Robin was a treble, Hel was an alto. In the Allegri, I was in the semi-chorus with Ella (?), Margaret Duthie, & Stephen Power, hidden behind the altar. My friend Stuart was a ringer, adding some heft to the bass line. A cat emerged from the middle of the choir during the Gibbons (see photos). And one of the tenors (not in photos) finished the concert lying on a slab at the back of the church awaiting an ambulance.

Tracks in alphabetical order (if anyone has the programme I shall rearrange these!):

Allegri: Misere Mei

Bairstow: Let all mortal flesh keep silence

Bassano: Dic Nobis, Maria

Duthie: Song of the Nuns of Chester

Gibbons: O clap your hands

Mendelssohn: Lift thine eyes, from Elijah

Parry: My soul, there is a country

Parry: Never weather-beaten sail

Parry: There is an old belief

Rhienberger: Abendlied

Sheppard: In manus tuas

Stanford: Justorum animae

Stanford: Coelos ascendit hodie

Stanford: Beati quorum via

Wood: Hail, gladdening light

Photos

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows-in-place-upgrade

and running PS command 

.\setup.exe /auto upgrade /dynamicupdate disable

and selecting Windows Server 2022 Datacentre as the version I wanted to install (because it is!):

I would then encounter this:

and obviously I didn't want to proceed with "nothing"!

Well, after logging a support ticket and a lot of very friendly but unhelpful email exchanges, I thought I should try again and capture screenshots of every step. And then I solved it... I had simply chosen the wrong image for my server. When I selected "Windows Server 2022 Datacentre (Desktop Experience)" I was not offered the options to keep or not keep at all - it simply went ahead with the upgrade as shown:

Two days later... actually it failed the first time - it bailed out silently, with server remaining unchanged, and nothing diagnostic in the event log that I could see. Same again second time. But the third time I ran it, the upgrade completed and my server is now Windows Server 2022 with everything seeming fine.

Most of the specific information about works of music and writing are published using the ‘blog’ tool, which lends itself to searching by categories, dates etc. In fact the site has three blogs, one for news, one for musical works, one for written works, and the last two of these are managed within folder tenants (using cloudscribe’s multi-tenancy capabilities). However by default cloudscribe uses the URL segment /blog/ in pages created in this way, and some people had remarked that this looked a bit odd having the /blog/ segment in pages about specific musical works, e.g. https://peter-tranchell.uk/writings/blog/jottings-of-a-domestic-bursar

After a little investigation, I was able to change the music and written works blogs to use the URL segment ‘works’, by changing this line in RoutingAndMvc.cs:

routes.AddBlogRoutesForSimpleContent(new cloudscribe.Core.Web.Components.SiteFolderRouteConstraint());

to this:

routes.AddBlogRoutesForSimpleContent(new cloudscribe.Core.Web.Components.SiteFolderRouteConstraint(), "works");

Having made the changes, the above post is now at https://peter-tranchell.uk/writings/works/jottings-of-a-domestic-bursar

Having done this, I needed to put in place some redirect rules so that any bookmarks or published hyperlinks that used the old URLs would automatically redirect to the new ones. This was achieved with the URL Rewrite module for IIS, and a rule like this:
<rule name="Redirect writings blog to works" stopProcessing="true">
     <match url="^writings/blog/(.*)$" />
     <action type="Redirect" url="/writings/works/{R:1}" redirectType="Temporary" />
</rule>

With all this done and seeming to work OK, I then used a link checker to see if I’d left any broken links in the site by accident. For this I used a tool that I remembered from many years ago (I found it in some old notes): https://www.deadlinkchecker.com/website-dead-link-checker.asp

This checks up to 2000 hyperlinks free of charge. It did find plenty of broken links, where external websites had moved or removed things, e.g. this History of music at Eastbourne College, which I rediscovered with some searching:

https://www.eastbourne-college.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/musichistoryupdated-2020-09-30.pdf

I had linked to this document because it contains some information about Peter Tranchell’s brief spell at Eastbourne College in 1949-50:

Brian Polden (S48) remembers Peter Tranchell: ‘He brought with him an outrageous and infectious sense of fun and was a most gifted musician’. Ian Fraser (Sykes) (P47) remembers: ‘He was a bizarre character, particularly in his very eccentric manner of dress, including multicoloured dressing-gown sashes with tassles instead of a belt, which didn’t go too well with the fur of his academic gown. I vaguely remember the strange music he wrote for one of the school plays, which included a ‘jungle piano’, a small wooden box with pliant metal bars attached which you twanged’.

But none of the broken links had been created by my own actions – phew!

It’s a Netgear ReadyNas2, and I’m certainly not ready to consign it to the scrapheap just yet, thanks! (2.7TB of storage in a RAID configuration for safety).

The admin page is accessed at an address like https://192.168.1.xxx/admin/ (often accessed by clicking the “Admin Page” button in the “RAIDar” app, which opens the address in your default browser).

This is what I was seeing:

In Edge the detail of this feedback was as follows:

This site can’t provide a secure connection

192.168.1.111 uses an unsupported protocol.

ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

And on clicking the “Details” button:

Unsupported protocol

The client and server don't support a common SSL protocol version or cipher suite.

Some Googling and Binging shows a million other people having similar problems, but I didn’t readily spot a solution that worked for me… installing old versions of browsers doesn’t seem to be possible or sensible any more.

I failed to persuade Edge or Chrome to load the page, despite asking “Internet Options” to accept TLS1.0 and 1.1 (etc).

I found a solution with Firefox advanced settings. Browse to about:config

CTRL+F to look for “security.tls.version.enable-deprecated”.

Toggle this setting to “true” (e.g. by double-clicking the row).

After this, the ReadyNAS Admin page loads just fine!

I hope this helps someone, and please feel free to leave comments to improve this post!

