So what is timesnewroman? It's not the font, rather my take on the age we live in. The USA is the new Rome and the times we live in are timesnewroman.
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Shrine of the blind winger Jones
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timesnewroman is listening to: Tiken Jah Fakoly, Arctic Monkeys, Biffy Clyro, Kings of Leon, Bloc Party, Led Zeppelin, Jimi, Franz Ferdinand, Youssou N'Dour, The Strokes, REM, The Kings of Leon, Curtis Mayfield, Jefferson Airplane, The Trashcan Sinatras, Jeff Buckley, Phil Ochs, Stan Kenton, The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Mogwai, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, The Zombies and Orange Juice amongst many others.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Time for pontificatingRight, so a few of the Countryside Alliance Pro Hunt Mob infiltrate the Labour Party conference having joined a couple of days beforehand, they were able to get tickets to see Bliar make his impassioned (just kidding) speech. Labour Party must be getting really desperate for members and people to listen to them then.
The thing that strikes me here is that only a week ago the same countryside warriors were bursting in on the House of Commons most likely with the assistance and support of their pals on the Tory benches.
Now just suppose that some Al Quieda supporting chappie had joined the Countryside Alliance a few days beforehand and had managed to infiltrate the commons along with the hooray henry spoilt little bastards? Shouldn't whoever assisted them be hauled over some particularly hot coals for having compromised the nation's security, like the poor prat from the Labour Party who was so keen to hand out visitors tickets.
posted by timesnewroman at 8:51 PM
Monday, September 27, 2004
Monday and the holiday break is almost over. I am quite looking forward in some ways to getting back to work. The 6.00am. rise in the morning, early nights and little or no alcohol, coupled with the need to get stuff done by ludicrously tight deadlines. I am sure you can appreciate the allure.A brief update on the medical fronts 1 and 2.
The Shingles don't seem to have developed any further, certainly none of the pain traditionally associated with the virus. That and although a second spot looked like it might be trying to erupt, it has retreated full speed. If anything, I think I have Shingle!
I have no idea what the blood pressure is at the moment, however I have developed my very own scientifically based diet upon which I now embark. Well actually its a bit of the G.I. low carb diet, but without the rank craziness of stuffing saturated fats, a la Atkins, into one's gob as well! But with the added twist of using lots of Potassium enriched foods as long as they are low G.I. Simple really. I am hopeful that it will prove to be a staggering success and that I shall make vast fortunes from the books and the recipes and the film rights. Then of course there is the increased exercise. Got to be good for you.
Recipe No. 1 for a low fat, lowish (if you discount the sugar in the rhubarb) G.I., high in potassium and high fibre dessert.
Rhubarb Crumble.
1lb of Rhubarb washed and chopped in chunks
2 Tablespoons water
1.5 oz Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon ground ginger
Combine ingredients in a pan, bring to the boil and then simmer gently for about 10 minutes, you want the rhubarb to be a bit chunky.
When cooked drain the liquid and transfer rhubarb to an ovenproof dish.
In another bowl, mix cup of rolled oats with 1/2 cup of wheatgerm, small handful of sesame seeds and stir in a couple of tablespoons each of soya oil and honey. The mixture should be neither soggy nor dry. Feel free to experiment with nuts and all sorts of stuff.
Spread this mixture over the rhubarb and bake at 180o in a pre-heated oven for about 15 - 20 minutes until its brown and crispy on top. Serve with low fat Greek yoghurt, or high fat custard if you must!
posted by timesnewroman at 5:43 PM
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Kris Boyd - Sadly unavailable for my fantasy footie team
First game I have been to this season. Am I glad I went. 5-2 victory and it could/should have been more.
posted by timesnewroman at 4:40 PM
Friday, September 24, 2004
Varicella-Zoster Virus
It never rains but it pours
I have not been near my G.P for well over a year, until yesterday. Yesterday morning on top of everything else I had what looked like a burst plook (spot) on my forehead above my eye. This morning my eye had swollen somewhat and thewife insisted that I go back and visit the doctor again. I protest, but agree to humour her. This time I got the doctor I like. He squirts some orange dye into my eye, has a look with a blue light to examine for abrasion and the like. Decides that the eye is okay, but will give me an anti-viral ointment for the eye and some tablets for my suspected Shingles. Shingles by golly. "That's bad isn't it." "Well it can be." He asks me if I feel any pain and to be honest I don't. He seems to think I will have some pain as he tells me to take whatever painkillers are necessary, mmmm. He tells me the virus is related to chicken-pox and can lie dormant for many years. I think in my case it must be like forty. It's not contagious apparently, in that you can't catch shingles from someone with shingles, but if you have a supressed immune system you should steer clear of me.
