Under-worked Chef dies making Royal Icing

It was a close thing. Our brandy-soaked Christmas Cake, its homemade marzipan coat firmly in place, only needed icing.  Into the Kenwood Chef's cavernous bowl went egg whites, lemon juice, glucose and a little icing sugar. Faster and faster the beater whizzed around, the mixture began to thicken and we made ready to shovel more sugar into the frothing mass. Then disaster struck!

Smoke rose ominously from the Chef. The kitchen quickly filled with the acrid smell of dying electric motor and, before either of us could reach for the off switch, it ground to a halt.

Fortunately, we also have a hand-held electric whisk so, with kitchen windows wide open to flush out the fumes, the job was quickly completed.

Cheffie stands in the rain, awaiting his trip to the dump.

Poor Kenwood Chef! He was 25 years old and had worked hard in his youth, helping to create cakes and buns every week for the family. More recently, though, he's spent most of his days in the dark recesses of a kitchen cupboard. Indeed, the last time he saw the light of day was November 2018, when I used him to make my 70th Birthday sponge cake, then last year's Christmas cake.

Shall we replace him? I was astonished to discover that Chefs now retail for about £300; that's a lot for a machine that will probably only be used once a year. Refurbished ones cost about half that amount, whilst 2nd-hand ones on eBay go for less than £100, but even that still seems a lot of money to spend on a little-used item.

Granny mixed all her cakes by hand, so I'm sure I could too, or might a hand-held mixer suffice – like the Kenwood Chefette with which we started our cake-scoffing married lives? We have about 11 months to make up our minds.

Loudish and Clearish

"You ought to get your hearing tested."

"Why?"

"Sometimes you don't hear a word I say!"

"What?"

At times I get so engrossed in a Sudoku puzzle or my daily French lesson that I hardly hear what's going on around me. I call it selective deafness!  Joking aside, though, I reckon that my hearing is pretty good. However, I am aware that it isn't as acute as it once was, particularly if I'm trying to pick out a voice in a crowd, and especially if that voice is high-pitched.

At my age, my GP would doubtless be willing to refer me for a hearing test, but so far I've not been motivated to book an appointment with him. My opticians are also offering free hearing tests, but I don't really trust them as they appear much too keen to sell folk hearing aids costing several hundreds of pounds.  If ever I do need hearing aids, I'm unashamedly resolved to go for the free NHS variety.  With long hair over my ears they'll be as invisible as the expensive ones.

Back in October my friend Lucy blogged about her worries that she may have damaged her ears by playing music too loudly through earbuds. To check this out, she installed a Hearing Test app on her smartphone and was delighted to discover that all was well. Now that really did sound interesting, so I too downloaded the app.

It's important to stress that this is certainly not a 'proper' hearing test; it's only a guide, but a useful one nonetheless. I've tested my hearing over a several days and there's little variation in the results. Here's the latest one...

Mmmm. It's certainly not as good as Lucy's and shows all too clearly that I'm suffering from moderate hearing loss above 6kHz. My left ear (blue line) is slightly worse than my right, which is interesting as that's the ear in which I suffer from mild tinnitus - a whistling sound at about 7kHz.  At times, though, the tinnitus lifts completely and it would be interesting indeed to repeat the test then.

The previous graph was moderately worrying, but this one was more reassuring. It shows the same results, but plotted against a range of age norms. By that measure, I'm just about average for a 71 year-old. 

Growing old gracefully... that's me!

A Feast of Results

The scene is set.  As a responsible citizen, I've cast my vote, though the Forest of Dean constituency is far from being marginal. Indeed, so predictable is the result here that the Lib Dems have dropped out, even though they beat the Greens in 2017. I was sorely tempted to vote Green to give them a little boost, but in the end voted with my head rather than my heart.  Now though, if the Greens lose their deposit, I'll be feeling guilty.  Oh well.

A long, wakeful night is in prospect. I always enjoy watching the results come in and rarely make it to bed before 3.30pm. To sustain me through the wee hours, I've just returned from the Co-op with a diet busting feast.

