Fatuous email from the Royal Mint

The Royal Mint  -  Fotherington-Thomas at the helm.

The Royal Mint has been trumpeting a special offer where you can apply to get one of 2015 free sixpenny bits, which they are giving away in order (they claim) to revive the defunct tradition of making your Xmas cake and pudding on Stir Up Sunday which is the Sunday before Advent, i.e. this Sunday 22nd November this year. Actually they are doing it in order to get hold of various greedy people's contact details so that they can then plague them with emails, spam, junk mail and phone calls trying to persuade them to buy some of their over-priced coins for the rest of all eternity, and the list of details will also be sold on to other loser companies to do the same with their own useless products. These lists change hands for considerable sums so the price of 2015 sixpenny bits is a negligible outlay; why even the face value (which you would not get) is only £50 7s 6d. As you can see in the email they sent me (see below) the ploy has been successful with almost 25,000 fools applying. One of whom was me. If you too were one, make sure you locate the microscopic "unsubscribe" button at the bottom of their email, and click on it.
I applied because 1) I want a free sixpence. 2) I deserve one, because I already uphold the tradition of Stir Up Sunday. My mother always made her Xmas cake on Stir Up Sunday and I do as well because I have turned into my mother.

What I was hoping for :

Delightful coin of the realm

What I got :

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your application for the FREE Stir-Up Sunday sixpence.  Unfortunately, on this occasion, you weren’t one of our lucky 2,015 applicants. We had an overwhelming response to the promotion that saw almost 25,000 people apply to receive one of the 2,015 silver sixpences.

But please don’t let that deter you from joining in the Stir-Up Sunday fun. If you don’t have a sixpence handy, why not try another coin?

Don’t forget to share your Stir-Up Sunday pictures on social media this Sunday using #stirupsunday and our username @royalmintuk. You will find The Royal Mint on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We will be reposting, retweeting and sharing our favourite pictures and there will be prizes!

PLEASE READ: Obviously, due to size, putting a coin in a pudding might cause a risk of choking. And while we might all remember stirring a 2p or 20p piece in our puddings as children, modern knowledge of health and safety might change our thinking towards it, particularly if the coins aren’t pure silver, or have not been sterilised. As such, we recommend that you do not bake your coin into the pudding or when reheating. Instead, we recommend that coins should be placed into the pudding just prior to serving, with the slices then dished out at random to give someone the chance to find it. Alternatively, simply pop the sixpence in its pouch and hide it under one of the table settings before everyone sits down to dinner.

If you do add anything like coins or charms to your pudding, sterilise them first in boiling water. Make sure you choose items large enough to be noticed, or wrap them tightly in a ball of tin foil, and tell everyone to look out for them. This serves two purposes: it will increase the fun, and it counts as a word to the wise, so that Christmas dinner doesn't close with people accidentally swallowing the coin or breaking teeth!

Season’s greetings!

The Royal Mint


        

Unsubscribe button,
magnified X 1,000,000,000 by me,
so that you can see it.
In reality not visible to the naked eye.
 

 

They can't even be bothered to address me correctly. Sir Forwardslash Madam does not appear in any Debrett's I have ever perused.
Then they patronisingly tell me what a wonderful triumph their offer was, and suggest since I didn't win, "Why not try another coin?". Don't you "Why not... " me, sir. I bite my thumb at you. I bite my thumb at your infantile use of exclamation marks. I am a grown woman, not a two year old. I will NOT be taking, let alone sharing, any Stir Up Sunday pictures, neither will I alter my habits one iota in order to pander to your ridiculous blandishments. I will not sterilise any coins and I will certainly not "pop" any money of what ever denomination in to the cake just prior to serving as recommended by a bunch of utter weeds and killjoys. I do not pop things. I will not "pop" the stupid coin under the table mat either. How thick ARE these people you think I will be serving? It would not fool my lot for a PICOSECOND and then there would be a fight. "Oy Mum Henry's got a sixpence, it's mine, I left it on the table this morning," etc.
If I wrapped a coin in a ball of tin foil I would be removed forthwith into padded custody which is the place of choice for detaining persons of the Carroll name who have gone completely off their heads. Why the devil finding a screwed up ball of silver foil in your food would "increase the fun" I do not know and I think their belief that this is the case indicates that they are long overdue for some serious army training and no mercy shown.
Also I dispute their claim that Stir Up Sunday is fun. My heart always sinks when I hear the collect as it means I have WORK to do.

