Let's hear it for Powergen and Anglian Water!

This morning, a man in black wellies, white hard hat and bright yellow safety jacket knocked on my door to tell me they were going to cut the electricity off for two hours while they repaired a fault. And they did, and they did, and in the meantime, it set me to thinking....
Look round and consider how much of your life is dependent on electricity: lighting, heating, cooking, washing, computer and other electronic devices. Then, after you have done that, turn on the cold water tap (faucet) and flush the toilet. Clean water to drink and to wash in, and an efficient system to get rid of your waste or "dirty" water.
I have noticed that both my electricity and my water bills have gone up astonomically in the last eighteen months. And you know something? I don't begrudge them a penny of what they charge me to keep my life safe and comfortable.
Pity the two-thirds (is it?) of the world's population who don't have either utility. We are damned lucky. Let's face it: our civilisation would (will?) crumble the day we no longer have electricity or clean water.
Oh yes, and the corkscrew.

That nice Mr Blair

That nice Mr Blair has just landed two great jobs as an "adviser". First with JP Morgan Chase at about £500,000 a year; and second with Zurich, a Swiss firm, also at £500,000. The article in today's Times where I read this was just a tad snide, but I want you - and that nice Mr Blair - to know that I do not begrudge him one penny.
It's heartening that a local boy from the underprivileged NorthEast has made good. It's even more heartening for me that he and I are alumni of the same Oxford college. Sadly, he was after my time, so never knew me, except by reputation, based on my addition of an indelible stain to the front door of the President's Lodgings. Werl, it's fame of a kind.

Anyway, I want Mr B to know that if he needs me, he can call on me. Anytime. I am not THAT busy with barn owls. What is more, I will settle for a mere tenth of what he is earning with JP Morgan Chase and Zurich.
But if he doesn't, he'd better watch out. I can be a demon with the wax and the pins.

Mysteries

Something that happens regularly to birders is to be baffled by non-birders. Not as people, they are as messed up as everyone else, but because of the tales they tell you: "Oh, you're a birdie person, aren't you? Well, we had this AMAZING bird on the lawn: bright blue it was, enormous, and it was making a nest out of discarded pooh sticks..." And so on. It's no use telling them it was a Jay (which it certainly was), because they come back with "Oh no, it definitely wasn't a jay. We had one of those hanging on the peanut feeder the other day..." And so on (Jays don't hang on peanut feeders, by the way).
Yesterday, a farmer's wife (we were there on Barn Owl business) announced that a particular bird of prey had bred on their land for the last three years. The bird she nominated does not breed in our part of the country, but it has an extremely rare and similar-looking cousin that very occasionally does, though never recorded in that particular area. Baffling.
Maybe I really SHOULD take up a new hobby, Like, say, stamp-collecting. But I know what will happen: "Oh, yes, you're a philatelist, aren't you? Well, I found this amazing stamp on a postcard the other day. It was one of those, you know, "penny blacks"...............
Yeah, sure. Pass the headache powder.

Birds on my nuts? If only!

The weekend just gone was the weekend of the great RSPB Garden Birdwatch. More than a million people participate, watching their garden birds for an hour and recording maximum numbers. I thought: I should be a part of this great British endeavour. On Saturday morning, I looked out and there were slathers of birds everywhere: blue tits, great tits, goldfinches, greenfinches, robins, dunnocks, longtailed tits, great spotted woodpecker, green woodpecker, etc. Despite the fact that most of the feeders were empty!
So, methought, I will fill the feeders to the brim and do my count on Sunday morning. And yes - I hate how you guys are always ahead of me - on Sunday, zilch. One robin after fifteen minutes. Is it any wonder I plunge so easily into deep melancholy?
This morning, Monday, as I was preparing my usual breakfast of paracetamol on toast with a side of bicarb of soda, I looked out and the feeders were festooned again, positively INFESTED with birds.
What am I doing wrong? Whatever it is, it's the RSPB Garden Birdwatch that will suffer.

