Virgers! How are we doing with those explosives?

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07/06/11--07:34: Article 24 (chan 2250183)



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I must admit I'm not entirely sure what all these represent...


Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/555233.html.


07/15/11--14:28: Article 23 (chan 2250183)

I've written a Vorkosiverse ficlet, with Ekaterina (not the fic I owe munditia, but I'm thinking my way into the character...)

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/555777.html.


07/30/11--10:35: Article 22 (chan 2250183)

Bags packed (well, apart from the computer) for tomorrow's trip to London, and thence on Monday to America.

Have been preparing by binging on Jonathan Raban, though he doesn't actually write about any of the relevant bits. But he is very good. (Though I can't locate my copy of Hunting Mr Heartbreak, which is a shame).

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/557332.html.


08/26/11--06:26: Article 21 (chan 2250183)

Oh dear. My ability to get things done today is suffering from a total lack of - is it motivation, or merely energy? I'm not sure, although my body-clock is still badly messed up. My own fault for not being brutal enough with alarms, I suspect - result is I can't get to sleep, or at least not until after hours of tossing and turning, or more reading in an effort to stop trying to sleep. I don't suffer as badly from insomnia as some, but I'm mildly prone to trouble sleeping anyway, and it's always miserable.

Anyway, as a result I rather quickly read Paula Byrne's Mad World, which is about Evelyn Waugh's friendship with the Lygon family and the influence it had on Brideshead. An interesting book and a rather more nuanced view of Waugh than merely as the unpleasant climber, though I have to say I still don't think I'd have found him all that likable (too prone to petulance and jealousy of his friends' time). Had, as happens surprisingly often when reading biographies, the experience of being jolted by something which I know is not quite right - the usual difficulty being that while it looks like fairly obvious to me, that may just be my weird ideas about what constitutes widespread knowledge.

(The mistake is that, when discussing ex-pat homosexuals in Venice, Byrne refers to "Baron Corvo, the noted homosexual ex-priest and writer". He was homosexual and a writer, but in fact he was never a priest*, because he was chucked out of both St Mary's Oscott and the Scots College in Rome for not having a vocation (and also neglect of his studies and probably his tendency to fall spectacularly out with people); "Baron Corvo" was not his real name; he was called Frederick Rolfe and came from Cheapside, where, Wikipedia informs me, his father made pianos. Granted, all this is not particularly relevant to the main thrust of the book, but Rolfe, also an English convert and author of a very Catholic novel (albeit one that's largely a Mary-Sue-becomes-Pope story), might bear interesting comparison with Waugh.

It's raining. Sooner or later I will have to splash out to the shops, and I fear that my cunning 'wait till it's stopped raining' plan won't work, because it shows very little sign of doing so...


* You can't be an ex-priest, anyway, but that's a side matter.

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/559357.html.


08/30/11--13:18: Recipe post: Slow roast chipotle pork; chipotle pork chile. (chan 2250183)

I have still not entirely unpacked, but I have had a successful time in the kitchen, of late, so I bring you recipes, because I am very impressed with my own pork-cooking skills (having been accustomed to encounter Standard British Catering Roast Pork, which is as tough as old boots, I am always pleasantly surprised when I'm reminded that actually, it can be beautifully tender). Slow roasting is an easy way to achieve this, of course! Anyway, this is the best pork I have ever cooked, and even beats the chilli, garlic and lemon infused pork with which I once impressed a senior member of the Church of England.


Slow roast chipotle pork shoulder (adapted from The New Cook’s Tour of Sonoma by Michelle Anna Jordan.)

Take a 1.7 kg (3 ½ lb) piece of pork shoulder (rolled is OK; if you’ve got a pot that’s big enough, cut the strings and unroll it – you’ll get more spice into it, that way. But check the pot is big enough, first. I didn’t have one, so it stayed rolled). Make a spice rub using 2 tbsp salt*, 1 tbsp chipotle chile powder**, 1 tbsp chocolate chile mix.*** Work it into the meat, making sure all the surfaces of the meat are covered (obviously there’s no point working it into the skin).

Put in a covered pot – I used a small stock pot – and roast in a pre-heated oven at 135 C/ 274 F for 3 ½ to 4 hours or until done, basting occasionally with its own juices. It produces a lot of juice – I eventually poured off a bowlful, which produced very good, gelatinous pure meat stock with a minimal amount of fat. The pork is done when it can be pulled apart with a fork and minimal effort (and when the juices run clear, obviously).

Put the stock aside – it will be very salty and spicy, but it can be used in a chile.

