Bratapfelkuchen or how to expand your waistline really quicky!

It all started when my lovely friends gave me a couple of bags of beautiful Spartan apples freshly picked from the trees in their garden. I could have been really good, of course, and just worked my way through them over the next few weeks, but some were a bit bruised and slightly imperfect and wouldn't have kept long. Well, that was my excuse anyway!
Once I had the excuse I had to think of ways to use them and had a bright idea to find a recipe for Bratapfelkuchen or baked apple cake that I had eaten in Germany many times and loved.
I found several recipes but they all called for an ingredient that I was pretty sure I couldn't get hold of in the UK, something called 'vanilla pudding' which, I believe, resembles a firm custard. So, I decided to experiment. I'm happy to report that the experiment was very successful, so here is the recipe.

Pastry

200g plain flour, sieved
1/2 tsp baking powder
75g caster sugar
1 pinch of salt
100g butter, softened

Filling

6 medium apples, peeled and cored
Juice of 1 lemon
4 tbs of custard powder
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
100 g sugar
600ml single cream
200ml milk
50g flaked almonds

26cm springform tin

Method

Mix up the pastry ingredients and knead it until smooth. Form into a ball, cover in cling film and chill for 30 minutes. Line the base of the springform tin with baking paper. Roll out the pastry and lower it into the tin, lining the base and sides to at least a height of 2.5cm. The pastry may well fall apart (mine did!) but just press it into shape and it'll be fine! Prick the base with a fork. Cover the pastry with greaseproof or baking paper and fill with baking beans. Bake blind for 10-15 minutes or until it's slightly golden around the edges. Set it aside to cool.

Meanwhile, put the peeled and cored apples into a bowl of water with the juice of a lemon added to it. Whisk the custard powder, sugar and 200ml cream together until smooth. Add the vanilla essence. Put the rest of the cream and milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Take it off the heat and whisk the custard mix into the cream and milk. Return the pan to the heat and whisk continuously as the mixture comes to a boil. Cook until the custard thickens well. Dry the apples and arrange them on the pastry. Pour the custard over the apples and making sure you fill the holes where the cores were. Bake in the oven at 180C for about 45 minutes. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and return to the oven for at about another 15 minutes or so until the custard is set.

Allow to cool completely. Sprinkle with icing sugar before serving. Some recipes recommend that you leave the cake for 24 hours before eating, if you can keep your hands off it!

A common variation is to fill the apples with rum soaked raisins before pouring the custard over.

Dear readers

I have been neglecting this blog of late and not just of late! I believe my last post was last September. But, oh, what a busy and exciting time I've had since then. The reason for my extended silence here is that I have been writing, not a blog, but children's books. The first, The Rise of Agnil, was published in late December and the second book in the series, Agnil and the Wizard's Orb will be published very soon. So excuse my silence, dear readers, and head over to susannavas.com where I post far more frequently on the subject of my books. I will return here from time to time, with my usual ramblings about food and such.

You want a link to my book? I hear you say, well here it is:
http://smarturl.it/AmazonAgnil1

Sloe, sloe, quick, quick, sloe

Making pacharán

A few years ago my cousin's husband introduced me to some of his home-made pacharán and ever since then, whenever we've been eating out in Spain, I will usually have a little glass of pacharán on ice - for medicinal purposes, you understand!

Pacharán is a speciality of the Basque region, but is available all over Spain. It's a drink made from aniseed alcohol flavoured mostly with sloes and I've yet to meet anyone, apart from non-drinkers, who doesn't like it.

On our return from a short stay in Spain this past summer, I decided to have a go at making it myself at home. My first hurdle was finding the sloes. I've never picked sloes before and had only a vague idea what they looked like. They are, of course, the fruit of the blackthorn, or prunus spinosa, and resemble a small blue/black plum.

Sloes

I read somewhere that they shouldn't be picked before the first frost but, as I didn't want to leave it to chance, I decided to give the sloes a "false frost" by putting them in the freezer for a day or two.

