A Tale of Two Shopping Baskets

You can learn everything about a person from their shopping basket. My mother's typically contains organic vegetables, wine, granary bread, skimmed milk and wholewheat pasta so therefore you can instantly tell she's middle-class and so a bit of a food snob. My sister's usually is full of saladly bits, chicken, couscous, bread, Hellman's mayonnaise and things like chopped tomatoes and olives revealing that (a) she has a remarkable amount of discipline when it comes to junk food, (b) has inherited my mother's food snobbery and refuses to buy supermarket brands and (c) cooks meals properly from scratch.

My latest shopping basket however was an embarrassment, even by my low standards. It contained milk, tea bags (that's alright), Cocopops, tinned soup, two quiches (not great but not that bad), toblerone cookies, Dairy Milk Wholenut, sausage rolls (it's ok, I am revising for finals after all, the need for soul food is understandable) and microwavable macaroni cheese (there is no excuse). In comparison my flatmate's basket held Fruit and Fibre, apples, spices, rice and pesto. I was so embarrassed that I deliberately picked out the most common looking checkout person in Sainsburys and even she judged me.

But even this shameful assemblage doesn't even come near to the typical shopping basket of a boy I knew in first year. His basket (and those of you who know me know I rarely exaggerate) comprised of meatballs in a can, three packs of supernoodles (which he mixed with the meatballs), Tesco Value bacon, white bread, tinned ravioli, coffee, ketchup (which was squeezed in liberal amounts on top on the supernoodles/meatballs concoction), three packets of fags and a 24 pack of Carling (drank with the meatballs/supernoodles/ketchup combo). I haven't seen him for three years but I can only presume he's either dead from malnutrition or his mother dragged him back home in horror at his dietary habits.

I'm hoping that my shopping habits will sort themselves out in time. Otherwise I am never going to get married. I'm putting all my hopes in the fact that as a middle class person it is my unavoidable destiny to start buying organic milk, artisan cheeses, probiotic yoghurt and fairtrade coffee.

Bad Geology

Bad science is a universal feature of films. Bad geology is less common (probably due to the fact that geology is hardly a subject to get the heart rate racing) but when it is found it is often so wrong that geologists everywhere wail at the cinema screen in frustration. Here is my countdown of some of the biggest howlers.

HONOURABLE MENTION; QUANTUM OF SOLACE

The moment where 007 picks up a rock and looks at it before confidently concluding that river used to be here. The excitement! James Bond, the coolest man in the entire world, is a secret geologist! Archaeology has Indiana Jones as its champion, palaeontology has Ross from friends, physics has Mr Fantastic and all geology had Professor Lidenbrook (and admit it - you haven't even heard of him). No longer! Now we can claim James Bond as one of our own.

#5 JURASSIC PARK

Along with Harry Potter, Friends and Sharkey and George, Jurassic Park holds a special place in the hearts of my generation. For that reason I was somewhat reluctant to include the film but, despite such sentimentality, it has to be acknowledged that the film is based on some seriously dubious science. Firstly Jurassic Park is a misnomer as, while some of the dinosaurs do belong in the Jurassic, most of the dinosaurs featured in the film are actually Cretaceous in age. It is difficult to see how one mosquito could have bitten dinosaurs separated, in theory, by over 150 million years. Secondly many of the biological features of the dinosaurs are simply wrong. All valid points but, I admit, pedantic ones and ones only geologists and palaeontologists would care about. The bigger issue with Jurassic Park is the concept of cloning dinosaurs from DNA extracted from a 200 million year old mosquito trapped in amber. This simply is not possible. However as many films are based on impossible premises and it would be churlish of me to pick on this revered film which is why, despite its bad science, it only sneaks into number five.

#4 THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

Because climate change is that quick.

#3 TREMORS

The monsters in this film, according to the romantic interest (who is a geologist and should know better), “predate the fossil record”. That would be the fossil record that stretches back 3.8 billion years when all there was anyway were single celled organisms that didn’t even breathe oxygen?

