(no subject)

[slemslempike]

I have more or less processed the loss of my laptop, and am even hopeful that I can get the data off it. (For a while I was able to do this myself, in somewhat painful stages between collapses, but now it doesn't even begin to log on to windows.) I have moved on to the anticipatory pleasure of buying a new laptop. As I am seeing my parents at the end of March I thought I would ask them to have it delivered to them and then bring it to me, so I am enjoying looking online. Haven't laptops come down in price in the last 5 years? Amazing. Unfortunately I am a bit picky about keyboards, and really don't like not having separate page up, page down, home and end keys. I don't use any all that much, but it incenses me every time I get it wrong. So I am planning to get the smallest screen laptop with this keyboard (without a number pad), but unaccountably the pictures available online rarely seem to show close-ups of the keyboard.

I went to the Parliament canteen today. They have beer and wine in their self-service drinks bit. I did not partake. I had their "vitality" offer of a pork escalope with salsify and beetroot and a baked potato (what is salsify?). Then I had a truly delicious apple cake.

I am filling my time without a laptop and therefore without music or television by reading Wolf Hall. It's terribly good. I am enjoying not really knowing what's going on because my historical knowledge is not that good, and then suddenly being surprised by a snippet of information coming to the fore. Is it this Cromwell whom Shakespeare charged to fling away ambition, and was later quoted by Laura Ingalls Wilder?

And can anyone with access to GO books tell me what Rosamund Atherton's scholarship essay is on in A Head Girl's Difficulties? I was thinking that was ambition too, but I think I may be muddled.

I am off to try a new supermarket, in the hope that it will be a little cheaper and perhaps more stocking of cheddar than the Delhaize near me. I have also discovered where ALDI is, so next time I'll go there and be made oddly homesick by the central-European labelling.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

By that sin fell the angels.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I know it comes in a play I've seen because I remember gooin ooh (interally) when it happened. if it is this Cromwell, then I assume Henry VIII, or perhaps a later of the VIs.

[morganmuffle]

Henry VIII and yes it is that Cromwell.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

i thought you would know!

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Salsify. My impression, from I think Jane Grigson, is that it is rather more of a faff to prepare than that site indicates as you have to submerge the peeled bits in acidulated water to stop them turning brown.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

i rather enjoyed it! will probably never actually make it myself though.

[jekesta]

I'm sorry about your laptop. I can't remember if I said, I never know where I've commented any more. I hate how much they don't show you when you try to pick things online. Bye.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

you hadn't, but i brashly assumed that you would be sorry without saying it. i'd got the first episode of scandal downloaded and everything.

[nwhyte]

Are you in the Parliament? I'm there all morning tomorrow...

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

not usually, this was a visit to a subcommittee.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Salsify turns up in Scaninavian menu translations a lot and as far as I have gathered looks like black carrots. If you want to be more international than you are already, you can call it "Scorzonera".

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

ooh, fancy! i shall try to dip that into conversation.

[alltheleaves.livejournal.com]

Next time you're in London I recommend going to the National Portrait Gallery as they have several rooms of Tudors including lots of people mentioned in Wolf Hall. I really enjoyed going after I'd read the book and putting faces to the names.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Excellent suggestion, thank you! I love the npg, but normally stick to the moderns as I get bored with older paintings of people I've never heard of as I don't understand art, or indeed much of history. But now I will know people and can enjoy it more. Although they might not look right.