Town Mouse

Ultra Processed

August 9, 2026

A busy spring and the (mostly) dry summer means the garden has been a bit hit and miss when it comes to food production. Apart from a nice crop of gooseberries, pretty much all the fruit has gone straight from the bush into the gardener, with not enough ripening at a time to trouble a bowl let alone any kind of cooking.

Only the redcurrant bush didn’t get the memo and has produced a massive crop of currants, most of which are still lurking in its depths (I did attempt to prune it into the approved goblet shape for ease of picking but it responded by going even more berserk than usual so you have to just reach in and grab what you can find). And once picked there’s then the question of what to actually do with them.

Three punnets of redcurrants in the fridge

Actually, I had the answer to that to hand – try out my new (to me – I got it secondhand off Ebay) mouli-légumes. I’ve been on the look out for one ever since I discovered the hard way that you can’t strain asparagus soup by sticking it in a cafetiere unless you want your whole kitchen annointed with it, like some sort of chemistry-lab build-your-own-volcano type eruption in vegetable form (I mean, this might be obvious now, but at the time it seemed like a good way to short circuit the whole painstaking sieving and scraping with a wooden spoon method). Pretty much every recipe for redcurrants involves a lot of tedious straining so this was the perfect opportunity to put it to use.

Food mill half filled with redcurrant pulp

And it worked! Especially once I’d worked out that you needed to turn the handle clockwise (I’m left handed and if there’s a wrong way to go at something I will inevitably find it). A whole kilo of redcurrants got passed through the sieve in moments, ready to be turned into jelly. Magic. (it would have been even better if I’d not then ignored a lifetime of bitter experience and decided I could leave it heating up on the stove while I got absorbed in something else and came back to find a slick of boiling redcurrant jelly in the process of escaping the pan. Ahem. There’s a reason why I’m not fit to be left to live on my own).

Anyway, now that I have a shiny new hammer, I am in search of some nails. We’re too late in the year for asparagus soup, but there are blackcurrants in the freezer that could be turned into sorbet. And more redcurrants in the fruit cage. Tomato sauce is apparently another good use for the mill. The world is my oyster … (OK, maybe not those)

3 Comments | gardening, Rural Diversions | Tagged: Mouli legumes, redcurrants | Permalink
Posted by disgruntled

Wait, There’s Two of Us?

August 6, 2026

The other half is away visiting family, leaving me to the joys of all the household tasks he normally manages, such as locking up at night, watering the greenhouse and, crucially, the weekly shop. I can, theoretically drive but frankly, nobody wants that, so bike it is, and yesterday saw me heading into town with the cow pannier rather than my more unobtrusive Ortlieb one because so far I’ve yet to go on a shopping expedition that the cow pannier hasn’t handled the results of (this might be why it’s on its second set of hooks) – it is, as the old car adverts used to say, inordinately capacious.

Anyway, there I was, riding along, wondering why the car behind me wasn’t overtaking even as I dawdled meaningfully in a passing place, casting an encouraging glance over my shoulder. Finally, the driver pulled alongside, slowed, wound her window down and said “Sorry, I thought you were someone I knew” – before adding (slightly bafflingly) ‘You’re doing really well” and pulling away.

As well as pondering what, exactly, I was doing so well at (pulling over so drivers can pass? Not falling over despite my lopsided pannier? Just generally pedalling in a forward direction?) this has left me curious to know who my doppelganger might be as I like to think I cut rather a distinctive figure on my bike – surely there can’t possibly be TWO cyclists with cow panniers in Bigtownshire can there? Or is it just that we cyclists all look alike…

Answers on a postcard (or in the comments) please – I’m going a bit stir crazy here on my own and it’s only the third day of the other half’s trip.

Leave a Comment » | Cycling, Rural Diversions | Permalink
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Briefing to the Choir

July 31, 2026

Yesterday evening saw me pedalling up the hill to Nearest Village with a pal to attend a People’s Emergency Briefing on the climate and nature emergency. Sadly, this isn’t an official response to the world burning around us – just a campaign to try and get the government to do an actual briefing, to the whole public, about what’s happening – and then actually do something urgent about it. We watched the film which summarised the expert evidence (if you want to be terrified at your leisure and in the comfort of your own home you can find the full transcripts here) interspersed with reactions from members of the public discussing it with Chris Packham (the local church eco group which was running the event had opted for the ‘sweary version’ so we got the unfiltered reaction of the very posh lady who provided pretty much the only light relief in the entire viewing). In truth it provided little that was actual news to me, although having it presented all together in one brisk gallop through tipping points, collapsing economies, health impacts, food insecurity and nature destruction was pretty sobering. As was having our Reform MSP stand up afterwards and denounce it all as a load of nonsense (although this also was nothing new).

