Sunday 16th December

Oh don't you hate starving blood tests? I have one tomorrow, so I have to top up food-wise tonight so I can actually get to the surgery! Anyhow, enough of that.

Well, I had a super day yesterday. Considering that I've been cosseting myself for the past week, I feel I'm now recovered - still got a bit of a cough & sniffles, but by and large I'm well, so I met up with some old friends from university for a day out in Bath. We had a great time! Went round all of the shops, lunch at Demuths - fabulous. We had a pea and almond soup that was just gorgeous, and the deli plate to follow - a small tub of houmous, some wholemeal pitta's and fantastic artichoke - I wasn't quite so keen on the pumpkin & pepper mix, but then you can't have everything. It's just so nice to catch up with old friends. I think I've sort of done my Xmas shopping too, except for of course, the food bit. That comes this week.

And I've a dilemma with it too. The way my break works out, I'm over to stay at the family's for part of the week, but it's our turn to work over Christmas itself, so I'm back on Boxing Day. So I have to shop for myself for later in the week - in advance. I figured I'd go buy myself some nice jars of antipasto, (yes, especially artichoke!!) and I'll bring back some cold meat with me. Should keep me going until the shops open again - which I figure must be Thursday. But it's going to be really strange, because I've got a shift on Christmas Day itself - I must make absolutely sure that I keep Christmas lunch bang on time!

So I guess I'll be blogging again in the new year. Have a good Xmas everyone!

Monday 10th December 2007

Well dears, I can only apologise for my lack of blogging. I have a very good excuse - I've never been quite so ill since I was about ten years old and got real influenza. And not just me either - can you imagine the chaos in la famille when younger brother and carer to Mum went down with the same bug? I can only relate the events from a distance, but let's just say it's resulted in the re-arrangement of the living arrangements for every other member of the family. Nick has had to move in to the family house for the duration to be there overnight because Martin could no more have got himself up to attend to any probs Mum might have had than fly. Personally speaking, I've no doubt he was awake, probably coughing himself half to death. Anyhow, eventually I think Jo probably got quite worried about him and dragged him to the doctors, who diagnosed 'a nasty virus'. Yep well that's the word for it, and as far as I understand it, to judge by my GP's this morning, half of the country is down with the 'nasty virus.' According to one of the receptionists, even one of the GP has succumbed.
I staggered in, and clearly infected the computerised appointment system, because no sooner had I logged myself in than the thing collapsed - no doubt suffering from a 'nasty virus'. Everyone who followed had to move on from the wall mounted screen system, and stand in front of the receptionist desk for a good ten minutes until one of the workers deigned to notice you from behind the elaborate glass screen/wall they've handily put in there. They all look terribly busy, all bent over the computers etc - they barely glance up and when they do, frankly, you're interrupting their work routine. It has ever been so in the world of the GP's receptionist. Having said all of this, I should say that I was barely standing there for more than what, three minutes, after I emerged from the doctor, to book a next opinion. Alas I have to go for tests. I am after all, sick. I have a 'nasty virus'. Which is why I'm a touch alarmed that I've been sent for tests on my blood pressure, because frankly I'd've expected myself to have a high blood pressure. Just how high does it have to be to get sent for tests?? No doubt there'll be more on this at a later date...

So having succumbed to the 'nasty virus' (yes, I'll get bored of this too soon) I simply haven't been able to do much more than lie in bed and cough - when I'm not out of bed and making tea, or out of bed and making inhalers of hot steamy water and drips of Olbus oil. I feel like the inhabitant of a strangely mentholated Turkish Bathhouse. It's also been incredibly irritated that I've fancied food, got up, made myself something to eat, taken a mouthful and not been able to eat a morsel more. You've no idea how irritating that is to the cook. She hasn't got the energy to spare for the making of uneaten meals. She wants to go back to bed and cough. I won't go into any more of the details, it's not pleasant and besides I am feeling just that little bit better. I'm still coughing, but at least I feel that the cough is - yep, just that wee bit more productive.

So.. what else to tell you. I have done a great deal of composing of lists of things I need to go and buy for Christmas. Martin has his list, food to be ordered from Tesco, I have my list - food to be physically picked up & carried over there. This year, I have been sensible and gone for small, manageable presents. I can get them all into the one bag, clothes alongside, and with any luck, a large-ish bag from M & S tucked alongside that. I can stagger on to the bus, roll over to Winsley, and stagger from there to the family home. Mind you I don't know why I'm going on as if I've got the plague, because I've got a good two weeks to get over this. If I'm not returned to my normal self by then, frankly I should have a blood pressure monitor thrown at me, and that'll be it.

Tuesday 20th November

Gosh here we are three weeks into November already! I don't know why I should be so suprised, I feel like my new best friends are the staff at my local post office, I've been up there so often. I made a huge mistake of going to the central post office in Bristol the other day, and boy, was that stupid.

They've just spent ages tarting the place up, and when I was in there, they've got some daft new system for queuing. Instead of having a nice, clearly defined space for queueing in, you take a ticket - yep, just like the line at the deli counter in the supermarkets. Works well there doesn't it? Not in the Galleries it doesn't. The space where people would line up, and wait, nicely, probably moaning, but at least having a rough idea of how long they'd have to wait, and where they were in the queue, is full of posh chairs and irritating interruptions in the space. So you can't actually queue, you stand in the mob, with people getting angrier and angrier, because they've no idea how many people there are in front of them, how long it'll take - absolutely hopeless. I spoke to the manager, who told me this was the bright idea of their re-design people, and I am going to send an email to the customer service department, but it won't do any good. I've stopped going there. I'm lucky in that I've got a local sub post office I can get to, with a nice defined queueing space and polite people to fill it. At least I'm reasonably sure I won't get decked simply trying to get out my parcels.

Anyhow things have been flying out of my Ebay shop. I've got a special deal on postage - spend over £10.00 and you get everything sent to you free! But if you only want a couple of items, then you still get your discount - first item at £1.50, and everything else at just 0.25p.

Check out some of my Xmas items!

A pink and plum Bagcharm - starts on the 27th November, and at just £3.00!

This is a dinkly little fat bagcharm - all pink crackleglass beads and pink flower beads. Starts on the 26th November, again at £3.00.

These are some of my small bookmarks. There's lots of choice, all between £2.50 - £4.00 for the small one's, with lots on buy it now, so you don't have to wait for the end of the auction!

This is one of the bigger bookmarks. They're on auction -

mostly starting at about £5.99, with a 6 inch squiggle crook!

1st November 2007

I have just discovered exactly how far civilisation has fallen. I have seen the evidence in front of my own eyes.

I went to Sainsbury's, the way you do, after posting a few packets - I needed bread, that sort of thing, and I was in no rush so I dawdled around looking at the Xmas stuff. On the end of one rack of shelves were some children's toys - dolls, plastic figures, and among this, a rather battered box containing a doll. A doll done up as some sort of fairytale figure. Across the top of this was a tag line - advertising blurb, I suppose, though what it's called properly I have no idea. It's the sort of thing that people in advertising agencies must have conferences about, and I'm betting that this one came up as the topic at the end of a very long session.  The doll, I'm reasonably sure, was a Disney, so perhaps that may explain it, but nevertheless, this doll - a Sleeping Beauty, although in a way this makes this even more mystifying - was described as "Royal Elegance and..."  now what would you think Sleeping Beauty would be? In this day and age?  Royal Elegance and a presence at the Bar..? Royal Elegance and Empathy over the X ray machine?  Royal Elegance and her gold medal Flower Arranging Certificate???

