A life of few desires

 Living the simple life

I have never been a man who had to keep up with the latest trend.

If I had a trend, it was that unless I saw the purpose for upgrading an item, the upgrade was unnecessary. A good case for this is the change of phone I had put upon me. My children considered that as my previous phone was over 10 years old, I should have a new one. I could have changed my phone several times, but as it was doing what I requrited, I saw no need for change.

I used to get great enjoyment in going for a walk, these days, I get enjoyment listening to the birds. My greatest enjoyment in recent times was coming face-to-face with a fox. I didn't see the killer that the hunting fraternity would have believe; I saw an animal afraid we would hurt - nothing could be further from my mind.

While some people upgrade their computers, I am happy with a sinple laptop, my requiremnts for a laptop do not need a high-powered performer as I don't play PC games these days. If I did, the type I would play would be the city building varierty such as Tropico, or Cities. 

I did try the original Gears of War, but found I was not any good at the type of game where quick reactions are required. I did attempt to play a game called F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Alien Reaction), the problem I had with this game is that the team you work with are programmed to do jobs, and they dash off doing these works, leaving you lost. 

I loved the game Thief, the Golden Age. It is a mideval game where the character you play is a thief, I was excited to know the firm producing the game had upgraded the game for their latest version, but when I began playing the game I didn't enjoy it for several reasons; the main reason being it had gone from third-person to first person.

Third-person means you are outside the character, and can see the body of the person. First-person means you are the character, and can only see your hands. I find writing in the third person easy, whereas writing in the first is hard. If you write in the first person, you can only say what your character would see, or do, if your character has an accident, or gets injured you either get a restrcted story, or need to find a way of trasferring the story to another chracter. If you use third-person, you can change your view point as the story moves as you are an onlooker.

My taste in food has changed little over the years, I have tried Olives, Anchovy, Cavair, and Champagne. Being honest, they left me with no desire to try them again. I would like to try some varities of fish, especially Pike, as Pike are a killer of water life from small fish to ducks. I can understand why some people dislike Pike as it apparently has a strong taste. This is no issue to me, I enjoy Mackerel.

The palette of the country needs to be widened, there are many more fsh than Cod, Plaice,Sole and Haddock that can be eaten. I have had, and enjoyed Monkfish. Some fish such as Skate do require a long preparation time, which is why I think they are not eaten. 

In the old days, fish was eaten by what you were able to catch in local rivers, so though your taste was limited to what you could catch locally, you had a good vareity of fish.

I wonder what Cuckoo tastes like?

I realise that may shock some people, many people look forward to the sounds of the first Cuckoo of Spring, but you need to realise for each Cuckoo you hear, two or three chicks have been killed. The Cuckoo is not partial to whose nest she lays her eggs in, so many species could die out as the Cuckoo thrive; talk about a Natural born Killer.

A short while ago, I decided to do some hedgerow foraging, to find out what I could eat from our neighbourhood. I found a swarth of Sloe berries. While they are bitter to eat, they are edible in small amounts. I also found a large amount of wild appples, and Rosehips. The Rosehip is edible, best eaten after boilng as jam as the shellis very hard to digest.

Other than the usual Blackberry, there are numerous foods in the hedges that could be eaten, but you do need some knowledge of what to eat, my wife got worried four or five years ago when I ate some of the Mushroom crop I saw in our fields. I would like to study mushrooms, as I love to eat them both raw (washed), and in put them in my recipes. The first rule is to know the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool.

As children we oft got told the story of rings of mushrooms around Oak trees, which we called Fairy Rings, it was only recently I found out the rings are a parasite which drains the trees of nutrients. Life is odd at times, we love Mistletoe at Christmas, but few people know the plant is a parasite.