To blog or not to blog

I spend most of my time in the house or garden. I seldom venture out into the big scary world for fear of lions and tigers and bears, oh my! But occasionally I have no choice. A typical example would be on the occasion where you discover that the bread which was fine yesterday, and well within its sell-by date, has today grown legs, horns and a green fleece and started stampeding round the kitchen with a life of its own, necessitating a trip to th’Asda (other supermarkets are available, consult local press for details). Yesterday provided another example: I had to go see Dr Doolittle for my monthly de-louse, worming and thermometer up the bum. But in the greater scheme of things these absences from home are very rare occurrences. In fact, the trip yesterday accounts for just 1.7% of the week. So, how is it then, that in that relatively miniscule slice of time, InterLink decided to try to deliver a parcel?

And it happens every time. If I gird my loins and steel forth to the land beyond our drive I can pretty much guarantee that someone will try to deliver something! You must have had the same thing happen to you, where you wait for a parcel for weeks but then have to ‘pop out for five minutes’ and you get back to find a card through your door effectively saying:

We tried to deliver your package. How could you be out when we called? I mean, how dare you? How very dare you? What makes you think you have the right to a life? You are an evil person destined to the fiery pits of hell for all eternity. If you want this package you will now have to complete several Herculean tasks, and even then we expect you to grovel at our feet, you pathetic waste of space.

So, suitably chastised and vowing to never leave the house again, I arranged a redelivery for today. I don’t suppose I even need to tell you the rest of the tale. You already know what happened. It is what always happens in situations like this. InterLink, still demanding their pound of flesh, did deliver the package, as they are obliged to do, but they did it at the crack of dawn, when I was in the middle of a particularly enjoyable dream involving marshmallows (my dream, you can’t have it!) and when the insistent ringing of the doorbell was guaranteed to propel me from the deepest of slumbers to a state of abject panic in less time than it takes Gordon Brown to lose a fake smile! Bastards!

And then the game starts. You know, the one where they try to get back into the van and speeding off down the road in less time than it takes you to get out of bed, struggle with a dressing gown (which always has one arm inside out) and half-fall down the stairs to the front door. Oh how much fun! What jolly japes! What a joy it must be to the neighbourhood to see me standing there at the front door, semi-naked, with dressing gown somehow managing to simultaneously ensnare me and expose me (probably have ‘bits’ on display but can’t do anything about it as one arm is somehow wedged up my back and the other is caught up in the rope that SHOULD be holding it all together but undoubtedly isn’t.) Now add to this the fact that the frantic grab for my specs sent them skipping across the bedroom floor and under the bed, way out of reach, so I have about the same quality of vision as a mole with cataracts, and I’m still being sucked back into the marshmallow dream-state and I’m sure you’ll appreciate the vision of loveliness that greeted said delivery man.

Now, at this point I should note that on the very rare occasion that we are home for a delivery (like Tescos for example), we are usually sent something that resembles the love child of Ann Widdecombe and John Merrick. Today, when it is I who resembles the missing link, the person at the door is a complete Adonis, muscles, shaved head, rugged and manly (but clearly sensitive and just sufficiently in touch with his feminine side). And what does this gorgeous hunk of a man say to me, in a deep baritone that oozes sexual magnetism? “I’ve got a package for you”!  No SHIT! And what a package! That is NOT the thing to say to a gay man in the best of circumstances, let alone one in a semi-comatose state just snatched from a marshmallow fantasy!

Now if there were a God (or if this were a porn film), I’d have come up with a suitably evocative response. Something like, “Oh, what an intriguing packet. Well, you’d better come inside while I unwrap it”. But no, Murphy’s Law springs into action yet again and my somewhat less than eloquent response is to sneeze. Not a little sneeze. Projectile mucus everywhere, dripping off my nose, on my hand, probably off the door if I dare show my face in public for long enough to look. I think I missed the InterLink man. I hope I missed the InterLink man. Needless to say his departure was rapid and I suspect he’ll be putting in a request to change his round!

