Pavlova Recipe

Here is the pavlova I made yesterday (click on it to zoom in):

For the meringue (from http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/passionfruitandraspb_87335)

• 4 large free-range egg whites

• 225g/8oz caster sugar

• 2 tsp cornflour

• 1 tsp white wine vinegar

For the berry coulis (from http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/etonmesswithberrycou_83245)

• 100g/3½oz frozen mixed berries, defrosted

• 1 lime, juice only

• 1 tbsp icing sugar

For the topping

• 3/4 - 1 punnet of fresh raspberries

• 5 squares melted chocolate

• 1/4 tub Haagen Dazs (vanilla flavour)

Make the meringue

1. Preheat the oven to 140C/285F/Gas 1.

2. For the meringue, place the egg whites into a clean bowl and whisk until soft peaks form when the whisk is removed.

3. Add the sugar, a spoonful at a time, continuing to whisk until firm peaks form when the whisk is removed and the mixture becomes glossy and smooth.

4. Whisk in the cornflour and vinegar.

5. Line a baking sheet with baking paper and spoon the mixture onto the tray in a large round.

6. Transfer to the oven and bake for ten minutes, then turn the heat down to the lowest setting and leave for 2-3 hours, or until crisp but uncoloured. Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then place onto a serving plate.

Make the coulis

1. To make the coulis, place the mixed berries, lime juice and icing sugar into a small food processor and blend until smooth.

2. Pass the berry mixture through a fine sieve.

Topping and decoration

1. Spread 3/4 of the coulis onto the meringue base
2. Arrange the raspberries in a circle around the edge of the meringue. Repeat so there are two or three rows of raspberries.
3. Drip melted chocolate on top of the raspberries.
   
4. Spoon the ice cream into the centre of the circle of raspberries.
5. Top with the remainder of the coulis and leftover chocolate.
6. Serve.
   

On Standby

It has been a while since I last posted a blog: the twin hindrances of exam stress and the fear of offending people with my dreadful moaning prevented me from writing in doses exceeding 140 characters. In truth, my brain is still frazzled from all that effort and writing has been pretty low on my list of priorities. I have what I had yearned for throughout that tough exam schedule, with all the liberty, finances and free time necessary to enjoy a 3 month long holiday. But I am not happy. In fact, I am less happy than when I was taking those exams a month ago, even though I have caught up on both sleep and socialising. I miss seeing my friends every day, and I miss the familiarity of my school and the people that bring it alive. I am fully aware that many of you reading this will tut and scoff that a naive 18 year old feels this way: surely I should be enjoying this last summer of freedom, the no man's land between school and university where absolutely no strings are attached to endless fun, frivolity and laughter beneath a glowing sun. I feel that I should feel this way, and that makes the sickness that exists at the pit of my stomach all the harder to bear; there is nothing worse than the feeling that you ought to be enjoying yourself.

Last Tuesday marked the last thing I will ever do for my school: I played two solos in the Summer Concert as well as in the school woodwind ensemble (yes, bow in reverence of my coolness). During that last chord of the final piece (Prokofiev's 'Kije's Wedding'), I felt something change inside of me: I would no longer be going to Southend every Monday and Friday for my rehearsals, I would no longer be part of that group of like-minded people and I would no longer be a part of the school community I have enjoyed for 7 years. Fortunately, the blow was softened by my best friend: we spent the rest of the week cinema-ing and making a cake for a concert she was playing in (she is a super-brilliant clarinetist). But now that week is over and my brother is on his Duke of Edinburgh expedition, my dad is in Rugby and my mum is still caught up in solicitors' documents almost one year on from my grandmother's death (it was a very complicated will). So I am at home sleeping, vegetating and generally failing to do the things I had resolved to during the periods when I had no time to have a life.

At the end of the blog that precedes this one, @chlorinekid from St. Helens (one of my very first followers no less) advised, "'There will be no going back.' Get that tattooed down both arms and never forget it. Believe me, it's the truth.". Typifying the teenager who thinks they know best, I inwardly laughed it off believing that I'd be too busy enjoying myself to miss my old, boring life of books and silly stresses over whether I'd be getting an A or an A* (HA, as if either will happen now after those godawful exams!). But David was so right: it takes all of my effort to remember that I will never have that life again and that unknown as it is, September 29th will mark a new start in a new city away from all of my friends. I know that many of my friends are beside themselves with the thought of being let off the leash and able to acquire all the unsuitable tattoos, piercings and alcoholic concoctions they could ever wish for, but I am fully aware that although I'll make new friends and enjoy the fact that I'm no longer living in an East Anglian village where the biggest excitement of the year has been the introduction of new range of bread in the Londis convenience store, it will be very difficult to maintain that same closeness to the friends with whom I've grown up. I am, to some extent, rather paranoid about the whole thing: with the exception of Lucy (who is off to Southampton to study Physiotherapy), my friends are all off to Oxbridge while I will either be at UCL or Warwick depending on just how badly my exams went this year. I guess I'm worried that I'll be discounted because I'm not as smart as they are, or that they'll all become terribly prissy and posh and not want anything to do with me. This is all highly irrational, but when you have no idea of where you'll be within 70 days of the present and you're working to set the groundwork to protect the friendships you've expended so much effort to build, the summer that you've spent so long hankering after becomes filled with anxiety and fear.

