Rat Au Van

Anyone who's a fan of the Blackadder series will recall one of the funniest scenes in Blackadder Goes Forth, that is a conversation between Blackadder and Baldrick . Blackadder queries the delights on the trenches' menu, to learn that Rat Au Van is indeed "A rat...that’s been run over by a van...”

For Rat sauté:
"Take the freshly shaved rat and you marinade it in a puddle for a while (till it's drowned), then you stretch it out under a hot lightbulb, then get within dashing distance of a latrine and then you scoff it right down!"


For Rat fricassée:

“...the same, but use a slightly bigger rat.”

While Baldrick may have had a ‘cunning plan’ to take care of deceased animals in the trenches... I do sometimes wonder what happens to the estimated 10 million birds and mammals that are killed on the UK’s roads every year? An ex-colleague of mine was a firm believer in the "waste not, want not" approach. His rule of thumb was "if it’s still warm, it’s good to eat".... many a recently-demised pheasant he spotted on his travels was swiftly loaded into the boot of his car, and was roasting away in his oven that night.

Purgatory-pending pheasants are plentiful on the roads around where we live...they apparently outnumber every fox, deer, badger and rabbit killed by cars by at least six times. This is hardly surprising, as anyone who’s ever seen a pheasant running (they very seldom actually fly) across the road, knows they have not evolved any road instincts to deal with two tons of metal coming at them at 60 mph. Just last weekend B and I were driving home when a pheasant on a death run across a dual carriageway ended up hitching a ride in the middle of our radiator grill. There was an immediate yet distinct smell of roasting pheasant...we pulled over to the side of the road as soon as possible, convinced that we would be pulling a dead, partly cooked bird from the grill......only to find a slightly stunned Percival turning around to peer at us...very disconcerting!

Even on the odd occasion when pheasants do remember that they have wings, the results can be disastrous....I’ve witnessed a couple of these dozy birds launch themselves into the air....thwack!...only to collide mid-flight with a passing truck. Before they knew it, they were carving out a protractor-perfect trajectory back to the side of the road on which they started.

Ownership of road kill is debatable...most country people assume that the driver who kills the rabbit, pheasant or pigeon may not make a meal of it, but the driver of the car behind can. Although the Highways Agency owns all road kill on the UK’s roads, this rule is rarely enforced. It is, though, the party that is responsible for clearing it away. But are there many other people prepared to scrape their dinner off the tarmac rather than visiting their local supermarket? Best known for his BBC programme, The Roadkill Chef, professional forager, Fergus Drennan, describes himself as a ‘vegetarian who eats road kill’. Recently decorated with an Ethical Cuisine award from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Drennan trumpets the merits of mown-down fox, hedgehog and badger over supermarket meats and processed food, and says "eating foxes, squirrels, pheasants, hedgehogs, badgers, rats and rabbits killed by cars is fair game", because "it has not been killed on your behalf". On his website www.wildmanwildfood.com, Drennan extols the virtues of road kill insisting: "It’s not factory farmed or pumped full of antibiotics. It is fresh, local, seasonal and nutritionally rich" and says the best place to find quality road kill is on roads you use daily: "If it wasn’t there the previous day then it’s probably good to eat today."

To finish, flattened fauna can serve scientific and educational purposes, providing an ethical source of animal tissue for research. Scientists at Cardiff University, for example, have studied the diet and environment of otters by post-mortem examinations on almost 1,000 otter carcasses, mainly road kill from across Wales and England. Otters are very difficult species to study, as they are quite elusive and rarely seen in the wild alive. Examining dead otters is a useful way of monitoring river pollution levels because pollutants accumulate up the food chain and they are at the top. The research showed there has been a drop in lead levels in otters since the early 1990s, which reflects the ban on lead in car fuel in the UK.

Space Invaders

I’m more ‘spatially aware’ these days...a car accident can do that to you, as I found out the hard way last November. It was nothing serious, mind, but enough of a dodgem-car style bump, grind and jolt to now give me the heebie-jeebies every time another car drifts too-close-for-comfort in a tight roundabout. Always a fairly cautious driver, I am definitely more inclined to ‘let the other dude go first’ nowadays....respect the safety gap!

