Highly decorated

We're having Work Done on the house. It warrants capital letters, as it involves major renovation rather than just eg slapping up some sticker murals, or changing the lightshades.

It all started last summer.

Our next-door neighbours have been engaged on a lengthy and all-encompassing renovation project in their house, which included replacing one of their wood-burning stoves.  The stove they took out was not very old, and in excellent condition, so we asked if we could buy it* to fit into our fireplace, and thus be rid of the 1970s sandstone crazy paving fireplace which I have loathed since the day we first viewed the house.

I've been looking through my photos to see if I ever took one of it, but I think I must have tried to crop it out whenever I used a camera in there, as it was so awful. I did manage to capture the magic of a new log burner being installed, though.

Once the chimney breast was denuded of the horrible yellow "stone" and given a new coat of plaster, the rest of the room suddenly looked dreadful in comparison.

Mr WithaY and I had several earnest discussions about What Actually Needs Doing In Here, and each time the list grew longer.  By the start of this year we had decided that the answer to the question "What do we need to sort out" was "Everything, including the electrics."  Time to make some phone calls, then.

The first person to call in any event of this nature, as longer-term readers will know, is Kevin the Decorator.  He came round, looked at the walls and ceiling, listened to our plans and then said "Yeah, I can do all that. Not the plastering though.  I'll give you my mate's number, he's a good plasterer."

So we called the plasterer.  He came round, looked at the walls and ceiling and said "Yeah, I can do all that. Not taking down the ceiling though.  It'll be much cheaper if you take the ceiling down yourselves."  Mr WithaY and I nodded in agreement.  Neither of us has very much experience taking down ceilings, but really, how hard could it be?

I said "At least you don't have to plaster the wall above the fireplace, that's only been done recently."  The plasterer ran his hand over it with narrowed eyes before opining "Yeah. But to be honest, it's a bit shit, isn't it?"  Reader, it was indeed a bit shit.  We opted to have the whole room skimmed.

Once the first blow has been struck, there is no going back.

The first cut really was the deepest. Then it was a festival of hammers and crowbars, and the unstinting practical assistance of our next-door neighbour, who is clearly a bit bored now he's finished renovating his own house.

Mr WithaY spent a couple of days removing nails from the joists, channelling all the electrical and hi-fi cabling where it will be out of sight, and left the room in a fit state for the plasterer to work his magic.

In the meantime, Simon the Electrician came round. I like Simon. He is a thoughtful man, prone to long silences when you ask him questions while he thinks deeply about the answer.  He knows his stuff, and takes electrical things very seriously.  I asked him why he was so meditative in conversation, and commented that he really does like to consider his options before replying.  He looked at me for a long moment, before saying: "That's because with plumbing, if you get it wrong you get a wet floor.  With electrics, if you get it wrong, the house burns down." 

I hadn't though of it in those terms, and with that in the back of his mind all the time, I can understand why he takes a while to get his ducks in a row.

Anyhoo, Simon the Electrician plumbed in cables and so on for the new lighting we decided to install, and went away until there was a ceiling in place he could cut holes in.

And Lo! There was a new ceiling. And it was good.

The plasterer came back, and in what felt like record time we had smooth walls and a ceiling with no visible lumps and bumps. 

A few days for the plaster to dry, Simon the Electrician returned to fit the new lights (with dimmer switches! How posh are we?) and then Kevin the Decorator was back, transforming the room into something which feels like home again.

We moved a chair back in there so Mr WithaY had somewhere to sit and review stuff for work.  I think it feels a bit cluttered now, to be honest.  Maybe the dog basket could go somewhere else.

The ceiling and walls above the picture rail are the same shade of pale green, and the walls below are a darker shade, which looks absolutely gorgeous.  I am very excited about getting our furniture back in there. 

We went for Farrow and Ball paint, which left me in a froth of anxiety about being That Woman, but apparently they are top quality and look superb, so I am prepared to suffer the opprobrium of being middle class as fuck.

I've been in touch with a company who renovate parquet floors, and they will (I hope) be getting back to me to let me know when they could come and restore ours to shiny, non-damaged loveliness.