That's why I'm 'On Standby' in more ways than one. I'm waiting to find out where I'll be getting my degree from (and where I'll be living and studying for the next 3 years of my life), while I fluctuate between my two concurrent lives: one of vegetating (standby) and the other of socialising. Boredom and an empty schedule are strictly incompatible with my personality, and the endless days that I vowed to spend reading are largely filled with equal measures of anxiety and fear.

I'm sorry to have produced something as waffly, unstructured and moany as this, but it's all I can think of at this present time. I'll attempt something more constructive once I begin to get over this and look forward to a future that might be even better than the past I've left behind.

PS I feel better already

Beyond the Parapet

This academic year has been a year of 'lasts' for me. The past few weeks alone have included both the final day of my childhood and the beginning of revision for the last school exams I will ever take. The months preceding those were filled with yet more endings: my grandma was taken ill with ovarian cancer and died weeks later (the last of my grandparents), and in January I was rejected from the university I had long dreamed of attending. Today I made the realisation that I have just 16 days remaining until I leave school forever.

I like to imagine that the experience of school is comparable to seven years of house arrest in a luxurious castle; although you remain reasonably aware of the goings-on in the wider world, you live your life in the comfortable knowledge that not much is going to change from one day to the next. In the sixth year of your seven year stay, you decide to ascend to the roof of your castle to glimpse between the crenellations, all the while imagining what your 'freedom' will entail. You will do this all the more often once your final year begins. Despite having envisaged the new 'liberated' version of yourself throughout your incarceration, you realise that you have never felt the grass beneath your feet or the wind in your hair: you have merely witnessed their effects on other people through the castle windows that both protect and imprison you. Although you have seen the grass and heard the wind, you know that you will not feel them until the drawbridge is down and you are on your merry way.


As I type, my poll card for tomorrow's general election and the accommodation form for my top choice university (incidentally now seeming like a rather better option than my original dream) rest before me on my desk. To my left is the noticeboard I decorated before my first day of secondary school and to my right is a reading list for the course on which I hope to enroll in September. I am perched on a rather comfortable blue swivel chair, able to observe both what I have been and what I hope to become. The view is pleasing but nothing special.

These past seven years have been the most formative of my life and I'm not sure I ever want them to end. Nonetheless, the wind is beginning to blow through the walls and puffs of pollen are being carried into my bedroom by summery gusts of air. There will be no going back.

On holiday with technology

One of the main faults I can find with the human world is that true understanding can only be attained once you have sampled both ends of the stick. By this, I mean that it is only possible to comprehend something by experiencing its diametric opposite: how can we possibly appreciate our peaceful times without witnessing the horror of war and the abominable corruption that can exist within the human mind? The most recent period at which the British population was enlightened by this juxtaposition of war and peace was during the 1950s, when people busied themselves with street parties, a national festival and dancing. Mostly, however, they made babies. Lots of babies. The problem is that those babies have grown up to take the same stance as their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents: that war is viable as a 'last resort'. It is, however, only a viable 'last resort' if you have forgotten the terror and unhappiness it brings to both sides. If only the mistakes of the past were heeded. Humans are, however, blind and forgetful creatures who blithely march into the selfsame tragedies as their forefathers.

On second thoughts, I am being too charitable with the adjectives 'blind' and 'forgetful'; I think 'conceited' and 'arrogant' are rather more apt. The truth is that each successive society believes itself to be more technologically advanced than its predecessor and hence more able to manage the obstacles that come its way. The reality is that humans are as unfit to dominate as they ever were, and that technological advances exist only as a vehicle through which increased suffering can be inflicted on rival societies. It is a sad realisation when you find that many of the things you love and cherish came out of humanity's insatiable taste for blood of its own kind. The cavity magnetron, a necessity in the reheating of so many delicious ready meals, is just one example of an invention that emerged from this need to out-kill the enemy. We as human beings are therefore embroiled in the most terrible of paradoxes: while we are in possession of both the capacity to hate and the intelligence to act upon it, thousands of years of evolution mean that diplomacy is against our nature- humans are inherently selfish creatures. While we can identify the mistakes of the past, we lack the ability to apply the messages they hold to our own lives: our leaders look solemn enough on Remembrance Day but have few qualms about glibly posting our troops around the world for causes of little unilateral consequence at best and political expedience at worst.


