Stern stuff

I've always liked spring evenings. Of course technically it isn't quite spring yet, not until the 21st. But it's a light early evening as I walk across the fields to the University, and it's about 6 degrees warmer than it has been. That is, it is about 6 degrees, and everything's no longer frozen. Birds are singing. Trees and grass smell of, well, trees and grass.

It was actually a bit of a gamble. I only heard about this evening's event yesterday, and hadn't realised until today that I'd be able to make it. Free tickets were available by phone or email. I emailed, and got no reply. Towards the end of the working day (4:30) I phoned too, but everybody in the Economics Department must have finished work early.

And can you blame them? Lord Stern (of Stern Review fame) had been invited to give a talk on his experiences at the infamous COP15 (that's Copenhagen climate talks to you and me). The fact that Lunchista had no ticket (free or otherwise) made me the official gatecrashing delegation, but I don't take up much room and I usually behave myself. In fact no-one was checking for tickets, and a handful of us late arrivals were quietly ushered in just as the Vice-Chancellor was finishing his introductory speech. Perfect.

The lighting (this "dramatic lighting from above" lark seems to be becoming fashionable) made Lord Stern's features look slightly Indian. I found myself wondering whether he, like Lunchista, had a slim Indian strand in his family tree, possibly dating back to some aristocratic liaison in those enlightened times before the Victorians started frowning on that sort of thing.

He lovingly described the characters, atmosphere, mistakes and successes of the Copenhagen talks, in particular how, because every decision had to be made unanimously, it reminded him of Student politics. Thinking back to when I was a student, many of our campus wannabe politicians were students of Economics, so that must have resonnated for practically everybody in the room. Somehow campus politics just didn't appeal as much to us Physicists, which perhaps explains a lot.

One of Copenhagen's successes, which I must admit had passed me by at the time, was the REDD anti-deforestation programme, by which countries with more trees than money can be bribed to keep their trees. The biggest failure, on the other hand, appeared to have been the idea of writing a "provisional" agreement in advance (with a view to saving time) which, naturally, offended every representative who wasn't directly involved in it. Oh well, you live and learn.

There followed lots of talk about future growth while reducing Carbon emissions. I wondered whether he'd ever had a chat with Prof Tim Jackson. There was even time for questions at the end: I would dearly have loved to ask about this but I felt I'd already pushed my luck a bit!

Put a spell on you

Quite a few "traditions", especially those involving people a lot younger than Lunchista, make their way from West to East across the Atlantic. You know, like Rock'n'Roll, Trick-or-Treat, and, erm, Spelling Bees. I'd never given any of this much thought until Lunchista fils came home from school one day proudly brandishing a letter which explained that he was on their school team for the Times Spelling Bee. Apparently they'd been doing practice rounds in class and he had turned out to be rather good at it.

Isn't life strange? Because Lunchista's spelling is absolutely appealing, and marvellous other half hails from a land where spelling simply isn't an issue. In fact if you think about it, most non-English speakers do: whatever their countries' other tribulations, they don't have the effects of 1066 and the Great Vowel Shift to deal with. Thank you Polyglot Vegetarian for an example of one such alphabet.

Parents were warmly invited, in fact encouraged, to come along and cheer on. The regional heats were being held forty miles away on a Monday afternoon. Lucky Lunchista, not having to be at work on a Monday! (by this time of year in my old job I'd usually used up my meagre allowance of annual leave, even including the extra days I "bought" instead of having a pension).

The venue was one of those Multiplex cinemas. The teams, rather melodramatically lit from above, lined up at their desks with the silver screen behind them, while the parents sat in the darkness. Rules were run through, in quite some detail because this was apparently only the second ever national Spelling Bee held in the UK. I was relieved to hear it would all be refereed using a British (as opposed to transatlantic) dictionary.

About a quarter of the players, at a guess, were bilingual, including two of our team of four. Interestingly, they did just as well as everybody else, demonstrating as they did so that bilingualism is good for the brain. Except perhaps when culture got in the way: one lass who had come swathed from head to foot in black kept getting given words like "cognac" and "bodice". I was beginning to wonder if it was a put-up job.

Lunchista fils' team won! Strangely, neither he nor I could remember any of the words he'd had to spell. Even more strangely, that's supposed to be a sign of real concentration, of being "at one" with the game.

Vikings!

Every year at about this time our city gets invaded by Vikings. Some of them are local, others come all the way from Norway, Denmark and suchlike places to join in the fun. They race their long-boats down the river, hoist huge sail-like banners painted with sagas in the square and set up stalls demonstrating bits of Viking workaday life in the shopping centre.

It can get quite surreal in the streets: like anybody else, seasonal Vikings need a break from life's stage from time to time, so you also see them, still in their huge woollen robes with metal helmets, leather wrist-straps and sacking gaiters, talking on mobile phones or getting cash out from a hole-in-the-wall.

