Thieves dig 100ft tunnel to steal cash in Manchester

How much would you expect to earn for 6 months work digging? Factor in no insurance or sick pay, unsocial hours and unsafe working conditions plus having to supply your own clothing and equipment.

I would think £10,000 would be an absolute minimum – per person.

Police aren’t sure how many were involved in this theft but they’d have been better off doing practically anything else.

“Thieves in Manchester dug a 100ft (30m) underground tunnel to get to a cash machine.
Thieves dug the tunnel directly under the cash machine and used machinery to cut through more than 15in (38cm) of concrete to steal the money. The tunnel started from a railway embankment at the rear of the shop, and went under a car park and beneath the foundations of the store.
The passageway was about 4ft (1.2m) tall and had been fitted with lighting and roof supports.

However, the thieves only escaped with about £6,000 – because the machine had not been re-filled after the New Year bank holiday.”

Oh, I do like stupid criminal stories.

Read the full story: here

Spring comes even earlier this year

January 12th  !!

I’d spotted bluebells, daffodils, crocosmia and cruses  popping up in the garden.

One rose had opened and there was a tiny bit of blue on the lavender.

Some primroses were in flower but they tend to flower, on and off, all year round.

Then the sun came out and the crocuses in the raised bed opened. Magical.

Woman rubs her butt over $30m painting

My first weird news item for a while:
“A WOMAN dropped her pants at a museum and rubbed her rear end all over a painting valued at $30 million, according to police.

Carmen Tisch, 36, was arrested after scratching, punching and, well, rubbing her butt against Clyfford Still’s “1957-J no.2″ and causing an estimated $10,000 damage to the artwork at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. Police believe she was drunk during the late December incident.
…
The oil-on-canvas abstract expressionist painting was spared additional damage when the woman tried to urinate on it but apparently missed.”

Well, that was lucky. Mind you, it doesn’t look the sort of thing I’d spend £30 on, let alone $30 million. Nor does she, if you know what I mean.

Read the full story: here

New Zealand Christmas 2011

So, once again, it was off on Air New Zealand to the other side of the world to be with our son and his family, staying at Finnimore House again with the lovely Willy and Kathleen as our hosts.
As last year, the first full day there was also the girls’ Christmas Playgroup session and this time I got to play Santa.

Again, as last year, the weather was cold, damp and windy in Wellington for the first few days until the Southerly winds died away. Suddenly there were clear skies and dangerously bright sunshine. I had taken along a UV meter; in the UK level 7 is regarded as the dangerous maximum UV level. The first time I switched it on it read 14 and rose to 15 in the early afternoon, with a recommended maximum exposure time of 12 minutes. Time for high factor sunblock and a hat.

I’d remembered a surprising level of detail of Wellington’s roads and didn’t need the SatNav at all while there. We visited several beaches on our own or with the family. The water was cold but many locals were also enjoying the sunshine.

We went along with Tess, her Dad and James for her 20 week scan. Everything looks fine and it’s going to be another girl. Thank you, Tess, for those precious moments.

Christmas day began, of course, with much opening of presents by and for the girls. Lunch was BBQ porterhouse steaks (thank you, Pete) etc in the garden making use of the new furniture (including the essential parasol) we’d bought them.

 

Last year we visited South Island. This time we all drove up to Hawkes Bay. We stayed in a Motor lodge while the family stayed with Tess’s Nan.  Other members of the family came and went. It’s a nice town; we did some shopping and pavement café dining, picked strawberries and visited a very busy water park and spent a day in nearby Napier – a town on the coast which was virtually destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930s and rebuilt, much of it in the Art Deco style of the time. Well worth a visit.

  

By now, Mollie’s listlessness and lack of appetite had made itself clear as a bad case of Chicken Pox. Strangely, Summer was showing no such signs and still isn’t as I write this. Mollie’s potty training was made more difficult by her sickness but success was growing.

Back in Wellington, we took the girls to local parks and the swimming pool and, on the last fine day before the fine weather broke, to Zealandia – a nature park close to the heart of the City. A whole month’s rain in the next two days put paid to any more outdoor activities and, all too soon, it was time to leave.

All the photos are on Flickr and several of the places we visited have been reviewed on Trip Advisor.

Happily the house central heating, left on low, hadn’t failed and the weather was mild for early January so it wasn’t too traumatic to be back in the UK.

Until next year!

Quote of the week

Maybe even the quote of the year.

In an interview with ABC News’ Barbara Walters, the increasingly isolated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad answers a question about children being dragged from their homes and arrested with a simple, “I don’t believe you.”

That was bad enough. He continued to separate himself and his government from any “violence against protesters [that] might have occurred”. But then, and this is one to hold up in front of him when the time comes, he said “We don’t kill our people… no government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person.”  

The Glaswegian advent calendar:

Blatantly copied  from a forum. I just thought it was funny.

(Do Glaswegians think it’s funny?)

‘End of virginity’ if women drive, Saudi cleric warns

It seems that, yet again, a Middle-Eastern cleric is spouting what I’m sure the rest of the World will view as nonsense.

