The lost hour

Allow me to recount one of the strangest commuting days that Lunchista has ever had. It happened round about this time of year, which is why I'm reminded of it now, as the trees start to revive.

It started out normally enough, with a bus journey so routine that I have forgotten that bit altogether. But that was just to lull the unsuspecting Lunchista into a false sense of security. The first of my two trains, being late, was more crowded than usual: so much so that it was standing room only at the ends of the carriages, and not a hope of walking through into the warm, quiet bit where the passengers (remember them?) were supposed to be. Not if I wanted to get to the doors in time to get out at my stop, anyway.

Things started to go wrong just before the doors opened: I heard a bit of a kerfuffle behind me and felt a hand groping down my back. A young, smartly-dressed lass had collapsed and lay mumbling on the floor. Somebody who could spare more time than I could on the way to work called for help as soon as the doors opened. Another commuter nearby went to help the fallen girl. I only hope they knew what to do: I had ten seconds to sprint over the footbridge to my next train, or be made to feel terrible about being half an hour late in. Curiously enough, if I'd actually had any work to do when I got there, it wouldn't have been so bad, and I wouldn't have felt so guilty. Isn't that strange? As it was of course I felt terrible anyway: there were so many other people who looked as if they were doing something to help, but how will I ever know if they actually were?

There followed a working day so unremarkable that it slipped out of my consciousness as soon as I left the building to go home. My walk to the station, a third of a mile uphill and another third down, had to be brisk for two reasons: first, if I timed it just right I got straight on a train without having to wait half an hour, and second, there had been a murder nearby. I was always glad to get to the top of the route so I could see where I was going. That day I saw something else: a teenage couple were walking along chatting, when the lass suddenly, and without comment, threw up. Both continued on their way as if nothing had happened. And they hadn't even been drinking.

The way downhill is quite steep, lined with a staircase of classic blackened millstone houses: anyone parking there has to have a good handbreak. A white van pulled in just as someone was crossing the road. As I walked by it was obvious that the van hadn't hit him, but even so he just toppled over onto the tarmac. You don't forget the sound of a head hitting the road. I had to get there first in case anybody tried something daft, like moving him, or trying to drive round him and failing. People came out into the street, including a lady who said she was a nurse and knew what to do. Someone rang for an ambulance.

After all that I began to wonder, why today? What was it about this particular Monday that had done this to so many otherwise healthy-looking young people?

Those light evenings that everybody looks forward to in the spring, have a price. Some people will sail through the twice-yearly disruption to their daily rhythm. Some, like Lunchista, are a bit more sensitive but will at least try to make sure that they get enough sleep. Many will not realise that an hour of sleep has been taken from them as "the clocks go forward". I wonder how many accidents are caused by these discontinuities in time? Or how many people know that the idea was originally dreamed up by a golf enthusiast who wanted to give the Working Classes an extra hour of daylight in the summer in which to, well, work?

Winter Warmer: the veggie challenge

In Lunchista's early days of attempted vegetarian cookery, the same problem used to present itself over and over again: I just couldn't find a vegetarian dish that filled me with quite as much warmth, sleet-proof-ness and sheer alcohol tolerance as was offered by meat dishes. Given that wine appeared more often in my life than central heating (or indeed heating of any sort), this was a serious issue.

Now you know those old eejits who talk about "Things they wish they'd known at eighteen"? Well, here's mine. It is the recipe for the warmest veggie dish I know that doesn't actually involve weapons-grade curry powder. The only drawback is, it needs a bit of forward planning (unless you cheat), but it serves 4 hungry students, or one lazy student all week, even if they're vegan.

Soak 200 grammes of chick-peas overnight, then boil them for an hour (perhaps while you're reading some classic literature or tidying up after the last party). Alternatively cheat, and get 1 lb of already-cooked chick-peas.

Peel and slice into chunks 2 spuds, 3 carrots and 3 parsnips, cut up a celery or a fennel. Dice 2 red onions, a clove of garlic, a lump of ginger and some mint leaves. Make up 300g of veggie stock and drop in some threads of saffron. Grab a tin of the ever-useful Italian tomatoes and a large frying pan (or that wok, including a lid). Find 1/2 a teaspoon crushed chillies, or mild chilli powder.

