Life in the slow lane, my arse!

And so on to today's major topic - the thrilling debate on 5live about whether it's ok to take the piss out of religions. I have to say I think it's a jolly good idea. In fact it's almost an essential act of mercy and compassion. Listening to that bunch of self-righteous, pious, pompous, dogmatic, narrow-minded zealots leaves the average listener very few options other than piss-taking. How glad I am to be re-assured by the politicians that today's new law will still allow us to get cheap jibes in at their expense.
Hari om.

This blog is crucifying my ego.

Do you know that the average time people stay on this blog is 24 seconds. And don't forget that's the average time, so some people are probably gone in less than ten. Is it really that bad you can make your mind up that quick and be out of here in less time than it takes me to have a pee. I know they don't make time like they used to but 24 seconds - I'm gutted.
I'll tell you what, if you've got this far why don't you just piss off now. I'd hate you to waste any more of your valuable time. And I promise you if my average time gets below 20 seconds I'm pulling the plug on this whole bloody show. Then you'll regret it - you'll never get to see my recipe for tofu stir fry, and that my friends, will be your loss not mine.

Of course I realise that what with one million new blogs worldwide coming on line every week, there's more stuff written than could possibly be read. I think I seriously need to consider whether I want my writings to fall into the relatively new literary category fondly labelled 'worthless blogshite'.

It reminds me of when in 1969, I went for an interview to study sociology at Kent University. I was completely stoned at the time and before the interview I took the opportunity to go for a crap and a top-up smoke. In somewhat of a daze I glanced around the cubicle and there above the loo roll was the statement, 'Sociology degrees - please help yourself'. I cruised the interview and got a really easy offer. Needless to say I don't remember what happened next, but something must have because to this day I have never been near Canterbury again.

A saying for every occasion

OK so I got over-excited about my shepherds pie. But now I realise that it is not such a cool idea to have a recipe as the first thing all my visitors see. Also as soon as I get on to the subject of Organics I lose all sense of intellectual and emotional balance. In this state I often carry out irrational verbal attacks on perfectly normal harmless people, like farmers and junk food manufacturers.
I used to work with a guy who always used to say - 'don't discuss religion or politics'.
Here's another good one of his too, 'live in the present but keep one eye on the future'.
He probably had a little saying for every situation that could arise in his life. Mr cliche man or what. I wonder if his house was covered with those awful messages that people put on their walls. Here's one from the wall of a bedroom that I slept in a few weeks ago. 'It is better to do something which you might later regret, rather than choose not to do something and later regret that'. Is that code for 'just go for it'.
I thought about that one for a while - it's the same thing both ways isn't it.
Maybe I'll just put my tofu recipe up - it's probably more interesting than this post.

My recipe for Shepherds Pie.

First thing is that as far as possible all the ingredients I use are organic. Eat organic - it's good for you and the environment. By buying and eating organic you won't be encouraging those ignorant gits to put poison on our earth because they are too damn lazy to grow things properly. Second thing is keep it simple - good food tastes good without a load of messing about.

300g OG green/brown lentils
an OG onion
5 cloves OG garlic
a big OG carrot
1/4 tin OG chopped tomatoes
1 kg OG potatoes, I think Desiree are the best variety for this pie.
1/2 cup of OG milk
OG miso, yeast extract or marmite.
OG tamari
100g OG cheddar cheese

OK, cut the carrot into smallish cubes and steam them. Cook the lentils in about four times their volume of water mixed with the water from the steamed carrots. Cooking in a pressure cooker saves time (and fuel) but be careful not to cook the shit out of them. They need to be just cooked, whole and just turning slightly to lentil gravy. What you're after here is a fairly thick lentil stew - definitely not watery at all.
Fry the onion and the garlic in olive oil till it is nicely browned. I'm quite generous with the olive oil - I like it.
Add the lentils, tomatoes and carrots to the onions and garlic and stir it all together. Add a small teaspoon of marmite. If you prefer to use miso instead of marmite you can use tamari, which is salty, to make the lentils more tasty. Keep the whole mix simmering until you're ready to make the pie.
Get the potatoes going in the pressure cooker. When they are cooked, strain the water off, then add the milk and mash them up until they are fluffy.

Put the lentil mix in a flat dish and using a fork spread the mashed potatoes evenly over the top. Go right to the edges of the dish so that the lentils are completely covered. Grate the cheese over the potatoes and put the pie in the oven on gas 5 for about 20 minutes.

Serve the pie with thick onion gravy and a huge serving of full-on organic spring greens.

NB. when I say 'gits', in this case what I really mean to say is 'our dear brothers and sisters who as yet sadly lack the conciousness to look after our planet properly'.

Still in Xmas mode!

I do like a nice exclamation mark! Gives the sentence the importance that it deserves don't ya think!
So the end of Xmas is in sight and I will soon be back working like a man possessed. But right now I'm doing the minimum, a bit of mucking out and even that I'm doing with a sort of 'I'll do it properly tomorrow' kind of attitude. Truly if I want to succeed in this life, in a worldly sense that is, then more effort is required. But some things cannot be changed - a lazy sod like me cannot become a dynamic ambitious seeker of fame and fortune just because a new year has begun.
I am keeping an account of how many opportunities I miss to make money this year. So far, and this is just the ones we have spotted, I am down over £200 and we are only four days in. How can I be so crap. Well, I've undercharged on a couple of jobs, I've failed to book in a couple of virtually dead cert jobs, and I've failed to sell at least two things that people definitely wanted to buy off me.
But I have done some good stuff too. I did some good work with Ruby (one of our horses) yesterday, and I've got a couple of emails telling me that things are really going well with a job we did on New Years eve. And last night I cooked a really good Shepherds Pie (vegetarian) - this has now become part of my cooking repertoire bringing the total different dishes I can do to five. I'm thinking about that pie and getting really hungry. See ya.

New Years Day and not a lot on. Plenty to do but I've just got into the swing of being a lazy sod who continually eats crap. Still that's Xmas for you I guess.
I'm going to leave the title the same for a while - no-one ever reads it anyway so it's a bit of an irrelevance - Oh my God, does my blog mirror life itself! Seriously, you know I don't mean that - life is of course a great opportunity, grab it with both hands and enjoy every second.
Happy New Year to any wandering soul that passes by this way.
Love and Peace
Tom
PS We went out yesterday on a job. This young girl thought her horse was collapsing on one side. I was so chuffed when we got it all sorted out. I'm not one for making resolutions but it would be really cool to go through a whole year working as professionally as we did yesterday. I get such a buzz from stuff like that.