I assure you that I am in no way misanthropic: I marvel at technology, especially platforms such as Twitter which grant autonomy to all, and I admire the many individuals who have each made immeasurable improvements to our lives. I simply believe that in this age of rapid technological change (in which, as the great Fry puts it, a month is a year and a year a whole decade) we have an opportunity to rectify our situation before we once again make the mistakes of the past. We can go one of two ways: the world will either become obsessed with observation or use technology to develop mutual understanding and bring about a new form of democracy. I sincerely hope that we do not adhere to the fluctuating pattern of the past (endless alternation between war and peace) and that in this instance, we will only need to lick one end of that metaphorical stick. We must learn that a technological capacity to do something does not necessarily make it the right course of action.

I will finish with a short anecdote from my history teacher. She too attended the school as a girl, and told us that no fewer than 32 years have passed since she sat in that same classroom and mocked Orwell's dystopian view of a future of telescreens and unhindered government observation. As the world develops and technology takes root, we must be mindful to let this new and exciting phase of human civilisation take the correct course. We still have time: Humanity is currently on honeymoon with Technology, its confidante, helper and friend.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-Albert Einstein

By way of introduction

Hello, I am Rachel (well, i_am_rachel).

I lead a mundane life in a suburban village with rural pretensions. At the age of 11, I decided to attend a school situated half-way across the county, so I am now lumbered with a long and boring daily commute to school aboard a rickety double-decker bus. I love it though. I am currently 'enjoying' my final year at home with my dad (a 59-year-old balding man for whom true rebellion is writing letters of complaint to the poor souls at Essex County Council), my mum (whose sole source of worldly excitement is seeing whether the First bus service is running on time) and my younger brother (an XBox fiend and omniscient genius- in that order). The poor ergonomics of our house render the coexistence of the family and Sanity a perpetual impossibility: the latter has long-since been relegated to a solitary life at the bottom of the back garden.

This cosy life is, however, entirely subject to change. The shadow of university hangs low in the sky like a yellow skull, made continuously more ominous by both the passage of time and the influence of my boffin friends who are all on the Yellow Brick Road to Oxbridge. I was sadly not accepted to accompany them on this glorious path, so I am now waiting for lesser institutions to condescend to let me in. If successful, I shall be studying English Literature. You must understand that this comes as a huge disappointment to the parents, who are both in possession of PhD's, MSc's and all sorts of other impressive-sounding acronyms. Do remember that the Arts are for those who have failed to wire their brains for the glory of mathematics; in my family, BA stands for Bogus Academia.

So far, this has been a rather negative portrayal of my parents. I will now assert that they are loving, kind and generous, and they always attempt to involve me in their 'little discussions' about such inconsequential topics as the origins of the universe. My brother is similarly accommodating, and once spent 3 hours explaining the first chapter of 'A Brief History of Time' to me in return for my completion of one of his English essays (he views the subject as a worthless drain on his time).

In the time not occupied with eating, travelling on the said rickety old double-decker bus and sleeping, I do my homework. This may seem an unconscionably large amount of time to be dedicating to what is essentially an extension of school, but the awkward truth is that I AM STILL BEHIND. It is now that I should divulge the true meaning of 'homework': homework can encompass many things ranging from QI, Paul O'Grady on Radio 2, Radio 4, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera et cetera. This blog is my new homework and I shall very much enjoy completing it.

In addition to homework and the other aforementioned occupations, I have my 'hobbies'. The list of these was once long and expansive (ranging from high diving to trampolining), but it has now been whittled down to two principal activities: badminton and music. I am in LOVE with classical music, and I mean it. Once you discover it, there is no going back; it is an unstoppable voyage of discovery from that first, seemingly innocuous CD to the shamefully long bills sent from iTunes and Amazon on an almost monthly basis. I am a proud player of both the oboe and the cor anglais, and I devote a great many of my lunchtimes to the school woodwind ensemble. It is run by a fearsome but very friendly woman, whose talents far outshine the bleak setting in which she applies them.

And now to reveal my final indulgence: my iPhone. Like many other devotees, I think I would forget how to walk if I could not feel its reassuring presence in the pocket of my jeans. I am truly convinced that it has become an extension of my body.

So, this is me in a box. Thank you so very much for reading and I hope that you will revisit soon. Bye for now.


Rachel