Cake (picture-heavy)

For reasons too complicated to explain, I found myself committed to baking a cake for a friend in another country who isn't going to be here to eat it any time soon. The only relevant part of the backstory is that I was meant to make a cake some months ago and made a bloody great mess on the floor instead. It's almost like I got DLA for a reason.

Nevertheless.

Part One was done in advance. I found a recipe, of the sort that tells the cook to get an adult to help them with the oven, and went and bought the stuff I'd need.

I think eggs and butter were the only things I had in the house anyway, and I didn't have enough of either, so I purchased the whole recipe. Using mostly supermarket-own-brand ingredients this came to about £15. Admittedly I have a lot of stuff left over - flour, sugar, icing sugar, vanilla essence - but I'm really unlikely to use any of it. Even if we just add up the things that were entirely used up it comes to over £8. It would definitely have been cheaper, in monetary terms, to just buy a cake.

Nevertheless, again. This is not about eating cake. This is about making a cake.

Greasing the cake tin wasn’t too traumatic. Measuring ingredients was a bit okay if a little messy at points. Creaming the butter and sugar brought me back to that whole "DLA for a reason" thing. But that's okay, because the difference between making a cake and cooking a meal is that I can take as long as I like to make a cake, and it doesn't matter if it's the only thing I do today (I will now stop banging on about DLA. I'm just always worried, when I post about my biannual adventures in cookery, that someone's going to try and use it to report me).

Adding the eggs to the butter and sugar was… well it started okay and then I thought it looked a bit lumpy, but no matter how much I stirred the lumps wouldn’t go away, so I figured, it’s butter, it’ll have to melt when it cooks if nothing else, and pressed on, adding a tidge of vanilla essence, a tidge of milk, and the sifted cocoa and self-raising flour.

The resulting dough was tasty… uh, did I say tasty? I meant it looked tasty. Yes. Looked. Having no great cake-making expertise I did wonder whether it was meant to be dough. If it was meant to be batter then I’d done something really badly wrong at the measuring stage. But I was too messy to Google it, or to take pictures and ask Twitter. So I kept going.

Wrangling the wodge of dough from the mixing bowl was awkward, and then it kind of sat in a big sticky messy lump in the middle of the cake tin. It didn't really look like any kind of proto-cake so I sort of splatted it out a bit. Not squished it flat or anything, but made it a bit more circular and more evenly shaped. I probably should have taken a picture before it went into the oven, but it was already in the oven when I realised that, and even I know you're not allowed to keep opening it.

The time it took to bake was longer than the time I needed to find instructional videos on how to check a cake is done and how to get it out of the tin. I have a springform cake tin with a removable base, so getting the cake onto the cooling rack was remarkably easy. A couple of people have already expressed jealousy about my cake tin. Seriously, it cost less than the cake ingredients. If you enjoy baking, and are frustrated by normal tins, then just get one.

And lo! Cake! Properly baked, not dry, not burnt, not soggy!


There was, however, one small problem.

At just an inch and a half in height, the stage of the recipe that called for cutting the entire cake in half horizontally was going to be more of a challenge than this novice could handle. Happily, I'd been looking for a way to avoid that particular challenge anyway, so it didn't take me too long to decide that actually, I'd just cut the cake in half the easy way, and stack the halves into a semicircular cake.

I mixed up the filling and while that was chilling in the fridge, I had my lunch:


It was very tasty.

Finally, it was time to assemble the cake.

From this side it pretty much looks like chocolate mousse with cake somewhere in the middle...


... but from the other side it looks much more cakelike.


If I was doing it again, I would probably try and get a smaller cake tin. I also think that while the whole raspberries look good on the top, for inside the cake, making it a sandwich of chocolate filling on one side and raspberry jam on the other would work better than thick chocolate filling with whole raspberries added.

I have a great sense of accomplishment for having successfully made a cake. All things considered, though, I probably won't be doing it again. The cost of ingredients, the pain, the time, the cleanup, are just all too much for what's basically a pretty mediocre cake. In future I will continue to outsource all of my cake requirements to the lovely experts at Sweet As.