The downside to all this industry, apart from the GAAAAH HOW MUCH cost of it all, is that the house is almost uninhabitable.  The kitchen is full of furniture (coffer, coffee table, drinks cabinet, multiple sofa cushions, various electronic items), as is the spare bedroom (blinds, curtains, rug, ornaments, clock), Mr WithaY's study (upended sofa, huge box of DVDs, CD cabinet) and the hallway (upended sofa.) 

There's nowhere to sit and eat a meal.  We've been either going out to eat, or pretending we're students/in a hotel and eating upstairs in the bedroom, which is not as much fun as you might think.

The dog has found it all a bit trying, I imagine.  She has taken to coming upstairs to sleep at night - usually she is not allowed upstairs - but as the house is in chaos I am allowing it for now.  The downside to that is that she tends to wander up and downstairs in the middle of the night, and if you get up to use the bathroom (women of a certain age blah blah) at 4am, she leaps up, cavorting around you while she wags joyfully, imagining that you might be about to do something fun.  Idiot.

HOWEVER.  The end is in sight.  The curtains are at the dry cleaner's, the painting is almost finished, the furniture will soon be rid of its thick caking of dust.

Once everything is moved back into the room, we are going to look at the vast WithaY art collection and decide what we want to hang on the walls.  There are several new items from JAPAN (we went, it was great, we're going back, more on this anon) which will be framed and hung as a group, as well as some of the pictures which were in there previously. 

Doing all this - the last time we decorated was in 2003, there was a date and our names written in the wall under the wallpaper** - has made me feel much more positive about making changes to the rest of the house and garden.  Sometimes you can get a bit stuck in your environment, and it feels like it's impossible to move on.  This has been like opening a window in a stuffy room, allowing fresh air in.

In the mean time, our kitchen table looks like this.

Don't judge me.

Cheers!





*As they are the best neighbours imaginable, they gave it to us as a present. 

**Prior to that it was 1975, by the previous owners I assume.

Dinked

Events of note at work so far this week:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, people.

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

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

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

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

Well.

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

"What happened to yours?" I enquired.

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

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

Oh, and Mr WithaY was fine too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fuck."  I said.

He nodded sadly.

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

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

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











*Sorry.

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

Playing Chicken

I went to my first ever village planning meeting the other week.  Well, I say planning.  It wasn't really.

It was a consultation exercise, chaired (I use the term very guardedly) by the Parish Council, to discuss the planning impact of a proposed new agricultural development a mile or two down the road.  There's a disused chicken  farm, which has been disused for at least four or five years, maybe more; the owners now want to redevelop the land to put a new all-singing, all-dancing chicken farm there.

When I say "all-singing, all-dancing" I don't think that'll be the chickens themselves.  I may be wrong, of course.

Anyway.  The plans said that there would be a large number of lorries travelling through the village (narrow roads, few pavements, already awkward to get through when there are large vehicles coming the other way) which was hotly contested by the increasingly furious village people at the meeting.  There were also concerns around the removal/disposal of "foul waste" - chicken shit, I guess - and presumably dead chickens that failed the assault course and swimwear sections of the final rounds of their training.

The meeting was loud, poorly-managed and grumpy.  Things were not improved by the arrival of the local pretend police at the start of the meeting, sauntering in casually in their stab vests.  Nice touch.  Nothing like some not-really-police-officers arriving in uniform to reassure the disgruntled attendees that things will all be lovely.

So. The upshot of all the ill-tempered arguing was that the people who own the current chicken farm are pretty much adamant that they will be developing their property, and it will be a huge battery "broiler chicken" farm before much longer.

At one point the chap representing the developer said "Well, it's all very well to protest about it, but you all like this sort of chicken!" to which there was a loud, sustained roar of "No we don't!" from the audience.  It was like the world's most middle-class pantomime ever.

I'm not vegetarian, or anything like a vegetarian, but I do buy eggs and meat that are British, free range and locally-reared, preferably from one of the independent butchers we have in town.  I am aware that I am fortunate in being able to make choices based on my personal ethical preferences, rather than price.  It was, however, very amusing to see the look of dismay on the chicken farm owner bloke's face when he realised that most of the people glaring at him were not his target market for two-for-a-fiver chickens.

