In the interests of science, and of my son's soon to be birthday, I want to find out whether cookies baked from frozen dough taste as good as those baked from fresh dough. In order to know this, I am conducting a controlled experiment.
According to Wikipedia (a source I use when my students aren't looking): "a controlled experiment often compares the results obtained from experimental samples against control samples, which are practically identical to the experimental sample except for the one aspect whose effect is being tested (the independent variable)".
This evening, I have made a batch of cookie dough - chocolate chip - and so far I have baked 12 and I am waiting for a further 6 to be ready. That makes 18 cookies which I hope is enough for a few to make it through to tomorrow evening. I have frozen the remaining dough - enough for six cookies - which I will unfreeze tomorrow, roll into balls, press with a fork and bake. The independent variable in my experiment will be the frozen nature of the dough. Or rather, the unfrozen nature of the dough. Or rather the once frozen nature of the dough.
On my return from work tomorrow, and before badminton, I'll make a pot of tea, sit down and compare the cookies baked from freshly baked dough with the cookies baked from once frozen dough. I will do this by eating one, then another, being careful not to muddle them up.
The problem is, because the cookies baked from fresh dough will be a day old by tomorrow, another independent variable (one-day-oldness) will have been introduced. The other problem is, I have to eat one first, and then the other, introducing another variable (order-in-which-cookies-are-eaten). It will also be a Tuesday. And I might fancy Earl Grey. And we will be a couple of minutes of light nearer the equinox.
I seem to have backed myself into an uncontrolled cookie-filled corner of multiple independent variables. Ah well.
Monday, 19 January 2015
Wednesday, 31 December 2014
I Burn The Old Year
This afternoon, we wielded axes. We pulled down dead tress. We chopped up wood. We built a bonfire. We struck matches. We lit paper. We waited for the fire to take. We stood back from the flames. We warmed our hands. We watched sparks fly up.
I imagined the sparks as all the plentiful, beautiful life-giving moments of my year of 2014. They shone bright as love through the smoke.
I thought of the smoke as the happenings of my 2014 which have fogged my happiness.
As dusk fell, the smoke faded to invisible, disappearing into the darkness of this year's last twilight as the sparks flew up higher: up and up, shining bright and brighter.
I imagined the sparks as all the plentiful, beautiful life-giving moments of my year of 2014. They shone bright as love through the smoke.
I thought of the smoke as the happenings of my 2014 which have fogged my happiness.
As dusk fell, the smoke faded to invisible, disappearing into the darkness of this year's last twilight as the sparks flew up higher: up and up, shining bright and brighter.
Monday, 29 December 2014
I Hire A Bicycle
The topic of scars came up over Boxing Day breakfast. M and I compared notes whilst other stories were occurring elsewhere around the table. I was delighted to find something else in common with her: we both have scars on our knees from childhood cycling accidents involving gravel. Come to think of it, I can't remember a cycling accident I've had that didn't involve gravel.
I've had my current bicycle for 25 years. It's the one I inherited from my mother and I am very fond of it both for the sense of connection I feel to her and because it's a good bike. It has an aluminium frame and five gears, which I've always found to be plenty. I don't ride it often as I keep it in the garden shed and bringing it out to the road through the house takes time, involves tricky manoeuvres and, usually, tyre marks on the walls.
One of my ambitions for my stay in London this Christmas has been to hire a Boris Bike. These can be hired from a 'docking station', used and then deposited at any of the other docking stations around central London. The emphasis on short journeys is reflected in the costs: after the initial registration fee (£2 for 24 hours) it's free for the first 30 minutes, then costs £1 for up to an hour, £4 for up to 1 hour 30 minutes, etc.
A desire to own one of each of things we only need to use occasionally - lawn mowers, salmon kettles, carpet cleaners, fitness machines - seems odd to me. Shared ownership of some things makes sense, even if each of the bikes in the Transport for London scheme has to advertise a bank for the initiative to be workable.
Usually with my ambitions, the hardest part is putting on my shoes. Yesterday, my natural inertia was overridden by the enthusiasm of the company I'm keeping. After that it was just a case of following the lead of my longest-serving friend Helen as she wove our strand of cyclists through the warp of London streets, and then through Battersea Park, towards an excellent lunch.
