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.

Well preserved

There's been a ridiculous influx of lemons into the WithaY house.  I take full responsibility.  It was all my own doing, and I accept that.  I went to the farmers market the other week, where they have varied and marvellous bargains.

I bought a giant box of red peppers at Christmas, which was fantastic.  I could have also bought an enormous jar of pickled eggs, a whole cartwheel sized Brie, the fixtures and fittings of a defunct pub restaurant, and a herd of calves.

It's an excellent market.

But honestly, a whole box of lemons for a fiver?  Who could say no to that sort of bargain?  And they were really nice big juicy ones* too.

Unfortunately, when smitten with Bargain Blindness, I fail to maintain my usual sense of proportion and perspective, and even some common sense.  So, I handed over my fiver, carried my box o' lemons to the car and drove home in high spirits, completely not thinking about what I was actually going to do with them all.

I counted them when I got home.  There were 50 lemons in the box.  Some of them were wrapped in paper, like little surprises.

"Ooh, what can this be?  It's another lemon!  Well, I wasn't expecting that."

This shook me, rather, and I got out the recipe books to see what recipes I have for 50 lemons.  Turns out that most recipes only need "the zest and juice of one (or maybe two) lemons."  Nowhere is there a recipe calling for "35 lemons, washed and zested," unfortunately.

Several hours of slicing, chopping, squeezing and weighing yielded me:

• A dozen bags of lemon wedges and slices which are in the freezer;  
• A lemon drizzle cake;
• A large jar of lemon curd;
• A delicious lemon souffle pudding which I would recommend to anyone

But most of all, MARMALADE.

A shedload.  Here's the makings for the second batch I did, using (I think) 10 lemons a time.  It took bloody ages.

I got bored by the last few jars and added dried chilli flakes to them.  It will be interesting to see what that tastes like. It sounds like it should be nice.  If you were in a posh restaurant and the menu included something called "hand cut lemon chilli marmalade" you'd think "ooh, that sounds interesting."

Well, I would.

 As you may see from that picture, I was running low on jars, and had to scour the cupboard for old Chinese food containers to put cooked marmalade in.    It was a useful learning experience though.  For example:  it seems that the very-similar-to-Chinese-food containers that deli olives come in do not stand up well to being filled with a boiling sugar product, and buckle dramatically after a very short time.

Yeah, that was a fun five minutes.

Anyhoo, the lemons are all used up with no waste, hurrah for me and my frugal ways, and I have a box full of jars of marmalade.  And, though I say so myself, it's delicious.  We've been having it for breakfast this week, on home-made** bread.  Om nom nom.

Also this week, I have been making a Medieval jacket for Mr WithaY.  He was supposed to be taking part in a re-enactment event this weekend but due to circumstances beyond his control, the plan fell through this morning.  However, the jacket was made on a bit of a deadline, as we assumed he would need it today.

I drafted the pattern, cut it out, and got most of the machine sewing done on Wednesday,  then hand finished it yesterday.  I think it took me about 5 hours to do the drafting, fitting, cutting, machining and pressing, then another 5 or 6 for all the hand sewing.  There are a lot of laceholes which had to be hand stitched, and you can't do it fast.

Well, I can't anyway.

So.  Here's the pattern I made, finally fitted properly, with the outer fabric cut out.  It's made of a madder (reddish) wool, lined with a slightly darker red linen.

This is the front view, laces have since been added to the eyelets all down the front edges.  20 of them,  hand sewn.  Did I mention that already?  My fingers are still bloody sore.

This is the back view, please note the V-shaped collar insert which was an absolute bastard to get right.

It didn't help that I haven't made Medieval clothing before, so the shape of it seemed all wrong.  I spent years making Seventeenth Century re-enactment kit, so I have a good feel for how it should look when it's complete, but this was all new.

I kept thinking "It's too wide...the sleeves are too full...that collar is all wrong" until Mr WithaY put it on.  Then he looked like an extra from Cadfael, and I was relieved.

In other news: I went to the shopping village at Street, Somerset this week.  I'd never been there before and a friend*** suggested we take a look, so we had a Big Day Out shopping.

Mmmmm shopping.  I'd like to point out that not all of those bags are mine.

My advanced age and general lack of cool can be summed up by the fact that I bought myself (among other things) two new aprons, a butter dish and some soap, and was utterly delighted with the day.

The shopping village is on the site of the Clark's shoe factory, and there are some interesting bits and pieces relating to the history there.

