A peaceful evening

I'm relieved to have had no 'trick or treat' visitors tonight.

Perhaps the habit is dying out in England? I hope so; I've never liked it. A putative joke with a hint of menace is one of the tricks of the bully.

I wonder if one can buy trick sweets? Pepper filled chocoloate, or chilli fudge would be useful. Chinese shops used sometimes to sell tamarind candy, a soft sqishy sugar coated confection containing a geat deal of chilli. That was very useful one year when the first of April  fell in College term time.

All I had this year was a little dish of innocuous sweets. I planned to leer at uninvited vistors and reply to their 'Trick or Treat?' with 'That all depends on you. Can you tell which of these are the tricks, and which are treats?'

It would have been only a feeble jest; I'm glad it wasn't called for.

The Interpretation of Dreams

For a moment I thought I was remembering something that had happened,

Junior cat had leapt through the air, leaving behind her a little cloud of burning gas, from the conflagration of which I inferred that she had farted in mid flight, and her effluvia had been ignited by a candle flame, though it was puzzling that there was no candle or equivalent to be seen.

Then I realised that the event had no definite location, and no antecedents or consequences, and I concluded that I must have dreamt it, perhaps last night, or perhaps the night before last.

Some people claim to interpret dreams. I wonder what they would make of it.

Expensive MPs

So much has been said about MP's expenses that I've tried to avoid contributing to the cacophony, but recent developments suggest people have missed something.

I understand it is proposed that MP's should no longer buy second homes and claim mortgage interest, but should instead rent houses and charge for that.

Yet rent for property is usually higher than the interest on a mortgage, partly but not only because rent includes the cost of maintenance and repairs.

The change would therefore achieve neither of its supposed aims. It would not reduce the cost to the taxpayer, and it would not relieve the taxpayer of the cost of maintenance - it would just conceal that cost in the rent. Any moats would still be dredged at public expense, because the owner would set a rent that allowed for that.

Unplanned population growth

I haven't blogged for a while because on most recent issues someone or other somewhere in the media has voiced thoughts close to my own. An exception has been discussion of the supposed need to prepare for substantial increases in the world population, and the population of Great Britain.

I'm very irritated by the tendency for people to treat population growth as quite beyond anyone's control, like an earthquake.

Babies are not delivered by an uninvited stork. They are created by human actions of which I assume all readers of this blog will be aware. I wish that those who produce the children would look after them.

Perishable Clergy

A few months before I went up to King's Cambridge in 1956, the Dean committed suicide by jumping from the top of the Chapel tower.

I've just discovered that another Dean of King's recently committed suicide, though not so spectacularly. Alerted by a friend I made an internet search that revealed this article in the Cambridge Evening News.

A great fuss about not very much

Whenever I switch on a television, my view of the screen is largely obscured by a notice about an imminent change of wavelengths which will make it necessary to retune my sets.

Why must we be told in advance and in such an irritating way? When the change occurs the need to retune will be apparent. Until then I should like to be left in peace.

Compton Verney

Last week I accompanied three friends on a visit to Compton Verney , which is a country mansion quite recently rescued from decay to be converted into an art gallery.

I found the contents much more interesting than those of the conventional art gallery, because there was less that was beautiful but dull, and more that was strange and so capable of stimulating thought.

Quite a lot of space was devoted to ‘folk art’, including shop and inn signs, and strange wind powered Victorian toys. There were also paintings showing disproportioned animals, with the parts most interesting to the farming community inflated to preposterous proportions. Especially delightful was a painting of a street scene in which the pub was called ‘The King’s harms’.

However the principal attraction of Compton Verney is the tea room, where we were served full afternoon tea on three tiered stands, with six sandwiches, a scone and three cakes each. They provide little plastic containers so people can take home any cakes they can’t manage on the spot.

The following picture shows what they provided. The stand in the foreground was for two people; only a third of the sandwiches are visible, but one can see most of the cakes. Click on this picture for a larger one.

Bakers' Vocabulary

My bank has just sent me a leaflet entitled:

"Changes to your agreement with us".

Yet it can hardly be an agreement, until and unless I agree.

Colonel Gaddafi

Watching television pictures of him ranting at the UN I noticed how uniformly black his hair is. Does he dye it, or is it a wig ?

Cutting the cost of Education

The Minister of Education, or whatever his title is these days, has claimed that expenditure on education can be reduced by 2bn pounds per year without producing any reduction in standards or provision.

If that is true the reduction should have been made years ago.

Mr.Balls, as he likes to be called, seems to be relying on a reduction in the number of heads which, although attractive, seems unlikely to save very much.

I think greater savings could be made by more use of the Internet accompanied by a reduction in classroom teaching, especially for the older pupils.

Lavender Ice Cream

On Tuesday I dined out with a friend to celebrate my 71st birthday.

We went to The Case, a restaurant I’d never visited before. It is on the part of Hotel Street where Clarke’s and Satchel’s book shop used to be, and occupies the second and third floors above a varied collection of (unconnected) ground floor shops, including an old fashioned sweet shop that sells Leicester Rock and boiled sweets kept in large glass jars.

The case specializes in champagne; as well as the restaurant there is a small ground floor champagne bar connected to the restaurant by an intriguing winding corridor. We therefore had a bottle of one of the house champagnes.

A crab souffle (I apologise for my failure to find the acute accent) made an interesting first course, and lamb both pink and very tender testified to considerable skill in the kitchen, but the highlight of the meal was the pudding course.

One option was a sample plate for two. We’d noticed that one of the puddings included lavender ice cream, and requested that that should be included in our platter.

There were portions of nine puddings. I judge that most were about a third of a helping, though a couple may have been full helpings, so we had the equivalent of about four helpings between the two of us, but it was the novelty of the lavender ice cream that most excited us.

We were a little disappointed that it wasn’t blue - though that would have required a blue die; lavender oil is nearly colourless. However it tasted strongly of lavender.

I’ve now tasted two dishes flavoured with lavender - I sometimes cook lavender chicken. I must think of more ways to cook with lavender. Suggestions would be welcome.

More fussing about children

Tiresome regulations are often defended as needed to protect children.

That claim is particularly weak when urged in support of the current proposals to check people having any regular contact with anyone else's children.

Abused children usually suffer at the hands of members of their own families or other people who live with them, yet the proposed checks will not apply to family members.

People will need to be vetted before being allowed to take groups of children to football matches, but will not need to pass any test before taking the much more radical step of becoming parents.

This is not a plan to protect children, but to provide more power and work for social workers.