Heroes, what heroes - perhaps this is the explanation?

Admit after so many positive and enthusiastic comments since my original post on what a disappointment I found the Heroes series to be, I have re-watched the major part of the first two episodes and now agree that Heroes is more interesting than I first thought. Not a lot, but am intrigued enough to keep watching. I particularly like Hiro, (sic) the Japanese geek character who finds himself to be a comic book super hero.

Since 1st July 2007, England has been "Smokefree" according to the law. "Virtually all enclosed places and workplaces in England" are now required to be smoke-free. This includes churches, by the way. Just in case you fancied popping into one and claiming sanctuary. Although as a non-smoker and mother of an asthmatic, I have appreciated smoke-free workplaces, and transport, I just feel that the way this law is to be enforced is an example of creeping fascism or extreme socialism, however you want to describe increasing state intervention into our private lives. There is even a telephone number for you to report a breach of the law. Big Brother anyone?

Yet the only difference I have noticed, is the increasing number of smokers in the streets. I keep almost literally bumping into them as I walk round town going shopping, to the bank etc. They are not allowed to hover in doorways  and so move slowly around the pavements (sidewalks). I have never felt so like lighting up myself - and blowing the smoke into the face of any passing politician.

   Oh, and in case you don't understand English - worry not:

The individuals leaflet is also available in the following translated versions and formats below:

Albanian (PDF, 647KB)	Latvian (PDF, 671KB)
Arabic (PDF, 711KB)	Pashto (PDF, 1,5MB)
Belarusian (PDF, 673KB)	Polish (PDF, 669KB)
Chinese (Cantonese) (PDF, 939KB)	Portuguese (PDF, 663KB)
Chinese (Mandarin) (PDF, 906KB)	Romanian (PDF, 667KB)
Czech (PDF, 670KB)	Russian (PDF, 671KB)
Estonian (PDF, 666KB)	Slovakian (PDF, 668KB)
Farsi (PDF, 1,6MB)	Somali (PDF, 663KB)
French (PDF, 671KB)	Spanish (PDF, 663KB)
Greek (PDF, 673KB)	Turkish (PDF, 666KB)
Kurdish (Kurmanji) (PDF, 1,3MB)	Ukranian (PDF, 678KB)
Kurdish (Sorani) (PDF, 1,8MB)	Vietnamese (PDF, 664KB)

Easy read version (PDF, 522KB)

BBC promo dialogue for Heroes: "Heroes, the top-rating new series for the coveted 18 to 49 year old age group in America this season, is to be screened on BBC Two next year."

Well that counts me out then. But the BBC is correct! Anyone under 18 and over 49 wld see it for the rubbish it is. What a let down, what disappointment.

I have been an SF fan since 10 yrs old. Have heard, watched and read most everything. Even attended SF Conventions ( not trekkies) serious stuff with the most influential writers. What is this Heroes crap? Like Lost only worse.Where are the SF writers of yesteryear?

 

 

   

Was half watching a BBC2 TV programme about 20th century inventions when the presenter, James May, said something like "the city is the greatest invention of the 20th century" - and that more people are moving there. This is curious as cities have existed for centuries - but I think he was getting at something else. Did any other Woyanos watch it?

To me it alludes to the debate on city versus country living. I was brought up, more or less, in the country but moved to the city - London - when I was 18 as a student, a hundred years ago. Never returned to live in the English countryside until approx eight years ago en route for rural France. For the first three or so years I missed London so much that I used to joke that my car was would take me straight back to London on the motorway if I ever took my eye off the route when driving on country roads. In fact I escaped as often as I could by train whenever I got the chance. Just to get a whiff of London taxi diesel fumes in my lungs. And an injection of liveliness and excitement and awareness. Besides I couldn't, and still can't, stand country drivers - especially those who don't know how to manage roundabouts and a million and one other aspects of driving a vehicle. Road rage is never far below the surface when I am driving in and around my country 'city' streets (in reality a market town of 40,000 inhabitants but called a city because of its cathedral). In fact I think my blood pressure have increased since I started living back here in the sticks. OK, it's not the same as living in a tiny village, but hey - not much different if you have arrived from London. I have to speak more slowly, and act more dense. Everything here is so slow and so smug. I don't mind slow, I love rural France. I do mind smug and obstructive. So why am I still here? Because I am still following plan A: en route to France. But in my dreams I live in Sydney, Australia. Another vibrant city. At the end of the world. Wow.

So where do other Woyanos live or want to live - city or country?

I am famous (among my friends) in the French Cotentin ( Cherbourg peninsula) for this summer salad. Suitable for vegetarians and instructions here are dedicated to Loves Boc Party:D

This make enough for two to four people at lunch. Depends how greedy you are ( We are very greedy!) It is not original, but this is my version. Easy to expand for more people. As carnivores, we often also serve a plate of sliced French cured sausage, or a pot of rillettes ( Sort of spread made from cooked salted pork).