Pull as much pork as people want to eat apart with two forks (if you’re using rolled pork shoulder, it’s easier if you cut the strings on it first. Chop fresh coriander leaves over and serve with tortillas, slices of lime, fried peppers and onions, corn on the cob, or else whatever seems apt. If you want to eat it as tacos, then you’ll probably want some hot sauce to go with it, and whatever from the usual taco accompaniments takes your fancy (guacamole, salsa, cheese, sour cream, etc).

Or alternatively you could just slice it up and have it with potatoes and corn on the cob, or whatever vegetable you care to eat with it.

Serves four; or if there’s one or two of you, there will be left-overs sufficient to make a very good, though somewhat inauthentic chile.

* The original recipe calls for kosher salt, which as far as I know you can’t get in the UK. It’s a salt specifically designed for curing things and the grain size is rather smaller than sea salt flakes, but bigger than table salt. But I used ordinary table salt, and it worked out beautifully.

** You can get both chipotle chiles and chipotle chile powder in the UK, apparently, if you hunt, though you’ll probably have to get it online – for instance, Amazon sell the whole chiles. It seems to be easier to get whole chiles, and you could buy these and grind them into powder. It’s a pig of a job, but it’s probably nicer. Alternatively, you could use a mixture of smoked paprika and cayenne pepper.

*** This is a commercial blend which can be approximated by mixing 2/3 cocoa to 1/3 chipotle chile and adding a dash of sugar.



Scotia-Mexican chipotle pork chile

(I made this one up myself, after consulting various internet recipes for ideas. Maybe one day I’ll try making chile with coffee…)

Finely chop half an onion and four cloves of garlic. Sweat the onion, then add the garlic.

Add one red chilli, finely chopped.

Chop the pork into bitesized pieces, add to pan, stir. Add one yellow pepper, chopped, and a tin of beans (black-eyed for choice; cannellini and borlotti are good substitutes. Kidney beans aren’t to my mind, the skin has a bitter aftertaste).

Add your stock and 400g of chopped tinned/ tetra-bricked tomatoes, and then two good shakes of oregano (or to taste), 1 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp paprika. Check for heat and salt and add more cayenne pepper or chipotle if necessary (if the stock is from the chipotle-rubbed roast pork, then it will already be fairly hot. I added about 1 tsp of chipotle powder and felt that the resulting chile was fairly mild, although I should note that my red chilli was a fairly wimpy British-grown thing from Sainsbury. Use your own judgement.)

Add a slug of a smoky whisky (something like Laphroig, although a cheaper blend would do, as long as it has a high percentage of Islay in it!)

Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer until done (i.e. the beans are cooked and the meat is even more tender. It should be done in about half an hour, but it will get better if you let it go on cooking. If you like, you can thicken the sauce with cornflour, but it will thicken a little as it cooks. Personally, I like it unthickened.

Serve over rice or with tortilla chips and chop over some fresh coriander; add grated cheese (a nice sharp one is ideal) or sour cream to taste.

I wanted to serve it with tortilla chips, but – and this shows you how rubbish it is – my local Sainsburys didn’t have them. Still, rice is better for you….

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/559999.html.


09/05/11--05:32: Article 19 (chan 2250183)

While I'd quite like to believe this (who doesn't love a story about kids fighting for the right to read what they want?) I find it hard to believe that a Roman Catholic school* would ban some of these. I mean, admittedly you might censor Paradise Lost, because its Christology is certainly very dubious, but getting upset about works on human evolution is more of a fundamentalist Protestant thing, and I can't imagine why any school that didn't have a Stalinist axe to grind would want to ban Animal Farm.

But.... Dante? I'm not buying it without considerably more substantiation.



* The OP doesn't specify what kind of 'strict private school' they attend, but states that "most of the books contained information that opposed Catholicism".

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/561393.html.


09/07/11--15:58: One for the DS9 fans (chan 2250183)

I was poking around youtube (as you do), and found this trailer introducing Deep Space 9 to an unsuspecting world. It's interesting to see, in retrospect, how they sell it (though I do wonder why they picked chunks of the TOS-crew film sound tracks to accompany it). The narration is deeply cheesy (though occasionally subverted, as when we cut from a promise of "exotic pleasures" and a massage or something in a holosuite, to Kira telling Quark "If you don't take your hand off my hip you'll never raise it again." I'd forgotten Quark was quite that sleazy early on), but the selection of clips does give a decent feel for the first season, I think. Though of course it dwells rather on the links with TNG.

Four minutes long. It's rather a shame we don't get that much detail in trailers for new series now - though admittedly they'd probably get very dull if you didn't like the look of things!



