Hay and other fevers

Our brush with DOOOOOOOM* seems to have passed fairly quickly, compared to some people. I still have no sense of taste and very little sense of smell, and we are both still far more exhausted and achy than usual - even at our advanced ages.

Despite this, or maybe because of it, I am trying to get stuff done every day so that I can at least feel like I am being reasonably productive. Admittedly, sometimes that stuff consists of "an hour doing my jigsaw puzzle" but hey, it's SOMETHING.  

Whilst in the throes of plague I wasn't able to concentrate or focus, so anything creative was out. I have a couple of embroidery projects on the go (one has been "on the go" for at least 5 years) but lacked either the eye-focus or inclination to make any progress. I have a couple of new dressmaking projects in mind, and it's only been this weekend that I've given any real consideration to starting them.

Today I have baked a loaf of bread, and had a go at making gnocchi for the first time, using leftover baked potatoes I made a couple of days ago. The gnocchi had a splendid texture, and I am reliably informed that they tasted of "mostly potato." Result. 

I boiled them for 3 minutes, then pan-fried them in sage butter till crispy on the outside. Served piping hot with grated parmesan cheese and (because we're BEASTS) tomato ketchup. I am quietly confident that if Stanley Tucci made my house a destination on one of his TV shows, he would not be disappointed by the food. 

Appalled by the leering middle-aged woman serving it to him, possibly. 

It was Mr WithaY's birthday yesterday, and we had been invited to lunch with some of the lovely neighbours. The sun shone, we sat outside and drank the finest wines known to humanity (I couldn't taste them, so it was a waste of fine-ness) and had a truly memorable meal.

I took along a coffee and walnut birthday cake for dessert, and some jaunty unicorn and rainbow candles, which were all eventually lit at the same time - it was breezy in the garden. 

When it was time to go, I boxed up the remains of the cake (I did check with the gracious hostess if that was ok) and took it out into the garden. 

As we were saying our farewells, the boxed cake was left on a low wall. Within reach, it turned out, of at least one of the resident black Labradors.

 It seems dogs like cake. Who knew?

Anyhoo, we had a slice of it today (not from the dog-nibbled side) and it was still delicious. Apparently. 

All I could smell/taste was a faint whiff of coffee.  The texture was good though.

I'll be glad when my senses are back to normal, and I can actually enjoy food again. And no, I'm not getting thinner as a result of not being able to taste anything, which is annoying.

Today is a Bank Holiday, although I suppose every Monday could be viewed as a holiday from now on. 

I'm starting to half-heartedly look at job websites, but haven't seen anything I fancy yet. I definitely don't want a full-time job, and I don't fancy working at weekends, so my options are limited. 

I might just become a lady of leisure, and swan about wearing a big hat and a flowery frock all day. Or become a village busybody, in the style of Miss Marple, delving into everyone's business, whilst solving murders and drinking tea with locals of note.

Early days.  

*Covid. It was shite. 

Dinked

Events of note at work so far this week:

• Group of Japanese tourists arriving at 7am, buying fuel for their car, and then photographing each other outside the shop, collapsing in helpless, excited laughter at our coal bunkers.  

• Man buying coffee from the coffee machine and then demanding I add more coffee, as it wasn't coffee-y enough.  I was tempted to chew up a mouthful of coffee beans and spit them into his drink, but I managed to refrain, and merely made him a fresh cup, which was apparently "fine."

• Being handed a crumpled five pound note with wet cowshit on it.  This happens far more often than is acceptable.

• Man buying a pasty, then remaining at the till to harangue me (and other customers) about the terrible recent case of a young girl who was found dead after a row with her family. He was bellowing "She was hanged!  There's more to that than we're being told!" at a polite man trying to pay for his diesel for quite a long time.  

• Being asked many technical questions about putting oil in a car by someone who has no idea whether their car is a petrol or a diesel, and aren't even sure if it needs oil, but "a light has come on so it probably does."  All this while a long, impatient queue of people builds up behind them, while they ponder what they actually want at their leisure.

• Woman wanting a gas canister, then wanting to do complicated stuff about changing from one canister size to another, which only our managers are allowed to authorise, and then getting hugely annoyed when told how much the canister she asked for in the first place costs.  There was a degree of huffing and flouncing, which made the man in the queue behind her roll his eyes expressively at me.

• Woman running into the shop and asking me "Did I just put petrol in my car??" When I said no, she said "I've been swimming in the sea, it's messed with my head!"

Ah, people.

