Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog

We went and visited Scotland’s Secret Bunker the other day. I was really fascinated by the nuclear bunker in Fife, that I totally forgot to look at the exhibits in a critical way.  At the moment I am still wondering how much of the exhibition in the bunker was actually authentic or not, and if it is, from which time period. As the bunker was decommissioned in 1992 or so, but build in the early 50 ies, there are for example a wide range of red telephones from different decades on show.

However, it was very exciting actually seeing the bunker, which is based in the middle of nowhere near Crail, about two hours drive away from Edinburgh and South- East of St. Andrews.

It looks a little bit like a farmhouse from the outside.

Scotland's Secret Bunker

However, the entry fee is now a little bit less than 10 pounds per adult person, but the canteen in there has good prices and is very lovingly preserved. The owners seem to put a lot of enthusiasm and energy into the attraction to make it exciting; it was nice to see an exhibition about the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament included in the bunker.  I also have forgotten how the toilets smelled in the past; in the 70ies and 80ies when I grew up, it was taking me right back into my childhood to have smelled the bunker toilets and to use the extremely thin toilet paper in order for the pumps to be able to cope. I have totally forgotten that even the toilets made progress and became more powerful in the last thirty years.

I would have totally bought the story of the rooms being authentically been rebuild, even though some visitor behind me was wondering what the German army rifle would do in the  general’s command room,  if there wouldn’t have been a flag with a swastika been hanging in the communications room. Well, I guess the owners want to make the bunker attractive to all visitors, but that was going a bit too far for me – though they are possibly trying to cater more for people interested in military history at that point as they had a collection of army knives on show, too. Another room they had a lot of East German army exhibits, which had at least thematically to do with the Cold War, but of course, had nothing to do with the bunker in reality either.

the radar room

Though, in total, for me it was really worth going there, as I have never seen anything like it, but am sure there are many more nuclear bunkers existing all over the world.  I would have liked to have heard many more personal testimonies of people who actually worked in the bunker or used it before it was given up, but as the Official Secret Act still applies, it seems the owners have difficulties finding people. There was only one short interview with someone who used it as a short term accommodation during some military exercise; to that point I had never even thought about that there weren’t any showers in the bunker or that there wasn’t any food prepared in the bunker, but that it was brought in from the outside.

I was very fascinated by the red phones (with the sign beside it reading: early missile warning)  and the underground  BBC radio studio.

Red Phones

Me and my hubby had a fantastic day out last weekend.  We borrowed a book “The most amazing coastal places in Britain” from the library and were off exploring the close-by recommended sites south of Edinburgh. With the Marathon though running through Musselburgh and beyond we missed out on the close-by places and ended up in Dirleton, visiting Dirleton Castle, which is famous for its gardens which mainly consist of one huge flower border.

Dirleton Castle

Afterwards we went into the local pub, the Dirleton Inn, which was recommended by the staff in the Castle, as it had just had a change of owner and got refurbished. It felt very posh sitting at the completely new tables and everything was brandnew, the carpet so soft and unused,  the staff and the owner were still so enthusiastic and proud.  They did not have a menu but just printed out paper, but the Cullen Skink was fantastic and I loved the goats cheese on top of the pork loin. Apparantly the owner had the Cramond Brigg beforehand, which he is in the process of selling.

Afterwards we went to Yellowcraigs Park and wandered around the beach whilst being amazed about seeing Fidra Island for the first time.

Fidra Island

Afterwards we went on to North Berwick and also got to see Tantallon Castle,  which is located just beside the sea, with Bass Rock in the background.

Tantallon Castle

If this year is continuing to be like the last months it will certainly be very busy – especially on holidays!

In order to get to Germany we visited Cambridge on the way and tried to visit Burghley House, Park and Gardens – it was still closed though and is only opening from about Easter onwards for summer. Even the toilets were closed – so we headed to Stamford to find some, the beautiful little village beside Burghley House, which because of the conservative attitude of the major landowner has no petrol station and no out-of-town shopping centre.  So the town is kept very historic and traditional; it looks very beautiful with its little streets and everything. Apparantly it has become a conservation area in 1967 and has half of the listed buildings in Lincolnshire, says Wikipedia.

