Dec 1, 2019 · 1 minute read
so much baking have you ever baked so much that you cannot walk i have and we'll do it all again next year!
72 eggs. 4kg of flour. A quantity of sugar that has been suppressed under the Thirty Year Rule. A very filling Thanksgiving was had, and I remain very thankful for great friends and a very understanding family.
After the madness of Thursday, Friday and Saturday were much more sedate affairs (though somehow even after cutting our order to the bone, we still managed to leave Grace of India with leftovers), even including a cozy watch of A Matter of Life and Death on a dreary, cold Saturday afternoon - definitely the appropriate environment for it. Yes, you can feel some of the damp!
And now, only three week until I’m back home again…
At the time of writing, the dessert count for next week currently stands at 17. Some might cry “lunacy!”, but I’m idly wondering if I can make it an even 20. I cannot be stopped. I probably should be stopped.
However, if nothing else, this weekend has shown me the mystical ways of the induction cooktop. I’ve always been somewhat sceptical. On Saturday, I cooked a sugar solution to 115ºC in under two minutes. So fast that I was completely unprepared and had to scramble to get my hazelnuts out of the oven.1 It’s amazing, and may change my frequency of caramel making up here in the frozen North (it takes over an hour to make a caramel on the electric stovetop I have under normal circumstances).
After the first day of baking, I have pâte sucrée, oreo dough, gingerbread, praline paste, two rounds of croissant dough (two sets of chocolate croissants, but one set will go straight into bread pudding…), toffee with pecan-smoked almonds, a second batch of toffee with a recipe that actually worked, cookie dough, graham cracker-flavoured ice cream…,and tomato-chili jam for the bacon naan rolls we’ll be having for breakfast on Thursday (shamelessly stolen from Dishoom).
I have no non-cooking news. Everything is now baking until the end of Friday. Or until my feet give out again.
For homemade Nutella. Everything is totally over-the-top. Have I mentioned the Black Forest Gateau that I added to the menu a few days ago and now has as many layers as the Heston one? Except they’re all different?
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Bit of a holding week this time around. We’ve finalized the dessert menu for Thanksgiving at fourteen different items (thirteen would have been unlikely, of course!), and next weekend, the baking begins in earnest! Madness!
Meanwhile, it has been a weekend of IKEA, watching Peter Egan shoot himself in the head, a young naked Richard E. Grant playing the flute, and grimy 1970s bars. I pick the best BBC dramas. Oh! I may have also broken the curse of Jubilee by making Tammy watch 24 Hour Party People. Not that it’s a classic…but, it is not something that makes you want to claw your own eyes out by the second reel. I’m getting better! Next…O Lucky Man! Hahaha, no.
(one issue with 24HPP that I didn’t really think about is that so much of the film only works if you know New Order, The Fall, Happy Mondays, Wilson, Alan Partridge, Factory…and…well, Britain in the 80s and 90s. Which is a bit of a tall order for somebody who doesn’t)
If you fly on four planes in three days, then you’re going to get sick. It’s an iron law. And all your crowing about how you managed to fit all your clothes into one backpack will not save you. So anyway…I went to Chapel Hill, I went to Raleigh, I went back to the airport, and I came home to find my cat sitting in my chair, looking at me as if to say “Well, what time do you call this? Also, I believe you’ll be giving me all the treats shortly. Or else.”
However, the week wasn’t a total loss, as I finally got confirmation that I really wasn’t dreaming this version of Regulate:
(insert a general diatribe about how American versions of pop culture history have infested and supplanted actual histories in other countries)
Right, I’m off to find some Lemsip. See you back here next week…
Nov 3, 2019 · 2 minute read
freeze all the things can you tell what it is yet
Perhaps a major middle class weekend.
Firstly, I have reached the Galaxy Brain level of consultant tech travel. When I first started working in America, I got laughed at for bringing a massive checked bag (though I feel I had the last laugh, seeing as how I ended up there for…five months?), but eventually I transitioned to bringing one of those bags that you try to stuff in the overhead compartment while everybody looks on with you with contempt. Look, I still check it about 70% of the time, okay? But this week, I’m going to Raleigh for two days, with a side trip to Chapel Hill for IP3. No big bag. No American Airlines-branded carry-on. Just my backpack and me. Adventures!
