Candy Crush - I wish I had invented it

I confess - I am an addict - to Candy Crush
and to all the new games that King.com keep producing
The last was Pet Rescue - not quite as good as Candy Crush
Today  - Farm Heroes Saga - perhaps the best yet.

I find them soothing when I am stressed
and useful when I am bored

I refuse to pay for any of the helpful things offered - I consider that cheating
But - I have paid - perhaps 3 or 4 times - the huge price of 69 pence - at the places where I am advised by my children - there is no other way to advance.

Now - I had a "Pooh Think".
Winnie The Pooh had "Pooh Thinks" and our family caught the habit

According to an article I read recently   - approx 66 million (66,000,000) people play Candy Crush
If they all pay - like me - 69 pence x 3  - that is approx  137 million pounds (£137,940,000)

In one article someone in the know estimates they make
$875,382 per day which is about half a million pounds a day

That is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge amount of money

I so wish that I had invented it  - Don't you?

Smoked Scottish Salmon - or is it?

We have a very fishy Scottish parliament - Our Scottish parliamentary leader is  Alec Salmond and his deputy is Nicola Sturgeon.
Alec Salmond has recently struck a deal with the Chinese to supply them with huge amounts of Scottish salmon.
However - According to Private Eye, we cant produce enough to fulfill the deal.
So the industry goes clever with some very fishy labeling with - it seems - the full approval of whoever it is who sanctions these things.
Below are two sentences with the 3 same words - but in different orders

1. Smoked Scottish Salmon
2. Scottish Smoked salmon

Apparently - according to the officials -
The first means Scottish salmon smoked in Scotland
The second means - salmon from anywhere in the world - smoked in Scotland

I was scandalised when I heard this. I had recently bought a packet of  - what I thought - was Scottish (smoked) salmon from Tesco
My husband got it out of the fridge to examine it.
At first glance the assumption was it was Scottish  - as there was a  St Andrews flag on the front.
It called itself  - Tesco - Smoked salmon Slices.
To read further, my husband had to put his reading glasses on and search very carefully to find some mention of source
Finally he found this on the back

Farmed in Scotland (B) , Norway (C)
For country of origin see the letter in the use by box on the front of the pack.

So turning over to the front we found a letter B
Therefore this packet was salmon from Scotland

I would like to know - if it had been a C - salmon from Norway - would there still have been a Scottish flag on the front?

It may be legal - but I think it is a wicked deception. It is not honest.
Not that I have anything against Norwegian salmon.

Cooker conundrums

I had what might have been a cooker crisis just before Christmas. The element in my fan oven died.

I wasn't too surprised  because we had had  a cooker crisis a few years ago - at Christmas. The repair man then seemed surprised that a cooker as old as ours was still functioning at all. He mended it for us but - as he went out the door - told us very firmly - not to call him the next time it broke. It would then  - he said - be fit for nothing else but the scrap heap.
Well that was quite a few years ago, so it has done very well.
I remember him looking inside the main oven and exclaiming in horror and saying in a very accusatory sort of way
"You don't open roast do you?"
I had to think very hard about this. What did he mean?  I felt attacked and very foolish and tentatively asked him what he meant.
He explained - as if to a total idiot - that open roasting meant roasting in an uncovered receptacle.

Well I don't know about you - but to me - roasting  involves putting a chunk of meat in a roasting dish and bunging it in the oven - for 20 minutes per lb plus 20 minutes. The roast potatoes get put in around it about 45  minutes before the end.
Infallible - works a treat  - as done by my mother and probably her mother before that.
I wouldn't dream of putting it in a covered container. That would not be proper  roasting - it would be braising or something weird like that - a different process altogether.

I proceeded to tell this to said repair man.

He looked duly amazed and then told me that NO-ONE open roasted now and that I was most unusual.
He then said something extra-ordinary -

"Cookers nowadays are not designed for open roasting.
If you open roast in a modern oven you will destroy it"

I think his explanation also  involved a description of the fatty fumes getting into the fan where they cant be cleaned. Certainly my cooker billows fumes whenever it is in action.

But no more - the main element was dead.
Someone pointed out to me that my cooker was multi-function and it could also cook conventionally and that perhaps the conventional elements top and bottom still worked.
This was an exciting find. I had no idea that it was multi-functional whatever that meant. I had no idea that it could be a conventional oven  as well as a fan oven. I had no idea that the element for the fan was situated in the back wall and the elements for the conventional cooker in the floor and roof.