No. Oh no you'd be way way wrong. No this Sleeping Beauty was Royal Elegance and..  Kung Fu Action.   Royal Elegance and Kung Fu Action.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

Sunday 22nd October

Ha! So much for my five days a week posting - but I have got a decent excuse, I've not been feeling very well. So sorry, and thank God I made the chicken soup!!

And just to prove it, here's a photograph of the soup, all steaming straight out of the pot!

So I thought, since I didn't make my five days a week blogging about food, I'd best have another go. And next week is quite an important one, food wise, because it's payday. With all the opportunities for overdoing it that that brings. So I suppose I'd best tell you what I've eaten today - it's not been good folks.

Basically my shopping for the weekend included minced beef, cauliflower, leek, and bread. I'm afraid that where I should have done something sensible and low cal like spag bol, frankly I just didn't fancy it, and I did want a way I could get loads of garlic into my diet, raw if poss. I don't know about you, but I don't know many recipes for raw garlic (short of swallowing them whole, which I don't intend to start trying!) so I made (cringe, cringe...) burger and chips, with garlic mayonnaise. It's been my one high fat meal of the week, so it's not as bad as it could have been, and you should see the way I make it.

Firstly, I get a potato, and slice it into very fine sticks. I popped it into a bath of water for half an hour to get rid of the starch coming out of it (I don't think this makes the blindest bit of difference, but it seems to make them cook a bit better.) Then having dried them on kitchen paper, I tossed them in about a tablespoon full of oil, before popping them into a hot oven for about 45 minutes. I make my burgers by grating a garlic clove into the meat, with some salt and pepper. I've tried not using salt, but this seems to be one of the few dishes were a grinding or two is absolutely essential. I then give it a good mix with my hands - it comes together not unlike a dough. Then I form it into patties, and put it back in the fridge for a couple of hours. After they've stood for a while, I pop them into a heated dry non-stick pan. As they cook enormous amounts of fat are released, and I've take to using the spatula to hold the burgers steady whilst I pour the hot fat out into the washing up water. That cuts down on the fat that the burgers cook in, and is actually in them - and I've not added anything to that. It's a pure meat burger, with the kick of garlic, but you can use any sort of meat and any sort of flavouring. Try pork burger with some grated ginger & spring onions. Goes brilliantly with rice.

The mayonnaise is a standard one, with a small clove finely grated into a couple of spoons full. You can scoop it up with your chips - it's an indulgent meal alright, but boy it touched the spot!

Thursday 18th October

Thought I'd make you hungry! Yep, this is yesterday's chicken, mid way through it's cooking!

Today though, today I have eaten like a god (yep, small G, it was only chicken soup!) I took all of the veg, and stock from around that roasting chicken, and popped it in the fridge - today, before I went to work, I sliced up an onion finely and fried it off, with a clove of garlic, in a dab of oil, and a good dash of boiling water. Now I'm sure there'll be those of you out there who will have picked up that off that rather odd dieting programme on Channel 4 - but let me tell you I've been doing this for years, largely because my oven runs hot, and onions tend to brown rapidly. When you want a truly translucent onion, add boiling water because it converts to steam instantly and speeds the cooking. Not to mention cutting down on the fat content.

Anyhow, to the onions I added finely diced carrots, a couple of bay leaves, a bouquet garni and a stock cube. When this had had about ten to fifteen minutes - when the veg were soft, I added a good cup full of well washed lentils - green lentils. I cooked this until most of the water was gone, and it was absolutely on the point of catching, before adding in all of the stock from the roasting tin - which had set to a jelly overnight in the fridge. Delish! I also added just a bit of the chicken meat, and water, and cooked it until I considered it was done - about an hour and twenty minutes or so. At that point, I added in the rest of the chicken meat which I had taken off the bone, and shredded. At that point, I was ready to go to work (a 2 - 9 shift today!) so I filled up a food flask that I have - wide necked, an excellent way to take liquid foods to work. I gave it two minutes in the microwave, and boy, come five pm, it was absolutely what I needed. And having just come home (about 9.30), I've had a second bowlful, but with the addition of some finely shredded cabbage - I layered it on top of the soup, so that it steamed whilst the soup heated - and it was fabulous. A really good meal. Chicken soup - you just can't beat it!

Weds 17th October

As I write this, dinner is gently cooking in the oven. I've just hot-footed it back from work - via Sainsburys, whizzed through before the post work rush arrived, so wow it was quick. And - bless them, they've yet to fill their shelves with Xmas tat, so I can still find things. 

Now, as I'm sure you'll have realised by now, this week is the one before payday, so I'm broke. So what I buy is important, and on the way home I put a good bit of thought into it - I bought chicken. We all know chicken goes further, but in order to bring the most out of it, I gave a good deal of thought as to how I'm going to cook it, and bought the accompaniments as carefully as I did the main bird. Alas much as I'd like to, I've never been in a position to afford a free range bird - yes, I appreciate that one ought to, that it's the epitome of Chicken eating etc etc, but before all these food nazis start screaming about it, frankly I can no more afford a free range chicken than I could go to the moon least of all at this time of the month.  Bring the price of a free range chicken down, and we might be getting somewhere. So I have a medium priced bird.

I bought onions, carrots, and a cabbage. Oh I can hear the screams of the teenagers from here, but frankly, I don't have one, and if I did, that teenager would have been eating these types of basic foods all of their lives, so lets not go there. To get the maximum out of this bird, I've chopped up one of the onions roughly, the same with a couple of the carrots, and I took the outer leaves of the cabbage, and the core, and gave them a good wash, and shredded them finely. I mixed them all up together and put them in the base of a large roasting tin. On top of the veg, and underneath the bird, I've put a couple of bay leaves, and a chicken stock cube. I do spend money on buying good quality stock cubes, well worth it if you ask me, and better value. I put another couple of bay leaves inside the bird, along with a bouquet garni. I rubbed the outside of the bird with olive oil, and plenty of pepper - freshly ground. No salt though, there's enough of that in the stock cube.  Then I topped it up to the level of the veg with boiling water - and sat the bird on the top. Basically it will pot roast - I should get a nice skin, with plenty of moist meat and a fantastic stock. All of the veg in the stock will go into the stock pan but ultimately be sieved out before I make the soup. I'll have roast dinner tonight, cold chicken for tomorrow, and soup for Friday.  You can't argue with chicken if you're broke - its a good few days meals.

And by the way I didn't go mad and have a cheese sandwich before bed last night!  I restrained myself and gave myself a pat on the back for doing so. But the sandwiches were lovely at lunchtime - really tasty. And of all the food at work, I only had a single chocolate chip biccie today!  Good going is what I say now - but it's only just gone five thirty and the evening is young,...

