Contains nuts

We're in the middle of a spell of glorious Spring weather here, sunshine, clear blue skies, chilly evenings which make the warm day feel even better.  Marvellous.  It's lovely to sit in the garden with a cup of tea, watching the bees and butterflies doing their thing in among the flowers.

hello tree. hello sky. hello clouds.  all are full of joy in the springtime.

This is my little herb garden where I sit in the afternoons and drink tea.  It's very pretty, in a "things in pots" kind of way, I think.  The sad squished looking things in the smallest pot are oriental poppies which I am trying to grow from seeds which I saved from the one that flowers in the garden already.  They don't seem very happy.

This weekend we planted more stuff - I know, I know - including some sage plants, half a dozen sweet pea plants, a new climbing rose bush and a dozen little lavender plants.  I have decided that I will try to do more rose and lavender flower-drying this summer, weather permitting.

Also at the weekend, it was the grand Cake and Craft and All Kinds of Other Stuff Event in the village hall.  There were a few of us there with stalls, ready to sell our various wares to the clamouring public. There was a HUGE cake sale, with dozens of different cakes available, as well as cakes you could buy just a slice of to have with a cup of tea and a chat with your neighbours.  I'd like to point out that my coffee and walnut sponge cake went very quickly.  Yes, it was THAT popular.

Unlike my Clementine and almond cupcakes which paled into insignificance next to the gorgeously glittery decorated cupcake offerings of the village yummy mummies.

The event was very successful.  Dozens and dozens of people came along, everyone seemed to be either eating cake or carrying round cakes to eat later, and we raised a good chunk of money for Sport Relief, which was the aim of the exercise after all.

The village hall looked very cheerful and festive with all the bunting.  I took this before the start, hence the lack of people.

And, best of all (for me, anyway) I sold a few things from my little craft stall.  I chatted to people, I saw neighbours I haven't seen in ages, and I picked up one or two commissions for later on in the Spring, so a good afternoon all round.

Mr WithaY and I celebrated that evening by buying a Chinese takeaway with my profits.  We'll never be rich, but we will be full of Chinese food.

Oh, and I won the raffle.  Twice!  I have been taken to task* for accepting two raffle prizes, but my reasoning is that if I have bought 25 tickets, statistically I am likely to win more than once.  I therefore feel justified in accepting two prizes.

Had I won a third time, I would have been gracious and said "No, no, no, please...put my ticket in the bin and let someone else have a turn."  But two prizes? All mine.

Mwahahahahahaaaaaa.

Anyway, one of the prizes was a big box of chocolates.  Like I'd have abandoned that.

Is there a formal laid-down raffle prize etiquette anywhere?

One of the other raffle prizes was this:

A Gruffalo cake!  Brilliant.

In other news, at the garden centre where I bought my new climbing rose and the lavender plants, they had some slightly mental moss rabbits for sale.

Look at the eyes of the one on the right!  He's clearly crazed and dangerous.  He'd be carving his way out of the garden with a trowel before you knew what had hit you, I reckon.  Brrr.

I do like the garden centre.  You can get pretty much anything you want, as long as what you want is deranged.

A giant metal cockerel, standing 6 feet high?  Check.

Paving slabs with artistic interpretations of fish embedded within them? Check.

A statue of Atlas, supporting the world on his mighty stone shoulders?  Check.

Frantic whirling plastic solar-driven butterflies, to strike terror into the heart of any pet? Check.

A solemn Aslan-type stone lion, looking mournfully at you from across the yard?  Check.

Dozens of ornaments made from cutlery?  Check.

Plus they have an aquatic centre where you can buy tropical fish, or marine fish, or snakes, or this...a rain forest in a box.

There's a tiny pond at the base with fish swimming, and then above that there's steamy, foggy mini-jungle with little frogs in.  Brilliant.

In other, other news, I had a go at making peanut butter last week. Why, dear readers, did I decide to do that?  Fucked if I know.

For some reason it seemed like a good idea, and we all know how those ideas generally work out, don't we?  I bought several pounds of shelled (but not skinned, crucially) peanuts and searched out some recipes on the Internet, which, as we also know, never lies.

I roasted the peanuts, and then realised with a cold horror that I had to get all the red skin off them.  Fuck.  That took three hours, and left me with blisters on my thumbs.  Then it was time to put the shelled and skinned peanuts into the food processor.  Well, in fact, as I discovered when I re-checked the recipe, you are supposed to put them into the blender.  I, however, failed to clarify this small but telling detail, and spent 45 minutes watching a pale yellow concrete-like substance forming with painful slowness.

I added peanut oil, as some of the recipes suggested, which didn't seem to help.  I re-checked the original recipe I had used and realised I ought to be using the blender.

Coaxing the thick, gritty, warm peanut-crete out of the food processor and into the blender with a flexible spatula is a memory which will stay with me a while.

Once I started it blending, however, the texture changed quickly to something almost peanut-buttery, and I was greatly cheered.  I tested it, added a dash of salt and a spoonful of honey, an then whizzed it for a bit longer.  It was clumping together around the blades at the bottom of the goblet, so I poked it with my spatula and then turned the blender all the way up to eleven.

Readers, it did its best.  It tried.  It really did.

There was a sudden strong smell of burning, then smoke poured out of the motor.  I turned it off at the wall socket and removed the blender goblet.  Mr WithaY (who had been popping into the kitchen at hourly intervals to ask "how's it going?" before laughing uproariously at my crap peanut butter-making) manfully carried it out into the garden in case it went up in flames.

We left it out there for an hour to think about what it had done.

I decanted the peanut butter into jars.  It's paler than the shop-bought stuff but actually tastes rather good.

I won't be making it again, I think, though.







*Hello Laurie!

Put out more flags

You could grate cheese on my rough scaly gardener's hands; it must be Spring.  There are other clues, of course.  The birds are yipping and chaffing in the early mornings, the sun is shining more often than not in the afternoons, there are bees and bugs in the garden, and even some butterflies.

