I went karting on Friday, for a colleague’s leaving do.
I have been before – once – at a Butlin’s or something, but to be honest that was a bit noddy. The carts where single engined, and the track was indoor, but what fun!
It was absolutely fantastic, and I loved it. I wasn’t particularly fast (over a second off the pace of the quickest in our group), and I was very aware of one corner in particular where I could have gone faster, but couldn’t work out how – and instead got it wrong almost every lap. It’s actually quite tricky assessing whether you’ve improved or not, as you have no real feedback about timing until you get out of the cart.
I hadn’t really appreciate how physical it was – after a 10 minute session followed by a 15-20 minute session, when I got out my legs were shaking, and I felt shattered. When I got home and into bed, I discovered a large bruise on my back, which meant I had to sleep on my side.
Of course, I spent the weekend looking up karting tips, how to work out the racing line, etc – and I’m just gagging to have another go. Think I might have to organise my next birthday party around karting!
Just got back from a lovely trip to the border county. Well, one of the border counties anyway. Of England. Turns out that a week is nowhere near long enough to even scratch the surface, especially as we could easily have spent 5 days building sandcastles in a Canutine attempt to withstand the tide.
I won’t have time to write all about it now, but our itinerary was as follows, and I shall aim to expand over the next day or so:
Angel of the North, arrive
Holy Island
Alnmouth beach
Cragside
Seahouses and Farne islands
Barter Books, and Alnwick Garden
Dunstanburgh Castle and Embleton Bay
Leave, and High Force
Ok, so the first and the last aren’t in Northumbria, but I consider them to be part of the trip!
It is a lovely place – more or less my first visit to the county, and I’m almost certain we’ll be going back next year for another go. The beaches are awesome too!
When I was growing up, we had a bit of family joke. Us youngsters would ask “what’s for supper?”, and be told that it was “wait and see pie”.
This happened so often, that “wait and see” pie actually became a specific meal – a steak and veg pie with a suet crust. It is one of my favourite dishes now, and while the exact recipe is a closely guarded secret, it is along these lines:
Wait and See pie
Serves approx 4-6
This is a two stage process – first you cook it on the hob, then transfer it into the oven, so it’s best to use a casserole dish that can do both. I guess you could transfer the filling into a casserole instead.
Ingredients:
Filling:
2x 450g cans of stewed steak in gravy
1 large onion, chopped
1 large courgette, sliced
4 medium carrots, sliced
mushrooms, celery, …. (to taste), sliced
Pastry:
225g self-raising flour
110g shredded suet
salt and pepper
cold water to mix
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 220°C (200° fan)
Fry the chopped onion in a little oil until soft (about 5 mins)
Add all the other veg, and gently cook for 10 minutes or so with the lid on.
Add the meat, and simmer for another 5 – 10 minutes. You may need to add a spot of water/stock
While the dish is simmering, make the pastry – mix the flour, suet, and seasoning together.
Add a small amount (a tablespoon or so) of cold water, and mix using a spatula.
Keep adding small amounts of water and mixing, until the mixture just stops falling apart, and has formed a dough that doesn’t stick to the bowl.
Knead for a few minutes to a smooth elastic dough.
Leave the dough to rest for 5 minutes.
Roll out the dough to a circle that just covers the casserole, and plonk it on the top. The sauce will bubble around it, but that’s part of the meal! Transfer to the oven, and bake for 30-45 minutes until the pastry is golden brown.
Notes
You can’t make the pastry in advance, as the self-raising magic starts as soon as the mixture gets wet. However, it’s so quick to make, this doesn’t really matter.
Anyway, some early responses from friends. I’ve edited for brevity/anonynmity as I haven’t asked them if they mind!!
H says:
Life on Mars = yes
also
The West Wing
6 Feet Under
Both remarkable pieces of programming. I am currently on series 2 of 6 Feet Under and series 3 of West Wing, and they’re gripping, still. The DVD box set thing is just the job for telly IMO – I can’t get organised to watch things at a particular time, but having a few box sets on the go is fine.
I probably would have put West Wing on my ‘possible’ list, but I’ve never seen an episode. Similarly 6 Feet Under caught my eye, but I haven’t quite manage to catch it yet.
When I commuted to Leeds every day, one of my co-passengers had a video iPod type whatsit, and he was making his way through Enterprise, squeezing in about an episode and a half each day. He’d done the full West Wing as I recall, and spoke very highly of it. If I was still having 70 minutes on the train each day, I would be very tempted to adopt a similar approach.
With some further reflection I might add
Tru Calling
although I’m unconvinced this would survive more than one or two watches. I also wonder if Ghost Whisperer might be worth investigating?
Anyway, back to my friends; C tells me I’m very wrong about Lost. Over to them:
Personally, now I’m part way through [Lost] Series 4 (of the total 6) I’m really looking forward to rewatching from the start to see how much they’d tied together from the very start. It feels really joined up at the minute, with things from the first few episodes onwards still being explained.
Others you’re missing are definitely Murder One, at least the first couple of series of 24. X-files is one I’m not sure I’d want to watch back-to-back, but wouldn’t want it lost. Buffy is a definite yes.
Murder One is not even on my radar – not sure I’ve ever heard of it! Although I never got into X-files, I would probably agree it should be saved for posterity. 24? Series 1 was very good, it’s true – but even that ended up being a bit too much like hard work for my liking (so much so I didn’t even start any of the later ones). I can’t see that I’d particularly look to watch it again.
Utterly unrelated, I wonder if Red Dwarf deserves an honourable mention?
A month or two ago I happened across the last ever episode of Friends being re-broadcast on some channel or other. Actually I only caught the last 5 minutes – and it’s not an episode I’ve seen in it’s entirety. All very emotional.
Anyway, voice over lady announces at the end that we needn’t be sad, because, starting the next evening, the whole lot would be shown again from the very first episode!
OO-oo thought I. How exciting – I could watch every single Friends episode, in order!
Then reality hit – quite aside from the practicalities, do I really want to spend the next half a year of my life watching an episode of Friends every night?? I don’t think so.
But it has got me to pondering some of the truly great TV series of our time. The ones that would survive a dedicated onslaught of watching. The ones you could pass on to your children. The ones that you wish you’d seen every single episode, from start to finish, ideally in order. What would be on my list?
I haven’t yet settled on a definitive list, but mine would look something like (in no particular order)
Northern Exposure
Twin Peaks
The Simpsons
Star Trek: TNG
Friends
Firefly
Jonathan Creek
Other contenders would include All Creatures Great and Small, possibly Buffy, maybe Heroes (didn’t see enough to make up my mind), and Smallville has a look in. Life on Mars is close, but I’m not sure it would take two viewings. Similarly Doctor Who and Torchwood pass the “watch every episode” criterion with flying colours, but I’m not sure they would really take more than a viewing each.)
Definitely off the list is Lost – and a few others I don’t have time to write because parental responsibility calls!!
