Redcurrant Jelly

I recently used up the last of my homemade redcurrant jelly, and I see no prospect of making any more.

In the previous house I grew my own fruit, but if shops sell redcurrants at all, they do so only in minute quantities at extremely high prices. I should need about 30 100 gram punnets costing more than a pound each to make a reasonable batch of jelly. As making jelly is the only use for redcurrants, I don't see the point in selling them in such small quantities.

I therefore bought some redcurrant jelly. It was most disappointing. It was extremely sweet, lacked the sharpness I expert from redcurrant jelly, and the texture suggested that the setting agent was gelatin, not pectin.

I miss my old fruit garden.

A neglected Garment

Many years ago, most likely in the late 1970's, I decided to get a new overcoat capable of keeping me warm in the coldest weather. At the time it was fashionable for overcoats to be just rather large jackets, reaching down no further than the lower boundary of the buttocks, and leaving legs exposed to the freezing blasts of the Winter winds. So I went to a shop offering made to measure overcoats. Having extracted an assurance that the cost would be the same however long the coat, I specified that it should reach well below my knees.

Staff in the shop were so shocked that they made me sign the order form to signify my consent to the length.

Thus was born my Harris Tweed overcoat.

I used to wear it for about six weeks each year, in the very cold spells we used to have in January and early February, when the insulation it provided more than compensated its weight.

I can't remember when I last wore it, but I sure It must be more than four years ago, and probably a lot longer.

So far this Winter I've encountered only two brief flurries of snow, and in both cases the snow melted within an hour or two of falling, and there has been no frost severe enough to last all through the day. The temperature has always been above freezing by noon.

I firmly believe in climate change !!!

Living Dangerously in my Youth

I've just read the warnings on a packet of aspirin tablets. Apparently aspirin should not be  taken by anyone under the age of 16.

In my schooldays anyone indisposed was sent to the school secretary, who gave them an aspirin. No matter what the ailment, it was always an aspirin !  How did we survive!

The Telephone Directory

A new Telephone Directory arrived today, and I wonderd how long it is since I used one.

I'm fairly sure I haven't looked up any  number in a directory since I moved house rather more than two years ago, and suspect I didn't use one for several years before that. Who, if anyone, still uses directories ?

An Innumerate Minister

Christ Grayling, interviewed on BBC Radio 4 this morning, responded to concerns about the possible extension of Heathrow Airport by saying that there has been a quantum change in the noisiness of planes.

As a quantum is the smallest change physically possible, that doesn't reassure me at all.

It often happens that dim people hear clever people using some word and think they can make themselves look clever by using it too, and do so without first finding out what the word in question means. It worries me when such people somehow get into the Cabinet.

Inspired by Atomic Models

Media chatter about sugars got me thinking about their structures, so I used some atomic models I bought a few years ago, and made models of the glucose and fructose molecules. The differences between them and their relations to other sugars were suddenly crystal clear.

Students of chemistry should be issued with such models as a matter of course. Perhaps they are now. I wonder why we weren't.

Economical Word Processor

Editing a document using Libre Office, I noticed that it contained about 20 000 words, and amounted to about 119 000 characters.

Checking the file I noticed it occupied only 64K on the disk, suggesting commendable economy. MS Works, the word processor I used to use, needed about 160K to store an earlier and  slightly shorter version of the same document.

Counting My Books

I have about 1250 books. The number isn't precise, because I wasn't sure what counted as a book. I decided not to count maps, guides to stately homes and museums, back number of magazine, and what I call 'pamphlets', some of which differ from books mainly by being very thin.

I decided to count after hearing a news item estimating the mean number of books per household at around 150. I wonder where that survey drew the line between books and pamphlets

Before moving house I had even more books, but carried out a purge before moving, and another after moving. I guess that I used to have 1500 or more.

Counting to 3.6 billion

It was recently claimed that eight rich men own more than the 3.6 billion poorest people. I wonder how the 3.6 billion was obtained.

In many societies most property is held in the name of the male head of the household. Even in some quite prosperous households wives and children are not recorded as having any property.

The 3.6 billion may thus include many family members of people who are quite prosperous.

Filenames upset my Browser

I put on a web page a set of photographs with names  base_name001T.jpg...to base_name015T.jpg

The browser (Google Chrome) gave a perfect rendering of the page when it was in my computer, but when I put it on my website the files base_name009T.jpg and base_name011T.jpg  were not found, and base_name010T.jpg was converted to base_name001T.jpg. There was no problem with the other files.

I doubt if there was an error in copying the files to the site as I use a batch file to load all the jpg files in the relevant directory. Nevertheless I checked that the errant files were on the site and in the correct place, and reloaded them several times with no effect.

When I entered directorypath/base_name010T.jpg into the navigation bar of my browser, the file name was altered to base_name001T.jpg and that file then displayed.

Eventually I renamed the problem files base_nameZ09T.jpg,
 base_nameZ10T.jpg, base_nameZ11T.jpg, and then all was well. I wonder what happened ? Why just those filenames, and not the others?

Pictures of the Underworld on my web site

I've just added some pictures of the underground chamber revealed when we had some work done on the house earlier this year. this is a link to the relevant page

After idling for months I have at last started to sort out my website. I've just added a few pictures of the house. I hope they will just be the first of many this is a link