In other news, Mr WithaY and I (and the dog) went to visit some very dear friends down in deepest Sussex earlier this week.  They live in a cottage on a rather excellent country estate, so we went for several dog-walks through the meadows and woods.  Their dog is a charmer, and he and ours played together most endearingly.  Our dog retired to her basket when we got home, and slept for about 18 hours solidly.  She can't party like she used to.

I wanted to take photos of The Big House there, because it is a beautiful (possibly) Elizabethan manor house with a Horsham stone roof, but I felt that  might be a bit intrusive and gawky, so you will just have to imagine it.

We travelled down in Mr WithaY's new truck, which is far more comfortable than the LandRover was, and much more practical. It's a double-cab pick-up with a roof on the pick-up bit at the back, so there;s room for 5 people and tons of stuff too.  He's very pleased with it.

But what happened to the LandRover, I hear you ask?

Well.

Several months ago, Mr WithaY was off to the woods to work, where he planned to be for a long weekend.  He packed all his kit into his car, said a fond farewell to me and the dog, and headed off.  Some hours later, I was at work, and he came into the shop to ask if he could borrow my car.

"What happened to yours?" I enquired.

"Crashed it," he replied somewhat tersely.  I gave him my car keys, with a stern injunction not to crash mine too.  He disappeared again, returning several days later with a sad tale of bouncing off a woodland track at 10 miles an hour and hitting a tree.

Unfortunately, the age of the vehicle, and the substantial nature of the damage inflicted - lights smashed, bonnet crumpled, side panel dented, bumper broken - meant that the insurance company wrote it off, hence the need for a new truck.  The tree, you will be pleased to hear, was undamaged, not even getting a dent in the thick moss covering the trunk.

Oh, and Mr WithaY was fine too.

While Mr WithaY was away over that long weekend, we had a new fence put up.  It replaced the horrible tatty broken fence which ran along the side of the gardens, front and back.  A team of charming young landscape gardeners came to erect it* and worked like Trojans from morn** till night***, pausing only briefly for cups of tea.

On the eventful Friday afternoon when Mr WithaY had broken his car, I was in the house, having been at work all morning.  There was a knock on the front door.  One of the gardeners stood there, looking anxious.  If he'd had a flat cap on, he'd have been tugging nervously at the peak.

"Hello," I said.  Have you finished already?"

"No," he replied.  "We've dug a hole for the last fencepost, but it's full of water."

"Oh, never mind about that! Our water table round here is really high. I bet it'll be fine."

He agreed with me, and said they had some finishing off to do, and could sort out the last bit of fence in an hour or so, once the water level had dropped again.

An hour or so later, there was another knock on the door.  He looked positively anguished.  The flat cap would have been clutched in nerveless hands, wrung with despair.

"Come and look at this," he said.  That's never good.  I followed him around to the side of the house where the fencepost hole was brimming with water, and a stream had formed running down onto the back lawn.

"Fuck."  I said.

He nodded sadly.

To cut a (very) long story slightly shorter, it turned out that our water main runs down that side of the house, and in digging the hole, they had managed to somehow disturb the pipe and cause a massive leak.  Several hours of panicking, phoning plumbers, phoning Wessex Water and trying to build makeshift dams with breeze blocks followed.

Thankfully, Wessex Water were able to come out the following day and fix the problem, but they suggested that if we ever win the Lottery we might consider having all our external water pipes replaced.  Cheers for that.

It is traditional for some domestic disaster to occur when Mr WithaY is away, so I'm pretty used to it now.  I ought to make a Domestic Disaster Bingo Card, and keep myself amused guessing what will happen next.











*Sorry.

**About 8am-ish
***About teatime

Canally retentive

I've been away on a canal boating holiday! A very short one. Alright, a weekend. Well, a day and a night and a half a day.  It was very nice too, and despite the freezing wind which whipped around us intermittently, the weather was glorious.

Our lovely mates Bill and Jayne have bought a narrowboat, and invited us to come and admire it, so early on Saturday morning we set off for Oxfordshire.  The sun shone, the roads weren't too snarled-up with traffic, and we arrived almost exactly on time, to be greeted by our mates, offering cups of tea.  Marvellous.

As well as the four adult humans on board, there was a charming dog. We'd sent ours off to have a holiday with her family, and thus avoid the possibility of two excited dogs falling onto the canals.  Anyway, this is the lovely dog who lives on the boat with his owners:

He's a Bavarian Mountain Hound, and a more relaxed dog you'd be hard-pushed to find.

