Month: November 2026

So the weekend has dawned without a great deal in prospect, although no doubt I shall be busy in the kitchen later on in the day.  I am always resolved to get into town relatively early on Saturday mornings as I have learnt from bitter experience that the Saturday newspapers, replete with supplements, tend to sell out fairly quickly. After the relative exertions of the day before, I think I shall enjoy a bit of quiet piece and relaxation today but I am not really sure what delights the TV may or may not hold for me. Yesterday at the Philosophy group meeting, it was agreed that I should start off the next  discussion in one month’s time and I have already chosen the very generic title of ‘What is Science?’ I am already turning over several approaches in my head and thought I would start off with some of the logical foundations as enunciated by J S Mill in his Five Canons of scientific enquiry before opening a discussion that this is not how science actually gets performed. The Philosophy group are really delightful and there are about 8-9 of us altogether which is just enough to sit around a table and for everyone to contribute equally – although on the face of it, it sounds  rather arid and even boring, it really is fascinating as each of us brings part of our own biography and personality into the discussions and we are very open and supportive of each other. The month of November is upon us and now that the clocks have been put back and we have darker evenings, I think we are turning our thoughts to tunnelling through the weeks ahead. Of course, we have Halloween to negotiate first and the shops are full of the kinds of tat that the kids enjoy and the adults buy to add to the general sense of enjoyment. Being brought up in a small village between the ages of 9-11, Bonfire Night was a great  event and most of the village – approximately 200 souls- used to turn up for it. A local farmer gave us the use of a field for the construction of a huge communal bonfire and as children we seemed to spend  the week or so beforehand contributing to it. On November itself, so far as I remember, most of the village used to turn up the women bearing parkin (a more treacly form of gingerbread) to consume in our hands whilst the men arrived bearing beer. We children  used to race around, delighting in finding the spent sticks of the rockets that were fired off in the firework display and, of course, we all had some sparklers to wave. The village was only about 200 people in total so evidently there were very few children and we all knew each other. The principal form of entertainment in the autumn and winter evenings was the local village hall where the adults used to play badminton whilst we children used to amuse ourselves with goodness knows what until we too were taught how to play badminton by our elders. It was in this village that as a young boy, a cricket bat was put into my hands (as it was for every other young male)  and you were inducted into the game of cricket with no questions being asked or dissent allowed. 

After I had collected my newspaper this morning, I treated myself to a stir-fry of vegetables to serve as a cooked breakfast but I really wanted the opportunity to try out my newly acquired Tefal frying pan. I was a little intrigued to see if I could discover the durability of my new pan, given that I acquired it so cheaply but without the benefit of packaging or instructions – I did give it a conditioning of warmed olive oil before first use. My newly acquired purchase is some 70% heavier than the other 32cm frying pan that I possess, itself being of a reasonable quality and an internet search reveals that lightweight aluminium pans heat up rapidly, but they also experience quick temperature swings. This rapid expansion and contraction can cause the thin base to warp—especially on induction hobs or if rinsed before cooling. Once a pan warps, heat distribution is ruined. Heavy-duty collections use thick-gauge cast aluminium, hard-anodised aluminium, or stainless-steel bases that remain perfectly flat under intense heat. Tefal’s internal laboratory testing indicates these premium, heavy coatings can last 6× to 15× longer than their basic, lightweight counterparts. which I have also learnt may only have a lifespan of a couple of years. I have learnt some fairly basic care tips which always to utilise  plastic or wooden spatulas, not to employ light cooking sprays, to avoid the thermal shock of plunging into cold water and to hand wash such implements instead of entrusting to a dishwasher. On the basis of this, I thought I would prepare some more ‘mirepoix’ to be used as a basic ingredient of soups and vegetable stock so I sautéed a couple of batches of some onions, carrots and celery which, after cooling, is to be frozen. A big pan like this, is particularly good to sautée vegetables because there is plenty of base with which the vegetables can be in contact and of course the heat distribution s generally superior. A treat in the early afternoon was to view a BBC transmission of ‘Sense and Sensibility’. This particular production I had been seen before but it had a stella cast of Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant and I must say that I enjoyed every moment of it. I have learnt this afternoon that the telecoms giant Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) is to axe thousands of jobs as it slashes its cost base amid investor concerns about its ability to service its £22bn debt mountain and is drawing up plans to make a substantial proportion of its 16,000-strong workforce redundant in the coming months. This is coming hard on the top of the news that the future of Poundland is perilous in the extreme and some 12,000 jobs may well be in jeopardy, and the full impact of AI-generated job losses is still to come. One really does wonder from whence the new jobs are likely to come and the threat to global economic activity must be laid firmly at the door at the conflict in the Middle East, which it must be said is a conflict of the USA’s making. The only hope on the horizon is that after the mid-term elections in the USA, there may be pressure from the Congress for the USA to abandon the war quickly (particularly as Donald Trump insists on saying that it will be over in days)