(For Meades)
As I sit here contemplating some home-cooked food, I ponder on how life has almost turned a full circle. I left the UK in 2003 after a life-changing event, determined not to return, as I was disgusted with the capitulation of my home country to the forces of Evil (Dubya and Tony). My destination was the Antipodes, and the future lives of choice were either greeny hippy builder or vintage motorcycling zenistry, the two alter egos of my adult life.
A revulsion to “eco leaders” in green stripey trousers [Ed: Meades will be devastated], and hippy chicks that talked the talk and then bailed out to live with the first available solicitor / advertising exec with a big bank balance when times got hard, made me realise where my true social standing lay: a motorcycle guy (or gal) is a motorcyclist first, and a political animal second. It’s a disease.
So how the fuck am I living in semi-rural northwestern Connecticut, armed with a green card and the prospect of naturalisation next year, and more to the point, how come I am eating a meal consisting of venison curry (freezer stocked by rednecks), organic brown pilau rice, and a side of home-grown zucchini, tomatoes, herbs, onions and garlic, all free from either my small veggie plot or from local friends? Worse still, I occasionally spend evenings playing with axes in a community-owned wood. What the fuck?
We live in interesting times, and while occasional observances are fine, perhaps it would be good to explain a little about my home, a run-down industrial town in northwest Connecticut; or, as a friend of mine’s father constantly asked her, “So what exactly is in Konneckticut?” As a middle-aged, widowed singleton, I have to say it’s largely about toys, but as I have resided here far longer than anywhere else in my adult life, and appreciate other aspects more and more, let’s do some background; it’s easy to do a wiki search on Connecticut.
Here is a personal précis:
Connecticut is known as the Constitution State after the “Connecticut Plan”, the proposal by the CT delegates to the Continental Congress that is credited with saving the assembly from acrimonious break-up, and leading to the ratification of the Constitution in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War. The framework was supposedly based on the first articles of the New Haven colony from 1639.
Population: 3.7 million, in an area of 4849K square miles; that is to say about the same as Surrey, Sussex, Kent and Essex combined. The capital is Hartford, centrally located, and all the other major population centres are along the southern coast, bordering Long Island Sound. They are all a bit odd down that way. That’s where a lot of the money is too, as it’s within the commuter belt of NYC. (Also where the money isn’t, paradoxically: large parts of Bridgeport and New Haven make the Broadwater Farm Estate look like an agrarian paradise.)
State politics: the Communist State, nailed on to return two Democrats to the Senate, due to the large cities. Everywhere outside city limits is Trump territory. Sixth highest taxes in US states, and pretty good welfare support for poorer citizens, about as good as it gets, in fact. Must be why everyone seems to want to move to the South.
Early history: surprisingly, largely unexplored in the early years of colonisation, half-way between the Dutch in NYC/Hudson Valley and the Pilgrims in the Boston area. Groups of colonists seeking more religious freedom than on offer in Massachusetts (they are all a bit odd up there) started settling the Long Island Sound and the navigable reaches of the Connecticut River in the 1630s. Turns out that the Pilgrim fathers, fleeing political and religious intolerance in the mother country, were pretty keen on imposing their own even more extreme intolerances on the early colonists. The knock-on effect of this was the demand for self-governance in the fledgling settlements across New England (anarchism by any other name), which in turn kindled the fires that started the Revolutionary conflagration 140 years later.
I will leave the fates of indigenous inhabitants to scholars of such subjects, except to say that the shared custody of 4849K square miles of luxuriant temperate forests, lakes and streams, bounded by coastal regions unbelievably rich in fish and shellfish was fairly exchanged for a few beads, some hatchets, a lot of illegally brewed alcohol, and a couple of casinos. It’s all documented.
There are only a few of them left, so they made out like bandits. People like to assume that most of the Pequots, Mohawks and Mohegans generally wandered off to join their brethren further north and west, and they all lived happily ever after.
Geography: a bit of everything, but particularly a lot of lakes, hills, and rivers, the proliferation of which would lead to the Connecticut River valley becoming the heartland of the early American industrial revolution in the 19th century, some forty to fifty years after the process began in western Europe. Also thickly forested; almost all old growth had been cleared for farmland by the 1850s, but the opening up of western lands and the civil war led to huge areas formerly under cultivation being abandoned, and the regrowth continues apace.
Industry: in the early years, plenty of water power running from the upper reaches of the Appalachians to the west and the Berkshires to the north provided the power to make things. There are abandoned mill ponds and races everywhere in the woods, which are also crisscrossed with old stone walls from abandoned farms. Small forges and foundries gave way to larger factories in the 1890s, and led to wave after wave of European immigrants to work in them. This town is particularly strongly represented by Italians and Polish/Ukranians.