This is the boat, complete with gorgeous hand-painted bargeware bits and bobs:

We went from the boatyard, down the canal to Cropredy, where we went to the pub.  The Red Lion, as well as serving beer, selling excellent cheesy chips and housing a beautiful golden retriever called Shandy, has a guitar shop.  I had a chat with the guitar man, who also runs the pub, and he told me Rickenbackers are buggers to play. Yeah, I knew that.

Oh, they also had a funky clock on the wall:

A stroll around Cropredy, then back to the boat for drinks, pre-supper snacks, and then a mighty fine supper cooked by Jayne.

An evening of chatting, laughing, catching up on 30 years of friendship, then wrestling with the spare bed to allow us to get to sleep, followed by an early morning tea and Jaffa Cake-fest.  A leisurely stroll to the local shop, a look around the Cropredy battle-site memorial, and back up the canal to the mooring.

This little sign took my fancy.  You walk through the Hell Hole to get away from the church.

 The view up to the pub from the canal bridge.

Making way back towards a lock.  The pointy bit you see there is the front.  Sorry if I'm getting too technical.

I liked being in the locks, and I particularly liked this one; the gates look like the entrance to Mordor. In my head.

We passed this sad wreck, seemingly a victim of the storms, where I was intrigued by the musical instruments and amps left on board.  Just across the canal from it was a fallen willow tree, blocking the thoroughfare (is that the right term? I'm not sure) which had fallen across the canal and meant everyone had to risk bumping into the sunken boat to get past it.

As a favour to the canal-dwelling community, it was decided that on the way back down the canal Mr WithaY should wait in the front of the boat with a long trident/rake thingy, and a bill-hook, and when we got close enough to the fallen willow, he would hack away enough of the branches to clear the channel for other boaters.

What a great idea.  You can see the tree there on the left, making it difficult to pass the sunken boat safely.

We got close to the fallen tree, our stalwart captain held the boat in position, and Mr WithaY leant out of the boat with the bill-hook, lopping off the longer branches.  Most of them were so dry and brittle that they snapped at a touch, making his task easier.

Most of them.

Almost as soon as our captain cheerfully shouted "Don't drop the bill-hook in the water, mate!" Mr WithaY hacked at a branch that was NOT dry and brittle. No.  It was green and lush, full of bounce and vim.  So much bounce and vim, in fact, that on contact the bill-hook bounced off with some violence, causing Mr WithaY's hand to release his grip on the handle, and it dropped into the canal with a gentle "sploosh."

Dear readers, there was some bad language.

Fortunately, our sensible (and experienced) boat-owners had a large magnet on a length of cord, and after a little bit of fishing, the bill-hook was recovered, none the worse for wear.

The remainder of the journey to the boat yard was completed with the bill-hook and trident securely stowed away, in no danger of falling in the water.

This is the boat yard, where they had HUGE chickens roaming around outside.  I look forward to seeing it again on a less chilly afternoon.

In other news:  I am pretty much fully recovered now, and am able to drive, carry stuff, lift things (carefully) and walk the dog again, so I am much happier.

I've rediscovered my desire to sew, and have been cutting out all the bits to make a shirt.  Today I went down to the excellent Hansons Fabrics in Sturminster Newton and had a good old poke about.  Tomorrow I shall start actually sewing all the bits together, and by the weekend I plan to have a funky new shirt finished.

It's all go here.

Recuperation

I'm bored.  Bored bored bored bored bored.  This is a clear sign that I am on the road to recovery, but it's frustrating to think I am only about halfway through the first stage of "take it easy" recuperation.

I'm having my stitches out this afternoon, which I am both pleased about and horrified by. Part of me wants to see the "wounds" as they are delightfully termed by medical people, part of me wants them to remain forever concealed under waterproof dressings.

Brrrr.

I'm still freakishly tired most of the time, and have been doing that thing that very small children and puppies do where they just fall asleep in the middle of whatever is going on at that moment.  Fortunately, most of what I am doing involves sitting on the sofa half-heartedly watching TV, reading a book or dicking about on my phone. It would be rather more alarming if I were, say, a brain surgeon or an offshore undersea welder.

It's great that I am feeling more like doing things, but it is frustrating because I think "Oh, I'll just do some ironing," or "I'll clean the bathroom windows," and then I think again and realise that no, no, I won't.  Not for a couple more weeks.

