Not that c word.  The other one, the worse one.  Cancer.

I’ve been very lucky that – touch wood – it’s not impacted my nearest and dearest to a great extent.  It was with a massive degree of inspiration I read the blog of one of my friends’ fathers though who hasn’t been so lucky. 

Whilst I can’t empathise quite with this illness specifically, with recent heart-related scares in our family of late I’m reasonably well versed in coming to terms with the fact that we are all very much mortal beings.  It’s a scary realisation, none of us are here forever – we know that – but it’s not nice to have unexpected reminders of that.

I would urge you to have a read – I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting David, my mate’s dad – but am amazingly inspired by his reaction to the shitty hand that fate seems to have dealt him.  Just as we can be prone to over-reacting to relatively trivial events, I am full of admiration for how he is the exact opposite – remaining positive and upbeat in the face of perhaps the least trivial news you’re ever likely to get.

As well as this, he has taken positive action to raise thousands of pounds to promote both awareness and early diagnosis of cancer, as well as cancer research.  It’s truly staggering and incredibly humbling – and really helps to bring things into perspective when you get a little bogged down in day-to-day mundanities that shouldn’t really worry you as much as they do.

If you feel as moved as I have been then there’s a link to donate to ‘Windsurfing for Cancer Research’.  I was tempted to say a legacy to be proud of, but in his own words:  ‘Sod my life expectancy progress – I will be there.’  I really hope so.

I was quite excited by the jailbreak when it was announced, then it didn’t work.  Of course, I love my iPhone 4 just as it is, but the temptation to unleash whatever things Apple might not want unleashing is always tempting to me for some reason.

Sadly the demand for the website ‘jailbreakme.com’ meant that my initial attempts weren’t a success – however, thank to Pip I followed the steps below with first time success, so if you’re struggling – give the following steps a try:

1. Close the tab in Safari of the jailbreak page
2. Exit Safari
3. Go to Settings -> Safari -> Accept Cookies
4. change Accept Cookies to ALWAYS
5. Go back one menu step and click on “Clear Cookies” and “Clear Cache”
6. Go back into Safari and go to jailbreakme.modmyi.com

Ah, Cydia, how I’ve missed thee.  Rather sadly, my number one reason for jailbreaking is to have the five icon dock again!

Despite oft being surrounded by vegetarians, I’m very much a carnivore – and one of the obsessions we’ve been developing at work is a real penchant for dried meat products.  It started with Beef Jerky, and now we’re on to Biltong.  A process that originates from Europe but was made widespread in South Africa when the new colonisers needed to be able to preserve food whilst they developed herds for a sustainable food source.

My fledgling Biltong in it's dryer awaiting nature to take its' course!

Anyway, I digress.  It’s yummy – so naturally we started looking at how one would go about making it (as you do), and it’s surprisingly easy – the only tricky we have is our climate is a little strange.  Drying meat doesn’t necessarily need heat, but it does need airflow and also a dry (ie, not humid) atmosphere – so for something effective in our climate I used some instructions I found on the internet to make a very basic ‘biltong box’ in which to hang my meat (wahey!).

Whilst out and about picking up suitable parts for my new toy I also picked up a topside steak from Morrisons to be my first experiment.  My first job was to assemble the loosely planned design I had in my head from a shelving unit that was on sale in B&Q, some bits of wood I had from some doomed project or other, and some electrical bits to add a light bulb to the lower compartment.

It went surprisingly well, so I also had time to prepare the meat this evening and try a number of different marinades – I have eight pieces of meat now hanging in the garage, three with a kind of spiced/salted herby ‘rub’ on them, two with a sweet chilli marinade, two with Reggae Reggae Sauce covering them and finally one small piece with no marinade (beyond the salting and vinegar process recommended in the instructions) just to see what it tastes like unadorned.

Obviously being the first attempt it’s tricky to know when it will be ‘done’ so I think I’ll leave it towards the longer side of the 3-5 days it should take to dry.  It seems weird you can just make raw meat edible by leaving it to dry, but then I suppose technically it’s edible raw anyway.  With a bit of luck it will be suitably dry by Thursday evening so that I can take some in to work on Friday to test out on the my fellow Biltong fans at work!

