Category: learning curve

Some tweets

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Various subjects. As you’ll read.


First up: Covid (of course).

People go to a festival, think they’re safe because “it’s outdoors” (except the shared car journeys, the indoor bits, the bars and the densely crowded, close contact bits), and then they contract an extremely infectious virus.

It’s nothing new.

We’re told that it’s sociology, rather than epidemiology or microbiology that tells us when a pandemic is over. And looking at things sociologically, in many cases – like the festival(s) above – behaviour has returned to normal. Except, if the pandemic is over, why are so many people still getting infected with the causal agent? And this in summer, as well.
Wider society might think we’re done with Covid. The medical experts will tell you differently.

Crime: It’s a huge problem in South Africa. How do we solve it?

It’s not so difficult, apparently:

Actually, it’s been staring us in the face all the time. Rather than increasing policing, relying on better intelligence or working on active rehabilitation of offenders, people should just stop stealing. Then the crime numbers would come down.

You can’t fault his logic. And if we can make it work on theft, then surely robbery, assault and murder should be addressed in the same way.

Just do less of it.

Crime: Sorted.

Photography: The trouble with it being free.

There is indeed a lot of “vapid shit” in the photography sections of the internet. (And to be fair, in a lot of other sections as well.) But, aside from asking people to produce less of it (see above tactic), would having to pay for trendy, hipster, retro film – like we used to have to do – make people care more?

Probably.

But, it would also price many people out of the photography game. And we would miss out on a lot of talent because of that. And so the best way is not to make a return to the “good old days” of film and cassette, but rather to champion and support and share the really good work out there.

And yes, maybe occasionally take the piss out of the really horrific stuff, just for balance.

“Highly experimental” recipe in progress

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When life gives you lemons loquats…

When we bought this place, we also got a loquat tree thrown into the deal. Not specifically, it was just one of the things in the garden. The previous owners didn’t like loquats, apparently. They had asked their gardener to snip off the buds at the beginning of the year to prevent any loquat development.

And I do get why. Which is actually kind of unusual for many of the decisions that were made here.

The birds love the loquats, so there is huge fruit loss from that direction, which also means a fair amount of mess in and around the tree as well. Add to that the beagle, which will happily hoover up anything (in this case, half eaten loquats) that drops to the floor, and the… er… consequences of mammals gorging on soft fruit. Nothing horrific (yet), but we’re going to have continue to keep an eye on that as the season progresses.

Anyway, because we didn’t snip any buds off the loquat tree, today, I went up a ladder and brought down a couple of kilos of actual loquats. I avoided the over-ripe ones, the under-ripe ones and the ones that the starlings had taken a single peck of and moved on elsewhere. And I made – well, I am making – loquat chutney.

It started like this, looking exciting and colourful:

That’s destoned loquats, vinegar, sugar, cabbage, carrot, chili, an apple, red onions, garlic, salt, pepper, a splash of Hendo’s, a splash of red wine. Lob it all in a pan and reduce it down for a number of years. Simples.

And it’s now beginning to take on that world-weary, homogenous chutney appearance:

Which – I am happy to admit – does not look great. But this is chutney. You don’t buy chutney for its rugged good looks. You buy it for it’s sweet, tangy flavour. And this seems to have that in huge amounts.

I’m quite hopeful that I might have made something quite good here. But there’s some more reduction that needs to happen before I can say for definite, so I’m leaving this on a low heat while we go for our regular Wednesday afternoon horse visit to the other side of the Mountain. (Yes, there are other people at home to keep an eye on things.) (Thanks for your concern.)

Stand by then – eventually – for a full report on how successful (or otherwise) this highly experimental recipe turns out to be. Bring on some well-aged Cheddar, I say.

UPDATE: It’s really good. Really strong, but really good. I’m quite impressed with myself.

First question: poo

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It’s been a hectic week, so I only got round to watching the first episode of the new series of Only Connect. And it was off to a flier with the first question (as always) (not really) being faeces-related.

The great thing about being a bit late for this one is that there’s really not very long to wait until the next one.

(Reference: the named characters ending up in “less than ideal” situations regarding poo in Slumdog Millionaire, Back to the Future, The Shawshank Redemption and Trainspotting, in case you were wondering.)

Swiss next?

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Loadshedding is very annoying, but we’re coming closer and closer to the realisation that we’re not the only ones who are chronically short of electricity.

As documented, the UK and Australia have come very close. And Shanghai and China were recently rolling their own blackouts. Now, there are warnings that Switzerland – yes, Switzerland with its neutrality, mountains, engineering brilliance, intricate timepieces, army knives and just general perfection – is likely to run out of power this winter.

When Switzerland is struggling, you know that there’s a real problem.

“Repeated, hours-long power cuts”. That sounds awfully familiar.

As I’ve mentioned before, some other country experiencing loadshedding doesn’t make the situation in SA any better. And our loadshedding is for a different reason to theirs (tl;dr – it’s massive, wholesale, unimpeded corruption), but it does remind us to maybe drop a bit of the exceptionalism.

The Alpine grass, despite what you’ve seen in The Sound of Music (that was Austria, I know) (although €707.23 per MWh there, too), is not always greener.

UPDATE: Loadshedding: now with added Finland.

Bits and Pieces

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It’s Curry Club this evening, so I’ll likely be enjoying a Jal Frezi rather than blogging in front of the fire. In the meantime, please enjoy some (or more) of these snippets which don’t quite deserve a blog post of their own, but equally don’t deserve to be completely ignored, either.

The last phone boxes
5 million phone calls are made each year from the UK’s remaining 20,000 phone boxes. I think that both those numbers seem ridiculously high. This is a lovely long read about phone boxes and their place in an ever-changing society.

Hike
The Boy Wonder is hiking the Lion’s Head tonight, with the promise of hot chocolate on the summit. It’s actually getting ridiculous how many Bootlegger coffee shops there are in Cape Town now. (Substitute Costa in the UK or your local ubiquitous high street coffee outlet in to make this “joke” work for your country.)

Ironically, there is usually a Vida e Cafe truck parked at the gate to the Lion’s Head hiking trail.

UCL Draw
Once again, Sheffield United have missed out on a place in the group stages. I might still pop over to the UEFA Youtube page to watch the draw for the 2022/23 competition live this evening though. 5pm BST = 6pm CAT.

With no apologies to Elvis…
…John Cooper Clarke’s (You Ain’t Nothing But A) Hedgehog

“You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t never pricked a predator
You ain’t no Porcupine”

“Hedgehogs! Leave some hedge for everyone else!”

And…
August is nearly over. So, in a mall near you:

It’s a very seasonal thing:

And, as you can see from this graph of interest in that song on Google, the interest in that song is very much waning. This is great news, but it’s also worth noting that even if people aren’t quite as bothered as they used to be, history shows that we are likely to see the annual uptick beginning in the next few weeks.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.