So: good intro to DS9, or not?

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/562307.html.


09/14/11--04:17: Article 17 (chan 2250183)

Article about Downton Abbey, from the Grauniad. I invariably find Tanya Gold slightly irritating* (and how she found the miscarriage scene funny beats me, though I suspect it's sloppy writing/ editing - there's another paragraph towards the end that doesn't seem to make sense), but there's some interesting snippets with Julian Fellowes, Hugh Bonneville, and others from the cast, as well as the Caernarvons, and Alastair Bruce, the historical adviser, who is "still getting over Braveheart.


* I find her irritating here despite the fact that I'd agree that Downton is at times a very sanitised portrait of the 'big house.'

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/562571.html.


10/03/11--04:41: Article 16 (chan 2250183)

I watched Made in Dagenham (2011), dir. Nigel Cole, last night. Cole also directed Calendar Girls, and it's another of those lightly-fictionalised Heart-Warming British True Stories, though it's a much more political story than Calendar Girls, about the Ford Machinist's Strike in 1968, which began as a dispute about the down-grading of the women sewing machinists, and broadened out into a wider campaign for equal pay for equal work and led to the Equal Pay Act (although, as the film doesn't actually point out, while the women got a pay rise so that they were being paid the equivalent of the men at their grade, the re-grading issue wasn't resolved). Its sympathies are feminist and solidly left-wing, although without overly sanctifying the union: on the one hand, the union leaders are largely resistant to the women's cause, because they think that men earn the bread-winner's wage and women are working for pin-money (as the narrative points out, this wasn't always the case), and at least one of them is a venal character who's mostly in it for the expenses. On the other hand, the union does give the women a voice, and the film makes some sharp observations about the undervaluing of women's work and women's intelligence, particularly in the row between the heroine, Rita (Sally Hawins, who is very good), and her husband(Daniel Mays), a nice man who occasionally falls into Nice Guy Syndrome, but isn't allowed to get away with it (and doesn't want to, when he's made to stop and think).

The main weakness of the film is not, I think, as one of the Grauniad's reviews suggested, that it's clichéd, though there is a little too much play with Sixties icons (there's a minor sub-plot involving a Biba dress, but on the whole the period detail seemed quite good - though I wasn't there, so I suppose I can't judge). It's the uneven tone - the narrative is split (roughly two-thirds one-thirds) between the progress of the strike and the experiences of the women and those associated with the Ford Plant and the union (or management) and Barbara Castle being Barbara Castle and Harold Wilson being a bit wet, only coming together at the end. The trouble is that the politicians are largely played broadly, and unconvincingly - Wilson mostly comes across as a bumbling idiot, and Miranda Richardson overplays Castle horribly, except for a few minutes where the character comes together. (She was nominated for a BAFTA. I have no idea why). In fact, the Westminster sub-plot seems to have wandered in from a different film, possibly a spin-off of Yes, Minister (except Sir Humphrey would have eaten the useless civil servants we see being repeatedly chivvied about by Castle for breakfast). The Dagenham strand, on the other hand, is mostly naturalistic, though with a good deal of humour, and with some genuinely affecting moments. Possibly the director was trying to make some kind of point about the "real world" of the working class and Westminster's remoteness from it, with Castle's intervention in the strike (in a dress from C and A we've earlier seen Rita in) breaching the gap and resolving the conflict, but if so, it doesn't quite come off, because the "Westminster" is so hard to believe in. Richard Schiff has a rather unexpected turn as a Ford executive-come-hard-man; he doesn't look anything like Toby Ziegler, but the voice is rather distractingly recognisable,* and I had trouble fighting off the feeling that he should have been on the other side.

Despite the weakness of the Westminster stuff, though, it's well worth seeing, because the Dagenham bits are excellent. It is worth noting, though, that the film's billing as a heart-warming and life-affirming comedy, while not untrue, is a bit misleading, because there are some dark moments. In particular, there's (spoilers: highlight to read)a sub-plot involving severe, untreated PTSD, and suicide (we briefly see the feet of the character who's hanged himself). And it's nice to see a film about the working class and left-wing politics that isn't either humourless, or poking fun at the proles, or, conversely, a tragedy of the decline and fall of British industry (I love Brassed Off, but it isn't exactly cheerful).

* Still, at least they got a real American.

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/565376.html.


10/04/11--16:38: Article 15 (chan 2250183)

Happy birthday, oursin! May your prickles never grow less!

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/566539.html.


