New Version of SmartFTP Client.  Very nice.  Just smoother than before.

In other news, I have eaten a vast quantity today.  Breakfast, a Creme Egg, a sort of instant curry and rice thing, sushi, banana, crisps and an entire packet of Fruit Pastilles.  And I am very much looking forward to going home and making pitta bread pizzas.  These last are very easy.

Smear passata over pitta breads (uncooked - I have wheat free ones, which live in the freezer).  The jar lives quite happily in the fridge for a few weeks.  You need two pittas for a normal person, three for a hungry person, four for a rugby player.

Throw on dried herbs (thyme, rosemary, that sort of thing - tis a bit pot luck as to what comes out of the cupboard) and whatever anti-pasta takes your fancy.  I had some very good mushroom stuff from waitrose, but I also like peppers and artichokes.  The picture below has smoked salmon, 'cos it was there.

Slice up mozzarella and dump on top.  Or use the pre-grated stuff.  I like the stuff in little bags, with the salt water, because that transfers quite nicely into a little tub, still in salt water, and keeps better.  Pre-grated can be doctored with wheat flour to stop it sticking.  Half a normal lump of mozzarella does two pittas the way I slice it (thick).

Whang into a hot oven for 10-15 mins, allowing the mozzarella enough time to go stringy, but before the pitta bread goes solid.

Eat.  With salad if you're being really energetic and need something to do while you hop up and down impatiently next the oven.  Note.  It is a bad idea to hop up and down while chopping up salad.  Restrain yourself to some slight jigging about.

xxx

Fairy Cakes, top and side elevations

Dolly Mixtures (not yet on cakes: cakes need to cool)

Wheat free chocolate brownie. Mmmm

Muffins (blueberry)

Birthday cake.

My Mummy in her Wavy Scarf.  She wants another.

Somehow, I find this entirely unsurprising.  What's the naval equivalent of a camp follower? 

I've got three more chapters to deal with today: conversely, because yesterday felt like Sunday, today somehow feels like Saturday, despite the fact that I'm listening to Elaine Paige on the radio.  And then, allowing for a bit more tidying, the restructured third draft of The Book will be ready to email off to my editor.  Who will doubtless want several more changes - however, this draft is all about the structure rather than polish.  Next draft will be polish.  I hope.

Have just discovered that A. M. Maynard is Agnes Mary.  Hurrah!  For once in my life, I have used Facebook for something useful (I was updating my reading list).  That was something that was bamboozling me slightly.  Am now less baffled.

And I'm engaged in sewing the ends in on that pullover before knitting the neck.  So.  Pleased.  Less pleased to have three balls of yarn completely and utterly unstarted for this thing.  I'm reasonably sure I only ordered the amounts required for the smallest size...  Less pleased with all the ends.  Look (sleeve and back - I've done one sleeve and the front):

I swear, the next thing I knit will involve rather fewer changes of colour.  Or be in pure wool, so the ends won't need sewing in so badly as they'll felt in over time.  I do have a hankering for this, but at the same time I want to knit this.  And then, of course, I have yarn in hand for something in 4-ply, grey, and pretty....which was going to be this but then I realised I've the wrong weight yarn.  Then there's this for which I have, I think, enough Debbie Bliss Cash Cotton to knit.

Opinions?

What shall I knit next?

Autumn Rose
Frontier
Something grey and warm
Sylph Cardigan

(View Results)

Create a Xanga Poll

xxx

I'm onto health rules in the Guiding Handbook (1929 edition).  I've just learnt how to make a mousetrap.