Tuesday 14th October

Today's installment of the food blogs.. I arrived at Tesco's in town today, thinking I'll zip around here and grab enough to feed me for the next few days - like fast fast, so I can get to work - only to find Tesco's has rearranged all of it's shelving to make way for the Christmas products. Yep. Dundee cake where the pancakes were - I mention this, because frankly I got lost looking for the bread. Yep something as simple and straightforward as a wholemeal sliced loaf. Gone, gone and never called me mother.

Quick diversion here - I have no idea where that expression came from, but I've got a feeling it's one of those music hall soliloquies, the old among us will know what I'm talking about here - Arthur and the lion, that sort of thing. I'm fairly sure I heard one of these things on the radio as a relatively small child, and ever since then I've been wandering around saying 'gone and never called me mother' at things that disappear. No you don't need to tell me this is sad, I'm well aware of the fact, but I happen to like the expression, and have no intention of giving it up...!

Back to Tesco's. I tracked down the bread and purchased a large sliced multi grain loaf. I bought a box of eggs, and a lump of cheese - at least I think it's cheese, I'm never 100% sure of this substance that arrives in solid plastic packaging. Frankly when you get it open it resembles the packaging on the tongue, but they don't have a fresh cheese counter, so you either take the plastic substance or you do without. If it was real cheese, a bit of wax would do, and a wrapping of say brown paper. I remember again (oh dear this is turning into a trip down memory lane) going in to the new - yep, first supermarket in town as a kid, and it had this wonderful scent. Because things like cheese were sold in brown paper, and you could smell what was on sale. You knew it was fresh, because you could smell it. And I'm prepared to bet it was a damn site more ecologically friendly than the current offerings which you can't smell, nor pop the wrappings into the compost bin.
Anyhow I digress. I bought cheese, eggs, bread and a pasta salad for lunch. Now I was impressed with this. It was a chicken and red pepper pesto salad with rocket, and it came with a separate pot of balsamic vinegar dressing. There was plenty of chicken, with a lovely fresh taste - like cold chicken you'd roasted at home and sliced a few bits off to make dinner. The pasta was well cooked, not overcooked, and there was plenty of red pepper and rocket. All for £1.99! I reckon it was an economical healthy meal for about the price you'd pay for a sandwich, and there was plenty of it, it was perfect for tea at work - yep again I worked till 9 o'clock, so I needed a meal.

However, despite this it hasn't been a good day foodwise. I didn't have any of my fresh orange juice for brekkie, because as I mentioned yesterday I've run out of oranges, and don't really have enough money to go buying any more - one has to be practical on the week before payday. But there will be cheese sandwich for lunch tomorrow, which as I'm doing a 10 - 4, will be at an appropriate time of the day.
But, and this is where it all falls apart, everyone seemed to have decided to bring stuff to work for everyone to eat. Bought to work today has been a large bag full of crisps in the flavours no one in the family likes - really surprisingly including bags of mini chedders, which I'd have thought everyone liked! But we're talking a big carrier bagful of crisps and snacks here. And then someone else bought in a couple of packets of biscuits - chocolate chip and chocolate digestives, and around four in the afternoon, a box of croissants. I mean I ask you! I'd reached the stage where if it's waved in front of me, I'm going to eat it. But I do want to say that I did only eat a small packet of peanuts ( I cannot resist a nut) and a single chocolate digestive, and a croissant. I thought this was pretty good going! And I was past eating anything when I got home, so no real disasters.

Well I'd best be off to make the sandwiches for lunch. Maybe I wrote the last sentence above too soon... I'll let you know!

Monday October 15th.

First of my everyday this week food blogs, and boy I could have chosen a better week to do this! I'm working a whole weeks worth of 1 - 9 pm shifts, so my guess is I probably won't be blogging again until Weds morning - so excuse me for not doing this properly!

And on top of that, food wise, today has been a disaster!

I started well. Oh yes, freshly squeezed orange juice  - two of them. Very nice and tasty. Having done that, I'm now all out of oranges! In fact, I'm quite short of fresh food, I need to fit in a trip to the supermarket tomorrow, that's for sure.

I'd made lunch yesterday before I went to work. Yep that old standby, peanut butter sandwiches - but that was it, no chocolate, or crisps - just peanut butter and a couple of bits of bread. White bread though, but good white bread. None of the plastic loaf rubbish.

Dinner - well. With a diet like this for the rest of the day,  you can imagine what happened. By six o'clock I was starving, lunch having been pretty well consumed by three.  I was Hungry with the capital H. So of course, I ended up going to Burger King. Isn't that awful? Awful, but delicious. What I'd like to know - and yep it's that other favorite chestnut of the fast food industry - how come there's nothing on the menu there that's a bit healthier? Its not surprising that no one's going to buy salad - I mean, come on..! But why not go for a half-way house? Where's the lean chicken burgerette? Why enfold everything in crispy coating (which is where the fat is.)  I've got a pretty good idea it's because they couldn't make it look respectable.  But if I was in charge of the Burgerhouse menu, I'd be looking to produce a piece of lean chicken breast, one that had say been dipped in a spice mix, so that it had a nice coating. One that could be photographed attractively, and hold it's own among the (I kid you not here) Angry Burgers on display.  Yes, truly folks, burgers with steam coming out of them , so laden with jalapeno chillis that I'd need a cardiac resuss team on standby if I took a mouthful.  I'm just damn sure that they could produce a healthy attractive looking burger if they tried.

And they could put a baked potato on the menu.  And I'm absolutely sure if you tried hard enough, you could come up with a healthy version of an onion ring. The Burger palaces claim that they put healthy food on the menu, but no one chooses it, so none of it sells. I say they're just not trying hard enough.  If I can think of this in about five minutes flat, then they have the time, the effort and the energy to do it sensibly.

Anyhow that's it for today. I'll try to blog again tomorrow, but frankly it depends on how tired I am when I get home. But if not tomorrow, Wednesday for sure. And I'll be popping on a penitence about how I get on in the supermarket, looking for healthy food that I can make a quick dinner out of when I get home tomorrow night.

Sunday 14th October.

I promised myself I'd blog again over the weekend. Not for any particular reason - just because I feel I'm not blogging enough!
I've been busy over the weekend making bagcharms - last effort before Xmas I guess. I dare say I'll make more, but it's one last big effort! And loading stuff - lots more bookmarks to go on the site, but that'll go on for a while.
I'm about to go make dinner. Today's big meal is going to be pasta and green vegetable sauce. I've chopped up leek and Bok Choi finely, and an onion & garlic. I've soaked some dried mushrooms as well, and I'll keep the water for stock, but I'll fry off the onions and garlic in some olive oil, add the veg and mushrooms - maybe I'll put in a few olives, and perhaps the last of a box of plum tomato's I've got, and perhaps I'll even put it in the blender. I've got some linguine to cook to eat it with, and to follow this, I made an apple crumble earlier. I made this by cutting up a load of apples I had which had reached the point of use them or loose them! I cut them into big chunks rather than anything small or fine, and I left the skins on them. For some added zing, I added the juice of a fresh orange. I made crumble by just doing the standard thing - nothing extra, just flour, butter and a little sugar. Piled it up on the top, and dotted a bit of extra butter on there, and popped it into the oven for an hour at 150 degrees c. It's come up golden brown, and the apples have cooked down to a beautiful looking mush type filling - I can't wait to get my teeth into it! All in all, I think it's a very healthy and good dinner.