Where were you Chris Upson? You said you’d be here!

Knowing how much you like a sound thrashing, I ignored my pulled hamstring and cracked rib (yes the price of Pen Cerrig Calch), and entered Llanbedr to Blaenavon (15m, 4500ft ascent), missing the bus to the start and having to drive like a nutter down single-track lanes to arrive 3 mins before the start.

Nice relaxed run (apart from the hurty rib and bum), chatting all the way with Martin Humphreys of Stroud AC, not much talent on show. He died in style at the bottom of the last hill… and I wandered lonely as an orange, up the slaughtering slopes of Blorenge.

1. Crispin Flower, 2.18 joining an illustrious crowd of Donnellies, Derbys, Forsters, Palmers and McQueens on the attached goblet!!

2-10 rif raf

11 onwards, veteran + female rifraf

Runner, Why do you Run?

This was the title of a Boat-Race write-up exquisitely crafted by Chris Menhennet a few years back. It's a question that occurred to me several times over the first weekend of July, as I lumbered around the Elite class of the Saunders Mountain Marathon trying to stay within sight of Crispin, cursing the horrendous bracken, tussocks and concealed boulders of the first day that cruelly exposed my soft centre, and the fast runnable paths of the second day that revealed the true extent of my lack of fitness.

Perhaps the question should have been, 'Runner, why don't you run?'. Of only a dozen or so training runs I had managed in the previous four months, the longest was the Kilpatricks Hill Race. Thus, with a background of virtually no training, I set off for the Lakes at 1 a.m. on the Saturday morning with a fluttering stomach and water in my bowels. I'd stepped in as a late replacement when Manny suddenly remembered that he's a big girl, and would rather a 5-mile leg of the canal relay than having to dirty his socks on the Helvellyn range and I had serious suspicions that I'd flounder on the first day and spoil Crispin's weekend.

Conditions could hardly have been better on day 1. Overcast, 60-odd degrees and a cloud-base of about 2000ft. This meant that the tops were in clag, but for a struggling donkey with no sweat-glands, the fine mist was pleasantly cooling, and as I had very little part in the early navigation, the lack of visibilty wasn't really my problem. It merely saved me from seeing the monstrous nature of the hills we were expected to negotiate.

The first three check-points were pretty straight-forward, with a fair amount of good running and no real navigational difficulties. Thereafter, starting with a long, long third leg, things started to go downhill. A wall Crispin was climbing succumbed to his considerable mass and collapsed under him. I watched in alarm as he tumbled to the ground from a height of about 5 feet, with enormous boulders cascading around him. Fortunately his generous padding protected him from injury.

I'd gone like a bull at a gate up the first climb (not an entirely new tactic for me, I'll admit) and after a couple of hours running was starting to feel pretty shagged and not a little grumpy. Checkpoints 4-9 were in horrible steep, rocky terrain, and although upping my J.B. and Geobar consumption had restored my spirits, I was having to work bloody hard to prevent total melt-down.

Crispin had a rough patch around checkpoints 7 and 8, during which I rallied to some extent. Leg 9 was a bugger of a contour and the descent to the day's finish was a complete bastard on steep slippery grass and wet rocks, for which my road-shoes had no answer. We trundled into the mid-camp bruised and knackered, and were astonished to find that we'd completed the day in second place, 20 minutes behind the leaders and 10 minutes clear of third place.

Crispin had sounded a bit preoccupied on the phone when I said we'd have to use his tent, as mine was bought to accommodate a family of six. His, it transpired, had been bought specifically for one, and was, by his own admission as we stood looking at it in dismay, 'a bit like a bloody coffin'.

Nothing, however, would have stopped me sleeping like a corpse (fittingly), and after a couple of cans of lager (just to make sure), 5 packets of supernoodles and a limp down to the shores of Ullswater, I crashed out in my sleeping bag and slept, without stirring and with my mouth gaping unattractively, for 10 hours.

The morning revealed a groin-strain, 2 blisters, a swollen ankle, chaffed thighs, bruised toes and shoulders and a mild hangover - 2 cans being more than I've drunk in months.

We'd made the chasing start and set off 20 minutes after the leaders, whom we were not to see for the rest of the day. At each checkpoint we asked for the gap, and it never varied by more than three minutes, which pleased us almost as much as it amazed us. The down-side was that this encouraging progress meant that Crispin wouldn't allow me to stop for a picnic and 40 winks.

On the first day Crispin's navigation had been excellent, with probably less that 3 minutes of the 7 hours spent looking for checkpoints. On the second day it was truly inspired, as time and again he hit it right on the button. The only leg on which we may have lost a couple of minutes was the one on which I volunteered my sole piece of navigational input, persuading him against his better judgement to add distance to his proposed route to take us onto a lovely smooth Land Rover track for a few miles. Unfortunately by the time we hit it I was too shagged to muster much more than a fast shuffle, and comparing leg times with our competitors at the end it emerged that we had lost more on this leg than on any other.

A pig of a climb to the end of this leg (the fifth) took its toll, and after an easy sixth we laboured up the final climb of the day, on a route on which I repeatedly expressed doubts about our bearing. Unsurprisingly, I was talking bollocks, and we dropped bang onto checkpoint 7 exactly where Crispin expected. From here it was a manic descent on a narrow trod to the end. The wind in his sails, the nimble youngster skipped on ahead as I yelped and hopped in his wake, cursing the pain in my groin and feet (8 blisters and two departing toe-nails) with every step.

Miraculously we had held our second place, even managing to take a minute or two out of the leaders. It transpired that not only did they both have fell-shoes, but they also train regularly, which, I'm sure you'll agree, is rather against the Corinthian spirit of the whole thing!

It was, despite my hideous lack of preparation, the most enjoyable MM I have done It scares me to contemplate what Crispin could do with a partner who could navigate and run. Even one of the two would be a vast improvement!