In conclusion : What sort of gluten-free non-dairy quiche eaters do they think we are? Looking back at historical statistics do we see a spate of deaths by choking or poison every Christmas? No. No one has EVER been killed by a sixpence piece. I checked.
The 6d is innocent. Calm yourselves, Royal Mint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quinoa - The Truth

There is a very fine fake quinoa cooking recipe (right) but it swears a lot. I try not to swear in these posts because of my mother who always wanted me not to swear; however these instructions nicely express what all right-thinking people feel about quinoa so I have written out the same sentiments but without the swearing.

 Quinoa Instructions 

·          - Prior to commencing cookery remember to tie your hair and beard into ponytails. Put on some pretentious music in the background, ensuring that it is loud enough for the neighbours to hear it so they will know how clever and intellectual you are. Suggested tracks: whale song, Indian chanting, ‘World music’. Avoid anything with a good tune or pleasant harmonisations.

-  This stupid stuff has to be RINSED before you can even use it. Rinse 1 part quinoa. You must do this with cold water drawn from the Yangtze River - Do not rinse it with tap water. Make sure people see you.

- Measure out 5 parts water, or stock. Measure it with your de Longhi measuring jug as used by the brigade de cuisine from Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons or similar. If using stock this must be made from rare-breed chicken carcases sourced from an artisanal producer at the Farmers’ Market on Notting Hill High Street, and cooked on a hob costing £10,000 or above.

- Bring it to the boil in a multi-million pound Le Creuset saucier pan and then tip in the rinsed quinoa.

- Simmer for 20 minutes. This gives you time to read a sentence of Proust or carry out some kharmic mindfulness or other sophisticated activity.

- Then remove the pan from the heat and let it stand for another 10 minutes during which period you can go out to fetch the infant Tarquin from his balalaika lesson.

- Fluff up the grains with your special Fortnum & Mason Quinoa-comb, and serve with some unpalatable, difficult to procure accompaniments which show how on-trend you are.

- Tweet about it so your public knows what refined and urbane eating habits you employ. Hashtag picture of your plate.

- Do not say grace. People like you despise Christians.

- Eat, meanwhile preening yourself because you are a complete TURKEY. Share your meal with other poseurs of your acquaintance. If possible speak French at table. 
Do not reflect that, if you weren't such a Superior Being as you are, you could be enjoying a load of tasty chips, some BACON or a Mars Bar. YOU have chosen the austere, the worthy, the wholesome path. Congratulations.

Recipes of The Times

Media Cookery Writers are silly.

Daily they demand that you make meals with ingredients you have never heard of and do not know what they i) look like, ii) taste of, iii) are, or iv) may be sourced from. Doubtless these are all REALLY expensive - of that at least you may be sure. Also cookery writers think you have nothing else to do and can therefore spend valuable drinking time shelling micro-peas / spreading pesto onto individual cashew nuts / assembling intricate insalate out of tiny fronds of rocket (which they call arugula, because that's more exclusive).

Ingredients. All your ingredients have to be obscure if you are a media cook. Here are some of the items they have called for in recent months:

Dukkah. Used as a dusting on chicken, as far as I can make out.

Freekeh. If your freekeh is cracked, you can get away with simmering it for a mere 15 minutes. Uncracked freekeh takes much longer, as does farro. Even so, you must buy your farro UNCOOKED : Never buy cooked farro or freekeh: come on, what sort of a lightweight are you? However, I remain none the wiser as to what these things are for, regardless of whether they are cracked, cooked or in any other form.

Buddha's Hand. A kind of citrus fruit which has no juice or pulp - just pith and skin. Sounds useful, doesn't it? I have no idea what desperate straits one might need to be in, to use any Buddha's hand.

Maftoul. Dear Lord! For once the cookery writer, realising that no-one would know what maftoul is, helpfully revealed that it is "similar to Sardinian fregola (Sardinian, mind. Not any old fregola) and is made of toasted semolina dough." Great. Thanks, Cookery Writer. I might have bought non-Sardinian fregola if you hadn't mentioned it. Toasted semolina dough of course is every housewife's fallback, isn't it. ('No, it isn't actually. We have never encountered it,' say the housewives)

Za’atar "Written history lacks an early definitive reference to za'atar as a spice mixture, though unidentified terms in the Yale Babylonian Collection may be references to spice blends," says Wikipedia, helpfully.

