I love sausages,so to motivate me to eat fruit,I make my five favourite sausages,because generally I find fruit rather boring.
I buy the skin of the sausages on the Internet, and this has been very much a trial and error process.However,I now have the perfect vegetarian gelatin based skin to use with my sausage making machine.
So my favourites are
Banana Sausage
Strawberry Sausage
Tomato Sausage
New Zealand Kiwi Sausage
Blueberry Sausage.
I make one batch flavour a day and freeze them.I aim to have my five favourite flavours each day and cook them many ways. I never get bored with them.
What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
She tweaked it, and suddenly the blossom fell.
Blossom
“That’s Blossom! “she thought to herself.Some petals fell to the ground, and she gathered them up and took them home to make the most delectable perfume. The other petals she left on the ground as the flowers had seed in them and would make blossom next year.
Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.
There is no special someone.Everyone I’ve met,everything I’ve read, and everyone I might meet has,does, and will have an impact on me.All positive because we communicate and learn from each other.
Even the worst evil can have a positive impact as the world turns against it and reminds us that we can stop it when we choose to.
It was the beginning of her shift,she had resigned two weeks ago, and tonight, after five years ,she would leave and never come back.Well ,she might come back as a customer at Christmas , Wankroses Christmas Food had been quite good and they usually had quite a good range of spices which were handy at Christmas.
The experience of working in a mainstream supermarket had been new to her, and she felt she had fitted in quite well.
Being on the till had seemed quite daunting to her at first ,but she had soon realised that it wasn’t really that difficult,that the powers that be felt they had reduced the complexity of the task to scanning a bar code and swiping from left to right.
She laughed to herself whilst sitting there that her slender wrists movement and a gentle rotation of the hand were done with such aplomb that the customers were in awe of her deftness.
In truth,the customers were in awe of her friendliness and understanding.Something ,she learned that Wankroses Management needed lessons in.
So here they were, an hour and a half into her last shift.She wasn’t allowed near the tills or running the self checkout, which gave the duty manager an absolute headache but made her smile.
“Rules was rules”.
She, on the other hand, knew there was a lot that needed done; so she wasn’t going to be bored on shift. She began by pulling products forward on the shelves which had been in dissaray.There was a spillage by a customer of a fruit yoghurt,she cleaned the squidgy mess up,and put the yellow warning sign over the wet patch so that no one would slip on it,while the wet floor dried.
It was as she came out of the back of the shop;she saw the young man with a rucksack on his back go straight up to the Lottery and Cigarettes area.
Definately, an 18-25 check she thought to herself,and watched as one of the young shop assistants who was as bright as a button and that she really liked went behind the counter and served the young man.
She wasn’t paying much attention as she tidied up some giftwrap and noticed that the young man had left the store. The young shop assistant came over and said to her.
“Would you have age checked him?”
“Well, yes,I think I would,no harm in asking for ID.”
“Oh ,I should have done,I nearly did.”
Just then, the young man returned and walked up to the young shop assistant with a letter and handed it to her.The young lad had been a mystery shopper and the store had been caught selling restricted goods to an underage shopper.
Too late,the Duty Manager came out and started telling everyone that he had heard from another shop that the mystery shopper was in the area and that to be extra careful.
The young shop assistant burst into tears and held out the letter.
Funny, she tried a month or two back to warn the Store Manager that things were not as they should be when the duty manager was on.
It was the second sale of restricted goods to a minor in one month.
All that happened after her talk with the store manager was she had been subjected to further sexist behaviour by said Duty Manager, and things went from bad to worse.She decided it was time to go.If there isn’t a willingness to improve things will never improve.
The said Duty Manager that they were now so short staffed that she would have to do all the things that the rules said she shouldn’t do as the poor bright as a button shop assistant would have to be interviewed and do her training again in the back of the shop.
At the end of the shift, when the shop staff were standing at the door waiting to leave and saying their final goodbyes to her .
The Duty Manager passed by her, and she said “Freedom ” straight in his ear. Knowing that the Duty Manager certainly was not a free man,but she was free now.
OK I admit it , we had it pretty good. I’ve always had an economic option or “a job and prospects” as some people like to call it. But all that has really worn very thin in the UK. I suppose I’ve noticed it over the last 20 years or so this feeling of being left behind or being totally overwhelmed and I don’t think I’m the only one.