I can only find one photo. Beer is evident, and the coffin is almost out of shot lower-right (it was pressed into service again the following year, and there's a better photo - it hadn't got any larger).

Five hardy souls braved balmy sunshine and a gentle breeze on Saturday April 28th to tackle the Erskine Bridge Cross, an annual Christian Aid charity event. The course was similar in many respects to Manny’s notorious 12-Trig Trog, apart from the heather and the peat… and the mud, bogs, forestry and hills. Er – and the bracken and gorse and burns and grass.

In fact it was a 3-hour trudge across the Erskine Bridge and back, and back again, and back agai… you get the picture. The idea was to complete as many 1.25 mile crossings as possible within the 3 hours (although the somewhat lenient time-keeping allowed Crispin to collect his final stamp after 3 hours and 10 minutes!).

Despite the lack of imagination involved in the course design, the event was made interesting by the support and smart-arsed comments from the throngs of walkers – several hundred in all, and by the guy with the microphone reminding the assembled multitude that a world-record holder was in their midst every time Charlie lumbered past.

The views from the top of the bridge were surprisingly lovely, the water glistening hundreds of feet below in the sun. Wonderful air-clarity allowed occasional glimpses as far west as Nova Scotia, and to the east one could almost see Bishopriggs.

Apart from pit-stops (Crispin with his bowels and Charlie with his hair), all five ran strongly for the full three hours, except Archie who stuck to his word and pulled up after two hours and spent the last hour frightening small children and completing a couple of crossings at a pace befitting a man of his advanced years. The deceptive hill that had to be tackled in both directions was a real bugger, and all five Westies reported a marked slackening in pace in the last hour as the heat, the unrelenting pounding of the road and the cruel absence of the promised cakes took their toll.

Final tallies were as follows:

Damon 20 crossings 25 miles

Crispin 20 crossings 25 miles

Charlie 18 crossings 22.5 miles

John D 16 crossings 20 miles

Archie 14 crossings 17.5 miles

Dave Calder bottled out, recording a humiliating zero crossings and zero miles, then hastily decided that the event would not, after all, count in the Winter League

Mark my words – that Crispin lad will go places. [Wales wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I wrote this!]

I somehow managed to talk him into accompanying me to Northern Ireland for a crack at the Belfast Marathon, only a week after our combined exertions on the Erskine Bridge [see this article]. How many runners, let alone hill runners, would see the allure in taking on a road marathon at two days’ notice, a week after a similar distance on the road, especially when the intervening week has been characterised by rotten guts and nights perched on the porcelain?

We travelled on the Sunday evening, Crispin popping immodium and Rennies like smarties, and awoke to blue skies and a steadily rising temperatures on race-day.

The race blurb boasted of a 6000-strong field. 5,000 of these turned out to be participants in the 5-leg relay, run over the same course at the same time as the individual race. This made for an interesting and confusing run, as we had very little idea of where we were in the field as fresh relay runners kept skipping past.

A brace of Kenyans had been drafted in for the event, and duly ran away from the rest of the individuals and all-but two of the relay teams. Further back I set off faster than I’d planned (no surprise there, then) and soon commenced a battle with my irksome bowels that would dominate the middle section of my race. A quick dive for the bushes (posh suburban garden) at 7 miles cost me a minute or so, but I was straight back into 6:10 miling with no ill-effects. 10 miles passed in 62 minutes.

A second whirlwind pit-stop (building site) at 12 miles cost me another minute or two, and 15 miles and my first jelly-baby point trotted by in 1:34. Thereafter stomach-cramps assailed me and I slowed gradually and miserably until a 7:20 22nd mile. Another handful of jelly-babies and a dramatic improvement and guts and spirits returned me to cruising speed, and I happily bagged 4 places in the last three miles to finish 10 seconds shy of my target in 2:50:10.

A few minutes back, Crispin ran a disgracefully conservative race, bouncing unruffled through half way in 1:29 and speeding up for a 1:27 second half and a final clocking of 2:56. Judging by his ridiculously fast last few hundred metres and his look of utter composure at the end, he could knock lumps off this whenever he wants. He ran exactly to plan (I hate bastards who can do that!) and trotted bemused through the latter miles, waiting in vain for the expected ‘wall’.

I joined Crispin as a last minute replacement for Damon Rodwell in the Scafell Class. We failed to match Damon and Crispin’s usual high standard of finishing 2nd, but managed a 3rd place despite a few dithery moments trying to find checkpoints. The 4th team very nearly caught us in a mad dash for the penultimate checkpoint, but we did just enough to hold them off.

The routes started at Gatesgarth farm by Buttermere and crossed the Ennerdale hills for a mid-way camp in Wasdale next to Joss Naylor’s farm at Greendale, before returning back across Ennerdale on Sunday.

A strange feeling of deja vu surrounded this year’s Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon, based around Coniston on July 3rd and 4th. Once again, Crispin and I had teamed up at the last minute (the Friday afternoon!). Once again Manny had pulled out with a bruised pinky or some-such. I’d intended to run with Chris Upson, and Crawford was hanging around in the wings as a substitute for Manny. When Chris pulled out with gut-rot on Friday morning, it appeared that fate had once again thrust Crispin and me together. Like last year, when I’d started completely untrained, I ran like a complete donkey on the first day and had absolutely no navigational input, and recovered slightly on the second day.

By way of contrast, this year I had actually done a little running in the months leading up to the event, and even a couple of races. My awful performance on day 1 therefore came as a nasty surprise, but my transformation on day 2 was startling, and thus unhindered, Crispin steered us to three fastest legs out of the day’s seven.

The weather on the Saturday was absolutely atrocious. Clouds were swirling around Conistion’s roof-tops and on the open hill we were continually battered by hail, rain and a blustery wind that made picking our way through the treacherously slippery boulder-fields very tricky indeed. We had no knowledge of these hills at all, and marking our maps up at the start we were struck both by the length of the course (two hours longer than last year, it turned out) and difficulty of the route-choices.