Ingredients:

1. Walnuts - preferably fresh from shells - but otherwise from a packet of broken pieces - don't pay more for whole pieces. About a small handful. If shelling, need to break them into small pieces.

2. Approx 100gm (4 ounces) Roquefort cheese. Roquefort is a creamy French blue cheese made from ewes milk. ('Brebis' is the French for an ewe - aka " the wife of the sheep" as explained to me by a patient lady cheese seller in our local market some 20 years ago!)

3. A decent quantity of the best salad leaves. We use two thirds green - usually curly - to one third red oak leaf ('chene'). We buy them from local growers in the open air market and wash and prepare them ourseleves. But any flatish leaves would do. Or just buy a packet of French style leaves from the supermarket.

4. Dressing: one tablespoon of Balsamic vinegar; one teaspoonful of Dijon mustard ( preferably with mustard seeds), mix together. Then add four or five tablespoons ( taste to decide) of olive oil and mix. Yum.

5. Knob of butter

Method:

1.Put dressing in bottom of large salad bowl - you may not need all of it if only using small quantity of leaves.

2.Add washed leaves - do not toss yet.

3. Chop cheese into small pieces and add to top of leaves.

4. Take frying pan and put on low heat - add butter - allow to froth ( not burn) then throw in walnut pieces. Shake pan until coated in butter and saute gently until walnuts are toasted - lovely almost caramelly smell - but don't burn!

5. Throw toasted walnuts onto top of salad. Take to table and toss so dressing, cheese and walnuts are nicely mixed.

Serve with fresh French bread and unsalted butter. And a glass of chilled French rose wine.

Yum.

(image from waitrose.com recipe site - recommended - also has section which converts metric into imperial measures)

This is a great summer salad which turns into an instant warming pasta dish if the weather is miserable - as it has been in the UK for months now. I make no excuses for having found it on a recipe card in UK top people's favourite supermarket, Waitrose. (On one of my rare visits there these days, Tesco being my budget pal these days.) I served it first time as a salad because I found it during a brief warm and sunny spell a couple of months ago. But ever since then I have taken the chef's tip at the bottom of the page - to tip it into a bowl of hot pasta. I use quick cook - six minute - fusilli - and it cooks as I fry up the chorizo. Perfect timing. Absolutely delicious. Takes about 15 minutes from start to finish - excluding time to pod the fresh beans and peas. But if you use frozen ones - it's a doddle. Actually, word to the wise and those who have 'delicate' digestive systems - frozen broad beans are kinder on the system if you get my drift :D

A couple of weeks ago I happened to be in M & S ( Marks and Spencer - popular good quality clothing store for the English middle-aged, middle-class), and spied a special offer on men's cotton polo shirts. Three for the price of two! An offer previously unknown at M&S in the foodhall, let alone on clothing.  In thrall to such an unbelievable bargain, (now no more according to the website) I spent about twenty minutes carefully looking through the display to find three shirts of the correct size for Husband, and importantly, of appropriate colour ways  to suit summer excursions and lifestyle for both in England and France. ( I take these things seriously...) So, £30 paid happily into the M&S coffers. Three fab shirts for £10 each. Result! Shareholders you can also celebrate. Well, anyway - Husband was delighted with my choice and has worn one shirt of a particularly flattering shade of sky blue off and on almost ever since.

So far, so good, so normal, (in my domestic life).

Then last Saturday we were out shopping together (aaah) in the town centre,  and we passed a charity stall  piled high with paperback books  - ooh our favourite! Stopping a while to browse the titles, I suddenly realised Husband had moved to look through the rack of donated clothes. As I deal in vintage fashion and textiles, I thought he had spotted a designer label among the droopy items hanging on the rail.  Seeing me approach, he held up a stripey polo shirt. "It's my size!" he whispered triumphally. Er, yes it was indubitably his size ( tall and handsome), and furthermore rather nice stripey colours.  Quite classic - very French, sipping wine in a harbour bar style  etc.  So he bought it. 50p, thank you very much.

Is it time to let him do his own clothes shopping?

On the night of 21 June 1943 my father, a bomb aimer/navigator on an RAF Halifax, was shot down and on the run in Nazi occupied Holland. This is a photo of him ( far left) with three of his great pals, from the seven crew members of his original crew. The pilot, Flight Sergeant Edwin Sims, RAAF, is the jaunty fellow in the middle of the front row, ( Everything's apples!" was his favourite saying, according to my mother) To his left is a Canadian and chap at the back is from Northumberland, England. ( I have all their names but cannot yet identify which is which due to my father now being dead and my 87 yr old mother's fading memory). On the 21 June, bomb aimers being in short supply (!) my father volunteered to join another crew on their mission that night even though he was not on duty. His plane was shot down but he survived, with the help of some very brave young Dutch Resistence helpers. Sadly all the other members of his original crew, died on their mission the following night. Two are remembered on the Runnymede Memorial ( bodies unrecovered), Sims is buried in a Belgium Commomwealth Graves Cemetary (CGC) and his name appears in the Roll of Honour in the Australian War Memorial. I am researching the others.