Some ingredients are Superfoods which are a deluded idea and quite wrong. Celebrities often promote these sort of crackpot manias. Superfoods are supposed to do all manner of miraculous cures if you eat them instead of proper food; but they do not. Scientists have proved it. The celebrities want you to eat prickly cactus juice, Maca powder (ground-up Peruvian radishes) and chaga fungus as these will rebalance your pH, stabilise your BP, reduce depression and PTSD, make your skin lovely and other wild and unsubstantiated claims eg. chaga fungus will cause you to be immortal, says Katy Perry, who ever she is. We have only just finished being told we must have drinks made out of blenderised kale, and THAT was bad enough. And now they say that the blendered kale was in vain. Look, health freaks, the radish powder will soon turn out to be just as useless, mark my words.

How do you even pronounce half these stupid ingredients? I mean "chorizo" FPS (for Pity's sake) is that Cheritzoh, or Korr-eye-zo, or chorrizzoh or korrizzo or WHAT? quinoa? za'atar? Come ON people. Actually I have been told many times, how to pronounce chorizo but I can never remember. It is information which the human brain can not be bothered to retain.

Even ordinary things like tomatoes are required to be rare-breed or of fanciful provenance.

This leads to preposterous announcements such as :

"Tomatoes must be heritage, and mozzarella must be buffalo." I have no idea what that means. The most desirable tomatoes are in fact heirloom but these are virtually unobtainable. Heirloom (adj.) means so scarce and expensive that they have to be inherited rather than purchased. 

"Note: if your limes are not Goan you had better leave them out altogether."

"It is imperative that any tuna be yellow-fin and longline-caught" - or you might as well forget it.

"Hand-roll the sushi" if you do not wish to suffer instant social death.

The things they expect you to do to figs are nobody's business. Really in this country if you get a decent fig you are so happy you would not dream of doing anything to it. You just eat it, and be jolly grateful. You do not fashion it at considerable length into Sweet Spiced Freekeh with Grilled Figs. Have SOME sense.

Media cooks inhabit a different gastronomic planet from normal people. Normal people need to eat cheaply and quickly without infringing on their other activities unnecessarily. Media cooks sit around thinking up ridiculous ideas and making a lot of work for their underlings and any readers foolish enough to try one of their recipes. Here are some examples:

Hangover Hash. 

Cooking time 2 hours. The writer has failed to grasp the fundamental fact about hangovers which is That They Are An EMERGENCY. One cannot simply wait TWO HOURS for help. Also the sight of a raw egg (see picture) is not beneficial.
Persons suffering from a hangover would NOT appreciate this revolting looking dish being presented to them 2 hours after their suffering began. Plenty of ibuprofen, some orange juice and a bacon sandwich, taken with a glass of claret, prescribes Dr Mel, and dose to be taken STAT immediately, not in 2 hours' time.

Friday Night Pizza. 

All you need to know about this is that the recipe begins "Make the cauliflower base". Yes! Can you imagine how nasty a pizza with a base made out of cauliflower must be? UGH. If you read further (not recommended) you will see that it also contains chia seeds, whatever they may be, and almond meal; and the finished pizza is served sprinkled with nutritional yeast flakes. Absolute purgatory.

Fresh Blueberry Fudge. 

When you peruse the recipe, you will realise this is definitely not fudge. Fudge is made of sugar, butter and milk and has to be boiled to Fudge Point. Not "place cashews in a bowl" or do anything with "rice malt syrup" as is suggested here. Good Lord. Discard.






Poached Quince and Winter Fruit in Spiced Wine. 
I hardly know where to start in describing what is wrong with this recipe. You must acquire "2 Quince". (Not quinces.) How ridiculous. The plural of quince is quinces and to suggest otherwise is to be an affected poser. I'd be jolly surprised if a quartered quince cooked in 29 mins' poaching as claimed here. What the devil kind of quinces were they using? You add some Cox's apples and some ripe pears for the last 4 minutes of poaching. This chef has never cooked Cox's apples before has he? You can tell. Then you put in some blackberries and prunes. You serve this concoction ice cold with some red wine sorbet. It sounds most unsuitable for a chilly winter evening when everyone would much rather have blackberry and apple crumble which would have been a far better use of the ingredients. N.B. Quinces and blackberries are not ripe both at the same time so this recipe was not going to work anyway. Media cooks never have a clue about what is ripe at any particular season so they are always writing recipes that are completely impossible to do.