• The Reds are represented by a nice, but not too expensive, bottle of red wine. This time I've gone for Beaujolais.
• For the Blues I thought some creamy blue cheese would be appropriate, so I've chosen a slab of Cambazola.
• Independents are represented by a small slice of Brie, which will hopefully do better than they will. 
• The cheese biscuit selection has no political affiliation, though being Co-op it might be somewhat left of centre, like me.
• Finally, to celebrate this first December general election since 1923 I've laid out the princely sum of £1.78 for some Christmas Cake Cheese. 

This morning's Poll of Polls in The Guardian had the Conservatives on 43%, Labour on 33%, the Lib Dems on 12% and the rest nowhere. The Lib-Dem-leaning Guardian was trying hard, bless 'em, to put an anti-Tory spin on it, though it looks as if Boris will get the working majority he's hoping for.  However, opinion polls have been notoriously inaccurate in the past.

Of more interest will be the joint Exit Poll conducted for the BBC, ITV and Sky. When that's revealed at 10pm, I'll be strumming my ukulele and singing with the Ukes uv Azzard, but will doubtless contrive to take a look (between songs, of course) at the BBC website. Then it's home for about 11pm, by which time the first couple of results should be in.

My personal prediction (for what it's worth) is that the Christmas Cake cheese will win the night, but it could be a close thing.

FUN in Gloucester

My loyal reader has contacted me, concerned about my long absence from blogging. Truth be told, I find it harder to write moderately interesting posts in the winter as life is apt to become somewhat routine, with no interesting new rambles to describe.  Today, however, was far from 'routine' and such good fun that I'm still buzzing 7 hours later.

FUN stands for Friends UkeNited – a gathering of ukulele players from clubs throughout Gloucestershire, and sometimes beyond. Today we congregated in Gloucester city centre to help the local Rotary Club raise money from their many good causes.

We were still getting ready to sing when this photo was taken.

As you can see, Santa hats were much in evidence. I'm standing on the right, next to a lady in red trousers. As well as my favourite little Santa hat, I'm sporting my Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer jumper, but unfortunately its hidden behind my pink music folder, pink coat and pink scarf. It was quite cold out there!

Under Terry's inspirational leadership, we made Gloucester rock with Christmas favourites such as Jingle Bells, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, Frosty the Snowman and (of course) Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody.  My favourites, though, were Dominic the Donkey and Must Be Santa. If you don't know the first of those then look it up on You Tube – it's hilarious. As for the second, it's an old Bob Dylan number, but unlike anything else I've ever heard him sing. And what could be better than to hear it for yourselves? Thank you, Katie, for posting this one.

The Staunton Longstone and some Leylines

This is the third in my series of occasional posts inspired by Ray Wright's book Secret Forest. For the others click here and here.

The Staunton Longstone stands beside the busy A4136, ½ mile east of Staunton. It's about 7ft tall and dates back to the Bronze Age. What makes this one a bit special is that, according to local folklore, if you prick it with a pin exactly at midnight, it will bleed. Cynical old woman that I am, I'm not tempted to forsake my warm bed to test the theory.

Ray Wright places great importance on this stone as being at the intersection of two leylines. He writes, "These two lines make contact with the Rivers Severn, Wye and Monnow at points where the energies of the rivers are dissipated. Elsewhere he explains, "Leylines  are not only physical, material lines, but are also ionized lines along which very subtle forces or earth currents can flow."

Well, you're free to make of that what you will. I'll admit that the fact that The Kymin (overlooking Monmouth), The Buckstone (near Staunton), Staunton Longstone, a couple of crossroads and Barrow Hill on the other side of the Severn are in almost perfect alignment is very interesting. I checked them on an OS map and they really do align. I don't put it past the ancients to site their landmarks thus for their own reasons; cynical me, though, is not ready to subscribe to talk of ionising lines and subtle forces.

My visit to the Staunton Longstone was part of a longer walk that began and ended near the Forest Holidays holiday park at Christchurch.

Here are a few photos of the walk...

Despite horrendous amounts of rain in recent weeks, we're enjoying a glorious autumn in the Forest of Dean. The colours are amazing, and even more so when the sun condescends to shine. This is the footpath that skirts the Forest Holidays site. 

It was good to get out onto this broad forest track through Marian's Inclosure, as the rains have reduced many of the smaller paths into slippy-slidey mud tracks. 

A couple more shots of Staunton Longstone, the first showing its close proximity of the A4136.