Secondly, I’m getting a chest freezer next week! Exciting, I know, but every growing family needs more freezer space. Oh, yes, I live alone. A fair point, but I need the space for my annual “how many desserts is it actually possible to make in 48hrs hours?” event, or what Americans call Thanksgiving. Anyway, I have grown a touch fed-up of having the bottom freezer compartment so full that if you close it at the wrong angle, half of what’s on the top falls behind the bottom section. So chest freezer it is!
And finally, a portable induction hob1! Perfect to add to the kitchen during the Thanksgiving madness, and an experiment to see whether it might be a more appropriate choice rather than my current thought of adding in gas burners. I know, I know.
Come back next week for…probably hilarious adventures as I attempt to actually get a chest freezer through a door…
Note to family, I know this is technically a Christmas Zone violation, but I need it for Thanksgiving…so…
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Oct 27, 2019 · 6 minute read
death to nostalgia and yet
It’s a cold, wet, and miserable weekend, which means it’s time to pick a British drama serial to watch. But. But. But! There are rules.
It Must Be Damp
No matter what you watch, there has to be a feeling that there’s no central heating working properly anywhere and there’s probably some black mold creeping up the side of the sets. Oddly, this rules out a lot of early black & white BBC serials because they just don’t feel damp enough. Once you get into 16mm film and early VT footage, though, you are golden. After 1992 or so the standard of VT footage gets good enough that things just don’t feel properly damp enough anymore. Early Taggart (especially the shot-on-VT pilot, Killer) gets Glasgow grime across very well. If you’re looking for a period piece instead, then the BBC’s adaptation of C.P. Snow’s Strangers And Brothers is worth a look.
Dark Conspiracies
Conspiracy thrillers make for a great Saturday night watch, provided you have no friends and you’d rather spend your time hunting down shifting YouTube channels finding obscure television rather than just opening Netflix. It’s great! Even better are the ones from the 1970s that envisage a dark future of government control set in the late 90s or…2020. They’ll make you forget about that Twitter account for a few hours at least.
Seek out: The Donati Conspiracy, a wonderful three-part 1973 BBC serial which had a follow-up three years later (State of Emergency), though that is sadly not on YouTube…or on DVD. 1990, which is everybody’s favourite “Labour Has Turned Us Into A Dictatorial State And Also Proto-Servalan” series. If you really want Servalan, Blake’s 7 fits here, though feel free to bail out at the end of Series B and just watch the last 5 minutes of the final episode for closure.
Oh! And Bird of Prey for the British take on WarGames. Instead of nuclear war and Matthew Broderick, you get civil servants and Richard Griffiths. GET IN!
A Play For Today? Why Thank You!
Of course, you can always turn the old strands of yore. The BBC had Play For Today, Centre Play, Theatre 625_, The Wednesday Play, and eventually Screen One/Two, while ITV had Armchair Theatre and Playhouse. I’d avoid the black and whites due to lack of that proper claustrophobic dankness that you get in early colour, and well…depending on your mood, most of the Dennis Potter plays are probably going to be a bit heavy. Still, if you do want a good Potter, Double Dare is excellent, and Blade On The Feather is also decent if you’re after some Cambridge Five aftermath goodness. Which you almost certainly are! (but we’ll return to that later)
Other great choices here include a rare non-comedic performance from Dave Allen in One Fine Day, and appropriate enough for Hallowe’en, Pandas Fen!
(Oh, also, there are some fun episodes of Performance out there - here’s a dramatization of the Oz Trial, complete with Hugh Grant in a hilarious wig and Nigel Planer playing John Peel!_)
Oh, You Want It Funny?
Okay, maybe you want a laugh. Or at least a chuckle. If you’re looking for a drama serial with a very light heart, then obviously there’s The Beiderbecke Affair (and its two sequels). “What’s wrong with being Geordie? Well, nothing, but it’s not Yorkshire, is it?”
