Two Quotes From The Times
These two quotes were in The Times yesterday.
Billy Jean King – “pressure is a privilege”
Joely Richardson – “if you want to achieve anything in life, you need guts.”
I like them!
Joely Richardson also followed up her quote with a statement that not enough people have them.
I’ll agree with that too!
Amy Winehouse’s Cat
I met somebody yesterday, who has a cat that was once owned by the late Amy Winehouse.
Apparently, it has a few problems, like wanting to sit on top of everything, like doors and the microwave on top of the freezer.
The cat just seems to love to get high.
My New Stacking Chairs
My old dining chairs have had it and one has even collapsed. So I ordered two Castor stacking chairs from twentytwentyone.
As you can see I brought the two of them back on a number 30 bus.
The weirdest thing is that the size of the seat on the chairs and my old stools is virtually exactly the same. The new chairs are 36 cm. and the stools are 35.6 cm. It actually looks like the old stools, which were made in the 1970s are probably fourteen inches. They are also the same height, as you can see in the picture, which shows the end of my table.
The Long Arm Of The American Tax System
This story from the BBC entitled Goodbye, US Passport, caught my eye, as it was top of the BBC’s most read list this morning. It’s about US citizens living abroad, giving up their citizenship.
The number of Americans giving up their citizenship has rocketed this year – partly, it’s thought, because of a new tax law that is frustrating many expats.
Some examples are given, where Americans living in countries like Germany and Scandinavia are having to spend several thousand dollars with professional advisors just to fill in the complicated tax form required. And then they are not actually paying any tax!
Would you give up your British citizenship, if say you wanted to live in Italy and the British government wanted you to fill in a complicated tax form, so you could be taxed on things that are nothing to do with the UK at all?
Years ago, I was in Denver at a conference and about seven of us of different nationalities, all sat down and discussed the tax we paid. It was strange some of the taxes that in those days Americans paid. One guy who lived in Virginia, always ran an old car, as he had to pay a yearly property tax on his vehicle to the state.
In the end we came to the conclusion, that if you added up the cost of national and local taxes, property taxes and the cost of healthcare, schooling and universities, there wasn’t great differences between anywhere in the developed world.
I suspect it’s not much different now, if you take one of your average 2.4 families, where the parents do normal jobs.
C Would Love This Story
My late wife, C, would love this story on adoption from the BBC. Here’s an extract.
Nearly 4,000 children in England were adopted from care in the year to March.
The latest statistics from the government show an increase of 15% compared with the year before, and ministers say it is a record.
She had been adopted herself and much of her work as a barrister had been in the field of adoption.
Smoking In Kings Cross Square
As an experienced police officer said, when I visited earlier in the day, you have to give people somewhere to smoke, until the habit dies out.
One of the East Coast crew, I talked to, said that there should be an area for non-smokers.
But perhaps the most amazing comment I heard, was from a man, who actually asked one of the cleaners in the square, would she mind if he smoked.
I don’t know whether he did, but he had asked the question in a very sheepish manner.
So does an efficient cleaning team, waiting to pounce on a dog end, make smokers feel guilty?
I think it will be very difficult to predict if smoking is allowed in the square in say five years time.
Londoners Still Love The Hackney Eight
I was coming home from the Angel last night, when one of the Hackney Eight showed its distinctive shape coming from the direction of Saddlers Wells.
As it approached the stop, prospective passengers walked past the 56 that many of them, like me, could have taken and waited for a few seconds for the New Bus for London to arrive.
Why don’t Transport for London do the right thing and convert route 38 to the new buses?
But then us plebs in Hackney don’t count for much, as BT have shown by their non-delivery of fibre-optic broadband.
If the 38 went to Archway in Islington, it would have been converted by now!
Bondage In Trumpington
I like this story from the BBC, as it has all of the threads that make up an ideal story for the tabloids or a steamy novel.
Trumpington is a picturesque village with an interesting history. They even had a bed burial and Chaucer based the Reeve’s Tail there. Now srely a bed burial is rather kinky!
I even went to a reception there, after two members of C’s chambers had tied the knot.
A Comeback for Europe’s Wildlife
This report on the BBC is to be welcomed.
As I found in Sweden, bears, wolves, beavers and moose are all thriving.
The trouble comes, when animals like urban foxes and badgers become a menace because they are too numerous.
We need to make sure we manage the consequences properly.
Portuguese Pork
This is one of Lindsey Bareham’s recipes that I did last night. It’s here on The Times web site.
I cooked half quantities to give me enough for a good supper.
I started by taking a pork fillet, which Waitrose had cut in half. Each half was about 200 g.
Pork, Cumin And Lemon
I cut it into small pieces and then sprinkled it was half a teaspoon of cumin. I also put some lemon juice over it and mixed it up. I then chopped up a medium onion and softened it in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, stirring every now and again. It took about ten minutes.
Cooking The Onion
I used my new Le Creuset shallow casserole and after cooking this dish, I wish I’d bought one earlier.
I then put two peeled garlic cloves and a small red chilli without the seeds and filament into my Little Chopper.
Chopping The Garlic And Chilli
This was then added to the casserole.
Onion, Garlic And Chilli
It was cooked for another five minutes, keeping it stirred.
I took a 400 g tin of chickpeas ans trained and rinsed them thoroughly. For this quantity of pork, I would only need half, but there didn’t seem to be any small tins of chickpeas.
I now turned up the heat slightly and added the pork stirring it constantly.
Cooking The Pork
After the pork had cooked, I added the chickpeas, half a chicken stock cube, 120 ml of boiling water and the remains of the cumin and lemon juice from the bowel.
Final Cooking
After simmering for perhaps 5 minutes, it was seasoned well and some finely chopped coriander was stirred in before serving.
Portuguese Pork
It was good and pretty spicy.
The Anonymous Widower 