No Vikings Today

Yesterday was all about Doing Different Things.

Mr WithaY and I were in town early in the morning - dropping my car off for its MoT, which it passed without a hitch - and then went for a cup of coffee and a bun in a nice little cafe.  The cafe has adopted the quaint European "pavement culture" approach, which means that there are several tiny metal tables on the pavement, mere feet away from the traffic which rumbles through on the main road almost constantly.

As we walked to the door, as we had sensibly decided to sit INSIDE with the buns, and not OUTSIDE with the traffic, something in the road caught my eye.  Coffees and buns bought, we settled down at our table and I leaned over to see what it was that I had spotted. An elderly man sat at one of the tiny metal tables, reading a newspaper, blocking my view of the road.

I stepped outside, walked briskly to the point where I had spotted the anomaly and took a photo.  The elderly man watched me from over the top of his newspaper.

Readers, this is what I photographed:

Is it a piece of raw veal?  Is it a large boiled sweet?  Is it a dog toy?  Why no, gentle reader.  It's the end of a big rubber cock.

Charming.

Coffee and buns devoured, we walked through the town enjoying the sunshine.  Passing the tourist information office, I spotted a notice for the local history society's forthcoming programme of events.  There was a lecture on The Viking Invasion of Wessex listed.

"Ooh, that sounds like it might be interesting," I said.

"Mmm.  When is it?" asked Mr WithaY.

"Tonight!  Shall we go?"

"Yeah, why not?"

So it was a date.  Half past seven at the public library.  We drove home in high spirits, debating whether it would be inappropriate or not to go to the the lecture dressed as Vikings, carrying huge horns of mead and driving looted oxen before us*.

At seven that night we headed back into town, parked in the main car park and went and sat outside the front of the library, where all the doors were locked and there was no sign of anyone from the history society.  Time ticked on, and we were joined by a charming Australian man and a young chap who arrived in a taxi, both eager to hear about the Viking Invasion of Wessex.  Neither of them had dressed up, I was pleased to see.

After twenty minutes of waiting, the taxi driver said "I'll just go and see if the back doors are open."

Off he trotted, returning in a moment to let us know that "There's about 40 people in the back room all being talked to."

Well, arse.  We hurriedly made our way to the top secret BACK doors of the library, 10 minutes after the start of the lecture, and sheepishly sidled into the room.  Inside was a varied collection of local history enthusiasts sitting on little hard chairs facing an old man standing at the front of the room.  He smiled and paused in his talk to let us latecomers find somewhere to sit, which we did as unobtrusively as possible.

The chap taking the admission fees - £3 a head for non-members - bustled along the row of seats and handed Mr WithaY and I a photocopied piece of coloured paper each.

I looked at my paper in puzzlement.  There were two maps, side by side, one dated 1782, the other 1970, showing the same streets in town, with various buildings marked in red.

Were these locations where they had found Viking hoards?  Or perhaps the graves of notable Wessex Viking chieftains?  Or even just houses the Vikings had burned down?  Even with my somewhat rusty grasp of history, the Eighteenth Century seemed a bit late for Norse invaders.

I tried to imagine the scene - a Regency dandy strutting down the pavement, eyeglass in one hand, silver-topped cane in the other, hat at a jaunty angle, shining boots twinkling, only to be felled by a single mighty broadsword thrust from a shaggy bellowing Viking.

Nope.

My wandering attention was yanked back to the old man at the front.  He had a small laptop, the screen facing the audience, and he was apologising for the fact that the overhead projector had failed to work properly, meaning that an entire roomful of people was trying to look at an image about the same size as a packet of cornflakes.  As if that wasn't bad enough, there were two or three bull-necked** chaps in the audience who interjected their own hilarious comments as the old chap spoke.

He kept forgetting names and street details, having to be prompted by the audience, and stammering in his nervousness.  I wasn't sure if the nerves were due to the failed projector, the interruptions from his cronies in the audience, or the fact that at least two of the people facing him were open-mouthed in horrified disbelief at his subject matter.

Instead of The Viking Invasion of Wessex, we were being treated to The History of Old Warminster, without visual aids, and with a Greek chorus of wise-cracking Wiltshire elderly men.

I started to feel a huge bubble of laughter rising inside, and had to bite my lip to stop myself from exploding aloud. Mr WithaY was sitting rigid in his chair, the photocopied map clutched in steely fingers, his jaw set in a manner which clearly stated "I am trapped, and must remain here until the end. I shall Do My Duty."

In desperation I stared fixedly at the pictures on the walls of the library, and then an image rose unbidden in my mind of Mr WithaY and I arriving in full Viking garb, hallooing and roaring through the doors, only to be stopped in our tracks by a convoluted, halting, timorous description of Eighteenth Century Warminster malthouse placement.