My existence does seem to be governed by Murphy’s law – “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong” as I pick my somewhat haphazard way through life. It IS a real law, Murphy DID exist, he was a physician and noticed the tendency for things to fail. The law has many variations, such as Finagle’s addendum to Murphy’s Law which states that: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.” There is also Murphy’s Extended Law: “If a series of events can go wrong, they will do so in the worst possible sequence.”  And the Law has a number of practical applications, or if you prefer, more detailed subdivisions which give us a context to apply the Law to everyday life. My own observations concur with the consideration that: “Packages are only delivered when you are out, or otherwise unavailable”.  This variant forms a part of a larger collection of sub-rules, know as “Murphy’s ‘B’s” – and these deal with the certainty that interruptions (such as phone calls, visitors, fire alarms etc) are predetermined to happen when you are in the Bath, Bed or Bog!

Other interesting nuances include:

Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics
Things get worse under pressure.

Quantization Revision of Murphy’s Laws
Everything goes wrong all at once.

Murphy’s Constant
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

Murphy’s Law of Misestimation
Nothing is as easy as it looks or Everything takes longer than you think

Murphy’s Replacement Stratagem
After you bought a replacement for something you’ve lost and searched for everywhere, you’ll find the original.

Murphy’s Law of Diminishing Value
No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you’ve bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

Murphy’s Laws of Motion
First Law
The other line moves faster (this can be applied to any queue, be that at a checkout, in a traffic jam or any similar situation)

Second Law
Traffic speed is inversely proportional to how late you are

Murphy’s Law of Repair
When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.

Murphy’s law of Reciprocal Pairing
The washing machine will eat one of each pair of socks placed in it

Murphy’s Laws of Observation
First Law
The probability of being observed is in direct proportion to the stupidity of one’s actions

Second Law
Your best attempt at anything (such as a sporting shot, throwing a sweet in the air and catching it in your mouth, hitting the perfect note etc) will happen when nobody is about to witness it.

Third Law (the inversion of the Second Law of Observation)
Your performance is at its worst when someone is about to witness it, and the more people there, the worse your contribution will be.

Murphy’s Law of Humour
It sounded funnier when someone else told it or It was funny in my head

Weather Laws
There are too many to list in this blog, but all follow the essential premise that the weather will bollocks things up. Primary examples relate to the impact of washing a car, planning a barbecue or hanging out washing, with several grades of associated inconvenience based on pertaining factors, ie distance travelled from inception, number of guests invited or urgency of requirement to wear washed garment.  Interestingly, Murphy acknowledges that in almost all circumstances, ‘rain’ can be substituted with ‘bird poo’ and the truism of the Law is preserved.

Of course, Murphy has been plagiarised throughout history, with many of his observations being stolen, re-worked or falsely credited elsewhere. You may recognise the well-known “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” as having its roots in Murphian philosophy and Mark Twain, no less, once used a bastardised version “No good deed goes unpunished.” Those in the IT business will immediately be reminded of “To err is human, to really screw things up takes a computer” – again, a re-hash of Murphy’s key observations. And who hasn’t heard of the buttered toast principal? This was a concept proffered by Murphy and adopted by many subsequent philosophers not least of which was Thomas Moore in his verse:

I never had a slice of toast,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
Always on the buttered side

Perhaps the most succinct rendition comes in the popular form: “Shit happens” although this fails in many ways to illicit the subtlety of the diversity of situation in which shit can happen, the consequences of shit happening or indeed the full horrendous arc of distribution that occurs when said shit, upon happening, hits the fan.

Now the less cynical among you may be thinking that this is a very pessimistic view of the world, but I argue that accepting the inevitability of catastrophe is in and of itself a fundamentally optimistic attitude. After all, if you only ever expect things to go wrong either your fears will be realised (and you’ll be prepared) or you’ll just be pleasantly surprised! That said I must in all faith point out that Murphy also understood the dangers of over-optimism and developed what is widely believed to be his greatest contribution to human thinking of all time. Greater than any Newtonian theory, making Einstein appear a gibbering imbecile, questioning even the validity of the thoughts proffered by Stephen Hawkins. Murphy provided us with his greatest gift in his final observation, widely believed to have constituted his last words as he lay on his death bed (at the age of 23) crippled, broken and dismembered from years of testing and proving his theories. I share that thought with you today and it goes as follows: If Murphy’s Law fails to operate, it’s building up for something really big!

