The Frumplingtons

Saw Newsnight on BBC2 last night. Is it just my imagination, or is Jeremy Paxman getting more like Blake Carrington as he gets older?

And still on a food theme: y’know those bobbly sweets you get in packets of licorice allsorts? (They’re usually either bright pink or bright blue.) Well, there’s a proper name for them. They’re called spogs. Remember that; sooner or later, it’ll probably come up as a question on Uni Challenge.

Try asking for a bite of the reality sandwich and see how far it gets you. (Answer: slung outta the door, most likely.)

Chris mentioned in passing that he’d heard on ‘The One Show’ that it is not a recent phenomena that most of our food is imported. Now this might not sound a very exciting topic for a blog post, but it does make interesting reading and may I say, provides food for thought!

This quote was taken from the Food Standards Agency website and I think it sums it up quite nicely.

Many of the most vociferous campaigners for organic farming also argue for a major shift to local food production and consumption. But in many respects this seems to be based on a romantic vision of a non-existent past.

As a small, densely populated country with rather poor conditions of soil and climate for agriculture, Britain has relied heavily on imports for a long time. For instance, in 1939 we imported 70% of our food and even now half of our food still comes in from abroad.

Going back to the 19th century, George Dodd wrote in 1856 ‘Let the query be, whence does London obtain its butchers’ meat? …Bacon from Ireland, …hams from …Germany and Spain… rabbits.. from Ostend. If the daily bread of the metropolis be the subject of enquiry, we must travel yet farther to trace the sources of supply.’

Some of our most familiar foods, which we now think of as totally British, started out their life as imports.

source

So buying locally produced food is not going to feed everybody and if you really want true organic food, it’s time to dig your garden up and get planting!

Curly-haired horticultural heart-throb, Monty Don, begins a new tv series next week, called “Around the World in 80 Gardens” ( or ‘AW80G’, for short), and to say we’re looking forward to it has gotta be the understatement of the century.

Unfortunately, our advance review copy of the series has not yet arrived from the BBC (those bloomin’ bicycle couriers are such a let-down!), so I can’t actually confirm this at the time of writing, but I am led to believe that the programmes feature some fantastic gardens, including,

1. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
2. Mr McGregor’s vegetable patch, and
3. Robert Mugabe’s window box.

Former jeweller, Monty (a man with a fine appreciation of high-quality garden obelisks) is certain to be the perfect presenter for AW80G, and I have no doubt that the programmes will become essential viewing for all armchair gardeners. I do, however, have some concerns about Monty’s foreign travels: after spending so much time visiting exotic locations, I suspect it’s all going to make Berryfields (Monty Don’s home turf on BBC “Gardeners’ World”) look terribly dull by comparison. Look out for Oriental statuary (maybe even a pagoda) making an appearance in the Berryfields long borders later this year.

There has been a bit of a lull in posting recently, but we’re up and running again, and, as a well known member of the glitterati once sang: “It’s good to be back…good to be back…”

For anyone who might want a more detailed explanation for our absence, well, I gotta admit it was mostly my fault. I decided to come out in sympathy with the Hollywood writers’ strike.

And then, after a while I thought Sod it. I mean, those American scriptwriters don’t do strikes properly like we used to do here in Blighty. No standing on the picket line in freezing cold weather for them, huddling around a warm brazier, waving a hastily scrawled cardboard placard and shouting ‘Blackleg!’ and ‘Scab!’ at anyone who’ll listen. A good tip for those Hollywood strikers: if you want to give yourselves a bit more street cred, try writing your signs in block capitals for a change, stop faffing about with your apostrophes and get rid of all those diddly little semi-colons.

And for goodness’ sake, if you do turn up for an afternoon’s picketing, park your fancy sports cars and Bentleys round the corner where no-one can see them. Take a lesson from British miners’ pin-up, Arthur Scraghill, instead and plump for the tried ‘n’ tested antiphonal chant technique. Here’s how it would work for you Hollywooders:

“Whadda we want?”

“PAY RISES, FREE WORD PROCESSING SOFTWARE, AND NO MORE HAVING TO WRITE RHYMING SPELLS FOR THE THREE WITCHES IN ‘CHARMED‘!”

“When do we want it?”

“NOW!“

Just saw this on the BBC News website:

Two teenagers who killed a man by burning him with a cigarette lighter, then rolling him into a river, have been given detention orders. James Quantrill, 17, and Thomas Orme, 15, were convicted of the manslaughter of Toby Atkin in Spalding in November.

For the full story, including the sentences handed down to these two monsters, visit BBC News. You’ll be swearing and cursing at your computer screen by the fourth paragraph; I guarantee it.

The council engineer arrived today to mend our boiler. He did several tests, and eventually found why the boiler had stopped working: it needed new gas valves. Luckily, there was a set of gas valves in stock back at engineering HQ, so our man dashed off in his van to collect them.

Naturally, I couldn’t resist taking a look at the inner workings of the boiler while the engineer was away. I’m not really an engineer myself; not a trained one anyway. But I do like to have a go. Well, you know how it is: you have to push the envelope sometimes, don’t you? Otherwise, how are you ever gonna learn anything new?

It’s surprising what reading the back of a Horlicks jar can teach you…it says that in Shakespeare’s day, as mattresses were fastened on with ropes, they had to be tightened. Hence the phrase ‘Good Night, Sleep Tight’.

We can’t let such statements pass us by, so we boldy ventured onto the interweb to see if we could verify the statement. Many sites appear to disagree with Horlicks, The Phrase Finder quotes the following as a possible source:

The phrase actually isn’t very old. The first citation found is from 1866. In her diary Through Some Eventful Years, Susan Bradford Eppes included:

“All is ready and we leave as soon as breakfast is over. Goodbye little Diary. ‘Sleep tight and wake bright,’ for I will need you when I return”.

However, according to the 7 Ages of Manchester Festival 2006, the phrase does originate from Elizabethan times;

There are some common sayings we use today that have their origins in Elizabethan Times. The “sleep tight” part of “Night night, sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite” refers to the fact that the base of beds were made of ropes strung together. As the nights passed those ropes would get loose and it was the servant’s job to tighten them to ensure a good night’s sleep. The bed bugs biting were a fact of Elizabethan life!

And here is a picture of a 16th century rope bed with curtains, recreated at Weald and Downland Museum (source)

If you want to make one for yourself, like the one pictured below, then have a wander over to House Greydragon.

Next time remind me not to read the back of Horlicks’ jars!