God look at me, going on about food again. That's life for you - well, I like eating and all, and I am still trying to loose weight. I agree it's not every one's idea of a diet, but it's high in fresh veg, and fruit, and there's very little sugar in it. As for fats, yep, there's fat, but the crumble layer is extremely thin, and I'll use probably less than a teaspoonful of oil. So beat that - it'll have real flavour to it too. I can't abide those ready meals that everyone seems to buy to eat these days - ok, I buy one every now and again, when I'm pushed for time or whatever (ie I can't be bothered to cook) but the idea of eating something like that every day or even more than once say every two weeks, fills me with horror. You only have to look at the list of ingredients. E numbers galore, additives, preservatives - vile. I'm not into puritanical avoidance - like I said I do eat them every now and again. I like curry, and I'll eat Chinese, but that's about as far as it goes. And to be honest, when I do buy them, I do tend to buy the more expensive one's, Marks and Sparks etc. It's a treat - now doesn't that sound strange. I definitely think of them as being a treat, and yet I'm also telling myself that they're full of 'stuff'. Well it's an example of how we can hold contradictory positions on things!

Back to the diet though. I was thinking to myself earlier today that I'm slipping a bit, in the sense that I don't even think I've thought about it for the last week, week and a half or so. I must get myself back up together with it, and a way of doing that is to consciously blog what I've been eating. So I'm setting myself a challenge right? I'm going to do a short blog every day about what I've been eating. For example, today - on top of what I was talking about above, I've had a few pieces of toast and peanut butter, (yes a bit of butter as well!) two freshly squeezed oranges, and a cheese sandwich for lunch. So you see, having a proper dinner that includes a bit of apple crumble is not a bad thing to be eating. Oh I also had two cups of tea with sugar, but I restrained myself - no cake, no biscuits! I might have a couple of small squares of chocolate before bed, if I feel that I need something to restrain myself from running amok at about nine or ten tonight!

So - well there we go. I'll be seeing you tomorrow I guess, for the first of my food instalments!

Friday October 12th 2007

I've a few spare minutes, so I thought I'd do a quick blog! I'm doing a night shift tonight, so I had a lie in this morning - it's been a quiet day, and the weather seems to suit it, heavy cloud, not a trace of a ray of sunshine. So unlike yesterday, which was just gorgeous. I know every one's going around arguing what is or is not an Indian Summer, but frankly yesterday qualified for me. And needless to say, I was stuck in work, and the day I have free, its not exactly nasty weather, but it's nothing to write home about.
I'm just back from the Post Office. These strikes are ruinous for those of us trying to make a bit of extra by selling the odd thing through Ebay. So having sold two bagcharms, I thought I'd best run off to the Post Office and get them away asap. I stopped off in the bakery on the way home and bought a lovely looking white split tin - yep, I know it should have been wholemeal, etc etc, but who could resist a lovely home-baked looking split tin? It was like a blast out of childhood! I'll be making some nice sandwiches to take with me to work tonight - tuna mayo I think. A tuna mayo sandwich warms the cockles of your heart at say two o'clock in the morning. I just had the crust with some peanut butter - yep, I've got quite childish tastes in food at times. When I was a small child coming home from school, I used to rush in and cut myself a large chunk of bread, and often just eat it without any other accompaniment - I didn't consciously think about this when I came in, but I made myself a nice cup of tea and peanut buttered crust without thinking about it. In fact, I do this more or less at around this time every day. It's part of the routine of my life - tea. Doesn't everyone? In this country at least, you come in from work, school, college - shopping, wherever, and you rush to the kitchen to make tea. Tea is such a huge meal in the British way of life. There's this kid in Bath who makes video's for U Tube or something like that, and who's had millions of hits - he made it to the news a few weeks back and they showed a clip of what it is every one's clicking on, and there's this scrawny 15 year old boy, making tea with teabag and mug in front of him. I thought it was rather comforting, plus ca change and all that. Whatever it is he's doing, and whatever media it is he's using to do it, he's a half-grown kid, and he's making and talking about tea. At the end of the day, nothing really changes.
The height of tea though, as far as I'm concerned, is family tea on a Saturday in front of the football scores with the prospect of Dr Who coming up. I can't tell you how many years - real time years, I will have spent in my life indulging in this activity. When I was young, it was bought to us - we were sitting on the floor, Dad was hurrumphing and maintaining a pretty constant stream of criticism from his chair, whether it was the football results, the quality of the tv he was watching or the general unsatisfactoriness of his family, there had to be something to criticise - and the tea tray would be brought in by Mum. The same silvery tea pot still sits in her cupboard, a bit more battered now, but we still use it to this day. Back then we had green Derby cups and saucers, and on Saturdays there would be cake of some sort. Usually a Cadbury's chocolate cake which she would cut up and parcel out to each of us. I can almost still hear the sound of the reading of the results - about the same time the curtains would be closed and lights switched on against the gloom of a real autumn evening. It would be warm and cosy, and we would all be looking forward to Doctor Who - real Doctor Who, not the travesty that's passing under that name now! Patrick Troughton or Jon Pertwee, darlecs - do you know, I have no idea how to spell that, darlik, darlek - ah, yes, darlek I think, no still doesn't look right. Whatever. They were frightening! And yes, Jo and I really did have to go and hide behind the sofa sometimes - it's always talked about as a joke, but it was real alright. If there was enough tea in the pot, you'd get a second cup, and nine times out of ten, someone would top the pot up, so maybe even a third. Then when Doctor Who was finished, and the news came on, it was all gone for another week, the tray and remains would be carried away, and the family would break up - each to their own tasks. Mum to make supper, Nick off to who knew were, but I think probably to get ready to go out that night. Dad would disappear to, and Jo and I would probably be sent to lay the table for dinner.
Ah well, I must get moving myself to make some supper to eat before I trek off to work - get my backpack ready for the night. I need stuff like jumpers and food for the night. I dare say I'll be blogging again over the weekend.

Sunday 7th October

I've been loading up the Ebay shop with stuff this weekend - mostly bookmarks, as I've got so many of them to upload for Xmas. If you're looking for stocking fillers, nip over is my tip, but don't despair if there's nothing there that catches your eye. I've a lot more to put on over the next 8 weeks or so!

Now just sit back and think of the obscenity of what I've just written. Take a look at the header of this post. It's the first week in October, and I'm loading stuff on for Christmas. .. actually I just checked, and it's not as obscene as I first thought, there are in fact 11 weeks left til Xmas, and of those 11 weeks, approximately 2 paydays, possibly 3. I can't say I've done much thinking about it personally, although I daresay I'll get round to it at some point, but I'd like to build up a bit of an Xmas nest egg by selling a good few - yep, you guessed it, bookmarks. Among other bits and bobs of course. Sainsbury's, my local supermarket, has started to load up it's shelves with all sorts of stuff - the usual giant tins of sweets, advent calendars, cards - just the non-essentials to start with. Well, of course, buy your advent calendar now, and there's every chance you'll loose it, and need to buy another.