The old factory chimney is impressive, and there are some fab London Plane trees in one of the courtyards.

It's not somewhere I'd visit regularly, but once or twice a year I think is fine.  You can always stockpile aprons, after all.

Oh - almost forgot - I made some peanut butter fudge with my bastard home-made peanut butter.  I found a Sophie Dahl recipe online and tried it.  I ate one piece of fudge when it had cooled down and thought I was about to die, my heart was racing so hard.  It's all  boxed up in the freezer now.  I'm too scared to eat it.

*Apologies, smut seekers
**In a bread machine we were given.  It's not Little House on the Prairie.
***Hello Jo!

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!

Sacked

It's been a busy day here.  In preparation for the Grand Cake Etcetera Sale tomorrow I have been baking.  I made a shitload of clementine and chocolate cupcakes (yes, that is the correct unit of measurement, ask a baker) and a coffee and walnut sandwich sponge which looks rather good.

I have also been finishing off the bits and pieces I will be offering for sale to a discerning public.

Look:

They are (pics from top to bottom)
1) Small, medium and large hearts filled with dried rose petals that I harvested from the garden and dried last summer.
2) Cushions. 2 matching, one individual.
3) Bunting.  Bloody yards of it.
4) More fabric hearts, these ones stuffed with, well, stuffing.

I have also made some pretty mini memo boards, along the lines of the ones I made earlier, but much smaller, designed to stand on a mantelpiece or shelf.

Oh, and some bookmarks, which I really like.

In other news, I looked out of the window into the back garden this afternoon and this is the sight that greeted me:

Our apple tree, festooned in hessian sacks.

I looked at it for a while, my jaw sagging open unappealing, then went to find Mr WithaY.

The scene:  A domestic garage, lit by bright afternoon sunshine.

Me:  Just.....why?

Mr WithaY: (without even looking up from his manly garage-sorting task) To dry them out.

Fin.

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.

Variety meats

Mr WithaY and I were at the butchers yesterday.  We are fortunate to have two good local butchers in town, and I try to buy my meat from them as often as possible.  They do these great deals where you can buy a sack o' meat for about 12 quid, and every time I've done it, the meat's been top quality and made some great meals.

As the butcher was wrapping up the purchases, we got chatting.

Butcher:  There's your mince.

Me:  Oh lovely, thank you.

Butcher:  I'll wrap all these other meats up individually so you can see what's what when you get home.

Me:  Thanks...otherwise it could be interesting when dinner time arrives.

Mr WithaY:  Ah yes, mystery meat casserole, my favourite.

Butcher:  You have to be careful.  We sell pet mince (Note: Pet mince is made of minced meat, but also minced offal like lungs, hearts, livers etcetera that customers are less inclined to buy nowadays.) here, and a chap came in one day and told us that his wife had cooked it and he'd eaten it by accident.  He said it was tasty, but chewy.

I was planning a review of the local paper as well, but this week it's been all about the recent loss of life overseas, so I thought I wouldn't.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17399064

Cheep and nasty

Activities in my life since my last post can be summarised thus:

Sewing, fitfully and without enthusiasm, with a growing sense of panic about deadlines.  Self-imposed deadlines, mind, not anything that I have been ordered to make.  There's a cake sale and sort-of craft sale in a couple of weeks in the village, and in a fit of enthusiasm I agreed to have a stall there.  So of course, I need some stuff to sell.  It's very strange making things that other people will  look at and then decide if they want them enough to give me money in exchange. Previously when I have made things for people it has either been as a gift, when they respond politely, or on commission, when I know that what I am making is what they want.

Knitting, whilst watching TV and complaining about the programme I happen to be watching.  I'm about halfway through Mrs Jones' scarf, and I am pleased with how it looks so far.  I've never tried making anything that involved short rows before, and I shall definitely be using them again.  Perhaps for a charming hat.

Watching TV, usually criticising whatever is on loudly, whilst looking stuff up on IMDB to validate my assertions.  Unless it's MasterChef, in which case I just shout at Gregg Wallace and his odd shiny head.   Oh, and make monstrous "gnnaaaaaaaaarghkkkk!" noises whenever he opens his cavernous maw to devour a huge forkful of whatever the sweating terrified contestants have produced.

Cleaning the house.  The place looks like some sort of bizarre show-home, one occupied by wild animals and someone with a baking fetish.  And Davy Crockett. And a Medieval robber baron.  And a Victorian seamstress who likes cushions.

