Free Salad Tomatoes!

WILL MY AMAZING FINDS never cease? Now it's free "salad tomatoes" from Morrisons supermarket. I found so many my fridge is groaning under the weight. I bought a cheap but not horrible margherita pizza reduced to £1 and pizzazzed it up with these and red pepper shards. It came out very nice indeed.

Clearblue pregnancy tests cost £11.99 from my methadone chemists; so I was thinking of starting a carboot stall selling all the various crap I've collected over the months. I have lantern-style candle holders. A Scrabble-like game in French. Lots and lots of granny-style faux cut glass ashtrays (actually I need all those). And a joblot of dreadful but nearly brand new chicklit novels about "my best friend's hilariously disastrous marriage" and other subjects I cannot stand.

Spherical says hello. She is about to get cleaned out tonight, which I was putting off doing as she made herself a mega-cosy nest she will be incredibly annoyed to see bulldozed... (poor Spherical) ~ only it reeks of old chicken bones etc etc...

PS QUIZTIME: WHAT is the connexion between these 2 pictures?...:

My Own Private Drugstore

I AM NOW PROUD OWNER of an (intact) pregnancy tester, several bottles of baby oil (including baby oil gel), a swathe of eye makeup types and colours and all manner of girlie bottles of sparkly body cremes, exotic soap (with Polish labelling). Plus gent's shaving "balm".

I rescued all this from a bursten outsized carrier bag of bathroom stuff obviously belonging to a former tenant at another house and thrown out by the landlord.

I took it because you never know when you might need Baby Oil Gel, sparkly body creme and a pregnancy test!

And I'm posting this here because **** all else has happened in my life lately. So there we go ...

Cooking Chicken...

... MY KITCHEN QUEST IS FAR FROM DONE!

Only last week I was in utter bemusement in a butcher's while purchasing raw chicken legs about what setting to oven cook them on. Iceland's own Chinese Chicken Drumsticks and Barbecue Thighs had cooking time and temp on the packet (and it was absolutely bang-on correct) but I'd clean forgotten it. The time was half an hour. But the heat setting? God only knew...

So I said to the man, "Do you think it is half an hour at 200C?" and he said, "Oo-aargh! No, boy! That would incinerate 'em good an' proper! Try half that."

I wandered sceptically off and decided to try half an hour at 175 and they came out barely done. So in desperation I stalked outside and rifled my own bins (to some vulgarizing looks by the neighbours, which perversely seemed to make it all worthwhile) and found out my original instincts had been correct ~ the cooking temp for chicken pieces is indeed 200C in an open casserole dish in the middle of a preheated oven for half an hour; and for good measure turn off heat after this time and leave chicken bits to cook-as-they-cool. This gets them really nicely done. Alternatively, you could do them for 35 mins full blast, then remove them.

Cooking my own chicken bits has saved me a fortune at the local chippy, which charges £2.25 for a chicken quarter (actually that's not bad value come to think of it). But Iceland do 600g of pre-marinaded bits ~ that's six drumsticks or thighs per packet ~ for £2.50. And Tescos were doing an entire uncooked fairly large chicken for £2 (until I moved too far from Tescos to be practicable) and £3.50 for a medium-small cooked one.

At my house-before-last I cooked an entire chicken from scratch in the landlord's miniature tinpot oven (it was like a mobile toast-grilling device ~ not much more; my naive friends assumed it was an olden microwave for it wasn't much bigger...) anyway this device cooked a whole halal chicken absolutely perfectly. I used the meat in stir-fries and Chinese takeaway MSG-flavour curries.

I found if you're going to use it in stir-fries and the like, it is far more practical to pre-roast a chicken whole and re-flashfry as desired than to dodder about with raw meat and giblets. There's no worries about food poisoning and no need to neurotically keep checking the meat and cutting sections in half ensure it's not pinky-translucent in the middle...

Here endeth today's post. If anybody knows any better chicken tips, you know where to answer... many thanks and goodbye for now ;->...

PS: pictures are surely self-explanatory; except maybe the bottom one ~ doncha just luurve a plate of British-tandoori over-coloured chicken tikka?... Yumm!

Furry Friday/Saturday: Roborovski Hamsters

IN MEMORIAM AND LAMENT...

Roborovski hamsters are the smallest of all hamster species. These special pygmy hamsters come from the Mongolian steppes, where climate is harsh all year round...

