Wednesday 6th June - Apples, potatoes, and my mother

My mother was told that if you keep an apple in with your potatoes, it stops them from putting out all those irritating hairy rootlets.

She tried it, and it works!

So, for once, I did as I was told, and put an apple in with my potatoes. It works! My potatoes live in a black fabric bag in the vacuum cleaner cupboard in the kitchen - not a hugely convenient home, but the best I can do. Last week, we bought a plastic bag of potatoes and threw them in, still sealed up in their bag, on top of the half dozen leftover spuds and The Apple. Yesterday, I went to get some potatoes, and found that the fresh ones, still in the plastic bag, are now all ready for planting out, whereas the old ones are still round and sound and, more importantly, bald. That apple had been there for about a month or so, and was wrinkled, but not rotten.

I have cooked the older potatoes, put the newer ones out on the windowsill in empty egg boxes to await planting, and retired the apple to the compost bin.

So, Useful Top Tip; keep an apple in with your potaotes,

Tuesday 5th June - semantics and services

So why is it called a church "service"? Why is it not a "gathering", "convocation", "get-together", "meeting", "convocation (Latin 'calling together', translating the Greek ecclesia;  a group of people formally assembled for a special purpose", or some similar word implying people all arriving in the same place for a common purpose?

It sounds like a yet another way of concealing what happens in church from people who are "not in the know" - or, to use a despicable and ugly and patronising and hateful (in my view) word, people who are "un-churched".

How else do we use the word "service"?

Boiler service, car service. Um. Not so good. Something that must be done at regular intervals, usually at great inconvenience, which is inordinately expensive, and has potentially horrible consequences if you ignore it.

Performing a service to, or for each other - "Service to the community" - yes, that's a positive notion.
So who are we giving the service to, and why? To each other? Do we just turn up on Sundays to make the vicar feel wanted and give the musicians (band, organist, choir, guitarist, whoever) a chance to play? It is a huge amount of work to keep the show on the road every Sunday. The columns on our rota (prepared as a loving service by a loyal and committed lady every three months, covering an entire sheet of A3 in miniscule print) include prayer ministry, flower arranging, sacristan, four columns for children's work each needing a leader and a helper, two transport columns, readers, intercessors, two columns for music leaders, song-pro, PA, and administrators (of communion wine, not paperwork). Someone else collates the weekly "Pew News" sheets and the service information, produces the masters and photocopies and folds enough for the congregations, and inserts the appropriate liturgy pages. Both wardens tend to be on duty from 8:30am (half an hour before the first services) until 1pm (an hour after the second service ends). I know, because I was a warden myself. "Sunday Lunch" was sandwiches, except on rare occasions, for about 12 years, as I was the music leader for ten years before I became warden, playing on most Sunday mornings (although we only had one service on Sundays then).      

Thinking about it, calling it a church service actually a close description of what it is.

But what is it all about? When I was wardening, and in the years before when I was leading the music, it was all too easy to get so bogged down in everything, that the real point of it all was lost.

Well, here is it. This is what it is all about.... http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A38-42&version=NIV

Luke 10:38-42

New International Version (NIV)

At the Home of Martha and Mary

³⁸ As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.^[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Aha, the church service is the time when we come together and God looks after us! Unfortunately, it takes a massive amount of Martha-ing around before we get around to the Mary-ing sitting and listening bit, by which time we've usually lost the plot and become very grumpy over everything that needs to be done.

So, tell me again, because I'm still confused. What is the service for? Who is it for? Is it a "service" at all? 

Sunday 3rd June - Let's eat cake

well, drop scones, actually, as we have run out of bread.

You will need

half a pound of flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 ounces of butter all dumped into a big mixing bowl. Also a heavy, preferably non-stick frying pan, fish slice, and Internet-enabled mobile phone. Oh, and a grill pan with trivet for them to cool on.

It's a good job my scales are bilingual; the first part of my education was all wrestling with different number bases;
pounds shillings and pence (20 shillings to the pound, 12 pence to the shilling)
stones, pounds and ounces (14 pounds to the stone, 16 ounces to the pound)
gallons, pints and ounces (20 ounces to the pint, 2 pints to the quart, 4 quarts - at least that makes sense - to the gallon). The abbreviations didn't make much sense either; oz for ounce (fluid or weight), L for pound and d for penny (money), lb for pound (weight). Somewhere in that lot are rods, poles, perches, furlongs, miles, feet, yards, inches...  Today's children have it easy with all their kilogrammes and kilometres and everything in tens.