Ready for their "false frost"

 I only had a 70cl bottle of aniseed, so decided to add about 180g of sloes. Other flavourings are a small handful of dark roasted coffee beans, a piece of cinnamon stick and about just over half of a vanilla pod. In one recipe I saw, instead of vanilla, a few chamomile flowers were added.

All the ingredients

Put all the ingredients into a wide-necked bottle or jar, close the lid securely and shake.

Shaken not stirred

And now comes the slow, slow (or should that be sloe, sloe!) wait for three months until it is ready to filter through muslin and drink. By my reckoning, it should be ready in time for Christmas!

Update 15.12.13

This evening I finally bottled and tasted the two batches I made; one flavoured with the vanilla pod and the other with a few camomile flowers. I'm pleased to say, it has passed the taste test :-)

Flammkuchen

As I'm in Germany at the moment, I thought I'd post a recipe for a speciality of Alsace, which is not a million miles away from here. Alsace has a history of belonging both to France and Germany at various times. Since WW2, it has been a region of France.

In France Flammkuchen is called Tarte Flambée and is a bit like a thin crispy pizza but made without yeast. I started making it myself when I realised just how quick and easy it was.

200 g plain flour
2 tablespoons oil (ordinary vegetable or sunflower oil will be fine - olive oil is considered to not be authentic)
125 ml water
1 pinch salt
1 tablespoon butter (or butter and oil mixed)
200 g creme fraiche (I've used slightly less and it was enough)
200 g onions, sliced
100 g bacon, pancetta or similar, cut into thin strips
salt and pepper


Preheat oven to the highest temperature possible.

Thoroughly mix flour, oil, water and salt to make a dough which should be soft and stretchy but not sticky. Roll it out as thinly as possible (We're talking very thin here!) Lift the rolled out dough onto a lightly oiled baking sheet.

Optional: Melt the butter (or a mix of oil and butter) in a pan, add onions and sweat for just a couple of minutes. Add bacon, stir and heat through. If you slice everything thinly, you don't have to sautée it before putting it onto the base.

Spread creme fraiche on top of the dough (but not right to the edge), then spread onions and bacon over the top. Season with salt and pepper.

Put in a hot oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes. Once the edges look browned and crispy, it's done.

With salad, will feed two very hungry people or 3-4 with smaller appetites


You could also experiment with other toppings to make a vegetarian version, for example, olives and tomatoes or strips of red pepper.

A sweet version can be made by topping the creme fraiche with a thinly sliced eating apple (I used a Braeburn) and sugar flavoured with cinnamon.




Recipe sourced from Food.com and slightly adapted

Challah

Many years ago I attempted to make a challah and it didn't turn out particularly well. Not being very good at coping with failure, I put further attempts to the bottom of my "to do" list. 

This year, however, as I explained in my previous post, I've rediscovered my love of baking bread so decided to have another go. Finding the right recipe to try proved difficult. There are many variations on the Internet so the first thing I had to do was narrow the field. The biggest stumbling block was the fact that many of the recipes were American and I had to rule these out straight away as they use cup measures.  At home I have a cup measure that I recently bought to cope with this, but here in Germany I haven't, so I continued my hunt for one in metric measures.  Luckily I came across a site that does the conversion of the recipe for you - allrecipes.com.

Once I'd found the recipe, the adaptation began. I had instant yeast instead of the active yeast called for, so did things in a different order. I used almost cold rather than warm water, added slightly more honey (the jar was almost empty so it seemed silly to leave it!) and most radically of all, I barely kneaded it. Having seen the technique used by Dan Lepard, I decided to risk using it on this dough. I figured that as I'd used more yeast because it was a rich dough, that it might just cope with this technique. Too late, just now, I have found a Dan Lepard version of the recipe which just means I will have to try this version too :-)

Anyway, back to my experiment. I left it to prove and crossed my fingers!

It rose beautifully in the kitchen at room temperature.

There are many ways that challah can be shaped but I decided to go for the standard three-strand plait. I left it to rise again, painted on an egg and honey wash, dropped some poppy seeds on it and flung it into the oven for 35 minutes or so.
I must say, it tastes pretty good. Not at all like shop-bought but that's really not the point!

