Bake!

Cookery programmes, reality shows and talent competitions are pretty much the mainstay of British television these days, so whoever thought of combining all three presumably knew that they were onto a winner from the word Go!

The Great British Bake Off (hereafter GBBO or Bake Off) is now into its fifth season and thirteen other countries have or will have their own versions. On the face of it a knock-out competition comprising a dozen people baking cakes, pastries, bread and the like may not sound that promising but it seems to have captured the imagination of the public, if for no other reason than that we can salivate over lots and lots of cake. After all what's not to like about cake?

The GBBO Team (Picture telegraph.co.uk)

The first series passed me by unnoticed and the second series I only started watching by chance. One evening, flicking through the channels in the vain hope of finding something interesting, I saw a place I knew, Valentines Mansion in Ilford. I recognised the tent in which Bake Off is filmed having seen it in Valentines Park earlier in the year. I watched the programme out of idle curiosity, there being nothing better on, and that was that, I don't think that I've missed a single show since. That second series was the one which got a lot of people interested in GBBO with viewing figures of over 4 million (Series One peaked at about 3 million for the final). The current series, Series Five attracted 10 million viewers for the now notorious "Bingate" episode in which Iain's Baked Alaska was removed from the freezer. It was a quite genteel, typically British drama that  even with judicious editing, was a tiny tremor as the show glided on.

Valentines Mansion, Ilford.

The current series has, to my mind, the most consistent, evenly matched group of bakers so far. Previous series have had a few outstanding bakers, in this series the winner is difficult to predict because all are good; very good. One of the things that I notice when watching them bake and talk about their baking, is that more than in any form of cookery, baking is an art and a science. There is a lot of talk on GBBO about the action of yeast, about gluten and the structure of gluten that makes baking much more precise than some other disciplines of cookery.  Dough has to be proved for very particular lengths of time, chocolate has to be melted at a precise temperature; there is so much precision required and so much that can go wrong. Which is probably why I would not make a very good baker (just about the only thing I bake are potatoes), because when it comes to cooking I have something of a free and easy attitude. In many things I am pernickety, a bit of a perfectionist and sometimes over obsessed with detail. When I was working, one of my jobs involved testing computer software, where attention to detail is a pretty fundamental requirement. I got something of a reputation as a perfectionist, as someone who went into a lot of detail. This is not something that I carry into the kitchen, it has to be said.

One of the reasons for my somewhat laissez faire attitude to cooking is recipes. Now I will grant you that recipes are important, but I find them an irritant and tend to view them as guidelines rather than hard and fast instructions. Firstly because the number of ingredients in many recipes is excessive. For instance Shepherd's Pie is one of the simplest dishes that I know of, yet I have found on the internet a recipe for it that requires sixteen separate ingredients, including some that you know you would use part of once, then  throw the remainder away untouched. Wasted food is a bugbear of mine and I detest buying ingredients that come only in larger quantities than are required for a particular dish and then having no further use for the rest. Secondly it is annoying to have to constantly refer to a recipe; in the kitchen I like a bit of spontaneity. Whereas I like order and certainty almost everywhere else, I'm prepared to accept a little chaos and improvisation when cooking.

What this tends to mean is that if I don't have all the right ingredients I will substitute something else; if I have too little or too much of something I tend not to worry. "Bung it in and see what happens" is my philosophy. To date I haven't poisoned anyone (as far as I know) and apart from some Pork Meatballs that were a disaster and had to be rescued with some last minute inventiveness (I blame the recipe, which on that occasion I was following quite closely) most things I have cooked have turned out Ok. While this works quite nicely for stews and casseroles, chillies and curries, I have my doubts whether it would be as effective when making meringue or profiteroles.

