<< october >>
Friday, 31 2003
Good morning goblins! Hope you all have a good day wailing and wringing your hands - it's your day after all! Here's a little film for you... (flash needed)
Wednesday, 29 2003
I have tinkered about, winsomely, and have wedged a commenting feature onto each post, so all you lovely folks can add rants and delirious praise to each of my humble pronouncements. I used to have such a thing, but my convoluted system of publishing this site (more Wright Brothers than Stealth bomber) made it a right bloody hassle to continue. But....I've seen the error of my ways thanks to Kim at Starjewel. I'd better see some pretty hefty comments folks - otherwise I shall be forced to unveil something rather gruesome....
Speaking of gruesome, here is a pic of my favourite neepy lantern: it's a witch carved out of the turnip flesh with an umberella cover as a skirt and a broomstick as a handle. I loved it, despite the rather haughty pootser face I'm pulling!
more about neepy lanterns next week...they're an integral part of a good Bloody Pudding's Guy Fawks Night....
Tuesday, 28 2003
We carved our neepy lanterns tonight...
Stan's, the bottom creation, is rather rubbish, whereas mine is exemplary. Carving the neeps prepares us for the excitement of going around at Halloween - Stan can be Lurch and I'll be Miss Piggy.
Here's how we did it in Stromness ...Running about with a 4-litre tub of treacle-based goo is difficult when you’re trying to keep your pointy back hat and bag of sweeties and pennies safe. Slick some sticky batter on lamp posts, smear margarine under car door handles, sprinkle flour over cats: Halloween in my home town is fun indeed. This is militant trick-or-treatery – we’ll knock on your door, get the goodies then besmirch your weekend DIY anyways with our mixtures and packets of goo. It’s called devilment and in Stromness at least it’s three-pronged. We have our costumes and songs (an import from America), our sinister devilment, and our neepy lanterns – turnips carved into heads then impaled on sticks.
I’ve been looking into devilment and have come up with a very interesting origin from which it seems to have been derived. In the olden days…us Orkney folk were a supersitious bunch. Still to this day, we don’t take to compliments – they embarrass us. Seems though, in years gone by, compliments scared us were they not accompanied by a qualifier like ‘God save you’. Had you said to me, mercy Christine, that’s a bonny wart ye’ve got on yer chin and not blessed me, you would have spoken to me with an ill tongue and I would’ve been considered forespoken. To rectify this, I have to be essentially ‘de-hexed’ by drinking & being sprinkled with a magic potion – called forespoken water.
This was made by taking a quantity of water and dropping into it three stones gathered from the shore. These had to be of different colours – the most powerful being black then white then red, blue and green. Over this stony solution was recited:
'In the name of him that can cure or kill,
The water shall cure all earthly ill,
Shall cure the blood and flesh and bone,
For ilka ane there is a stone;
May she fleg all trouble, sickness, pain,
Cure without & cure within,
Cure the heart, and horn and skin.'
Then I would be cured!
This superstition though was extended on Allhallows when the forespoken water was taken and daubed in signs of the cross on buildings, kye, boats etc., to ensure success and properity. To me it seems that when we kids ran around with out tubs of sticky mess, clarting doors and windows, we were merely carrying on this ancient tradition. I was never meant to do such things, but thanks to the bad influence of some of my friends, I deviated form the righteous path and ran about being as evil as the best kids were that night – blessing all the folks of lovely Stromness town.
Sunday, 26 2003
I'm listening to Norma Waterson's 1996 album, where the folk-feminist song Ain't No Sweet Man is causing my to sway seductively, and Stan to role his eyes theatrically.
So sisters in beaded pill-box hats, sing along with me....
Shaking like a leaf on a tree
That's coming loose from its stem
Shaking like a leaf on a tree
Because I'm coming loose form my man
I'm like a weeping willow weeping on my pillow
It's been for years there ain't no sweet man
That's worth the salt of my tears
Down and down he dragged me
Like a pain he nagged me
For years and years there ain't no sweet man
That's worth the salt of my tears
Although I may be low still I know I must tell him goodbye
Rather than have that man see me lay down and die
So brokenhearted sisters, aggravating misters lend me your ears
There ain't no sweet man that's worth the salt of my tears.
As the enzymes of my body go about their business digesting the rather tasty Creamy Pepper Chicken Kiev I just ate, my mind is turning towards just how they're made: more specifially...of what they're made. They are 46% chicken, contain pork gelatine and the rather unspecific 'flavouring'. This chicken on inspection seems to make up 85% of the dish - an ovoid of meat filled with a peppery creamy sauce & covered in breadcrumbs. However, I suspect the 'chicken' part is boosted with (un)savory stocking fillers - gums and stabilisers (- images of supportive wheels there..) Mechanically Recovered Meat is categorised as
residual material, off bones, obtained by machines ... in such a manner that the cellular structure of the material is broken down sufficiently for it to flow in puree form from the bone.
