Day 34
Be Prepared! The meanderings of an obsessive crone –more in the style of Lehrer than Baden Powell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D8bGAucjSI&list=RD0D8bGAucjSI&start_radio=1&t=10
One of the things that worries me about the oncoming winter, especially living in the sticks, is the likelihood of power cuts. Things have improved over the past few years, but I remember one year in the late 90s, when in the twenty weeks of winter, we had twenty-three power cuts of significant length (over an hour). Until I had my power cut kit sorted, it was a very desolate, boring and isolating experience.
If we have a bad winter - the omens are not looking too good – the power lines will be vulnerable and if the virus also takes a firm hold, maintenance crews may be depleted and power cuts are the inevitable result. So I’m sorting and updating my power cut kit.
Lighting and heat are fairly easy to sort, if you have lots of lanterns and torches and an open fire, woodburner, gas fire or gas hob and lots of woolly jumpers, socks and duvets. Keep a torch or lantern in each room – you really do not want to fall and injure yourself faffing around in the dark.
Phones are a problem – not too bad if you live in an area with a good signal, your mobile will probably work (if charged up). If not, you are dependent on a landline and most modern landline phones depend on electricity, so try to get hold of an old plug in phone. They’re available online for about a tenner. Then, at least, you know you can make contact with the outside world which is comforting.
Food and drink – do you have any food and drink in stock that doesn’t need cooking? Or do you have a camping stove that you can use?
Staving off boredom. This is important because boredom can intensify your sense of powerlessness (sorry, I didn’t intend that) and desperation. It all depends how long the power cut lasts. The longest I had to endure was twenty-three hours after we had had a heavy fall of snow. A battery radio is a godsend because it keeps you in touch with the outside world, but you need to have spare batteries. There are few things worse than your radio dying in the middle of a power cut. It makes you feel as though you have lost final contact with the mother ship and you are spinning off into infinity. There are lots of battery run music machines that will store your music. But, if your music is stored in the cloud or you stream it, will it work without Wi-Fi?
Books, of course, are a blessing but it’s at times like this that a kindle comes into its own, as it can store a library load of books and you don’t need a light, but again, it needs to be fully charged or it will let you down.
I have a stock of batteries (not so many that there’s a risk they they’ll start to deteriorate) but also a number of power packs that I keep charged up.
Bearing all this in mind, I bought a new radio which seems to be a magic machine. It is:
A DAB radio
An FM radio
An alarm clock
blue tooth
It has an AUX connection
It has a USB connection
It has an inbuilt charger that doesn’t only recharge its own batteries, it will charge anything else that you can connect it with.
I have spent the last couple of days copying my music files onto an enormous memory stick. Some of them go back over twenty years. I have been playing them on shuffle all day and it has been such a moving and strange experience, as songs that meant a great deal to me when I recorded them, surface for the first time in years, next to stuff I recorded this year – a weird feeling.
I am going to do the same with all the talking books I have on disk.
Reading this back, it looks like the ramblings of a fanatical crone with a Noah complex. I suppose that is what I have become, but it’s a condition I recommend, because it uses up loads of time and, while not as much fun as holiday planning, it makes you feel happily smug and ready for anything.
It goes without saying that while all this has been going on I have been taking time out to read.
One of the features of the pandemic that has upset me a lot is how it has affected my reading habits. In theory, this would have been an ideal time for serious reading – infinite time to tackle all those proper, mind improving, books that you always intended to read – The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Walter Scott, Lawrence Durrell et . . . cet . . . era, et . . . cet . . . era. . .
I can’t do it. My attention span has ebbed into minute eddies of interest. Anything too serious or challenging and either I start fretting or I fall asleep.
(Though, the falling asleep element miraculously disappears as soon as it gets dark. Why????)
Equally, if something is too trivial, I can’t cope. If a book shows signs of being too dystopian, it’s a no go. Sad books plunge me into the depths of hopelessness.
This is very limiting. So I have reverted to books I have read before, children’s books and that wonderful genre, young adults. True you get dystopian worlds and tragedy, but there is an essential difference between young adults and old adults – hope and a lack of gloom. There is a tendency in modern adult fiction to plunge readers into the depths of anguish and despair. It seems to be that a novel is only considered ‘serious’ if it is intensely gloomy. Late 20th/early 21st century literature will be known as the Age of Eeyore. It is ironical because it is much harder to write a good comic novel than a tragedy – but how many comic novelists win prizes?
