Lady of Leisure

I've bitten the bullet and put in the paperwork to claim my Civil Service pension a few years early. This means that:

(a) I have a regular monthly income, albeit a smaller one than if I'd waited, and

(b) the pressure is off me to find another job, until I either get bored, or spot something I really fancy.

I've had a job since I was a teenager (part-time), throughout studying for my degree (part-time, and full-time on the summer holidays) and then after graduation for over 20 years until I left the Civil Service (full-time) so I feel like a bit of a hiatus now is not anything to get stressed about. 

And how am I filling my days, without the endless drudgery of earning my living?

Well. 

I have joined the gym, and am going along 3 times a week to try and sort out the annoying wheezing/coughing which has become much more pronounced since I had Covid. Also, it will get me fitter and hopefully give me more energy. My fitness instructor/lard wrangler was most helpful, and so far it's been very enjoyable. Let's see what I have to say in 6 months.

A holiday has been booked. We are off to France in a few weeks, to visit the gorgeous city of Lyon. I've never been there before and am very much looking forward to seeing the sights, visiting the ruins, eating the food and mangling the language.  We're going on the train, so will hopefully see a fair bit of the countryside as we travel down there. 

Dressmaking. Yes, I am once more grappling with my creative demons. We're off to a Regency picnic at the end of May (no, I don't really know what that entails) so I am making myself an early C19 outfit. I've made loads of re-enactment kit for myself, Mr WithaY and various mates over the years, but that was all either English Civil War or Medieval, so a more tailored dress in very different - and much less forgiving - fabric is proving challenging. 

So far in this project I have:

• Acquired a lovely Egyptian cotton duvet cover in a charity shop (£3!) to make a toile;
• Made a toile from a commercial pattern, then redrafted it to include more authentic C19 tailoring and construction;
• Cut out the new pattern in gorgeous embroidered fine cotton lawn for the overdress;
• Tried on the toile-and-overdress combo;
• Discovered that they are at least three sizes too big for me, and deconstructed them;
• Re-drafted the toile pattern to (hopefully) fit me properly.

I have also found some passable-looking footwear, some gloves and a straw bonnet which I can gussy up to match the dress once it's finished. I shall make a small bag to match either the dress or the jacket, depending on which fabric I have the most remnants left to play with.

Oh, and I have to make a jacket, but I think I can use the dress pattern as the basis for that, if I amend the neckline and add long sleeves. Plenty to do.

The dog is loving having both of around more during the day, and has lost weight due to the higher activity level this generates. We've also had family down (up?) to visit at weekends a couple of times, which has meant sitting in the garden and having drinks and barbecues. Lovely. 

So far, so good. 

Glorious victory. And inglorious ailments.

Hello, happy 2015 etcetera etcetera etcetera.  To be fair, I have very little clue what day it is, never mind what year.  This is down to the usual Christmas/New Year bewilderment that happens every year, but also because this year, for a change, we all got really ill over the holidays.

I don't know why I refer to them as "the holidays," given that Mr WithaY and I no longer work a standard Monday to Friday pattern.  Every day we're not working could be described as a "holiday."

Anyhoo. We had all kinds of plans for Christmas, all sorts of parties and events we were planning on going to, or hosting.  Day trips, even.

Mr WithaY and I went to the Bath Christmas market, where we bought gee-gaws and trinkets and trumpery*.  These included:

• A wooden trivet made of slices of wood all set in some sort of resin, which looks like an arty photograph.  I love it.  

• Some beautifully soft grey and blue lambswool fingerless mittens which I wear almost constantly outside, 

• A stained glass Christmas tree decoration from a very young, very silent, Belarusian nun.  

• A wreath made from dried apples, oranges, cinnamon sticks and (I think) Scotch Bonnet chillies, which now hangs in the front porch.  

We shopped for food, we made sure there was Champagne for Christmas Day, we moved furniture to ensure the tree would fit in the sitting room.  The decorations went up, the house looked festive, we were ready.

Things started well with several members of the extended family arriving for the weekend before Christmas, much jollity and dog-walking, and a tremendous curry where we all sat at a great big long table and ate a vast selection of lovely food.  The remainder of the family arrived the next day and there was more hilarity, dog-walking, exchanging of gifts and a buffet.  We do like a buffet in our family.  Mostly because you can have three slices of ham if you want to, AND a sausage roll AND some celery AND a bit of cheese.

The majority of the family went to their respective homes again, leaving just Mr WithaY and I, and my lovely Mum here for the Christmas period.  The first few days were perfect. We went out a bit, drank lots of tea, ate lots of delicious home-made food, watched some Christmas TV, and looked forward to the Big Day.  I went to work on Christmas Eve, Mr WithaY and Mum stayed in and watched a DVD together.

