Whatever's happened to real meat over the years?The only way you can be sure of what you are eating today, is to buy and cook it yourself. How many of us eat out in pubs etc nowadays? Quite a lot I suspect. Yet, how many times have I looked at the pile of congealed 'so called' beef on my plate and thought to myself, "That's never a slice of meat from one animal!"
With today's huge range of legal additives and preservatives, meat processing plants are able to recontruct meat from fragments of meat taken from almost anywhere on the carcase, forced together under pressure and virtually glued together by other components. Sometimes it even looks quite real! Were it not so uniform in shape, it would be difficult to see under its usual swamping of gravy, also extracted from dubious origins.
Now make no mistake, I am a complete omnivore and ready to tackle almost anything food wise, even meat from exotic sources, as long as I know its derivation. But a collagenous compressed mess, masquerading as real meat really is not going to 'rock my boat' I'm afraid.
The answer of course when eating out today, is the Carvery. These are usually very good and at least you can see the source and size of your meat portion or portions depending on your appetite and greed. I do worry about the hygiene in a lot of these places though, noting that often they use the same knife to carve sometimes four different kinds of meat? Have they not heard of cross contamination?
Even the cold packaged and hermetically sealed meats sold in supermarkets look fine in their neat packs, but when you open one to get a slice of what often looks like pink tracing paper, disappointment sets in. I remember days as a child when ham had real taste, and steak and kidney really looked like it, instead of the brown slimy mess often found in today's pies.
The list is endless, but to sum up, I am glad I learned to cook, albeit later in life, but the taste of home cooked lamb, or beef, or pork with lovely 'crackling' is so very much better than you can buy in any eating establishment, in my humble opinion.
Finally, I think I experienced the ultimate 'liberty' taken by a pub a few days ago. I'd ordered a a roast pork lunch and when somebody asked for 'crackling' so did I. I later wished I hadn't. All that arrived was the meal itself, which wasn't too bad, even though it was obviously processed meat again, but the chef had the cheek to send out a bowl of warmed up pork scratchings to give to those who'd asked for 'crackling'. I sat there, imagining the chef laughing at our acceptance of his deception.
I didn't complain but will remember the place so as to avoid going there again, at least for a meal. Really, it's almost enough to turn a bloke into a vegetarian!

Whatever happened to the world of trust? As a child I was brought up to have great respect for the professional classes Bankers, Doctors, Dentists, Solicitors and politicians, even local councillors were held in high regard by almost everyone. This also included the higher legal profession in general. Judges, magistrates, and even the police force were thought to be without flaw. How sad it is to grow older and see every echelon of these professions infected by either greed, misuse of power, bigotry or merely complete incompetence and to have your previously accepted ideals shattered and tainted.

Isn’t it about time some one ‘shook up’ our legislative system including its  ludicrous magistrates and made these people use properly the very laws with which they have been selected to administer. The ridiculous sentencing system for a start needs to have an enforced code of standards for all. I cringe when I read the court round up files in The News at times and see that perpetrators of violent crimes getting smaller fines and lighter sentences than motorists for road traffic offences. Why should this be?

Knife carrying crimes and any kind of violence should have an automatic minimum threshold to which magistrates can add time, not deduct it. Of course circumstances need to be considered, but only after a minimum sentence has been ordered.

Few criminals fear being caught nowadays because they know that the worst thing that can happen to them is a very small punishment. Community service?...What is that?.....It is a joke!...It is almost laughable to think for a moment that a penalty like it is going to do anything to change someone’s criminal behaviour other than to irritate him /her a little.

Even inside jail, prisoners have access to colour TV, sports facilities and many prisons have their own shops. Why not bring back ‘hard labour’ and help solve many of our coastal erosion problems by allowing criminals out from jail to build much better sea defences etc?

They could earn money from their labour of course, and do a useful job at the same time. We didn’t hesitate to use Prisoners Of War during WW2 to supplement our manpower.

In addition, many other indolent dole abusers who refuse to work in jobs found for them by our employment services, should also be offered this type of work, with the alternative of losing all their benefit if they were healthy and refused it.

