Turning and Turning

Screw you Caterham!

Part of the rear suspension of my Caterham has gone rusty so I've removed it, wire brushed it and repainted it. To refit it I needed a new pair of nylon washers. They're an odd size 17.5mm ID. 1mm thick. The good news was that these washers were easily available directly from Caterham. The bad news was that, with shipping, these two flimsy washers would have cost £10.

As It happens I have a short length of nylon bar stock, so, out of spite, I decided to make the replacements myself. I drilled and bored out the centre, faced off the stock, and then parted off two very short lengths. The project was a great success, other than the huge amount of material wasted as swarf, the surface finish, the dimensional tolerances, and the massive burr I raised when the parting cut met the centre bore.

Richard "But at what cost" B  

Dinner Party

On New Year's Eve I cooked a 4 course meal for seven. Do you recognise this menu?

Mulligatawny Soup - served with sherry

Fish (Cod in parsley sauce) - served with white wine

Chicken (roast, with roast potatoes and vegetables) - served with champagne

Fruit (salad) - served with port.

It was a social experiment that had got out of hand. The previous new year one of the guests was a German and as a cultural exchange program she showed us a sketch which the Germans often watch around Christmas time. The sketch is in English, it's black and white, and involves an old lady and her butler having a four course dinner. It's called "Dinner for One". When I found out that she was coming again I decided to cook the Dinner for One menu and see how long it took for her to recognise it. She spotted what was going on between the first and second course.

Next year I'll cook something simple.

Mulligatawny soup has become my goddaughter's favourite, and even if I say so myself, the parsley sauce was excellent.

Richard "Admiral von Shneider" B

Ambiguous

 I love and hate the Engligh language. It can be very specific. We have, for example, a fully fledged verb for using subterfuge to direct someone to one particular Rick Astley video. At the same time it can be wildly ambiguous. I once boasted that I'd taken 200kg of woodchip to the tip. My mentor said "nobody can have that much wallpaper". I was talking about chipped twigs and branches that I had taken out of my hedge. In the days before Christmas my sister and I were shopping for Christmas supplies. I said that we needed crackers. "No need" she said "My husband will bring a big box of them". I was expecting the pyrotechnic cardboard party favours that you see on Christmas dinner tables. He brought a big box of biscuits for cheese.

Richard "Suzi Dent" B