Disease of the heart or heart disease

Valentine ring buns
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Yes, it's that day again the annual roll out of Gregg's Valentine day sickly baked treat! This years is a doozy!

One interesting point which may point to wild times round Mr Gregg's pampas grass fringed bungalow, why would you need 6 valentines buns!?

What’s he got in pocketses...... nowt actually!

AKA: Spring can’t come too soon.

Not for the obvious reasons (gambolling lambs, longer days) but so I can retire my overcoat for the season. The main reason being the left pocket has started to go again, the right one is already an oyster card and phone swallowing cloth tube and now this morning there’s a little gap appearing in the left. They both have the added excitement of a hole further in side in the coats lining so a phone or your house keys can whoosh down and out and for one “thrilling” moment last week almost bounce off a station platform into the path of a speeding train.

I could sew them up but I’ve done that at least twice already and each time the pockets get a little shallower. So if I do it again they will be only just be deep enough to accommodate a bookies’ pencil or a single cafe crème cigarillo (neither of which sadly I have much use for).

So let’s hope it just stays getting warmer so maybe next week I can abandon my coat and then maybe splash out on a new one next winter*.

Yours BLTP’s South London Sartorial Sloth correspondent

*(when as usual the shops will be full of 2010’s bikinis, I’ve never mastered this whole fashion out of sync with the Seasons thing)!

Winter wonderland

Snow Drops & Clumps of John Nettles
Off to Oxfordshire for the weekend to see friends and had an excellent time thanks folks!

And in tribute to all the awards given out here are my nominations for last 48 hours:

Time team comes alive before your eyes panorama of the weekend:

We had an excellent walk on some local hills called "the Clumps" it was an astonishingly beautiful snowy day, clear and sunny so you could see for 10-20 miles all around.

The clumps themselves contain Iron Age hill forts as did every other ridge and vale we could see. The whole area seemed to be full of Christmas card vistas filled with nestling pretty Saxon churches or Norman abbeys. I did like the contrast to Deptford which has plenty of history what with the river, the docks, railways etc. But Oxfordshire's history seems almost geological and the view with the exception of Didcot power station unchanged (if you squint) for centuries. I was looking up the Clumps on wiki and Tony Robertson and the mad one in the hat have already been their which makes sense.

Grand tour of Britain cultural landscape big tick of the winter schedule: Having been to Goatslands or "Heartbeat country" and had some chips in Holmfirth and being born near the original Coronation st I was delighted to find out that Wallingford is officially "Midsummer Murders land"and that half the town has been in the series as extras some of them several times, so much so they have to wear wigs to avoid recognition . Next on my list the Howard's Way coast and Catweazel's hamlet....

Home decoration tip of decade:

To add a hint of "theatre" to any room why not put up a framed picture of 18th century Astronomer. This essential advice is brought to you by Museum Of Art Oxford (well a slightly gushing description of one their exhibitions). I am thinking of going for Tycho Brahe for various reasons chiefly his silver nose not pictured!

(Not sure their other exhibit naked South American woman gets hosed down with high-pressure jet helps with what to do with that dark corner in the hall way though).

"I think you've got too many ingredients on your plate Belinda" aka Masterchef is seeping into every aspect of my life menu of the week:
We had an excellent meal in on Saturday, some delish fish soup was followed for me by the roast lamb with Savoy cabbage, various tasty mashes and a Jus. But also nestling on the plate like a John Torrode fake indignation magnet was what the French (?) menu writer had called a "Cornish Pie". This had intrigued us thinking it might a timbale of veg or some such. But no it was tiny pasty it was delicious, but I fear G&J would have exploded by now.

Having said that why stop at pasties why not have a little chicken & mushroom pukka pie with coq au van or maybe a teeny tiny lasagne with the spaghetti vongole. Food should be fun and it did make me smile.

Gigs I wished I'd attended of the season:

Over at Ms Woo site she's talking about gigs you regret not attending I'm quite fortunate in that I've seen most people I like and the only ones I regret I'd need a time machine to see. But I do wish the Snowdrop Teas had been being served in Swyncomb yesterday. Please do accept that I'm not being the least bit ironic here what so ever, I genuinely love the idea that there are places were people can go to see at drifts of snowdrops (and wolf's bane!), admire an 11cth century church, listen to choral evensong and probably best of all eat home made cakes and drink tea. Sadly the bad weather had meant it was called off doh!

That being said walking in the crisp utterly beautiful woods around the church, checking out rabbit and deer tracks, seeing a hare dash across the snow, the woods alive with rustling leaves as the sun melted the ice, the crunch and squeak of the virgin drifts under our boots was more then wonderful. The exercise sans cake was probably good for me to. Also it pleasing on the way to station to see the sign for "Christmas Common" (as it should be) covered in snow.

If you are Watlington way next week and it doesn't snow again, the snowdrop teas may well be rescheduled but get their early for the pick of the best cakes!

More chestnuts vicar

Recent events reminded me of the old joke....

It's new year and people are detoxing and dieting it's sensible thing to do my grandad died from too much salt...

He got run over by a gritter..

