What I Did In My Summer Holidays

The Gee Family had planned to spend the past week in Wales, but we postponed our trip until next year after a well-placed tzores sauce source told us that there'd be sheep at the border with guns. Instead we vacationed at home. Not that there was much vacationing going on as three of the four human elements of the Gee Family, none of them me, are students involved in various sorts of advanced study. What with the first draft of my book at the publisher, that left me spinning my wheels.

I had therefore promised the world that I'd be spending the week just elapsed making music, jam, and a nuisance of myself.

First, the Music. My beat combo having been temporarily derailed because, you know, the THING, I have set up a small recording studio at home, and have been busily recording things. I have so far recorded five six things, and you can listen to them on this Soundcloud Playlist, Locked Down & Blue. I'll be adding to this list as and when I record more material, so do check back. Some of the things are covers of old blues, folk and Americana: others are originals, either written myself or along with members of the aforesaid Beat Combo, in particular the Main Man, D. C. Wilson.

Second, the Jam. The Lockdown has turned me into quite the countryman. Mrs Gee and I have been growing our own crops, or as much as we can in our small garden. We have our hens for eggs, of course, and I have been baking the family's bread for some months now. It was only natural for me to get out the jam kettle and start preserving things. Now, I usually do a little of this each year, but this time I've been doing it like I really mean it. Here is a portrait of my efforts over the past week.

Jam Today

We have been growing lots of marrows (trans: oversized zucchini), and what with our apple tree, reliably cropping large numbers of cooking apples, each one as large as a baby's head and raining down on the garden at this time of year such that it's advisable to go outdoors with a hard hat, I made marrow and apple chutney. For the recipe I went to the tzores source sauce of All Knowledge and Wisdom, in short, my Mum. Here is her recipe:

MARROW AND APPLE CHUTNEY 

4lbs marrow, peeled and chopped; 
2lbs cooking apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped;
1lb onions, chopped; 1lb soft brown sugar; 
2 pints vinegar ; 
1 teasp. ground ginger;
1/2 oz pickling spice;
3 oz salt 

METHOD: put the marrow pieces into a large bowl in layers with the salt and leave for 12 hours or overnight. Next day, rinse the marrow pieces and drain well. Put into a preserving pan. ADD the apples, onions, sugar and spices. Cook gently UNCOVERED for about 2 hours, stirring from time to time, until the chutney is thick with no excess liquid. Pour into warm sterilised jars and cover with vinegar proof tops.

My Mum said that these days she tends to 'free wheel' with the spices, so, as I couldn't find the pickling spice that Mrs Gee swears she'd ordered from InSainsbury's, I ground up some mustard seeds, star anise, Chinese five-spice, coriander and cinnamon with a handy and mortar and pestle.  It tastes great.

A taste of childhood was my Mum's Marrow and Ginger Jam. Nothing like those golden gingery cubes of marrow on a piece of thick white bread and butter of an autumn evening. Here's her recipe for that, too:

MARROW AND GINGER JAM

2lbs marrow PREPARED WEIGHT (that is after peeling and deseeding); 
2lbs white sugar; Rind and juice of 1 and a half lemons; 
3 oz fresh ginger, grated; 

METHOD: cut the prepared marrow into smallish cubes and STEAM them until they are just tender. Put into a bowl and add the grated lemon zest, lemon juice and the ginger. Add the sugar, mix well. COVER and leave to stand for 24 hours. Put in a preserving pan, heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved and cook uncovered until the marrow is transparent and syrup is thick (about 15 mins) Test for setting point and pot up in sterilised jars.

It will have escaped the notice of neither of you that the hedgerows are currently groaning with free food. Offspring#1 and I have been out collecting blackberries and with the haul I made blackberry and apple jam, using our own apples. I think I got this recipe from the intertubes:

BLACKBERRY AND APPLE JAM

1kg blackberries;
4 large apples (peeled, cored and chopped);
Juice of 3 lemons;
1 kg white sugar;

METHOD: Put apples, blackberries and lemon juice into the pan and set on a low heat, stirring occasionally. After 15 mins stir in the sugar and boil for 10-15 mins until set. Leave for 10 mins in the pan and then spoon into sterilised jars.

While Offspring#1 and I were foraging for blackberries, we found several bushes laden with sloes damsons bullaces very tiny plums, and picked 1200g in short order. There is some debate about the identity of the fruit, but a quick google revealed that they are all much the same things (that is, plums) and often interbreed. Anyway, I made these into jam as well, and here is the recipe, adapted from BBC Good Food. Not surprisingly, it tastes like plum jam:

FURIOUS DAMSON JAM

A quantity of damsons/ sloes/ bullaces/ plums;
The same weight in sugar;
Water (100ml per 600g of fruit).
Knob of butter.

METHOD: Splosh the fruit and water into the pan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the fruit is soft. Stir in the sugar, ensuring that it is completely dissolved.  Raise once again to a rolling boil. Keep on the boil for 10 mins. Do not stir. When the jam is ready, stir vigorously. Remove from the heat. Skim off any scum, stir in a knob of butter, leave for 15 mins to settle and spoon into jars.