Grocery shopping.  The high spot of that particular achievement was getting a discount on diesel because I spent more than £60.  Which meant when I filled my car up, I saved almost £7.  It all adds up.  I did go to the Frome Farmers Market yesterday, though.  I bought mild goat's cheese from a tousled and attractive young man, and a horseshoe-shaped load of olive bread which is delicious

Dicking about on the Internet.  Obviously.  I've been trying to get my head round Twitter again, giving it a rather longer period to win me over than I did last time. I think I gave it about 48 hours last time, and then gave up on it, deciding it was a sack of arse.  Oh, and playing World of Warcraft with a friend in America, which has been terrific fun. Yes, I know.  I can't get my head round Skyrim, I find the look of the game rather depressing, and that limits my desire to play it.

So yes, I've been reacquainting myself with Twitter.  It's a process of trial and error.  It's been great for finding some interesting new blogs to read but I get very bored with my feed when it's full of the same two or three people saying much the same thing over and over again.  There are a few very funny people out there, and I am enjoying their input, but I'm afraid anyone who just constantly pushes their website, or re-tweets stuff I'm not interested in gets removed from my feed.

One gem I found, and which has been making me cry with laughter, is the Star Trek - The Next Generation Series 8 feed - @TNG_S8 if you're inclined to take a look.   It runs as-yet unfilmed plots for the 8th series of TNG, and whoever is writing it is inspired.

Examples:

A transporter error quickly fills the ship with hundreds of excited dogs. Worf calls them "fools" and "disgusting". 


A world with a terminal plague tries to attract the Borg as a cure. Geordi's visor falls off into the toilet for the millionth time.


Alien minstrels trap Riker in a 90's dreamscape, only Picard can swashbuckle him free. Data and Geordie tie the hula hoop competition again.


If you're not a Star Trek nerd, I daresay you will merely sigh and move on, but if you are (like me) you will love it. Take a look.  

Cooking.  Actually, the last entry on the list of non-achievement reminds me that we had some friends over for dinner last weekend. More or less on a whim, which is something that I like very much, and I spent much of Saturday making a variety of Indian dishes.  Nom nom nom.  I even made coriander flatbread - from scratch - which worked reasonably well.  I made (brace yourselves):

• Lamb and aubergine curry, with a home-made spice mix, which was fab, though I say so myself
• Tandoori chicken, basically chicken pieces marinaded in yoghurt and spices, then baked till tender
• A red lentil daal, with loads of ginger and black pepper.  It tasted lovely but looked like workhouse gruel.
• Sag aloo, with potato, spinach and spices, very nice
• Plus the afore-mentioned flatbread and rice, and some little samosas which I bought from the supermarket and which we had as an appetiser.

My excellent mate* brought a pudding.  I love living in a village.

There were a couple of pieces of sad news, unfortunately.  One of them involves our mates with the mad spaniels.  They had to have one of them taken to the vet for the last time as she was - in addition to being a venerable old spaniel lady - quite poorly.  I remember when she was a teeny tiny puppy, I spent an evening in the pub with her flopped bonelessly over my shoulder like a rag doll, completely comfortable, sleeping.  She was a sweet-natured character and will be missed.  On the plus side, she probably had about the best life a dog could ever wish for, and it was a long one too.   And she got to be a bridesmaid a few months ago.

*Hello Jo!

Knee deep

Is it March already?  Blimey.  I always feel a bit shortchanged by February somehow.  But then, as if by magic, overnight it turns into March, and Spring is here, and things seem so much better after all.

Mr WithaY went for a long walk yesterday afternoon around the lakes between here and Salisbury - he has to plan, undertake and document three different long walks with reams of wildlife data for three different terrains as homework for his bushcraft course - and while he was out he saw three kingfishers.  One on its own and a pair flying together.  I've seen kingfishers once or twice on the river through the village, but never more than one at a time.  I love them, they are incredibly colourful and vibrant, like humming birds.

I didn't go with him on his walk because I have been limping around with a massively damaged knee this week.  It was sore - well, they both were - after our sterling decorating efforts on Monday. I'm too old and creaky to spend long periods of time kneeling on the floor, it seems,  but by the time I woke up on Tuesday morning it was a bit sore.  And, alarmingly, my foot and lower leg were feeling weird too. More stiff than painful, really, but overnight it got worse.  

