......your days of sorrow will end

so says the prophet Isaiah. But not yet.......

I travelled to Lancaster on Wednesday and picked up a copy of the Times on the train to read these words as part of an inside article.

They were written with great feeling by one who knows.

"I do not believe a parent can ever “get over” the death of a child, because the flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood, will always remain just that, and therefore pain will always be there, beating within a vein just below the surface of your skin.
.............. we should not expect to “get over” any sort of loss. In particular, surely we honour the beloved dead by carrying our losses with us, just as a snowball rolled along picks up snow, and — in time and with the right help — that process cannot but add to the sum total, the spiritual size, of who we are. This is not a matter of choice. Yet it necessarily involves several degrees of acceptance."

There is a danger that people will not know after time passes what to say. Do they skirt round or avoid the subject. We are blessed by close friends who know they do not have to offer the magic words, the fix it remedy, who can share of what is happening to them because we care about it perhaps more keenly than before because we have been forged together in our shared loss of FLN and El Pasto.

So Teapot has posted photos of FLN over the past few weeks and here is a favourite of mine. My 90 mph delivery was about to be slog swept over our house which at the time was just to the right of the photo. Notice the gleeful expectation of the winning hit!

We carry our loss with us but one day sorrows will end.

"I am the Lord in its time I will do this swiftly"

Who's hot......

I popped down to the church last night to see if I could deliver some jelly baby cakes to the Cornish Pixie. She was not around but I was hailed with huge enthusiasm by Miss Junior Baddog.

I wondered why until I read this morning's paper. She was obviously looking forward to the return of Dr Who on Saturday. And one Timelord is much the same as another? She may even have been in some kind of time tunnel or vision warp.

See what you think tomorrow.

A duet in the Tardis

What could Teapot and Mrs FLN be doing here?

What could they be looking at?

Any offers?

bong hits 4 jesus

There is something rather refreshing, infuriating, crazy or may be its just a reflection on the values of our cousins across the big pond that this banner and the right to display it outside a school has gone all the way to the Supreme Court.

As fellow bloggers well know a bong is a pipe for the smoking of bhang, black, blast, blow, blunts, Bob Hope, bush, dope, draw, ganja, grass, hash, hashish, hemp, herb, marijuana, pot, puff, Northern Lights, resin, sensi, sinsemilla, shit, skunk, smoke, soap, spliff, wacky backy, or weed depending on your preference.

Jo Frederick thought it would be fun to fly this banner as an Olympic parade passed by his school in 2002. His head teacher was not amused and banned the banner. She thought it did not fit with the school's anti drug policy and could lead to unruliness.

Jo refused to take it down and was suspended for 10 days. He did not mean to mock Christians or promote hash. He then sued for breach of his rights under the First Amendment and the case has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. Judgement is still to be given.

I am sure Lionel Hutz is in this somewhere. But as we all know America today England tomorrow.

So Cornish Pixie and the Amiable Amy beware but if you are told to take down that poster which says "Bong hits 4 haribo" and want some help then look no further.

Food for thought

On Monday we had the real pleasure of Yankee Doodle Dandee here for her evening meal with Jenny and Big Al who was doing the cooking.

I enquired in my best sympathetic way about the preparations for Saturday's Songs from the Shows. You all know I am putty in the hands of a weak and vulnerable woman [see Sunday's news sheet].

I wondered how it would be if we had a traditional recipe for the meal that is such a part of this kind of event. Something to celebrate our great regional dishes. In Lancashire there are still potato pie suppers and a recipe for this remarkable dish follows the end of this blog. I cannot remember the last time I ate it.

What would you suggest? A balti? Faggotts and peas? Cornish pasty? Fish and chips?

...........or even something from Yankee Doodle land.

May be all these are out of fashion now: not very Jamie Oliver and perhaps not quite the thing for Songs from the Shows. But any ideas?





Recipe


Potato Pie(Serves 4 to 6)

Ingredients:
500 gms of soft shin, cut into small cubes
Flour
Cooking oil
1 onion peeled & sliced
350mls of beef stock
Salt & black pepper
500 gms of potatoes, peeled, cut into cubes & part boiled
Short crust pastry

Method
Dust the meat with the flour. Heat the oil in a pan & fry the meat & onion until lightly browned. Add stock & seasoning. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for at least an hour or until the meat is very tender. (The longer and more slowly the meat is cooked the better). When the meat is ready mix in the drained potato cubes. Put into a deep pie dish or casserole and cover with a short crust pastry crust. Make three slits in the top of the pastry (for the steam to escape), brush with beaten egg or milk and bake for about 40 minutes at 200C until the pastry is golden brown.