I had to bite my hand.

At the end of the lecture, the chap who had taken the entrance fee tried to persuade us to join for the rest of the season.  We said we'd think about it.









*We decided it might be.

**I could only see the backs of their heads

Good, Dawg

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

Anyway. We're all here now.

In a nutshell:

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

Gah.

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


I digress.


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


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


I said they were.


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


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


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


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

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

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


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

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


Other than that, an excellent day.

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

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


We're definitely going again next year.  


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


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


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


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









*About my age, probably

Narrow squeak

Ah, life.

Just when you think it's all going so well, something comes along to throw you.

There's been a period of remarkable positivity in the WithaY household of late.  I've left my job, and am enjoying a summer off work - still enjoying it, despite shitty weather a lot of the time - and not panicking just yet about running out of money.  Mr WithaY has been successful in his application for a prestigious and competitive year-long course he applied for, and has also been told that his request to leave his job was approved, so he'll be free of his 28-year office drone shackles in a few months.  We've sold Father in law WithaY's house, so that particular millstone is removed.

The house sale, inevitably, had a few final bizarre hiccups.

We had to pay for an insurance policy in case some long-forgotten Covenant on the land was found to have been breached.  Nobody mentioned it when Father in law WithaY bought the house, several years ago, but hey. 

We had to spend days and days and DAYS negotiating with the house clearance people, who, I assumed just took everything away, but it seems that some of them prefer to try and cherrypick, and just want to take the "sellable" stuff, and leave the junk there.  Um, no.  If we wanted to be heaving old mattresses and broken jamjars to the tip, we wouldn't be paying you to clear the house, would we?

Gah.

Anyhoo.  Once all the tiresome faffing about clearing the house was over, and we'd cleaned it nicely, we settled back to relax, happy in the knowledge that the new owners were moving in, and all was complete.

Until we got a phone call from the lawyer. 

The new owners - bearing in mind that the contracts had been exchanged, the deal was completed, they now owned the house - were complaining bitterly about "all the stuff" left in their new house.  There was talk of legal action being taken against us if we didn't come down and remove it all immediately.

Whut?

Our lawyer was nonplussed.  He said that he had never heard of people complaining about stuff being left in a house.  Stuff being removed - door handles, light fittings, kitchen units - hell yes.  But stuff left behind?  Never.

Let us examine the list of stuff we left behind:

1)  A small Victorian garden statue, stone.  In the garden.  I always assumed that things like that were included in a house sale unless specifically excluded.  It seems that it offended the new buyers, and had to go.

2)  A small, admittedly rickety, wooden bench in the back garden.  As above.  Offensive, to be removed.

3)  A wall clock, fixed to the wall, in the kitchen.  Yes, I can see why you'd want to sue us for leaving a clock in your kitchen. What bastards we are.

4)  A fire extinguisher in the garage.  Christ, I'd have had us assassinated for leaving that there.

5)  Last but not least, the wheelchair access ramp at the front door, which they had dragged off to one side. Mr WithaY went down there after work with a sledgehammer and an attitude one evening and smashed it up, put it in the back of the Landrover and took it to the tip.  He said that they had the builders in already, renovating and updating the house.  The builders had carefully placed planks outside the front door to make a ramp for them to move tools and materials about.  I hope they charge the new owners a thousand pounds extra for their home-made ramp.

But, now, finally, it's over.  I think.

Remember I said we were looking into finding a new nursing home for Father in law WithaY?  And we thought we'd found somewhere suitable?  Well, they had one of their nurses visit F-in-L the other day to evaluate him.  She phoned us last night to say that she thinks their nursing home is, unfortunately, not suited to his needs.  Arse.

We've already given notice to his current home, but coincidentally, we had a letter from the owner yesterday telling us that the matron is leaving (mutually agreed, etc etc etc) and was there anything they could do to persuade Father in law WithaY to stay, given the impending change in management.  We will go and talk to them next week,and see if we can get things improved for him there, and then maybe he'll be happier about having to stay.

Perhaps the new matron won't drop him on his head.  That would be nice.

It's all very sad.

Other news:  Today I am mostly making a linen Medieval shirt for Mr WithaY, who is off poncing about doing swordfighting again at the weekend.  What larks.  He's borrowed a jacket and hose from a mate who used to do Medieval re-enactment, but there is a slight sizing issue with the hose.  Mr WithaY put them on, walking gingerly around the room, looking, as he said, like a sausage whose skin was too tight.  I hope he doesn't try any lunges, or there could be an unfortunate burstage incident. 

