“What are we having for tea tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Well, what takes the longest?”

“Kedgeree doesn’t take that long. I suppose there’s the joint of meat. We want to do that long and slow.”

“Right. We’ll do that then.”

“Besides. There are horses playing badminton on at one.”

“What???!”

Stolen from Dooj.

Food, glorious food

1. Are you a vegetarian? Vegan?
No. I will not, however, eat hare or cetacean for reasons of personal politics.

2. What’s your favorite food?
It’s a tough choice between chicken and sushi.

3. White bread or wholemeal?
I don’t eat much bread at all.

4. What’s for breakfast?
Weekdays it’s a protein shake made of whey isolate and leucine powder flavoured with Green & Blacks drinking chocolate powder. At the weekend it’s either eggs, fruit salad or porridge.

5. You’re making a Dagwood sandwich. What’s in it?
I don’t eat sandwiches as a general inclination. I certainly wouldn’t eat one of those.

6. What’s on your pizza?
Fresh tomato sauce, mozzarella, anchovies, black olives, goats cheese and red onion. Basil if it’s in season.

7. Coffee, tea, milk, or soda soft drink?
Yes. Except milk. And don’t even threaten me with Dr Pepper. It will go badly for you.

8. Dark, milk, or white chocolate?
Not a huge chocolate eater. I will eat small quantities of either Maya Gold or really good quality milk chocolate. I can destroy an entire packet of the G&B;’s mint chocolate.

9. Teetotal, beer, wine, or hard liquor?
Wine usually. Beer after racing. Gin and tonic (Bombay Sapphire, thank you please) for special summery occasions.

10. Does coriander leaf taste like citrus, or like soap?
It tastes like bad parsley. Neither citrus nor soap. I could spend a while describing the various flavour components, but suffice to say that it works as an ingredient in some things while I don’t particularly like it by itself.

11. Is chorizo the greatest thing ever or is it totally disgusting?
I quite like a bit of chorizo, but I am not liking these false bipolar choices. Something can be neither the greatest thing ever nor the worst.

12. Do you use garlic like a vegetable or like a spice?
Both. Depends on the dish.

13. Onions: raw, cooked, or not at all?
Again, it depends on the dish.

14. Does broccoli taste sweet or bitter?
Neither. It tastes like broccoli (I’m starting to think that whoever wrote this quiz should get his taste buds checked out).

15. How do you feel about fish?
I like all marine fish, not so keen on freshwater fish.

16. How about sushi?
Mmmmm. Sushi. Very naughty, owing to mixing fish with rice (bad dog!) and yet I seem to get away with it. Sushi is my friend.

17. Fave ethnic cuisine?
I couldn’t say.

18. What’s your favorite fruit?
I really don’t know. Raspberries, maybe, although I eat a lot of bananas.

19. Cheese – thumbs up or thumbs down?
I like cheese. Not all cheese.

20. Finally, favorite dessert?
I don’t eat a lot of dessert, it has to be said. I like creme caramel and a really good cheesecake is a joy forever. Mostly when I make desserts they’re for Frood. He’s the pudding monster.

“Gah!!! What the FUCK is that?”

I’m looking out of the window. It’s dark. We’re watching our fave TV show (NCIS – Abby is so hot). I have seen a UFO. Possibly an earthlight. Definitely not a will-o’-the-wisp. It’s moving too damn fast.

Frood, used to me seeing things, gets up and has a peer. His usual expression of “Here we go again” is replaced by a fascinated grin.

Outside, on the rough ground behind our block of flats between us and the old gas storage structure (so Robert Rankin), an incredibly bright green thing is darting around. I can’t judge how far away it is or how big it is. One moment it seems to be on the ground and quite big, the next it seems to be on the outside of our window and really quite small.

“It’s chasing da bunnies!” I exclaim, as one of our resident lapine population takes fright.

“It’s a laser pointer,” Frood tells me. “Someone is chasing da bunnies with a laser pointer.”

I’m instantly a tad concerned that the laser could blind one of the rabbits and contemplate knocking on the doors above us to find out who’s doing it and get him to stop. The green light vanishes.

Fortean mystery to potential animal abuse in one easy step.

Random apostrophes are almost forgivable compared to mistaking a comma for one.

Ask me nicely and I’ll tell you the company. It’s not a one-off mistake by the livery painter because it was on all their vehicles:

The funny-ha-ha tagline loses something when all attention is distracted by the punctuation.

New phone! I has it!

You ate rather a lot of beetroot last night, remember?

I just found a pile of old “Consequences” sheets. I think they are from the second Devon Lek.

Barney Frotterbum
Met Miss Love-a-lot
At a gloryhole in a cottage
He said “Oil me up and fetch the larger forceps”
And she said “I couldn’t possibly, I’m on a low-protein diet”
And they could not quite manage a 69 with all the eyes looking at them on stalks.

Frood and I introduced that game to my parents at Christmas…

I lost my coffee.

I had a mug of coffee. I lost it. I lost it while Frood was in the bathroom.

I found it in the wardrobe.

Frood‘s list of things for me to do.

The environment and semiotics.

Putting in place effective policies to stimulate climate-friendly behaviour in the UK is clearly essential, but so too is the use of effective communications. Today in the UK, more stakeholders, including every type of media outlet, the Government, environmental groups and companies, are discussing or communicating on climate change than ever before. But what impact are these stakeholders having? Are they helping or hindering efforts to achieve behaviour change? Will producing more of the same communications do the job, and if not, how could the way climate change is communicated be improved?

To help answer those questions, ippr commissioned Linguistic Landscapes to analyse current UK constructions and conceptions of climate change in the public domain, using some of the tools and principles of discourse analysis and semiotics.

The discussion of “linguistic repertoires” is especially good. My favourite, I think, is “British comic nihilism (‘Oh, bugger it and open another bottle!’)”. Some of the pseudo-intellectual diagrams are whimsically bollocks and make me smile.

You have to register to read, and it was published way back in 2006 (there’s a sequel), but worth a look if you’re interested in the way words can affect thoughts and thus population behaviour on a global scale.

With our thoughts we make the world…