Mr WithaY is being hugely helpful, and our lovely neighbours are popping in with books, sweeties and chat, all of which are much appreciated.  On Saturday Youngest Sis and her husband came up to visit, bringing our slightly belated Christmas presents, which was lovely.  We sat and chatted, ate lunch, chatted some more, opened our presents and drank tea, while the dog went BANANAS with her Christmas gift:





She gnawed it till the squeak stopped working, and then contented herself with rolling around on her back, holding it between her paws and playing with it.

Hopefully later this week I will be able to go out for a walk with her and Mr WithaY, at least partway round the village.  I can't tell if my legs are wobbly because I am still so tired, or because I have hardly used them for 10 days.

I'm missing being able to cook anything much.  I might order a box of marmalade oranges and pop them in the freezer to make some more Seville marmalade when I can heave pans about again.  I'm also planning to make fruit jellies; I always loved them as a child and recently found some interesting recipes to try.  I think I ought to wait a few more weeks before I start experimenting with boiling sugar though.  Safety first.

Cheese. Thousands of them.

Autumn is definitely here. The misty, cool mornings.  The evocative smell of woodsmoke on the air.  Birds massing in the sky in a slightly menacing manner.  Hedgehogs and that.

And what happens at the start of Autumn, lovely readers?  Why, the Frome Cheese Show happens.  And I was there.  Well, me and Mr WithaY.  And the dog.  We were all there.

Last time we attempted to go, we left it a little too late in the day - about 11am, as I recall -  and were thwarted by ridiculous traffic tailbacks which went on for miles and miles.  We turned tail and came home, disappointed and annoyed at our lack of forethought.

This year it was different.  I bought the tickets in advance, saving us 6 quid in the process, marvellous, and we were up early, turning our shining morning faces to the sun, dog all fed and brushed and ready to go, cheese money burning holes in our pockets.

We do like a bit of cheese in our house.

The dog was very excited.  Well, we all were really.  We left home at 8am-ish, drove the short distance to the showground - no traffic - and in we went, unimpeded by queues or hassles of any description.  It was quite misty, and the grass was soaking wet, making everyone* pick their way through it, grumbling about wet feet.

The first thing we spotted was this:

I think it's a tribute to Thelwell.  The children were all fiercely determined, grim-faced and focused as their teeny ponies trotted back and forth in an endless competition of some kind, more or less under control.  It was just lovely.

As you can see, the mist is already burning off, and the blue sky behind it can be glimpsed.  We decided to go and look at the cheese tent.  We took it in turns, one of us standing outside with the dog while the other one went in and admired the cheese. And by Swansea it was admirable.

This one looks like the winner of the CSI Somerset Crime Scene Reconstruction section.  I was tempted to draw a chalk outline round the grisly remains, but there were many burly cheese officials wandering the tent, and I lost my nerve.

Some of the cheese categories were baffling.  At least to the uninitiated.

Lemon meringue?  Really?

I did like the shy mozzarella, which is like a badger cub on Springwatch, needing to be coaxed out of its bag.

I expect the judges used high-quality crackers to lure it.

Competition categories were inspired.

I wonder who the cheese-judging celebrity was this year?  And how do they phrase the invitation.

"Hello - Elton?  Are you busy on the first weekend in September?  No?  Would you like to come and judge a huge tent full of cheese in Somerset for a morning?  No?  Really? Are you sure?  Hello...?  Hello...?"

This sign leaves little to be queried:

I assume the competitors have to make up their "cakes" before they arrive, rather than forage around helping themselves to cheeses which look the part.  But I do like the idea that there are people casually pocketing cheeses as they go round, thinking "This one is shaped just like a teeny bridegroom! Perfect!"

This cheese captured my heart, just because it's so completely mad.

It was big, too.  About the size of a watermelon.

This category was nicely specific.  I imagine the judges measuring each entry and flinging those on incorrectly-sized boards out into the pony-competition ring in a fury.

Some cheeses had the look of a cheese which had been made to take part against their will, under protest.

"But Muuuuuuuum!  All the other cheeses are way bigger than me!  I'll be laughed at!"

I bet they were told, "Oh, you'll be fine, stop making a fuss."

Ha.

Exhausted by so much dairy produce, I went and watched the dog obedience teams while Mr WithaY went and looked at the cheese.  The dog was supposed to watch and learn.

I don't think she was taking it all in, to be honest.  She certainly didn't seem too keen when I suggested she had a go jumping through the hoops of fire.

The day was heating up by now, and we had bought quite a lot of cheese - which gets heavy - so we decided to go and look at the animals for a bit, where it might be shadier.

