Rather strange to be 'blogging' in the morning but 'change is good for the soul' I am sure somebody once said.Our Mansfield Centre National Trust trip was, as usual, a great success. The forecast had not been good but in fact, we were lucky. Enough sunny bits to make the house and gardens at Dunham Massey a joy. Pictures of the house itself appear under the link I published on Saturday so I thought you would enjoy more a picture of this charming arbor in the garden.
Our return trip over the cat and fiddle pass was exceptional in the clear light and
lengthening shadows (please see Picture 2). We were supposed to stop in Buxton on the outward leg but this didn't happen due to the coach company issuing the driver with an incorrect itinerary. So it wasn't his fault, or ours, that the ladies were deprived of a brief trawl of Buxton shops. Picture 2 was with my trusty old Casio through the glass of the coach window. It is a great little camera even though held together with black sticky tape. 
Often the exposure decisions it makes outstrip the ones I make laboriously with the Nikon. But I wouldn't be without that either ! I held the camera as close to the glass as possible to avoid reflections and all I needed to do in Picasa was straighten it. So easy.ps. Nipping back briefly to the Harley Gallery blog and the Welbeck Farm shop I forgot to mention that I bought a pot of 'Patum Peperium' there. I thought it has passed into the mists of time. I researched it, and as you will see if you open the link, Wikipedia came up trumps again and provided a most interesting page about the product. Y hates it, far too salty, but it is described as the Gentleman's Relish so what can you expect.
While nipping back, I meant to agree with Jill about Rick Stein's 'Carbonara recipe'. It certainly seemed odd. Far too 'eggy' ! I want my Carbonara to be creamy white, not look like rich custard.
Peter by the way is fascinated by the 'cookery items' in the blog and says he wants to see my cooker. I think he is expecting a kitchen-wall-filling Aga rather than our modest Zanussi. He will now add cookery to the fairly large list of things (like my propensity to get lost) over which he can good-naturedly pull my leg !
Picture 3 is the bandstand in the Pavilion Gardens at Buxton. I tried to capture the effect of the evening sun with the Nikon but haven't really succeeded. I forgot to set the camera to under-expose a stop because left to itself with such a scene it tends to over-expose.When we returned to Mansfield we dropped Jean and Wendy off and then zoomed straight down the A60 to TJ's. Ruby and Elli has been allowed to stay up and as we drove in there were excited little faces loooking out of Tracy's front patio doors and lots of vigorous waveing. It was lovely to see them but around 8.30pm I said I would have to be going. Elli (as she does) asked why and I said it was because I didn't like driving in the dark. She always processes these things and this morning asked Y (who stayed over) if 'Grandad Graham is frightened of the dark?' Y explained that I wasn't and that it was only the driving aspect.
When I reached home I was, as predicted, beyond blogging so it was straight to the little read, little radio, phase.
Please remember dear blog-readers that if you left-click a picture you get an enlargement, and that anything in orange will be a live ink which, when left-clicked magically opens much information.
Unaccustomed as I am to closing the blog at lunchtime I am now off to eat something and start the crossword rather than finish it.
It is a great shame that your photos are wasted on me at the moment because of my wonky monitor. Foliage is varying shades of purple, which is not good.
ReplyDeleteI am a fan of ‘Patum Peperium’ and have a small pot which has been open in the fridge, and is occasionally used, since Christmas (I am not sure which one). It is so salty that it never goes off, although those who dislike it may say that it has never been ‘on’. Rich man’s Marmite, some call it. Spread very thinly on toast, alone or with scrambled egg, it is a delicious treat.
One of my short stories (possibly the first) written in the horror genre, c 1989, was about a sort of Jekyll & Hyde quack pharmacist who manufactured a similar and very popular-with-his-customers paste in the lower basement of his seaside town shop. The principle ingredient was boiled and ground-up schoolboys. It was called ‘Patum Pupillium’
Back to the last blog comments:
Yes Jill, Erskine is a man’s name, as is, more surprisingly perhaps, Lynn (Chadwick). I have granddaughters (American) called Ashley and Jordan, both of which, I believe are unisex (the names, not the granddaughters, although they both play what they insist on calling ‘soccer’).
re old films:
Someone told me the other day that they had been chatting to Albert Finney and Tom Courtney, and Albert said, “Have you seen how much weight Bungus has piled on? and his hair is totally white! I wonder if he still has any of his own teeth?”
Other matters:
The Observer ran a piece recently on street games and referred (with a picture) to ‘British Bulldog’. Correspondence shows that this game, which was usually played on school playgrounds (ginnels, twitchells, alleys, passages, snickets, and similar
places being too narrow), is also known as:
'Hi-diddle-arum' (Stevenage),
‘Hunch-Cuddy-Hunch’ (W Scotland),
‘Bok-Bok’ (S Africa),
‘Polly on the Mopstick’ (Birmingham),
‘Strong Horses, Weak Donkeys’ (Monmouthshire),
‘Mont-a-Kitty’ (Middlesborough),
‘Husky Fusky Finger or Thumb’ (Notts),
‘Trust’ (Lancs),
‘Bom-bom-borino' (Cardiff),
’Stagger Loney’ (Cardiff),
‘Weak Horse' (Bristol),
‘High-Cock-a-Lorum’ (Kent),
‘Wall-e-Acker’ (NW London),
‘Warney Echo’ (NW London),
’High Jimmy Knacker’ (E London),
'Jump the Knacker, I,2,3’ (Watford),
At Carter Lane Elementary School, Mansfield, in the late 1930s, it was known as 'Dob' and the concluding cry of victory was 'Two, four, six, eight, ten, Dob and off again, Dob'.
I never understood the rules and never played it.
At the weekend, Danny’s partner, Emma, brought us a couple of pounds of Pink Fir Apples (our favourite salad potato) from her allotment. Although they are main-crop they are better, nuttier, (we think) than any ‘new’ potato (and they keep until March). When I cultivated veg they were eventually the only potato I grew; and ultimately the only crop apart from garlic.
Peter may like to know that we had some for Sunday lunch (at about 5 0’clock) with tinned salmon, stir-fried yellow zucchini (also from Emma) and salad. Very nice indeed.
What an educational blog this is - I would never have known alternative names for British Bulldog. My two lads used to play it at Scouts occasionally - they used to come home bruised,uniforms torn, battered, dishevelled, and when I asked about how it was played. the answer always was 'you don't want to know'. So I don't know, and never saw it played.....
ReplyDeleteJust to name drop - many years ago I met Lynn Chadwick and his wife (?Frances) at the home of Ro's younger brother, at the time Tony was managing Director of Marlborough Fine Arts Gallery. We hadn't got a clue who they were.....