A Moral Dilemma

Last Friday, I had a pleasant day’s outing with the family at a well known Amusement Park. However, the day gave me some food for thought. ‘Legoland’ at Windsor was very busy on the day, myself and wife and grandchildren and their father visited the place. We assumed that the large crowds were there because the weather had been bad all week, with overcast skies and rain showers, yet this day, was absolutely perfect. I mean, silly me, I even managed to get sunburned. It was so hot, that at times I could almost feel my brain, or what little is left of it, boiling inside my skull.

Well!....Maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but it felt like it as I had left my hat in the car. Anyway, at each ride or amusement there were very long queues, if you wanted to actually go on them. Of course, this didn’t bother me or my wife come, as we guessed we’d be spectators for most of the events. The problem was how to keep two children still and reasonably well behaved whilst they waited, sometimes for ninety minutes. This became a  dilemma of its own.

Happily, the Legoland organisation have a ‘queue busting’ system in operation. If you pay an extra amount of cash, (£20 - £30), you can bypass the queues and go straight on to a ride as long as you have booked your times on the little device, like a bleeper, which they lend you on receipt of a returnable deposit.

On one ride this proved to be useless. A member of the actual operating staff seemed oblivious of its existence, pointing to the long queue, saying they are all waiting for the same thing and told my wife to complain to the ‘people up top’.....whoever they are!

But most other rides with long queues became no longer a problem for us armed with the timer gadget, It was called a ’ Q Bot’ if I recall correctly.

But although my grandchildren were able to see and do a lot more during the day by being able to dodge the queues, in my heart I felt it was a bit unfair on others who had to queue, or could or would not spend the extra cash for the privilege. Somehow, I felt guilty, but obviously the children didn’t think or care twice about it.

I have heard that other places also use similar systems, but I’m not sure whether morally or ethically they are right. I think it might make youngsters grow up believing that money can buy anything, when we all know it cannot. Or can it?

Fortunately, I’ll not be visiting many such places in future, so probably won’t know whether this practice is to be repeated elsewhere. For example,

Imagine queues at the supermarket.....Instant tills for those happy to pay 10% more on their bill, Cinema queues and theatre queues with a 10% surcharge for immediate entrance? 10% surcharge for instant coffee in any of the new coffee bars serving Latté’s etc, where each is individually made and usually seems to take about half an hour? Where will it all end?

Not wishing to offend ornithologists or bird lovers, I have always thought of our feathered friends as being exceedingly ‘thick,’ with the exception of just a few species. Hence, my regularly used disparaging remark ‘birdbrained’ when I describe people who don’t think things through before making a decision, like many of our modern bureaucrats and politicians.

However, unlike the latter, I love the little flying feathered monsters despite their unpleasant habits of nesting in the eaves, unloading plumes of guano down the outside of the house, and happily screeching at the top of the little throats in the early mornings, sometimes very early mornings.

I understand that there was a huge reduction in sparrow numbers this year at the last bird count? I think the reason for this is that they have found their ‘nirvana’ in my back garden and roof and plan to remain there.

I spend a lot of time on ‘cat watch’ looking from my window to ensure no neighbourhood mog is soiling my flowerbeds again. Don’t they realise how unsociable this is? - even after all the insults, swearwords and easy to hand items thrown at them when they trespass into my garden?

In a way this creates a much safer environment for any birds wishing to feed. And the sparrows certainly are aware of it. Their only real enemy is a feisty sparrowhawk who has paid two visits now without success. Occasionally there is a small robin who puts in a brave appearance, but other than that, the other feathered visits I get are from two scruffy looking collared doves, looking for a cheap meal and half a dozen or so feral pigeons.

Now these are smart! My wife recently bought me a bird feeder arrangement on a pole with various hangers on which to hang food and nut containers. The pigeons very quickly learned that their over-gorged obese bodies cannot comfortably land on the seed and nut containers because of their size, so they now wait for the host of sparrows to arrive. They then quite nonchalantly pick up the bits of nuts and seeds which are scattered down onto the ground. Every now and then, they turn an eye skyward to ensure there is no stop in their supply and when the small birds disappear for a couple of hours, now replete with my seeds and nuts, so do they. The pigeons usually send out a reconnaissance patrol before arrival en masse.  I often spot a solitary one high on a gable end of a building overlooking my garden, prior to their main invasion force.

Not so stupid after all, eh?