Day 268, 271109 (gingerbread)

Concerning gingerbread people.

You know, if we were professional bakers we probably could have had this done and dusted in half the time. A third of the time. Total man hours required for myself and Sam (of Tea and Cake fame) to make 100 gingerbread people turned out to be about 14; my standard hourly rate (for callouts) is £50, which makes these some of the most expensive gingerbread men ever made. Or, would do, if we were charging for anything other than ingredients.

But, we did it, they are done and we did them. 100 gingerbread people, as a T&C enterprise for one of Sam's friends, getting married on Saturday and wanting wedding favours for people. You know how I say things like "try everything once, just so you know you'll never have to do it again"? Well, without a bigger oven, a higher working surface and something to pulverize crystallised ginger without gumming up I'm never making this many gingerbread men again...

The recipe was the standard one that I swiped from my mother, and modified slightly with some different spices and some maple syrup, with the extra addition of a couple of tablespoons of blitzed crystallised ginger. It's a bit gummy, that stuff, so my hand mixer didn't really like it very much. It makes quite a difference to the mixture, though - a bit of texture and some more ginger in there, without having big lumps of mouth-searing surprise. Fifty raw gingerbread men look like this:



... and as they were cooling, but before I put them in airtight tins, they looked like this:





They stayed crisp overnight (hoorah!) in the airtight tins, but I did have to make another batch before going to bed because some were a bit too singed around the edges and were more like those biscuits you get in plastic packets when you order coffee in hotels that are trying, but don't quite get coffee. Perfectly edible if you like that sort of thing, but not really suitable.

Met Sam at the station, we went home and took out the ladies that she'd done, melted some chocolate (which set really quickly, so I decided that properly tempered chocolate was a luxury we couldn't afford in this situation and went for speed and simplicity over my own "technique above all else!" aesthetics), and decorated the ladies.



Then we set the chaps out, melted more chocolate, and did them. By the time we got to the end of the chaps it was 10pm, we were shattered and backs were really aching, and you can tell by the lack of suits and more... odd decor some of the chaps got. There was a skellington (userpic), someone in an X-ray machine, and a member of the Syndikat.



We did special ones for the bride and groom, too. Lots of chocolate! We did comment on the decoration as we were doing it; some of the ladies were very obviously grannies, some were in evening wear, some in dungarees. The gents were... eclectic, I think.

We certainly had fun making them - a lot of fun - but it's hard, hard work. I have much more respect for bakers, especially ones who do artisinal things like this. We could have done single colour, five blobs and a smile, and be done in ten minutes, but where's the artistry in that? This was all about the handmade product, the joy of uniqueness, and I think we did a pretty good job with that.

Richard was a star and ran out for tupperware with mere minutes to go before Sainsbury's closed; when packed up, the 100 gingerbread people looked like this:



Fun, yes. Next time though, I'm charging more :)

Day 262, 211109 (Thought Bubble)

This weekend was the best sequential arts fair in the North, and possibly the country (although Birmingham may argue on size, I think this is the friendliest). By which I mean Thought Bubble.

In a city with two indie comics shops (one of which does games) and a FP, you'd think that a comics convention wouldn't be a huge thing here, and if there was one it'd be a small affair, stuffed in a church hall or in the basement of the Town Hall, or something. In fact, in year one it was in the basement of the town hall, and it was a fairly sedate affair with only a handful of names attending, and it wasn't bad, but not really enough to hold interest for very long (also, I was very ill at the time). Then in year two - it amazes me that it's only three years old now - it exploded into Saville Hall, a huge conference venue by the Armouries. It was rammed solid last year, with the queue stretching quite some way at opening time and not really shortening very much before lunch. At that one I looked after the fetishman stall for a bit and pretended to be Geof for an interview, and spent a bit of money - but not that much - on indie comics.

This year was something else entirely.


I went with a budget, and with the intention of spending money on indie comics. I arrived at lunchtimeish, found Mavis who gave me a quick tour - showing me some Doctor Who artwork that made me think "Oh, it's a shame t'other Penny isn't here" on the way - and then stood with me as I carried out my first purchase of the day, and one I've been looking forwards to for two years, a copy of Grandville.

