Snack of the Month - buying buns on holiday

OK, this is my last holiday post, I promise. Regular readers will know I do a snack of the month feature. This month I'm doing something a bit different and blogging about a snack I had on holiday.

The snack was a Belgian Bun from Martin's Dairy, which is a little bakery shop on the quayside in Looe in Cornwall. I have borrowed this photo from their website because, inexplicably, I didn't take a photo of this bun before I ate it. I hope they don't mind me borrowing their photo, but it will be in the context of the most positive Snack of the Month review I have ever written and probably will ever write. 

How good was this bun? I will put it as simply as I can. 

THIS BUN HAVE RUINED ME FOR BUNS FROM NOW ON.

Seriously, I think every time I have a bun from this point forward I will be comparing it to the Belgian Bun from Martin's Dairy. They were that good. The bready bit was perfectly done - not dry, not wet, with that elastically gluteny texture of an ideally baked bun. There was enough jam in the folds of the bun, not too much, not too little, exactly the optimal amount. A few raisins. Just enough to notice them. Not too many. The icing was more like a thick glaze not a fondant. 

They were exceptional. 

After we had finished eating our buns, Cathy looked at me and said, "Soooo, are we going back to Looe tomorrow morning?" (We didn't. We should have.)

Have these really ruined me for buns? Well, I tried two other baked products on holday after these buns that really sounded like they would have been my sort of thing. A "Chelsea doughnut" - a Chelsea bun cooked like a doughnut - and a cinnamon bun from a bakery claiming the title of oldest continuing bakery business in England (and also claims they may have supplied biscuits to the passengers on the Mayflower). 

Neither were anywhere near as good as the Belgian Bun from Martin's Dairy. 

I really doubt any bun will ever be as good. 

So, if you're passing Looe, stop and buy one. Even if you're not passing Looe, drive there and try one. See if I'm wrong about this. But be warned. It might just ruin you for buns too.

Something else we saw in Looe

We were parked on the quayside and when we went back to our car, we saw a chap eating a fish and chip supper in his car, being stared at by a couple of seagulls on his bonnet.

They wanted some chips! He turned his engine on. They didn't budge. He turned his windscreen wipers on. They didn't budge. So he sat there eating his fish and chips and they just stood there peering through the windscreen at him. 

A day at Dartmoor Zoo

On our recent holiday we had a slightly chilly day at Dartmoor Zoo in Sparkwell not far from Plymouth. It's the zoo that the film We Bought a Zoo is based on, although in the film the zoo is in California, not Devon.

On the way in we saw the tapirs eating their breakfast.

Tapirs are some of my favourite animals. Unfortunately the chilly wind deterred them from staying outside and once they had polished off their meal they went and hid in their little house.

The tapir's neighbours, the capybara family were also a bit chilly but were happier to stay outside.

Although it's quite a small zoo (which makes it really manageable and good for young children or older people), Dartmoor Zoo has an impressive array of big cats. It feels like visitors can get quite close to them and the design of the enclosures makes it easy to take photos. 

Of couse, it also means the cats can have a look at you!

I learned the difference between big cats and lesser cats from the talk by the cheetah enclosure. Big cats roar, and lesser cats purr, but no cats do both. Cheetahs are some of the largest of the lesser cats and we heard them purring in anticipation when the zookeepers brought out their food. Because they are lesser cats, they have kittens not cubs. 

Just across from the cheetahs they have lions and tigers. The tiger was putting on a show, doing adorable tigerish things like grooming.

But at one point he yawned revealing a set of fangs that could rip a human's throat out and it was a reminder that these creatures are deceptively fluffy.

The reptile house was small but well laid out and the lizards were visible. The geckos were fun. I told the volunteer staff member working in there about how my family used to have geckos living in the house when we lived in the Gambia. (They were very useful, eating flies and bugs. Even my grandma liked having them around and she wasn't keen on critters.)

There were a few smaller animals as well. Some were hard to photograph, like the potoroos. They are small marsupials that look like a cross between a big rat and a small wallaby. There were also some meerkats, which seem to be mandatory at zoos now. I found them amusing, particularly as it looked like one of the keepers had left a welly behind and the meerkat was colonising it in the name of meerkat-kind.

The following evening we watched the film of We Bought a Zoo. There was one bit which was a dead giveaway that the story was based on a tourist attraction in the UK - just before the zoo is about to open the weather turns into nonstop rain potentially preventing anyone from attending on opening day. That felt much more likely to have happened in Devon than in California!