Wars lead to profits. A local high-end carriage manufacturer was the only major casualty of the civil war (all the rich guys wanting fancy carriages were down south), but the local brass mill developed the first easily mass produced bullet casing; the Union government bought loads of them.
Elsewhere in the State, they made the weapons that they needed, Colt and Winchester being possibly the most famous. Innovation and ingenuity being a natural part of the yankee character, local discoveries are too many to mention, from cotton gins to condensed milk and rubber vulcanisation, sewing machines and needle bearings. Manufacturing became a mainstay of the local economy through into the 1950s and 60s, but the writing was on the wall as cheaper labour and power supplies elsewhere started to take its toll.
Natural history: you name it, we got it within spitting distance. Deer aplenty, raccoons, chipmunks, skunks, and bears all seen rambling regularly in my neighbourhood; wild turkey roam in small herds. Me and the boys in the factory next door stood around for a good while last week watching a couple of red-tailed hawks learning to fly, and the mill dam is an excellent spot to throw a worm and catch a small brookie or rainbow trout now the factories have all closed – that is, unless the bloody bald eagle has been by and had ’em all, or scared them away, but he’s fun to watch too. Friend of mine had her chickens eaten by coyotes two weeks ago, and another friend has seen two mountain lions in the last year, not ten miles up the road. I’ve not seen a coyote or mountain lion; both of these are relatively recent returnees to the state. Connecticut is also ground zero for Lyme disease, we have deer ticks a plenty.
Signed, sunbeamtim.
Ovally Balls 
Wonderful stuff, SBT! Great to hear about a bit of the USA I know very little about.
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Real cricket update. Must be a slow news day as they made the local rag this time. My lad was instrumental in the 112 run thrashing of the opposition:
https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/sport/cricket/upminster-colts-enjoy-successful-sunday-1-6774925
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Words SBT!!
Although….
the mill dam is an excellent spot to throw a worm and catch a small brookie or rainbow trout
AVs will be along to provide some re-education in some nice Socialist Democrat accommodation shortly.
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Ticht – from the previous blog, nice one on the couch to 5km. I started some exercise a few months back (well, my friend who is a pt is helping me) and I’ve noticed how much better I feel.
One word of advice on the food (if you don’t mind the unsolicited advice), make sure you get enough protein through spinach and pulses and drop the potatoes, pasta, rice, bread etc. That’s one thing my friend is very hot on. Getting enough protein and lowering the carb intake.
I have quite a lot of fish (canned Tuna mainly) and meat but it’s doable with just veg too.
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Sbt – that’s a lovely Harley BTW. Nice old school hard tail. Does your friend let you ride it3
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I’ve been baking my own bread for the past few weeks, and it’s amazing how it doesn’t feel stodgy or make me feel stodgy, even when I made a very dense loaf with spelt flour. No sugar, no preservatives, etc. It’s filling (I add seeds) so I don’t eat a huge amount of it, but it certainly feels nutritious.
Carbs are good for energy/stamina, especially if you’re doing sporty activities. All things in moderation.
I have read – in reputable sources! – that the Irish peasantry were among the healthiest in Europe, pre-famine, because their diet consisted mostly of potatoes and Guinness (well, Guinness-like brews). Apparently it was a pretty rounded diet for the time. No doubt it also included some veg, in season.
The main thing to be avoided is highly processed foods – and that unfortunately includes most ready meals and indeed restaurant meals these days. Cook your own food from whole ingredients and you’ll be okay: some meat or fish, some carbs, plenty of veg.
/does a flying dismount off high horse
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Thaum – you need carbs for sure. But if you cut them it’s the quickest way to lose a few pounds apparently. I’ve made some bread too so I haven’t given them up totally.
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Yep Craigs, he does, its a fairly straight 1936 VL.
Here is a couple I built, being ridden last Friday. er, hope post thing works.
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Nope, that didnt , oh well.
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Great ATL, SBT! I’ve never had any inclination to go Stateside, largely because I still have so much of Africa to explore and have recently been exposed to the marvels of Asia too. However, yours and AVS’s posts have made me reconsider. And just to send Thauma running for the (not-Appalachian) hills, Mrs Deebee would love to tour the south in an old Cadillac visiting all the rufty-tufty country and bluegrass bars. May have to convince her they’re all Trump supporters and hate Africans. Of any hue.
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Elon Musk Update:
“You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.”
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I can only assume, SBT, that you’ve read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at some stage during your meanderings on bike or in car? I had a copy of it as a student and got 3/4 of the way through before being arrested for (alleged) drunk driving one Friday night. Not proud of it, just to be clear. Ended up in a police cell on the eastern side of Joburg and the officer on duty had to be paged (yes, i know) from his movie night with his wife. He was furious, of course, and gave me the third degree.
Whilst filling out the charge sheet, he obviously asked occupation, to which I replied (with sinking heart) “student”. Wits University in those days was a hotbed of anti-apartheid protest and it was assumed all students were communist agitators. “What you studying?” he asked. “International Relations” I replied, convinced I was going to spend the weekend behind bars. He looked at me and asked “with Prof Kunert?”. I nodded. “He’s a great man – great mind” was the response. Turns out he had been studying at uni but couldn’t afford to continue so had joined the police on a five year stint to be able to study through them, which was pretty common then. We chatted about a whole range of topics and he asked me what book I was currently reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” It was like hen’s teeth in SA then, and he couldn’t find a copy. He let me off with a warning, so I went back a couple of weeks later and gave him my copy – have still never finished it!
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“A bit like Kinshasa Part 2!” I hear being shouted from somewhere in the arctic north.
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Lovely stuff SBT. An area of the US (like many) I know little about.
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‘Everywhere outside city limits is Trump territory.’
One of life’s great mysteries. Why a multimillionaire NY property developer born with a silver spoon up is butthole has the undying support of rural poor people he doesn’t give a crap about and would happily shaft without a second thought.
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That was a greatread, SBT, I’m envious of your yard.
Thanks Craigs, during the second week I really did feel like there was no way I’d be able to finish the course, now 5k is a piece of piss and my daughters have recommended the Body Combat videos on youtube, so Ikll give them a go and use them along with running.
I watched two films at the start of all this, What The Health and The Game Changers. They challenge conventional wisdom on nutrition and as a result they received the expected backlash, however the makers have defended themselves and their films well enough.
I can only go by my own experience, adopting a vegan diet and shedding a few pounds has gotten rid of the inflammation that was causing shooting pains running up and down my forearms. I have so much more energy and feels I’ve found the right way for me. As a precaution I take vegan vitamins and a disgusting concoction of turmeric and black pepper in water as an anti-inflammatory.
Much of my diet is fresh fruit and vegetables with brown rice, I still can’t get into brown pasta, it just doesn’t do it for me I’m afraid.
Thaum, the bakery at the top of our hill does a mean brown sourdough loaf, this is apparently very easy on one’s digestive system. I want to make my own once this all calms down to whatever “normal” is, there is a great video on making a starter by an Irish baker, I’ll see if I can find it.
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Here we go
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Sbt – my bike is in the my garage collecting dust at the moment. It needs a new regulator for the battery and some tlc. I think I will end up selling it but it’s almost 20 years old.
After the fire and a small crash I started to cycle. I’ll pick it up again one day*.
* I’m pretty sure a round the world bike trip will be on the cards in about 15 years. When my youngest has left. My wife keeps mentioning things like ‘being uncomfortable for long stretches on the back’ but it was in our wedding vows (implicitly) so a contract is a contract.
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Speaking of the house, we hope to move back in in January. Been a while….
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I loved Zen and the Art…
Great book, I was reading it when I was the tennis court attendant (slacker summer student job) and the local kirk minister rocked up for a game, he saw the book and proceeded to talk with me about it for almost an hour, great guy.
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That’s good news, Craigs
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‘I’m envious of your yard.’
Ditto
All that space for stuff. Could fill it with all sorts of gear. And a proper hen coop so I wouldn’t be knee deep in poop as I step out the back door.
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Good stuff craigs. Have you visited GBH on the neighbours yet?
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@ticht
I saw this on my youtube feed yesterday and thought of you. Well I thought of Sag really but you certainly fall into the camp of “people who have opinions on things like this”. I think it’s a great video
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Ticht – body combat will sort you out!! Try finding a HIIT workout too.
Re The Game Changers, one of the claims (I need to find this) they make is false and it has been demonstrated as a manipulation of statistics. Others (such as the battle ropes thing or Connor Mcgregor’s loss to Nate Diaz) are kinda suspect.
If it works for you then great but as mentioned I don’t subscribe to the idea that removing meat entirely is the necessarily healthiest option.
Less food, less booze (nooooooooo!!!!!!), more vegetables, more fish, higher quality food, less processed fats etc would help most people’s diets tbh.
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Cheers guys.
Chimpie – he apologised for ‘being a dick’. Apparently he can be a dick sometimes. Deep down he knows but only acknowledges it after.
I appreciated that.
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Lovely ATL Tim
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Sounds like a serial dick, craigs. Needs some harsh treatment for him to realise there are consequences so he won’t do it again.
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Chimpie – that may come after the party wall stuff has gone through.
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@craigs
Tell him to behave or you’ll set Chimpie on him.
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Tbh, he lives in a converted barn with an acre of land and a pool on mates rates rent so I don’t think he’ll be too happy coming back to the terrace above a shop with no garden. He recently got a big dog too. I think they’ll try to rent out the space above their business and stay where they are.
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I finished the pizza oven in my patio recently. Need to have another project. I might dig a small pool in the garden and put in those natural filter beds.
Mrs Craig’s is sceptical but if she wakes up and the work has already started she’ll probably be fine right?
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‘Tell him to behave or you’ll set Chimpie on him.’
*gets cheesegrater ready*
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Ticht – thanks for that; I haven’t attempted sourdough yet! Gonna try soda farls in a bit.
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I finished the pizza on my patio recently. Need to have another pizza. That’s how I read it anyway.
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The {SA} tour will be Gatland’s third as B&I Lions coach after a 2-1 series victory over the Wallabies in 2013 and a 1-1 draw with the All Blacks in 2017.
Gatland hinted that he might retain some of the coaches that were involved in those tours. Rob Howley (attack), Andy Farrell (defence), Steve Borthwick (forwards) and Graham Rowntree (scrum) were all involved in the last tour in New Zealand.
“One of the things that I’ve found really, really important is that, yes, you want to make a few changes and you want to bring some new faces and new voices in, but you don’t want a clean sweep,” Gatland said.
Howley can only be better than whoever the attack coach at the 0-7 Chiefs is. Will be interesting to see how that tour pans out after the disruption this year. i was quietly confident we could squeak past Scotland with a couple of homer ref decisions, retain the 4N title and build towards the Lions tour with a rousing NH end of year tour. Now we manage to avoid the Sword of the South, may end up playing a truncated 4N wholly in New Zealand and won’t tour the NH at the end of the year.
Will that be worse than the B&I Lions players finishing this year’s 6N, doing the 8N end of year tournie and moving on to the next 6N with barely a breath? Not sure. One side may be undercooked, the other overdone.
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What I will say is that Gatland is due a defeat as Lions coach – the trajectory says so.
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That’s a really good vid, OT. I’m no Beatles scholar but I think they were instinctive musicians who had a real feel for “what sounded good” and were interested enough to follow up on whatever they stumbled across – it’s a bit like the discussion on “natural musicians”, I don’t believe there is such a thing*, there are those who can sit at the piano from morning till night and not notice the 10 hours go by. Learning an instrument is all about repetition, and good guidance. If you can sit there for hours on end and enjoy every single minute of it, rush home from school or work in order to sit there for hours to play, there is your “natural musician”.
*there are people like Mozart or Beethoven, the child prodigies, I have no idea how to explain them but for the rest of us, it’s down to hours of repetition – ten thousand hours to mastery of any pursuit is what they reckon – I don’t think I could be an Olympic sprinter after twenty thousand hours, but that’s another matter.
I liked the bit at the end of video where he talks about music theory in general, there is an inverted snobbery in rock music especially which goes by the mantra that theory kills creativity, that’s bollocks, it’s all the more liberating if you know many more alternatives and variations on the old three chords. Yeah someone like John Lee Hooker can use one chord and just sit on it for a whole song, but not many can pull it off like him.
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My other idea is to make a DIY offset smoker bbq. Texas style.
I can’t weld yet. But I can’t use a digger yet either.
Decisions, decisions.
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Craigs, when you do your first slab of brisket, give me a shout.
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I had to go and look up what makes a prodigy – I like the quote at the end of this short article, Experts are born, then made
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-a-prodigy1/
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Deebs – won’t be my first.
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But of course.
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And that’s a good reason to drive around the deep south innit.
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Lovely stuff SBT!
The early 2000s changed me too!
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When you do your next slab, dammit! And I need a few days advance warning to get a plane ticket. And an invitation, of course. Last bit is optional, I’ll find your address anyway.
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Thanks for kind words, the Editor did a great job turning rambling twaddle into something semi coherent.
Thanks Thauma.
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When you do your next slab
A good ol’ fashioned Karl. Right there.
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Petrus du Plessis has left Glasgow, which is a shame as he had really helped their scrum in a coaching capacity and even as a player when needed – he was 39 at the end of the season there!
Kelly Brown has gone back to the Weedge in a coaching role, leaving Saracens.
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‘After a severe sepsis infection caused the loss of his genitalia, a 45-year-old man has become the first to have a new “bionic penis” grafted onto his arm.’
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