Here is a recipe from my own recipe book. When this was invented there was MUCH derision I can tell you. My husband's contribution to world nutrition. I think it is well within the spirit of Media Cookery.

Lunatics' Beetroot.

Method:

Mix together beetroot, hardboiled egg and tomatoes (chopped). Place in a teapot. (Don't ask.)

Fry bread.

Spread the mixture from the teapot over the fried bread.

Traditionally served in the Lunatic Asylums of Gothenburg when the full moon is at perigee. 

Variations suggested by jeering members of the family : throw some muesli and plenty of salt over the dish. Aniseed balls may also be added, and shavings of hazelnut.

Actually Lunatics' Beetroot is quite good, as long as you don't add any of those toppings. Better than Friday Night Pizza anyway.

The National Trust

The National Trust annoy me with their high-handed treatment of US - us who are their owners, if they could just bear that in mind. They charge fortunes for entry and begrudge letting you in even then; they keep wanting to sell off land that's been given to them to defend and preserve, because they can't cope on the BILLIONS of pounds they have at their disposal; and they repeatedly let places burn down due to criminal levels of carelessness, thereby depriving the nation of multiple priceless irreplaceable assets that they had been charged with looking after. They are arrogant, which they have no business to be because they are shoddy. 

A visit to Dunster Castle revealed some prime examples indicating the shocking state of the National Trust. First we were accosted by a hostile old lady who demanded to see our tickets, as though we were sneaking in without paying - but we were only going in to the GROUNDS, and why should we pay for that? My husband has a Life Membership Card anyway and that entitles him and guest to get in free which the old lady did not believe and he had to speak quite sternly to her and tell her she must look it up on the internet. It is as well to maintain an air of authority on these occasions. Do not be cowed by the minions. I was only sorry he did not claim to be Goat Luttrell (previous owner of D Castle) and that he would buy this place and install a jukebox.

We went on, and were soon stopped by another fierce unwelcoming harridan at another machine gun post, demanding to see our tickets again. We showed the trout, and told her we'd already been checked. She retorted that there are "hundreds of places where they (sic) can get in" which nicely demonstrated that the National Trust's corporate hostility to the people they are supposed to serve is both strong and diligent.

National Trust Border Guards in action. 

Victim of difficult new stairs

The next annoying thing was that they have got a long stairway of wrongly-sized steps incompatible with legs of normal human length. The steps were recently installed at great expense, and who ever designed them has obviously never walked on stairs in his life. Presumably it was someone on the committee's brother/nephew/godchild; it definitely was not any graduate of the Royal College of Staircase Design, or even any pupil in their Kindergarten.

Then there was a silly map pointing the wrong way. North was indicated towards due West. Fools. And it takes them a whole year to put in a few herbaceous perennials. Work did not seem to be progressing very successfully either if I may say so. It was a proper mess, such as one can see in many a garden without paying entry fees of £7.50 per person.

There were haughty 'Private' notices everywhere, forbidding the nasty unwanted visitors to have access to any of the most interesting-looking places. Really who do these people think they are? They would do well to remember that these places are the property of the nation, i.e. the general public, whom they clearly much despise. 

We declined to take tea as it was being served in polystyrene cups which are most disagreeable to drink out of. At the prices on show one would expect Ming at the least.

There were some quite nice flowers out in the gardens, I will give it that, and charming views, but you can get these anywhere.

They had let in some pretty girls, which pleased all the men but annoyed me. Here they are (right). Out you go, Girls.

There were tractors, strimmers and chainsaws loudly at work all over the place which detracted from everyone's enjoyment so the fee for entry ought to have been waived anyway.

Also they are idiotically resurfacing the car park. Why they need to do it at all I can not imagine, and certainly not in the middle of the busy season. Again, "Fools". The car park was fine before, and what they really needed to do was sort out the utterly STUPID road in and out of the car park which is long and single lane but serves for both coming in and going out. Given that the majority of National Trust visitors are aged approx. 90 and suffer from degenerative neck problems so they can't reverse this road is completely useless for the purpose.