On Tuesday we crossed the Channel and visited Brussels city centre. I really like Brussels as it is very open-minded and a very diverse place with lots of languages being spoken. Its also a World Heritage Site, and I liked the Grand Place with the distinctive and impressive buildings like the City Hall. We had a big expensive meal at Butchers Lane near the Queens Gallery, having “Mussels in Brussles”. I first didn’t want to go in the tourist centred restaurant, but my partner insisted and also the waiter was very nice and very cleverly persuaded us in. But it was a good (and expensive) meal to remember. I had gratinated mussels and my hubby the mussels in white wine ; we had some cherry beer with it. Due to confusion as to where to bed down we just ended up driving till we got tired and then crashed out in one of the cheap motels on the way.

The next day we drove and visited Koblenz, another city with a world heritage status, if so mainly because as a part of the lower Rhine region. We had an extremely nice breakfast in the cafe next to a bakery and walked around the city. The whole area  in front of the “palace” has been dug up though we first thought the building site would become an underground car park it is planned to be the site of the main German flower and gardening show this year. There were again very nice houses and extraordinary buildings, but in contrast to Brussles quite few of them. The most impressive building site was a little court yeard in the back were it seemed the historical buildings from the middle ages were dug out and restored.

Later on we tried to visit Wuerzburg, another little charming town with a world heritage site, though we arrived to late to actually visit it this time. We had a stroll around the city centre though and enjoyed the sun shine a little bit.

The weekend we drove together to the Bavarian Forest to do some skiing, the first time for my partner to try. He was first a bit fearful and shuffling along but his skills improved greatly and on the sunday and the monday he was able to do a full round of Nordic cross country, 4km of it. Sunday it took about 2 hours to complete the track and on Monday 45 minutes. On the way back we visited a delightful chocolate factory and got some presents for friends, colleagues and family.
The day after we had a very amusing meal in a  mad fish restaurant.The landlady seemed to be getting slightly drunk during the service and made more and more jokes with heightened levels of obscenity. My mum started to get a bit upset when the landlady started flirting with my Dad.   The decoration of the restaurant was significantly stuck in the 80ies with DIY mural paintings of what were supposed to be Italian villages and food specialities; the furnishing  was quite outdated, too. The food was quite nice though I am always a bit suspicious if we eat seafood in a region where there is absolutely no sea. My hubby loved the “Genovese Fishpot a la mamma” and luckily didn’t understand any German whereas me and my Dad found it all quite funny but my sister and my mum enjoyed moaning and complaining about the weird experience afterwards.

The next day we were heading off back to Britain. We did not get far before we were getting stopped by the police. Typical! I was driving along with about 70 miles an hour – usual British spped limit whereas there isn’t any speed limit on the motorway in Germany so I was suspiciously slow apparantly. The police car made an indication it wanted to overtake us, then its LED light flashed up with a “Follow me” message on it. They checked my car papers and driving license and stated they were concerned about the car being overloaded and overweight. So they demanded that we should drive with them to a sandpit to get weight. Can only happen in conservative Bavaria I have to add. We made 1480 kg. However they still refused to let us go and waited for the Peugot garage to call them back with the allowed wieght specification, as it wasn’t in the car paper. We found some in the Operations Manual and would have met all of them, but the police was not certain which Type of car it was and therefore did not let us go either, but insisted I should empty out the car with all the luggage and boxes of books to find a metal plate with additional information of Type and weight specification. After me refusing for about half an hour to empty out the boot, we finally dug up the metal plate and look and see: it was exactly the same as on the Operation Manual with 1590kg. Police was excusing itself and l;eaving but I was still pissed and the day wasn’t improving as we got into a traffic jam for and hour and had a mad horrible experience trying to drive in Brussels with Google Maps indicating the wrong address to our overnight stay. There were loads of one-way streets and aggressive drivers in the rush hour, as well as a lack of signs, too, and there were a lot of smaller roads meeting in star-like junctions where it seemed the most confident horn-blowing driver had priority. However we had a very nice host although we had to empty our luggage with the three boxes of books out again and carry them into the flat because of fear of getting the car broken into.
The next day we visited Brugge, a charming city, but with the added problem that no toilet opens before 10 am. Brugge is also a world heritage site and a lovely beautiful town with nice buildings.
We crossed the Channel back around midday and had a quick break in Canterbury before driving to Nottingham where we wanted to visit some relatives and stay for the night. Unfortunately though I had misplanned the extend of the holidays and was expected back at work the very next day, which consequently lead to a intensive night drive up to Scotland.

It was the Monday before New Year, I just got up and sat in my jimjams on the couch having my first morning cuppa and watching the brandnew Wallace and Gromit bakery murder mystery: “A matter of Loaf and Death” when the door bell rang.

intercom: “Hello here is the photographer from the press agency.”
me: “Haeh?????”
intercom: “I am here to take a picture of the worms”
me: Double-haeh??

