Grim up North Heath

Tag: dailyprompt

  • Crisps. Always, crisps

    Crisps. Always, crisps

    What snack would you eat right now?

    Also known as ‘chips’ in the US and Australia1, crisps are my go to snack.

    Will Self is a fan. In his typical sesquipedalian style he has written about the ‘plangent crepitation’ experienced while consuming these ‘fried and friable foderols’. Basically, it’s the crunchiness that gets you. There’s little more disappointing in this world than a non-crunchy crisp.

    What flavour? I’d rank the standard flavours as salt & vinegar > ready salted > cheese and onion.

    Favourite S&V is Piper’s, a different flavour of vinegar. They claim it’s cider vinegar but whatever it actually is, there’s something a bit more mellow about these than the standard sodium acetate in some crisps.

    Pipers cider vinegar and salt crisps. Emphasising the vinegar first suggests that the vinegar is at the forefront of the flavour, and they are right.

    Ready salted is the vanilla ice cream of the crisp world. Maybe not very exciting, but a crisp manufacturer has to be able to do this right. The crunch, the salt and the fat are a delightful combination that can also be experienced in good pork crackling, but without having to prep a pork roast first.

    So while I’d normally put cheese and onion as third after ready salted, the exception is Fiddler’s Lancashire Cheese and Onion. These are currently my favourite crisps, though they are difficult to get hold of. Mrs S surprised me last Father’s Day with a whole box of them, much to our mutual delight. Hers in finally finding something I want2, mine in having 24 bags of these fantastic crisps all to myself.

    Current favourite crisps, Fiddler’s Lancashire cheese and onion. Distinct flavour compared with other cheese and onion, Lancashire rather than ‘cheese’ makes all the difference.

    Many other flavours are available from Piper’s, Fiddlers, Kettle Chips and others. Mrs S is a fan of Fiddler’s black pudding and mustard. Black pepper is a great addition to any crisp. Pigs in blankets and chorizo get shout outs from some manufacturers. But for me, the ‘big three’ flavours from my childhood will likely never be supplanted.

    1. Where what we call chips are known as ‘hot chips’. The colonials are so disappointing ↩︎
    2. Apparently, I’m impossible to buy for. ↩︎
  • S.I.M.O.F.

    S.I.M.O.F.

    Daily writing prompt
    Come up with a crazy business idea.
    View all responses

    Science Institute, Mainly Old Fogeys.

    Whenever a scientist retires, resigns, is made redundant in their mid-50s, or leaves science for any reason there is a great deal of knowledge, know-how and wisdom lost.

    I’m proposing an institute where these people are paid to come in a few days a month and thrash out their old theories for the benefit of younger scientists and engineers. There will be access to equipment, testing rigs and all sorts of analytical equipment, with free tea, coffee and biscuits. The full-time junior staff will be specially selected for their intelligence and patience.

    One of my theories about innovation is that there are many half-notions in the world, but connecting your half to someone else’s half and making that bridge the gap between problem and solution can be a hit-and-miss affair. If you’ve ever heard something at random that sparks a memory and makes you go “Ah!” then you’ve bridged that gap.

    Comedy writers are excellent at this, a joke is two ideas put together in an unexpected way.

    The SIMOF solution is to have people who spent a lifetime bridging gaps create sparks in ways that nobody – least of all themselves – could anticipate.

    It needs funding, and a site that has good access for public transport. Other than that, the idea’s good to go.

  • Bungle the teddy

    Bungle the teddy

    Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

    When I was very young I had a teddy bear. Not unique, I know. Mine was a hard-bodied bear that I called ‘Bungle’, after the bear in Rainbow. I have no idea where he came from or who gave him to me.

    Bungle could growl. Hidden inside the body was a device that gave out a ‘Ba-aaa’ sound when you turned him upside down. He wasn’t very cuddly, I may have had other toys to cuddle, but Bungle is the one I remember.

    My memory of him is that he lost an eye at some point and also at least two limbs. He got threadbare and likely very grumpy towards the end. I have no idea what happened to him, he probably got thrown out when we moved from Thurso when I was twelve.

    In the living room of that house there was a big toy box that also served as a window seat. From there we could glimpse the island of Hoy, one of the Orkney Islands. In the box was everything you could wish for to play with. A couple of dozen cars and car tracks, loads of Lego, soft toys, Bungle, some Fisher Technik, wooden building blocks and a tired old red plastic ride-on train.