A week in the Tamar Valley

I mentioned in my previous blog post that we unexpectedly ended up going to Cornwall for a week. We had been planning to go to Cambridge but then our reason for going over there got cancelled. So we headed to Kernow instead, literally just inside the county staying in sight of the River Tamar with Devon on the far bank. 

We were staying in a little cottage in Calstock, a small village with an impressive viaduct over the Tamar.

We could see the river over the roofs and chimneys from our bedroom window.

Calstock isn't very big. It had a couple of pubs, some nice art galleries, a coffee shop and an ice cream parlour. I tried the peanut ice cream. It was delicious.

Walking along the river, we visited Cotehele, which the locals call C'teel. It's a big National Trust property set in nicely scaped gardens.

The closest 'big' place was Tavistock, just across the county border. Neither of us had visited the town before and we enjoyed exploring it. It has some impressive 19th century buildings.

In the Guild Hall we got to see the old magistrates court (and the cells underneath!). Cathy got to sit on the magistrates bench...

... while I was in the dock!

In the exhibition in the building, the list of offences tried in the court included "refusing vaccination" (is it time to bring that back?) and the 19th century equivalent of road rage.

Tavistock also seemed to have an abundance of toy shops, which was great! We got the obligatory photo with a giant Playmobil figure outside the Toymaster.

I really love the wildness of the Cornish coast and the dinky little traditional fishing ports. We went to see the sea at Portwrinkle and then went for an explore in Looe.

And we were also very close to Plymouth. We had both been to Plymouth before. I had a memory of it being a dismal city centre built out of concrete. We saw a different side to the city this time. We parked near the Barbican area next to the Marina.

We saw the Mayflower steps, where the pilgrims set sail for the New World.

And we saw the Leviathan, which is apparently also referred to as the Prawn.

The Barbican is claimed to have more cobbled streets than anywhere else in England. It was full of galleries, boutiques and independent eating houses. Apparently it is where both Catherine of Aragon and Pocahontas both first set foot in England (not off the same boat!). It's also where the word "potatoes" was used for the first time!

We finished our exploring by driving around Plymouth Hoe. The views out to sea were wonderful.

We, thankfully, didn't see any Armadas though.

We drove through the outskirts of Plymouth another day as well - on our way to Dartmoor Zoo. We took lots of photos of animals, enough for a standalone blog post. So that's coming next!

February 2022 - end of month review

This is a bit late as we are already into mid-March, but we had a week away last week so I am playing catch up now. Being almost 2 weeks into March means that I feel like I've forgotten what happened in the shortest month. 

Another reason why the monthly review is hard to write is because events in the wider world took a rather grim turn as Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting the first war in Europe since the early 1990s when Yugoslavia fell apart. I have several thoughts about why this war feels different even to the post 9/11 invasion of Iraq, the long war in Afghanistan or the Syrian civil war. 

There has been a democratisation of war reporting now, with anyone on the ground with a mobile phone supplying footage and commentary. Twitter is full of shaky handheld footage from people in or near the combat zone. This is probably the first war to be livestreamed. It's all very sad and stupid and depressing. 

However it has lifted the lid again on the utter corruption of the UK Government and how easy it has been for Vladimir Putin to purchase the souls of Conservative politicians. It's the ultimate Thatcherite mindset - to put a monetary value on everything. Although Margaret Thatcher would have been horrified to see the way her successors have shilled themselves and her party to malign despots. 

There was a show of solidarity across football crowds with the people of Ukraine. Barry Town fans have long used blue and yellow Ukraine flags as decoration, so it was suddenly sadly relevant to see them being held up by fans at the game against Caernarfon Town at the last game in February.

There were a couple of other notable things about the game. Firstly, the Caernarfon manager had decided to copy the hipster's choice of football manager, Marcelo Bielsa. by sitting on a tub at the edge of his technical area. He got a chant of "Discount Bielsa, you're just a discount Bielsa" aimed at him.

The other was Barry's supporter's rep on the board, Ian, turning up in a suitable costume to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight.

The free bananas that he was handing out were especially welcome as it was a 12.45 kick off and I hadn't had my lunch yet. (I bought chips from the chip van.)

That game was the final one of six matches I attended in February. Barry had two Friday night games so on the free Saturdays I went to Pontardawe Town near Swansea and to Cambrian & Clydach in Clydach Vale near Tonypandy in the Rhondda. They hadn't updated their match board, but the game was on. 

