Barking mad or Rocky is innocent ok?

Barking mad or Rocky is innocent ok?





Link to the story

[fannie and freddie] the couple who might bring it all down

The WSJ had this to say about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

In Henry M. Paulson's first month as Treasury secretary, two deputies flagged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as significant risks to the economy. He didn't share their level of concern. When he was at Goldman Sachs, he told the aides, the mortgage giants weren't on the list of things that kept him up at night.


Two years later, they're at the top of his list. Mr. Paulson is embroiled in emergency planning on ways to shore up the companies to avert a destabilizing jolt to the U.S. economy and the world's financial system.

Moving obliquely from the big crash, it makes one think about whether to own property or whether to rent and take your chances.

Methinks it is going to be increasingly the case that more and more people will be keeping their assets, such as they are, as cash. Advice is to put it in commodities but the average Jo can't do these things.

I wonder how much my own current situation is the worst available option. Looks like it at the moment but mobility might become a key factor in a few years or even earlier.

Brick Bridge over Beverley and Barmston Drain

Brick Bridge over Beverley and Barmston Drain











It's along this embankment where you can find the blackberries if the council has not destroyed most of the brambles in its slash and burn policy. In my view there is no difference between council workers and vandals. Those brambles that you can see on the bridge on the last photo have now been destroyed by council workmen.

All photos subjected to Creative Commons Licence.

Beverley and Barmston Drain Blackberry Jam 2008

A unique product from the kitchens of JHL.

Step 1 – Out with Mrs. Beeton’s Cookbook and a cursory glance to brush up after last year’s effort.

Preserves [Jam-making]

“The fruits from which jams are made vary in their content of sugar, acid and pectin [a natural gum like substance]. All three of these make an essential contribution to the set and finished results.”

* Fruits very easy to make into well-set jam include apples, blackcurrants, damsons, gooseberries, plums, redcurrants.

* Fruits of medium setting quality include apricots blackberries, raspberries, and loganberries

* Fruits of poor setting quality include cherries , strawberries.

Blackberry jam

3 pound blackberries
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 lb sugar

Place berries in pan with lemon juice and simmer gently until the fruit is cooked and well softened. Add the sugar and stir over a low heat until dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly until setting point is reached. Skim. Pour into hot, dry jars. Cover. Yield – 5lb.

Step 2 – Pans, scales, sugar, berries jars, chef and chief bottle washer at the ready and JHL is away. In with the berries and sugar, the required flame beneath, checks with the special jam thermometer and things are bubbling. Tension mounts as the temperature crept towards the magic 220 Fahrenheit, along with a bare minimum of salty language, the heated bottles at the ready, great tension, the temperature comes up and the pan is lifted from the stove.

Plop, slop – the jam goes in but there’s something wrong – too thin, clearly the fault of the bottle-washer as he wasn’t around for last year’s masterpieces. [The definition of a masterpiece is when you can turn the jar upside down and nothing falls out.] At this point the smoke alarm goes off, which requires the bottle-washer rushing into the dining room with the broom handle to push the button on the ceiling.

Step 3 – Retire to the living room with cups of tea and start the post-mortem. Maybe best to re-check Mrs. Beeton’s. Oh, b—ger. Should have put the fruit in first and softened it.

Not to worry.

Step 4 – Second batch and this one is slick and professional. Bottles at the ready, jam bubbling, temperature reached, pan off the stove and a warmed pyrex measuring jug used to slop it into the jars, bottle-washer following up with the cloth, wiping the bottoms clean [of the jars] – all well.

Step 5 – Jars placed in refrigerator, JHL reflecting that there’s far less swearing in this kitchen than in Gordon Ramsay’s.

However, this was not the case when that journalist was here. For a fuller and more balanced account, read this and scratch your head.

Step 6 – Take Rocky for a walk and get more sugar from Tesco. Finish first half of pork pie and then get ready for Round 3 – The Master Round.

Everything goes like clockwork this time, jars ready, sugar in at the right time, thermometer registering that this jam is on song, as per the video and there we finally are – bottled and settling in to its new home already.

Ice-cream with hot blackberry jam sauce - extremely yummy!

ORDER FORM FOR YOUR JAR OF BEVERLEY and BARMSTON DRAIN BLACKBERRY JAM

Name: __________________________________

Address: ________________________________

Sexual orientation: ________________________

£1.75 per jar via email or you can enter the Great Jam Contest. Simply complete the above form, send a pic of your own favourite jar of jam and the winning entry will be sent one of these unique offerings asap.

[interim report] hopes and expectations

Have to admit I was hopeful of one reply in particular when I logged on at the library just now. It wasn't there and that was mortifying. Perhaps it was all an illusion, perhaps it was real, I don't know. One of our fellow bloggers did write and there might be a blogger meet-up tomorrow.

Another tireless lady helped with some excellent links and they are definitely worth pursuing. John is long suffering at his end and today cooked up the best bacon butties imaginable.

Bit down just now but it might be better by the evening. Hope your Friday is good. They just warned they're logging me off now. Bye.

[lovely pic] my contribution to the fad

OK, everyone's posting beautiful pics of animals so here's my contribution above.

And don't forget the latest news through a few minutes ago - someone is trying to assassinate Gordon Brown. Not exactly relevant but thought I'd put it in anyway.

OK - tea's up.

[sarajevo,1914] you'd think they'd change the script

Mikhail A Molchanov, professor of political science at St Thomas University, Canada writes:

During the whole Boris Yeltsin decade, Russia's foreign policy did not significantly deviate from the master plan devised in Washington. The country was ruled by the oligarchs, not by the elected government.

The West has called this "democracy". While the two small Caucasian nations were clamouring for protection, Moscow's hands were tied by the fear of Western disapproval.

The slightest sign of independent orientation in foreign policy was cited as a proof of Russian "imperialism".

I’m not endorsing this because it ignores certain naughtiness on the Russian side but I think this comment by Tony Sharp:

This was supposed to be about South Ossetian independence and interests. The Russian actions are those of a country determined to control its satellites and impose its will on a sovereign state - Georgia. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Georgia's position, Russia has taken advantage of them. Where next? Ukraine?

… is fairly typical of the Brit reaction, as opposed to Wolfie’s:

Go Vladimir! Thankfully Georgia isn't on our doorstep or we'd dither until everyone was dead.

Richard Havers was close to it, in my eyes, in saying:

Nothing can be quite that simple.

All right, so let’s not get into the rights and wrongs of this side of it for the moment because we’ll be arguing till the cows come home but let’s look instead at what the overall game plan entails, given that the heads of governments are not actually the primary agenda setters.

In other words, where is this thing headed?

The U.S., through NATO, lays down an ultimatum, Putin lays down a counter ultimatum, some ‘statesmen’ like Sarkozy broker a peace, Milliband gets his bit in, China backs Russia, along with Iran and India, the EU imposes sanctions, troops are massed.

Yet the cutters and dicers are all part of the same team, grim-faced and defiant all the way to the round table but there it ends over cocktails. Methinks we need to look at where the current stand-off fits into the overall game plan of creating super-blocs. Does anyone actually deny that the political map is now oriented towards blocs?

That’s what this thing is all about – jostling for position – and it has sfa to do with the good of the common man inside whatever you want to call those republics or however you draw up the map.

You’ll find me in uniform in Dad’s Army within weeks of hostilities breaking out, along with most of my vintage but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask people not to blithely accept the simplistic ‘enemy is evil’ blandishments they’d love us to accept.

Don’t forget this is exactly what the average Russian is saying in reverse.

[conkers] the crime of having fun

In the park just now and the leaves are starting to fall.

People were walking dogs on fancy leads, the grass had been half mown by a council worker but then he'd obviously knocked off, as the rubbish collectors also seemed to do today. Big mistake putting the bin out last night in the hope that when they said they'd come early, they would.