10/05/11--12:06: Fic rec: Jonathan Strange/ Aubreyad cross-over. (chan 2250183)

Via comments on toft's journal, I found The Blest Surprize, by afrai. A very haunting, touching story, set during Arabella's imprisonment in Faery, with a clever twist that I failed to see coming (though there was a strong indication I missed...).

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/567236.html.


10/07/11--01:52: Article 13 (chan 2250183)

Happy birthday, liadnan!

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/567957.html.


10/10/11--01:24: Straight out of Compton (CC) (chan 2250183)

Cricket's always had its seamy side, but it's still rather unexpected (and heartening) to find a team thriving in one of the most notorious parts of LA, even if, sadly a proposed tour of the UK couldn't take place because of lack of funds.

American cricket is surely ripe for revival (yes, revival; after all, as the article mentions, the world's first international cricket match was between the US and Canada).

Also (sort of) cricket-related: the beginning of the end for R4 Longwave, as they can't get the valves any more. A sad moment indeed, and not merely because I shall miss being able to get TMS on my radio, rather than online; it will also be a blow to people who could pick up R4 in various parts of Europe.

And I do hope that they tell the submariners why Today's gone off the air...

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/568627.html.


10/19/11--09:30: Oh, come on. (chan 2250183)

If you recommend as one of the best translations into English the work of a translator who not only willfully disregards the sentence structure of the source text (in ways going beyond what the differences between English and German requires), makes positively embarrassing howlers apparently based on unintelligent guesswork (I know "Melone" sounds a lot like "melon", but even if you don't have access to a dictionary to find out it's a bowler, context should at least have given away that it was a hat and not a piece of fruit), misses bits out, makes things up, and writes, at times, remarkably odd sounding English, then I question your judgement quite severely.

I'll admit that Thomas Mann isn't the easiest read on the planet. But he's not unreadable, which is what Lowe-Porter makes him sound.

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/571126.html.


10/20/11--04:07: Zombie Charles Kingsley, is that you? (chan 2250183)

I have rather wasted this morning by getting distracted by the Grauniad website, and worse still, the comments section (I ought to know better than to read below the line). It's too easy to point and mock some of the things that people say in CiF threads (there's an obvious reason, dear reader, why someone picked McCartney rather than Lennon in a discussion of the greatest living songwriters...), but it's still surprising to see how old meme continues to circulate.

Such as the guy who commented on the (shocking and dreadful) story about stolen babies in Spain, in which the Spanish government and apparently also the church authorities played a very discreditable role, by saying, more or less "No wonder Cardinal Newman thought it was OK to lie!"

That particular line's a real blast from the 1860s...

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/571236.html.


10/23/11--04:35: Article 9 (chan 2250183)

I can't believe I haven't linked to these utterly brilliant posters for Christ Church Broadway, New Haven.

I think my favourite is "Bread and Wine, Body and Blood - Change you can believe in", but I like "Tonight we're going to worship like it's 1099" - though really, in that cotta, it's more 1899, or possibly 1929... But being serious, they do a fantastic job of communicating what the parish is committed to - worshiping God, unashamedly in the Catholic tradition, and doing things well and with care and aesthetic sense, while not taking itself too seriously.

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/572391.html.


10/26/11--16:12: Article 8 (chan 2250183)

What's up with LJ at the moment?

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/573424.html.


10/27/11--03:40: Article 7 (chan 2250183)

After the prolonged spectacle of the Dean and Chapter of St Pauls making asses of themselves over the Occupy London protests, I'm heartened by Giles Fraser's integrity (though I'm appalled that it's become necessary for him to do it, and I cannot think what the Chapter have been thinking, other than that they're running round like headless chickens in an unnecessary panic).

Despite the icon, I might note that Cramner, no bleeding heart liberal to say the least, broadly agrees with me.

Of course, I always wondered how long Giles Fraser could stick it at St Pauls...

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/573689.html.


10/27/11--05:17: Article 6 (chan 2250183)

Further to LJ's latest fail: I'm seriously considering deleting the LJ - though I would like to save the comments, and I've never been able to get LJ-book to work, alas - because I don't feel my data is safe. I know some of you don't like DW or feel that DW users are overly evangelistic about it, but while it's not perfect, it is a much more reliable service. I would be sad if I lost friends that way, though.

I have some DW access codes if you would like them.

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/573913.html.


10/28/11--11:59: Nicked from wemyss and el_staplador (chan 2250183)

Despite my dismal lack of productivity of late, a meme:

If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach. —Alfred Hitchcock

When I write a story, what do readers immediately look for?


Contrariwise - Tweedledum/dee

When I write a story, what would readers be extremely surprised to find?

Crossposted from http://tree-and-leaf.dreamwidth.org/574095.html.