Well that was almost a new blog post

I spent about 40 minutes writing a blog post and looking out all the photos for it and then I accidentally hit some key or other on the keyboard and it disappeared into the ether. I cannot find it for love nor money which is discouraging. I am off now to tick a few other items off my to-do list and hopefully I'll be feeling recovered eno0ugh to do a proper post tomorrow. 

Baking Subscription September

 

This is chocolate orange loaf, or as the subscription people would have it, chocolate orange jaffa loaf. It can't really be a 'jaffa cake' though as it doesn't have that jelly type layer between the cake and the chocolate top. 

It is however a lovely thing, up there with the lime and coconut loaf and like the lime and coconut loaf I suspect I will make it quite a lot. It's basically an orange drizzle cake, the sponge has some ground almond in it which gives it a nice flavour. When I do it again I'll probably just melt some Cadbury's milk chocolate on the top rather than faff about melting butter and dark chocolate chips and then beating in icing sugar, but there again if it were a special occasion I might do the more complicated thing. 

For those thinking it's sounding a bit simple, decorating wise, for my subscription, well spotted. You  were supposed to make your own candied orange peel to put on the top of the chocolate glaze. Those long term readers who remember my efforts at doing this previously when I attempted to recreate a St Clement's cake from the Bake Off will understand why that was never happening. I also managed, because I told myself that of course it didn't matter that my juicing thing didn't fit exactly on the top of my measuring jug, to send said jug flying when half full of orange juice, which promptly spread itself over a bench, down a set of drawer fronts and over more of the kitchen floor than anyone might have thought possible. Not fun. Unless you were watching, in which case it was probably very funny indeed!

Talking of Bake Off, it returned to our screens last evening and I was so pleased. That said I have already found one of the contestants annoying practically beyond all bearing and as they seem to be really rather good I suspect I am stuck with them for quite a long time, possibly all the way to the final. Curses! As usual while open mouthed at the ingenuity shown, I do rather wonder about the point of some of the 'showstopper challenges; last night, gravity defying cakes? I wouldn't know where to start. And if I did, could I be bothered? It's not that several of them weren't wonderful things, but I feel that at this point the show is well beyond looking for 'the best amateur baker' and into celebrating the semi-professional. 

Did I show you these....?

 

Resting nails, before I go wild with them in October. 

Plain but pretty I thought. 

Devon Part 3

After the rigours of Clovelly, Monday was a much gentler day. We went to a small place called Chagford on the edge of Dartmoor where we had arranged to meet up with a couple of my friends from university for a walk and then a pub lunch. We were too busy chatting to take many photographs but we managed this one

It was lovely to catch up after quite a long time of not seeing them. Looking back over my time away I feel I am very fortunate to still have friends from so many different times and places  of my life. When I was first a student I could never be convinced that anyone really wanted to be my friend; I was always convinced that people had an ulterior motive in being nice to me but now, decades later,I am starting to think that maybe I am valued by some people for my own sake. Which is progress, even if it's been a long time a-coming. 

Tuesday was an OH choice day and although he sold it to me as an Otter and Butterfly Sanctuary I think it's not coincidental that there was a narrow gauge railway, the South Devon Steam Railway, just next door. We didn't actually ride on the stream trains but we saw several arrive and depart, and had a very bice lunch in their cafe. The otters were cute looking ( I know they can be vicious little beasts really) and the butterflies were beautiful and I tried to take good photos of them but it was difficult. especially as the camera lens kept getting steamed up! 

Train at the top, sadly no steam engine. Then otters and butterflies. It was a fun day, if a trifle hot. 

Bedside Books - And now we are three...

yes, two gone and now  there are only three books left on the bedside pile. I feel this is very good progress. 

I finished this one recently.

Years ago I put this to one side ( or actually onto the shelves in the back hall, along with several others ready to go to a charity shop) and somehow the pile just stayed there. Come lockdown I retrieved them and put them all, bar two, in a charity shop box. I kept this one back  because I'd seen a recent reference to it somewhere and thought it might be worth another go, despite having read it previously and not being all that impressed. 

Well I gave it another go and I suspect I found it marginally more comprehensible and enjoyable this time than last. I don't know what I find wrong with it really, like Ben Aaronovitch it's the sort of book that on paper I'm going to like. And there's nothing wrong with it per se; in fact the general world set up is quite original, and there's a nice mix of fighting, back stabbing politics and conflicting agendas. Possibly the writer just isn't good at differentiating  his characters, possibly there are too many differing view points and groups to take in too quickly.

It's the first of a trilogy. The second one is lurking at the bedside ready to be tackled. It's probablyy telling that a) I can't remember whether I finished it and b) I never bought Book 3. But we'll see. 

At least I got through Winterbirth which is more than can be said for the other bedside book that has come off the pile. This was Love You Dead by Peter James. I actually gave up on James' series of Brighton based police procedurals a long time ago, but this one was in a bag of books passed on by my neighbour and I thought that after so long it might be worth a look. I gave it a good go but in the end I gave up. All the usual faults with these books were present; attempts at describing his main character's life outside work that end up being mawkish, prosaic writing, too many acronyms, too many pages ( James is yet another author who needs a good editor).the l-o-n-g on-going saga of the main character's disappearing wife that has been stretched over far too many books. Incidentally I found by skipping through various parts of the book that I couldn't be othered to read properly that this is now resolved, and even if the explanation had been a bang rather than whimper, which it most certainly wasn't, it wouldn't have warranted being dragged on over so many books. In addition to all of these, there were far too many characters, far too many diffuse plotlines, far too much skating over improbabilities (eg "she used her savings and a fake credit card, which she also managed to use to obtain cash a few times" - what? this is a young girl who has just left home. She's not very nice, she shoved her sister off a cliff because she was jealous of her, but where did she get a fake credit card? how did she use a fake card to get cash?  - the book is full of this sort of stuff that you're meant to take on trust as being perfectly easy to do) and too much truly boring detail about the lives of truly boring criminal people. I think James wants to write thrillers, but has stuck trying to lever a thriller into a police procedural because he knows that anything with his series character name on it will sell, and he, or his publisher, is averse to putting out a book without the name  to sell it. 

