This weekend I went to Wales with Daisy on a mission to help Mother-in-Law find the route from her house to Bristol Airport. As it turned out, holiday traffic made the mission fail, but I spent a good amount of time enjoying the Sun and reading.

Now, I’m not a big reading and reading a book usually takes me weeks; nay months. However, I managed to shift my way right the way through Ben Elton’s Blind Faith in two days. It’s a book based in a future where global warming has caused much of the world to flood and, in the UK at least, the religious right wing have taken control and “The Temple” rules the citizen’s life. The internet and social networking have taken over and the lives of everyone is put online; live and continuously. This is considered good and any attempt to keep secrets is against the law and punishable by death.

The book takes a look at how one man, Trafford, sees through the blind faith around him and begins to enter the subversive underworld of reason.

I have read reviews on Amazon that say the book is a rip-off of 1984. Much to my shame, I have not read 1984 so cannot really comment. However, even if the plot is a rip-off (although story plots in comparable fiction tend to realise in similar ways), I think the up-to-the-minute satire on the social networking sites of the day (‘I’m going to Tube you’, ‘Upload it to my FaceSpace’) make the book a humourous adventure. Of course, these also mean the book will date quickly. The book appeals to my atheism in that it clearly highlights what a bonkers world the world of religion is, even if this story is extrapolated to the extreme, it’s clear the characters running The Temple have an aura of truth about them.

Talking of the characters, I found most of them a little lacking in depth. Also, there were a few inconsistencies in the story and the narrative felt a little “thrown together”. That said, it was a good read and it kept me reading until the end, which I usually find pretty hard to do.

– 4/5 – Good book with some small flaws.

Just messing about… here’s a reel called The Tap Room played, rather badly, on my mandolin.

I only really picked up my mandolin for the first time in about 3 years about 2 weeks ago. I was actually getting it to steal the pick that was on it, because I’d lost my guitar pick. I realised it was tuned the same as the fiddle and maybe I could get a few tunes out of it. Turns out it’s great fun to play!

Here’s the ABC for The Tap Room, as it’s played here:

X:1
T:The Tap Room (as played by Matt)
M:4/4
R:Reel
K:Edor

E2 Bc dB ~B2 | dB AF DF AF |
E2 Bc dB ~B2 | dB A=c BE ED |
E2 Bc dB ~B2 | dB AF Dz fg |
af ge fd ec | dB AF DF AF  

(3Bcd ef gf ec | dB AF DF AF |
Bd ef gf ec | dB A=c BE ED |
B2 ef gf ec | dB AF Dz fg |
af ge fd ec | dB AF DF AF 

…and if you prefer the dots:

Note that I’ve put some possible ornamentations into the first notes of phrases in the B-part. Feel free to use your own.

I decided this year to only grow a couple of courgette plants. Last year I grew 4 of the things (too tightly packed) and they took the whole vegetable patch hostage and sprouted green protuberances almost daily. We ended up with a glut and, through some serious lack of imagination, they were mainly used in some sort of pasta sauce every other night. This year, with only two, we’re not quite so inundated with courgettes, but still, with the summer sun and the summer rain, we’re getting a couple of courgettes every few days.

So it was with great excitement that Daisy came home with a recipe for Courgette Loaf. “Is it bread or cake?” I said trying to work out the inconsistency in the name and the photocopied picture. “It’s cake.”

For my folky session last I made the cake for the first time. Realising that it was much like a carrot cake, but with courgettes, I added a nice butter icing frosting to the top. It went down very well. Considering the heavy ingredients used, the cake is light and not too sweet. The lack of sweetness is made up for by that wonderful butter icing, of course

Yesterday with more courgettes I made another one.

Recipe

• 225g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup
• 150ml of sunflower oil
• 100g light muscovado sugar
• 225g courgettes grated
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 50g walnut pieces

For the butter icing

• 75g butter, softened
• 225g of icing (confectioners) sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
• 1-2 teaspoons of water

1. Preheat Oven, 180^oC (350^oF).
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon
3. Add all remaining ingredients and mix well
4. Transfer to baking vessel (I use a cake tin, but you could also use a loaf tin) and bake for 45-60 minutes, until a skewer will emerge clean.
5. Turn out an allow to cool completely
6. When cool, beat together all the icing ingredients and add to top.

