So a new week has dawned but when I enquire of ‘Alexa’ (my smart speaker) what the weather holds for me today, I am informed that the temperature could rise as high as 15\u00b0 which is quite mild for near the end of October. I am having to get used to the idea that I always need to wear some a raincoat of some description which rather puts an end to the exceptionally dry period that we have had for some months now. The week ahead is the half term break for much of the country so I shall expect a lot of grannies treating their grandchildren to trips around Waitrose and the other supermarkets which seems to be ‘de rigeur’ when the youngsters are left in he hands of the grandparents. I suspect that today is to be devoted to some domestic activities, one being to spend at least half an hour a day on tidying up activities whilst another pressing need is to make some more home-made soup and it is probably going to be parsnip this week. I have just watched a couple of really good chefs showing you exactly how to cut up the vegetables and prepare a ‘mirepoix’ mixture (2 parts onion, 1 part carrots, 1 part celery + some garlic) which is the foundation in classic French cuisine for so many sauces, soups and stews and I will certainly follow this advice first. The part that would not have occurred to me is a gentle saut\u00e9e for a few minutes before eventually adding water and bringing to the boil\/simmer or, alternatively, a quick flash freezing and then storing in bags in the freezer to be used as required. I gather that the husband of my cousins is very much into cooking probably since COVID days and he was telling me the day before how he scours the supermarkets looking for the more specialised ingredients that he might use. On which subject, I have decided that I might use a couple of supermarkets from now on. I will probably use Aldi once a fortnight for some basic shopping particularly if it turns out to be a ‘light’ week. In the intervening weeks, I will then use the newly opened Sainsbury’s supermarket for a wider range of goods and perhaps some of the more exotic items that one only buys occasionally. Thinking back to the weekend when I entertained Meg’s cousins, I was delighted to be able to share with them some of the interesting reading in which I had engaged in the past year, particularly the books on ‘Social Health’ and ‘The Grieving Brain’ the latter of which they seem to already know about. This same couple also have a passion for both online Sudoku as well as online Scrabble which they seem to play practically every day. I must confess that one my daily jobs are done, I still quite like tackling the ‘Fiendishly difficult’ Sudoku at which I am successful about 70%-80% of the time these days but I do this to a background of ClassicFM if there is nothing much to engage my attention in the evening TV transmissions. In theory, one is supposed to try new challenges and puzzles to open up the neural pathways in the brain but Sudoku is still a favourite but only if it presents a real challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I hoped to be a quiet and restful day turned out to be quite a busy one. After I had lunched on some of the remains of yesterday’s lamb stew, I pressed ahead with making the mirepoix mixture to act as a base for my soup making. First I diced the onions, carrots and celery and then saut\u00e9ed these for about 10 minutes and then divided the mixture into two portions, one for immediate se and the other for freezing. The latter I spread out on some greaseproof paper on a baking tray and left to cool after which they will be popped into the freezer. Then I parboiled some parsnips cut into thin slices, saved the water in which they boiled to act as a stock for later on and then gave the parsnips a quick microwave roast on the oven setting of the microwave Then I made some parsnip soup in the soup maker in two batches, not forgetting to add the coconut milk, some left over honey and a small amount of curry powder dissolved in boiling water to add a little bit of kick to the finished product. The first batch has turned out OK but a lot of the afternoon has been devoted to cooking with some tidying up in between sessions. I am going to be glued to the TV all tonight because there promises to be an interesting documentary on Egyptian hieroglyphs on BBC 4 at 8.00 followed by another on Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator, who was responsible for the expulsion of much of the entrepreneurial Asian community (who came to the UK, very often to Leicester which to its shame took out adverts asking the Asians to stay away). With the benefit of some decades after these events, it has to be said that with the benefits of Asian entrepreneurism, this has been to UK’s benefit and Uganda’s loss. Turning out attention to the well-known utterances of Donald Trump, we learn today that Trump also attacked Norway, calling it a ‘s***house country’ and \u200csaying Norwegian immigrants were not welcome in the US ‘because I didn’t get the \u200bNobel Prize’. The Nobel committee is based in Oslo. This led to me to wonder malignant narcissists (into which category Trump undoubtedly falls) actually believe their own propaganda. This is a query that using AI can eveal. Malignant narcissists operate in a complex state of psychological compartmentalisation, meaning they often do and do not believe their own propaganda at the same time. Psychological and behavioural insights outline how this works. As they aware of the lie, deep down, malignant narcissists know the reality of what they have done. They often craft false narratives, rewrite history, or gaslight others deliberately to avoid shame, guilt, and accountability. Their intense anger when confronted happens because the truth threatens to pierce their fragile ego, proving they recognise its validity. Compartmentalisation and Self-Deception are also common. Over time or in the moment, they create separate psychological realities. Through mechanisms like denial, projection, and cognitive distortion, they convince themselves of their own superiority. There is often an ‘internalised fiction’` if a lie or grand narrative is repeated for years, some narcissists genuinely internalise the fabrication as their absolute truth, allowing them to pass it off with complete conviction (even appearing sincere on a lie detector).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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