In the case of MRM chicken, it is used to provide the main 'meaty' base for products purporting be made of meat. A certain make of hotdog, imported from Holland and labeled as 'hotdogs in brine' contain mechanically recovered chicken and no other meat. Under the new regulations they will have a zero meat content (...). The chicken chunks we scoff in our pre-packed sandwiches is generally made of this: it's birled about with the stocking filler stuff & shaped into the form of 'chicken bits' - the same shape we cut our hen tits into when making stir frys for example. The more I think about it...the more I shiver, especially we I realise MRM is not just pureed bits of meat obstinately sticking to the bones of an animal - it is allowed by law to contain skin, rind, gristle and sinew in amounts naturally associated with the flesh', as well as the more commonly consumed organs such as heart, kidney, liver and also head meat as per the The Meat Products and Spreadable Fish Products Regulations of 1984. If I could, I'd raise me a patch of chickens, pigs and cows - but quite simply this type of meat is cheap and easy to prepare: a chicken kiev can be sizzled into the oven from frozen and is ready & delish in half an hour. Creepy convenience food...
Friday, 24 2003
Apparently the aurora boralis will be spectacular over scotland for the next few nights - several sunspots have exploded, leaving holes the size of jupiter on the surface of the sun:
as a result of associated flares, NOAA predicts strong geomagnetic storms to hit Earth on Friday with the potential to affect electrical grids and satellite communications ( ... )
Well, more rightly it's my poor scalp having a poots at me for the awful treatment I have given it: dye me? it's snarling, peeking out at me from it's scaly blanket. Two months ago I decided I needed an injection of sunshine into my life, and rather than pay a hairdresser to colour my hair, I bought a box of peroxide, which was inexplicably reduced from a tenner to £1.99. What I wanted was a vibrant splash of honeyed lightness at the front of my head, so I selected a wedge of hair from ear to ear and tied the rest back with a band. I then painted on my peroxide, and left it to gently lighten my locks. Ten minutes later a seething scalp prompted me to rinse it off: revealing orange-yellow smears. This was a new hair technique - the marble wash effect. Living with it for two days, I then dyed it another three times to get it back to a normal shade.
Now I'm hexed with the scalp of a scabbed-up baby and the shoulders of your friendly Dungeons & Dragons player.
Diana diana diana....when I was little I thought she was fabulous: I had my hair cut like her's (or at least my Granny told me I did) and wrapped a bit of lace around me in my leotard & pranced around convinced I was the image of her in her whipped-up frock. Anyhoo...did you know that Osama bin laden put a hit out on her according to some? Or that the hospital where she died - Salpêtrière - was where Jean Martin Charcot, Freud's mentor from 1885 to 1886, conducted experiments on the nature of hysteria concluding that it can only develop where there is a hereditary degeneration of the brain.She certainly inspires a lot of hysteria.
Wednesday, 22 2003
If you ever look at my skin page, you'll see that I am quite obsessed with my appearance. Not in terms of being thin, or being beautiful or having the most fashionable outfits, but in having nice skin: it's something that really matters to me. Skin is the organ which visibly shows our health: if I'm eating and sleeping poorly, it shows. If I'm tired, it shows: long before I'd feel the effects in another organ too.
So today when I came across this link, I realised it was time to stop striving to attain something which doesn't exist. Look at the model when first you click on the link - she looks touched-up sure...but so much? She's a different person altogether! Here's my attempt at touching myself up..
roll mouse over to see the new me
Check your jobbies!
I said, earning disgusted looks from the more refined members of my class. It was 1992 and at school we were discussing the importance of various dietary substances - the question I answered being how can we tell we're getting enough fibre? The reason they float is because fibre cannot be broken down by the digestive system so it passes through the intestine, absorbing water and increasing in bulk. This process helps to strengthen the muscles of the intestine and push out the undigested food: they act as 'lifejackets' to the waste, making it buoyant in water.
The reason I am so base as to talk shit is that this morning on the gaudy BBC Breakfast News there was a feature on a man who at 54 had been diagnosed with cancer of the colon. He has been given 2 years to live, and puts the fact that his cancer is now rife throughout his body down to the fact that he - like a lot of us - was both ignorant of how his body was warning him of the damage the rapidly multiplying cells were doing, and afraid to look & discuss with others the state of his stools. We are revolted by our own bodies but "both kings and philosophers defecate, and ladies too," wrote the philosopher Michael de Montaigne.
