Friday Links

Posted on May 31, 2013 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday, today I shall be mostly recovering from a migraine, what are you up to?

1) Don’t play the ‘I have kids’ card. Amen.

People without children have lives that are as legitimate and that they cherish as much as people who have children. This unwavering entitlement—I need time off; I have to have this holiday; I need to leave a half-hour before everyone else does, every day—kills office morale. (And obviously this doesn’t apply to emergencies.)

A family-friendly workplace can be a wonderful thing, but there is more than one way to have or to be family. And the quality of life for people without children shouldn’t be affected because someone is pulling the kid card

2) One of my pet hates.

To sum up: This is a blog post or a post or a blog entry. It is also a piece and an article. But it is not a blog

3) Jay Rayner on food miles. Very interesting.

according to this exceptionally detailed study from 2006, lamb, apples and dairy produced in New Zealand and shipped to Britain have a smaller carbon footprint than the equivalent products produced in Britain. To be exact, the UK uses twice as much carbon per tonne of milk solids produced as New Zealand, and four times the amount as New Zealand for lamb

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What I’ve Read – May 2013

Posted on May 30, 2013 by nicdempsey

This is one day early however, I’m unlikely to finish anything between now and tomorrow without being up way into the night and I’m staying at Ma’s tonight so it’s very unlikely as I’ll have to be up at ‘Oh my God it’s early’ o’clock tomorrow morning. The 7.27am train to Waterloo the train of nightmares.

Reading this month has been on and off.  At the beginning of the month, I was all about the reading. That eased off when I realised that I needed to do stuff that didn’t involve lying down and make some effort to interact with other humans. I also borrowed S1 of Friday Night Lights and started watching last weekend, so that’s at least an hour a day I can’t read anything because I’m watching it. At this point I also need to say something about the strangeness of my obsession with a TV series about a sport that I don’t really understand (I understand actual football and can even explain the offside rule!) It’s seems to be mucked about with rugby with players who wear extra padding (which seems sensible!) but I can’t recognise it as football.  They should call it something else because that’s not football.

Anyway, reading in May looked like this…

Angelmaker – Nick Harkaway

I started reading this last month and finished it while I was on holiday. I loved it, it was complicated, silly and very funny. You need to be able to stick with it through all it’s complications and it pays off. Whether you will enjoy it depends on whether enjoy silliness or not. I was sold when the lead character was described as ‘standing as if he’d just been given the Spanish Archer’.

Goodnight Steve McQueen – Louise Wener

I picked this up at Barter Books as a quick non thinking read. Which is exactly what it was. It fine while I was reading it but I don’t think that I’ll read it again.

World War Z – Max Brooks

Another book I’ve been meaning to get around to and even though I probably won’t go and see the film, it did prompt me to get my act together and read the book. I loved it. I liked the structure of it, the reader ends up putting the story together and there are a lot of gaps. I also like that we are viewing the ‘war’ as over and that like a lot of things, change has happened good and bad. The structure of the book also makes it easy to read, short stories that link. Was perfect for reading during the commute.

How to Talk to a Widower – Jonathan Tropper

This is another Barter Books purchase and was apparently a Richard and Judy book club pick, which completed passed me by. Doug is 29 and was married to an older woman, Hailey, until she died in a plane crash. Leaving him grief stricken. A year later he’s still grief stricken and mired in self pity, drinking a lot and doing little else. He really needs to get to grips with his life as well as contenting with an angry stepson, a father with dementia, a pregnant twin sister who’s marriage is breaking up and a sister about to marry the guy she met while he was sitting shiva for his wife. It’s not slapstick although I found some of it really funny. Doug just needs to grow up. The bit I found hardest about the book was believing that someone as capable and in control as his wife was supposed to be, really would have married him. Generally the message is ‘shit happens, deal with it’.

Rebel Heart – Moira Young

I loved Blood Red Road and can’t think why it took me so long to get around to it’s sequel. I love Saba’s voice, I love that everything wasn’t perfect. I’m interested in the world that Young has built but glad that it’s not all explained, there’s room for you to put it all together. I want to know if there will be another one and when!