It's noticeable how well-adapted the simplest of things can be: the Vikings looked much warmer in their woollen and fur kit than the shoppers in their skimpy little nylon coats. We sampled Viking bread (heavy and tasty), cheese (a bit like a solid version of condensed milk), and soup (savoury and filling). You could also have a go at grinding flour: the result, still with its full quota of protein and vitamins, obviously made for better bread than its modern equivalent. Lunchista fille was asked if she could make good cheese: apparently this was a crucial life skill for any Viking lass on the pull.

There was a slave auction in the guildhall. The Viking legal system (yes there was one!) recognised two types of slaves: captured slaves and debt slaves. Vikings facing the dark-age equivalent of not being able to use the hole-in-the-wall could work for their creditors for a set time or, if there was no work needing doing, they could be sold off to pay off the debt and go and work their time for someone else. A debt slave had various rights, including the right to finish their time unharmed and not pregnant (pregnancy by your boss counted as a type of harm).

This gave them more rights than many of their decendents until about, ooh, the 1920s.

Army Catering

In reviving any neglected Orchard, there comes a time when you have to admit that some of the trees are leaning over, falling over, dead in parts or simply overshadowing themselves. For most fruit-trees (but not plums or almonds) that time is now, when they are fast asleep and no sap would get lost. So we had to take the bull by the horns (or at least the saw by the handle) and make a start on pruning the poor trees into shape. Our chief Orchardista had decided to make a day of it by inviting the local fruit-tree expert to give us an illustrated pep-talk in the morning (in the delightful and newly-redecorated Social Hall), after which we could all have a spot of lunch and then head out with our "implements of Destruction" and do our worst.

On finding out that the Social Hall kitchen would be at our disposal, Lunchista offered to make soup. Then it transpired that 30 people had expressed interest in coming along. Which meant Army Catering: my favourite kind! Especially when there's any kind of project in the offing as well.

At the back of the largest cupboard in Chateau Lunchista's kitchen there lurks a giant stainless-steel saucepan: I think it holds 10 litres but I've never bothered to measure it, because the inside kind of expands into the fourth dimension, and whatever gets made in it there always seems to be plenty to go round. It was originally bought for making Elderberry Syrup, but it has also been used for making puree and preserve with previous fruit from the Orchard.

Out it came. Into it went a scaled-up version of the following (adapted from the Cranks' Recipe Book):

A spud, an onion, a carrot, a cooking apple, 2 cloves of garlic, all diced as in the picture, then gently fried until the onion is transparent. A large spoon of curry powder, 2 pints of veggie stock (Vecon is good) and a tin of the ever-useful Italian tomatoes then go in on top. Then bring it all to the boil while stirring, turn it down and let it simmer for half an hour. I did all this (ably assisted by Lunchista fille) the previous day and left it overnight. In the morning I got out one of those hand-held blenders and whizzed it smooth.

Why Mulligatawny? The rationale was fairly straightforward: if it's vegetarian then anybody can drink it, and if it packs a bit of heat then each mugful will warm us up more. It also turned out, by a happy coincidence, to be our chief Orchardista's favourite soup.

Worst of days, best of days

For the last couple of years at work, I remember reading that the Monday of the third week of January is, officially, the day of the year when most people feel at their worst (kudos to Bryony, who had to resign from the Sustainability Committee last month in order to start her new job today!). It's a combo of dark mornings, paying for Christmas, cold weather, failing at (or having to put up with) new-year resolutions...and that's probably what lies behind all those holiday adverts you get on tv this time of year. Why content yourself with bills in just January when you can book 2 weeks in the sun and have bills til October?

But Lunchista has, as ever, stumbled upon a cheap and cheerful alternative: today is also International Optimism day. Apparently it is celebrated, not by buying, or even making, presents but by doing stuff. Their first four suggestions are:

-Write a list of simple things that make you happy, and share it
-Write down 3 things you're grateful for
-Call someone you haven't spoken to for ages
-Say hello to someone you see everyday, but never speak to

Well most of the things I write about in The Year-Long Lunch Break make me happy. And I'm grateful I didn't have to get up before dawn this morning...and finally, I don't think there's anyone I see every day (including during my commuting days) that I don't say hello to.

School's out!

This good old-fashioned, unreconstructed, take-no-prisoners winter is still with us, much to the delight of all at Chateau Lunchista. The smaller Lunchistas returned to school on Monday (4th) and were looking forward to finding as many ways as posible of getting round that boring, litigation-culture-inspired rule that forbids the throwing of snowballs in the playground. Towards the end of the morning I settled down to start scribbling, and not long afterwards the 'phone rang. It was Lunchista fille, informing us that school had given up for the day because the heating wasn't working, and she'd gone home with a friend, presumably for a pleasant afternoon building snowmen, chatting and drawing cartoons.

A few minutes later Lunchista fils piled in and announced with obvious glee "Peak Oil has reached our school!" Apparently the tank was empty, the next delivery of the vital substance being either badly procrastinated or stuck in the snow somewhere. During Science, they'd had to light the Bunsen burners to keep warm. No oil delivery was due until the day after tomorrow, he said, so could we go sledging tomorrow?..