Bake Off is a competition rather than a cookery programme; there are no step-by-step guides on how to make any of the pies or pastries. For that sort of thing there are a whole range of programmes with celebrity chefs broadcasting their wisdom. Some are good, some not so good. Jamie Oliver for instance is a chef whose recipes are generally down to earth, good, family fare. I bought his 15 Minute Meals recipe book recently and while fifteen minutes is a bit optimistic for some recipes I don't think it's meant to be taken literally. His recipes are pretty easy to follow and the results are decent. On the other hand there is Nigella Lawson. When I have watched her I have despaired at the amount of fat and sugar she uses and one "dish" she made consisted of frying garlic, adding a tin of tomatoes and poaching an egg in them.  To my mind that is just heating things up, not cooking, but what do I know, Nigella's the one on TV.[1]

Jamie Oliver cooking (Picture guardian.co.uk)

Nigella Lawson not cooking (Picture Daily Mirror)

A problem a lot of people encounter when cooking is getting everything to the table at the right time, cooked for the right amount of time and at the right temperature. Sometimes this requires a bit of multi-tasking and overall, I am not an advocate of multi-tasking. To me multi-tasking is a skill that people make a virtue of when in fact their vice is their inability to manage time and tasks properly. It is like the phrases that people use on their CV's, like "Energetic," or "Punctual," or "Enthusiastic" as opposed, presumably to "Slothful," or "Persistently Late," or "Indifferent." Saying that one has an ability to multi-task is frequently just an excuse for doing lots of things badly but simultaneously.

After four years of watching Bake Off I suppose that I ought by now to have become enthused by baking and be making cakes and pies left, right and centre. Somehow I don't think that my style of cooking is best suited to pastry, but one day, one day soon, I guess I ought to have to try.

  

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[1] Google Jamie Oliver and most images show him cooking; Google Nigella Lawson and very few images show her doing anything with food.

Think Before You Print

"Help protect our environment by only printing this email if absolutely necessary" is the sort of message that one sees at the foot of almost every email you receive from a company, whether they are a major conglomerate or the local plumber. I doubt that this warning has ever made anyone think, "Hey, you know what? I don't need to print this email after all!" On the other hand the totally exorbitant price of ink cartridges might.

For one reason or another we print a fair bit at home. There are tickets for the BBC radio shows we go to, there are letters from Sarah's school that need to be printed so part can be completed and returned to apply for something and Val prints some work related items (although blessedly we can claim some of the cost of these prints back). I also print things related to football and now and then we print a map rather than drag the A-Z out with us or rely on the map on a phone. And whenever I do print something a little dialog box appears on the monitor; "Ink is running low" it says, and it seems to say this almost as soon as a new print cartridge has been installed and I have run off two or three prints. There really is a tyranny around print cartridges. Not to put too fine a point on it we are being ripped off. Some years ago I heard a story, and it may be apocryphal, it may be an urban myth, but basically what it said was that manufacturers put an expiry date into print cartridges so that once installed they will register as empty and not print after a given period of time whether they have been used or not. True or not, it certainly seems to be the case that once I have installed a new cartridge, a week or so later, whether I have printed one page or a hundred, that message about the ink running low is there. Of course I ignore that message until the evidence of my own eyes suggests that the cartridge needs changing because the quality of the prints has deteriorated to the point where it is unreadable, and I'm sure most people do the same. On the other hand I have heard that some manufacturers (and trawling round the internet, it appears that Hewlett Packard are the principle offenders), make cartridges that steadfastly refuse to work once a certain period of time has elapsed regardless of how many pages have been printed.

There was actually a segment in the TV programme, The Men Who Made Us Spend aired on BBC 2 recently that showed that with commercial print cartridges there is a counter that can be reset to extend the life of the cartridge; doubtless domestic ones have a counter too, if only you could get at it. I was thinking about all this just the other day when I went out to buy new cartridges for our Canon printer. Having recently bought some stationery in WH Smith, I had a money off coupon worth 20% off the price of a cartridge, so I duly went into Smiths and picked one up. It was £49.99 for a double pack containing both a black cartridge and a colour one. That couldn't be right surely? It was and with my discount I was still being asked to pay forty quid, so I put it back on the shelf and walked out. I went to Ryman. The same pack in their shop was £39.99, the same price as WH Smith after the discount. Buy two packs in Ryman and the second would be discounted by 25%, grand total £69.98. It was still an horrendous amount of money but I paid it anyway, got home and did some cursory research. I realised that I should have done the research first, it would have saved me time and money.

A blister pack containing a black cartridge and a colour one from Ryman costs, without any sort of discount, £39.99. PC World currently sell a Canon Pixma iP2850 printer for £34.99 and if my experience of buying printers is typical, they will throw in a print cartridge assuming that one doesn't come in the box as standard. Meanwhile PC World have a bundle including the printer, black and colour cartridges and paper that comes in at £59. So for the cost of two cartridges from WH Smith (£49.99), plus £10 I can have a brand new printer, cartridges and paper.