    I think the box itself was thrown out with the move, but some of the toys are still around. The Lego, my wooden blocks – a present from my ‘new little sister’ in 1973 – and the train are still at my mum’s house and are enjoyed by her grandchildren and great grandchildren.

    Bungle is long gone. Other toys have been lost over the years, but I do love that generations of our family have enjoyed toys we outgrew, but our parents kept hold of, just in case.

  • Confessions of a serial degree taker

    Daily writing prompt
    What colleges have you attended?
    View all responses

    I’m taking ‘college’ to mean ‘university’, since I have only been to one college – a 6th form college (16-18 years old) where I did my A levels.

    In my time I have got degrees from four universities and a diploma from a fifth.

    I did my first degree (Chemistry) at Loughborough University, a mid-range university and high-level pronunciation test for non-natives. This is the most important college/ university because that’s where I met Mrs S.

    After Loughborough I worked at Liverpool University, where I also studied part-time to get a Masters in geosciences. I learned how to use Excel (version 5.1) to model isotope fractionation in carbonate minerals.

    My next job was at Bath University, still a low-level lab tech. After a couple of years there I was offered the chance to do a PhD. Since my career was otherwise stalled (departmental politics) I said ‘yes’. I finished my study of the surface chemistry of pharmaceutical cellulose excipients in 2002, graduating in 2003. More importantly, Mrs S and I got married during my studies.

    2003 was also the year we moved to Australia and in 2004 we became parents. In 2005 we moved back to the UK, where I started work for the company I would be with for 19 years before being laid off in late 2024.

    During that time I did another part-time masters (I’d intended doing a Diploma, but the course was pretty interesting and useful). This one was run by De Montfort University in Leicester, on Quality by Design in the Pharmaceutical Industry. I also found time to do a Diploma in Innovation at the Saïd Business School (Oxford)in early 2024. Both of these were remote, so I don’t know if I can say I ‘attended’ them.

    So lots of pieces of paper and academic experience. I think they’ve been worthwhile, even though I still don’t have a regular job that uses any of them!

  • The year I was born: 1969

    The year I was born: 1969

    One small step…

    The main event in the year I was born was something that I consider the crowning achievement of humanity: man landing on the moon.

    Neil Armstrong on the moon. Not much else to say about it.

    Thousands of genius engineers and scientists worked with one aim: to get people to the moon and back again safely.

    Other events

    The first Jumbo Jet flew in January and the first Concorde flight took place in March. So as far as getting people off the ground, it was quite a good year.

    In music, the Woodstock festival and the first Isle of Wight festival took place. Black Sabbath recorded their first album in October, though it wasn’t released until 1970. The Beatles split up and the disastrous Altamont Free Concert put a lid on the flower power era.

    Moon Landing

    Over the years there have been a lot of crazies who insist that the moon landings didn’t happen. Some of these range from the reasonable – we didn’t have the technology so it must have been faked somehow – to the frankly bonkers.

    A lot of issues from the reasonable end of the spectrum are down to a poor understanding of how cameras work and physics. There are no stars in the pictures because cameras have limited dynamic range. And if they wanted to fake it, wouldn’t they have put stars on the roof of the studio? The flag does act weird, it wobbles for a long time. This has been ascribed to the ventilation in the studio moving the flag. The same ventilation doesn’t affect the dust on the floor, though.

    The bonkers end is more fun, though. We never went to the moon because the moon is a NASA hologram or a government hoax. We know this because spheres can’t reflect light so the moon is flat, if it is real at all.

    The moon is a space station and an artificial satellite brought here 13000 years ago by The Reptilians – the Draco Empire and grey aliens.

    The Moon was made by scooping out the Grand Canyon and filling it with helium.

    The astronauts would have been killed by the van Allen (or van Halen, the name changes) belt radiation. And they can’t live in space anyway because there is no magnetic field for their hearts to work off of.

    I have a file of various conspiracy theories. Whenever I’m feeling down and a bit stupid, I look at these and realise I’m not so daft after all.

  • It’s been quite a year

    It’s been quite a year

    Daily writing prompt
    Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?
    View all responses

    One year ago – Tuesday 17th December 2024 – I was in full-time employment at the company I’d been with since it started in the summer of 2005.

    On Wednesday 18th, the CEO came to our labs with the news that the company was going to be refocussing and that all R&D function was being stopped. This meant half the company was being made redundant, including me.

    To say that it was kick in the guts would be right.

    The news didn’t make for a very festive Christmas, though I had three months gardening leave to get my head together. Things could have been a lot worse – I know at least one person in our town was laid off with no notice, no money and no wages for the previous month.