From the Longstone we zig-zagged along forest paths, descended to the mighty River Wye and made our way upstream to the Symonds Yat rapids.  The rapids are a favourite spot for kyakers. I've canoed down them a couple of times and it was great fun. Usually they look like this...

... but after all the recent rain, they looked like this!  Not a kyaker in sight.

When it's not heaving with summer visitors the Saracen's Head Inn at Symonds Yat is a great place to refresh ones energies before the steep ascent to Yat Rock, with its breathtaking views of the meandering River Wye. I needed that refreshment and can recommend their Brie and Cranberry baguettes. 

Yat Rock

Autumn Reflections

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
lengthen night and shorten day;
every leaf speaks bliss to me
fluttering from the autumn tree.

Emily Brontë

Skipper and me

having fun

in autumn sun 

at Soudley.

Listen...

With faint dry sound,

like steps of passing ghosts,

the leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

and fall.

Adelaide Crapsey

Oh oh oh oh, when I'm dead and gone

Scarcely a week goes by without some financial institution trying to sell me a Funeral Plan. I'm sure it's my advancing years that prompts them; surely financing my funeral must weigh heavily on my mind. Moreover, my hard-won pensions are there for the picking.

The latest offer from Sun Life made sober reading...

The average cost of a basic funeral in the South West of England is £4,685

Notice that that's just the basic cost and doesn't include such 'essentials' as press notices, black cars for the mourners, flowers to bedeck my coffin, a church service with organist and appropriately cassocked vicar, a bun-feast in the pub and a lovingly inscribed headstone to mark my final resting place.


Over the decades the funeral industry has taught us what a 'proper' funeral should look like. A shining black hearse, black limos, a funeral director in pin-striped trousers, top hat and tails, a professionally-conducted memorial service... the list goes on.  Little wonder, then, that the cost of the average funeral has risen by about 120% since 2005 and is projected to rise by another 77% over the next 10 years.  With this increase has come a dramatic rise in the popularity of funeral plans, as families seek to shield their loved ones from this crippling cost. About 1.3 million people in the UK have a plan and 200,000 new ones are sold every year. I wonder who profits the most from that?  I strongly suspect that these plans are actually driving up the cost of funerals, since they literally bury the true cost from grieving families.

I realise that I must choose my words carefully. If you've recently been bereaved, and bidden farewell to your loved one with all the pomp and ceremony that you and your chosen funeral director could muster, then God bless you. Funeral services are, after all, primarily for the living, and if the last one you had to plan brought help and comfort, that's great. But such extravagances are not for me.

They'll still spend more than they should.
It's just another Funeral Plan advertisement 

Here are a couple of  things to ponder:

• Why does the coffin need to be present at a funeral service? Unless you're moved to open it, it's just a rather ornate heavy box that we take on trust to contain a body.

• And why, if you have a church service, does the vicar have to commend the dearly departed to God? I speak here as a Christian who really does believe in a life hereafter, but do we really think that a body that's been dead for a fortnight or so needs the 'ok' from a minister to release it from limbo?

I'm writing in my will that I would prefer a Direct Funeral, sometimes called an Unattended Funeral. My body will be taken to a crematorium (I really don't mind which one – one of the cheaper firms uses a crem in Lancashire), then my ashes will either be scattered or (for an extra £70) returned to my family. Costs start at around £1000, rising to about £1700 if one employs a local firm. Other costs that they may wish to consider include:

• A Service of Remembrance which, with vicar and organist, would cost about £300.
• Notice in the newspaper, at about £75... or why not tell everyone via Facebook?!
• Finally, how about a bring-&-share meal in a hall? Another £250 perhaps?

So bidding farewell to the late Angie Kay will cost at best £1000 and at worst about £2400 – a little over half the cost of that average funeral.



NB. I would like to assure my loyal readers that this post has not been inspired by the knowledge of my impending demise.  To the best of my knowledge I'm in splendid health.

Le français sonne comme gobbledegook

Failing the Eleven Plus in 1959 was a big setback for me, though occurring just two years after mum's death in a motor accident, it wasn't exactly a surprise. Although I was in the top stream throughout my Secondary Modern education, a chasm quickly opened up between what we were taught and what the Grammar School taught their lowest streams.

Their chemistry, physics and biology were dumbed down to our General Science, Rural Studies and Health Education. Only in practical subjects like woodwork, metalwork, needlework, cooking and home economics did we excel... and the reason for that was all too plain to see —

• They were being trained to be society's leaders and thinkers; we were being trained to be the workers.