I woke up in the middle of Tuesday night aware that my right knee was really hurting, and moving it made it worse.  Fuck. I limped into the bathroom and found some painkillers which allowed me to go back to sleep, albeit grumpily.

Clearly all the kneeling had caused something to swell up inside the knee joint which had impacted on the nerves or tendons or whatever the hell was twinging all the way to my big toe every time I moved my foot.  I spent much of Wednesday sitting on the sofa whining for ibuprofen and tea, doing bits of hand-sewing and knitting, in between getting up and walking around and swearing about my much my leg was hurting.

Fortunately by Thursday things seemed to have begun to resolve themselves, at least in part, as my knee was still making horrific graunching cracking noises when I moved it, but my foot and lower leg were back to normal.

Today, you'll be thrilled to know, I am sporting a sexy neoprene knee brace which Mr WithaY found in the back of a cupboard, and am not swearing quite so much.  We will see how things go.

I hate being old and crap.

Paint it ...cream

Today, I ache.  My arms, my tummy, my back, and most especially, my knees.

Mr WithaY and I spent yesterday decorating at my lovely Mum's house.  We painted the bedroom - a small-ish room, to be fair - in a day.  Ceiling, walls, woodwork.  We work fast when we get going.  Plus it was really nice emulsion and satinwood paint which went on easy and dried fast.  And, though I say so myself, it looked really smart when we'd finished.  And, the most important thing, my lovely Mum was pleased.

On the way home, me driving, Mr WithaY in the passenger seat, we were discussing how much lighter the evenings are now.

Me:  Wow, it's half past five and not dark.  Excellent.

Mr WithaY:  And the mornings are lighter, which is great.

Me:  I woke up really early and although the sun wasn't up, it was light.  I guess it stays light for a bit after the sun sets too?

Mr WithaY:  Yes, that's why you're legally allowed to shoot for an hour after sunset and before sunrise, as it's still light.

Me:  So this would be "dusk" about now?

Mr WithaY:  Yep, the sun has gone down but it's not dark.

Me:  And there's the morning version of dusk as well.

Mr WithaY: (After a short, incredulous pause).  Yes. You mean "dawn."

We had stopped at some traffic lights, which was just as well, because we both laughed until we cried.

Easily amused, we are.

What else is new?  Well, in big procurement news, I have bought a staple gun.  I make these pretty padded memo boards, and they require quite a lot of stapling to keep everything in place.  Previously, I have borrowed Mr WithaY's heavy duty staple gun, but I thought I should get one of my own, dedicated for girlie craft stuff rather than stapling animal skins to trees or whatever it is he does all day.

I picked one up in Homebase - almost £25, thank you very much - a few months ago, and it sat on my shelf, waiting to be useful.  It has a handy little plastic tool case, so I felt like a real professional when I unpacked it for the first time at the weekend.

Readers, it was SHITE.

Really.  Almost everything about it was awful.  The staples have to be dropped down a tube to load it, and then a separate spring-loaded stick thingy gets pushed down the hole to hold them in place.  Unless you get the angle of pitch EXACTLY right, the staples break apart and jam the stapler.  I assumed I was being too oafish and heavy-handed, and persevered until I had a cartridge of staples inserted properly.  I tried it out on a thick wad of newspaper.  There was a satisfying THUNK noise.

When I looked at the newspaper, though, the staple was only partially embedded, with a clear air gap between the cross piece and the paper.  I dicked about with the adjustment wheel thingy that alters the force of the staple, and tried several more times.  No discernible difference.  Still a big air gap.

Isn't it interesting that there are so many technicalities to stapling?  No?

Anyway.  I decided to carry on, as I had already started 4 memo boards.  I continued with the lame-ass half-stapling for a while, until I had finished the first stage of the memo board making process, and then I went and found a small hammer from Mr WithaY's study.  I like creative projects which require hammers.

I went round all of the work I'd already done and hammered all these stupid not-even-making-an-effort staples so that they were properly embedded, and then gave up in disgust.

After that, I went on Amazon and ordered a new stapler, advertised as being suitable for DIYand upholstery.  It arrived this morning, I have high hopes.

In the meanwhile, the Homebase stapler will be taken to a charity shop and left there to make some other poor sod's DIY/crafting a misery.  And I won't bother buying any of Homebase's own brand tools or equipment again.

Gah.

Other news:  Progress on the big long-term business plan is being made.  I might be able to actually tell people about it on here without feeling like I am jinxing it.

In related news, I took (and passed) an online food hygiene training course last week.  I now know not to lick raw chicken blood up off the floor.