The 5th Wave – Rick Yancey

This was Luc’s pick for Bank Holiday reading. It’s really readable and interesting, picking up on Stephen Hawkins observation that aliens are more likely to be hostile than friendly. I read it in 2 days, Luc took three days and objected to the ‘kissy stuff’, well he is 12 and I think that he’ll also need to re-read it a few years time.

Partials – Dan Wells

 

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Picture post – Warkworth Castle

Posted on May 28, 2013 by nicdempsey

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This weekend…

Posted on May 27, 2013 by nicdempsey

Made pizza.

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Watched a movie with Ryan.

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Cooked some lamb (and I still can’t carve for toffee)

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Ate black pudding. Yum!

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Planted some herbs.

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Got a little bit burnt (seriously, it wasn’t that sunny and I was out for about an hour. I really inherited my father’s celtic colouring!)

Watched a lot of Friday Night Lights.

How was your weekend?

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Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens

Posted on May 25, 2013 by nicdempsey

On the way back from Hadrian’s Wall, (it was a wall, it was raining, it was further south than I’d always imagined it), we went to Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens.

It’s quite a place and I left it feeling very sad, for the sad, empty house. So I’d better explain why.

The buildings and gardens are managed by English Heritage with the rest of the estate being run by the original owners the Middleton family.

So first we went to the Castle, via the gardens. The Castle was built in the 14th Century and has a Jacobean wing to it, it’s not difficult to determine which is which! However, my slight obsession with spiral staircases continues..

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The quarry gardens are built in the quarries that were left from quarrying the stone for the Hall (and yes I am aware that there were far too many uses of the word quarry, in that sentence, but I couldn’t think of a suitable synonym for quarry!). Because they are sheltered, the gardens have plants that wouldn’t normally grow so far north and if it hadn’t been cold, raining and, close to closing time we probably would have spent more time wondering around them.

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I love ferns, the look like fossils…

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Then we went into the Hall.

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I was not expecting to like the Hall at all, from the outside, it looks like a brown square box. The guidebook describes it as austere and so it is. It was designed by John Dobson for Charles Monck (formally Middleton – he changed his name to get an inheritance!) who was very keen on Greek architecture although whether he was keen on it before he honeymooned in Athens isn’t clear. He built the Hall, relocating the village in the process, and the family moved into it on Christmas Day in 1817. Despite it’s outside and the very formal and quite cold central hall, it isn’t an unfriendly house. We knew that there would be no furniture in the Hall, English Heritage says it’s “displayed without furnishings to reveal the fine craftsmanship of its construction.” but I wasn’t at all prepared for how sad wondering around this poor abandoned house would make me feel.

Especially the library..

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It’s actually in the terms of guardianship that the Hall is displayed without furniture and I don’t understand it. I couldn’t see the craftmanship, I just saw a house that deserves better than this….

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Belsay is lovely and I wish we could have stayed longer and that we had better weather, but it’s a very sad house.

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Friday Links

Posted on May 24, 2013 by nicdempsey

Another week done. It’s Friday morning and here are the links. The news is full of what happened in Woolwich this week, this post isn’t. Some people did a terrible thing, a man died, a child doesn’t have a father. That’s sad and awful enough, it doesn’t need any commentary today.

So links..

1) Electric shocks to brain seem to help people with maths problems. Not sure that this is something I would have liked at school but I’m rubbish at maths, unlike my Ma and Ben.

People who struggle with maths problems might fare better after a course of gentle electric shocks to the brain, scientists have claimed.

Psychologists at Oxford University found that students scored higher on mental arithmetic tasks after a five-day course of brain stimulation.

If future studies prove that it works – and is safe – the cheap and non-invasive procedure might be used routinely to boost the cognitive power of those who fall behind in maths, the scientists said. Researchers led by Roi Cohen Kadosh zapped students’ brains with a technique called transcranial random noise stimulation (TRNS) while they performed simple calculations, or tried to remember mathematical facts by rote learning.

