Thread 19 - TalkLair: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 18)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

In the TalkLair, the fairy lights are festooned on the mantlepiece, the tree is twinkling with baubles, the mince pies are in the oven, the MN legendary chicken is ready to feed the hordes. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

I took my student nephew to Sainsbury's to stock him up when I was at his uni for a work thing. One of the things we got him was a tub of Twiglets the size of a bucket- he said "I've never owned this many all at once!"

I was idly clicking around the BBC radio site earlier to see if there was anything interesting on and found myself about half an hour into T S Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, which I did for A-level in 1969. So I went back to the beginning and discovered that there are great chunks of it that I remember verbatim. I have also, quite unintentionally, retained all of Prufrock and a lot of The Waste Land. If only I had used that brain space for something more practical, who knows what I might have achieved!

(It was a really good BBC Wales production, by the way. Sat 27 Dec, Radio 4, 15:00 if anyone has 90 minutes to spare.)

@moto748e we had the stout last night and it's amazing! I'm astonished that it's made from parsnip, you'd never guess it. How did you come to devise that recipe?

Oh God, this is so familiar to me! My brain feels like one of those junkshops where you have to climb over 65487290 other things to get to the thing you've spotted. I have all of Prufrock, large chuns of WLand, most of Tom Lehrer and Flanders & Swann, rags and tags fom most of Shakespeare... it's exhausting when something triggers them!

Also, at 6th form, I was in a production of Murder in the Cathedral in Winchester Cathedral, which is built on a marsh, in November. I have never been so cold in my life, despite being lagged like a hot water cylinder, but it was an amazing experience.

Oh, I have the Lehrer and Flanders & Swann too! Plus bits of Anouilh's Becket, which was on the French A-level syllabus. The bits of that which I am stuck with don't form any sort of coherent narrative, so must be the quotes I memorised for the exam. 🙄

I've wondered about my brother who is an actor. He told me once that he generally learns the entire script as it makes learning his part easier. I find it hard to get my head around being able to do that on a regular basis. He'll also recite long speeches which he's learned simply for the pleasure of being able to recite them or sing endless songs from the 1940s. For myself, I have a vast web of interlinked knowledge about plants and soil biology which can entertain me for many hours at at time.

The other funny thing with my memory is that being in certain places will jog lines from films. When in a certain part of the main garden I work in a bit of Laurel and Hardy pops up where Laurel says 'Say, what are we having for dinner?', Hardy says 'Why don't I put on a pan of beans and you make a steaming hot pot of coffee' and Laurel replies 'Swell, you sure know how to plan a meal'.

I found a recipe in an old 1960's paperback, and I tried it. And it was vile! But I tweaked it and tweaked it, and played around with different hops and malt adjuncts, until I thought I'd got it right. But it's mostly parsnips, in that most of the strength comes from them. Glad you liked it! 🍻

Latest batch siphoned into demijohns and dry-hopped with muslin bags. This will start a small secondary fermentation by tonight.

@moto748e - I found your recipe on the brewing site, along with the tweaks, and have archived the page just in case. It would be interesting to try making some.

What flavour of vile was the original stout?

@moto748e someone said on another thread that Aldi are literally giving away their surplus stocks of parsnips and other Christmas veg, so if you've got one near you maybe you could set up a production line!

I bagged some in Lidl at 5p a pack!

Too sweet and much too strong, as I recall; it's years ago now, I think I pretty much doubled the amount of water, as a starting point. That seemed a step in the right direction, but further tweaks were made along the way, trying different hops, etc.

A belated merry Christmas to one and all! I have a new phone and it’s taken me a while to get round to putting in all sorts of passwords so I’m a in catch up mode with everything.

Christmas here was as quiet as it generally is, just me, my mum and my brother. I cooked a turkey breast joint for the others and a nut roast for me. Annoyingly, having decided to make a bit nut roast since I had the oven on, I overcooked it so it’s nice but not as nice as it could have been (and not as nice as the ones I make regularly in the air fryer in a small loaf tin). We are all in favour of the tradition of sprouts but don’t actually like them so we have sprout tops instead, plus mashed swede (this year cooked in the microwave which makes for a tastier, less watery mash) and excellent roasties. I left everything far too late do in the last week or two I have made the Christmas pudding and Christmas cake plus an Ottolenghi clementine cake with chocolate icing that I always make on Christmas Eve on the basis that it’s Christmas and there can never be too much cake!

Leftovers with more roast potatoes this evening.

Oh and I bloody love Twiglets (especially with a gin and tonic for some weird reason) but I’m trying to eat less junk food these days and, delicious as they are, I’m not convinced Twiglets count as actual food.

This is the sort of kitchen experiment anyone can get behind. Nice one.

I read this piece and thought it of interest, but couldn't figure out where to post it! It didn't improve my view of where we're heading.

https://unherd.com/2025/12/why-should-britain-rescue-an-enemy/?set_edition=en&tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&utm_source=UnHerd+Today&utm_campaign=f33cbbfb68-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_12_29_11_40&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_79fd0df946-f33cbbfb68-35748842

Extraordinary story, that. I keep wondering, with all the batshit stuff going on around us, what the end game is.

I'll have to register to read that, which I will, but when did not having read something in full stop anyone from commenting? 😉

Stories of removing citizenship hit quite close to home here, though MrG remains more than happy not to be American and would like to thank the late President Nixon for his illegal denationalisation frenzy. But this chap is in a similar situation to my sister's children. They were born in NZ and currently live there, but also have UK citizenship based on their mother's nationality (she wasn't even born here). Abd-el-Fattah's UK citizenship is based on his mother having been born here.

As for Shamima Begum, born here, denationalised and stuck, stateless, in a Syrian internment camp for 10 years ... that is just blatant cruelty.

God that's a depressing read @moto748e.

The complete lack of any moral purpose from Starmer, and the political class in general, is highlighted all too well.

@Gonners : on a roll, now, I read this decent piece on deportations a while back:

https://archive.ph/F2UBt

I've now read it. What I took from it is what a nasty, vicious piece of work that journalist is and, as for the comments ... well, I despair of people.

New Year’s Eve! I’m not sure when my feelings towards the turning of the year changed. Once upon a time it felt sort of exciting and anticipatory, now it’s more like wariness and mild dread . Maybe 2020?

But here’s Mochi in a tinfoil hat.

Mochi looks very sweet and contented. Lovely tree too!

DH folded the hat from a Lindt foil wrapper. Mochi was very tolerant of the hat, kept it on through most of our double-bill of Beyond Paradise and Death In Paradise Christmas Specials*. Once she's settled on a lap, she likes to stay put for a long time.

(*Verdict: Unusually, I preferred the BP episode and found it cute and touching. The DiP one was just too convoluted, and that's saying a lot because most DiPs are very convoluted).