Thankfully, I eventually broke out of the system, took a college entrance test and was enrolled on a GCE O-level course.

One subject that was considered unnecessary for us Secondary Mod kids was French. Perhaps I would have hated it, but it would have been nice to have had the chance to find out.  Since then, thanks to a set of Reader's Digest cassette tapes, I've picked up enough French to make simple requests ('un verre de vin blanc, s'il vous plait'), ask for directions ('ou sont les toilettes?') and buy a railway ticket ('un aller-retour pour Epernay s'il vous plait') but most French still sounds to me like gobbledegook.

Now I'm doing something about it, and it's all thanks to my brother, who introduced me to the smartphone app Duolingo.

I started leaning French in August. The teaching style is totally unlike anything I've experienced in the past and it's great fun.  After a short break when my AirBnB cottage didn't have Wifi, I've clocked up 102 days without a break.

Here are a few screenshots of Duolingo in action:

I got this one wrong! Before the lesson is complete, I'll be asked again.

I realise that for many of my French-speaking friends this is pretty basic stuff, but it's transforming my understanding of the language, keeping my brain active and raising the distinct possibility that, next time I go to France, I'll actually be able to converse with people I meet.

Hoad Monument

I'll start this post where I ended the last one – on Gummer's How. In this photo, looking over Lakeside and towards the coastal town of Ulverston, I've crudely circled a monument at the top of a distant hill.  If you click the photo you'll hopefully get a slightly better view.

"I wonder what it is?" I mused.  A few days later, as our Lake District holiday drew to a close, I found out.

This is the Sir John Barrow Monument – hardly a snappy title, so locals call it Hoad Monument, for the very good reason that it sits on top of Hoad Hill.

Sir John was born near Ulverston. His father was a tanner, but young John had his sights set on greater things. At the age of 16 he went on a whaling expedition to Greenland and by his twenties he was teaching mathematics at a private school.  He became a founder member of the Royal Geographical Society and held several important government posts, eventually rising to that of Second Secretary to the Admiralty.

The townspeople of Ulverston were clearly proud of their local lad who made the big time, and after his death raised £1250 to build this 100ft tall monument.  Appropriately for a man who served the Admiralty, it looks like a lighthouse, though it has never housed a light.

A Wikipedia article notes the similarity between the Hoad Monument and this one – Smeaton's  Tower, which also doesn't have a light. Here's little me enjoying the sunshine on Plymouth Hoe, back in 2008.

Lakeside

After the exertions of climbing the Old Man of Coniston we both fancied a somewhat less energetic day. What better than a leisurely trip on a steam railway, followed by some pleasant sight-seeing?

The Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway runs through 3¼ miles of pleasant riverside countryside to Lakeside, at the southern end of Windermere. It's probably unique among preserved railways in making direct connection with pleasure boats at one end – a feature that had already attracted three coach-loads of tourists before we arrived. Thankfully, though, the train was a long one and we had half the rear carriage to ourselves.

The best way to photograph railways is, of course, not to travel on them, but rather to find to some picturesque spot along the line and wait for the train to appear. Less enthusiastic souls like me simply take a few snaps in the stations, then hop on board. The photo above is out of sequence as it shows the train arriving at Lakeside for our return trip to Haverthwaite.

How many station platforms, I wonder, can boast a view like this, taken from our carriage window? 

A pleasure steamer arrives at Lakeside, ready to take those three coach-loads of tourists for their cruise up the lake. Many years ago, with my in-laws and two young sons in tow, I made the mistake of hopping on board for a cruise to Bowness and back – 2 hours of total boredom. In fairness, everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves, but it was far too tame for me.  I longed to be closer to the water in my little Enterprise dinghy.

At Lakeside thoughts turned to coffee and cake. The station cafeteria was heaving with humanity, so we sought out the genteel elegance of the Lakeside Hotel. We were shown through to the hotel's palatial conservatory where an immaculately uniformed waitress informed us that they don't serve cake in the mornings, but they do have homemade shortbread.  Would that do?  Yes indeed it would. We each ordered a cafetiere of coffee (one decaffeinated for S--; one fully caffed for me) and settled down to browse the menus.