The death of bread. Long live Real Bread!

I'm becoming a bread snob.

Over the years in the UK, I've seen a deterioration in the quality of bread. It started with the increasing popularity of sliced white mush and even when it became sliced wholemeal, the texture hardly changed. Local bakers started to reduce the variety of breads they produced and seemed to want to mimic what could be bought in a supermarket. This has eventually killed off the real local bakers in the area where I live. So-called 'artisan' breads of different shapes and colours are available to add some variety in supermarkets, including breads flavoured with olives or cheese but even they hardly seem to vary in texture.

I spend a lot of time in a small town in the south west of Germany and within a radius of about 75 metres there are at least four bakers. A lot of people will tell you that the range of bread in Germany is phenomenal and to a certain extent this is true. Walk into any of these bakers and you will be greeted by an astounding display of breads made with different flours, some darker, some lighter, some round, some square, but they are not all that they appear to be.

Until a few years ago, the baker next door to where I am right now used to make all his own bread. He used to produce the best Brezel (not to be confused with pretzel) in town; slim and crispy in the right way in the right place, plump and salty where it mattered. Above all they were freshly baked in the early hours of every morning. You could go there at seven in the morning and buy Brezels, piled in wicker baskets, still fragrant and warm from the oven. The bread was good too. But now we can't buy good hand-made Brezels and bread with a decent texture and flavour here anymore.

A hand-made Brezel (with butter). Note the thinness of the crossover strands as they touch the outer circle. Machine-made ones are much more even and thicker.

In recent years the bread started to change. We noticed deliveries of bread mixes, like those you can buy to make different breads for your breadmaker, rather than deliveries of flour. The bread still looked the same but the texture and flavour changed. It's the same at all the other bakers. Either the bread is delivered from a central factory baker or part-bakes are delivered which are then finished off on the premises.

I recently found a web site about the Real Bread Campaign which will help you find sources of real bread where you live in the UK. In my area there are none. I would have to travel a good 12 miles to buy decent bread. I've decided to make my own instead.

Many years ago I always baked my own bread. Even with a dough hook on my Kenwood mixer, it was laborious and time-consuming. I didn't always get the results I hoped for. However, earlier this year I rediscovered the magic of bread making. I found a way of making bread that requires no kneading and because it's left to rise for a long period of time (15-20 hours), requires little yeast and develops a wonderful flavour. The method is described with videos and recipes on the Breadtopia site  Alternatively, when I'm in more of a hurry, I've found Dan Lepard's method very simple and successful, but it produces a loaf with a very different texture and flavour to the no-knead. This video makes a good starting point for understanding Dan's method. Ignore the fact that he talks about sourdough bread at the beginning. The recipe does not produce a sourdough.

My home-baked bread

One of the best!

From time to time we all receive those scam spam emails where someone pleads with us to help them to solve their rather large money problems. Rarely however, are the scam emails as topical as this one. Somebody was really quick off the mark to produce this:

"Dearest,

Peace be onto you and your family,

I am Mrs. Safia Gadhafi the wife of Muammar Gadhafi of Libya. I am presently in Algeria with my daughter Aisha and my sons.

I am sure you knows all about my family presently, I am contacting you for urgent help to secure in the name of investment in your country my family fund which NATO, UN and the Libyan transitional council have not seen. The amount involve is $80M.

Note; we are not interested on what you are going to do with this money or profit you will make from this fund rather my interest is to have the money back on demand.

If you are interested in assisting us, Your full assistance is highly needed in all participation.

Note also that your percentage for this help could be discuss.

Please forward the following information to this email address. safiagedhafi@xxxxx.xxx 

(address removed!)

Full name:

Address: 

Tel:/fax:

Copy of ID: 

Finally don’t forget that it is a top secret therefore only email correspondence for security reasons.

Thanks for your support in advance

Mrs. Safia Gedhafi"

My reply to this cry for help?

Dear "Safia",

The next time you try to scam someone, you might like to at least check that you spell your own name consistently.