A quick note from my diary from back then:

[...] A two-hour session with Bryan Talbot as part of the Ilkley Literature Festival, who was talking about his techniques in graphic novel design with specific reference to The Tale of One Bad Rat. He started off with a retrospective of his work up to that point - which took 40 minutes - and pointing out how he learned to use a brush, crosshatching, lines of convergence, vanishing points, use of colour (which happened very late on), and some seriously interesting things about passage of time - how he spread a six-second sequence in Luther Arkwright across 72 panels, for example - and plotting. Then he gets into One Bad Rat, which pulls all of this together. He talked about the nine-frame grid a lot, and intuitive reading, and how people's brains work when reading comics - their eyes jump everywhere, even though the conscious brain is only aware of the linear flow - and putting little things in a frame which aren't necessarily supposed to be seen, per se, but help the brain work out what is supposed to be happening. Really, it was an incredible session. I made a ton of notes, made a note of all his references and work, and thought "gosh, that's the sort of thing I learned in photo classes!" a lot.

Just as we were leaving he pulls out his portfolio and asks if people want to take a look at some of his stuff for Grandville (the first ten pages, which looked outstanding), the thing he's currently working on ("Steampunk meets Sherlock Holmes, with animals instead of humans.") so of course I did, and then someone suggested a beer. So, three of the attendees (a graphic designer, a philosophy lecturer at UoL who is taking a year out to write about comics, and, erm, me) took Bryan to a boozer where we spent the time between his two events getting gently sloshed, discussing his work, who is up-and-coming, why comics aren't really taken seriously in the UK as opposed to, say, France or Belgium, trying to get graphic novels published and how much easier it's getting - aha - and technology. Plus going over two versions of Grandville, one in vibrant colour, the other slightly desaturated and trying to work out which was the best ("I brought these along to get opinions - here, what do you think?") It was at this point that I learned about Thought Bubble, as we started talking about conventions and the characters who turn up.

Bryan is a nice chap, and seeing as I've known about him since I was nine years old and stealing my Dad's copy of Luther Arkwright (Book 1), it's quite nice to realise that one of my childhood, um, heroes is really accessable. No kidding, being asked to rate his work? That's a bit of a "wow" for me.

Of course, I got Grandville signed by Bryan, we had a quick chat about a panel in Luther Arkwright I'd been wondering about for over twenty years, and I mentioned my perhaps somewhat dodgy thought that his cover for Erskine's Dan Dare does look a bit like a, erm, "book cake" shoot (look, those cruisers are seriously phallic, ok?). Anyway.

We headed back to Geof where I deposited bags and biscotti, with the instruction to use the biscotti as they saw fit. Geof had a bottle of "Mr Reynold's Genuine Hand-Squeezed Kraken Ink".


Next, to see John Allison, bought badges and a poster, and pestered Ellerby for more ellerbisms and requested he sign things. Also demanded "what's new?" of Lizz Lunney and had a quick chat to the guys at We Are Words and Pictures, from whom I bought my favourite print of last year.

I spotted Bunny! So went and got volume two, having loved volume 1; this is one of those comics that really deserves to be read in print. Reading it on the web is fine, but this is something else when it's a book. Next door to Bunny (ish) was Gunnerkrigg Court. Wandering over to the chap behind the desk my opening gambit was "where do I know your name from?" and we eventually worked out it was from John Allison. I picked up his book, thinking it was a little expensive, but was instantly hooked. This was some seriously good writing and printing, and whilst the art seems a little naive it picks up really quickly. When I got home I read Grandville, and then I read this; it was stunning work and I loved every panel. Much hard work has gone into producing this and I can't recommend it enough.

Some people had work that looked fun, but wasn't my cuppa; a book of lovingly rendered watercolours telling a mermaid's tale was startlingly expensive but obviously a lot of love went into it's production, for example. I just didn't like the story that was being told enough. There was a lot of "trying too hard" stuff; semicompetent artwork and writing basically consisting of vomit, scatalogical references and poorly-thought out storylines, all of which turn me off. Some sort-of big press items that were ok, but there were better artists not getting book deals. Oh, and I didn't queue up to see any of the Names other than Bryan (and there wasn't much of a queue for him). I should have gone to see Paul Cornell, but he wasn't there when did go to see him and the crush of people trying to see Templesmith was getting ridiculous. And then Tony Stark turned up (sorry, rubbish photo - my decent camera was at the bottom of my bag by this point) and everything stopped wherever he was standing.

Ollie East was there for Blank Slate, who are publishing Trains Are... Mint and Proper Go Well High (instead of him selfpublishing). I bought copies of both, and loved them; these were sweet watercolours with a nice, otherworldy feel to them, the stories being Ollie's walks from Manchester to Blackpool and Liverpool respectively. Love these books; they're great artifacts, beautiful objects to have. Won't be everybody's cuppa, though. (I later discovered Ollie was the cover artist for Seldom Seen Kid.)

