Nature – Page 5 – Boadicea's Chariot

Baaa humbug

In time for the festive season it is reported that Wales now rejoices in 10 million sheep but only 3 million homo-sapiens-type creatures.

That’s a flocking surge, says the Mail. An apposite observation, methinks.

Mind your brassicas

They are the Marmite of veggies, the bane of bairns. And I love ’em.

Their growers have their own association (as you do) who are campaigning against boiling the little critters. Steam, stir-fry or microzap, they insist.

But I humbly suggest an easier way to max their flavour. Take a shallow dish, drizzle ’em with extra virgins, cover with foil and bake in the oven with the roast. Say 15 or 20 minutes – to taste. Crisp or not, you decide. And it’s true, sprouts improve with frost and don’t mention Brussels.

The Danes have a word for it

The meeja are going on about it, hygge*, one of the year’s top ten words allegedly.

It’s funny how a common idea can become news. In this case the idea is already global. It’s what the British pub offers, it’s what elderly denizens of Mediterranean villages enjoy at the taverna, it’s a family barbie in Oz. So why all the fuss this year? It can only be because some ‘opinion leaders’ have discovered a word to encapsulate the thought!

*So the Danes get credit for a Norwegian word pronounced hoo-guh. But we’ll all stick to our own ways of doing it.

Flax

Ain’t that pretty?

Proud

It’s meant a lot of work and determination but worth every ounce. I refer of course to a grandparent’s input to a grandchild’s GCSE results, published yesterday!

My most senior of ten did all the requisite academic subjects and (Jazz note) the really useful Textiles Technology, well suited to the distaff side methinks. 😷

So I can relax again until next year when another young lady shows her paces.

Woodland tale

Thomas Toad spends most days snuggled beneath the bay plant, looking smug
after a puffed-up encounter with his metre-long rival, Black Adder.

A memory

How pleasant to remember our recent holiday in Portugal! An evening stroll on the beach, just two minutes from ‘home’……

The hedge

It’s a beech hedge, 70 yards long on our southern boundary. Can’t hold the electric trimmer at shoulder level for a couple of hours so it’s the shears! Do they make a battery job that doesn’t need recharging every half hour?

Quick fix

I’m not a gourmet but I have been known to toy with a few grenouilles and more frequently a dish of escargots, suitably lashed with garlic butter of course. And Backside reckons that’s a case of matter over mind, given my aversion to garden slugs.

But I was surprised to see only today that if your delicate skin requires pampering you can invest a mere twenty quid for 50 ml of snail salve, the mucus of more than a dishful of the critters, collected allegedly from the glass over which they have slimed their merry way.

Not for you? No, I quite understand, preferring a rub down with an oily rag.

Scene and Herd

At my local convenience store today.

The hitching post and buggy parking spots have been there for a while and are often used (sometimes just to leave a deposit as evidenced), the electric car charger is new and as far as I know, unused.

A few captions spring to my somewhat biased mind:

Sublime or ridiculous

Charging or discharging

Bullsh!t or horsesh!t

Nonsense or horsesense