Third, the Nuisance. The dogs need a lot of walking, and what with our shopping largely limited to home deliveries, with few top-up shops or cheeky snacks or visits to cafes, I have been saving money and losing weight. The Offspring are also bringing me up to speed with elements of popular culture. Offspring#2 has reminded me of Torchwood -- a Televisual Emission from the BBC that's a kind of grown-up spin-off from Dr Who. Meanwhile, Offspring#1 has got me as far as the end of Series 3 of an anime called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which is precisely as billed - bizarre, and adventurous. Kids, eh? Without them I'd have remained in ignorance of manifestations including but not limited to Hamilton (the musical); Frozen (the magic-lantern-production) and Lady Gaga (the popular music artiste). My life has thus been enriched.

The Pandemic notwithstanding inasmuch as which, the Offspring will shortly be returning to their Institutions of Higher Learning. We'll miss them.

We Don’t Need No Edyucayshun

My two penn’orth on the exam-results debacle - What needs to happen is a complete rethink in how pupils are assessed, and before that, a thorough overhaul of education. It’s far too academic, too early. On the whole, education is wasted on the young. They should be taught the basics of English language and elementary arithmetic, basic civics and car and home maintenance, but otherwise encouraged to follow their own stars.

At the same time, there needs to be more provision for continuing education. I did A-level English at 33, and I’m sure I got a more lasting appreciation of literature than had I done it at 17.

Youngsters need to be literate, but not to be force-fed Shakespeare, unless they want to study literature- which they will do if given an opportunity by an alert teacher.

They need to be able to count their change and fill in a tax return, not solve quadratic equations, unless they want to be a mathematician - something that an alert teacher will spot and encourage.

All the science a child needs can be found by futzing  around at home, in the insides of cars, or roaming the woods and fields - a tendency that a sympathetic teacher will spot.

This  won’t happen, of course, because educationalists lack imagination and are cursed with poverty of ambition.

Above all, exams are a lousy way to assess a person’s potential and should be scrapped. Universities and employers should set their own tests to suit their needs - and university degrees should be reorganised on a US-style liberal arts model with a foundation year for all students.

DISCLAIMER - I speak as a former Steiner-school pupil. Waldorf education isn’t perfect, for sure - but I know from experience that it’s far better at producing happy, rounded and able citizens from mixed-ability classes than the current wasteful and misguided system. And yes, I still did GCSE’s and A-levels.

Locked Down and Blue

Lockdown has got to me, people. So much so that I have recorded a slice of vintage Americana. You can listen to it here. The song is 'No More Cane On The Brazos' originally sung by the convicts sentenced to life with hard labour in the sugar-cane fields on the Rio Brazos in the early Twentieth Century. It's been covered widely -- from the Limeliters to Lonnie Donnegan, The Band to Ian Gillan. I did it in a band called Hippies With Mortgages, somewhat later in the Twentieth Century. WARNING - may contain traces of accordion.

I Speak Your Weight

Lockdown Life -- Here at Chez Gee we have tended to view weighing scales in the same way that Queen Elizabeth I viewed mirrors. Despite the reputation that fat people are harder to kidnap, Mrs Gee noted that COVID-19 has a particular fondness for people built in, let us say, a more 'traditional' manner. So we've been on a health kick.

Helped by the fact that we only shop online and put up with what we have, so no cheeky choc bars, bags of M&Ms, take-away meals, cafe breaks with, noblesse oblige, a sausage roll, for all that the sausage roll is a 'diet' sausage roll as some of it ends up in a dog, combined with Mrs Gee's strict portion control, and her strenuous efforts to hide the biscuit tin, as it is a fact universally acknowledged that when I am shut in a room with a packet of biscuits, only one of us comes out alive, and, notwithstanding inasmuch as which the presence of a lively Pupperino means I am taking more exercise, and Mrs Gee is devoted to a YouTube exercise channel for Ladies of a Certain Age -- we have lost weight.

But how much?

Well, the weighing scales arrived yesterday. When I stepped on them I expected them to go AAARGH! and explode, leaving a wisp of purple smoke and a bad smell, or at the very least say NO COACH PARTIES before expiring or announce ONE AT A TIME PLEASE in starchy schoolmarmish tones.

But no! The scales remained whole and entire, and gave a silent, oracular and definitely digital reading, which I couldn't read from 6 feet up. However, the digits persist long enough such that I can read them once alighted, and, noting the numbers, I discovered that my weight is measured in some newfangled units such as steradian parsecs per cubic millisieverts. What the what? A handy google allowed me to convert this, via troy ounce per cubic acre, to something intelligible, which was... wait for it ....

18st 3lbs. 

Now, this means little as I don't know how much I weighed before, but the last time I weighed myself I was 19st and upwards, whence the Elizabeth I attitude to scales. I'm still of a form such that were I to indulge in sea bathing, someone would call the Sea Mammal Research Unit.

However, I have had to make new holes in the short end of my belt, and people have remarked on my relatively svelte appearance in my Facebook profile pic. Mrs Gee, too, has started to assume a sleeker profile. Don't worry, folks, we don't look like the young gods we did when we met ... YET.

*** UPDATE, 1 September 2020 *** 

Yesterday I weighed myself and was

17st 7lbs

So the diet is working.

*** UPDATE, 13 October 2020 ***

 17st 3lbs

So that's a stone lost in two months. Not bad, but still no danger of my slipping between the cracks in the pavement.