Moods, variableness of

This week I have been swerving between a pleasant relaxed "life is good, I love having the time to make marmalade and bake bread and have a cup of tea and a chat with my friends in the middle of a weekday afternoon" state of mind, and blind unreasoning panic which focusses entirely on finance:  "Gaaaaaah, I haven't got a job...there's no money coming in....we'll be out on the street by the summer, starving in the gutter...we're DOOOOOOOMED."

Yes, a strange and heady mixture of emotions.

I worked out why this has started happening again.  When I first stopped working, waaaay back in late May last year - yes, I have been Not Working for almost a twelvemonth now- I had a few weeks where it just felt like I was on leave.  Then a month or so of gloating about having the summer off work, helped by the fact that the weather was rather nice, and then a few weeks of panic.  It was probably around that panic-time that Mr WithaY decided that he too was going to give up his job, and follow his long-time ambition to become a bushcraft specialist.

So.  Two of us went from being long-term career Civil Servants in comparatively senior (and fairly well-paid) posts, to being two non-working middle-aged people intending to start up their own new businesses.

Mr WithaY is doing well.  He's now halfway through a year-long training course, at the end of which he will be a fully-qualified instructor, and has got himself onto a local apprenticeship scheme which will give him loads of useful and relevant experience.  Unfortunately, he is not getting paid for any of this.  Yet.

On the plus side, he is happier than he has been for a very long time, and is discovering he has a real skill in wood carving, making some fabulous pieces which I hope he will be able to sell in due course.

I'm feeling less positive - this week, at least - as my long-term business plan is grinding forward slowly and painfully.

I have tried to improve my mood by doing everything I can to facilitate progress:

• I took (and passed, yay me) an online food hygiene training course.  

• I drafted up a best-guess costs and liabilities account, trying to work out what we will need to do to turn a profit, when we finally go ahead with things.

• I spent a while researching the grants available to small businesses, trying to establish what - if anything - we would be able to apply for.

• I read several helpful blogs about setting up (and sometimes closing down) small retail businesses.

• I now have a better understanding of some of the many and varied pitfalls, and have been able to start pulling together contingency plans.   

As if in answer to this burst of focussed activity, this morning I received a long-awaited email reply which we have been waiting for, and this afternoon am having a chat with my future business partner to decide how we will respond.  I'm hoping that by the weekend I will be a fledgeling small business part-owner.

Fingers crossed, eh.

Anyhoo, I worked out why the blind panic has gripped me this week.  It's because as long as I am planning and preparing to start a business, I am effectively taking myself off the job market.  I have had a few minor forays into getting a job, none successful, but by setting up this business I am removing the possibility of going and working in a local supermarket to pay the bills.  It's that whole "make a decision and stick to it" thing, which kills off the comforting "Ah, anything might happen" state of semi-denial.

It's getting real.

In other news, I have been making stuff like a madwoman to sell at a charity cake and craft sale at the end of next month.   We're all making cakes so people can come and buy a cup of tea and a cupcake or whatever, in aid of Sport Relief, but a few of us are also setting up little craft tables. I have decided to bite the bullet, take the plunge, grasp the nettle and many other clichés, and see if anyone is interested in buying stuff I've made.

I'm also making some Medieval kit for Mr WithaY - he plans to do sword fighting demonstrations with a couple of other friends at events over the summer, and needs some hardwearing clothing to wear while he does it.  I've almost finished the pourpoint - a short sleeveless jacket, with lace holes around the waist to hold the hose (leggings) up.

Next on the "to make" list, a jacket with long sleeves, to wear over the top of the pourpoint and hose.  I'm not making hose. Too bloody difficult, matey.

And for those evening where the thought of sewing anything fills me with choking fury, I am knitting a scarf from a pattern pinched from Mrs Jones' blog.    If it works, I shall post a photo; if it doesn't, I shall unravel it and make something else with the wool.  It's looking rather pretty so far.

Oh, and I have reactivated my Twitter persona, but this time it's more about keeping tabs on local business and related stuff than broadcasting my own brand of trivia to the InterWeb.

Slots

Oh yeah, I remembered what I meant to write about in my last post, before I got sidetracked by dull domestic trivia anecdotes. If you can call a pointless whinge about nothing much at all an "anecdote," I suppose.

Anyhoo.

