Meat free January

Happy new 2012 to you! Fresh from my recent spate of blogging, I thought I'd open my 2012 account with one on the first day to explain why I'm going meat free in January.

It was an idea planted by one of my friends at the European thing I went to in May. Liv is vegetarian and challenged us at the end of the conference to have a vegetarian day at the conference. She pointed to the environmental impact meat production has on the world as reason enough to do it for one day in the week long conference. (You can do your own internet searching on this. I did and there's a load. Here's one called 'Veguary' (think a vegetarian Movember in February) which sums it up quite well here, although the stats are US based. In short though, it seems to me not to be a bad thing to cut down on meat eating. Just like it's not a bad thing to cut down your bottled water consumption when you have a tap with perfectly clean, safe water.) Anyway, it was a very short point Liv made, but she persuaded me and I hoped at the next conference we have vegetarian day.

Cut to a few months later and I found my old diary. I had once tried to be a vegetarian (20th October 1990, fact fans). "Huh. I never really did that."

Then I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on The One Show. He was on to promote his vegetarian cookbook. No big deal, not really interested. But then he said in research for writing the book he became a temporary vegetarian, I think for three months. "Oh. A temporary vegetarian". (In the movie of my life this will part will have a montage of flashbacks to the earlier incidents.)

Now, here's the important bit, I still might not have done anything about it until I was out for dinner later that week with Karen Photographer for her gallery opening. I mentioned what I had seen on The One Show and Karen decided to join me in a month-long vegetarian adventure (Karen will have her own reasons for the challenge, I think mostly she likes a challenge - see marathon).

As it was already into November, we'd kind of missed the boat on that month, and December is just a crazy month to try to go cold turkey, so to speak. January has the new start feel to it and would give us time to research a little bit about what we need to do.

So that's it really.

Last week Karen and I renewed our pact to do it with a high five. That made it official, cos we're a bit street. And I've marked recipes from my cookbooks and gone to the brilliant BBC Food website. I see that herbs and spices are going to be important. Well vegetables can be a bit boring, can't they? And I'll need to keep myself in fresh vegetables and eat a lot of beans and what not to keep my protein levels up. But I'm happy to report 18 hours in, things are going swimmingly. Mostly because I'm a bit sick and haven't tried to eat anything substantial, but it's nonetheless encouraging.

I wouldn't have tried to do it without any one of those four things: Liv, my old diary, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Karen (although if I had to grade them, my diary is probably the least important and Liv and Karen the most).

I'll probably put some stuff on here about it, but we'll also be tweeting our vegetarian adventure at #meatfreejanuary. We're not private on there, but if you have an account you can tweet us encouragement. Or try to make us feel better if we succumb to a big dirty burger or a fry, or some ribs. Or a Chinese...

I need to get me some butternut squash or something. Quick.

From the drafts: Crafty games

This was one of the final TinaLostInSpace posts that never made it. That's because I only added the photos. No comments, no writing, no nothing...I'll do that now.

It'll probably not surprise you that I was big into crafts when I was little. Every Christmas and birthday I got something that needed me to make, create, paint, set, do. I had them all, plaster of Paris, clay, Fimo modelling clay...and these fine examples of craftiness.

Latch hook is actually quite hard to do, which is why this remains mostly undone.

The weaving loom though...

Oh yeah, half done as well.

Sylvanian Families paint by numbers is done. Actually, this was a practice one just done on paper, not the 'canvas' they give you. So what, I liked to practice my crafts.

There was something I did particularly enjoy about the things I found - the box kids. You know, the ones that demonstrate what you're supposed to do and how well they can do it (which, no matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to recreate). Take these examples:

I don't know how old you have to be before you can be described as 'preppy' but I'd say that boy has reached it. (Discover Food Technology allowed to do experiments on mouldy bread and the like. You got your own petri dishes and everything.]

Oh hair, hair, hair. So big you don't notice the braces until at least the second look. (Bead and stitch, you probably had one yourself. Ahem.)