They are also extremely fast, hate being picked up (and wriggle violently) and can ping across a room quicker than a wild housemouse. An escaped robo is far harder to recapture than any other type of pet hamster. Trust me I have had Syrian, Russian and Chinese hamsters and these are nowhere near as swinish when on the run as the megatrotting robbie.

For scale: here's a robo in a toilet tube:



Compared to an ordinary golden hamster:



Robbies have a plump, tubby body with harvesty-coloured fur, beady eyes with white-highlighted eyebrows, hardly any tail and fat pink noses:



Their coat is woolier and softer than an ordinary hamster's:



Because of their flighty nature, robbies do not make good pets for children. Being the most social of all hamster species, however, they are really good to watch and love to do things together:



Adult female roborovskis come into heat every four days. The newborn babies resemble baked beans with paws. This is what they look like as soon as they get fur:



I think these crisps (or "chips" as you Americans might call them) were a bit too salty:

On the Dotted Line...

FINALLY and at long long last I have signed the paperwork for where I live!

This after more than six months of floating in a noman'sland of computorial nonexistence (despite signing weekly registers TO both "nonexistent" addresses; despite receiving council tax bills at both)...

Yes finally! And at long, long last...

(Of course I was late for today's appointment and a bolshy woman said I would probably have to wait for ages. So I sunnily replied "that's fine" and spent nearly an hour at my old internet cafe, the one that was always interminably slow, where I used to live and hated living ~ the place where I hardly ever posted because I couldn't find a netcaff to accommodate my basic needs...)

Then I saw da man and he was fine about it all. I had all the appropriate papers (a first ~ for they were actually on me) ~ I signed up. When he asked whether I had any questions I flickered and glibly bowed out of the issue of my alleged half-year of nonexistence and the arrears I would supposedly owe for that.

I'm thinking of taking the council to a formal complaints tribunal for their negligence in that matter. Knowing full well my "mental" and "druggie" situation (I actually said I was on heroin on the original application forms) it is to THEIR negligence not to have furnished me with the appropriate payment slips and plastic swipecard immediately ~ let alone six months down the line...

I will be getting a Housing Services Payment Card "in the next three days" ~ but that's for this place. At least I shan't be running up arrears here ~ I'm resolutely determined not to.

This charge is minimally just under £10; but I would owe more because I so-uniquely WORKED ~ for over TWO YEARS before plunging into the morass of "welfare" I get National Insurance Contribution-based benefit which is slightly higher. Except what the government give with one hand the Council's Housing Department swipe back with another. Meaning I'd actually be far better off (and in a less complexicated situation) if only I'd not bothered working to start with.

And that's my biggest gripe against the British Government. Hard work is rarely rewarded. If you're stupid enough to save thousands and then need nursing care in old age you're expected to burn up these savings ~ and yet profligate folks who drank and gambled every penny in their lives will get such care absolutely free! Which is one more reason I fell out of love with this cursed country and want out as fast as possible.

I shouldn't gripe because anyway I exist now. I really do! I'm on the computer. I've signed the forms. I exist! I exist!! I exist!!!

THERE WAS A KING IN ORKNEY:

Here's another favourite Goethe poem (from Faust I again). Der König in Thule The King of Thule ~ Thule was a mythical isle to the "far north"; it is possibly Orkney (north of the Scottish mainland) or Shetland (the furthest north isles of Britain) or even Greenland...


Es war ein König in Thule
Gar treu bis an sein Grab,
Dem sterbend seine Buhle
Einen goldnen Becher gab.

There was a king in Thule;
faithful to the grave,
who, dying, to his mistress*
a golden goblet gave...

You can read the rest of this in translation here.

Or in the original here.

Or with music, here.

*I haven't a clue what a "Buhle" is anymore. I thought it meant a kinsman; but the internet says it's a mistress... does anyone know any different (and hopefully better ...?)

This is quite funky. Not the sing-song tune I know, but very good. With silent footage of Faust:



Here's the original poem in German, narrated with illustrations:

I Love The Apprentice

SIR Alan Sugar is way scarier than his American counterpart, Donald Trump.

Have a look at this. These are "interviews from hell" and people were saying, "you'd never get a real job interview this confrontational". ~ But I heard the selection process for top-flight jobs in finance is exactly like this:



PS ~ Yasmina to win!!

A Clean Sheet

I AM (TRYING TO) turn over a new leaf.