---

While I was making the courgette cake, Daisy made the cookies from the Bake or Break blog. They are also very good… very, very good. The recipe makes a really big batch, so it’s ideal for parties or little piggies like us.

One of my favourite biscuits from when I was a kid was the Maryland Chocolate Chip and Hazelnut cookies, and it was this memory that made me search the internet for some nice cookies to make. Finding the Bake or Break blog was very good luck! What wonderful recipes they have there, and I shall look forward to making some of them.

For this cookie recipe we changed the pecan nuts for hazelnuts to try to recreate the cookies of my youth. Although softer in texture (perhaps I didn’t cook them long enough), I’d wager that they’re just as good.

I challenge you not to get hungry looking at these:

On Saturday, Daisy, Dad and I went out sailing on the boat. Dad did his back in earlier in the week so I was officially capt’n, but not knowing a sodding thing about what I was doing meant that every decision I made I consulted with Dad!

We were able to sail as soon as leaving the mooring and sailed out past Poole Bar, where the Sandbanks Ferry and Harry Redknapp’s house is, and sailed straight up to Old Harry Rocks near Swanage. That tooks about an hour and we turned around and headed back.

As we were sailing back through Poole Bar, avoiding the jet skiers, the other yachts and the fast ferry to France, Dad noticed that one of the metal wires that stops the top of the mast bending too much (I can’t remember the name of it now) had come off! When the boat’s listed over to one side, all the pressure is on the windward side of the boat and the wires go slack on the opposite side. However, they’re not supposed to come adrift. We quickly took the sails down and motored back to the mooring from there.

Once stopped, it wasn’t too hard to get the wire back in its rightful place although it was clear that a small piece of plastic had become brittle and broken off. Dad is hoping to get a replacement soon, although how we intend to get it into the appropriate place near the top of the mast is another thing!

A week ago today I removed my mandolin from the wall so that I could steal the pick from it, as I’d lost the pick from my guitar. Admiring how nice it looked, I gave it a quick pluck and remembered that a mandolin is tuned identical to a violin. As it has a similar scale length too, I realised that I might be able to play some of the tunes I’d learnt for the violin on it. I tried and hey presto, I could! In fact, in a few hours I’d pretty much managed my whole violin repertoire.

It was suggested to me that I do a duet for violin and mandolin, and here’s my first attempt.

It’s a traditional Irish hornpipe called The Boys of Bluehill. Here’s the music:

And the ABC which I got from theSession:

X: 1
T: Boys Of Bluehill, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: hornpipe
K: Dmaj
||FA|BA FA D2 FA| BA (3Bcd e2 de |fa gf eg fe|df ed B2 dB|
| BA FA D2 FA| BA (3Bcd e2 de |fa gf eg fe|d2 f2 d2
|: fg| af df a2 g2 | ef ga b2 ag |fa gf eg fe |df ed B2 dB|
| BA FA D2 FA| BA (3Bcd e2 de |fa gf eg fe|d2 f2 d2

Here’s the result (you need Flash 9 installed to play it):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(Flash player possibly won’t work in Firefox, so download here)

I recorded the mandolin and guitar using my Zoom H4, and the violin recorded with a Microvox gooseneck pickup (which unfortunately I kept huffing into, if you’re wondering what that low rumbly noise is). Put together in Cakewalk Sonar 4 and to MP3 in Sound Forge.

Yesterday, late afternoon, I went over to Wareham to help sail the yacht back to the mooring. All the hull repairs were done at the weekend but the boat was been stuck in Wareham until Thursday. That’s because Dad got himself a bad back and the weather hasn’t been ideal for sailing. However, it was costing money to stay there and Dad’s back still wasn’t better, so reluctantly (I think), he let my sister and her fiance, Daryl, and myself sail the boat back to the mooring.