And so an exciting afternoon was spent by the lads in the street investigating the structural properties of snow necessary for building the largest snowman, the ballistics of snowballs, and the coefficient of friction of ice (and how to minimise it). They also confirmed the finding that a body loses 25 (yes, twenty-five) times more heat through wet clothes than dry ones. The following day we took the sledge to a particularly good ice-run down by the river, and built a snowman striker (complete with football) to take a shot at the goal on the playing field in which someone had thoughtfully constructed a snow-goalie.

Today we'd been advised to listen to the local radio to find out whether or not the school would be open. I haven't listened to the radio for years, though we do at least still have a working radio in the house. I'd forgotten how bad commercial radio could be: the guy kept saying "...and school closures, coming up shortly..." then there'd be adverts, sporting fixture lists, trailers for interviews coming later with celebs I've only just heard of, traffic news (protracted by the huge number of road and airport closures because of the snow), followed by a piece of music I'd always profoundly disliked but which, having been shot at me first thing in the morning, remained embedded in my head for hours.

Finally we gave up and looked on the school's web-page. School was up and running. So off went the small Lunchistas, in their wellies in something like six inches of snow.

Now that I can sit and think, the obvious question that occurs is: what on earth is an urban school doing messing about with oil, when gas is available, cheaper and (for those who care about such things) emits less in the way of greenhouse gases? It's also more reliable: one thing I discovered from my foray into radio news this morning was that if Transco fail to deliver, those households left gas-less are entitled to £300 a day compensation.

And it wasn't a one-off: the smaller Lunchistas' previous school also suffered an empty oil-tank one New Year, with a use of oil over the holidays that bordered on the suspicious. Nothing was ever proven, though: no-one at the school had the slightest idea how much energy the place really used. I wonder if there's a posse who go round schools with a lock-picker and a length of hose while everybody else is busy stuffing the turkey? If so, I wonder why I've never heard a case of these people being caught?

Kosher bacon buttie

Half-way through half-term, and we're having something of an Indian Summer. It would, I thought as I heard the sound of arguing over the computer from upstairs, just be a total waste of these last gorgeous days, not to go out somewhere. Could we make it, on our bikes, to a particularly nice spot I vaguely had in mind, and back, in time for Lunchista fille's rendez-vous at the flicks with her friend just after lunch? Turned out no, because her bike's tyres were flat, and our new, unfeasibly-compact, technologically-advanced bike-pump was (a) lost, and (b) totally lacking in anything as technically downbeat as instructions.

Which meant that Lunchista fils and I set off alone, after much protesting on his part.

Now Lunchista has the sense-of-direction of a deranged fruit-fly, but fils happened to know a nice route beyond the ring-road that would (allegedly) take us round in a big circle, through nice country, entirely off-road. It started with a ride down the entire length of the local golf course: it's a very long thin course and, for extra entertainment, seems to include part of the ring-road. People were driving golf-buggies over a special little bridge. I was rather glad fils was wearing his helmet. Part of the path, along absolutely flat land with rows of trees, running beside a fosse, reminded me of the opening sequence to "Secret Army" with its roads through the Low Countries.

The golf-course includes a large area of land still marked as "Common" on the map. Hence the old ditty:

The law locks up the man or woman
who steals the goose from off the Common.
But then it lets the villain loose
that steals the Common from the goose.

Beyond the golf-course lay grazing land, which (we found out from a notice on a stile) was also an SSSI bristling with ground-nesting birds. And, erm, cows. We were halfway through the field beyond this, in other words in the middle of nowhere, when fils suddenly announced:

Ten minutes to ice-cream!

What???

And sure enough, ten minutes further on down the line there was a campsite, with a cafe, with a terrace, and (yes!) ice-cream. So I bought him one, and sat down with a mug of tea while he went off to investigate a nearby lake, and give some passing anglers a hand chasing the cafe's chickens off their grubs. It was idyllic: the terrace had a pergola (half of which was discreetly covered with perspex, in case it rained), up which newly-planted clematis were making their first steps. In a couple of years' time, I thought, it would be like my favourite place on earth, the pergola (now sadly demised) at the CAT.

Apart from the serious-looking chaps who had come for the fishing, we seemed to be the only visitors. I got talking with the chap who ran the place, who'd been a farmer there since the 1950s, but now looked like one of those classic "Farmers Diversifying" success stories you regularly find in the Yorkshire Post Country Supplement (every Saturday). The cafe, for example, had been there less than two years, and the fishing was taking off to the extent that they'd just excavated another lake. He seemed even more outraged than Lunchista about the Common, and also knew the name and address of the owner of a disused piece of land whose predicament had been puzzling Lunchista for years. What's more, as a farmer he happened to know that cows, amazingly, never step on birds'-nests. Not even when they're on the ground.