Perhaps this lack of local knowledge was largely responsible for a couple of navigational howlers that saw us finish the day in fourth place, over 40 minutes adrift of the leaders, but within striking distance of the teams in 2nd and 3rd spots. At one point we lost the best part of half-an-hour trying to cross the River Esk in spate, eventually hacking uphill through waist-high bracken for a couple of miles to the point where we should have been in the first place.

The weather cleared to some extent around lunchtime, but by now we were both pretty shagged and the relentless boulder-hopping and bracken-bashing sapped our morale as much as it did our legs. We reckoned that, with the exception of the lovely fast mile-long run to the overnight camp, there hadn’t been more than a couple of hundred metres unbroken running in the whole day of almost eight hours. Chris was waiting at the finish, having miraculously recovered from his cholera and driven down for the Pike o Bliscoe race. Having perused our map and told us how stupid our route-choices had been, he set off for a hot shower in Penrith – bastard! The instant we had the tent pitched, Crispin retired to his sleeping-bag, from which he was only coaxed out after some hours by the promise of a pint in the Old Dungeon Ghyll just a few hundred meters away.

Day 2 dawned a bit brighter, although we’d had a fair bit of rain in the night, and another flurry just as we were packing up. We made full use of the half-hour route-planning before the whistle, and managed to miss the start, watching hundreds of teams snaking up the first climb while we were still shoving things desperately into our packs. Picking our way through all these stragglers probably cost us a couple of minutes, but this was offset by the adrenalin-rush and frustration. By the top of the first ascent we had passed all but two pairs and a handful of individuals, whom we worked through on the long contour to the second checkpoint.

In contrast to the previous day, I was now running slightly more strongly than Crispin, which gave me the chance to share the navigation. I’m woefully slow at this, and need to stop and think about the map, while Crispin can do it in full flight. The cerebral aspect certainly added to my enjoyment, and I think it may have reduced the burden on my long-suffering companion a little. At least I hope it did!

Sunday was generally much, much more runnable than Saturday, and this combined with the benefit of the half-hour’s route planning seemed to favour us. We fairly romped through the early legs and at the fourth checkpoint were neck and neck with Saturday’s leaders. Fatigue found us, however, and we slowed over the second half. One bit of pretty crap navigation lost us 10 minutes, but this apart we had a very good day and a cracking last two legs on very fast terrain saw us overhaul both the teams we’d had in our sights to repeat last-year’s second place.

The horrible weather and the unusually long first day (which the organiser later acknowledged) led to a very high attrition rate. As far as we could make out, only eight of the 17 or 18 teams that started the elite pairs’ class completed the first day, and at least one of these failed to make the finish. By the time we left for home, almost four hours after finishing, only five teams in our category had been posted on the board.

Interestingly, for second place last year we received a crappy little bronze medal. This year it was an equally crappy gold one. Hopefully we can complete the set next year, although what position we need to aim at for a silver is anyone’s guess...

I can add these photos:-

And why? Well, with two vegetarians, three meat eaters and one nut allergy in the family, what were we to eat for the main Christmas Day meal? I wanted one main meal for all, rather than doing separate meat and veggie things with even more hassle and washing up. But it would have to be something impressive, because for the last few years (when we were all meat eating) we’ve been used to magnificent roast pork with crackling  (always from W George Butchers in Talgarth). With nut roast off the options list, I had to find something that could hold its own as a centrepiece, having the same impact and presence as roast goose or pork. So I settled on a “Leopard Pie”. Now this doesn’t seem promisingly vegetarian at first glance, but I felt it was one of those classic recipes that has one defining feature and can then be adapted creatively. In this case the defining feature is the macaroni (in a pie!).  I did a trial run, and this final recipe benefitted from that enormously. But I confess the quantities below may be inaccurate, as the final version used leftover frozen filling from the trial run, augmented with other ingredients, and the final quantities have been adapted but remain largely theoretical until I make it again.

Here’s the finished article, or rather what was left of it on Boxing day!

The bulk of the filling is roasted vegetables, egg, various cheeses, and macaroni.  I had recently harvested an enormous Musquee de Provence squash from the garden, but I think a butternut would be fine.

The filling can be made in advance, and frozen if required (omitting the eggs, cream, cheeses and macaroni until just before assembling the pie).

Ingredients

300g macaroni

12 quails’ eggs (or 2 good quality eggs if these can’t be found)

6 medium/large good quality eggs

Whipping cream (small pot)

Olive oil

White wine (half a bottle)

A stalk of rosemary

3/4 lb squash (butternut or similar), peeled and de-seeded, chopped into 1 inch chunks

2 onions, in large chunks e.g. 1/8ths

1 large carrot, in large chunks

1 fennel bulb, sliced and chopped

2 sticks of celery, chopped

1/2 lb mushrooms (quartered or sliced)

4 cloves of garlic, crushed and sliced

10 stoned prunes, roughly chopped

1 cinnamon stick or 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

100g grated parmesan cheese

Taleggio cheese (typical half-pound pack, about 200-250g). Limburger/Herve would be a worthy alternative, or possibly Gruyere.

1 Halloumi pack (150g)

Salt and pepper

For the pastry

360g flour

180g butter

1 medium/large egg

Equipment

1 roasting tray, 1 large pan, cheese grater

23cm cake/pie tin, preferably springform

Method

Roast the vegetables with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, and the rosemary, at 180°C for one hour. After 30 minutes, turn the vegetables and add a glass of white wine and some salt and ground black pepper. After an hour, they should be browned around the edges and well cooked. Set aside, removing any rosemary twigs.