So - I tried it
The kitchen immediately filled with horrific choking fumes. I reckoned it was all the years of fat that had accumulated on the never-used conventional elements. So I gave it 2 hours - with all the windows open - to burn themselves clean. But there was no improvement

On Christmas Eve, in desperation, I got down on hands and knees and inspected it.
It looked as if the oven floor was trying to peel off a layer. With nothing to lose I carefully lifted up the peeling off bit.
It occurred to me that what I was looking at was some sort of oven liner thing, made out of black synthetic something, possibly put there years ago. Lying directly over the lower conventional element - this was the cause of the fumes. It was removed and binned and the problem was solved.
The Christmas meal was open roasted in a fumeless kitchen.

However - with Christmas out of the way - I must now investigate and ultimately buy a new cooker.
If I wanted to buy a new computer or  tablet, the internet overflows with reviews going into the most  minute detail on every available product

For cookers - there is nothing

The lack of anything has driven me to take out a subscription to Which magazine. Even that is pretty useless.
Because I don't have gas in my kitchen, I sadly have to have an electric hob.
Do I really want an induction hob and have to throw away all my existing pans which would be rendered useless?
I want to find out more about ceramic hobs and the rings that lurk beneath them.
Are they fast halogen?
Are they those dreadful ones that keep turning themselves off, whilst pretending to keep the pan at a steady temperature?
I want to know the wattage of the oven - how powerful it is?
Why is there this lack of information - it is very basic stuff
Sadly the answer is - I think -
That very few people cook anymore
Very few people do the sort of real cooking from basics done by previous generations - the sort where open roasting is normal.
Most younger people use their cooker - if they use it all - to reheat ready made meals - in covered containers - while they play with their tablet!

How to recognise a shagged sheep

I get told things by my crofting neighbours and I can never be quite sure if they are pulling my leg.

However - I have been told that the sheep I see in the fields just now - with coloured bottoms - have been shagged - mated.
The ram, or tup as they call him here, has done his job.

I think it may be right.
A quick Google tells me that putting coloured paste on the underside of the tup before he mates, is called raddling.

I suppose it is quite clever really. How else would you know which sheep had been left out and still  needed attention?

 I wonder if it helps the tup - for the same reason

The Last of the Ducks

I wrote earlier (Duck Shooting 22/10/2013) about the sadness of the tame ducks being shot on the loch with the unpronounceable Gaelic name.

The snow has come here and the weather is dreich, so I set off up the hill to see how they were faring.

To my surprise I found 20 of them up the path, just seconds away from the croft, cowering in a hollow.

Today - just a couple of days later, there were none.

A walk right up to the loch found only one alive – wounded and dying.

It was a place of slaughter, with the odd dead bird on the ground and one even hanging in a tree. The ground was littered with empty cartridge cases and litter.

And they call this Sport?

Bank Debt

Do you find it difficult to get your head around bank debt? .
I do.
There was the initial lunacy - when they were all passing around parcels of debt - like children playing pass the parcel at a party. Who gets stuck with it when the music stops playing?

It seemed beyond belief that banks had been buying and selling - passing around all these complex parcels of  debt  - without understanding what they were.

In my naivety, I thought that all debt was bad. Why on earth would anyone sane want to buy a parcel of debt?

Well the music stopped playing and some banks had to own up to the horrific amount of debt they had.
Others (I gather) have still not been totally honest about it.

Apparently some of this is goodish debt, some bad and some very very bad.
What does this mean

I go shopping with Deborah and she sees a jacket she likes, but realises she has left her money at home. I lend her the money to buy it. She is a good friend. She is honest, has a well paid job and no debts. She agrees to repay me next day. That is a good debt.

I go shopping with Tracy and the same thing happens. I know she has money problems and a reputation for not paying back loans. This is bad debt
Whether it is good or bad depends on  how likely you are to be re-payed.

Who are all these people who owe money to the bank?
Are they little people from the UK who can't pay back their mortgages?
Are they little people from  the UK who have taken out loans and can't pay them back?
Are they small /medium size UK businesses who have taken out loans to make their business work?
Or are they huge faceless multinationals?
Or are they other countries?
Or - perhaps - they are massive debts incurred by the bank gambling with our savings?
Or - perhaps - it is all those nasty parcels of very toxic bad debt from all round the world

If Tracy can't pay me back, I lose that money.
What happens if someone can't pay their bank back? The bank loses that money.

If someone or something goes bankrupt, what happens?
If I went bankrupt Tracy would still owe me for the jacket.
But - If I died then Tracy would breath a huge sigh of relief.
If Tracy goes bankrupt she no longer has to pay her debt to me.

What happens when a company goes bankrupt?
I suspect that those who owe money to that company will also breath huge sighs of relief

But what happens if a bank goes bankrupt?
What happens to those who owe money to the bank?
and
What happens to those who have had all their life savings deposited in the bank?.