The latest run of young adult books I have been reading and enjoying is Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St Mary books – not, as one might imagine, a series of stories about a girls’ boarding school or the adventures of an intrepid sisterhood of nuns, but the chronicles of a research establishment run by a bunch of accident-prone historians who investigate major historical events in contemporary time. (We are exhorted by the author not to call it time travel.) To date there are twelve full length novels and fifteen novellas.
The books are full of action and adventure. They are at times sad, but also funny and always upbeat. The historical element is good, not overpowering, but interesting enough on occasion to have sent me to Wikipedia to find out more. Taylor doesn’t sanitise the past - and some of it is quite horrific, seriously affecting the characters - but the overarching tone of the books is positive and buoyant. The science and logic of the time travel is credible and easy to accept as reality. The characters are, for the most part, endearing and they develop over the series.
Chronicles of St. Mary's
0.5. The Very First Damned Thing (2015)
1. Just One Damned Thing After Another (2013)
2. A Symphony of Echoes (2013)
2.5. When a Child is Born (2013)
3. A Second Chance (2014)
3.5. Roman Holiday (2014)
4. A Trail Through Time (2015)
4.5. Christmas Present (2014)
5. No Time Like The Past (2015)
6. What Could Possibly Go Wrong (2015)
6.5. Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings (2015)
7. Lies, Damned Lies, and History (2016)
7.5. The Great St Mary's Day Out (2016)
7.6. My Name is Markham (2016)
8. And the Rest is History (2017)
8.5. A Perfect Storm (2019)
8.6. Christmas Past (2019)
9. An Argumentation of Historians (2018)
9.5. Battersea Barricades (2019)
9.6. The Steam Pump Jump (2018)
9.7. And Now For Something Completely Different (2019)
10. Hope for the Best (2019)
10.5. When Did You Last See Your Father? (2019)
10.6. Why is Nothing Ever Simple? (2019)
11. Plan for the Worst (2020)
11.5. The Ordeal of the Haunted Room (2020)
12. Another Time, Another Place (2021)
Jodi Taylor has written other books apart from this series which are also good fun.
They are on kindle and many of them also on Audible. A good way to pass the time.
Comfort Food
Chicken thighs with red lentils
For the chicken For the red lentils
2 tbsp fenugreek seeds 1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cinnamon stick ½ onion, chopped
2 tbsp mustard seeds 1 tbsp mild curry powder
1 clove 225g/8oz dried red lentils, rinsed
1 tbsp coriander seeds 500ml/18fl oz chicken stock
2 tbsp cumin seeds ½ red chilli, finely chopped
4 skinless, boneless chicken
thighs 2 heaped tbsp chopped coriander
1 tbsp vegetable oil ½ lime, juice only
knob of butter salt
For the mint yoghurt
300ml/10fl oz plain yoghurt
½ bunch mint, finely chopped
1 lime, zest only
fresh coriander, to garnish
Method
Preheat the oven to 220C/200C Fan/Gas 7.
1. Mix together the fenugreek, crushed cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, clove, coriander seeds and cumin seeds in a bowl.
2. Rub the oil into the chicken thighs, cover with the spice mix and place on a baking tray. Cook in the oven for 15–20 minutes or until cooked through.
3. Meanwhile, to make the lentils, heat the vegetable oil in a saucepan and cook the onion over a gentle heat for 4–5 mins until softened.
4. Stir in the curry powder, then add the lentils, stir well and cover with the stock. Simmer for 10–15 mins, or until the lentils are tender.
5. Stir in the chilli, coriander and lime juice and season with salt.
6. To finish the chicken, melt the butter in a wide frying pan. When foaming, add the chicken thighs and colour on all sides. Remove from the pan and allow to rest.
7. Mix together the yoghurt, mint and lime zest.
8. To serve, spoon the lentils onto serving plates. Carve the chicken thighs into pieces and place next to the lentils. Spoon over the yoghurt and garnish with the coriander and lime wedges.
Some More Tom Lehrer
He suits my mood tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPmRJIoc2k
Today’s Picture
A Street in Stockport by LS Lowry, 1930
I’m writing this on the day the Prime Minister has sent Greater Manchester into Tier 3 lockdown, with insufficient funding for those who will not be able to work. I don’t want to bring politics into this blog, but it strikes me as inexpressibly sad, that Manchester, no stranger to hard times, is being driven into a period of hardship and uncertainty reminiscent of the 30s, but with a difference, as Lowry’s painting shows. In the 30s people were able to keep their spirits up by chatting to each other, by supporting each other, by helping each other out – activities that Tier 3 has denied them.
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