I could have sat there all afternoon, but for two things: it was lunchtime, and I'd run out of cash. There was a gorgeous smell of bacon butties, so I asked about cards, or even cheques, but no go. So non-existent bacon butties it was, then (the only Kosher type: well, better that then Zen ice-cream I suppose), and we'd have to have lunch at home. Such is life.

One consolation was our haul from today's sortie: in addition to fresh air and sunshine, we'd picked up lots of pine-cones (we dry them, spray them gold and use them for Christmas decorations), and a golf-ball. I checked with fils and he reassured me that, yes, it had stopped moving before he picked it up...

Car Booty

The Party kitty was, well not quite empty, but perhaps feeling a little peckish. An election was, well not quite imminent, but in the offing. The Meeting was collectively wondering what to do about this undesireable state of affairs, when somebody mentioned a car boot sale.

Now as you can imagine this isn't something Lunchista could take on alone, lacking a boot, a car and indeed permission to move anything larger than a bike (with or without trailer) along the public highway. So I offered to be co-pilot to whoever took this on. And somebody (let's call him Will) rose to the challenge. It turned out that, lurking in Will's garage, was a load of stuff he wanted rid of. You know the kind of stuff that's absolutely indescribable until you look at it and try to enumerate it, and even then it can be a challenge. Old camera gear, board games, a bathroom cabinet, shoes, well-used sports kit, ugly ornaments. And that was before the call went out to everybody else to take a long look at their wardrobes, bookshelves, cupboards and (for the better-off) garages and perhaps even sheds (though we're not the kind of party to have many punters with stables and outbuildings...yet!).

More and more stuff arrived at Will's house. I never asked (out of a kind of British politeness I suppose) but I'm willing to bet he was beginning to regret taking this on. Then a promising weekend materialised: the local car-boot, held at a former airfield, turned out not to need bookings, and the weather chart just said

HIGH

so we went for it. In mufti, so as not to scare off people (the vast majority of the population, in fact) who vote for parties other than ours.

By the time we got there things were already in full swing, and we drove past rows and rows of colourfully-laden tables, following directions and gestures, to a spot under a tree in the far corner. We had driven through the entire "field of combat", and it was massive!

As soon as we got out of the car and openned the boot, a crowd gathered round and people jostled for position to see what we had on offer: some of our things got sold before we'd even unfolded our table's legs. I began to get a bit worried about the money tin, especially now it already seemed to have quite a lot of money in it. As the morning grew hotter (it was high summer, literally, and we were becoming thankful for that tree and its shade) the action continued, at a scarcely less frantic pace. I couldn't get over the number of people there, or indeed the variety of languages that chattered past us.

We hadn't bothered to label prices for anything and it turned out that was just as well: better to adapt your price to your punter, using as a guide their apparent affluence and/or enthusiasm. If they stopped to ask, they were interested. If they didn't, my sales pitch became "come over here out of the sun, we're the coolest pitch at the airfield today!" or if people hesitated: "just because we're in the shade, doesn't mean we're shady!".

We took turns to sit on the one deckchair we'd brought along (there hadn't been room in the car for another), and were glad to have had the prescience to have brought along something to drink, and sunhats.

By about 2 pm we realised that most of the bulky stuff had gone, the crowds were beginning to thin out and the heat was just ludicrous. The shade from our tree was long gone and I had resorted to using my umbrella as a sunshade, far-Eastern style. A particularly long lull gave us a chance to consult the money-tin. It contained an indecent sum of cash and we decided to beat a retreat.

In case you may be wondering why I'm writing about summer exploits (and not even this year's, at that) when in fact we're facing the back end of October, it is for two reasons. Firstly to reminisce about hot weather (which is always kinder to memories than it is to real people at the time), and secondly to "compare and contrast" with a more recent car boot session.

Just last week we were back at the booty: same personnel, same venue, same vehicle. But making a wild difference to our fortunes were the range of goods we had on offer (lots of glass ornaments this time, and no ancient camera kit or home-made jewellery), the ambient temperature (although it was still bright and sunny) and of course the times of credit crunchiness to which we are now exposed.

One or more of those factors made the difference between clearing nearly £100 last summer, and our more recent, but rather less impressive, net total of £25. Sadly, however, it doesn't look as if we're in line for a bail-out from the government.

Space Invaders

"What d'you do if you see a space-man?"
"Dunno"
"Park in it-man!"

The quality of jokes circulating at Lunchista fille's school never ceases to amaze. But I quote this one because it describes, quite nicely, what a bunch of us got up to on International Car-Free Day: we invaded some space. In fact we happen to know that we invaded exactly 18 square metres of space.

Now that particular 18 square metres of space isn't much to look at. I must have walked past it dozens of times, and never really noticed it. And there'll be people who drive past it every day, who'll see it but on whose brains it will make no impression whatever, because their attention will be elsewhere. That probably includes a lot of people who have actually parked their cars on it at some time in the past. And that's why we had to go there quietly before the day's events and "case the joint". The area, the cost, the distance from the nearest place where we could store things, how early in the morning it would start to get busy, and so on. I volunteered to be the first to arrive, and my mobile number went on the press release. Then I looked at the weather forecast and shuddered.