Regards,

S 

A Summer of Reading

This year, instead of our usual tour around Spain, we've stayed "at home" in south west Germany. Circumstances have not allowed us to travel. When it dawned on me that I would have a lot of time to read, I decided to buy a Kindle rather than use up my luggage allowance with paperbacks before coming over from the UK.

I've been asked by a couple of people for recommended reads, so here is my Top Ten. These are not in any particular order!


1. "The Dying Light" by Henry Porter. This is a story set in the very near future and is all about surveillance - in my opinion a "must-read"! It's a direct descendent of 1984 by George Orwell.

2.  "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin. If The Dying Light is a descendent, then "We" is the father of both Brave New World and 1984. A classic dystopian novel, written I believe in 1927. It's a translation from the Russian and although I found it a little strange to read at first, the style of writing absolutely suits the story. It helps to know that Zamyatin may have had synesthesia as he gave letters and sounds qualities :-)

 3. "Moon Tiger" by Penelope Lively. A Booker Prize Winner from 1987, this is a superb book. About the life of a woman dying in hospital, the narrative is sometimes written from her point of view, but sometimes from those of the other people in her life. A poignant tale of life, memory, love and loss.

4. "The Novel in the Viola" by Natasha Solomons. This beautifully written second novel from Natasha Solomons, whose first was "Mr Rosenbloom's List", is set in Dorset and tells the story of a young Austrian Jew from a wealthy family who flees her home country shortly before the start of WW2. She goes to work as a maid in a country home and it tells of how she adapts to her new life. A moving story with wonderful descriptions of English country life in the 1930s.

5. "Before I go to Sleep" by SJ Watson. A great pyschological thriller - a "page turner" about a woman suffering from amnesia. She loses her memory again every time she goes to sleep. On the suggestion of a therapist, she starts to keep a journal and finds that all is not what it seems.

6. "Great House" by Nicole Krauss. A neural network of episodes, neither linear nor parallel, but all connected. A book about memories and a desk. Hard to get into but so glad I persisted. Beautifully written.

7. "Chickens Mules and Two Old Fools" by Victoria Twead. A light and lovely read about Victoria and her husband 's move to a little village in the mountains in Andalucia. If you need something that will make you chuckle, as well as green with envy for the life she now leads, this is the book for you!

8. "Brandenburg" by Henry Porter. The second Henry Porter book I read this year, and I will probably go on to read others. This one is a spy thriller set in and around Berlin, shortly before the Wall came down. Great story telling from Porter again.

9. "Never Let me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. A film of this book was released several months ago. Great story set in a parallel version of England. I don't want to give too much away, so when I am asked what it was about, I say "free range chickens". It's not, but when you've read it, you'll know what I mean! One of these days I'll get around to seeing the film.

10. "The Warsaw Anagrams" by Richard Zimler. I've read all of Zimler's books. This one is set in the Warsaw Ghetto in WW2 and is a murder mystery. I always really enjoy anything this author writes!


Honorable Mentions

Other books I have read recently:

"Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell

"Life Blood" by Thomas Hoover

"Truth Dare Kill" by Gordon Ferris

"The Hare with Amber Eyes" by Edmund de Waal

"War on the Margins" by Libby Cone

"Guerra" by Jason Webster

"Bloody Foreigners" by Robert Winder. This is a history of immigration in England. Everybody in the UK should read this! A compelling and surprisingly easy read. Very interesting!

Rubbish!

I am a frequent visitor to south-west Germany and have always been very impressed by the cleanliness of German streets and towns. One of the places I am seeing a lot of at the moment is a suburb of Karlsruhe, called Waldstadt. Faced with a post-war housing shortage, with thousands of people, including many refugees from the GDR needing homes, the mayor of Karlsruhe, Günther Klotz, came up with the idea of building a new suburb in the Hardwaldt, north of the city centre. Work started in 1957 to build large apartment blocks and houses, providing accommodation for a wide range of income groups.
The whole suburb is inside the forest, and with each apartment block surrounded by taller trees, it is difficult to see directly from one block to another. All are linked by a network of footpaths through the forest. It seems a very pleasant place to live.