Heat up a little vegetable oil in the wok, and cook all the vegetables slowly until they are soft, then lift them out of the oil and put them aside. Fry the garlic and ginger, then add the onions, mint and chillies/powder. When the onions are soft, tip the tomatoes in, simmer for a few minutes then add the chick-peas and some of the juice in which they've been cooked. Add the stock and the cooked vegetables, then simmer the lot for 25 minutes, and serve.

If there's any left over it will keep for days and days, because there is no meat and hardly any fat. This would have been extremely useful for the young Lunchista, who often came home from parties hungry. It's far cheaper and healthier than burgers or kebabs, and at 1 a.m. can of course be eaten in the relative safety and comfort of your own kitchen.

Your very good health

It has been officially ascertained by Her Majesty's Government that being out of work is bad for your health. This "truth universally acknowledged" is based on simple statistics: a greater fraction of the unemployed seek medical help than do their employed counterparts.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is Lunchista's considered opinion that in this case Her Majesty's Government are talking (to use a physicist's technical term) spherical objects.

A large chunk of the workforce in the UK is over the age of 35. By this time in life most people have some nagging health problem like back pain, knee joints that play up, headaches, unexplained tiredness, sugar balance that's going a bit wrong, that kind of thing. Never quite bad enough to cry off work, but still something we'd rather do without. But we carry on regardless, out of lack of time, lack of faith (in our ability to describe the problem to the medical profession, or in their ability to put an end to it), or sheer inertia: and anyway we're healthy enough to hold down a job, so we must be ok.

But then, for some reason completely unconnected with health, we might pack it in. Or the P45 arrives. Sociologists and psychologists and people who know far more about that sort of thing than Lunchista does, say that this often causes people to re-assess their whole lives. You know, what do I want out of life, how can I make my life better, and so on. And I've got all this time...I know, I'll go along and get my knee/back/permanent cold sorted out. Because our healthcare is free, but time-consuming, for employed and unemployed alike.

And so Lunchista is taking her sinusitis to the Doctor's, who have already offered some Antihistamine (in case I'm allergic to something) and an appointment with a specialist (which I can take up at short notice because I have no need to book time off work). Meanwhile our Primary Healthcare Trust are no doubt wrestling with the problem of how on earth Unemployment can increase the chances of Sinusitis: a phenomenon recently identified by their statisticians. Obviously further research is necessary.

And what of Lunchista's real state of health? Well, three days after my final day in my previous job, my teeth stopped bleeding. None of my other habits had changed: same food, same address, same amount of excercise (i.e. shamefully, not very much), same water supply, same teeth-brushing routine, same toothpaste and brush.

Of course I haven't had to see anybody about this: our wonderful Health Service therefore remain blissfully unaware that packing in my job may have saved my life.

Don't cheek yer Elders

As someone born towards the end of the school year, Lunchista got rather used to hearing this phrase in the playground, and always thought it might be put to better use elsewhere. So here it is, dusted off and re-purposed, as an offering to the readership of The Year-Long Lunch Break to add to your anti Swine Flu arsenel.

It all started three years ago, on the garage roof at our old house. Lunchista shinned up with a pair of loppers to take down some huge branches that were overshadowing our garden. On closer inspection (Lunchista's eyesight was never fantastic) the branches proved to be absolutely dripping with berries. Not wanting to waste them, we put them all in a bucket and then rang round the rels for ideas on how they might be used. Kudos to Lunchista's mum for knowing how to put them to good use. Here's what we did.

We sat outside with a bucket and pulled all the berries gently off the stalks. This is rather time-consuming, but if it's not done the result has a bitter taste which makes it useless for things like eating. It also happens to be the kind of job you can do while discussing the finer points of existentialism, listening to some nice home-made music (or joining in), or taking the occasional swig of wine. The advantage of working outside is obvious once you bear in mind that elderberries were used for dying clothes in days gone by. For the same reason it's a good idea to be wearing dark clothes (of course anyone discussing existentialism will already be in black, so no problems there), and not to be needed at some venue demanding clean-looking hands at any time in the near future.