I know that basically, personal economics now demand that you start your buying early. And no doubt, if enough money is sunk into the excess of the season, we may stave off public economic collapse for another few months. But boy, it does seem to get worse every year, with things appearing earlier and earlier - I always think of it as being daft and obscene, but of course it's not. Not really. If its not there early, you can't afford it, and so much of what we think of as being Christmas depends on the excess. It papers the cracks in our social fabric. It's like the annual jokes about the meaning of Christmas - indigestion and a good row. Papered over with another sherry mother, and fried Christmas pudding for Boxing Day breakfast.

You'll have to forgive my sourness. We've - that is to say, the family, have not had a good week, and to compound it, I couldn't possibly write why here. There must be millions of people who blog, thinking they're going to write about the reality of their lives, only to find that so many people are reading what they're writing that they can no longer write with the freedom that they originally intended. Alas that is the case here, but let's just leave it at the fact it hasn't been a good week.

What I can write about is the book that I sort of semi-reviewed last week, The Alton Gift, by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah Ross, although it's more likely to have been more the work of Ross than Bradley. See the post below if you want to fully get the drift of what I'm going on about, but essentially, I was talking about the problem of new writers taking over established series of books. Darkover - for this is a Darkover book, is beloved by many people who've been reading them for years - I don't have the date the first book was published at the tip of my fingers, but it's got to be 20 - 30 years at least, and Bradley died some time back. The latest book, published this year I believe, is the result of a collaboration between Bradley (who was notoriously protective of the Darkover oeuvre) and Ross, who's also been involved in writing other's in the series. It's pretty much the latest thing in publishing - the Dune series, written for years by Frank Herbert was taken on after his death by his son, Brian, and another writer with more actual writing experience.

I think that the fact that this appears to be the latest 'trend' in publishing says an awful lot about why it's happening. Firstly, it must be a disaster for a publisher who's counted on a banker of a book coming out say once every year to two years for the past twenty years to suddenly be faced with the loss of the income from that book. Anyone who loves books has to also be prepared to support the publishers who produce them, so long as they don't get too excessive about the prices that they charge. So yon publisher of course is going to look about him for someone to produce that new banker. If there are notes for a 'new' book, all well and good, you can put in a good chunk about blurb about that - it links in the new writer to the existing series. If you've got a family relationship, or a past collaboration to add to that chunk, again, all well and good, it's a peg to hang the change on.

But do we as readers actually know that what we're being told is the truth? It's not like the new Dune books are labelled by the paragraph - Herbert Snr, Herbert Jnr, Anderson (the new guy) and the same goes for the Darkover book. Every time I pick up one of these types of books I get the feeling that basically I'm being ripped off. I have nothing to depend on that what they're telling me about where the book came from is the truth.

And as I said in my earlier post, all I can actually go on in the end is whether the book itself is actually any good or not. And alas, I'm sorry to say that pretty much like the Dune books, The Alton Gift isn't a disaster, but my God it's poor by comparison.

So Assuming that Bradley left some kind of notes for the book, it's clear that she intended Domenic (the central character) to be a figure in the mould of Regis Hastur, and to have the same crisis of faith prior to assuming the position of Regent (do excuse me if you know nothing of Darkover - I'd skip this bit if I were you!) but the reality of what appears on the page is a pretty shallow echo of her normal sterling gift for characterisation. Appallingly worse is what happens to Marguerida, one of my all time favourite characters out of Darkover, who I have been left feeling has been hung out to dry! The betrayal of Marja, having to beg pardon for using her gift to the Comyn Council is appalling! Lou, creeping off to Nevarsin to spend his final years in retreat for using the Alton Gift - it just doesn't fit. I don't know, this could have course have been what Bradley intended, and my feeling is that if it was, she'd have handled it in a way to make it fit, and us her readers comfortable with the outcome. As it is, I'm left with a very sour taste in my mouth, and the wish that I'd never read it. And maybe that's what I need to remember, that I just shouldn't bother to buy these books. But there are masterpieces of people taking other's characters and working with them - The Wide Sargasso Sea for instance, and I read a book a good few years ago now, when someone (and I'm sorry to say I've forgotten who) had taken the heroine of Rebecca and written a follow up. It was terribly good. Mrs De Winter, I think it's called. But as I've no doubt you're saying to yourself as you read this (or at least I hope you are) are, but there you're dealing with classic works, fine fiction. Which is all very well, but I happen to like reading Dune and - for arguments sake, Exile's Song. I enjoy them just as much as I enjoy Jane Eyre, and Rebecca. I'm no literary snob, for heavens' sake I watch Neighbours. (And you should see me turn up my nose at EastEnders, now there's trash for you...) In particular, when it comes to so called good fiction, I regularly read and re-read the Sherlock Holmes stories. And one of my favourite thrillers of all time is The Woman in White. You can't beat it with a cup of tea, and a good storm going outside!

So anyhow, bookmarks. Shall I post a few photo's? After all peeps, we've all go stocking fillers and presents to buy in these next few 11 weeks!!! All of the below are on sale now, or going on sale over the next week.

This is a small pink and plum crackleglass beaded Shepherd's Crook bookmark!

This is a close up of the beaded tag of another - a pink glass lampworked bead (i.e., it's got glass flowers worked onto the surface of the bead), with a garnet crystal Swarovski heart hung pendant underneath.

And this one is quite similar, except it's a green lampworked bead, and a Swarovski heart in padparadsha. You can see how brilliant the Swarovski crystal is in this one, look at the reflected light!

This is the tag of blue crackleglass beads, with a silvertone butterfly charm hung underneath. If you flip the charm over, it has 'inspire' embossed on the other side.

This is a new bagcharm that's on sale - hematite charms, on three silver plated chains.

Monday 1st October 2007

Wow, October already! Aren't you shocked? That the year seems to be flying by, so quickly! I went to the post office and the supermarket today, and boy, I couldn't believe how autumnal it was. The trees are turning yellow, and there were a good few leaves on the ground - it was really what they would call dreich up in Scotland, that fine misty rain that soaks through everything without a drop actually forming, so it was wet and slippy underfoot. By the time I got to Sainsburies, I was dripping down the back of my neck, 'cos needless to say, I'd forgotten to take an umbrella with me. The sky was that horrible white colour - low cloud in other words, just horrible. Mind you it was a fair relief to leave the post office and find that the weather hadn't changed, most times by the time I leave, there's a full fledged downpour going on.

Sainsburies was almost pleasant. It was early afternoon, on a Monday - so it was really quite empty. I was able to whip around in a matter of minutes. I bought apples, pears and plums, and I've every intention of making myself a crumble at some point. Autumn crumble - a nice mix of those fruits, and crumble made from the usual flour, butter and sugar, but I'm going to add a small quantity of nibbed hazelnuts, and some pounded gingernuts. I'll let you know how it turns out!

