Farting through my Fingertips

 
"If you're not scared or angry at the thought of a human brain being controlled remotely, then it could be this prototype of mine is finally starting to work."

-- John Alejandro King, My War On Terror!


And the hallmark of every single genuinely effective person I've ever known:

"One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done."

-- Marie Curie (1867 - 1934), Letter to her brother, 1894

Lardy Cake. Lardy Cake.
I ask you: how can you just walk on past something called that?

Answer: you can't.

Good thing, too. Yum-o.

Local Markets are the BEST.

The light. The light is changing. I noticed it this morning as I rounded a curve at the foot of Little Tibet. The eye-high jumble of hedge by the road, shot through with wickedly spined blackberry hordes, stood unshaded in the sun at that time of the morning as it has every morning since this hell-ride became part of my day.

But this morning the exploding green is different somehow. It's… like the still-deep green has been dusted with orange. But not like the leaves are turning, like the colour's draining from within to be replaced with autumn's hue. The green's still there, still green, and the branches' brown's still there too, still brown, still the same as it was yesterday. But, now, somehow, orange too, as though a faint film has been poured over every leaf, every branch, every –as my gaze widens—every stone, every patch of earth, the fence posts, the grass, the fields, the tree borders between them. I'd stopped by now and stood and craned, and everywhere a cast of orange.

Season's change here is not like elsewhere – more than just the plants, the whole landscape, the whole country is turning with the year.

The light. The light is changing.

Coming back across the ploughed fields now dusted with green shoots, I'm arrested by the sky.

Heaven's a high pale blue and beneath it a single spatterwork of cottonwool clouds marches in melee order and at-ease pace, drifting like happy galleons before a summer breeze. But today there's something different, and it takes some time to place it. Flare white a-top, they carry hulls of silver blue, somehow darker and brighter than the sky, lighting the land with a cast of strange magic. Pivot and scan the horizon, and I stand beneath two skies, one far, one fey.

The clouds are dipped in elf-metal, and it glows.

As you may or may not know, Zimbabwe has chewed through its economy and is now in the terminal stages of starving itself to death. For example, at the start of the year its biggest bakery used to bake 200,000 loaves a day, today only 40,000.
By way of support, encouragement, and insightful explanation for how this can happen in what used to be a rich country, a Zimbabwean Finance Ministry offical who works directly for and with the Finance Minister offered the following:

A statement by Doc Mtusi, official in Zimbabwe's Finance Ministry, interviewed in the Cape Times:

"The unpatriotic hoarding of food gives the impression that we have a problem, which clearly we haven't, except in the South African media's mind. We do not call it starving, we call it fasting. Fasting is actually good for you. Lots of famous people have fasted for the benefit of their people. Gandhi, for instance. In our case, the people themselves will be encouraged to fast, thereby strengthening themselves against the onslaught of colonial imperialism.
We have no objection in principle to people eating. People in government all eat, but only because people in our important positions have to. What we must guard against is the belief that people have the right to break the law if they're hungry."

source: The Week, 2007.09.15.
The full article, even more chilling, is here.
"I'm surprised that Mbeki still allows you to write this nonsense. We are relying on comrade Zuma to make you change your tune once he takes over."
"It is simple economics."

 

Dwile Flonking

Dwile flonking is an outdoor game of dubious parentage played in the UK's Suffolk and Sussex countryside during the August Christmas season. It is a game of dexterity and drinking, with the apparent aim of having a laugh and getting as drunk as possible.

What IS Dwile Flonking?

Two teams take turns to dance around each other and have the beer-soaked dwile flung at them.

'Flonk' is probably a corruption of flong, an old past tense of fling; and 'dwile' is a knitted floor cloth, from the Flemish 'dweil'.

Appropriate and seasonal dress is important. The BBC provides photos of seasoned flonkers here and here and the interested would-be flonker is well-advised to study them closely.

