Symbolic Forest

It’s a hard thing to do.

The other week, as there’s a long weekend coming up, I booked a camping holiday, in Wales. Only a day or two later, the news outlets started running stories about how awful the Easter weekend weather was going to be; wind, rain, sleet and snow. Oh dear.

There’s still snow on the forecast for Northumbria; but the forecast for the Welsh weather, though, has got noticeably better over the past few days. It’s gone from sleet, to showers, to sunny periods. And I’ve noticed this happening before. There seems to be a tendency now for the forecasts to be more extreme further off, before calming down as the date approaches.

Which is statistically what you’d expect, of course. Extreme weather is, by definition, unlikely, and shorter-range forecasts are always more accurate, so any extreme weather in a long-range forecast is likely to mellow as the forecast gets closer. That doesn’t stop the news jumping on any forecasts of horrible blizzards, though. I’m still worried that the snow forecast for the north Pennines is going to creep southwards over the weekend.

Keyword noise: camping, Easter, holiday, prediction, rain, sleet, snow, Cymru, Wales, weather.

After Thursday’s post, Kahlan got back in touch, with a tip-off. Apparently there had been a rumoured sighting of a can of own-brand non-evil condensed milk, in a Waitrose. So our Saturday was spent driving 25 miles to Harrogate, the nearest branch,^* to find … Nestlé products firmly on the shelves. Oh well.

To make up for the disappointment, we bought an ethical jar of dulce de leche instead, and tried to make cookies, from this recipe. They didn’t quite turn out as I expected, being rather flat and soft, but they still taste good, albeit so sweet that I can barely manage to eat a couple at once. Not surprising, given the huge amount of sugar in each one.

A quick redaction of the recipe, the way we did it: take 230g of butter, chop it up, and beat it until it’s soft. Open your jar of dulce de leche and taste some just to make sure it’s not off or something. Beat 3/4 cup of light brown sugar and 1/2 cup of granulated sugar into the butter, then add 3/4 cup of dulce de leche, assuming you can scrape it out of your measuring cup, and beat that in too, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Lick your cups clean, and your fingers, and anything else the stuff has stuck to. Add 2 eggs, mixing them in one by one, before sifting 2 1/2 cups of flour, half a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of bicarb into the mixture. Rest the dough for a few minutes before putting teaspoon-sized balls of it onto baking trays lined with greaseproof paper, and bake at 160 degrees for 12-14 minutes. Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes before removing them from the baking tray; then when they are properly cold, carefully pair your cookies up into matching-sized pairs before using the last of the dulce de leche – if you have enough left – to sandwich the pairs together. Yum.

* and the only post code district left in the country that’s free of the Mighty Tesco

Keyword noise: baking, biscuits, condensed milk, dulce de leche, food, Harrogate, Nestle, recipe, shopping, Yorkshire.

“My dog’s got no nose.”

“Haven’t we been through this?”

“Shush. My dog’s got no nose.”

“How does he smell?”

Well, funny you should ask that. We’ve just joined this scheme called Smelling-Nose Dogs. You know how, in America, guide dogs are called seeing-eye dogs? My dog with no nose now has his own guide dog, who goes around, sniffs things, guides him away from odorous obstacles and generally lets him in on all the latest dog-gossip.^* And it’s given him a whole new lease of life! He’s happy, and bouncy, and has a shiny coat!^** He’s always bounding around and eager for his smelling-nose dog and him to go for a walk together. Completely unlike how he used to be, always moping in his basket unable to smell anything.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes, it’s really done him the world of good.”

“Still not very funny, though.”

“Er, no.”

* You know – which dogs have urinated on which lamp-posts and that sort of thing. Which is, I’m told, very important information for dogs.

** Not that that has much to do with anything. Maybe I should be a copywriter for Evil Nestlé’s dog-food arm.

Keyword noise: happy ending, jokes, silliness.

Regular reader Kahlan, in the comments, reminded me of a slight problem we have when it comes to the boiled condensed milk^* mentioned the other day.

The problem is: well, one of morality, and not doing evil. There’s only one brand of condensed milk that’s easy to find in this country, Carnation, produced by the rather unethical Nestlé S. A. This is a bit of a problem, particularly for K, who tries to follow the longstanding international boycott of their products as much as humanly possible. Getting hold of ethically-sound condensed milk is proving to be rather tricky.^** I’m going to write an email to Sainsburys to ask if they stock non-evil condensed milk anywhere. Neither Tesco or Morrisons seem to have a customer services email address that I can track down – they must have them, but prefer to keep their details secret from their customers. I figured it would be fairly pointless asking Asda, Part Of The Walmart Family, because they’re pretty damn evil to begin with.

* also called dulce de leche, if you’re Spanish-speaking, apparently. I will have to find someone who has tried both, to see if they really are the same thing.