I bought far too much small indie comics costing under a fiver, too. I'll do proper reviews of them when I've read them all, but particular highlights were My Cardboard Life (oh! so lovely!), and The Rainbow Orchid, the first volume of a gorgeous-looking series of three, inked in the very best Belgian style. Brilliant work, can't wait for volume two.

Finally, I coughed for some Fetishman stuff as well, including a mug this time. Swag:


Penny joined me, and we decided to make up some sort of creative salon. There was a talk about Grandville held in the casino, so I had to go along to that (learned all about anthropomorphic cartoons through history, as well as some of the in-jokes in Grandville itself), then I made balloon doggies for a bunch of people, and then I was shattered and had to come home. But I did well, and did my bit to support the indie comics industry. In amongst everything else I met the model for the Doctor Sketchy's event they were doing - I love that idea, a burlesque evening where you're encouraged to draw - and had an extended gossip session with Michelle Culturevulture.

Oh! When I left it had been raining, and Clarence dock looked like this:


Seriously, this was an outstanding day; Lisa does a brilliant job of organising the festival and it showed on the day. Of course I'll be back, and loving every minute, again.

Day 258, 161109

This is a bit of a catchup post.

I've not been doing much on 101things recently, because of other stuff getting in the way. Fully aware that you chaps aren't necessarily interested in that, I won't write about those things in great detail.

The beetroot pasta task (#36) needs a little explaining; I don't want to make pasta out of beetroot per se, but to use beetroot as a colouring agent so I end up with reddy purple pasta. Funky colours, see? The problem is, you need quite a lot of beetroot to get the colour. As an example of this, I present some marshmallows that I made a couple of weeks ago:

See that faint pinky colour? Two beetroot (grated and steeped in 100ml boiling water) in about 750ml of liquid. If a normal pasta dough is 500g of flour, I'm going to need the colour of six beetroot to get anything like the colour I want, and I can't have that much fluid in it, as the dough is basically egg and flour, with only a few sprinkles of water. Cooking beetroot juice turns it brown, too, so I can't concentrate it through evaporation. This is going to take some thought. Yes, I could cheat and make gnocci, but where's the fun in that?

Sam and myself are making a gingerbread army. Wedding favours for a friend of Sams, with proceeds going to charity, like we did with the Charming Armley Cake Comp. This has meant my making a lot of trial runs of gingerbread, but the final batch will be started next week; a mixture of maple syrup, pulverized stem ginger and careful use of bicarb will make these the finest gingerbread men and women the world has ever seen. Photos when available.

Exposure Leeds (#85) continues to skip lightly forwards; I think I've attended all the indoor ones to date and given talks at three of them. I was thinking about this the other day; in the 18 months since I met Jon Eland I've given four separate talks at Photocamps and three talks at Exposure Leeds sessions, and become involved in a pretty huge technology project. It's fun, I enjoy doing it, it's just an odd thing. Anyway, at the last Exposure I gave a talk on Panographs and Panoramix, the slides of which are available in four parts: [part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4]. If you'd like me to present this anywhere - because obv, 80% of this is in the delivery - I'll do it for expenses :)

Because I needed to do proper research for my talk I popped into Leeds University's Arts library, the Brotherton. This enabled me to tick off another library from task 17. The Brotherton is a fab library, with special collections, books that are never checked out, and little corners to hide in. The little corners can be occupied by "characters" as in the case of the Library Foot-Sniffer, the scourge of many when we had open access to the libraries, but on the whole it's a lovely place to be. As a part of the talk I made a panorama of the interior...



... and came across a book that I had to check out; David Hockney's Cameraworks. This book contains most - not all - of his "joiners" and some I didn't know existed, and has an interesting monograph at the front by the compiler about the hows and whys. I may spend a bit of time writing about this book at some point.

Once the gingerbread army is out of the way I'll be making more chocolates, and trying to write up some articles for T&C. But... I had an idea for a cookbook. I shouldn't waste time on it, but as an idea I love it and want to take it forward, just a little bit.

That'll do for now. Just a quick state of the nation -type posting.

Day 240 301009 Wordle

On time, for once.

From Screen Captures

Day 236, 261009

Britain's Best Dish is now, at least for me, over. If you want to watch it, ITVPlayer will have it for the next 29 days at time of writing.