Later, we hired bikes again to cycle along the Thames embankment from Chelsea to Somerset House to see the Egon Schiele exhibition. It was a bright afternoon: the sun confident, already seeming to have recovered from its midwinter low, the London air perfectly dry and cold, the streets, relatively uncluttered for this post-Christmas-excess exercise, still sparkly with tiny lights. My bike felt sturdy, unphased by the occasional flashes of lycra passing us by. Speed is not what a Boris Bike is about.
We reached Somerset House nine minutes before we were due. I can't remember a journey through London I've enjoyed more.
Sunday, 21 December 2014
I Replace A Washer
There have been problems with the washer I replaced back in February. I think this is because the washer I used wasn't the exact size of the washer space in the tap. I revisited my repair a couple of months ago, and recently the tap has been dripping again.
When I named this blog after my first washer buying experience, I was unwittingly linking my sense of self to the functioning of a bathroom tap. Each day of dripping has felt like a small erosion.
Yesterday, I bought three new washers of varying sizes. I enjoyed the way I could choose them from a selection, and take them away in a small white paper bag. It reminded me of pleasure I used to feel at buying a quarter of spearmint pips or peanut brittle.
Today, I located a spare hour and the right spanners, turned off the water at the mains, unscrewed the tap and tried out the washers. The first one was too small, the second too tight; the third seemed just right.
It has worked, for the moment, this Three Bears approach to plumbing. And it seems important to tell you about it.
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
I Celebrate My Birthday
My birthday was yesterday, but I have been celebrating it since June. This is because this is the year in which both I and my longest-serving friend Helen turned fifty and we decided to do one thing per month to celebrate from our forty-nine-and-a-half birthdays until our fifty-and-a-half birthdays.
The problem with winter birthdays is that they aren't very good for camping. And the problem with celebrating a birthday just on one day is that there's a 5/7 chance of being at work. So in order to do the things we've wanted to do to mark our 100 years, we've had to take control.
In June we went camping on the Lleyn Peninsula; in July, we went to see Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies at the Aldwych Theatre; in August, we drank red wine simultaneously; in September, we spent a weekend at Helen's parents' home in Somerset; in October, we re-read Anne Michaels' novel Fugitive Pieces; in November we met up in Shrewsbury at Theatre Severn; later in December, we will be spending half of Christmas together.
I've managed to squeeze in other celebrations, like my favourite ever birthday party. This involved poetry, good food and wine, and a variety of amazing people from most parts of my life, including a few I'd never met before, but have now. And yesterday, a class of my students brought in food to share after the morning lecture. There were a lot of crisps. I like crisps.
Yesterday evening, at the restaurant, my youngest son announced, 'This could be the worst wrapped present ever,' as he pulled the still warm and slightly creased slow movement of his first piano sonata from under his blue shirt. And then my eldest son produced a card he'd drawn, 'The background's after Rothko,' he said, 'and there's an L on it because L is the Roman Numeral for 50, so because your initials are LL, fifty is your perfect age'. The moment I saw the music, the moment I thought about the L, I felt as if every planet in the solar system was aligned. I never realised before that the music of the spheres is the tune of 'Happy Birthday To You'.
It's been a wonderful thing, this uber-celebration. And the great thing is, there are still five months of it to go.
The problem with winter birthdays is that they aren't very good for camping. And the problem with celebrating a birthday just on one day is that there's a 5/7 chance of being at work. So in order to do the things we've wanted to do to mark our 100 years, we've had to take control.
In June we went camping on the Lleyn Peninsula; in July, we went to see Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies at the Aldwych Theatre; in August, we drank red wine simultaneously; in September, we spent a weekend at Helen's parents' home in Somerset; in October, we re-read Anne Michaels' novel Fugitive Pieces; in November we met up in Shrewsbury at Theatre Severn; later in December, we will be spending half of Christmas together.
I've managed to squeeze in other celebrations, like my favourite ever birthday party. This involved poetry, good food and wine, and a variety of amazing people from most parts of my life, including a few I'd never met before, but have now. And yesterday, a class of my students brought in food to share after the morning lecture. There were a lot of crisps. I like crisps.