There do, however, seem to be a lot of things crashing into each other lately. On Monday this week, it was reported that two nuclear-armed submarines from Britain and France collided while on separate patrols in the Atlantic Ocean. Analysts said a major disaster could have resulted had the underwater collision ruptured the hulls, set off conventional ammunition or started a fire, although the chances of a full nuclear explosion were virtually nil. But, thankfully, there were no injuries or radioactive leaks....just some rather red-faced British and French officials, who have so far failed to explain how two sophisticated vessels from allied nations could collide in open water.

And, last week, the US commercial Iridium spacecraft and a defunct Russian communications satellite collided in space over Siberia, in what is thought to be the biggest incident of its kind to date. The impact produced a cloud of debris, which will be tracked into the future. It is hoped that most of the debris will fall to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. The risk to the International Space Station, which is orbiting the Earth some 435 km below the course of the collision is said to be low.




Since the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, it is estimated about 6,000 satellites have been put in orbit. There are about 17,000 man-made objects above 10 cm in size that orbit Earth - and the tally is constantly increasing. This in turn raises the risk of collisions between objects. Intact satellites share Earth's orbit with everything from spent rocket stages and spacecraft wreckage to paint flakes and dust. The diffuse mist of junk around our planet is the legacy of 51 years of human activity in space.



Speaking of objects sharing our planet’s orbit, on Friday April 13, 2029, the ‘Apophis’ asteroid (originally designated 2004 MN4) will fly its nearest to Earth, a mere 30,000 km above the ground - for comparison, geosynchronous satellites orbit at 36,000 km. At closest approach, the asteroid will shine like a third magnitude star, visible to the unaided eye from Africa, Europe and Asia, even through city lights. This is rare....close approaches by objects as large as ‘Apophis’ are currently thought to occur at 1000 year intervals, on average. No one in recorded history has ever seen an asteroid in space so bright.


Back in December 2004, astronomers considered there was an ‘unprecedented level of risk’ – a 1-in-45 chance - of ‘Apophis’ striking the planet. In Egyptian myth, ‘Apophis’ was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness. A fitting name, astronomers reasoned, for a menace that was hurtling towards Earth from outer space. NASA had estimated that an impact from ‘Apophis’ would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere. Thankfully, however, additional observations soon ruled out a direct collision... phew! It’s predicted the asteroid's trajectory will bend approximately 28 degrees during the encounter, a result of Earth's gravitational pull. What happens next is uncertain....some predicted ‘Apophis’ might swing around and hit Earth after all in 2035....but these reports were quickly dismissed by astronomers, who calculate that the probability for that encounter as 1 in 12.3 million.

Let’s hope they’ve got their calculations right....I’d rather leave sleeping satellites (planets) lie..........

"Sleeping Satellite" by Tasmin ArcherChorus
I blame you for the moonlit sky
and the dream that died
with the eagles' flight
I blame you for the moonlit nights
when I wonder why
are the seas still dry?
don't blame this sleeping satellite

Did we fly to the moon too soon
did we squander the chance
in the rush of the race
the reason we chase is lost in romance
and still we try
to justify the waste
for a taste of man's greatest adventure

have we lost what it takes to advance?
have we peaked too soon?
if the world is so green
then why does it scream under a blue moon
we wonder why
If the earth's sacrificed
for the price of it's greatest treasure

and when we shoot for the stars
what a giant step
have we got what it takes
to carry the weight of this concept
or pass it by like a shot in the dark
miss the mark with a sense of adventure

Love Is In The Air....

"Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap."   [Joel, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]

Cue soppiness, satin-covered heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, teddy bears and red roses selling at £10 a stem....it’s the day that keeps card makers, florists and chocolatiers in business for another year. But how did Valentine’s Day come about and is it just another excuse for commercial profiteering?

The early origins of Valentine's Day can be traced back to the ancient Roman celebration of Lupercalia, which was held on February 13th through February 15th to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility. Lupercalia honoured Lupercus (god of shepherds) and Faunus (the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Pan) and the founders of Rome. When the Catholic Church set out to change the old Pagan feast days into religious feast days, they made the pastoral festival into the feast day of Saint Valentine....but just who was Saint Valentine? Considered the Patron Saint of (in no particular order) engaged couples, bee keepers, people suffering from epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriage, love, lovers, plague, travellers and youth, there are at least three different stories surrounding his identity.

