My car is knackered :( Any suggestions about what to replace it with?

My car’s engine is apparently knackered, and I’m going to have to replace it.

Bearing in mind my requirements, which are:

1. inexpensive to run,
2. reliable,
3. something Piglet can travel in (her crate currently rests on the back seat, which isn’t ideal),
4. something that’ll let me nip up to the Lakes/Scotland from time to time, but won’t be used much, and
5. inexpensive to buy,

does anyone have any suggestions about what I should replace it with? I have a pal from the running club who works with and knows a lot about cars, and he’s going to have a look around, but I wondered what y’all think.

*cries a bit*

New phone – ongoing progress report

Right. So far I’ve:

1. Got a working internet connection.
2. Installed Opera.
3. Worked out how to answer a phone call.

Now it’s time to take Piglet for a walk.

4. Posted a comment to Alan’s blog.
5. Done a hard reset and reinstalled Opera and the internet settings. Doh…
6. Sent a text. Had it received. Received one at this end too.
7. Installed ActiveSync, moved some files across and selected my Babe ringtone.

Spent some happy time searching through my YouTube favourites and posting a few of them to my blog *g*

Made pizza. Slept. Eaten bran and raisin muffins. Yum!

8. Uninstalled Mini Opera 5 Beta and replaced it with Mini Opera 4.1
9. Found, installed and set up MoBlog. (Thanks, Darren ♥)
10. Posted text.
11. Posted pictures. Eventually managed to get them the right way round!

Time to walk Piglet again. She was berserk in the woods last night! Must get some more BBC podcasts first.

12. Created email address for use exclusively with phone.
13. Set up email on the phone, and tested it. Working!

Had dinner (chicken, new potatoes and salad), watched Masterchef: The Professionals. Slept.

14. Installed Quo mapping.
15. Exported map of home area to the mobile.
16. Learning how to use Quo on the mobby. It’s great!

Finally got the phone! HTC TyTN II

HTC TyTN II

Phew! After all that faff and angst I’ve finally got a phone!

I decided to upgrade my current monthly Vodafone contract to include internet access (it comes with 100 minutes, 500 texts and 500MB data for £15pm) and buy a used phone that I can use for both blogging and GPS. I know that’s not the ideal solution–2 devices would be better, for the reasons people have given–but at the moment I can’t really afford to buy two, so one will have to do. I’ll just have to get a couple of spare batteries and be careful about how often I use it.

Having made those decisions I fondly imagined that actually choosing the phone would be relatively simple. Ha! It wasn’t, because my requirements were so specific (GPS, Windows Mobile (necessary for Quo), QWERTY keypad (ideally a sliding one) and touch-sensitive screen (also necessary for Quo)) that it was very difficult to find phones that would fit the bill.

I’d have gone for Alan’s Nokia N97, but that uses the Symbian operating system and so I wouldn’t have been able to use my recently acquired Quo maps. I also loved the little Blackberry Curve that Martin and Gayle are using, but again I had to drop the idea once I’d decided that I needed to be able to use the device for GPS with my Quo maps. I almost went for the MWg Zinc II (thanks, John, for that suggestion–it was a good one), but I read a couple of negative reviews about the keypad, and knew it would annoy me every time I used it. And finally, I also very much liked the HTC Touch Pro that Colin is currently using, but I couldn’t find a used one in good condition at a price that I felt I could afford.

In desperation I started searching through Ebay to try to see everything currently available, and late in the day I came across the HTC TyTN II.

This phone looks very similar to Alan’s Nokia N97, and almost every review I read was glowing in its terms. Colin spotted some warnings on the internet about problems with 3G, but it sounded as though that wasn’t likely to affect me on top of a hill and so I decided to go for it anyway. The phone’s very expensive new, but there were quite a few good sounding used ones on Ebay and in the end I bought one of those.

Much kudos to the Ebay seller, phonesmart.eu. I bought it at 4.50pm yesterday, paid £2 extra for Special Delivery and sent the seller an email to explain that I’m in a hurry because I need to try to learn how to use it before I go walking. He somehow managed to catch the afternoon post, and the phone arrived with the post man at about 10.30 this morning! Quite fantastic service!

I was concerned that I mightn’t be able to get the internet to work, and indeed initially it failed to connect. I rang Vodafone, though, and they emailed me a .pdf with instructions on how to set it up. I followed them and it connected immediately. Amazing! *g* So! Now I just need to learn how to use it.

