Friday, March 28, 2008

Off on another trip

There may be some fantastic photos when I get back from this one.

Mornington Cresent, I think. Here's the map, clicky to geopen.

Cutty Sark.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

In which I purchase a shredder

I suppose the time has come for me to tell you that my best-laid plans as announced last year have come to fruition, and I leave for somewhere where I will have to speak Spanish on or around Sept 1st this year.

As a result I am slowly trying to prepare my house for rental. This involves turning out a good 10 years' worth of accumulated archived bank documents, salary slips, and other assorted private information. One hears such dreadful stories about identity cloning that I haven't been throwing these away, but building them up in a corner awaiting the day I got access to a shredder.

Today I bought a shredder.

I had no idea it would be such fun to see assorted documents being munched into confetti. It reminded me forcibly of a game I used to play with Pickle, us either side of a door and me wiggling a bit of paper under it in a tantalising fashion. I had a delightful 15 minutes of watching my 1995 bank statements disappear in a very similar manner until the shredder seized up from overheating. It's cooling down now. I'd call it a cheap piece of tosh, but it wasn't cheap.

Of course, what I needed was one of these:

Monday, March 10, 2008

In which I am HORRIFIED by Delia Smith

I cannot believe my ears and eyes this evening watching Delia Smith's appalling new show. I NEVER thought I would see this day, and I am absolutely aghast.

She has completely sold out to convenience food. Tinned mince. Frozen mashed potato. "Why don't you have some of these spicy potato wedges in your freezer?".

Well I'll tell you Delia. Because they are covered in preservatives, colourings and other E-numbers, and I don't control the salt and fat contents. How could you. How COULD YOU! Besides which, her tinned mince (catfood?) shepherds' pie just looked revolting. As did the potato wedge dip. Urgh. Urgh Urgh Urgh.

I'm disgusted. I'd like to say I'll not watch her show, but it's like driving past a culinary car accident. You can't tear your eyes away from it. I hope she's getting paid a hell of a lot for it by the convenience food lobbyists, because it's going to ruin her reputation.

Delia. Unfortunately, she's not having a laugh.