One legend tells of a third century Roman priest who went against the anti-marriage laws of Emperor Claudius II. Claudius believed that unmarried men made better soldiers then men with wives and families, so he made it illegal for young men to marry. It was said that Valentine secretly married couples, and when Claudius discovered his betrayal, he had Valentine executed. Another story tells of a priest who was executed helping Christian prisoners escape harsh treatment and torture in the Roman prisons. A third Saint Valentine was a martyred minister who practiced in the province of Africa, but there is very little known about him and few scholars believe that he is actually associated with the Valentine's Day holiday.

But why did a saint's feast day become a day for lovers? Perhaps it had something to do with an old English custom of the fourteenth century. On February 14th, the unmarried people in a village would each draw the name of another unmarried person, and the two would then exchange notes. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week, which has led to the modern day expression “to wear your heart on your sleeve”, meaning that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.

Charles, the Duke of Orleans in France, was said to be the first person to send a love note on St. Valentine's Day. In 1415, he sent a letter to his wife from an English prison. Sending valentine cards first became fashionable in Great Britain in the 19th century, and in 1847, a Massachusetts woman named Esther Howland created and sold the first mass-produced valentines in the United States. Her embossed paper lace valentines inspired so much popularity that today, nearly one billion valentine cards are sent in the US each year, making Valentine’s Day the largest seasonal card-sending occasion of the year, next to Christmas. Cupid, a symbol of Valentine's Day, became associated with it because he was the son of Venus, the Roman god of love and beauty. Cupid often appears on Valentine's cards holding a bow and arrows because he is believed to use magical arrows to inspire feelings of love.

Valentine's Day does seem to be a holiday of expectations..... culturally we feel obligated to be part of a couple on this day, a time to be in love and to be loved, so it is a hard day for people who are in between relationships, in bad relationships, or who may have a partner but only in memory. Perhaps Valentine Day should be more of a time remembering all the people in our lives whom we love. B totally has my heart, but there are many kinds of love...the love of parents, siblings, good friends. One of my all time favourite films, 'Love Actually', I think is a wonderful homage to love in all of its forms, not just romantic.

A Touch Of Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Back in 1993, the British Medical Journal published the results of a study, provocatively titled, "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?" Here's the abstract for this publication:

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between health, behaviour, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in the United Kingdom.

DESIGN: Retrospective study of paired data comparing driving and shopping patterns and accidents.
SUBJECTS: Drivers, shoppers, and residents.

SETTING: South West Thames region.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Numbers of vehicles on motorways; numbers of shoppers in supermarkets; and hospital admissions due to accidents.

RESULTS: There were consistently and significantly fewer vehicles on the southern section of the M25 on Friday the 13th compared with Friday the 6th. The numbers of shoppers were not significantly different on the two days. Admissions due to transport accidents were significantly increased on Friday 13th (total 65 v 45; p<0.05)

CONCLUSIONS: Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52%. Staying at home is recommended.
[BMJ 1993 Dec 18-25;307(6919):1584-6]

Any paraskevidekatriaphobics (people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th) reading this – well, they most likely won’t be doing much else, given their fear of even venturing out today - are probably nodding sagely about now, thinking “You see, there’s scientific evidence that the day is unlucky!” Personally, I think it's a bit far-fetched to base the ill-fatedness of any particular date on the calendar on a single, rather peculiar scientific study. More likely, these statistics can teach us something about human psychology. Could the fact that it's Friday the 13th make you anxious and that will make you more likely to have accidents, drive less well, and perhaps find it harder to relate to other people?

Unlucky or not, today is the first of three Friday the 13th days we’ll get through in 2009....touch wood!

A Snow Week That Was

This week, the “heaviest snowfalls in 20 years”, caused the UK to almost grind to a halt. The ensuing transport chaos brought misery for commuters, but joy for children as thousands of schools closed. For me, working from home as I do, it was pretty much business as usual....barring a cancelled meeting with a client in Edinburgh, a casualty of the airport closures.

Here's a collection of images from the week....

I was lucky to capture the sun setting over a snowy field near our village......

Sunset over snowy fields