On Sunday at his formal 5th birthday party, the Mrs is making the cake. But for this one it was me and it was a superbly soft one layer chocolate cake with milk chocolate butter icing. As you can see the Pest loved it. We all had another slice tday with the cake having spent 24 hours in the fridge and, dare I say it, it was even more amazing. Maybe I should apply to Bake Off as my cakes are even more exceedingly good than those of Mr Kipling.

That Theranos was a gargantuan fraud is in little doubt but that its CEO Elizabeth Holmes is being charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud is, according to liberal deadwood press wanksheet the New York Times just plain sexism. Ms Holmes was the poster girl for women making it big in US business and folks trying to get her sent to the slammer are all sexist beasts. The whole article neglects to mention one salient point which is that also on trial facing exactly the same charges is Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani who is a man.  Even the bedwetting dullards who read the NY Times would surely conclude that that fact, not mentioned once in the article, rather undermines its core thesis. 

Welcome to progress with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board banning the 1954 William Goulding novel Lord of the Flies from all its schools after a whinging complaint from one 17 year old student who also views Shakespeare as “outdated and irrelevant.” All hail modernity! All hail progress!  The student, Ms Kyla Gibson, wrote:

Joshua turns five tomorrow – exactly 100 days before Christmas day. On Saturday I have some of my family over to remember almost a year since my father died. On Sunday I shall be catering for the Pest’s little chums and their mums.

I have always thought that the idea of handing out trays of high sugar cup cakes bought from the local Nisa to the brats in your kid’s class at nursery or school on his or her Birthday, was just very silly. It did not happen when I was a boy, say I to the Mrs, sounding more and more like a grumpy old man as every day goes by.

The mint plants in the herb garden next to the new strawberry patch on badger hill have flourished and ever eager to try new ice cream recipes I set out to make mint cordial and then choc chip mint ice cream.

My father brought me up to call them yellow peas but the very English Mrs says that is just a mock Irish affectation and thus I bring you the first sweetcorn from the Welsh Hovel. Grown in the bit of the former jungle designated as Joshua’s garden we will not have a big crop this year, maybe 12 ears, but it is a proof of concept and we will go for a bigger crop in 2022.

Football is not a beautiful game it is a business. Those who play it well earn a shed load because there is such a huge demand to watch them kick a ball around the park and for merchandise associated with the great and good. But those who demand equal pay and airtime for the women’s game sometimes forget this.

The cooking apples from the tree on the lane down to the Welsh Hovel have been dropping for weeks. But now those edible apples in both the old and new orchards are also  ripening fast and thus every few days I find myself making another jar of stewed apples and cinnamon to store in the fridge.

That is to say that they are seizing control of the possessions of baby Jayarani. Today Quincey had taken her high chair as his own while Sian goes for her baby rocker as you can see below. To be fair, when Jayarani cries, Quincey is often the first to rush to her to nuzzle up to her with his mousey breath and comfort her.

It is like National Velvet but far better, the rank outsider coming through to win a major sporting event. Emma Radacanu seems such a pleasant young lady discussing how honoured she is to have had a message from a role model that is the Queen, after her win. Wearing that crucifix, so unfashionable in Britain today, this is a girl who has worked hard to get A’s in maths and economics A levels just a couple of months ago and who talked of celebrating with chocolate frozen yoghurt with added chocolate. So like the whole nation I wake up thinking how wonderful this British sporting heroine is. But if there is a bandwagon there is always Nigel Farage.

My colleague Darren uploaded these photos and reckons what he saw was cherries. Poltroon! Sadly my nine cherry trees are yet to yield much, I have hopes for next year. What you see is from the two crabapple trees in the new orchard I planted in early 2020 and which Joshua and I harvested last week.

I was up at 5 AM working on another series of articles busting the Umuthi fraud and as a distraction I made some damson gin and also used 300 heads that Joshua and I picked yesterday and brewed up another 1.5 litres of lavender cordial which now sits in the fridge. It is great in prosecco or in water for Joshua and it is what i used to make lavender ice cream.

There is an opinion poll out today showing Labour leading the Tories whose support is collapsing. Why vote Labour Light when you can vote for the real thing? Or if you are a Thatcherite, as I am, how can you bring yourself to vote for a Tory party that would disgust and repel every bone in the body of the blessed Margaret. The Tory party of the serial liar Boris is corrupt with party donors paying for his home furnishings and picking up soft sinecures and lucrative PPE contracts but, as bad, it has abandoned so much of what Thatcher believed in, including basic common sense. My day job is exposing fraud. How can I vote for such obvious frauds? The article below first appeared in my free weekly Tomograph newsletter which you can sign up to receive HERE.

We have already enjoyed a good few meals of Autumn Squash here at the Welsh Hovel but the plants have a large yield this year and so I have now taken off all of those squashes that had ripened through to orange to try and store them. A few yellower squashes I have left on the plant and we should eat them in the coming weeks.