Namesakes

For a few brief moments, I thought Hillary Clinton had been assassinated. Turned out they were referring to the late Sir Edmund Hillary. Not that Sir Edmund Hillary was assassinated, you understand. I suppose, if he had been, the headline would have been They Knocked the Bastard Off!

Doesn't it annoy you how Hillary Clinton is campaigning for the U.S. Democratic nomination under her first name? Anyone might think she is trying to distance herself from her surname.

Which she is.

Fancy pudding

From a late-night online chat with Carolyn during the transition between yesterday and today (slightly abridged for brevity):

Carolyn: We had [friend's name] to tea tonight and so we had to have sausages.
Me: So when are you inviting ME to tea? I'm not a fussy eater! But I do love sausages!
Carolyn: I do a good ham and treacle tart!
Me: Have you ever eaten muffs?
Carolyn: What are they?
Me: You come from Bromborough! You MUST have eaten muffs! They're fantastic!
Carolyn: Oh yes, I thought it was a fancy pudding!
See also: Muff's Online (highly recommended)

Monkey tale

I tried to engage a couple of colleagues in a metaphysical discussion last week. Actually, it was more of a metabiological thought experiment:

"Stand still," I said, "and imagine that you have suddenly sprouted a tail like a monkey's."

My colleagues looked at me sceptically.

"No, go on, I'm being serious. Imagine you've got a monkey's tail. Now here's my question: would you instinctively know how to move it about? Do you think your brain would be capable of sending a message via your nervous system to your new limb to tell it to move? Go on, try it now: try to move your imaginary tail. Can you do it?"

The sceptical looks turned to blank ones.

"Well I can!" I said. "I instinctively know how to move my imaginary tail around. In fact, I'm doing it right now!"

My colleagues told me I was weird.

I think about this sort of thing a lot.

Fieldfare etymology

Fieldfare
A fieldfare last Saturday.

I went for a walk on the moors on Saturday (photos here). It was extremely wet.

On my way down, I spotted between 40 and 50 fieldfares gathered in the gloaming on some powerlines. A couple of other walkers spotted me looking at the birds and came over to ask me what they were. I explained that they were fieldfares. They asked me what I knew about them.

As luck would have it, I had listened to a podcast about fieldfares earlier that week, so I knew quite a bit about them. So I told the walkers about how fieldfares come over from Scandinavia in the winter, how they have a distinctive call (which a few of the birds immediately obliged me by demonstrating), how they hang around with redwings, how they have a distinctive grey hood, blah, blah, blah… My new friends seemed very impressed with my vast knowledge of all things fieldfare.

"So why are they called fieldfares?" asked the woman (who I couldn't help noticing was rather cute). It was a fair enough question. Unfortunately, I hadn't a clue what the answer was. But I was on a roll, so I made one up:

"Ah!" I ahed. "It's because they are 'fare' (food) which is found in fields. Our ancestors used to eat them. Quite tasty, by all accounts. They're a type of thrush, just like blackbirds… 'Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie' and all that!"

OK, so I bullshat for Britain. But I had a new-found reputation to live up to.

Carolyn cooks 'luch'

Carolyn in an online chat yesterday evening:

I cooked luch for my parents today. First I thought I had a 16lb ham (because the man in the recipe did and I assumed that I must too), and then I tried to cook a treacle tart. Easy I thought, I started it last night just to be sure. First, the pastry was runny - so I added more flour and icing sugar, and then it was still very sticky and I mean VERY sticky this morning and so I had to put it in the freezer in cling film before rolling. Then the topping took all morning to make - what a nightmare. Luch was finally served at about 2.30! […]

I took the cooking wrapper off last night to soak the ham as per instructions on Gary Rhodes recipe so that was why I didn't know what weight it was. It never occurred to me that I wasn't using the same weight as him - although it's apparently very obvious to everyone else. So then I thought I had to cook it for about 5 hours - very worrying when I only had 2! That was when I rang my mum to delay luch for ½ hour thinking that I'd just do 2½ hours and hope nobody noticed if it wasn't cooked!

Stuff came out my nose.

Libellous

Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times): This has been my perfect week

… All the harebrained schemes for renewable energy are popular among Britain's beardies

Not with this bloody beardy they're not, Jezza! I'm cut to the quick. Don't you read Gruts or something?

(He's very sensible re. nuclear power and windmills, though-but.)