Canon Pixma iP2850 £34.99

Cartridges £49.99 in WH Smith

So on the whole buying my print cartridges in WH Smith or Ryman is actually pretty stupid as they can be had much, much cheaper elsewhere, particularly online and I confess to a lack of forethought in going out and recklessly buying cartridges from a high street retailer; stupid, stupid, stupid! I stewed about it. I had obviously been seduced by the minuscule discount that Ryman had offered which had appeared almost competitive against the fortune Smiths wanted. PC World charge only £29 for the same product; Amazon, Tesco and Argos charge twenty one quid plus some change. I took the cartridges back to Ryman and they gave me a refund. They asked me why I was returning the cartridges, offering the option "Is it to do with the price?" suggesting that they (the staff in the shop) know that the price is not competitive.

Setting aside my own stupidity in paying through the nose for my ink, the fact remains that home printing is a complete and utter scam. If you book tickets to a show or a concert you pay a handling fee and postage; now that many sellers offer the option to print your tickets at home you still have to pay a fee for the privilege of using your own ink to print the damned thing.  Even more extortionate is printing photos at home. Ten or so years ago when I bought my first digital camera it came with a dedicated photo printer. The print cartridge expired after less than a dozen pictures. The cost of a new one would have been many times greater than taking my memory card down to Boots or Snappy Snaps and getting my prints done there. Does anyone other than the serious photographer print at home? I doubt it; for the casual snapper the cost is prohibitive.

The manufacturers of ink cartridges are notorious for reducing the amount of ink in their products while maintaining the same price. Either they or the retailers now seem to be going for the double whammy and reducing the content and increasing the price. On one occasion I tried to economise by buying the shop's own brand cartridge. It was certainly cheaper but it didn't even seem to last as long as the printer manufacturer's product so any saving was marginal at best.

What to do? As far as I can see, the choices are to print less, shop around for cheap cartridges or just buy a new printer every time the ink runs out, which may not be environmentally friendly but might just be less expensive.

Save money, don't print this page. Thank You!

For Your Safety And Comfort

Whenever I hear an announcement or read a notice that starts "In the interests of security," or "For your comfort and safety" I brace myself for some inane rule or regulation that is either inconvenient or nonsensical or both. I feel sorry for it is the Health And Safety Executive (HSE), whose name is frequently taken in vain by various companies, bodies and individuals who cite health and safety rules as a reason for not doing something, or prohibiting ordinary members of the public from doing something when the so called health and safety rules they quote are figments of their imagination. The HSE have become so miffed by this that they actually have a section on their website dedicated to debunking the myths that surround their work (http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/).

Examples of health and safety incorrectly being quoted as a reason why something cannot be done include:

• Not serving chips in a paper cone.
• Free weights not being allowed in gyms.
• Universities banning mortar boards being thrown in the air by graduates.
• No mirror allowed in a toilet.

Chips in a cone, banned under "health and safety" rules!

Me (left), not throwing my mortar board but not due to health and safety.

Not allowing something on health and safety grounds is often due to ignorance or downright laziness on the part of the person seeking to ban whatever it is that one is trying to do. Of course there are legitimate health and safety reasons why some things should be discouraged. Removing trip hazards like trailing cables in the workplace, not blocking fire exits, providing adequate training for fire marshals, that sort of thing are all sensible, common sense health and safety precautions; not stocking plasters in a workplace first aid kit is not.

The blind adherence to rules, even when they make little sense is everywhere. A story much beloved of the newspapers is the one where a supermarket cashier refuses to allow the sale of alcohol to a person well over the age of 18, regardless of whether they have ID or not, because they have an underage person, say their son or daughter, with them. The sale is refused on the grounds that the adult may be buying the alcohol on behalf of the minor, an offense for which the cashier themselves may be prosecuted as an individual. So an adult may not buy alcohol because they have their child with them. What happens if that adult returns to the supermarket a few days later without their child and is served by the same cashier? Would that cashier refuse to sell them alcohol because by now they are on notice that this person has a child and therefore the alcohol they are buying may be passed to the child? The worrying thought is that at some time in the future some eagle eyed cashier with a good memory for their customers and their families may take it into their head to refuse, creating the possibility that in order to buy a bottle of wine, adults must sneak into an off license where no one knows they have a family or risk being prevented from buying alcoholic drinks until their children are eighteen. Take a rule to its logical extreme and we can see how ludicrous matters become without the application of a little common sense.