By which I mean that my hands are rough, not that you should grab the very nice chap who comes in now and again to help us manage our acreage, and forcibly try to grate Parmesan on his hands.  That would just be weird.

Anyhoo.  Mr WithaY and I had a spot of financial good fortune - we won the Lottery!  Yes, £51, aaaaaaaall ours.  We won't let it change our lives though.  There had already been a conversation about what to do with the garden, so we decided to spend that nice little windfall on some fruit bushes.

The Great Planting was as follows:

10 strawberry plants, 5 each in a large tub on the back patio.

2 redcurrant bushes, planted at the side of the house where the cold frame now sits, and the lavender bushes we put in last year are flourishing.

2 Ceanothus bushes, which we hope will attract butterflies and bees.  They've been planted in the front garden, where we'll be able to see them from the sitting room.  I also put some Oriental poppy seedlings under them, which had seeded themselves from the gorgeous pink one in the front garden.

2 parsley plants, one flat-leaf and one curly-leaf, both added to the herb garden in the back garden.

1 woad plant, in a tub, all on its own in a state of high honour.  I am slightly anxious that Mr WithaY will nurture it, tend it, coax it into flower, and then make a shitload of dye to paint himself blue and run around the woods naked like an Ancient Briton.

I moved the blueberry bushes from the fruit bed in the back garden, and put them in their very own bed   on the other side of the garden.  Hopefully they'll have better luck without being stifled by the giant raspberry bushes, which seem to be intent on taking over the entire garden.

Mr WithaY planted carrots, radishes, pumpkins, aubergines, several varieties of courgette and sage seeds, some in the vegetable bed, some in pots in the greenhouse.  We moved the greenhouse to a different spot in the garden where it can be accessed without having to cross any wet muddy patches, thus making watering things easier.  Hopefully it means things won't just DIE like they did last year.

Oh, and Mr WithaY mowed the lawn, without losing any fingers.  Hurrah.

In other news, I am busily preparing for the cakes and crafts sale this Saturday in the village hall. I have promised to make some cake, and am also having a stall of my homemade crafty stuff to sell.  It will be interesting to see if anyone buys anything.  I hope they do, or I am giving all my friends the same things for Christmas and birthdays for the next 10 years.

Today I am making bunting.  Yards and yards and bloody yards of it.  It's strangely therapeutic.  And it will come in handy for the Jubilee/Olympics/summer barbecue parties I hope we will be having over the summer.

Oh yes. At the risk of sounding like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, what the fuck  has happened to the quality of writing at the Daily Telegraph?  Eh?

Check this out for quality highbrow journalism, found on their on-line site yesterday:

"The court was told that the man Laura Johnson, 20, was seeing had jumped into her car and forced her with his two pals into driving them as they stole a haul of electrical goods, fags and booze. "

Putting to one side the inevitable Name, Age thing that all newspapers seem to need to do, since when were "fags and booze" the terms of choice in this context?  And "pals" too.  Sort it out, you lazy, tabloid-esque skivers.  Oh, and I have not altered the punctuation either.  Yes, it really is that bad.  It's barely comprehensible.

Gah.  And pah.

I know it's easy to criticise and that anyone who spends any time reading stuff I write will undoubtedly find plenty of semantic and grammatic errors, but hey, I don't get paid for writing, and I assume that most Telegraph journalists do.

Bastards.

Ear slugs

It seems as though winter has remembered what it's supposed to be doing, and we have had a much colder couple of days over the weekend.  Heavy frost, even.  Alright for me, I was snug at home with an abundant supply of tea, cake and duvets.  Mr WithaY, on the other hand, was living in the woods for a week, sleeping in a hand-made bender for at least one night.

Not, as I hoped, a wooden facsimile of the wise-cracking Futurama star, but a rude shelter crafted from sticks and tarpaulins.  Apparently it was "bloody cold" and a slug fell in his ear.  He said he removed it "immediately" which was a relief.

Ah, life in the wild.  I'm glad I'm only BY the woods, and not actually attempting to live in them.

Ah, slugs.

Years ago, when I was living in my teeny little student house in Winchester, Mr WithaY used to come and visit at weekends.  One night, one chilly damp night, I asked him to fetch me a glass of water from the kitchen.  The kitchen was downstairs, and it got visited by slugs.  I had stuffed all the cracks and ingress holes I could find with paper to try and keep them out.  I had put salt on the floor to stop them coming in. I had even, on the advice of a probably mental friend, put garlic on the floor to offend the slimy bastards.

Nothing worked, and most mornings I came downstairs to find slug trails all over the place...on the floor, up the walls, on the windows...it was revolting.

This particular night, Mr WithaY scampered downstairs to fetch the glass of water (he was young and in love, so was eager to please) and I heard an anguished cry of "Oh God NOOOOOOOO!"

I knew exactly what he'd trodden on with his bare feet.

I've been busy while he's been away, which has been very pleasant.  I hadn't realised quite how easy it could be to become isolated when you don't go out to work, and a few days of bad weather can make it very miserable.  Luckily for me, there are some fab people living in the village who don't mind me popping in to drink their tea and eat their biscuits every now and again.

Apart from socialising, I have been sewing.  And knitting.  And baking.  I made a chocolate cake as I had a mate coming over for tea one day, and it worked rather excellently, though I say so myself.  It's a cake with no flour in it, so it is potentially very mousse-y if you undercook it, but even if you do that, it's lovely.  It's made with dark chocolate and butter melted together, and sugar, eggs and vanilla, whisked up till it's huge and fluffy, all mixed together, then baked in the oven.  Nom nom nom.

I might make some more this week.

I've also been pruning things in the garden.  Roses, the crabapple tree and the flowering trees at the side of house  have all been chopped up tidily to within an inch of their lives.  Hopefully they'll all revive in time for the Spring.  We've already got a crocus in flower in the lawn, which is ridiculously early, and the snowdrops in sheltered corners are in flower.

