After admiring the sketch from Reenin (Emily) in deviantart I’ve put this graphic together for the Bookmark People – still love her illustrations though.
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Sausage Plait – ‘cos u can!
- pack of sausages, we had cumberland but choose your faves – or two packs for a big one with some leftover for cold pack-up!!
- large egg
- mushrooms
- red onion
- cheese
- puff pastry
- Heat oven to 200 – Grease a baking tray.
- Take skins off sausages.
- Slice mushrooms and slice red onion. Grate some cheese,
- Flour work surface and roll out the pastry into a rough square shape. Put pastry baking tray
- Lay the combined sausage meat down the middle of the pastry, leave gap at the ends.
- On top of meat, lay sliced mushrooms, then sliced onion, then cheese – and whatever you fancy – salt and pepper.
- Cut diagonal strips on the sides of the pastry. Brush the pastry with some egg wash.
- Tuck the top and bottom ends over the filling. Fold the pastry strips over the filling – alternate sides.
- Brush the top all over with the rest of the egg.
- Bake for 35-40 mins or until golden.
- Serve hot or cold with baked beans or whatever.
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Commute…
A 2021 update on the below:
Driving ~7.5 miles @ 7.5mpl, £1.45p/litre, costs £1.45 each way, that’s £ 14.50/week.
A 2018 update on the below:
Driving ~8 miles @ 7.5mpl, £1.26p/litre, costs £1.35 each way, that’s £13.50/week.
A 2017 update to the below:
Now ~9.6miles, 7.5mpl, £1.18p/litre
= £1.51 each way = £15.10/week
A 2015 fuel costs update to the below:
7.7 miles, 7.7mpl, £1.08p/litre
= £1.08 each way = £10.80/week
2013…
I’ve said it before and OK, it’s not about ‘time’, or ‘cost’, but just for the record:
7.5 mile commute into Leicester
On Monday (sometime in 2013) my bike was in for an annual service – and when you commute by bike, everyday, through all seasons, take my word for it, it’ll need a good service!
So Monday I took the bus: Novel
It took a bus 55mins! (+10min walk), Tickets £2.60 x 2, week ticket £25
(return is £6 duh!), £100/mth
+patience
On Tuesday I thought I’d try the car: humm, sedentary…
Car journey took 29mins, fuel £1.32 x 2, £13.20/week,
£52.80*/mth +legal* £37/mth, total £90/mth
+ Car maintenance costs**
Back on the refurbed bike on Wednesday! Ah! You know you’re alive – energy!
Bike, 34mins, fuel banana 20p. £1/week, £4/month
+Bike maintenance costs**
So Car 29mins, £14/week +costs,
then Bike 34mins £1/week +costs.
then Bus 55mins £25/week +patience.
*7.5 miles, 35 mpg, £1.35/litre = £1.32 fuel (£52.80/4weeks)
Annual legal costs: tax £100, insurance £300, mot £50 = £450
**Car and Bike maintenance costs, no comparison at present but could be similar on average.
2015 UPDATE : 7.7 miles, 7.7 mpl, £1.08p/litre = £1.08 each way = £10.80/week
2017 update : Now ~9.6miles, 7.5mpl, £1.18p/l = £1.51 each way = £15.10/week
2018 update : ~8 miles @ 7.5mpl, £1.26p/litre, costs £1.35 each way = £13.50/week.
2021 update ~7.5 miles @ 7.5mpl, £1.45p/litre, costs £1.45 each way = £ 14.50/week.
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Greenbelt 2013
What a fabulously nutritious and soothingly vibrant time we had. Much to imbibe, chew on, reflect on and be thankful for!
Thanks! to the Syston & Birstall Meth crowd, the Cornish contingent, and the Mansfield troop, for their company!
Fresh from the camera – here’s a few images that might capture a certain aspect of the weekend.
The sun’s energy was always present, all be it sometimes accompanied by a lurking grey doubt…
The weekend was, and still is, essentially, about ‘people‘…
…as well as being about you and me. Birstall & Syston Greenbelters
Energy was a key element – fuelled by music, art, a 40th anniversary (and crepes etc)
Key points – meeting relies, and friends, Duke Special, Grace Petrie, Courtney Pine, Fat & Frantic, Austin Francis Connection, Fischy Music, Blunderbus Theatre, London Com. Gospel Choir, The Temperance Movement, Thea Gilmore, Sunday Morning, Steve Chalk, Barbara Brown Taylor, to name but a few….
“Sunday morning reflections”
I first went to GB in 1988 like a long-lost friend it’s honest and holds no grudges. Long may ‘it’ last!
Faces from #GB40
I’ve always had cause to reconsider my experience of growing up in Cornwall – you can take the boy out of the county but not the county out of the boy etc… yadda yadda.
I have always failed to summarise this essential attitude that seems to pervade much of the Cornish being – previously, the best I could come up with is a curious ‘contentedness’ with their meagre lot. A brash humility, not necessarily humble contentment, but a brackish contentedness… a rough softness… a sugary saffron bun on a salty sea wall.