Anyway, "rub in" (that's techno speak for coat your fingers and the butter in the flour, squishing the butter slightly to increase its surface area, which you coat with flour and squish again, over and over, raising it out of the flour for the "squish" bit and dropping it back in for the "coat" bit, until the butter has become zillions of tiny bits of butter all coated in flour, and the bowl looks as if it is full of fine bread crumbs) and stir in enough milk to make something the thickness of custard. About a mugful. Probably in the region of 200ml, whatever that is in pints and ounces.

Now, let that rest while you heat the pan on a medium hot setting, and wipe a smear of butter over the surface. Switch on the mobile phone and find either http://johnthelutheran.tumblr.com/ or http://revdkathy.tumblr.com/, as these sites will help you to stay focused on the cooking of the scones, without getting distracted by reading a book or watching television.

sorry, no picture of the scones as we have eaten them all.

Using a tablespoon, make three separate puddles of scone liquid in the pan, and cook until you see bubbles forming in the surface and the edges seem to have become slightly firm. (about three or four pages on the tumblr site). Flip them over with the fish slice; the cooked surface should be golden brown. Leave them for about another three pages, and then transfer them to the grill pan to cool. Continue in this way until all the mixture is used up. 

This will make about 20 pancakes - good with cheese, or jam, or ice cream and maple syrup, or just butter. I used to make double quantity of flour/sugar/butter mix, and just use as much as I wanted, leaving the rest in the fridge. I don't know how long it will keep for in the crumb state - I had always used it up by the end of the week.

Sunday 2nd June - All kinds of tea (and coffee)

When the weather is really hot, what I like is proper cold tea to drink. In a Sunday magazine, probably twenty years ago, I read that the best way to make cold tea is to place a spoonful of fine tea (darjeeling? jasmine? Earl Grey?) in a small jug of cold water and leave overnight in the fridge. I do the cheat's version; bung a tea bag into a recycled smoothie or fruit juice bottle. Currently Clipper Tea's White Tea. Then I can fish the teabag out (it floats conveniently near the surface) and put it in with my packed lunch. The bottle. The teabag goes in the compost bin. With any luck a chill pack will have kept it (the bottle of cold tea of course - the teabag went in the compost, remember? Do pay attention, please!), and my sandwiches, cool until lunchtime, or whenever I get a chance to drink it.

Today I have indulged in a series of tea (and coffee) occasions.

It started well; coffee and croissants were on a tray ready for me once I was out of the bath, clothed, and in what passes for my right mind.

Later in the morning we went to the Santa Fe coffee shop, which is upstairs in our Waterstones bookshop, as a reward for getting up early to do the shopping. It's the first day of half term and all my decision-making ability had been used up in the supermarket, so I was unable to supply coherent answers to complicated questions such as "which coffee would you like?" (choice of 4) and "what size cup?" (choice of 3). In the end I managed to whimper "the strongest one" and make a cup shape with my hands to indicate the size. The waitress looked resigned and sorted it out for me.

Somewhere around 3pm we finally remembered that we hadn't had lunch. That delayed our arrival at the Jubilee street party until 4pm. I guess there was tea and cake on offer, but we just had an ice cream each, chatted to the one adult (a neighbour) and the three school children (I teach at the school round the corner) that I recognised, and then went on to friends down the road....

where we sat in the garden and had proper tea and home-made cakes and Jubilee shortbread from a commemorative tin. By this time it was warm and sunny; the Best kind of Bank Holiday weather. (The cake was coffee with coffee icing and walnuts on top. I had two pieces.)

It wasn't really a cold tea sort of day, apart from an hour or so around 4pm, which is proper tea-in-a-teapot-time.

It is now time to start thinking about supper (7pm). I think I need another cup of tea to help me decide what to cook.

The Perfect Pocket Handkerchief

the double-point fold

the balloon fold

If you have time to stuff mushrooms (remember "Superwoman" by Shirley Conran), then you have time to create the perfect pocket handkerchief. I assume this is for show; and you keep your paper tissues in another pocket for real use?

I don't really like to think of the handkerchief being carefully refolded and put back after use.....


http://www.atailoredsuit.com/mens-pocket-squares-folding.html

Saturday 1st June - Rescue - combined skills save the day

The strange and rather spooky rustling noise in the staff room turned out to be a bird in the chimney. The combined expertise and skills of the staff were required to effect a rescue.
Between us we located the step ladder, found a screwdriver to unscrew the ventilator grille, fetched a pond-dipping net from the infant resources cupboard and set to work.

The plan went like clockwork. Once the grille was removed, the bird shot into the net like a small feathery missile. We covered the open end of the net with a handy cake-tin lid, and carefully took it outside in order to release it into a suitable shrubby bush.

The bird had other plans. As soon as the lid was removed it flew off, up, up and away.

picture from wikipedia

Back to work everyone. Nothing to see here. All finished.