An upside down world

Here we have the kitchen CD player, a plate of home made hot cross buns, a slice of Wensleydale (ymmmm) and one of Timelord's special possessions.


It may look like a junior dalek minus the business arms but in fact it is a flour shaker. It belonged to my mother and must have been used to dust the kitchen table on many a baking day before she began to roll out her pastry. It must have tonnes of the stuff on its clock.


If you have ever had your hand full of hot cross bun dough this is your friend as a sprinkling of flour helps free the fingers of the gooey stuff.

Now here is Teapot's father's house and if you expand the photo you will see the name of the house, "Milford Haven", in lakeland stone just to the right of the door. One of the first things he said to me when he came here after FLN died was how FLN had asked him once, rather nervously, if he could have it after grandad died. FLN's middle name, like his grandad, was Milford. He had agreed. But it seemed to sum up in one incident how upset he was that he had survived his grandson.

So this week when Teapot went to see him he had made sure the stone was taken down and he gave it to her. It will be reset at 73 Rosary Road, probably in the garden, and when you go there you must ask it see it.

So a flour shaker and a piece of lakeland stone: one making a family journey in the normal course of things but the other a mark of how our world has been turned upside down.

Just when you thought....

......the bus would never come three arrive at once!

Fellow scribblers may have looked at our site recently and wondered when there would be another post. Well like the buses the posts have come all of a rush, in a threesome in fact.

I thought I would see how many ideas might come to me between now and Easter by reading the chapters in Isaiah that EB chose. The Beatles and Johny Dep are there so have a look. You never know who will be coming next!!

trolleys of the world unite...

...all you have to lose is your chains

On New Year's Eve Julie Dearing was driving her new Citroen C3 along the slip road beside the Tesco car park at Clifton Moor, York when a trolley "came out of nowhere" and smashed into the side of her car.

Julie blames Tesco and Tesco blame the unusally high winds that day but I know that this trolley had been provoked beyond endurance by the overloading he suffered over the Christmas period.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1464557.ece

Enough is enough. A trolley can only be pushed so far. Crashed, banged, abused and herded with rows of other trolleys in chains by gangmasters in orange coats. I saw this for myself at Sainsburys yesterday as the king gangmaster of the store held up the traffic while he manhandled 2 lines of about 40 trolleys across the car park.

Is it any wonder now and again the odd courageous one breaks free to vent his frustration on any passing object, human or not.

I would not want to be the man in the orange coat walking alone passed the chained up lines of trolleys by the store entrance late at night....let alone an innocent passer by returning from an evening out at the local curry house.

So I say declare this week as "be nice to trolleys week". Speak softly and nicely to your trolley. Thank you is easy to say. Ask customer services at the store for the name of your trolley and when they look at you as if you have gone off yours tell them you will take your custom elsewhere. After all farmers name their cows. It is time to halt trolley abuse. Chains are a denial of trolley rights.

And if we do this and accept the dignity of the humble trolley you may be spared the fate of Julie Dearing

shaken but ....

Teapot and Al have already posted their reflections on last week's events and especially our visit to Stafford Crown Court on Monday.

That was an experience which comes right at the top end of the crapometer if you follow my drift. I suppose it was the sense of being rewound and taken back to see the events of 10 September unfold before our eyes and ears.

The ghastly almost inevitability of disaster as Andreas Klassen drove his lorry up the motorway network to his planned delivery points in Lancashire. The painstaking nature of the investigation and the inevitable sentence.

So shaken is a good word to describe the shock to the sytem as all of this hit my senses. And a response to the realisation of the calculated risk taking built into the way of working of the driver and his employers. A further underlining that the world is all out of joint and not just because FreelanceNerd and El Pasto are no longer here with us.

So why the but.....

I guess I have wanted to find something to say that is good and positive out of all that and it has taken me a while and I have found my but....

...they are the two police family liaison officers Gary and Jan. I can truly say I wish I had never seen them but right from the night of the accident through to Monday and no doubt beyond they have been massive. I have spoken more to Jan than Gary and I admire their sensitivity, their willingness to give their time on and off duty and I am just thankful they have been there for us.

So shaken but...