Sad news

I learned late last night that my friend and fellow writer Betty O'Rourke died last Thursday. Looks like I'm off to Reading for her funeral next week.

Betty was a tremendous help in getting my own writing to fly, and although she was a well-known figure in the world of romantic fiction, and a long-time stalwart of the Reading Writers, she had no front whatsoever and had one of the biggest hearts (and sharpest minds) of anybody I have ever known.

She has specifically requested that nobody is to wear black at her funeral, which makes a choice of outfit difficult for me since I tend to wear quite a bit of black. Still, assuming I can find somewhere to crash next Tuesday and Wednesday it will be a chance to meet old friends, stock up on cheese, tea, coffee and other goodies at the County Deli, get a couple of Sweeney's pies in, pay a visit to Lush, and inspect the new Hotel Chocolat which has opened in the Horrorcle!

Betty's, as with so many people, was a lifge to be celebrated rather than a death to be mourned. Betty, I'm so glad I knew you!

Hard Sums

A thick package plopped on my mat this morning - an undergraduate prospectus from Lancaster University. I've been thinking about doing another degree, in maths this time.

The thing is, it's always rankled with me that I struggled with maths when I was young. Yes, I know I got a B at maths A-Level, and I completed my first degree in physics, albeit a pretty undistinguished one, which requires some grasp of maths however much lab work can be counted and essay questions answered in exam papers. But I'm still haunted by the ghost of my 4% in my mock A-level Applied Maths paper, the pages and pages of carefully worked-through prooofs that never got any nearer tyhe expected result (and never came out the same twice running), the sense of dizziness I felt in Uni maths lectures at bizarre concepts like the Gamma Function, the cold sweat induced by the mere sigh of the Schrödinger Wave Equation. What made it worse is that all my peers seemed to take it in their stride.

Earlier this year I bought a textbook of A-Level Pure Maths and I've been working through it steadily in odd moments. To my amazement I find that trigonometric proofs fall out neatly under my fingers, I can manipulate matrices (actually I always liked matrices, I can integrate by parts, at least at a relatively uncomplicated level. It all seems so easy now, almost frustratingly trivial, and I want to go on. Hence the interest in university courses. I want to see if I can take this further, even understand the fearsome Gamma function! And before I die I want to understand wave mechanics.

Mathematicians are supposed to burn out young - why is it, then, that what was so mind-blowingly difficult at 18 makes so much more sense at 52, even having not touched maths with the proverbial bargepole in the intervening years.

Am I too old to do thi, do you think?

Bummer

This morning it was bright and sunny with a good breeze, so I put my washing in the machine.

Guess what happened within minutes of me pegging the washing on the line?

Meh!

Window On Your World

Has anyone else taken part in the PM (BBC Radio 4) 'Window On Your World' project? A photo taken wherever you are on the stroke of 5pm today?

In praise of Staffordshire oatcakes

I uploaded the photos for this to Flickr last week - a dangerous thing to do when acanthium is about! So it's time to write the entry.

Staffordshire oatcakes aren't oatcakes like the Scottish oatcake, but a flatbread, and thus cousin to the chapati, the paratha, the Mexican tortilla and the Derbyshire pikelet. Almost like a pancake bound with oatmeal instead of eggs, and fluffed up with yeast. They are quicker to make than bread, you can roll up what you like in them and eat them as a wrap, put them on a plate with bacon and eggs, or just butter them. Yummy!

You need

500 ml warm milk
500 ml warm water
250 g plain flour
250 g medium oatmeal
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 lump fresh baker's yeast

(Ask for fresh baker's yeast at the bread counter of your local supermarket - Morrisons around here give it away, and so do Tesco)

Mix the milk and water. Cream the yeast and sugar together in a cup and mix to a thin paste with some of the liquid. Mix the flour, oatmeal and salt in a large bowl (every kitchen should have a big Gresleyware mixing bowl), making sure the mixture is free of lumps. Add the liquid a little at a time, mixing it all to a thin batter. Add the yeast mixture. Cover with a teacloth and leave in a warm place for half an hour until the batter is frothy.

Now the fun bit. Heat a lightly-greased frying pan (I love my American cast-iron skillet which is just perfect for this) and pour in a ladleful of batter. Spread it around the pan so it makes a thin pancake. Wait until the top is set and covered with bubbles, then flip it over with a fish slice. Repeat until you have a plate piled high with oatcakes.



Very moreish!