Steve Cooper's Personal Blog

My inexporable book writing continues. I’m now at a stonking 137 pages.

I should comment that, although the taste is at first unfamiliar, by the bottom of the cup I’d really gotten into it. It might become a regular feature of my liquid diet.

After Spence commented on tea, I felt it was necessary to perform some experiments…

In order to extend our knowledge of the Fine Drink, I attempted something this morning that I believe is a world’s first.

The worlds first Capputeano.

I will share with you all…

First, get an espresso machine, and add tea to the attachment that usually holds coffee beans. I find that three ripped-up tea bags fills it up. Then, make tea concentrate in the same way you’d make your espresso. I like to call this ‘teaspresso’. The resulting teaspresso should have a good crema – the light-coloured foam you get on the top of a proper espresso. If it is anything like coffee, this should be a mix of strongly brewed tea and emulsified tea oils. Mmmm! Then, fire up the milk steamer and steam yourself some foamed milk. Add the teaspresso. Voila! one capputeano.

If you are feeling adventurous you could add a second shot of teaspresso, and maybe sugar, to counteract some of the bitterness of six teabags worth of tea concentrate. I also hope that a finer grind of tea would give better teaspresso. I also susprect that an ice-blended version would be magical on a hot summer day.

Expect it in Starbucks from early autumn. But remember you saw it here first.

S.

Wow. I went through my hard drive and all over the web, grabbing pits and pieces that I’ve written over the years and throwing them all into a single big source file, for my role-playing book. It’s now a whopping 109 pages, although none of the pieces really form any kind of coherent whole, either in style terms or in structure terms. However, what is important is that it’s a great deal of ideas, some kind of structure, and it’s a very strong indication that I can actually write enough to fill a book.

read more…

So, I’ve managed to put together about 50 pages of my book so far, once you take out the title page and the contents. Mostly I’m gathering old essays, web posts, etc and dumping them together, but it turns out I’ve written a lot of stuff in the last few years… So, with any luck I’ll have gathered together 100 pages by the end of the week. I reckon that’s not impossible, if I can find enough old stuff and burble about new things that catch my interest. It has surprised me just how quickly I was able to put together this much. Ah, the benefits of a wasted youth.

I’m considering writing a book. I’ve got a method in mind for writing it that I think will be effective. Especially since I’m not an expert on the subject. Yet.

Writing, editing, and learning at the same time

Just back from an all-nighter, watching the sun come up on the solstace on the beach at Lindisfarne with, among others, cfw, clotilde, and smorgasbord. Am now barely holding it together, because I’ve only had an hour’s sleep. I apologise in advance for what may spew forth.

The solstace seems like a good, solid holiday to celebrate to me. Being a confirmed atheist, and thus robbed of almost every other significant holiday, it’s nice to have something natural to celebrate.

We started the evening by celebrating greynolds‘s birthday. At the pub he revealed that, like every man, he has his price. For five million pounds, he would let his bollocks be bitten off my a horse. Which is eminently fair, I think. Five million is a lot of money.

We crossed the causeway onto the island around three, after a two and a half hour drive. We wandered over the beach until the light began to strengthen. Although there was a little cloud on the horizon, it was not long after four-thirty when the sun peeked out. As it did, everyone was quiet. It was one of those great moments where everyone is perfectly silent and yet there’s still a feeling of deep communion.

After the sunrise, we tried to cook a breakfast barbeque like a bunch of hungry clowns. You’d never think it would be so difficult for half a dozen people to light two disposable barbeques, but there were elements of slapstick…

We were off the island by six, and back in york soon after. And now I’m up again, posting to my live journal…