And so, at 7 a.m., aided and abetted by my other half (who is very tolerant about all this) and his bike-trailer, we arrived on our bikes with two deckchairs, a huge potted palm and a banner. Incredibly I've never had to work a parking meter before: I was pleasantly surprised that it actually produced a ticket, rather than simply eat my last pound coins, smile at me and leave me stranded on the wrong side of the law without a witness. Some of the meters here even have solar panels on top.

At this point the big guns rolled in. Trike-trailers, drafted away from their usual task of picking up the recycling from our city's best narrow streets, had been loaded with turf the night before. Our resident eco-enthusiast had bought it the day before that, ensuring not only that the nearest DIY emporium actually had it in stock, but also that he knew someone to whom he could sell it on afterwards: total cost, zero.

So we laid down the turf. We put up a table and got out the deckchairs, next to not one but by now two huge potted palms, and a parasol brought along by some brave soul unfamiliar with the term "equinoxial gales". Mind you my banner was also struggling, but people (including the gentleman from the Press who turned up at 8:30) were still able to make out the blurb:

People Park, not Car Park

Car-Free Day Sept 22

The table was graced with a cloth, two self-service tea-urns with cups, milk, sugar, and plates full of Danish Pastries. There was also a basket of apples from the Orchard. The idea was to have a picnic breakfast, and to offer some to hungry commuters.

Now there are people out there who write fascinating research tracts in fields with names like "Psycho-geography", about phenomena such as "mental maps", "sense of place" and "connectivity", whose description of our activities would sound a bit odd at first blush, but bear with Lunchista as she leaves her home turf of energy and matter to foray into the ever-changing world of intangibles.

Apparently what we achieved was to turn a "non-place" into a "place". Oh all right, the first person to come up with the term "non-place" was called Marc, did it in French and spent far too much time indulging in existentialist contemplation of the meaninglessness of his modern life, probably while smoking too many Gauloises, and so didn't follow his idea through very well. So instead, how about an American chap called Eric talking in a straightforward, no-nonsense way about how he first came to notice that his home-town was becoming "nowhere", instead? Or even, how about Will Self?

For three hours or thereabouts, in fact until our ticket ran out, we chatted, drank tea, waved to passing drivers, offered our breakfasts, read articles and (in my case) were quietly thankful that the weather forecast had got it wrong, and the sun was shining. A jolly lass in a red dress and dreadlocks from the local radio turned up and Lunchista, as the person whose number had been given on the press release, was interviewed live on air. City councillors came along, including the former leader (on his bike as ever), and our favourite LibDem (because he's such a character) who took our leaflets out into the 5 lanes of raging traffic and handed them to passing commuters. We had turned a bit of space that nobody gave a second thought to, into something that was (apart from the incredible noise level from the traffic) really rather worth something.

Late morning took me into the city centre, where I could sample the delights of a street I'd never walked down before, because the pavements are narrower than I am and it had always been full of traffic. But the Council, as a bit of a dare, had closed it to traffic for the day (using a row of massive planters of flowers: it looked rather good). Suddenly you could walk down it, and look at the shop windows, at the same time. People had brought their wares out into the street. The buildings were visible, in that you could afford the time to look up at them: everything from mediaeval to art deco. It reminded me of Diagon Alley from Harry Potter: it really was another world.

The radio station rang again: heck, they couldn't get enough of us! I was back on the air, live from the studio, and by a delicious irony for "Drive", the afternoon commuters' show. No doubt some of the listeners will have thought Lunchista was a bit barking. But I wonder how many are, even now, beginning to plot their escape?

Stars on Reasonably-Priced Guitars

"I don't suppose you know this one?" We were having a barbecue (I can use this term now because the said event, having already been and gone, can no longer be spoiled by rain) and our neighbour strolled back in with his guitar, pulled up a chair and started playing...only my favourite, ever, piece of soft rock in the known universe! Of course knowing all the words I pretended to use my wine-glass as a mike and sang them...

Actually, Lunchista knows all the words to practically everything from three of the last four decades. Sometimes it even comes in useful. But when I was working I often thought, how nice it would be to be able to play stuff, too. Now I don't have to start off all on my own.

Many years ago, when Lunchista fils started school, he was offered the chance to learn one of several musical instruments. This can be a minefield. But Lunchista, by a happy coincidence, had some help, in the form of a book "The right instrument for your child". Having found out what kind of sound someone would like to make, or who they'd love to be able to play like, you don't necessarily also think "do they like the physical sensation of holding and operating this machine? Does it demand anything of them which they would find uniquely difficult? Do they like to play with a load of other people or are they more the solo, self-contained type?". Unless you're particularly perceptive, of course, or you've had a look at that book or something like it.

