Up at the Crack of Sparrow's....

Long term readers will know that in working life, I worked in the rather rough-tough world of cold store, warehouse distribution where the culture and language were rather more 'fruity' than you'd use in polite company. We didn't really do 'swearing' in our house - I think the baddest word I ever heard my Father say was 'ruddy' and that was very rare. You pretty much had to swap modes on the drive to/from or you'd have been a bit shocked every day. Now in these rural parts in the soft spoken 'wesht', I am back surrounded by clean language once more but I do remember some of the choice warehouse expressions with affection and amusement. I used to love one in particular for describing getting up early for a shift which was "I was up at the crack of sparrow's fart"; the idea that sparrows wake up early anyway and the first thing they do is break wind, and even at the start of that there is the first cracking open of their rear.

I only gave you all that because this morning was one such morning - with Liz booked on an 0800 flight (Ryan Air to Stansted this time) so us needing to leave here at 0600 and alarms set to 0520; not quite as early as my work day 0415s but bad enough. There were no sparrows about, certainly none with any flatulence issues, the rooster had not even crowed yet and the dogs were mighty confused as to why they were being walked around in the pitch dark. Liz is off to Darkest Kent again. This mission had been planned to share Diamond's 58th Birthday with her and John and to enjoy her moved into the new house and 'holding court' from her posh hospital-supplied all singing, all dancing, anti bed-sores mattress bed. Sadly, as you probably know, Diamond lost the battle with cancer on Tuesday 21st but we had the flight booked, so Liz has gone over anyway to spend some time with John, Mazy and the Kent contingent who worked so hard to support Diamond in the last days.

I don't know if you are involved at all in internet chat groups, Facebook or Twitter, but I know Diamond and a lot of her friends used to 'hang out' on both FB and on the chat forum which was originally the Guardian Newspaper's group "Guardian Unlimited (GU) Talk". That group has since been officially closed by the paper but was reborn privately as "Not the Talk" which has since morphed into "Just the Talk" with a lot of the original gang still hanging on. I love that this group of friends have come together in a private discussion group on FB and had what has been a lovely, happy, story-telling, memory sharing, pictures-of-Diamond posting, memorial inventing, on-line wake. Friends from all round the world (Australia, Bogata etc) have joined and rejoined in their various time zones to keep this chat going for over 60 hours and 700 posts now. Diamond, who loved all this stuff, would have been delighted and thrilled. It is internet Social Media at its best. I know some people don't 'do' social media, Facebook and so on but I think it has its moments.

A fair old haul then!

Back home I have been left to deal with the pork collection from our pig butcher and we have got quite a haul. We had estimated that the pigs, alive, had reached 91 kg each so that, with the 'industry standard' conversion figure of "around" 72% yield, we should be expecting 64 kg of joints, belly pork, chops and sausage meat. Rather laughably (or alarmingly, perhaps) the commercial boys will regularly inject water and preservatives up to around 11%, returning their yield to almost 100% and our pig training guy told us that he has known of cases where carcass weight actually exceeded 'live' weight!

More Pork.

None of that nonsense for us, we don't want our pork chops to shrink in the grill or our bacon to leave grey wet sludge in the frying pan! Anyway, in the event we got an impressive 129 kg of meat from the two girls (plus the liver, heart and heads), 64.8 kg each and the Butcher and I had to carry 7 heavy boxes of meat out to the car. It quickly became obvious that I might struggle to fit all this in the space we have available in the 2 tall freezers and 2 fridge/freezers.

Will it fit in the freezers? Pirate the cat
is sniffing around. 

I just about made it, trying to sort it into categories all the while, weighing sample packs and then scoring how many such packs were going away. Liz had asked the butcher to cut the big shoulders into more manageable sized joints, so we got back from our 2 pigs, 22 shoulder joints at about 1.7 kg each, 14 leg joints at 1.79 kg and so on. We got 48 (!) packs of (3) chops at about 0.8 kg, 11 slabs of belly and 3 big bags of sausage meat. I just about got it all into the freezers, slotting the final chop packs away in all sorts of nooks and crannies and evicting Liz's bag of chicken stock-bones to a fridge along with the heads.