That gentleman aside, those present consisted mostly of the already converted (I could have done a bingo card on the expected members of the audience and got an instant full house before we’d got half way to the inevitable home baking at the back). Hopefully they will spread the word and sign the petition and write to their politicians in the hope of at least getting them to believe that there is much more widespread public support for the policies we need to actually avert the looming disaster (although given both MPs in the area are Conservatives, they would then face losing the whip if they were to agree with us). There was wild talk of showing it to the council, which has already declared a climate emergency but not done anything rash like acting on it as far as I can tell. Maybe that would make a difference, although I have my doubts. I find it very hard to see any link between the clear and evident alarm being raised by an impressive roster of experts and the almost total lack of meaningful change on the ground, beyond the gradual roll out of renewable electricity generation and what feels like a daily announcement of fresh backsliding on the few measures that have been announced.

I started writing this in an attempt to persuade anyone reading this to think about attending (or putting on) a similar event in their area although I realise reading it back that it’s more likely to put people off because who really wants to give up their evening to learn that a) things are even much worse than they thought and b) nobody’s really doing anything about it. But, on the other hand, if you go to a rural one there’s likely to be some good home baking (having been urged to cut food waste as one of the mitigating measures, we felt no compunction at going back for thirds), and at least it was a nice bike ride home.

Leave a Comment » | Rural Diversions, Weather | Tagged: climate change, National Emergency Briefing | Permalink
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Don’t Let the Bugs Bite

July 24, 2026

“The problem is we have too many butterflies'” the other half suggested after overhearing me usher yet another one of an endless succession out of the house (this particular genius had, unusually, made it out the open half of the French window, but then decided to stop for a long rest right on the threshold so I couldn’t close the door to stop its colleagues from blundering in without squashing it). Too many butterflies sounds like a nice problem to have, but it’s a very localised one – they seem to mostly be in the house, along with the usual quota of flies, bumblebees and whatever it is that is feasting on me in the night, none of which seem capable of flying out the way they came in.

Weather forecast showing impending rain for four days

In a sense it doesn’t matter (apart from the nighttime bites) because while the insects batter themselves relentlessly against every surface of the house that isn’t an open window, we’ve mostly been sitting outside in the garden attempting to bank as much enjoyment of the fine weather as we can before normal service resumes tomorrow – it turns out I’m as incapable of finding my way indoors during this weather as the average bluebottle is of finding its way out. I keep thinking I’ll catch up with any desk-based tasks in the evening, but the evenings have been nicest of all for sitting out in. So we have just been leaving the windows wide to let the heat upstairs dissipate so we can sleep at night, and if we have to spend a bit of time coaxing errant wildlife out of windows it seems a small price to pay for a month that has felt like we’ve actually been on holiday without any of the bother of actually travelling. I finally understand the appeal of all those design pieces urging you to treat your garden like another room of your house, and to ‘bring the outdoors in’.

There are limits though. The other half was opening up his study skylight the other day and admiring the red kite perched in the tree across the road, when it took off and launched itself straight at him. That window got shut pronto. Trying to get a bewildered butterfly out of the house is one thing; evicting a red kite would be quite another. Some parts of the great outdoors are best left where they belong.

Leave a Comment » | Weather, Wildlife | Tagged: heatwave | Permalink
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Buzzin’

July 20, 2026

The fine weather continues and while I know it’s all very bad news for the planet, civilisation etc. in general, it has meant we’ve had an incredible summer so far for us here, and I’ve decided I’m not going to let global warming stop me from taking a little pleasure in being able to sit out enjoying my coffee in the sunshine of a morning without having to put a coat on first.

Today’s task was to use my handy new bumblebee card (courtesy of SWSEIC) to identify the many bees bumbling fuzzily around the marjoram, truly a bush that keeps on giving (white tailed, I think, although I’m confused as to why they come in two different sizes as the queens should all be in the nests by now if I’ve understood their life cycle correctly.)

