NaBloPoMo 5: Fireworks

Today we woke up to John in the spare room, him having arrived last night for a weekend of diy.

Last night we ended up at Tragos in Portswood with Ben, Laura, Marmers and john in honour of John's presence. I had a delicous New York steak sandwich and lovely Miss Piggy mocktails, a combination of apple, ginger, raspberry, cranberry and lime.

Today, I had a fine lie in, mooched round to the shop for milk and crumpets for breakfast and gardened.

On my walk to the shop, I saw a victorian villa named 'Tolstoi'. What was a lower middle class home owner in Southampton doing reading Tolstoy? Ah the stories I will never know. I also saw oversized chandeliers in victorian terraces and familes with small puppies calling over teenage boy dog walkers to socialise in a canine fashion.

In the afternoon, I pruned and pulled up weeds whilst Tom and John removed our old tv aerial and put up a new one. I also made a lovely lunch of a spanish omelette with potato, onion, leek, chorizio, mushroom, peppers and herbs.

We gaily went off to introduce Andy, Jess and John to the delights of Yo Sushi around 530 and then met up with Ben, Laura and Marmers on the balcony of West Quay to watch the fireworks display. If we'd gone to Mayflower Park to watch, it would have been £6 a head, but we had a great view from West Quay.

We tried to find pub to have a drink afterwards, but everyone else had had the same idea. We had a swift one in the Grapes in Oxford Street, but the lack of chairs lead to Andy and Jess inviting us to theirs.

So here I am, sat on their floor, having drunk wine and feasted on crisps, cheese and ryvita. Jess is trying to make Strictly Come Dancing work on the telly. All is good in Alex land.

NaBloPoMo 4: A lazy warming moment

The official prompt for today is:

When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?

I prefer to use a computer for blogging, or writing extended pieces of work like essays. But I definitely prefer writing out ideas or creative pieces on paper with a decent pen. I love the way ink rolls over paper and the shapes of letter form in space.

What I feel like writing:

I also love the warm lazy feeling of sitting in a softly lit room watching the dark outside.

I have worked from home today crunching endless puzzles of numbers to show the success of various campaigns run by my department over the summer. It's exercising the parts of my brain I'd gently tucked away age 16. Creating nubs of algebra to spin maths for me. The numbers are, on the whole, positive and so whilst hard work, not entirely unpleasant.

I am now at the point where I need numbers from other departments so I am working away waiting for these on other smaller things.

Tom is home now, and I can hear him pottering in the kitchen, the soft tones of PM on Radio 4 are slipping under the door.

The wonderful Oink have scuppered my dinner plans by not being able to provide tasty pork at the South Western Arms tonight due to an electrical fault, so now I shall potter off and see what I can find in the kitchen to cook for John this evening, or an appropriate restaurant to patronise.

 

 

NaBloPoMo3 - Home

There's something very satisfying about being at home after being away.

I had a quiet lovely and polite breakfast with John's rents as he'd already left for work on his bridge at some godawful hour of the morning. As civil engineers are want to do. I then drove to the White Cliffs of Dover for today's training session. The M20 and A20 were nice and quiet and I got drive in another tunnel and go up the very steep and windy hill past Dover castle to the cliffs.

When I arrived, I sat checking my email on my phone whilst watching the ferries coming in to the port in the wind and rain. It was dramatic and beautiful and the sea was green and grey and glassy.

As part of the session today I got to have a private tour of South Foreland Lighthouse. It was fascinating, I love old technology, and the views were also fab. It's 19 miles away from France, and on the most south easternly part of Britain. Definitely recommended if you're in the area.

I found today's work very satisfying, as it was a bit more of an advanced training session, so I got to talk about some more indepth things, rather than just the basics. And the team were friendly and enthusiastic which helps!

On the drive home, I got caught in torrential rain on the M25, but the traffic wasn't too horrible overall. I find the lights of cars in the rain very beautiful, especially coupled with the swish swish swish of the wipers. The industrial things often call to me, like the great grey buildings as you approach London Waterloo on the train. I broke the journey at Fleet again, and I think the AA salesman recognised me, which is weird.

And now I'm home, and Tom made salmon with caper sauce, swede mash, purple, white and orange carrots and romanesco cauliflower for dinner. It was delightful. I'm looking forward to my working from home day tomorrow so I can try and catch up with all my emails.

NaBloPoMo 1+2

Hello all, its that time of year again where I try to post once a day.

As you can see I'm already failing miserably. I will blame the nasty cold I picked up, I think kindly shared by a work colleague. I even had Tom worrying I had consumption for a moment. How very victorian.

Nov 1

Today I went to work at the site that is nominally my office. We had a big team meeting and I was pleased to be able to share some really positive figures showing some improvements I helped achieve since I started. The only problem with a big team meeting is everyone was in the office and so the bandwidth died a horrible death. This is not good if you're the web person.

I also had a battle with the technical support team that had me fuming. Having been technical support, I know a kind, apologetic manner can get you far. These guys were less than useless.

I stayed a bit later than normal to try and wrap stuff up, enjoyed my dark drive home, and spent the evening knitting and watching a feelgood film.

Nov 2

I was up early today as I had to go to Berkshire to run a training session. Traffic was alot better than I thought it would be so I arrive early and got through it at a reasonable pace.

I then had to drive to Richmond for a meeting. This was going well until I discovered a road closure with no aparent diversion on my usual route. Cue driving around for an hour trying to find an alternative route.

Fortunately a nice colleague made me a big cup of tea when I arrived and the meeting was very productive.