"O crikey, just look at this," I remarked. "Afternoon Tea here is £64 for two people, and wine starts at £8.50 for a small glass. What have we let ourselves in for?"  We resolved to be brave, keep smiling and load it all on a Visa card. 

When we had been offered cafetieres, I'd imagined that they would be the small 'one cup' variety. How wrong can you be? In my mind the bill rose by another pound or eight.  The shortbread slices – two plain and two flavoured with root ginger – were, however, delicious.

As we ate and drank, I gazed across the water towards a hill called Gummer's How. "That looks interesting," I declared. "I'd really like to climb that one."

"So much for our leisurely day," muttered someone with a mouthful of shortbread.

Three cups of coffee (each) later, S-- rose to pay the bill, then invited me to guess what it was.

"£20?"   "Less."

"£15?"   "Less!"

"Um... £10?"   "Almost right.  It was £9.50!"

£9.50 for 6 cups of coffee and 4 slices of delicious shortbread was remarkably good value for money. Well done, Lakeside Hotel!... though I don't think we'll be returning for Afternoon Tea. 

Compared to the Old Man, our walk up Gummer's How was a gentle stroll, but the views were nonetheless spectacular. In these two I'm looking back down to Lakeside. The River Leven can be seen on it's twisty way down to Ulverston and the sea.

It was very windy up there!

Finally, here's the view in the opposite direction. Storm clouds were gathering. The following day would be a washout, and though that didn't stop us tackling a fell walk (and getting drenched) there are no photographs to record it.

Old Woman of Lydney conquers Old Man of Coniston

I sought advice and the advisers were unanimous; "If your going to climb The Old Man of Coniston, take the footpath from Little Arrow. The other route is boring."

Little Arrow sounded rather like Indian Country to me, but turned out to be a hamlet 2 miles from Coniston, with friendly natives and a nice little AirBnB cottage which I promptly booked.

The path climbs gently away from the main road, then follows Torver Beck. Soon we had our first clear view of The Old Man. It's the peak on the left; the one on the right looks high from this angle but it's only a baby at 870 feet high and isn't even named on my OS map.

Almost level walking now.  Oh, this is easy!  To add to my joy, the sky was getting more blue by the minute, promising fabulous views from the summit.

Here's where Torver Beck flows into an old quarry. Again, it's not named on the OS maps but a photo on Google Earth declares it to Banishead Falls, so presumably this is Banishead Quarry.

A short, steep clamber over rocks brought us to Goat's Water – a good place to sit on a rock, have a thirst-quenching drink and contemplate the next part of the walk, straight up to the ridge at the far side of the Water.

Up... up... up... At times like these I realise that I'm not as young, nor probably as fit, as I once was. I was about half way up when I took this photo, looking back to Goat's Water and in need of a short rest.

At we approached the summit, billows of low cloud rolled in from the north, threatening to blot out the views. Thankfully they began to clear as quickly as they had arrived, though were still lying low when I took this photo, looking towards Coniston Water. Windermere is just visible in the distance. The popular ('boring') route to the summit can be seen in the centre of this photo.

Some people calmly approach the summit, whilst others feel the need to show off a bit. I make no apology; this was literally the 'high point' of the holiday.

Without doubt, the best thing to do at the top of a Lakeland mountain is simply to sit, eat lunch and admire the magnificent view. On a clear day it's possible to see the Isle of Man and Blackpool Tower from here, though sadly not on this occasion.

By the time we tore ourselves away from the summit, the misty clouds had gone, the sun was shining and Windermere was now clearly visible beyond Coniston. The sheep, however, seemed unimpressed. They'd seen it all before.

In hindsight, I think we should have taken the popular path down. There's a highly acclaimed longer one via Swirl How, but your scatty bloggist had spotted another path, half way along the ridgeway at Levers Hawse, that would take us straight down to Levers Water.  "Can we try that one, please?"
"O, all right then."

It wasn't long before my choice lost its appeal. The map contours were very close together but the steepness was hard to fully appreciate until we were too far down to change our minds. To add to the fun, much of the path was covered in scree (loose stones). I've marked our descent to the water's edge in red.

Thankfully, spirits soon rose as the path became a gentle descent, and I was forgiven for not wanting to take that Swirl Edge path. It was time to head back to Little Arrow and leave the mountainside to the sheep.