Observations from a Hill

OK - here's my take on things business/economic, and I'll go all in and say off the bat, that the problem with capitalism as it stands today is not that there's too much profit, but rather that there's too little. Capitalism is not just the sole fiefdom of the corporate world, or the wealth management bubble, or of the landowning gentry 'farming' classes. It is business, first and foremost. That includes the corner shop in my tiny village square and the myriad micro-businesses plying their trade in home-made clothes, jewellery, cakes, fancies and any number of other perfectly good, worthwhile and saleable goods, offered by individual and family traders throughout the world. A small business, which by definition will have a small turnover, needs to earn a decent profit on its sales, over and above its costs and overheads, in order to make a living and ensure its survival. In any normal market on the scale that small businesses would have traditionally operated,

Here's a thing. We have a US President-elect vowing to tariff the beejesus out of the rest of the world in his quest for US trade autonomy [in itself a pretty economically weird concept]; the UK government vacillating about our country's trade relationship with the EU; UK landowners [Big Farmer] bitching about the removal of a tax bung they've actually only had for forty years [and they'll still be better off than they were before Thatcher's 1984 gift, only paying half the rate of inheritance tax that every other bugger has to pay]; yet another COP, yet again held in a petrostate, going nowhere for the 29th time. And then we have China. In contrast to the Indian subcontinent, that erstwhile emergent tiger economy of tech, which is currently suffocating under the clouds of its own industrial pollution; China seems, on the surface of it, and despite its former reputation as a global mega-polluter, to be turning a corner and to offer somewhat of an example to the rest

If you Google pre-natal nostalgia, all you get in return is stuff relating to one's experience in the womb; but I came across a reference to what I would recognise the term to signify in this week's Times Literary Supplement, in a review of Darren Coffield's new book "Queen's of Bohemia", by Libby Purves. My understanding and experience of the concept of pre-natal nostalgia, is a sensation of harking back to a time and culture that predates one's own birth. A nostalgia for a time, place and context one couldn't rationally say one actually knew. But here's the thing. I actually believe in collective, innate memory: call it folk memory, ancestral or cellular memory; whatever. We are, like all other species, programmed by the experiences of our forebears well into the distant past, and we react to triggers afforded by our environment, so deeply embedded as to be completely innate and subconscious: we react to external threat completely instinctively,

What have the Church of England - and for that matter The Church of Rome - the upcoming Trump government and the Mafia have in common? Loyalty and Omertà is what. Swearing fealty to one's chosen overlord - be it/they/she/he corporeal or divine - no matter what, and keeping one's counsel over transgression as a matter of duty. The Church of Rome and Anglicanism have a sorry track record over - usually sexual and often deeply institutionalised - transgressions against the most vulnerable of their respective flocks, something that is currently in the full face of public scrutiny at present. What this actually means to the ordinary person of these faiths I don't know, as Christians seldom intersect my orbit, and those that occasionally do tend to be of an evangelical leaning anyway, and that's another kettle of rotting fish in my book. The Mafia - pick your flavour from the many varieties available - demand absolute loyalty from favours lent: with interest and on pain of s

  As mentioned last night, here's last night's repast. Lamb steak and potatoes: note token vegetable matter. The potatoes were peeled and sliced into 1/4" rounds, just like my mom's homemade chips used to be, which gives a good volume to surface area ratio for cooking, looks different and well, is frankly easier than cutting batons out of ellipsoid solids. They were dried off, well salted with sea salt, and blanched in freshly-boiled water for about ten minutes, dried again and marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and garlic paste before being cooked in the air fryer for about twenty-five minutes. Meanwhile, the lamb was seasoned, and marinated in Sharwarma kebab paste and the leftover potato marinade until the potatoes were done. About eight minutes per side in the air-fryer for the lamb, and Bob's yer dad's brother [as usual, don't forget to rest the meat for at least half the cooking time before serving, preferably longer]. Lovely juicy spiced meat and go

  I would have written about tonight's jazz cuisine: Jane was at work today, and I had, as would be usual on a Sunday , a kind of Ready, Steady, Cook hour, where I just go with whatever produce and spicing is in front of me and invent a meal out of it. Tonight's turned out pretty well, considering I only had four spuds and a couple of lamb steaks to go on: the veg was a microwave mixed bag from M&S this afternoon, and so was kind of peripheral. I'll relate the recipe maybe tomorrow, but I have to give a shout out to the pizza pictured above from yesterday evening. After our glass of Bass at The Black Boy [see yesterday's post] we called at Morrison's in Caernarfon for a few bits and pieces. Jane already had something to eat at home, so I just thought "...pizza for me, then..." I found the above in the frozen foods aisle, stuck it in the basket on the basis that I love 'Nduja sausage anyway, and we drove home. Come around seven PM, I put the thing i