While the vegetables are roasting, fry the mushrooms over a medium heat in a little oil until well browned. Set aside or add to the vegetables.

In the same pan, add a little more oil and the garlic, and fry for a couple of minutes (we don’t want to burn the garlic), then add 2 small glasses of white wine, half a pint of stock, the chopped prunes, the cinnamon stick, a pinch of salt, and simmer for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave to infuse for at least 30 minutes. Then discard the cinnamon stick. If you don’t have a cinnamon stick, add half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon instead.

Combine the above cooked ingredients, and add the grated parmesan. This mixture can be made in advance and frozen or kept in the fridge for a day or two.

Weigh out the flour and butter, roughly chop the butter, place bowl of flour and butter in the freezer for ten minutes.  Then whizz in the food processor until mixed. Break the egg into the mix, add a tablespoon of cold water, and pulse to mix until the pastry comes together (a little more cold water might be needed).

Separate into roughly 1/3 and 2/3 portions (lid and base/sides).  Roll out thinly between sheets of clingfilm, and line the base and sides of a 23cm tin with the pastry. Allow sufficient height in the sides to fold over the lid when it’s added. Put the tin and the remaining pastry in the fridge until ready to fill.

We’re now going to assemble the filling, so a large pan or mixing bowl is needed. If resuming here with defrosted or chilled mix, we want to reheat the vegetable mixture so it’s warm, without cooking it any more.

Hard boil the quails’ eggs, cool, peel and remove the white. We will add the unbroken yolks to the mixture later. If you can’t find quails’ eggs, just chop the hard-boiled yolks of 2 hens’ eggs.

Cook the macaroni in lots of salted boiling water until just done – this taking exactly 10 minutes for a typical supermarket dried macaroni. Drain, add some olive oil to prevent sticking, and add to the main mix.

Dice the Taleggio into cubes about 1.5-2cm, and give the Halloumi similar treatment though a bit smaller. Add to the mix. We don’t want the Taleggio to melt away at this stage, so the mix should not be too hot.

Separate the yolks of 4 eggs (set aside the whites for something else), mix with two whole eggs and about 100ml whipping cream. Add to the mix.

Add the hard-boiled egg yolks.

The mix should now be moist but without pooling liquid. If it seems dry, add some more white wine and cream.

The seasoning of the filling should be OK already, but use your judgement and add more S&P to taste.

Fill the pie and add the lid, folding over the sides to seal. Prick the lid and brush with egg/milk. Here’s the pie before the lid goes on:

And ready to go in the oven:

Bake at 200°C for ten minutes, then 180°C for 50 minutes. The pie should be nicely browned. Remove from the oven and rest for ten minutes while finishing off accompaniments (for our Christmas Day lunch this meant roast potatoes, sprouts, peas, bread sauce and onion gravy!).

The pie should hold together reasonably well on cutting into slices, and will keep well for Boxing Day picnics.  Leopard Pie Curry is not a thing.

Here’s the pie just out of the oven (onion gravy in the background):

And after carving and serving half of it. Eagle-eyed observers might spot some chick peas – that’s right, and I left them out of the recipe above as we didn’t think they were needed.

Why not give it a go, and please feel free to comment below with any suggestions!

It’s a Brecon Cathedral take on the famous Turkish dish "Imam Bayildi", which translates as "The Imam swooned".  One variant of the story has him swooning at the unctuous delights of the dish, the other when he discovered how much expensive olive oil his wife had used to make it.  If made well it is indescribably delicious – far exceeding the promise of the raw materials. A certain former Brecon chorister, who normally hates aubergines, described this a “surprisingly yummy”.

This recipe is derived from one published online by the New York Times, with practical modifications in the light of personal disasters experience.

The dish is not quick, if made in one go – about 2 to 2.5 hours. However the component parts of the dish can be prepared ahead, and the whole dish is best made in advance and served warm.

Allow half an aubergine per person as a starter, or as a main with other things (e.g. stuffed vine leaves, baked feta, rice/chips, salad), or dish up two halves with light accompaniments.

Ingredients

2 aubergines (each 15-20cm long)

1 large or 2 medium onions

1 red pepper (optional)

6 cloves of garlic

4 tablespoons Olive oil (extra virgin)

3 teaspoons sugar

Salt

Water

Either:

1 tin chopped tomatoes

A handful of chopped fresh parsley

A handful of chopped fresh basil

A handful of chopped fresh dill

Some fresh thyme and/or oregano, or dried if fresh not available

Or:

if you cannot lay hands on fresh herbs, it's (almost) OK to use a jar of good Bolognese sauce instead of the tomatoes + herbs.

Or+: 

I have sometimes used both, i.e. raw ingredients plus a jar, in order to have loads of lovely sauce left over.

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C.

The aubergines:

Half the aubergines lengthways.  Don’t remove the stalk, halve it - this helps keep things together during the long cook. On the inner faces, make two or three slits in the flesh lengthways - as deep as you can without going through the skin on the back. Place the aubergine halves face down onto an oiled tray, or onto oiled greaseproof paper on a tray to help avoid sticking. Put in the oven for 30 minutes.  When done, the skins should be wrinkly and the face slightly browned. Flip the aubergines face up, and sprinkle with some course salt (including in the slits), and set aside to rest for 30 minutes (NB this can be done in advance).

The sauce:

While the aubergines are baking, mix the chopped tomatoes and herbs in a large bowl, with a tsp sugar, a tablespoon of olive oil, and a little salt. If using a Bolognese sauce, don’t add salt.

Finely dice the red pepper (optional), slice the onion very thinly and gently fry them in about 2 tbsp olive oil for about 20 minutes, stirring regularly. The onions and peppers should be completely soft but not browned.

Mash/chop the garlic and add to the frying onions for the final minute. Then tip the lot into the bowl of tomatoes, mix, and set aside. NB this tomato sauce can be prepared in advance.