By the time I finished work at 6pm, I was feeling very odd.  Dizzy. Hot and cold.  Headachy.  I got home, and the others were feeling much the same.  And that, dear readers, was that.  We all went down with the flu as if felled by hammers, and for the next three or four days hardly moved.

Mr WithaY and I, whilst feeling dreadful, were able to eat a little, and even make cups of tea and so on, but poor Mum just got worse and worse, to the point where she ended up staying with us for an extra week, and was then only taken home on New Years Day to go straight into hospital. Thankfully, after a week of top-notch care, she has returned home and seems to be much better. but it was a horrible time for all of us.

Mr WithaY and I have both been left with horrible racking coughs, and intermittent high temperatures, but we are both much better than we were.  I have no energy, and even walking the dog around the village, or pushing a shopping trolley round the supermarket leaves me shaking and exhausted, but hopefully in a few days that will pass too.

The good news is that I have lost a stone, for the first time ever over Christmas, and am definitely less podgy than I was.  A few days of eating normally will probably put paid to that, but it's nice to begin a New Year feeling like I am already on the right track.

 Other news:  Prior to the Great Flu Outbreak, I was the proud winner of this:

The Stonehenge volunteers had their Christmas party, and held a Great British Bake-Off competition, where people were invited to submit cakes for JUDGEMENT.


I made this, a coffee cake with home-made apricot jam in the middle, and butterscotch chocolate ganache icing. Mr WithaY added the Neolithic deer drawing:

And it won!  I assumed, when Mr WithaY came into the pub to tell me (I was at the work Christmas meal, so wasn't at the Stonehenge event, clashing dates, sadly) that there had only been one or two entries, and we'd all won a cup.

Oh, but no.  No.

There were apparently about 30 entries, and the judges did it all very seriously, tasting everything and making their decision very carefully.

AND I WON!

Hurrah!  Here's the glorious cup in situ, dominating the room:

I am hoping I get to keep it forever, rather than having to return it next year.   That reminds me, I must add it to our insurance.

So.  The flu.  A quiet and very worrying Christmas.  A lingering annoying cough.  No other news.

Here's a lovely picture of the dog that my Middle Sis took on one of our family walks.  I really, really like it.  It shows you exactly what a friendly, sweet-natured girl she is.  And the dog is nice too.

Here's to a good New Year, and that nobody gets the flu again.


Oh, and once again there was no Dinotopia on TV.  Outrageous.









*you have to talk like that in Bath. It's the LAW.

Cursed

Things are not good at the WithaY house right now.  Mr WithaY has succumbed to a really unpleasant sinus infection, AND conjunctivitis in both eyes.  He has spent much of the last four days blinking painfully through a haze of eye-goop at me, his eyes red and sore and scarily like an old-fashioned vampire's.  A vampire with a Y in his name.  A vampyre, in fact.

We were supposed to go and see Omid Djalili at Salisbury City Hall last week, but by that mid-morning it was clear that Mr WithaY was in too miserable a state.  Plus he wouldn't have been able to see the stage  with his scary red goopy eyes.  We were able to pass the tickets to a friend of a friend who apparently enjoyed the show, so they weren't wasted, but it was a disappointment.

I think this is a continuation of the cold he went down with on Boxing Day.  It never seemed to clear up properly and has recently decided to migrate into his sinuses and torment him for a few more weeks with a charming mixture of vile-tasting snot, eye-ooze and violent spasmodic coughing.

Mother in Law WithaY came to stay for a few days, which had been long-anticipated and looked-forward-to, but a combination of the vile weather and Mr WithaY feeling terrible meant that we weren't able to do some of the things we had sort-of planned.  Mother in Law WithaY lives in the South of France, quite near the coast, but also handily near the mountains, and she is used to warm Mediterranean weather, interspersed with the howling wind known as the Tramunta, which blows for either 1, 3 or 9 days at a time.

Arriving in England in the coldest month of the year - we had snow, even - was therefore a bit of a culture shock.  She rang to let us know she's arrived home safe and sound at the weekend.  Apparently there was snow and a 95mph wind blowing, so perhaps the English weather had decided to go on holiday to Catalonia.

The region she lives in is full of teeny little mountain villages, usually surmounted by a huge fuck-off Cathar castle, like this one at Castelnou.  We climbed up to the top once, and were able to look down at the birds lazily circling on the warm updrafts in the valleys waaaaaay below us.