Business developments are creeping along, but I'd rather we get everything sorted out now than discover in 3 months time that we didn't make the right decision, and have to start again.

Show and tell

I've been living in a creative maelstrom this week. It all started with a cake I made.

We've had success with the vegetable garden this summer, and have a lot - a LOT - of courgettes coming to fruition now.  Zucchini, for our American readers.  We're eating them with supper most nights, cooked in a variety of interesting ways, often sliced into long thin strips and pan-fried with mixed herbs and a little butter.  Nom nom nom.

Anyway.  I was flicking through a free magazine that came through the door, and lo! it contained a recipe for chocolate courgette cake.  I had to try it.

Readers, it was excellent.  Really.  Plenty of sugar, cocoa, eggs, flour, vanilla.  All the usual malarky, but you also add loads of finely grated courgette.  The cake was dark, moist and delicious, and I shall definitely make it again.  I tore the recipe out of the magazine and put it in the new noticeboard.

In fact, here's a link to the recipe. Try it, you'll thank me.  Plus, it's a great way to make children eat vegetables, apparently. 

Mwahahahahahaaaaaaa.

What's that you say?  Why, yes, I have made another fabulous notice board, thanks for asking.

Here it is, look:

Hanging in the kitchen, adding a much-needed point of interest to the otherwise dull sad corner where the bin lives.  None of the cool appliances ever go there.  It's like the Woking of the kitchen world. 

Inspired by my soaraway success in the noticeboard arena, I made some cushion covers to replace a couple that had got tatty and spotted*, utilising some of the fabric liberated from father-in-law WithaY's antique-restoring stash. 

Unfortunately, this gold one looks a bit sad and flat. I think it needs a new feather cushion thingy.  We all get a bit squashed by life, I reckon, but this poor cushion shows it more than most.

However, this one I am delighted with:

I spent bloody ages making sure the pattern was central to the front of the cushion, as I knew that otherwise, every time I looked at it I'd get all anal** and grumpy about it being off-centre.

There is a new set of bathroom curtains almost finished, too, I plan to get them up tomorrow.

Other news:  Went into town today thinking that the rain had stopped for the afternoon.  Fool that I was.  Mr T would have pitied me, no doubt about it.   

As soon as I parked the car and got the heavy box of crockery and assorted ephemera from the boot, the heavens opened.  Actually, I think the heavens opened, and hell was raining upwards, there was so much sodding water everywhere. 

I had to walk (slowly because of the heavy box) to the charity shop in torrential rain, blinded by the wet stringy hair that was in my eyes (mine, not someone else's with no concept of personal space) and my raincoat hood blinkering me like some sort of piteous Victorian cab-horse. 

Gah.

By the time I got to Oxfam and handed the box to the nice lady behind the counter, I was soaked.  My trousers were absolutely drenched, but my feet stayed dry - hurrah for Converse shoes! - so I thought I might as well walk around town as it wasn't physically possible to get any wetter.

A man from Wessex Water was stood on the pavement beside his van, watching the rain flooding down onto the main road from a narrow driveway, muddy water cascading into the drains.

"You out collecting?" I asked him.

He laughed and said  "Don't need to, we've got plenty thanks."

It's rained almost every day this month, or that's how it feels.  Hopefully we'll have a nice Indian summer next month.

My roses are looking splendid though.  All this rain has brought out a second crop of flowers, so I am dashing out and cutting a few in between downpours so we can enjoy them in the house. 

Mr WithaY bought me a proper woven willow shopping basket the other week when he was at the Wilderness Gathering.  It's a three day event where Men*** gather to do Manly Things.  However, he didn't stay there this time, he commuted from home daily.  Last time he went he slept in his little tent and spent the weekend making a fish spear, casually whittling and lashing as all the other manly men wandered past enviously.

I imagine he'll get a stern letter from Ray Mears, telling him off.

It was very impressive, though.



*Spotted with bits of food, mostly, from where we use them to rest trays on when we scarf down dinner in front of the telly.  Shame, shame, we are chavs and slatterns.  But, hey, Star Trek and all, right at dinnertime. 

**Welcome, dodgy word googlers!

***And women. 

Bootiful

It's the middle of August, supposedly the height of summer.  We've got all the lights on in the house in the middle of the afternoon; it looks like November outside.  The rain hasn't stopped lashing down all day. Apparently there has been flash flooding in Dorset.

Ahhh, English weather.

Last weekend things were different.

Mr WithaY and I had a long-planned few days away to see some friends in East Anglia.  Remember Tall Richard, who took me to dinner at the RAF Club?  Yeah you do.  It was a visit to see he and his lovely family.  We've known them since before they had children, and now look at us.  Their eldest is halfway through his time at University now, which makes me feel older than I like.  I commented to Tall Richard that his son is now the same age I was when I first met him.  That made us look faintly appalled for a moment. 

Age-related trauma aside, it was a lovely weekend.  We went to look around Thetford - sadly most of it was closed - but we wandered through the hill fort, supposedly the highest in the country.  I'm not sure if it really is, or if it just seems that way to the people who live there, Norfolk being so notoriously flat and all. 

On Sunday they took us for a look at the north Norfolk coast, which was very scenic.  Flat, though.  At one point we were driving along the coast road and realised that the sea was actually higher up than we were, thanks to the dykes.  Not something I am used to.

However, low-lying land fears and all, we had a very pleasant day.  A stroll on the causeway to look at the view, a fine pub lunch featuring crabs, then a wander round some art galleries, followed by a little walk around the town to look at the interesting architecture. 

Lots of the towns and villages in Norfolk and Suffolk have these signs. Not all of them say "Blakeney" though.

There were people swimming, which I thought was rather ambitious.  Rather more people were catching crabs off the quayside. 

It really was a beautiful day.  And there is an awful lot of sky up in that neck of the woods.  Not many woods, though.

