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I love hearts, especially lambs hearts.
I love hearts, especially lambs hearts. But they need to either be cooked very hard and fast or slowly. The easiest way to do them is to cut the hearts into thin slices and stick them in a smoking hot pan and fry, with something like cumin seed if you...
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Aye it is horrible
Aye it is horrible when the cats get in. I'm going for those raised bed veg-trug type things this year, in the hope the wretched moggies will not be able to contaminate them. I wish cat owners would start realising their pets need to be kept indoors,...
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A love/hate relationship with cleaning.
I have a love/hate relationship with cleaning. On the rare occasions when my house feels completely clean and tidy, I love it. I love the end result of clear surfaces and crumb-free floors. But I hate the fact that you’re never done with cleaning. Almost...
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A delight in Nature
I see a wood mouse every now and then in our garden, usually emerging from a low dry stone wall. One winter, when we had a bird feeder - and there was a greasy patch of fatball debris on the ground - a wood mouse ran to it from the nearby hedge. As soon...
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learning to thrive:
I now have a number of thriving houseplants and the simple reason is this: instead of watering them in situ (when water is likely to accumulate at the bottom of the decorative pot ) I now put them in the sink (you could use the bath), give them a good...
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Lament from the youth
This moving lament for the death of innocence sends to us all the message that each single breath is precious when we are in thrall to nature’s relentless extremes, for each of us might face a day that shatters our hopes and our dreams when everything’s...
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Gazing away our lives
The real problem with smartphones is that gazing at them for long periods, for whatever purpose, is removing the user from the real world and its non-human inhabitants, animal and vegetable . We are already seeing consequences of behaving as though the...
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Alive with Nature: All is good.
I have tulips coming up in two pots so far, and one single tulip is just peeking through the soil in the garden. I know I planted more than one in that spot last year so I am hoping that a few more will appear as time goes on or that single tulip is going...
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Electric scooters are everywhere
Electric scooters are often bad. They should be part of a city's overall transit plan. It is that they have been dumped on the streets for profit, with not a care about the obvious consequences. And in this day when every other person is a borderline...
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Truth as a basis for schools
The problem is that humans crave - desperately crave - emotionally reassuring narratives. Simple stories of good vs evil. Heroes and villains. Oppressors and oppressed. A model of the world that tells us that We are responsible for the good things in...
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Just a minute: Gone
Hugely sad and a great loss. His enthusiasm and love for his job shone through the radio show just a minute. He could have easily retired years ago but the fact that he kept going was a testament to his huge talent and dedication to the BBC He made everything...
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Cholesterol is not an evil compound..
There is some evidence that ingestion of sugar may, may influence the ratio of types of cholesterol produced, but, cholesterol is produced by all animal cells, not just by the liver. Cholesterol is not an evil compound.. it’s found in every cell, the...
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A world of one sided conversations
There is nothing more soul destroying that someone who carries out one sided conversations. If they are a colleague, there are techniques you can use to make them share air space,or at least pretend to listen, because the relative formality of the workplace...
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Cat Afoot.
Cat thefts Round our way there have been several instances recently of cats mysteriously vanishing, sparking disputes and recriminations between neighbours. However, police now have reason to believe that the pets are being spirited away concealed in...
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Build the alternative, ban the car.
Build the alternative, ban the car. We can have car free town and city centres throughout the country if we do one thing and that is to stop thinking walking and cycling will replace the car. Take Bristol as an example. For years Bristol city councils...
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Ultimately, it is happiness and suffering.
Ultimately, everything comes down to happiness and suffering. The utilitarians were right. If you ask someone “why ought you to do this?”, they will almost always eventually reach the point of saying “because it increases happiness or reduces suffering”....
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1960s buildings are really great
Many 1960s buildings are really great but feel intimidating because at street level they were designed to interact with cars and not people. An example is the National Theatre, which when refurbished removed car access and is now an inviting building....
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Scotland Taking back control
Taking back control Taking back control from a succession of Conservative governments which have no mandate in Scotland is a prize worthy of a great deal of sacrifice. Especiallly when so many of the world's most successful countries have similar populations...
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A Scottish soldier Dunkirk in 1940.
There was a Scottish soldier that had been in Dunkirk in 1940 and was one of the soldiers left behind after the evacuation. He was captured by the Germans and after a fair bit of toing and froing he ended up on a farm on the Baltic where he spent nearly...
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German Beer - good for the environment
A few years ago in Germany you could buy 12 bottles of beer in a crate for 8 euros. Once you’d drunk the beer you handed back the crate and empty bottles and got 3 euros back - the bottles were washed and reused. A far better approach to recycling than...
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Plants we should write about .......... .....!
One day last year we had no Foxgloves, the next day we did. Like the Triffids, as one got to about 5ft tall - and at the start I thought to remove them, but the bees were all over them and at the end of the Summer last year we had about 10 of them. They...
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A Scottish Pirate yet American Hero
John Paul Jones lived from 6 July 1747 to 18 July 1792. A successful seaman, John Paul Jones went on to become the first US naval hero of the American Revolution, and in many eyes the father of the US Navy. Later in his career he briefly became an Admiral...
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Isn't capitalism wonderful?
Isn't capitalism wonderful? The very people who need the cheapest deals, can't get them, while those with wonderful credit scores who could afford to pay more, have lenders tripping over themselves to practically give them money. Whenever Credit Reference...
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Proper preparation is always the key.
Proper preparation is always the key. The government's majority now means that Brexit is inevitable but, just as surely we need to prepare now for what might easily happen. This year's going to be a kind of phoney-Brexit where we'll formally leave but...
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A definition of England
The problem with English nationalism is that it depends on an exceptionalist mythology that is steeped in racism, an unwarranted sense of superiority, and, since the end of the British Empire, a set of self-pitying grievances directed against imaginary...