I’m not the only one enjoying the heat either. Our olive tree – now more of an olive shrub after a near death experience with one Scottish winter too many – is clearly loving the heat and has burst into flower.

I mean, it’s clearly the end times and all that, but who would begrudge a poor exiled olive tree the summer of its life?

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Tails you Lose

July 14, 2026

We’ve had some stonkingly good weather recently – not the searing levels of heat people are suffering down south, nor yet the inevitable haar that has been plaguing parts of the east, but warm and sunny enough to make a fur-coated hare reconsider its sartorial choices during the day, with enough of a breeze and clear skies making the nights bearable (once I’ve dragged myself indoors to sleep). Productivity has taken a nose dive – basically, if it’s not something I can do from a shady spot in the back garden under the madly buzzing buddleia bush, then it’s not happening at all.

Hare lying in the sunshine on a patch of gravel in a garden

Down in Bigtown things are a little toastier and, as I unlocked my bike from outside Tesco, I struck up a conversation with a gentleman on a nice-looking ebike about whether it was a bit hot to be out cycling or not. My feeling is that, at least at the sort of heat we get here (high of 26C, pushing up to about 28 if it really gets going), then a bike is the coolest place to be if you do have to be out in the sun as you bring your own breeze. Except, that is, when you’ve got a tailwind, as I was reminded as I pushed up the hill to home. For the wind, usually in my face on that climb, has swung decisively into the east in recent days and was now at my back. Which is nice and all, in many ways, but it does mean no cooling wind at all. It seems that – after nearly 10 years of living up a stiff climb into the prevailing wind – I have finally found a second reason to love a headwind.

Give me another decade and I might find a third.

Leave a Comment » | Cycling, Weather | Tagged: heatwaves, tailwinds | Permalink
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Reading the Runes

July 12, 2026

Just over two years ago, I was combining the general election with an attempt to see what moths we had in our garden and hoping that the ballot outcome wouldn’t prove as much of a disappointment as the contents of our moth trap. Two years on, with the resulting premiership already passing into history, my pal with the moth trap arranged for a return visit as she was sure we could do better than a single moth.

Sure enough, having chosen a more prominent spot for the trap in our garden (and got up at 5:30am to switch the light off and close it up), this morning we opened the trap to find over 30 moths (some might have escaped while we were attempting to identify them) of 17 different species, at least that we could nail down (not literally, you understand, the moths were all released unharmed into the garden).

Some of them were small and understated, some were rather subtly beautiful when you look at them up close and some were very splendid indeed, and with names to match (looking at you, Burnished Brass above). My friend wrote them all down but has taken the notebook away with her so I can’t remember what the other ones were but it made for an enjoyable Sunday morning’s activity, poring over the details of pages and pages of moth illustrations (no wonder jaded birders often take up lepidoptery) and marvelling at their inventive names.

As to what it all portends, I’m hoping it’s a slightly more auspicous start to the likely Burnham administration than the last two years have proved under Keir Starmer. Although you could equally argue that we’ve seen a 17-fold increase in moth diversity under this government and we should have given it more time to prove itself. Or maybe it’s just that putting the moth trap in a more prominent position in the middle of a very warm spell means you catch more moths and it’s got nothing to do with anything in Westminster, but where would be the fun in that?

Anyway, now that we’ve had more success with the trap, I’ll probably not wait until another change in government is imminent before trying the exercise again. Although, given the rate we’ve been going through prime ministers recently, that may not be all that long.

Leave a Comment » | Wildlife | Tagged: moths | Permalink
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Still Hooked

July 5, 2026

It seems I spoke too soon last year. Having bade farewell last year to the Tour de France, with the end of the highlights programme I’ve been watching most of my adult life, I was not expecting to be tuning in again this year. But then I chanced upon news that Channel 5 would be running a nightly highlights package after all (say what you like about the algorithm, sometimes it comes up trumps). Hurrah. Summer saved. Jaunty accordian music and local colour returned to my life, and another installment of the international psychodrama looming.