Don't worry, OFPRAT is on the case

This may be my last posting before I am dragged off to Room 101 by the Office for the Prevention of Anything Tendentious (OFPRAT). It may be my last, not because we are poking fun at the lunacies of Health and Safety (no water feature in the school wildlife garden because someone might drown. In TWO inches of water??). Nor is it because of my incautious use of words that suggests a person's colour (darkie), nationality (dago) or religion (towelhead) No. Something infinitely more sensitive: USE-BY DATES.
I am grateful to regular readers of this blog (I love you both!) for providing examples of the UBD insanity: an expiry date on a packet of Saxa salt, superannuated Marmite, defunct paprika. What happens? Do they undergo some chemical transmutation and become dangerous? Explosive? Do terrorists know about this? Is there a website devoted to telling you how to make bombs out of superannuated Marmite mixed with defunct paprika?
Sorry, I am rambling, but this whole business unnerves me. I have become paranoid to the extent that I fully expect anything I have put into my shopping cart from the supermarket shelf to be out of date by the time I get it to the checkout.
OK, I accept there is a difference between USE BY and BEST BEFORE. If they labelled people this way, I like to think I would have the latter stamped on my bum, but no doubt OFPRAT have already catalogued me as all used up and are working on a way to recycle me even as we speak. Don't laugh, I could be an ingredient in your next instant meal. For god's sake, eat it before the expiry date: I am not getting any fresher.

Remove your brain before cooking

if you are one of those who invades the vegetable patch to get the wherewithal to create a minestrone masterpiece, or plunge into the icy waters of the local rill to catch what you need and then scale, pare and fillet it before dropping it into your bouillabaisse, if, as I say, you are one of those, what follows is not for you.

Because I belong to the other lot, the ones who buy it in black plastic trays with a film lid that you pierce before popping the whatever into the microwave, or which you remove before putting into a preheated oven.
On a baking tray.
Or not.
The baking tray itself to be preheated.
Or not.
And you put the tout ensemble in the middle of the oven.
Or in the top.
And if your instant gourmanderie is frozen, you cook it straight from frozen.
Or you don't.
In the latter case you defrost it thoroughly for a minimum of twelve hours. I like that "thoroughly". Is there a way of defrosting that is merely approximate?

My beef is this: I can see no rhyme or reason in this preheated/not-preheated, middle/top,
defrost/not defrost dichotomy. And no-bloody-where, if you will pardon the tmesis, can I find an explanation for these variations on a theme. Not even in Wikipedia, heaven help us.

I will leave you to digest this before I come on to my next mystery tour: use-by dates.

Baby Parsnip

I have been pondering the meaning of "organic" as used by supermarkets. The first thing you notice is that the packaging of your Baby Parsnip, or whatever, is much prettier. The second thing you notice is that they are more expensive than their inorganic (?) cousins. But what I didn't realise until this evening is the material difference between the two. It is this: organic baby parsnips are dirtier and have lots of exciting black "eyes" that you need to gouge out with your gouging knife. So, with organic, in addition to superior packaging and elevated price, you get earth and exercise. Taste? I can't tell the difference.
My pondering has also extended to the naming of children. In Catholic countries, you have to give your children Catholic names. Similarly in Muslim countries, only Koranic names are halal. Given the paucity of available names in the Koran, it is not surprising that most Muslims have a name based on the triliteral root h-m-d - Mohammed, Ahmed, Abdulhamid, etc.
But in the good old godless (or at best lapsed Protestant) Anglo-Saxon countries, you can call a baby whatever takes your fancy: Dale, Clint, Chipolata, Yggdrasil or whatever. It's very fashionable in our dumbed-down soap-opera pop-celeb age to name your bairns after "stars". Pity today's Kylies, who will be tomorrow's laughing stock. I am just grateful that my parents stuck to a simple name like "Jack", although they might have called me Cary (after Grant) or Orson (after Welles) or Veronica (after Lake) if they'd been cinema buffs. And drunk.
And if you can make a link between organic vegetables and decent names for our children, please let me have it, because I am really stuck for a succinct way to finish this piece. The thought has just struck me, though: surely Parsnip is not a suitable name for a baby, organic or not.