Many thanks again to all of you who helped with advice and suggestions, both on here and on the phone. Every suggestion and piece of advice was very much appreciated, as were also the hints to stop faffing around and make a decision *g* Darren taught me more about how all this blogging stuff works in the course of a telephone call than I’d thought it was possible to know *g*, and Colin showed enormous patience yesterday, dragging himself away from his sewing machine several times to field a series of increasingly frantic phone calls requesting information about his HTC Touch Pro, and whether X, Y and Z phones were likely to fit the bill. I’d never have believed how difficult it was going to be to choose a blogging device. If it doesn’t work then rest assured I’ll blame you *g*

Computer sound problem– Help!

I suspect that I’ve inadvertently done something stupid to the computer, because all of a sudden I’m getting no sound: not even system sounds. It was fine yesterday afternoon.

I’ve checked all the obvious things–speakers seem to be connected, no wires appear to be loose, I’ve not unplugged anything accidentally, volume is on the usual place on the slider and not muted, the sound-card seems to be working, there don’t appear to be any hardware conflicts in Device Manager.

What’s interesting, though, and may provide a clue to a person who actually *has* a clue about this stuff, is that the sound’s still fine through headphones.

When I’ve had sound problems in the past there’s always been a very simple solution, arising out of the fact that I’ve done something daft. Does anyone have any ideas, please?

My very own wee pig!

I’m so excited this morning

Last Saturday Humphrey emailed to alert me to a scheme about to be run by a wonderful farm, not far from where he lives.

Peelham Farm raises organic, free-range rare breed pigs. They’re committed to the ethical and compassionate treatment of the animals in their care, and they produce pork, lamb, mutton and even veal of the highest standard. See their ‘Meat Manifesto’ here.

Anyway, they’ve decided to run a Peelham Own-a-Tamworth (or POAT) club, whereby 12 lucky families can own their own Tamworth pig. In exchange for a contribution towards the cost of caring for the pig, the families can choose a piglet, visit the farm, have fun with like-minded families, follow the piglet’s progress and–ultimately–eat the piggly.

There was a feature about the scheme in The Observer last Sunday, and there’s been massive interest. I was very keen to join in, but it occurred to me that it might be possible to do it a little differently. Maybe I could sponsor a piglet to live out its life happily on the farm without going to market…?

Well, I wrote to the farm and asked, and they wrote straight back to invite me to choose a she piglet (a gilt) to become a breeding sow. I can contribute towards the cost of her care, and visit her. I can meet her piglets when she starts to breed at about 7 months, and she will effectively be mine for the whole of her life (up to 8 years, apparently). I can even choose her little name! (Suggestions welcome, btw.)

This is a real thrill for me I love bacon sandwiches and the odd sausage as much as the next person, but I’ve become increasingly distressed by the terrible conditions in which most of the animals that sustain us subsist. Compassionate farming seems to me to be the way forward, and it’s hugely exciting to be able to be involved in this way.

Wee Piglet is also very excited, and has started building a small sty in the garden under the large bush in the corner, even as I type. Puss-Puss is licking her lips and sharpening her tooth. Um…

I’ll keep y’all updated, but in the meantime a thousand thanks to Humph for the tip-off ♥ ♥ ♥

Shock! Horror! Andy Howell eats *crubeens* in Spain! (The brute…)

Andy’s long-awaited and much anticipated write-up of the trip that he and partner Kate took to the high mountains of the Pyrenees is now up, and it includes… (wait for it…)… restaurant reviews

*trots around, excitedly*

There I was, though, happily grazing through interesting writings about snow, hail, Bushbuddies, thunder and lightning–basically, all the trappings of a typical Pyrenean July–when, before I knew it, I found myself reading a grizzly description of Andy chomping his way through minced piglets (in the form of saucisson) and innocent little pigs’ trotters, and fantasizing about eating a sleeping pig!

A crubeen (*weeps*)

Hard to believe, eh? You’d better go and read it for yourself…

*g*

Trip photos: Pyrenees, Dales Way, Pennine Way & food

I’ve almost finished writing up my C2C trip now, but I’ve got hundreds of photos from trips to the Pyrenees, the Dales Way, the Pennine Way and various shorter outings that I haven’t written up.