I did like the buildings made of flint, particularly the white-painted ones.  Very pretty.

Worryingly, we saw metal signs in the walls of one house showing where the last lot of flood waters had risen to.  It would have left only the very top of Tall Richard's head out of the water.  We measured.

Other news:  Today I made a chocolate and courgette cake.  Nom nom nom.

Flaming

I'm typing this slowly and painfully, moving my arms as little as possible.  Why, dear readers, is this?  Why, it's because I have:

a)  Tired old arms from a day of hard work yesterday, mostly spent carrying trays across a sunshiny lawn, whilst nimbly dodging a football being kicked around by many small children.
b)  Aching wrists after de-stoning a huge - huge - box of cherries and putting them in the freezer for "later".
c)  Managed to get sunburn across by upper back and shoulders this morning whilst enjoying the glorious sudden advent of proper summer in the garden.

Yesterday I was helping a friend cater a garden party, all very smart, in a marquee in someone's garden.  It was a cold buffet, lots of ham, salmon, asparagus quiche, potato salad, that kind of thing, and then a shitload* of fruit tarts and chocolate caramel cake. 

Everyone was anxious about the weather, it being a garden party and all, but by noon the rain had stopped, the sun was out, and the remainder of the day was just gorgeous.  The garden overlooks acres of green barley fields, so whenever the wind blew it was magical, watching the barley move like the sea.  Loved it.

However, being the lazy non-working lightweight that I am, I was completely knackered by the time I got home, and spent the remainder of the evening on the sofa, whining.  And eating a Chinese takeaway.  And watching The Odd Couple on DVD, which neither Mr WithaY or I had seen before.  It was very pleasant and relaxing.

Today - another gloriously sunny one, must be some mistake, surely - I have been doing stuff in the garden.  Things have been transplanted, pruned, watered, trimmed and moved around, and now it all looks fab.  My new parasol is finally up, and Mr WithaY and I sat under it together, reading our books for an hour earlier. 

As a result of being an idiot, and not wearing sunblock whilst weeding the garden, I have bright scarlet shoulders and upper back.  That's going to hurt when I get in the bath later. 

Other news:  I finally bit the bullet and bought a new mobile phone.  My iPhone, which is about two and a half years old, has been playing up for several months, refusing to synch with iTunes, or to backup properly, and I kept putting it off and putting it off.  Because, you know, it's a pain in the arse and all, changing mobiles.   

I did go so far as to take it in to be examined by the Apple experts at the store in Bath a couple of months ago.  Their expert opinion was "It's broken."

Yeah, thanks for that, genius.

Anyway, I had to go to Salisbury earlier this week, and as I was walking around, I passed the O2 store, so popped in and waited until one of the staff deigned to notice me.  To be fair, they did have a laminated sign on the cashdesk which said  "We're understaffed today, so we might just ignore you for a bit.  You don't like it?  Tough titty, loser."  I may be mis-remembering the exact wording.

After six or seven hours, a girl emerged sulkily from a cupboard at the back of the shop and asked me what I wanted.  I felt like replying "I want you all to kneel miserably at my feet while I lambast you at length for your total lack of any kind of customer-facing competence, you useless, useless goons," but what I actually said was "I want to buy an iPhone 4 please." 

She looked at me as though I had asked her to sell me a guinea pig curry, then slowly went and fetched the correct item of technological crack cocaine. 

We had a long, tiresome discussion about the sim card it needed.  In my head, the conversation went like this:

Me:  I would like to buy a new phone and keep my current number.  How do I do that?

Helpful staff member:  You buy the phone - here is one - and a new sim card - also here - and then contact the O2 customer services - here is the contact number - and they will migrate the number when you are ready.  Thanks for your valued custom. Oh, and please take this pretty bunch of flowers as a thank you for spending so much money with us in these hard recession-driven times."

In reality, it wasn't quite like that.

Me:  I would like to buy a new phone and keep my current number.  How do I do that?

Staff member:  Oh.  Um.  Well, we've got the phones in stock.  You want one?

Me:  Yes, please.  (there was a brief struggle until she understood which type of iPhone I wanted, but we got there eventually.)  Can I put the SIM card from my current phone into this one?

Staff member:  Nah.  S'different.

Me: Ok.  So do I need a new SIM card?

Staff member:  Um.  Yeah.  You want one?

Me:  Yes. Please.

She rummaged under the desk, pulled out a small cardboard folder and dropped it on the counter in front of me.

Staff member:  Anything else?  (She was clearly bored by now, her attention riveted by the two young men with complicated hair who were sat at a nearby table having an animated conversation with her colleague.  If she'd had some gum, she'd have been blowing bubbles at me.)

Me:  So how do I transfer my number to the new phone?

Staff member:  I can do that now.  What's your number?

Me: No, I need to download everything off my old phone before I transfer anything.  How do I do it?

Staff member:  (exasperated by my stupidity) Yeah, I can do that now.

Me:  Do I contact O2 when I'm ready to transfer?  Or what?

Staff member:  Yeah. You could do that.

I paid for the phone and the SIM card and went home, pausing only to buy a large bag of fresh cherries at the market stall on the way back to the car.

When I got home, 25 miles and 45 minutes later, I discovered that the SIM card was missing.  The plastic casing was there, but the actual micro SIM was gone, probably previously sold and the cardboard wrapping dumped under the counter.  How I laughed.

So, all the way back to Salisbury the next day to get a new SIM.  The young man who served me was less challenging, but still seemed puzzled by what had happened.  Well yes, I suggest you get your colleagues to stop chucking empty SIM wrappers in with the ones for sale, matey.  That might help. 

The story has a happy ending.  My new phone is working, and my number has been successfully transferred to it.  Yay. 

Unfortunately, my OLD phone had stopped backing itself up to iTunes in early March, so I have a bit of work to do to get things back to spec, but otherwise, it's all good. 

