a big guy in a big city

Posted by Bone at August 31st, 2005

On bank-holiday Monday we had some excellent weather, and some visitors for several hours in the fields in front on our house. I hit my camera until it worked (v. tempted to buy a Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200, but £370 is rather a lot) and then stealthed my down the field behind some hedges to get some close-up(ish) pictures. They spotted me a few times and slowly walked a bit further away, but I still think I got some nice shots. There’s also a pic of chez Bone in there, so that any stalkers will know exactly what my house looks like.

Update: The picture of my house doesn’t seem to have been hoste right, oh well, go elsewhere stalkers!

Posted by Bone at August 31st, 2005

I didn’t realise that The O.C. was returning to American screens on September 8th, just over a week away, which means it will probably be hitting my computer screen on September 9th.

So to celebrate I obviously have to post a pic of Rachel Bilson, my most favouritest of the O.C. lovelies. Have no fear though, this isn’t turning into a(nother) blog of hot girls, I’m just not all that busy at the moment and struggling to find things to write about. Also, much to Hodge’s disappointment, it still isn’t a porn blog, so classy pictures only.

In other news, I headed off to Lancaster again yesterday and have thoroughly plundered their Great War selection, so there won’t be any more fish & chips from ‘Razzmatazz’ for me, stupid name, excellent fish.

Posted by Bone at August 29th, 2005

I thought I’d post a couple of pictures of Charlotte Hatherly (sp?) of Ash. I do have a reason actually, Hodge said he wouldn’t visit the site ‘becuase there’s no porn on it.’ I did point out that he wouldn’t know since he doesn’t visit, but never the less, I will bow to public pressure and not go down the porn route, but there is always something about a woman with guitar. And a woman with an ice lolly (or popsicle for US visitors), well, what can I say….

Andrew Bowness….. sell out.

Posted by Bone at August 29th, 2005

So the first Blade was good, the second was less good, my expectations for the third really weren’t that high.

I was curiously surprised, it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be. Yes, it was cheesy, in fact it was “le grand camembert.” Yes, the plot was non-sensical, but come on, it was a story about vampires, they really do have to try very hard to deviate from the norm. Yes, Ryan Reynolds (Berg) does swear ALL the time, but I still found that funny (yes, I am almost 21 years old, swear words make me giggle). Jessica Biel was an excellent choice for a replacement to an old bearded man.

To sum up this rather odd review, if you don’t expect Shakespeare, you might just have a good time.

Posted by Bone at August 27th, 2005

Yesterday I visited Carlisle to keep my research binge going. I found the castle that the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment museum is housed in pretty easy, afterall, it is a castle in the middle of a city. Parked up, headed in, paid £3 entry (good old student ID) and went inside. I had a look around the castle first, it’s pretty small, quite interesting, but there wasn’t much information about telling you about the place, which was a bit disappointing since I didn’t have time for a tour. I went into the little museum and looked around at the vast array or militaria and memorabilia that they have. I was very impressed, the Regiment dates from the late 18th century I think, and they had stuff dating from then to pretty much the present.

After roaming around I asked the curator what kind of stuff they had for my dissertation, unfortunately they only had a few things at hand for me to take a look at but when the guy next goes into the archive he’s gonna get a few diaries out and I can go back next week.

Little cameraphone pic of the castle Keep:

Picture of the millenium stone which is supposedly a curse upon the city. The ‘curse’ has resulted in the floods of 2005, the relegation of Carlisle Untied to the conference (though they are back in the league now), and for the fire that occurred in the Carr’s flour factory (Carr’s is Delia Roberts favourite flour, so there). It’s part of the Carlisle Millenium Gallery, that was opened by the Queen in 2002. There was a free art gallery nearby as well which was quite nice.

One of the days highlights was happening upon a food fair that’s going on in the city centre at the moment (it’s on till Bank Holiday Monday for any locals who are interested). There was loads of stalls, with various european countries being represented. I bought smoked sausages from Germany, pate from France, Churro from Spain and various fudge from, errr, England. There was also Indian food, Greek puddings, French clothing + perfume, local preserves, local organic meat, German beer and spirits, Dutch cheeses and waffles, lots of different types of bread, flavoured meringues (I’ve never seen such a thing!), a paella man, and organic pasta from Italy. I also bought a Sigur Ros album (haven’t listened to it yet, but it comes under StevieG’s recommendation) and a second hand Great War diary that was 1/4th of the Amazon price (secondhand Amazon mind you).

And to finish of this rather long and multi-media-fied post, a picture of me eating a giant German bratwurst. Tasty as…… something that’s very tasty, but it really shouldn’t have been lunch.

