A few weeks ago, I said I liked clicking on random dates on Tricks of the Trade. This was tonight’s lucky dip – not at all seasonal, but it does make one appreciate that, in England (not sure about the wilds of Scotland where it can be bloody cold or, indeed, Wales), we don’t know what weather really is.

October 28, 2004

Coping With The Cold: Frozen Feet
If your feet start get painfully cold while outside in the winter, stand some deep unpacked snow. Snow has a constant temperature just below freezing, which could be quite warmer than the air temperature on an exceptionally chilly day.
— McGub
Posted by Matthew at 10:38 AM
October 27, 2004

Coping With The (Extreme) Cold: Arctic Explorers
If you’re camping in the arctic and the temperature at night dips below
-40 farenheight, not even the warmest sleeping bag will keep you alive all night. To survive, you’ll have to wake up after a few hours and eat something to give your body the fuel it needs to keep on keeping warm. Pop tarts are the perfect midnight snack– just put a wrapped one in your sleeping back with you when you go to sleep for the night. When you wake up chilly, eat the warmed pop tart and sleep warmly until morning.
Posted by Matthew at 10:42 AM
October 26, 2004

Coping With The Cold: Car Keys
If you find that your key won’t fit into a frozen lock, stick the key into the snow for a couple of minutes. The metal will usually contract enough to allow you to unlock your car door or whatever lock.
— Karen
While not strictly on topic, I think we’re declaring it “Coping with the Cold” week here at TotT. If you have a trick for weathering the weather, send it in.
Posted by Matthew at 03:23 PM
October 25, 2004

Coping With The Cold: Frozen Windshields
If you live in a cold area you may sometimes walk out to your car to find the windshield completely frozen over. Rather than scraping away at it you could just start you car, urn the window defroster on, and — here’s the trick — put down the sun visors. The warm air will be forced back onto the inside of the windshield and it will defrost much faster.
— Jaan B.
Posted by Matthew at 09:44 PM
October 22, 2004

Street Musician
Wear a kilt when playing bagpipes on the street. You will make twice as much money than if you wear regular clothes.
Posted by Matthew at 01:02 PM

I can’t decide which of these is the most excellent!

I couldn’t find anywhere to say these are copyright, if they are I will plead besotted adulation and apologise deeply.

I was sitting in bed doing a Tough Puzzle* at half past seven this morning when the Sage called upstairs “Hello?”
“Hello,” I replied.
And waited.
“Do you want something?” I added after a while.
Politeness is excellent, but sometimes you need to come straight out with it. Al had just had a phone call to say his assistant had hurt her wrist and couldn’t come in to work, and was wondering if I might be free for the morning?
A slight rearrangement of jobs and the abandonment of Tough Puzzles and I was free. I went and picked tomatoes and courgettes to take in with me and spent an enjoyable morning in the shop.
I’m not sure I’d like the sort of emporium where you have to do the hard sell, but a shop where people go because they want what you’ve got is very enjoyable. A particular pleasure at this time of the year because all the produce is so good. Local strawberries, currants of various colours, raspberries, cherries, gooseberries, and all the summer vegetables too, such a pleasure.
One customer has asked for a seasonal fruit box each Monday. Al is sometimes asked if he does fruit and veg boxes, and of course he is willing to, but he really prefers people to say what they want. As he says, if it’s a family of 4 or 5, they will want plenty of each item, but a single person or a couple probably wants a little of many things. And he would want to cater for personal preferences too. However, Dilly has said she is willing to make up this box, so Al just asked a few pertinent questions regarding number of people and any particular dislikes, and the chap paid for next Monday’s box.

*that the name of the magazine, not my judgement. Have you come across it? It was started up back in September 1983 (I have a random memory, erratic but specific) as a subscription only magazine. The various Logic Problem and other mags were offshoots or derivatives from it. A couple of years ago it went from monthly to quarterly – same price, same total number of puzzles, but presumably cheaper to produce, it must have a very small circulation.
We are keen enough in this family for me to have, for years, paid for three subscriptions, for me and each of my sons. Last year they offered to let you download it instead of having it posted. I opted for this – it’s over 50 pages so I’m not sure it saves me a great deal, but you are allowed to print off four copies, and since Dilly likes it too, this seemed a good idea.