Oh, and I bought a great big box of cherries on my return visit, as they were so lovely.  Today I have been de-stoning and freezing cherries, and my fingers are stained black. Niiiiice. 

Other, other news:  We've all but cleared out father-in-law WithaY's house now.  The sale is progressing. I really hope in a couple of weeks it will all be over and we can stop fretting about it. 

This week I am mostly going away with Middle Sis for a few days of pampering, foot massages, swimming, nice food and (if past history is anything to go by) lots of inappropriate laughter. I am very much looking forward to it. 






*technical catering term.

Cry "God for Harry, England and Saint George!"

It's so strange, waking up to day after day of glorious sunshine.  It feels like Abroad, somewhere not quite real.  And of course, it's so early in the year - April! - that it is still Spring here, pretending to be Summer.  We've got daffodils in the garden, which seems faintly bizarre in blazing 26 degree sun.

I spotted an anemone this morning too - gorgeous dark purple, the solitary show from a whole pack of bulbs that we planted.  There are also some Mystery Plants coming up next to it, also from bulbs, but I have no idea what they are.  It's like a very sedate whodunnit - what will they turn out to be?  Alliums?  Irises?  Exotic lilies?  Deadly Triffids?  We have to wait a month and see.

The clematis is starting to flower - it is covered in buds so in a day or two will be covered in brilliant white flat flowers that look a bit like Tudor roses.  Love it.  Even the roses already have loads of buds forming, so it's easy to visualise how pretty everything will look soon. 

We've got cowslips growing in the lawn, and some lily of the valley colonising a dank corner under the hedge out the front.  Mr WithaY and I planted more lavender.  We are making a hedge alongside the path at the side of the house, ooh get us, which I have high hopes for.  Yesterday I bought a new bench to go out the front too, as the old one creaks unnervingly when sat upon*. 

I like the fact that conversations for the last week have all followed the same pattern.  They begin with "Wonderful weather! Isn't it fantastic?  Hottest Easter for a decade/century/thousand years, they said on the news last night.  Yeah, we're having a barbecue tonight.  Got sunburnt on Bournemouth beach yesterday."

Then the tone changes slightly and we get the qualifier(s):   "Let's hope we don't pay for it later, eh?  It can't last much longer, can it?  It's bound to piss down all through July now."  There may or may not be some sort of half-arsed gripe about global warming too, and of course dire predictions about smog. 

I love that we can't just enjoy a spell of sunshine without having to add all the riders about how it can't last forever.  Neither can any kind of weather.  Britain is famed for its weird and variable weather.  The fact that we've had more than 3 days of the same weather - in this case sun - on the trot is unusual.  Remember the snow in the winter? That went on a bit too.  That's why it made the news.  Gah.

Other news:  Looks like we may have finally FINALLY sold Father in Law WithaY's house, thank the lord.  The estate agents overvalued it in the first place, and then, of course, all the offers we received were way lower than the asking price.  We have managed to convince Father in Law WithaY that the market is a bit crap at the moment, and that it makes more sense to sell the place than to hang on to it, empty and unloved for another year.  Plus Mr WithaY won't have to risk losing more fingers mowing the lawn down there.

So, I reckon we need one more trip to clean the remaining rooms, a skip to get rid of all the accumulated crud that is not sellable or recyclable, and a man with a van to take away the furniture that didn't get sold at auction, and the place is ready to go.  I can't say I'm sorry.  It's been a millstone around our necks, knowing it was empty, and until fairly recently, crammed with a lifetime's collection of antiques.  At least all the stuff that could be sold at auction has gone, so all that's left is more mundane stuff.

Plus, with the hideous price of diesel (£1.42 a litre!  Fuck!) the journey there and back isn't cheap either. 

Mr WithaY has taken himself off today to volunteer at this place.  Now that he's booked onto his axe-head forging course, he is all inspired to do more prehistoric technical shit.  And stuff.

I declined, on the grounds that I am not keen to spend the hottest day of the year so far up to my oxters in an Iron Age cess pit, or digging a well.

I might make some new curtains for the bathroom. If I can be arsed.  Or I might just have a long cold drink, sitting on my new garden bench, reading a book.  I've discovered the Classic Rock digital radio station, and am loving it. 

Happy St George's Day. 



*Possibly only when sat upon by two large adults, but I am not risking my life, tea or dignity any longer.

The times they are a-changing

It's all change here at the moment.  I found out this week that my request for early release from work has been approved by the powers that be, and that the end of May will therefore see me leaving the Civil Service.

I am SO excited.

Inspired by this, and also by the fact that his own job has become increasingly tiresome over the last couple of years, Mr WithaY has thrown caution to the winds, his hat into the ring and his fate upon the bosom of the gods, and applied for early release as well.

He finds out in July, as there are about 100 times more people being hoofed out of his Department than out of mine, so the process will take much longer.  If successful he will be plodding forth into the snowy wastes with his little bindle on his shoulder in October. 

But where will we go?  What will we do?  Will we be begging for scraps outside the pub of a lunchtime, and busking for small change in Bath city centre on a Saturday?

Quite possibly, yes. 

However, my immediate plan is to take the summer off - I can't wait - and take some time to consider what I want to do with myself.  I have already started looking at what jobs are around and trying not to automatically consider all the stuff that is exactly like what I'm already doing. 

It's like shoe shopping.  Whenever I go shoe shopping, I end  up buying a pair of shoes very much like the ones I am already wearing.  I can't help it.  And it seems that job window-shopping is the same.

I reckon I could find a job pretty quickly, I always have in the past, and am usually pretty fortunate at interviews.  I've never been unemployed,  so perhaps I am over-complacent.  I could get a temping job somewhere, doing office-y admin-y stuff, but I want to change direction.  I went into the Civil Service more or less by accident, as a "well, I need a job and this will do for now" stopgap, and then stayed there for years.  And years.  And years. 

This is my chance to change my life in a big way.  I am grabbing it with both hands.  And all my feet.