"If you  have no mouse-traps, put a newspaper over a pail of water, break a hole slightly in the centre in the form of a star, and place a bit of herring or cheese on the centre tips of the star to entice the mouse.  Let the paper reach to the floor, not too upright, for the mouse to climb up."  So all you need to worry about then is a drowned mouse... "Try putting broken camphor into their holes: they dislike the smell."  Heather, did you try broken camphor and herring on Houdini?  Or does the entire shebang make you, like me, feel slightly ill?  Nevermind.  Let's open the windows top and bottom and let the sunshine in "Cases of consumption are rare in dry, sunny houses" you know.  So plant some sunflowers outside to help keep the soil dry! "Fresh air is your great friend; ... the night air in London and other large towns is purer than the day air, and both in town and country you should sleep with your window open if you want to be healthy.  At least one window on a staircase or landing should always be kept open."  Please excuse me while I go and rectify the landing window.  My bedroom window is permanently open anyhow (just at the top - other windows in the flat open and close randomly).  However, I think Mum shut the landing window last time she was here.

xxx

Oh, can you imagine?

"In practising First Aid it is a great thing to bespatter the patient with blood and mud to accustom the rescuer to the sight of it, otherwise it will often unnerve him in a real accident.  Sheep's blood can be got from the butcher's shop."

It gets better.

"Prepare a heavy smoke fire in a neighbouring room or building while you are lecturing the club room.  Secretly arrange with two or three Guides that if an alarm of fire is given they should run about frightened and try and start a panic.  Have the alarm given either by getting some one to rush in and tell you of the fire, or by having some explosive bombs fired.  Then let a patrol, or two patrols, tackle the fire under direction of their patrol leaders.  They should shut windows and doors.  Send Guides into different parts of the building to see if the fire is spreading, and to search for people in need of rescue.  These Guides should have wet handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses.  'Insensible' people (or sack dummies) should be hidden under tables etc.  Guider rescue them by shouldering or dragging them out and getting them down to the ground.  Use jumping sheets, chute, etc.  Other parties lay and connect the hose, or make lines for passing fire buckets.  Another party revive the rescued by restoring animation.  Another party form 'scrum' or 'fence' to help the police and fire brigade by keeping the crowd back."

So, we're setting fires inside (can you imagine the smoke damage?  I assume the Guides get to do the clean up after).  Not sure if it's assumed that we're informing the police/fire brigade beforehand: one would assume so, otherwise the consequences are potentially extremely nasty.  Then, once the fire's running, we'll send the Guides into the burning building to drag people out (so either they can suffocate or put their backs out).  Then we'll add lots of water into the mix (water damage anyone?), restore animation (pass them through a film projector perhaps?  How do you reanimate a sack dummy?) and scrum (link arms behind backs and bend forward) to keep the screaming crowds back (so your back's out again).  While covering ourselves in sheep's blood.  In fact, the only sensible part of the entire thing is to shut the windows and the doors (assuming one isn't shutting oneself into the room with the fire.  Having set off a few explosions which is bound to have the police round dragging you off as a potential terrorist.

Mind boggles.  What a thing it is to live nearly 80 years later...

xxx

Can I have a W00t?  I have, pretty much, finished the THIRD DRAFT and The Book is now 67,000 words long.  Ish.  This is about 13,000 words more than the first draft.  I think there's more that I want to put in.  There's more I can describe, more conversations to write about.  It took a while to stop behaving like a student with a word count that must not be broached and I'm still not entirely through that stage.

It's only taken me 5 years to get to this stage.  I swear, if I were The Anthropologist, I'd have written up my PhD by now.  If I can produce this in my spare time, then why on earth can't he produce a PhD when he has nothing else to do?  Mind you.  I suspect that I'm just producing drivel, and he's supposed to be producing something that isn't drivel.  Still, isn't this amount of drivel with a full time job something to celebrate?

xxx

However, it is actually Saturday.  So, I think I need a list...

• Supermarket (including paper) Tried Morrisons, which had very many copies of The Sun, and The Mirror and The Mail and every other redtop, but no Times, so I ended up at Sainsbury.
• Laundry (fourth load of three is on)
• Sort out Pack Holiday plan - need a timetable, and various other bits of random stuff.
• Email GinC from the other Unit to find out if she's in London or not and if it would make life easier if I went over and picked things up (I do not wish to do either of these tasks).  Go over, if required.
• Go through record collection and get rid of albums I'm never going to listen to e.g. Sefton and Bartholomew play Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.  need to take them to the secondhand shop.
• Write
• Finish that darn sleeve
• Photograph of the newly reknitted collar from the strange Jaeger Jumper (it's very snuggly to wear, so I am wearing it now that it's much easier to get over my head - a byproduct of not having a tight collar is that the sleeves are much longer now, which is glorious).

