With all of the horrifying shit going on in the world right now, I figured you'd all appreciate a picture of a puffin.
You're welcome.
Taken last summer at Bempton Cliffs. Plans are afoot to get much more up close and personal during the coming season.
Damn right I looked directly at it. This happens once inna generation, I'm not passing that up. The photos are here (updated with some new ones, if you saw them go by on the Twitters earlier).
I remember the last one, in August '99. I looked directly at that one too, through the net curtain in my then-girlfriend's flat. I still remember the sight of a crescent Sun in the twilight down at the end of Gorton Road. That girlfriend was the insane Christian youth leader who wanted to break into the church at midnight and do it on the altar. I was the one who chickened out. But seeing a crescent sun... that was something special.
But back to the present. I had constructed a cardboard-box pinhole camera obscura, and it actually worked—but I left that downstairs in case any of the guests tried to blind themselves. For me, it was up to the roof. I had a brand-new variable neutral-density filter and I wasn't afraid to use it.
Maximum occultation at my location was set for 09:36. It was a glorious clear day at 09:20, bright blue skies with occasional fluffy white clouds. By 09:30 it was coming over a bit grey. This is probably for the best, since a couple of cubic kilometres of water vapour between me and it probably shielded my delicate retinae from some of the horrifying UV radiation. Also it lent the photos an eerie, atmospheric quality. Moody. Dramatic. Ethereal. Outlander-ish.
I stood and clicked and I watched as the huge black globe of the Moon rolled lazily in front of the Sun's disc, like a slow-mo snooker ball. Just exactly like a snooker ball, except a ball of 7.35×1022kg in mass, a ball a quarter the size of earth. She felt round. I sensed her bulk, her incomprehensible mass, as she slid leisurely-like inbetween us and daylight itself.
The Moon has a 7% albedo, you know. She reflects about as much light as coal. Think about that the next time she's full. Above our heads, neatly slotted inbetween the squat block of Edinburgh Castle and the airy spires of St Mary's, the eternal celestial ballet executed a perfect adagio.
It got bloody freezing up on that rooftop, but that's probably rather more to do with standing onna rooftop in Scotland for an hour onna cloudy day. By about 09:39 the cloud coverage was total. Show's over. It's time to go home.
But I won't forget spending a few minutes watching Space happen right above me.
My retinas were a wee bit itchy for the rest of the day. I consider that a totally acceptable trade-off.
The next half-decent one here isn't until 2026, and the next proper one is 23rd September, 2090. By then, I expect to know how to work this damn neutral-density filter.
More eternal celestial ballet.
Oh yes, and the vernal equinox was at 22:45 tonight. Happy Spring, everybody!
In 1787, Robert Burns the Ploughman Poet walked along the riverside by the Falls of Bruar. Bruar Falls, in Athole, are exceedingly picturesque and beautiful;
said he, misspelling ‘Atholl’ as he did so, but their effect is much impaired by the want of trees and shrubs
. Thus inspired to action, he did what any of us would do. He wrote a poem and addressed it to the landowner.
Let lofty firs, and ashes cool,
My lowly banks o'erspread,
And view, deep-bending in the pool,
Their shadow's wat'ry bed:
Let fragrant birks, in woodbines drest,
My craggy cliffs adorn;and so on and so on
There was already a birk adorning those cliffs, but he'd gone home to write a poem.
As a result the Duke of Atholl instituted a massive tree-planting programme. Because some inkstained twit wrote a poem. Is that how you get a public works project approved? Is some latter-day Bard even now penning A Humble Petition to just get the damn trams finished already
? Or is that, as I suspect, a niche that these days is filled by the letters page of the Scotsman?
Nonetheless, a couple of weeks ago I popped up north to view the result. The Falls of Bruar is an area of outstanding natural beauty, and these days you can't see any of it because there are trees everywhere.
There's some scenery behind here, but you can't tell.
I already can't stand Robert Burns. Now he's actively ruining things I like to do (viz., looking at waterfalls). I'm inclined to start taking this personal.
I can't write like Burns (thank Christ), so perhaps a humble petition after the style of Scotland's other favourite son will suffice.
Ohh, 'twas in the month of July two thousand and twelve,
Into the woods around the Falls of Bruar did we delve,
And tho' the scenery was beautiful like a painting or a frieze,
None of it could we see because of all the bloody trees,
and ooowhhh ...
I may have slipped into a Milligoon voice towards the end there, but in my defence, it's hard not to.
Remainder of the photoset is here. I had to climb down slippery rocks on cliff edges to get some of these shots. Rabbie is actually trying to kill me.
The Mockney Prat is at it again, this time with the 30 minute suppers that will change your life
, as it says on the front cover of my Sunday supplements this morning. Really, Jamie? These had better be some damn impressive suppers, then.
Alas, tis not to be. GOT TIME TO HEAT A READY MEAL? THEN YOU'VE GOT TIME TO MAKE IT FROM SCRATCH
, bellows Jamie inside the magazine (in all caps, no less). The level of reality disconnect here is infuriating. The total cooking time has no bearing whatsoever on the preparation time or on what I choose to do with my evening.
When I get home from work, tired, and stick a Tesco™ Finest®
Chicken & Pasta Bake in the oven, I do not then stay in the kitchen and watch it slowly go brown for the next thirty minutes. I retire to my room and get on with my life for the time it takes to watch a single episode of classic Doctor Who. When that's finished, I go back into the kitchen and the food is done.
The fact that a ready meal takes thirty minutes to cook doesn't mean that I could have spent that thirty minutes shucking mussels or knocking up a rhubarb millefeuille. The point of a ready meal is that it's ready-made.
This kind of sensationalist press bullshit is incredibly frustrating, because there's a genuinely valid point to be made: that proper cooking doesn't have to be arduous or time-consuming, although it can be if you like. Jamie's attempts to express this concept boil down to repeated hysterical outbursts that, if you've ever removed all packaging including film lid, you must be working-class, and probably fat.
Fuck you right in the nose, Jamie, with my extensive collection of factory-second Sabatiers. There is a way to make good food while maintaining a busy lifestyle, and there's a way to explain this without having to be a cock.
The following is an example.
( Food porn! )The important issue here is that I did all of that once and then I had an entire pie. I made a batch of potatoes and microwaved some peas (~1min.) to go with it, and it lasted for four meals and two snacks. Real homecooked food that not even Jamie could complain about: the difference being that, for the next week, when I got in from work I had a meal ready. You might even call it a ready meal
.
And reheating everything in the microwave takes three and a half minutes on medium. I'd like to see Jamie suggest a quick oozy mushroom risotto
that he can slap together in that long.
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