreover, I've just found out** that on June 22nd I'll be 10,000 days old. Ancient.

* I try not to let everyone else know that a lot of the time when I'm called out to fix things my response is just to poke whatever it is around a bit to see if it starts itself working again.

** Via the duration calculator - thanks to Bloomfield for the link.

21:34 Comments (4)

January 3rd, 2005. The return

Back to the office tomorrow.

I do like my job. No, really, I do. Frankly, compared to my previous job, it's much better - I'm paid more, I don't just sit at one desk all day, I have my own office, and occasionally I get to drive up and down the motorway to exotic places like South Yorkshire.

However, on the other hand, I'm not looking forward to going back to work. The past week has just been so ... well, so stress-free. I'm not looking forward to having my phone ring again with everybody's urgent problems.* I'm not even looking forward to turning my phone on and finding what messages the Christmas-cover staff have left. I'm definitely not looking forward to finding out what's broken. There's bound to be something vitally important that won't be working properly tomorrow morning - and, when we look at it, the only thing we'll think is "how the hell did this ever work in the first place?"

* all of which are more urgent than everybody else's urgent problems, of course.

20:53 Comments (3)

January 1st, 2005. Changing seasons

Happy new year, everybody.

Last night was the first time in years that I didn't see in the new year. Coming down with an awful cold, I slunk away to bed at half-eleven instead. Right now I have a headache, full sinuses, and keep sneezing very, very loudly. It's not a good way to start the new year off. On the other hand, I did get a lovely phone-call from the ex-boyfriend - I told him he should move to Lincolnshire, as there are lots of jobs for physicists* and a gliding club** in practically every field. I may have been exaggerating slightly.

Coincidentally, this is a round-number day for the blog as well as for the calendar. According to Movable Type, this is blog entry #600. I didn't mention it at the time, but Comment #1400 went past the other week, too. The rationalist in me wants to whine about how if we all had one finger less then there wouldn't be anything special about it, but the other half of me just wants to say "Wow! Look! Round numbers!"

* He's a recently-graduated physicist, you see.

** Whose main hobby is piloting gliders.

20:41 Comments (4)