Arriving there on Tuesday morning, I noticed large piles of discarded furniture, placed near the refuse collection points, at the ends of the paths, next to the street. I was told that there are occasional collections of these large items that people no longer need. An impressive service, I thought. At home in England I would have to ring the council and pay for the collection of something big like an old sofa or wardrobe that I no longer needed.

Imagine my horror when I walked along the same street a few hours later and witnessed these scenes...






It seems that the refuse collectors decided that some of what they found didn't come under the heading of "large items" and deliberately threw the smaller items around the grassed areas, paths and parking spaces, breaking glass and mirrors, discarding the drawers from inside a freezer, taking the rings off a curtain pole etc etc. I find this sort of petty minded, "jobsworth" attitude totally despicable! What if an elderly person, of whom there are many living in this area, had tripped and fallen on the strewn rubbish? Who would be held responsible for their injury? Do the local "Stadtverwaltung" actually believe that they cannot be held to account?

I somehow think that these refuse collectors would not have dared leave such a mess outside privately owned homes!

TV debut

In another post to this blog a couple of years ago, I wrote about my father's films. They have now been "discovered" and a few snippets were used in a BBC Four documentary which was part of their "Sea Fever" season, called "The Joy of the Sea". First broadcast on Tuesday 11th May, it can still be seen on iPlayer until the beginning of June. I also make an appearance, being interviewed about them.

It seems it has been decided by the surfing historian, Roger Mansfield (author of The Surfing Tribe), that my Dad was the first person to a) experiment using a long-board to surf in Europe, and b) to film himself using it.

My father would be most bemused that he is now beng considered a pioneer. However, he was always proud of the fact that he'd not only made this surf board, but also that he'd made a waterproof casing for his camera, strapping it to the board, to film it skimming through the water :-)

The silver lining?

So here I am...stuck in Germany. Well, not really stuck, since I know when I am going to return to the UK. A few days ago Iceland decided to cough (as an acquintance of mine put it!) and spluttered volcanic ash all over Europe. Flights were cancelled and the world was/is in chaos. We heard a comment on German radio the other day, which roughly translated said,"First they burn our money, then they send us the ashes!"

When Ryanair announced last Friday that there would be no flights to and from the UK until at least Monday lunchtime, I thought I should make some alternative arrangements, bearing in mind I was supposed to be back at work on Monday. I tried in vain to get through to Ryanair to re-book my flight. This, with hindsight, was a truly Good Thing, because I probably wouldn't have been back in the UK before May Bank Holiday the way things are going. The alternative options open to me were firstly the train, which I decided was a) too expensive, and b) the thought of lugging bags on and off trains and luggage racks while my back is still in recovery (a few months and several chiropractic sessions later) did not exactly enthrall me. Second option was to take a bus to Victoria. After some online investigation and a trip to a local travel agency, I was able to book onto the first available bus, which leaves Heidelberg tomorrow at midnight. This gets me into London late morning on Thursday.

The media is full of tales of people's long and arduous journeys across Europe to reach the Channel ports, hiring cars and taxis at inflated prices or having to stay on camp beds in airports or at expensive hotels while they wait for the skies to clear. Dan Snow, the historian and BBC presenter, even took a flotilla of inflatable boats across the channel at the weekend to pick up stranded Brits ("Ye Olde Dunkirk Spirit"). He was stopped in his tracks at Calais, although I do believe he took a few back. I do consider myself one of the lucky ones, having somewhere safe and comfortable to wait, and feel really sorry for those without money and nowhere to go.

Meanwhile the airlines are whinging that it's all taking too long and they're losing money, and let's ignore the fact that the volcanic ash damaged the engines of some f-16s. Lufthansa sent some planes from Munich to Frankfurt, which the BBC decided was evidence that they were 'test flights'. In fact, they were sent there to have them ready for when the planes were ready to really carry passengers. The BBC claimed that they flew "at altitudes of up to 8000m." What they didn't say was that most of the way they were travelling at 3000m, well below normal flying altitude. The time they spent at 8000m must have been barely a few minutes, considering the short flight time between the two cities. Other airlines are also sending test flights and claiming no damage to engines. What if the effects are cumulative? I'm not sure I would want to be in one of the first flights going back!