Pic: The Guardian

Health and safety prohibitions on ordinary, everyday, risk-free activities is one bugbear of mine; difficult to understand security restrictions are another. Everyone acknowledges on the anniversary of 9/11 and in the climate of potential terrorist activity, travellers should be protected at airports, or aeroplanes and on other modes of public transport but some restrictions carry no obvious value and merely inconvenience the innocent traveller. There is a limit on the amount of liquids that one can take onto a flight from the UK. Try and take more than 100 ml through security in a single container and you have a problem; 100 ml of an innocent liquid like water is prohibited, yet you get airside and can buy significantly more volume of the same liquid and take it on the plane without a problem. A couple of years ago I was at Stansted airport and the lady in front of me in the queue was becoming increasingly distressed because her medication, in a container larger than 100 ml, was in danger of being confiscated. The security personnel wanted to see her doctor's prescription before allowing her to travel with a fairly innocuous and inert substance, because as we know, rules are rules, there can be no exceptions and no matter how illogical, the rule must be applied. Yes, rules must be applied without the application of our old friend common sense. Sadly we see less and less of our old friend and his buddy, discretion, as the years pass.

Today we are a more risk averse society than we have ever been and I wonder what our world would have been like had some of the today's stringent safety requirements existed one hundred and fifty years ago. Would the United Kingdom's canal and rail networks have been built if the health and safety jobsworths have been in existence then? Would Brunel and Stephenson to name but two, have thrown in the towel having been wrapped up in so much red tape that their constructions never got beyond the drawing board? While the world is undoubtedly a dangerous place and certain jobs are more dangerous than others, a sense of perspective and proportion is required. Recently a story came to light of a group of local residents who collected litter in their community being told to stop as they had not received training in the use of "pickers." These residents, many of whom had been picking up litter for years, were told to cease and yes, the danger of discarded 'sharps' is an important consideration but one which can be dealt with quickly and without stopping an important local activity.

 

This device is so fiendishly difficult to use, specialised training is required.

I was moved to write this piece having just read an excellent book, In the Interests of Safety: The absurd rules that blight our lives and how we can change them by Tracey Brown and Michael Hanlon. It is a call for common sense in health and safety and our need to question the obstacles that are thrown in our path in the name of protecting us from ourselves when clearly we are quite capable of doing so without some pettifogging restriction, thank you very much.

I must repeat that am in favour of health and safety and of risk management, but it has to proportionate, effective, sensible and  realistic. Risk management and health and safety rules should be SMART[1] to which we can add that they should be reviewed in the light of further developments and amended accordingly otherwise we end up with rules and restrictions that are aimed to mitigate a risk that no longer exists and which achieve nothing other than annoying the life out of people. As I'm sure you know by now, rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men: nowhere in our lives are the fools outnumbering the wise men than in the field of health and safety.

Rant over.

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[1] SMART: Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic and Timebound.

Oh, To Be In England

Perhaps Keats and his Ode To Autumn (Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness) would be more appropriate than Browning's poem that references April, because the onset of autumn is probably my favourite time of year, although I don't relish the fact that next month the clocks go back and suddenly it's dark at four o'clock in the afternoon. I love the crisp, bright mornings with the sun reflecting off the dew and the leaves as they turn golden brown; I do not, however enjoy the hours of raking the leaves from the lawn, but what can you do?

Regardless of where you live there will be things about that place that you love, things that you could do without and things that are unique, the things that encapsulate your home. This last week I have visited a couple of places that were new to me and which are as far as I am concerned, are quintessentially English. A week ago Val and I went for a walk along the River Lea from Tottenham Lock to Limehouse Marina. There is something peaceful about walking by water, whether it is the sea, a lake, a river or a canal. It was calming to watch the occasional narrowboat pootling along and it was fascinating to watch the roadway at Limehouse Marina swing open to allow a yacht to enter the basin.