So guitars were in. We bought him this nice little machine for 20 quid. Lessons happened during the school day (I love the word "peripatetic"!), so no driving around on dark winter evenings or postponing dinner while trying to learn complicated notes on an empty stomach. At the end of the first day we found Lunchista fils sitting in pride of place at the after-school club, delightedly playing the first notes he'd learned. That was five years ago.

On packing in my job I suddenly found that I had time to sit and listen to him practice. The nice thing about guitars is you can just leave them standing around and pick them up whenever you have a few moments that you feel like filling in with a few notes. So we had two guitars permanently loitering with intent in the living-room. Then one of the tuning-keys on Lunchista fils' machine snapped. Not wanting to throw it out I took our plight to our local music and bits shop (who sell individual guitar strings: that's my kind of market). The chap went round the back and returned with a spare set of three keys for a machine-head. They were a different shape than ours, and I'd never taken a machine head to bits before, but what the heck.

I spread out all the bits on the kitchen table (having first wiped off all the jam from breakfast). I got out Chateau Lunchista's entire collection of screwdrivers, and a saucer (non-flying) to put all the bits in that would otherwise roll onto the floor...

And in fact, if you take everything off in order, remember what you've done and don't lose any small bits, it's actually quite easy to put on a new tuning key. Which meant that Lunchista fils had something of a unique machine to take to his Grade 2 a couple of weeks before he left his old school, and I had a load of guitar spare parts in the tool box with the screwdrivers.

One day during the summer holidays the phone rang and Lunchista fils happened to be the first to get to it. He listened for a moment and then his face lit up..."YES!!!" It was his teacher, who had taken the trouble to ring up to tell him he'd passed. And that the new school was on his peripatations.

Lunchista estimates that the total cost of all this musical activity, for both small Lunchistas (Lunchista fille plays keyboard), amounts to about a tenner a week. That's less, apparently, than an average woman of my age spends on hairdressers.

Value Engineering

There are some places on these islands whose sunlight really is special. Lunchista has lived in Glasgow (but almost anywhere on the West Coast of Scotland will do as an example), and stayed near Aberdyfi in Wales, but the Lake District has this light too. Somehow the sun looks brighter if its light is falling onto steep, dark terrain. The less charitable could also point out that sunlight looks brighter here simply because it is so rare, and I'm afraid the numbers from the Met Office back them up. You've got to seize your moment.

Famille Lunchista were lucky enough to catch possibly the best day of the summer for a boat trip on Ullswater (although to be fair this followed a prescient look at the forecast). A 1930s style boat took us half the length of the lake (about six miles) to a classic country hotel where we had lunch on a terrace with stunning views. It, too, had something of the 1930s about it, even down to the waitress's uniform (full length black dress plus white pinny). It was all very unhurried, un-crowded and, unlike most tourist destinations I've been to of late, generally not a system under stress. Or so we thought.

Value Engineering is the black art of getting the most "value" out of some enterprise, by paring off any inputs that aren't strictly necessary while still delivering, just, what people expect, and have paid for. It was originally applied to straightforward mass-production and the like, where it made for more-efficient processes and less waste, but has since then spread into areas in which, to put it charitably, it is less appropriate. Such as Tourism, and infrastructure design.

We walked back to the lakeside in time to see the previous boat to ours come along. It was rather smaller than ours, and could only just take on the people queuing at the jetty. The motor started up... and then the driveshaft failed to engage. From the crew's conversation with their base we jaloused that the boats were checked thoroughly every morning, and that these smaller ones had had extra checks because they had been drafted in to replace the route's largest vessels, which could not be used that day because the lake's water-level was the highest it had been for 20 years after our unusually wet July.

The crew explained that a tow was needed and that this meant all the passengers had to disembark. They thanked us for our patience. Then the real system failure happened. It transpired that the jetty only had space for one boat to moor, so we all had to wait until the Park Rangers' motor-launch (complete with tow-rope) had done its stuff before any of us, now a total of about 300 people (including all the passengers in our boat, which as we joked was in a "holding pattern" out on the lake), could go anywhere. All because someone, somewhere, had decided that the cost of a few extra planks couldn't be justified because, well, they'd never be needed...

We were there for an extra three hours.

Most tourists want to cram as much as possible into their day, rather than simply sit somewhere and soak up the atmosphere. But as far as I was concerned, none of this really mattered: not having value-engineered our day, we didn't have to be anywhere else in a hurry. The jetty was warm wood, the view was beautiful, Lunchista fils lay his head on his rucksack and had a quick kip, Lunchista fille looked at the shapes of the mountains, and I was lost in memories of various children's stories set in this type of landscape: Swallows and Amazons, the Moomins, that kind of thing. Nobody got cold or hungry, and we only slightly regretted not staying on at the hotel terrace for cream tea. Even the dog didn't throw a wobbly.

