Researching recipes to make and eat over the festive period.

Laughing at myself - ever thought along the lines of, 'Right, I'll need a hammer, some nails, something lightweight but sturdy... Actually, all I need is some thread instead of all that'

The first Paul Hollywood book had nice cakes and breakfast stuff


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Me




eBay seller


Good mind to tell them to cram it up their hole. There's any number of 'companies' selling knock-off versions of this thing (one giant Alien Queen. Yes, I know)!

On one level, they've got a point. If they were selling a fake, they're hardly likely to tell you it was a fake when you asked.
On another level, they're a supercilious twat.

The reason I prefaced it with 'genuine NECA version' is that 'Star Images', 'I do good hand paint' (not even joking) etc could be absolutely anybody, but they also knock out bloody good fakes sometimes to legit sellers. Even Amazon has to keep taking them down.

The planned upgrades to this iMac.
Samsung EVO 500GB SSD and the optical drive replacement caddy just arrived, I have TIM surface cleaner and prep, the new i7 is waiting at the sorting office... and the TIM itself won't be here until the 30th.

Watching Bedknobs and Brooksticks. It's my formed opinion that all these fantastic films set during WWII (this, the Narnia films, etc) are showing the mental conditions of the kids' minds not dealing with the horrors of war, shutting down and making some kind of fantasy as a defence mechanism. In reality, they are hysterically quivering in a shelter somewhere.

Let me know how you get on with the SSD swap.
I'm thinking of doing that to speed up my 2009 imac

Will do! I'm fighting the urge to do it now, but it'd be silly to have to dig into this machine more than once. I also need to find an 8GB USB stick to build an installer on, my present one appears to have given up the ghost.

My family - which seems to have become the Militant wing of the Vegan Marketing Board. Or at least my sister and my mum have - there’s a skill in turning any conversation into either one about vegan food/cafes or dropping names of people they know who are vegans (hey, look, we know other people who are fussy eaters too).

The thing is that as soon as they are all together, it all becomes a bit of a clique (mum, dad, sister, sister’s boyfriend), and I’m suddenly less included as they all know the various haunts (which are not at all local to me at all - there is a distance between myself and my family). Also, food and eating starts to become heavily political (my sister referring to “lumps of dead stuff” that people would be trying to cook on Christmas day). When my wife asked them how they can make vegan cheesecake (after a certain cafe they all go to makes it and its virtues were extolled), it took over half an hour of blather, politics and “isn‘t it wonderful [that they can fake cheese like that]” not to answer the question. We already feel we have to censor our conversation to avoid various triggers. Asking about recipes is clearly another one to avoid.

So Christmas with my family was a bit odd. I’ll have to speak to my dad about this, but getting hold of him when he’s not in earshot of my mum (who is very single minded about this) is tricky. He’s not even a vegetarian, but he’s had the lifestyle imposed on him. He’ll secretly attack a burger when he’s not being watched. It’s all rather upsetting.

That you always forget how easily bad weather kills a TV signal...

Right now it's attempting to flatten this building I'm in.
At least it's only work, not my home.

Mark

But have you got a TV signal?

I don't even have a TV here.
The house we are renting has the areial in the loft, so we can pretty much always get a Freeview signal.
Bring your TV ariel indoors. (8+p

Mark