Eden Project - Time of Gifts

(picture heavy)

Steve recently finished what I shall tactfully describe as a "gruelling" work contract (and yes, that is putting it mildly) which took a toll on both of us, and we decided that we were owed a little break before getting into the fun of preparing for Christmas and trying to figure out where our life goes next.

Given a free choice of anywhere to go, nine times out of ten I will pick the Eden Project (the tenth time I will beg to stay in bed and be brought cups of tea). In the last year we've been to Cornwall three times, and on each occasion we've visited the Project for two or three days, and I still always feel sad to leave.

Last time we went was in May, when it looked like this:


In November, even inside the Biomes, it's more like this:


I still get a great sense of peacefulness and well-being from the Project. And the access. Oh, the access. No being sent round the back, no staff tutting at you if you can't keep up, no "special" holding pens areas, no leaving you sitting by the bins while they try to find out if anyone knows where the keys for the service lift have got to. Universal design, access is front doors and main paths all the way. The slopes can be a bit of a workout and there is a certain amount of mileage involved in getting around the place, but they have scooters and powerchairs which can be booked in advance. November being the off-season, they weren't all booked out, so at the gate I was politely offered the option of using one of their powerchairs "if it would be easier." More importantly, my choice of sticking with my own chair was accepted without fuss.

As he tends to, Steve took hundreds of photographs of all sorts of beautiful plants, flowers, sculptures and suchlike, and I'm sure soon he'll load them up to his Flickr stream which will be much better than me trying to describe. But he's let me pop a few onto my own Flickr stream so that I can blog this.

The second day of our stay, the Friday, was the beginning of the winter celebrations at Eden, which they call the "Time of Gifts". There is, of course, a Father Christmas with a cohort of elves and a stable full of actual reindeer, much of which is centred around the Sami people of Northern Europe. I was more interested in the goings-on within the Mediterranean Biome, though - storytelling, music and craft activities particularly. There are definitely worse things to do on a Friday afternoon than to sit and make Christmas decorations and chat with a bunch of friendly strangers, listening to live music and surrounded by the gorgeous smells of Mediterranean plants. As it got darker, Steve returned from his photography spree and brought me a hot chocolate to warm me up while we listened to the evening story and music.



Then it was time to leave the Biome and get ready for the lantern parade. There were large sculpture lanterns being carried mostly by staff and volunteers, but anyone who wanted could join in the parade with a pyramid-shaped lantern on a stick, with a candle inside it. Anywhere else, I'd have assumed I couldn't participate. At Eden, no one batted an eyelid. So here I am, in front of the big Christmas tree outside the Core, carrying a lantern wedged between my legs and my wheelchair, waiting for the parade to start:

And modelling my own handknit hat by the light of my lantern:


The procession began with large sculpture-lanterns coming down the ZigZag path towards the Core building, where we were waiting. It was an impressive sight, although with a slightly hairy moment as a nearby child forgot to pay attention to his own lantern (my reaction of "excuse me! please don't set fire to me!" made me realise just how incurably English I can be). As the sculpture-lanterns and their accompanying drummers came past, we were filtered into the procession. It was quite a strange experience to be actively participating in something like this, being one of lots of little bits. There was a very carnival atmosphere.


The procession wound around the gardens outside the Biomes, lit by flame torches with occasional groups of non-participating onlookers. It ended by a gazebo of fairy-lights, where the Eden Choir were waiting to perform. Since the wheelchair makes me an honorary short person, I was ushered to the front with the kids so we could see.



Listening to the Eden Choir was lovely, and some of the drummers joined in ad lib. Then there was a short and unexpected burst of fireworks which sent Steve whirling around to try and catch a shot:


Finally, this lovely piece of fire art, lit while the choir sang, reminded me very much of the Paralympic closing ceremony which meant that in a strange way it reminded me of summer again.