Posted by Claire at August 26th, 2005

I thought today would be an appropriate to leave a little message, I’ve been doing Germany stuffs all day, on the phone to this & on the phone to that. Very stressful, but beginning to get really excited now. It’s so daunting, but I think I’ll have a really good time. That’s if the darn place isn’t washed away in the current flooding!

I visited the house of wheels saturday night, can’t really remember much of it to be honest, what I do remember however, was being sent home from work the next day after 3 hours. I’d been sick. A lot. Vowed never to drink again!

I’ll see you all saturday night…

P.S. I got my stolen money back. Yay!

Posted by Bone at August 26th, 2005

The only war I struggled with today was time, my writing hand, and texting my friends when I should have been reading.

I got up obscenely late at 12:20, becuase I don’t use an alarm clock and usually employ the parental service of shouting at me when I’ve had enough sleepy-time. So I quickly had my crunchy nut cornflakes, and headed of to Lancaster to get some hard studying done. But since I was so late setting off I needed lunch by the time I got there, so I headed to Booths, but they had virtually no sandwiches left, so I ate a dissapointing chicken and bacon wrap and got on my way again.

In 4 hours of work I managed to get through (almost) one book, perhaps I’m just being a bit too scrutinous (is that even a word) in my research. Although it should be said that this book was very relevant and would have pretty much answered my question if only the book was written about the British army rather than the French.

And so, I must return to Lancaster University library once again to take advantage of their Great War collection. I do quite like it there though, maybe because it’s so quiet (well it is still the summer holidays after all).

BTW, the book I was reading was “Men at War 1914-1918: National Sentiment and Trench Journalism” by Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau. If you happen to chance upon it (though I think it may be fairly rare), it really is worth reading for the amazing stories taken from the trench newspapers.

Also, I listened to the Senses Fail album “let it enfold you” on the drive there. Its worth a listen if you are of the emo persuasion. Oh, and the Homegrown Ep “when it all comes down” (I think that’s the right name) was a blast from the past of a band that me and Rob road-tripped it to Leeds to see a few years ago, a 5 hour road-trip to see a band (and my first experience of The Early November), crazy eh?

Posted by Bone at August 25th, 2005

I know this is only very loosely advice (maybe a ‘Recipes’ category would be a step too far?) but I thought I’d share my recent adventures in Tempura with you.

I’ve always been a fan of pretty much anything battered and deep-fried, but in my rather health concious household I’ve struggled to get more than a smattering of oil into a frying pan or wok. Tonight was slightly different, we had vegetables as usual, but this time I actually wanted to eat them. Why, well rather obviously because of the prologue, they were tempura-fied my friends.

There’s not really much more to say than they were tasty-licious and really not that hard to make at all. I’d be tempted to say that if you were having a dinner party and wanted to accommodate vegetarians then these could be suitable for both the veggies and the omnivores.

The recipe for the batter is:
85g plain flour
1tablespoon of cornflour
1/2 tablespoon sea salt
200ml ice cold sparkling water
ice cubes

Sift the the two flours into a bowl, put in the salt, whisk in the water, then add the ice cubes to keep the batter cold. Dip the vegetables into the batter (pretty much any veg will do, if you think it will work, it probably will) then put them into the hot oil.

We found that the batter struggled to stick to things like mushrooms, rolling them in flour before dipping in the batter seems to help (at least it did with the desert bananas - del.ic.io.us).

There’s also a simple dip to go with them that’s really nice:

3 tablespoons of soy sauce
3 tablespoons of sherry
1 tablespoon of suger
Zest of 1 lemon

Just mix them all together in a little bowl, simple enough for anyone I think.

And that’s the end of the cookery lesson for today.

(maybe I’ll give sushi a try next time…)

Posted by Bone at August 25th, 2005

Yes, for the second day in a row we’ve had a power cut, thankfully it was short-lived. This time I went for a walk rather than reading depressing war books, just to the waterfall, but it was great to see the giant amount of water flowing over the waterfall following the recent heavy rain that we’ve had.

The dissertation research goes on, with possible book buying going on within the next few days. Off to Lancaster Uni tomorrow, then maybe the Border regiment museum in Carlisle on Friday. Busy busy busy.

Posted by Bone at August 23rd, 2005

Well? Whaddya think? Isn’t it noice? It’s a theme I found on thought mechanics called Desert_Theme, rather oppositely to the name of this blog. A few short hours later I slotted in the familiar logo, added in the prerequisite Google AdSense ads. And an Amazon searchbox down on the bottom right, but remember, out of site doesn’t have to mean out of mind in this case!

We had a power cut this afternoon, which is odd for summer, but it did allow me to read through a book about World War One, which was a picture book, which really gave me more of an insight into the war. This shouldn’t really be necessary since I’m doing my dissertation on WW1, but since I’ve never had any classes or written any essays on it, everything I know is just little bits and pieces from the Discovery channel (and the diaries that I’ve been collecting of course).