Wulf's Webden

The Webden on WordPress

28 November 2024
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The Christmas (music) season begins…

Even through I’m not responsible for music in a church this year, the Christmas season remains musically busy. My first official Christmas engagements are the Christmas lights switch-on in East Leake (free event in the town centre, with music from Charnwood Concert Band starting at 3:45pm) and, alongside Jane, singing with the University choir at the Cope Auditorium next Wednesday evening (7:30pm, tickets at £7 with concessions and available online or on the door).

It isn’t just gigs – there are also the rehearsals supporting those gigs and some additional events I’ve signed up for. Those include a scratch band playing in Loughborough’s Carillon shopping centre on the afternoon of 14th December (first rehearsal tomorrow night – I’m planning on tuba for this one) and guesting on electric bass with a big band which meets up in Nottingham on the afternoon of 15th December, so another set of music to get the hang of.

Phew!

26 November 2024
by wpAdmin
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Super failure?

I have to say that my superglue sun visor repair hasn’t held up too well. I thought it was doing okay and then, this afternoon, it popped out again. However, I’m not entirely sure it was either my brute strength or the material strength of the repair but because the motion of the visor has become incredibly stiff. It should need enough force that it doesn’t flop around but not an excessive amount. With a bit more reading, it looks like this is not an uncommon problem.

I’ll probably need to order a replacement but I might just have a look at whether I can clean and lubricate the rod in the existing one first.

25 November 2024
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Superglue Boosts

Last week, I reached up to adjust the driver’s side sun visor in our car and it came off in my hands. I’d probably been a bit careless but I was trying to quickly block the sun streaming in through the side window after I’d turned a corner and I was concentrating mainly on the road. I think it was mainly trying to lower and rotate it at the same time which caused the problem but the result was that, although we had the bits, we didn’t a sun visor.

The assembly involved a lot of plastic, some of which was cracked or had sheared off, and a couple of awkward metal clips. Over the weekend I figured out how to remove the clips, which were still fixed in the car (insert a flat screwdriver and twist it, allowing the clip to be worked down – squeezing with pliers seemed ineffective and like to result in some nasty pinches). Further research revealed that a new replacement would be the best part of £200 and even one from a breaker’s yard could be over £30. Then Jane came across an idea, which I’d seen before but not tried, of using tissue paper along with superglue for plastic repairs.

It turns out that superglue wicks into the paper and quickly sets, creating a way to mould the adhesion around the target rather then relying on minimal natural points of adhesion. Doing a bit of further research also suggested bicarbonate of soda as another substance that could be used to add extra utility to superglue.

After a bit of fiddling around I seem to have achieved a sufficient repair that I’ve been able to fit the original visor (and clips) back into the car. It looks like new on the outside (or perhaps just a hair off perfect) and hasn’t fallen off yet although I’ll be extra careful for a while to come. I would say the results weren’t quite as marvellous as most YouTube videos you can find on the subject but probably enough to keep us going for now.

24 November 2024
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The Message I Didn’t Preach

There was a possibility that our friend, who was leading the service and preaching at the church we went to support this morning, would be called away at short notice. In the end, that didn’t happen but I made a few notes in case I needed to step in. The overall service leading would have been easy enough but I wanted to have a thread to hold onto in case I ended up delivering the sermon as well.

The theme for the day was Christ the King (standard for the last Sunday before Advent) and the readings in the service were to be Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 and John 18:33-37. My plan was to start off with something that is well-rooted in the UK perspective on monarchy: how many people have got to the point when they don’t need to check themselves from singing “God save the Queen” when the National Anthem comes up? I didn’t want to get mired in royalism versus republicanism but, in a sense, Christians would have to agree with those who protested at the Coronation last year. If we have to choose, Charles isn’t our ultimate king but Jesus is.

I was then going to touch on all four Lectionary readings for the day – the two mentioned and also Psalm 93 and Revelation 4:1b-8. If in doubt, much better to bring attention back to the Bible and set people up for pondering it over the coming week rather than blathering on down my own dead ends.

I would have started with the John reading, Jesus before Pilate. In fact, I would have extended it to include v38. The Psephizo blog noted a clever pun in the Latin Vulgate this week. When Pilate says “what is truth?” (Quid est veritas? in Latin), that is an anagram of ‘the man who stands before you’ (Est vir qui adest). Only a few hours earlier, Jesus had declared to his followers “I am … the truth” (John 14:6) so, although the Latin anagram isn’t part of the inspired text, it is a notable comment on an important observation. Another observation is that, when Jesus was talking about his kingdom not being of this world, one of his followers had tried to defend him with violence and, of course, Jesus had not only stopped that but healed the man who was wounded. Jesus was the spotless lamb, not guilty of the charges of either the Jewish authorities (because he was God) or the Roman powers.

I then planned to navigate through the other passages although my notes there were much briefer. If I hadn’t done more than just read them and encourage the congregation to look at them together, that would have been enough. Finally, because I have just finished studying the seven ‘I Am’ statements Jesus makes in John’s gospel, I would have come back to that because, together, they give us perspective on the kind of King that Jesus Christ is. Bread of life (Jn 6), light of the world (Jn 8), good shepherd (Jn 10), gateway (Jn 10), resurrection and the life (Jn 11), the way, the truth, and the life (Jn 14) and the true vine (Jn 15).

