8 months upstairs in Flat 4: the coldest, draughtiest flat I’ve ever lived in – but with a great view of an incredibly beautiful garden – and I lived in it during the coldest December England had known in 100 years!
The boiler ran at 60% efficiency – yes, 40% of the gas it burned went up the chimney – the floor boards had 1/2 inch gaps, the windows rattled, and the draught in the kitchen blew open the door! But there was a great gas-burning fireplace in the living room! Expensive to use, but warm.
I stuffed folded newspaper everywhere: between floorboards, under baseboards, round windows. I covered the kitchen window with plastic and when the wind blew it ballooned. I lived all winter wearing a cashmere blanket as a skirt, over tights and trousers, 3 sweaters on top, and a hat. Thank god for the electric under-blanket on my bed, and the 3 duvets!
Langdale Road, flat 4 was a chilly experience.
After 8 months in the freezer, I moved downstairs to Flat 2, which is actually the best flat I’ve had in the U.K. It has the best cooker, the best washing machine, the best boiler, the best shower, the best bathtub…it’s simply the best! Though it could use double-glazing on the windows!
There’s nothing seriously wrong with it; a bit damp and could use a bigger radiator in the living room, but by Brighton rental housing standards it’s quite all right, and so is the owner.
I’ve loved living on Langdale Road, have enjoyed this flat and wish I didn’t have to leave, but the owner wants her flat back and….and truth be known, I’m truly homesick for Canada, so when she said she wouldn’t renew the tenancy agreement, I decided it was time to leave England and go home! The decision has not been made lightly, as I’m connected to various communities in Brighton and Hove; I enjoy those connections and many of the people I meet.
I’ve so loved living here, the neighbors are great, and one will put me up as a house guest my last night here. How much have I loved life in Little London by the Sea? I wrote some about that in the post about Brighton. Though the seafront poems tell the story better than anything else. Here are a couple improvised with musicians at the last Safehouse.
I’ll miss you Langdale Road. I’ll miss you Brighton and Hove. Thank you for having me.
Vegans don’t eat eggs. There are many reasons why they have eliminated eggs from their diet. The Vegan Society devotes a full-page to the evils of egg consumption, and if you think eating only free range eggs is okay, they have an answer for that, too!
I’m not vegan. I like eggs, though I do think there is validity to their arguments – starting with battery hens, right down to debeaking free range hens and slaughtering cock chicks. Once you’ve gotten past that argument, they feed you the environmental impact, both from the food-wastage due to the amount of grain it takes to feed laying hens, and the ammonia from animal waste that contributes to acid rain when it’s released into the atmosphere.
Enough already! Is there nothing we can eat that doesn’t have a detrimental effect on either the life of the creature providing it or the planet we live on? If we didn’t eat those eggs, there’d be a chicken over-population problem, then what would we do? Eat chicken? No thanks, I’m a vegetarian!
…Like I said, I like eggs.
Image by Annie Mole via Flickr
I like them cooked just about any old how: poached, boiled, scrambled, and fried – sunny-side-up, sometimes slipped into a warm bun, so when you bite into it, your tongue dances with the soft yolk as it trickles out from between the layers.
Image via Wikipedia
I like eggs in omelets, quiche, tortillas, French toast, eggy bread, and bread pudding. I like them in pancakes, crepes, cakes and pasta. Yes pasta! Cracked directly into the hot pasta and stirred with lots of garlic, salt and pepper.
Image by David Maddison via Flickr
Image via Wikipedia
I like the whites folded into angel food cake, or whipped into meringue and baked into shells to be filled with strawberries and whipped cream, or spread over the yolks that were blended into lemon pie, the sticky, sweet meringue-topping forming curious, little caramel-like beads as the pie cools. Careful when you eat it! It will stick to your fingers, lips, everything it touches!
Eggs Are in Everything!
