Observations from a Hill

I feel like a motherless child - sometimes... 'Treblinka, the Last Witness', on PBS this evening - started to watch, but couldn't finish it. What with everything else... I read Jean-Francois Steiner's book 'Treblinka' in 1988 - a moving and affecting non-fiction novel that I haven't been able to re-read to this day. Extraordinary and excruciatingly painful. That same year I read 'Hiroshima' by John Hersey. Poignant, terrifying, required reading. But it's taken me years to revisit this. Some things are too intense to want to revisit often. A good time to maybe.

C ouldn't resist that after the trail for the similarly named reality TV show probably lost on anyone outside of this glorious country. Actually, the show seems to consist of lots of young people making (apparently) large amounts of cash by doing mostly irrelevant stuff on social media. A reflection on our times? Mmm... After the pandemic (is finally over?) I would hope that we might go back to human-human interaction again, just off the back of having been forced to stay away from each other for so long. But... Anyway, I live in hope.

W ell, maybe not the Consul (Ford or otherwise,) but Fairview Heights, anyway. And a sunset. As it turned out, not a bad day at work. Pretty much socially-distanced from the rest of humanity during the day (just a couple of close calls) and the weather's been kind. Still a bit chilly tonight, though, but a lovely sunset, nonetheless. Going into some shops is a bit like an episode from Emergency Ward 10, with all the masks etc. God, I actually remember Emergency Ward 10. That'll be lost on anyone under sixty. Has anyone noticed that the Archers hasn't yet acknowledged Covid-19? Or any other soap, for that matter, not that I'm an avid fan of any of this stuff you understand, but weird, nevertheless. Could the latest figures indicate a possible, faint glimmer of hope? Be nice to think so. 'Somebody exploded an H-bomb today But it wasn't anyone I knew...'

Pant Y Gwair, this afteroon W e got out to stretch our legs round the lanes for an hour this afternoon - there's only so many old movies on Talking Pictures TV that you can watch in a sitting. This walk takes you from our place down Tan Y Bwlch Road and through Llanllechid Churchyard, where the two sisters that used to own our place are buried. Although the Church itself has long fallen out of use, the graveyard is still kept up and there's a fine yew avenue leading down from the main gate. From there you head down beside the stream to Pant Y Gwair and then up past Cae Swings to the High Street and so back to our place. A pleasant stroll that I think we've done on and off ever since we moved here forty years ago. Jane walks this one more than I do, but then I'm out and about with work anyway, so I get my fix of pounding the country lanes most days. Been reflecting on the fact that growing old does change the way we deal with stuff like the current situation. I ...

J ust finished re-watching The Day After Tomorrow (well, why not...) and straight after see Trump flailing around like a prat on the news - dear God Almighty, when will they just get rid of the idiot and start dealing with their situation... 

T his is my take on Murgh Masala: It takes twenty minutes prep and about an hour cooking time. Enough for two. All of this apart from the chicken is from our pantry, but then we do cook a lot of from scratch and keep plenty of herbs & spices etc., to hand... Greedyments : 2 Chicken Legs, skinned 2 Fresh Tomatoes cut into quarters 1/2 can Chopped Tomatoes 1 Large Onion, finely chopped About a mugful of Greek Yoghurt (or other strained yoghurt) A splash of your usual cooking oil for frying For the Spice Paste : 1/2 of the chopped Onion 2 Cloves Garlic, crushed Good thumb-sized piece of Ginger, grated finely 1 teaspoon Chilli Powder of your choice (I use Kashmiri for the colour) 1 teaspoon Coriander Powder 3/4 teaspoon Cumin Powder 1/2 teaspoon Turmeric Dash of oil or water to loosen the mixture when you blitz it Whole Spices : stick Cinnamon 6 Green Cardamoms, bruised a couple of Indian Bay (Cinnamon) Leaves - not vital, but don't substitute ordinary b...

C urious that one of my favourite literary genres is shall we suggest, the slightly dystopian. I would never have figured that I would find myself, if not stage front, but at least third spear-chucker from the right in the very real and potentially very dark scenario that life's Theatre of the Absurd has dumped on us recently. Existential threat has been an over-used and much abused term of late - but I think we might be close to appreciating the fact that we are now facing just such a threat. It's like the best wake-up call you could possibly get - there is no ignoring it - there is nowhere to run to hide from it - even if you're a billionare skulking on a superyacht or hiding on a private island somewhere; if the world's economy dies because of this shit, then you die. Sorry, can't help myself... I started this post with the intention of talking about books, so let's do that - Books I have recently read/started: Robert Harris - The Second Sleep: Dys...

A fter last weekend's monster influx of unthinking grockles (think queueing to get on Snowdon, two miles of parked cars through Ogwen and Idwal,) it doesn't come as much of a surprise to see that North Wales Police have set up a checkpoint at Queensferry to send non-essential travellers back to England. Pity of it is, the damage has almost certainly been done and we're expecting a spike in infections on the back of it...ninety-five percent of people round here are taking this seriously and making an effort, but a lot of youth (and some of the old) don't seem to have got the point yet - and now otherwise fit and healthy young people are succumbing to this thing. Someone needs to drive the message home that this is not a joke or a videogame...

S od's Law dictates that if something remotely shitty can happen, rest assured it will. And so it transpired. I start the countdown to retirement, initiate the getting-all-my-ducks-in-a-row process in readiness for it, and boom - a global pandemic... Statistically, I guess there must be millions more reaching this stage in life at this precise time and I would also guess that not one of us would have seen this one coming. My late father always used to say he could feel '...a bloody great draught...' as more and more friends and family popped their clogs over time - a feeling I must say I've grown to understand myself in the last few years. But this is more hurricane than sodding draught... We're probably justified in feeling a tad anxious here in Fairview Heights, but we are acutely aware that we are very fortunate to live where we do - relatively safe in the hills of Snowdonia, itself in a pretty sparsely populated part of the UK, namely God's own co...