Files and Records

Category: Random Wednesday

  • Getting there is half the fun. More #randomwednesday

    Shetland shown within Scotland
    Image via Wikipedia

    They say that getting there is half the fun.  In which case, this trip should be a real blast.

    I’m away this weekend, down to Yorkshire to collect a table, see my folks, drop in on my mother-inn-law to watch Doctor Who on Saturday night, stuff like that.  Taking Thing Two, eldest son, with me for company on the drive and some father-son bonding.  The journey is scheduled to go something like this:

    Stage 1:  Overnight boat from Lerwick to Aberdeen courtesy of Northlink Ferries.  Y’see those blue blobs on the map there?  That’s where we start off.  Aberdeen’s a good 12 hour crossing from there.  That’s assuming a good crossing.  It might be a nightmare.  I’ve had ferry crossings where the captain has warned us to be in bed before we reach open water.  That was a fun trip.  I’ve had crossings that would’ve made a good ride at Alton Towers!  With 3 kids in the cabin, all proclaiming it to be the best night’s sleep they’ve ever had.  Go figure!

    Stage 2:  Drive to Dundee, get the pox-ridden handbrake fixed on the car.  This is where it could all go horribly wrong, depending on what the Renault main dealer finds.  Hopefully it’s just a case of hooking everything up to the computer, explaining to the car that yes, it does actually know what this new handbrake unit is for, and off we go on our merry way.  I’ve got an awful feeling that it isn’t going to be that simple.  Not by a long way.  And that the garage I’ve had it with up here on Shetland has caused more problems than they’ve fixed.  Not that I’ll be able to prove anything.

    Anyway.  Let’s assume Stage 2 goes to plan.

    Stage 3: Drive from Dundee down to Yorkshire.  A five hour drive, given reasonable roads and traffic.  And assuming the car doesn’t do anything stupid.  AA membership on standby.

    Once we’re actually in Yorkshire, things will relax.  A lot.  Get to see one of my brothers, pick up this dining table and start the slog back north, do the whole thing in reverse except with an overnight in Corbridge and a stop by the indescribable Cairn o’Mhor winery.  So basically, it’s a weekend of journeying with a few little things in between.  This is where I’m lucky.

    My kids travel well.  All of them have, pretty much from day 1.  It’s a luxury I’m very grateful for, living where I do.  The worst of them so far is the latest addition, he did not like being driven around Lanzarote last October and was pretty damn vocal about the whole thing.  We won’t know how well he copes with another long trip until the summer.

    Thing Two will act as chief navigator, OIC telephone, I’ll teach him Twitter so he can provide updates whilst I’m driving.  He’ll also be in charge of snacks and changing the CDs.  Apparently we’ll be listening to Jeremy Brown, Secret Agent for the drive south, maybe Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the rest of the time.  If he goes to sleep I may just sneak on Hugh Laurie’s blues album.

    We get to do great things whilst we’re south!  We get to put fuel in the car at almost reasonable prices (rather than the £1.52 it is for diesel up here at the moment).  We get to drive for hours and hours without running out of road (or land).  We get to see trees!  You lot down there just take trees for granted, all big and green and sticking out of the ground.  We’re definitely short of them up here.  Bloody sheep.  Above all, though, we get to spend time with each other and just chat.  And that’s just magic.  We’ve a plan B in case the car is completely borked, and that’ll be just as much fun.

    So that’s my plans for the weekend.  Drive to Yorkshire to get a table.  What’s everyone else doing?

  • Save money! Brew your own beer! #randomwednesday

    Brewing beer is great fun.  Not only do you save a shedload of cash (can you say fifty pence a pint?) but once you’ve got the hang of things you can start experimenting…

    I started brewing at university.  Kind of an occupational hazard for a microbiology student.  It’s practically homework, when you think about it.  Made a few kits, then was given a book…  We brewed a Christmas ale from first principles, left it in bottles for the best part of a year before opening it.  Yowzah!  The first year, it was strong.  A lovely, rich, dark, liquoricey ale.  Went down a treat.  But it kept getting stronger!  Second year in and you could have a pint of it at best before you started feeling sleepy.  Third year and we were down to wine glasses.  I left 4 bottles of it in the flat when we moved out.

    Moved to Kent, found a good homebrew shop, started up again.  Had to throw away the first 40 pints of cider – Kent water is not good for brewing, especially not the area we were in.  Lesson learned, next round we bought a load of water from the supermarket just for brewing.  To be fair, we also had to buy water if we wanted a decent cup of tea.  Down in Kent we had an abundance of superb local ingredients.  Elderflowers and elderberries, the fruit section of Perry Court Farm Shop for strawberries, apples…  When we moved here to Shetland we brought the last of the elderflower wine with us.

    And then we took a break for a few years.