In other news, I went to the market this morning.  No lemons this time, sadly, but there were bargain tomatoes.  A huge boxful for a fiver, which have been transformed into nine large bags of chopped tomatoes (stashed in the freezer) and four jars of extremely spicy chutney.  I followed a recipe which was called "Spicy Tomato Chutney", but would more accurately be called "Suicidally Hot Tomato Sauce, Eat In Very Small Doses, It Would Help If You Like Mexican Food."

They were lovely, and not one was blemished.  This is about a third of the box.

I also bought a large lump of fresh root ginger and four huge aubergines (for another fiver) which I plan to turn into (respectively) apple and ginger jelly, and a moussaka.

Maybe two moussaka.

Moussaki?

Moussakas?

The weather continues to be shit, with torrential rain and hail at regular intervals.  Today it's windy as well, just for some exciting variety.

Last week, while Mr WithaY was away, I went through a bit of a miserable episode, mostly my own fault for not going out and doing stuff.  I was busy with some sewing work - proper for-someone-else sewing - and thus ended up not leaving the house (or garden) for about three days, and by the time I realised why I was miserable, I was really miserable.  I self-medicated with chocolate and Futurama, and made a full recovery, you'll be glad to hear.

I also made a determined effort to get on with some of the boring housekeeping jobs which I have been putting off for ages.  I have a voice in my head which says "You might as well do the ironing, you're already grumpy," and I tend to listen to it.

So, with a zesty spring in my step, and my sleeves rolled up purposefully, I took the arm caps off the big sofa and handwashed them.  This was by way of a test, as they have labels saying "Dry Clean Only", but I wanted to find out if they would fall apart, bleed colour or shrink to buggery if they were immersed in water.

You'll be relieved to know that they didn't collapse into threads, lose all their colour or turn into jaunty egg cosies, so I stepped things up and put the actual sofa covers into the washing machine, with a devil-may-care attitude.

That's how I roll.  Like a 1930s housewife, with a bad-ass attitude and a Dyson.

Wrestling the covers back onto the cushions took longer than it should have, and would probably have been a prizewinning video clip on You've Been Framed, had I had the foresight to film myself doing it.

Which reminds me.  The other week, before the weather went all shitty, I was out in the back garden, pegging out some washing.  In a bizarre Norman-Wisdom-esque sequence of events, I managed to get my glasses caught on the rotary washing line as I was turning it round, half dragging me along, before flicking my specs into the currant bushes.

You couldn't make it up.

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!

Master Chef

Hello virtual mates!  Hello hello hello.  Yes, it's been a while, hasn't it? 

Every time something has happened which I have thought would make an interesting and/or amusing blog post, I've self-edited in my head until I think "Actually, it would be dull and a bit shite, so I won't do it."

Bad habit to get into.  Baaaaaad. 

So, what has been going on in my life since the last rambling set of unrelated semi-anecdotes I inflicted on you all?

1)  A wedding.  Remember I told you about the hen party?  Yeah you do.  Mr WithaY went to the related stag party the following weekend - beer, watching a rugby match, curry, beer, whisky, sleep, nausea and pale fragility for the next 48 hours - which he said was "fine." 

As an aside, whenever I ask him how something was, it was usually "fine."  Sometimes it was "ok,"  occasionally it was "a bit weird," but in the main his go-to review of all social events at which I am not present is "fine." 

Many years ago, he went to a re-enactment event in Cornwall without me.  It was one I had been really looking forward to, and to which practically all our friends were going. 

I had appendicitis, which for about two years was misdiagnosed as "a stomach bug" or "food poisoning" or even "a dairy allergy" and this was during that dark, miserable (but skinny) time.  Eventually I had to be rushed to hospital to be operated on, and was able to gloat, pointing at my stitches and telling everyone "See?  I TOLD you I was ill."

Anyhoo, this particular weekend I was vomiting and dizzy and feeling awful, so I said I wasn't going to go to Cornwall.  Mr WithaY offered to stay home and look after me, but I said no no no, you go, you've been looking forward to it, have fun, you just enjoy yourself without me.  So he did, the bugger. 

He returned home on Sunday evening, sunburnt, muddy, bruised, exhausted, and I said "Well?  How was the weekend?  Who was there?  What happened?"  And he said "Yeah, it was fun." 

