bored bored bored
Jun. 6th, 2011 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erastes(at dad's) Hate not having any connection. It's cloudy and rainy (which is great, because, 3 months with no rain!) but that means no connection at all and it's BORING. And even if I do write, which I will, I'm back in the groove now, I can't check anything, and that's annoying as hell.
Home made chicken curry for lunch. I wish I could find a curry powder that's hotter than the ones available in the supermarkets. I have to add a chilli sauce to get it anywhere near the heat we like. "Madras" it says on the tin, but it's more like Korma for my taste buds. Just a tingle, and nothing else. I should stop be being lazy and make my own curry powder, I always used to do it,mixed up from spices from scratch. I should be able to find the stuff online.
Would you like a Chapter of "I Knew Him"? Hopefully, you do!
Here's chapter two. Any X's within the text are because I haven't decided on that name. Bear with!
Chapter Two
A modicum of introduction is required, then. Let us pretend that these four study rooms on the long wall of the warm-stoned quadrangle are the social venue to which you have been invited—although with the all-pervading smell of academe which even the beeswax cannot subsume—I don't know why you'd accept—and I'll take you around and introduce you to the chaps, those who are worth you meeting, at least. You've already met me, but I suppose I should share some of my credentials. Harry George Alexander Bircham. The Sussex Birchams I'm afraid, not the Norfolk branch. According to family legend, or perhaps wishful thinking, we slipped above the Bircham blanket sometime in the 17th century; a liaison between a younger son and a visiting ladies' maid. It's a nice story, and I'm sure it reassures my family that they are the higher beings in their little village circle, but it's just as likely that our ancestor simply came from Bircham and moved due to some need or other.
I like to think he was in actuality, some stern and intolerant schoolmaster—Isaac Birch'em who had to leave his village after flogging a boy to death for his declination of Amo Amas Amat. Sadly though, life, I've found, is rarely as glamorous as history, and family wish-fulfilment, would have it be. If one were to believe every ghastly work of romance that people love so much (our Matron is a devotee, and we are assailed with lurid half-clad women on the covers of her books every time we go to the San.) then all heroes in historical times are really undiscovered heirs and are simply floundering around with the hobbledehoy until apprised of their true heritage.
Sadly I doubt that Lord thingy of Bircham is going to spot me walking through London, see an exact facsimile of his great-great-grandfather and welcome me back into the ermined fold. So I shall remain simply Harry Bircham and go into the law.
I'm average height for my year, that is to say there's only the freakish tall or the freakish small who stand out—my hair is on the sandy side of brown and I have brown eyes. I'm pretty unremarkable, or pretty but unremarkable. No title, middling fortune, no breeding. C'est moi.
You've also met him. Now he has breeding, or at least a family tree, rather than a legendary blanket—and the promise of a fair fortune. His family once owned half of Cumbria. Or Tyneside. Or—well, wherever it was it was terribly earnest and hard-working, you know the kind of thing; honest and gloomy men in striped shirts and those belted trousers with picks in hand and canaries in cages, hewing the coal from the subterranean with the sweat of their fetid brow—or some kind of brow, anyway. Well, that's his family for you. Filthy rich by the 19th century, then sold it all off (quite sensibly, seeing the mess the coal mines get into every so often) and invested it somewhere or the other and doing very nicely on it thank you.
But for all that, you'd never know it to look at him. He's permanently creased, and I don't think—even when we've sat down to a formal hall dinner—I've seen him entirely groomed. He couldn't look less like a young man of Great Expectations. He told me that on his first day at our prep school he was so untidy by the time he arrived he was mistaken for Rowlands, a boy in our same year who was poor but worthy and had a scholarship. The HB was quite put out to discover his real name and lineage and I'm afraid was rather set against him from day one, as if he'd had some prank played on him but wasn't sure what it was.
I didn't meet him properly for a term or two, and it took a long time for us to get where we are today. That in itself is a long, sordid, and at times uproariously funny story, the fine details of which are known only to two people in the world, myself and him, and I think I'd rather keep it that way if you don't mind. This story has no relevance to us—being where we are—wherever that is.
