slippery

Both the kids enjoyed sliding on this patch of ice, on the path up to the Holmenkollen ski jump.

a natural

Thomas had a ski lesson.

skijumping

Thomas wanted to do this.

down the hill

By the way, we went to Norway last week, which was very cold but fun. This is Thomas sliding down the slope outside the youth hostel in Oslo.

Woolly batter

I spent nearly 2 hrs at Kings Cross last night, much of that sitting on a train which then turned out to be broken. The replacement one was very slow and too full and I ended up sitting with 4 middle-aged skinhead cockney chappies who farted a lot and incessantly repeated the phrase 'woolly batter', which they found incredibly funny but it all just reminded me that sometimes I want to punch England in the face really hard. And then I cycled home in the rain, arriving at 2.30 am. Anyway, I shall never again leave my house.

I'm not a pheasant plucker

A strange thing happened this afternoon. I was sitting at the computer when I heard a loud thud, as if something heavy had fallen down in another room. I had a look around, couldn't see anything, then looked out the bedroom window and saw a large female pheasant (like the one in the picture) lying in the front yard. It must have crashed right into the window at high speed.

It blinked for a while, then tried to get up. And then it died.
A friend suggested plucking it and roasting it, but (a) see the title of the post, and (b) given Mad Bird Flu Disease and whatnot I'm not really game (ha!) to start chowing down on a bird which was clearly Not of Sound Mind.
That said I gather pheasants are not the Einsteins of birds at the best of times. But still.

Watt?

This article about Japanese food from the Guardian is nice enough, but I was particularly struck by these two sentences:

We make cucumber maki rolls, coWattal hand rolls...

I vow to take the time to prepare it properly, forsaking MSG (discovered, trivia fans, by a Japanese chemist analysing what made kombu taste Watte) for the real thing.

CoWattal? Watte? What's with the Watt?

The article is about a chef called Nic Watt. I suppose the author originally referred to him as 'Nic', then one of the Grauniad's eagle-eyed sub-editors all-changed 'Nic' to 'Watt'.
Watte work.