bookmark_borderAttention All Shipping

Attention All Shipping by Charlie Connelly

Received as a birthday present last year this was an ideal “train” book as it’s automatically broken into chunks for, as it says on the front cover, this book is “a journey round the shipping forecast”. It also holds a tiny bit of extra importance for me as the journey in question starts and ends on my birthday! (I’m certain my Dad knew that when he bought the book.. right Dad??)

Before I continue, I’ll ask you to stop reading and name as many areas in the shipping forecast as you can. Malin, Dogger, Fastnet, Trafalgar…. um …. Irish Sea?… erm… harder than it sounds, isn’t it. Well it was for me having never actually (knowingly) heard the shipping forecast itself. I did know of it mind you, although I’m not sure how. Osmosis is a wonderful thing. It was with this slightly befuddled, and somewhat sketchy, knowledge that I started reading.

The opening chapter of the book outlines a little of the history of the forecast, and the place it holds in the hearts of those who grew up with its weird and wonderful language. Of course the forecast is crucial for many but for us landlubbers.. well it’s all a bit odd, isn’t it, I mean what does “south-westerly veering north five or six, decreasing four” actually mean? Well, having read the book, I COULD tell you but that’d spoil all the fun.

The format of the book is fairly straightforward and has the author, Charlie Connelly, endeavouring to travel to each zone of the forecast within one calendar year. He takes us with him on a Bryson-esque look at the people and cultures that lie within the various shipping zones. From Spain to Iceland, from uninhabited rocks to inhabited metal turrets in the sea, he reveals the large variety of life held within the forecast area as he flits his away around it armed with little else than a dogged determination and the canny knack of always arriving at the airport several hours before his flight. Ohhh, he also travels on boats, which is just as well as it would have been a bit of a cheat, given the title of the book, to do it all by air.

Connelly comes across a likeable sole soul with a nice turn of phrase, he peppers the pages with an excellent mix of history, anthropology, and snippets of wonderfully quirky information; with historical names that include Chatsworth Musters and Sir Cloudesley Shovell he has plenty of “quirk” from which to choose. In fact, whilst we are on the topic of history, I’d like to apologise to the people of Barra for the way Lieutenant-Colonel John Gordon (for I presume he is related) manhandled them out of their homes. Appalling behaviour. I do hope his actions don’t preclude me from ever visiting Barra, although I’m pretty sure he is related on the ‘other’ side of the family, and distantly at that (hopefully my surname will throw them off the scent).

Attention All Shipping was a wonderful book to dip into, never failing to offer the reader something to ponder, and written in a welcoming, homely, style. Any man who can use the phrase “royster-doystering”, not once but twice, in a book surely deserves a glance, if not a thorough reading. He even manages to impart a lot of wisdom without ever patronising or boring, quite a talent indeed.

Comparisons with Bill Bryson are obvious – this is a travel journal, and Connelly has a similar gentle wit and easy way with words – so I’ll avoid them. Suffice to say that this is a well written, informative book that managed to illicit several chuckles from me (which in turn brought a few inquisitive looks from my fellow commuters).

Attention All Shipping, heartily recommended if you are looking for a change of pace, a change of scenery and change from a tenner.

bookmark_borderRSS This

I’ve updated the feeds available from this site (and one day I’ll figure a nice clean way to present the choices, for now this is all you get).

The main site feed now includes a daily cull of my del.icio.us links. Thanks largely to the lazy sheep bookmarklet, I’m using del.icio.us a lot more these days, and when I spotted that FeedBurner could grab and combine links from there as well I thought “why not?”.

Finally I’d like to introduce the new Super-Duper Trough of Informationtm feed. Powered by Suprglu (where you can also see the information displayed on a web page) it pulls in content from my blog, the overflow, del.icio.us, haloscan, flickr, and last.fm. Blimey.

One thing to note is that the Super-Duper Trough of Informationtm seems to take a wee while to notice the most recent post, but if you want an entire view of my online shenanigans, it’s the one to choose. And yes I did originally create the Super-Duper Trough of Informationtm for my own personal use, my ego isn’t THAT big.

So you now have a choice of feeds:

  1. Posts only
  2. Posts + daily del.icio.us links
  3. Overflow (miniblog) posts only
  4. Super-Duper Trough of Informationtm

Right. If you would like anything else added, or removed let me know. Hopefully there are options enough to satisfy all 100 or so of you who actually use the damn things.

bookmark_borderSeamonkey

I mentioned the SeaMonkey project last week. It’s a package from Mozilla which includes “a state-of-the-art web browser and powerful email client, as well as a WYSIWYG web page composer and a feature-rich IRC chat client”. Having downloaded it, installed it, and tried to break it for the last few days I can unreservedly state that you shouldn’t bother with it. Well, most of you shouldn’t bother with it, it may appeal to some.

The clue, that I missed, is right there on the Mozilla page. It states that:

“The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to deliver production-quality releases of code derived from the application formerly known as “Mozilla Application Suite”.

To a lot of people these days, Mozilla means Firefox. Back in the day (when Polos were only 7p a pack) Mozilla meant Netscape so imagine my horror, and the swift checking of my calendar when, lo and behold, the browser that opened was Netscape. Well, technically, it wasn’t but it sure looked that way.

There is nothing startlingly clever about any of the applications included in the package, this is both it’s downfall and it’s selling point. If you are web savvy I’d suggest you steer clear as you undoubtedly already have applications that meet your needs, I know I do and none of the applications on offer here better, or come close to bettering, what I already have.