Testing Testing

A new widget from Blurb to promote my book.

A Portrait of the Alhambra by Sue Clamp

A Portrait of The Alhambra

The making of a book

Finally I have both copies of the book "A Portrait of the Alhambra", that I made both in Apple's Aperture and in Blurb's Booksmart. The results are very interesting. Firstly the Aperture version is slightly larger at 28cm x 21.6cm, compared to the Blurb version which is 24.1cm x 20.3cm. I ordered the Blurb book in their "Premium paper", which is noticeably thicker than the Apple version. The Apple paper is still good though and both cover and pages have a nice silky finish while the Blurb book has a glossy cover and silky pages.

The slightly bigger Apple version


The quality of the actual printing is very similar, and apart from one rather important difference, may simply be a matter of personal preference. I found the Apple photo prints to have slightly more reddish/yellowish tones, which on most of the photos gave quite a pleasing effect.

Pages from the Apple version


Pages from the Blurb version

However, on the one black and white photo in the book, this was not what I wanted and in this respect the rendition of colours in the Blurb book is much better. The other photo that also gave a very different result in the Apple book, was one of the Alhambra at night, where the sky has a brownish tone, whereas in the Blurb book it is completely black. I personally think that the Apple version is perhaps closer to my original photo, but the Blurb print is far more pleasing.

So which one is better? Overall, I think I prefer the Blurb book, even though there are some aspects of the Apple book that I really like. What makes the decision easy in the end is the difference in price, the Apple book being considerably more expensive.



The whole Blurb book can be previewed and purchased here.

Creating a book

I've had an interesting few days, spending long hours in front of my iMac, putting together my first book of photos. I wanted to try two services and two pieces of software for comparison. The first was Aperture, the Apple photo management program that I use, This has a book making facility integrated into the program, which makes the creation of a book very straightforward, you then click a button and, providing you have an account set up with Apple, upload and order your book.

Good bits of using Aperture:

Easy to do
Easy to order

Bad bits:

Very slow to upload
Text options limited (somehow couldn't use different fonts very easily, or choose different sizes within the same block of text - did I miss something?)
Seems expensive (but haven't got the book to inspect quality yet)

The second service I tried was Blurb, using their free software Booksmart. This involved exporting all the photos from Aperture (which took time), but I found the layout options very flexible and allowed some 'creative' options which I enjoyed. Maybe I didn't fully explore the possibilities with Aperture, but there seemed to be more options (especially with text!) in Booksmart.

Good bits about Booksmart (and Blurb):

Easy to do
Lots of options
Easy to order
Cheaper than Apple (but haven't got the book to inspect quality yet)
Seemed to upload more quickly (but see below)
Being able to sell to the public with a profit :-)


Bad bits:

Having to export photos from Aperture was time consuming, even when all photos were selected en masse.
First attempt to upload failed.


I will report back when both books arrive for a comparison of speed of delivery and quality of product.

By the way, I have entered the Blurb Book Contest, so please vote for the book from the 23rd October onwards :-)

A Portrait of ...

By Sue Clamp

Book Preview

I blow my nose at swine flu

OK, I'll admit it, I've blown my nose a few times the last couple of days. I've even sneezed and coughed once or twice - BUT I HAVEN'T GOT SWINE FLU! How do I know? I haven't got a high temperature and apart from one slightly stuffy nostril, I feel absolutely fine. Whatever happened to the summer cold? It seems everyone with the slightest sniffle claims to have swine flu these days. I'm not saying that nobody has it, but I'm guessing there are fewer than reported. It's just a theory of course, but with all the media hype, over the phone diagnosis and the availability of Tamiflu, I'm wondering whether some people aren't exaggerating their symptoms just a teeny bit, just to get hold of antivirals.
Yesterday, at Stansted, I saw two women wearing masks. I consider this to be a little over the top, as there is no proof that masks would protect you in any case. We have to live our lives as normally as possible. It's a bit like after the September 11th attacks, a lot of people were afraid to fly. It seems to me that governments quite like to have their population fearful and dependent on them for 'protection'. After September 11th we saw tanks at Heathrow(!) and increased security everywhere. In this case our government gives us a pandemic helpline, Tamiflu and the promise of vaccination in the autumn.
The world's gone mad.