** Ironically, getting hold of ethically-sound dulce de leche is rather easier, but that’s not as much fun as boiling a tin of milk for several hours.

Keyword noise: boycott, Carnation, condensed milk, dulce de leche, ethics, Nestle.

“Now, children, it’s time for you all to swear to Her Majesty The Queen. All together now:”

“FUCK OFF, HER MAJESTY!”

Seriously, now, this plan to make school-leavers swear allegiance to the monarch, if they can be bothered to, is a ridiculous one. It’s supposedly meant to instill British standards in people – that’s, an imported American ceremony, to make you feel more British. I hope schools don’t take it up, although it’s a depressing thought that they probably will, given the fervour with which they’ve started holding American-style Proms in the last ten years. That’s another horrible American import which we’re best off without.^*

It’s strange, though, that the “British standards” the government is keen on instilling are never the British standards that Britain is actually famous for, and that Britons have been famous for for hundreds of years. They’re more interested in realising some mythical moral standard where everyone doffs their cap to their betters and helps old ladies across the street.^** Such a world never actually existed, but that never stops people claiming it did.

* I don’t know many American teenagers, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the ones who don’t bother going to their prom, or hold an alternative one, are the only ones I would get along with.

** Whether they want to cross the street or not. “It’s for your own good, dear, now come over here with me.”

Keyword noise: America, Britain, loyalty, nationalism, patriotism, swearing.

No, really, they can. The one I’m thinking of hasn’t come true yet, but I’m sure it will soon. On Saturday night, I dreamed I was boiling a can of condensed milk on the stove, to make toffee.

I have no idea why I dreamed about this. In the dream, it was to use it as a sauce on top of a sponge-cake, but I’m not sure that would work. Ever since I got out of bed on Sunday morning, though, I’ve been trying to think what I could make that would involve it. Cakes, puddings, biscuits – there’s a whole world of baking out there that can involve boiled condensed milk in some fashion. All I have to do is find a reasonably simple recipe, and at least one of my dreams can come true!

Keyword noise: biscuits, cake, condensed milk, dreaming, dulce de leche, food.

“My dog’s got no nose”

“How does he smell?”

“He doesn’t. He sits around all day getting into a deeper and deeper cycle of depression, because he can’t smell anything, in one huge cloud of nose-related ennui. He never even comes out of his basket.”

“That’s quite sad, really.”

“Yeah, I don’t know why the title says it’s a joke.”

Keyword noise: jokes, silliness, tragedy.

This gets written down today, and not left any longer, so I don’t forget it.

I was jolted out of a dream about school. Why are so many dreams about school? I was jolted out, and it felt like a sharp jolt, into a shaking bed.

It was all over very quickly. Reading this post will take you much longer than the time it took in reality, so try to imagine this compressed tightly. I had time to think: something big is crashing, a truck, a plane. An army is marching down the street outside, their tanks rumbling and shaking everything. The room was shaking, and the shaking was building up, and a very deep and loud rumbling sound was getting stronger too. Something in the plumbing went splang! I was picturing a burning something outside, still, but the shaking faded away, gently and slowly. Still waking up, I realised everything was still, and the thought popped into my head: we’ve just had an earthquake. A strong earthquake. It didn’t occur to me just how unusual that was, until the next morning.^*

By the time the shaking stopped, it was about 6 or 7 seconds since I’d woken up. Groggily, I stumbled downstairs. Everything was intact, and nothing had fallen over; but the cat was racing about like a mad thing. So I did what anyone would have done: logged on to the computer and wrote a blog post about it.

* A thousand years ago it might not have been that unusual, interestingly enough. There’s a small chance that bigger earthquakes are going to be much more common from now on.

Keyword noise: earthquake, eye witness, geology, Grimsby, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, shaking.

This might seem like a strange thing to say at 1am, but: I’ve just been woken up by an earthquake. That was odd.

Keyword noise: earthquake, geology, Lincolnshire, Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, unexpected.

Driving to the office today, I was stuck behind a van which, like small tradesmen everywhere, proudly advertised a free 0800 phone number on the back. And – with little more to occupy my mind – I started wondering: is there any point, any more, in buying yourself a free phone number?

Who pays much for phone calls nowadays? Landline calls cost pence. Does anyone think: “Hmmm. Plumber A and Plumber B are both nearby – but it won’t cost me anything to call Plumber B! Hurrah!” Secondly, and even more important: most people use mobiles, now. Most people, calling from a mobile, have to pay more to call a “free” 0800 number than a normal geographical number.

The only people who are going to care about calling you for free are the people who are going to carefully weigh up the benefits of every single penny they spend. The very people, in other words, who are least likely to bring in money once they’ve phoned you. The very people who are going to query every single item on the bill. So who still buys an 0800 number?

Keyword noise: 800, bargain, business, phone number.