‘A report in Saudi Arabia has warned that, if Saudi women were given the right to drive, it would spell the end of virginity in the country.
The report was prepared for Saudi Arabia’s legislative assembly, the Shura Council, by a well-known conservative academic.
Though there is no formal ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, if they get behind the wheel, they can be arrested.’

Read the full story: here,

and also: this from 7 months ago.

Zimbabwe women accused of raping men ‘for rituals’

‘Zimbabwean police believe there is a nationwide syndicate of women raping men, possibly to use their semen for use in rituals that claim to make people wealthy.
It has taken more than a year for any arrests to be made, and on Monday three women are to go on trial in the capital, Harare, over the allegations which have shocked the country.
One alleged victim, who wished to remain anonymous, gave an account on national television in July of his experience which happened after he was offered a lift by a group of three women in Harare.

“One of the women threw water in my face and they injected me with something that gave me a strong sexual desire,” he said.
“They stopped the car and made me have sex with each of them several times, using condoms.
“When they had finished they left me in the bush totally naked.
“Some people gathering grass helped me by calling the police, who took me to hospital to deal with the effects of this drug that I had been given, as the urge to have sex was still there.”

The women due in court have been charged on 17 counts of aggravated indecent assault – as Zimbabwean law does not recognise the act of a woman raping a man.
They were detained earlier this month in the central town of Gweru, 275km (170 miles) south-west of Harare, after officers found 31 used condoms in the car that they were travelling in. ‘

It has been a while since I came across a weird news item worthy of blogging but this one clearly passed the test. Read the full story: here

Another Piston Heads gathering

No particular reason. It was a nice pub, The Blackbird near Newbury, and we like gathering for a drink and looking at nice cars. The menu looked pretty good but we also had a BBQ organised so I just had a burger so I didn’t spoil my appetite for the Sunday roast that would be waiting for me when I got home.

 

It was a bit cold but the sun shone and a glass of hot mulled wine made it even better.

Several more photos on my Flickr, including some of the BBQ when surplus run-off fat produced an inferno that required the use of a fire extinguisher.

My cornish pasty recipe

After posting pictures of my recent pasties I was asked for the recipe. I had tried various versions I’d found in books or online. One used strong bread flour – yuk. Several followed the original idea of putting only raw ingredients in the pastry. My parents could always get it all to cook that way, though the pastry was heavy, but I found nothing cooked properly inside in the time needed to cook the pastry. So I typed up my recipe from the notes I’d made and here it is. Enjoy.

Makes 6 small or 4 large pasties, depending on size of dinner plate used to cut pastry circles.

All quantities are approximate.

Pastry:

400g self-raising or plain flour + 1 or 2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 or 1 tsp bi-carb

125g lard

50g margarine

1/2 tsp salt

150g cold water

Cut lard & margarine into tiny pieces in the mixing bowl. Sift on the flour etc. Mix to the consistency of coarse, barely sticky bread crumbs. Add water gradually and mix until the whole mass will just hold together and feel damp. You may not need all the water. If it becomes stuck to your fingers and the bowl you’ve added too much water – add some flour.

This can be done with an electric mixer but it’s a ‘heavy’ mix and better done with cold hands.

Mould into a ball, wrap in lightly oiled cling-film and place in the fridge.

Do something else for a couple of hours.

 Filling:

200g potato (preferably waxy, rather than floury texture)

200g swede (1/4 large one)

350g skirt of beef

1 large onion

seasoning, milk, cooking oil

Remove pastry from fridge to return to room temp.)

Preheat oven to 180C (165C fan)

Peel veg. & chop into 1 cm (or smaller) cubes. Place in water to come to the boil. Add salt when it begins to boil.

Chop the onion as preferred.

Chop the beef into 1 cm cubes. Coat lightly in flour. This can be tricky as all the little pieces tend to stick together.

Place beef & onion into hot oil in a non-stick pan. Stir fairly often and vigorously to brown the beef pieces and sauté the onions for a minute or two. Turn the heat down.

When the veg. has been boiling for 3-5 minutes turn off the heat and strain.

Add the veg to the meat and onions and stir. It’s OK if some liquid from the veg. goes in too. Add lots of (fresh) ground black pepper. Turn off the heat and allow to stand.

Turn the pastry onto a floured surface and knead fairly firmly until the dough becomes elastic. i.e. pressing a finger tip in and it springs back afterwards. The skill of kneading took me a long time to gain. If you don’t do it the pastry will fall apart later.

Divide roughly into 4 or 6 unequal pieces. Start with the largest piece and work down. The trimmings from each circle can be added to the smaller pieces.

Roll out until each piece is big enough to cut a circle around your chosen dinner plate. Brush the edge with water or milk. Pile some filling into the middle (don’t overdo it) and fold over. Press the edges together.

Brush that edge with water/milk and crimp. I still haven’t mastered the skill of crimping. The experts make it look so easy. Brush the top with milk. Place on oiled, floured baking paper in oven trays.

Bake for 35 minutes.

Serve with whatever you want.