In the middle of the month, Cathy and I celebrated Valentine's Day by watching the film Singin' in the Rain. I thought I had watched it as a kid, but remembered nothing about it at all apart from the iconic bit where Gene Kelly is dancing along singing in the rain, which I reckon I must have seen as a standalone clip. The film has aged quite well, I felt, with the theme of celebrities faking relationships to keep the gossip industry happy being weirdly up-to-date. 

Then towards the end of the month we had a sudden announcement that something we were planning to attend in Cambridge wasn't happening, so we suddenly had no reason to go and stay over there at the beginning of March. In typical fashion, we had just booked accomodation in Cambridgeshire the day before we were told that we didn't have to go. 

Fortunately, we were able to swap our accomodation for a week in Calstock next to the Tamar River on the border of Devon and Cornwall. I will tell you more about that in my next blog post!

Numbers can be playful (the "Twosday" post)

It’s “Twosday” – the Tuesday of all the twos. The 22nd of February 2022, which can be written as 22.2.22. It can also be written as the palindrome 22. 02.2022. It even works if you write it the American way as 2.22.22.

If I had more wherewithal about me I would have posted this at 2.22pm. But sometimes work gets in the way of fun like blogging about weird numbers.

I do like playful numbers, though, and I like playing with numbers. That’s partly why I have done a Christmas Card Audit every year, or keep tabs on the amount of leaflets we receive at election times. Last week I went to see my doctor to discuss my flowmeter readings that I’m doing daily to analyse my lung function. The doctor asked if I minded doing another two weeks’ worth of readings. I said I didn’t mind at all. I love collecting data.

I realise this is an unusual trait – cataloguing mundane things in life. Cathy and I have a little notebook we use to keep score whenever we play Yahtzee. Over the past 10 years we have recorded hundreds of games in there. We have different tactical approaches to playing Yahtzee and one day I plan to analyse the data to see if there is any advantage to one strategy over another. I doubt there will be much of a difference at the end of the data trail.

I know other people share this focus. The aforementioned Christmas Card Audits are easily the posts on my blog that people engage with the most. I sometimes blog about my football stats – there is a whole app dedicated to supporting people like me who like to record which football matches they attend. And I have my own supplementary data projects too, like my ongoing ‘Book of Days’ project.

The obsession with numbers is part of the reason I really like baseball too. The baseball cards that I collect are full of statistics and I admire the way different designers attempt to spice up the data and display it a bit differently. And sometimes the cards trigger other number-related connections as well. Two new cards arrived in the post today, all the way from Rhode Island in the USA. That brace increased my total of cards featuring Tony Gwynn to a significant number that triggered instant recognition – 1066!

All I need to do now is make a reference to conquering my collecting goals and this blog post is complete!

Snack of the Month - canned crisps from Yorkshire

We were sent a hamper at Christmas that included a can of Yorkshire Crisps. Last year I blogged a Snack of the Month from a Christmas hamper that lasted until September. We got round to these crisps much more quickly.

The side of the can made some bold claims, as you'd expect from a relatively fancy brand. They kept it Yorkshire, though, with the promise of "nowt artificial".

Opening the drum reminded me of the phrase I first read on boxes of breakfast cereal. "Some settling of contents may occur." About a third of the can was air.

But they filled a bowl for snacking.

Overall, there was a mild taste of tomato, basil and mozarella. I was expecting more from them. They had a lot of salt on them and the sodium really overpowered the flavourings. 

(On the plus side, the can was fully recyclable. Unlike other canned crisps like Pringles!)

When God revealed the secret of workplace success to Bender the robot

The Planet Express crew

There is an episode of Futurama where Bender, the robot crew member of the Planet Express spaceship, is accidentally fired into deep space. As he speeds into infinity, he becomes the home to a microscopic civilisation which he inadvertently destroys after they start worshiping him as a deity.

With all the life on him wiped out, Bender continues to drift entirely alone until in a far corner of the universe he bumps into God. This gives him the opportunity to ask where he went wrong. As he sees it, when he tried to give people what they asked for, it resulted in their extinction.

I watched the episode again recently, and, as it always does, God’s reply made me laugh. He says, in a suitably booming voice full of gravitas, 

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

I actually think this is really good advice for anyone in the workplace. Work can feel a bit of a thankless task sometimes. But, actually that’s part of the point – if you are doing what you are meant to be doing then everyone around you should be experiencing work without much hassle. People who don't get noticed often don't get thanked. 

But not being noticed isn't a bad thing. Most of the time, the bumps in our experience of work are caused by people not getting things right. Inadequate planning, or delayed decision-making, or subpar delivery, or missing deadlines, all cause problems for everyone else on the team. Similarly, negative experiences of services are almost all due to things not going well - every complaint is pointing out a flaw in the experience.