I am procrastinating, though, because my new sewing machine is intimidating me.  Brrrrr.  Multiple stitching options. 

Dressing up

So, yeah, this re-enactment we went to the other week.  That was fun.

It's been a fair few years since we gave all that malarky up and sold all our kit off, but we'd been asked to go along and take part in some specific activities* with some mates, so we rejoined on a weekend membership and hoved off to Cheriton to camp for the weekend.  I say "camp."  What I actually mean is "share a rather fine motorhome with our kind mates."  There was no crawling around in small, damp tents for us that weekend, oh no indeedy.   

It was a multi-period event, so there were lots of different people in many different uniforms.

Medieval.

French Napoleonic.

British Napoleonic.

Blokes on horses.

With sabres.

Corsairs. NOT pirates, they were most emphatic about that.

Second World War types.

English. 

German.

And of course English Civil War.  Dashing, no?

My personal favourite was the little vintage "pub" that was set up in a sort of wooden framed tent, run by the WW2 chaps.  Mmmm whisky.  It's a bit blurry because I turned the flash off for Atmosphere.  They had a sign on the wall saying that due to a nearby broken gas pipe, no-one could smoke, which I thought was a clever touch. 

What was particularly interesting was that while it was lovely to see old friends, and catch up on people that I ordinarily only chat to via Facebook, at no point did I think "I wish I was still involved in all this."  I was perfectly happy to sit on my comfy camping chair, reading my book** in the shade, while most of the others rushed around in the boiling sun in layers of heavy woollen clothing, doing drill for hours, or queueing up to collect gunpowder, or marching off to the battlefield. 

It also made a pleasant change to come home from a re-enactment with no injuries, other than some mild sunburn on my shins.  Mmmm, attractive. 

 



*Swordfighting, to be precise. 
**Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - bloody marvellous.  Read it immediately. 

Poor example

Oh. My. Word.  I thought this was a joke at first, but I don't think it is. 

How does someone get to be 42 years old believing that being morbidly obese is not only a good thing, but something to be aimed at, an achievement?

The article, for those of you who can't be arsed to read it, says that she weighed 520lbs when she had her daughter (which in itself raises questions I don't want answers to), now weighs 600lbs, and is aiming to weigh 1,000lbs so she can break the world record for being fat. 

"She runs her own website where people pay to watch her eat, or see her wash her huge body. "  Nice.

I could run a website where people pay to watch me eat.  Or doing the ironing.  Or cleaning the windows.  Hot steamy domestic goddess action.  Not sure I'd make much money though. 

Apparently her website* makes enough to cover her weekly food bills. 

I'm trying to understand what she thinks she is doing.  She has a young daughter and a teenage son, she must know that by continuing with this she will probably reduce her life expectancy.  Is she so stupid that she thinks she will break the Fattest Woman Ever record, then magically get thinner so she can have a normal life again? 

Who's going to pay her inevitable medical bills?  Is this self-inflicted injury? Would medical insurance cover it?  I have no idea.  Diabetes, heart disease, arthritits.  All that fun stuff is pretty much guaranteed if she stays that size for very long.

I know I sound like a size fascist, but really.  Christ on a bike. 

I remember seeing  an archive photo from the 1920s or maybe 1930s.  Depression era, anyway.  It showed a "Fat Family" at a carnival.  A mother, father and teenage son, all plump, relaxed, smiling for the camera.  A crowd of onlooked stood looking at them. 

What was striking was that the fat people in the picture looked like "normal" people to me.  You see fatter people walking round town any day of the week nowadays.  The striking thing about the picture was how thin the people in the crowd were.  Sharp cheekbones and clothes hanging off them. 

Times have changed.





*There wasn't a link to it from the Telegraph article.  I looked.

Gunpowder, treason and plot

I was at the Houses of Parliament earlier this week, for a work-related thing.  I'd never been there before so it was all terribly exciting.

The instructions they sent me said "allow AT LEAST 45 minutes to get through security".  So I obediently got there an hour before my meeting was due to start, expecting to be queueing in the rain for ages.

No. 

There was no queue.

There was a helpful security lady dishing out lanyard clippy pass-holder things outside, so that once I got in there all I had to do was clip the newly-aquired photo pass to it and hang it round my neck. 

Through the security checks, into the main body of the building.  Pause to gawp at fabulous architecture like the potato-headed yokel that I am, then continue through to ask another security chap where the room that my meeting is in is.  Get given vague "down that way" directions.  Nod sagely. 

Ask if it's ok to take photos.

Yes it is, but only "down there".  I go "down there" and take a couple of pictures on my iPhone (it does everything.) 

After that point, no more photography, sadly. 

