Esk

1: Look up Rhubarb crumble on Google, click the first result. It should be James Martin’s recipe. Here.
1a: Try very hard to ignore the huge amounts of butter and sugar involved.
2: Proceed as directed, except 2 mins before the rhubarb is done in the oven, add raspberries and 2 more tbsp caster sugar. Yes, more sugar. It makes the raspberries even nicer.
3: Eat a quarter per person with ice cream. Later, return secretly and eat any remainder. You do not need “befores” if you’re going to do this!

I like making afters/pudding/dessert*, I’m going to do it more often. Jim made a rhubarb and gooseberry pie last night and it was tasty too, but I’m still not quite sure how I feel about gooseberries.

*Pudding is a specific type of afters, no? E.g. ice cream can be dessert but not pudding?

PS: Congrats to Jon and Hayley!

On election night itself, I was painfully disappointed. The Lib Dems had lost seats, of all things, which struck me as yet another indication of a broken system. We held Ceredigion with a huge margin (>8000 votes) which made me feel like my vote counted for a lot less than it did in 2005, when we won it from Plaid by a mere 200 or so.

As the final result of a hung parliament emerged, I was unsurprised. Evey poll for the last month had pointed at it, and the exit poll was equally sure. What I didn’t expect was the LibCon (or ConDem for haters) coalition that we now have. Going back over the last few days, I first expected a Con minority government, no deals, because the numbers didn’t really allow for a LibLab majority unless they cobbled together some sort of fragile rainbow which, to me at least, seemed much more unstable than a simple minority goverment. And of course, there was no way the Tories could work with the Lib Dems, was there?

Talking to other people convinced me of at least a chance that a progressive alliance could work, but I fairly consistently pointed out that whilst the party similarities might allow for it more easily, the balance of seats just did not.

Many Lib Dem voters, especially those who voted for the Lib Dems for reform rather than because they actually supported their other policies, may be angry at Nick Clegg. He’s done a deal with the devil, in their eyes. But to those who wanted reform, as has surely been pointed out by now: this type of government is exactly what you are asking for! This is a test run of what you will get if we reform the system to be more proportional — even AV will make some headway towards it. If you don’t like it, you should have voted for whichever party would oust the party you don’t like. Tactical voting is much less of an issue in AV or STV. More equally sized constituencies will also help a bit. No, we’re probably not going to get Proportional Representation. But isn’t any electoral reform that genuinely comes from within the system going to be an impressive step forward?

From the sounds coming from the media and more importantly the Lib Dems, Labour never really had a serious plan for coalition. What was it that you wanted Nick Clegg to do, exactly? Go back on his word and refuse to deal, resulting in a Conservative minority government and no hope of reform? This way the policies of each party to be implemented are set out in a manifesto-like way at the beginning. It remains to be seen whether the promises will be kept. But I tell you what, surely if you’ve got yourself a deputy prime minister and another 4 cabinet positions, Lib Dems, haven’t you won? Surely this was the best possible outcome?

No, I don’t really like David Cameron. He’s smarmy. His general attitude galls me. But if more people voted Tory and more Tory seats were claimed than for any other party, he deserves a bit of a say-so, doesn’t he? And what, so do Labour? Yes, and they’ll get to have their say as the opposition, which ought to be fine. I don’t want to say they’ve had their turn, but they have had a very long go at running the country, outcomes have been some good, some bad, and now the country wants someone else or some other system, ideally both.

It’s not going to be an easy ride for anyone. What the Lib Dems have achieved is to make David Cameron’s job really really hard whilst not giving him much option to avoid doing it. He’s going to be unpopular within and outside his party, most of the time. There’s a chance it’ll lend him a bit more humility, and it’s certain that he won’t be able to run sweeping conservative changes across the country in the manner he would have if he’d got a majority.

If all my other arguments have failed, then just remember this: the coalition Nick Clegg and David Cameron secured was possible because they were able to compromise and behave decently. That they were able to do this despite glaring differences in ideology is a glimmer of hope for fair and honest government. Just a glimmer, but at least a glimmer, of hope.

Claire’s Tantalising Tomato Pasta
Serves 2, or 1 if you put a bit less of everything in.