In doing so I am reminded of a haiku I once read in a creative writing manual:

This blank page
glares at me:
white with rage.

Know what I mean..?

My Peace Is Gone!

THIS is what drugs have done to me ~ as told in another favourite poem by Goethe. MY PEACE IS GONE:

Mein Ruh' ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer;
Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmermehr.
Wo ist ihn nich hab'
Ist mir das Grab,
Die ganze Welt
Ist mir vergällt.

Mien armer Kopf
Ist mir verrückt,
Mein armer Sinn
Ist mir zerstückt.

Meine Ruh' ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer;
Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmermehr...

This "lied" comes from Goethe's Faust "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (Gretchen at the spinning wheel). (Gretchen is Faust's fancy-piece...) In the play it is usually sung rather than recited and has been put to music eloquently by Schubert among others.

Here's a pretty accurate translation I dug up online:

My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy.
I'll never find peace,
ever again.
When he's not with me
It's like a tomb,
the world around
a bitter place.

My poor head
is turned upside down.
My poor senses
are torn apart.

My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy.
I'll never find peace,
ever again.

For him only, I look
out the window.
For him only, I go
out of the house.

His lofty bearing,
his noble air,
the smile on his lips,
the strength of his gaze,

his talk's
magic flow,
the touch of his hand,
and, ah, his kiss!

My peace is gone.
My heart is heavy.
I'll never find peace,
ever again.

My heart pines
for him.
Ah, if I could touch him
and hold him

and kiss him
all I wanted,
in his kisses
I would be lost.

My peace is gone.

You see they don't name the drug after a "heroine" for nothing ... the parallel between heroin addiction and a kind of love affair is highly pertinent ...

Mad Dogs and Englishmen..*

IT'S A BAKING HOT DAY already, though it's barely mid-morning. Blue sky, heat-haze, sleeping dogs; sun flashing off every dreamily passing car. The local chippie's not open yet, else I'd be having breakfast from there (the chips really are wonderful). So I've been bumbling about the local shops like a bumble-bee, gathering ingredients for stuffed tortelloni with grated cheese and broccoli sprigs. Foreigners tend not to eat broccoli, so only one of the local shops, who seem to have a stock policy of "look at what the next one along sells and get that in too" even sell broccoli, the most superior of all greens (if you ask me). And yet every one of them has a Polish brand of coleslaw labelled Salata! and rank with flakes of what appear from the illustration to be salty, raw roll-mop herrings..!

I have so many things to do today (and not knowing quite what to do or how...)... I don't know where to start...

... And what else can I say..?

I hate Mondays. It's too hot! And I hate Monday mornings most of all!!

*go out in the midday sun...

PS: THIS picture reminds me of Baby Itchy Roborovski ~ jumping for joy! ~ when she used to escape ...

Lovely Cardboard Chips

I REALIZE I'm not using the most attractive vocabulary, but I've found a fish-&-chip shop near me that does the best, slightly greasy crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside (but slightly soggy and rubbery ~ which I really like) with a kind of cheapy cardboard flavour I also adore... British-style chips. So good are these I've been purchasing a portion a day. In Britain, fish and chip shop chips portions are about four times bigger than a McDonald's standard measure of "fries". No wonder I'm not underweight.

Now I hope you Americans realize that by chips I do indeed mean what's ordinarily translated in transatlantic word-lists as "French fries".

French fries in this country usually means spindly long overly crispy chips. Not that nice. Our English chips are thick and full-bodied, as illustrated and actually have more in common with fried potato wedges than the spindly straggly variety of "fries".

I once saw a hilarious documentary about a family of Londoners and one from Brussels in Belgium, so did a week's holiday house swap. The Belgians were advised to try fish and chips from such-&-such chippie. O! The looks on their faces as they tried to shove all that stodge down. They were very polite but said it had left them utterly nauseated. You have to be pretty hardcore to be able to nosh down an entire fillet of cod with such a mountain of yummy soggy chips...

Hmmm... I don't know what else to say. Except the local Morrisons are doing mushy peas (a must-have side-order) for 15p a tin which is joy for a skinflint like me. I get to save all of 40p by not ordering in the shop and heating myself.

Personally I've taken to eating said chips with a side order of Best-in 35p baked beans (best cheapie ones you can get in this country) and ready chopped-up and boiled halal beef frankfurters. Which goes together very well indeed. O and by the way, chicken ones taste more like pork ~ for all you infidels...

And how was your weekend..?

