Eat Your Carrots

Google Translate

Google Translate - what a wonderful tool that could be. If only it could be trusted...

According to Google Translate the English equivalent of

"Qu'est que c'est avec tout cela français?"

Is

"What is with all this English?"

So which word in that sentence is the word for English? français perhaps? I thought that must surely mean "French".

It doesn't just cock that up in French translation either. I tried Dutch and hey presto:

"Ik dacht dat ze zou willen spreken nederlands?"

becomes

"I thought she would like to speak English?"

How bizarre. There is a button on the translate page that lets you "suggest a better translation". Needless to say I've posted my suggestions.

I wonder how that all works? Rather than actually translating text does it look up what people consider to be the best translation of something? That could be interesting if enough people suggest that a better translation of a pretty common phrase be something totally totally meaningless or amusing.

Suggestions on a postcard.

Happy Anniversary

It was our 23rd anniversary today. That's half my life now, but it doesn't seem like it. In many ways it seems like only yesterday, and that must be an indication of just how happy we've been. Happy events (great holidays, good movies, any time off work for any reason) just seem to fly by and that's what's happened here. And besides, I don't actually feel old enough to have been married that long!

We went to The Golden Lion in Osmotherley for lunch. It was fabulous. A proper country pub, with low ceilings, uneven floors and a real fire, in a village that still has hens wandering around it (above)!
It's a well known food pub, and the vegetarian choices are very good. I started with a goat's cheese and Mediterranean vegetable terrine, which was delicious, chalky-dry but flavoursome and tangy, followed by a vegetable risotto that was so rich and creamy I could feel my arteries thickening with each mouthful! Wife had Tomato Soup followed by Vegetable Shepherd's Pie topped with Goat's Cheese Mash (below).

This was to exactly the recipe that she makes her own to (one of Delia's, FYI) and this one was every bit as tasty as her own. It seemed strange to not be having it two days running (the one wife makes is so huge it does us two meals!).
We topped the day off with a walk around the village, tea (cup of) in the tea shop there and then home to watch Iron Man on DVD with the cat curled up on our laps.
A lovely day!

So Who Died?

What a pathetic load of twaddle all of the furore about the Strictly Come Dancing "voting fiasco" is. For instance The Daily Mail says "Strictly outraged: All three couples make the final after scoring bungle leaves Tom in certain dance-off". Scoring bungle? Where was the bungle? It was just scoring, and how it worked out can hardly be declared "a bungle". Couples have tied for position before, and the points system adopted in the case of tied positions is pretty standard. Bad luck that this left Tom adrift and facing a certain dance off, but the dance off is where he deserved to be anyway.
I can't believe that people actually bothered emailing in with comments such as "I'll never watch the show again". Why? What actually happened to make you feel that way? The worst dancer came bottom of the leader board? For Gods sake grow up. Perhaps we could have done away with however many weeks of dancing and just had the public vote once for "who's your favourite celebrity" and let that be that. John Sargent wins and Tom comes second. Yawn.
I watch the show for what it is - a dancing competition, and if the best dancer doesn't win then that's a complete travesty. Whoever votes for just "their favourite", irrespective of how good they are, are somewhat missing the point. Lisa was hopeless to start with, but now she's superb. Rachel has set more record scores in this show than anyone ever has. Tom is good, but he's the worst of the three. Simple fact. But let's all email and phone and complain when it looks like he might go out. Oh, and then when he's reprieved, lets all complain about that too.
Come on. No one died; no kittens were harmed; it's all just entertainment.