They have a cheerily cavalier attitude to health and safety at their old castles, the French, or possibly just the Catalan French, at least.  It's as if they are saying "If you're stupid enough to go and peer over the edge of that friable, windswept thousand-foot high precipice, don't blame us if you are never seen again, Monsieur."

I like to imagine a local police detective viewing the shattered remains of  yet another photo-opportunity-seeking tourist at the bottom of a deep wooded valley with a Gallic shrug and a resigned sigh.

But I digress.

The reason I think things are bad* for us right now is that we are cursed.  CURSED.

Last week, in a fit of enthusiasm and feverish tidying (mother in law coming to visit and all that) I was emptying out some of the many boxes and bags of sewing ephemera which we cleared out of Father in Law WithaY's house, and which I couldn't bear to see tossed into a skip, as threatened by the house clearance people.   I found many, many mother-of-pearl buttons, which I will be able to use,  also spools of thread, some of them still in their original cellophane wrappers, a giant tangle of embroidery silks which were beyond any sorting, and several reels of perished elastic.

We also found this:

Tucked in the bottom of a box of buttons, broken thimbles and rusty needles, I found what looks like a teeny little Hand of Glory.

It really is teeny.  Look:

That coin beside it is an old pre-decimal sixpence, dated (as you can see) 1958.  It too was in the box.  A sixpence is about the same size as a modern 5p piece, maybe a bit smaller.

So.

What did we find?  Any clues?  Is it something we ought to seek advice from the Bishop of Bath and Wells about having removed from our home?   Will a delegation of hobbits and a dodgy Wizard rock up at the front door and tell me I have to carry it to Mount Doom to destroy it? Or what?





*"Bad" in this context means "one of us suffering a distressing but entirely curable ailment which with any luck will have cleared up by next weekend."

Tiny tripe

Well hello there.  It's been a while, hasn't it?  I was working on the assumption that everyone would be away on holiday and therefore not notice that I had been slack and idle for the best part of a fortnight.

To be honest, that's not true.  I haven't been slack, and certainly no more idle than usual.  In fact, I have been out and about, gallivanting across the countryside like a frisky gazelle, scampering hither and thither.

Yeah, I have.

Where have I been? Well I'll tell you.

Mr WithaY and I went up to Derbyshire for a weekend.  The Chatsworth Show was on, and we fancied having a look at it.  We drove up to a pleasant B&B on Friday evening, and were advised to try a local pub for dinner. 

If you are ever in the area, go and eat there.  Really.  The food was excellent, the staff were competent and friendly and the prices were not too steep.  In fact, here's their website - The Black Swan.    It was so nice that we went back again the next night and tried their "sharing dish" of rib eye steak and big chips.  Mr WithaY and I enjoy our food* but we still ended up with a small tinfoil package of steak to take home at the end of the meal. 

The B&B was good too.  Note for American readers - a B&B is a Bed and Breakfast establishment, where you stay overnight and they feed you breakfast - usually a huge and sausage-filled extravaganza - but you don't get an evening meal.  B&Bs are less expensive than a hotel, and often more interesting.  Sometimes, though, they are shite. 

This one was lovely, though, and on a farm, our room looked out across one of their trout lakes.  People were fishing, and Mr WithaY sat with his nose pressed forlornly against the window, watching them till we went out. 

There was a degree of grumbling along the lines of  "I knew I should have packed my travel fishing rod," but it soon passed.

The Chatsworth Show was excellent fun.  We missed the Red Arrows, who flew on the Friday for the first time since the crash that killed one of their pilots, but we did see a splendid display of stomach-churning aeronautics by two small stunt planes as we were leaving on Saturday afternoon.

Chatsworth House itself was under wraps, unfortunately, possibly to deter visitors to the show from gawping in through their windows and watching the Duchess sitting there in her curlers eating cheesy Wotsits and watching Jeremy Kyle.

I took a couple of pictures of their impressive wall carvings though:

There were hundreds of different stands and displays there, ranging from the traditional country pursuits of ferret-racing (no photos, I was laughing too much to think of using my camera) and stick-whittling to formal mounted displays of the Household Cavalry, with a fairground and lots of small trade stands in between.  There were people doing clever fishing demonstrations, shooting stands where you could Have A Go, and more delicious food vendors than you could shake a stick at.

As is traditional, Mr WithaY and I Had A Go at as many of the shooting stands as possible.  It got competitive. 

I am officially Rubbish With An Air Rifle.  Mr WithaY was hoping to win an air rifle on the strength of that result, but as yet has not had a phone call telling him to go and collect his prize. 

However, the .22 rifle was more successful.  Mine:

Mr WithaY's:

And yes, that is the noticeboard I made. We have our targets displayed in the kitchen. 