So, let me show you around. The entire wing is symmetrical and there are four studies on this floor. This is his study, opposite mine. I know what you are thinking; it's pretty tidy for someone I've just been slating as the untidiest man in college. But that's not his doing. That pile of detritus over by the bed-side table; those layers of papers, books, banana skins and plates? That's what his entire room would look like if it wasn't for the bedder, Crane. Crane is the unfortunate woman who does for the four of us up here, and she has strict instructions—upon pain of discommendation—not to touch anything within two feet of his bed. You can almost see the circle of dust, two feet in circumference around his bed, can't you? Almost. I have a suspicion that Crane pushes her broom into the hallowed area and scrapes out the worst of it, but I'll never voice my thoughts. Her secret is safe with me.
Further up the corridor here, and nicely far apart—the doors being as far away from ours as could be—are Richardson and Gilbert. This is Richardson's study, as you can see he's rather a sportsman—as is Gilbert, to be honest. The Dean has complained several times about the gaudy display of cups and rosettes, because frankly too much display is showing off, however well-deserved it is—but Richardson treats the current Dean with the same level of contempt as do the rest of us.
I think it's down to the fact that we've never really forgiven Dean Winterbottom for taking the hallowed shoes of Dean Armitage, who where e'er he walked, cool gales did fan the glade and all that. We all had a pash on Armitage, queer or otherwise. How could we not? A veritable Heathcliff in cap and gown, striding about the quad positively bristling with repressed sexuality. I say repressed because none of us ever heard of him having a woman—or anything else—but then I've never seen Richardson with anyone and he's hardly what one would call repressed. Anyway—back to the late lamented Dean Armitage, which is a far nicer subject to linger upon. Smouldering dark blue eyes (or at least we liked to consider they smouldered when looking at us) glossy black hair with that divine touch of grey at the temples and a physique that had me weak at the knees. He reminded me hugely of Magnusson- the Head Boy in my last year at Druitts Torture Academy for Young Gentlemen. He was another brooding Gothic Heathcliff, but as blond as the divine Icelander Hans Bjelke from Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Magnusson had thighs like tree-trunks and a posterior that positively wouldn't be disguised by an attempt at wearing the baggiest of trousers. The four of us (I had the misfortune to go to Prep school with all four of the miscreants on my current floor) became quite addicted to Le Sport during Magnusson's reign and we would actually be found on the touchlines at matches, cheering and causing some consternation, as our appalling disinterest in sport had long been a thorn in Druitt's collective side.
But, ah well, he's dead and in his grave and oh the difference to me or however it goes.
When Armitage left and Winterbottom took the post of Dean, it was as it were Paris had taken the mantle of Telmanacus instead of Hector. Mrs Winterbottom would probably be scandalised to be compared to Helen, it has to be said. I don't think someone the shape of a cottage loaf launched so much as a punt, let alone a thousand ships. So trés disappointing, and however good a job he did, he simply wasn't going to get the slavish devotion of this study-wing who went so far into mourning at Armitage's departure that we posted black crepe around our beds and would have painted red crosses in blood red paint on our doors had not we been caught at it and been fined most unfairly.
Totally irrelevant really, I suppose other than to demonstrate how one man can't ever really step into the shoes of another.
Back to the tour then. So if Richardson isn't in his own study, he'll be found here—in Gilbert's. And here they both are. On opposite sides of the room, too, each with a book, and as usual quite disappointingly not springing apart as the door opens unexpectedly.
"Dash it, Bircham," Gilbert scolded. "You could knock."
I smiled at him sweetly and blew him a kiss. "I could, but you know I never do." There was—and never would be—any need to do so, after all.
"He's not in here," Gilbert added, pointlessly. I could see that perfectly well. "He was earlier, complaining loudly about his spoiled summer. He invited us down to his mother's house. What's all that about?"
"I couldn't say," I replied in perfect truth. "Are you going to come?"
The two of them exchanged glances and I saw Richardson give the smallest of shrugs. "We haven't decided yet," Gilbert said.
"Well, don't do us any favours," I said with what I hoped was a scathing rise of my left eyebrow. It was something I'd been practising, and I thought it was devastating. "Abandon us to Somerset and all her deprivations. What were you planning to do instead?"
"Gilbert's people have a house rented in Torquay--" Richardson began.
"Torquay?" I exclaimed. "Oh, for God's sake, that's worse than Bognor. If you truly wish to bury yourselves among the tweeded Boer War relics and the knitting widows, then by all means go to Torquay."
"You're such a snob, Bircham," Richardson said.
I paused for a moment in thought, leaning provocatively against the doorframe. "But then, Torquay isn't a million miles from XXXXX, we could move around to alleviate the dreary. Would your people have room for two more if necessary, Gilbert?"