I love the Tent Of A Thousand Goats.  Sadly, no dogs allowed, so I popped in and admired the poultry tent while Mr WithaY took the dog to see some tractors.

Again, a wide selection of competition categories, some stranger than others:

Gosh, that's a bit, well, harsh.  Surely beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and one man's ideal egg is another man's marginally less ideal egg?  Although that one is a corker, I must say.

It's an EGG.  What do they expect to be inside it?  A previously undiscovered novel by Dickens?  A jewelled clock?   Shergar?

Cuh.

I suspect foul** play here.  Not only has an element of the category title been redacted in a professional, indeed an almost FBI-like, manner, the eggs themselves are missing.  Where are they?  Stolen?  Kidnapped?  Currently making up part of a prizewinning Victoria Sponge?   I demand answers.

How Victorian.  A freak show.  Again, note the sinisterly empty egg plate in the top left corner.  I hope the hens who laid these at least got a cup of tea or something afterwards.

This is just a very pretty little decorated egg which I wanted to photograph. Awwh.

Ah, even here, the cult of shallow shell-deep beauty permeates.

Mind you, if I was brought a boiled egg or two on a tray looking like this, I'd be thrilled.

Fantastic.  I wonder if they all came from the same hen?  And if so, what are they feeding her?

Personally I preferred the one with the blue eggs, but hey, I'm not an egg judge.  Ohhh, I've wasted my life.

By the time I had finished wandering through the poultry tent, making admiring noises and chuckling to myself, it was getting really hot.  I went and found Mr WithaY and the dog, and we all sat in the shade having a drink and a bit of a nice rest.

A little bit more wandering through the show, and it was time to head home.  I was deeply gratified to see the massive queues of traffic, stretching all the way from the showground, far across West Wiltshire, cars full of hot grumpy people who hadn't got up as early as we had.  Bwahahahahahaaaa.

In other news:  The dog has been a bit poorly, so I took her to the vet yesterday.  He diagnosed a bout of colitis, which apparently is really common in young dogs, particularly the ones which hoover up anything and everything in their path when they are out for a walk.  So, she's got some special anti-squit medicine to help sort her stomach out, and some goopy brown stuff I add to her food to restore her internal bacteria balance.

Last night, for the first time in several days, I only had to get up and let her out into the garden once (at 4am) rather than on the hour, every hour, as it had been recently.  A huge relief for both her and I.

Other, other news:  We've had the go-ahead from the environmental health lady and so our catering business is officially up and running.  We have our first job booked for October, but this week we are going to get some business cards sorted out and some adverts in the local press, and hopefully pick up some more bookings.

Also, I have had my hair cut short.  I decided that I was bored with it - I've had long hair for at least 10 years now - so went into Salisbury last week and had about 10 inches cut off it.  It's quite liberating.  I realised that I almost always wore my hair up, and it seemed a bit pointless having long hair if whenever it was down I just got annoyed because it was in the way.

So, a new look, a new business, a new season.  Oh, and I've lost a stone, thanks to walking the dog.  Hurrah.





*Everyone not wearing sensible boots or shoes with gaiters.  I had fabric shoes on, and my feet were SOAKED.


**heh

Do Not Press

I've been on Blogiday.

It's like a holiday, but just from blogging.  Obviously all the other many and various on-line communication systems I use were being hammered regularly, but I never quite got round to feeling like writing anything on here.  I blame Twitter.  If it takes more than 140 characters I can't manage it these days.  Attention span of oooh look!  A squirrel!

Anyway. How is everyone? Not been swept away in the floods, or the gale force winds, or the rains of ash and blood we've been having this summer?  Not yet, at least, I hope.

We've been very busy here at WithaY Acres.  Once all the horrible, complicated but not TOO* expensive plumbing issues were finally resolved we were able to get the back garden into some semblance of order again.  There's still a stack of stuff out there which needs to be found a home, but we're definitely winning.  Mr WithaY's new workshop was completed this week, with some very smart custom-made work benches in there, and all the electric sockets any man could ever need, including a massive "don't you touch that red button now, Father Dougal" for his lathe.

Every time I go in there it draws my eye, compelling me to step closer, to reach out one finger and just have a little go. I will press it one day, I just know it.  It's big and red and looks EXACTLY like something from an old sci-fi movie to stop the launch of a spaceship with bare moments to spare.

In my head.