So how about this woman who was taken to court for dropping a sausage roll meant for her daughter? Or the one who waited five years for a house that catered for her disabled son which she never wanted until the council blocked a plan to reconstruct the front of their house?

The one I love is that doing cartwheels is now banned. Girls and boys must now desist because it is highly dangerous to do a cartwheel, as you know. Like playing conkers, there is a very real danger of having fun.

But people still do have fun - they stroll in the park, share a joke, sip a pint, visit the garden centre, go to the conservatory or bicycle to the station and chain the bike up there before taking the train to work.

Carthorses still haul the rag and bone men down Steptoe Lane and people are still polite and helpful, especially in community facilities like libraries.

And the colour is something else again- that rich, soft green and it doesn't really matter a damn what the killjoys are doing - this is still a green and pleasant land.

And we're all going to have fun at Bridlington or Notting Hill or wherever.

Cheers!

[blogosphere] the power of friendship

With ten minutes to go on this one hour internet time I'm allowed at Hull library [and they are very nice people here], I've just checked my email and not yet the post below and have to make a statement.

I don't feel alone with that sort of practical advice and encouragement. I thank you from the bottom of the heart and now, to make you thoroughly sick, I'm going to celebrate this by going out and having fish, chips and mushy peas.

The blogosphere works, it's wonderful and the moment I can get a breather and set up basically, I'm turning round and helping you in return. No doubt on earth about that.

Thanks again.

Proper post this evening.

[the rat race] where are you situated?

Someone recently said that success begets success but once it goes the other way, it all comes over you in waves and you can’t take a trick.

It’s true and an example of my own I can offer is in the mid 90s when I was my lowest ebb ever to that point – unemployed and trying to qualify for ue and housing benefits, once the cash ran out. I don’t really count that one though as I still had the car, clothing, iron and so on and I could compete for jobs. I was shopping for food at M&S.

Still, there were some numbing experiences. Had an interview in south London and it involved calculating the amount of fuel needed to get there, what food could be consumed that day to keep under the budget and so on. Turned out they weren’t interested anyway but just wanted to see me out of interest.

When the break came, it was almost an anti-climax. A teaching job became a housemaster’s then the head’s job itself. As the money moved steadily into the coffers, more smiles greeted me, people sought my company, allowances were made and little things like reserved parking spaces were made available and so on.

Riding relatively high, it all came abruptly to an end due to some issues from the school’s past; it limped on another couple of years but I didn’t.

So, back to square one in Russia and the long slow climb again, to the point where, in Russian terms, I was again right up there, with a thriving practice and coming into the lucrative summer. Contacts were exponentially expanding and I was even being a bit lazy and knocking back offers.

Most readers know what happened from May to August which was stressful but nothing to what it is now. You could well say ‘serve you right’ as I let everything back home slip away, dropped out of the credit system, dispensed with the mobile, failed to renew things like the drivers’ licence etc.

Result being that having returned, there is no recent credit history or any other history for that matter and those that officially bestow things on you don’t like that. They suspect you’re a terrorist, I think. So they refuse you bank accounts, benefits and other little goodies, which in turn means that overseas drafts are stopped dead in the water and a steady stream of refusals result.

Now it only needs one lucky break – one – and the nexus is broken.

I could point to a position I now hold or property I’m renting and everything then expands again. But without that first break, nothing at all comes – it’s scorched earth and meanwhile the clock counts down on largesse shown by certain kind people.

So it comes down to just one break, providing the groundwork is being done thoroughly and we’re up and running. Sound familiar to you, this story?

Incidentally - because the jameshigham email is not working on this computer due to javascript problems, then I also cannot access the address book to write to people nor can I check emails in. The address to use now is nourishingobscurity@gmail.com.

Also also - we were in the park just now and the first clump of leaves were under the tree and the brown leaves were in the trees. Autumn is upon us, folks and it is beautiful.