#2 ARMAGEDDON

A nuclear bomb, provided it is big enough, can solve any sort of problem in America. You need to get rid of some aliens? No problem, just send a nuclear missile screaming their way. That’ll show the little green buggers not to mess with the good old US of A. There’s a meteor heading your way? No worries. Just send a load of oil riggers (oil riggers? The USA spends billions on their military and space agencies. I think someone in the American government needs to take an urgent look at how all that money is spent. Clearly they aren’t getting value for money if the best people they have are a bunch of rednecks) into space with a nuclear bomb, which (after sufficient setbacks and drama of course) will blow the meteor into bits which will conveniently and harmlessly tumble past Earth. Surely, even if the meteor could be blasted into bits, wouldn’t the problem shift from dealing with one big meteorite to dealing with numerous smaller meteors which are now highly radioactive?

#1 THE CORE

The Core is a towering example of how to take seize an exciting idea (in this case journeying to the centre of the earth), fail to consult any geologists (despite the main character is one and surely geologists are the kind of people who would know about the centre of the earth), and create a film that is so incredibly inaccurate even my sister commented on it. I can get over the whole travelling to the centre of the earth. It’s a film after all and I’m not that much of a pedant (well, for a geologist anyway). I can accept the concept of the collapse of the earth’s magnetic field. I can even tolerate the use of a nuclear bomb to restart the Earth’s core. After all this is an American film and as I already have pointed out nuclear bombs are the answer to all of America’s problems. Even Russia. No, The Core earns its enviable number one spot due to one scene and one scene only. Imagine it. The small (and good looking) crew are powering through the Earth’s mantle in their unobtainium ship, protected from the massive temperatures and pressures as they swerve past thrillingly large diamonds. Then, alas! They soar into a massive void and crash into a mass of huge crystals. A void? In the Earth’s mantle? Had the film producers even talked to a geologist? Clearly not for then the crew go out of their vessel and inspect the damage to the engines. This got one of my geologist friends so riled up he threw his (thankfully empty) pizza box at the screen. For the non-geologist the pressures in the mantle are in the range of a million times that at the surface and the temperature is at least a couple of thousand degrees. Not an agreeable environment for humans. In fact, at those conditions, a human would be simultaneously crushed to the size of a matchbox and vapourised. And how do the plucky crew protect themselves? By donning suits that appear to be made of canvas. Enough said.

A Simple Recipe for Spinach Pie

First place the spinach in a large colander, sprinkle with a little salt, rub into the leaves and leave for 30 minutes to drain the excess liquid.

Big colander is dirty and there's too much spinach to fit in the sieve so skip this step. The spinach probably doesn't need draining anyway.

Then preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Melt the butter or margarine in a large pan and fry the onions until golden.

Damn - haven't got any butter. Nick some of flatmate's instead. Realise after five minutes that the butter isn't melting because oven isn't turned on at the wall. Turn on oven. Chop onions using flatmate's very sharp knife. Rinse sliced open finger under tap and put on plaster. Put slightly bloodied onions in with the butter which should now be a little burned.

Add the garlic, crumbled feta cheese and pine nuts. Remove from the heat and stir in the eggs, spinach, saffron and spices. Mix well.

Try to crumble feta cheese into a bowl but get it all over the floor and worktop as well. Rinse brine out of cut on finger. Haven't got any pine nuts or saffron so have to do without. Root around in flatmate's cupboard for paprika. Find something that may be paprika but not labelled so decide not to risk it (last time you mistook garum masala for tumeric and ended up with some very strange tasting kedgeree). Break eggs into bowl. Pick out the bits of eggshell and beat into a satisfying pulp. Find the biggest bowl in the kitchen and pour everything in. Damn - not big enough. Try to mix with a wooden spoon but fail and have to use hands instead. Wash cheesy, eggy onion mixture off hands.

Grease a large, rectangular baking dish. Take seven of the sheets of filo and brush one side with a little olive oil. Place on the bottom of the dish, overlapping the sides.

Cheat and use ready-made filo pastry. Haven't got olive oil so sunflower will have to do. Lay down the filo sheets and then realise that you forgot to grease the dish. Take the filo sheets back and grease the dish with more purloined butter. Relay the now ripped filo sheets and spray each one with sunflower oil.

Spoon all of the spinach mixture over the pastry and dribble 2tbsp of the remaining olive oil over the top.