But when everyone is doing their job correctly, things just happen without anyone really noticing. If the system works the way it should then people don’t notice the system. The stuff people need to do their jobs is there for them to do their jobs. The things that service users need to happen, happen.

And often, when you do everything right that you are meant to do, people won’t really know whether you have done anything at all.

Erasing Cara Dune from Mandalorian merchandise

Cara Dune was a major character in both seasons of The Mandalorian. She debuted in the fourth episode of the first season, when the Mandalorian and the Child he is protecting seek sanctuary on a quiet planet. Cara is also hiding out there, and they team up to protect a village that is being attacked by hostile bandits.

At the end of the first series, the Mandalorian assembles a team of allies that he has made on his various adventures, to take the fight to the people pursuing the Child. Cara joins him and at the end of the final epsiode in the series, stays behind on the planet Navarro, where the showdown took place.

A few episodes into the second season of the show, the Mandalorian returns to Navarro, at the request of Cara and another character, to help them destroy a remnant Imperial base. In the process, they discover some more of the Child’s back-story hinting at why the remaining Imperial forces are hunting him. At the end of that episode, Cara is recruited by the New Republic to become a Ranger, which is a bit like a police sheriff.

At the end of the series, the Mandalorian approaches Cara for help, using her privileges as a newly minted Ranger to find and recruit someone to help him in his mission to rescue the Child from the Empire. Cara joins the Mandalorian and is part of the climactic battle against the Imperial warlord who has captured the Child.

So, as a character, Cara plays an important role in the story arcs of both seasons of The Mandalorian. However, after the second season wrapped, the actor who played Cara, the former MMA fighter Gina Carano, made negative comments about transgender people and refused to apologise. Gina then moved on to other topics, including conspiray theories about the pandemic, and was subsequently fired by the Disney Corporation. This was despite her being lined up to star in a new series set in the Star Wars universe, which Disney has decided to ditch as well.

So, basically that means it’s the end of Cara Dune as a character in future Star Wars projects. Because of the controversial comments made by Gina Carano, any attempt to recast the character would just dredge up all the reasons why the original actor got fired. Disney have decided to move on without both Gina Carano and Cara Dune.

Disney has the right to not employ people who don’t share the organisation's values. As the controversy dragged on, Gina Carano, had several opportunities to retract comments and de-escalate the situation. Instead, things got more toxic until Disney decided it had had enough.

However, Disney has now gone a step further and started removing the character from materials relating to The Mandalorian.

Towards the end of last year, Topps released a set of trading cards in the UK based on The Mandalorian. It was basically a re-release of two sets that had come out previously in the USA, with both sets combined into one big set covering both series. However, Cara Dune is notably absent from the cards.

Cara appears in a couple of still photos taken from various episodes, but very much as a background character. She barely features on the cards with pictures from the episode where she is introduced and first teams up with the Mandalorian. She is notably absent from the shiny ‘character cards’ that are in the set, although other characters who appear in just a few episodes are included.

While I understand the decision to not continue with the character in future projects, I feel ambivalent about the retroactive redaction of media to remove the character completely. Maybe there are contractual issues, although I would imagine the contracts for merchandise were signed a long time ago. Shiny character cards featuring Cara were included in the original trading card releases in the USA. So this is a decision made after the controversy.

I’m not keen on the phrase ‘cancel culture’, because it feels to me that the people who object the most to ‘cancel culture’ are, ironically, the people who think we should ban or boycott anything they don’t like. But this redaction is really noticeable. Because of how prominent a character Cara Dune was in the show, removing her is really obvious, and, weirdly, the removal of the character acts as a reminder by omission of the toxic comments that prompted the controversy. It’s almost as if Cara Dune – the character – made those comments and has been removed from the follow-up media.

I don’t know what the best way forward for the various companies involved would have been. They might have attracted negative attention if Cara Dune appeared in the trading card set from people who can’t distinguish between a character and an actor. Or maybe I am being naïve in thinking that it is possible to watch and enjoy a show without endorsing the views and opinions of the actors playing the characters. These things become intertwined and are hard to differentiate.

Some final notes

The Cara Dune action figure at the top of this post was released as part of a range of ‘retro’ looking figures that copy the style of the original Stars Wars figures that were released over 40 years ago. Because of the controversy, it is very unlikely there will be future action figures of this character. So, I bought one, as a future curiosity more than anything else.

The box of trading cards was a Christmas gift. I now have a complete set of the base cards and most of the insert series. The highlight of the box was a “parallel card”, with a purple tint. 

