Home sweet home

I have moved to a new home. Here’s the first view of the living room after an immense day collecting free furniture from friends of family and Glasgow Freecycle members. The white sofa is normally blue; its covers are being washed. The floor lamp is the only thing in the room I’ve actually purchased; it was £15 from Ikea.

More sickly sweet tales from my new apartment soon.

Poaching

Last week, while travelling at speeds of almost 200km/h, I ate freshly prepared Eggs Benedict and drank a quite reasonable Merlot. Some unexpected news had reached me during a five hour train journey (via the complimentary wireless internet provided on said train), so I decided to celebrate with a modest lunch in the restaurant car. The restaurant on National Express East Coast services is in fact half of a first class carriage beyond the standard class buffet counter, so for penny pinching apex travellers like myself, a meal on the train is actually a pretty cheap upgrade to first class for as long as you are eating. The Eggs Benedict didn’t last that long, although the Merlot and a coffee meant I spent the time it takes to get from York to Peteborough in a much more comfortable seat than that which I had occupied from Glasgow at the other end of the train.

I don’t think I’d eaten Eggs Benedict until a few years ago when I tried the dish during a torrential summer downpour in a Montréal bistro. Something I miss a great deal from living in Canada (and travelling in America) is the ease and affordability of eating out for breakfast. The consumate skill required in preparing Eggs Benedict makes it a justifiable purchase in a breakfast joint, especially since I rarely have the motor skills first thing in the morning to poach eggs.

These eggs were amazing, served beneath a creamy hollandaise sauce on lightly toasted muffins, with a few slices of cured ham and salad. Light yet filling, supremely healthy, and surprisingly well matched to a glass of red wine. Before I left the train at Peterborough I asked the chef, who was lingering at the end of his immensely impressive narrow kitchen in the next carriage, how he managed to make such perfect poached eggs on a train. He said it was simple.

“I’m just good, that’s all.”

Not the kitchen tip I was hoping for, but he did disclose that poaching eggs can’t be done without a drop of vinegar in the boiling water to help the eggs thicken and coagulate. Having never poached my own eggs before, I was reminded of this tip during an early morning B&Q trip today. I was accompanying a new homeowner who wanted to buy a new contraption that makes painting easy for those who forget to wash their paintbrushes. After finding the device and purchasing it at half price we stopped at a supermarket on the way home, planning breakfast. Eggs, salmon, hollondaise sauce and bagels were procured, along with a copy of the Saturday Guardian. With some fresh spinach leaves at home, I launched into my first ever attempt to poach some eggs. I must confess that I’m slightly surprised at just how easy it was - the vinegar in the water does indeed help, and by using a spoon to stir a whirlool in the pan of boiling water the egg forms a vaguely contiguous shape that is simultaneously aesthetically pleasing to mount on a toasted bagel. I plan to poach some more in the coming weeks. What with my kitchen being slightly more spacious than that on board a high speed train, and noticeably more stable, I suspect all that is needed is practice.

Snapshot: the signwriter’s delight

Seen on the platform of the newly refurbished Queen’s Park station in Glasgow. Perhaps any signwriters reading this could let me know roughly how much it costs to fabricate a metal sign approximately 500mm square with laminate lettering that advises you to find another sign that might be able to tell you something.

Cancelled

I’m ambivalent about graffiti and flyposting. I don’t have a problem with it, but I can appreciate some property owners do. So how does a city council deal with illegal fly posting of commercial events? They can tear them down, and then tear down the replacements, and then tear down the ones that replace them. Or they can slap one of these red stickers over them.

Smarter than your average city council…

Watching Sky on Skye

On Sunday night I took a walk along a short stretch of the A87 between Dunan and Luib on the Isle of Skye. I had only a fleeting overnight visit to Skye this time, although I hope that I continue to have the opportunity to go there to attend to the business that took me there this weekend. With the sun beginning to dip to the west, I plodded along the verge of the reasonably busy road to get a longer view of the sea loch between Skye and Scalpay and to get a stronger mobile phone signal. It was with some modest shame that I even turned on my phone; somehow it didn’t seem right to go to the trouble of travelling six hours and almost 200 miles without sacrificing some contact with the outside world. That cellular contact was comforting though. And it wasn’t exactly cheating. The modest accommodation provided for me on Sunday night was cunningly disguised as a shed at the back of a builder’s yard, but it had a Sky satellite dish hooked up to the TV.

Britain may appear to be a tiny little island to those who see it from a distance, but like most British people, I do not consider myself to be an islander. After all, the British Isles consist of two large islands and about six thousand smaller ones. It’s only in the second half of my life that I’ve really begun to appreciate some of the Hebridean Islands. Although by the standards of my island experiences, Skye is almost too big an island for me, being more than 1,600 square kilometres in area and almost 100km from north to south. It’s status as an independent land mass has also been unromantically eroded by the utilitarian Skye Bridge, over which I was able to float on board one of the thrice-daily buses that connect Glasgow and Fort William with Skye. The first time I came to Skye, I was killing time on a day trip from Mallaig on the mainland before I crossed the sea to the significantly smaller (and suitably named) Small Isles. I felt then, as I did this weekend, that Skye was just too big for me. It was hard to grasp the concept or emotion of an island I couldn’t walk across in an hour or two. And while Skye can be crossed on foot, it’s best not attempted in my shoes.

That short stretch of the A87 is not Skye’s finest walk. But in addition to only spending a brief period of time on the island, I also arrived completely unprepared for its true landscape. The smooth asphalt of the road was about the only surface on Skye that my city dwelling shoes were good for.

I look forward to my next trip to Skye. I may not be able to grasp the island, or its spirit, but any excuse to leave the city behind for this landscape and space is to be relished.