Rabbit with pudding in its belly

I watched a crazy program on BBC2 tonight about what food was like in Elizabethan times. Basically it was about a food critic (a self confessed "fatso") and a radio presenter that had to live a whole week eating as a wealthy Elizabethan merchant would have lived.

Their meals were... interesting. The highlights seemed to feature an entire sheep's head (including the oesophagus and lungs), most kinds of fish and beer with every single meal. Tea and coffee weren't due to arrive in England for another 100 years.

One of the most bizarre servings was a fish (and on another day, a rabbit) with a suet fruit pudding cooked in its belly.

I'm not sure if the funniest part was watching the two presenters try to stomach some of the (quite frankly) foul oddities from the table of history or their occasional tantrums due to caffeine withdrawal. :)

Quite frankly it was vile and I'm glad to be born in this century. What was noticeably absent from their meals was any kind of vegetable. It was meat, meat and meat cooked in cloves, nutmeg and various dried fruits (including, in large quantities, the prune).

Both of the guinea pigs lost 4 kilograms over the course of one week and I'm not surprised. It was pretty much a Shakespearean Atkins diet.

Here's the BBC's description of the show:

Restaurant Critic Giles Coren and writer and performer Sue Perkins spend a week going back to the food of Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare. Cooking for them at home is top chef Paul Merrett. Giles puts on his codpiece and Sue makes up like Queen Bess.

The duo discover the joys of sheep's head decorated with offal, the dish that bleeds and leaping frog pie. Giles tries some cupping and Sue learns the lute. With so many exciting foods to try out from the New World, the intrepid Supersizers find out how healthy the Elizabethan diet was.

Happy Birthday to me

It was my birthday this week which saw me rack up another year on the odometer of life. Fortunately I'm not really at the 'I hate birthdays' stage of life yet so it was quite nice to feel special for a day. :)

I got a couple of cards from family and a lovely gift from my sweetie that I really wanted - a Lamy Safari fountain pen. They're supposed to be really good for drawing with and I have to say - it feels lovely to write with. :)

She knows me very well too - she got me the limited edition funky lime green one. I doubt I'll see many of those around. It's great! If you like writing with fountain pens then I highly recommend a Lamy. =D

As far as birthdays go it was pretty uneventful but that could be because we're utterly and completely skint at the moment.

A brief political whinge...

Thanks Gordon Brown, you money sucking tax-happy despot. Roll on a general election. I'd vote for the Smurf Party, the Free Chocolate For All Party or even the Liberal Democrats if I thought it would get Gordon Brown out of number 10.

Blackbird update

We were worried about Colin's progress so eventually we phoned a wildlife sanctuary that we know that has its own medical centre. I know he'll get the care and attention he needs there, poor little thing. They assured us that if he recovers they'll release him around here (where he came from) and if not, he can hop around their sanctuary.

Bad news about Colin

Now that Colin is a little more relaxed about us (he's not even pecking me when I change his food) we decided we couldn't wait any longer to look at his wounds and see what we could do about them.

Kay held him while I carefully extended his wing. The good news is that the wing clearly wasn't broken. The bad news is that the wing muscle and skin was badly torn and not smelling too good. I carefully cleaned it out and treated it with anti-septic anaesthetic cream but it left me really worried for him. Seeing the area of skin that's damaged and the number of feathers that are missing I doubt he'll fly again.

The fact that he's still eating is a good sign - he's even started making small singing noises in the morning. But the wound clearly isn't good and we're going to have to keep a close eye on it. We don't want to take him to a wildlife sanctuary because we're both certain they'll just put him down because of the wound and the unlikely chance of rehabilitation.

We'd rather try to make him happy, treat his wound and if he lives we'll keep him as a pet rather than let some cat take him as an easy meal.

I'm just really glad that Kay learned a lot about keeping sick birds from her uncle. He used to be a prize-winning pigeon keeper that (unlike some pigeon 'lovers') would never put a bird down unless it was absolutely necessary.

A blackbird called Colin.

We have a new arrival in our home. It's a poorly blackbird that we rescued from the alleyway behind our yard. One of its wings is badly torn and its tail feathers are in a bit of a ragged state too. I'm guessing that a cat got him.

We've got him in a cage at the moment and we've treated it with tick and mite powder, washed the worst of the mess off him and fed him plenty of meal worms (he seems to love them). Someone has said that they'll bring us a bigger cage for him to hop about in but for the moment he seems pretty happy considering what he must have been through.

Our aim is to give him time for his wing to mend (getting help if necessary), to strengthen up and ultimately release him back into the wild.

I kind of felt he needed a name so we eventually decided on Colin. I don't know why but he kind of looks like a Colin. :)

New doodles in the sketch-book

It's good to have the sun shining and feel my mood improving day by day. I've even starting doodling again and I'm hoping to do a full drawing soon.

I recently acquired a dip-pen (basically a handle and two metal nibs to slot into it) to use with bottled ink. I thought it might be fun to explore a medium other than ballpoint when I'm working with ink.

I've already created a doodle with my new tool. It's in my sketchbook blog (click on the image below to see a larger version).

Life in ink

I've been feeling my motivation starting to return recently which is really good news.

As a result I'm actually feeling positive about returning my life to normal and re-engaging with reality (for want of a better term). I just feel like my life has been on hold for the last several weeks because of the effect that my illness has had on my motivation and even ability to do what should be simple things.

One of the areas that I'm noticing an improvement is my ability to create. I've blogged here before about the frustration I've felt when I've tried to draw but I feel that is improving along with other areas of my outlook.

I enjoy drawing with pens, particularly ballpoints and I thought I'd explore this area of interest by investigating dip-pens. I already had some inks from years ago (I never got around to opening them) and a holder and couple of nibs cost next to nothing. I'm all set. I know how I draw normally with a ballpoint but I thought I'd take a look around at how people that use dipping-pens regularly use them.

I was stunned at how little information there was. And what is available on the Internet seems to be restricted to drawing comics (particularly anime and its ilk). Don't get me wrong, I like the anime style sometimes but when it's all you can find it gets a bit boring. It looks like I'll just have to play around with my new drawing tool and see what happens.

An unexpected visitor

We've been trying to get the backyard of our flats looking nice by growing some plants, cutting back the overgrown shrub and putting out bird-feeders to attract a bit of wildlife.

We were delighted when we discovered that a Greenfinch had discovered the black sunflower seeds and was filling its face on the feeder today. I managed to get a photograph before a gust of wind dislodged it from its repast. Cute! :D