I interrogated him for the best part of the evening.  Who was there with who?  Were there any relationship breakups?  What scandal and gossip?  Was anyone injured on the battlefield?  What outrages were committed in the pub?  Tell me!  TELL me! 

In the end I gave up and rang a female friend.  We had a two hour conversation where she filled me in on all the many and varied events of the weekend.   Gah.  Blokes.

So, yeah.  The wedding.  It was lovely.  But, lordy, I have never been to a wedding where so many people cried.  It was like some airborne chemical had been sprayed into the room to make us all weep like children whose hamster just died.  The bride walked in looking stunning, in floods of tears, which set all the women off.  The groom started choking up as he said his vows, and ended up weeping, which set all the blokes off, which then set all the women off again.  There was one small child there who took exception to the "noise" in the room, and she started weeping loudly, until her poor mother took her out, and spent the entire service weeping on her own in the bar as she was missing the ceremony.

Honestly.  It was a soap opera wedding in emotional terms.  The sun shone for the photographs, everyone looked lovely, including the specially-bathed mad spaniels, and the food was incredible.  They'd arranged a Blues Brothers tribute band for the evening, who were excellent, and I think pretty much everyone there had a dance or two. 

We were staying the night at a pub/hotel locally, along with a dozen or so of the wedding guests, so it ended up being a convivial team breakfast the following morning, then a huge mob went to the newlyweds house and drank tea, then huzzah, off to the pub for lunch.  Mr WithaY and I finally got home at about 4pm.

Marvellous.

2)  I've been making stuff. A neighbour asked me to make her some fabric-y bits and pieces.  We bartered.  She gave me a pedicure and some gorgeous nail polish (she's a beautician, not a foot fetishist,) and in return I did her the cushion covers and a noticeboard. 

I like barter. 

The photos don't do justice to the colour of the fabric she wanted me to use, or to the perfectly-matched ribbon and fabric I found for the criss-cross straps and fabric-covered buttons.  That I made.  Yes I did.

Today I have been finishing off the last cushion cover, and will take a picture of that too, just for completeness.  I bet you can't wait.

3)  Future business plans for the WithaY household are taking shape.  I won't go into detail now, for fear of jinxing things, but I am feeling positive about the future.  Plus we paid off half our mortgage this week with some of our redundancy money.  Yay.  Watch and learn, Greece.  And Italy. 

4)  We had friends round for Sunday lunch last week, and I decided to have a go at making a sticky toffee pudding.  I've never made one before, and was inspired by the delicious one I was given for my pudding at the wedding reception. 

I followed the recipe to the letter - to the LETTER - and the end result was perfect.  Rich, sticky, dark, sweet and fruity* with a light yet dense texture.  The sticky topping was perfect too, the cream, butter and sugar sauce formed a dark toffee-coloured emulsion, thick and gooey and smelling of caramel and butterscotch. I poured a little onto the pudding as it baked and it formed a sticky, unctuous topping, as specified in the recipe.  Which I followed TO THE LETTER. 

The main course was roast pork, with a selection of vegetables, stuffing balls** and roast potatoes, served with delicious meaty gravy.  Mr WithaY made the gravy, and it was perfect.  Thick, rich, dark, savoury little flecks of pork meat floating in it from the roasting dish, just enough fat to make it cling to the food, not so much that it was greasy. 

We ate our pork and vegetables, enjoying the delicious gravy.  We enjoyed the delicious gravy so much that the gravy jug was almost empty.

I asked Mr WithaY to refill it from the pan on the stove top, as he was nearest to it.  He jumped up with alacrity and returned in a moment, the jug practically brimming.  Mmmm delicious gravy. 

One of our friends poured a generous helping of gravy onto her greens.  I picked up the jug and went to do the same.  I sniffed at it, a sudden cold thrill of suspicion running through me.

It smelled like butterscotch.

Mr WithaY had refilled the jug from the wrong saucepan.

I was mortified. 

Our friends declared that greens with pork and butterscotch sauce was wonderful, so, possibly influenced by the wine we had been swilling down, I tried it.  And you know what?  It was bloody lovely. 

For pudding we had sticky toffee pudding with pork and butterscotch sauce, and that was bloody lovely too.

