Sunning

At around 17:00 this afternoon, dressed up with jacket, scarf and gloves, it was warm enough to sit out on our back patio and take the sun.

There were some interesting goings on with my eyes shut. Depending on the state of the sun - there was some cloud drifting about - I mostly either saw a sort of mottled black-brown, a sort of mottled blue-green or a patchy red-yellow. This in order of brightness, which presumably accounts for most of the variation. Something to do with absorption of light by the skin and blood of the eyelids?

While sometimes there were shapes moving about, sometimes complicated, generally a bright but pale shape on a darker background.

[lifted from reference 1 below. It cooked to black on the outside, agreeably soft & mushy inside. With what appears to be some barley, rather than the lumps of hard white fat you get in lesser products]

[white puddings - also prone to escape their sell-by date]

The sun going behind a large cloud, back indoors to take some black pudding on brown for tea. Peeled and then fried in a little rape seed oil, it went down very well. Much softer and milder than the black puddings we used to take occasionally from Slomers - from whom we still take white puddings. In fact, rather like foreign black pudding. The only downer being that it must already have been out of date when I bought it. We decided that as a cooked and sealed product it was probably safe enough: looked and smelled OK and nothing untoward has happened so far.

Delving deeper, I turn up reference 1, who will sell a ring, perhaps the same as the one I bought, but at less than half the price.

While the actual manufacturer appears to be a small operation called Pork Traders Oakwell Ltd. With the recipe being a closely guarded secret on an industrial estate on the eastern outskirts of Liverpool, not far from the M62, as snapped above.

While the exemption accounts filed at Companies House tell me very little, apart from there being around 3 employees, including the bosses.

Perhaps more interesting, the document snapped above was delivered by Amazon Web Services from the server farm called EU-West-No.2. Something else for the Brexit crew to deal with. I suppose that Amazon are as good as delivering web services as they are at delivering consumer goods, and for all sorts of applications it is simpler and cheaper to use them, rather than DIY'ing it. Or perhaps Microsoft, whom I believe have a similar offering. Don't know about Google.

PS: I have just learned that my victory by half a length at Scrabble this afternoon was tainted, tainted in that I used the word 'wont' in the cluster of senses around 'was accustomed to'. Checking with OED, I find that this is an old and respectable word, rating several meanings and several columns, but one which has largely fallen into disuse in this country, so obs, while maintaining a good foothold in the US. Ever sporting, BH checked in her rather newer Concise Oxford, which listed the word without comment. Nevertheless, given that we play with the full OED, tainted. A rematch has been scheduled.

References

Reference 1: https://www.greendale.com/product/oakwell-black-pudding-ring. 

Reference 2: https://slomersltd.co.uk/. The rivals from estuary land.