Back in my meat-eating days I used eggs to bind ground beef when making burgers or meat loaf. I used them to stick salmon or tuna together to make fish burgers. They’re in the batter for fish’n'chips, the Yorkshire pud for roast beef. Eggs are in everything! They’re even in noodles in your soup, or dropped directly into egg-drop soup, or broken-up in egg-fried rice. I can’t imagine life without eggs – but then again, maybe I can. This week’s trip to the shop resulting in unwittingly buying 6 eggs from caged hens has turned me off store-bought eggs, and I haven’t a garden where I can raise my own hens, nor do I have a neighbor with chickens.
Caged-Hen Egg bought from unscrupulous neighborhood shop-keeper in gullible moment.
I’d Have Egg On My Face
I’m seething about that shop-keeper selling me those code-3 eggs, smiling as he took my money, saying:”They’re good eggs aren’t they?” Well the first batch were, but not these last ones.
I could go back and give him a piece of my mind, but I’d have egg on my face because I didn’t check the code, nor did I even bother to ask. I just trusted they were from the same farm, and he didn’t tell me any differently.
I’m annoyed about that. I’m annoyed at myself for being so gullible. I’m annoyed that he builds trust, then abuses it. I don’t like merchants who do business that way. Nor do I understand why a small, neighborhood shopkeeper like him would demean himself in such a way as to sell eggs that Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Marks and Spencer’s, the Co-operative and even Burger King and Wendy’s won’t sell! They’ll even be illegal in the EU come next year and he has the audacity to sell 6 large, battery-hen eggs for the same price as some shops sell 6, regular free-range!
Oh, for some backyard hens!
Image via Wikipedia
Long gone are the days when we could just run out to the hen house and collect the daily eggs from our family of hens, or stop at a farmer’s driveway and take a dozen eggs from the egg-box and leave money in their place. We are at the mercy of the egg marketeers. But some city-dwellers are beating these unscrupulous, deceiving shop-keepers by raising hens in their backyards (or gardens as they call them here in Britain.)
My first flat in Hove was on a street with hens and a rooster. The rooster would crow all morning and I presumed the hens laid eggs. I could see the back garden from my flat, and figured out which house it was, then realized it was the vicarage; so one day I asked the vicar if he would sell me some of his eggs. He told me he needed all the eggs the hens laid to feed his brood of children, and besides, the foxes were always terrorizing his birds and sometimes they even managed to get into the pen and have themselves a nice dinner – then he too was at the mercy of unscrupulous egg dealers
What we need are eggs from heaven. Or how about a Hen Heaven, a place where…
All the birds…are rescued. Most would not be alive, and some would still be in Hell if they were not at Hen Heaven, where they are allowed to live out their natural lives.
HEN HEAVEN! What a great idea! It’s real!
Image via Wikipedia
Linda Turvey rescues hens from battery farms and gives them a good home in Henfield, West Sussex where they can run about and lay eggs – wherever they want! On her website, Linda describes her rescued birds as:
“… “little people” with distinct personalities, likes and dislikes. They do not want to suffer and are entitled to be treated with respect. At Hen Heaven they all receive individual attention and tender loving care. Any profit from selling their eggs pays for their feed, veterinary costs and general upkeep.”
What fellas would call high maintenance birds – these gals’ Happy Eggs eggs sell at £3.00 for a half-dozen. 50 pence an egg! At that price one is not going to use eggs unnecessarily. So today I bought a box of Egg Replacer. Egg Replacer can be used anytime I need an egg for baking, and who knows maybe it will even work to bind those vegetarian burgers I’m working on. Not sure if it’ll make meringue.
No, I’m not giving up eggs. I enjoy my eggs far too much to stop eating them. But I do think I can do my bit for hens and the environment by just eating fewer eggs and being very selective about where I buy the ones I do eat. Besides, it would be nice to be friends with the birds who lay my eggs.
Zemanta’s not working! Hence the out-of-focus phone-camera pics! Next morning: And today Zemanta’s working, so we’ve got more pics!