We watched some lurcher racing.  It;s like greyhound racing but a bit less organised.  The dogs have to run at high speed through a field, after a fake rabbit on a bit of string that is being dragged along at even higher speed.  Blimey, they can move.

To such an extent that there are warning signs posted.  They'll BREAK YOUR BONES, so stand back.  I wonder how? Perhaps they use cudgels, although I'd have thought gripping a big twatting stick between small lurcher paws might be tricky. 

There were many different craft tents, some crammed to the gills with talented people, others less so, some just brilliantly demented.  We found these chaps in a far corner of the showground. 

They had a whole marquee full of teeny little model carts and things, all made to accurate scale.  My favourite was the butchers shop on wheels.  It had dolls-house size meat, including little teeny pigs trotters. 

You get a sense of the scale of it by comparing it to the proud creator sitting behind the table there.  He was delighted that I was taking pictures, even moving the butchers shop around this way and that so I could capture the interior properly.

Look at the tiny pigs feet!  And black puddings!  And tripe!  I was entranced.

I spotted this giant letter "R" made from trees on the opposite hillside.  No idea what it is, or why it's there.  Anyone who has any answers, please feel free to comment. 

Oh, this is me firing a 2-bore muzzle-loaded gun.  The recoil was hefty, hence the rather appalling firing stance I have there.  You could have a go with four different types of muzzle-loader, shooting at clay pigeons.  I am proud to announce that I managed to shatter a clay with a flintlock musket.  Yay me.

We also popped in to see my genius clock-making mate, and selected two of the types of wood he is going to use to make our clock.  That was interesting, and I am looking forward to hearing how it's progressing.

Where else have I been?  Oh yes.  Ragdale Hall.

I went on another - ANOTHER! - short break to the home of all that is relaxing and beautifying, along with both sisters, mother and auntie.  We had a blast, I have not laughed so much in a very long time.  I had a reflexology treatment, a full body massage, a facial and a pedicure, and loved every minute.  We all went swimming in the fabulous pools, sat in the various steam rooms and saunas, chilled out in the comfy chairs that are artfully scattered around the place, and talked and talked and TALKED.  So much to say to each other. 

Normally when we all get together there are hordes of children and husbands and partners milling around, getting in the way and preventing two-hour conversations about nothing. 

Middle Sis and Youngest Sis and I shared a triple room.  It was like the Three Bears house.  Three beds in a row in the room.  Three robes hanging in a row in the cupboard.  Three coffee mugs in a row by the kettle. Only one toilet in the bathroom, though.  I had half expected to see three of those in a row in there too.

Other news:  I have been harvesting crab apples from the tree in the garden, and making crab apple jelly. The first batch has turned out remarkably well.

I'd post a photo if Blogger would let me.  Maybe later.








*are fat greedy bastards.

Pigs etcetera

I think I might go back to work for a rest.

I know that's a cliche, but hey, I've been too busy to come up with anything original.

Last week was a whirl - yes a whirl - of gaiety. 

Tuesday was Mottisfont Day.  It's a big annual day out for me and my lovely Mum.  We go to look at the garden there, which includes the National Rose Collection, and is just beautiful. 

The house is rather splendid too.  Look:

I am pleased with the brooding sky in this photo.  The whole day was like this, sunny and warm, with "end of the world" weather potential. 

The gardens are just fab.  Go.  Even if you live in Texas or something, it'd be worth the trip, honest.  And there's a tea shop and everything, so you know, not a wasted journey.

They've put a fence round the spring now, so you can't fall in unless you try really hard. 

Unfortunately I am an idiot, and failed to check the battery in my camera, so these last few pictures were taken on my phone.  Sorry.

More impressively dark skies on that one. 

Mum and I took shelter in that little tiled hut thingy in the corner, waiting for the downpour. It never came.  But if it had, we'd have been dry.  Take that, weather.

Anyhoo, look.  Pretty.

Later that same week, Middle Sis and family came to visit for a few days.  We had a barbecue, and ended up sitting out in the garden with the fire lit till really quite late*.  Party animals that we are.

Being the evil thief that I am, I have nicked one of her photos for my blog.  Mwahahahahaaaaaaa.

Those are my new solar-powered garden lanterns.  Marvellous.

The highlight of the week, though, was the Bath and West Show.  It's not as brilliant as the Frome Cheese Show. To be fair, how could it be?  It doesn't have the same depth of character, the same terse notes left by the judges, and the same dazzling arrays of prize silage and unfeasible leeks, but it does have pigs.  Lots and lots of pigs.

Big ones.

Small ones.

Sleepy ones with a bucket on their head.

