Monday meanderings – except it’s Tuesday

It seems like Monday – largely because yesterday was Easter Monday and therefore Part-ner-who-drinks-tea was home marking papers and not rushing off to teach her students. Mind you, she works Saturday and Sunday teaching so our week-ends are not normal at the best of times. This week-end was special with it being Easter, with Partner-who-drinks-tea’s birthday, and with Son-who-watches-films cooking us all some lovely meals.

I’ve reached the conclusion that he is now a better cook than me. He still needs to ask questions because I’ve got forty years more experience but in terms of the various skills he uses and the manner of his cooking he has an innate ability and it is really beginning to show. He made us both dinner and supper on Sunday and supper consisted of various Chinese and Indian starters and little parcels of chicken in breadcrumbs with herbs and spices of his own concoction. They were such simple little things and yet the flavouring was brilliant and the deep-fat frying would have been such an easy thing to get wrong. I’m sure if I had tried them the breadcrumb mixture would have fallen off and I doubt I could have made them as tasty. The girls’ skills have long since surpassed mine in many areas – Food-loving-daughter enjoys her partner's cooking but you only have to taste one of Daughter-who-takes-photos' cakes to know she outshone me in the kitchen years ago.

Fortunately I had redeemed my self-esteem on Friday by making one of the best soups I’ve made in years. The problem is I never measure the quantities of anything so reproducing it exactly is not feasible but I did add one ingredient that doesn’t normally go in - Asparagus. Even though it was only three or four sticks and was competing with many other vegetables and pulses it seemed to make a world of difference. I must try it again today but this time I’ll measure the ingredients.

The weather has not been fit enough to venture into the garden. It wasn’t only raining outside but it came in through the conservatory roof again. A sure sign that it’s unpleasant out there. So I spent some of the time sorting my photos of the garden flowers from the last few weeks of sunshine and I have started posting them on my Garden blog. There will be a lot more on there in the near future. I hadn’t posted on there since last July so there’s some catching up to do but I think I’ll just start at March 2012.

On Friday I posted a ‘hidden niche’ in my house and it excited some comment including the question as to what exactly it was. So here is the answer. If you look in the bottom right hand corner you’ll see it.

I’ve shown you my post-card board before but these are my current favourites. I now have so many lovely ones that I have to rotate them regularly.

That is not the only notice board in the study. To my left as I type there is a little one which serves no great purpose. I rarely use it for notes.

But it does have some things to liven my day like Lisa Simpson carrying books and this fridge magnet.

This ‘postcard’ is a fridge magnet I got from an Etsy shop.

And finally here are some lovely flowers that Partner-who-drinks-tea got from Daughter-who-takes-photos and Son-in-law-and-Friend-who-loves Otters.

That’s all for now, folks. Have a good week.

Digging up Trouble

As regular readers of this blog will know, I love the archaeology programme 'Time Team'. I record old episodes and they are a staple ‘play in the background’ type of programme while I work on the Computer. Since I don’t kweep up very well with the news of the day I was unaware that it was rocked in February by a major row.

Mick Aston and Tony Robinson

Mick Aston, he of the multi-coloured jumpers, who has been in team since it started 19 series ago, has resigned in a row over the programme being dumbed down. The 65 year old professor of archaeology said he’d been left seething at alterations which resulted in “a lot less archaeological content and a lot more pratting about. The time had come to leave. I never made any money out of it, but a lot of my soul went into it. I feel really, really angry about it.”

Mary-Ann Ochota

The archaeologists were told last year by producers that the Channel 4 show was seeking a female co-presenter who “does not have to be overly experienced or knowledgeable as we have plenty of expertise within the existing team”. So ex-model Mary-Ann Ochota, 30, (dubbed the show’s “totty”) was introduced as Tony Robin-son’s co-presenter. Now Cambridge-educated Mary-Ann has told her fans she will not be returning either. It sounds like the team is in a mess.

P.S. Dictionary definition of pratting' :
(verb) to behave stupidly, especially when you should be behaving in a responsible way; messing about; fumbling; mucking about; particularly used in the north of England in a derogatory way,

Dictionary definition of 'totty' :
(noun] a girl or woman, especially one regarded as sexually desirable.

An Easter Sunday Sermon

 When Partner-who-loves-tea and I met we were pleased to know that we agreed on the subject of religion. Our view, put simply, was that we were not church-going, we adhered to no particular branch of the Church, we did believe in some Higher Being of some sort, but that our main reason for calling ourselves ‘Christians’ was that we adhered to what we considered to be Christian principles. I know some people reading this will consider worship and church-attendance as inherent parts of those principles but many of those principles I am referring to are to be found in just about every other religion in the world.