The other end of the garage is now a proper rain-, bird- and mouse-proof pantry, complete with freezer and ample storage for cooking stuff, pots, pans, jars and so on.  It even has a little double-glazed window, which makes it feel like a Wendy house.  We still need to finalise the "moving stuff around and optimising the space" thing - I want all the giant vices and boxes of carpentry tools out, for a start - but we're very nearly there.

Just as well, as I have a visit from the Environmental Health lady from the Council next week.

She's coming to inspect the kitchen, which has recently been registered as somewhere that will be producing food for commercial use - i.e. cooking for other people for money - and as a result our downstairs doors have blossomed with dog-proof gates in the last week.  I've washed the floor more often than ever before, and all the corners that previously housed collections of esoteric kitchenware have been emptied and cleaned out thoroughly.

I've also started my new part time job, which I am enjoying very much indeed.  It fits very handily around the rest of my life, there's a four minute commute (by foot) and the people I work with are lovely.  So, a fine result.

Can I just say that a four-minute commute on foot is about a billion times nicer than a three-hour one involving a car, a train, a bus and the London rush hour?

If I can find another local part-time job (about 15-20 hours per week) I'll be made up.  Until then, I am enjoying having lots of time to spend with Mr WithaY and the dog.

This morning we all went for a long walk.

I took some photos:

Walking up the hill to the woods, admiring the impressive sky.  Hello trees,  Hello clouds.

The woods themselves were dark and pretty muddy. The dog loved it.  She's very good off the lead, and comes back when we call her, which is more than our last one did most of the time.  Someone told me "Labradors are born half-trained, Spaniels die half-trained" which I rather like.

The river, looking just lovely in the sunshine.  There were some swans but they got a bit lairy when they saw me staring at them, so I thought I'd better not try and get a photo in case they broke my iPhone with a single blow of their wing.  They hate the Paparazzi, do swans.

Mr WithaY insisted - INSISTED - that this was a path.  Yes, yes, yes, it really is.  Stop moaning.  Crawl under that log, then just scramble over this bramble thicket, then through the bog and nettle patch.  It's very straightforward.

He and the dog nimbly hopped and pranced off through the greenwood, I lumbered after them, mud dragging at my wellies, nettles lashing my face, brambles snagging my clothes. It was great.

We're so outdoorsy.

He's off for another weekend of Bushcrafting, I am going to work, and to a party, and will chill with the dog. I might even get some sewing started. I bought a load of fabric and patterns the other week, but have yet to cut anything out.  It's my least favourite part of a sewing project, cutting out, especially if I have to cut the pattern out too.  Once it's all cut out I love to get on and sew it all together, but the start of it puts me off.

Plus I will have to make sure the dog can't wander in and lay down to sleep on top of whatever I am doing. She does like to sleep on top of things - my feet, Mr WithaY's feet, a heap of freshly-ironed clothes on the bedroom floor, a carelessly dropped towel - if it's on the floor it will end up with a small black dog snoozing atop it.

The hoover is earning its keep these days, I can tell you.



*Under £500, thankfully.  And they did a good job of tidying up afterwards, too.

Stop, cock.

The water thing.  Part II.

The Wessex Water workmen didn't return the next day as originally promised, which meant we had a week or so with the jerry-rigged hosepipe supplying the house with running water.  In the meantime, the local plumber was summoned. He's a very charming young chap by the name of Ollie, does a good job, is polite, friendly and doesn't demand unlimited tea and biscuits. Plus the dog loved him.  He examined the work done outside, and then ferreted around the kitchen looking for water pipes.

He ascertained that all the pipes were sited behind the (new-ish) kitchen cabinets, so went to investigate the downstairs toilet for possible pipe access.

"Oh dear," he said. "It's a really nice little room, isn't it?"

Yes it is.  Thanks for noticing.  Oh, you mean too nice to hack holes in the walls to get to the pipes?  Yes, that too.

We had a cup of tea while we decided how best to approach the problem.  The problem being that the water pipes running from the OUTSIDE of the house to the INSIDE of the house are most likely in the same terrible colander-like state of corrosion as the external water pipes, and therefore need to be replaced.

And, of course, we have to arrange - and pay for - that part of the work to be done, hence the visit from Ollie the Plumber.  The tea drunk, we decided on a plan of action.  Sadly, some of the kitchen cupboard interiors would have to be sacrificed to the greater good, but there would be no visible damage to the exteriors.  I was ok with that, and set about emptying cupboards with a will. Mr WithaY deftly dismantled the complicated corner cupboard can-store mechanism thingy, and we were ready to go.

