Madsen Pirie

I’m an optimist by nature, largely because I’m confident of my ability to influence the circumstances of my life.  I also tend to see the good in developments rather than the bad.  Looking ahead to the coming year, I see quite a few things to look forward to.  Indeed, I’m compiling a list of them to write about.  On the whole I expect the modest economic recovery to continue, especially on the employment front.  I also look to what I might call a more relaxed attitude in the nation, with fewer people getting uptight about things.  The royal birth should give a boost to national morale a sense of well-being.  I think it will become increasingly clear that the nation is in no mood for more political integration with Europe, and would probably vote to leave the EU rather than accept that.  I also think the circumstances are promising for major tax reform and simplification, which cannot be bad.  I haven’t finished my list yet, but I’m facing the year with enthusiasm rather than foreboding.

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I do themed years instead of New Year resolutions. 2012 was “full pelt,” and in it I published three books: “Economics Made Simple,” “Think Tank,” and “Tree Boy.” I recorded 20 YouTube videos in my “Economics is Fun” series.

I debated twice in the Oxford Union, and once in the Cambridge Union and at Trinity College Dublin.  I spoke at a Freedom Forum, an NCPA conference in Prague, Freedom Week in Cambridge, at two ISOS conferences, and at an IREF meeting in Paris.

I addressed university societies at QMUL, Essex, Cambridge, Doncaster, York, Oxford and UCL. I spoke to 6th form students from Leicester, Cherwell, King’s Canterbury, JFS, and Harrow. I wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, plus “Silver Dawn” (children’s SF). I did a series of 10 blog posts on “Ten Very Good Things,” and another series on “Ten Reasons to be Cheerful,” plus 100 other blog posts. I appeared on Sky News, Channel 4 News, BBC 2, Radio 4, World Service plus others.

2013 promises to be quieter, since my theme will be “hobbies,” featuring 12 of them during the year. Quieter, perhaps, but still fun.

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Christmas carols seem to play a smaller part than they used to in Christmas festivities, with their role increasingly taken over by Christmas songs. Carols, or religiously-themed Christmas songs, enjoyed a Restoration comeback after Cromwellian puritans had banned any celebration of Christmas. Until about the middle of the 20th century they were very much the sound of Christmas, with traditional favourites dominating. Carols such as “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” filled the Christmases of my childhood. The one secular outrider was “Jingle Bells” from the mid 19th century. New carols were occasionally added, including “Mary’s Boy Child” and “Little Drummer Boy.”

The mid 1930s to 1940s saw the rise of the secular Christmas song, most famously with “White Christmas” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” but also including “The Christmas Song” (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and many others.

And now? I don’t remember hearing a single carol played this year in the piped music of Christmas stores. Instead it was Slade’s “Merry Christmas, Everybody,” Wham’s “Last Christmas,” and Maria Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas.” I did manage to catch some carols in “Carols From King’s” on BBC2 (recorded a few minutes’ walk from my house), but otherwise I had to turn to CDs and YouTube. Apart from that it was wall to wall secular, maybe reflecting changes in the way the nation regards Christmas.

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Ever since I learned Delia’s trick I’ve enjoyed good roast potatoes. My technique is to par-boil the potatoes for 8 minutes first, then shake them about in the pan with the lid on to roughen the edges. Then I dry them on kitchen paper towel before putting them in a baking tin with goose fat (very important). I give them about one and a half hours, basting them occasionally. That’s it.  They come out a lovely golden brown outside with a few crisp edges, but fluffy inside. Roasting them on a shelf underneath my Christmas goose, they came out perfectly. Mmm… By the way, it’s a whole year today since I posted anything on anotherfoodblog.com, but Robert, who’s taken it over, seems to be enjoying it.

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A very merry Christmas to everyone. I’m not into this “happy holidays” stuff, since all of my friends, including Hindus, Moslems, Jews and atheists, enjoy Christmas. Whether or not you take the religion, it’s a great festival.  I read that it’s becoming increasingly popular in China, though I’m not sure how the European trappings will translate. An occasion to eat and drink good stuff in the depths of winter is a good morale boost all round.

I cook goose for Christmas dinner since I find turkey can be rather dry and bland. Goose is much gamier and tastier, and comes with a great deal of clear white fat which is excellent for roast potatoes and pastries. I serve it with apple sauce and no stuffing in the bird, though I sometimes roast stuffing balls alongside it. I don’t go for Brussels sprouts. Although they were presented to me as a child as a Christmas ‘treat,’ I always found them bitter and nasty. I often serve sautéed mushrooms and peppers, with potatoes roasted in goose fat. Afterwards comes Christmas pudding, doused in rum and set alight. And I find a light red wine tends to go well with goose, rather than the traditional white recommended for poultry.

