I wrote up earlier. how we had made 23 litres of apple juice. As of Friday morning 24 bottles have been filled, the first four of which are below. I reckon we have another eight to ten to go and that is me done for this year. Or maybe not. If Joshua sells all of this run at Sharestock. we may have to run off another batch. There are still apples on the trees by the river, easily enough to make another thirty bottles if needs be.
The raspberries, largly golden, are the gift from the garden that just keeps on giving. It took me just a quarter on an hour to clean the bushes yet again and the bowl that I brought in was enough for Joshua to grab a few, for me to make another litre of ice cream and to have enough left over to flash freee a tray, as you can se below.
As readers of my other website know, I have a few pressing medical matters at hand. Wednesday saw a long conversation and a short examination by my GP and on Friday I should get back some rather important test results. You cannot just sit there and ponder your own mortality. Life is for living though we must all, always, consider what the alternative means for those around us. So on Wednesday afternoon Joshua and I picked even more apples and that evening my pal C popped around to help me press.
Last Friday Robert Kennedy junior, RFK, said that in ten battleground states he was withdrawing his candidacy for President and urged his supporters to back Donald Trump. In British terms this is like a Kinnock urging folks to vote Tory. The son of Bobby Kennedy, the nephew of JFK is backing not just a Republican but Trump. I discussed HERE how this really can make a difference and makes a Trump win all the more likely. But the Democrats are cheats.
It has been a funny old year for fruit. Damsons almost a no show. The pears are not much better but the plums were not bad at all. As for the apples, we look to have a bumper harvest but the odd thing is that not only are the early fruiting Discovery trees I planted by the river ready as they should be but so too are all the other trees, four weeks ahead of schedule. Apples are already starting to drop to the ground in large numbers. So the harvest is now underway.
Apparently, the first words little Jaya said this morning were “Daddy’s ice cream is so much better than Tesco’s or Bellis’s” I kid you not but she is right. Last night’s production ,pictured below, was blackberry and, having allowed myself a teaspoonfull, I can tell you it was amazing. It now goes in an increasingly ice cream packed freezer ahead of Sharestock when it will be served after supper. Also on the production line yesterday was damson jam. The harvest this year was dire and I had to scrounge fruit off a neighbours trees down by the river. and to chuck in a few of my plums. But, as you can see, we now have ten jars. And then to the orchard.
It is the data behind the headlines that is telling. No doubt folks like Carol Vorderman and the BBC will be creaming themselves with this swing state poll. They should not be. The data behind it is very good news indeed for Donald Trump as I explain.
As I repeatedly point out the Ukraine war and the US Election are closely linked and, as ever, the BBC, ghastly Jon Sopel and the rest of the liberal media class mislead you as to what is going on on both fronts. I discuss bad news for Ukraine and how, I sense, the Kamala Harris honeymoon is over, certainly after Robert Kennedy jnr today, as I predicted he would, threw in the towel in the swing states and backd President Trump. the polls, Financial betting all tell a similar tale.
Straight fromthe Democrat convention the awful BBC brings you a star delegate. The BBC might think this is normal but I challenge anyone else out there to watch this and not leap to the conclusion WEIRD. If you are a normal person you vote Trump/Vance this Autumn.
Joshua is keen that we make nettle cordial and from that nettle ice cream. And so we shall, but first things first: nettle beer.
Real men have wood stores. The Mrs just does not understand what it means to me as I stack log upon log. Readers: I need some male affirmation here. Anyhow as a result of the tree being knocked down and a barn being knocked down earlier in the year I have vast numbers of logs to put in a wood shed emptied after what the Met Office termed“the warmest spring on record” when my fire had to be kept on virtually every single day.
It is all happening on both fronts with shocks from left field.But what happens next? I discuss in detail and as things stand I reckon the US winner will be….
Most of the remnants of the tree chopped down in my garden are slowly being split into firewood. As my wood shed fills up I am taking photos and will bring them all when the job is completed later this week and I can revel in my manly glory. But those branches thatwere too small, the leaves and the sawdust is now piled high on the bonfire site. They will damp down during the Autumn but i staill have some old pallets and other junk from the barns to clear to make space for chickens and goats. So, as you can see below Iam well prepared for bonfire night. But…
In Operation Mincemeat, in 1943, British Military intelligence dressed up a dead tramp as a Marine officer, floated his body carrying details of a planned invasion of Greece onto the Spanish coast knowing that the bogus plans would find their way to the Germans. The Germans fell for it and diverted tanks, boats and men from Sicily, where the allies really were going to land, to Greece. It was a triumph. There are two books written about the operation and both mention the underpants placed on the body but only in Ben Macintyre’s 2010 account, on which the Colin Firth film is based, is there real detail. Unfortunately, Macintyre engages in dramatic conceit and gets it all wrong. I start, once again, with those 4 young girls photographed in the late 1880s.
The sad demise of Michael Mosley in Greece and of Jay Slater in Tenerife this summer naturally made me think of my great Uncle David Cochrane, not just the manner of his death in 1931 but also of the waiting that all three families endured. With Cochrane there is also a villain of the story, his uncle by marriage, and this is, in a way, a precursor to a very long article I am preparing on Operation Mincemeat, the underpants and my family. It all starts with the four young girls pictured below in, I suspect, the late 1890s.