Well.  The plumber laid out giant dustsheets all over the kitchen floor and strewed a collection of tools across them.  The dog immediately sneaked in and stole one of his screwdrivers, carrying it proudly to Mr WithaY. We returned it, and tried to teach the dog what "Get the most expensive-looking drill" means, but to no avail.

Ollie the plumber began carving holes in the back of the cabinets.  He was very careful and tidy, but even so.  When you've spent a bloody fortune having your kitchen refitted from top to bottom, it's not much fun watching it being partially dismantled and hacked about to fix something that is beyond your control.

I closed the door and the dog and I sat companionably in the sitting room, trying not to listen to the sound of holes being drilled in the house.  Every so often I would pop my head into the kitchen and see how things were going.  There was a deep, deep hole running from the back of the cupboard out to the garden.  Ollie was trying to connect it up with the hole on the other side, and wasn't having much luck, it seemed.

The drilling continued, the house shook, the dust levels increased, and the long day wore on.

Eventually the plumber came and found me.  He was unable to go any deeper until we had the septic tank emptied, as it was so full that it was backfilling the hole as fast as he pumped it out.

Ugh.

So.  We booked the nice man with the shit-sucking truck to come and do the dirty deed, and once that was complete we could get the plumber back to connect up the interior pipework.  Once THAT was done the Wessex Water chaps could come back and reconnect our water supply to the proper underground pipes rather than the temporary blue plastic hose.

It was like some sort of evil nursery rhyme.  The old lady who swallowed the fly, then swallowed the spider and so on until she swallowed a horse*.  

Anyway.  Where there was once a deep pit several inches full of dirty water, now there is a tidy patch of concrete with a neat little plastic drain cover in it.  And we have a stopcock inside the house, which I don;t think we had previously.  All we need now is the bill from the plumber.

One a different note, this week I watched a 1970s TV documentary about the first English chapter of the Hell's Angels that I was pointed to via Twitter.  It was interesting, in a weird "Withnail and I" way, and the voice-over commentary made it sound like an old Monty Python sketch.  One of the gang had wildly crossed eyes, the result, the commentator explained neutrally, of having "both his eyes knocked out of their sockets in a fight."

The thing that struck me the most, apart from the lack of traffic on the streets, was how young they all looked.  I assume that's because I am getting old.















*She's dead of course.

Good, Dawg

Hello.  Hello hello hello.  Sorry.  I know.  Been a while.  I have no excuses to offer other than the usual "I was far too easily distracted to focus on writing a blog post" which I know is lame and weak and terrible.

Anyway. We're all here now.

In a nutshell:

1)  Job news.  I had a job interview a while ago, following an unexpected email.  I thought the interview went well, and they told me at the end of it that I could expect to hear back from them in a "few days."  Almost two weeks went by, then I finally got the long-awaited email.  In it, they told me that they had decided to go with Agency staff rather than taking on someone for the short term.  Fair enough, but what annoyed me was their statement that their Agency staff had started work "this Monday."  I got the email on the Thursday. So, they must have known they were going to hire Agency staff at the end of the previous week, and could have emailed me a week before they did.  Which would have saved me a week of anxious (borderline obsessive) email-checking.

Gah.

However, on a more positive note, I have actually got myself a different job. It's part-time, only a few hours a week, but it is within walking distance, doing something I like.  I shall be a supper cook at a large residential care home, which is something I have become quite interested in since poor old Father-in-Law WithaY went to live in a nursing home.  It makes such a huge difference to his day when his food is prepared just how he likes it.  I like to think I could make that sort of positive contribution to peoples' days too.

I'm waiting for them to get the relevant references and security clearances sorted out, and then hopefully I can start work shortly.  The best thing is that it will allow me to get on with other catering work-related stuff during the day, AND do social stuff in the evening, as the hours are so handy.  

2)  Home improvements.  We've had the garage transformed from a fetid, cobwebby filth pit into two smart rooms, one to be a workshop for Mr WithaY, and the other to be a storage space for the planned catering business.  We need to get the wiring done, and new lights fitted, but after that I can get a decent freezer and a blast chiller/fridge in there, and we're good to go.  I'm still waiting for the local environmental health people to come and inspect the kitchen, but once they've done that I think we can start with all the "making and selling tasty treats" activities we have in mind.  