If we can't bring ourselves to check our jobbies to confirm we're consuming enough fibre, how will we see whether they are abnormal: speckled with blood? We should go through the motions...
Monday, 20 2003
Unlike David Blaine, my mitochrondria are positively bristling with freshly processd energy...the glucose from the delish pizza Stan made me on my return from my Human Biology class is as I type being transformed into ATP energy to fuel all my ticks and twitches and to regenerate all my warts and styes.
I got my results - those from the first test I've sat since my university finals in 2000, and certainly the first one since 1995 where I've had to learn things by rote. I got 72%!!!!!!!! Sounds fab, but this entitles me to a B, not an A as it would have in my day...sob...
Sunday, 19 2003
I've signed up to donate blood - levels were 'dangerously low' when the announcement was made last monday - meaning elective surgery may have to be cancelled. It seems the shortage is being eased though because so many of us were motivated to register to have out blood sooked out of our veins. I've not had the call yet - but I'm hoping for Custard Creams to alleviate my suffering post-op.
This sunday I am spending an hour or two preparing a sumptuous dinner for the lovely Stan, who is out steaming windows, a la Tina Turner. I'm trying to make Potatoes Dauphinoise, but with gruyère, leek and nutmeg. It's going something like this...for two:
I'm using an oval deep dish - use anything you have though.
measure out enough milk to go around half way up this dish - infuse this in a pan with a crushed clove of garlic until the milk is gently simmering
slice very finely a section of leek (about 2 inches)
cube some gruyère cheese
slice very finely around 10 small charlotte potatoes
(or anything your have- alter amounts though!)
assemble:
butter dish & season
lay layer of potato on bottom - I overlapped the slices like starchy fish scales
sprinkle over some of the leek and some of the gruyère
season and grate over a little nutmeg and dot with low-fat creme fraiche
repeat until all your tatties, leeks & cheese are used up.
pour over your hot garlic milk. I then added a few dots of low-fat creme
fraiche and a few remaining cubes of gruyère. Season again.
I've set it all aside in the fridge (cling-film patted over top to
prevent discolouration of tatties) until Stan gets home, then I'll thwack it on
the oven at 180°C/350°F/Gas 4 for between 30 and 45 minutes.
Saturday, 18 2003
said Merle Kilgore of the death of Johnny Cash early in September.
A suppressed love, my fondness for Country music is becoming less hidden as the hit parade fills up with identikit shiny-bodied boys & girls singing of things they've never felt as armies of stylists ensure their faces and bodies are as sharp and underfed as their voices are flat and overblown. Johnny Cash's last 4 albums contained his covers of songs from artists as diverse as Nick Cave and Nine Inch Nails. The latter recording, of Hurt is extraordinary: his voice, strong and quavery:
What have I become ?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt ..
... If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
see video at mtv.com
Said Apu of the Kwik-e-Mart to Homer Simpson, "who needs the infinite wisdom of Ganesha when I have Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman staring at me with their dead eyes?".
Is it just me, or is every second competition and prize draw aimed at winning you 'the celebrity lifestyle'? Collect 69 tokens to stand the chance of living like your favourite celeb for a year ... look like Kylie - win a blusher stick ... God, I sound like a right old wifey - tsk..these kids and their obsession with celebrity... but I really do think some strange seismic shift has happened of late - we all should aspire to a certain 'lifestyle', and we can get closer to that ideal by buying various shoes, hair stylers, sofas and probiotic yogurt drinks. I'm as bad as anyone - blessed with good skin I continually smear it with pigmented goo trying to fake the post-sex glow in time for a day's work with some artfully applied blusher; try to emulate the inner glow of a yoga-ista with skin-coloured creams sprinkled with 'micro fragments which will illuminate the complexion' ( - glitter). This I-want-it-but-don't-want-to-save-for-it thing is the new religion for us twenty-somethings. I want rid of my lurks and bats - are there any tokens for that?
Wednesday, 08 2003
Could you mark the stages of your life with accessories?
Currently, sleek & sophistaced - with a twist - I accessorize with my nugget of Murano glass which serves as a ring.
When 12 and freshly pierced of ears, I jazzed up my outfits of ultra-bleach-wash baggy jeans (tight belt plus bottoms rolled up to mid-calf height) and technicolour elephant-print acrylic jumpers with two isosceles triangles of brittle mauve plastic. I'd won these earrings in a darts match at my chum Debbie's house - I think she wanted rid of them, but they were, with their dangling purple slices, the epitome of style to me during that fashion year. They pointed upwards: with those earrings, I could only get better.