Bad Sexual Etiquette

Warning: this post is about rape issues.

If you are affected by rape issues you may wish to visit the Rape Crisis website (England and Wales).




It doesn't really matter who he is. Maybe he's your boyfriend, of weeks or months or years. Perhaps he's the old schoolfriend who you met again a few hours ago downstairs at the party. Perhaps he's a "friend-with-benefits" who you've known for years. Maybe he's your husband. Maybe he's the man you don't want your husband to find out about. Maybe you've had sex with him before, maybe not.

It doesn't matter. He's a nice guy. You have no reason to think badly of him. Your taste in men is surely not that bad. You've dumped plenty of idiots and refused to even consider dating plenty more. This one has passed the filters, and you want to have sex with him.

That said, you want to use a condom. Again, it really doesn't matter what your reasons are. Maybe you want to avoid disease. Probably, you don't want to risk getting pregnant. Perhaps you're feeling aware that it would, for whatever reason, be awkward for you to try and get hold of the morning-after pill. Maybe you're on the everyday pill but you missed one, or are just wanting that extra layer of reassurance.

So you're kissing him, and both of you are enjoying it, and you want to have sex, but you slam on the brakes and one way or another you raise The Condom Question. And despite the hormones and desires and excitement, you refuse to go any further until he's agreed and there's a reassuring square foil packet sitting ready on the bedside table (or the dashboard, or the refreshments trolley in the company boardroom, hey, whatever works for you).

Then, with gleeful abandon, the brakes, and the rest of your clothes, can start coming off. You're excited. You're aroused. You are spread out, relaxed, enjoying all sorts of foreplay and eager to have wonderful, enthusiastically consensual, penetrative sex.

And he's between your legs
Oh!
kissing his way up your body
amazing kisses
making you feel fantastic
and suddenly
no, he can't be
he's pushing into you
he wouldn't
and the little foil packet is still sitting there, unopened.

"No!" you say, and your voice sounds like it's coming from a long way away, so you try again, "no, we need to use a condom..."

"It's okay," he says, his familiar, nice-guy face smiling over you.

"No, it's not okay!" you shout? whisper? not even sure any more and you try to push him away but your muscles won't work properly even as he caresses your useless spaghetti arms and gently, almost lovingly, but quite firmly enough, holds them down over your head, and tells you to relax I would relax if you would just put the bloody condom on because he's not going to come in you.

As if that makes much difference. You were awake in sex-ed class, you had it drilled into you that pregnancy and disease are possible from pre-ejaculate. You're certain that at this point in your life you don't want to deal with the mental and physical strain of a pregnancy, or an abortion, or childbirth, or raising a child, or giving a child up for adoption. This is not a risk you wanted to take.

But "no" hasn't worked and I can't move and my mind is whirling too much to give a lecture on sexual health issues...

His face is still over yours. He's still smiling, still kissing you, mistaking your panic for pleasure. He tells you that he wants to feel you orgasm like this orgasm? I'm not even turned on any more and with a shiver you realise that if you can't physically force him off you then the only remaining option is to fake it, get it over with, quickly as possible, minimise the risk, get him off me.

So you breathe, and you try to ignore the little voice that's screaming getoffme getoffme getoffme and you say oh, mmm, yes, NO! and flex your Kegel muscles as best you can until oh thank god he's convinced, and he withdraws, and the smile on his face tells you that your faked orgasm has reassured him that you actually really enjoyed that experience when in fact you're lying there still and boneless and in shock, trying to process what's happened.

He didn't come. Do I still need the morning after pill? Would I even be able to get hold of it without admitting what's just happened? Am I prepared to take the risk? How do I arrange a sexual health screening without anyone finding out? What's an abortion actually like? First things first, what's the date, how long until my next- WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING NOW?

What is happening now is that he's pushing into you again, and this time he's wearing the condom, and you are expected to be grateful for this can't be happening, can't be happening, can't be happening you feel sick and your stomach muscles clench and you gasp for breath and this is also interpreted as excitement and finally he comes and he withdraws and this time you practically leap off the bed and get your clothes back on and you're out of the room in ten seconds flat even though your arms and legs still aren't quite doing what they're told.