    Thinking things over

    Over the previous years, Mrs S and I had talked about what we would do if I lost my job1. The talk had turned to setting up businesses doing something or other, buying a 3D printer and selling stuff, starting a consultancy… but we didn’t really think that we would have to do this.

    I kept my work laptop and phone, so that was a good start. To begin with I kept track of the courses I did and tried a few things that ultimately didn’t work out. I tried making books to sell on Amazon (sales = 0), an Etsy shop (sales = 0), and other things that went nowhere.

    Still, we went to Australia in the summer, having paid for this already and had a great time in Sydney (I was best man at my brother’s wedding), Melbourne (a revisit, we lived there from 2003-05) and Perth.

    Part of the Perth City art trail, this design is by Spanish artist Hyuro, I liked the kinetic energy of the women and empty dresses tumbling across the side of the building.

    Where are we now?

    One the positive, I learned how to use the 3D software Blender using my WP blog as a portfolio. I set up another shop on RedBubble (Heath Way Prints), started doing a food blog both on WordPress and paralleled on a separate site Cheese & Garlic and a TikTok channel with Excel tips. And I even managed a bit of consultancy work, though I’ve yet to set up a website for that.

    One of the models I made in Blender as part of a course. This is Steve the orc, moonlighting at the Mordor Improv.

    I’ve also learned how to use CapCut for video editing – my Yorkshire Pudding video was my first attempt at a ‘how to’ recipe video. And I also did a four week social media marketing course that taught me a lot about how to use social media for business. I set up the Cheese & Garlic site during the course – I’d never have known how to do that without the course.

    After a year, I’m feeling more positive about the potential for the various businesses. Let’s see where we are in December 2026.

    1. There’s a British expression: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. ↩︎

  • Latest speech

    Daily writing prompt
    Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
    View all responses

    I’ve performed on stage several times, though not for many years. Last time was in 1988, I think, when I was at 6th Form and in the Drama club.

    Giving speeches and presentations was part of my job when I was a scientist. I found that, as long as I was prepared I wasn’t nervous.

    The last time I gave a speech was in August ’25. I was Best Man at my brother’s wedding, and so I was duty-bound to give a speech. I was the last of four to speak. First was the bride’s mother, then my brother (who speaks for a living – he’s a university lecturer), then one of the maids of honour (who also gives speeches a lot), then me.

    I was a bit nervous, but the whole atmosphere was convivial. I’d stayed sober, I’d prepared, and my one joke landed.

    I’ve no idea when I’ll next be called on to speak in public. But it’s not something I dread any more.

  • Silliness above all in humour

    What makes you laugh?

    Mostly I laugh at what has no agenda and is mainly silly. Always punching up, heavy on the puns and wordplay with a side order of deserved frustration.

    This will be why I love Taskmaster, Morecambe & Wise, Bob Mortimer, Airplane!, Ghosts, Eddie Izzard, Monty Python and Stewart Lee.

    Silly songs, too!

    You could include Terry Pratchett, though the elevated level of silly hides sharp commentary and anger.

    An inherited sense of humour

    I think my sense of humour has remained unchanged since I was a teenager. My dad had a wicked sense of humour, one that four of the five of us1 have inherited. One of my fondest memories is when four of us were sitting at the dining room table with our parents. Someone said something (wish I could remember what) which set dad and three of us off in fits of laughter. My oldest sister had to leave the room. Mum and other child were left bemused.

    To get some flavour of his sense of humour, his favourite joke was the Headstone joke.

    Does time change a sense of humour?

    Things I enjoyed in the 80s are still funny. Red Dwarf, the film Clue, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the Morecambe & Wise Andrew Preview sketch…

    The other day I went down a bit of a rabbithole about George Formby. This triggered the memory of the revelation that Formby – not Bob Dylan – is the original author of Subterranean Homesick Blues. This is from The Day Today, broadcast in 1994, where we also saw Alan Partridge for the first time.

    A lot of this is skewed towards older stuff, but that’s not to say there’s nothing new I like. We saw Bill Bailey last year2 and Mrs S was in pain laughing at the ‘cappuccino in Amsterdam’ story.

    To finish, here’s an extended dose of silly from Andrew O’Neill in 2023.

    If you need the Baker Street joke explained, leave a comment.

    1. I’m the third of five children. ↩︎
    2. We’ve seen him at least four times, first time in 1991, as part of the double act The Rubber Bishops. ↩︎
Verified by MonsterInsights