The Rules

According to The Friends Of The Lewes Arms, "The rules of the game are impenetrable and the result is always contested." However, less alcohol-centric authorities provide more clarity.

A 'dull witted person' is chosen as the referee or 'jobanowl' and the two teams decide who flonks first by tossing a sugar beat. The game begins when the jobanowl shouts "Here y'go t'gither!"

The non-flonking team joins hands and dances in a circle around a member of the flonking team, a practice known as 'girting'. The flonker dips his dwile-tipped 'driveller' (a pole 2-3 ft long and made from hazel or yew) into a bucket of beer, then spins around in the opposite direction to the girters and flonks his dwile at them.

If the dwile misses completely it is known as a 'swadger' or a 'swage'. When this happens the flonker must drink the contents of an ale-filled 'gazunder' (chamber pot ('goes-under' the bed)) before the wet dwile has passed from hand to hand along the line of now non-girting girters chanting the ancient ceremonial mantra of "pot pot pot".

A full game comprises four 'snurds', each snurd being one team taking a turn at girting. The jobanowl adds interest and difficulty to the game by randomly switching the direction of rotation, and will levy drinking penalties on any player found not taking the game seriously enough.

Points are awarded as follows:

• +3: a 'wanton'- a direct hit on a girter's head
  
• +2: a 'morther' or 'marther'- a body hit
  
• +1: a 'ripple' or 'ripper'- a leg hit
  
• -1 per sober person at the end of the game

At the end of the game, the team with the most number of points wins, and will be awarded a ceremonial pewter gazunder.

The History (or "Thrash my rhubarb they're still flonking the dwile")

The earliest definitely known game of Dwile Flonking was played at the Beccles Festival of Sport in 1966. According to BBC research, 'No one can remember the score, although team members recalled feeling "pretty fragile" the following morning.'

The organisers were Andrew Leverett and Robert Devereux, printing apprentices at Clay's of Bungay and Clowes of Beccles, respectively, who had apparently been shown the rules on the only decipherable portion of a parchment document entitled: 'Ye Olde Booke of Suffolk Harvest Rituels', which George High of Bungay claimed to have found the same year while clearing out his late grandfather's attic. The inaugural teams were formed by employees of Clay's and Clowes.

Some suspicion was cast on the game in 1967 when the Eastern Daily Press ran an article which stated inter alia that the county archivist had failed to find any mention of the game amongst the county records. Dwile flonking featured as a key element in legal hearings later that year assessing an application for a licence extension to cater for the dinner dance of the Waveney Valley Dwile Flonking Association. The Waveney Valley Dwile Flonking Association went on to make their television debut on The Eamonn Andrews television programme in 1967, which resulted in letters from Australia, Hong Kong and America asking for a flonking rule book, although in the Australians' case this may have been a misprint.

More recently, Schott's apparently retcons the game, renaming it 'Dwyle Flunking' and claiming an historical evidence in a 16th century painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Children's games.

References

• Finn, Timothy: ''Pub Games of England'' (Oleander Press)

External links

• "The art of Dwile Flonking" at BBC Suffolk, 2003-09-11
  
• Dwyle Flunking at the Lewes Arms in Lewes, East Sussex
  
• Play Virtual Dwile Flonking online, courtesy of the BBC

with thanks to Paul of Suffolk for the heads-up, of-course.

K :

Hi guys

Cinema next week – Tuesday – Bourne Ultimatum.

Will have a look on Monday where it is showing and what time. Let me know if you fancy it.

Sal :

Could do – do you need to know the back-story? I haven’t seen the other 11 Bourne movies, you see.

K :

I don't think so.

Sal :

Well, just to be on the safe side, I’ll make one up.

“Mr & Mrs Bourne-Yesterday were walking through the woods one day when suddenly they suffered a terrible divorce. Their baby son, Baby, took his father’s name, and crawled at high speed over the horizon with it clenched firmly between his moviestar teeth (which he’d won in a colouring competition), becoming embroiled in fearsome adventures and perilous dramas, until he ended happily ever after.