He follows you. He's the clothed, smiling man who not half an hour previously was an entirely nice chap, talking to you and making you smile and showering you with affection.

He doesn't think he's a rapist.

Do you?

Problem?

The big line being pushed by our beloved government this week is about "problem families" and the need to "crack down" on them. The right-wing press have seized on this, breaking out charming descriptors like "Britain's worst scumbags". There are apparently 120,000 of them, costing Our Brave Nation £9bn every year. Even the supposedly-neutral BBC agrees, although by now their oft-used phrase "according to ministers" basically translates as "you might want to take this with a pinch of salt."

So, what makes a "problem family"? How do we define the country's "worst scumbags"?

Well, that's where it all gets a bit runny. No one's quite sure where the figures of 120,000 and £9bn have come from - those ministers so keen to make these assertions aren't so keen to have their assertions examined and have not been forthcoming with their sources. Fullfact.org have given it their best shot and come up with the 117,000 families in England classed as "Families with Multiple Problems" as the nearest likely contender. The definition of that is clearly set out. An FMP is a family that matches at least five of the following seven criteria:

• No parent in the family is in work
• Family lives in poor quality or overcrowded housing
• No parent has any qualifications
• Mother has mental health problems
• At least one parent has a longstanding limiting illness, disability or infirmity
• Family has low income (below 60% of the median)
• Family cannot afford a number of food and clothing items.

This quite surprised me because by that yardstick, I spent most of my teenage years in an FMP. My mother was not in work (1) due to her longstanding limiting illness, disability or infirmity (2) which meant that once my father was gone, we were a single-parent family reliant on state benefits which were a low income (3). We had difficulty affording proper food (a regular meal was "pasta and gravy", no meat or vegetables, which I didn't even realise was unusual until I was 19) and most of my clothes were second-hand (4). And our house was in a pretty awful state of repair, cracked windows and dangerous electrical wiring being two of the simpler issues (5). Ding, Family with Multiple Problems.

Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, has been ranting about these families not in terms of their circumstances, but in terms of their behaviour - crime and social disorder, truancy, alcohol abuse, and "ruining the lives of their neighbours".

Hmm. My sister and I were never in trouble with the police, we always had a parental note on the rare occasions when we missed school, the only alcohol in the house during our teenage years was the occasional bottle of wine given to our mother as a gift, and we got on well with the neighbours on both sides. We performed well in school, engaged in extra-curricular activities, got home by our curfew and were basically normal, boring, well-behaved kids.

Which on one level is admittedly irrelevant. My personal circumstances are anecdote, not data. To examine the data, go back to the Fullfact article, which is excellent in that regard and links back to all manner of primary data sources, and indicates that the number of FMPs which also have children exhibiting problem behaviour is closer to 46,000.

What I can say - anecdotally - is that while my teenage self would have accepted the descriptor "Family with Multiple Problems" as an unpalatable but undeniable truth, she'd be rather upset by the idea that to live with those problems was interchangeable with behaving in an antisocial or criminal manner. When getting home at 5pm after doing her homework on the school computers with a bunch of other kids in similar circumstances, she'd be quite put out by Mr Pickles' view that children like her needed to get their truancy under control. When babysitting, for free, the child of someone who volunteered one evening a week at a social group for people with learning difficulties, she'd be quite angry to hear Prime Minister David Cameron assert that people like her and the person she was babysitting for were creating "a huge amount of social problems, for themselves but also for the wider community".

Please, please, please, can we stop conflating "poverty" and "immorality", "lives with problems" and "is a problem", and "not in paid employment" and "does nothing of any use at all."

