G'day folks, As much as I enjoyed the thread, I think that we should leave it for now. For those 'really interested' I'll post a msg about the state of my lemon tree when I return to Townsville in two weeks time. I have requested a friend of mine to visit our house to see if the tree can be saved. It had a full set of fruit on it when we left which would have been ripe for picking when we return. I have made several lots of excellent lemon pickle (hot) with the fruit from that tree. ooroo

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jack Hume" <jhume@nc.rr.com> To: <india-british-raj@rootsweb.com> Thanks Jack, for your observations on weather pro and con. Those poor trees must have had a slow death - I can't recall anything the like hereabouts - the gum trees tend to put down deep tap roots . Corrections welcome. I have been complaining volubly about the heat - I shall stop ! Wishes S. Stewart

I was never in the Indian Army but my father was. Can't remember which 'outfit' but know he was based in Delhi during WW2. At GHQ. We used to live in Lodhi Bungalows. Salaams - Hazel Craig

----- Original Message ----- From: "Lynne Hadley" <lynnehadley1@bigpond.com> >. But hearing of the lemon tree reminded me: > ladies, if your hair has lost its gloss and you are fortunate enough to > have > a lemon tree nearby, you might try doing what my old mum used to do when > we > were young. She used to boil up a few handfuls of lemon leaves in a large > saucepan for around 10 minutes, let the water cool, then strain it and use > it for the final rinse of our hair. Results? Very shiny hair!! :)) >the message In response - I remember a hard, round, brown dried fruit (?) which grandmother used to boil in rain water which, when cool, made a final rinse which resulted in hair soft and shiny ! Can't recall its name ? Nice memories . By the way - 'neem' is now widely used here in Oz although I have not - as yet - seen it in toothpaste form. P.S I can boast a curry leaf tree ! :o) Wishes Sally

I personally, found this story of great interest. One of the first jams (for want of a better word) I attempted was Marmalade (1965c) since when I have gone on to more complicated cuisines - one of my hobbies is cookery. If for some reason, and I'm pretty short on that, I have time on my hands, I am in the kitchen "cooking up a storm". Seville oranges are not available here however, as soon as this "monsoon" is over I will do the Marmalade "thing" again. So John, expect a jar of Marmalade. Molly Sarstedt-Hamilton, Townsville, Australia We are having the most rain in 30 years!!! Researching - Sarstedt/Hitchcock/Osborne/Cullen/Pringle/Vargas/Hamilton/Slark/Samworth/Fury/Short/Lawcock/Smith

Very sad to hear that your lemon tree has gone, John, but the rain is very welcome after such a long dry spell, methinks!! My sister headed off to Bundaberg from Agnes Water this morning.........via Miriam Vale, since the roads are all cut the other way. But hearing of the lemon tree reminded me: ladies, if your hair has lost its gloss and you are fortunate enough to have a lemon tree nearby, you might try doing what my old mum used to do when we were young. She used to boil up a few handfuls of lemon leaves in a large saucepan for around 10 minutes, let the water cool, then strain it and use it for the final rinse of our hair. Results? Very shiny hair!! :)) Cheers, guys. Lynne. :)) ----- Original Message ----- From: "John FELTHAM" <wulguru.wantok@gmail.com> To: <india-british-raj@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 12:13 AM Subject: Re: [INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ] Qld floods > G'day folks, > > > On 15/02/2008, Lynne Hadley <lynnehadley1@bigpond.com> wrote: > >> Guys, spare a thought for the listers living in Queensland...........the >> monsoon is making itself felt up there!! Mackay copped it today, and >> now >> it's Townsville's turn. South of there is also flooding like crazy. >> And, >> for all of you who live in the "Deep North"...........good luck!! >> Cheers, >> Lynne. :)) > > Just received news from Townsville. We have lost our lemon tree - > waterlogged and fell over.. > > No more lemon pickle huh? > > See also the current radar picture from the weather bureau. > > http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR212.loop.shtml > > > >> >> >> >> Life should NOT be a journey to the grave >> with the intention of arriving safely in an >> attractive and well preserved body, but >> rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, >> martini in the other, body thoroughly used >> up, totally worn out and screaming >> "WOO HOO what a ride!" >> >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' >> without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.20.5/1279 - Release Date: 2/14/2008 > 6:35 PM > >