I've been working hard on my Xmas order, and it's coming along very nicely. I've about five of the bookmarks done, and one of the bagcharms - it's a big order (well, big for me!) and I'd like to get it done. I've had some lovely beads arrive to do it with, really nice pink opaque glass 'melon' beads, which are sort of segmented up in the way that a pumpkin sometimes has segments. Most attractive. I made some bookmarks to send home with my brother who visited last week, and had a call from my sister in law last night to thank me for them - it was nice to chat with her on the phone. We don't talk often enough really. Don't you find that the time to just simply chat is hard to find? It's like rushing around from Peter to Paul and back again. I was working over this weekend, but because of a bit of an emergency at the work building, from home. I don't see it being fixed that quickly either, so I guess that I may be doing a night shift from home later in the week - my neighbours won't be best pleased I guess.

I've been reading Darkover books as well. Its funny but when I started reading science fiction, all those years ago, I used to read Asimov and Heinlein, what used to be called 'hard' sf. I used to quite despise fantasy, but as I've aged, I've read more and more of it. I'm lucky I suppose to be making my way through a saga of books that I've not read, classics of sf/fantasy, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I have about ten of them, and I've just bought some new one's from Amazon, (and hey, they've arrived quickly!) The biggest one that I got was the Renunciate books, which I'm pretty sure I have actually read - at least two of them at any rate, years and years ago, and totally out of sequence. I have an ambition to be able to read all of them in order, so I can read through the development of the books, the story - the planet. Anyhow after I've read that, I then have the last one to read, The Alton Gift. I say last, but my guess is it was essentially written from notes by the co-writer, after Bradley's death in 1999, and there's some blurb on the book that suggests there may be more to come. I'm not as anti this as one might think, I've read the 'new' Dune books, and they're not that bad - the concept is strong enough to carry them, without the genius of Herbert being actually present. My guess is that the Darkover concept may well be as well, the woman who's written this one talks in her introduction about how you have to fall in love with the original characters to be able to write them, and I'd agree with that. And since Darkover (and Dune, come to that,) are generational stories, you can move on to new characters - but it depends entirely on whether these writers are good enough to be able to create the solid dependability of good working characters to carry whatever plot it is that your working with. After all, there was only ever going to be one Paul Atreides, and one Regis Hastur et al, and (yep, this is the heresy) maybe a new writer will add something new that will actually deepen and enrich the stories. Ok, now in my experience so far this hasn't actually happened (I haven't read the Alton Gift book yet, and can't speak about this) but I did find with the Dune books that there was a coarsening of the stories. It was indefinable, I could no more put my finger on exactly what it was about them that missed the mark that Herbert snr hit every time, but I'd say it was that he lived the Dune world, whereas everyone else is interpreting his vision. But I'm not so entirely anti it as the purists seem to be. I live in hope that one day someone really will be able to enhance a saga - but then of course, with the laws of copyright as they stand it's unlikely to happen, because the people who are writing them are engaged by the publishers, and copyright holders. The person who will truly enhance one of these books is the person who writes from love of the story - which leaves me quite hopeful for the Alton book I was talking about. She does seem to have grasped that point, which you've got to admit is a good sign. So I'm moderately optimistic!

Saturday 22nd September

Now, in my everlasting search for the perfect opening sentence for a blog entry, I've been trying to think up lots of let's grab hold of my audience!!!

And yes, you're right, I couldn't come up with anything. Nothing has actually been happening - except what seems to have been an unending day after day of work - if it's not getting up first thing to go to work, it's getting up to go to work in the middle of the night. And now I have a few days off, do I have any money to go and do anything on my days off, even so much as go visit the family? Of course not, not until Monday at any rate. Aha.. come Monday though..!

So what am I going to write about? Well I could go off on another of my Amazon crusades, but I'm sure that everyone has their own little Amazon gripe. So excuse me if I duck out of exposing my Amazon gripe to the nation, it's ultimately very boring.
Actually I'll admit I'm not feeling too bright today. I slept late, and even when I got up firstly, I felt headachey, and then secondly I felt sleepy. I even went back to sleep, a sure sign that yep, I ain't feeling 100%. So if this is a totally dull blog, forgive me. Come back next week, it might have improved!!!

I do have one thing to write about which is really interesting. I was sent this link to a new group on Flickr, The Monthly Scavenger Hunt. (Link is: http://www.flickr.com/groups/monthlyscavengerhunt/ )
and it's fantastic! Every month they publish a list, and you get to go off and photograph stuff on it, and then make a montage out of the photo's and post it to the group. It's so random, you've got to love random. The lists have things like 'heirloom', and 'Black Object', so open to interpretation, which I just love.

I really admire people who can put this sort of randomness together and make you look at a few objects and think, wow, that's great. A few weeks back I saw some wonderful photos in the photostream of one of my contacts, PaperFlowerGirl.
(Link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paper-flower-girl/ ) She had photographed what appeared to be a random collection of items on her desk, in colour matching groups and they are really fantastic photos. I did a sort of frankly poor homage photo's, well I'm interested in this kind of thing, but I'm no master of it ok, and I was quite pleased with my photo's. I'd paste them but I'm using this live writer Beta thingy, and frankly if I want to post a photo, I have to cut and paste and use the real bloger poster. So why not? I'm fed up with not putting enough photo's up.

. The idea is that the top bit is gold, the middle bit is green and the bottom section is red.

Heck, I hope that comes out a bit bigger on the blog than it is here!

These are really things off my desk. My desk is a mess, it's always a mess and frankly it's always likely to be a mess, which sort of leaves me with lots of things to choose from to make photo's like this. That's life as they say.

Anyhow what else have I been up to? Not a lot as I said. I could write a thesis about the bus service in Bristol right now, the amount of time I've been spending waiting for them to turn up, and of course the numbers of times a bus turns up on time in this city you could count on the fingers of one hand. Less than that. I have been doing a lot of work - jewellery wise that is, making the final downhill run into the big Xmas sales. These are a few of the things that I've been putting together:

I've been doing a lot of these metal and single bead type bag charms - not everyone wants a bag charm loaded down with beads!

This one is a bit less 'beady' than

the Bagcharms I normally do - but it's got some

lovely peachy crackleglass beads, and a big agate

donut at the bottom.

Anyhow, these are the things I've been up to - boring, but then that's average life for you! All of the bagcharms can be found in my Ebay shop over the next week or so - these are going on sale then.

Sunday September 9th.