Bringing it all together:

Place the aubergine halves in a large, heavy-bottomed lidded pan or skillet. There needs to be room to get in with a spoon for basting, so use two pans if you don’t have one large enough.

Cover each half aubergine with the tomato sauce, easing it into the splits as far as possible. Put on enough to cover all the flesh of the aubergine, but you don’t want it falling off the sides. Don’t worry if you have sauce left over – use it in tomorrow’s veggie pasta or chilli. Or eat it.

In a jug, mix 2 tablespoons oil, the same amount of water, 2 teaspoons sugar, and a bit of lemon juice (optional).

Pour about half of this around the aubergines, perhaps 0.5 centimetres deep.

Put the pan(s) on a low-medium heat until the liquid is simmering, then cover and reduce the heat to minimum.

Cook gently for at least an hour, and preferably an hour and a half. Remove the lid occasionally and lose any condensate from the lid. Baste the aubergines with the liquid from the pan, and add a little more from the jug if it’s becoming too dry.

By the end, there should be not much liquid and it should be slightly caramelised – dark goo is good, so long as it hasn’t burnt.

Allow the aubergines to cool in the pan, and (as mentioned above) serve whenever you need to, but ideally when warm. Any remaining juices in the pan can be spooned over. They are just as good for tomorrow’s lunch with crusty bread.
Crispin  ...]]> https://flowerbunch.org.uk/father-mark-swooned crispin.flower@live.co.uk (Crispin) https://flowerbunch.org.uk/father-mark-swooned https://flowerbunch.org.uk/father-mark-swooned Sun, 10 Mar 2019 08:45:15 GMT Another emailed report to Westies, shortly after we moved to Brecon when I was still running under the “W”. This was possibly my worst ever fell race, in terms of injury, abysmal performance, and general misery! And that shoulder still gives me gyp now.

3 Peaks (too many in my opinion)

Still no word of Gordon R… hope you finished all right.

But seriously now, the Three Peaks race, Sunday 28th April 2002, was a strenuous day out in less than ideal conditions, and a busy day for the St Johns Ambulance folk. I had dashed straight into the first aid tent at the finish (only to avoid the kit check you understand – no hat being a disqualifying offence), and I can heartily recommend it as a return to the womb. No sooner was I in the door than I was coddled and reclining in blankets, fed sweet tea, massaged, informed that my temperature was only 35 degrees, amused by watching other fragged runners taking oxygen and grinning as stupidly as I was, told my shoulder wasn’t actually broken but would hurt like hell for days (true)…. but then how indescribably horrific to have to leave that heated haven, emerging into the rainy gales again.

The first couple of hours were great – easy running up Pen y Ghent (35 mins) with Gordon, undulating descent to Ribblehead (about 1hr30), then across the river as the weather got really nasty, through the bogs and climbing fast up Whernside. I put my foot in a hole and didn’t know whether I could go on for a few minutes, but my ankle found its strength again and I kept overtaking people as the gale and hail got stronger as we came down Whernside with Ingleborough looking really black and bad ahead. And it was. Really really very bad as you climb gently and relentlessly on a silly little duckboard walk, and I was walking, and a Carnethy lady went past (to win), and the bloke with the big ginger hair from Tring AC. Then the vertical ascent, and I was passed by one of those Steptoe lookalikes from Lancashire. Then delicious descent, and after passing Steptoe I was just starting to remember how to run again, when I took an enormous flier, 30 feet or more I reckon, landing on my shoulder, and really wanted to sit there and blub. Struggled on over the slippy limestone pavements and slime and slippy stiles, finished, first aid tent.

24 miles, 4,500 foot ascent. I think I did about 3hr52 (forgot to stop my watch). Winner Simon Booth, Borrowdale. The bloke in the 120 pound diving suit is just arriving at the first checkpoint as I write.

PS perhaps my legs were compromised by a glorious Westies victory in the Black Mountains Roundabout the previous weekend? This 25 mile 6,500 footer was a bit short on serious competition, as even after missing the start by 5 mins and stopping for a midpoint cup of tea with Naomi, I won by 35 minutes!

Rigby goes supersonic at the Brecon Beacons

‘On yer marks’…

‘get set’……………

133 runners start to shuffle…

‘hang on!!’…

133 runners stumble and start tripping over each other, but some are 20 yards down the road…

133 runners are all thinking ‘What, is this going to be the first ever false start in 3000 years of fell running? We’ll tear him limb from limb…’. The starter sees 133 runners glaring (including Scoffers), and knows he doesn’t stand a chance…

‘Oh, go on then’…and we all embark on the Brecon Beacons race, 19 miles, 4500 feet ascent, and the last British Champs race of the year, with all to play for at the sharp end.

At the blunter end, I was sure this was all going to end in tears – just recovering from 3 weeks of gastric flu, and generally feeling pretty down in the mouth about running. Still, I felt good up the first long climb to Craig Pwllfa, and even better striding out along the ridge towards the central Beacons, and I knew there were cars at halfway in case my wheels fell off.

Mark had stayed with us on friday night, and his top tip was to start eating as early as possible. Now this was music to the ears of a fat bastard, so I was tucking in right from the off. And then my colleague Jon was halfway up Cribyn with jelly babies, banana and drink, so I troughed some more, and nearly let Gavin Bland get away. Jon told me that Mark was in the lead, but being chased by lots of evil-looking skinny beggars, and that I was in 31st place.

What, Gavin Bland? some mistake surely! OK maybe he was having a particularly bad day, but I caught him again at the top of Cribyn and said howdyado, and he kind of looked at me with a look that said ‘jeez now I’m being passed by people I never even seen before from obscure southern welsh clubs’.

