How much????!!!!!!!

There has recently been a bit of a debate about the cost of tickets to see the Rolling Stones saying that the average cost of tickets is about £406.

Well, maybe but when I was curious enough to look online about two weeks ago(ish) this is what I found. To say my jaw hit the floor was an understatement.

After the hurricane

Two photographs I've seen online, the first from the 30th and the 2nd from today made me want to give them some captions:

"What happens when we keep burning our way through all that petrol"

Given the above, it seems appropriate to link to a rather amazing animated sequence about what's going up above New York.

I caught a headline from on the BBC that I couldn't stop thinking of when I then saw this image.

"East Coast residents were overjoyed to hear that the NYSE had re-opened!"

And then to wrap up, two entries from the Climate Progress blog:

The most recent one is a post about Governor Cuomo of New York City who would obviously disagree with the BBC reporter I heard yesterday say that "[Sandy] ... is a once in a generation storm". But then the BBC seem under the strictest orders never to mention Climate Change as even possibly playing a part in any extreme weather event that they report.

The other is the omission of the mention of Climate Change by the mainstream media when discussing Sandy's appearance, approach, arrival and aftermath. I particularly liked this tidbit from the USA - "During this July’s extreme heat wave, only 8.7 percent of television news coverage mentioned climate change; over the summer, television news outlets covered Paul Ryan’s P90-X workouts three times more than the record loss of Arctic sea ice;". I have to add that I've no idea who Paul Ryan is ...

How many guns do they need?

Mitt Rommney, current US presidential hopeful, said last night:

And our military — we’ve got to strengthen our military long- term. We don’t know what the world is going to throw at us down the road. We — we make decisions today in a military that — that will confront challenges we can’t imagine. 

In the 2000 debates there was no mention of terrorism, for instance. And a year later, 9/11 happened. So we have to make decisions based upon uncertainty. And that means a strong military.

It's sobering to be reminded of the USA's military expenditure in 2010:

And Iran isn't even listed! But then, you can never have too much stuff ... 

Cake competition

This post is stupidly overdue, but that seems to be the way with me. I'll try to improve ...

Anyway, it was my first Goldhanger Gala Weekend at over the 8/9th of September weekend and there were a number of competitions one of which was "cake to a given recipe". I love cooking so I thought I'd enter into the spirit.

It was "Crunchy topped lemon cake", though on the recipe printed in the parish magazine 'Crunchy' had lost its 'n' ...

So, I made the cake which was only the 3rd I've ever made. Number 1 was a disaster and put me off for many, many years. The 2nd was earlier this year and was a Delia recipe which was a definite success so I thought this one might turn out OK.

I made it on the Friday because I knew there would be no time on the Saturday (can't remember why) even though I had to enter it on the Sunday. Anyway, on a beautifully sunny Sunday morning I took my cake on its slate base to the tent in the churchyard and placed it beside the other entries. I have to say, I thought mine looked very nice.

I went back at 4:30pm or so after the judging and was greeted with a "Ta Ra" by about four or five women in the tent and walking over to the cake ... well, what did I see?

On the reverse of the left paper it said something like "Excellent texture and flavour. Well done". The original paper is somewhere in the bottom of a full box of papers that I'm too lazy to search.

I burst out laughing I think and then grinned stupidly. Another woman who had entered every cake competition (this was one of three) had won the other two ... but not this one. I had! So far I'm still alive but I keep an eye over my shoulder.

One of the women in the tent warned me that next year the WI would be visiting when they needed 500 scones ...

Here is a photo of it as the judge first saw it before we tucked in:

I must admit, it was lovely to look at and very tasty indeed. I made a second one for my Mum as she wasn't there to try the 'original' but that didn't look as nice (it had a slightly raised centre) but, paradoxically, hadn't risen as well so it was a bit heavily textured.

Anyway, I was dead chuffed as was Chris and everyone else it seems and intend to be back next year.