Well here we are, mid September already - what a horrible thought. This year seems to be going by so awfully fast!!!
Now.. what to write about. Goodness only knows, because frankly, I haven't been doing anything that's worth writing about. Except for a curious incident yesterday evening.
I had a telephone call from one of those absurd machines that dials you up, and tells you you've won something. Well I was a bit bored at the time, so I called it back - to be honest I'm a bit of a sucker for those 'you have won' type lines. I know I shouldn't be - I really do know that, I know no one ever wins on these things, but I have that sort of everlasting hope about them. I'd love to be the unexpected recipient of a large cheque. Well who wouldn't?
So as I said, I phoned the thing. I put in the neverending series of numbers , press this button for that etc - that's how they make their money of course, by keeping you hanging on to a premium charge telephone number. But in a way I sort of feel that's what makes me believe in them - at some point, they have to hand something over to someone, in order to be within the law. Anyway having pressed all these buttons, the machine finally told me I'd won a holiday - I was pretty much expecting this, I never 'win' anything that I'm really interested in. Only this time, of course, it is. Promising me something interesting that is, it's telling me I've won a holiday in Venice.
Venice. One of the places I've always wanted to go to! So against my better judgement I'm investigating this a bit further. I'll write off and send them the 'standard sized envelope' (they very cleverly don't tell me what a standard sized envelope actually is, so if nothing turns up, well that's their get out clause right there) and they promise they'll send me the details. It's bound to be that I have to take it probably before the end of April 08, because I haven't enough annual leave to take a week off before then, or there'll be some other catch with this. There has to be because people like me don't win things like a free holiday in Venice. I mean just imagine wandering around St Marks, or the Doge's Palace - and more than that, simply the back streets. All those opportunities to take photo's of fabulous architecture - I'm not quite so sure about the gondolas. I'm not really built for a gondola!
Anyhow, I'll keep you posted as to what happens next. What the eventual get out clause they have that will prevent me from seizing this by the teeth and pocketing it!
Anyhow, on top of all this, I've been busy working away. Lots of extra hours here and there, extra shifts when I can fit them in to my rota - which isn't often. I have to make do with a few hours here and there. But I've been doing my own work too - I had some simply lovely extra big bookmarks arrive from my supplier in Australia. Great big squiggle shaped one's, six inches long!

There you go, doesn't it look good? The big black circle there is haematite, with a nice silvertone metal oval it can hang from.

This one's a standard sized silver tone metal bookmark, with a wonderful bronze flower charm hanging off it, with two fabulous leaf charms - also bronze tone, and with wonderful veining. I got them from Etsy a while back, part of a whole pack of leaf charms I got. Excellent for bookmarks!

This is a long chain necklace, with haematite circles - I think it makes a great everyday wear jewellery! All of the bookmarks, and this necklace are on sale in my Ebay shop now, or over the next couple of days!

These are fabulous earrings - big drops of blueberry quartz, with small bicones of Swarovski crystal hung over the top.

This is a fantastic necklace that I'm aiming to put onto Ebay in the run up to Xmas - its made from fantastic handcrafted beads from one of my favourite Etsy sellers, Chickadee Beads. These are just fabulous mottled purple blue glass beads, hung on silver plate chain with a dangle of small Swarovski Crystal bicones.

Well that's it for now - more in due course!

Thursday August 30th

Well it's a miracle that I'm typing this! I've been in no-computer hell for about the last - well since last Thursday at least. Basically for the past two weeks, my cable has been playing up, and then as I say, last Thursday it packed up altogether. So if anyone's reading this, thinking that they might find out what's happened to me - there you go. No-computer hell!

Mind you, even if I had had it, I wouldn't have been around much. It was Mum's birthday on Sunday, and I was over there from what, Saturday - frankly, even though this was only last weekend, already it feels like weeks ago. The cake came out wonderfully, although I scotched the butterflies - simply too much trouble. Check it out!

The party went very well. We were blessed with really really good weather - we've been joking at work that this summer's consisted of a week in April and a weekend at the end of August, with autumn in between. But wasn't last weekend wonderful? People had to sit in shade, and come in out of the sun! Best of all though, Mum herself was on form. When someone's suffering from dementia, being on good form, or having a good day is particularly important - I can remember when Dad was in what was still the reasonably early stage of Alzheimer's, he and Mum went to visit my Aunt living in Birmingham, and they got half way there and he became convinced that Mum was kidnapping him! Writing this, it may seem like something of a joke, but believe me it wasn't any kind of joke at the time. Anyway she was in a very good mood and a good time was had by all.

So of course when I got home I was all excited that the people were coming to fix the cable - and indeed they did. Unfortunately they had to leave very soon after they arrived, as they didn't appear to have foreseen that in order to put the cable right they would need to get the other end of it out of the hole in the pavement. Frankly I would have thought this was pretty obvious to start with, but clearly not, and away they went again. If I hadn't have started shouting down the phone like a mad thing, frankly I think I'd still be here waiting, but I have a loud voice and I can make it work for me. So the web is once more mine!

Some of the books I ordered with my birthday Amazon vouchers have turned up! It's always thrilling to get parcels in the post isn't it? Anyhow, so far I've received 'The Popinjays', which is the account of the Woodville family. This frankly was a bit of a disappointment, rather than the rollicking read I was expecting. I can't really put my finger on why, it certainly should be a lively book given what the Woodvilles got up to.

Then, my second parcel arrived, with Christopher Brookmyre's Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks. Now this is an oddity, it's the first of his books I've ever read, and I bought it because I'd seen some good reviews. I'm not saying it's a bad book, but it's oddly disjointed, which is probably his stock in trade. I'd guessed the solution by about the third chapter, which was rather disappointing, but - well, what the hell, it wasn't that bad. Not sure I'll be buying any more of his books though.

The third book was a biography of Edward III. I'm still plugging my way through this, but a problem I hadn't anticipated was that in order to make the paperback small enough not to put people off, they've made the print so tiny that I have to go back and re-read half of what I've read! So it's very slow going. But it is interesting, and I do like Edward III. I've already learnt stuff that I didn't know, which is always a good thing in a history book, particularly when you're reasonably familiar with the background. So one up on that I say!

But ultimately, this shows the problem with buying from Amazon. You're dependent on reviews for a guide to whether you're going to like something or not, and in a lot of these cases, the only reviews that are there are the buyer one's. You can end up spending a lot of money without really knowing what you're buying. Still I've got another two books I think to come, so maybe it'll turn out to be 50/50 good/bad. Here's hoping folks!

Weds 22nd August!

I've just been watching the football - what a depressing experience that was! Oh well, I shan't comment, probably it's a case of the least said, it started ok, but oh boy, did it end poorly.

Anyhow, I've been a busy bee. Lots of work recently - hit that patch in the rota where it's been nothing but 8 - 4's. Ah, I hear you all say, lots of time to be working in the evening then. No, lots of time to be sleeping in the evening is what I say. I did get a bit done, but frankly, an 8 - 4 leaves me pretty much wanting dinner and a bit of mindless telly followed by a chapter or so of something entertaining bookwise, before sleep. What energy I did have went on icing...

Yep, the cake. What can I say? I have an entire potfull of butterfly wings and various letters that will eventually make a 'Happy Birthday' and walls sort of splattered with remnants of pink and white icing! (Actually I exaggerate this part, if the landlords reading!)  Seriously though, using an electric whisk to make royal icing is not a particularly good idea!

To be honest, it's not the electric beater, so much as the exploding icing bags. I don't know what they're doing to icing bags these days, but they don't seem to hold together the way that they did.  I bought a new one a couple of days ago and it actually had a gap in the seam before I'd even filled it!  Next one's I buy, I'm going to buy the good one, yep the professional bag, because you can at least rely on it holding together, and possibly lasting more than one icing session.  It's like tights, it's not a good thing to try and save money on.

 

Well fingers crossed anyhow, tomorrow I make the cake. I have the recipe, the ingredients - the pan is out of the cupboard and waiting for it's lining to be fitted - buttered and parchmented ladies, I'm old fashioned. I did use one of these super-doopery silicon jobs, but to be honest, I can't cut it well enough to actually fit the bottom of the pan, so it's best to stick with what you know.  Especially now Lakeland make that wonderful three inch roll that just fit's the sides so wonderfully.