Tomorrow we won't be talking about books. We might be talking about knitting. Or Devon. Or something totally different. But not books. 

Books to Read Poster No 29

 

That's the picture and there is no prize whatsoever for guessing that it was A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. 

I've read a fair bit of Dickens in my time but not this one. I got it from Audible, read by Julian Rhind Tutt of whom I am a big fan. He was brilliant, but - 

I didn't enjoy the book. It's an early one of course, and really the major interest was seeing early manifestations of some of his writing tricks and habits.. Overall though the book was dull, which, given the subject matter was quite an achievement I thought. It was also horribly sentimental, although I did find the last few minutes of it quite moving, despite myself. 

I blush to confess that, despite Mr Rhind Tutt's beautiful voice and expert characterisations, I played a good third of this at 1.5 speed just to get through it more quickly. 

A bit of a miss then. 

An Evening Out!

 Such excitement! Going out to an event! After so long when we couldn't go out at all, and then when we were restricted to  going out to wander about or have coffee somewhere but  just the two of us, this was a huge deal. 

On Thursday evening the library had an author visit from Ben Aaronovitch, author of The Rivers of London series. Now although I have many friends who rave about these books I don't really 'get' them. It's odd, because on paper I should love them; crime, a touch of the fantastical, really funny and with some wit. But somehow they just don't gel with me. 

On the other hand I wasn't going to miss the chance to go; partly because it made such a nice change and partly because I thought listening to the guy talk might actually give me a better handle on his books. 

He was an easy interviewee, it was a case of press the button then let him talk, and he was funny and expansive and had some interesting stories to tell. But, I cannot say I warmed to him as a human being, which is perhaps a little unfair because in the circumstances he would have been putting on a public persona and he might be quite different under other circumstances. And it didn't stop me enjoying the occasion. 

While I was listening to Mr Aaronovitch the OH was doing the weekly supermarket shop and when he collected me afterwards we took ourselves off to Harbour Fry, who serve the best fish and chips in Orkney. And then we were back home  in time to watch Celebrity Masterchef live rather than recorded. 

It was a lovely evening, which I  appreciated much more for tis novelty than I would have a similar occasion pre-Covid. And with covid numbers on the rise again I'm not unmindful of the fact that such occasions may become rare again. Definitely a case of Seize the Day. 

Devon Part 2

So during our time in Devon we each had two days where we chose what we did and two days socialising with other people.Sunday was my first pick and we went to Clovelly.  

Decades ago, as in when I was young, we had a holiday in Devon. My sister and I were quite happy but it was a disappointment to our parents, and that must be putting it mildly because for the only time ever we came home early from a holiday. Just a day, but even so, it was a huge thing to do in those days when holidays were rare and comparatively expensive. I have some very clear memories of the time, one of the clearest was getting into a lot of trouble for getting tar on my new shorts on a beach. Since at the time I had no concept of what tar was, and failed to recognise it when it presented itself as several piled up slabs on the beach at Westward Ho! which were great for climbing on, I have thought often that being told off so comprehensively was a bit unfair, but it certainly served to fix the place in my mind. 

A happier day was the one we spent in Clovelly, and for those not acquainted with the name, Clovelly's chief claim to fame is its extremely steep main street which 'in olden days' had deliveries made by donkey rather than carts as they were too unwieldly. Not only is the street very very steep, it is also cobbled. Walking down is hell on the knees, walking back up is a cardiac work out that demands so much it may be self defeating. Access to the village is largely controlled by the trust which now own it and you therefore have to pay to go in. This was not the case when we visited before. (The trust also controls catering outlets and other shopping to the extant that the vibrant, if rather tourist trap village I remembered from my childhood is long gone and there's a sedateness and gentrified-ness about the place which strikes a surreal note. Not as surreal as Port Meirion which is totally weird and bizarre, but odd enough. 

That said there were lots of colourful things to see, and there are still donkeys there, albeit in a field at  the top of the cliff, rather than pulling heavy loads up and down it. 

It's definitely picturesque

The Cliff Top Donkeys

on the way down ...

                                               lots of colourful gardens and framed doorways

...

destination harbour ( and yes we did go all the way down)

the 'slope' back up!

and our one and only cream tea the whole week. Rather inelegantly served in a polystyrene box, courtesy of Covid, but very tasty regardless. 

Some Books Wot I Read ...

just because I wanted to. Not from the poster, not from the bedside books pile, but a trilogy that I got into and couldn't stop reading until I finished. That feeling of 'Don't interrupt me, I'm reading something compelling' doesn't come to me nearly as often as it used to, but I had it in spades with this. 

 

This is The Broken Earth trilogy. It's not fantasy and it's not hard sci-fi, in fact it's difficult to classify but I suppose soft sci-fi is as close as it gets. The books are set on a planet like Earth, and which could  indeed be a very future Earth. or just an alternative one, which periodically undergoes long, widespread and vicious periods of seismic instability. When these are particularly bad it leads to the declaration of what is called a 'Fifth Season', some of which have historically lasted for decades. 

The books are ingenious, well written and have  a compelling story line, but underneath they're about human folly and hubris, prejudice, and  cycles of violence and hatred. They're also about ingenuity, adaptability and ultimately hope. 

Highly recommended. 

In another part of the forest I'm a long way through both a bedside book and a book from the poster but boy! are they both hard work.