Only 50 of these were released and I got the very first one as noted on the back!

The character, Moff Gideon, is the Imperial warlord who captured the Child for his wicked plans at the end of the second season of the show. He's not my favourite character but at least he is in several episodes and has a speaking part!

Tracts and trickery

Recently I met up with my longstanding friend, Mark (Hi Mark!), for a coffee. We chatted at length and after we collected our second coffees of the evening, we decided to switch tables. The table we moved to had some literature left on it that looked like this.

At very first glance, I thought someone had left a leaflet along with a decent tip for a hardworking busboy. Then I realised it was something else - and I got a bit excited. This is the first time I have seen an example of a "Fake Bank Note" religious tract in the wild.

When it's taken out of the other leaflet it looks like this.

That's right it's a one million pound note from the 'Bank of Eternity', which bizarrely seems to be endorsed by Simon Cowell. I doubt he has agreed for his image rights to be used like this. The point of the tract is to warn you that large amounts of money or even being as famous as Simon Cowell won't save you on judgement day, so you need to get repenting or you will go to hell. (I'm paraphrasing here, but that's the gist.)

Mark was a bit surprised about how keen I was to look at this bumf. But I have an interest in religious marketing (because I seem to get sent religious post regularly). I've also never seen this in use in the UK. I remember reading several highly critical responses to similar Fake Bank Notes being used in America several years ago - for example, in this post from 2014 on Stuff Christians Like - but I didn't ever expect to see something so tacky in use over here. 

I suppose, like most terrible things that develop in American culture, it was almost inevitable that they would show up in the UK eventually. I can only imagine the disappointment of a staff member thinking for a fleeting second that they have been given a generous tip, only to find it's a hard sell for religion. I can't think of anything more offputting, really. 

I was slightly impressed by the designer's attention to detail. The serial number starts JN316, a reference to John 3.16 - but I can't figure out if the rest of the serial number is meant to mean something. [Edit: Carol W thinks it might be another Bible reference - IS551 meaning Isaiah 55.1] It's a bit of a hidden gag that I appreciated even if the target audience wouldn't get it. There is also a line saying it's not legal tender. It's almost as if the "Bank of Eternity" isn't a real bank after all.

January 2022 - end of month review

Cathy and I kicked off the New Year with a Lego build that took us most of New Year's Eve and was completed on New Year's Day. It will fit in  nicely with our other large Lego vehicles.

I had a few days off at the start of the month and we put away the Christmas decorations before I started back at work after the seasonal break. The Christmas cards came down around about the same time and I embarked on the annual audit (results posted here!).

Halfway through Januray I had an exciting weekend, which included the first community litterpick that I had been on for ages, and the first local football match as restrictions eased. I made it to three games in January - the game at Cardiff Draconians I blogged about, a dismal defeat for Barry up at Cardiff Metropolitan, and at the end of the month, a trip to Gloucester to watch Longlevens play Bishop's Cleeve.

I went to that game because Cathy's cousin's stepson, Luke, plays in goal for Bishop's Cleeve. He wasn't called on to do much in the game, but he made a couple of very good saves and it was nice to see him keep a clean sheet in a 2-0 win. In the picture below, he's the tall goalie wearing a purple kit. He looks small in this photo because he's further away than any of the other players.

This was a rare month of matchgoing, because I went with different people to each game. Steve joined me at Cardiff Dracs. I somehow persuaded my friend Callum to come to Cardiff Met, and we picked up Paul, the other member of the Barry Town West Cardiff Massive, on the way. And then I watched the Bishop's Cleeve game with Cathy's uncle Steve, and her cousin Adam. 

For the first time ever I had a personal stake in the Africa Cup of Nations, supporting Gambia who were appearing there for the first time. They did well in their group games and won the first knock-out game before losing in the quarter-finals. It was enjoyable sharing updates on the Gambia team's progress with my mum and brother. None of us could really believe how well they were doing. 

Unlike last year, this year we were able to celebrate my Mum's birthday with her. We spent her birthday weekend in Shrewsbury. On her actual birthday we had a jaunt to Oswestry, which meant we could meet up with some friends we hadn't seen since before the pandemic started. We also had a Sunday lunch out, with some of my cousins coming over. We hadn't seen them for almost 3 years, which is just another reminder of how long the world has been pandemified.  

The big TV event this month has been the weekly release of episodes of The Book of Boba Fett on Disney Plus. This started strongly, but hasn't really gone where I expected it to. I am holding off until the season finale on the 9th of February before giving it a proper review. Suffice to say, I have thoughts!