The Offending Spot
posted by timesnewroman at 1:25 PM
Thursday, September 23, 2004
One for thewife
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, then everything would appear to man as it is, infinite"... William Blake.... and the source of the Doors name.
Tenuous door link follows. Had my perception been cleansed at the time of tackling the "how hard can changing the hinges on a door and rehanging it be be?" question, I would have undoubtedly realised that such a task, if completed in the way one would like it to appear, it would certainly be infinite. I'm not entirely cack-handed, but I may as well have been. It doesn't fit the frame, the hinges aren't quite right and the previous hinge slots are very visible. I think thewife now regrets mentioning the possibility of me undertaking the task.
Bollocks! Caught by the Hypertension clinic. I haven't gone for a while and I sort of didn't bother renewing the prescription because, the blood pressure was down and.... well anyway pleasant nurse puts me as at ease as possible, whilst doing weight and height checks and taking blood. Taking or giving blood is something that my body is very loathe to do. I could never have been an I.V. Drug User, I have very thin practically invisible veins apparently and trained Phlebotomists have struggled to get the red stuff out of my right arm. I suggest the back of the hand and she looks at me saying we're not really supposed to do that. I'm thinking that in a few minutes I'm going to have a a few pin pricks on my arm and nurse will have given up and have to go for the back of the hand anyway. No, she tries the left arm and hey presto, its coming out, slowly, but coming out nevertheless. She apologisies for the bruise I am going to have, but me I'm just impressed that she found the vein.
Next its the blood pressure and this is the bit that's worrying me........... not helped by the earlier realisation that with 15 minutes to go, the appointment is for today and I haven't done the urine sample yet and thewife says it was supposed to have been the first pee of the day, midstream would be best. That's long been flushed away and I'm not sure if I can even do one and when I do I sort of miss, the bottle, not the pan! and then I think I'm not going to be able to do this and then I manage a few drops and wonder if its enough and then finally flow. Whoo-pee so to speak. Except that I am on holiday which entitles me to have partook of a number of glasses of wine last night and what the hell get a move on and you might make it.............. So I am sat there looking at the machine and knowing full well that the sight of one of these things, coupled with someone in a white coat and all my rushing around is guaranteed to have pumped my blood pressure right up. 228 over 143 I know this is bad, this is Hypertension. So off she goes to check with the doctor there and then to see if he will medicate. Bollocks! He comes back with her and its the one doctor in the practice I will NEVER make an appointment with. Comes across as arrogant and dismissive and he once gave me pain killers for a Hiatus Hernia where I gave a pretty accurate description of the symptoms. Anyway to cut a long story short, I took it on the chin and got the medication. I don't want the medication indefinitely, been there before and didn't like it. So went walking in the afternoon, and then shopping for a whole host of healthy goodies and pottassium enriched foodstuffs, such as bananas, which allegedly may help. The diet seriously starts here!
posted by timesnewroman at 5:05 PM
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Reidski was up for the weekend. Monday seemed to disappear entirely. This pretty much explains what happened.posted by timesnewroman at 10:02 AM
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Faring Badly
There's me in fanatasy footie land expecting the sack any day now, and no bloody wonder. I thought I had offloaded Youri Djorkaeff weeks ago. It was only when I decided that Kluivert had to go that I realised I hadn't completed the transfer paperwork properly. I'm never going to win, but the pleasing thing is despite having a number of passengers, there are managers doing worse than me.
posted by timesnewroman at 2:58 PM
I'm on holiday this week and next. We aren't going anywhere, just having rest and relaxation. The weather was quite nice yesterday so we went for a walk in Eglinton Park, one of our favourite spots, along with harbourside and the beach park Well at least they were until I found this and this whilst looking for a suitable link! Eek
posted by timesnewroman at 9:21 AM
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Palace Insecurity.
