cranberry futures

I was passing the time of day with a friend of mine at the end of the check out in the food emporium frequented by Teapot and myself earlier today when he pointed to three packs of cranberries.

"These are for next Christmas " said he. "I will freeze them and make a cranberry jelly next year. You know there was a shortage this year".
I asked if he would be buying next year's Christmas cards in the sales but he said not.

It made me think. What happens if his family become vegetarians and they no longer need cranberry jelly? What if there is a turkey shortage next year? How does he feel if there is a glut of cranberries next year and the price collapses? Just the kind of risk someone faces who buys in advance, or forward as the commodity traders call it.

My dad was a wool buyer for a felt manufacturer in Lancashire. The price of wool futures for was one fact he had to conjure with as he planned what to buy against the planned and hoped for demand for the factory's products......and woe betide him if it went wrong!

Nearer home I thought of other friends searching the supermarket aisles to make sure they are prepared for next Christmas........with venison ( or is it reindeer) steaks for the freezer, Christmas pudding by the tonne, and not forgetting brandy butter (now how do you store that?).

I wonder what Christmas pudding future prices are right now......pass me the Financial Times!

Grommit's Best Reads 2006

What could be better than munching on a piece of Wensleydale whilst turning the pages of a book showing Wensleydale itself!

There are times however when Grommit turns to a spot of fiction so here are his top ten reads in 2006:

• a Wedding in December : Anita Shreeve
• 44 Scotland Street: Alexander McCall Smith
• Light on Snow: Anita Shreeve
• Saturday: Ian McEwan
• The Far Country: Neville Shute
• the Adventures of Shrelock Homes: Conan Doyle
• Wessex Tales: Thomas Hardy
• Birdsong: Sebastian Faulks
• Angels and Demons: Dan Brown
• Digital Fortress: Dan Brown

How about some suggestions for Grommit's bed time stories in 2007?

Three not So Wise Men

Teapot and I have been on a pre Christmas visit to the homeland, the Rossendale Valley, about 20 miles north of Manchester and the same distance west of Chorley. Mrs FLN has been in Chorley this weekend the home of long lunches, bingo sessions and Chorley FM. No doubt more of that on another blog!

We turned up Friday afternoon and took Teapot's father to the Christmas tea for the older members of the congregation of St Mary's Church Rawtenstall. We were married there. The church has recently been refurbished inside and a fine job has been made of it. Purple Pippin turned up as well to receive Mrs FLN's Christmas present.

Yet the most interesting point in the afternoon was my overhearing Teapot asking for the address of an ex boy friend. I am sorry to confess to listening into other people's conversations but these things do stick in your mind and I just have to unburden the news somewhere.

24 hours or so later we were at Teapot's father's house and the usual type of argument broke out between father and daughter. Not quite the "it is" " it isn't" variety but a bit like that. A matter of local history in their part of the valley. So Teapot had the bright idea of sending a text to another young man from yesteryear to settle the point......and he replied within minutes to say he would check the facts on his return home from Qatar where he happened to be at that moment waiting for the plane home to his tax exile in the Isle of Man. He who in his round robbin this year (Baddog take note) told us of his meeting Bill Gates!

No surprise to me that Teapot is able to beckon the opposite sex from half way round the world!

All this reminded me of the Bishop, another ex boy friend of Teapot's who is now in a senior position in a well known Christian organisation with a ministry going back over 100 years in London. I will say no more to preserve the anonymity of the party except that he is not really a Bishop. When he made contact some years ago FLN became very protective! He need not have worried. The bishop was once a minister of the wee frees and the idea of Teapot as the matron of the manse is beyond Timelord's imagination!

Three men, but not very wise men......because they had their chance and blew it.

Good, I say.

Truth is none of them knew how best to stir the pot or cope with the strong brew that results!!

Standing in for Robbie and Rudolf

I came home from the station this evening to see Santa on an aeroplane stuck on the front of a house in Dower Road......not quite a helicopter......

.......but it goes to show what will happen if we cannot find animals to pull the sleigh now that Robbie and Rudolf have been ruled out. Presents will be impounded, the air will be polluted and where will the jingle bells be heard??

So please please let us have youranimals. This is urgent.......

Mrs Landingham

My friend Baddog told me he spent the other Sunday evening watching the final episodes of the West Wing. How I miss them all: Josh, Donna, CJ, Charlie and of course most recently President Santos.

All this made me return again to one of my favourite episodes from an earlier series and realise with an unerring jolt how even more powerful it is than when I first saw it.

Mrs Landingham was President Bartlett's PA, an older lady with a wise head who had been around since his college days. She looked after the apparent trivialities and could say the telling word at just the right time.