I'm working in Kent tomorrow so rather than driving home, I'm staying with the lovely John and his rents who live 30 mins from where I need to be tomorrow.

We had dinner in a pub with roaring fires and the largest persian cat i've ever seen.

I'm really enjoying the travel with this job as I get to visit so many interesting places.

I shall leave it here for now. Here are some pictures of swans.

Rich is awesome.

I still can't work out how he got here from Surrey to do this between 8am when Tom left and 830am when I left for work.

Rich is awesome.

I still can't work out how he got here from Surrey to do this between 8am when Tom left and 830am when I left for work.

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://www.formspring.me/alexejones

What's your favorite late-night snack?

Salty popcorn, or cream cheese and Marmite on crackers

Ask me anything

Thank you Martin

for my awesome birthday shoes!

Thank you Martin

for my awesome birthday shoes!

bacon and beans recipe

From Tom

Recipe......

Err....

Warning: this is NOT a health food.

Bacon & beans;

Take a piece of good pork belly, this should have what seems to modern eye a large proportion of fat. Like 50%. Fit the size of the belly to the number of people you wish to feed, but people won't need a huge amount of the finished product, as its rich and filling, but then it will shrink. a peice the size of a sheet of A4 should do 4-6 depending on hunger.

Rub the skin with a LOT of salt, a mix of coarse and fine is best, to get great crackling. We don't put any other salt in any other parts of the dish. If you had to get a modern fat-less pig then you may first need a good glug of a neutral oil before the salt.

Put this in the oven, if you have all the time in the world go for 4 hours or more total time and put the oven on at 150c and if your a bit tighter for time you can go for 3 hours at ~170c. You could do 2 hours at 180c, but it just won't be as good. put the oven up to 200c for the last hour to crackle the crackling.

When you have 2 - 1.5 hours tilll the pig is done make the beans. these quantities will do 6-ish.

chop 1 shallot or a very small onion very finely & 2-3 cloves of garlic. Dice 150g of Chorizo, and drain 2x 400g cans of different beans (pinto & berlotti is my favourite combo, but any beans work, or a couple of cans of mixed beans).??

Fry the onion in a largeish sauce pan in the smallest amount of oil you can, and soften on a low heat, the add the chorizo, turn up the heat, and fry to release the chorizo oil and get a little colour. then chuck in the beans and garlic. add a glass of white wine, blakc pepper and some stock. (or a stock cube and some water). Turn down to stew.

Stew this till the pork is ready, adding a splash of water as necessary, thicken with whatever you like just a touch (cornflour, chicken bisto, Beurre mani??).??

Serve a square of the pork on a couple of spoons of the stewed beans, and crackling on top. Serve with something light and fresh veg-wise to cut through the fattiness. The beans make this a very filling dish.

Alex
http://blissfullyeccentric.blogspot.com

bacon and beans recipe

From Tom

Recipe......

Err....

Warning: this is NOT a health food.

Bacon & beans;

Take a piece of good pork belly, this should have what seems to modern eye a large proportion of fat. Like 50%. Fit the size of the belly to the number of people you wish to feed, but people won't need a huge amount of the finished product, as its rich and filling, but then it will shrink. a peice the size of a sheet of A4 should do 4-6 depending on hunger.

Rub the skin with a LOT of salt, a mix of coarse and fine is best, to get great crackling. We don't put any other salt in any other parts of the dish. If you had to get a modern fat-less pig then you may first need a good glug of a neutral oil before the salt.

Put this in the oven, if you have all the time in the world go for 4 hours or more total time and put the oven on at 150c and if your a bit tighter for time you can go for 3 hours at ~170c. You could do 2 hours at 180c, but it just won't be as good. put the oven up to 200c for the last hour to crackle the crackling.

When you have 2 - 1.5 hours tilll the pig is done make the beans. these quantities will do 6-ish.

chop 1 shallot or a very small onion very finely & 2-3 cloves of garlic. Dice 150g of Chorizo, and drain 2x 400g cans of different beans (pinto & berlotti is my favourite combo, but any beans work, or a couple of cans of mixed beans). 

Fry the onion in a largeish sauce pan in the smallest amount of oil you can, and soften on a low heat, the add the chorizo, turn up the heat, and fry to release the chorizo oil and get a little colour. then chuck in the beans and garlic. add a glass of white wine, blakc pepper and some stock. (or a stock cube and some water). Turn down to stew.

Stew this till the pork is ready, adding a splash of water as necessary, thicken with whatever you like just a touch (cornflour, chicken bisto, Beurre manié). 

Serve a square of the pork on a couple of spoons of the stewed beans, and crackling on top. Serve with something light and fresh veg-wise to cut through the fattiness. The beans make this a very filling dish.

Alex
http://blissfullyeccentric.blogspot.com

A christening

Thank you to Ruth and James for inviting us to the christening of their newest child, Arthur Reginald John Snook. We had a lovely time, and especially enjoyed the food ;o)

See the full gallery on Posterous

A christening

Thank you to Ruth and James for inviting us to the christening of their newest child, Arthur Reginald John Snook. We had a lovely time, and especially enjoyed the food ;o)

A tea cosy

Made from stash scraps. Design laid out by Toddy. Note to self, keep lining bigger so its easier to turn through and hem. Looks good worn as a bishops mitre.

See the full gallery on Posterous

A tea cosy

Made from stash scraps. Design laid out by Toddy. Note to self, keep lining bigger so its easier to turn through and hem. Looks good worn as a bishops mitre.

A birthday do

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

Thank you to the lovely Giles of Oink for the delicious food. I loved creating the outdoor party space. Thanks to everyone who came.