Suddenly, twenty years later, as he rocked to and fro on the deck of his moviestar house (which he’d won in a paint-stripping competition), he was struck out of the blue by a crushing crisis of confidence and assonance – who WAS he? Now read on…”

There we go, that should do it. I feel much better about the movie now that I know what’s going on.

I bought a leather pipe today,
In the spirit of Henery Crun.
"Mnk - You can't get the wood" -- you should try eBay!
Whatever you want there's one!

I walked 10 or 15 miles today. I'll check the distance properly when I get a more stable net connection, but a quick finger-measurement around the Ordnance Survey map says at least 10. Green green forest and winding tracks and sudden mansions and picture-postcard countryside. Squirrels and foxes and rabbits and voles and meeces and deer, oh my.

What a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

My feet hurt a little bit, but I'm not talking to them.

The ride to work is a long one and a hilly one. "Little Tibet" the locals call one part of it; and I'd laughed to hear it till I'd tried to ride it. You need low gears and my ancient bike's are jammed in the top cogs. Lifting 150m in a humping half-mile, when the hamstrings cry "Enough!" I tilt gratefully off the side and walk the rattling wobbling machine the rest of the close winding forest road to the top.

And the scenery.

Is exquisite.

I'm actually fit enough now to ride the whole way, but I prefer still to take it 10% slower and to marvel at the beauty, to revel quietly in the views, eyes drawn right at every turn by another living picture. Drawn with trees and hillsides and glimpses of lowland backdrop that speaks of time and stasis and the slow changelessly changing countryside rhythm of humankind old in landscape older. I'm in the hangers, they call it, and when Babylon occurs to you it's hard to think of a better word.

This morning I came around a tighter corner and up to a favourite sudden gap in the trees where the hill falls away in a sheer drop and only a bannister of incongruous modern wood warns impotently of the plunge beyond. Great spurs from left and right cross and twist a raw valley across the frame, painted bright deep green and high, a canvas covered in trees.

And I pulled up short and horrified. Eyes fixed on a single change. A single vatic flaw. One tree in the hanging garden has turned full yellow overnight, its leaves tipped with red that speaks of summer's end.

Like the first lie in a lover's eyes, the end has been silently declared.

The golden time snuffed, the joyous heart, the energy, has gone, elsewhere, has been turned to other ends. Nothing now but its own heart-dead momentum, the false energy of a spent rocket, the inevitable winding-down, the drawn out inevitable closing off of the carelessly promised futures, the once-bright prospect now dimming and cooling. Winter's winds and desolation stand stark and inevitable, not here, not now, but the distant certainty shruggingly shouted by a single giving-up.

Summer's blood is spilled on the landscape. And it will only seep and spread.

Adrian has created a monster!

Everyone wanting to see the next revolution in online auctions should immediately if not sooner go check out his baby:

Vzaar

Easy, instant, videos of your items on eBay.
Launched today.
The video bazaar.

Go Vzaar, go!

First, catch and cook your steak. Make sure it's unfeasibly large.

Next, on a fine bright Summer's sun day, remove the remains of your steak from the fridge and hike a mile through winding country lanes exploding with impossibly beautiful frantic green lushness, to an impossibly lovely pub considered traditional in the 16th century. We're talking tiny rooms, 6 foot ceilings, and more exposed wooden beams than you can shake another piece of wood at. Partake of two FINE real ales in dimpled glass mugs in a close bosky forest-walled garden, under a flawless sky and a bath of sunlight. Dogs and children playing in quiet lassitude all around, the happy laughing of friends eating and drinking and moving slowly if at all, the Sunday papers spread out around you. Drink and read and sunbathe until chucking-out time, which in traditional English fashion is 3pm for the Sunday early session.