I got to explaining to Lunchista fille about the layout of the Lake District and how it had come about: the lakes are mainly the routes of glaciers, radiating downwards and outwards from the central mountains, like the spokes of a wheel. Opposite our spoke, for example, is Wastwater, and then the coast.

Sitting on that coast is a place whose bosses and operatives, I really hope, never get the idea of Value Engineering into their heads...

Shady rendez-vous

It happened nearly ten years ago, but it's as topical this week as it was then.

What better start for a once-in-a-lifetime expedition like this, than the midnight train? And what better way, given that the end-points of this journey happen to be Glasgow and Basingstoke, to endow the intervening route with a bit of, well, class? Perhaps it's the comforting knowledge that you won't have to stand for all or part of your journey, or that someone will take the trouble to bring you breakfast. Or best of all that, having crossed London, you find yourself, at the height of the rush hour, in commuter trains which are completely empty. It's a bit like stepping into some strange looking-glass version of the UK in which everyone (and you can see them all, crowded onto the opposite platform at each station), works nights.

I wonder if everyone has the equivalent, in their own life, of the friend to whose house I walked from the station. She was one of those characters in whose company events, no matter how well-planned, always managed to take a surreal turn. We'd planned to drive to a guest-house in the west country and get there at some reasonable time, like about eight pm. In the event we got there at about two in the morning, and it had nothing to do with the notorious traffic on the A38 either, and much more to do with the fact that her living-room floor was up, the gas had cut-out and when I arrived she was halfway through laying a patio.

We decided, for the sake of our hosts, to pull up at the far side of the car-park, recline the seats and kip in the car with our coats and some blankets. The following day we thought we'd do a bit of bog-standard sightseeing, but it turned into something of a cream-tea-crawl.

And the day after that was 11th August 1999, and we wanted to get to the beach early and get the best view. We didn't want to miss it and have to wait until 23rd September 2090 for the next one (wonderful to find out that the most detailed timetable you can get, is lovingly compiled by a chap called Fred!) So we were on the road by 4 am. We got flashed at by a speed camera, went round a completely deserted roundabout somewhere near Plymouth twice and then got stopped by the Polis. They shone a torch into the car and, on seeing we were female, middle-aged and sober, let us carry on after asking a couple of questions just for form's sake. I only found out later that our trusty ride had no MOT, and moss growing on the dashboard.

We took our seats on the best promontory by six, had breakfast from a nearby kiosk at seven and were exchanging stories with other "tourists" about how far we'd travelled by eight. Thin, high cloud looked as if it might go away but the weather couldn't quite muster enough warmth to melt it. So we saw the entire eclipse as a play of shadows and sounds.

First the western horizon grew dark, as if a storm was approaching, but without the usual clouds. Then we could see the shadow coming in fast across the sea. As the shade grew deeper I began to notice it seemed to come on in waves from the west, each wave bringing a darker tone. I noticed sea birds were making the kind of sounds I usually associate with evening and the walk back from the beach after a long day building sandcastles. The last few waves brought utter twilight, but with a twist: the shadow isn't large, so the horizon all around us still glowed. Everything appeared lit from underneath. The final wave seemed to bring with it a faint "wuppp!" sound, but I thought I'd imagined it. A minute or so passed with no sound, no wind: no movement. Then waves of paler grey rolled in from the west, and after a short while I found myself thinking of morning walks down to the beaches I'd been to as a child, before I realised why: sea-birds sound different first thing in the morning, and that's what they all believed it to be!

About an hour later I'd started to wonder why I felt so queasy, before I realised I was sitting in the August sun on a Devon beach, still wearing a woollen sweater. You forget about hot summer days after living in Glasgow for three years. From where we were sitting we could walk down to the flat sands and get across, on the "sea tractor" at low tide, to Burgh Island, where the Agatha Christie novel "Evil under the sun" is set.

I found souvenir tee-shirts in Tavistock for the children. it turned out that they'd had a good view of the partial eclipse: the staff of their nursery had thoughtfully loaded everybody into double buggies and wheeled them all out into Kelvingrove Park with their shades. They smiled at the cartoons of the sun and moon on their tee-shirts and announced: "Ut's gooin' tae get darruk a wee but"!

Unlike Lunchista they may very well still be around to see the next eclipse on British soil.

Anyone who's in a bit more of a hurry to see one has until the day after tomorrow to get to, well, almost anywhere in Asia.

Hell's Kitchen (and how to avoid it)

I don't know if this happens to anyone else but hot weather kills my appetite stone dead. Then after eating next-to-nothing all day I wonder where all my energy has gone (well Duh!, as a passing American would say). If it's difficult to eat, it's even harder to cook, so what's been happening in the Lunchista kitchen of late, and more to the point where have all the lunch ideas gone? Some of us are getting quite hungry out here!

This is what we do in hot weather. In fact, in 2003 when it was ludicrously hot for a ridiculous length of time, we carried on like this for weeks. A family from the Continent were staying so there were eight of us altogether, which made for a great atmosphere.

