Archive
on fake food
I have long been aware of vegetarian sausages, burgers and such, but doing the weekly shop I came across a vegetarian haggis.
Over my life I have been aware that some of my friends, colleagues and one relative are people who don’t eat meat. I have no problem with that because I believe in people having a choice, and, whilst I am an omnivore, there are things thatI will not eat because I choose not to. I do not have, to the best of my knowledge, any food allergies, but there are foods that make me feel ill after eating them and some I just can’t face.
I enjoy food, and come into the live to eat category more that the eat to live. I like to cook and try to cook healthy meals from scratch so the the Berkshire Belle and I have a decent diet. We have cut down on quantities over the years and eat somewhat frugally these days, Meat or fish form the protein element of our dinners most nights, although we do occasionally have a vegetarian meal, usually a curry.
Our basic premise for cooking is to buy decent ingredients and cook them simply: We enjoy good food done well, and neither of us can understand why you would want to disguise one thing as another. It is one thing to take a vegetable mix and shape it as a burger or sausage for convenience , for example to fit into an appropriate shaped bun, but why try to disguise it as meat?
Nearly 50 years ago I was fed what looked like, and sort of tasted like, minced beef in gravy served over a baked potato. After eating it I was told that it was not beef, but tofu. My hostess, Stella, seemed very pleased to have fooled me, but my only thought was that she had promised a tasty meal, and that was what she had delivered. But the thought had struck me then: If you don’t want to eat meat, why try to make something look and taste like it?
Which leads us back to haggis, something that requires various parts of an animal, along with other stuff, to make. If you don’t put the meaty bits in it ain’t haggis. What is the point of making something look like it is meat to serve to someone that does not eat meat? Even more bonkers, to me, is tory and make something that is not meat to taste like meat and feed it to someone who does not eat meat.
The world of 2025 is a truly strange place to me.
on falling, a random rant
Che said; “You had a fall at home, an ambulance crew attended”, I interrupted the doctor, sorry, but I collapsed at home, I didn’t fall. To me, there is a big difference between a collapse and a fall. Yes, you end up on the ground in both cases, but they are not the same.
Unless you are the National Health Service, and you are over 60, in which case you have a fall. I don’t know why they are so pedantic about this, and yes, I know that I am being pedantic too, but there seems too me to be a significant bit of age discrimination going on here.
In my case I had been feeling ill, and with a thumping headache I had gone upstairs to lie down. The Berkshire Belle, who had been a nurse in her younger days, had given me strict instructions to call for help if I wanted to use the toilet, but I had got up and gone there anyway. Leaving the smallest room, I passed out and collapsed onto the landing.
I was running a temperature of around 40c, the result of a streptococcal infection that had caused ulceration in the portal vein from my brain, which, in turn, had resulted in blood clot, although we knew none if that at the time. What we did know, or at least the BB did, for I was enjoying the carpet, thinking how comfortable if was and understanding why the cats liked to lie there. She also knew that she could not move me, and that I was too close to the top of the stairs for any attempts to get me to move myself. She dialled 999.
I was very ill and not too far from shuffling off. It took a day to find the type of infection and start to counter it, but a week to work out where it was coming from, by which time I was a lot closer to shuffling off. But, once they’d worked out the source and cleared it out, I was quickly back. I had to learn how to walk again, and there were some indignities to face, but I was home after a 4 week stay in hospital and it took another two months to recover enough to go back to work. I’d been that ill.
But I didn’t fall! I am stuck with that on my medical records now though, and it rankles. If anyone reading this knows why the medical profession decided that old people fall, please write in and explain it to me. I really would like to know.
So there, a random rant. I haven’t had one here for a while, so maybe it was about time. I’ll shut up now and let you get on with your day.
life log #15
My recent stay in hospital has had a profound effect on me, the Berkshire Belle and thus my life. It is something that I am only just beginning to recognise, and therefore I have not yet fully understood it and cannot, as yet, come to terms with.
I had not realised until a couple of weeks after I came out of hospital the full picture of how ill I had been. I had not inkling of the conversation that the Hastings Hottie had had with the cardiologist on the first Thursday of my stay in hospital, and how she had gone home that evening with a real expectation that the ‘phone call would come to say that I had gone.