After recording and winning my last heat on the Monday, the following Thursday, I got the train down to London and stopped at the City Road Travelodge. It was bloody hot in there; I always overheat in London, and this time was no exception, but it wasn't helped by the blessed hotel having a broken heating system that was pumping hot air into the corridors, and no aircon anywhere. Well, I say no aircon, but in an attempt to prevent my death from heat exhaustion I had to keep the window open, and there were some noisy compressors just outside it. The room was clean and spartan, but really it was like trying to sleep in a server room without the nice cool airflow.

To Hackney Community College, where the gas wasn't working properly amongst other things. Every now and then, to find out why the oven in one station wasn't working, they'd reset the system, which had the added bonus of putting out all the other burners and ovens around it. Before we got to that point there was a lot of hanging around, the usual furore, much swearing as the crew had moved from Teddington that morning and didn't know where anything was. I met the opponents, who were all lovely; one bloke ran a club in Accrington and was an example of your charming Manc motormouth, and he was seriously funny. We had a glamorous granny, a Scots chap who'd shot his own pigeon the day before, a Welsh trades unionist, a mumsy type and a tiny Indian lady who was full of stories about her homeland. And me. Three of us were doing dishes that involved shrimp, two were a seafood medley, there was a risotto, a salmon tartare, pigeon breast salad, and a chicken wrap.

Prep happened and my dough was done, we had lunch, and hung around some more. And a bit more. I wasn't worried about my dough, because you can't really overrest it. When we eventually made it into the kitchen - they were nice little pods we were working in - and had started, I did everything I was supposed to before rolling out my pasta. I poked my dough, only to discover a whole chunk of it had dried out under the lights. Foolishly, I started to see if I could knead it out, and instead I got little blobs of dried pasta working their way through the dough. JBR & Ed came over to see what I was up to, and instantly told me to stop what I was doing and make my dough again. I had 44 minutes to re-make my dough that needed an hour to rest. Argh.

Well, I pulled a rabbit out of the hat. My new dough came out really quite good - far better than I could have hoped it to, if I'm being honest - and I managed to get my ravioli done and in the water on time, just. It made quite good telly, although I did get bleeped at one point. I suspect I may be told off by my parents and Grandmother for that.

This time we didn't see the judges reactions, but the food was also being eaten by proper food critics. We were told "ten minutes" and taken outside for some air. Instead of 10 minutes we ended up hanging around for over an hour and a half, waiting for the decisions. Eventually we were all gathered up and the usual trio gave the verdict, and I was out, beaten by the salmon tartare and the risotto.

We were hanging around for postmatch interviews, and one of the critics - Charles Campion - came out and said hello, so I asked whether he liked my dish. "Loved it," he said. Someone else asked what he thought of theirs; "total disaster," so at least I knew he wasn't just being nice. Ah, well.

Watching the programme was interesting; I had no idea how it was going to pan out with the critics and judges. This time I was properly nervous watching the show, because the critics could have been awful. As it was William Sitwell made a barking suggestion - keep the peas whole - which thankfully received the "whu?" it deserved, and although JBR thought it was underseasoned I am positive that it was fine. Still, not to worry; I at least produced something to go on the plates, and it could have been so much worse.

So concludes this adventure in Tellyland, where the sun always shines and the grass is an incredible shade of green.

Britain's Best Dish

Ok, I can now confirm that my next instalment of Britain's Best Dish is on Monday 26th October, 5pm, ITV1.

Woo! &c.

In other news, I'm mad busy; decorating cakes, making portfolios, writing a talk on panoramic photographs, and thinking about gingerbread recipes does take it out of a chap. I've done nothing on 101things for about a fortnight, but hopefully that'll change next week.

In the meantime, have a poster wot I made. I'm thinking there's a T-shirt in this.



If you're looking for something to read, ask Alex, because she's doing a 24-hr readathon over the weekend. Nutter. But she might have recommendations for you when it's all over, and if you meet up with her you could get a BookCrossed book!

Monday, 5pm.

Quick post about Britain's Best Dish.

As I've been asked by people:

Programme one is here and programme two is here. People not in the UK may be unable to watch, I'm afraid.

As far as I can tell the next bit is October 26th, but I'll confirm that when I know more.

Day 216, 061009 (telly, part 3)

After winning my previous heat I had a couple of days off, and then I was back down to Teddington again for the next round. My opponent this time is a very nice lady from Filey, making three different crab dishes, but all on the theme of a layered salad. The results (when we’re done) look incredible. The other players were: a corned beef pie with a roasted mashed potato cake, salt cod with black-eyed peas and rice, and an interesting matchup between a just-finished-A-levels young lady and not-started-GCSEs-yet young man (mini victoria sponges with lemon curd and tea bread ice cream, and sticky toffee pudding with cinder toffee ice cream respectively).