Last night, all on my own, I made up some more cream, butter and brown sugar sauce and had it with leftover sticky toffee pudding.  It wasn't the same. 








*much like me, except for the rich part. 

**fnar

Basket case

It's amazing what can cause stress, isn't it? For me, it used to be the whole getting up for work and travelling halfway across the country for work thing.  Not now.

Now it's all about bookcases.

Bookcases.

Thousands* of them.

In my house.

It's all part of the final push to get Father in Law WithaY's house sold - the contracts are exchanged this Friday - so we have been clearing the last things out.  Our friend with a van** came over last night and he and Mr WithaY went back and forth to Dorset a couple of times to bring everything back.  The last time we were down there, I thought we'd pretty much cleared everything out, but it seems I was wrong.  Oh, how very wrong.

It took two trips, one with a van AND a LandRover, the other with just the van, and now my house looks like Steptoe and Son live here.

In the style of Hello Magazine, allow me to show you around my gracious home.

As you enter the house, you are met by an original arrangement of furniture in the hallway.

Bookcases.  Here, let us walk around them and admire them more fully.

They certainly add to the overall cosy feel of the place, I think.

Step into the sitting room and admire our library.  In a trailblazing and somewhat daring move, we aren't using the bookcases to store the books.  No, we prefer to use boxes.  On the floor.

Why yes, that IS a book about King Tutankhamun on the top there.  Every home should have one.  In fact, I will sell you this one if you want it.  Hell, you can have it for free.

Back into the hall, squeeze past the bookcases and step into the kitchen.  I'd offer you a seat at the dining table, but as you see, we are currently hosting a modern art installation. It's called Too Much Bleach and Four Tea Services.  I'm not certain what the artist is trying to say with it.

Can you see what is lurking on the bottom left corner of the table?  It's a rather teasing shot there, but I won't keep you in suspense longer than I have to.

It's a Wurzels album!  On vinyl!  In Mono! 
And it has sleeve notes.  Forgive the terrible photograph, my hands were shaking.

I can't decide whether to bury it at dead of night under a rowan tree, put it on eBay or have it framed forever.

Turning away from the art installation, we see the eclectic mix of kitchenware across every work surface.

Handy.

And of course, big jugs are always nice to look at***.

Back into the hallway - another glimpse of those bookcases - and let's peek into Mr WithaY's study.  Mmmm.  The perfect relaxing little corner to sit and study, or listen to music****.

I have spent much of today hiding upstairs, ineffectually tidying up my own study, which I am turning into a sewing room.  So far all I have managed to do is shove my sewing table into the corner, with a nasty CRACK as one of the legs got stuck on the carpet (the table's, not mine) and slide my new computer desk into place. 

I keep telling myself it's all temporary.  This too will pass.  And all that stuff.

Until then, I will be in here, where there aren't dozens of bookcases, bizarre records and boxes of frankly mental belongings in every corner.  Well, there are, but at least they are all mine, and I know why they're there. 

*Not thousands.  But more than I am comfortable with.

**Hello Ed!

***Apologies, big boob porn seekers

****Or play Portal 2 or Call of Duty. 

Craft FAIL

Remember I was banging on about how unsuccessful that tie-dye experiment was?  And how ghastly the bedding looked after I'd finished dicking about with it?

I wasn't kidding.

You can just about make out the unpleasant bruise-like quality of the colour mix.  Please note the enhancing effect of the sickly yellow circles.

Mmm.  Sweet dreams.  Do the yellow circles look like unfortunate stains to you?  They do to me. 

Is that a patch of paler green in the top right hand corner?  Why yes, I believe it is.  What a delicious colour contrast.

Perhaps the pillowcases will look a bit better.

Or perhaps they won't.

The whole lot was discreetly wrapped in a bag and placed in the village clothing and fabric recycling bin while nobody was about. 

I hope that someone, somewhere gets some use from them, although frankly I can imagine frozen Third World rough-sleeping beggars turning up their noses at the whole sorry mess.

Mellow yellow

Yesterday was astonishing.  I sat and watched the BBC news reports from Japan with horror, which got deeper and deeper as time went on.  Waking up today to news of nuclear reactors exploding just seems unreal somehow. 

The footage of that enormous whirlpool way out at sea, with the fishing boat fighting to get out of it was like something out of a disaster movie. 

To try and raise my spirits, I thought I'd try to do something a bit creative today, what with my developing life plan to become a creative dynamo and all. 

The other day as I was performing some unrelenting domestic drudgery, I found a set of bedlinen that looked a bit drab. 

Plain white, a duvet cover and four matching pillowcases, all trimmed with sort of broiderie anglais stuff around the edges.  Pretty in an uninspiring kind of way.  Also, it was looking a bit tired somehow.  Clean, and everything, but just not living the bedlinen dream any more.

Mr WithaY and I had already decided to go to Salisbury this morning, so I thought I'd pick up some fabric dye and attempt to tie-dye it.  The bedlinen, not Salisbury. 

What was I thinking?

We packed away the traditional brunch of Eggs Benedict in Patisserie Valerie, performed a rapid synchronised scoot round several shops to pick up various essentials, and then hey ho to the fabric shop.  Mr WithaY needed to buy some orange fabric to make armbands.

Don't ask.  I promise to take photos when all can be revealed. 

While he was speculatively examining every roll of fabric in the shop, I decided to get some wadding, fabric and ribbon to make a posh notice board out of a scabby old cork board.  That's my plan for tomorrow. If it works I will take gloating photos.

I also decided to get some fabric dye for my tie-dye experiment.  How hard can it be?  Hippies manage it, after all. 

I bought a box of yellow, and a box of vibrant blue. My plan, such as it was, was to tie up the bedding, dye it yellow, undo the ties, re-tie it all slightly differently, dye it blue, and thus end up with a gorgeous mixture of white, yellow, blue and ahahahahahaaaaa GREEN in a random yet stylish pattern all over it. 

The first part went ok.  I spent bloody ages tying multiple bits of string artfully around the pillowcases and the duvet cover, then bunged them in the washing machine with the yellow dye and half a kilo of salt.  I even had to make a special trip over to the garage to buy extra salt.  That's how seriously I was taking this.

Mr WithaY was busily making armbands on the kitchen table, so we both had a cup of tea and watched the bright, bright yellow water in the washing machine. 

The washing machine finished, beeping at me bossily.  I took out the gorgeous yellow bedding.  I untied the string, waiting to see the lovely patterns, and there was nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Fuck all.  The entirety of the fabric was bright yellow.  Mr WithaY squinted helpfully, trying to be encouraging.

"I think there's a sort of paler bit there in the corner." 
"Really?  Where?"

"Right in the bottom corner...oh.  Now you've moved it I can't see it any more.  Is that a circle of white in the middle there, though?"

"Might be...maybe...."

I sighed sadly and put the beautiful blue dye and yet more salt in the washing machine, then spent at least seventeen hours (maybe longer) unpicking the wet string and re-tying it into careful patterns.   I was hoping that where there were some paler white-ish bits, the dye would be blue, and where it was nice and yellow, there would be green, and where the string was, would stay yellow. 

I remember having to spend ages in art at school dicking about with colour wheels and so on.  Yellow and blue make green.  Definitely.

I wasn't very good at art, mind.

I am now the proud owner of a set of khaki bedding, spotted with distressing yellow circles, much like little rings of sickly toadstools here and there on the forest floor.

Fuck it.

Smashing

Today was the day that disaster struck.

Yes, disaster.

You heard me.

Settle down, dear readers.  Gather your loved ones close and get comfy.  This is a tale of HORROR.  Of WOE.  And of astonishing, catastrophic breakages. 

I was planning to post up some photos of our new kitchen curtains today.  I know how to live, eh?   I decided a few weeks ago that the thin, feeble, pale, unlined curtains that graced our kitchen and dining room were too depressing and crap at insulation, and that They Had To Go.  I ordered some fabric samples from Next Online and showed them to Mr Withay.  He nodded at all of them, and said more or less the same thing to each one:

"That one's fine."

This, I believe, roughly translates as: "For the LOVE OF GOD stop showing me curtain fabric, woman.  I don't care.  Just pick one, and let me be.  Jeez."

I may be mistranslating slightly, but I think that's the gist of it.

