Looking Out To Sea

I don’t often do explicitly journal entries here, cos my life isn’t that exciting, I’m sure. I might be wrong though. But I’ve had a nice evening so I thought I’d just blog randomly about whatever’s happening, and whatever’s going through my mind.

I have mentioned already that we’re doing a lot of cinema-going at the moment. If nothing else, the Filmhouse membership cards have forced us to go to the unusual stuff. Some great German cinema, and next week Inherit The Wind being put on by the eternally-useless BA. On Monday there was a Cafe Sci in honour of Darwin’s 200th birthday (today, same day as my brother). My pimping Cafe Sci on the Bad Science forums finally bore fruit, and a couple of the guys from the meet-up last month appeared. The speaker was quite entertaining, and I got a baked potato with chili con carne for tea. Also two pints of Guiness bought for me — that counts as a successful night out, I feel.

Work, which I don’t mention often, has been going well. I feel like I have been given a bit more responsibility, which is always good for the ego and for the brain. Something to push against, mentally speaking, helps to keep the morale at a reasonable level.

The bread-making has been up and down, mostly because I’ve been testing the limits of my abilities. This has resulted in a lot of swearing and anger but most of the actual bread has been tasty. (Only one absolute disaster so far. The dough was over-hydrated and I didn’t leave it to prove for long enough. So in the end I baked a series of small stiff puddles. But you live and learn.)

Tea this evening was a stew I made from some slightly-dry steaks, with some lovely rice and broccoli. We then watched the Victorian Farm programme, which was really amazing. If you didn’t catch the series I really recommend getting it on DVD or something. It’s the one show that makes up for all those god-awful “how will they survive in a 1950s school?” shows with petulant teenagers that plagued the schedules a few years ago. Three historians that really knew what they wanted and why they were there, ready to muck in and do back-breaking work because that was what it was all about. It was most gratifying: thank you BBC.

Watching the final show in the series, which culminated with a harvest and harvest festival, made me want to try something culinary that we’ve never done before: brewing. I know a lot of people manage home brews. It’s a genuine cottage industry, in some places. And, well, I’ve tried bread so why not beer too? Who’s with me? We’ll probably have to wait until the weather is more clement — in the current climate we’re more likely to manage freeze distillation — but it’s definitely on the cards.

I found out today that there’s a website devoted to the Leith community and its green spaces which seems really interesting. The park that is just out our back window had a volunteer clean-up last Saturday and we never knew! Apparently 20 people turned up and did a whole bunch of cleaning up and rubbish removing. That would have been a really great way to integrate a bit into the local community, something I think that we really need to work on. Anyway, Greener Leith has a blog and RSS feed, so I’ll be keeping an eye on them. Hopefully good things to come from that.

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