At first that banana nearly killed me, wrestling it open while chasing some Newcastle chappy along ‘shrapnel ridge’ – a gradual descent after Corn Du, dead fast but chocky and loose underfoot – I tripped and nearly flew 400m into the Neuadd Reservoir below. But it was all the more yummy for that (though I’m sure Ronnie would disapprove of such performance-enhancing substances), and I soon found that the Newcastle man was none other than Dermot, again a bit of a surprise as I’ve never been within a mile of him in anything. He was feeling a bit shady, so I eased up and we chatted along the old railway track for a couple of miles, then found a great line up Pant y Craigiau passing three or four who got caught in the rough.

Suddenly Talybont reservoir was in sight, shimmering deep blue and distant, and so was Tor y Foel, the final hill, looking a long way away, bigger than I remembered, and suddenly making me wonder what I had left. Softmints!

Dermot had dropped back, then came back at me fast and we were catching folk in droves as we found the good lines through some non-descript hummocks. Dermot had to beat Horwich folk for the team prizes, and we caught two big ones.

Then onto the track, a nasty fast burning blistering 2 miles of track, catching Scoffers and a couple of others, feet burning, Dermot creeping away.

And then the moment of truth – Tor Y Foel, can you run it? Well, maybe half of it, sat on the arse of an Eryri who gasped near the top ‘are you Welsh? are you in the championship?’ and, when I said no, seemed to weep for joy and settle into a plod.

I’ve flown down Tor Y Foel before, but this time it was just too steep, and I busted my toes coming down like a granny with cramp (Mark said he and Simon Booth felt exactly the same), then bursting out onto the Talybont dam for the wobbly sprint to the finish.

And Mark finished 3rd overall, a couple of seconds behind Simon Booth, and a couple of minutes behind Nick Sharp who clipped the old record with 2.28.30. Mark was miles ahead of Robby Bryson and Mark Roberts, and is now the British v40 Champion!

I was around 2.55, about 26th place, not sure yet, but about 20 mins quicker than I hoped for. 1st Lady Sally Newman, around 3.10.

The team stuff was all rather complicated, but I think Ambleside won, with Newcastle dumping Borrowdale into 3rd and taking the Vets prize over Horwich.

It was a great day, a great race, and I’ve almost finished drinking Mark’s prizes.

Good ? – oh yes

Rich ? – plenty of prizes

Fell Race? – not really, but a cheeky 6 miler on tracks with 900 feet of ascent. Forest of Dean, near Symonds Yat.

A slightly longer course than of old (in the days when this was Damon’s stomping ground), had us stumbling through a field for a few hundred frantic metres, tripping over sugar beet and tiny little junior runners. The front three started extremely fast, in fact I never saw them again, so I tucked in behind another pair – grizzled and stringy enough make me feel like I was in a fell race after all.

Then up a sharp climb, over the fence onto the road, and then onto the first of two laps. This started along twisty fast woodland tracks back down to the river, then a long varied climb, where someone kindly called me back from a wrong turning before I’d gone too far, up onto the top a of long ridge (the ‘fell’). Very fast along here and back down a grass track, and I was feeling distinctly shagged as we hit a slight climb – I was seriously considering calling it a day and heading back to the pub. Too many people about, so I took it easy into the beginning of the second lap, letting the grizzlies get a lead on me, and then suddenly felt really stong again as we started to climb, and I left them for dead in the woods. But couldn’t get back to the 3rd chap, who was nearly a minute ahead.

The winner, in the horribly good time of 39 minutes, was the course record holder, a v40 called Billy Nott (I think) from Halesowen.

I was fourth just under 46 mins, winning a frighteningly large bottle of Lidl cider for my pains.

PS Sorry Damon – I couldn’t make it to the Blaisdon Jelly Leg (too much medicine last night), and they said this is its last year.

A beautiful epic Bob Smith Traverse (all six 800m summits of S Wales), in bright sun snow and ice on saturday. 20 miles run, 25 miles bike, with 2635m ascent. Decided and planned late friday evening!

Some bits very difficult, plenty slides and falls, all quite slow. For those with maps (Chris) … Started at the last farm N of Llyn y Fan Fach, over Fan Brycheiniog to road at 854 222, then across the bogs and tussocks to Crai dam 889 219. Coffee, chat and shoe change, onto bike, over to Heol Senni then long climb up to Storey Arms toilets 987 198 for hot rice pudding and coffee. Then up to the three Beacons summits, Duwynt, Corn Du and Pen Y Fan, and down to Cwm Gwdi 023 247, for pizza, via the most dangerous descent ever with huge sheets of sloping ice – sore arse and elbows. The lanes were too icy for my cunning shortcuts, so went down to the Brecon bypass, then via Llanfihangel Talyllyn across to Pengenfford and then Cwmfforest 186 289. Totally shagged, and having to get off to walk up icy steep hills. This is the longest bike ride I’ve done for at least 8 years!

Munching whole nurseries of my little jelly baby friends on the climb up Waun Fach, with deep snow and dead cold feet. Then as the sun started to set behind Mynydd Troed and the Beacons behind me, the snow all started to go orange and pink, the sky deep blue and a big half moon and it all felt great. The athmosphere disturbed only by my mobile phone going – Naomi nipping the ear, and after a 5 minute chat I realised I’d dropped my glove when hauling the phone out of my pocket – 300m back down the hill but too cold to go on without.

From Pen Y Gader Fawr, I couldn’t drop down quickly into Grwyne Fawr (usual BST finish) because Jon my support couldn’t drive all the way round. So I had to retrace my steps back over Waun Fach, and down the steep slopes to Cwmfforest again, almost dark now, plenty big cats about…

Total time 7 hours 35 mins.

Huge thanks to Jon, for agreeing on friday night without any idea what we were going to do, driving 110 miles to all the right places, and cooking the best tinned rice pudding ever.