Snipped from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/marmalade-why-it-isnt-yet-toast-782991.html Orange marmalade has been made in England since the late Tudor period. Ivan Day has a recipe from around 1615 and many variations from the 1730s. By the Victorian era our current notion of marmalade - in which the intensely sharp Seville oranges are tempered by the sweetness of the sugar to produce a fresh yet intense orange fragrance and flavour unmatched in any preserve anywhere in the world - was well-established. Jars of it travelled the world with colonial administrators throughout the days of the British Empire. Queen Victoria's grand-daughters had it sent to them when they became the Empress of Russia and the Queen of Greece. Captain Scott took it with him in 1911 on his expedition to the Antarctic where a jar was found, in perfect condition, 70 years later. In the process, marmalade turned from a mere food into an icon of Englishness, embodying all the qualities the English like to cherish in themselves: unique, eccentric, bitter-sweet. And, at its best, it has about it - as the lovingly labelled homemade concoctions sent for judging in the festival showed - the bumbling nobility of the amateur. It shows, says Lepard, that Britons' interest in food is not restricted to sitting watching sophisticated culinary extravaganzas on television while eating supermarket ready-meals. "All across Britain there are people making marmalade, sewing, knitting and gardening. Doing something carefully, and well, enriches people - and in the winter, the darkest time of the year when there are no native flowers, the heady smell of cooking oranges fills the house like the scent of a enormous vase of flowers." More than that, there is something about marmalade-making that brings out our humanity and generosity. "People make a big batch and they give jars away to their friends. I have never come across such a thing as a marmalade miser." ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India

Snippets from a review of two books at: http://warandgame.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/book-reviews-british-empire/ posted on February 16, 2008 ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India 1 Linda Colley's Captives: The Story of Britain's Pursuit of Empire and How Its Soldiers and Civilians Were Held Captive by the Dream of Global Supremacy, 1600-1850. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. xxii + 438 pp. $27.50 (cloth), $16.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-375-42152-5; 978-0-385-72146-2. 2 Kathleen Wilson's The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century New York and London: Routledge, 2003. xvi + 282 pp. $104.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780415158954; $30.95 (paper), ISBN 9780415158961. Colley's book is about the thousands of ordinary Britons-men and women, soldiers and civilians-taken captive by indigenous rulers and peoples in North Africa, India, and North America between the early seventeenth century and the middle decades of the nineteenth. Part of the book's appeal lies in the drama of the narratives that many of its subjects wrote upon regaining their freedom. In relating these stories, Colley uses her considerable literary talents to the fullest, blending masterful prose with judiciously chosen maps and illustrations. Her main interest, however, is what captivity has to tell us about the larger trajectory of Britain's imperial expansion. For readers of Colley's earlier work on national identity in Britain proper, perhaps the most striking part of her analysis is the vulnerability and fragile national identity of Britons in the colonies. Throughout the book, a leitmotif is that Britain's expansion "always involved dependence on non-whites and non-Christians, and not merely the experience of ruling them" (p. 71). Another theme is the frequency with which Britons taken captive adapted to-and in some cases adopted-the mores of their captors. For groups like the sailors condemned to work as galley slaves on Barbary corsairs, such cultural transgressions were the result of coercion and nothing else. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Britons also voluntarily refashioned themselves, changing religion (usually to Islam), taking non- European husbands and wives, and entering the service of local potentates whose resources frequently outstripped those of the British Empire. As Colley writes of British enlisted men in India during the first half of the nineteenth century, their aristocratic countrymen in the East India Company's officer corps were the object of far more resentment and hatred than the subcontinent's "natives" (p. 343). Although never welcome, captivity for such people could be a chance for escaping the constraints of their own society, whether social, sexual, or religious. [snipped]

