A Cunning Plan That Worked.

I’ve been on a mission the past two winters to find a hot chocolate drink I like. I haven’t found one yet, but another of JJ’s cunning plans has produced an acceptable substitute.

I thought I’d try Waitrose’s bog-standard ‘dark chocolate drink.’ Not up to standard - the heavy cocoa taste was too sludgy, and it was an excessively dark brown colour that made it look like beef tea! But then I had an idea.

It’s an instant one – just add hot water and stir. I decided to try using only enough water to bring the level up to two thirds full, and then topping it off with full cream milk. And then I put it in the microwave for half a minute to bring it back to scalding heat. Voila! Not only is it lighter in colour and creamier in taste, but it also has FROTH! A frothy hot chocolate drink!

Which is pretty damn spiffing.

But the search will continue next winter.

Dear Fellow Bloggers.

Here’s a question for other Google bloggers.

Do you ever read those Blogger Buzz posts in the dashboard? And do you ever have the slightest clue as to what the hell they’re taking about?

Am I just a blog illiterate?

Interfering with the Cunning Plan.

The lighting at Miss Bella’s house was little and low again tonight, which had me assuming they were all out – and that’s a problem (I’ll explain why in a minute.) But then I saw a dark figure skip quickly down the stairs just as I was passing the appropriate window, so either the house has a ghost or there was somebody at home. I chose to assume the latter and passed upon my merry way with lighter step.

Where does he get this crap from?

Dunno. I always assumed it was you.

Really? I always assumed it was you.

So anyway, if the parental personas will shut the f*** up for a minute, here’s why it’s a problem:

I’ve become extremely fond of Miss Bella (which is pretty rare for me - no, very rare,) but Miss B is strictly an infrequent and diurnal experience. So one of the benefits of walking past her house every night is that it goes a little way to extending that experience, albeit in a unilateral and fantastical sort of way. If she isn’t at home, therefore, it sort of messes up my cunning plan. And having one’s cunning plan messed up is little short of devastating.

Got it now?

Another cunning plan coming up later.

Titbits.

Winter returned to my part of England today. A blizzard filled the morning hours, followed by jagged shards of cold, damp, gale force wind.

My blog has been almost devoid of visitors.

My internet is slow and cranky.

Miss Bella hasn’t replied to the silly e-mail I sent her at one o’clock this morning, so I don’t know whether it irritated her or not.

I still haven’t had the contract guaranteeing my right to stay in this house for at least another year.

The blossom is breaking on my three fruit trees, but I can’t see it surviving the sub-zero temperatures we’re being promised for the next few nights.

Tomorrow is Zoe’s birthday. Remember Zoe? I do.

More later, after the walk.

The Pragmatic Nature of Nature.

I was watching two robins feeding together on the bird table earlier. That’s unusual, so I assumed they were a breeding pair. One of them picked up a bit of food and hopped across to give it to the other one.

Cute, you think? Not a bit of it. It’s just an example of the cock bird keeping the hen sweet for the duration. Once the season is over, he’ll be chasing her off the table to have all the food to himself. Or vice versa, maybe. That’s how nature works.

Two Questions and a Note.

Why is it that a teenage girl shop assistant can stare at me pointedly and intensely (in the fruit shop, of all places!) and that’s OK – but if I were to stare pointedly and intensely at a teenage girl shop assistant (in a fruit shop or anywhere else,) the phrase ‘ageing Lothario’ would spring to people’s lips?

*  *  *

Why do people throw their heads back when taking tablets? They don’t do it when they swallow anything else.

*  *  *

I’m getting my old photographic equipment into shape to see service again, and so I went into Boots and asked the shop assistant:

‘Do you stock button cells?’

She looked blank.

I tried ‘little round batteries.’

‘Oh them, yes. They’re over there.’

You’d think a shop assistant would be familiar with the common terms for their merchandise, wouldn’t you? As it happened, I didn’t get them from Boots anyway. They sold packs of two button cells to fit my cameras for £4. The hardware shop around the corner sold packs of twenty assorted watch batteries – which included four the right size for my cameras – for £2.99. The hardware shop got the sale. Isn't the retail business odd?

All I need now is for this late taste of winter to end (despite assurances from the weather forecaster last night that there would be no snow down at this level, we had a raging blizzard this morning) and then I can start putting some pictures of the local landscape on the blog.

A Lazy Post.

I was going to make a post about how I saved a spider from death by drowning earlier, and how much I like saving things. I was also going to make a post about the little warbler I saw round the back of the kitchen, and how that worried me because warblers are a family of birds that migrate from Africa where it’s warm, and this one shouldn’t really be here yet, especially now that a cold spell has arrived. And then there’s the interesting fact that our weather in Britain seems to be mirroring what’s happening in Ohio almost exactly.

But I couldn’t be bothered, so I wrote the above instead.

What I find pleasing, however, is that I just got in from my nightly walk, and I spent most of it trying to construct a ditty around Sarah’s new name. I couldn’t do it because ‘Bella’ is a surprisingly difficult name to find constructive rhymes for. And just as I was beating myself up over yet another lamentable failure, she dropped onto the blog about an hour earlier than usual. That’s neat, that is.

The Colours of Things.

I read an article once about how different cities are associated with a predominant colour. Paris, for example, is blue; New York is yellow; London is red.

It took me a long time to realise that festivals are the same. Easter is yellow, while Christmas is red and dark green. I’ve decided that Beltane should be light green, saffron and red. I wonder why!

The BMI Story Revisited.

I read today that a US study has ‘discovered’ that Body Mass Index is an inadequate way of defining obesity. Surprise, surprise! Would it be permissible to point in the direction of my post Rule by Numbers: the BMI Story?

The message the researchers are putting out, however, appears to be confined to the assertion that the use of BMI is failing to identify some people who are clearly obese, and that the obesity problem in the US is, therefore, even worse than previously thought. I wonder how long it will be before they also acknowledge the other half of the issue: that some people are being defined as obese when they’re clearly not.

Can anybody tell me why it is that getting those with power and influence to see what is patently obvious is like pulling impacted wisdom teeth?

And I seem to be saying ‘I told you so’ a lot lately, don’t I? Sorry; it's a weakness I sometimes indulge.

Defining the Poet.

Someone who goes through life without ever reaching the age of reason.

...or so it appears to me. And I mean it as a compliment.