When I went to see my friend in hospital last week, I was a bit nervous.  Partly because I was apprehensive about seeing her after such a catastrophic event, and partly because I was dreading doing or saying the wrong thing and somehow making her feel bad.  I know that's not entirely rational, but it was in the back of my mind nonetheless.

I was also a little bit anxious...maybe that's too strong a term....apprehensive, maybe, about the actual logistics of the journey.  It struck me that since giving up my hellish 6 hour round-trip commute last May, I have made far fewer long journeys than I probably ever have in  my adult life.  I've been down to visit my lovely Mum a few times, been up to Ragdale Hall a couple of times, and travelled extensively* around and about the local area, but it was the first time I was driving myself somewhere unfamiliar in a while.

I have actually driven around Southampton quite a lot, but not recently, and the last time I went to the hospital there was about 20 years ago, to visit Father-in-law WithaY after HIS catastrophic life-changing event.  So, it was pretty likely that the road layout would have changed.

I did all the usual stuff, like looking on Google maps and whatnot, and I have my trusty satnav now, following the Watford Gap Incident last summer.

Gah.

I'd arranged to get to the hospital at about 4pm, both to avoid the worst of the rush-hour traffic, and to be there at the same time as a couple of other people that I wanted to see, so I set off from home at 3.15.  It only takes 45 minutes to get to Southampton, and with my satnav glowing at me reassuringly, it was all going to be plain sailing.

Aha, well, yes.  It would have been, had I checked that the postcode I entered for the hospital was for the correct bloody place.   I got right into the heart of the city, driving all the way across it in fairly heavy traffic, arriving at the selected destination at 4pm on the dot.  Perfect.

But wait.  What's this?  No Accident and Emergency facility here?  Large signs in the carpark for the diabetic resources centre?  No ambulances? No people, come to that.

It turns out that there are TWO large hospitals in Southampton.  One is the Royal, which is pretty big, but not quite as big as the General, which is where I should have been.  So, thanking the powers that be for iPhones and 3G coverage, I found the postcode for Southampton General hospital, and made my shamefaced way there, arriving 25 minutes later than I had intended.

When you get to their carpark (much, much bigger than the one at the Royal, I must say.  And more ambulances) you take a ticket and the barrier opens and lets you drive into the multi-storey bit.  You park your car, go to the hospital, pay your visit or whatever, and then, on your way out of the building, you put the ticket into the machine to find out how much you have to pay for the parking.  Fairly straightforward really.

Well.

If it's dark, and you're a bit on the emotional side after visiting your very dear friend, and there is a huddle of dodgy-looking people hanging around in the shadowy periphery of the entrance area, it's easy to get flustered.

And if the ticket machine is badly-lit, to the extent that several of the electronic screens are unreadable, and the only bit that is brightly lit looks like a ticket slot, but it's dislodged and broken, it's easy to get a bit confused.  And, then, it's a simple matter of poking your carpark ticket into the slot, and realising the instant you do it that you have probably just fed your ticket down the side of the broken slot bay, and therefore into the bowels of the machine.

I muttered profanities, and then pressed the "Call the Assistant" button.

A crackly voice came through the intercom.

Carpark assistant:  Yerrrrrs?

Me:  I'm very sorry, but I can't get the machine to read my ticket.

Carpark assistant:  Just press the Cancel button, love, and try again.

(Note:  all of the buttons were shrouded in gloom, and impossible to identify.  I pressed a few anyway, just for the look of it.)

Me:  I think it's eaten my ticket.

Carpark assistant: (wearily)  Ok.  I'll come out.

A large, burly man in a reflective jacket** walked out of the hospital, causing the huddle of dodgy-looking people to scatter and melt into the darkness, much in the manner of a feral gang in an apocalyptic film set in a City Of The Future.

He looked at me.  I looked at him. He sighed.  I made a sad face, trying to look like I wasn't an idiot, whilst acknowledging that he would be within his rights to consider me thus. It was a tough expression to pull off, but I managed it.

Me:  I'm really sorry. I just realised what I did, I think I poked the ticket through this hole, and it got lost in the machine.

Carpark assistant:  Aaaah.

Me:  Can you recover the ticket, do you think?

Carpark assistant:  Hmmmm.  (He frowned, scratching his chin thoughtfully with the aerial of his walkie-talkie.)  I could, yeah.  But it's a right old hassle.  Tell you what, when you get to the exit, press the Call button on the ticket machine and I'll let you out.  What's your name?

Me:  That's very kind!  So...should I pay you?  (I had the right money in my sweaty paw, ready to pay my debt to the Southampton Hospital car-parking authorities.)