And my personal favourite, hugely tolerant ones which were being used to demonstrate "pig handling" by very young children. I did take some pictures, but won't post them on here, what with them being of other peoples' children and all. 

Believe me, a four-year-old in a teeny white coat, whacking a huge pig with a stick to make it walk in a straight line is a sight you don't easily forget. 

Other attractions included competitive sheep shearers.  Middle Sis and I watched them for a fair while, impressed by their skill and dexterity.  Nothing to do with the muscles and vests.  No no no. 

The sheep all looked faintly bored, the ones backstage jostling and peeking over the barricade, watching their mates being shorn.  Little did they know it was their turn next.

"Haha, your new haircut makes you look like a dick, Kevin..."

The Army were there, doing lots of fun stuff, including challenging people to run about in the hot sun carrying heavy weights.  There was a queue for this.  Really.

There was a giant mounted knight made from recycled rubbish.  I liked him a lot.

And there was this.  We wantssssss it, my precious.

It's got a matching bag to put your shotgun in!  How great is that?  Perfect for nipping to the shops.  The GUN shops. 

Saturday night we went to a party for a neighbour's birthday, which was pleasant - marquees and tables in their riverside garden, with food and music and wine and chatting.  Most convivial.   I have garden envy now, though.  I want river frontage and fishing rights.

Sunday I was woken up by the most godawful thunder and heavy rain I can remember, which enlivened the morning.  Torrential rain all day, making up for all these past weeks of dry.  Dryth?  Drought?  No rain, anyway. 

Today has been lovely, not least because I didn't get up at 5:50 and then struggle in from work, knackered,  at 8pm.  I could get used to this. 




*After 10pm.  We're getting old.

Catcalls

You know when you're expecting people to arrive?  Family, specifically.  You're bustling around, changing beds and hoovering up random filth, making the place look lovely for them.

You decide to go out into the garden, put the benches and deckchairs out ready to relax out there later on.  While you're out there, you might think "I know, I'll sweep up all the grass clippings all over the paths so that it looks really tidy, and people won't trail grass all through my freshly-hoovered house.

You fetch the broom, and set to, sweeping cheerfully in the sunshine.

You hear a shrill "Coo-eeee!" from around the front of the house.

"Oh good," you think.  "My guests are here nice and early.  Hurrah."

"Coo-eeee!" you reply, continuing to sweep.

"Cooooooo-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" comes the call again, louder and shriller.

"Helloooooooo!" you reply, still not stopping sweeping, waiting for your guests to appear round the corner into the back garden. 

They don't appear.

You realise that they are playing games with you; their shrill calls take on a strangely urgent tone.

"Is there a cat in my front garden?  I can hear it mewling and squawking at me," you call, as you walk round the corner.

You come face to face, not with your sister and her family, but with the post lady. 

"Oh!  I was expecting my sister!  Um...sorry."

"Here's your post.  I knew you must be about, I could hear you sweeping."

Gah.

Values

So hello.  Hope everyone is enjoying the festive season.  Tis the season to be jolly, apparently, but I'll settle for "relaxed and cheerful".  Jolly sounds far too much like hard work, and I am too idle for that right now.

Today we went to Salisbury, ready to hit the big city and check out the sales.  In the big city shops, the ones with more than two styles of shoe, or a wider variety of goods than rat poison, ash buckets and mole traps.  It's not like round here, you know.

As we had got up early*, we arrived in town without having eaten breakfast, so we found a cafe and had eggs Benedict.  And it was GOOD.  Not quite as fab as some of the eggs Benedicts we had in America. but not bad at all for a foggy Wiltshire Wednesday morning.

I picked up a couple of pretty tops in the M&S sale, one of which I had looked at when it was full price, so that was satisfying.  Mr WithaY wanted some new jeans, and also possibly a new tweed jacket.  He can't help it.  He's just naturally tweedy.

We made our way across town to the splendid old-fashioned gents outfitters, and I took a seat in one of the big leather chairs while Mr WithaY rummaged through the racks of tweed jackets.  His rummaging soon took him out of sight.  Another couple wandered into view, him looking at clothes with enthusiasm, her distracted and grumpy.

Him:  (Holding up a vibrant green and yellow tweed jacket) What about this one?
Her:  Ugh.  No.  Put it back.
Him:  *sigh*

He made his slow way along the rack, searching, searching, humming a happy tune.

Him:  (Holding a more muted tweed jacket aloft, swinging it about)  Aha!  I like this one!
Her:  GOD no.

He wandered a bit further, looking hard for the perfect jacket, clearly slightly deflated by her dislike of everything he was choosing.