On our way out that Miss Blennerhasset woman who had first tried to keep us out bestowed upon me a final vindictive glare.

The last view we had of Dunster was this - an officious National Trust official raking in the cash from the extortionate parking fees. 

Humourless, ungenerous and grasping, I'd say of the whole Dunster ethos. Not a rewarding experience for the visitor. 

Cold Weather : Fashion Emergency

The fashion people at the Times informed us recently that the weather has got cold and this means that one's coat has got to Stand Out. You must have a Statement Coat; and the difference that makes a coat Statement rather than Ordinary is not distinguishable except by aesthetes (says the Times). A Statement Coat must give a knowing nod to current trends and therefore it may be "swooshy", shaggy, layered shearling in fake fur (not real fur, perish the thort) or be ankle length with asymmetric hem. I do not need to be an aesthete to see the difference between that and any of my coats. Mine are men's coats in the Smith signature long, straight and dark in colour look worn by all generations and genders of the Smiths of Hardham. Sourced from the charity shop. Max price £10. 

The Style Mavens on the other hand ramp up the Glamour Quotient. The fact that below-the-calf length coats are the thing at present is causing the poor darlings to have to tangle with all sorts of hem-length conundrums and I warn you now: Seventies Flares are going to be an Enormous Trend this summer (see right). These are 'Mistake Trousers' if ever I saw such a thing.

Time to leave the district my friends.

Here's a person who thinks, wrongly, that her clothing is going to keep her warm in the icy climes of latitude 51˚N in February. She has got her statement coat but she has forgotten she needs a woolly hat, gloves, vest, jersey and something MAJOR to cover the vast expanse of exposed neck. I bet she has not got a petticoat on under the flimsy dress either and she is going to FREEZE. She hasn't even put her arms into the sleeves of her coat. Perhaps she does not know how a coat works. Daft. She ought to let her hair down too. It is too cold to wear your hair up in this country except on certain days in the middle of July during years when there is a heatwave.

A few tips from the fashion ladies on what turns a mere mortal coat into a statement:

1. Colour. Avoid black or tan, go bright or patterned.     No. No. I stand by the dark plain hues of the standard Smith coat.

2. Collar. Go for fur, ruffles, anything flattering that makes the coat stand out and your face look pretty.      Do NOT do this. A modest, small, ordinary collar is what is needed, thanks.

3. Silhouette. Seek dramatic shapes and lengths.     Long and narrow, as I said.

4. Texture. Look for luxurious materials and contrast (cashmere/fur/silk/boucle/feathers/etc.)     No luxury at the charity shops of West Somerset I am afraid. Besides, those silks and fur etc. are too difficult to look after. Boucle and feathers, what ever THEY are, are not the Smith Way.

5. Fit. The coat must fit like a glove.     Er, no... The coat must be too big, so that you can wear about 30 layers of jerseys underneath it. This is Exmoor after all.

6. Construction. Make sure it’s lined, properly sewn and feels like it will last a lifetime.     Well, OK, if you can find such features on our budget (£10). And you mean 'feels AS IF it will last a life time'.

And Beware! Only wear velvet if it's in the form of red peplum jackets, and if you haven't got any PVC boots yet well what ARE you thinking of? Head-to-toe white outfits even the Times admits are impractical but still the catwalk ladies will not be seen without them.

Statement Boots:

(Left) The only statement these are making is "I am having a Footwear Crisis." They look like the sort of things surgeons wear for wading about in the gore on the operating theatre floor (without the heels though).

This boot (right) says "My leg is like an elephant's leg" - this winter's must-have leg. I thought Jimmy Choo shoes were meant to be desirable but this definitely isn't. Extraordinary. N.B: This boot is not only Statement, but also Key. Fancy! You will need one of these for each foot by the way.

A person in Porlock High Street told me I - I!  - looked elegant yesterday! In my Smith of Hardham coat with 10 thousand layers underneath and my unstatement boots and my hood up. It was pitch dark at the time and the person concerned is a known optimist but still. Elegant! Me! Perhaps she said "Elephant" but even if she did that means my legs at least are On Trend.

Even children are not safe.

Here is an outfit recommended for godparents to buy for their goddaughters. It looks like one of those pictures of when the child has endearingly got itself dressed and put on all sorts of ill-matched clothing. However in the Fashion Pages this passes as acceptable. From £212.