Comedy that is both groundbreaking, fearless, and not something you’d want to watch with anybody else due to the horrific stereotypes often on display? Step up, Spike Milligan’s Q series. When it’s good, it’s amazing…other times it’s a difficult struggle.
As for sitcoms, well, there’s always Watching, for all your late-80s bird-watching romance requirements. Or, just skirting under our rules, 2point4children, the BBC’s forgotten answer to Roseanne. If you must go to ITV, I’d head for the first few series of Shelley, complete with the Thames Television Ident of all our childhoods.
A Bit of Bully, or Gameshows to Watch
Sometimes, you just want something quick and simple. Why not a classic gameshow? Because spending your night watching gameshows from 1983 is…okay, I’ll admit I’ve done it at least once.
First up, we have Bullseye. Obviously. If you’re going to watch Jim Bowen and assorted odd prizes, you should head for the earlier series which shows off the 1980s in a way that documentaries and received history can often miss. Solid working class misery. And that’s just the darts. Oho.
And then there’s 3-2-1, which I hesitate to recommend because it is…well, it’s hard to describe fully, and that’s why I end up thinking that if you haven’t seen it, you probably should sit through one episode to truly know the depths of despair. I forced my parents to watch this when I was little and here I apologize. Allo Allo I’ll stand by, but making them watch this and them not putting me up for adoption is how you know that parental love is a real thing. Part Saturday night variety show, part twisted gameshow from the very depths of Hell itself, 3-2-1 is a turgid hour of 70s entertainment dying for its last breath a decade later coupled with ‘clues’ that are…well, you have to experience one to really understand the full terror:
They are all like this. You can never win outside of random chance. For anybody that says all TV was better back in the 80s, just show them the visage of Dusty Bin.
Aside from Bully, Blankety Blank is also fun. I’m obviously talking about Les Dawson era, with all the gurning, mother-in-law jokes, and a general ‘can’t be arsed with this’ air that you could possibly need!
Documentaries!
But they were wrong. A good set of Adam Curtis documentaries is always a decent selection; you can follow along and yell when he gets the science/theories wrong. Why not try The Way of All Flesh or 25 Million Pounds if you want your Curtis a little more obscure.
Otherwise, throwing “horizon+bbc+1980s”, “equinox+channel 4”, or “world in action” into YouTube is a great way to while away an evening. Gasp! As the APT train splutters into life! Shriek! As your favourite pop stars from the 1980s are revealed to be inflating their chart positions! Find out just how you’re going to die in a nuclear explosion! (Okay, that last one is Q.E.D.)
The Gentleman’s Choice
Or, providing it’s very cold and/or damp outside, forego any of these thoughts and just plump for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People. Cold, damp, dark conspiracies, the British class system as an underlying theme, plus copious amounts of Cambridge Five allusions! And a very mute Patrick Stewart.
Never Under Any Circumstances
Don’t watch Threads if you plan on sleeping any time in the near future.
As it happens, I ended up spending Saturday night watching far too many UK commercials from the 1980s. I may need help.
Oct 20, 2019 · 2 minute read
always have a local Indian restaurant every game a ripoff
Last week, I realized I had mislaid my travel/restaurant credit card. I’d been lazy in cancelling it because I hadn’t got around to looking up what services are charged to that card and the other online accounts that are registered with it. It’s always an annoying process having to sort that out, and I just needed to work up the energy to be bothered to fix it.
Anyway, we went to the local Indian restaurant that we tend to go to at least once a fortnight…and as we were leaving, one of the owners came running out to give me back the credit card that I’d accidentally left there last week. So the moral of the story is always to have a local Indian restaurant to hand. Grace of India — Their chicken tikka is pretty amazing and can feed a family of four for about three days.
And! And! And! After, what…six months, the basement work is finally done! I can put things back to normal down there, rebuild the chocolate room just in time for Thanksgiving, and it means that we can also start planning out things for the Crazy Downstairs Escape Room / Murder Mystery. Hurrah!