We were discussing it the other night, and Mr WithaY made the point that unless we ever won the lottery (a remote prospect at best) we'll never be in a position where we have a reasonable lump sum come into our possession.  So, how marvellous, how exciting,  how fortunate, that we can ask ourselves "what would we like to do?" and not "What do we have to do?" 

Of course things would be different if we had children to think about, or huge debts to manage, or fears about being able to provide for ourselves in the future, but we don't, so we can both face whatever is coming our way with excitement, not anxiety. 

I am loving it.  For the first time in a very long time - since I left home to go to college I think - I feel as though things are going to change in a big way, anything is possible, a new vista is opening up for me.  God.  It is fucking brilliant.

Other news:  Mr WithaY made the local paper this week, as a "member of the public" who called the police when the garage was being robbed.  Fame at last. 

Also, today we bought a cold frame at Lidl.  It has been assembled in the back garden and we are planning to plant aubergines.  Or maybe sweet peppers.  Something tasty will be grown in there.  We also bought seeds for the vegetable garden, mostly French beans, courgettes and squashes.  Or is it squash?  Anyhoo.  I wanted carrot seeds but Lidl was disappointingly short in the carrot department*.  I shall go to the garden centre tomorrow and get a packet or two.

This week has seen the worst train chaos I have had to deal with since I started working in London. I left work early on Monday night, wanting to scamper home to tell Mr WithaY that I had my release date.  I got to Waterloo thinking I would be in time to catch the 4:50 train...it was cancelled. 

Ah well, I could get the 5:20.  Cancelled.  Fuck. 

Trying to be clever, I got on a train that was headed for Basingstoke, according to the information board, thinking I could get a local train to Salisbury from there and then either get Mr WithaY to come and pick me up, or get the train back to where my car was parked.  Lateral thinker, me. 

The commuter chaps around me were very helpful, finding me a seat and helping me stow my bags and coat.  I settled down and smiled at them, asking what time we were due at Basingstoke.

"We're not going to Basingstoke, love."

"No...first stop is Winchester."

I was horrified, and had to gather up all my stuff and get OFF the train in a rush, for fear of ending up halfway across the country from where I needed to be. Gah.   They were lovely, though, asking me if I wanted them to save my seat in case I came back.  I declined.  I have a feeling we'd all be planning a holiday together by now if I'd said yes. 

Back to the concourse, to look sadly at the Board Of Many Delays. 

O-kay...the 5:50?  Delayed.  But on the platform. I got aboard and settled in grimly, waiting for the train to leave, or death, whichever came first.

The train left. 

I got home at almost 9pm, having left the office just after 4.  Almost five fucking hours. 

I worked at home on Tuesday and Wednesday, then up to London again on Thursday.  The train was on time, but the further along the journey we went, the slower it got.  Eventually, at the time we were supposed to be arriving at Waterloo, we got to Surbiton.  The guard told us the train was terminating there, and we all had to get out.  Fucks sake.

Twenty minutes of standing on a bleak platform, icy winds blowing through from Siberia, followed.  Several trains chugged through without stopping, until a local train halted.  Everyone piled aboard, and we made our way painfully slowly into Waterloo, stopping at every signal along the way.  We got there an over hour late, which meant I got to work over four hours after leaving home, cold, stressed, grumpy and tousled.

I am unutterably happy that this will end in a few short weeks.







*That sounds like a euphemism: "He's a nice bloke, but disappointingly short in the carrot department."

Holiday snaps part 2 - Maine and New Hampshire

Yes, more pictures.  But this time of Maine! And New Hampshire! So much travel, so little of America covered.

We left Boston on a cloudy Sunday morning, after a huge breakfast. We had been advised to use a small cafe down the street from the hotel, and their Eggs Benedict was superb.  

The trip to the airport to pick up the hire car was entertaining.  The courtesy bus, shared by three hotels in the area, was driven by a cheerful Jamaican man who was playing a Bob Marley cd.  He drove along, occasionally bouncing the minibus off small obstacles like crash barriers and kerbs as he tried to drive, sing, chat to his passengers and answer his mobile phone all at the same time.  He was most impressed that Mr WithaY and I had heard of Bob Marley.  So much so that I can only assume that most of his guests come from remote islands in the South Pacific. 

Delivered from the Jamaican rally drive champion 2010 we went to talk to the nice Alamo lady at Boston Airport.  She looked us up on the computer, checked that we had ordered a car, then looked us up and down quizzically.

"How far are you driving?"  she asked us.

"Oh, you know, up to Maine and back, then down to Cape Cod...around and about."

She shook her head sadly, and said "This car you ordered is no good...it's too small for you."  I wondered if perhaps we'd inadvertently booked a clown car.

"You need something bigger."  She looked at us again.  "Much, much bigger.  Tell you what, if you are willing to pay to upgrade one level, I'll upgrade you three."  We nodded.  She nodded.  It was a done deal.  Her colleague wandered over as we finalised the paperwork and she told him to take us outside and "pick them something nice" which I thought was very kind. 

The car lot was packed with all kinds of huge cars, but the one that we both spotted immediately was a Jeep.  So, we set off to New Hampshire in a Jeep Patriot, which was comfortable, economical, had fab aircon and a decent stereo.  Kudos to the Alamo lady.

I thought it was quite a big car, till we came out of LL Bean later in the trip and saw what had parked either side of it. 

Anyhoo, the drive up to New Hampshire was fun, once Mr WithaY remembered how to drive an automatic, and that they drive on the right, the RIGHT, darling, other side, over there. 

The placenames in New England are eerily familiar.  Amesbury!  Salisbury!  But in America!  How thrilling. 

We drove up to see our mates in New Hampshire, where over the next few days we went out for lobster and steamers, saw a chipmunk, went for a long hot walk along the Marginal Way, visited many, many shops, ate fab food with our friends, and went to a graduation party with hogroast.  The man roasting the hog was using a giant steel machine, all rotating spits and charcoal which he'd designed and made himself.  It was called the "Oinkmaster 8000" and he was justifiably proud of it.  The roast hog was delicious. 