Make your Family like the one from the Poster

Fortuitous article in the Times

Following my remarks about that sickening poster, the Times have published a manual detailing how to make your family be just like the one from the poster - the family that does mistakes, and loud really well etc. Conversely, as sane persons, we may read the recommendations and do the opposite in order to avoid becoming like that family.

The article is about Raising Boys. Firstly we should point out that in England we BRING UP children we do not raise them. The Times has forgotten that it is published in England for English people. Raising of children is something carried out in America I believe. Next, it is a refreshingly sexist article that acknowledges that boys are different from girls. It is quite rude about boys though, saying that they are impulsive, pugnacious and more muscly than girls and the muscliness means there is less of their brainpower available for thinking and other clever stuff. (The brain is all used up with controlling their extra muscles). 

Here is what the Times thinks you (the parents) should do:

You must partake of what they call 'think-throughs', and 'descriptively praising' and 'reflectively listening to' your children. You must play 'The Go Game'. A typical Go Game activity is as follows: 'When I say 'Go' walk round the table twice, then sit down and tell me the name of 4 animals.' The child can only do it when you say 'go'. Switch roles for fun (sic).    Good God.

The boys' father must rumple their hair at every opportunity, sit next to them when they are playing with Lego, and wake the boys on schoolday mornings by sitting on their beds and chatting. Er... real boys are NOT amenable to this sort of thing on schoolday or any other mornings. "Get away from me you Freak" is the likely reaction to such overtures. 

Boys must be forced to shift their allegiance from their mothers to their fathers. Eh?? The parents are lucky if there is the slightest friendliness shown at all in my experience let alone any personal allegiances. 

The Importance of Sport: According to the article the father MUST ensure that the boy is good at football because all boys need to be good at football or no-one will like them. The father must practise playing football with the boy every day and not use words like 'Brilliant!' but say inane things such as 'You stopped that ball,' and other statements of the obvious. These are 'descriptive praise' and you should make such comments all the time. I would imagine the result of this would be that the child will stop listening to you altogether because it will realise that you are a loony who never has anything worthwhile to say. According to the Times though, the child will internalise it ('it'? what?) and begin to reinvent themselves. 'Reinvent themselves' is a very irritating and meaningless phrase which should be avoided.

Schedule playfighting for certain safe places and for times when an adult is present, says the article. Look, you are missing the point. Fighting does not work like that, and scheduling it can not be implemented. Sorry. Also do not use the term playfighting. All fights are to be undertaken in full earnest. The article does surprisingly admit that your children are going to be constantly hitting each other so don't bother having rules against it. On the other hand it recommends saying 'You didn't laugh when your brother made a mistake' as one of the descriptive praise observations which shows that the writer failed to have an effective think-through about this. It would be viewed as a challenge in most families: Hey everyone let's all laugh at our sibling. 

Bribe the children with Screen Time (allowing use of computer). This teaches them bribery. Excellent. 

Pretend you understand how they are feeling ("Gosh it's frustrating isn't it when you have to finish something you're enjoying" instead of "GET OFF THE COMPUTER THIS INSTANT YOU DISOBEDIENT CHILD") This makes them feel heard and attended to (apparently) and is an example of reflective listening. No. In fact it is condescending and will make them quite rightly loathe you.

If you have got a fidgetty child you should tell the child to make a fist and squeeze hard for 5 seconds. Cured! Also teach the children to sit on their hands. And - this is REALLY strange - train them to stop moving and freeze on a signal from you, eg. a hand held up palm out. Use this at unexpected times and give them permission to use the signal on you at designated times. By this means you will be able to establish your family's reputation as a bunch of utter weirdoes.

Read to your son even after he is perfectly capable of reading for himself and no longer thinks it's cool. (When did being able to read constitute something cool? It's just normal, like having 2 legs or a cat, or performing simple interpretive dance moves (not really. Interpretive dance is NEVER normal.))

Stand over your child while he does his homework. Patronisingly ask him what the teacher wants from him in the homework (this is a think-through) and keep interrupting him to give descriptive praise eg. 'You are writing slowly and neatly!' Actually in real life it is more help if you just sigh angrily when he gets something wrong, criticise his punctuation and spelling and tell him he is going to end up in the gutter if he doesn't try harder.

