The lads in their hundreds

You have to have a heart of stone not to feel George Butterworth's exquisitely melancholy setting of The lads in their hundreds from A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, beautifully performed here by Roderick Williams and Ian Burnside.

What a difference a few days makes

A much better session today, with good efforts from both of us. I crossed of a nemesis that I've had on my uncompleted list for a little over six months — although, in my defence, I've only attempted it once since then — and R was much happier than she had been on Friday with only a minor glitch on one of her adversaries.

Flapjack variations

Clearing out the cupboards over the weekend, I decided to use things up by making some slightly modified flapjacks. Starting with Felicity Cloake's recipe, I changed:

• half the golden syrup for treacle;
• 50g or so of oats for mixed peel; and
• added a generous couple of tsp of ground ginger

I cooked the mixture using the chewy guidelines — because crunchy is just wrong — and now that most of them are gone, I can safely admit the results were unexpectedly excellent: soft but cohesive with a nice dark flavour from the peel and a suggestion of gingerbread from the treacle. Yum.