The steam engine and 3000 foot shafts were Cornish…
At sea, the most dangerous civilian job in the UK was Cornish…
The lichen and moss (soft silky) that coats many a granite outcrop is “Cornish”…
Causley’s Tim Winters was/is essentially Cornish…
Cornwall is the the second poorest place in the UK. It’s a place of contrasts: with expensive yachts and luxury second homes for Tarquin and Jessica’s summer sojourn, a place of union-jack shorts, Carlsberg nites, plastic buckets and chicken nuggets for Vince and Pat. It’s a place of community eating and religious feasting. It’s a place of craft and art as well as back-of-a-lorry markets. It was a place of place of warm chapels and cold pews. It was my home. It has a deep rich if damp past and an unknown future. Fantastic weather and a harsh climate.
Moving on from ‘contentedness’, I have recently reconsidered the notion of ‘reverence’.
In her book “An Altar in the World”, Barbara Brown Taylor, quotes Paul Woofruff “To forget that you are only human… to think you can act like a god – this is the opposite of reverence” Reverence – a virtue that keeps people from trying to act like gods. Barbara says “While most of us live in a culture that reveres money, reveres power, reveres education and religion, Woodruff argues that true reverence cannot be for anything that human beings can make or manage by ourselves. By definition, he says, reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self – something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding.”
My recollection of the Cornish world-scape recalls a sustaining reverence. The land sea and sky are so much bigger, the engineering and raw-material trades are harsh, the summer sun burns harder and brighter than man’s endeavour.
The Cornish love of music is another essential quality that I have always lived with.
Moving ‘up to England’ and losing touch with a ‘contented reverence’, I similarly found that a love of real music can be lost in the manufactured world that we find ourselves consumed by.
Bjork and David Attenborough recently discussed that essentially “singing is more fundamental to us than speaking”, and notions of the sublime, symmetry, transcendence, simplicity.
Musical expression is essential to human life? Live music, sound, reverberates, resounds, emotion… Song and rhythm agitate energy that can lift and stir…
Can I posit that feeling is more fundamental than thinking?…
The combination of emotional expression and an essential reverence, now there’s a thought.
Bad Weather and Glorious Views (just some foughts)
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AJ & PT demonstrate…
AJ and PT demonstrate – as featured by the Bookmark People
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Sleeep… zzzzzz….
Just for the record – however not convinced it tells us anything really…
After watching the BBC’s Horizon ‘Monitor Me‘ programme t’other night, we thought we’d try the Sleep as Android sleep monitoring app.
It simply tracks your movement overnight and creates a graph of high-movement/light-sleep and low-movement/deep-sleep and then reasons sleep ‘cycles’ from this.
A good idea, and if you are having trouble sleeping it might be more interesting to try it, but at the mo. I don’t have trouble sleeping (thanks to the Cit.) The results do sort of match how I ‘felt’ over these sleeps but not sure it tells me much.
All six nights I seemed to stir at 2am and 3am the latter part of the 6-7 hours was more restless than the first few hours.
(Incidentally, I nearly always have a coffee at 9pm – does seem to create problems, it probably would if I stopped the habit)
Zzzzzzzzz..
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Do it every day – read!
Four of my images were recently selected to feature on promotional Library Bookmarks that will be distributed by North Lanarkshire Public Libraries.
A suite of four bookmarks to collect, that promote local Lanarkshire authors.
The four images were selected from a shortlist of 8 of my photos are here:
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Cycle way provision ? Leicester
There’s a variety of provision between East Goscote and Leicester City:
The good:
The bad:
and other stuff.
Compare the above with typical Dutch provision, thanks Dave Warnock:
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Multi-faceted…
I recently created a trio of visuals to accompany three poems reflected on at the recent Methodist Conference 2013.
These were also re-produced on handy bookmarks for future reference and reflection.
After the success of these, I was asked by Jo Kay to consider some of her poems and as a result I’ve produced the visual below, tom accompany Jo’s poem Multi-faceted God.
This is Jo’s poem:
MULTI-FACETED GOD
Multi-faceted God, whose every myriad of surfaces
Reflect every tone and hue of colour
In the wonder of creation.
All the colours, shades and varieties
of the promised and longed for rainbow.
Whose face recognises mine in all this riot of colour.
Multi-lingual God, whose multiplicity of ears
Recognise every tone and timbre of tongue
Of all the wonderful nations.
All the rhythms, cadences and songs
Of the people of this Earth.
Whose ear hears my voice through the cacophony of sound.
Multi-purpose God, whose existence for me is my purpose;
Reflects for me the longings and desires
Of all created people.
All the needs, hopes and yearnings
Of believers young and old
Who brings purpose to my life in all its richness and diversity.
Multi-sensory God, whose every sense is finely tuned
Mirroring those we have in the world.
A sense of smell and sense of wonder
All the taste and sight and awe
That we share with the Holy Mystery
The God who senses every person, knows their minds, hearts and voices.
Multi-focused God, whose every facet is focused on me and you
Amazing God who looks on everyone
Looks with every atom of being and existence
On every person in creation
Concentrates on only me and only you and you
And you and you and you
This Holy Mystery who encompasses all and holds us for all time.
©Jo Kay Douai Abbey April 2013
Jules P Richards 