I’m not sure that I’ll do it again. I’ve felt guilty all year at having denied them the extra subscriptions – even though it’s now owned by WH Smith, who can well afford it. And Al thinks I shouldn’t have done it. Even though it’s allowed (my original justification), he still says it’s not right. But, in practice, if I pay for three or four subs, I’ll still only download from one log-in. Of course, the simplest thing to do is for each of us to buy our own, but it’s been my little pleasure, to give a gift of something I like too. My father enjoyed crosswords and other puzzles and got me hooked from an early age, and I like the family link.
This is the Puzzler link. If you click on one of the Top 5 magazines, it takes you to the offer of a sample, if you might like that kind of thing.

Not for the first time, I think I’ve seen it all. SeaFairis a travelling art fair, cruising up and down the east coast of the United States. I’m sure it will do very well the on its first tour, but long-term? Well, what do I know about these things. It’s another world as far as I’m concerned. It may be marvellous. I hope they keep well out of the hurricane season though, just imagine the sound of delicate porcelain and antique furniture hitting the deck with great force.

Your IQ Is 130

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

None of the words given is actually the opposite of gregarious (boringly, I go back to Latin derivations rather than colloquial approximations) – the result is entirely unsurprising except for the first item, of course.

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

It wasn’t hard, not impressive. Though, since the last maths exam I took was O Level in 1969, I was relieved I could still do simple sums.

“Darling” said the Sage casually, “can you come with me for a minute?” I shot out of the room. He is so polite that I knew it was urgent but he didn’t want to alarm me – usually, he would have asked if I could “spare a minute.”

He had spotted Foster, his favourite cow, grazing by the kitchen garden. She looked at us and turned towards the greenhouse, then, trustingly, veered back on to the drive and onto the field. She is so used to being hand-fed that she let my husband go past her and open the gate to the field for her to go back in.
Then we saw Bart Simpson (we do not name the cows, they come to us already monickered) in the kitchen garden. We hesitated, not sure how to head her back towards the field safely. Dilly appeared and stood guard by the gate, I went into one end of the greenhouse, meaning to come out the other and drive Bart back; I reckoned that her going towards one greenhouse was better than the gap between the other two but, inevitably, that gap was her chosen route. Across the pumpkin patch and then we saw where the fence had collapsed. She ambled back into the field.

So, drama over and rarely have we been so glad of an anti-climax. We were very shaken. If one had blundered into a greenhouse, she could have done herself terrible damage. I went to check the plants, not caring in the least. The whole vegetable garden could be wrecked for all it mattered. But no, a few broad beans leaning over and nothing else touched. Even the pumpkin patch was unscathed; they had walked between the plants and not trodden on anything at all. I can’t quite believe it. I’ve firmed in the beans and put the sprinkler on and we’ve temporarily mended the fence. We discovered that the ballcock on the water tank had stuck and it was empty, and the beck had run dry; they were simply thirsty and in search of a drink. The other five cows were on the other side of the beck, thank goodness, for seven of them would surely have come to some harm.

There’s only a brief window of opportunity each year to make a summer pudding with English fruit. Black and red currants aren’t in season for long, though the different varieties of raspberries take us well through to the autumn, with the odd break. No one in the family likes it as much as I do, and it is not often worth ordering in a restaurant. They are too often tempted to put in strawberries or cherries, which just don’t add the required tang and, understandably but annoyingly, they usually make little individual puddings, which make the proportion of bread to fruit far too high.

You may have surmised from this preamble what we had for pudding for our Sunday dinner. Everyone else enjoyed it moderately, although it was generally agreed that the best way to eat it is to swallow the currants whole to avoid the seeds. I protested at this, as I love seeds. Particularly raspberry seeds, and especially when one discovers one in a deep recess of a tooth an hour or two later and has a tasty nibble. Furthermore, as I continued to enthuse to the gathered family, I love apple skin. If I peel an apple, I eat the flesh and then enjoy the flavoursome skin most of all. And if you have peeled the whole fruit in a spiral, rather than quartered, there is an extra pleasure in not breaking the long piece.
I broke off and looked around. As usual, they were all politely bemused. “Have you noticed” I added “how delicious orange pith is?”