My favourite Murphyism though has to be that which is known as the “Stiff Upper Lip” Law, or to give it the correct title, “Murphy’s English Law of Consequential Behaviour” which draws upon both the technical genius of Murphy’s gamut of observations as well as his astute understanding of the human condition. The law in question is phrased in very complex scientific terms, drawing from physics, chemistry, biology as well as cognitive behavioural theories and indeed religious sub-texts but can be expressed in the following formula:

Or expressed in non-scientific terms: “Cheer up,” they said, “Things could get worse”. So I cheered up and, sure enough, things did get worse!

I leave you though with a final Law, and in fact one of which Murphy was very fond, yet did not develop himself.

Cole’s Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

Time restraints dictate a short blog today. I’ve been to the hospital for the first of two check-ups this week. Today’s visit was to see my oncology consultant, the one I have somewhat unkindly re-named Dr Dolittle due to his apparent inability to arrange the tests he says I need to have. He came up with another one today – a 6-monthly CT scan. It remains to see whether this actually happens 6 months after the last one (ie due sometime in August) or if I’ll still be watching for the appointment letter amid my Christmas cards this year! I’m a bit down about it because for the last few weeks I’ve not been ‘pending’ any tests, but now there is another on the horizon. It is good that they keep such a close check on things, but will be even better when they don’t think they need to! Still, looking back, this time last year I was in the High Observation ward, with tubes and monitors and needles and oxygen masks  and a real chance I’d not make it to the end of the day!  What a difference a year makes.

Maybe it is a good thing that we experience time in such a linear way. I’m not sure how I would have coped with the last year had I been given the benefit of hindsight, or if I would have lived my life differently in the years leading up to my cancer diagnosis. I hope, not that differently.  I’ve always believed that we make the best choices available to us at the time. They may not seem to others to be the right decisions, and hindsight may prove them to be disastrous, but at the time they were what we honestly believed were the best for us. That is a basic tenant of NLP, NeuroLinguistic Programming, something I have studied in a little depth and which presents models for the way people represent the world. But our minds are wired up for linear time and we don’t get second chances to go back and change what we have done in the past. I guess to that end I would say I don’t have regrets. Regret is a compound emotion anyway and can always be broken down into more base elements, such as anger, shame, embarrassment and so on.  And why regret things that you can’t change? Learn and move forward. Try to not make the same mistakes again. We don’t have a time machine to go back and fix things!

Consequential, linear time is certainly less confusing than having to deal with temporal paradoxes that being able to jump back and forth through time may bring, likethe possibility of killing your own great grandfather, thus preventing your birth and the possibility of your travelling back in time to kill your great grandfather. We all sometimes want time to run faster when we’re bored and slower when we’re having fun, and perversely it feels like exactly the opposite happens in both situations. Still, Albert said that E=mc2 and so I guess we’re kinda stuck with things the way they are. The world’s greatest minds ponder such things, parallel universes, quantum mechanics, branching possibilities where every choice leads to BOTH eventualities being followed. Tis the stuff to make your head hurt and maybe something I’ll consider for a future blog!

So time and tide wait for no man; a truth that seems as relevant today as ever when I consider that it would have been the birthday of Jon Pertwee, the Third TV Doctor Who. (I emphasise ‘TV’ as there were actually three actors who had played the Doctor before Pertwee took on the role, William Hartnell was the first incarnation, followed by Patrick Troughton and then Jon Pertwee, but Peter Cushing also played the Time Lord in two 1960’s movie adaptations. Pertwee’s Doctor was the first one I really got to know, although Tom Baker remains ‘my’ Doctor. Ah well, we’ll see what the new guy is like soon enough, when David Tennant shuts the TARDIS door for the last time in the New Year (unless rumours that he’ll be back for a movie are true!). I could write plenty about the Whoniverse, but that will also save for another day when time permits. Sadly, Jon Pertwee, like many of the other doctors, is no longer with us, gone to the great blue police box in the sky.