As an ex-nurse she is in that difficult position of knowing too much and not enough at the same time, and recognised that, despite the platitudes, I was close to the end and that the medical team were running out of options. Fortunately, on the next day, Friday, they worked out where the problem was and scheduled me for theatre.
My memories of that first week are sketchy. I can remember lying on the floor and thinking how nice the carpet was, then I have a memory of a lady paramedic talking to me, but I was floating in and out of consciousness. I can recall being taken back into the ambulance and then being in a bed in a corridor, and then being taken for some test or other, of having lost my parking space in the corridor on return in A&E and having to be found another space there. I can remember ringing the BB and telling her that I was in Bay 16 and then of being taken up onto Amply Ward where a bed was available.
Most of what I remember of that first week is pleasant. The ward was just around the corner from where I had stayed for the bulk of my last stay eleven years ago and so I could see the helicopter come into land and, in the distance, some of the same countryside. There are some unpleasant memories; one nurse who had trouble finding a vein to take blood from being brutal with the tourniquet and leaving me with a bruise that has only just faded, and having to wear incontinence pants. I am not sure if I was sedated or not at that point, but it could explain why I was, as the Wonder of Wokingham puts it, not really with it a lot of the time.
This is me at 0700 on Saturday the 16th June, ten or so hours after coming back from surgery. I am not sure who took the photo, I don’t think that I did.
And this is me at 1045 the next day, Sunday 18th June. I am feeling pretty good and have made the effort to put a decent shirt on. At that point we hadn’t got my electric razor sorted and so I am unshaven. I am on the Critical Care ward with my own room and a nurse stationed outside where she can see me through the window by the door. There is a visible transformation.
In the Critical Care ward I may well have been sedated. Certainly I was confined to be from the time that I arrived there on Friday evening until around the middle of the following week when, having asked if I could have a shower instead of the daily blanket baths, I was assisted to the shower by a nurse who washed and dried me as I sat in a plastic chair.
I had no strength in my legs and, on the Thursday of that week two Physio ladies turned up to see me and to get me out of bed. I quickly came to loathe them as they got me doing things that I really did not enjoy. Walking with a Zimmer frame was just about bearable, but standing on one leg was not, and nor were any other of the exercise that they put me through. I christened them Bambi and Thumper after two characters in Diamonds are Forever who give James Bond a working over.
They came twice on the Thursday and then again on the Friday morning. Friday afternoon Bambi turned up with a male colleague and they took me out for a walk in the ward using a walking stick and, presumably liking what they saw, asked if I would try some stairs. Whilst walking on the level was an issue, the stairs were a breeze and I flew up two flights with no problem and came back down equally confident. My torturers were satisfied that I could walk and my days in critical care were numbered; the next day I was moved out.
Back on an ordinary ward I quickly weaned myself off the incontinence pants and began to walk up and down the ward’s corridors. I needed my walking stick, but the main aim was to be seen to be making an effort as I wanted to be sent home.
I was on a schedule of drugs, in tablet, injection and drip-feed forms, these being served up around the clock, and I was also still having my blood pressure and sugar levels checked at regular intervals. My room on the ward was one of the standard five bed type and I was, this time, in the bed next to the bathroom. One of the problems with being in this sort of situation is the risk of becoming institutionalised, and I tried to resist that, but things like mealtimes can assume a level of importance, that need for a routine is very pervasive, especially as I enjoyed the food.
My efforts to avoid sinking into the mire were in my walking, and that gave me an escape, even if only for a few moments. The Berkshire Belle persuaded my that she and I should go down to the Costa Coffee bar in the hospital’s reception area and we did that a couple of times during my last week and I also went down there after breakfast on my last two days.
I was released two weeks earlier than planned, primarily because I had shown that I could get about unaided, and had intended to go back to work a couple of weeks later, but my GP signed me off for longer on the basis that I needed the time to recover. He was right, although I was disappointed, but the reality is that I am struggling with my physical fitness. A combination of Sciatica and Plantar fasciitis makes walking difficult and I need to be able to walk around six miles in a four hour session when I go back to work.
So my first change is physical, in that I walk like an old man for the first time, age looks to have caught up with me. The other change is really mental in that I have been off work for two months now, the longest I have been off work in my adult life. I desperately need to get back into the saddle to sort my mind out, but am not fully confident that my body will take it, which is another mental issue.