Ingredients:
1 onion (red is best)
oil (vegetable or olive, not extra virgin as it’s no good for frying)
Some cheese (parmesanalike or a strong cheddar)
1 tin chopped tomatoes
Tomato puree (3 tbsp)
Balsamic vinegar (1 tbsp)
Schwartz Italian seasoning (I know, replace with chopped garlic at the onion stage and then basil and oregano at the seasoning stage if you like)
Mushrooms (little ones are easiest)
1 Red Pepper (Ramero is best)
Some Pasta (200g should do it)

Equipment:
2 saucepans or 1 saucepan, one frying pan
1 wooden spoon
2 hobs
Plate
Fork
Spoon
Cheese grater
Pasta strainer (or in a pinch, the cheese grater)
another plate for the cheese to sit on while you wait
chopping board
Knife for chopping veg

1. Put pasta in saucepan, cover with water about an inch above it. Add tbsp oil to stop sticking. Add vegetable stock cube for tasty taste.
2. Put pan on hob, turn hob on to a high heat (so it boils). Use a lid to speed up cooking if you like.
3. Chop onion. Chop mushrooms. Chop pepper. All into pieces about the same size as the bits of pasta (because vastly different food sizes are confusing and bewildering). If you are not quick at this you should do it before you start cooking the pasta.
4. Fry onion in oil (and fry garlic too if you’ve gone that way) in a saucepan or large frying pan until brown. High heat for this.
5. Fry red pepper for about a minute, then add chopped toms and turn heat down so that it all simmers rather than explodes out of the pan. Do not lid it, as you want it to reduce, and the moisture needs somewhere to go. Also, add tomato puree at this point. Mmm, puree. You can eat a bit out of the tube, it’s ok, no-one’s looking.
6. Add mushrooms and seasoning, you can use quite a lot of the seasoning, say 2 tbsp.
7. Wait, keep an eye on everything, stir each pan occasionally. turn heat down on pasta if it looks like it might overboil. Add water if necessary. DO NOT PANIC.
8. When the pasta is nearly done, stir in a tbsp of balsamic vinegar to the pan with the sauce. Don’t drink any vinegar from the bottle, you can’t anyway, there’s a stupid plastic pouring device in it.
9. Try the pasta, and if it’s done how you like it, drain the pasta pot, tip the pasta on a plate, tip the sauce onto the pasta, sprinkle the cheese over the whole lot, and eat it. Fork and spoon is apparently the appropriate cutlery, but goodness knows why.
10. TURN OFF THE HOBS, and dump your empty plates in the already slightly full sink. Make a cup of tea to celebrate the culinary success that you are.

I finally started putting my new computer together from its constituent parts, and I bought DDR3 to go in it. Well, I should have looked harder at the motherboard spec, evidently…

Anyone:

a) want to buy 4GB (2 sticks) of DDR3 RAM from me, I paid £83, make me an offer.
b) want to have for free the old DDR1 RAM (2 1GB sticks) from my old computer, oh yes, it was time for an upgrade. (plenty of other bits going spare, including a *single core* processor, how retro.)
c) want to sell me at least 2GB of DDR2 RAM for less than the market price, let me know quickly as I’ll probably cave and go to Crosswood tomorrow otherwise.

On the plus side I’ve sewed up a hole in my coat, and Jimmy and I got another 5 geocaches today, bringing our total to 22. Lots of fun!

Was great to see folks from out of town visiting last week. Sorry I was so snuffly. Jimmy and I went to see Electric Six for his birthday (yes, they are still going and have released 6 more albums (of varying quality) than when I last paid any attention to them) on Saturday in Birmingham. Our plans were thrown awry at several points along the way…

1. I was so ill Wednesday evening that I almost didn’t make it out for Jimmy’s birthday meal. That night I didn’t sleep a wink and was feeling far too hot but also shivering, leading me to believe I had fever. The next day I convinced myself I had swine flu, which, given the symptoms *at the time* was fairly reasonable. I got myself a useless swine flu number for England and started thinking I might not be ok for the concert.

2. I stayed off work the rest of the week, causing me to leave the tickets on my desk.

3. I decided to print out the tickets again Saturday morning, only upon arriving on campus, we discovered the entire network down, so we couldn’t use Jimmy’s computer or a 24hr computer room to get anywhere.

4. I have no key to my office, where the previously printed tickets were, so I had to get a friendly gent with a key to let us in.
First success of the day here, we get the tickets from my desk, noting the address of the venue, O2 Academy, Dale End so that I could plan a route with my phone.

5. We head back to Jimmy’s car to discover a flat tyre. He changes the wheel whilst I try to buy some lypsyl at the union shop, as my lips are still killing me from the cold. Shop is shut.

6. I get lypsyl from Morrisons in Newtown. We have a fairly uneventful journey to Brum. We go round in only a couple of circles before finding the car park to Birmingham Central Travelodge. We park. It is £6 for 24 hours, which is what we thought, and Jimmy was prepared enough to have brought it in change, the clever bunny.