I intend this book to be a best seller, it won’t solve all your problems but it will help you to help yourself(my last chapter) Not in a free market Liz sort of way ;but in practical terms with the tools ,legislation and government that still exist despite the free marketeers .(see Chapter 12 if you want solutions without the back story, but you’ll miss so much fun, because the story is quite incredible )
In the meantime, for those who would like to know. How did we get ourselves in the vaguely United Kingdom into this unequal, unholy mess?
Was it the Global Economy? Was it America’s fault? Was it class wars, or lack of class wars? Was it immigration? Laziness of the working classes (assuming classes still exist) or just lack of interest by the average voter in the system? Was it devolution or no devolution? The expense of setting up Scottish and Welsh assemblies and the inevitable nursing of the Northern Ireland assembly to re-establish itself and be run by Peace Loving Politicians.(We can only hope)
The cost of this Government Hierarchy to the Public Purse is phenomenal and it doesn’t stop there. We still have an ancient Parliamentary system with heaven knows what costs and expenses to keep it going. The building itself is needing eye watering amounts spent on it just to meet fairly basic health and safety requirements. An awful lot of hot air is debated and fine wines and beer drunk. It’s a time and motion nightmare, and to most of the population who are not professional politicians, irrelevant.
We also have Public Inquiries which cost an absolute fortune to run and generally keep Kings Counsel’s, Retired Judges, Barristers and their associated administration staff, busy with a full-time job for on average 3-5 years. It would be cheap of me to say jobs for the boys and girls.
With very little redress to the protagonists, currently it’s the Horizon Scandal, a few years back it was The Grenfell Inquiry. For some reason the NHS Blood Scandal didn’t get a full inquiry. Not to ignore the immense Human Cost of these Scandal’s and Events which lift the lid on Gross Inadequacies and Corruption of past events. The money from Public Funds ( enough to run a Medium to Large Sized manufacturing Company for five years )is spent looking at what has gone wrong and the truth comes out in a lawyerly fashion.
These enquiries produce nothing except evidence for Compensation Claims, which though thoroughly deserving, in many cases come too little to late for the people involved. The same applies to the endless committees run by the Government, with parties from all sides acting like a Court , but with no power to actually do anything. It’s embarrassing for the Executives of Thames Water to be questioned over “water leaks and sewage but it doesn’t actually stop them from doing the damage. And there is the rub , ladies and gentlemen.
We are a nation of evidence gatherers and pointer outers. In my younger days there were no student loans. If you got the necessary grades you got your tertiary education because that was what the Government wanted ( Not now it seems, they want young people to do National Service, bit of a turnaround that). Students’ digs were not expensive, the tuition fees were paid for by the government. The government of the people wanted more tertiary educated people, and they got them.
Those tertiary educated people have been the ones in positions of power now for the last thirty years or so. They grew up expecting things to be free for them and for them to be entitled as long as they performed intellectually and proved themselves academically.
On the whole, with the big prizes of promotions and titles in sight, they lost their moral compass and started making judgements on others who did not tick as many academic boxes as them. Ticking boxes became a lifeline to those who quickly became out of their depth even with their perceived intellectual prowess as the world changed and changed very quickly. Enter Bill Gates, Google and Steve Jobs. Suddenly there was loads of money and embracing technology was the way to get it.
To be honest, these “Baby Boomers” couldn’t have helped themselves .Latin verbs versus an Excel spreadsheet. Latin verbs may have bugged them, but they didn’t have bugs in them. (Yes , I have been watching the Post Office Horizon Scandal on You-Tube) and the people involved in that , some are claiming that they could barely work a computer , how were they supposed to know what a bug was? Indeed why were they Senior Managers?
Human nature is what it is. After buying their first house and being in the upper quartile of earners and perhaps having a second home and three foreign holidays a year and being recognised as leaders of the proletariat.
Their lives became invested in responding to the demands of those who were above them( whoever they are, more of that later) and what those above them said they wanted .Efficiency and reduced costs.
Well, no one is going to give all those perks up lightly or even argue for the Keynesian view that actually building a road to help infrastructure and productivity for the greater good is worthwhile.