I need to mark another passing though today, with mixed feelings. We were very close, David more so than I, but it doesn’t mean we can’t both feel a sense of bereavement. You see, yesterday, David lost his Mohawk. Shaved it right off. It is gone. It’s passed on! It is no more! It has ceased to be! Expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! It now lies dead and decaying in our bathroom bin. It is an ex-Mohawk. So, you can forget your Michael Jackson, your Mollie Sugden’s Pussy and Farrah Fawcett; I demand a tribute concert in the O2 arena, endless documentaries on the TV, outrageous signs of public mourning and at very least two minutes silence.  I’m thinking there may be a musical and film rights to consider…

David’s Mowhawk: 2005-2009 RIP

I hate my oven. Really I do. And it hates me. There is no question about it. We have officially and irrevocably fallen out. There was never much love there to start off with, but now, nada, zip, nothing but mutual loathing. What, I hear you ask, could have caused such a breakdown in that which should be a mutually supportive relationship? Well, symbiosis only works when both partners gain something from the experience, and this weekend saw the stew that broke the cooker’s back. Well, it wasn’t actually a stew, but that sounded better.  And it wasn’t the cooker that ended up a broken, shattered mess, it was me.

I should explain myself, before venting! When we moved in here the kitchen came equipped with a gas hob and separate electric fan-assisted oven. However, the oven is one of these blessed oven/grill combination things. One unit. I’m not even sure it is fair to use the word ‘combination’, which would at least imply that they had been designed to work together, which clearly is not the case. So, if you have the oven on, you can’t grill anything, and if you want to grill something, the oven is rendered useless. All I can assume is that the ‘genius’ who came up with the notion of these ‘combi-cookers’ has never tried to cook a meal that needs roasting AND grilling at the same time. A good example seems to be almost anything ‘n’ chips, where the chips need 25 minutes in an oven and the ‘n’ needs to be grilled. Can’t do it. The ‘n’ has to be oven-baked whether you like it or not! And let us be honest here, we’re a nation of ‘n’ chips lovers!

Now to add insult to injury, the oven comes with a single shelf and slide-in grill pan. On first inspection you may be forgiven, dear reader, for thinking that this would not present a problem. But how wrong you would be! If this were a game show you’d be hearing the ‘quack quack ooops’ claxon of failure right about now. Wrong answer! To understand the problem I should provide a little information about the design of said stove. The heating element, which has to perform the function of a grill OR to heat the oven, is located, as you would expect, at the top of the ‘box’. There is a fan at the rear to circulate the heat when the oven is in operation. Sensible. Until you consider that the grill pan is a solid block of metal that slides in a third of the way down the oven and acts as a perfect heat shield. Having only one shelf means that I have to use the grill pan as a second level – you just can’t DO roast chicken, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and stuffing balls on a single shelf about 18 inches square! So I’m forced to employ the layering option provided by the grill pan, which then effectively seals off the upper third of the oven, raising its temperature to a degree that even a pot of molten iron might begin to mutter, “It’s a bit on the warm side in here”, and preventing any heat from reaching the poor raw chicken sat in its tray on the lower shelf, failing to break into a sweat let alone turn out with the golden brown crispy skin seen only on roast poultry or TV antiques show presenters.

I mentioned the fan, and those among you equipped with advanced engineering degrees who understand the mechanics of such domestic annoyances will be hopping up and down on the spot, brandishing set squares, blue prints, calculators, smug expressions  and almost wetting yourselves in the need to remind me that the fan is there to circulate the heat. Does it bollocks circulate the heat! The grill pan creates such a superb barrier that all the fan does is shift cold air around at the bottom of the oven, chilling its contents more effectively than the blasted fridge, and intensify the scorching temperatures above the grill to a point where the laws of physics break down!