Commercial break

The other week I decided that the time had come to see if there might be some people out there in the big wide world who would want to buy my photos. In a flurry of activity, I set up an account with Red Bubble, who take care of all the hard work for me and I am now able to offer any of my photos as greeting cards, prints of all types and even posters! I was pleasantly surprised when, within the first few days, I sold three greeting cards :-)
I have taken a small selection and uploaded them to my Reb Bubble site, but any of the photos on my Flickr page can be made available by request.
If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you can see a slideshow of the Red Bubble photos and a link to find them. If you're too lazy to scroll, there's another link on the right hand side of the page :-)

Education, education, education

So the Rose Review of the Primary Curriculum has been published and I heard that Mick Waters (QCA Director of Curriculum), speaking at a conference in the past few days, has said that schools should totally ignore it! He says that the Conservatives don't like it at all so it is never likely to happen.
It seems rather perverse that politicians can get rid of something that is seen as a positive move by a significant part of the education community.

A passing

Saddened to hear of the death of John Martyn today. I first went to one of his gigs in 1974 and last saw him in November 2008. This feels like the end of an era.

New love

A new passion has entered my life. Not content with the glorious high of owning The Red Shoes, I have now bought myself the longed-for dslr - a Sony Alpha 300. Until now I've had a Konica Minolta Dimage 7, which I 'inherited' from J a couple of years ago. It's been a good friend and taken some beautiful photographs, but it was time for a change. I've made a lens purchase from eBay, got another one on back-order at Jessops and a Crumpler bag also out of stock and on order.
It's all rather novel really and filled with exciting possibilities, only limited by my ability. It's quite a steep learning curve - all this stuff - words like exposure, aperture, focal length and f-stops twirling around in my little brain like autumn leaves in a flurry waiting to settle in the right places.
Photos? I've taken a few. Here's one and the rest can be seen on my Flickr stream.

Red shoes

Have you ever been totally obsessed by a pair of shoes? I never have; never understood the passion that some people (usually women) can have for shoes. I've always been a practical person, preferring comfortable flat shoes for most occasions. I think this came about after sneezing while wearing a pair of high platform shoes in my early twenties and putting my back out for three months (yes, I know that sounds highly unlikely, but it is true!). So when this pair of red shoes took my eye when I was buying myself a pair of slippers last weekend, I was totally shocked at my reaction. Anyone looking closely enough would have seen my pupils immediately dilate. I was a woman in love! Another woman in the shop had been trying them on and debating whether they would be a little too wild for her role as a doctor. The shop assistant suggested the black version, but the doctor dismissed black as boring. Of course she was right. While the black version were simply elegant, the red ones were to die for. She bought the shoes, but I just didn't dare look at the price tag. I knew they would be expensive. They smelt expensive.

I went home, happy with my new slippers, but I couldn't get those shoes out of my mind. All week I kept thinking about them. I looked up the manufacturer online and found a picture of them that I could drool over, but this simply wasn't enough. I had to go back. If they didn't have my size or they felt uncomfortable, it would be fate deciding that I was not destined to own them.

I walked into the shop and there they were.
"Can I have these in a size 4 please?"
The assistant disappeared downstairs to the stock room.
"Only in black, I'm afraid. We've only got the red ones in a size 3."

Now it has been known for size 3's to fit me, but rarely. I decided to try anyway. I felt like Cinderella as I slipped my foot in and pulled up the zip at the side. They fitted as if they had been made for me. I walked around the shop and they were surprisingly comfortable; the leather soft and forgiving. By now I had looked inside and seen the price. It was no shock as I knew they would cost that much. Without a moment's hesitation, I was handing over my card to pay. However, the best bit of this story is that the shoes have now become a very early Christmas present for me from J. Thank you so much!