The following message, posted today on somebody's blog, originally comes from a Yahoogroup called ''War To End All Wars'' (on all aspects of the First World War). ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India QUOTE February 15, 1915 Mutiny breaks out among Indian soldiers in Singapore In Singapore on this day in 1915, Indian soldiers launch the first large-scale mutiny of World War I. Some 800 soldiers in the Indian army's 5th Light Infantry Brigade broke out of their barracks on the afternoon of February 15 and killed several British officers before moving on to other areas of the city. By the time the revolt was quashed, several days later, by British, French and Russian troops, the mutineers had killed 39 Europeans-both soldiers and civilians. British soldiers executed 37 of the mutiny's ringleaders by gunfire. The Singapore Mutiny was intended by its organizers to be part of a general uprising being engineered by Sikh militants in neighboring India against British colonial rule. The Sikhs-whose religion combined elements of Hinduism and Islam-had earned favorable treatment from the British after their refusal to take part in an earlier mutiny in India in 1857, but some still chafed against the constraints of the empire. The Indian rebellion in 1915 enjoyed encouragement from the Germans, whose ship, the Bayern, had recently been intercepted by the Italians with a cargo of 500,000 revolvers, 100,000 rifles and 200,000 cases of ammunition intended to aid the militants. The rebels in India were betrayed in March 1915 by a police spy, and the leaders were arrested before they could signal the start of the revolt. Eighteen were hanged. Despite such insurrections, many Indians from across the country continued to volunteer to serve the British empire in World War I. The first Indian Victoria Cross for bravery had been awarded on the Western Front in January 1915. Mahatma Gandhi, champion of passive resistance and leader of the struggle for Indian home rule, played an active role in the recruitment of Indian soldiers during World War I, writing later that "If we would improve our status through the help and cooperation of the British, it was our duty to win their help by standing by them in their hour of need." UNQUOTE

Marmalade Rules OK! Please have a look at http://www.marmaladefestival.com and see how we British still support the making of this fine product.......Support for the Hospice comes into it too. My wife entered this year and also made up nearly 50 jars of lovely dark chunky marmalade--almost all of which has now vanished into the pantries of relatives,friends and "trade persons"..I have my own small stock hidden away though. We think that the secret of making near perfect marmalade each time is the old Victorian rotary orange slicer that we inherited from a very dear friend many, many years ago. Turning it also keeps you fit, so that you need that toast and marmalade to revcover!!! Cheers Peter D Rogers,Suffolk UK

Greetings Neighbour Helen All's well this morning in Townsville, apart from everthing looking very washed out. It is still raining hard but nothing like during the night or a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully, I don't lose any of my trees like John's lemon tree. Now of course is the time for gardening which I have been doing over the past fortnight but not today I don't think. Our Ross River looks spectular falling over the weir about 100 metres from our front door. Keep the spirits up and the patience and get your "wellies" and "umbrella" out of storage. Molly Sarstedt-Hamilton, Townsville, Australia We are having the most rain in 30 years!!! Researching - Sarstedt/Hitchcock/Osborne/Cullen/Pringle/Vargas/Hamilton/Slark/Samworth/Fury/Short/Lawcock/Smith

Hi, From the "Deep North", waiting, waiting. Breaks the monotony. Helen

G'day folks, On 15/02/2008, Lynne Hadley <lynnehadley1@bigpond.com> wrote: > Guys, spare a thought for the listers living in Queensland...........the > monsoon is making itself felt up there!! Mackay copped it today, and now > it's Townsville's turn. South of there is also flooding like crazy. And, > for all of you who live in the "Deep North"...........good luck!! Cheers, > Lynne. :)) Just received news from Townsville. We have lost our lemon tree - waterlogged and fell over.. No more lemon pickle huh? See also the current radar picture from the weather bureau. http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR212.loop.shtml > > > > Life should NOT be a journey to the grave > with the intention of arriving safely in an > attractive and well preserved body, but > rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, > martini in the other, body thoroughly used > up, totally worn out and screaming > "WOO HOO what a ride!" > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