Carpark assistant:  Nah, that's alright, love.

He grinned at me, and his previously intimidating face lit up.

I scarpered back to my car, found the exit, pressed the Call button as instructed, and was released back into the mainstream traffic of Southampton on a dark cold night.












*I've been to Frome.  And Shaftesbury.

**It reflected light.  It wasn't asking itself thoughtful questions about the nature of causality.

Irony

The snow has gone, as has Mr WithaY's sinus infection, also his scary red vampyre eyes. Relief all round, I can tell you.

We only had a couple of days of snow, but the temperatures rarely went above freezing for at least a week.  According to the thermometer in my car, it was -7 (Centigrade, sorry, American readers) at 9.30 one morning.  A neighbour had a reading of -10 on their garden thermometer, so it was pretty brisk outside.

Mr WithaY eventually went off to his bushcraft course 24 hours late, having spoken to the trainers about it, and also booked himself into the nearest hotel, rather than camp in the snow.  Ordinarily he would have done, along with the rest of the course attendees, but given the fact that he was still on antibiotics for his sinuses, the likelihood of developing pneumonia was too high.

So, he went off, did all his bushcrafty things in the snow, passed the exams relating to this part of the course, and came home triumphant and decidedly less snotty and septic than he had been when he left.  Result.

I spent the few days while he was away frantically boiling anything and everything possible, for fear of infection.  It was like a Victorian cholera hospital.  Bedding, towels, clothes, dressing gown, scarves, gloves, pretty much anything that had had any chance of touching his conjuctivitus-y skin was put through the washing machine at environmentally-destroying temperatures.  Sorry about that, environment.

I got it all washed and dried, and then thought "I'll get some of this ironing done, as it's too cold to go out today."

Things escalated.

By the end of the afternoon, I had ironed everything in the basket.  I was deedily putting my clothes away when it occurred to me that I ought to put Mr WithaY's away too.  There were two reasons for this burst of domestic philanthropy:

1)  He was away for a few days, so unless I wanted to leave them on the floor, I'd have to climb under them to get into bed that night.

2)  It was fairly likely, on past performance, that even when he did get home, his clothes would remain in a tidy heap in the corner of the bedroom for some time to come.

So, I started putting things in drawers and on hangers.  But wait...what's this?  A wardrobe with non categorised clothing hanging in it?  Shameful.  I moved a few things, just to make it look tidier...all the trousers hung at one end of the rail.  Oh, and the dark trousers hung at one side, and the lighter trousers hung at the other.  But if you do that, then the shirts ought to be sorted out, with all the white shirts hung together, and then all the countryman check ones, and then all the heavy green moleskin ones.   And the short-sleeved ones should all be up together so that when the weather improves they're easy to find.

Gah.

Other news:  Remember my friend I mentioned?  The one who had been all-but-given-up-hope-of just before Christmas?  I went to see her last week.  She is making remarkable progress.  There's still a very long way to go, but she is sitting up, talking - albeit a bit mixed up at times - but able to chat, eating "proper" food, and will hopefully begin physiotherapy shortly.  It's pretty damn close to a miracle.

So hurrah for unlikely and unexpected recoveries, I say.

Cursed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress.

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

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

We also found this:

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

It really is teeny.  Look:

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

So.

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





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

Flaked out

Hello hello hello, no, not dead yet.

I've just not really been in the blogging mindset, I suppose.  It's strange, I feel as though nothing interesting enough to share with all you lovely readers is happening in my life, but I don't feel bored or miserable about it.

I have been doing some business-style organising, both for the Big Long Term Business Plan and my interim ongoing dressmaking thing.  I had some dressmakers business cards printed by Moo.com - heartily recommended for fast service and nice-looking products - and some fabric sew-in labels for the stuff I make, and I am very pleased with both.

Almost professional, even.

Today, I woke up to snow falling.  Outside, I mean.  Well, we had the roof fixed in the summer.  The weather forecast said that it would have turned to "white cloud" by 10am but it was still falling at 2pm.  Perhaps Winter has decided to get its arse into gear, finally.

I prefer to think of it as the weather deities acknowledging that today is my birthday with a splendid, totally organic biodegradable ticker-tape parade for the whole area.  Yay, and indeed wahoo.

I had a fine cup of tea in bed, made by the equally fine Mr WithaY, exclaimed delightedly over my lovely presents, then we had bacon sandwiches (in the kitchen, not in bed, that would be far too decadent) while watching the snow falling outside.