It's good to have your ribbons match your shirt and pinafore combo. (Clothes peg dolls could be the theme of a four Yorkshire (wo)men skit. Dolls? We used to dream of dolls, we used to make them out of clothes pegs. Clothes pegs? Luxury.)

I also found a few card games. Nothing was complete, except this one, The Neighbours Card Game.

It's like a version of Happy Families, you have to complete the families, which if you can't see are the Robinsons, the Mangels, the Clarkes, and the Ramseys. Proper old Neighbours like.

Well, you don't just lose your Neighbours cards, do you? 

Ah good 80s times!

From the drafts: old computers

This should have gone on August 17th, but I think I thought I was plaguing you with posts about my roof space tidy. So better now to post it when I'm plaguing you with posts in order to beat the deadline eh?

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Technically the tidying started last week. Dad started to throw away our old computers, like this one.

A Mackintosh PowerMac 5500. It boasted a 4GB hard drive and interweb capabilities.

This was its laptop cousin, a PowerBook 5300cs. No one in my house remembers actually buying it. Do let us know if you think it's yours.

Our very first computer, a Spectrum ZX. That's not a tape deck folks, that's where you load the games!

I found video of the screen you got when a game was loading on You Tube. There's no sound though, I remember there being a screechy kind of sound.

Our favourite games were Treasure Island and Postman Pat. Both are on You Tube, of course.



That's 128k technology right there my friend.

Then the Postman Pat game. You can click through to it here, I didn't want to post it because of the username of the person who posted it - you might be sensitive to such words. Bet you click through now though...

This game became famous in our house for the phrase 'Cup of tea Pat?'. Even now, every once in a while it's likely my parents will say it each other (neither of them are called Pat, you probably knew that though.)

From the drafts: I've got a golden ticket

[This is from June 22nd. As you might guess, I'm excited for 2012 arrive!]

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The email finally telling us what we got in the Olympics came last night. I had heard rumours that if you checked your 2012 account in the early hours of the morning then you'd see what they got. I tried that, as it happens at 23.59pm and nothing. At the stroke of midnight I hit refresh and bam! There were my bloody handball tickets listed in all their glory!

Obviously I got mum to check hers immediately and I am delighted to say that she got Athletics tickets for the last night! How exciting! The night includes:

- 4 x 100m Men's Final (no baton drops in the heats Team GB, USA or Jamaica please and thank you)

- 5000m Men's Final (Mo Farah, I hope you decide to double up)

- 800m Women's Final (Jenny Meadows? Come on girl!)

So today I have been reliving some 4 x 100m action. I must have watched this about five times today. My favourite things are Steve Cram saying 'In fact it was terrible!" and Maurice Green's seriously unimpressed face during the medal ceremony. Brilliant!

Slightly concerned that Team GB don't really have many sprinters left in their prime, never mind their baton dropping. So who knows if we'll see them even make the final.

And there's this one, which lacks Steve Cram's excitement. The commentators seem slightly underwhelmed by Jamaica breaking a world record which stood since the days of Carl Lewis. So you'll have to make your own excitement of the magic of 37.10.




[December edit: I was lucky enough to receive a How to Watch the Olympics book for Christmas. It's very good, although, strangely it lists the sport as Handball, not Bloody Handball as it is referred to in our house.]

'Resolutions'

My resolution this year was to write more. I wrote my dissertation, all 20,000 words of it (60,000 if you include appendices. Just saying.) So check that one off the list.

I also vowed to blog more. And I did do that too! Last year I blogged 64 times. This year, I'm up to 66. Oh yeah! I say 'up to' because obviously this one will make it 67. Plus if you include the drafts that I never quite published (but am about to) I'll beat the dizzy heights of 2009 level blogging. Not sure the glory days Princess blogging in 2005-2007 will ever return. Ah, glory days.

I'm not sure the point of resolutions is to do them on the last day, but I do like the pressure of a deadline.

Click here to read:
I've got a golden ticket
Old computers
Crafty games