We left Ridge Wharf at around 3:45pm and motored up the enclosed channel. When we got to a more open stretch of channel we put the genoa up and motor sailed for 5 minutes or so. Once we turned off the motor we were still making 5 knots (with a slight tail-tide).

It was too windy (around force 4-5) for anything other than just the genoa, but I was truly surprised at how well we sailed anyway. In fact, at one gust we had to dump the genoa to avoid getting the decks too wet

We arrived back to the mooring around 5:15. The dingy was pumped up on deck and we headed back to the Lilliput Sailing Club and home.

It was a very enjoyable sail, despite only using the genoa. I’m looking forward to going out again. Could this be the start of another very expensive hobby? Argh!

I ordered some new specs a couple of weeks ago from Glasses Direct. As my first introduction to buying specs online, I was both anxious and excited when 2 weeks later through the door popped a jiffy bag with “Your Glasses Have Arrived” emblazoned on them.

I excitedly tore into the bag and pulled out the bright blue snap case which came with them. I opened it up and inside were a shiny pair of rimless specs, not too dissimilar to what I already had.

I took off my grubby, fuzzy old specs and carefully pushed the new ones onto my ears. A bit of eye rolling and daze-inducing adjustments and they were straight. I looked out of the window to the distance.

Uhm…

I re-adjusted.

They’re rubbish!

My right eye was pretty much out of focus; possibly worse than my old specs. The left eye was better – almost correct – but I wouldn’t say it was pin-sharp.

To be honest, I don’t think this is Glasses Direct fault: I don’t think my prescription is correct. For example, if I look at something that’s just into my field of view of my left eye, it’s still blurred in my right eye. This surely means my right eye is weaker, so why is my prescription the same for both eyes?

Quite honestly, I’m not convinced the optimetrist at the shop I went to was up to much. She was doing everything so quick and seemed to make very few adjustments. At the end she decided it was right, but I wasn’t convinced. I was like “er, well.. ” but the test specs were off and I was being herded to the frames section.

So, my plan is to get another eye-test done and check out that prescription. If it really is correct, I will not use Glasses Direct.

A month or so back, my Dad bought himself a new sailing yacht. We went down to the boat a few weeks ago to find the bottom sloshing in what we thought was diesel. After some investigation Dad found that although there was diesel in the bottom of the boat, it was mostly water.

Further investigations revealed that the the source of the water was a hole in the bottom of the boat. As you can imagine, holes and boats don’t go together well. The hole was actually ever so tiny – almost a pin-prick, but water is forced through the hole and slowly trickles in to the bottom of the boat (known as the bilges).

To fix the problem, Dad organised for the boat to be taken out of the water in a small boat yard called Ridge Wharf, a mile up from where the River Frome joins Poole Harbour. Yesterday I helped him and my sister’s fiance sail it from its mooring up to the boatyard. You can see us approaching the boatyard in the photo.

Once lifted out it was given a good clean and the bottom could be investigated. It wasn’t obvious where the water was getting in, but Dad went down the boat today to reinforce the area where the hole was.

However, Daisy and I went down to Christchurch to meet a friend we haven’t seen in a while. There happened to be a festival on, although it was a little bit weak. It was fun watching the morris dancers though (ok, ok, I was watching the melodeon players!)

Not the vegetable, this time, but the game.

On Monday, I played squash with Gary. It was hard work, partly because it was much like getting into an oven and stuffing your head in the fan, but also because it was a work out to which my body is currently quite unaccustomed. It was great fun though, despite the fact that I lost all games.

Daisy went and splashed around in the kid’s wee wee; that is, she went to aqua-aerobics in the swimming pool. As we’re now back on the Weightwatchers diet, it was nice to get a whole bunch of points for our efforts (and points mean pri.. er.. chocolate).

Come Wednesday and my body has realised what happened to me on Monday. My butt cheeks are aching like I’ve been sitting on a rollercoaster all day! And to top it all off, I think I might have to get on my bike and go into town, as we’re running low on bread flour.