I found where I was supposed to be, and asked the stern security lady if I could go in, bearing in mind I was over 30 minutes early (security being so much more efficient than we had been led to believe.)

She said No.

Go and wait Over There.

I went Over There and waited, admiring the beautiful painted panels on the walls.  Gradually, more and more people arrived, walked through to the scary security lady, were told the same thing, and perched meekly on the leather benches to wait for the call.  A cheery looking chap opposite me caught my eye and smiled.  I smiled back.  He came and sat next to me and struck up an amusing conversation about what would happen if we all headed for the meeting room*.

He asked me if I was going to "this thing", waving vaguely in the direction of the meeting room.  I said yes, I was.  Well, it was true.

The crowd of people waiting had grown, so we headed into the lobby area to be sure to hear when we got the call to go into the meeting room. It was rather exciting**.

Finally, FINALLY, with 2 minutes to go, we were told it was ok to go through to the meeting room. In the confusion I lost sight of my new buddy, but followed everyone else, hung my coat up in a v posh coat cupboard, and went into the meeting room.

Helloooooo?

What's this?

Lots of information about security systems? Posters for a variety of specialist Universities? Not a soul here I recognise? How odd.

But look....there are cakes! And tea! And nice friendly staff who want me to have some!

So I had a glass of fizzy water, and stood there like a lemon, hoping someone I knew would walk in. After a few minutes, it was clear that nobody I knew was going to walk in. In fact, I was the only woman in the room, which is unusual at meetings these days.

Hmm.

I was in the wrong meeting. I could have stuck around and enlarged my woefully thin knowledge of high-tech security systems, but I thought I might have been thrown in the Thames as spy, and decided I ought to leave.

Muttering "fuckfuckfuckfuck" to myself I slunk out, sweating at the thought of wandering the Houses of Parliament like a lost soul, bleating and panicking.

Fortunately, MY meeting was in the room next door, and it was a big, informal standy-uppy affair, so I could sidle in, grab a cup of tea and pretend I had been there all the time.

The walk back to Waterloo provided a couple of nice photo opportunities:

Please note the moon this time.

This is a profile view.

I thought it was rather nice to have been where Guy Fawkes was this week, all those years ago. Well, in the same approximate location, at least.

*We agreed that it would certainly end in a machine-gunning, and decided to stay put.

**I don't get out much

Blast from the past

When I was going into London on Wednesday morning, the train was delayed as we approached Waterloo. We sat still, and then inched forwards, then sat still a bit more.

And so the long day wore on.

After about 10 minutes of this, the charming Polish (I think) guard's voice came over the intercom. She apologised for the delay, and then said "It is because of.....(pause)....a train from the past."

A train from the past eh?

No wonder we were delayed. I was most disappointed when I got out at Waterloo not to see Stephenson's "Rocket" parked up on the next platform, with the bloke with the red flag looking sheepish, apologising to all the grumpy delayed commmuters.

Other news: It snowed! It was minus 4 degrees at 0700 when I was scraping the ice off my car, and by the time the train got to Basingstoke there was significant snow on the ground. And it's not even Halloween yet. Tch.

New job is going ok, I am starting to get to grips with some of the stuff around the edges, which is encouraging. Might even feel semi-competent by Christmas at this rate.

But lawyers. Brrrrrrrrrrr.

Broken II

Not to be outdone by the hand-fracturing antics of my gorgeous guitar teacher, Mr WithaY has today been diagnosed with a "deep-seated chest infection".

Does that mean it's in his arse, or what?

Anyway, he's on a ton of scary drugs and sounds like he is going to cough himself inside-out.

I have been working at home drafting a Concept of Analysis, which is every bit as dull and tiresome as it sounds. In between times I have eaten sandwiches, watched a couple of episodes of Futurama on DVD and looked gloomily out of the window at the pissing rain.

Oh, and I painted my toenails*. Woo fucking hoo.

Later that same day, I made the world's most disappointing pasta dish for supper, which, despite being full of lovely ingredients was dull and all but tasteless. The best part of the whole meal was the steamed broccoli. Fucking hell. What kind of a meal is that, where broccoli is the highlight, eh?

Still, other than that, it;s been a nice day.

Mr WithaY gave me a present, whcih was most unexpected and lovely. It's a book for me to take on holiday called "City of Laughter", and it's subtitled "Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London". Brilliant.

I love social history. And the Eighteenth Century. I was a secret, slightly ashamed, fan of Georgette Heyer for years but now I know how many primary sources she used for her historical novels, I feel almost virtuous reading them.

It's making learning fun.

*Lilac, in case you were wondering.

Trench

If you get the chance, watch that programme on Channel 5 about First World War Trench archaeology. It's very interesting, desperately sad, but best of all stars my mate Martin.