The article suddenly ends there, but there will be a whole BOOK of this advice coming out on 12th February, publ. Yellow Kite, £14.99. I shouldn't buy it if I were you unless you will be happy for your household to Do Hugs and Do Family etc.

Sickening Poster

This very repulsive poster has recently come to my notice, shown to me by my horrified son. I have made a riposte to it in order to offer some redress for the utter cloying imbecility of the human race here displayed.

AT OUR HOUSE

We do not give 2^nd chances to people who make posters like this. One poster and you DED.

We stamped out the practice of having said or sung Grace, long ago with an iron fist. Mother says Grace silently as a private matter between herself and Our Maker.

We HATE sentences like ‘We do real’.

Mistakes will not be tolerated.

No apologies in our house. Nous ne regrettons rien. Jamais.

'We do loud really well' is completely unacceptable. You might better say ‘We are a childish group of over-excited show-offs’

No physical contact permitted on premises.

We will DO in  your family, mate. A family that spawns posters like this deserves nothing less.

We do love Gin though.

I hope that makes you feel better, everyone.

Writing Letters in Anger

I have had cause lately to write to the Prime Minister about a matter of importance; Kingston Maurward College are proposing to build a housing estate at Lower Bockhampton in Dorset thus ruining a charming hamlet associated with Thomas Hardy.

Here is Lower Bockhampton - simply BEGGING  for 70 more houses to be built, as you can see.

I will here expound on the process involved in writing a letter when extremely cross.

First you should write a letter saying exactly what you really think. In my case the first draft is often not suitable for printing in public. Then try to do a toned-down version - this is what I wrote on my second attempt:

Cameron.

  I demand that you forbid immediately the building of houses which is proposed at Lower Bockhampton. Porlock is FULL of empty houses. So is the rest of the country. WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE HOUSES. Fill up the empty ones, for CRYING OUT LOUD. Then get the population reduced. This can be achieved by ensuring that

                                                      n(l) > n(e)      

         where n(l) = number of people leaving eg via dying or moving abroad,

         and n(e) = number of people entering eg via being born or moving over here from elsewhere.

   It's tremendously simple! Even a MP could understand it! 

   If you don't do it the promises and undertakings you made in order to facilitate your trampling your way to the top of the metaphorical dungheap which is Westminster are exposed as void. If you wanted to be Prime Minister in order to further your own devices you should not have pretended it was because you cared for the good of the country. 

    Do NOT give my regards to SamCam.

                      Mel

This is still quite rude. It needs to be softened further. The Right Honourable Gentleman will not read an overtly hostile letter.

Here is a politer version which still makes your point, but can actually be sent. Having written the earlier, cross versions, makes you feel better though.

Dear Mr Cameron, (While noting that Mr Cameron is not your dear by any means, you must take account of the conventions and address him as such.)

I request (not "demand") you to use your influence as most powerful man in the land (bit of flattery. They like that), to put a stop to the proposed building of a housing development at Lower Bockhampton in Dorset. The Dorset County Council has a shocking record of allowing insensitive development and they need to be curbed. You hold the whip hand here (more flattery) and it is your duty to use it.

This housing development is a symptom and you need to deal with it and then with the root cause which is the unquestioning acceptance that we "need more housing". (Leave out the capital letters and italics; they can prevent the letter from being taken seriously.)

  

There are huge numbers of empty houses and another single house should not be built until every empty house has been occupied, and no more people should be allowed in to the country unless there is a house available for them to move in to. I realise that it is cheaper to build new houses on previously unused ground ("See? I'm very reasonable. I am not a loony"), but we have to stop pandering to people who want to make easy money. In the long run it will be better for everyone if we acknowledge that the pleasant bits of our country do have a value which, although it can not be quantified in money terms, is extremely important for our national well-being.

If you stand by and do nothing about this housing in Dorset you will be letting us all down. Please act immediately. (You can't put in that stuff about the Westminster Dungheap either. MPs are very superior and do not take kindly to that sort of talk.)

Thank you. (More perfunctory and meaningless politeness. But at least you have still not sent your regards to SamCam)

          Yours sincerely,

                             M. G-AHLK (Mrs)

The letter will certainly be ignored and the houses built. If there is a halfpenny to be made, someone will make it. At least they will be able to connect Hardy's revolving body parts in their disparate graves, to some magnets and generate some electricity for the National Grid.