There is nowhere left for the lamb for the moment, so I have held off sending them on their final journey. We need to move some of this largesse on to friends and family, eat some, salt down some of the bellies for bacon and turn the heads into brawn to make some space. It would be silly to buy a 5th freezer, now, wouldn't it. Nobody needs 5 freezers, surely. Next year will will have to un-synchronise the 'harvests' of pigs and lambs.

Bereft

You have to feel sorry for Mum this weekend. Her main 'hobby' if you like is chatting to chums on the Guardian readers' chat forum "Guardian Unlimited" (GU). Over ten years or so she has got well into this, made some very firm friends many of which she has met in real life too.

They discuss serious stuff like politics as well as more superficial subjects like cooking, make up etc, and often also take off in flights of fancy imagining they are in a private club where they all can adopt bizarre personae and construct histories or comment on the decor and catering. They have been going so long now that some of them have got even friendlier and got married, had children or sometimes fallen ill and helped each other through bad times.

Big shock then on Saturday morning when Diamond (who's another ardent GU-er) phones Mum to say that the Guardian newspaper has decided to close the service, no longer support it, take down the site with no warning. They are distraught.... bereft! They Twitter and Facebook in protest but it is to no avail. They are cut adrift. What will they all do - how will the contact each other to decide what they are doing?

Luckily enough of them have each other's real email names and addresses (on GU they use secret 'handles' like CB radio names in the 80's) that they find another site which will have them (all be it the same, no-longer-supported software) and the word spreads. They battle their various ways in. It's like a survivors camp after a traumatic natural disaster, an earthquake or a flood, they all hug each other and chatter excitedly as they compare notes on how the disaster was for them, how they found out, how they battled through and found everyone again, and then how they are worried that person x or y has not appeared yet.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we head for Hastings again to look up Pud Lady. We must go via Canterbury, so we decide to go a bit different with the food and drink - instead of French fizz, Dad decides to try a sparkling wine in champagne style but made in Tenterden in Kent. Climate change is warming up England's SE and it is now getting more sensible to 'do' champagne in Kent and Sussex than in the original area of northern France around Riems and Epernay, but because the real thing has protected geographical status, they cannot call it 'champagne'.

As well as the fizz, Mum and Dad buy some of the meal deals now in M+S (we're doing 'posh' coz it's the Pud Lady and she's worth it!), a fish casserole but also a creamy, coconutty mild fish curry. This latter is a bit tongue in cheek. Pud Lady is 82 and had been married to Stamp Man for going on 55 years for all of which Stamp Man liked his good old English meat and 2 veg. Spaghetti Bolognese was about as 'foreign' as he'd go and Pud Lady always gave a slight impression that she'd love to go a bit more adventurous was she not reined in by Stamp Man. She has never, to Dad's knowledge, tried curry, chilli, anything too garlicky, bizarre cheeses (always Cheddar), sushi, Chinese or anything else 'beyond the pale'.

So Dad introduces the mild curry as only a small taster portion so that Pud Lady can at least try it and decide whether it's anywhere she wants to go exploring. "Curry?" says Pud Lady, raising her eyebrows in alarm but, fair play to her, she tries it, commenting on the hot after-flavour (only hot compared to what she is used to!) but eating it (and the real menu of fish casserole) and leaving her plate clean. Dessert is an apricot version of 'Tarte Tatin'. She looks quite pleased with herself as if she feels she has passed an important test, or a milestone. More importantly she finds some oxtail bones in the fridge from her meal yesterday with Dad's brother "T-fer" which she gives to us.

And of course, this is Hastings, where Pud Lady's wild and wooded garden gives access through badger holes under the fence to all the other gardens in the 'Crescent' (of roads) and Dad cocks a deaf 'un as I slide under and go off exploring the neighbouring territory.

Hope you're all having a great weekend

Deefs