I didn’t get to use it today but I’ll keep my notes filed away because Christ the King Sunday comes around every year and its truth is life every day.

23 November 2024
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The Deep Purples

Here is a video that entertained me today, an imaginative rendering of Deep Purple’s 1970 album In Rock as if it had been recorded in the 1950s:

Of course, it should be noted that 1970 is not so far away from the 1950s. I had the original album on cassette sometime in the mid to late 1980s, so about an equidistant time period from the actual release to this imagined version and it is now over 50 years ago!

22 November 2024
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Reverse Cappucino

Just under 15 minutes into today’s “How to Cook That” video, there is an exploration of how to make a coffee foam. When you whisk egg whites or the ‘aqua faba’ out of a tin of beans, the proteins firm up around the air and so it swells in volume and retains that. It turns out that instant coffee contains a concentration of gums that do the same thing and so we set to doing some experimentation.

The recipe was 2 tbsp of instant coffee, 2 tbsp sugar and 2 tbsp water, whisked up. Our best blending option was a stick blender but the blades did the job. However, I’m not entirely sure we needed the sugar so next time I’ll try it without. I think the sensation Ann Reardon was looking into was about making drinks but the best use we found was to serve with ice cream – a novel and pleasant way of getting an icecream coffee (and the icecream is sweet enough).

So that’s how to make frothy coffee in a way that isn’t just frothy milk. I suppose you could call serving it on ice cream a reverse cappucino (cold, with frothy coffee on top of the milk layer)!

21 November 2024
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Kedgeree

Recently, I’ve cooked up kedgeree for dinner a couple of times, based on this Rick Stein recipe from the BBC Good Food site. It is the kind of recipe that doesn’t need too much precision in the quantities and is even quite forgiving of the ingredients and, having already taken various liberties based on what I actually had available, I think I’m pretty much ready to give it another go without looking at the source.

I think I’d start by gathering my spices. Stein calls for bay leaf, cinnamon stick, cardomon and a small amount of tumeric. I think next time I might drop the cinnamon and crush up the cardomon seeds rather than just splitting the pods. I will possibly also add some cumin (we’re working rather slowly through a very large bag of it) and put the salt in at this stage rather than reserving it for later. I’d also assemble the other ingredients – 2-3 eggs, some fish that can be flaked up (skinless, boneless fillets are ideal) and some kind of green, leafy veg. Parsley is often suggested but I used some frozen tree spinach, harvested from the allotment earlier this year, which worked well to give green flecks in the final dish. Butter is also needed (50g but ‘some’ would be sufficient) along with an onion, basmati rice and stock. Stein has 450g rice to 1 litre of stock; I normally work out how much stock I have and then weigh out just under half as much rice.

Time to cook! Melt the butter and drop in the onion, cut to a fairly fine dice. The onion wants to soften but not burn and then, after about five minutes, the spices can be added. If I’m being time efficient I’ll probably also have my eggs started by then – hard boiled for eight minutes. Once the spices have cooked into the butter for a minute or so, add the rice, coating it with the spiced butter, and follow with the stock. Bring that to the boil, stir to avoid sticking, then turn the heat down very low and cover, cooking for twelve minutes. Soon the eggs will be done. They can be lifted out and placed in cold water to quickly cool and the fish can go into the already hot water the eggs were cooked in.

The fish only needs about four minutes so, before the rice is done, there should be time to peel and chop the eggs, drain and flake the fish and prepare any spinach, parsley or other green veg. When the rice is cooked, all of that can be added and stirred in, keeping over the heat for another couple of minutes. Finally, serve, perhaps with a bit of fresh lemon (visual garnish and for the bright acidity).

20 November 2024
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Fawkes Bitter Bottled

I got my Fawkes Bitter bottled today. It had a reached a final gravity of 1.007 so an ABV of about 4.3%. I’ll have to dig back through my records and see if there is a relationship between the type of yeast I am using and the final gravity. It should have ended at 1.010 but, if the yeast can cope with a high concentration of alcohol, then perhaps it makes sense for it to hit a lower level? If my data backs that up, I will need to think about adjusting the recipe for a lower original gravity if I want to hit a target ABV.

The other note to make on this one is that I repeated my experiment from last time with the Loco Beer, of transferring the beer into my jerry can (with measuring marks) then back into the cleaned fermenter with the prepared sugar solution for bottle conditioning. It worked well with the Loco Beer so seemed worth trying again.

19 November 2024
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That’s a Covering

Snowy Back Garden - November 2024
Back Garden – Mid-November 2024

I’m glad I popped over and did some allotment work yesterday. The sleet we met as we came out of choir practise last night had turned to snow by the time we went to bed and is still out this morning. I’ve got to walk over to the University this morning so I will allow a generous margin of extra time for the journey. The view seemed worth adding to the ‘looking down on the garden‘ series.

With low temperatures this week, snow could be on the ground for a few days until a wet but much warmer day forecast for Saturday.

18 November 2024
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Covering up

I’ve been down at the allotment this morning. The forecast is for a few days of very cold weather for the season and I wanted to get some horticultural fleece over a few things to give them extra protection.

Allotment - November 2024
Allotment – November 2024

I also took home a small harvest – some leeks that didn’t look likely to come to much more (some for dinner tonight and some small ones I’ve replanted in the polytunnel), the last few beetroot and a welsh onion that popped out when I was trimming down the nearby globe artichokes before putting on their winter protection.