For those of you who may have had their interest piqued but don’t want to go so far as to making your own Biltong over a period of days – you can apparently use an electric fan-assisted oven set to 40-70 °C (100-160 °F), with the door open a fraction to let out moist air – this can apparently dry the meat in approximately 4 hours.  Failing that, I found (via Jonathan – thanks Jonathan! – this awesome website which sells a variety of Biltong made from different meats, I might just have to place an order irrespective of how mine turns out!

Today I also found a stash of unidentified homebrew in a kitchen cupboard, so a meat and ‘wine and mead we’re not sure specifically what it is made of, or when it was made’ evening might be on the cards!  Amongst that lot was also an Elderflower wine kit so I might get around to making that too, whilst I’m in some kind of foodcraft kind of a mood.  Alcohol and meat – awesome.

Being a dyed in the wool Nottinghamian, it was always highly probable that I’d make the effort to go to see Ridley Scott’s epic ‘Robin Hood‘ movie soon after release.  And so it was the case, lucky for me Rich played social secretary and duly arranged seats for us at Broadway Cinema last Sunday to take in the film.

Originally it was going to be called Nottingham – which would have piqued my interest more – but having seen it, clearly there was a considerable shift in direction which would have rendered the name inappropriate.  I think Russell Crowe was originally due to play the Sheriff in a role-reversing retelling – as it stood, Matthew Macfadyen had little more than a bit-part to play in that role (who could beat Alan Rickman‘s portrayal, anyway?)

I was intrigued by the film too because the movie poster (see above) appears to have had my head photoshopped onto the rearmost horseman (it’s actually Kevin Durand playing Little John, who looks nothing like me normally!).  All in all, there was some degree of excitement (aside from feeling like crap and having a headache) on squeezing into the less than accommodating seats in Broadway’s Screen One.

I must confess, I left disappointed.  This is very much ‘Robin Hood: The making of the outlaw‘ – a prequel of sorts.  There were some great action scenes, and I think beneath the slightly over-complicated scene-setting there might have been a decent story trying to work its’ way to the surface (in a nutshell: King John crowned after the death of King Richard in France, double-crossed by a supposed friend to support a French invasion which Robin Longstride (yet to become ‘Hood’) assists to unite the Northern Barons to quell, Robin is subsequently denounced as an outlaw and we end with him making a home in the Forest with Marion and a bunch of kids gone wild after their fathers buggered off to the Crusades).

It was quite clunkily delivered though – that said, Mark Strong makes a great villain in the form of the double-crossing Godfrey, William Hurt is decent as the reliable Marshall – but you’re left lacking any real character building for Robin himself, or indeed his ‘Merry Men’.  Alan A’Dayle, Little John and Will Scarlett all feature – as does Friar Tuck – but you don’t really ‘get to know them’ as much as you’d like.  Things just kinda happen too quickly, loosely tied in to a link between a message on a sword hilt and half-remembered moments from Robin’s childhood.

Plus you’re waiting for Friar Tuck to start telling you you’ll get double Clubcard points on your Mead.

Russell Crowe’s ability to carry an accent (or lack of ) has been subject to much comment and amusement in the media already.  It’s true his northern Irish/Manc/Yorkshire/Australian hybrid was probably not all that authentic, but then given the state of language and regional accents in the 12th Century of England, I doubt very much what we (we being locals – because none of you non-locals know it!) know as ‘Nottingham accent’ existed.  So it didn’t really matter to me, at least he made an effort, unlike Costner or Slater in ‘Prince of Thieves’.

All in all, probably worth seeing – and it might well set the scene for a less awkward and more engaging sequel, but it wasn’t the treat I’d hoped for.  In a way I’m glad that Nottingham as a modern day entity made a typically ham-fisted and understated way of riding the coat-tails of the cinematic release, because it doesn’t really do the place justice to be associated with a film which is probably just above-average at best.