Time will tell, and I hope that the next life log will tell of everything being fine.
life log #14
Well, as noted in my Monday Musing this week, I am still here having avoided another swing of the Reaper’s scythe. This one was an even closer call than that of 2012, albeit that I have been fixed without the need for a longer stay in hospital. Eleven years ago I was in for six and a half weeks, this time just under three.
Both illnesses could have been fatal. In the first the diagnosis was made within thirty six hours and I was told that I had about as long again had I not been admitted. This time it took almost a week as the medics tried to work through what was going on and isolate the problem.
One factor was that I had two things wrong, but, after going down hill rapidly on day five, they worked out where the nastier problem was and fixed it. On waking up from the general anaesthetic I was transformed and am now back home with a plethora of pills.
At almost 71 I have had a decent innings and I accept that the end is coming closer, but I do have the spark of life and am honour bound to the Berkshire Belle to let her go first. She is older than I am, but ladies do tend to last longer, so I have to be able to keep going for a good while yet.
Generally I am pretty fit and it seems that it is these sudden, acute, infections that cause me problems rather than chronic ones. I have no idea why I should have had two now when, apparently, the types of infection that I have had, one Staph, the other Strep, are relatively rare. One was unlucky, two is greedy.
But it shows how fragile life can be. You can be a fit and healthy as you like, but accidents happen and you are gone. As a younger man I felt, as most of do when we are young, that I was invincible. I was in my mid-forties by the time that I accepted that death was inevitable and came to terms with dying. I am an atheist and believe that death will be the end, no heaven or hell, no afterlife. I am content with that, as long as the love of my life wanders off first.
Just an afterthought here. Like me the Hastings Hottie was married once before. news has reached us that her first husband died around the time that I, too, almost kicked the bucket the other week. Life can be strange.
life log #13
Still here and breathing, so things are not too bad. We seem to be past the worst of the cold weather now and the garden is looking better. The snowdrops have come and gone, but have been augmented by another 75 purchased in the green and planted to extend the current swathes (well, small clumps).
The daffodils, and their assorted cousins, are up and, largely, out although this year, again, a lot have come up blind. It seems odd that these clumps of diffs that spring up each year in odd spots along the roadside do so well, but mine less so. One of life’s little mysteries.
On my virtual walk down Route 66 I am coming up towards 600 miles and am almost out of Missouri. Before I leave the state I will pass through the town of Joplin which has a Bonnie and Clyde connection that it seems proud of. Next up is a very short stretch through the bottom right corner of Kansas before I get into Oklahoma where I have a long East to West stretch across the state. By the time I get to the other side I will be nearly half way to the end of the route.
The Hastings Hottie and I are both avid readers and get through two or more books a week. I usually have at least two on the go at once; one an e-book to read on my ‘phone and the other probably a non-fiction book that I read in my armchair. I also have a growing collection of audiobooks and listen to one of those every day in the car on the way to and from work. Reading, for us both, has been a joy since childhood. I’m not sure if you can call it a hobby, but it is an interest that we share, even if our tastes in books differs quite a lot.
Books is actually one of the things that developed our relationship from colleagues to friends back in the Summer of 1989. We had many days out on business and found that we both loved books to the point that we loaned each other books. For a book lover there is no greater mark of trust than to lend someone your beloved books. Back then a hardback was still an expensive purchase, something that you treasured. We became good friends through books and it paved the way for us to become lovers.
Music is less important to us as a couple. Our tastes differ a lot, possibly because of our age difference, although I love most of the music of her youth as much as I do of my own era. In my darkest days music was my refuge, it was one of the things that saved me and, to a degree, I think that it became a private thing. We don’t have the radio on at home and do not possess a stereo system these days. If we have the car radio on it will be to listen to a talking book rather than music.
I like to put the headphones on, shut my eyes and get lost in my music. My classic iPod is still working and, although I have not been able to update the playlists for years, there is still enough set up on there to keep me amused, even on a long-haul flight. Some of it triggers memories, but mostly I just like to listen, to enjoy the interplay of instruments and voices. Music is still my haven.
The garden is getting attention again. I think that this year I will not plan very much at all and just do what I feel when I get the chance. We do need to make a few garden centre visits, but I have no real idea about what I will buy other than some tomatoes and stuff for the hanging baskets. I will just see what is there and, if I like it, and think that I have somewhere to put it, I’ll buy it.