So enjoy your meal and your holiday!

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When I turned the first telescopes of my boyhood towards Mars, all I could see was a blurry red disc with indistinct dark patches. Even the best pictures of the day taken with the 200 inch mirror at Mount Palomar showed only polar caps and vague markings. We imagined they might be vegetation, but disappointment came in 1965 when Mariner 4 sent back photos of a cratered, lunar-like surface. More recently the Mars rovers and orbiters have shown an alien, changing world.

Wired, which publishes a ‘Science Photo of the Day,’ has passed on a NASA high resolution picture of cratered dunes (top) with Aeolian sandstone lying over a previously-eroded surface of layered sedimentary rock. The bottom picture shows “an isolated flat-topped mountain (known as a mesa) rising out of a sea of dunes located in the center of Hydrae Chasma.” We are told that “some of the detail may be the sediment remnants of ancient lakes formed within these canyon systems.” I find the detail of these images enthralling. We have come a long way since my first backyard telescope.

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I started the food blog after I took over a friend’s diet blog for a couple of weeks. With some friends we started anotherfoodblog.com, posting about things we ate and drank, usually with photos.  We wrote about what we cooked and what and where we ate out. Some contributors dropped out and others were added, though I was easily the most frequent writer. We did it for five and a half years until December 26th last year, then stopped.

We left the site up without adding to it, and were surprised by how well the readership held up. It dipped from the heights of nearly 50,000 visits a month, but still managed to pull in 30,000 visits a month from people looking up our take on recipes and restaurants a year after we stopped adding to it. It made us better cooks. It certainly made me seek to prepare more ambitious recipes. I started buying recipe books and trying out some of the adventurous dishes listed there.

It was stopped last Boxing Day because I felt it had run its course, and I wanted to use the time and energy it freed to do other things. But recently a friend decided to start a food blog of his own and was quite intrigued to take over ours when it was offered. So anotherfoodblog.com is active again, in the capable hands of Robert. After a year less a week of absence, it is back and prospering.

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The clock is ticking for civilian spaceflight. Wednesday’s glide of SpaceshipTwo was the first time the vehicle has flown with its rocket and tanks attached. It was an unpowered flight, though a powered one is planned by the end of the year. This looks a tight schedule, in that two more glide flights are planned before that, and the deadline is only ten days away.

It now looks quite likely that a flight into space will take place next year, although it may be the following year before the first fare-paying passengers are carried. I’ve been there to see two private citizens flown from Baikonur to the International Space Station by Space Adventures, and I was the first UK person to book a sub-orbital flight with them many years ago. Space Adventures buy space on other people’s hardware, and it remains to be seen when hardware that can take people into space receives its certification and begins taking tourists.

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December 21st is the day. The world is supposed to end according to the Mayan “Long Count” calendar.  Some have supposed, with no good cause, that a collision with the non-existent planet Nibiru will bring about our demise. Before we all drink the vintage wine we were saving for a special occasion, we might reflect that these apocalypse events come up with remarkable regularity.  As each one fails to deliver, the date is pushed along to the next one.

The best reassurance on the Mayan ‘prediction’ comes from Charlie McDonnell in a video blog he posted at the beginning of the year. Yes, the Mayan calendar ends on Dec 21st, just as the Justin Bieber calendar stops at the end of the year. This does not mean that Justin Bieber is predicting the end of the world, only that you need a new calendar for next year. A more detailed account of the Mayan calendar, albeit a less entertaining one, is given by Sven Gronemeyer. The world will not end tonight, and there will be a blog here tomorrow.

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For some unfathomable reason, Christmas jumpers seem to be in vogue. Traditionally they are knitted ones showing reindeer, snowflakes and other somewhat Nordic Christmas themes. In that they are a festive choice, they are, in a sense, extravagant.  They are not something most people would want to wear through winter, but more the sort of garment to be brought out each time Christmas approaches.

Seeing how fashionable they have become this year, my immediate reaction is to suppose that recovery might be on the way. This is disposable income, almost frivolous consumption, and not the sort of things you do when times are hard. My own Christmas jumper is by no means frivolous, being very warm as well as decorative. But the widespread appearance of Christmas jumpers suggests that people are prepared to have a little fun, despite straightened times. It’s a good sign, worth enjoying for its own sake, but could perhaps be an early indicator of recovery.

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