Sporadically speaking

Lazy Fridays, when I really ought to be doing something sensible with my time, or at least this Friday when I ought to be getting on with other things calls for a touch of provincial English cliché which is why it’s been a day of homemade chicken soup, shortbread and cassis.

Lacking much more than one piece of chicken, my soup tended towards rather more or a sweetcorn and carrot affair with a few pieces of shredded chicken thrown in for variety. I also couldn’t be bothered with the sort of bouquet garni business that would have required fresh doings or at least dried herbs tied up in a piece of old fabric so did with two stock cubes, vegetable and chicken respectively, topped up with some Dijon mustard and a slosh of whatever medium dry white wine was within reach. And the result was perfectly fine as far as sweetcorn soups go. Had I actually gone to the effort of fussing about with thyme and oregano the result might have tasted a little more like chicken soup really but it wasn’t a bad combination as it was anyway.

Cassis with lime cordial and a frozen slice of lime tossed in on the other hand, is nothing new really and if anything what I’m trying to do is finish off the cassis sat in the kitchen so that I have an excuse to pick up some chambord next, though I have been meaning to try this just for comparison.

As for the shortbread, I’ve found myself growing pickier than ever in regards to shop bought biscuits of anything but the digestive kind lately and seeing as I had some plain flour to use up and a container of some chocolate pieces, a small batch of shortbread seemed like an easy enough idea. I did worry at first while I was attempting to mix the flour, butter and sugar together with a fork if I shouldn’t just get the handmixer but it was a quick enough job, even if I think I’d sloshed in a little too much water at the end when I was attempting to get the dough to behave in a more dough-like fashion. But that was moderately remedied by throwing it about on an overtly floured board for a little while once the oven had reached the right temperature.



I’m not entirely certain that the shortbread came out exactly as it was supposed to but considering that I declined to really measure out anything at all and instead was more amused and distracted by the fact that the chocolate pieces I added were termed ‘chocolate vermicelli’ that was probably to be expected.


In the meantime I’m busily ignoring the fact that Boris Johnson may yet become Mayor of London and that the Tories appear to generally be winning in the local elections. If this had been a few years ago I wouldn’t have had an objection but then in an ideal world Michael Portillo would have been leader of the Tory party and I wouldn’t be sadly bewailing the fact that the EU, like Communism, is a nice idea that has a rather alarming tendency to go wrong. I think I’m falling out of love with the great European project but as long as I don’t fall in love with UKIP, and its dashingly effective leader, any time soon that probably won’t be too much of an issue. Though I have to admit that it’s a sad day when a Tory lead in the polls doesn’t at least fill some latent part of my psyche with joy as a sympathetic gut reaction before my conscious mind takes over. Well done, Cameron: you’ve cured my childhood Pavlovian conditioning.

That said, yesterday, before I rushed out to do things with my time it occurred to me that I ought to vote in the local elections on the way back rather than tell myself that I’d make a second trip out to do so. And it was only when grabbing my polling card that it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know who was running locally or what they were campaigning for. I’ve been more than a little unaware of local news of late and could probably tell you more about Abkhazia and Transylvanian goulash at the current time than discuss the merits of each prospective local candidate, so lacking just about any information I decided a quick Google was in order. I certainly didn’t have enough time to actually compare and contrast critically but I did have a chance to decide that I was probably going to vote based upon the strength of local school policy, and I did, among other things.

The only thing is, in my case at any rate, voting dependent upon school policy seems a bit of a bizarre thing to do because I don’t currently or ever intend to make myself a parent. So what I was voting on wasn’t something that specifically impacted on me. It also doesn’t impact on any associated families since the children who are still of school age are few and far between and are probably already well ensconced in a variety of public schools (British use of the term there where these places often tend to be fee paying and possibly boarding too). That said the proposition from one local party seems to be to close down two grammar schools (which aren’t necessarily fee paying) for no discernable reasons and if there’s one thing that gets my hackles up it’s the idea of curtailing access to education. Two children of one family actually did attend the respective boys and girls grammar schools in the area and from all I’ve heard those schools certainly have earned their status, so if the proposition is to close them down so that parents will be forced to send their children to a variety of state schools instead, I can’t see how that might possibly help anything.

The suggestion seems to be being made that if there are no other choices then children will be sent to state schools and thus somehow the states schools themselves will be forced to improve but I really can’t see anything working out like that. The government is free to improve the standard of education provided by state schools but until they do then those schools are hardly going to be the preferred option. And I’m pretty sure that that’s been born out in areas where the state schools excel and parents are preferring to send their children there rather than to the competing denominational schools and sundry. But the improvement in quality of education must come first otherwise what’s being proposed is using entire batches of students as demonstrational aids to prove that a school is failing and if nobody actually improves matters then all it will do is turn out legions of individuals like the first lot who’ve been failed by the educational system. Which doesn’t strike me as particularly conducive to anything.