Gardens are always a work in progress. You might get one to the point that you are satisfied, but stuff grows and needs maintaining, so you are never finished with a garden. I’ll keep on fiddling with it and, at least most of the time, enjoying it.
All for now. Stay safe wherever you are.
on Gulfhaven
For those who do not know Gulfhaven is the limited company that the Hastings Hottie and I set up back in 2002 when we both thought that we might be made redundant and wanted a basis for going freelance. More on that below, because the important thing here is that this is one of several notices to inform those who may have an interest that Gulfhaven Ltd will cease trading at close of business today, 20th March 2023.
Covid has not been a factor in the decision, it’s just that all good things come to an end and we do not need a limited company anymore, nor any of the things that one has to do to keep HMRC and Companies House content.
Age is the thing that has brought the decision on. I am 70 and the HH is, well that’s her business, but she has not been active in the business for some years and I don’t need it. This is the end of an interesting road, but I will be glad to have put it behind us.
If you ever used us, many thanks.
wondering if the kite got breakfast
Stopping off at the supermarket this morning, I got to see one of those little vignettes that make being alive special. It also was another proof in my theory that looking up often pays off in terms of what you can see.
Today it was the sight of a red kite circling low over the car park. I often see them when out driving, but there there is the priority of looking where I am going rather than bird spotting, and so it was a joy to watch this kite as it moved across to the industrial sites across the road.
It flew a few lazy figure of eight patterns and then, gaining some height, peeled off into an almost vertical dive. I assumed that, perhaps, it had spotted a rat or some sort of similar morsel, but, just before it disappeared behind the building, it aborted its dive and began to flap vigorously upwards.
The reason for this change of plan became apparent when two other avian shapes flew up after it. As the trio came back towards me the other pair were a gull, of some variety, and a crow. This pair pursued the kite away, the crow giving up after a couple of hundred metres, but the gull not only maintained the chase, but carried out a series of attacks. The kite always twisted away from these thrusts and, in the end, the gull came back.
I’m not sure what the kite had spotted, but it was going to have to ,look elsewhere for breakfast. Such is life in the urban jungle.
life log #12
Where did the good news go? OK, there is the odd bit here and there, but any media bod will tell you that bad news sells, and so the headlines are always leaning to the dark side and it becomes harder to find any benign news. It grinds you down.
I have long been a devotee of the ostrich approach. I don’t look very often. This saddens me because I was, once, a big fan of current affairs as we used to call them. These days most people probably think that it is about who is shagging who, perhaps another sign of the times.
Last year I did a virtual walk from Lands End to John O’Groats (aka LEJOG). It entails recording your daily walk or run and entering the details, with evidence, onto the web site that plots your position along the route. It was not an especially fulfilling experience and I felt no inclination to do another one, but over the Christmas break I succumbed and entered myself to do a virtual walk of Route 66.
So far I am about 125 miles out from the start on the shoreline in Chicago and still have over 2000 miles to go before reaching the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica, California. Along the way I will be 24 hours from Tulsa twice (once coming, once going, will know the way to Amarillo and, can be standing on a corner in Wilmslow, Arizona, and there are probably a few other songs in there somewhere as I am getting my kicks on Route 66. I am putting in about 37.5 miles a week and so it will take me over a year to finish. I have no idea why I am doing it; I do the exercise anyway, but there it is and I will include progress here along the way.
Out in the garden the plants are doing their best in all of this frost. With the weather being fairly mild through the early part of Winter a lot of the shrubs were coming along well, but I fear that I am going to lose some in the permanent-frost. A few snowdrops have poked their noses out and some of the daffodils are also coming up. I love these things as they give a portent of better weather to come. The evenings are also drawing out which is nice.
On the run into Christmas I changed by early morning eating and cut back by a third. The logic was that I was staring an hour earlier at work and did not have time to do my usual two part breakfast. I didn’t go hungry and so, after Christmas, I stuck with the reduced nosh. I’m back to eating it in two sessions, about two and a half hours apart, but I’m not especially missing the extra food.