I’m thinking that when I’ve finished the C2C I’ll put up the photos from those trips. It seems a pity to just hide them away on my hard drive, and it’ll be liberating not having to dig out my notes and write them up at the same time.

In the meantime, I’ve got a 14 day free trial of the photo site–SmugMug–where Streapadair has his amazing walking photos, so I thought I’d make a test gallery showing pictures of how to make the little pork and prawn wontons I made a couple of nights ago, for my Thai’ish soup. Click on the wonton piccy above to get to the gallery

Dinner tonight — Yum!!! Thai soup with pork/prawn wontons.

I love Thai noodle soups, and I also love Chinese wonton parcel thingies. This evening I made a sort of Thai soup (no noodles) with wontons, and wow! It was yummy, and very, very easy, though a *little* time consuming.

It’s very easy to make the little wonton parcels, and if you enjoy cooking and/or eating then it’s lots of fun. Yesterday I bought some free-range belly pork, some raw prawns and some little wonton wrappers (frozen in a block) from the Asian stall at the market. I followed a Ken Hom recipe from a book I bought about 20 years ago: A Taste of China. Basically, the recipe involves equal quantities of minced fatty pork and raw prawns, some minced mushrooms, some minced spring onions, some sesame oil, some Chinese rice wine, some light soy sauce, some sugar and some salt. They’re all mixed up together in a bowl and left to sit for a while.

Then one puts a blob of the yummy mixture in the middle of a wonton wrapper, wets the edges with water and folds the corners in, making sure to press in order to seal them. Don’t put too much mixture on the wrapper or it won’t be possible to wrap it properly.

After that it’s necessary to have some good chicken stock. It only takes an hour to make it from scratch, and it involves free-range chicken pieces (wings or thighs are excellent, but drumsticks work fine (breasts would be a waste of money, and there’d be less taste)), some garlic cloves (unpeeled) and, if you have them, some ginger and some spring onions. Cover the chicken in cold water and bring to the boil, turn down to a simmer, skim off the scummy stuff and add the other ingredients. Simmer for an hour and drain through a sieve.

After that, just get together a collection of the soup-appropriate vegetables that you like best, or happen to have in the fridge. I normally use broccoli florets, but I happened to have asparagus because it was on offer in the supermarket a few days ago, and also some v. nice green beans I found at the local organic farm shop 2 days ago. Tonight I also included some sliced brown-cap mushrooms, and one and a half organic red chillies that I also got at the farm shop.

So! Once you have the ingredients it’s as easy as walking from Grasmere to the Travellers’ Rest

First, Ken H. says it’s best to blanche the little wonton parcels in a pot of boiling water for 3 minutes, or until they float back to the top of the pot. Having spent a week watching Gary Rhodes learning to cook real Chinese food in China I decided to dip the parcels in a cornflour/water mixture first, as those who know better than me all seem to agree that it helps to retain the flavour in whatever’s being cooked. So, do the business, drain them and then have them ready on a plate next to the cooker.

Next, put 3 large ladles of chicken stock in a pan, turn up the heat enough to bring it to a fast simmer and add the chopped chillies (including the seeds, if you like a bit of heat in your soup). I then added about 1.5 tablespoons of fish sauce, the juice of a lime and a generous splash of light soy sauce. If I’m feeling more energetic I might also add some Tamarind paste and dried lime leaves, but tonight I didn’t bother.

When the soup began to simmer I added the sliced mushrooms. Perhaps 90 seconds or so later I added the sliced green beans–I’d cut them into pieces of about 1.5 inches each–and let them simmer for a minute or so. I like my soup veggies crunchy rather than soft, and so I’m mainly aiming to heat them through in the pan because in the time it takes me to carry the whole thing upstairs (for consumption) they continue to cook in the soup. So, about 90 seconds later I put the wonton parcels in and also the asparagus (which I’d also cut into chunks of about 1.5 inches). Another 90 seconds later I poured it all into a big bowl and added some chopped coriander.

It was delicious! I think the pork and prawns in the wonton parcels were perhaps a little over-cooked, but I suppose it’s always better to err on the side of caution with pork. Still, it was all lovely

I’m sticking this here so that I can remember how to make it next time I feel like wonton parcels in soup.

*trots away to watch the Cookery Channel*