She went out one day to buy a new car. On her first drive she was hit by a drunken driver and died in the accident. The power of this particular episode is the thanksgiving service in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle in Washington (see picture) or more precisely what happened afterwards.

Bartlett asks for the secret service to secure the building. He launches into a tirade against God for what he sees as vindictive thuggery in the death of his friend who he loved so much. The point at which he lights a cigarette and stubs it out on the floor of the sanctuary is great drama. The most powerful leader of peoples on earth rails in his frustration and grief against the Almighty and he is angry. Yet he is in the sanctuary.

So for Mrs Landingham read FreelanceNerd; for drunken driver read German (or Russian) lorry driver.What does all this say.

People ask me how am I doing, or they wonder how I stand up to it all. Readers of these blogs will know how much I draw on friends, but that is not the whole story.

I have this print in my office. It is almost unique in that I took it on a walk with FLN just the two of us on the last Friday of our holiday in Grasmere.To look at it captures the hole in the
universe which is now part of who I am. Clocks do not go back; the video cannot be rewound. I take in and absorb the grief of those I love, like Teapot, Mrs FLN and Big Al. I cannot fix things and now and again could do with a kicking post where I could apply a stout boot in frustration. I feel the tragedy of others all the more keenly: parents of a Vietnamese man who was killed after falling on the underground, of 4 teenagers killed in an accident on the A449, of Michael Blakey in Dharmshala in India.

Colleagues at work are great but time does not stand still. Things have to be done. Energy is spent.

Yet the light shines in darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. I will take hold of Christmas with this great truth burned in me....... and the church carpet is safe from burning dog ends.

Hen Weeks

Teapot was out on a hen day yesterday with her friends at Hoar Cross Hall. She was not looking forward to it but in the end enjoyed it very much.

She came home early evening full of the facilities and the experiences of the day. Being of a sensitive disposition and not wanting to be too shocked by these things I managed to distract her attention by telling her of my incompetence in failing to record "Strictly Come Dancing" on the VR. VRs are unknown on Gallifray.

The mention of a chair with an automatic massaging facility was enough for me....along with the reference in the brochure to kick boxing!

It all took me back to the visit I made on business a year or so ago to Bradford. Waiting for the clients to arrive I passed a few minutes with the Telegraph and Argus and especially the letters page. It was full of letters mourning the closure of Jasper Ramsbottom's finishing school for young ladies. This had provided a long and distinguished service to the mill owners of Bradford who used to send their daughters there for a week's "finishing" before the big day of the wedding.

The young ladies learnt to hone their skills with the following courses:

• laying fires, bringing the coal in, cleaning out the grate,
• the correct temperature for the water for the dolly tub,
• how to achieve 40 strokes to the minute with the posser
• black leading the grate
• meat and 2 veg 7 days a week on housekeeping of less than a £1
• success with the donkey stone
• darning by candle light

....and much more. The big finale was the yorkshire pudding making competition!!

Jasper's place was an old stone built mansion on a track from the road out of Skipton to the dales........which reminds me that Big Al is in that area this weekend and his half cousins are called Ramsbottom. I wonder!

Watch this space or may be his blog!!

Reindeers preparing for lift off!

Christmas Eve minus 1 (saturday 23 december) and regular bloggers are invited to join us at the Tardis from 1830 hours onwards...

...I took the opportunity on Saturday when taking Robbie and Rudolf back to Mrs FreelanceNerd and CliffHanger Lyd's place to ask the dynamic duo about their preparations for the big day.

Rudolf reminded me of his limbering up exercises on the bird table and generally giving Tiger the run around. They are both keen to be with us on CE minus 1.

Mrs FreelanceNerd will be here to make sure they have an early night and are in top class flying form!

We will have mince pies and mulled wine and just possibly some reindeer biscuits for the really discerning palette. It has taken some skilled interrogation over the last few weeks to discover the secret recipe!

Hope you can come...

The Trumpet shall sound...or not

It is official. Handel would not be welcome at the Test Match grounds of Australia.

Cricket Australia confirmed this week that trumpets would not be allowed at any of the venues for this winter's Ashes series.

But why trumpets and what about trombones, euphoniums, saxaphones, sackbuts and hunting horns. All no doubt verbotten in the police state that rules in the cricket grounds of Oz.

Silencing the Barmy Army...I don't think so.

My guess is that the ban on trumpets will backfire. After all blowing their own trumpet is part of the pysche of all Australian cricketers. Imagine the build up of frustration as bragging and blustering is held in check. Shane Warne silent! Glenn McGrath gobsmacked!! Justin Langer dumbstruck.

What joy........