Is it having any effect? I don’t know for sure as my scales are buried under a pile of stuff in the office, but I do think that there has been an impact on my waistline: The control pair of 42 waist trousers fit well. I don’t know how others on diets feel, but, over the years, I have fat days and thin days, at least in my mind, because the scales don’t reflect much difference from day to day. I need to get mine out again and do a weekly check if nothing else.
Over Christmas we didn’t go mad on food. Like many people we bought more than we needed and things went into the freezer for another day. We ate well, but the fish that we had bought for Christmas dinner was not as good as we had hoped. Win some, lose some. Nothing else disappointed though, and most of it was bought mail order.
Almost every main meal that we eat is cooked from scratch and we try to keep variety in what we eat. There are no set menus for certain days, but some things might be on the table once a week. For example most weeks we will cook a curry, a mixed grill (alright, a fry up) comes around every other week and we try to have fish of some sort at least twice a week. Our main meal is always in the evening and is often very simple, something like an omelette, smoked salmon and toast. We do have a pudding some nights, but probably only a couple of times a week.
Alcohol is also rationed and a bottle of wine gets shared over Friday and Saturday dinners, although we do cut loose over a Bank Holiday weekend we usually have a second bottle. Sometime we might have a gin and tonic on a Sunday, but very rarely and I do have the occasional bottle of beer.
We have still managed to avoid Covid, but over Christmas I caught the bug that is doing the rounds and am still having some minor breathing problems. Fortunately I didn’t pass it on the the Berkshire Belle.
I am looking forward to getting out into the garden. At the moment I venture out a couple of times a week just to tidy up a little, but soon there will be some snowdrops out and then the other bulbs will be pushing through, buds appearing on trees and shrubs and the promise of a new year all around. Bring it on.
Stay safe out there, wherever you are.
life log #11
We get along. So far, we have not done too badly with cutting back on utilities, but the cold snap that we are now entering will not be fun: The heating will get turned up a bit, I can’t have the Berkshire Belle getting cold. She is my not house flower, my orchid, and needs nurturing at times like this.
Otherwise, we are fine. The Hastings Hottie (she’s still hot stuff, if even she does feel the cold) spends part of her days trawling the internet for good food. She has a short list of suppliers now, for fish, meat, continental foods, curries and more. We also have a couple of good butchers locally and we have a fruit and veg box delivery. I do all the cooking these days and, with good ingredients, we eat well, and I think that that goes a long way to keeping us healthy.
I have stalled on most of my projects but have started writing a lot again. The writer’s block that had enveloped me suddenly fell away and the keyboard has been getting a pounding. It is a long time since I published anything other than a blog, but maybe 2023 will see something come from the series of ideas that I have been working on. Some of these go back ten years or so. I had been writing short stories for bank holiday blogs, usually putting myself into some weird situation, historical, sci-fi or whatever. One or two of these started to get too long for blogs and so I began to develop them into outlines for novels.
It is a very big step from a blog to a short story, let alone a novel and when the first one ground to a halt I tried another, then another and another. I have about seven partly written and might get one of them done one day. My non-fiction stuff still sells the odd copy and, if we are lucky, pays for an annual literary lunch. I’ll never get to Dan Brown levels of sales, but I did, for a short while, have a Number One Best Seller on Amazon, even if it was in a rather niche category. Going back to blogs, I note that on this page I have published over 500 posts. Seems a lot.
My other writing at this time of year is to produce a poem a day for the Berkshire Belle. I start on the 13th and do the twelve days up to the 24th. This year I threw in a short story of how we got together in the style of Jane Austen, and that went well enough for me to then do another one about the first time that I saw her in the style of a dime novel, and then had another go at the day we got together, but in a 007 meets Gunsmoke pastiche (it was full of in jokes that only the two of us would get). The other nine days had poetry, and, for me, there was some of my best work.
Christmas, for us, was the usual quiet affair. No-one came knocking nor will we did not go calling. We had some nice things to eat, more than enough to drink and, most importantly, have each other. That will always do for us.
life log #10
Between us, although mainly myself, the Berkshire Belle and I have been keeping the NHS busy lately. I have had my annual diabetes check (results not back yet), we have booked in for our Covid boosters and will try to get our ‘flu jabs at the same time. here’s also a new app to install that allows video appointments. On the non-NHS front, but still medical, I am off to the fang-puller to talk about an implant to replace the tooth that got knocked out in a fall about a year ago. I’m also due for hearing and eyesight tests that I need to make appointments for, and I’ve had this morning my letter about my annual diabetic eye test. Seventy years of use, and abuse, have taken their toll.
