mostly i have been listening to...

Over the last couple of weeks I have discovered a whole slew of new and newish guitar bands. I guess if you like your music touched with a little melancholy then you will probably like this stuff. To be fair, B.C. Camplight is a little more than a guitar band. He is one of those lovely slightly eccentric singer/songwriters than we know and love. His stuff is in a similar vein as Badly Drawn Boy.

1 No Voice Was Raised Castanets
2 Wouldn't Mind The Sunshine B.C. Camplight
3 Since K Got Over Me The Clientele
4 Flashes and Cables Centro-Matic
5 Size Of Your Life The Promise Ring
6 We Were Wrong Audible

The biggest surprise for me recently has been my discovery of Galaxie 500. This is one of those groups that you hear about all the time in the music press. For some reason, even though I have heard them namechecked a hundred times, I have never listened to them until now. The hype really is deserved. This is one of those great undisovered bands, and I can hear the way in which they have influenced a whole load of bands that I have heard and liked over the years. This is It's it a pity from their 1989 album, On Fire. By the way, Dean Wareham went on to form Luna in 1992, and they made one of my favourite songs of all time, Bobby Peru.

phew

We had a bit of a panic this morning at hospital, when it appeared as if the Bairn hadn't grown at all for a month. The consultant was quite reassuring and said he thought it was something to do with the measurements being off as I'm taller and thinner than average (well I was thinner until my recent acquisition of thighs of lard) but that I needed a scan as soon as possible. Despite his reassurance, I immediately began to feel the fear that you only feel when you have no control over anything and your world is falling apart. Fortunately, Mr McMuffin was a rock and hid his own fear very well, so I managed not to get any more hysterical than a few tears and a big, red puffy face. Anyway, we had the scan and the Bairn is absolutely fine and a normal size for his age.

I now feel a bit pathetic and wrung out and I'm not going back to work this afternoon. Mr McMuffin is making us a lovely lunch and we're both going to relax and think about our last glimpse of the Bairn, which showed him opening and shutting his mouth in the style of a fish and waving his hand in front of his face, looking quite relaxed and comfortable and oblivious to the worries around him, as babies should be.

up on my box again

We really haven't moved on as much as we think we have according to this research. Even the defence lawyer talking about it on radio 4 tonight attributed this to sexism and thought people needed to change their views. Certainly got me wondering about how if the tables were turned what we might think. Say, for example, you're a man in his twenties out on the town with a load of mates. You've had too much to drink and you're chatting to a bloke at the bar. After a nice evening you leave to go home on your own and as you're walking back you are hit, threatened and raped by the 'nice' bloke at the bar. How much do you feel you're to blame? How much do the Police and the ordinary person in the street think you're to blame? I don't think there's a clear answer, except if you're male you're probably less to be blamed and more to be pitied than if you were female.

more birthdays

This time a very happy birthday to Single Cookie, who although in my mind is a young little thing, is getting on like the rest of us, although she doesn't quite need a fire engine on standby when the candles on her cake are lit. We celebrated her happy day yesterday at a restaurant in the murder capital of South East London and a jolly time was had by all, especially Mr McMuffin who after a couple of Single Cookie's amazing margaritas felt no pain. After sharing a bottle of wine with Mrs Carrot Cake, his pain felt no pain either. I, of course, just looked on with a sour face, fantasising about a cold bottle of Hoegaarden in seven weeks' time but not the celebratory cigar.

happy birthday to us...

We are two today. It's hard to believe that we have been at this blogging lark for two whole years. We have met lots of lovely people over the years, and for the most part it has been a real pleasure. I was looking back over some of our posts the other day, and I thought we would celebrate our birthday by reposting an old post. I always thought it was quite amusing.

By the way, we turned down Typepad's kind offer of compensation. I think the service is great, and rarely have any problems with it. I wonder how many of you asked for the maximum amount.

royal scandal from 18 November 2003

I was surprised to finally find out what the latest royal scandal is all about from the front page of The Sun. I thought there was some kind of gagging order in place. Apparently Prince Charles was caught in a 'compromising position' with a manservant. I wonder what they mean? Prince Charles giving someone a blow job? Who really cares about this stuff? I suppose this is some kind of Princess Di backlash, which reminds me of the theory that my sister had when Natalie Wood died. Do you remember that Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood's husband, used to star in a detective series with Stephanie Powers in the 1970s, well my sister was convinced that Wagner and Powers conspired to murder their respective partners so that they could be together. She did not think it was a coincidence that shortly after Natalie Wood accidently drowned, Powers' long time partner, William Holden, also died, in some kind of accident involving a coffee table. Absolutely nothing we said could dissuade her from her theory, she would merely nod sagely and say, "I think the facts speak for themselves."

recipe

This is based on the recipe for chocolate cake in the November edition of BBC Olive magazine.

Butter and line a 20cm cake tin. Using an electric whisk, beat together 250g butter and 300g light muscovado sugar until fluffy. Added a 100g plain flour and 100g self-raising flour and 5 eggs. Beat it all together. It might look as if it's splitting for a second, but just keep beating. Pour 300g of melted dark chocolate, once it has slightly cooled, into the mixture and beat until fully combined. Spoon into the tin and bake for about 1hour and 15 minutes at 160C (fan) 140C/gas mark 3. The cake should be risen with a crust on top. Test it with a skewer. Let it cool, then cut the top crust off, I don't like it much, then cut the rest in three. Whip up 300ml of double cream, and spread half on to the bottom layer. Scatter about 250g of cherries soaked in krisch over the cream. I bought a 500g jar of black cherries in kirsch from the supermarket. Repeat with the second layer.

For the covering melt 300g dark chocolate, once it has cooled slightly, mix in 300ml of double cream. Let it cool for little bit longer, and then spread all over the cake.

Mmm...chocolate heaven.

dinner

My brother and his boyfriend are coming over for dinner tonight. I have spent the morning preparing a lovely meal for us. I have decided that it was time to try my 70s menu. We are having prawn cocktail, boeuf à la bourguignonne, and finishing with probably the best chocolate cake ever made, my version of black forest gâteau. The recipe for the beef comes from Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham's book The Prawn Cocktail Years, which is probably one of the best, and most entertaining, cook books that I have ever bought. There is hardly anything in it, apart from the tripe recipes, that I don't fancy cooking. I think you should all rush out and buy a copy. You will not be disappointed.

The cake looks so fantastic that I had to take it outside to photograph. The secret I think is in the proper chocolate sponge cake. For some reason most chocolate sponges rarely taste of chocolate. You will not find a measly few gms of cocoa powder in this sponge. No, there is 300gms of the finest dark chocolate, five eggs, 250gms of butter and 300 gms of light muscovado sugar. The filling is whipped double cream and cherries soaked in kirsch. The whole thing has then been covered in a ganache made from equal measures of more dark chocolate, another 300gms, and double cream. With ingredients like that, I do admit it is hard to go wrong.

I'll let you all know how it tastes. Better still, I'm sure there will be tons to go around, why don't you pop in tomorrow around 11am and we can have a slice with some coffee?

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I have also made some ginger vodka. It involves a big chunk of ginger, finely sliced, being soaked in vodka for three weeks. Of course, I had to sample it as soon as it was ready, and I am pleased to be able to tell you it tastes great.

before i forget

As requested by Mr Worstall, here's a link to his description of his book and I'm sure it will make a lovely Christmas present for that special person in your life. As he's at pains to point out, it's not all about economics and right wing railery, which is a blessed relief for us lefties. He's also involved in this project, which looks rather interesting.

I also have to apologise to Mr Raising Chooksfor not ever finishing the seven things meme he tagged us with. I approached this with great enthusiasm (as I have to confess I am a massive fan of his blog-it's witty, wry, with wonderful writing and warmth) but my partially complete response has languished on a virtual yellow sticky on the desktop.

I am also plagued at present with an appalling memory. Not that I'm always brilliant, but I usually have no need of lists as I can keep the important stuff in mind. Right now I need all the lists I can get and an enormous list of where all the other lists are. I've even taken to using the calendar in Outlook at work and making sure that I'm reminded of every appointment and phone call I need to keep or make. Unfortunately, once I've dismissed all the reminders, I still forget. This would be something of a tragedy normally, but as it's accompanied with an inability to give a toss about anything else other than the Bairn and Mr McMuffin, it's not something I care about at all. Fiddle dee dee.

bloody spammers

I'm afraid we have had to take the drastic action of setting up comment approval. This means that all comments will have to be approved by us before they can be posted. You just make your comment as usual, but it will not show up straight away. We've done this because we are being haunted by some kind of finance site who are sending us six or seven spam omments a day. Hopefully, Typepad will get things sorted and we can go back to the good old days of free comments. I hate spammers.

cidade de deus

I've been thinking about City of God, or rather I have been thinking about that fact that the film was co-directed by Kátia Lund. The other director, Fernando Meirelles has been praised by the media and has gone on to make a big budget hollywood thriller, The Constant Gardener. The odd thing about this partnership is that the awards industry both in the US and UK refused to recognise that the film was co-directed. Fernando Meirelles was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA award for City of God, while Kátia Lund was ignored. I remember hearing her being interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour when the Oscar nomination was announced. She tried to put on a brave face, claiming that even though she had not been nominated, both she and Meirelles knew that they had made the film together, and any award would still be an award for her. I don't have any point to make, really. I just wanted to acknowledge Kátia Lund's contribution. I guess, I have puzzled over this strange incident for a couple of years. I don't doubt that there is a casual sexism involved, but what I don't understand is that once the mistake had been pointed out, why was it not corrected?

a little problem...solved

The only problem with Front Row is that it insists on displaying the cover art for the song playing. What's the problem with that, I hear you say. Well, until now I haven't been too bothered about how big the album cover art was. It was only being displayed in the corner of Tunes, so it didn't seem to matter much. However, Front Row seems to be displaying it at around 600x600, and everything looks a big blurry mess. I have found something to help. It's a web page designed to display the 600x600 albums from the iTunes Music Store. If you right click on an album cover in the iTMS then you are offered the option of copying the URL. Paste that here: iTMS Album Art Finder and Bob's your uncle.

wow!

I found Apple's Front Row on one of those wonderful free sites, and I've been playing with it this afternoon. All I can say is wow! It offers the classiest front to the main entertainment apps that I have ever seen. It makes the Media Centre software look really clunky. If you've got a Mac, get yourself a copy. If you've only got a Wintel machine, then bad luck.

iphoto drama narrowly averted

Well, after nearly two days of hard work, I have managed to sort out all of our photos. I have reimported them, put keywords on them and put them neatly in albums. It all looks lovely. I am now going to back up the bloody thing...you know, just in case. Unfortunately, my last computer failure cost us our photos of this year's holiday in Madeira. As luck would have it though, Ms Victoria Sponge took hundreds of photos, and she takes a much better picture than me, so all was not lost, so to speak. As I was going through our photos I found this lovely picture that I took last year of this beautiful moth, who very kindly settled on a complementary background for our shoot.

we make him sick

Poor little Slinky has been vomiting a lot over the last couple of days and today I understood why. He has clearly been returning to her for the odd half hour and hoovering up any food he finds. Unfortunately the food he finds is not very good for him and today's vomit contained noodles. I did have my suspicions that it was a message from him about being abandoned while Mr McMuffin and I went out with Gypsy Tart and had lunch at a local Thai place, but I'm not sure Slink would have been able to make it down there, grab a plate of noodles and make it back home without us noticing something. It's probably best that I keep a closer eye on him...just in case.

holy communion, batman...

We've been out shopping and eating noodles today with Ms Gypsy Tart. She choose today to reveal her deep dark secret. Apparently, she has received eucharist. Now, Ms Gypsy Tart is a bit of a non-believer, so I was a little bit surprised when she told me. She went on to explain that when she used to look after old people, a priest used to come around to offer communion to the residents. One day he came while she was on shift and rather than be impolite, she took the wafer when it was offered. She said, "I just didn't like to say no." Is it just me, or is that really very odd?

oh dear...help

I started off with the best of intentions. Every time I added photos to iPhoto I would put them into an album and add comments and keywords. However, gradually, over the last year or so, I have stopped doing this, and as our collection has grown, it became a bigger and bigger job. Adding to this problem is that, for some reason, I seem to have about a thousand duplicate photos. They're not straight forward duplicates though. iPhoto seems to have ignored the metadata and decided to store them in strange places. For example, photos taken on 26.07.02, our wedding day, are stored in iPhoto Library > 2002 > 07 > 26, which seems simple enough. But, I also have some of the same photos stored in 2001 > 07 > 26 and 2004 > 02 > 19, and in other places too. It is just a little bit odd. Oh, and the thumbnails that Finder uses seem to have become mixed up with the full-size pictures too. I have tried a variety of methods and tools to try to sort it out, but without luck. iPhoto is a great app, and it usually creates a very neat database, leaving to one side it's reluctance to throw anything away...Ah, the penny has just dropped. The huge number of duplicates probably has something to do with iPhoto's insistence on making copies every time you change something, but that doesn't explain why it would be changing where it stores the information. I wonder if it has something to do with reimporting the library, which I have had to do on a regular basis over the years because I am forever messing up my OS install. The truth is I just don't know what is going on. Fortunately, I have quite a few of the photos on disc somewhere, so I might just start again. Although, I can't bear the thought of having to go through the library picking out the photos that I want to keep.

Does any clever soul out there have any idea how to sort this out with the minimum of work?

more Paris...

I thought you might like to see a little bit of the train journey to Paris that we made last month. It's only a minute long, but it is very exciting, and you may be pleased to know that I have a whole two minutes of unseen footage. I haven't decided yet, but I may release an extended director's cut. I must admit, having seen some of this country side, it makes me wonder why anyone would bother continuing on to Paris.

(*** Almost as compelling as that Star Guitar video for the Chemical Brothers and watching cricket on the telly-Mrs McMuffin)

anyone who had a heart

Just a little post to express my gratitude to whatever powers that be and the nice cardiologist for the good news I had today. Having never had any concerns about the heart murmur before, I was a little upset on Wednesday when I found out that because my murmur was in the aortic region, if it wasn't a cheeky but innocent little squishy sound, it could be quite serious and potentially a bit dangerous. Today's news was most welcome and it's good to know that despite my cruel treatment of it in the past (although I've made sure that I've never let it get broken) my heart is healthy.

I'm now three quarters of the way through the pregnancy (hasn't it dragged on? Although I'm not complaining, I'm happy it's not yet at an end) and am sorry to say that the wonderful sense of energy and wellbeing I had in the second trimester is starting to fade. This is such a shame as I have never felt better in my whole life. Mr McMuffin and I are approaching the preparations for the appearance of the Bairn in different ways. I am poring over catalogues and making lists of 'essential' equipment which I am gradually getting. Mr McMuffin is getting the technology in before we get locked down and has also been doing a fair amount of baking. I am grateful for his foresight and can look forward to sleepless nights where I shall be comforted by watching telly without wondering why the whole world has developed jaundice and fine red lines running all over them and eating large slices of gorgeous chocolate cake and banana bread. Surely that's not so bad.

is that it?

Four, no wait, five, posts in almost as many minutes. What is that man on?

aerial

It probably will not come as any surprise to our regular reader to find that I am a big Kate Bush fan. Kate has a new album out. It's called Aerial. It's her first album in 500 million years. I've been listening to it all afternoon. Initially, I was a bit underwhelmed by it all. I really do like the dramatic stuff. Her voice still sounds fantastic, and gradually over the course of the afternoon, the songs have burrowed their way into my head. I could never imagine that Kate would ever release a bad album, but it is a relief to find that her new album is grower. Ah well, and the good news is that we only have to wait 12 years for the next one.

don't be jealous II

Last week was a good gadget week. First of all I got a lovely iPod on Friday, and then on Saturday, sick fed up of watching yellow people on TV, we finally decided to take the plunge into the sea of digital madness. We got ourselves a beautiful HD LCD TV and a HD DVD player too. Of course, we have too much class to buy a truly humungous screen. Instead, we went for a dignified 26" screen, the smallest you can have and still appreciate HD beauty. I can't believe that it has come to the sorry state of affairs where people will assume that we must be intellectuals because we have such a small TV. Thank God, the size of your TV has nothing to do with the size of your penis. Anyway, it is lovely, or at least the DVDs are lovely. Sadly, the TV signal can't match the quality of the TV and the picture is crap. Hopefully that will all change next year when Sky launch their HD Sky+ box. I can't wait.

don't be jealous...

I did indeed get myself a beautiful new iPod. It's sitting in front of me as I type, and it is all lines of sleek white beauty. It is lovely. Unfortunately, being an early adopter means that I can't actually take it out yet because I don't have a proper case for it, and I couldn't bear to have it get scratched. The iPod is a very satisfying gadget. It does just what it says on the tin. It plays music, brilliantly, and it plays movies. As a movie player it is surprisingly good. The 2.5cm screen is pin sharp and very easy to watch. I have already begun to download a collect of movies to take on holiday with me. One of the best features is that the movies, and photos too, can easily be played through a full-size TV. The picture is not the greatest in the world because these are 320x240 movies blown up to fit, but they are very watchable. I've seen it compared to ordinary VHS quality. I think it is a little bit less than that myself, but very good all the same. Have I mentioned that my iPod is beautiful?

it's official...

Mrs McMuffin is not a heartless bitch. You may also be interested to know that her heart is not made of stone or the size of a pea. Mrs McMuffin has had a heart murmur all of her life, although it has never caused her any problems. Every now and then some doctor notices it, but does nothing. However, this time, a very nice doctor took the time to ensure that she had an echoscan. The whole thing took about 20 minutes, and it turns out that she does indeed have a heart murmur, but it is only some flow turbulence, which has something to do with having a slightly thicker valve wall than most people. Even though I wasn't worried about it all, it was a relief to have it confirmed that she is okay, and that this should never cause her any problems. By the way, the whole process was fascinating. I've seen her heart.