*Please be kind people I've not had much work since the the News Huddlines was cancelled*

Snow business

Snowbot
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Back to work: (aka the Children of Armageddon*)
The trains weren't running so had to get the 171 which wasn't bad apart from the 2 posh girls (plum coloured coats, big rock engagement rings, loud mobile conversations with boy friends about being on the bus) who pushed in and nabbed seats off all us who were standing on the top deck .

Oh and the A-hole driver who over took our bus at the lights and skidded and hit us and then proceeded to berate the driver to compensate for his lack of genitals or higher brain function. His favourite line was "shat ap your a public servant, shat ap your a public servant" He got a hearty jeer when he finally "shat ap" and pushed his car out of the way off to spend the rest of the day blaming the world for him being an un-evolved numbnuts and Chelsea fan.

On the news we had lots of wingeing about the buses never stopping in the Blitz. Well things were more pressing then weren't they, if people didn't get to work convoys got sunk. Even with how shaky things are now a days lost work isn't going to end up with John Mills & Donald Sinden clinging to a life raft while day dreaming about meeting saucy WAAF's on crowded troop trains.
People stayed off and had a longer weekend including priggish types who write to the Telegraph.

* sorry this was the title of the book the guy on the bus opposite me was reading it sounded a bit over the top.

Good things about the snow: playing out, the quiet, an excuse to buy ginger wine, getting stuff done at home, watching the first episodes of The Wire.

THE DEPTFORD SNOWBOT

Snowed in:I decided to treat today as icey snowy gift and not spend all day watching telly so I did some washing and mopped the floor went out for some bits made some bread oh and made another little film....... as always I offer it to you as an indulgence. See what you think.

Listen the snow is falling all around

Listen the snow is falling all around
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Well blimey! I can't even get on the south eastern website let alone their trains!

So is it wrong to go up the park and not go to work?

Greenshoots of recovery ?

Seeds of Spring.
Sadly not the pound or footsy but I did see some guys from the train this morning down in the park next to Tower bridge carefully laying out rows of bedding plants which must at least show that spring is on it’s way.

And just now I had a good sarnie (mexican tuna filling fans!) sat in the warm sun in Exmouth Market. I get mocked at work by those with thinner blood for this winter sun bathing but I'm sure 20 minutes in the sharp winter sunlight does you more good than a month of detox or mango smoothies.

Oh and Exmouth market has a coffee shop that sells records score!

Acts of remembrance

Sgt Fred Lindley

I found this the other day it’s from the Barnsley Pals website the soldier described Fred Lindley came from the village I grew up in, he lived at the bottom of the village, the opposite end to us up on the “common”. He seems to have lived down Spark lane so named after the nail works that were once beside the road. He probably worked in the pit next to my primary school, its’ dark seams extending under our hillside village and causing bits of it to sag and subside. The pits gone and there’s Italian restaurant and a tanning shop at Four lanes ends but he’d probably recognize bits of it.

His family name sounds familiar and as kid I probably unknowingly stood in front it every November during our Church’s service of remembrance. Fred’s name should be on our village memorial in the little walled off garden opposites the Foster’s baker shop.

Fred more than likely had a hard life and seemingly was old for a soldier being 32 when he enlisted and went onto survive only a couple of years of the Great War. The surprising figure of George Orwell gives us a glimpse of the harsh world Fred came from in a description of miners cottage in our village some 15-20 years later here it is.
(from “the road to Wigan Pier”)
“House in Mapplewell (small mining village near Barnsley). Two up, one down. Living-room 14 ft by 13 ft. Sink in living-room. Plaster cracking and coming off walls. No shelves in oven. Gas leaking slightly. The upstairs rooms each 10 ft by 8 ft. Four beds (for six persons, all adult), but ‘one bed does nowt’, presumably for lack of bedclothes. Room nearest stairs has no door and stairs have no banister, so that when you step out of bed your foot hangs in vacancy and you may fall ten feet on to stones. Dry rot so bad that one can see through the floor into the room below. Bugs, but ‘I keeps ‘em down with sheep dip’. Earth road past these cottages is like a muck-heap and said to be almost impassable in winter. Stone lavatories at ends of gardens in semi-ruinous condition. Tenants have been twenty-two years in this house. Are L11 in arrears with rent, and have been paying an extra 1s. a week to pay this off.”

All this (or similar) and 15 odd years down the pit and then off to the front. I not going to speculate about what he thought about all this I think the one thing he’s earned is the right to his own opinions. Far too many people are quick to put words in the mouths of the dead.

Anyway Fred rest peacefully.

What, sorry Who comes after W....

Hopefully the last George Bush cartoon Steve Bell will ever have to draw? SB seems almost sad to see the warmongering man-chimp going.

cool things

Step into winter!

I was going to have a rant, late running trains leaking neighbours bath, but I thought why bother and then I saw these lovely chaps of City of London Borough Council putting the lights on this humongous Xmas tree next to St Paul's.

So here’s some more reasons why winter's great:

Now the leaves are off the trees I can see the

London Eye lit up when I'm washing up.

There’s more excuse for eating pork!

There's an R in the month so you can eat oysters.

You can wear daft hats to keep warm.

If only it was cold enough for snow, well there’s always ski Sunday

After sports night you could light a nice log fire





If you are going out breakdancing have some ready brek!

You can always stay in and watch great films

What's your favourite thing about winter?