Him:  (Pulling a brown corduroy jacket out of the rack with glee) ....
Her: (Before he even spoke and without turning round to look) NO!

They wandered out of earshot, her still looking furious, him with the crumbling remains of a spring in his step.  Not for long, I'll be bound.

We left without finding anything either, but at least we weren't looking like we were going to be murdering one another with axes before the New Year**.

I bought a new teapot to replace the one that got smashed to smithereens. 

Today I have emailed more photos of the carnage to the insurance people.  It hadn't occurred to me to call the insurance company until Z mentioned it in a comment, and then I thought I'd see how much it would cost to replace everything. 

Yes, I know.  Muppetry. 

And guess what...the total came to over £500.  Gah! 

So, I photographed as much as I could identify, and have sent the pictures to the insurance people, along with the approximate replacement costs where I could find them.

It wasn't easy, a lot of the glass stuff was literally smashed to dust. 

That's all that was left of a very large glass plate my Mum gave me.  I loved that plate.  Fucking stupid fucking shelf fucking collapse.

Anyhoo.

We also went to Waitrose this afternoon, part of the Big Day Out.  As we walked into the store, an elderly couple were being reunited, surrounded by smiling staff.  It looked a bit like one of those allegorical paintings with Eighteenth Century European royalty posing heroically, surrounded by fawning cherubim and seruphim. 

Her:  They've made three announcements for you!  I've been so worried!

Him:  What?

Her:  Over the speakers...three times they announced that I was looking for you.

Him:  Well I was outside.  By the car.

Her:  Three announcements.  Three!

Him:  I heard NOTHING.

The smiling staff melted away, and the elderly couple left, her still asserting that he had been lost, him insisting that he hadn't. 

Other news:  I have been making sausage rolls.  And readers, they are damn fine.  Father in law WithaY has been much impressed, something that takes quite a lot of doing.

Christmas Day was quiet, we went over to the care home to visit F-in-L, then home for a big roast dinner.  Oh, and The man Who Would Be King on TV. I love that film. 

There was a slight misunderstanding about Christmas gifts.  On our return from F-in-L, I said to Mr WithaY "So...would you like to open your presents now?"

Mr W:  What?  I didn't think I had any presents.

Me:  Of course you have!  Silly!

Mr W:  But we agreed...we weren't going to get presents for each other this year.

Me:  No we didn't!

Mr W:  Yes...we said we were going to buy a new TV instead.

Me:  But we didn't do that.  So you've got presents.

There was a rather awkward silence.

Mr W:  Well, now I feel terrible.

Me:  (Cheerfully, whilst inside I am screaming like a flayed banshee) Oh, never mind...come and open yours.

Good job it's my birthday soon.   Next Christmas I think we will have a written agreement about whether or not we are Doing Presents.  Just to save any arguments. 

Oh, as a cheeful footnote, we went down to my lovely Mum's on Boxing Day and I had lovely, lovely presents from the family.  So yay for families! 

It was great, albeit a bit squashed.  I think there were 16 of us there, at one point we were ALL in the sitting room.  I love Christmas.





*Before 0930.  Fuck knows how I am going to cope when I have to get up before 0600 for work again. 

**Probably.  I'll keep you posted


.

Easter basket cases

I've done a lot of driving lately.  I went down to Sussex on Friday to pick up my lovely Mum, who is staying with me over Easter.  We're having a bit of a girlie weekend, which is very pleasant. 

Mr WithaY has made himself scarce, off on some woodsmans training course, where he will be honing his bushcraft and survival skills.  I daresay that even now he is sitting by a campfire, munching on pemmican, trying to dry himself off.  He made a batch of venison jerky last week, ready for the weekend.  Then, struck by inspiration, he finely ground up some of the jerky, added dried cranberries and suet, moulded the whole lot into squash-ball-sized lumps and packed it in his survival kit.  He was very proud of it. 

Pemmican.  Mmm.  Fatty.  And if he doesn't get through it all, I daresay the birds will enjoy it.

Anyway, the driving.  I went down to Sussex, as I said, a journey of just about 100 miles which usually takes me 2 hours, give or take a bit.  The weather was horrific.  Heavy, heavy rain, thick blinding spray on the roads, and of course all the fuckwit holiday drivers who are determined to drag their caravans all the way to the South Coast despite the fact that it is like the end of the world outside.

Gah.

I know I've mentioned this on the blog a few times before, but why oh why oh fucking why do people insist on driving with their lights off in poor visibility?  I almost sideswiped a silver van as he came up fast on the outside, completely masked in the spray and gloom.  Luckily I spotted him before I started to overtake the car in front of me, but even so it was close. 