Yesterday evening, at the restaurant, my youngest son announced, 'This could be the worst wrapped present ever,' as he pulled the still warm and slightly creased slow movement of his first piano sonata from under his blue shirt. And then my eldest son produced a card he'd drawn, 'The background's after Rothko,' he said, 'and there's an L on it because L is the Roman Numeral for 50, so because your initials are LL, fifty is your perfect age'. The moment I saw the music, the moment I thought about the L, I felt as if every planet in the solar system was aligned. I never realised before that the music of the spheres is the tune of 'Happy Birthday To You'.
It's been a wonderful thing, this uber-celebration. And the great thing is, there are still five months of it to go.
Friday, 14 November 2014
I Steady My Nerves
It feels liked a dream - I've wanted to be a poet since I was eight, and on Monday I read my poems to an audience of approximately 450, and to Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke, with whom I shared the stage at Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury.
I'm not quite sure how I managed it, both the being asked to read by Anna Dreda, who is Wenlock Books and Wenlock Poetry Festival, and the standing on the stage in the spotlight.
I didn't have an ambition to read with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke - that's because it didn't enter my head that it would be a possibility. And I have never been to a show at Theatre Severn and thought, "I'd love to read my poems from that stage." It wasn't a case of, as Abraham Lincoln put it: "I will prepare and some day my chance will come." (We all know what happened to him in a theatre.)
I suppose the advantage of that is that the whole experience, from Anna suggesting it to the final echo of applause, was, for me, what Raymond Carver describes as Gravy. Do you know Carver's poem Gravy?
Realising my luck, I wanted to honour the trust that had been put in me. I wanted my sons, who were listening to me read for the first time, not to be embarrassed by me. I thought hard about which poems to read. I tried combinations out loud. I asked my sons if it was okay to read poems in which they feature.
When I'd decided, I printed them in font 16 so I wouldn't need to negotiate my glasses (which I usually leave on the top of my head). I glued the pages into a book, wrote notes for myself.
At about 4pm on the day, my inner child wanted to tear up all these ideas and start again. I felt a sense of despair. My poems bored me. I felt the need to write new ones. "Who do you think you are?" asked my inner critical parent.
Fortunately, my inner adult has quite a loud voice, and she told me that I needed to stick with my decisions and get into my frock. And my inner, nurturing parent said, "It'll be fine."
My younger son said, "I'll make you a cup of tea."
My eldest son said, "You look great, mum." "How should I have my hair?" I asked his girlfriend, "up or down?" "I like it down," she said. "You look like a poet with it down."
Later, backstage, I listened to the growing murmur of voices in the auditorium as it neared 7pm. The quality of sound piped into the green room was one of anticipation of pleasure - like a flock eager to be fed, but not ravenous. They'd already had a chance to enjoy a wonderful variety of poetry being read in the foyer - it sounded like an audience that had been warmed. The mood in the green room was relaxed, positive, encouraging. I drank half a glass of white wine.
I won't describe the reading. If you were there, you had your own responses. You were part of an audience which radiated attention. The mood on stage was one of mutual respect and support. Throughout, I felt as if I was amongst an extended family of friends and relations who were saying, "Go on. Go on, then. Do your thing."
I'm not quite sure how I managed it, both the being asked to read by Anna Dreda, who is Wenlock Books and Wenlock Poetry Festival, and the standing on the stage in the spotlight.
I didn't have an ambition to read with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke - that's because it didn't enter my head that it would be a possibility. And I have never been to a show at Theatre Severn and thought, "I'd love to read my poems from that stage." It wasn't a case of, as Abraham Lincoln put it: "I will prepare and some day my chance will come." (We all know what happened to him in a theatre.)
I suppose the advantage of that is that the whole experience, from Anna suggesting it to the final echo of applause, was, for me, what Raymond Carver describes as Gravy. Do you know Carver's poem Gravy?
Realising my luck, I wanted to honour the trust that had been put in me. I wanted my sons, who were listening to me read for the first time, not to be embarrassed by me. I thought hard about which poems to read. I tried combinations out loud. I asked my sons if it was okay to read poems in which they feature.
When I'd decided, I printed them in font 16 so I wouldn't need to negotiate my glasses (which I usually leave on the top of my head). I glued the pages into a book, wrote notes for myself.