Otherwise, I have been mostly spending the week thinking far too much about Horace and getting increasingly frustrated with people who seem to think that just because you can do something (i.e. copyright strikes), you have to do it. And like ‘fetch’, Horace is never going to happen. Almost nobody cared about him during the actual era of the Spectrum, for goodness sake. Making a few appearances in a YouTube series is…not exactly on the same level as making Mario a recurring character. I fear it’s only going to get worse with services like Antstream providing incentives for people to hoover up old IP and remove it from freely-available archives. I’m not a fan. I’m also not exactly looking forward to the day that Comcast discovers it owns the ZX Spectrum ROM code.
Oct 12, 2019 · 5 minute read
tammy might be evil so devious shux 2019
To be honest, I was expecting SHUX to be something of a disaster. Due to the book and other events, we didn’t do an awful lot of planning. On top of that, three days from our flight, I got an email from the hotel we’d booked saying “So…our staff are on strike, but we might be able to offer you a room at another hotel…”, which resulted in two days of frantically emailing and calling said hotel, getting stonewalled and eventually receiving an email essentially saying “…so we couldn’t book you into the other hotel, but if you would like to be a scab, then we’ll give you 25% off…”. At which point it was time to politely decline the opportunity to cross a picket line and find another hotel. Two days before flying. Oh, the fun.
However, I’m happy to report we had a wonderful time at SHUX. The new hotel was fairly spiffy and just across from this brutalist boi:
We didn’t see a lot of Vancouver, though. It was mainly just the few blocks near the Convention Centre1 and harbour (complete with floating petrol station on the sea!) for four days. Which was a little disappointing…but on the other hand we were rather busy at the convention itself.
I started the first day in traditional Ian fashion, i.e. spilling tea all over myself and having an impressive breakdown in the middle of a food court. Nice! But having calmed down a little, we played some games, I resisted the urge to shout Quiiiiiiiiiiiiins at every opportunity, and we struggled to hear the initial session over the sound of feedback (thankfully, they did manage to fix things enough so that you could actually hear Quinns’ later lecture on ‘Titled Goose Games’). We played some games, wandered around, and finished the evening in an impressive facsimile of a British pub from 1992.
But it was to be the second day that shall ever remain memorable. Firstly, I finally met @mippy! After following each other online since 2003, circumstances finally saw us in the same place, and a random meetup occurred. I also got to show off my confection-making skills to the SHUX crew - I know that Pip was quite enamoured with the Pimm’s Meeple Gummies.
We had one of our few disappointing events of the convention that day too; we took part in an-escape-room-in-a-box event that sounded so promising, but ended up being a bunch of tedious maths puzzles combined with obscure knowledge about board games (at one point, it’s important to know the points value of a certain item in Agricola. Which only one person in our team had ever played and even he thought it was esoteric). It was a hateful experience and all of us were just happy to have it over and done with. Did I mention that it also took two hours?
And then there was Blood On The Clocktower2. Now, we’d played this yesterday, and we had played another game of it in the afternoon, but what we were really looking forward to was an evening game we had been told about in the morning; a game with twice the number of players, all of whom had played the game at least once before. By a stroke of luck, both Tammy and I both ended up being on the Evil side (4 versus 13). Of course, I died fairly earlier, but I cannot convey just how brilliant Tammy was at wrapping the entire side of Good around her finger for almost two entire hours, leading to a final round where only in the last thirty seconds did one of the Good side finally realize the extent of the betrayal. It was hilarious. And we can confirm that Tammy is quite possibly a little evil (this was confirmed the next morning when Matt from SHUX outlined a BOTC strategy that was ‘evil’ and it was exactly the same as a strategy she had suggested the day before!).