When spooning notice that the mixture is not that well mixed so half the spinach pie will be very cheesy while the other half is very oniony. Wipe up the egg that has dribbled all over the worktop.

Fold the overlapping pastry over the filling. Cut the remaining pastry sheets to the dish size and brush each one with more olive oil. Arrange over the top of the filling.

Scissors are dirty so rip the filo sheets instead. By the time it's finished the spinach pie should look like it's survived an intifada.

Brush with water to prevent curling and then bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown.

Clean up the devastation in the kitchen. Pick out the spinach leaves blocking the plug hole and sweep up the feta cheese on the floor. Impatiently check the pie every five minutes. Take it out when it's just on the underdone side and serve it with anything in the fridge. And because it's so big you will be eating slightly undercooked spinach pie until the end of time. Enjoy!

In Case of Zombies, Break Glass

I was at a friend’s birthday party the other night and another friend announced that he and his flatmates had a set of protocols in case the dead arose and started to feast on the living. Unfortunately I became distracted by the lemon squares that had suddenly come on offer and never got the chance to continue the conversation any further but it did remind me of a similar conversation a year or so ago with my flatmate’s boyfriend.

We had a book “The Zombie Survival Guide” that lay in our bathroom for several months and, judging from the well thumbed appearance it quickly developed, was a source of much toilet-based entertainment. It became so popular that I walked into our kitchen one day to find my flatmate and my other flatmate’s boyfriend discussing a survival strategy in case a “Dawn of the Dead” scenario ever arose.

Step One: Block off the staircases. Being on the third floor we could ensure our safety from the zombie hordes below. The book suggested destroying the stairs completely but ours are solid Victorian stone and so this would probably require several days and some sort of wrecking ball, neither of which would be practical so we’d just have to settle for barricading ourselves in with various items of furniture.

Step Two: Once the immediate danger of being eaten by zombies had passed we would have to turn our attention to longer term survival. The book recommends that every household should have a stash of canned foods in case of such an event but, as all I have in my cupboard at the moment is two elderly potatoes and a box of teabags along with tube of garlic paste that I’m certain isn’t mine, this isn’t going to happen and so this would have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. My flatmate suggested that we could grow vegetables in the back garden. I pointed out several problems with this plan. Firstly, and most vitally, I didn’t have any vegetable seeds and I very much doubted if anyone else would have a packet of cabbage seeds kicking around. Secondly I suspect any of us would know how to grow a dandelion let alone enough vegetables to feed five. Thirdly vegetables take weeks to grow and so we would starve anyway before the first potatoes had taken seed.

Step Three: If by an amazing act of divine intervention we actually managed to grow something that was both edible and nourishing we would construct an array of zipwires to get around and link up with similar communities in Marchmont (probably propelled by all the gas produced by a diet of vegetables). Again I saw a problem. None of us were engineers. One of my flatmates only has one tool in her toolkit which is a hammer which gets used from everything from assembling flatpack furniture to changing a light bulb and the bookcase that I bought from Ikea is held together by duct tape and hope.

I was firmly told to stop being pedantic. I was missing the point. The point wasn’t long term survival but rather avoiding being zombie snacks. We’d probably perish of hunger or plummet to our deaths from a poorly constructed zipwire or just kill each other in some sort of cabin fever induced frenzy but hey, at least we wouldn’t be zombie food. And that was the most important thing of all.

The end of the world as we know it?

A couple of days ago my flatmate and I were curled up in my room in our jammies, tea in hand and somehow the conversation meandered onto the cheerful topic of the end of the world. What would get us first she wondered, would it be all out nuclear war? Would India and Pakistan turn each other into smoking holes in the ground? Would Russia and the USA in a fit of high spirits send nuclear warheads screaming across the Atlantic? It was a worry we agreed but I was of the opinion the world had bigger problems. I think the world has been nearer to nuclear meltdown. I remember a conversation with my mother a few years ago. She remembers some of the Cold War and how there were times when impending nuclear doom seemed not only likely but probable. I’ve not quite reached that stage of terror so I’m still taking out the rubbish and not cowering under the bed with a paper bag over my head just yet.