One result I do have from the diabetes test is my weight on the surgery scales which I assume must be accurate. When I weight myself at home I do it wearing just my underwear, but at the surgery I was on the scales fully dressed, including shoes, and with car keys, ‘phone and wallet in pockets. 121 kg is too much, but probably more like 117 kg and that is about 10 kg more than I would like to be seeing. I am writing this at the end of a two month period in which we have had a variety of birthdays and anniversaries to celebrate and that has involved some good eating. No excuses, but, with Christmas coming up, I need to get a grip.
Finacially we are reasonably comfortable at the moment and have no worries over the energy crisis other than what a series or power cuts might do to our web stocked freezer. However, we are trying to cut back on consumption and have both turned the heating down a degree and cut back on the hours that it runs for. We have taken various devices out of service; the Alexa dots for example, and are carrying on with our usual efforts like only putting as much water as we need in the kettle. Such things are ingrained in people of our generation perhaps.
I once of my former professional careers I used to manage a large property portfolio and dealt with energy bills in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Finding ways of reducing those costs was always a priority. Reducing consumption was only a vehicle for reducing cost, but such things become habit. Any home we might only be saving pennies rather than thousands, but every little helps and if we are working towards helping to stave off power cuts then that’s fine.
The Wonder of Wokingham and I both remember well the scheduled power cuts of the early 1970s. She was in RAF quarters back then with two young children and I was working as a stock controller. We saw the cuts differently because of those lifestyles, but neither of us want to have to go through all of that again. Today we all have so many more electric devices than back then. In the time of the last cuts not everyone had a TV, now it seems that most homes have one in every room. Then most rooms downstairs had two single power sockets and upstairs rust one. We have seven in the kitchen now and there is something plugged into all bar one of them. It is a different world and we have to face up to our excesses.
I have had another couple of weeks off work and we have tried to get out and about a bit more. That has left little time for the garden and garage, but I have been doing a bit in both. Autumn maintenance in the garden and getting the garage cleared out a bit so that I can get back to using it without risk of being buried under an avalanche. I have started getting some things off to auction so that should see a few extra pennies dropping into my piggy back over the coming months. Other stuff will go to charity and the rest to the council tip. We just have too much stuff.
Collecting is habit forming and I am especially guilty of it, to the point of an addiction at times. Fortunately some of what I have collected has accumulated in value (a lot has not), and it is the former that I am firing off to the auction rooms. None of it was bought as an investment, I bought it because I wanted it, but there comes a time when I realise that you have things that have been shut away in cupboards or the loft and start to think that it is pointless. There is little satisfaction, for me, in k=just owning something and so I have hardened my heart and started to move it on. If it generates some cash then that is doubly welcome.
With the Hastings Hottie and I having both seen milestone birthdays in the last few weeks we have decided to face up to another harsh reality and we are going to having lasting power of attorney documents drawn up in case either of us loses our faculties. We took out funeral plans earlier in the year and, whilst these things are depressing, it is worth sorting out. Having been through the problems of a parent with dementia I understand how hard it is and, should I fall foul of that, I would not want the Berkshire Belle to have to deal with the fallout without the relevant piece of paper to allow her to manage me.
Cheerfull topics are required now, so a few words on how the garden recovered from the heat and drought. We did loose some things and others were badly scorched, but most plants have recovered. As I get through the Autumn tidy up I will have a better idea of where we have issues. My move to more and more containers planted seems to have worked and we are looking around to see if we can find a few old chimney pots to add some variety. Containers can be moved and so I can shift them around as I like.
The garden isn’t getting too much attention at the moment, but another couple of weeks work on the garage should have that sorted out and I can get the garden ready for Winter. It has been an odd year again, but now that we have the fences sorted out I can have a more normal run through next year all being well. No doubt there will be odd weather again, it has become the norm, but I now have nearly 600 litres of water storage to help me over any drought conditions and I have improved the drainage in the garden to cope with the odd monsoon. The new fences give us some shelter from high winds and so we are in a better position too start a new year than ever before.
I support this charity
British Blogs
the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke 