Willum refuses to join in the plot

Willum, that's him in the picture, reluctantly declined to be part of my plot to get rid of Ruby and her hangers on. Remember I told you about them in previous blogs.

It's not that he likes the Hackney Slasher, "no way mate, can't stand the ginger Southern furball."

He explained it's a matter of principle, "never peed on the furniture and not going to start now but very tempted cos it's in a good cause." Looked me straight in the eye and said, "look mate I only ever piddle on things that can easily be swilled down under the tap. You know, like the laptop, printer, mobile phone or them old books you've been hanging on to for years."

Thank goodness there's some principles in the household.

Not my bodily fluids

"Who did it then? Whose weed on the toilet wall?"

Susan came rushing out of the downstairs toilet. Somehow I didn't think she had found a strange cigarette. The expression of disgust signalled the discovery of an unpleasant bodily fluid.

As I'm usually the alleged culprit I'm on the defensive. Who else can I blame?

I follow her sheepishly into the toilet to examine the incriminating evidence. Relief, I spot yellow liquid at the opposite end of the room to the toilet bowl.

"It can't have been me" I say, "even when I miss I get closer than that. Anyway my slippers usually soak most of it up."

"I never said it was you, pillock, it's obviously one of those bloody cats."

"Yes, and I know which one" I said leaping as usual to the correct conclusion, "the Hackney Slasher".

The Hackney deviant is my daughters cat Ruby mentioned in my last blog. Pictured above though I'd rather starve her of the oxygen of publicity. Go on, admit it, you can tell she's a wrong un. Not like my two cats.

How devious can you get.

I mentioned in the last blog Ruby's efforts to drive our cats out by force. Only limited success as Maisie and Willum sneak in shivering at the dead of night. So now it has turned dirty.

You probably think I've got it in for Ruby, but do you know what she did the other day? She ate her breakfast then walked straight over to Maisie and Willums food bowls and threw the lot up in them. I don't think she was sharing.

I need to have a chat with Willum and Maisie to plan how we can get her back. Now if Willum could be persuaded to go and pee on the chair in Ruby's room then perhaps Susan would insist she moves back down South immediately. Yes thats it.............now where is Willum.

Feline Friction

Right, thats the festive season endured successfully again. Jason, my daughters partner was the last Christmas guest to leave today. Big smile on his face. I put this down to him finding the two pound coin in the Christmas pudding. Surely he couldn't have been pleased to be leaving?

Kept up my reputation for philanthropy and helping people in need the other day. I removed my card from the cash machine in Waitrose, but forgot to take the cash. Bet the guy with the brogues, cord trousers and large four wheel drive who picked up the hundred quid really needed the money. Am I losing it? Well obviously cash, but I'm not sure about the mental faculties.

Despite the fact that all our guests are gone Susan and I are not alone. I forgot to mention earlier that our daughter, grandson and their cat came to stay with us in September for a couple of weeks. This was to bridge the short (we were assured) period between them leaving their flat in Hackney and moving into a new home near Southend. They are still with us. It is not their fault. They have I feel been let down by the professionals (sic) who are supposed to be progressing the purchase of their new home. Our home is not overcrowded but our lifestyle has certainly been affected over the last three months. I have been reminded that I have perhaps become more set in my ways than I realised.

Strangely enough most arguements have centered round cat management. We have two nervous, sweet, docile and gentle animals. Maisie is pictured above and she has a brother Willum who is a large dope who will jump at the sight of his shadow. Who could resist Maisie's imploring look? Well I can tell you who can. Ruby the bad tempered old ginger hoodlum from Hackney. She has a room of her own but not content with this does her level best to banish the others to life in the garage.

You would not believe the friction this can cause between the adults. Or maybe we are projecting our own frustrations on to the cat situation, I don't know. Anyway, cat lover though I am I shall be pleased to see Ruby taking her Southern attitudes back to Essex. Of course I'm not one to stereotype.

How many innocent Iraqis?

I opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. Not that I had any time or sympathy for Saddam Hussein and his vile rule but because:

• There are plenty of unpleasant regimes around the world which the UK and US governments not only do not change but actually support and deal with.


• There seemed to me to be no justification for sacrificing the lives of young men and women in our military services in a conflict with a country that was not immediately and directly threatening our interests.


• It was clear that given the fire power of the USA many innocent Iraqis would be killed in the adventure.


• There was much obvious fabrication and scullduggery in Blairs justification for joining the Americans in the war.


• I was and still am deeply suspicious of the USA's motives for engaging in the enterprise. I still think their motive is control of the oil supply and I suspect that however ignominious their eventual pullout is they will maintain some presence or influence that enables them to control this.

I do not believe for one moment that the Bush government thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We are expected to believe that a country which can take spy satellite pictures of individual vehicles could not spot a bomb factory or the movement of munitions. If they had seen them they would have shown us them. The best they could do was set Colin Powell up at the UN trying to convince us a milk processing truck was some kind of portable weapons production platform.

Memo to any dictator. If you want to make sure the USA does not attack you must have a nuclear weapons capability. Let them see evidence of it but not enough to be sure of what you have got. You might be the subject of UN sanctions for a while but don't worry. The "International Community" will deal with you if they need you again in the future.

The whole thing has been a shambles. Coalition fighters by the hundreds and Iraqis in the thousands dying for no obvious positive outcome. A country riven by factional fighting and whatever Blair and Bush say, a situation providing a focus for terrorist activity which threatens us in the UK and others in a way that did not exist before the war.

The thing that really galls me is the sight of the Tory "Yo" Blair, who has borrowed the Labour Party, strutting the world stage attempting to convince us he has some significant role in all this. He tells us we will get our troops home when the Iraqi elected government and their security forces are able to manage their internal insurgency and conflict. Utter bullshit. Our troops will come home when the Americans say it is ok. It may well be that a new Labour Prime Minister is able to negotiate with the Americans an "early release"for the UK, but there is no way we would be staying on after the Yanks have gone.

And now Saddam Hussein has been hanged, the event reported round the world in unbelievably ghoulish detail. Will this have helped this situation? I don't think so. I have to admit some bias here in that I have always opposed the death penalty and do so in this case. However it is not just a matter of principle. It is just possible that the Iraqi governent have made a martyr of, and given some dignity to Saddam for a significant numbers of people in Iraq and the Arab world. He should have been tried for all the crimes he is alleged to have committed. I suspect the Kurds will feel cheated that he has not been brought to book for allegations of genocide against their people. If he had been imprisoned public opinion may well have focussed more on why he was incarcerated rather than as now the manner of his death.

We are told that he deserved execution because of the number of deaths of his people he was responsible for. This implies that a lesser sentence may have been given if less people had been killed on his orders. So how many innocent Iraqis can be killed on the orders of a world leader without them facing the death penalty?

Perhaps people like Bush or Blair could help us with a figure?

Born to be Mild

Out for a run this morning on my 1991 Honda C90 Cub. Seen here parked by the Little Witham river in Lincolnshire. The plan was supposed to be that I renovate mopeds in the winter and ride them in the summer. The main rationale for this being that I don't fancy getting cold and wet.



My recollection of riding a Triumph Tiger Cub in the winter in the early 60's is of being frozen to the point of immobility. Mind you it seemed to cure my chilblains as I have never had them since. My grandma's remedy for them was to soak the offending finger or toe in urine so maybe I had been doing that. My memory is not what it was.

Winter riding does not now seem so bad. There could be a number of explanations for this. Am I less sensitive than I was? My family support this thesis. Maybe I now have better weatherproof clothing. Looking at the pictures of me riding the old bike this could very well be the case. Perhaps I don't go fast enough. Almost certainly true.

Or is it global warming?

I bought the Tiger Cub from Tony Gray for £9.00 in 1963 and it was either a 1956 or 1959 plunger framed model. The registration number was KTL 266 and I wonder where the bike is now. If you know please get in contact.

In those days we painted our own helmets (you can probably tell). I still have the crash hat hanging in my garage. I originally painted it with green and black house paint, but whilst it was drying someone knocked it into some sawdust. My mother probably, always trying to spoil my teenage fun. The sawdust gave it an interesting texture but not much street cred with the other young bikers or the young women we tried to impress. It looked a little like a decorated half coconut on my head. Nothing for it but to sand it down and refinish in blue, black and white. An improvement though it still had a pimply appearance, a bit like it's 16 year old owner.