If not nuclear war, then maybe terrorism? Again I wrinkled my nose, not convinced. Terrorists, as has been proved over and over again, have been capable of terrible things but I think they lack the organisation to threaten the entire world order. The main advantage to terrorism is that most terrorists are motivated by their own perverted beliefs and the problem (or advantage) with that is that no-one quite believes exactly the same thing. So you get splinter groups and then splinter groups from them until you get a bewildering array of terrorist groups who probably hate each other more than their supposed enemies. To paraphrase Augustus De Morgan, great cells have little cells upon their backs to bite ‘em, and little cells have lesser cells and so ad infinitum.

No, I think we’re looking at global warming which will eventually be the downfall of humanity. I study geology (not geography! Please don’t get them mixed up or you may find yourself being punched by an irritable geologist. Nothing gets a geologist more riled up than people thinking they study geography. The film The Core comes a close second but that’s a story for another day) and I’m sorry folks but it’s happening and there’s bugger all you can do about it. Recycling your milk cartons and using energy efficient lightbulbs is not going to offset all the damage that humans have done over the past three centuries. Rising sea levels will push more people into less space. Less land means less room for agriculture and the poorest will be the first to starve. Dwindling resources will push humanity to the edge and we’ll disappear into extinction in a blaze of war, protectionism and arrogance.

But to end on a positive note – what an achievement for mankind! Never mind agriculture or the electric toothbrush, we have managed to throw a spanner in the workings of an entire planet.

Gardening

I hate gardening. It's right up there with midges, the Daily Mail and people who don't know how to use punctuation. I blame my mother. She has an unfortunately massive garden and even bigger plans to landscape it and to do it she will willingly rope in anyone unlucky enough to be passing. In a burst of 'The Good Life'esque intentions half of the garden is given over to vegetables which have to be watered twice a day and some of the most ferocious arguments between me and my sister have been over who gets the relatively easy job of watering the plants in the greenhouse and who has to water the rest of the bloody thing. Needless to say my sister won most of the time and I spent a goodly portion of my summer heaving a hose around. The rest of the summer I spent mowing the endless expanse of lawn with a juddery diesel lawnmower which turned my arms to jelly (it took hours for my boobs to stop vibrating), making a rockery (sensibly located on a raised flowerbed) and spreading horse manure. And what did I get from all this effort? Nothing but dodgy tanlines and splinters. It's just not worth it.

Down at my dad's gardening is something that's only ever done in short bursts. My stepmum takes a notion every now and then that 'something has to be done about the garden' and off she goes to B&Q, returning with armfuls of bulbs and seedlings which she proceeds to plant over the next two days. My dad meanwhile only does the practical and manly jobs around the garden. He drags the lawnmower out of the barn and cuts the grass (the explosion of swearing when he hits a forgotten toy lurking in the grass is something to be witnessed), has a good hack at the bushes and rakes up leaves. I can't help feeling that it's all in vain. The horses in the field behind us eat every scrap of vegetation they can reach and my little brother with a football can turn even the most robust flowerbed into a sorry, desolate mess of broken stalks and bent petals in less than fifteen minutes.

I think though that the prize for the most manly gardening has to go to my flatmate's father who takes a more direct approach. When asked to remove a fence that was running through their garden he decided that it would be too time consuming to take it down by hand and he set fire to it instead. Apparently it got rid of the fence but there was a long streak of burnt ground for months. A nearby bush still hasn't recovered and now looks like a horticultural version of Twoface; full and green on one side but black and burnt on the other. My favourite story though involves pampas grass. Pampas grass needs to be burnt back every so often so it can grow back bigger and better (this is one of the many things I know although I have no recollection of anyone actually telling me this) and my flatmate's mother, clearly not learning from the fence incident, asked her husband to set fire to the patch of pampas in their front garden. Set fire to it he did but to help it along he'd doused the plant in petrol before hand "to get things going". I'm told the resultant whoooomp could be heard two houses away.

My mother assures me that I'll come round to the idea when I'm older which, frankly, is a terrifying prospect. The minute I willingly plant a daffodil bulb I might as well join the parish council, order in Reader's Digest and accept that I am middle-class, middle aged and it's all downhill from there.