(when we randomly bumped into some of the players the next day on the convention floor, one of them even pointed and hissed you! at Tammy as we walked by)
The final day was a little more sedate, partly due to me catching something nasty on Friday leaving me with a horrible sore throat (it’s now a week later and I still haven’t quite shaken it!), and partly due to us skipping a bunch of the day’s activities to walk along the harbour for a bit and watch seaplanes take off into the sky. Absolutely terrifying. Oh, and I found out that Cadbury’s Canada sells a variant of Star Bars! So…I stocked up on them. And I still have one left, so I’ve been reasonably good, I think.
So, that was my first boardgaming convention! Would I go again? Probably. It was a bit of an expensive trek to get there, especially with the last-minute hotel issue. But we had a great deal of fun, and I came back with a few more games plus I now know that backing BOTC on Kickstarter wasn’t a mistake. And, of course, Gen Con is only a little over an hour away…but it’s also ten times the size fo SHUX, which feels a little impersonal. We’ll see what happens next year!
(and Tammy will deny it, but oh, she’s so evil!so evil!)
Yes, finally back in a country that spells things correctly!
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Sep 29, 2019 · 2 minute read
moving to the country gonna eat a lot of peaches everybody loves a dennis potter joke by everybody I mean me make them watch the snowman
This week I finally got to open the impeachment bottle I’ve been saving for over two years. Hurrah!
(I know what you’re thinking, but trust me, I have an even better bottle lined up for the grand prize, no matter how that happens. One of the best bourbons from the past 40 years, and no, it isn’t Pappy)
In other news, I learnt this week that I have psoriasis on 20% of my body. It’s not something I think about too much aside from making Dennis Potter jokes that almost nobody in this country gets, but it’s a little sobering to discover it’s now a fifth of my skin. Not great. But! New treatments to try, although I’m skipping all the treatments advertised in-between episodes of Law & Order with two-minute disclaimers of all the terrifying side-effects. For now, anyway. First, we’re going to try light therapy, or “Ian goes in a fancy tanning booth twice a week.” It seems a lot safer. We’ll see how it goes…
Next weekend, I’ll be up in Canadaland! Tammy and I will be attending SHUX, where there will be dice, cards, various different types of wooden blocks, and the entire Shut Up And Sit Down team. And to celebrate, I spent this weekend making boardgame-themed treats. Presenting, the Pimm’s Meeple Gummy!
Once I get back, we’ll be firmly into October. And I think I need to start putting together a film showing schedule, one with a theme of “Look, I know I showed people some bad films, but honest, these ones are good. Trust me!” It’s going to be great, I promise…
Untitled Goose Game was exactly what I needed this week. And maybe this year. Who could resist the charms of being a horrible goose and causing mayhem to all and sundry? Nobody, and that’s why pictures of terrible geese are flooding your Twitter stream. Look at that HONK:
I’ve seen some people online describe it as ‘being a story that England likes to tell about itself and is not, and has never been, real’. Which, okay, I get. It’s very much a pastoral / village setting, a gentle affair where the only problem is a horrible goose…but I think they’re honestly trying too hard with that comment. The pub reminds me of The Red Lion out at Wendlebury, and the setting could be any village like Chesterton, Middleton Stoney, Steeple Ashton, and I’ll put £10 on the line right now that Ardley probably has a story involving something as twee.
I also have a theory about when it’s set. Consider this little snippet from when you cause havoc outside a TV shop:
I think Untitled Goose Game is set somewhere between 1988-97. Firstly, that’s such a Radio Rentals or Rumblelows-esque shop. Secondly, the old BBC logo on the TVs definitely harkens back to the pre-1997 design.
So, 1993 or so, and in an obscure Oxfordshire village.
Anyway, if you have a system capable of playing Untitled Goose Game, get it. You will be surprised at how much fun you can have honking all over town and trapping people in garages and telephone boxes.
But what about non-geese news of the week? As if there’s anything that’s as important as geese news. I ask you. Anyhow, a few things happened that I can’t really talk about yet, which makes for a boring blog entry. Hence, geese. Oh, my book went to the printers! It will soon exist! I am hopeful it may make it to the Norrington Room in Blackwell’s. That would be…something.
Also, less than two weeks to go until SHUX! Which means I’m spending next weekend making Meeple gummies…