Nonna's Gnocchi Recipe

First ensure that you have the essential ingredients to hand. However to make the gnocchi you will require:

2.5 kilos of potatoes
One egg
500 grammes plain flour
Salt

Peel the potatoes and boil till tender in plenty of lightly salted water. Strain and allow to cool, but not go cold. You will be mixing them with raw egg and you do not want this to coagulate with the heat from the potatoes. Tip the potatoes onto a clean table and mash carefully as per Nonna's instructions. If possible wear a green and orange outfit like the assistant in the picture as these are almost complementary colours, but not quite. Make a well in the potatoes and drop in the egg, without the shell of course. Mix this into the mashed potatoes.

Next knead in the flour. You could nonchalantly upend the flour bag like Nonna does, but she knows what she is doing. It is more reliable for non Nonnas to weigh it out and mix it in a little at a time.

You now need to find many other people to assist with the next stage. Fast food this is not. Their job is to roll out the dough into sausages about two feet long and an inch thick. These will be cut into gnocchi about one inch long.

Like this. Use flour to prevent the dough sticking to the table, as you would with pastry.

The individual gnocchi should then be shaped with a fork to give them the authentic Italian appearance. This is achieved by rolling each piece of gnocchi down the tines of the fork to give it a ridged or grooved appearance. It takes ages but after some time you will have a table full of perfectly formed gnocchi.

Like this. A bit like the Humber foreshore after the tide has gone out but that is just poor camera work.

Now you need to cook them, and this is something that should be done just before you intend to eat. Drop them quickly one by one into a large pan of boiling water. We had two highly trained Italian ladies to do this, one Nonna and one Zia. Their hands were a blur as they transferred dough to pan. When a gnocchi rises to the surface it is cooked and should be scooped out immediately with a slotted spoon. Do not leave it and wait for the whole panful to rise as they will probably turn into mash.

These are risen gnocchi and should be removed from the water at this stage. I know they look like overcooked cauliflower.

Serve the drained gnocchi with a sauce of your choice and some grated Parmesan. Nonna tells me that the Italians also eat it brushed with melted butter that has been infused with sage leaves. An additional statin required I think.

He thinks its OK, you should try it.

No New Jersey in Newark this Christmas

I know, I know, the title of this blog was slightly misleading. Anyone who bothered to look at it would probably have thought they were going to get some snappy story of life in the States. Not so, its just another mundane bit about Christmas day in a small town in the UK, Newark in Nottinghamshire.

Our day was much the same as any other family Christmas Day. Grandson Orson woke the family early and all the adults stuck to the story that Santa had consumed the beer and mince pie left out for him on Christmas Eve. I reckon he knows his Dad drank the beer five minutes after he went to sleep. The lad is only three but he has seen the presents under the tree for about a week. So why would Santa be making unprofitable, expensive and potentially dangerous journeys across our allegedly crime infested land to visit everyone's home if no delivery was required? To check on customer satisfaction and quality of service? I don't think so. In Mr Blair's modern Britain Santa isn't allowed to do anything that doesn't improve the profit he makes for his company or his sales performance indicators.

In our house we all know that Santa does exist but, like a lot of hardworking public servants he is not allowed give the quality of service that he used to. I personally am deeply ashamed to be colluding in the myth that Santa is still going about his business as he did when I was a boy.

Anyway I digressed away from the important issue I wanted to deal with. The picture accompanying this blog is of the family pre-Christmas dinner walk at Kelham Hall near Newark. These fine and decent people all bought me presents this Christmas. Very nice presents which I will enjoy. But not one of them got me a jumper. I get one every year for Gods sake. I know they are usually unsatisfactory in some way, they don't fit, need washing, have style, or are decorated with patterns I don't like. I'm usually informed when presented with them that they came from Marks and I can take them back if I don't like them. I am always too idle to do this. I expected a pullover this year as usual but no such luck.

What rubbed salt into the wound was that my wife, Susan, told me she had in fact bought me a jumper, didn't like it and took it back to Marks. She got me some very nice cord trousers instead. I mean, the cheek. Its not for her to make decisions on what pullover she gets me on the basis of what she does or doesn't like. She should just buy one and let me not like it as usual.

I sincerely hope we are back to normal arrangements again next year. Surely somebody will get me one of those pink and white Pingle golfing jumpers with diamonds on that I can't stand.