7. We can’t check in until 3pm, we are told. We wander off to the german markets and I soothe my lips on some lovely mulled wine.

8. We do a bit of looking at shops and fighting through crowds and then return to our travelodge, only to be told at checkin “you’re not staying here, you’re at Newhall Street”. Whoops, my bad. Off we trot to our actual hotel, leaving the car where it is. We find our actual hotel (much nicer and closer, in fact), check in, and have about a half hour break before getting changed ready to go to Dale End for the concert at 6, as it states on our ticket.

9. We wander back out again, arrive at the venue obviously too early as it all looks shut. We go for a pint and a bit of grub, and come back at 6.

10. Venue is still shut, despite sign outside suggesting it is the correct location. Two other groups of attendees appear. Only one of these thinks they are going to see Electric Six, the other has Shed seven tickets for the same venue. We begin to feel mild panic. The Electric Six group say “Oh, it must be over at the new place” and proceed to hike across town. We follow, seeing no better option. The Shed Seven people follow too.

11. After a long walk, we discover they were right. The O2 Academy has moved to a new location, and has 2 rooms. Both Shed Seven and Electric Six are on. There are 2 shortish queues and they haven’t even opened the doors yet. We get in with no hassle, get pints in, start looking at the youth of the crowd and feel old, deride the first act, love the second act, enjoy Electric Six but feel knackered by this point and the room is like a sauna. I think I was about 2 songs away from giving in and dancing in my bra. Didn’t help that the setlist was so long!

So thanks, Ticketweb, for making our day just that little bit more complicated, by not informing me in any way that the venue on the bloody ticket was not in fact the location of the concert. If it hadn’t been for the group ahead of us, we’d probably never have found it. Genuine thanks to those knowledgeable people, whoever you are.

Despite all the aggro it was actually a nice weekend, we did a little shopping, raped Borders for cheap books as it’s closing down, and ate at the cute Mount Fuji cafe that Penny recommended to us, where I had the tastiest Miso soup and a lovely chicken bento box, whilst Jimmy had an even tastier pork bento box with delicious sticky sauce. It’s round the corner from Wagamama, good for small lunches and devoid of queues — or at least it was at 12pm on a Sunday. I want to go again already.

Dan and I broke up yesterday, and we’re both feeling frankly rubbish. I feel as though this has been coming for an awfully long time, and yet my mind keeps going over and over what we could have done differently to avoid this. However with me being me, and Dan being Dan, I doubt it could have panned out any other way. In the end, we are great individuals but we don’t actually function all that well as a couple, at least, not anymore. Hopefully we can keep our friendship, if we have the space and the will.

I’m so sorry everyone. Please help us make this transition as painless as possible.

Dan writes about it on his blog.

I frequent Bicon, and many people there have self-identifying labels which, if I use them in the outside world, are rejected or laughed at by even my closest friends. This upsets me. I am often told that “label x” just doesn’t mean that, it means this, and therefore the person doing the self-labelling is wrong. I can’t agree. What I can say is that if their label is obscure or badly understood by the general populus, most people aren’t going to get it, and perhaps it is therefore a useless label.

What I would prefer is that when a minority group comes up with a label that against all odds most of them agree on the meaning of, the wider world would do well to accept it and its meaning as a shorthand for what it represents.

An example, to make this all a lot less vague:

Sex
What chromosomes you have, and what primary and secondary sex characteristics you have. It is possible for even these to be “mismatched” for want of a better word, either through having a different set of chromosomes from XY/XX, or by your body developing in different ways that the expected (given the chromosomes), or by surgery.

Gender
Gender is an individual’s self perception as male or female or both or neither or something inbetween. It may or may not line up with what their chromosomes or physical characteristics are. It is possible, for example, for someone to have female genitalia and be brought up female, and identify as female, and yet have XY chromosomes. Many combinations are possible. There IS NO EASY WAY to say what someone’s gender is by simply looking. Take the difference between perhaps a transwoman and a transvestite - both could appear identical, and yet one identifies as a woman, the other as a man (very often). The point is that gender is not a black and white issue, and gender and sex do not mean the same thing.

Statistically, in the ‘real’ world, you’re not going to get it wrong very often. Most people who want to be thought of as male do all the things society expects of men, and vice versa for people who want to be seen as women. Thus, even the least convincing (physically) male transvestite or transwoman is going to be called “she” or “her” by all but the most insensitive souls, as long as she’s put on a bit of makeup and a dress so you know what to do. Likewise, any transman wanting joe public to treat them as a man will don typical male clothes, maybe somehow achieve a bit of stubble, short hair etc. because it makes it easier for everyone else to guess the right pronoun.