If I have a huge mortgage and my bank/ mortgage provider goes bankrupt  - does it mean that I no longer have to pay back my mortgage and that I now own my property?

When RBS (based in Scotland) was on the verge of bankruptcy, it was saved by the UK government tax payers putting in huge amounts of money and becoming major share holders.

If Scotland had been independent it would have gone bankrupt trying to that. What would that have meant?

RBS would have had large parcels of bad debt - money owed to the bank
It also would have had huge debts - money it owed to all those who had deposited their savings with it.
Would  those with bad debts who owed money to the bank have their debts wiped out?
Would the savers - the people it owed  money to - have lost all their money?

Was it insured in some way? Would insurance companies have had  to to pay out?
Would Scotland ultimately have had to pay?
At present the UK government backs all personal savings in UK banks up to £85,000

Why didn't the government allow RBS to go bankrupt?

Iceland's main bank went bankrupt and, as  a result, the whole country went bankrupt - because the debt of the bank was larger than the GDP of the country. (As was the case with RBS)

Did Iceland honour its debts?

I don't know - I have a feeling that it told everyone to xxxx off and started again. This is not a very business like way of behaving and must perhaps exclude Iceland from international business for a while.

It's shredded reputation now means poor ratings from the credit rating agencies.
Does this matter? Well yes - because it means that no other country will lend Iceland money, or if they do, the interest rate will be exorbitant.

Why might Iceland want to borrow money? Well for anything really - collecting the rubbish, running the hospitals, education, pensions etc.

Most  countries in the West borrow huge amounts of money and have massive debts - Britain and America being two of the worst.

Which is the main country lending everyone all this money?
The answer to that is - China
China - quietly - now owns most of the world

Last week, it was announced that RBS would not be split into a good bank and a bad bank.

When this was first announced I understood it to mean that ;-
The bad bank would be the one that gambles with our money  - the investment bank.
The good bank would be the old fashioned sort as managed by Captain Mainwairing in Dads Army.

I thought that an excellent idea. I don't want my bank to gamble with my money.

But apparently the bad bank, was to be one, into which all the bad debt was put. That would make it a very bad bank.

But - The new plan is not to split the bank up, but to open a special department in it, into which all  the bad debt can be put - hidden away - ignored - forgotten about - perhaps no longer even  mentioned in the every day accounts?
But most importantly - not counted as the type of debt that the bank needs to hold capital to balance.

Hence the bank can begin to loan more to the public.
It can be seen as a good bank with healthy books

It can loan more to all those people buying houses in this new government led property bubble- at exorbitant prices.

Is this a new game  -  pass the parcel and blind mans buff combined?

Interest rates will go up and the whole thing will implode - again

But I still don't really understand bank debt

Perhaps we could sell all the bad debt to the Chinese?
But perhaps they would be wise enough to ask -
(what our banks should have asked)
Why would  anyone sane buy bad debt?

What would China do about Tracy who still owes me for that jacket?
Perhaps they would just execute her.

PS - I miss you

My mother (now very frail and well into her 90's) is a terrifyingly practical lady -
a terrible thrower outer of anything and everything not in everyday use.

When I was a child I got a comic each week called Sandra. It was all about girls at a ballet school. I loved it. But each copy would disappear as soon as I had read it.

In my teens I graduated onto The Beatles Weekly. I had almost every copy and guarded them carefully. When I went away to University I hid them in the attic thinking they were safe - Sadly not. About 10 years later I went up there to have a quick read and they were all gone. That really broke my heart - especially knowing how valuable they had become.

Her recent throw out was the box of family postcards. In retrospect it is quite extra-ordinary that she hadn't done it years ago. There were postcards to us all, dating back to well before I was born.

I was horrified and said so. I had loved having the occasional look at them.

On my next visit they had miraculously been recovered. They had apparently reached the bin of items to be burnt, but had not actually  gone into the fire. I was amazed that she had saved them for me.

So of course I sat down with her to look through them with a renewed feeling of preciousness and discovery.

One of the first cards I found was one that I had never seen before. It was an ancient black and white card of Athens  -crowned by the Acropolis.
It was from my father (now dead more than 30 years) to my mother.

It said very simply that - He had arrived safely, had eaten and was going to have an early night - Love Dad Then it said
PS - I miss you

Oh my goodness. So simple and yet - such emotion - I wanted to cry

I read it out to my mother

Without pause for thought - she said
" I am still missing him".

I told her that she ought to put it somewhere special,
But she didn't seem really interested.

I get the feeling she is slowly letting it all go .
She doesn't need to throw it away

She will soon be going and leaving it all behind