Wheat

Day 1

I have long thought that I reacted to cereals in general and wheat in particular. Here we are 24 hours into a low carb (cereal free) diet and my waistline has already reduced by 4″!!

Onwards and upwards

Shock

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!

Robert Burns

 

Yesterday I finished Samantha’s fat suit. I have to admit to being horrified at just how much weight I have put on, I resemble the pictures drawn by very young children, or worse… Humpty Dumpty!

So, blow waiting until after the wedding, the remedy starts today. Hopefully I shall be having my gallbladder removed next March/April (the surgeon remarked on my weight; another incentive!), so that is my deadline, which gives me four months to lose… three stone!

The medical thinking nowadays is that waist measurement is more important to health than weight to height ratios, which means I have a massive 12 inches to lose off my waistline.

Experience tells me that the best way for me to lose weight is a combination of a low carb diet and more exercise. So today is Day 0, I shall report weekly on my progress and those of you kind enough to log in regularly are invited to encourage and remonstrate as necessary. Please

Paper Tape Dress Form

The fabulous Samantha, has had to abandon her svelte figure for the time being. Much like Renée Zellweger before she made Bridget Jones, she has had to go on an intensive pie eating course for the sake of her art. In other words, today my Darling Daughter and I made a Paper Tape Dress Form to make up for her inadequacies.

This was no mean feat.

Making paper dress forms is an art that goes back to the Paris fashion houses of the 19th century. It meant that their exclusive clientèle did not have to travel to the tailors/dress makers for repeated fittings, as their exact form was readily available as required. They only needed to be present in person for the final fitting.

The instructions for making the dress form can be found on the net, my favourite set of instructions can be found here.

The method is simply to apply dampened gummed tape to the person requiring the dress form. She has of course first put on an old t-shirt, otherwise removal of the finished form might prove difficult. If not impossible.

The taping sequence goes a bit like this from A Tailoring Manual by Gertrude Strickland:

Here someone is being taped up. (No, this is not Me!)

Three or four layers of tape are required, and it helps if you have more than your DD to do the taping! When it is finished the form is cut off the model, taped back together and trimmed. The finished article looks something like this:

Or even more grotesque, as in my case!

Announcement After I have attended the wedding, the outfit for which this form was made. I will be going on a crash diet…. much like Renée Zellweger after she made Bridget Jones!

T-Shirt

I want one!

 

Although anyone who knows me well, will tell you that this one would be more appropriate.

New Pages

I have now started the Costume and Stays pages, although they are by no means complete.

White Poppies

‘War is a crime against humanity. I renounce war, and am therefore
determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to
work for the removal of all causes of war.’ PPU pledge

 

It’s that time of year again. White Poppies for Peace can be purchased from the Peace Pledge Union, or contact your local Quaker Meeting.

Why wear a White Poppy?

To wear one is to remember the victims of all wars on all sides the dead, the crippled, the refugees, and those left to grieve.

To remember the 20 million killed, many by weapons made in Britain, during the last 50 years of ‘peace’

To remember that the same values which maintain Britain’s vast military budget also accepts high unemployment, poor housing and the need for charity rather than effective public provisions for those in need. PPU.

For me it is not a case of either/or, I wear my white poppy for peace, alongside my red poppy for remembrance.

Cheques

Today, after going into town to collect my new reading glasses, I filled up my car with diesel at Sainsbury’s for a forthcoming trip across the country. ‘Him indoors’ had given me some cash to do so, as he usually performs this chore. I filled up the tank and it was, as I had warned him earlier, more than the cash supplied. No matter I thought, I’ll pay by cheque. Just as I had earlier at Boots.

What do Boots and Sainsbury’s have in common? Neither accept payment by cheque any more! Fortunately I was able to pay with cash at Boots, but not at Sainsbury’s as I hadn’t enough. So, with a satisfyingly long queue behind me, I had to fill in a form so the diesel could be paid for later.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened. A few months ago my daughter needed to replace the ear-phones on her Mp3 player. We went to Curry’s but came out empty handed, as I only had my chequebook with me. (Curry’s loss; I bought some off eBay. And they were better ones!).

I’m now faced with persuading my bank to replace my cheque card with a Debit Card. Or withdrawing cash from my account on a regular basis. This involves a 30 mile round trip, which isn’t very ‘green’!

What’s wrong with cheques?!

Gore, Climate Change, and Alex Cockburn.