Look, a chipmunk.

One day we went up into the White Mountains, and had a trip on the North Conway Scenic Railroad, on a huge train with a cowpusher on the front.  Mr WithaY and I had seats in the Pullman coach, slobbing out in wicker chairs as we chugged sedately through the countryside.  It's very green, with a lot of mountains, as you'd expect, including Mount Washington, famous for having the worst recorded weather in the USA.

In the Ladies at the North Conway Railroad Station is this sign:

I was rather hoping they'd have a T-shirt for sale in there that said "My girlfriend went to North Conway Scenic Railroad and all she bought me was a box of personal hygiene products" but I couldn't find one.

There's a museum in Conway all about the observatory up there, where they have a mock-up of the shack that you can stand in while the windspeed goes up and up and up.

The shack shakes, the floor moves, the snow flying past the windows blurs into white lines and the noise is extraordinary.

200 miles an hour, eh?  Better get the washing in, I suppose.  The museum had loads of interactive exhibits you could poke about.  My favourite was the Vortex of Doom.

You could change the movement of the wind with your hand, man.  With your hand.  It was, like, awesome.  I dicked about with it for ages.

The highlight of the trip into Maine was the visit to LL Bean, long planned and much anticpated.  It's got everything, including a giant boot outside.

I liked these.  A selection of things that make duck noises, and not just any old honker, but a MAGNUM honker for those situations when you need that extra magnitude of honkage. 

They also had the DUCK COMMANDER for people who need to take command of ducks from time to time.

And this, which I just giggled at like an idiot while Mr WithaY stood a little distance away tutting and telling me to stop being childish.

Moving on.

When you go out for a lobster dinner, they mean what they say.  You get lobster, butter, sweetcorn and that's pretty much it.  Maybe some steamers as well, but it is usually all about the Lobster. 

I decided not to get this one, as it would have cost about $200, and instead went for something a bit smaller.

They have some stunning sunsets over there.  This one was going on as I champed and nommed my way through the lobster.  I expect it made an uplifting background to a frankly unedifying and probably repellant sight, as shell fragments and butter flew in all directions.

On that note, I will end, as I have a bazillion photos and I daresay you're a bit tired of them for now. 

Other news:  My ankle is recovering slowly, although I still can't drive which is tiresome.  We've got the loft insulation blokes coming tomorrow so I hope that we will be able to put all our stuff back in the loft soon.  I think a car boot sale might be in the offing, as there's stuff in the loft we've not used since we moved into this house, over 8 years ago. 

Oh, and we have started harvesting carrots from the garden, and very nice they are too. 

Flowers in the dust

I have been getting stuff ready for the big holiday.  The house is full of suitcases, partly because we had to empty out the loft (more on that later) and partly because I have bought myself a new Holiday Bag.  My old suitcase had more or less given up the ghost; the zip was getting unreliable, and it had a horribly squeaky wheel.  The squeaky wheel was so bad that when you dragged it through an airport, small children wept and security guards looked irritated.  I thought it best to replace it. 

Well, it was 15 years old.  I bought it when we got married, it has been to America twice, and all over Europe and the UK.  It's better-travelled than a lot of my friends.

So, to the Internet!  I ordered an Antler Size Zero case on Sunday, it turned up on Wednesday.  That's service.  It weighs something absurd - 3.3kg - and has lots of useful pockets.  I look forward to cramming it full of new clothes on the way home again.  We plan to travel light, and buy clothes while we're over there, as last time we went things were so much cheaper.  Admittedly, we were getting almost 2 dollars to the pound back then, but even so, I expect to find bargains.

I also bought, on impulse of course, a new camera.  My old camera is a Nikon Coolpix L1, and I have always enjoyed using it.  But, and it's a big but, it takes AA batteries and they only last for a few dozen pictures.  So I always have to ensure that I have spares with me, and it's a pain in the arse to keep changing them. 

The new camera is a Canon Ixus, which takes a small rechargeable camera battery, which should last me several hundred pictures. I will buy a spare one so that I can have one on charge while the other one is in use, and it will be more cost-effective in the long run, not having to buy loads of AAs. 

I had a go with it in the garden.  The weather here has been lovely for the last few days, and everything has gone beserk, growing wildly and gorgeously, so I thought I'd take some pictures.

The oriental poppy, we have a huge plant in the front garden which was here when we moved in, and it always delivers a ton of flowers.

Clematis, just starting to go over now, but still looking great.

Different colour oriental poppy.  We usually only get one of these.

Chives.  The bees adore them.

Also, remember I said I broke my glass windchime?  Yeah you do.  Mr WithaY salvaged the bits of it that weren't shattered to a million billion pieces and we have hung them on the rose arch.  We call it the rose arch even though the only thing growing on it is the clematis. That's how we roll.

Other news:  Brother in law is continuing his recovery at home, which is excellent.  Father in law WithaY is in good spirits too, although slightly grumpy about our impending holiday.  Mother in law WithaY is coming over from France next week and will be staying at the house for a few days while we're away, so we need to put stuff back in the loft.

Oh yeah.  The loft.  The cavity wall insulation boyos* arrived on Thursday, as planned, and spent a few hours drilling holes in the exterior walls, pumping silicon-coated fibreglass** into the cavity and then filling all the holes again.  They worked hard, made as little noise*** as possible, and were charming and polite. 

When they'd finished they asked me to do an inspection of their work, and sign off the paperwork.  I asked if I should do that after they insulated the loft.  They said no, the loft team were a different team, and I would have to wait for them to turn up.  In the meantime, if I could just sign here, and here, and then over the page here...ta love. 

The company had already called us to say that someone had called in sick that day and they might not be able to come and do the insulation.  I made my renowned "Middle-aged woman being mildly inconvenienced" noise, which always goes down well. 