Later, at 15, I favoured clinging black leggings, with big baggy jumpers, or a tunic top of a dreary colour. Splits up the side prevented belly-cling. Bright socks picked up a colour found in my chunky dangly ear rings. Hoops strung with beads: this was ethno-chic at its lowest level (one favourite pair were about 4 inches of glass bead sophistication. They were the skull-decor version of bo-ho beaded curtains).
Jarringly, I would wear pointy black suedette lace-up flat shoes with this ensemble. The tip of the toes were bare leather-effect plastic: the suedette rubbed off faster than the chrome on the silver-effect bangles we all wore to be grown up.
Ethno-chic segued into goth-ethno-intellectual, heralded by the purchase of a brown cord blazer from the Red Cross shop. It fitted appallingly, being made for a slim and tall wide shouldered man not a stumpy wide shouldered teenager. I wore it with navy blue batik-ed trousers which ended at the ankle bone. A navy blue tunic was my top of choice - the elegant fringes and self-coloured embroidery around the yoke fitted in with the bookish ethnic look I strove to attain. Beaded earrings were de rigueur at this time, but it is here that my most fabulous accessory enters, stage left, into my life.
A red hat. Pill box shape. Embroidered. Bejewelled with tiny mirrors. I attached it to my head with two kirby grips, and felt fab and at peace as my Amnesty International newsletters cried, unopened in piles around me. I was much to busy fashioning my hair into a whipped-up nest with Rock Hard Hairspray to get round to writing any plaintive letters to the heads of small African countries.
Monday, 06 2003
Tonight polkadotmittens sat, sweaty biro in heand, and took her first exam in over two years. I had covered every topic in depth on Sunday afternoon in between making Anzac biscuits & ironing my trousers, badly. Enzymes - fine; proteins - fine; cell respiration - fine. Body parts - now what would they be? Bear in mind my aim through doing this course is to get a place in Glasgow University's nursing degree programme...and I have no idea what the function of the large intestine - brackets colon end brackets - is, nor do I know the three parts of the small intestine. Of course, it's into the field of sexual health and contraception I want to run, arms out wide, so what use do I have for these wrinkled tubes of digestion? Here's a snatch from my personal statement - demanded by UCAS from prospective students: encapsulate how fab you are and what a benefit you'll be to the course in a box 6" by 8"...
I want to study nursing because through it I can make a difference to women like me and my friends: ultimately I would like to take my nursing career into the area of women's health, facilitating education about contraception and sexual health.
I pursued my previous academic background - historical English language - as an interest. At eighteen I had neither the maturity nor selflessness to see the benefit of working to help others. Eight years after I know I am ideally suited to nursing: I have humour, the ability and desire to work hard along with empathy for others' suffering and sensitivities.
It sounds good....but my new worry is that it sounds too...'constructed' to sound good - if you know what I mean. It ticks the boxes, it chimes the bells that ring when a good nurse is spoken of: caring, selfless, self-aware. But I don't feel in conveys my real passion for wanting to do this - how can it? printed in 12 point Arial on a box of space to be copied down & sent to admission officers, who wading through thousands of similarly earnest squares of careful care-rich language, regard my application as that of another of the same. Maybe I should write I have a rubber fetish, where I like to squeeze my rubber-gloved fists into small spaces...
Wednesday, 01 2003
In a move which could be interpreted as one foot down a slope towards joining the SWRI (an organisation which encourages the use of rick-rack and preserving pans rather than guns or ballot boxes), I am entering a soup-making competition.
A celeriac soup making competition.
It's being run by the Good Food magazine on the behest of the Yorkshire Soup Company. One would win a weekend at the Aldeburgh School of Cookery and have the winning recipe produced by said company. Oooh fancy that!Anyhoo, I have tweaked my parsnip soup, which tastes better with celeriac actually (actually) ..and have emailed it off. Why don't you all too?send your recipe here by the 14th of November. (you'll find out if you've won on the 2nd of january - what a festive treat)
We are, like many other tv-slathering automatons, rather taken my the BBC's shuffling of 'Dirty' Den Watts back onto our screens in EastEnders. Of course, it was no surprise at all - my wiley colleagues & I had found this out long ago with our innocent forays into 'spolier' sites such as walford web.
What continues to astound me about this programme is its take on reality: not that no-one in this fictional borough has a washing machine so has to go to Mr Papadopolous' laundrette nor that the succession of doctors never get hauled up in front of the General Medical Council for their constant presence in the Queen Vic's lounge bar, glugging bottles of some generic 'beer' which looks like Becks (plot devices we all know). No - what astounds us is Sharon Watts' skirts. She will stride through the square, snog her brother, run to her dying husband, shag her brother-in-law and change the kegs in her club/pub/bra: all while wearing a micro-mini with 10 denier tights, black stillettos and a silky blouse, cut to emphasise her ample decolletage.
Here she is.
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