Now I’m a creative type, I rise to most challenges and I don’t like being beaten by inanimate objects, and even more so ones that clearly have it in for me. I’ve worked out strategies to out-smart the bloody thing. I start off by turning it up full for half an hour, to get it really primed, no grill pan in at this point, just an empty oven that, if Corus sent an engineer round they’d probably be able to certify it for alternative use as a blast furnace. Anything for the upper quadrant needs placing ‘naked’ on the grill pan in readiness for a rapid insertion. The joint, or any said slow-roast item then has to be wrapped in enough tin foil to protect it from temperatures akin to those experienced by the shuttle on re-entry. Whip open the oven door, standing well back and fully anticipating the loss of eyebrows/hair/clothing (NEVER wear synthetic clothes for this part – I’ve found a blacksmith’s apron to be the most suitable, since they banned asbestos). I used to tell people I lost my eyebrows because of the chemo, but the truth, just between you and me, relates far more to a particularly argumentative Shepherd’s pie which struggled a bit as I tried to put it in the oven, causing me to be caught in the flashback. So, slam in your meat (Matron!!!), and shut the door again like your life depends on it – which it probably does unless you prefer to be called Cinders for the rest of your life, but, unlike the eponymous heroine, sadly find yourself lacking in the ball department.

Next, turn down the oven to about 5 or 6 degrees C, but wait for at least another twenty minutes before, with lightening agility and the best oven gloves money can buy, shove in the grill pan, with its contents, and pray that a) you’ve managed to retain enough heat in the lower section to keep cooking the meat and b) ‘upstairs’ has cooled enough to cook (not char) the spuds/Yorkshires.

Delia Smith never has these problems. HER oven always cooks perfectly evenly, at the specified temperature and her, “one I prepared earlier” is always browned to perfection. Cow. I hate her. She lies about Yorkshire pudding recipes (her ‘guaranteed’ toad-in-the-hole came out like a sausage pancake! Bitch!) and her used pots and pans seem to just disappear, instead of ending up in a pile of twisted metal and burnt-on carbon residue that need steeping for several hours before you can even THINK about introducing them to the dishwasher!  I can see what has driven Gorden F’ing Ramsey to his current addiction to profanity though! No wonder Rosemary Shrager always looks like she’s swallowed a wasp – some pimple-faced producer who has never so much as boiled a kettle before has provided them a set with an all-in-one grill/oven nightmare! Don’t get me going on Nigella ‘slowly caress its length with a drizzle of delectable juice and nibble the nuts from your spotted dick’ Lawson! I don’t need to see you seduce a scone, wank a waffle, suck off a sausage or fuck a flan! I just want to be able to cook a decent meal!

I was brought up in the era when celebrity chefs were confined to the radio, occasional guest appearances on The Generation Game (Good Game! Good Game!) or the odd appearance in Black and White when the BBC had run out of anything better to show on a Saturday morning. Yes, I am old enough to remember Fanny Cradock and the (in)famous continuity cock-up which lead to the immortal phrase, “Mmmm delicious! And I hope all your doughnuts turn out like Fanny’s”. I will always remember though, in ‘Butterflies’ when Wendy Craig was trying to make a trifle following the instructions on a TV programme and it all went horribly wrong – the jelly didn’t set, the custard was liquid and she ended up throwing fruit on top of the whole disaster.

And I must admit, I felt waves of empathy for Ria and her trifle recently. We had some friends over for a meal the other night. Nothing too adventurous; I still have to pace myself in terms of what I can do and what I can eat, so the menu was simplistic but safe: French Onion Soup (Oh how we wept), Chicken breasts stuffed with cheese and wrapped in Parma ham (see my previous blog “Did I mention I was wet?” on 3^rd July for the full procurement rigmarole) with garlic bread and salad (out of the garden, no less – the salad, that is, my garlic bread tree failed to deliver this year, despite all attempts to get a baguette to germinate), all followed by fresh fruit salad and coffee. NOTHING hard. NOTHING that the average school-kid couldn’t cook for their Home Economics class (or whatever the current SAT attainment level curricular stipulation pre-defines as what used to be called Domestic Science). All I needed was for my oven to play nicely, just once, and cope with cooking the chicken fillets and garlic bread.

I know how it works, I know the game by now. And for weeks I have been nurturing, complementing and fawning over the oven. Telling it how slim it is looking, how its silhouette is that of an oven half its age, how its sleek lines and perfect curves are even more beautiful than when we first met. I’ve let it watch its favourite programmes on the telly, bought it flowers and chocolates and wine. I even told it that it could see other appliances behind my back (I think it has a thing for the microwave as I sometimes see them winking at each other). Hell, only the other day David pampered it with the oven equivalent of spa treatment: a soak in a bath of essential oils, with candles and the sounds of distant toasters lapping on a Mediterranean beach and a full body scrub.. (Well, a good douse down with Mr Muscle oven cleaner  but I assume that in cooker terms that’s the same thing). All I asked in return was one night of good behaviour.