The Greater Good went out the window. No ,if one person can do the work of four and robots can replace people, then productivity will be increased at a lower cost, what a wonderful model, and my boss will be impressed with me and my workers will be able to afford to buy my house from me and I will move up the housing ladder ,maybe buy myself some land. Meanwhile ,my workers will be mortgaged to the hilt and will have to do overtime to pay for it.
This selfish attitude is what SKU’d the economy. Yet in every area of life it is our business model. Bill Gates was a dog eats dog sort of businessman. Excel has never really worked well, it’s a sales managers tool largely used to compare performance and costs .
Steve Jobs was more interested in the Arts, Graphics and Music side of life, and I’m grateful for his products, but hell they cost the earth and then Google,( my preferred Search Engine), has decided it wants me to pay for storage, controls my access to news and wants me to watch endless advertisements. Steve Jobs is probably self-rotating in his grave wondering where things went wrong.
I can feel the frustration of the mob ,how dare I?Our Sacred Sir Paul,who never has done harm to anyone and has done so much good.
Yes,but he is not my favourite Beatle, and I don’t like his sense of humour when I see him being interviewed.
I also am not vegetarian and will never be,although I’m not in total disagreement with Sir Paul’s views on this and have definitely reduced my consumption of meat and increased my culinary expertise with the more common vegetables.(My carrot Byrriani is to die for).
Also,I look for good animal welfare standards whenever I shop and am concerned that gung-ho trade deals by governments may let unacceptable imports enter into the food chain.
However,I will never be vegetarian, and neither will my dog.
Anyway,my disagreement with Sir Paul started with the break up of the Beatles(I think it was his fault).I never knew what really happened and my disagreement may be totally illogical.
However, the Mull of Kintyre debacle was the decider.He was living the “Good Life”even before Tom and Barbara(Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall) on a Scottish Peninsula, that he bought.He now lives between London and New York.I don’t believe that is compatible.
Plus ,the bagpipes and the video of that record.No wonder he produced Band on The Run.
Anyway, what I know of Sir Paul is only the Publicity Sausage Machine(albeit vegetarian).I know nothing about the real man,so no hard feelings; and my virtual nice clean tee shirt has been ruined by the virtual rotten tomatoes thrown at me.
Career is not a bad word as long as you don’t take it too seriously.Otherwise, you go careering into Death… which is a fate worse than Life.
Oh, and pages of cv’s are mostly boring, and no one cares about your hobbies, which really are far more interesting and tell them more about what kind of person you really are.
Indeed,recruitment for most jobs now is analouge and homogenised.They want to fit the peg to the hole and not the other way round.
I will have to view the prompt slightly differently,in that I hope it wasn’t the last live performance I will see and that I have more theatre, concerts and comedy to see.
It was Macbeth in a field at Buscot Lock. The Touring Theatre Group’s name escapes me for the moment ,but they were all male and had great voices and had no problem portraying their characters.
I love sitting on camp chairs with a small picnic beside me and a plastic beaker of apple juice and watching a different version of my favourite, life unravelling play.
I like to be at the back and move my chair if anyone sits in front of me and I can’t see.I try to get on higher ground.It was a nice evening and I didn’t buy a programme.
We were watching the beach yesterday from the balcony of my aunt’s holiday let at Perranporth.It was about six thirty and the Lifeguard’s had gone home.
I hadn’t seen the man with an inflatable dinghy, and three young children walk down to the waters edge.The exact place where the lifeguards warn of strong currents and rip tides that will pull you out to sea.
I did notice the all terrain vehicle from the surf club,driving towards the man who by now had the children in the flimsy inflatable and was ready to launch it.
Luckily ,the vehicle reached him in time, and what looked a gentle but firm conversation ensued.
The two toddlers and a not much bigger child hopped out of the inflatable.There was no glamour,no TV cameras, or journalists reporting the situation.
But lives were definitely saved.I watched as the all terrain vehicle returned to the surf club hut and the man with the dinghy balanced on his shoulders and head with the three children in silouhette following behind him in the fading light to a little pool where the dinghy could be launched and the children could have fun and everyone be safe.
Community is not some posh middle class village life view of life. Community is really caring about those around you who you interact with.
Don’t trust badges of award or credits,or multimillion pound charity benefits.Trust the people who help where they can,make people feel better and keep an eye on those less fortunate( not to see what they are up to) but to act as a safety net if things go astray for them.
thenotsomightyom 