"I had a bag with me - there could have been anything in there, explosives or anything. We are totally untrained, just ordinary guys. If we can get in there, anyone can."
The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir John Stevens, disagreed, saying that the pair would have been shot if officers had thought they were terrorists.
Note to any potential terrorists then - dress up in a silly costume and the Met will assume your just having a larf. Ho Ho Ho.
posted by timesnewroman at 5:32 PM
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Nostalgic Value
Father Bell sent me this postcard. It dates way back to the mid to late 1970s, when I was but a lad. Every Sunday night in the Grange Hotel, there would be a live band playing. As often as not it would be these chaps, Joe Lethal. They were the local heroes, brilliant band perfectly merging post-punk new wave covers with the blues and Beatles that they had been brought up with. I remember vividly, the epic "punked up" version of Eleanor Rigby which was their encore. It made the b-side of their first single that got a rave review in the N.M.E as I recall. The flier above must have been for their second single and I believe they made no more. Leo the bassist was a panel beater then and still is. I remember one of my first jobs, selling motor spares. He used to regularly come in for number plates. It was bizarre having one of your local rock gods as a customer.
I was always surprised they never made it relatively big. They looked the part , were well liked and more importantly could play. Live they were brilliant, at least that's how I remember them. The funny thing is I did a trawl acrosss the net and found a few references, nothing about them, just a few people selling the above single, which must be a vinyl collectors piece as it shifts for around �35. Expensive for nostalgia. I think I'll hang on to my youthful memories of just how good they were live.
posted by timesnewroman at 11:45 AM
Friday, September 10, 2004
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the woods!Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Tory anger mounts at 'botched' reshuffleposted by timesnewroman at 5:58 AM
Sunday, September 05, 2004
PHOTOFUNGIJimty is gonna love this!
posted by timesnewroman at 10:49 PM
The last Malapropism
What the hell. I should be depressed, we just missed out on the prizes at the King's Arms' Quiz. I was convinced beyond doubt, that croquet has never been an Olympic sport but I was wrong and it looks like thewife is going to remind me of that in perpetuity, despite the fact that I knew that 2-4-6-8- Motorway was a hit for The Tom Robinson Band. The most depressing aspect of this week quiz was question 31. This is a question, which wins a cash prize of up to �100, it hinges on a numerical question which no-one is likely to know the answer to, for example how many competitors entered the first Olympic Games. The prize money accumulates each week, if it gets to �100 the nearest answer wins. We won it once, tonight the prize is up to �80. The question was how many pages are in the Glasgow South Yellow Pages edition 2003-2004. We guessed 1,024 another team guessed 1,026. They were right, we were close, no cigar though. We are never bitter though and the night was lit up for me by a recollection , by the carpentry-lecturer of one of the Councillor's classic Malapropisms. Apparently he saw a particularly good movie last week. The Last Samaritan! You could not make that up if you tried. My all time favourite is of course, when he was best man to a friend who was going to Venice on honeymoon, he offered to go as well as their ghonorrea! No kidding!
posted by timesnewroman at 10:16 PM
What kind of fucked up bastards hide behind children? What kind of fucked up bastards link their struggle to religion and believe that any sort of supreme being would welcome them in heaven? Maybe Putin now has cause to wipe Chechnya from the map.
thewife and I had a quiet Saturday and decided to have a Tapas night. Shopping first for the ingredients and then a couple of worthwhile hours of preparation, buoyed by some cook's perks. The resultant feast of patatas bravas; tomatoes, stuffed with avocado, garlic, olives, anchovies and lemon juice; fried cod marinated in garlic, vinegar oregano and cumin; chorizo sausage rolls; asparagus with garlic and lemon mayonnaise; and last but definitely not least, asparagus rolled in salt pepper and lemon rind and wrapped in short crust pastry, (We stopped at this point realising that we really didn't need the Barcelona style pork as well.) De-effing-licious my mouth is watering just writing about it. All washed down by a nice bottle of Garnacha and a couple of bottles of white. Sat there for the rest of the night watching a Jackie Chan movie and purring in self satisfaction like Charlie. Charlie incidentally slept on thewife's lap with one front leg up on the back of the couch. We realised later he had a claw stuck, so laid back he is, he just went to sleep like that.
posted by timesnewroman at 9:17 AM