Do you think ovens get jealous? Maybe it was the fact that we were cooking for someone else that upset it?  But we’re allowed to have friends! We’ve never cheated on it.  It’s not like we were seeing them behind its back or anything. Nothing HAPPENED. Honestly. I promise. We wouldn’t DO that. It was just a meal.

But Hell hath no fury like an oven scorned. And it is more fun to reduce garlic bread to a smouldering cinder in under three minutes, when there are ‘new people’ around to witness the desiccation.  Ah ha! But I had anticipated a degree of oven opposition and was ready with a backup plan. Some bread rolls which just needed 30 seconds of attention with some herbs, butter and a garlic press before hey presto, garlic slices!

A harsh lesson learned though: never underestimate the level of sheer evil that can be inflicted by an oven when it thinks someone is trying to get the better of it. I mean, evil that makes Beelzebub seem like Father Christmas, evil that makes Adolf Hitler seem like he was just a little mischievous.  Pol Pot was a puppy, Stalin a softy. You’ve heard of Ivan the Terrible? Meet Oven the Terrible, his much nastier big brother!

So Garlic bread Mark II is prepped and slipped unostentatiously into the sulphurous pit of Valhalla and I swear, the oven door had not been shut more than 10 seconds when smoke started billowing out from round the edges. The chicken, meanwhile, is shivering in its baking tray on the lower levels, muttering something about brass monkeys (which to the best of my knowledge were not on the original menu) and I think turning blue from cold.  So, keep guests in living room, open patio doors, make comments about ‘someone seems to be having a barbecue, I’m sure I can smell burning’ and turn up music to sufficient decibel level to cover sounds of frantic scraping. Be gone burnt bits, for there is NO plan C!

Luckily, removal of grill tray allowed the near solar temperature to be distributed more evenly around the chicken which did, after much anxiety, several prayers (just in case there IS a god) and a few choice Ramsey-isms, actually start to cook.

25 minutes at 200C my arse! Let’s just say that if I had to swap kitchens with Nigella, she’s have made love to several puddings, a large pot of coffee and half the camera crew before her main course was ready.  Even the more appropriately titled “Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook” would have found itself running way into the News and probably interfering with a weather girl. So part of the meal cooks in about 10 percent of its designated time and part of the meal takes a good extra 90% longer than it should. I suppose mathematically that adds up to 100% and when reduced to an equation everything was actually ready on time! Maths was never my strong point. And the kitchen timer is only any use when the oven agrees to work to the same temporal rules as the rest of reality. Which it doesn’t.

But in the true English traditions of stiff upper lip, carrying on regardless, staring adversity in the face and grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory I soldiered on and managed to drag the soup course out for long enough to cover required extra cooking time. (Here’s a tip you don’t find in Mrs Beeton or for that matter post-prison Martha Stewart : small spoons! If you need more time, ditch the soup spoons, which are tantamount to mini ladles anyway, in favour of tea-spoons, or if you have enough, the spoons one might use for draining veg – you know, perforated to let the liquid drip through. And if you really need more time, give your guests forks and turn it into a party game!)

I’m pleased to say that the chicken WAS cooked in the end, and fears of salmonella were averted, but the garlic bread lived down to all expectations. Still, you can’t go wrong with fresh fruit salad, can you?

Today, having refused to go within 20 yards of the oven for a full 24 hours (a point needed to be made, even if it meant the expense of a take-away) I reluctantly decided to at least wipe down the hob and try to chip some of the charred remains off the grill pan. And it was then that I noticed something for the first time: The manufacturer’s logo on the oven door. Never paid it much attention before. Quick look, register what I thought was the name, good brand etc. But you see, upon closer inspection, it doesn’t say Indesit like I thought. Oh no. Now it all makes sense. When they moved out the previous occupants left me In-de-shit!