So we go through the same rigmarole as last time. Mark gives us a pep talk, warns us what he's going to talk about, we do walkons and intros, and I slice some radishes. We get taken off, the judges do their thing, and as we're outside we hear that the judges really weren't happy with this morning's lot; they'd tried too hard, and as a result their dishes had lost some of what made them great. We're called back on, and get rolling. I've changed the order of how I cook stuff (pasta gets rolled last) but I have acres of time.

Cooking the peas and sauteéing the shrimp is done in a flash, and I'm laying out sheets of pasta rather than cutting discs. I spend more than two seconds on the garnish, and start assembling. Alas! The second sheet of pasta has dried out and is cracking, and they stick to the worktop; out of the five ravioli I complete, one cracks just as I'm about to drop it in the water and one has a hole in I don't notice until I fish it out and the filling is four times the volume it should be!

Instead of being taken off for the judge's comments we're left on set, and filmed as they try the food. Jilly described the pasta as "muscular" whilst Ed and JBR think it's a bit overcooked, and not the fine quality of last time (this is because of the eggs being larger than usual). Other than that, though: they love it. Big thumbs up. They do the same to Debra and her crab, then we're taken off and I go to find something to drink, then we're taken back in for the verdict.

To say that I was pleased to win is underplaying it a little. My reaction will be on telly for all to see; at the moment, though, all I can remember is Mark building up suspense and then calling my name, and getting the biggest grin I've had in weeks plastered across my face. I was asked, in post-match interviews, "what went through your mind" and in all honesty I couldn't think of anything. "Wow" doesn't come close. The winners are handed red envelopes containing slips of card to represent the small prize we get for winning this stage, which are taken off us when we get off set. "Budgets," we're told. I don't even get the card as a souvenir!

The odd thing about this show is that I was filmed doing hobbies, as a background thing for my segment. So in June I gathered up some people I knew wouldn't be at work, and persuaded them to meet me in Whitelocks one lunchtime to watch me making balloon animals and be filmed for telly. Daag, Penny and Jo all came along to support me doing daft things, and I can't thank them enough. What was really odd was that they'd never met, all three being from totally disparate groups of friends. Made me think.



It's still on ITV's catchup service at time of writing; episode 15 of this series.

Day 214, 041009

On Sunday I completed another one of my things; enter the Charlie Cake Competition. This year the theme was "Make, Bake and Grow", and I'd mentioned to one of the organisers that Tea & Cake would love to be involved somehow. By maybe having a tea stall, or something. And I could enter, too. We were given approval, and so after a swift half-hour planning meeting on Friday after work with Sam, Biscuit and J9 (at Zouk on Leeds Road, excellent masala chai) we divvied up the tasks, and met at Charlie Cake Park on Sunday.

I'd made a cake to enter into the competition; my usual chocolate and marmalade loaf cake, this time covered in chocolate and cointreau ganache - it was covered because I'd used cheap greaseproof paper and the cake had stuck to it, so I needed to hide the holes. So after we'd set up the table and got the kettle on to boil I registered, had a wander about the stalls, and went back to our shed to await the hordes.

The stalls, by the way, were very interesting. The new Leeds City WI was there, who are called "Buns & Roses". I'd join, if it weren't for the pesky Y chromosome. Average age is well below the norm for WI groups, and my mum (who runs her local WI) laughed in a very good way when I told her about it. We also had - it was obviously the day for puns - local crafty people "Fox Bunting". Made me laugh. And there was us, of course:

We had a near-constant hot water crisis. We went through about 40 litres of water, 160 insulated paper cups, "some" plastic cups for squash, two cans of gas, a tonne of teabags, half a jar of coffee, ten pints of milk and some sugar. We weren't charging a set amount, just soliciting donations for the Armley Common Right Trust, Water Aid and the WWF; people were asking how much, we said "no set price, put what you think it's worth into the bucket". In the end we ran out of hot water, cups and milk at about the same time, around 2:30 and decided to pack in early. Biscuit totted up; we had only the vaguest idea how many cups of tea and coffee we'd sold - we used 160 cups, but some people recycled cups and we didn't count the orange squashes - but we made £116.65, an average of about 73p per cup. Split three ways it worked out at £39 per charity; given that we only spent half an hour on planning this, I think that's not a bad result.

Also, look at Sam's banner on the side of the shed. It rocked.

I didn't even get placed in the competition, by the way. There was some excellent entries, and mine didn't look good compared to them. Leedsgrub entered a giant Crunchie! It looked and tasted fab, although apparently it was a nightmare to cut up.

