The Social Path

Hypocras Recipe - just so I don't lose it...

2009-09-09T18:14:00.001+01:00

Ingredients:
2.2l (three bottles) of decent red wine170g sugar (a brown cane sugar is best)1 tbsp grated ginger4 cinnamon sticks mashed in a pestle and mortar12 cloves1 tbsp galingale½ tsp each of cardamom, nutmeg, mace, long pepper (substitute whole black peppercorns if not available) and grains of paradise
Method:
Preparation
Pour the wine into a large pan and gently heat until it is just at the point of boiling. Add all the other ingredients and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Reduce the heat and keep stirring for a few minutes before turning off the heat and allowing the mixture to cool.
Once the mixture has cooled, strain through a muslin cloth to remove the excess spices (one recipe tells you to save the spice mixture so that it can be added to your next stew).
Hypocras (or Ypocras as it was also known) was used as an aperitif, served either warm or cold with wafers, sweetmeats and comfits just before the main meal. Red wine gives you a pungent mixture. A lighter Ypocras can be made using a dry white wine (like a Sancerre) instead of red wine.

2009-03-20T20:38:00.001Z

Ah. Just spoken to kids. Apparently, I am not in charge.

2009-03-20T20:35:00.001Z

Right - I'm in charge tonight and it's time for kids -> bed...!

2009-03-20T08:20:00.001Z

Friday: what's not to love about meetings?

2009-03-19T22:16:00.001Z

J´aime ce qu´on m´interdit.
Les plaisirs impolis
J´aime quand elle me sourit...

2009-03-16T22:12:00.001Z

spag bol for tea. word of advice: never confuse "uncle bob's hot tamale cajun seasoning" and grated parmesan. you'll regret it.

2009-03-12T22:28:00.000Z

Anyone who likes rap and New Zealand should watch this spoof from NZ comedy "folk" duo flight of the conchords http://snurl.com/doxl6

2009-03-12T21:59:00.001Z

Coralie Clement-Track from 2nd album.She just has that French je-ne-sais-quoi and who knows what that is? Not me - http://snurl.com/douog

2009-03-12T21:43:00.001Z

Ah, Coralie Clement! The person I'd most like to spend the day at the beach with - great song http://snurl.com/doubn

2009-03-12T21:37:00.001Z

Travel back in time by finding all your old favourite tracks on YouTube! Muriel Laporte has the greatest lips! http://snurl.com/dotkg

2009-03-11T23:02:00.001Z

I lurve this song - until I've played it 6000 times and get bored: http://is.gd/mY9M

2009-03-09T23:49:00.001Z

Aaar! PH34R my 1337 SK1LL5, well 1337ish - we're not getting any younger, chaps. Tally ho - up the wooden hills to Bedfordshire & goodnight!

2009-03-08T23:33:00.001Z

Finally, 2 electrons on an electromagnet. One says to the other "I remember when all this was fields". Ahahaha. Hahahaha. Hahaha. ha.

2009-03-08T19:44:00.001Z

Question from son age 4:Daddy,when it's the end of the world,will Santa Claus die?HELP!Any viable innocence preserving hypothesis considered...

2009-03-06T11:14:00.001Z

If you unscrew your navel does your bum drop off?

2009-03-06T01:12:00.001Z

When recycling I find that putting the plastic bottles in with the tin cans excites me. Is that wrong? Is it really wrong?

2009-03-01T11:55:00.001Z

Before the day is out I intend to find out what the inside of my nose smells like. Not sure where to start though. thoughts?

2009-02-28T23:16:00.001Z

When placed in the mouth, molten lead and molten cheddar are almost indistinguishable from one another. J-SUS H C-RIST & I'm not even drunk.

2009-02-28T09:40:00.001Z

People who say "FACT" at the end of everything, especially when it's not a fact, are very irritating. FACT.

2009-02-28T09:38:00.001Z

If you harnessed the effort used typing on Facebook every night for a week, you would have enough energy to boil a kettle, probably. FACT.

2009-02-28T09:29:00.001Z

Did you know that the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary printed in the last 5 years? FACT - look it up...

2009-02-28T09:28:00.001Z

Ha. Suckers. I haven't really been mountain climbing! I've been here, in front of my PC, eating lard. You are so gullible!

2009-02-27T21:16:00.001Z

Everest: about half way up. Boiled up snow and ice to make hot, beefy, Bovril.

2009-02-26T12:01:00.001Z

cummon sherpas! where's my Yak's milk tea?

2009-02-25T22:20:00.001Z

Nepal. Everest Base Camp. Drinking tea with Sherpa. Makes it a bit salty.

2009-02-25T06:33:00.001Z

Wednesday: Matterhorn: Hörnli ridge route: the people below look like tiny neutral triangular chocolate ants who gave us the cuckoo clock.

2009-02-24T06:39:00.001Z

I am half way up the north face of the Eiger. Well - looking down, maybe 2 thirds. People look like ants in tiny lederhosen...

Children are little people too...

2007-12-03T10:04:00.002Z

I recently visited a jewellery shop in the town where I live. I was looking for a present for my wife and I had my two small children with me.

My wife had told me what she wanted, all I had to do was buy it. Easy, right?

The sales assistant, was assisting another customer who was wearing a cowboy hat. I'm not sure why, exactly, that was needed in the West of England on a Saturday morning.