We* made our final fabric selection, I measured the windows carefully and sent in the order, and within 7 days our new curtains had arrived.  All lined with lovely thick blackout insulation, and much, much warmer.  Mmmmm cosy.

We still need to get some more curtain rings as we miscalculated the quantity, the new curtains being much heavier than the old ones, but they are up (mostly) and look lovely.  You can't see the saggy end due to my astounding photography.  I haz skillz. 

Oh, and to prove I am a complete domestic goddess, I also ordered some matching cushion covers.  Yeah.  That's how I fucking roll, man.

So, enjoy the beauty of my (apparently) retro curtains while you may.

The disaster happened today.

I was in the kitchen as it was just getting dark, closing the curtains - aren't they lovely? - when I heard a strange noise, like chinaware clinking.  I looked around dopily, then the big cupboard door slowly opened of its own accord. 

Before I had time to do more than go "Whut??" a dish slid gracefully out onto the floor.  It smashed.

I went "WHUT??" again, and then started screaming in horror as an entire shelf full of china, cast iron and marble slid onto the floor in a sort of avalanche of kitchenware, everything breakable smashing into a million billion pieces.

I think I screamed for about 5 minutes solid as the slow, unstoppable slide continued.  The noise was incredible, and it just kept on going.  Then I stood there looking at the heap of smashed stuff on my floor.  Then I went a fetched a broom.  Then I went to find a cardboard box.  Then I fetched the dustpan.

And then I started crying.

And it was at that moment that Mr WithaY came home from work, to find his lovely wife weeping uncontrollably in the kitchen as she shovelled up the pulverized remains into a cardboard box. 

Look away now if you are of a nervous disposition. 

You may remember that blue plate from previous blog postings when I was bragging about my baking.  No more, my friends.  No more.

Look, I have codified it for ease of reference.  I can't help it, I'm a Civil Servant.  There's a ton of other stuff in there too but I couldn't fit all the text on the picture.   Plus I got bored with the labelling thing. 

Our 6 pint cast-iron Le Creuset casserole dish fell out, and amazingly didn't smash the floor tiles.  There are several large unslightly chunks missing from the enamel on the dish, though, and one handle is busted.  Good job it didn't land on my foot, I suppose.

So, all a bit shite really.

Turns out that the shelf was held in place by 4 little metal and rubber plug thingies, and one of them had weasled its way out, dropping the front of the shelf and causing the Avalanche Of Unnecessarily Destructive Force.

Fucker. 

Mr WithaY is going to hammer some batten up over Christmas.  That'll learn it.

I'm still in shock and will need to have medicinal brandy forced between my lips from time to time until I recover.

Otherwise, things are good.  Lots of snow on the ground, and looking forward to Christmas.  Yay. 





*Well, he didn't object to the one I picked.

Jam jam jam

The theme of this week in the WithaY household (other than work, sleep, work, sleep, deal with domestic stuff, sleep, work) has been jam.

Plum jam, to be specific.  We don't have a plum tree in the garden, although there are plans afoot to do some clever planting and espaliering (sp?) in the future.  However, Father-in-law WithaY has a tree in his garden, so when we called round to the house at the weekend on the way home, we decided to pick a few plums.

I think we ended up with about 40 pounds of fruit.  So, we ate some, we put some in a bowl to take to Father-in-law WithaY at the nursing home, and we looked at the remaining 38.5 pounds of plums.  What to do, what to do?

Jam.

Obviously.

We got everything ready...sugar, plums, water, recipe book, jamjars....perfect.

Please note, that little bowl of plums is the one we took to Father-in-law WithaY, not the one we used for the jam. 

We cut the plums in half, took the stones out and boiled the bejeezus out of them for a bit. 

Then we added the sugar and boiled them a bit more.  There was a degree of confusion about the correct amount of sugar.  We had to multiply the recipe by 3.  Or was it 4?  Anyway, there was a rapid and irreversible escalation of confusion which ended with me being sent out of the kitchen in disgrace to think about what I'd done. 

Mr WithaY continued with the jam making alone. 

Anyhoo, some time later, we had jam.