2) HS2 is a pup and we don’t really need it. And if we’re going to have it, could we start in the North and bring it down south last. We have plenty of transport links and infrastructure in London (ok some of it isn’t great but we have it) and the North doesn’t. We need to start thinking about the whole country not just London and the South East. I say this this as a proud Londoner!

Certainly, the leaders of Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester have welcomed HS2. For them it is either £1,000 a head from every taxpayer in Britain or nothing. They would be mad to refuse. The people of the Midlands and north were never asked what else they might do with such an enormous sum. If it were their money they would not touch it with a bargepole. No one offered them a Birmingham subway, a high-speed Manchester-Sheffield link or a Nottingham-Derby-Stoke motorway. No one did a rate of return on extending the M65 down the congested Aire valley in Yorkshire. To Westminster such projects are for peasants: they come nowhere near London.

3) On Monday, there were lots of people on the radio essentially saying “I’m not homophobic, but gay marriage will change the definition of marriage as we know it.” So I think it’s worth linking to this again.

4) and Peter Tatchell on the subject.

For me, banning same-sex marriage is homophobic discrimination. I resent being told that I’m not allowed to marry because I am gay. I want to be able to choose – and refuse. In a democracy, everyone should be equal before the law. This includes the right of same-sex couples to marry and be just as happy – or miserable – as married heterosexuals.

5) Miss Piggy Q & A in Saturday’s Guardian. One of my role models!

 What is your favourite smell?
Wet amphibian

6) Michael Pollan on the microbes that live on and in us. Fascinating.

Your microbial community seems to stabilize by age 3, by which time most of the various niches in the gut ecosystem are occupied. That doesn’t mean it can’t change after that; it can, but not as readily. A change of diet or a course of antibiotics, for example, may bring shifts in the relative population of the various resident species, helping some kinds of bacteria to thrive and others to languish. Can new species be introduced? Yes, but probably only when a niche is opened after a significant disturbance, like an antibiotic storm. Just like any other mature ecosystem, the one in our gut tends to resist invasion by newcomers.

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Struggle

Posted on May 23, 2013 by nicdempsey

I seem to be a bit down at the moment. For no reason I can really put my finger on. It could be that the imminent arrival of 40 is making me more unhappy than I thought, it could be that summer which should be just around the corner, seems not to be, it could be money and the lack of it, it could be I need to eat more red meat, it could be a whole heap of reasons.

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Whatever it is, I’m struggling. I’m tired, lethargic and I don’t feel well but there isn’t really anything wrong with me. I’m having more ‘down’ days and more migraines which really don’t help me feel full of the joys of spring. My grip on my life seems to be looser than it was and I really would just like to do nothing and see no-one for a while because everything feels like a too much effort. I’ve been thinking about it and talking about it and yesterday it hit me, I feel like normally feel in winter, when I’m coping with SAD.

Which given how not like summer or spring it is at the moment isn’t really a surprise. Seriously, it’s May and I’m still wearing most of my winter clothes. I still need to put the lights on in the morning because it’s so dark and the only reason I’m not putting the heating on is cause it’s May and I really can’t afford it. It may have been obvious but I’m pretty cross about it because now I need to do something about it, take some positive action which is possibly the last thing I want to do.

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What I want to do is sulk because it’s not  fair, I seem to spend most of my life trying not to be down. I just want to be done already, this is not supposed to be me in May. It’s summer, I shouldn’t have to be working at not being miserable until September, I fought the good fight all the way through Winter and bronchitis and this is not supposed to be my life.

However, it is my life, I’m never going to get to that place where it’s all perfect and easy and I don’t have to work at it. Intellectually, I know this, emotionally it’s a little bit harder to come to terms with. I need to give myself some tough love, I need to stop whining, suck it up and take some action. I have been doing this for long enough to know that making the effort now, even if I resent every single bit of it will turn how I feel around and that the more I do the easier it will become and life will look brighter and I’ll feel better.