Fuzzy Friday on Saturday: Humble Bumbles

BUMBLEBEES are some of nature's furriest little helpers. There are about 249 species worldwide. Here's Bombus terrestris, the largest species we have here in the UK:



Contrary to popular imagination, bumblebees are not solitary creatures. But compared to honeybees' metropolitan colonies (50,000 or more) bumblebees' nests are tiny villages ~ populated by 30 to 150 workers at their peak.

Also contrary to popular belief, bumblebee hives ARE available, fully stocked with bees:


But unlike honeybees' nests, bumblebees' will never fit neatly between frames. Constructed in muddy-coloured wax, they tend to look something more like a "Village of the Mud People":



Bumblebees CAN sting. Unlike honeybees their stings aren't barbed. But they're such placid creatures they very seldom use them.



Bumblebees do make honey from flower nectar just like their more glamorous cousins the "honey" bees. Unfortunately as their waxy nests contain acorn-shaped "rooms" rather than hexagonal cells a photo isn't possible. So have a look at some more bees buzzing into their nest:



Here's a David Attenborough video from Life in the Undergrowth:





ALL ANGELS ~ THE SCIENTIST
I heard this on the radio last night and really liked it:

My House Is Worth A Million Dollars!

I JUST FOUND OUT THIS today glancing in an estate agent's window. Houses like the one I live in part of are apparently deceptively large with several "reception rooms" and more bedrooms. Asking price: just under £700,000.

(NB: It's a bit posher than the "property" illustrated...)

Which reminds me, my one remaining hamster, Spherical Roborovski (I call her "Spherical" but actually she was the only one of three with an ordinary robo-body; the other two were "runts" which probably accounts for why they died early...)

Anyway: Spherical is now lady of her own manor with a luxurious 2-storey nest comprising several interlinked cardboard rooms with doors cut out by me. With Pompidou Centre style toilet tubes linking the exterior. Very swish for a Mongolian Pygmy Hamster ...

Having lost my Gothic German Bible for several days inside a duvet (don't ask ~ I don't know) my Biblical German is coming on in leaps and bounds. Some of the words seem far more expressive in German than English. E.g. what do you think a "winestick" and an "oil tree" are? I'm also fluent in Biblical vocabulary and can now say Slave/Servant, Righteous, Faithful, Whore, Wrathful, Revelation, Tribulation, Temple, Priest, Angel, Vision, Unclean, Prophet, Apostle, Disciple ... etc etc.

The word for Revelation by the way (Offenbarung) means literally "open-baring". See what I mean about expressive.

Anyhow I must dash. This stingy internet caff only rents out by the half hour and I am soon to be "terminated"...

PS: Yes ~ my Lutherian Bible has pages exactly like the one shown. No wonder it took me over a month to get used to the swirly Gothic typeface...

My Favourite Poem

... (IN GERMAN!!)

Wanderers Nachtlied II (Wanderer's Night Song II) by JW Goethe Germany's "national poet" who has been deified more perhaps than any other poet who ever lived. He wrote it on the evening of September 6, 1780. "A moment preserved in history" (you could say...)...

Here goes:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

An internet-found translation:

Above, all the summits
are still.
In all the tree-tops
you will
feel but the dew.
The birds in the forest ceased talking.
Wait: after walking
you shall rest, too.

I'd translate it (prosically) thus:

Over all the peaks
is peace.
Over all the treetops
you feel
barely a breath.
The birds silent in the forest;
just wait
... soon
you
are calm too ...

Isn't that excellent?

Prior to my Central European escapade, I'm reading all the German I can ...

Boo-Hoo... I'm Scared!

FEAR. YES! FEAR AND SHEER TERROR!! It's the lifeblood of addiction. If we weren't so terrified by the sheer looming drop into the seeming void of life without drugs ~ trust me, addicts to heroin, crack, drink and any other head-in-the-sand substance would tend to show far more willing to give it up.

Perhaps I ought to scrawl out several pages of deep psychological reasons WHY all this? Why why why?

On the face of it (from an outsider's point of view) heroin addiction, for example, seems very straightforward. You just stop taking the drug, feel a bit fluey for three days and then you're fine, right?

Well that's not right. As anyone who's had the flu, which is pretty much anyone, can tell you, however horrible you feel it's a pretty self-contained condition cushioned by sleep.