(the picture on the left, where I am practising my Posh Pout is the truest colour wise - can't cope with self-portraiture using flash in any way, shape, or form).

• Fold up the Intern's laundry and try not to laugh too much at the brown striped silk boxers complete with Homer Simpson motif that he seems to have acquired recently... Laughed my head off.  Incidentally, I'm only folding his laundry 'cos I want to use the drying rack.
• Acquire navy blazer bid on eBay.
• Darn the sleeve on my big grey sweater, which has disintegrated on being laundered, as usual: this is why I rarely launder it.

I've sent the Intern to look at the Museums - V&A, and The Natural History Museum and The Science Museum.  I think he'll enjoy those three far more than Kensington Palace, which is nice, but not that interesting unless you want to see royal dresses and it also costs to get into.  Dresses are lovely, but rather more girly than blokey, really.  Hampton Court is a much better use of a chap's afternoon, but, again, that's just my opinion.

I ended up doing an hour of work last night, as a couple of servers went a little nutso.  However, I still made it to the ceilidh in time for the second half, and was brought up to speed on everyone else's love lives, which is jolly nice.  I met Tawny Owl there and managed to ensure that she had someone to dance with for all the dances of the second half, as she'd been too shy to ask anyone (bless) and, because I was so late, they wouldn't let me pay which was so very, very sweet that I'm rather charmed.  It was an excellent ceilidh - I don't feel too hard done by but oh, I wish I'd been there for the first half.  Tickled Pink rock, and I'm so pleased I actually got there.  If I could find some music on t'internet, I'd be linking to it, but a brief search has not revealed anything particularly useful in that vein.  Ah well.  This is the second time running that I've been late to a Tickled Pink Ceilidh when Gordon's been calling - and I've still had a marvellously brilliant time.  I'm not sure I could manage a full ceilidh.  The fun might just kill me.

The Boy reports that the Channel is a tad choppy.

xxx

(Somewhat amazed that the Amazon link thingy actually has a link to the correct album.  This is vinyl, you see).

I missed the hailstorm.  However, the recycling box was left out, and open, so I could see the results.  I'm not joking.  Those hailstones were like marbles.  Very yuck.  I am glad I was on the tube - coming in from Hammersmith, I looked at the most appallingly oppressive deep grey cloud and wondered.  The Boy wondered if he was going to get stormed upon, before deploying, but I haven't heard that he got soaked, and apparently the students he's looking after are all numpties who arrived late...  Anyhow.  He thinks his hat is awesome. Well it is.  It's Alpaca, knit to my usual hat recipe - an ancient Patons pattern that I've had since I was about 17.

Yes, he's perfectly happy to pose for photos on the blog.  Unlike the Anthropologist, who got very uptight about it.  Bad shadowing owing to height differential: he's 6'1", I'm 5'4".  I really wish he didn't have to deploy for a fortnight, but he will have much fun, and is necessary if you're wavy.  We've had to agree to disagree on the subject of war: I'm not keen on the idea of anyone going out and fighting, but it's a bit of a necessary evil to be honest, unless I emigrate to Switzerland.  I do have a good deal of admiration for those who can, and do.  Particularly my friends who are volunteer reservists, rather than full time soldiers.  Still, if we find ourselves in the sort of situation which involves conscription, then I'll be off volunteering for medical type duties rather than combat.  I prefer to make people better and I think I'd be rubbish with any sort of artillery.

Meanwhile, I got badges for standing next to the flag in Westminster Abbey.  I'm rather proud of these, and will be sewing them onto my camp blanket before I run out of space on it.  However, I feel that I don't quite deserve them.  All I did was turn up...

xxx

I kinda cheated, and made an album.  USA part 1, as I'm going again in just over a month (am glutton for punishment).