Proceed homewardly along a picturesque forest lane, using the gait known as "bimbling". And as you pass a mountain of blackberry bush steep beside you, stop. Pause. Consider. Drop your bag and withdraw the steak, now warmed within its foil to merely slightly cool.

Tear into it with your teeth, popping sun-hot blackberries into your mouth with every bite, the juices of both running down your fingers and licked slowly off.

One of the best meals of my life.

*dingaling*
"I'd like to buy a steak, please."
"Certainly, sir."
-THE END-

As if.
Come on, this is Sal you're talking to here – nothing so banal as normality for me.
Before I start my epicures' epic-ette, a word of context:

MEAT! Sal loves MEAT!

Thank you. I trust all is now clear. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I trust your own mental picture of Sal ivating saves me writing them all down.

Oh, I've tried the veggie thing. Unfortunately, humans aren't built for it – the thinking gets muddy, the resolve turns to scattiness, and the body turns weak. It's not the protein; it's the myriad of micro-nutrients.

So. Meat it is.


I'd been astounded last week to buy in the town square's Saturday market a kilo of good local sirloin for £7. That's about a third or less of the supermarket price, and for much better meat. Some more local experimentive sampling was in order. This week(end): the butcher shop.

SCENE: THE BUTCHER SHOP

I pushed open the awninged door at 3pm. Sal, early riser, not so much. To my dismay (Dismay's not spiderman's aunt), the shop was bare – empty steel cabinets being hosed out (verrrry slowwwly) by an unfeasibly large number of lardy men in aprons and twee hats. (Odd. Aussie butchers are lean, and they BOUNCE, Tigger-like. A post for another day, micronutrient-wise.) Bollocks. They're closed. But, no, my eagle eye lit upon a concealed sign: Opening Times -– they don't close for another half an hour.
A beaming silver haired apron tottered through the slow bustle over to the counter:
"Can I help you?"
"Yeah, do you have any T-bone left?"
He lit up. In an emotional sense rather than sparking a fag.
"There's some out the back – how many do you want?"
"Umm…" I'd been about to say half a dozen, but some cautionary instinct made me say:
"Four?"
"Right! Just a minute!" And he speed-clumped through the rear door.

I waited.

And waited.

And moved around out of the way of the hosers a couple of times.

And waited.

And… then he reappeared with the meat. On his shoulder. Half a bloody cow's back on his back. I swear, it was THIS long. More, probably. It was huge. Longer than the average picnic table. Four, maybe five feet long.
"Christ, mate, I only wanted four!"
He wheezed in appreciation of my wit and dropped it on the counter (Richter 3.4) and after some semitheatrical indications of quality he opened the negotiations with 3" thickness steaks. We haggled to and fro and finally settled on 1.5"
Wheezing and grunting with the effort, his aged back took the well aged back out back.

I waited.

And waited.

And aged.

And waited.

His silver head popped round the door; my heart leaped.

"Sorry, I made the first one a bit too thick. Won't be a moment."

I waited.

And waited.

And w…

Oh, you get the picture.

Suffice to say it took bloody ages, with him intermittently popping his head in to apologise and to assure me that it wouldn't be long now.

Finally.
He arrived. En-meated. Fantastic.
He displayed them, with some pride. Great. Good looking meat. Highly steaky. Although I had a sudden qualm – could the previous huge proportions have disguised an unusually large cross-section? They looked… big.
He piled them on the scales.
I slipped a tenner into my hand, ready.

Have a guess, dear reader, what these four steaks weighed.
Four steaks.
Go on.
OK, got it? Got your guess? Number firmly in your mind? Ready for the moment of truth?

2.21kg…

*cough*

That's 20oz, 1.1/₄ pounds per steak. And rather more to pay for them…
5 Big Macs each…
Urp.
This could be interesting.

At home I discovered that each nearly entirely filled the 28cm frypan. And that not only were my eyes bigger than my stomach, but my steaks were bigger than my eyes.