The story of my father's evasion from Holland and his young helpers has been touched on in the book , "Shot Down and on the Run" published a couple of years ago. He was one of only three airmen to evade capture and escape from Holland by sea during WWII. The helpers were extraordinarily brave. The leader of the group was just 27 and his own escape, having been betrayed to the Nazis, was touched on in a 1948 Time Magazine report of a US tour by 29 students from europe and the Middle East, applauded by Dwight Eisenhower. ( Six degrees of separation anybody?)

Anyway, this was my Dad and I loved him.
   

Ist June and a beautiful English early summer day so I decided to take a walk through the cathedral close to the high street shops, rather than going through the city centre. The ancient cathedral, painted by both JMW Turner and John Constable, is completely surrounded by walls on three sides and beautiful old houses backing onto the river on the other. The only entrance to the close is by one of the three arched stone gateways in the walls. These are closed and locked at 10pm each night until 7am. (Residents have keys.) My house is outside the close but less than 200 steps from one of the gates. ( I was wearing a pedometer today because I aim to walk 10,00 steps everyday as part of keeping fit.) Once through the gate the view of the cathedral with its 404 ft spire, tallest in Britain, standing amidst the smooth lawns and paths, bathed in sunshine and surrounded by trees in full leaf, made my heart leap. To live so close to such beauty and not go to drink it in everyday is to deny myself one of the greatest visual pleasures on earth.

As I walked along I passed small groups of tourists as well as locals just enjoying the sunshine. Some sitting or lying on the grass, some on the weathered wooden benches conveniently dotted about by the low inner walls that border the lawns. Passing the gardens of the houses, some dating from medieval times, I paused occasionally to breathe in the smell of heavily scented roses tumbling over walls and twining around gateways. I picked a daisy from under a row of beech trees by the water meadow. In all, a truly English scene; it could be no-where else in the world.

Across a smaller lawn I passed the lovely 18th century Mompesson House, closed to visitors today but open again tomorrow. I would have been tempted by the tea-room in its back garden by the croquet lawn - delicious lemon cake to be had. You will have seen Mompesson House yourselves if you ever saw the film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, part of which was filmed there.

By now I was feeling very warm in the full sun, so I thought to go inside the cathedral for a walk around the cool cloisters and maybe take another peek at the magna carta in the Chapter House. One of only four remaining copies of the magna carta, and the best preserved, is kept here. Sadly since my last visit they have put barriers across to force visitors just wanting to see the Chapter House and magna carta to go in through the cathedral itself and out of a side door into the part of the cloister nearest the Chapter House. This means that you have to pass via a huge notice board with a list of suggested donations towards the upkeep. It takes a brave person to walk past this and the doorkeepers and ticket desk without flinching. In fact I do agree with charging because upkeep must be horrendously expensive and it was introduced for the cathedral proper many years ago. But this latest method of straddling the beautiful cloister with metal barriers and a turnstyle exit, seems so brutal. It surely would have been better to have allowed the cloister walk to remain unimpeded and put a discreet ticket box in the entrance to the Chapter House.

So back outside and walk towards the High Street Gate - the main arch through which most visitors arrive. There are terraces of tiny shops on both sides of the road on the town side of this gate: a toy and gft shop - beloved by generations of children, including mine; two hairdressers; an estate agent; a small law firm; a christian bookshop; a smart and expensive gift shop; the National Trust shop; a Post Office/gift shop. A modern restaurant now ocupies the site of the much missed old Beeches Bookshop - a wonderful rambling building which had books tumbling out of nooks and crannies. Now gutted inside and refurbished, but the lovely old black and white structure remains. Opposite is a tiny ladies shoe shop - more of a boutique really. The owner has exquisite taste and customers sit on prettily upholstered French salon style chairs to be served. I have seen a lovely pair of french navy and red sandals which I meant to pop in and buy but then remembered that I had only come out with enough money for a stamp for my letter. I digress, and letter posted, I return through the gate for a walk back home through to the gate at the other end of the close. Taking a slight diversion I pass another memorable house, Malmesbury House, which bears a sundial high on the wall. It has a series of dates across it but they are inaccurate because it was made, I think in 1749, while the Julian calendar was in use, before we changed to the gregorian calendar in 1752(?). Anyway it bears a glorious motto which starts: Life is But A Walking Shadow. Is that me? I hurry homewards.