The girl I spoke to said "Oh, have you taken the day off work to be there?"  Yes, I told her, I have.  And we've emptied the loft so the house is a tip.  She was very sympathetic, and said she'd try her hardest to get us a different team to come and do the work, so when the cavity wall chaps arrived I assumed they were it.  But no. 

Shortly after they left, job well done, the company called again.  No joy finding a loft insulating team, and the next available appointment is the end of July.  Gah. 

So, back up the rickety loft ladder today for Mr WithaY, and then we'll re-empty it after we get home from holiday. 

Other, other news:  We have bought a new phone for the house.  Our old one had an answering machine which contained a cassette tape (retro, huh?) and was being temperamental about letting us know if anyone had left a message.  The light would flash, but the tape would be blank.  No bleeding use whatsoever.  Now we have a phone with a digital answering machine, and I can wander the house whilst chatting to people.  It's a whole new world. 




*They were from South Wales, and, as it turned out, from a place about 10 miles from where my Mum comes from.  Small world, eh?

**I asked what it was.

***Apart from shitloads of drilling, I mean.

Has beans

No news is, well, my life at the moment.  I'm still poorly, although slightly better than I was.  I'm still coughing up hideous, revolting, alarming slime, but there's less blood in it.   I'm still feeling mighty sorry for myself, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

By way of variety, on Friday I coughed so hard that I put my back out.  That was nice.  I was sitting down at my desk, slightly twisted as I was putting something in the bin, and was overtaken by a violent coughing fit.  As I barked and gasped and groaned and wheezed, I felt something in my lower back go "twanggggg", which meant I went "coughcoughcough ohhhhhhhh FUCK noooooooo coughcoughcough."

Today is the first day since then that I have been able to stand up more or less upright.  Mr WithaY has been off work today with a horrible, horrible cold, so the pair of us have been shuffling, wheezing and groaning our way around the house, trying to make tea without one or both of us dropping dead.  It's been like the shittest remake of Planet of the Apes imaginable. 

It's been a laugh a minute, I can tell you. 

On the plus side, I've been feeling less feverish and weepy, so all in all things are improving.   Ah, Spring. 

Other news:  I think all Mr WithaY's carefully-planted bean seedlings are dying, as it's been a bit chilly at night.  We may need to plant a load more.

Bee do bee do bee do

I am sitting here, trying to type as best I can with one and a half hands.  No, we haven't had another Lawnmower Incident, in case you're worrying.  Nothing so exciting. 

For a while now I have noticed a weird tiny little lump on the palm of my left hand, almost exactly in the middle.  Last night, I realised it had got a bit bigger, and so of course, I started dicking about with it.  I rubbed it, and it moved around as if there was something stuck under the skin. 

How interesting*. 

A bit more dicking around, and I realised that there was a little lump of something under the skin.  I fiddled with it a bit.

Well, what would you have done? 

I kept playing with it till I had managed to squeeze the lump right out.  It was hard, like a bit of chalk, or a teeny bit of gravel or something.  Very weird.

Once the initial excitement of getting a foreign body out of my hand (right out from under my SKIN!  Ew!) had passed, I inspected the damage.  There's a surprisingly large hole there now, which is bloody sore.  As the evening wore on, it got more and more painful, till I ended up slathering it in antiseptic and sticking a plaster over it.  Now it just looks absurd.  A plaster right across the palm of your hand makes you look like some clumsy galoot who has had a run-in with a particularly tough ketchup bottle.  It's really not impressive, and it feels weird.

This morning, as part of the Spring Madness that is currently gripping the WithaY household**, we went out to the local garden centre and bought a load of plants.  We've got some thyme planted in the flowerbed in front of the house, so it will smell nice as we walk past, and whenever the postman tramples on it.  We planted some Woodruff under the huge hedge out the front, which (apparently) will brighten up a gloomy corner.  We'll see.

We planted two blackcurrant bushes in the fruit bed out the back.  I have high hopes.  The raspberry canes have started to show some green shoots, and the redcurrant bushes have lots of buds.  There might be jam in the summer.

There are now two new climbing roses against the fence at the side of the house, but I am not very confident about them as the soil there is terrible***.  I chucked in a load of compost from a bag, but if they aren't happy then we will have to move them. 

More roses have been planted in the front garden; two ramblers at the side of the drive in an attempt to repress the weeds, and two taller bushy ones in the bed the other side of the drive to add some height and colour.  Fingers crossed that they don't die.

We chose varieties that have old-fashioned open flowers to allow bees to get in and feed.  Apparently the more modern hybrid tea roses are not very bee-friendly.  Speaking of bees, we attempted some bee rescue yesterday.  As we sat on the bench out the front, surrounded by all the flowers showcased in the last blog post, yeah you remember, we spotted a bumble bee.  He didn't look very well. 

He sat sadly on a leaf on the bay tree, so Mr WithaY carefully picked him up and put him on the heather, in case he was hungry.  Nothing.  He just hunched up, looking wretched.

Mr WithaY decided that he needed to make up some sugar and water solution to feed the bee, in case it was too tired to find food in the flowers.

It wasn't very interested, so we left it on the heather, and hopefully it will recover.

Other gardening news:  The potatoes we planted have yet to make an appearance.  Bloody things.

My camellia's have flowered, although they are a bit feeble.  The one at my lovely Mum's house is about 8 feet tall and laden with huge flowers.  Mine do not look well by comparison.

Please admire the delightful pipework on the wall behind it.  All adds to the charm and ambience.  We've got shitloads of charm round here. 

*By which I mean "slightly gross and freaky" of course.

**Mr WithaY is spring-cleaning his study as I type.  That time of year again already. 

***I dug a hole in three different spots, each time hitting fucking hardcore or paving slabs about 4 inches down.  Lord knows what the previous occupants had buried under there.  Some kind of Doomsday bunker/fallout shelter possibly.