We have an ancient wooden dining table (the sort that folds down so it hardly takes up any room when not in use) that we bought from somebody's garage for a tenner. We sanded it down and varnished it with "does exactly what it says on the tin", making it almost completely resistant to food stains, burns, and the English summer weather. If sanding isn't your bag, the alternative is a couple of yards of wipe-clean plastic to use as a tablecloth. Thus protected, the table stayed outside all summer, making every meal a delightful garden experience. Anything that fell off it onto the lawn neither broke nor needed sweeping up. Heaven.

We made salads. Not limp lettuce and quartered tomatoes with a bit of salad cream type salad: this is hard-core. First, for the meal's energy, salad spuds with parsley and chives from the garden, plus dill pickles and yoghurt. Then a dish for protein, bean salad (a cupful of blackeye beans tipped into the water in which you've just boiled your breakfast egg, and left there to soak, will only need cooking for 20 minutes or so before lunch), then add, well, anything: peppers, tomatoes, sweetcorn, nuts...

And one for colour: grated beetroot and feta cheese (half-and-half) with some walnuts.

We found lettuce tastes a lot less limp if it just has lemon juice on it. And Lunchista has discovered that strawberries go really well with Wensleydale.

Finally, glasses of wine, and a huge jug of lemonade (thank you, The Homely Year, because I didn't have the presence of mind to get a photo of ours...), or just water with lemon slices in it: Lunchista can't drink just wine in that heat. Some people keep boxes of sliced lemon in the freezer for emergencies.

It is a curious fact of life that people will have better apetites if presented with lots of different dishes and just left to get on with it while chatting, than if there's just one heavy course. Some of our lunches, with the addition of tea and cakes, lasted through until the early evening. By which time the weather had cooled down enough to get the barbeque out...

Your turn!

Picture the scene: Burns' Night (that's 25th January if you're not in the know about such things), massive "supper", the type that kicks off with the dramatic entrance of The Haggis, complete with bagpipes and ode praising its life-sustaining qualities, followed by its distribution to all present, and by some of us at least eating rather a lot of it. Just before you start to scream, might I add that there is such a thing as a vegetarian Haggis, they're delicious, and somebody had thoughtfully made sure that they were available on this particular night.

Now Burns' Night tends to follow a certain loosely-agreed "order of battle" which, after the main speeches about Poetry, Life, the Universe and Everything, the "Toast to the Lasses" and the ever-witty "Lasses' Riposte", can involve the rest of the evening's entertainment being put in the hands of the guests. Lunchista had a bit of a reputation for banter among this particular crowd, which was cheerfully invoked by the MC before I was invited to come up and get the evening's show off to a good start. No prior warning. For about a hundred people. Including the family.

Well what would you do, if this happened to you?

It wasn't until days later (it turned out to be an extremely good evening!) that it crossed my mind that the things that people have learned off by heart are in a way a resource, just like food or fuel. If you have them, you can provide for other people. A lot of us haven't bothered with this for centuries though, first because we could always look up poems in books, and later because we had the choice of switching music on, rather than having to go through all the hassle of playing it ourselves. It is also sadly true that commiting things like poems to memory, or learning to play musical instruments, both take up rather a lot of time: time which is in short supply when we are all frantically alternating between earning as much money as we can, and spending it in such a way as to impress the largest possible number of people.

But occasionally large amounts of sort-of-spare time get dumped on us without warning, for instance if we are lain off work, or go off the edge of the piste and break something. Many moons ago Lunchista got involved in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas(!) and it turned out that the chap who, for five years running, sang all the classic "patter" numbers (like "The Nightmare Song" and "Modern Major-General") only had to brush up lightly on his words, because he had used his time on an isolation ward during a Malaria scare several years previously to practise them to the point of perfection.

Even if you're not unlucky enough to be suspected of harbouring malaria, you might still be unlucky enough to have to commute, in which case some of the time might be salvageable for memorising poetry or sketches. The 60-minute train journey of my London to Brighton commute, it turns out, was used by some enterprising soul a few years after I left as a venue for her French conversation class.

Meanwhile the smaller Lunchistas, after all this, have been inspired to memorise a couple of items of choice: one of them can now sing all of The Galaxy Song, and the other is working on an anthology of terrible puns: perhaps this runs in the family!

Before I finish I might point out that here in the British Isles, it's us English who are the real slackers in the spontaneous home-made entertainment department. In Ireland, so I'm reliably informed, it's not unusual to come across an evening in a pub where all the "turns" are done by just anybody who feels like joining in. Scotland, as already mentioned, has Burns' Night and various other occasions, and I might add that my Burns' Night experience as described here took place in Wales. Yes, Wales, home of the Eisteddfod, and possibly even of Rugby songs.

Anyway, in the time it took me to get to the front of that room I remembered that there was a poem I had learned by heart decades ago, because it was funny and I happened to like it. So Silly Old Baboon (thank you Spike Milligan) kicked off the evening's entertainment, raising quite a few laughs into the bargain.