Timing

I often feel quite frustrated about the poor synchronicity between my physical capacity to do things, my opportunities to leave the house, and the weather. For instance, when it's sunny and I feel good and I want to go out and get stuff done, but I'm stuck indoors. Or when my work desk is clear, the weather is okay, and Steve/my PA/someone else is loading my chair into the car for a gleefully-anticipated trip somewhere, but I feel awful and wish I could go back to bed.

So it's with a sort of wry satisfaction that I am sitting here, admittedly in quite a lot of pain while feeling really quite unpleasant with medication side effects, but listening to the rain thrash down outside, snuggled up in a fluffy jumper and the safe and certain knowledge that the nearest I need to get to going Out There today was this morning when I brought the milk in.

There's not even much I need to do In Here.

I'm dopey and tired and I can't sleep for pain, but at least for once my brain's not filling itself up with all the things I should or would rather be doing.

'Cept maybe make another cup of tea.

First Anniversary

It seems hard to believe, but Evilstevie and I have been married for an entire year.

Truth be told, the year, while not tragic, has not been a terrific one either. His work schedule has involved a level of "out of hours" work rather higher than we had expected and this extra work tends to crop up at extremely short notice - we rarely know in the morning whether we will be having an evening meal together. His workload over the last twelve months has been so heavy that it was January before he was able to take time off work for our "honeymoon" and he is still accruing "time off in lieu of hours worked" faster than he is getting a chance to actually use it. For my part, chronic illness does not respond well to such chaotic routines, so my pain and energy levels are no longer as well controlled as they once were, which in turn means the carefully balanced dominoes of my overall health and ability to Do Things (work, socialise, eat properly, manage disability bureaucracy) have crashed. It's all a bit of a mess, really.

On the bright side, we're very much still hanging on to each other and making each others' worlds that little bit nicer. This is definitely a more positive outcome than the alternative, which would be each of us yelling at the other "this is all your fault!"

And on the even brighter still side, at the beginning of May, Evilstevie came home with the biggest grin I'd seen in a long time and proudly announced that he'd booked the week of our anniversary off work, and we both squeaked and hugged each other and began to make plans.

On the morning of our anniversary, we had a quick photo-session to try out an idea I'd picked up via Ravelry. This was to take a picture of the two of us holding a picture of the two of us from our wedding. We took several - this is one of my favourites, although you can click through to see the others:



Then next year we print off one of those pictures and do the same thing again... you get the idea.

Photos taken, we packed ourselves into the car and set off to use an outstanding wedding gift from some very generous friends - a night at a luxury B&B in Devon. The weather steadily improved as we drove south and by the time we arrived I was regretting my failure to pack sun-cream and sandals. Instead we got a chance to sit in the shade looking out at glorious countryside, with tea and knitting for me, and coffee and camera for Evilstevie. Dinner in a nearby pub/restaurant was delicious and falling asleep in a beautiful room under crisp, fresh sheets felt like the holiday had properly begun.

The following morning, after guiltily declining most of the humongous breakfast spread on offer in the B&B's dining room, we loaded back into the car to go to one of my favourite places on earth - the Eden Project.





We first visited the project in January, and if you GiftAid your entry fee then you can get a year's pass to return as often as you like (or at least, as often as you can, because I think I could go every week for a year and not get bored). A brief stop to share the joy with Twitter, and then we spent the morning trekking up and down the outdoor areas, the idea being that if it started to rain, then we could head for the indoor biomes. Of course it didn't rain at all, and by the time we'd decided to stop exploring outdoors and head for the Link, my shoulders were about ready to drop off. We had a break for a late lunch, but I felt that I wouldn't manage much more pushing and that I'd like to just go into the smaller Mediterranean Biome to relax, instead of trying to hike around the larger, steeper, hotter Rainforest Biome. Evilstevie agreed and we made our way across.

That was where we found "the Back-rub team" offering 15 minutes of reiki back massage for £10, which to my burning shoulders and floppy exhausted arms seemed like a wonderful idea.

It really was. I mean, I didn't leap up and dance my way around the citrus grove or anything, but after a bit more of a rest and stretch I was able to not only get around the Mediterranean Biome but in short bursts I managed the Rainforest as well.