Lots and lots and lots of jam.  If I wasn't still on my weight loss regime (stone and a half so far, slow and steady, thanks for asking) I'd be scarfing down hot buttered toast with home-made plum jam like a machine.  A MACHINE.

We still have quite a lot of plums left.  Suggestions on a postcard.

Plumb crazy

We've had the plumber round. 

The WithaY bathroom is was a thing of beauty.  Spacious, well-lit, an excellent shower, a large, deep bathtub.  We even have a view of the woods, and the meadow, and the river.  Lovely. 

It's worked well for about 6 years or so, give or take the odd slight leak.  Right up until earlier this year, in fact, when the door to the shower cubicle started to stick as it was slid shut.  Of course, you have to close it all the way or when you turn the shower on, water will piss all over the floor and eventually bring down the kitchen ceiling in a rain of dirty water, limestone floortiles, plasterboard and dodgy crud crammed between the joists.  So, something to be rectified.

Before we went on holiday I rang the plumber to see if he could come over and take a look. He's very good, our plumber.  Thorough.  Yes, that's the word. 

One way and another we didn't manage to find a mutually-convenient date for the new shower cubicle to be fitted until after we came home.  Oh, and while he was here, I thought I'd get the bath taps repaired, as one of them has been a bit dodgy for ages.  Kill two birds with one stone, that kind of thing.

The plumber came.  He looked at the shower and told me it was a standard size, but an unusual shape.  He looked at the bath taps and told me that they were an unusual size and an unusual shape.  He looked at the tiles on the walls and told me they were an unusual shape.

I have a freakily unusual bathroom, it seems.

The nice, thorough, plumber told me that he could order in all the parts (taps, shower cubicle, fittings etc) and get the job done over a couple of days.  As I am still off work* as I still can't drive**, this week seemed the ideal opportunity. 

It all started in earnest yesterday.  At 0800.  Eight AM.  In the morning.  I was already up and showered and hair-washed as I guessed that the shower would probably be out of action overnight, and I greeted him with a cup of tea and a cheery smile.  He scampered upstairs, strewing dustsheets in his wake and got right down to business. 

There was a good deal of crashing.

After a while I stuck my head round the door, and almost screamed in horror.  My beautifully-tiled shower had several tiles missing from one corner.  Not part of the original plan.  The plumber said "Don't look at it!" and ushered me out.  I asked why the tiles were missing.  He said that they'd come off the wall when he took the shower cubicle off, because they hadn't been stuck on properly. 

Now, we had already had long complicated discussions about the tiles.  I love those tiles.  They are one of the things I really like about the bathroom.  We don't have any spare ones, and I had resigned myself to the fact that the tiles around the bath would have to be replaced, probably with something different.  The original tiles were too hard to track down, what with their freaky shape*** and all.

So the fact that four of them had been removed from one corner of the shower was a bit of a fucking problem, really. 

I went and made a cup of tea, genuinely upset by this turn of events.  Yes, I know, I'm a contender for one of Belgian Waffle's First World Problems posts. 

The plumber said he would carefully chisel off the tiles around the bath and we'd be able to use some of those for the shower.  He was careful, but I think using a chisel is not always the best idea on a plasterboard wall.

Even if it's got tiles on it.

Additional ventilation?  Extra storage for bath necessities? Somewhere to post a letter from the bank you don't want to read?  Suggestions appreciated.

Things got really interesting after that.  As he removed the bath taps, artfully positioned and a work of glorious modern gleaming chrome, he announced that they had originally been plumbed right into the wall, then cemented over.  He was going to have to change that, in case we ever had a problem.

So.

We can't use the shower.  We can't use the bath.  I may have to wash my hair in the toilet. 

On the bright side, he went to a specialist tile shop, showed them one of the now-useless tiles from the shower and they told him they could order some in, even though they are a freaky shape, a non-standard size and have been discontinued.  We had high hopes for this afternoon, but nothing had arrived by 6pm.  Fingers crossed for tomorrow, eh?

If anyone wants me, I shall be in the garden, washing my feet in the birdbath.

*Starting back on Monday in London, working at home tomorrow and Friday, hurrah!

**The ankle.  Remember? Yeah you do.  Possibly fractured, possibly not, still swollen and revolting to look at., thanks for asking.

***Rectangular.  I know!  Crazy!