P.S. I did get a reply. An underling wrote and told me Mr Cameron was quite THRILLED to hear from me and has passed on my comments to the Development and Buildings Directive. 

So much for being the most powerful man in the land.

Investment Advice

Currys - a company ON ITS KNEES

If you have got any shares in Currys I think you should ditch them right now, or at least as soon as the dealing floor opens in the morning. This firm is not bothering to make the slightest attempt to satisfy the customers, and people are going to notice before long. I have noticed already.

Currys -  the Investors' Bane. Sell NOW.

I went to a Currys shop recently to try to get an iPad thing in the sales. Mistake! It was a place of utter pandemonium. Horrible music played loudly on tinny speakers; numerous deafening alarms and beeping noises sounded constantly and no-one made any attempt to stop them. Ignorant, gauche young men milled about, their Currys livery betraying the fact that they were supposed to be helping the customers. They were all chewing gum. Well they weren't actually - they must have been forbidden to, which is something I suppose - but you could see that they wanted to. 

We found some iPaddy items, but noted that they were displaying the normal (not sale) prices. We secured, with some difficulty, the attention of a gauche young man and asked him what the hell he thought was going on. He told us that the displayed prices were false; but he did nothing to rectify the shop's blunder. We sent him to a staff information post among the toasters and kettles (don't know why it was there) to find out whether they had got any of the particular iPad thing we wanted. (That took him ages.) Predictably, they did not. 

We collared another young man, marginally less gauche, who was in fact a Manager (V grand!) who said that we could have, he thought, possibly, a different iPaddy thing which might well be in stock but was not the one we had painstakingly chosen after many hours of online research. Dismissing the manager, we discussed what to do. All this was being carried out in conditions of extreme inconvenience due to the mega-decibel beeping etc and music. We decided to order the wretched machine online and have it sent to our house. 

While still in the shop we found a cover for the machine and went to buy it at the counter, where a charmless girl eventually, grudgingly, served us while making it clear that she resented our interrupting her courtship of a nearby youth of negligible appeal. I think if he likes her, their union will be miserable. He should look for a girl who applies herself to her job in a more responsible manner. 

Then we went to the Carphone Warehouse section of the shop, directed there by the Manager fellow to sort out getting Wifi. Here the ignorance of the youths available surpassed even that of the ones with whom we had already dealt. They knew NOTHING about setting up the Wifi, but they were willing to set us up with completely the wrong thing, and take our money for doing so. Luckily they were quite unable to disguise the extent of their stupidity so we made our excuses and left. 

When we got home we needed VAST gins to restore us.

Later, the iPad we had ordered online arrived. And behold! They had sent the wrong one! So, not only do Currys' actual shops not work, but their online facilities are useless as well. Many hours were then wasted on the phone to the Complaints Dept who were steadfastly reluctant to help. I demanded to speak to Lord Curry himself but they wouldn't let me. We were told to return to the House of Ignoramuses, ad Domum Ignoramorum which was bally MILES away. 

Back we went. Still as noisy, still populated by dolts. Spoke to Manager. He looked at the unopened box, found a not-visible-to-the-naked-eye product code, looked it up on his encrypted secret staff site and confirmed it to be actually the right item after all - despite it saying clearly on the box, the name of some other iPad item.

Informative, eh?  Curse you, Apple.

If you went to Tesco's to get some baked beans, you would not expect to have to look at tins labelled Beans, with an electron microscope to find a secret code which you then had to look up online to find out what was in the tin, would you? You would just expect there to be writing on a label which says, truthfully, 'Tesco's Value Baked Beans'. According to Manager Man, this is a problem they have with Apple packaging; all the boxes look exactly the same and just say iPad on them. They do not go into the niceties of whether it is an iPad, iPad mini, iPad mini 2, iPod shuffle, Babbage Difference Engine etc.  Since this is the case Currys should make sure their Complaints Dept knows about it so that they can tell the customers where to look for the microscopic code to discover what is in the box.

Currys cares nothing for the sanity of its customers and I strongly recommend SELLING any shares you have in it because with service as bad as this the company is sure to founder soon. Also it is unkind of them to expose the gauche young men to the fury of the general public. While on to your stockbroker, tell him to get rid of your Carphone Warehouse shares which are equally worthless. 
Put your money in to Gin, my friends. 

GIN: Reliable stuff.