Once this has all been done (except perhaps the conclusion of the existentialism argument, which can wait til another day), tip the berries into a pan, put in just enough water to cover them, then bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes or so. Then go and find an old muslin, or a pair of old tights (not fishnets!). I've found that the best way to set up the berries for straining through the cloth overnight is to spread the cloth across a sieve placed over a big bowl, pour the berries and juice in, then pick up the corners of the cloth to tie up to a sturdy fixing point.

The next day, just add some wine-mulling spices and sugar, then simmer the juice until it becomes a bit thicker like a syrup, then pour into a jar that can be sealed. We have found that it keeps in the fridge for years. We use it like Ribena (but with hot water) and it's a real pick-me-up to fight off the effects of colds and flu, especially with honey, or some port, brandy or whisky.

It's been pouring with rain since we picked our berries this year, so I have had to blag a picture for this post (thank you Felicity ThriftyLiving) instead of going out and taking my own. It has also been difficult to find many berries that haven't been eaten by birds as soon as they're ripe.

Life's a swine

Blogs, traditionally, are all about News. Most of them seem to convey information that's much more "immediate" than the musings here on the Year-Long Lunch Break. But, in a break from tradition, Lunchista is going to "do News", just for once, because it has a bearing on the Lunch Break philosophy, and anyway it might be useful.

As I write this, the WHO have raised the swine flu alert level to "5" (the highest being "6") and the first few cases of human-to-human transmission seem to have been found. It appears though that no-one can tell whether this will be another avian flu (yawn) or another 1918. Confronted with this information (or lack of it), on such a gothic evening, what should we all do?

It looks as if we're back to Battenburg Cake.

Because people can travel from one part of the country (or of the world) to another in less time than it takes for any flu symptoms to show, cutting down the risk to zero would involve not seeing anybody, until the whole thing blows over. This is clearly a case of Pink Square No. 3 costing far too much. However there are lots of other Pink Square No 3s which either cost a lot less, cost nothing, or which it is always useful to do, swine flu or no.

There is a lot of talk about the various types of face-mask and why they are ineffective. But Lunchista has to ask, who is telling us this? Why, it's Her Majesty's Government. And they do have to think about appearences rather more than Lunchista does. Specifically, can you imagine the effect on morale if people started going around hiding their faces behind masks? Until fairly recently in these parts, the only people who did this were in the process of committing some crime, in the throes of being tried for it, or hired to behead someone. Think of the opprobrium heaped on "hoodies". You could call it our cultural prejudice: you can see why someone innocently sporting a Niqaab, the full veil, comes as a bit of a shock to the system. In Japan, on the other hand, it is considered the height of rudeness, if you have a cold and have to be out and about, not to wear a mask.

You might have to forego the live footie and the rock concerts (though Lunchista appreciates that a real fan will risk death for the cause). One thing you can forego with the greatest of ease is the wretched "compulsory leisure": by that I mean all those far-too-expensive visitor attractions aimed at children, or more accurately at their parents' wallets.

You could attempt to work from home. Especially if, like Lunchista last year, your commute involves six crowded vehicles a day, at least five of which contain one or more people who are coughing or sneezing. Though that's tough if you're a hotel receptionist or a nurse. You could ease off the working hours if you're self-employed or in short-term posts via an agency.

We now move on to a Pink Square No. 3 which costs very little. A stock of food in the house is always useful. Stick to stuff you eat anyway: in Lunchista's case that's rice, pasta, beans/lentils of various sorts, cheap tins of fish, dried milk (use it for cooking once it's not needed as a store), tins of soup and the ever-useful Italian Plum Tomatoes, bread-mixture if you like your bread with character, honey, and so on. I count medicine as a type of food. Otherwise if there's panic-buying in your town all in one wave, you'll be left short, or else in a shop full of people sneezing (sans masks).

But the two best precautions cost nothing and are good to do anyway. One is simply washing hands, properly, whenever needed. The second is a bit more obscure. Research is beginning to find, not only that we are all desperately short of vitamin D, but also that it's an effective defence against unwanted microbes including viruses. So, you can either have six lunches of fish and deep green leaves every day (which would require a very long lunchbreak) or you can go for a walk in the sunshine.

Or you could tough it out and risk Pink Square No. 2. However, Lunchista's Glasgow-Edinburgh commute included walking past a small nondescript house in which a plague-stricken family were barricaded in and subsequently died. Which is far too Gothic for most people's tastes.

Happy Walpurgisnacht.