At about 4pm on the day, my inner child wanted to tear up all these ideas and start again. I felt a sense of despair. My poems bored me. I felt the need to write new ones. "Who do you think you are?" asked my inner critical parent.
Fortunately, my inner adult has quite a loud voice, and she told me that I needed to stick with my decisions and get into my frock. And my inner, nurturing parent said, "It'll be fine."
My younger son said, "I'll make you a cup of tea."
My eldest son said, "You look great, mum." "How should I have my hair?" I asked his girlfriend, "up or down?" "I like it down," she said. "You look like a poet with it down."
Later, backstage, I listened to the growing murmur of voices in the auditorium as it neared 7pm. The quality of sound piped into the green room was one of anticipation of pleasure - like a flock eager to be fed, but not ravenous. They'd already had a chance to enjoy a wonderful variety of poetry being read in the foyer - it sounded like an audience that had been warmed. The mood in the green room was relaxed, positive, encouraging. I drank half a glass of white wine.
I won't describe the reading. If you were there, you had your own responses. You were part of an audience which radiated attention. The mood on stage was one of mutual respect and support. Throughout, I felt as if I was amongst an extended family of friends and relations who were saying, "Go on. Go on, then. Do your thing."
Saturday, 1 November 2014
I Run A Temperature
I like idioms. I haven't quite figured out why, but to me, they make complete sense as culturally acquired language. They can be smooth and seamless, they can cause a stir - they include metaphor, simile and cliche, often without owning up to any of these.
One idiom I've been running this week is a temperature. Or the temperature has been running me, more like. It's okay, I'm getting better, and it was sporadic and never very high, but it's stopped me in my tracks. Or rather in my bed, my own bed, which I've had to make.
I've had to abandon all sorts of plans. Two poetry readings. My longest-serving friend's 50th birthday. Most of some animation workshops I'd been looking forward to. It's not been a big deal in comparison with what many people have to put up with, and amazing friends have brought me soup, made me tea, offered me chewing gum, cut me some slack, and have generally bailed me out and stood in for me: Anna, Nadia, Barry, Lucy, Cathy, Ian, Helen, David, Iolo, Kathy, Hilda ... but I'll be glad to get back into the swing of things.
As I'm not contagious, however, I've ploughed on regardless a couple of times: to the graduation of a year's worth of social work students yesterday, for example. I wanted to be there by hook or crook. It's irreplaceable, that moment of witness, so I'd have been feeling even more out of sorts if I'd missed it.
I know the drill of graduation. Its medieval pretensions, its echoes of Hogwarts - in many ways it's not my cup of tea and I worried about causing a scene by fainting - but despite feeling washed up, by the end of the ceremony I was over the moon.
It'll take me a while to get back up to speed, but in the meantime, I am glad, that amidst the physical discomfort and psychological uncertainty that illness brings, I pushed my luck, and saw the Class of 2014 on their way out to take the world by storm.
One idiom I've been running this week is a temperature. Or the temperature has been running me, more like. It's okay, I'm getting better, and it was sporadic and never very high, but it's stopped me in my tracks. Or rather in my bed, my own bed, which I've had to make.
I've had to abandon all sorts of plans. Two poetry readings. My longest-serving friend's 50th birthday. Most of some animation workshops I'd been looking forward to. It's not been a big deal in comparison with what many people have to put up with, and amazing friends have brought me soup, made me tea, offered me chewing gum, cut me some slack, and have generally bailed me out and stood in for me: Anna, Nadia, Barry, Lucy, Cathy, Ian, Helen, David, Iolo, Kathy, Hilda ... but I'll be glad to get back into the swing of things.
As I'm not contagious, however, I've ploughed on regardless a couple of times: to the graduation of a year's worth of social work students yesterday, for example. I wanted to be there by hook or crook. It's irreplaceable, that moment of witness, so I'd have been feeling even more out of sorts if I'd missed it.
I know the drill of graduation. Its medieval pretensions, its echoes of Hogwarts - in many ways it's not my cup of tea and I worried about causing a scene by fainting - but despite feeling washed up, by the end of the ceremony I was over the moon.
It'll take me a while to get back up to speed, but in the meantime, I am glad, that amidst the physical discomfort and psychological uncertainty that illness brings, I pushed my luck, and saw the Class of 2014 on their way out to take the world by storm.
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