There is no easy solution, however, for those people who reject gender labels entirely, or believe themselves to be in the middle. You can’t dress like someone with no gender, because society doesn’t have a blueprint for that. Whatever you do, people are most likely to go on your physical characteristics and plump for one thing or the other. And it’s hard to blame them. Thus, such people find a term to describe themselves, so that people who know them can at least be sensitive to it. Usually that term is genderqueer or transgender.

If someone said “I am a couch, not a person” I could refute it, because being a couch is not a social construct, it is a physical description of an object. I think it’s different when you are referring to your place in society, and that is pretty much all gender refers to. The trouble is the same words are used at the physical level as at the social level. Thus, a genderqueer person who e.g. feels they have no gender, and yet was “born” a woman, can reasonably state “I am female” (sex characteristics) and also “I am not female” (identity). What do we do about this? What about if we could magically make all words gender neutral, so you could only be referred to as a person, never as a woman or a man? Would different people be upset at that? It is all compounded by some people feeling very strongly about gender whilst others don’t believe it exists at all.

Here’s a completely different example: What if someone says “I don’t believe there’s a God, but I’m a Christian?” Is that concrete enough that we can say “No you aren’t”? What about if they say “I’m a Jew” instead? Now it’s a race too, but which is meant, the race or the religion? What about “I’m a Catholic”? Dara O’Briain manages that one, though I’m not sure how seriously he means it.

I don’t have an answer, but I wish there was more respect given from all sides. There isn’t an obvious solution for every situation. I identify as an atheist but by some logics come out agnostic. That annoys me because of connotations *I* make when someone else says they are agnostic (e.g. that they don’t care, or are 50/50 on the matter). I want to assert my right to be called atheist, even if society in its entirety thinks I’m agnostic! And that is no use to me, or to them. Therefore I am inclined to think that the more people who understand a label the same way, the more useful it can be. Maybe we should just talk more instead of giving one-word answers to everything and hoping that the other person has made the right assumption.

Wikipedia’s article ‘transgender’ was really useful when writing this post.

I’ve not updated in a while, and since last time I’ve got my own flat, been to Portugal, been to Bicon and released a survey for my research. It is the latter to which I draw your attention at this very moment:

Compare Music (go on you know you want to)

Please rate some music, if you have the time. I am working on a reward system to encourage you all, possibly in the form of a shiny facebook trophy to display to all and sundry from your profile. I am also working on a non-facebook version for those of you who are anti-social-networking!

Again I find myself with little to say that hasn’t already been said by Dan, but Bicon was fab as always, Portugal was fun but not warm enough, and my flat is still on the wonk, and still nice to have.

At the weekend I attended Herofest, a Live Roleplaying festival down in south Wales. I have up until this point never done any live roleplaying, nor have I really done any table-top roleplaying. I have played quite a lot of Oblivion, but that probably doesn’t count. Despite my complete lack of experience and my trepidation, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would really like to go again. It’s all Rich’s fault.

We travelled down on the Thursday as Rich was faction rep for the Dai Fae Dyne so needed to be there a day early. On the way we visited a Welsh cider mill where we spent copious quantities of money of even greater quantities of alcohol, some of which I have brought back with me, you’ll be glad to hear. After trying a few “tasters” of cider, which were about a third of a pint each, I was a little bit tipsy and might have sung all the way to Candleston, which is roughly here.

Having arrived we met with the few others who were that early, and tried to pitch our tents. Rich had brought a 5m diameter bell tent which proved not too difficult to put up once we found enough space for it, whereas I’d borrowed Jimmy’s 3-man tent. It’s a nice tent, but without any instructions I’m ashamed to say it took me probably 45 minutes to pitch. One reason might be that I started with the outer sheet both inside out and rotated 90 degrees from where it should have been. The other is that the double guy ropes confused me. Ah, it’s been too long since I went camping.

After that I think we went shopping for food that we never ended up eating because we were too busy to even keep a fire going most of the time. I did buy two fold-up chairs though. I spent most of Thursday and Friday worrying about my costume, which I’d basically picked up in a few charity shops at the last minute with the instructions “find something green and brown”. It was alright, not too obviously modern but I still ended up buying a few extra bits and pieces from the traders at the site. I now own a large brown cloak, which I might take to the beach and sit on to ensure it gets some real-life use.