The trip home was marred by traffic.  Traffic traffic traffic.  We sat on the road into Salisbury for 45 minutes, just waiting to get into the city.  Once in, it was fine.  The roads were relatively clear, but the queue on the way was just appalling.  I only went that way because I had driven past miles of traffic heading west down the A303 on the way out that morning, and thought I'd be wily and avoid it going home.

Schoolboy error.

Here's a picture of similar traffic on the A303 I took a while back.  I daresay some of the same cars were in the queue on Friday. 

I logged the queue on Friday at about 6 miles.  Nice.

It took us 3 hours to get home. THREE.  Once here, however, we have been having a nice time.  Yesterday we went for lunch to the rather funky Indian restaurant on the side of the A36, which used to be a Little Chef.  They kept the elephant slide outside but have decorated it tastefully.  Today we plan a trip to the garden centre, as the sun has made an appearance. 

It's all go here.

Holidays

Ah, Sundays.  Lazy days for staying in bed till gone 10, drinking tea and reading John Wyndham novels.  Well, that's how my morning went, anyway. 

It's been a very pleasant week, one way and another.  Wednesday was an especially grand day.  To celebrate my lovely Mum's birthday, we had a huge family get-together* where went out at lunchtime for a Chinese meal.    There were ten of us, almost the only customers in the restaurant, and certainly the noisiest.  The food was superb. 

Several of us ordered the special toffee banana for pudding, and the nice lady brought out a platter heaped with large sticky balls of toffee-covered goodness for us.  We watched as she dropped each one into a dish of cold water, making the sticky toffee harden instantly. 

There was a lot of oooh-ing and aaah-ing as the hardened toffee banana balls were piled onto plates, then delighted shrieks** as a second heaped platter appeared and was also given the iced water treatment.  My word they were tasty.  Despite the enormous meal we'd crammed down, we managed to get through pretty nearly all the toffee banana balls. What heroes we are.

Everyone kept saying "It's a bit different from last year," which it was, thankfully.

I was especially amused by my youngest nephew, aged 5, gleefully telling his 12-year-old cousin "Ha, you got pwned by an old Chinese lady!"


He pronounced it "owned" but I knew what he meant.


A slow stroll in the glorious afternoon sunshine back to the car, past an unexpected little grassy area covered in purple crocuses*** and then home for tea and medals.

Mum came back with me to stay for a few days, and we did a lot of not much at all, which was lovely.  The weather was nice, despite many parts of the country getting hammered with more snow.  Mr WithaY came home from work one afternoon and told us there had been blizzards.  We'd had clear skies and bright sun all day, about 5 miles away.  Very odd.  It's cold though.  I expect tomorrow it will snow, in time to make my trip to work even slower and more tiresome than usual.  Bah.

Other news:  The cleaners came on Friday, and did their thing, leaving the house tidier and smelling fainly of Mr Sheen.  One of them asked: "Where did you get that from?" pointing at the bulb of garlic hanging up in the kitchen. 

"Just from Morrison's I think," I said, bemused.  "Why?"

"Oooh, I've been looking for one of those!  It looks so smart with just one garlic there, not lots of them.  I wonder if there are any more in the shop?"

"Um.  When we bought it there were lots of garlic bulbs on it.  We've just used them all up except that one."

She was most disappointed. 

Also, we have booked our holiday.  We're off the US of A in June, and will be progressing through Boston, Cape Cod, New Hampshire and Maine for the best part of a month.  Hurrah.  We didn't really have a holiday last year, other than a few days over in the South of France to see mother-in-law WithaY, and as it was a few days after the SSFH**** broke over our heads, showering us with unmitigated shit for the next 6 months, we weren't really in a holiday mood. 

So, we've booked the flights, the airport parking and the hotel in Boston  for a few days when we arrive.  We need to sort out a hire car and possibly a hotel room for the night before we fly home, and the rest of it we will wing. 

I am so excited.  We will go to the New England Aquarium, which is excellent, we will eat clam chowder, and I want to do a Duck Tour. 

Anyone with suggestions for nice places to go in that area, please stick a comment in and let me know.  Unless you're a mad optician, of course.  Then you can fuck right off. 




*A large number of people, as opposed to a group of enormous giants.  Although, we are pretty huge as well, to be fair. 
**Mostly from me, I seem to recall.
***Croci?
****Shit storm from Hades

Sparkles

Remember I told you about the glorious prize Mr Withay and I were awarded?  For our sterling efforts to introduce vegetable-based art to a wider audience? 

Yeah you do.