It was a bloody brilliant day, and one well worth doing. Next time we'll double up on everything and rethink the hot water a bit, but I think we can be justifiably proud of what we pulled off on the spur of the moment. Much thanks to Emma and Michelle from The Culture Vulture for talking to us about it and providing a very helpful shed (and a loo, and kettle when we were really in trouble!), and the Charming Armley Tourist Board for putting the event on. Now we know we can do it, I'm sure we'll be giving this another try soon.

So, although I didn't get placed I'm going to count task #95 as COMPLETED. Yay!

Day 212 wordle

From Screen Captures

Day 212, 021009 (telly, part 2)

I'm a bit behind due to a quick holiday in Liverpool and a mini family crisis. Sorry about that.

So, last week saw Adventures in Tellyland parts two and three (task #7). Here's the story of part two.

After I did "Taste The Nation" in January, and was knocked out in the first round, I told the producer who was looking after me to keep me in mind if anything else popped up that I might be suitable for. I wasn't really expecting to hear anything, but the day after my programme aired in April a producer from another telly show, called "Britain's Best Dish" phoned me up.

"We'd like you to come for an audition," said Maxie, a very nice chap who turned out to be quite a senior producer on the show.

"That's lovely," I said. "What shall I cook?"

"Oh, you tell us. If we like the idea, then I'll tell you where to go and when to turn up."

After a bit of thought I came up with a recipe that might work quite well; a pea puree and brown shrimp ravioli. Italian food is quite popular and making pasta from scratch always adds an element of drama to cooking, because it sometimes goes wrong. It's quite British with the filling, too, so I thought I could get away with it being "Britain's" best dish. (There was a parsley butter and pea shoots as garnish, too.) So I emailed the recipe off to Maxie, who phoned back and told me to be in York on a Sunday about a week later.

I was up very early that Sunday, making the sauce to go with the ravioli and popping it in a thermos to keep warm. A quick drive to York, I parked up at the hotel the auditions were taking place, and got to meet the people I've been talking to about this for a couple of weeks and say hello to Tallulah and Julie, a couple of people I met on Taste The Nation. I plated up, bought a ruinously expensive cup of coffee, and waited with a bunch of other people who were auditioning. And waited. And waited.

The food I saw that I was competing against was interesting; a number of people had brought pies, full roast dinners, fish, and some of the stuff was ok. Some was very poor. The thing that got me was a dessert someone had brought, which was a work of staggering joy; lemon & white chocolate mousse in a tart made from almond pastry, served with a shot of lemon liqueur. This was stunning work, and by far & away the best thing I'd seen (and this also managed to get on the show).

Eventually I did a piece to camera about how my dish was the best, then got to chat to the producers about my ravioli (the sauce, alas, didn't survive the trip) and hopefully make a good impression. The producers were very nice and liked that I'd brought a photo along with the food, and whilst they didn't eat it (by this point it was stone cold) they liked how it looked and told me they'd be drawing up a shortlist in a couple of weeks' time.

Two days later, I get called and told I'd been shortlisted.

About a month, and several phone calls about what to do, where to go, how to cook and what the recipe was all about later, I'm waiting outside a hotel at Teddington in South-West London. It was likely that this would be my only show, but I was confident that I'd do ok. Gradually everybody else arrived - the six competitors and three reserves - and we headed over in some very nice cars to the studios. We all started chatting (as you do); there were Lydia and Vicky, doing puds, Peter and Calam on mains and Angela and myself on starters. Immediately we spotted an issue; Calam was 14 so it was a bit of a foregone conclusion that he'd win his course, the only question was which round he was in - and I breathed a sigh of relief when I discovered he was in mains.

Teddington studios is a large complex, but not as big as I was expecting; about the same size as a cottage hospital. We were dropped in the green room behind our studio, had a briefing from Juliet (producer), and then a run through the studio and what we were cooking happened. Karen (again, someone from TTN) and I had a quick chat, they found me a better pasta machine and a clamp, checked that my shrimp were on the way, and Juliet came over, introduced me to my wrangler (Dan) and told me what I was doing in five minute blocks, which was all fine.