-----Original Message----- From: india-british-raj-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:india-british-raj-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of John FELTHAM Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 8:13 AM To: india-british-raj@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ] Qld floods Hi John and Lynne The grass is always greener and so on. John, I looked at the Townsville radar and was almost envious. Here in Townsville NC USA we are in need of a minimum 25" of rain in a short period of time to get back to normal. I have been cutting down 50' oaks along with many smaller trees which have died as a result of our drought. The local reservoirs have 30-40 days water supplies for the metropolitan area of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill nearly 2 million folks in a 3 county area. I live an hour north of that in Townsville which is on a lake that is 28 miles long and way down. I took my boat out to go fishing recently and got a better understanding of why/how I lost so much fishing gear. The lake was cleared of trees and their stumps - which are normally under 10-20 ft of water along the shore -- are now high and dry. I think I would like some of your weather for a short while. Jack Hume

Hi Guys, Guys, spare a thought for the listers living in Queensland...........the monsoon is making itself felt up there!! Mackay copped it today, and now it's Townsville's turn. South of there is also flooding like crazy. And, for all of you who live in the "Deep North"...........good luck!! Cheers, Lynne. :)) Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

In memory of those dark days when Ballantine I.P.A. seemed the sole torchbearer for real beer, the NYT - Dining section's tasting panel decided to sample 21 India pale ales. ALES OF THE TIMES; A Soldier's Ration for a Summer Day May 26, 2004 Few beers can conjure so much romance and salty seagoing adventure as they do. The India pale ale style was developed in Britain in the 18th century, as a way to provide the empire's colonial troops in steamy India with rations of their beloved brew. Beer did not often survive the marked changes of climate on long trips to tropical destinations. Efforts to brew it aboard ship failed, and India lacked the moderate climate necessary, in those days before refrigeration, for successful brewing. The solution came in the 1790's. A brewer named George Hodgson realized that a higher alcohol content would inhibit spoilage, and that bacterial action could be slowed by adding extra doses of hops, which impart bitterness, liveliness and aromatic complexity. The strong ale that resulted had a distinctive backbone of aggressive bitterness that could withstand the journey and still refresh the troops. The necessity for the techniques of producing India pale ale eventually died out, but the taste for it did not, and British and American brewers continued making it through the early 20th century. With the brewing revival, it seems as if every good deli has at least a couple of India pale ales, though the selection is now dominated by American labels. snipped from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E04E7D7143EF935A15756C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India

Hello all, There was a sizeable Jewish population in Calcutta in the early 1960's though there was a steady exodus to Isreal even then. The Israelie Government was paying each an amount of 10 pounds cash plus free transport by charter plane paid for by the Israelie Government and I know quite a few who took up the offer. I had several Jewish friends and work colleagues, who were all regular attendants at the Jewish Club - though a "non Jew" myself, I attended many of their functions. Molly Sarstedt-Hamilton, Townsville, Australia We are having the most rain in 30 years!!! Researching - Sarstedt/Hitchcock/Osborne/Cullen/Pringle/Vargas/Hamilton/Slark/Samworth/Fury/Short/Lawcock/Smith

http://8ate.blogspot.com/2008/02/lost-mumbai-collage-of-old-photographs.html Download all the images (zip file, 3Mb) http://8ate.athedge.googlepages.com/Lost_Bombay.zip ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India

February 15, 2008 To the western eye at least, it is both a shocking and humbling sight. Less than 10 yards from the entrance to Royal Calcutta GC -- founded in 1829 and the oldest in the world outside the British Isles -- an elderly man covered in soapsuds is washing in the river. Next to him a woman is cleaning what is, one assumes, the family laundry. Not six feet from her, a stray dog urinates into the putrid water that doubles, judging by the foul smell, as the local sewer. Inside the club gate, of course, a very different world unfolds. "Old" golf in India, introduced by the British forces stationed there during the days of the Empire, is populated by the affluent few in a country where the ever-rising population already exceeds 1.1 billion souls. But the incongruity continues, as the rings of barbed wire around the course's perimeter testify. Literally next door to the "rich man's game," the Kolkata slums are home to those a lot less fortunate. snipped from http://www.golfdigest.com/golfworld/columnists/2008/02/gw20080215huggan ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/south_asia_indian_independence_posters/html/1.stm ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India