Walthamstow Marshes on the River Lea

The road has swung round to allow this yacht to enter Limehouse Marina

Three Mills in East London.

We walked through the Olympic Park at Stratford, the first time that I have been back since the games two years ago and in spite of a lot of the misgivings that people may have had and despite the cynicism, I find it gratifying to see the work that is going on there to create a lasting legacy. A fundamental commitment of the Olympic Movement is the creation of a sustainable legacy in the host city and it is sad that some past Olympic cities have, for whatever reason, been unable to maintain the stadia and other facilities. Costs may be a significant factor, costs which some critics may feel are unsupportable in England but there are huge benefits, tangible and intangible.

The walk from Tottenham to the Thames is just a tad over nine miles, winding through rural and urban areas; regardless of where you are in, even in London, you are never really far from the countryside. No matter how built up we may think it is, London is a very green city. We carried on our walk along the north bank of the Thames, taking in the sea of 888,246 ceramic poppies, one for each British and Colonial fatality during the  Great War of 1914-1918, at the Tower of London, crossing the river at Southwark, passed Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern, before ending our walk at Caffe Nero by the OXO Tower. Like the Olympic Park, the area of Southwark by the Globe has changed immeasurably in recent years. I worked there for many years and when our offices moved there in 1992, the area was drab, dingy, dirty and some people said it was dangerous. The actor and director, the late Sam Wanamaker founded the Shakespeare Globe Trust to rebuild the Globe Theatre and played a central role in realising the project, eventually raising well over ten million dollars. The opening of the Globe in 1997, together with the conversion of the old Bankside power station into the Tate Modern gallery were pivotal in the gentrification and improvement of the area that is now a magnet for tourists and probably the nicest place I ever worked in.

Poppies at The Tower of London

Southwark: The Globe Theatre and Tate Modern.

Just about the only quibble or gripe I would have is that the so called Thames Path along the north side of the river is frustrating. Parts are closed and the sign posting leaves something to be desired. Mind you the same can be said for the path along the south bank from Greenwich to London Bridge where frequent detours inland are required and where at times it is not obvious how to get back to the river.

Then last Saturday it was off to Stanstead Abbotts in Hertfordshire in the company of my football friends, to watch our team, Romford, play St Margaretsbury in the FA Cup. Around this time last year I published a blog about the early rounds of the FA Cup (http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-magic-of-cup.html) so I won't repeat my thoughts about the competition, but I must mention the joy of a day in the English countryside and being able to watch both football and cricket. St Margaretsbury FC share their site with the local cricket club and there are tennis courts too. It is one of those places that I could quite happily move to, though my wife wouldn't see too much of me as I'd either be watching cricket or football most of the year round!

England's Summer and Winter sports on display last Saturday.

For readers more used to the comforts of Premier League football, a ground like St Margaretsbury's would be a bit of a culture shock. The capacity (according to Wikipedia) is an optimistic 1,000 of whom 60 would be able to find a seat, although there is plenty of seating on the grass banking. Frankly I wouldn't like to be in the place if it was even approaching half of its supposed capacity; health and safety fanatics would have field day and probably close the place down, but it is charming, picturesque and although it might be a little basic and probably not very comfortable on a cold February afternoon, in the late summer sunshine it was quite idyllic. This coming Saturday the Premier League and the Championship take a break to make way for international football and in keeping with the tradition that began in 2010, this weekend sees Non League Day, the idea being to encourage fans of teams in the top two tiers to go and watch their local non-League club for a change. Many clubs will be doing something special, from entertainment to reduced prices; you can see more at the Non League Day website (http://www.nonleagueday.co.uk/index.html). Romford are offering reduced admission to anyone who also takes in the game at Aveley, which is a mile and a half up the road from the ground Romford share at Thurrock, that kicks off earlier.

Walking for pleasure is, sadly, alien to many people, but it is something I have enjoyed for many years; walking somewhere new, as I described earlier is something I am keen to carry on doing (plodding over the same ground again and again is nowhere near as entertaining). Having walked south from Tottenham Lock last week I intend going in the opposite direction in the near future when a further nine mile hike will take me past the M25 to Waltham Cross, again along the River Lea.