Alex Cockburn remains the only leftwing voice, that I know of, that is speaking out against the barrage of propaganda about ‘Human Induced Climate Change’. A lone sensible voice who incurs the wrath and ire of those who have swallowed the propaganda whole without question. And that ire can be quite vicious, those of us who take a calmer, more scientific view of climate change (which is an ongoing fluid process) are hated, we are ‘Deniers!’. I can’t help thinking of this image:

Cockburn has written on the award of the 2007 peace prize to Al Gore, and the IPCC. He ends:

“The specific reason why this man of blood shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC is for their joint agitprop on the supposed threat of anthropogenic global warming. Bogus science topped off with toxic alarmism. It’s as ridiculous as as if Goebbels got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938, sharing it with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for his work in publicizing the threat to race purity posed by Jews, Slavs and gypsies. (The peace prize actually went that year to the Nansen Committee for Refugees. Gore certainly played his part in creating Iraq’s current 4 million refugees, among the greatest displacements of the past hundred years.)

The notorious “man-made” greenhouse gasses comprise about 0.26 per cent of the total greenhouse gas component of the earth’s atmosphere and the influence of this component remains entirely unproven, as I have pointed out on this site many times,and will be doing so again in reflections that will be published early next year in my forthcoming book, A Short History of Fear. Gore’s contribution to the debate has been an appalling mishmash of cooked statistics, demagoguery about “scientific consensus” and New Age hocus pocus about spiritual renewal. Anyone who has studied the antics of his co-winner of the peace prize, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will know that the IPCC’s prime role every three years has been to ignore the work–some of it respectable scientific research–of its expert panels and issue entirely mendacious and to issue alarmist press releases designed to win headlines in the New York Times.

Of course Al Gore has been a shil for nuclear power ever since he came of age as a political harlot for the Oakridge nuclear laboratory in his home state of Tennessee. The practical beneficiary of the baseless hysteria over “anthropogenic global warming” is the nuclear power industry. This very fall, as Peter Montague describes at length in our current CounterPunch newsletter, this industry is reaping the fruits of Al Gore’s campaigning. Congress has finally knocked aside the regulatory licensing processes that have somewhat protected the public across recent decades. The starting gun has sounded, and just about the moment Gore and his co-conspirators at the IPCC collect their prizes, the bulldozers will be breaking ground for the new nuclear plants soon to spring like Amanita phalloides–just as deadly–across the American landscape. “

Quite!

Other articles on Climate Change by Alex Cockburn; well worth reading:

April 28 / 29, 2007, From Papal Indulgences to Carbon Credits, Is Global Warming a Sin?

May 12 / 13, 2007, Hot Air, Cold Cash, Who are the Merchants of Fear?

May 26 / 27, 2007, Explosion of the Fearmongers, The Greenhousers Strike Back and Out.

June 9 / 10, 2007, Sources and Authorities, Dissidents Against Dogma.

Gaz

My good fortune continues! Thursday morning this appeared on our local Freecycle list:

“I have three Camping Gaz 907 (2.7kg) butane cylinders, two of which
are full and factory-sealed, the other part-used with butane
regulator. There is also a spare regulator, Camping Gaz/Calor Gas pipe
adapter and 1 near-empty Calor Gas 4.5kg butane cylinder.”

By Friday afternoon they were mine! I now have enough gas to last all of next summer (and probably the one after that!).

Hopefully, when it is rescued from the chaos that is The Corner Stable < Cloister Bell tolls >, my old Camping Gaz stove will still be usable. I still have my camping saucepan set, so now all I need is a whistling kettle (I’m getting very forgetful and a saucepan will boil dry before I remember I’ve put it on the stove; I have been known to boil eggs for two hours…), and a lamp, preferably this one, or even this one

A subtle change

You will notice, dear reader, a subtle change in the look of this blog. Reasons being: an ongoing irritation with the title strap line being lost on some browsers; a need to add more pages, but no room in the title bar to list them; and quite frankly I was getting fed up with seeing the grinning spinster every time I logged on. If you wish to see the beauty that is Me, click on ‘About’.

Onwards and Upwards.

Mums…

and the things they say:

Helping our fellow creatures

I loved this story from the BBC today:

 

Beleaguered bear in bridge rescue

 

A 250lbs bear clings to a ledge on the Rainbow Bridge, near the town of Truckee, California.

 

The bear panicked and tried to jump over the bridge’s rail after two vehicles drove past it as it crossed the bridge – it was stranded for almost 24 hours.

 

Rescuers lower a nylon net from an army surplus store as the bear looks on. More than 100 people gathered to see the rescue.

 

Rescuers shot the bear with a tranquiliser dart before using a pole to push it into the safety net.

 

An abseiler looks on as the bear is lowered to the ground.

 

The sheepish looking bear finally makes it back to land. He then made a quick exit into the hills near the ski slopes of nearby Lake Tahoe.