Mr WithaY spent most of Thursday painting both rooms a smart shade of magnolia.  There was a second coat on Friday, and then he painted the floors with some special floor paint.  I think it reduces slip hazards, or increases traction, or keeps the dust down.  You get a plus-6 buff on your Stamina stats when you walk on it.  It kills ants.  Something.


The only downside is that the back garden is stacked high with all the fetid cobwebby shite that was in the garage.  In the rain.  We have to sort it out and decide what we'll keep, and where we'll put it.


On that note, we put some things by the front gate with a "FREE! Take me home!" sign on them.  An old wooden kitchen chair.  A cassette/radio player.  Some assorted oddments.  But by far and away the most popular were the Kilner jars.  Father-in-Law WithaY was an avid bottler of fruit, and when we cleared out his house there were about 70 Kilner jars, many with fruit still bottled up inside them.  We put the jars in the garage.  Come reckoning day, out they came again.  The fruit - whatever it was - had turned brown and fragmented, lurking in thick viscous jelly.  I made an executive decision that there was no way on Earth that we were going to eat any of it, so spent a jolly afternoon prising the lids off, dumping the contents into many, many big plastic sacks, and putting the empty jars through the dishwasher.


As an interesting aside, the addition of 9 year old sauerkraut to a giant bag of mixed mystery bottled fruits creates a pungent and powerful aroma that stays with you for days.  Days.


I digress.


The clean jars and lids were put into boxes and placed outside, where they were rapidly snapped up by incredulous passers-by.  One lady said to me "If you come home one day and find a jar of marmalade on your front doorstep, it will be from me, as a thank you."  Nice.


One chap was less pleased.  He stood looking at the jars for some time, humming and hawing.  I happened to wander out into the front garden and he said "Are these Kilner jars?


I said they were.


"Aren't they supposed to have rubber seals?" he demanded.


Mr WithaY wandered over and told him that rubber seals could be bought via the Internet very easily.


"Hmph.  Well.  I don't think I'll bother," he grumbled, and drove off into the sunset, disgruntled and jar-less. 


3) Grand days out. We went to the Chalke Valley history festival  last weekend.  Well, Mr WithaY was actually taking part, as a dashing swordsman. He and our mate from Gloucester went along on Friday (in the posh and comfy motorhome) and I went with some friends on Saturday for a day out.  We took a monumentally excellent picnic, the sun shone and there was a flypast from a Spitfire.

I'm rather proud of that photo, given that it was flying a looooong way off.

See?  There are some of the crowds, watching it going back and forth over the showground.  See it?  Almost directly over the apex of the big white tent.


I took an even better photo than that, if you can believe it:

I went to one of the talks - a discussion on the life and work of Elizabeth David, supposedly - but it was a bit disappointing.  Of the three panellists, one was a biographer, one was a food writer and the other was the chairman of the Guild of Fine Food (I think) but they managed to make the hour feel like an awkward dinner party conversation between people who disliked each other and only socialised because they were forced to  through work.  A shame.


Other than that, an excellent day.

I like the juxtaposition here of the Roman gladiator, the Medieval knight and the two seconds for an Eighteenth Century gentleman's duel.  Apparently the chaps being gladiators were picked for that role because (and I quote the knight there) "They're the only skinny bastards in the group."

I particularly liked the chillout tent, fitted out with squashy sofas and a couple of classical musicians, filled with people of a certain age* reading the papers and drinking tea.  Civilised.  Now that's what I call a history festival.  


We're definitely going again next year.  


4)  Family addition.  This is the most recent, and the most significant, event of note to take place in the WithaY household.  We are about to hear the patter of tiny paws.  No, I'm not having a baby.  With paws. That would be freaky and wrong.  No, we're getting a dog.  I feel the need to shriek like Daisy Steiner when I say that, but I will try to refrain for the sake of Mr WithaY's sanity.  She's black Labrador, a breed which I think is actually compulsory in this village, and she arrives next week. She's 4 months old, is already called Hester, and is absurdly cute.  


Her current owner brought her (and her brother Henry) round last night.  They both peed on the kitchen floor - something I suspect I will have to deal with more than once in the next few weeks - and then spent some considerable time finding onions in the vegetable rack, carrying them carefully to their owner, and dropping them at his feet.


This activity exhausted them, and they both fell asleep on the kitchen floor, waking only to come with us into the sitting room where they both fell asleep on the new dog bed.  Awwwh.  


So.  Expect numerous and probably dreadful posts about how cute/clever/obedient the new dog is.  They are likely to be a tissue of lies. LIES.  









*About my age, probably