Opiate withdrawal is anything but "contained". You become fretful, hyperactive. Typically you don't sleep at all for days on end. It feels nothing at all like flu, though an unempathetic doctor may fixate on certain similarities, like feverishness, sweating, running eyes and nose, etc. But the actual experience of "cold turkey" is nothing like flu at all.

Another myth: it is not over in three days. It takes about a week to be over the physical syndrome, but residual anxiety and insomnia take a month or more to pass. This is far outside the junkie's 24-hour scope of survival, so of course it feels like an eternity and they can't cope.

The deeper you get into addiction the more you lose certain strengths and skills the rest of the population take for granted. The attention span is fractured. Sleep gets scattered all over the place. Food is utterly unpalatable without heroin. But crack causes extreme anorexia ~ so somebody on both will barely eat at all.

Heroin kills pain, both phsysical and mental. It's the strongest painkiller there is ~ as is testified by the fact that in the handful of countries where it is licensed for medicinal use (including Britain), it's the analgesic of choice in terminal cancer and other dire conditions. In the beginning, once initial distractions like nausea and skin-itching are pushed to the side, heroin flushes its users full of sensation and enchantment. By this point the experimenter will typically have tried pretty much everything else going, but in comparison to these substances, the effects of heroin feel totally natural and not forced. Heroin is a deceptive beast.

As time marches on and use of the drug becomes constant and relentless the enchantment fades to dust and all you know is that taking heroin feels far better than going sick without it and quite a lot nicer than methadone. And so continues a twilight state of living that can go on for decades. Nothing is really done or achieved. Periodic crises are averted with great effort. But most of life feels too great a task to take on. Heroin, once a great antidepressant, now leaves you in a continuous state of low grade misery.

So what's stopping me or anyone from taking that final leap into the dark?...

SHEER TERROR!

KEIRA KNIGHTLEY ~ DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AD
This was considered too strong for British TV, even after nine pm:





I know this is a corny choice of song, but it's what came to mind... When this came out I thought "bloody hell ~ same look, same sound; do something new, Lilly"... but I really like this ~~

LILLY ALLEN: FEAR

Sachertorte!

THIS WAS YESTERDAY'S "ACCIDENTAL OMISSION" ... Austria's most famous "tart" ~ Sachertorte:



It's very chocolatey, in a refined type of way:





It would go really well "mit einer Tasse Kaffee"...



Yee-HAR!!

You can gen up more about Sachertorte here ...

Konditorei!

Vienna ~ where I'm thinking of fleeing to ~ is world-famous for its Konditorei; its quality cakes:

Schokoladenkuchen (chocolate cake)



Käsekuchen (cheesecake)



Schwarzwalderkirschtorte (Black Forest Gâteau) ...














... and erstaunliche Kuchen ~ cakes of sheer genius! ...





... yum yum YUMMM!!

Alpine Wanderings

THE BERLIN IDEA hit me because I had never been to a German-speaking country and yet I semi-speak the language. I focused on Berlin specifically because I like to be in the centre of things, so I would always think to go to the principal city of a country first... and East Berlin has long been an object of fascination.

Having said all that, emigrating was not an idea that sprang from the most positive frame of mind. To be frank, it was the only alternative I could think of, one dire afternoon, to suicide.

I still don't know why ~ and surely you can't judge a town till you've actually been there ~ but the idea of Berlin kind of leaves me cold. As cold as the perishingly chilly East winds that blow relentlessly over from Siberia in Berlin's sub-zero winters. I do still want to go, but am not sure how long I would want to stay.

An alternative town, with far more surface allure, would be Vienna. The photos I saw look beautiful and I like the thought of all that Alpine fresh air. I would love to go wandering up in the mountains and Austria is a tiny country of spectacular scenery with the wonders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Germany all within easy reach.

Also I have heard the local konditorei (overpriced chocolate cakes/etc) is really good; and that the same number of people are spread out among Austria's sparkling lakes, glacial valleys, pine woods and cuckoo clocks as the 8.5 million crammed into London town!

And that's about all I have to say on the matter for now. It's hardly as if I've booked my ticket yet, so my travel plans remain wide open. Very slowly I am trawling the internet for the myriad details I really need to know before I get there.

It's a cloudless blue day. Fresh but not Alpine. Tomorrow's a public holiday so the main road's constipated with chugging jams of traffic on the way to in-laws, DIY-stores and Brighton Beach. I understand it's some sort of holiday in America, too.

Have a charming day, y'all. And I'll be back tomorrow...