Before I launch into the details of my action plan, I want to be really clear, I’m not seriously depressed, I’m naturally a bit depressive, which I entirely blame my father’s Irish melancholy for and I get SAD when it’s dark. The reason it doesn’t get worse is because I know what to do to snap me out of it. That doesn’t mean that I think all depression is curable with a bit of extra willpower. I spent over a year with a counsellor about 5 years ago working out the how and the why of what causes me to feel like this and how best to deal with it. If things get really bad I go back to that counsellor and work out what I need to do.

Although depression has some common elements, it’s different for everyone. So if  you’re reading this and thinking that you must be a worthless person because you can’t snap out of it by doing any of the things listed below, or you’re doing the things below and they aren’t helping. For the love of God, go and see the doctor, get the help you need and don’t compare your experience to anyone else’s because it’s never as simple as that.  Just remember that depression doesn’t want you to do anything so doing something (providing it doesn’t involve violence, drugs or alcohol) is probably a good thing.

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So now I have to make a plan. This is for the rest of May and June. None of it is revolutionary or really difficult but I’m going to concentrate on these things, it may be that other stuff will happen because these are in place, we’ll see.

Sleeping.

No computer after 9pm.

In bed lights out by 10pm (12 on the weekend)

Out of bed at 8am at the latest, every day.

Routine and self care

General

Get showered, get dressed – no lying in bed all day with a book!

Leave the house at least once a day.

Body stuff

Nails – paint and care for them.

Moisturize – body as well as face.

Take make up off properly, not with a baby wipe!

Food

Bring back food prep day

Stick to the meal plan

House

Tidy and wash up as you go

Exercise

Stretches for my knees, twice a day

A plank a day

70,000 steps a week

So that’s my plan to restore me to a smiley version of myself.

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Mainstay recipes

Posted on May 22, 2013 by nicdempsey

So this week is National Vegetarian Week and I was going to talk to you about cake. But although the cake was not a fail the photos absolutely were and so instead I thought I’d shine a light on the vegetarian recipes that I eat quite a bit.

Chickpeas & Spinach with poached eggs.

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Lentil soup

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Beans

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Sprouted lentil salad

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Finally last week’s Black Bean Burgers

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So what about you? What are you mainstay vegetarian recipes. Do you have any?

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Bloom

Posted on May 21, 2013 by nicdempsey

When T & C moved house in 2011, I inherited a cupboard and 5 houseplants.

That I haven’t killed those houseplants is one of the miracles of my life! Two of the plants, the begonias, came to me flowering.

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See flowering begonia! None of the plants have ever flowered since and one of the begonias was in a real state, possibly dying, until  I moved it to the window

Last week it started to bloom..

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So has the lemon scented geranium in the bathroom, which has never flowered to my knowledge.

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It’s a silly little thing that makes me very happy.

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The Weekend

Posted on May 20, 2013 by nicdempsey

This weekend started differently than I had intended. I was going to take Friday as leave and spend it with Tina. However, T is currently in hospital (and very cross about it!) so I went into work instead.

It was a slow day, as it’s a quiet week and I usually use it to catch up with stuff, but with a desk move coming and being all caught up because I thought I wasn’t going to be at work on Friday, I spent the day asking people if I could help them!

So Friday evening was an OXO evening.

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On Saturday, I went to the theatre. To see The Hot House. It’s Pinter. It had Simon Russell Beale and John Simm in it, who are both brilliant actors. It was good and very funny in places but I’ve decided either Pinter is overhyped somewhat or I’m just not bright enough for his plays.  I suspect the later because with the exception of Betrayal, I always come out of Pinter plays confused, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot but always confused.

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On Saturday night, I watched Dr Who and I spent the rest of the weekend in hibernation, reading.

Not an amazing weekend but good enough! This week is pretty planless. Work (we’ve had a desk move, it’s like being in a brand new office, with the exception of the printers, toilets and kitchen, nothing is where you expect it to be) and I’m going to attempt some running now the bruising from my fall a couple of weeks ago has gone down, but other than that pretty low key.  Next weekend is another Bank Holiday so a long weekend beckons!

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