I paid for the meal deal which was well worth it, as it meant we got Friday supper through to Sunday breakfast for £30 and no need to cook over the fire, and proper cutlery and plates and a tavern with a roof in which to eat and drink without getting rained on. The food was pretty good, especially the tasty chilli, and a full breakfast was plain necessary after a day of running around. Talking of the facilities, unlike mose camp sites the showers not only worked but were quite strong and plenty hot enough. The toilets even had loo roll. Whatever next?

The rest of our faction turned up a bit later, until there were 6 of us. Uglee (Shane) the half-orc warrior, Angus (Dave) and Haggis (Andy) who were wee free men warriors, Prudence (Helen) the witch scribe, and Fylgar (Rich), who was faction rep so automatically was a healer-scribe, and Esk (me) the bard healer. Since my guitar didn’t work properly, I ended up being Esk the cursed Bard for the duration.

(photo courtesy Tim Salmon, thanks Tim)

Our faction — The Dai Fae Dyne — are essentially neutral ruthless traders, so I spent a lot of time making series of lucrative trades so that we could get what we needed, but also what everyone else needed and then sell it to them at high prices. This was really fun and got me running around to see all the camps, some of which were impressively decked out, in particular the Wizards Concillium and the Dym Wan.

One thing I thought was a great idea was having each faction play some wandering monsters. Costumes were provided and there is very little that is more fun than running around looking scary and trying to hit small children with a sword. The kids’ faction, the Squires, was actually one of the most violent ones, as they seemed to lack the subtlety of diplomacy and intrigue and far preferred to beat people up. Can’t blame them, really.

The people were by and large less geeky than I expected, and yet the roleplay standards were higher, despite which I found myself welcomed by mine and other factions equally well. I threw myself into things on the Friday evening when I was left representing the Dai Fae in the Tavern accompanied only by Uglee, who being an orc was not a lot of use when it came to wheeling and dealing. Since I didn’t have the scribe skill, I couldn’t write anything down, so I had to remember 3 or 4 different trade agreements that I’d tentatively made before the rest of the faction came back and someone could make a note of it all!

Being new, I wasn’t entirely aware of all the rules, which meant that I’d made the assumption that you couldn’t be attacked in the Tavern. This is almost entirely true, however it turned out that there were certain exceptions to which I was not privy, with the result that I was coming back from the loo, spotted an enemy, went in to tell Haggis, and then we both turned round to find it raised up preparing to strike — I actually screamed and tried to run but failed and took a body hit - went down, crawled off to the side and waited for someone to come and heal me. Pretty much everyone had run off, but eventually someone, I think Uglee, came and fixed me up. It was a properly immersive scary moment, which pleased me as I’d clearly suspended my disbelief to the right degree.

The focus of the weekend was the ritual of the Wizards Concillium, which appeared to involve setting fire ineptly to fireworks and a big sigil dug into the ground and filled with cotton balls. It provided an impressive end to the Saturday night, especially when it inevitably all went horribly wrong and we had monsters coming out of our ears (well, mostly the rift gate, but y’know).

After we handed in our game money for safekeeping we sat around in camp for a good while chatting before going to bed. After going to bed, the Keepers sang “I am the Music Man” with their own instruments each round, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I didn’t mind really, if I had been a bit more awake I might have got up and joined in, but that would have involved getting up and out of my cozy sleeping bag. Not going to happen.

Sunday morning we were out of character again and made a leisurely day of packing up and returning home, stopping off at Dave and Helen’s for a cuppa on the way. It was quite odd getting breakfast called out in my own name, and I nearly forgot that ‘Claire’ — rather than ‘Esk’ — was me. That could have happened any morning though, I suspect. We made it back to Aber at about 5.15 and I still went to Buffy night despite being fairly knackered.

It was somewhat like a big murder-mystery with strangers and lasting over a weekend, but with subplots and sidetracks along the way, and a lot more freedom. So if you don’t like dressing up, or you don’t like camping, or you don’t like new people, it’s possibly not for you. However, if you like most of these things, and also cider, you should let me know and come along to the Interplanar Fayre in July! If you’ve managed to read this far down, that is. Sorry about that.

I’m not going to witter on about this because there’s not a lot to say, but I did indeed go without buying clothes for an entire year, with the exceptions of a) a fancy dress costume and b) A pair of shoes because I was getting blisters going up the hill. These shoes were £7 from Barnardos, so not exactly a big spend, eh?

[edit]:Of course, the next bit was an April Fool!
Having done so well at renouncing worldly things, I have decided to convert to Buddhism. Following the 8-fold path and the 5 precepts, I shall be renouncing both alcohol and meat, and will speak only truth from now on.