A Saturday Stroll

Last Sunday Amanda came back to BBC's “Something for the Weekend” having been on maternity leave; re-joining Tim Lovelace and chef Simon Rimmer. I really enjoy that programme; it's ideal for watching while working in the kitchen on a Sunday morning. Tim is a Chelsea supporter and Simon a Liverpool supporter. Tim was saying he thought “being a Liverpool supporter is the hardest thing to be because you had to know so much history. Any other club’s supporters just go and watch the matches but Liverpool supporters also sit around in pubs and talk about the great teams and matches of the last fifty years. and they test each other – like ‘left-back 1974’...”
Simon instantly said “Alec Lindsay. Scored the best goal ever disallowed at Wembley in the Cup Final that year. He was ruled off-side...” In fact, I was down at Wembley for that match and, as the television also showed, the referee got it wrong because the pass came off a Newcastle player and so he couldn't have been offside. We won 3-0 any way.


And talking of Liverpool Football Club, they started their Champions League campaign in earnest on Wednesday, beating Debreceni from Hungary 1-0 at Anfield.

For over a hundred years we’ve managed football matches with one referee and two assistants (formerly called linesmen), But in recent years we’ve had a fourth official on the touchline (whose task simply seems to be to keep the managers in order and wave the silly piece of equipment designed to say who is being substituted.). EUFA have now brought in another two assistant referees. I really don’t know why they don’t go the whole hog and use cameras like they do in Rugby. as one TV commentator said after one weird situation - “How many officials does it take to cock up one decision...”


Two of Something for the Weekend’s recipes from Sunday have found their way into my recipe book. I was amused to see them use a pastry lattice cutter. We’ve had one in a kitchen drawer for years and only recently we threw it out because we couldn’t work out what on earth it was supposed to be used for. As you will have gathered I rarely make pastry.

I was supposed to have a hospital appointment at the cardio-vascular clinic on Thursday but the doctor was ill! Not a very good advert for the health service, I thought. It’s been postponed until Monday. If I get the bus that’s OK but if Jo takes me it’ll means setting out on Sunday so as to get a space in the car park... I jest, of course. Ever since they put the car park price up to £3.00 a visit there are usually some spaces!


One of the books I’ve got from the library at the moment is the massive “Birds in Cheshire and Wirral” by David Norman. I was interested to see that there were no records in Pensby for the Siskin – a yellow finch. In 1910 a famous British bird writer, T A Coward, wrote “The siskin is only known in Cheshire as a winter visitor”. Nowadays it is supposed still to be a winter visitor but we had both a male and female in the garden in April. I wonder if they are now breeding on the Wirral.


Meanwhile, a baby Greenfinch came and peeped in at the window the other day and then went onto the bird table to have a feed. We don't very often get Greenfinches so this was quite a surprise.


This week we lost a talented performer and entertainer from my youth - Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary. She passed away after a long, four-year battle with leukemia. Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the most successful folk-singing groups of the 1960s. Almost unique among the folk musicians who emerged from the Greenwich Village scene in the early 1960s, Travers actually came from the neighborhood. I loved 'If I had a hammer' (which became an anthem for racial equality) and 'The Lemon Tree'. May she rest in peace and may the enjoyment of 'Puff the Magic Dragon' continue to shine its magic on us all for many years to come.

I like the new BMW advert with a good moral for all of us – “What you make people feel is just as important as what you make”.