Warm Jam

Treated myself: http://www.christopherward.co.uk/men/limited/c5awt.html

Really, really nice watch. Just need to give it a few days’ run-in and then, if needs be, spend a lunch break on it at work & get it properly regulated. Internals: ETA 2824-2, uprated shock protection, well-finished. Pretty much a Tag or Breitling, without the badge (or price!)

Oh – I haven’t actually mentioned work yet, have I? It’s been so long. I’m in full-time employ for the first time in a couple of years, my own little business endeavour being a casualty of recession. I now service watches Monday through Friday, which is hardly work at all, and the regular wage leaves me with little trouble fitting seven days’ debauchery into every weekend!

Life is good.

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Found ‘em! Choc Dips are not forgotten – apparently I simply wasn’t looking into the darkest back corners of corner shops, remained unchanged for decades… I even found Space Raiders and Transform-A-Snack, still at an inflation-defying ten pence a packet

But a guy’s gotta have standards. Moderation, however, is still an issue:

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Another shot courtesy of my trip to the forge – getting a little hands-on experience shaping mild steel:

Click to enlarge

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On my recent trip up North to visit an amazing blacksmith I’m dealing with and some old friends, the ’smith offered to make me a blade as a demonstration while I was there.

I sketched out a shape, and a couple of hours later he’d rough-forged the most amazing blade. I’ve reprofiled it & ground the sides, etched the steel & sharpened the edge ’til it took hairs off my arm. I don’t know if this is how I’ll keep the finish – the deep etch is perhaps a little over-the-top for my tastes, although I really want to do justice to the work the guy did folding the original billet (although the rough shaping took only a couple of hours, pattern welding the damascus takes several more!)

So, it’s a damascus steel body with a carbon steel fillet folded in for an edge – the guy absolutely nailed it, with the carbon edge steel being wafer thin but absolutely bang-on central. Now I’ve filed it into form, I’m dying to get it hardened so I can get to work on a wooden handle…

There’s a second blade, very different, to follow at a later date as well. That’s still looking too rough to show though, so stay tuned.

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Found this scratching about outside the allotment with a bloodied nose. Seeing as it was daylight & he was bleedy, I scooped him up and am feeding him Whiskas whilst he recuperates.

At 200g, it’s only a baby, and won’t survive winter alone (think nearer 600g before they’ll survive hibernation). Trying to contact a rescue center to drop him off at eventually led to someone local, who asked a bunch of questions & said he seems fine. She’ll take a look if we drop him by, then we can take care of him at home if we like.

I get to build a hedgehog hutch!

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A pair of oval plugs, with padauk fascias on an ebony body. Quite a few people, including myself, get skin irritations from prolonged contact with some woods, so I put these together to try out an alternative to inlays. They’re working a treat – no itching, and once they’re in they look like solid padauk

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My squash are coming up a storm – this picture is just a few days out of date, and the difference is phenomenal. I’ll have to take a fresh one tomorrow, there are now 30-odd hardening up outside in the plastic greenhouses.

The planters I posted a while back are working out wonderfully, as well – radishes, rocket, lettuce, spring onions and turnips. If this keeps up, as well as the allotment, it’s going to be a very good year.

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DIY press-up stands from spare parts & scrap timber, since £12+ seems pretty daft. Not my most exciting project, but thought someone might benefit from the idea!

In other news, I seriously need to vacuum the study floor…

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Not quite as amusing as when they lost their membership list, but considerably more poetically inept.

The Register brings to attention their “Battle For Britain” campaign, complete with Spitfire poster.

“The British National Party has pulled off a bit of a blinder by fronting an anti-immigration campaign with a poster featuring a Spitfire belonging to 303 Squadron of the RAF – the “most effective Polish squadron during the Second World War”, as the Telegraph puts it.”

How good is that?!

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I’m finally getting my appetite back after the hospital’s culinary efforts, so went to town a bit yesterday evening – these are the results.

Slow-cooked pork belly in soy sauce, lemon juice, honey and ginger glaze, with broccoli, ginger rice, and crispy kale. Total comfort food, read on for a vague how-to.

The pork goes in at gas mark 3-ish, about a quarter inch deep in the marinade (mix the listed ingredients to taste) for anything from an hour and a half. This time I think it was in there about two hours, regularly turned & basted. When it’s ready you’ll be able to cut the fat with a spoon.

The kale gets stripped from the stalks, splash of oil (sesame in this case) and some salt (not much, it shrinks a lot in the oven so it’s easy to over-season) then in the oven at something less than gas mark 1 for 25-ish minutes (not in with the pork though, as the steam stops it from drying out).

Rice was mixed with some finely sliced ginger then steamed, and the brocolli was just chucked in boiling water for a couple minutes then briefly in a frying pan with some of the (cooked) marinade from the pork.

Everything but the broccoli is cooked pretty slow so the timings are flexible, which is good because my coordination sucks. Presentation is my usual “fuck it, I’m going to chew it up in a minute anyway”.

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