"I thought you just eschewed the very thought of Torquay and its tweeded denizens," he said.
"I'm thinking ahead," I said. "Planning a campaign. If we are to be robbed of Europe and all her delights, we need to have some entertainments in hand. So? Would there be room were we all to descend on your relatives?"
"I can't see why not," he replied. "The place is huge. We were there last year and it seemed to be full of bedrooms. You might have to share, depending on whom else the Olds have invited, but that wouldn't exactly be a burden, would it?"
"It would shocking beyond belief," I said, with a mock sigh. "Well, I'd better go and find him, or he'll be getting himself into trouble. Ta ta."
They ignored me, so I sauntered off. That's the neighbours for you, solid and dependable, and of course I've known them both since before the Ark was built. Granted they could be more exciting, but I find I have my hands full enough most of the time without pulling their collective chestnuts out of the fire. I have chestnuts enough of my own.
The remaining few days of the term passed quickly enough, and there was the usual jumble sale scramble as every man in college attempted to find and retrieve everything he'd loaned, or had pinched from everyone else. Trunks were dragged in from God knows where trunks were kept and despite there always being things that one couldn't retrieve—I lost five socks that term, and I know I started the year with a chess set I never saw again—there never seemed to be enough room in the trunk no matter how one folded and squashed. I wrote to my mother and told her that I'd be going to Somerset, and I imagine that she was wildly relieved that I wouldn't be gallivanting across Europe, although there was no time for her to reply, and I timed it exactly that way. She approved of his family, even though she hadn't met them—and the common bond that had originally made us friends, that of us both having no fathers, seemed to touch her sensitive mother heart. For reasons known only to her, she seemed to think we would be good for each other. She was right, of course, but not in any way that she would like to hear about, I am quite sure.
By the last evening, when our studies were tidier than they'd been for weeks, he slid into my room, locked the door, took my hand and escorted me to the bed. He was rarely so demonstrative; he usually liked things just to happen—spontaneity was something he lived for, it was something of an obsession with him, which was pretty ironic, to be honest. Or other times he liked to be wooed, teased and explored, persuaded, as if the evil was mine alone and he was merely going along with it. It was a fantasy I was more than willing to encourage.
I thought I knew what he was trying to say that night, as he pulled me down and unbuttoned enough of my shirt to be able to invade my person and burrow around. Questing fingers pushed my vest aside and found skin, drawing my breath from my lungs and making me sink my lips against his neck. I imagined that he was making the most of the last privacy we might have for a week, maybe even weeks. Maybe his family would put us in rooms far, far away from each other, maybe they wouldn't like me.—when they finally met me after all these years—decide that they didn't want a no one, a no name, hanging around their son with no clear motive. Whatever his reasons, I pushed them aside and let him mean whatever the hell he wanted to mean. After a minute or two I decided it really didn't matter after all.
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Date: 2011-06-06 04:51 pm (UTC)Curry Powder Blend Recipe : Alton Brown : Food Network
Food Network invites you to try this Curry Powder Blend recipe from Alton Brown.
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Date: 2011-06-06 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 06:03 pm (UTC)The only supermarket-sold pre-mixed powders we tend to buy are the Sharwoods ones. Unfortunately they seem to be increasingly hard to get hold of. If you can find them though, we normally mix medium & hot together to make it the heat we like :-)
In other spice recommendations, I get most of mine from Fox's Spices, who are a mail order company based in Warwickshire. I don't think they've got an online shop (at least they didn't the last time I looked!) but their number is 01789 266420 - ask them to send out a catalogue. They do a few of their own curry mixtures as well as selling the individual spices for much cheaper than you can get them in the shops :-)
I also recommend adding smoked paprika to a so-so curry powder to pep it up a bit. I know I've bought that in tesco's before now...
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Date: 2011-06-07 06:18 pm (UTC)However I cannot believe that everyone is talking about curry and not one bugger has even commented on the new book!!!! :(
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Date: 2011-06-07 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 06:40 pm (UTC)Au contraire, it is far too short! I love the mood, and the narrator's voice, and the way things are shown-but-hidden :-D
Feels far too little to be saying about it, but I got all drawn in and then was "wah!? It stopped!"
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Date: 2011-06-07 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 08:57 pm (UTC)Re: curry powder
Date: 2011-06-09 11:34 am (UTC)Merry
Re: curry powder
Date: 2011-06-09 11:46 am (UTC)