Anyways, as there is no use having debates on the doorbell system I buzzed her in. Neglected to mention that there is a lift, with the hope of throwing myself into clothes quick enough whilst the photographer climbed lots of stairs. With Press Agency, I thought of the more reputable PA – Press Association, which has a small office in Edinburgh not far from where I live. And with the worms I had an idea it would be connected to the recent story in the Edinburgh Evening News about Worm composting.
However, I was not quite prepared for what was coming next.

My flat still looked a mess as it was just after Christmas and I came straight back from a family visit to work the weekend. This was about my first spare time I had in about a week or so and now I had an unannounced press photographer in my rather chaotic flat. Anyways, the photographer told me that she was just following orders and that the journalist had sent her.

First I got onto the telephone to talk to the journalist to tell her off for not making an appointment with me. It turned out, that it wasn’t in fact the more reputable PA but a small company called “Capital Press”, part of Harde Edge Media. The journalist was rather aggressive, not even understanding the issue of phoning before sending a photographer as an intrusion of privacy.  She insisted on doing the story for the Sun, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. Alarm bells were going off at the back of my head, as all three tabloids are famous of hostile, conservative, hierarchy-supporting, aggressive reporting towards any progressive, grassroot-led  and creative initiatives. Despite me trying to negotiate with her to try to aim the coverage at more reputable newsoutlets, she insisted on the tabloids, interrupting me all the time and I rather felt as if I was investigated for some really heavy stuff like murdering someone instead of talking about the coverage on composting with earthworms. During all my journalist education, which I was never more happy than during this telephone call to have had, I never ever came across something like that. For the first time journalism felt like a very capitalist profession – me sitting on information, trying to protect our composting project from being abused as a national joke in some crazy cynical tabloids and my reputation being trashed vs. the journalist who knew she and the press agency would loose hundreds of pounds of income if I refused to participate.
In the end, I did refuse to get my picture taken or to give any quotes.
However, there was an article appearing in the next day’s Daily Mail about the worm composting – basically stating the area where I lived would be full of unemployed drug-users and the small grant we received of two thousand pounds would be a waste of tax payers money. They also quoted me extensively – they must have taken the quotes out of the Edinburgh Evening News article.
Luckily there weren’t any article neither in the Sun nor in the Daily Express.  The article did not appear on the internet – thank God!!!! – and the byline was crediting the Daily Mail’s home affair correspondent.
I would be rather curious to know how the original Capital Press article was written, if at all, and how it was modified – if all that negative crap was added by the Home Affairs Correspondent or not. Anyways, as my quotes were taken from the positive Edinburgh Evening News, I sounded quite naively happy, chirpy, enthusiastic and positive in the article, totally clashing with the disapproving spokesperson from the National Alliance of Taxpayers or something.

For the last week, me and my partner have had great fun joining privately into the Channel4 Cookalong. Its basically a very enthusiastic cooking course on TV with lots of people cooking simultaneously the same dishes together.

The first dish was a Salmon en Croute, here I made the mistake of first getting the wrong doe – a puff pastry – as I could not find any other pastry in the shop, but then realising it was supposed to be a shortcrust pastry.  I also got a piece of salmon that was too thick to be flipped on top of each other with the filling. And, yeah, I forgot to skin the thing, too. But it was very nice although quite expensive.

I was running around the whole week trying to get some rhubarb, but though Waitrose stated on their website it would be in season now – with my allotment very much in disagreement as it all died back – they didn’t have any either. So we missed out on the Rhubarb Crumble dessert, but by that time, I was about an hour behind anyways as Gordon Ramsay is speed-cooking. It is very recommendable to print the recipes out beforehand and also to prepare the ingredients and have everything chopped up and washed up at the start, pots and everything.

Then I hunted for Clotted Cream, a very particular Cornish speciality. Although it is more or less cream, but not whipped but of an icecream consistency. Very nice! Had my problems with making the caramel, but at this opportunity, it somehow worked, however the caramel for the Hot Bananas in week 6 went totally wrong and bitter. I greatly enjoyed the Warm Goats Cheese Salad and had it at least three more times the same week before getting fed up with it.

Here my very excited feedback at the time:
“Phew, that was fast! Never before was so happy for every minute of ads… guess Sky + with its pause and rewind live tv really comes into its own with this programme, wish I would have it! That cookalong map doesn’t work for me, it seems to have something against Mozilla and Linux? The training videos are fab, wished I would have watched them before the broadcast, especially the one about skinning the salmon! It was nice that there was a summary of what had been done to the salmon before/after the ads, could that have been done more often? The starter was lovely by the way, but just wasn’t able to keep up with the speed so the dessert will be on tonight, hopefully the cookalong is on Channel4 On Demand? The pastry went a bit temperamental but in the end behaved itself though it wasn’t looking as professional as on TV but a bit patched together. My salmon piece was brilliant never had such a fantastic piece of salmon before! But it was too thick to flip the two halves on top of each other! So my salmon en croute had only one layer, but that means we can have a second helping of it tonight. I am very much looking forward to the Lasagne, and this time will try to print out recipe and prepare ingredients more so I can catch up better. Anyways a very exciting cooking show! Loved the pony in the kitchen and the increasingly frustrated celebrity – could really sympathise with her! I also love that this show rewards socialising and cooking together with friends as you really need several people to a) prepare and b) eat and c) have fun!”
Posted by Ulla on 25/10/2008 10:07:00

The second week included one of my favourite dishes: Lasagne. But of course I again ignored all the well-meant advice to use non-pre-cooking Lasagne sheets, and the pasta just stuck together when boiling it into thick cardboard like layers. But it all tasted great!

The third week included a duck breast in cherry-port sauce. And a angel hair pasta with crabmeat. That week was definitely a cooking highlight as I could neither get crabmeat nor duck breasts and therefore ended up getting a whole duck and a whole crab and trying to take it apart in a way that it could be used as intended for the recipes. The crab was incredibly fiddly and stinky, and basically a job for trying to tickle the white meat out of the claws and feet with a knitting needle. My partner was certainly very entertained this week. And the duck – lets say it tasted fantastic for days without end. It was all a bit much and I still have got its fat in my fridge. When cooking it the dried cherries were rehydrating themselves fantastically and the sauce was beautiful. However, I made the mistake of turning the duck because the potatoes didn’t get ready in time, and therefore the nice crunchy skin got unfortunately soft and soggy.

Week4 was fantastic, too, 70ies night and apart from making too much mayonnaise and spooning it all onto the prawns it was tasting incredibly delicious. But for that the British use smaller baking dishes – my mandarin cake ended up incredibly flat and about 2cm high. Non-comparable with the original but we ate it all! And very quickly indeed. The Steak Diane was lovely, too. Loads of calories, too, seems in the 70ies people were very keen on  adding loads of cream and butter and alcohol, much more than today.

Week5 was supposed to be Asia night, but because of work we ended up having it several days later via the CatchUpOnDemand TV. Its sadly only half the fun when its possible to catch up and rewind and when you know it isn’t live anymore. It shouldn’t make any difference but it somehow is a bonding experience to know there are a million or so cooking and eating along with you. My partner really loved the Hot and Sour Soup, for me it was a bit too spicey. We used our homegrown Jalapeno chillies for the recipe. For the Beef-stir-fry we also used our own home-grown beansprouts! Not sure if something with the sauce went wrong or if it is intended to mainly taste chilli-hot; I wouldn’t have minded getting to know a little bit more about how to make delicious Chinese sauces as that seems to be quite the most tricky thing about it. As said before I burnt the caramel and it tasted horrible – not because of the sugared chilli, which worked surprisingly well.

Week 6 was Indian food night. Great stuff, and everything went surprisingly well, but that for a sudden doubt if tsp means teaspoons or tablespoons. I decided for tablespoons which possibly meant the dishes were extre spicey, but they tasted fantastic. We missed out on the oranges because of lack of pomegranates and also we found out that we can usually eat only two dishes an evening – starter and dessert on one day, main course the other. So at that opportunity we decided that the oranges would have to be left – but according to the many excited and happy cooks feeding back on the Channel4 website, that might have been the mistake of that week. I am very happy of participating in this cookalong because I actually learn a lot and am trying out a lot and it is very good fun.

Norman Duncan died last Tuesday, 11th of November. He is the third Muirhouse Salvesen community council member to die this year, after Jenny Marrow’s death in late spring and Elizabeth Maginnis start of September.  We also had a series of resignations from the community council and with the tense situation of cuts of more than 150 000 pounds in our community in provision of public services to the elderly, the young and the socially excluded we are having a tough year ahead in our community.

I promised to write a positive blog entry about the firm who kindly exchanged my faulty digital kitchen scales. Due to my own fault I lost the receipt when buying these scales several years ago in Saturn, a German electronic warehouse famous for its good offers. I tried out the scales quickly as in switching them on and then took them with me over to Edinburgh, where I realised these were switching itself of too quickly to be working properly. The batteries might have been too old for the scales not weighing, so it took me some more years to buy a number of batteries. Anyways after 2-3 years I  realised that  I had never used the scales and considered throwing them away in a big tidy-up action.

Looking up the company on the internet, I realised that KORONA was actually giving 5 years of guarantee on the scales, and that they still had the digital kitchen scale “Jenny”, which looked exactly like mine, featured on their website in their product range.

When buying the scale I initially wanted to go for a solar-powered digital scale which was only offered by Kuechen Loesch in Nuernberg, but the only range ever produced was withdrawn as there had been too many customer complaints, so I wanted to go for a similar design – a scale which would also be useful to weigh letters and parcels, and have a range from 1g to 5kg, as well as a flat platform to use with whatever packaging or container would be to hand and which would be solid and easy to clean and as cheap as possible.

So I decided to try and talk to the customer services and send in the scale as we are really skint at the moment here in Edinburgh and we don’t have the money to buy a new one. So I am really pleased and happy to say that the KORONA company is going to give us a new digital scale for free and even upgraded the model!

Even though they are not legally obliged to at all as I don’t have the receipt anymore and also legally there is only half a year of guarantee which is usually only binding to the shop selling it directly to the customer, they responded positively to me pleading for an exchange!

I am very happy and pleased indeed, and hopefully it will be working for a long time! And I am very doubtfuL I would have got such a nice and good service from any company here in Britain. I was wondering if it makes sense to buy products in Germany to take over to Scotland, but with such a service it certainly does!

We brought the worms indoors now as it was getting colder and colder and they were all cuddling up to each other in a big ball in the middle of the wormery. However not sure if they are happy beside the washing machine as they seem to be quite sensitive to vibrations.

The last two weeks we have also joined the cookalong: it was very hectic and the first Friday I was behind about 45 minutes because of difficulties with my pastry and lack of preparation. Never got to make the crumble! Last week was much better though I was still about 10 minutes behind and also I never eat the starter during the broadcast as am worried I am not finished with it quick enough. But its good fun.
Just a bit expensive especially with all the different alcohols in every course. But get to do some stuff I am not usually cooking. Tried out for example the recipe from January with the scallops – and I have never made scallops before in my life! Micah was delighted and thought they would be melting in the mouth, but it seemed to me these were a bit undercooked, I liked the texture more pronounced, and tried out the different textures with different cooking times. Though I stuck very much to the recipe, but it seems to me that there is a tendency to have everything very pinkish in the middle in this series.

I have been over to Glasgow to the Coop and first of all I happened to take the wrong train to Glenrothes instead. Both trains leave from the same platform behind each other and I took the wrong one. Didn’t realise it till late because they annouced engineering works on the rails and different routes. Though should have been more sceptical when crossing the Forth Rail Bridge! Even more annoying that it happened to me before! But found out that its best to go over to Glasgow Central station from Haymarket where the Glenrothes train and the Glasgow trains use different platforms.

Anyways I am so annoyed with the Coop Bank, they are the most incompetent bank I have ever come across! They might be very ethical and not affected by the credit crunch but thats certainly because they actually don’t seem to be able to understand any concept of shares or hedge-funds or even mortgages because they are not even able to administer simple bank accounts properly! Apparently they are not even able to understand marriage certificates or change of addresses forms or adding-on of or change of signatories in joined accounts! And every time you are in the branch of the bank, they tell you everything is okay and will work wonderfully and then it never does with their weird administration mucking it all up!

This morning I found the first dozen or so dead worms which committed suicide by escaping from the worm compost bin onto the dry floor. I left the other layers off the worm compost bin as I was worried it would squash the worms but now put them on top to prevent any more break-outs.
The other issue I want to keep recorded that the lid of the can-o-worms does look upside down very much like a tray, and I accidentally thought it was the bottom tray. I hope that when I flopped the whole contents out of the lid into another tray it did not matter that the cardboard used as a mesh did fall into pieces and couldn’t be used anymore.

Found out that Mary Applehof’s book is garbage, really, because she has no practical troubleshooting answers like the Pilkington book. Most of what she is going on about in the book is how brilliant and experienced she is, though her classroom activity book is very useful. The information in her book is very US- centred and ignores the developments on the continent in the last 10 years completely – information about different systems, including pictures are taken in the last century.
Well, looking into the books index I realised its the 1997 edition, the updated version from the 1982 book.