Perhaps she ran Britains first steer herding ranch; nonetheless, she looked like she would spend some money and the sales assistant was, well, assisting her.

The sales assistant eyed me my two little children as we approached and smiled nervously, but carried on with her customer.

I browsed around, and my children became rapidly more bored and more interested in all the things in the cupboards and on the shelves in the shop.

I started issuing streams of instructions (as I do) "don't touch that, come over here, stand there, don't move..." and various informational and diversionary orders and comments issued forth as I attempted to buy some time to complete the transaction.

In the back room was a table set as for dinner, displaying some of the things that the shop had to sell. As soon as my family and I entered that room, the shop assistant broke off from schmoozing Rawhide and slid over to me:

"Excuse me, there are knives on the table".
I was a bit fazed.."Oh, okay," I said. I was at a loss as to the relevance.
"I wouldn't want them to hurt themselves".

Now, my children can be a bit wild, it's true, and on this particular Saturday morning they were getting bored. Bored with shopping, bored with shops, bored with Mummy's present. Bored.

However, they are unlikely to reach up onto a table, grab a knife and hurt themselves with it. That's just not how kids work.

At that point in time, one was lying on the floor, looking at a print of a fox hunt. The other was looking out of the window at the back of the shop.

The sales assistant Tonto'd back over to The Lone Ranger and turned her smile back on.

By this time, my children had started supplicating, "Daddy, can we" this, "Daddy, can we" that.

Now, Chisholm was starting to tut each time one of the children started a bored whine.
"Excuse me", I said, loudly. "Yes sir", said Tonto, "I'll be with you in one minute".

Now, forgive me all you people out there who fixated on the noisy or disruptive child aspect of this story. I meet people like you all the time. Once, I worried about you; about how you felt because we were disturbing your lunch or your conversation, or your dog was so interesting that you had to stop and force an impatient smile while we petted it and asked what its name was.

Once, I worried about your disapproving glares in restaurants, your tuts or mumbled comments over the adjacent table as one of my children said, "Yuck!", was bored or threw a bread roll.

Once, in fact, I was you.

Then I realised something. Children, you see, are people. Little people, with their own minds, wishes, desires and most have an insatiable interest in everything around them. And you know what annoys you? They don't care what you think. That's annoying, isn't it?
I mean you know the rules - sure, maybe you don't always obey them when you're, say, driving - but you follow the rules when it suits you and it suits you right now.

So kids making noise while you eat your lunch is spoiling something for you right now, and you'd rather that they weren't there.

Don't get me wrong - I don't expect anyone to sit and listen to my children scream and shout, or have a tantrum, as they sometimes do, because I wouldn't like that myself.

If we are in a shop or a restaurant, and if it's possible, I take them outside, - if not, I use our rewards system to discipline them, which doesn't always work, but I try.

Whilst I want them to learn appropriate conduct in different situations, the important word there is learn; learning takes time and you need to make some mistakes.

So as we left the shop, one of us had a little temper tantrum and slapped the front window really hard. A startled and horrified shop assistant glared at me. I grinned, waved and mouthed "Bye!"...and bought my present somewhere else.

Dance Face

2006-08-31T15:52:00.000+01:00

My father came round for dinner yesterday. When we had finished eating, my daughter wanted her music (a CD of children's songs) put on so she could show her dancing skills to Granddad.

After listening to some children's songs, I persuaded my daughter (she's almost 3) that Abba's "Dancing Queen" was good to dance to.

We then moved on to trad-Irish band Danu's "The road less traveled" and track 3 which is called "Top If Off / Jig Gan Ainm / Kilkenny Jig / Alasdruims March" (it's 4 pieces of music in one track) and we were soon dancing round the kitchen with my wife and my dad taking it in turns to jig with my son and daughter.

So I noticed that when I dance, I cover my bottom lip with my upper teeth. My wife maintains a fixed smile (she learnt Jazz Jive dancing for a long time) and my dad pulls the same sequence of faces involving raising his eyebrows and making an "ooh" shape with his lips. My daughter pulls exactly the same face as my wife and my son just looks annoyed.

What's your dance face like?

By the way, the album "The road less traveled" contains a number of tracks whose names end in "gan ainm". This is Gaelic for "without a name". There are many jigs, reels and hornpipes called "ril gan ainm" (ril = reel) or what have you.

Sure, what do you need to give them names for? Mine's a Guinness there, Padraig!

Murad's Top Tips 1

2006-07-27T15:06:00.000+01:00

Number 1 in an occasional series of "Murad's Top Tips":

BMW Drivers: Benefit from economies of scale by moving to France. Then we can hate all of you together instead of having to single you out.

Convertible Drivers: On nice summer mornings, drive slowly through the countryside enjoying the breeze in your hair. We don't mind waiting to get to work.

Cheap car drivers: Pretend you have an expensive German car by gradually turning the sound on the radio up as you accelerate and down as you slow down again.

Lunatics: Drive 3 inches from rear bumper of the car in front as they obey the 30 mph speed limit. Having someone so close makes them feel more secure.

Lunatics: Whilst driving 3 inches from someone's rear bumper, remember that they are not going to delay an emergency stop because you are looking for your sunglasses.

Lunatics: If you rear end someone, it's your fault. No, really, it is.