Lending weight to the 15-20 mile/per week training philosophy advocated recently by Rodwell/Gallagher, I just ripped 5 mins off my marathon PB in Cardiff this morning, after preparation that made last year’s last minute dash to Belfast look like a carefully planned campaign. I wasn’t sure whether to run at all, as mugs full of green gunge have been exploding from my head for a week, but when you’ve forked out £15 there’s really no choice.

We all stayed overnight in a fleapit with broken beds and lethal electics, on a road where the traffic was at its heaviest at 3.30am, and a few metres from the Mardi Gras festival site. So it was a bleary me that lined up at 8am with about 1500 others, on a beautifully crisp and sunny morning.

A strange course really, looping around and around the city then taking a 10 mile out and back, all uphill on the out and down the back. It all seemed like they’d had trouble making up the distance.

Cardiff hasn’t staged a marathon since 1986, and they seemed to have forgotten what the mile markers are for. There were plenty of them, and they were in the right order, but the size of the gaps needed work. My second mile was very respectable at 5.07, but later ones were over 7 minutes. I was aiming for under 3 hours – maybe it was this total confusion that sneaked me through halfway in around 1.26 and over the line in 2.51.

Winning time 2.33 (no Kenyans).

No race T-shirt, but a bottle of moisturiser and a PG Tips monkey instead !?

PS does anyone (else) pee on the move? Any tips?

Just checked the results for Westies….Mark Forrest (have we met?) sorry I didn’t say hi !!

OK I ran the second half with my eyes shut, after passing the pooey man with the brown smeary legs, but I thought I’d spot a big W if there was one. But according to the results, I must have passed you at around 20 miles…

Splits:

Mark

KM10: 0:38:33 KM20: 1:18:26

HALF: 1:22:46 KM30: 1:58:51

KM40: 2:42:11 FINISH: 2:52:19

Crispin

KM10: 0:40:22 KM20: 1:20:40

HALF: 1:25:03 KM30: 2:00:06

KM40: 2:39:03 FINISH: 2:47:11

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it!

I had a horrible knee, after mashing it on a rock at Pen Y Fan previous weekend, and that kept me v slow in first half, until the pain spread over my whole body thus rendering it not quite so worrying.

The power of the marathon to reduce a man to jelly never ceases to amaze me. The moment I crossed the line, I was transformed from a 6.15-miling machine, feeling like I could go for ever, into an hobbling freak. I couldn’t have started running again for anything, even to get away from a conversation about foot-plant technique with Marcus.

And the large bag of groceries they kindly give you doesn’t exactly help – it took me 15 mins to walk 400m to the pub where my ‘supporters’ had gathered (in preference to the actual race route which was a bit drizzly and lager-free).

And now, 3 days on, I can still barely walk – stick to the hills my friends!!

The current bout of excess wind contributed greatly to the jollity of Ffordd y Bryniau, 9 miles, 2000 feet, 82 feet running. Having driven through and around numerous fallen trees, barely able to see the road for stuff, I found the rendezvous completely empty. As the wind was too strong to get the car door open, I cursed for a while, decided it must have been cancelled, then toddled off to see Caerphilly castle. The ridiculous scale of Caerphilly Castle suggests that it was built by a man with a lot of enemies, or perhaps a very small willy, but anyway it was shut because of the wind, and just to support this one of the towers was leaning at a very interesting angle. So I ate a pack of Mr Kipling almond slices and drank a bottle of coke. Then I decided to go for a run anyway, and drove back through the debris to the car park, which of course was now full of cars and runners. I’d forgotten to put my clock back.

Five minutes til the start, and full of bloody cake!

Off we went up Mynydd Rudry, everyone going weeee in the wind and trying to stay on the hill, then we turned full into the teeth at the top, and …stopped. A beautiful sight, about 20 runners all doing a kind of Michael Jackson thing, and those with hoods going backwards at 3 knots. Save yourselves, cut them free, we yelled, but for some it was too late.

We all quickly adopted our own bizarre technique (some crabs, some drunken buffalos) til we were back in the woods and from then on it was plain sailing down every wrong turning possible. I ended up at the back twice, the second time after 4 miles. Only those who’d done the race at least 3 times before stood a chance of finding the route, and one of the guys who did the extra mile with me was never seen again. Not that the organisers seemed to care, when I asked whether anyone might be wanting to look for him. I suppose the dangers of these wee hills are not so great, though there was a fair chance of being eaten by a pit-bull in the valley sections. Anyway, after about 45 mins I was wondering why we were constantly heading into the gale – surely we had to turn back soon, or was the wind changing?

Clawing places back – the industrial estate section suiting my technique perfectly – then onto the ascent of the last hill, and I flew round those hairpins (more road). Then onto the hellish steep hands-in-the-bracken climb, keeping controlled and ready for the final descent where I would certainly fly past those two ahead. Strange, lots of people at the trig point, and some mad bloke sprinting past me and then collapsing at the trig….. err, that was the finish. Oh well, sixth, and only 6 mins behind the winner who knew the route really well.

Still puzzled by the wind direction, I asked if it was far back to the car park. It is 9 miles, we’re now on the Garth, we started at Rudry. Ah, a point-to-point, how amusing [I had only shorts, vest, thin pertex top, no lift, and it was blimmin freezing!].

Prize-giving in the pub, and the first 25 were in for a real treat, for the sponsor (InTech Systems Automation “Do your systems need automating?”) had kindly donated some drink mats – please see below pic*. A strange choice, as the mat claims to be “hand-made in Wales”, but then everything is a bit strange in the Valleys.

1. Tom Gibbs MDC 62mins

2. A.N. Other Les Croupiers

6 C Flower MDC (ouch) 66 mins

10 Emma someone (unattached, but in national team) 68 mins

Team prize MDC

The image (*) has gone astray, but I think I still have that mat somewhere and must add a picture if I can find it, as it was amazing – a kind of drink-mat model of Castell Coch.