When I was a child, I was much too polite and shy to spit out cherry stones. But, liking cherries, I used to swallow them instead. It was not so easy to get down plum stones, but I managed it once in a while. The old wives’ tale says that this gives you appendicitis – indeed, one was recommended not even to eat apple and orange pips whole. However, this old wife has not come to any harm yet; I didn’t believe it then and have no reason to now.
Times have changed and I have too. When the schoolchildren visited, one of them fished an interesting object out of the pond. “”What is this, it’s got a line all round it?” I examined the little item and identified it as an elderly cherrystone. “Sometimes” I admitted, “we hold cherrystone spitting contests out of the window. We’re not a well behaved family, I don’t recommend you copy us.”

We won the scarecrow competition last year. I think I may stop at that.
It took most people some time to ‘get’ the name.

I’ve just opened today’s post, which included a letter from the head of the Diocesan Board of Education (the village school is a Church of England school and I represented the village church on the governing body). It is quite the warmest letter of thanks that I could have received, and has touched me immensely.

Even the Sage, upon reading it, gave me a kiss (he’s not big on expressing praise, though appreciative in his actions).

Though still mindful of and affected by the sadness and problems of friends, I’m looking forward to the weekend. My daughter is visiting, we’re going to a party later to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of close friends and the sun is shining.

I wonder what you thank, if for you there is nothing beyond? Doesn’t have to be a god, let alone my God, but something beyond this world – maybe for me God is someone to thank?

I really meant to move on. But the third piece of bad news has rocked us most of all, the death of a friend in a car accident. not a personal friend, in that we’ve never visited each other’s houses, but we have known and liked each other for years; he was a well known and much respected and liked local businessman and he will be missed so much. I’m not superstitious, but I really hope that bad news comes in threes, because that means that’s the last of it.

Uneventful day, for me. Squiffany was sweet, except that she bit my nose when I was expecting a kiss. She went to sleep in the afternoon, half an hour in her cot, then she woke up and cried (because she does not like the travel cot, but I prefer to have her downstairs where I can keep an eye on her) and I picked her up and she slept for another hour and a half on me. I dozed off myself.

Friday evening market at Lovely Next Village. Many friends there, including people I don’t really know, but who are very friendly. Actually, I have a slight quandary which I would appreciate any views on – my son is thinking, at some time in the future, of raising a pig or two for meat. Now, I’m not a vegetarian and, being a professed animal lover, I accept that some may find that hypocritical. But I’m interested in ethically raised animals, humanely killed, and I have to accept that my choice to eat meat means that I’m responsible for animals being raised for the purpose. If I became vegetarian, I’d not touch dairy products either as I think that dairy herds are unnaturally and arguably cruelly treated. Hens can be raised ethically (there are compromises, but not ones the hens are aware of) so real free-range eggs are okay.

Now, we were talking about that this evening. One friend, who is vegetarian herself but her husband and sons aren’t, once raised a pig – they called her ‘Louisa for the Freezer’ and, she says, the point is that you have to accept this from the start as you cannot kill and eat a pet. Several others agreed. But I remember a friend who kept a few sheep. There was one, Longlegs – yes, she was tall – who had a personality rare in sheep. She was different. The others were nice enough, and some of them had distinctive natures; but Longlegs was one on her own. My friend took a full-time job in the end and couldn’t keep up her small hobby-flock. But she had to have a few sheep, so that Longlegs would not be lonely, as she had to stay in the family until the end of her days.
What if we had a pig like that?
But ‘happy pig’ until the time comes, I can respect that too. It’s not my choice, it’s Al’s and Dilly’s. Can I deal with it?

Although I’d lost the letter about yesterday’s meeting, I knew where and when it was. Or so I thought. Fortunately, I checked my diary at the last minute. It was in a different town and at a later time than I’d expected. Don’t quite know how that happened. There were three sessions, from 4.30 to 8pm and so they had laid on quite a substantial buffet meal, which was a nice surprise. I restrained myself to a couple of strawberries at first, but after the next meeting I gave up my virtuous self-denial and tucked in with everyone else. I knew I’d be cooking dinner when I arrived home, so didn’t want to eat much.

People seem to agree with me about acronyms. So why do we put up with it? At the end of the session – which was well presented and entertaining, partly because hardly anyone wanted to do it and there were only three of us, in contrast to the thirty at the second meeting – we filled in an evaluation form. To the question asking what I’d do as a result of this training, I said that I’d stop people in meetings and ask them to explain every acronym or abbreviation, as it was apparent that I knew hardly any of them.

Squiffany will arrive in ten minutes and I haven’t put in my contact lenses yet. See you later.