Amongst those principles are to be a person of excellence and to do your best quality work at all times; to obey those Biblical commandments which are key to being a humane person such as not killing, stealing, or coveting your neighbour’s property; but most important of all to love your neighbour as yourself by being there when help is needed.

Inherent in loving your neighbour is the idea that nowhere does it say your white neighbour, or your female neighbour, or your Church of England neighbour, or your neighbour who is heterosexual, etc. In other words, your neighbour is your neighbour whatever their sex, colour or creed. Since the world is now drawn so close together by the World Wide Web it’s fair to say everyone is one’s neighbour. Most of the people reading this are likely to be many thousands of miles away.

Inherent in those Christian principles, as I see it, must therefore be the freedom to express oneself as having a different coloured skin or a different sex or a different religion. (I appreciate there are clashes here where, for example, a religion forbids a woman to work outside the home; in which case I choose to interpret matters as being that a person is a woman first and member of a religion second and as such she should have equal freedom with men but debating that is not the purpose of this little essay.) No one should have to try to hide their racial origin, their sexuality or the nature of their religion.

Which brings me to the reason I chose to write a ‘sermon’ today.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has called for Christians to wear a cross every day. In his Easter Sunday sermon, Cardinal Keith O'Brien will tell worshippers to "wear proudly a symbol of the cross of Christ" each day of their lives. His comments come as a case is going to the European Court of Human Rights to allow employees to wear crosses. In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said that Christians "need to be free to act in accordance with their own principles".

Former nurse Shirley Chaplin, from Exeter, and Nadia Eweida, from Twickenham, who worked with British Airways, are taking their call for all employees to be able to wear a cross at work to the European Court of Human Rights. Both women were told in 2010 by their respective employers that they should not wear crosses at work.

On a chain around my neck I have a cross that Mum wore. I have worn it on and off for a while now, as much as a link with Mum as for any other reason. It could just as easily have been an ankh. Much as a I wear a wedding ring to show my link to Partner-who-loves-tea.

But as a mark of my support for the right to wear a cross I shall be wearing it continuously now until the case of Shirley Chaplin and Nadia Eweida has been heard and, hopefully, won.

Happy Birthday, Love.

Age is just a number.  Mine is unlisted.  ~ Author Unknown

One thing that hasn't changed with Partner-who-loves-tea over the years is that she still wears glasses up in her hair!

Many Happy Returns - may you always stay young at heart.

We are always the same age inside.  ~ Gertrude Stein

A Saturday Stumble

HELP! Does any blogger know how to set the order of one’s blogs in one’s profile? My main blog is this one and I want it to be at the top. But as soon as I tick other blogs to have on my profile Rambles disappears somewhere in the middle. It’s not alphabetical order. It’s not the order in which they were created. So when someone follows up my profile by clicking on my name when I comment they see a list of blogs with Words, Project 355, etc. They have no idea which is my main one. I’ve mentioned that Rambles is my main one in the sidebar of my other blogs but who looks in sidebars first? Not I.

All I want is to be able to list my blogs in the order I choose but I have yet to find any way of doing it. The only way I can point people to Rambles is by un-ticking all the others and making it look as if I have only one blog. If you have found an answer to this problem please let me know.

Silke is having another giveaway this week, generous girl, so you might want to pop over to see her at Metamorphosis.  You have until 9 o'clock this evening,  Saturday, April 7 (Eastern Standard Time) to enter.

I occasionally pass on titbits of useless information but today’s may be useful to those living in the UK – it is a warning of sorts. According to the Royal Mint there are 44 million pound coins in circulation – forged ones that is! Some of them are so good that you can’t distinguish them with the naked eye and the weight and sound (when you tap it) is about right. The only one I have consciously come across sounded different when tapped on a metal post. These ‘perfect’ ones do not deceive most machines so the first you tend to know about it is when the parking meter or drinks machine rejects it. I find the figure of 44 million quite astounding and apparently it is worrying the Royal Mint so much they are thinking of changing the coin and calling in all the present ones.

I have my own blog for the postcrossing post cards that I receive but I don’t mention on it the people to whom I send cards.  One young man to whom I have recently sent one deserves a mention. He is Ferenc, an 11 year old boy from The Netherlands. Since April 2005 he has been diagnosed as having Neuroblastoma Child Cancer and is now in Germany for the Antibody therapy. His Mum, Marina, has a website for him – it has a Google translate button for those of us who don’t speak Dutch and the translation is good enough to get the sense of what it says.

Although he has only just joined postcrossing Ferenc’s ambition is to get a post card from every country in the world. If any of my blogging friends would like his address to send him a card I will pass it on to them. (Sadly I can only really make this offer to bloggers who’ve been following me for some time or who are well known to me. It wouldn’t be fair to pass on his address to a complete stranger.) You can contact me via thewillows1a at btinternet dot com.