Prep kitchen - a portacabin, but better equipped than my kitchen at home - was next. Making pasta from scratch is great, but you have to leave the dough to rest for at least an hour, so I made the dough (filmed whilst doing it) and left it on my station in the studio wrapped in damp muslin. I was taken off to makeup, examined by wardrobe (my shirt was deemed to be "just fine" - a somewhat flowery but lightweight thing; being told I couldn't wear black, white or red had limited my options considerably), and interviewed by the AP who recruited me, with the usual questions; because I'd done this sort of thing before Maxie said "we want soundbites" and I set to the task with aplomb. Being interviewed for this sort of thing is really odd, though, speaking in whole sentences, avoiding temporal references, and talking about inspirations, which seemed to be something they really liked.

Back to the studio to be fitted with aprons, we were told where to stand, how to walk onto set, "big smiles please, unless we don't want them", and Mark Nicholas came on set to say hello, talk about what he was going to discuss with us, and generally put us at our ease (he really is a nice chap, who normally does the cricket commentary). After being fitted with microphones we had some dramatic camera swooping shots, were put on a turntable and spun round, and we had to do "head-to-head" shots, staring our opponents down. That bit was really odd, and we couldn't stop giggling; also, I don't think I've stared into anybody's eyes for that long since Sarah and myself were getting married. The judges turned up; Ed Baines and John Burton Race, who are chefs, and Jilly Goulden, who has been doing wine tasting on telly for years and years. We did some odd bits of filming and quick interviews with Mark, then we were taken back for ten minutes whilst the judges did their "what do you think today will be like" pieces. Then, back on, and the timeline started. I had 55 minutes to make my ravioli.

I could hear the judge's comments every now and then, and they didn't like my technique (which was inefficient, I'll grant you); what I did was roll out the pasta first, then make my filling, then cut out discs of pasta and make the ravioli by dropping filling onto a disc and putting another disc on top. The comment I heard was that if someone was doing that in a restaurant they'd have to charge £75 for the dish, as it was really time-consuming, which is true. The butter sauce wasn't quite right, it was too acidic and the pasta dried out really quickly under the lights, but I was happy with how they came out and was really pleased with how it all looked on the plate.



I plated up, and was then escorted off the set, along with Angela (who made a gorgeous looking-and-smelling smoked haddock bread and butter pudding with horseradish creme anglaise and tomato & chili jam, which worried me because it was a very good dish), and that was that; we couldn't see the judges' comments, or any of the other competitors (who had another 20 and 40 minutes to go). Eventually everybody else came out, and we were summoned back to the studio. The judges were really taking their time to decide and may even have been having a serious argument in the back room, but eventually they came out. Cameras started rolling, Mark prolonged the suspense, and eventually told us who the winners were. And I won the starters round!

Although I did win my round I didn't know until later if I'd got through to the regional finals, as only 2 of the 4 winners go through. Thankfully, I did!

My recipe is on the Britain's Best Dish website, here, and is also published in the accompanying book of the series (on page 63, uncredited).

Next: a wordle, then part 3.

Day 201, 210909

So, I'm a fifth of the way through.

Cor.

I'm nowhere near a fifth of the way through the tasks, though. Some are, of course, series tasks that will take a while, but it's still a bit daunting to see only 11 completeds - ten percent - in twenty percent of the time.

That's not what I'm writing about today. No, what I'm writing about today is this:
Yr Humble Svt will be appearing on Telly, again. So, task 7 rears its head again on Tuesday 22nd September 2009 - that's day 202 - at 5pm on ITV1. I shall be cooking on Britain's Best Dish, a starter of... well, you'll have to wait and see. I'll be writing up my experiences post-hoc (I wanted to write them up in advance, but didn't hear back from my producers), and the not-so-gory details will appear on here in due course. BBD is quite a bit of fun and worth watching anyway, just for seeing the state of British home cooking; the quality of the food coming through has been very high, so I'd say that state was pretty good.

Watch it, and let me know what you think!

Day 193, 130909

On day 193 I completed something I've been meaning to do for a good ten years. Task #63, climb the bell tower at Leeds Town Hall.

The clock tower at Leeds Town Hall is very high; Phill and the LHES managed to wangle a comprehensive tour a few years back (link, but his images aren't loading at time of writing) but we only had the mini tour, which didn't involve being crapped on my pigeons or falling through floorboards. First of all, this is what LTH looks like from the outside.

And this is one of the sets of stairs we had to take to get up to the clock faces.

There were 220 steps in all; thankfully there was a breather at 140 steps; the room where the chandelier above the vestibule is hung. I took a sneaky photo through the grating, but it's not very good (on the flickr photostream if you care). There is a huge pipe in this room, a flue from when the chandeliers were gaslit. Too dark to photograph. Boo.