If you are new to the web, then give it a go. It does exactly what it says on the tin and is a good way to get up to speed quickly, using a fairly stable, if somewhat pedestrian, set of products. Bear in mind, however, that for every application in the SeaMonkey package there is a better alternative, usually free as well.

SeaMonkey is a good idea, in theory, however I don’t know why it doesn’t use the “new” Mozilla products… maybe it will in the future. For now it’s either further ahead of its time than I can predict, or has already (possibly even in the time it’s taken you to read this post) lost some more ground to the sleeker standalone products offered by the other side of the Mozilla organisation.

bookmark_borderOINK

Popped into our local Lidl the other night – I always find the food tastier, it seems to be made for the ‘continental palate’? – to pick up some basics, tuna, juice, cold meat, milk, mayonnaise and so on. The shop was pretty quiet so we were the only people at the till as we paid.

Just as we turned to walk away the girl at the checkout said that there were some items behind us that were going to go out, so why not help ourselves. Now, I guess that one reason that Lidl food tastes better is because it has a shorter shelf life (less preservatives?), so we turned to see a couple of boxes of food items. Most of one box was chilled items, coleslaw, fresh sandwich spreads, and some fruit. The other box contained nothing but bacon.

We wandered over, inspected a few items when Louise noticed that the date on the bacon was the 24th February, 2006. We glanced at each other and I jokingly suggested that we just take it all.

Next thing I know she’s grabbed the box and I’m legging it out of the store after her!

So, we now have 24 packs of bacon in our freezer, um, make that 23 as we had a celebratory dinner with one pack. It’s medallions so not as much fat (good for the heart, bad for the flavour) but hey, it was free! We presume that someone made a mistake, and it’s only now that I’m wondering if we’ve nabbed something that someone else paid for… oh well, their fault for leaving it next to the ‘help yourself’ items.

What we need now is some good inventive recipes for bacon, other than slapping some between some bread, smothered in HP or ketchup of course, or adding some to a stirfry I’m a bit lost. The Danish bacon company has a few yummy suggestions – bacon with apple and pickle, and potato carbonara catch the eye – but we could do with some more.

So it’s over to you, we can manage the basic “scrambled egg and bacon” type dishes but I’d love to try something fairly inventive. We have pretty good stock cupboard and I don’t mind buying in special ingredients if a recipe warrants it, so the more original the better. Any other ‘bacon inspired’ tips are welcome.

bookmark_borderQuotable

A lot of bloggers have ideas above their station. I’m probably one of them although I’ll never admit it.

So when razor popped by a left a comment to tell me that I was being quoted in today’s Guardian.. well, colour me surprised (and quietly chuffed, just don’t tell anyone). Now, aside from the issue of the colour of a surprise, I’d suggest a nice deep orange perhaps, it does mean that a few of today’s visitors will be new here. To those that are, hello, to those that aren’t, um, as you were I guess.

And for those that are wondering what the chuff I’m on about here is a blurry photo which may feature the quote in question.

Guardian, page 2

The quote is from this post. Click the image to see all the other quoted sites, including Naked Blog (which doesn’t really need any MORE fame, surely).

I should point out that I’m not some raving “jock” (which has a different meaning for our American friends to boot) but I’m certain win would have been even better received had it been over the Auld Enemy. But then, you knew that, didn’t you.

The next question is… who? how? etc etc. Is there a Guardian editor hanging on my every word? (I’m kidding).

Anyhoo, if this is your first visit to my little dusty corner, please say hi – click the “comments” link below.

bookmark_borderAll is calm

The rest of February and all of March are going to be busy. VERY busy. I fully expect that, to meet both professional and, um, “pro-personal” commitments, I’ll need to spend several weekends working. However I’m actually looking forward to that, the pro-personal side in particular, as everything I’m working on is fun, new and fairly challenging. Given that the last year at work consisted of largely rudimentary work (as it always will at times), it’s good to finally be allowed to stretch my brain.

I’m also fairly pleased at my on-going weightloss. I put on about 10lb over the few weeks from Christmas to our return from Spain in mid-January, but since then have steadily lost an average of 2lbs each week. In other words, by the end of this week I’ll be back where I was just before Christmas. In the past that setback would normally have knocked me off track but, for the moment at least, my mindset seems to be fairly firm.

In fact I’m quite enjoying the fact that I can have a couple of bad days, we went to the chippy on Saturday night for example, but still be disciplined enough the rest of the week to lose a little more weight. I’m completely bemused as to WHY my brain is suddenly cooperating with me but I’m trying not to think on it too much lest it get suspicious and make me switch to a diet comprising solely of Sara Lee Chocolate Gateau.

I think that, and far be it for me to go on at great lengths about such a mundane topic (yeah because I NEVER do that…), it’s all part and parcel of being more organised. It’s taken a conscious effort on one level which has, I think, created a ‘learned’ response which has filtered into other areas of my life. So, my poor memory which forces me to make lists, and be organised (and consistent) about things, coupled with a desire to get more ‘stuff’ done this year, has ended up with me starting to feel all grown-up and organised, and finally cracking that “want to lose weight, don’t want to diet” switch in my head.

Sort of, let’s not get too carried away here.

Ohh and from the paper this morning and excellent quote (taken from some TV thing last night). A man who had lost tens of stones in weight, only to put it all back on again, was asked why it was so difficult for some people to stop themselves from overeating. His response:

How well do you think a heroin addict would do if he had to take just a little bit everyday?

But hey, it’s OK. We’re only fat people.