Anyway, here it is.  I ought to have provided a small red velvet cushion for it to rest on, and a series of artful, moody, backlit pictures by a professional photographer.  You will have to make do with the blurry amateur shots I have provided you with.  Hey, at least I didn't use my phone to take them. 

You're welcome.

Ooh, glitter!  All snowy and seasonal and beautiful!  But wait...what's that little object in the middle?  Wait for the swirling loveliness to subside.....

It's Belgium's most famous cultural artefact, of course, as befits a prize from Belgian Waffle.  Someone peeing.  In a glitter snowstorm.  Must be like being at a trippy 1960s music festival, in there. 

And there it is again, without the peeing.   Lovely.

Other news:  Went to see the family yesterday down at my lovely Mum's house.  We drove all the way through End of the World rain, which then kindly held off for much of the day, waiting only for us to begin our homeward trip. 

The floods!  The water running down the roads!  The spray on the motorway! 

It was all a bit scary, and once again I was glad I have a four by four with big chunky tyres.  Sod the enviroment.  When we drove through Salisbury at about 6pm, the water was gushing up through the roadside drains like fountains.  One particularly hardworking drain had a vertical surge of about 2 feet going on.  It would have been pretty if it hadn't been a sign of ground waterlogging, drain fullness and imminent flooding. 

We made it home safe and sound, although it took longer than usual, and there were several "spla-dooosh" moments.

Whilst down at Mum's, we went to the Christmas tree festival in her church.  They also had a temporary ice rink in there as part of the event.  The younger nieces and nephews flung themselves onto it with abandon.  It was great to see how they started off nervous, and gradually got more and more confident. 

Youngest Nephew was running at top speed round it on his skates after a few minutes.   Most entertaining. 

I liked the fact that the ice rink was sponsored.

And the church itself looked lovely.  Each tree was sponsored by a group or organisation, each one was decorated differently, and the individual and overall effect was impressive. 

These were taken on my phone, so apologies for the poor quality.  

Today I am mostly listening to music and keeping warm, as the weather is still shite.  Mr WithaY has ventured out in his Landrover, so hopefully will survive the floods, holes in the road and unexpected badger setts.  I once expressed concern at the size of the holes he was bumping through as we traversed a section of not-quite road.

"Please try to avoid the really big holes" I whined, fingers gripping the dashboard as my head richoched off the roof.

"I am!"

"No you aren't!  That one was HUGE!  It made me leave the seat entirely."

"No it wasn't....the really big ones are the ones that the whole truck fits in."

Apparently, in the past, people have been known to drive into what looks like a reasonable-sized crater, then the vehicle drops right into it and is effectively wedged into place and has to be dug and/or towed out.  Mr WithaY keeps an entrenching tool in the back of his Landrover for this very purpose.

Too much monkey business

Mr WithaY has been stung, yes stung, by the debate over the use if marker pen and cocktail sticks, and also by the suggestion that he has a fish fetish.

I hope this silences the doubters:





It has a maraschino cherry tongue! It's a great big green louche cocktail gorilla.

For those of you who fret about such things, we ate the marrow body and the courgette arms afterwards, but not the face. That was too disturbing.

Other news: Some pictures from the lovely, lovely party last weekend. As most of them are of the family, it seems rather inappropriate to put them on here, but I do like this one of Mr WithaY flaked out under the mighty erection, following his return from the woods on Sunday morning. What you can't see is the many small children and perky Jack Russell who were gleefully playing around (and sometimes over) him as he dozed peacefully in the shade.

The mighty erection in the garden:



It was a truly beautiful day, and the purple buddleia bush in the corner was alive with butterflies. There were Red Admirals, Commas, Peacocks, Fritilleries, white ones and yellow ones. Plus some brown ones I think may have been moths.

Buddleia butterflies:







This afternoon we're off to spend the weekend with some mates, which will be lovely. It's nice to feel that things are starting to get back to normal after the SSFH* of recent months.

Other, other news: Thing I have seen on my travels this week:

A huge articulated lorry turning a corner into Victoria street slightly too quickly, causing the large, expensive-looking motorbike strapped to the back to slide violently, detaching the straps on one side, then smash into the middle of the road. It hung there by one set of straps as the lorry driver leapt out of his cab swearing and panicking, his little dog watching quizzically from the open truck door as all the traffic in South London began to grind to a halt.

The guard on the train last night walking down the aisle, stopping as he got to where I sat, looking thoughtful, shaking his leg as if he had pins and needles, then picking up his keys from the floor and saying "Aha! I thought I had a hole in that pocket."

More roe deer than you can shake a stick at, leaping all over the fields in the mornings, making everyone on the train go "Ooooo!" at them.







*Shit storm from Hades