That night we crashed out at an unremarkable Travelodge in Bodmin, with the idea being that in the morning we'd be able to head home or elsewhere as the fancy took us. I'm sure nobody will be surprised to hear that in the morning, despite being shattered, we went straight back to Eden - we didn't find the back-rub team but we caught the Storytelling and had a lovely lunch before reluctantly heading for home and a couple of days to recover.

This is a technical document

Well, of course, it isn't, but I could put words like Cisco and network and voice over internet protocol all over it, and then it would look a bit like a technical document. It wouldn't make any sense, but I can't imagine who'd notice.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, there have been complaints. A particular reader is being a Bad Example To The Younger Generation by reading my blog at work, and apparently I must post more often. It's okay, English is unlikely to be the first language of anyone peeking over his shoulder. Yes, hello you. :)

There now follows a diagram. This proves the technical nature of this document which is entirely work related.



Look, I'm sorry. I mean to write more. I also mean to not just write about disability. I want to write more about my life and what I'm doing, but things divide into two groups:

• Things which are too boring and inconsequential to write about.
• Things which are quite interesting and I want to write about, but after doing the things, I'm too tired to write about the things until later.

Perhaps I should try doing shorter posts?

Today, I did some grocery shopping online. The best bit of doing online shopping when your brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to, is that when the shopping arrives, you've forgotten what you ordered. It's as if some kind of benevolent pixie sent you £70 of delicious food, and there isn't a single item you don't like!

I also had my laundry done. Yes, that's right - don't tell any of the women in my family, but I use a laundry service for my towels and bedlinen. I am a slattern who does not do her own housework. Or possibly a person who prefers not to injure herself wrestling large, wet, heavy pieces of cloth. Either way, in the morning the nice man picks up a sports bag of smelly linen from my house and in the evening he brings it back, fresh, clean, dry, and neatly folded.

I'm struggling with the paperwork for my assistants at the moment - making sure they get paid, and the monitoring that Social Services conduct to be sure I am using the money properly. I set up my systems really well, and my more lucid self has written out clear instructions for how to do each stage so that when I am not very well, I can still get things done. The problem at the moment is I quite literally don't know what day it is. I have "today" and "yesterday". All other days are confused together in a big tangle. So the timesheets and invoices got in a muddle and weren't submitted at the proper times... I think I've unpicked it, though.

Steve and I have been married for nearly a year and we are wondering what we should do for our anniversary. He's been able to book a little bit of time off work and we're looking at options. We have all these ideas - we'd love to go back to the Eden Project, or alternatively there are a few places in London we'd like to visit, for instance the Science Museum - but Steve is so tired out from work, I think he could sleep for a fortnight. We could just stay home and try to put together our wedding photo album. Right now we have thousands of photographs backed up to multiple storage devices, but unless you count shoving a USB stick into a digital photo frame, no album. There are also several guests who we have no pictures of, which is a bit sad.

The book I'm reading at the moment is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I have read it many times - I first picked it up in high school. It's a bit of escapism, I suppose. I have the DVD as well, but I think the DVD won't make much sense to people who haven't read the book because it misses out an awful lot of backstory and historical detail. Some of the "historical" detail is inaccurate but then it is a fiction novel.

I don't know. What else? What do you want to know?

Following technical complaint about the diagram above: (written by evilstevie)
This diagram clearly only holds true for a relatively small number of passwords - above a certain point you are either some kind of memory-whizz or use a password-manager program to ensure the right password goes in the right box. This has to be the case as most applications of passwords also have something in place to prevent brute-force guessing of passwords, either a counter or timer (or in some cool applications, both) to make it difficult or impossible for you to try more than a few passwords. At a certain point on the graph you simply get a flat-line as you can't enter any more wrong passwords and you stop making new ones or come up with a new way of dealing with passwords. Also, I'd like to add that Batsgirl's clearly been around me too much when she considers VOIP usable in everyday conversation or blogging...