The chap taking us on the tour was Eric, the FoH manager, a really nice bloke who knew the town hall inside out. The piano competition had been going on over the previous week (broadcasts start Friday, IIRC) and he'd been with the BBC taking photos of the town hall all lit up from various vantage points across the city, and was touchingly fond of the old building. He told us about how they change the lightbulbs in the chandeliers, the amount of pigeon crap they shovelled out of here over the summer (80 sacks! 80!), the various nooks and corners the town hall has. When we got past the bell tower (below the clock faces), we were in the clock mechanism, behind the faces, and I wasn't sure we'd be allowed out onto the balcony. Then he said "you can stay up here as long as you like, and the views are fantastic" and that was all the encouragement I needed. Outside, the clock faces look fantastic close up, with incredible detail nobody at ground level will notice...

... but really, he wasn't kidding about the views.

West:

South:

East:

North:


The clock mechanism itself is fairly simple and clockwork, and that's really all there is to it. Some cogs, some weights, and a mechanical winder. I learned that standard practice for all stopped municipal clocks is to set them to 12 o/c, as it's the time most people are bound to realise it isn't. They had a problem earlier in the year that needed the mechanical winder to be replaced by an electronic one, and replacing the bulbs in the clock faces is no joke. Replacing the bulb in the cupola is really not funny at all; we weren't allowed up there, because there's only room for one person and that person has to stand on the trapdoor.

The rest of the town hall is still a working building; the great hall is used for all kinds of events (recently the aforementioned piano competition)

But the cells, bridewell, and court are now just museum pieces (although all were in use until 1993). Interestingly, none of it is below ground; all at ground level, but behind so much stone it might as well be underground. I spotted one of those cracking mirrors that allows you to view around corners - presumably in case someone broke out of the cells, or was carrying prisoners and didn't want to bump into people - and selfportraited myself in it.


Eric, bless 'im, gave us an extended show round the building because I couldn't find the courts. He loves the building, and it shows; it is an easy building to love, with phenomenal history and stunning architecture. I was very pleased to have been able to take the tour and meet this tremendous chap with an incredible capacity and enthusiasm for the place he works.

So, task 63 is COMPLETED! Huzzah!

Day 191, 110909

A quick state of the nation post, just to keep track of where I am.

I have completed 10 - yes, that's ten - tasks.

• climbing Pen-y-Ghent (#96)
  
• had a go at archery (#68)
  
• watched a play written by @wordweave, aka Mrs W, (#82)
  
• attended four Exposure Leeds sessions (#85)
  
• learned how to make chocolates (#8)
  
• turned my handwriting into a font (#71)
  
• visited Tropical World (#23)
  
• appeared on telly (#7) but watch this space!
  
• whacked some balls (#86)
  
• and finally, registered for blood donation (#86).

Not a bad start!

What am I up to at the moment? Well...
In terms of explorations, I'm everso slowly working my way through all the libraries with an LS postcode (#17), even more slowly working my way through the municipal pools (#38), gone walking with Matt (#97) a few times, and have made serious inroads into visiting every museum with an LS postcode (#57). Roundhay park has been visited (#22), but I've not had a good poke around yet.

I have given away 17 books to charity (#60) and sponsored three people for doing things outside their comfort zones (#100). I gave away some of the photo stuff I don't need (#99) but need to give away more, I am still telling someone - guess who - that I love them every day (#13), and along with that am still being good and eating breakfast, not buying coffee, and eating more fruit (#88, #87 and #26, respectively). Also, I'm writing letters to people (#67). People like letters, I've found.

Exercise-wise, apart from climbing mountains I've been half-heartedly pursuing a training regimen, but not really talking about it because it's not been a concerted effort. When I get the focus for it, it'll join the other tasks such as getting the bike out (#81) about 14 times so far, and walking 30 mile weeks (#4), which is proving quite difficult. I'm getting lots of 25 mile weeks, four of them so far, but only one 30-miler.

Growing things has not gone well; not a good year for tomatoes and I lost heart when my chillies died out. I'll try those again next year. Herbs, as well; the parsley did ok, basil survived, just about, oregano smelled fantastic but didn't take very well. Again, reboot next summer. I'll have to restart my take 365 consecutive daily photos task (#3), too. I had a rough week about two months ago and it stalled, I lost track of where I was, and then it all descended into chaos.

But I am still doing quite well on bringing my lunch to work (#66); I'm on 80 out of 250! And I'm still remembering to wordle (#37), mostly.

I think that's where I'm up to right now. There may be a few things I've missed, but I'm fairly happy with how things are going. Not quite a fifth of the way through, and there's some good scores up there. Yeah, I'll take that.