    A couple of years ago we started up again.  Just to get back into the habit and skills, the family brewed some kits.  Ciders, bitters, a couple of wheatbeers.  And we’ve been experimenting with them.  A muslim bag of elderflower heads went into an IPA during its first fermentation and resulted in a lovely, light, flowery pale ale.  Very nice.  But the piece de la resistance has got to be the mead.

    I was staying at my sister-in-law’s house, browsing through their bookshelves when I came across a recipe for something that sounded amazing:  Barkshack Gingermead.  The idea is fairly simple but you’ve a long wait before drinking.  6 months is a bare minimum.  People mutter quietly in forums about bottles that are 10, 12, 13 years old.  It just gets better and better with age.

    As with any mead, you need honey.  And lots of it.  Root ginger, whatever fruit takes your fancy (we used raspberries, so the resulting colour is a gorgeous pink) and a few other ingredients.  Just to add a twist (and because I thought it would work), half the bottles got a shot of a very strong cinnamon tea before being capped and stored.  Start to bottling, a month or so.  Six weeks maybe.  Then the waiting began.

    Over Christmas I sneaked a bottle of the cinnamon gingermead open, just to see.  Mistake.  Far too early.  Should’ve left it alone.  Last weekend, I opened another one.  Now we’re talking!  The cinnamon has matured into a nice bite, the mead itself slips down a treat.  Can’t wait to see what it’s like this Christmas!

    And it’s turned into a nice family industry!  My eldest son helps out, sitting on the kitchen units and holding the syphon tube, they all like carrying bottles back and forth from the cupboard, and Thing Two’s getting to be a dab hand with the crown capper.  All of this is a useful addition to his skillset when he gets ready to go to university.  For the next batch of mead I’m going to get Thing One to do the bottle labels.

    One thing you do need, though, is a good local home brew shop.  The kits are heavy and expensive to post.  We had a good one in Lerwick, but he closed recently.  Whenever I visit my parents in Ripon, I go to Drinks Well on the market square and stock up.  Hop & Grape do a good line in mail order for the lighter stuff.  If you’re lucky, you might find your local Tescos has a home brew section.  Hexham certainly did the last time I was there.  A lot of my original equipment is stamped “Boots”, as they used to sell it as well.  Not so sure they do now.

    It’s a very rewarding hobby, and you’re never short of a beer.

  • Do you remember your first? I Can. (#eurovision #esc @bbceurovision)

    1992.  Holland House TV room (the one up the spiral staircase), Pollock halls of residence, Edinburgh University.  One Saturday in May.

    There were 3 of us.  Myself, my wife-to-be, and a random physicist.  We’d all met up there many times before, sharing our love of Thunderbirds, Star Trek and similar TV shows so it wasn’t unusual for us all to be there on a Saturday night.  We weren’t the partying/clubbing/pubbing types.  Our wine was cheap Bulgarian red, screw-topped bottles.  Unusual at the time, but it saved us having the expense of a corkscrew.  Hey, poor students, right?  The unusual thing about that night was just how dreadful the choices were for TV.  Only 4 channels but nothing to watch.

    “There’s a movie on later, should be good.”

    “Yeah, but that’s later.  What do we watch until then?”

    Y’see, if we’d left the TV lounge the chances were high someone else would come in and put something else on.  So we were determined to stay.  All 4 channels were discarded as options.

    “We’ve got to watch something.  Even if it’s BBC1 so we can say we’re waiting for the film.”

    “BBC1 it is, then.”

    Turned out to be the Eurovision Song Contest.  Hosted by Sir Terry Wogan, who sounded like he’d consumed far more alcohol than we had.  And we laughed.  We laughed like drains, drank, had fun, became outraged at the blatantly political scoring, and promptly forgot about everything the next day.

    Until the following year.  During a lull in a movie/home brewed beer marathon the Eurovision popped up on screen.  Subsequent movies were discarded and we began all over again!  Wogan, still drunk, presided once more.  The beer and snacks flowed.  Much fun.

    This set the tone for every year since.  We’ve watched it with friends, with family.  Last year my wife and I watched it in the Maternity department of the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (our son was born the next day).  This year will be no exception.

    Yes, it’s cheesy.  Yes, there’s some absolute rubbish put forward to represent the countries.  Yes, the voting is unashamedly biased and not at all motivated by who wants Russia to keep supplying them with gas.  Block voting, neighbours giving each other 12 points, the UK losing no matter how much money we pump into the competition.

    The last couple of years, watching with the assistance of Twitter, has been a blast.  You get comments from all around Europe.  In fact, during last night’s semi final someone tweeted that it was like having the whole of Europe round to watch it with you, only without the mess to clean up afterwards.  I’d credit them but there were so many Eurovision tweets last night it’s got lost.

    So eat, drink and be merry.  Enjoy Graham Norton’s commentary.  He’s no Wogan, but he’s getting there.  And where did you watch your first?