Except. Except. As we fired up the telly last night for the prologue, what we found was a very different programme. I’m not saying Channel 5 have just phoned it in, exactly, but it’s clear that they’ve gone to minimum effort with this one. They’ve stranded Rebecca Charlton in an anonymous set, valiantly topping and tailing the action – but then cut to the racing without even so much as a mention of who was doing the commentary, let alone an explanation of how the team time trial would work this year. Purists might argue that the original Tour highlights package overdid the explanations (you knew it was a slow day of racing when they brought the geologist out to explain how the terrain they were riding on was formed) but at least they’d have given us a bit more context than the Pogacar/Vingegord rivalry, plus a nod to this year’s designated plucky Frenchman, which was all the intro we got last night. Apparently, you can watch some of the stages live for free – as long as you don’t mind the commentary being in Welsh. Although frankly, if yesterday’s outing was anything to go by, it wouldn’t be much more incomprehensible than what we got.

And yet, and yet. You know we’ll still watch it, because we’re already invested. They know we’ll still watch it, so why bother doing anything other than stitching together some of the action and shovelling it out there to the waiting public? As I sadly switched off the box last night I reflected that if that had been my first ever experience of watching the Tour, it would probably also have been my last. We talk in cycle campaigning about the difference between catering to existing cyclists and creating new ones. The same thing surely goes for cycling fans. All I can hope is that enough people will tune in for them to try and extend a bit more of an effort. It’s that, or learning Welsh. Treial amser tîm, anyone?

4 Comments | Cycling | Permalink
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Totally Ripped (off)

June 24, 2026

I have been advised to try Tai Chi to try and help with my ongoing shoulder issues. Not so much for the mobility benefits as for the stress reduction, as it turns out that moving round in a constant state of fight or flight with your shoulders half way to your ears does not do wonderful things for your neck (who knew? I mean, apart from everybody). I’ve heard many good things about Tai Chi but resisted taking it up, initially because it does have something of a reputation as being something for older people, and then because of all the mad AI generated ads suggesting that 5 minutes of Tai Chi a day would leave you completely ripped* which have been clogging up my various social media channels for weeks.

Anyway, my sister is made of sterner stuff, and found a class locally and suggested I join her in giving it a go. Which was why Monday saw us both in the sports hall of the local Baptist Centre vainly trying to keep up with a bunch of ladies a couple of decades our senior as they moved gracefully through a routine that had me lost from the get go (we did ask if there was a beginners’ class, but were told we were in it). None of the other participants looked particularly ripped, it must be said (although who knows what abs might lurk beneath layers of pastel leisure wear), but were certainly testament to its cognitive benefits as there were no real instructions just an incredibly complex set of moves – as much a workout for the brain as anything else.

Having stumbled through an hour of finding myself mostly on the wrong foot, with the wrong hand uppermost and undoubtedly breathing in the wrong places, I wasn’t feeling quite the same sense of relaxed calmness my sister was reporting, but it does at least take your mind off everything else, and there’s nothing like learning a new thing to give you a bit of focus and (supposing I ever find myself actually working out what is going on) a sense of acheivement. I’ll give it a few weeks and see whether I become somewhat less at sea (that actually might be the name of one of the movements). And it’s only £5 a week, so nobody is getting rich off this particular exercise.

I did wonder about taking a ‘before’ photo so you can witness my incredible transformation after 6 weeks but, frankly, nobody wants to see that. So have a completely non-AI-generated photo of the ford instead.

* For the avoidance of doubt, it won’t, although there are apparently some interesting features to such clearly fake ads – including the fact that their very crapness is deliberate – according to this blog post here.

5 Comments | Off topic | Tagged: tai chi | Permalink
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Open Season

June 21, 2026

It’s peak Open Garden season right now, a chance to have a nosey around some lovely plots and discover that it is somehow possible to manage a perfect combination of colourful planting, relaxed informality and enough wildness to satisfy the most exacting tastes.

It’s safe to say, I won’t be achieving this level any time soon in my own garden, where it seems like the only things flowering are the weeds:

A commenter described my garden as lush, and it’s certainly that, aided by some epic amounts of rain in recent days, but it’s not exactly looking very gardened. Normally at this time of the year it would be at its best, with the columbines flowering all over the gravel beds, making up for a multitude of sins (just look at the mad display they put on last year).

This year, however, we’ve barely got any and I know why because I’ve watched the little culprit at it. The hares in our garden are allowed to eat what they like (within reason), and every year the resident leveret seems to develop a taste for something different – one year we couldn’t keep a bay tree alive, another it was the herbs that got it. Some will seem to go for anything with a garden centre label on it. One used to eat dandelion flowers from the base of the stem up, as though it were sucking up a giant strand of spaghetti. And the current inhabitant apparently likes nipping the buds off columbines.

On the whole, it’s still a net positive.