However, the yarn bred (the pink stuff is what I won as a Knitter Without Borders, the green and brown shall be mittens for Sara, the violet is my stolen inspiration, the pink XXL is a present from Sara, the multicoloured skein near the top left will be a peacock shawl, the red Schaefer Anne is destined to be Chalet Girl Socks - a present from Sara, there is multi-coloured Lorna's Laces in the Christmassy colourway (one skein will make me a pair of socks), and the dinky little socks are presents from Jennifer.  Oh.  And I am considering branching into Quilting, hence the fabric)

You happy now, Jennifer?  I have photos!  And I'm working on the sleeve of le pull  Français, so that I can show that off soon.

 Meanwhile, for actual knitting content: my Jaywalker on the left, and Sara's sock on the right.  They are enjoying the view from the top of the Sears Tower.

I did have an entirely different entry.  However, it was foolish and Xanga (justifiably) ate it.

xxx

to say I love you?

The stage is obscured, a great frame, studded with lights like a dressing-room mirror dominates the black wall which is where the stage should be.  It's got a purple curtain in it.  This is New York theatre, so I am reliably informed that the play will start late.  It does.  The curtain goes up on two chaps sitting on a sofa.  The sofa is the only thing on the stage that is lit, the rest of the stage is in complete darkness.  Black as pitch. 

The play is fantastic: disjointed sentences describing a complex allegory whereby the men's love for each other is mirrored by the relationship between the USA and the UK.  They love each other.  They wound each other deeply. And, golly gee, do they make each other buzz.  The live-ness is astounding.  Ecstatic.  The sofa gradually moves up: so by the end of the play it is in mid-air.  Cups of coffee and cigarettes appear from precisely nowhere, and are dropped again into nowhere, a soft thud indicating that there is, indeed, a black cushion at the bottom of the stage to break their fall.  The dialogue is astounding.  Caryl Churchill uses words sparingly: if she doesn't need a word, she does not use it. This leaves us with an impression of being part of a relationship that runs deeply.  The sort of relationship where only abstract ideas are needed. The ideas spark off other ideas.  The men speak in a type of verbal shorthand.  It's quite astounding: I am in awe of the entire production.

Afterwards, sitting supping some ginger ale, arguing with my knitting, and just listening to the conversation round me, I think how lucky I am.  I know some seriously cool people, and I get to see some seriously cool stuff.

xxx

How apt.  My iPod has just spouted something about "no drama, we don't want no drama!"  It has been a tad dramatic in the last twelve hours or so.  At least, it felt that way: I suspect that, apart from the actual horrible plane landing in stormy weather, the rest of it was me having an entire personal storm in a teacup over things occurring on the other side of the Atlantic over which I had no control whatsoever.  This combined with natural Airport Panic.  However, good nights sleep all round, and we are all rather happier.  But really.  Let me tell you all one thing.

If I invite you to come and do something at Brownies or Guides, pease, DO NOT TURN UP EARLY.  And, if you do, then please have the courtesy to stay outside the hall until the appropriate time.  We have our reasons.  OKthanks.

Still.  I am ravenous, and I was too tired to eat properly last night, so I am even more ravenous than I should be.  My personal body clock has no idea what time it ought to be, food time seems to be about right.  I suspect the clocks have also gone forward.  However, I am not entirely sure.  Is it still Saturday today?  What city am I in?  Who am I supposed to be meeting?  Where's the tea?

Coffee. I need coffee, and the only negative about my lovely hotel with free wireless, the most excellently drenching shower in the world (I nearly enjoyed myself, which doesn't often happen with a shower) and a fluffy bathrobe is that there's no tea and coffee making facilities in the bedroom.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering: I did not buy the Black Eyed Peas for my iPod.  Jo did.  For her Guides.

xxx

Is all.  Need supper.  In NY.