After that, Mr WithaY went out to the garage to do stuff with deer*, and I cleaned the kitchen in a slightly frantic and anal pre-Mother-in-law-visit kind of a way.

Yes, Mother-in-law WithaY is coming to visit later in the week, having left the delightfully sunny South of France to visit the damp, cold and now snowy UK for a while.  She must be loving it today.  We spent a Christmas over there with her one year, and I recall sitting out on a terrace in the warm sunshine, sipping chilled white wine and eating delicious French snacks. On Boxing Day.  December the 26th.  I think I wore a sleeveless dress and a light cardigan, if memory serves.

It's not like that today.  We're going out for tea later, I plan to wear at least five layers for the walk across the village.

Maybe it'll snow some more.  If it does, I don't mind.  I have a toasty new hot water bottle, thanks to my lovely Mum.







*Nothing dodgy, honest.  He's got a proper game dealer license and everything.

Too much information

Once again, my car has been a complete and utter pain in the arse.

I went to visit my lovely Mum earlier this week.  Just for a day, more or less on a whim, off out for lunch somewhere nice and a chance to chat and catch up.  We were both looking forward to it very much.

She has a camellia in full flower in her front garden, incredibly early.  Look:

I left home bright and early, driving carefully through a thick frost and threatened (but not actual) snow flurries, and hit the motorway in fine time.  The radio was on, the weather was improving with every mile, and all was well with the world.

Until I got to the outskirts of Southampton.  The Salisbury side, not the Portsmouth side.  That's approximately the halfway point on the the journey, in terms of time, if not mileage.

At that point, me chugging along in the middle lane of the motorway, the needle on my car's speedometer started acting oddly.  First it bounced up and down, as if in time to the music.  I watched it with cold foreboding, wondering if I was perhaps kangarooing along without noticing.  Nope, still cruising along at about 75.

The it dropped to 0.  No miles per hour.  I knew this was wrong, as I was overtaking a slower-moving lorry at the time, and he was doing at least 45.

My heart rate compensated though, and climbed steadily as I continued to drive along the motorway, now without the benefit of speed indication.

Every now and again the needle flickered, bouncing up to 10 or 20mph, then gave up and sank back to 0.  The remainder of the drive was stressful.

Unfortunately, I was so stressed by this that I ended up cutting my visit shorter than I had planned so as to drive home in daylight, which I felt would be safer.  A few miles into the return trip I had to brake sharply at a roundabout (thanks, insensate old man in the silver Audi, you know who you are) at which point the needle jerked back into life for the remainder of the journey home.

Rather than travel all the way back to the Toyota garage which recently replaced the turbo - £1500 thank you very much indeed - I took it to the local 4x4 garage in town.  They diagnosed and repaired the problem within an hour, all for less than £50.  Apparently there was "dirt on the speedo sensor" and once they'd taken it apart and cleaned it, everything was fine.

It made a refreshing change from "Aaaaah yes, we know about this.  It's a known fault...Toyota did offer a free repair for this but you missed it by a month/100 miles/a roll of the random Dice of Fate.  Sorry about that.  That'll be four billion pounds please."

I have had speedo issues before, but that time they were much less straightforward to fix.

All's well that ends well. I have a car that tells me how fast it's going, and I am still able to afford the thin gruel and dry bread that Mr WithaY and I are subsisting on  now that we're both unemployed.

Actually, I was wondering about this.  Am I technically "unemployed" when I am not registered as such, or actively seeking work, or claiming unemployment money?

I did apply for a job recently.  It didn't go well.

I mentioned it a while ago - a local, part-time job.  Only a couple of days a week,and not even full days.  Low money, but really easy to fit in around other stuff, and the opportunity to meet people on a regular basis.  It sounded quite handy, so I filled in an online application form and waited to hear from them.  The next day I had a phone call from their HR department, inviting me for an interview.

Readers, the next time I am at an interview for what is basically a part-time cleaning job, I won't mention developing and delivering secondary legislation to a tight timescale when asked "Can you give me an example of when you were under pressure at work?"  Or managing a billion pound contract replacement project, when asked to give an example of working in a team.  Or talk about briefing hostile high-profile stakeholders  when asked to give an example of dealing with people I didn't get on with.

Ah well.

I was told that I would hear from them within seven to ten days.  I think they'd sent the rejection email before I actually left the premises.