Engineering And Tea

(The discerning reader will find images of blueberry tarts, pie and muffins on the blog. Search here.)

"...the heavy beams that secured the gates were pulled back, and a squeal of steel on steel as the great metal portals swung out, salvaged wheels from railcars running along track set into the concrete of the roadway. Winches grated as the portcullis was raised..."
-SM Stirling, A Meeting At Corvallis (New York, 2007), Chapter Two, p. 52.

Observations:

a lot of very hard work has been done in a very short time since the Change;
I would not have a clue how to do any of that;
if not for people like Arminger, such elaborate defences would be unnecessary (hot oil is kept permanently above the gates).

Elsewhere, Sir Nigel Loring consumes blueberry muffins ("quite good") and chamomile tea with honey. Of the tea, he thinks:

"It wasn't quite as vile when you got use to it..." (p. 53)

I am a coffee man, not a tea man, but, after the Change, we would have to take what we got. The honey would help. Morals: after the Change, work hard and make do. Some aspects of life are perennial:

"Flames played over the glowing coals, red and gold flickering in an endless dance." (ibid.)

Addendum: Two more points for the food thread:

blogging was interrupted by a visit to the Wolfhouse Gallery where I had porridge with banana, peanut butter and honey, toast and butter with seasonal jam, a peanut butter brownie and filter coffee with hot milk whereas Ketlan had leek and mustard croquettes, chestnut mushrooms and a fried egg and three lattes;

Lord Bear suggests cooking French-fries and onion rings in the hot oil above the gate.