My recipe is a buttermilk pound cake sponge. It needs to be a keeper, so using one of the buttermilk recipes will make for a moister sponge.  I aim to be cooking by first thing tomorrow, and icing by tomorrow night, probably fitting the final touches over at Winsley. I don't think it's worth the risk of trying to move the thing with butterflies in place - it's easier to put the base icing on and take a pot of buttercream with me (and the piping bag!) to do the bodies of the butterflies and stick the wings in over at Winsley. At least that's the plan right now... who knows what it will be by tomorrow??

Tuesday 14th August

I should wash my hands before I start this - I've been doing some Sculpey blanks for new pendant work, and my hands are still a bit 'clay-ey' - is there such a thing as 'clay-ey'? I very much doubt it. But Sculpey air drying clay is quite harmless stuff - it seems to dry and brush off pretty much everything. The pendants I've been making at textured blanks - small, round, with a little hook in the top to hang them.  Did you read my post below on the leaves? Well at the same time that I collected the leaves, I collected a few seed pods, and rather interestingly, one of them's dried, and as it dries, it's opened. As it's this huge oval shaped thing (I've no idea what it's a seed pod of) it's opened particularly irregularly. Rubbing it over the top of the soft clay has left the most marvelous impression. Well, I rolled rather than rubbed, but regardless, I'm very pleased with it. I'll take a few photo's after I've painted them, and put them up. I'm going to coat them with a base colour, and then rub colours over the top, including possibly an old bit of gold wax I've somewhere around the place. It should look good.

Sadly alas, the leaves were a dismal failure. The icing doesn't dry quickly enough for the leaf not to decay underneath, and it would contaminate the icing which I definitely don't want. So they are all now in the bin! I've been piping out a few flowers - just a blob surrounded by other blobs really. They're not so bad. Tomorrow I'll get started on the template for the 'happy birthday' bit - I've been practising my swirls etc, and I also need a new piping bag. My old one doesn't fit all of my nozzles which is a pain as for the writing I need to use the finest one!

Lord I've got a documentary on Bergman on the box. It'll have to be - well, I don't know, turned down at the least, Scenes from a marriage is loud - at least the bits they've chosen to broadcast are. Bergman's not my favourite of filmmakers, I quite enjoy some of them, but oh dear very depressing. If I start paying attention to it, I shall need a good few chapters of something light and frothy before bed - do you find that? Sometimes, you need to be cheered up before you go to sleep. I find Wodehouse good for this, and I rather suspect that's at the heart of my enjoyment of Harry Potter. Light, Frothy and totally inconsequential. Together with a nice cup of ginger tea, it's everything you could want before falling asleep. So on that note, I'm off to bed!

Sunday 12th August

Well, I'm writing this very late at night, waiting to see if a customised listing works on Ebay - it's all very complex!
I've recovered from the gastro, thank god. It's a nasty experience.. I finally made it over back home too - we had a really nice time.
But.. the big news on the home front is that we've decided to have a party for Mum's 84th birthday in a couple of weeks. This is a big deal for us - and I'm making the birthday cake. This has to be just super nice, she doesn't get to have this sort of thing very often, and I want a really nice cake to be the centre piece of the spread. I've been looking at cakes, and cake recipes - consulting on Flickr for ideas, design wise, and various recipe sites for recipes - although I have to admit, basically I think it's going to be a genoise. It makes a good base for whatever sort of fillings you want to put into it - and I haven't made up my mind as to what sort of filling to put in it yet. It's summer, and I think summer fruits would be nice, but I want this to be a sort of ultra glam cake, which fruit doesn't lend itself to. I've been experimenting today, with making leaves. I have this sort of image in my head, of a floral top piece, with leaves and petals cascading down - so I've gathered some real leaves, given them a good wash and made up a royal icing in a green. I then 'painted' the leaves with the icing, and I'm waiting for them to dry out, so I can try peeling the leaves off the back. I've done this with chocolate a good many times in the past, and it works really well with them, but I have no idea if it works with royal icing. I strongly suspect at the moment that it won't, but nothing's dry enough to really find out yet!

If this doesn't work (and as I said, I suspect it won't) then it's back to the old standby that I used when I made a wedding cake for my sister. With this, you need a template - a template of pretty much anything, but for sake of argument, let's say a leaf. You need to fix this to a smooth movable surface, and tape down a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top. You then ice directly on to the greaseproof, and leave that to dry. You can then peel away the paper from the back of your iced motif, and they store really well in a sealed container. For Jo's old wedding cake I also made some iced net butterfly's - you tape a piece of fine net over the top of the greaseproof, and ice onto the net - it makes a fine net wing, but you have to be careful as you cut around the wing edges with scissors. I may go for butterfly's with this cake as well, because they make such a pretty display. And whilst Jo's were all in white, for this one I could add little dots and patterns in colours. But then I'm very taken with the wonderful designs I've seen where people are making motif's out of chocolate, and applying them to a white cake. They look very beautiful.

But then I've also got this idea that a lovely big sponge cake with cream and say strawberries would be lovely. Not a Strawberry shortcake - I have done that in the past, but it's not exactly a birthday cake is it? It's more desert. Some of these recipe sites have fantastic recipe's on them though - I'm very tempted by what the Americans seem to call Yellow Cake. This appears to be a very egg yolk rich cake, which maybe isn't the greatest idea, as this cake will have to keep for a day or so. Which rules out things like Angel Food Cake.

You may wonder why I'm thinking so American in this. Mum's had a very interesting life, and spent a good deal of her childhood living in South America and Canada. So an American cake may actually trigger memories for her of her childhood. I do appreciate that South America isn't exactly the home of say, Angel Food Cake, or even 'Yellow' Cake, but I feel it's somehow more in that direction than say a Victoria Sponge! Actually writing this is making me think I should consult my aunt - my mother's sister, who would probably know a great deal more about what sort of cakes they had as kids than I do. Mum made some wonderful cakes for us as kids.

At least I remember huge construction jobs going on in the kitchen - I know Martin, my younger brother, had a fantastic chocolate train cake at one point! Whether Jo and I had such things I don't know, I rather suspect maybe not! We did have a remarkable birthday - I can't remember if it was Xmas, or a birthday, or which of us actually had the birthday if it was that, but I have very clear memories of what followed. Mum had tied up our/my/her presents with string, and hidden them all over the house. We had to follow this incredible maze all over the place to discover parcels hidden under cushions on the sofa, behind plant pots etc - if I remember rightly, we'd woken up terribly early, found the string and literally almost demolished the house before Mum & Dad had even woken up. It was the most exciting thing you can imagine, all that following the trail, and ripping open of packages - I highly recommend it to anyone with a child. But if I were you, I'd confine it to one room!!! And perhaps downstairs, so that you can prevent any early morning wakings, and the downfall of your careful plan by waking to discover a house full of discarded string attached to torn open wrapping paper!

Anyhow, my big present this year is that I'm going to be having a new chair for the computer. Since my present one is this rather awful Argos thing, and the new chair is going to be just like the one Martin has, I know it'll be ultra comfortable and come on wheels. Jo bought me some really fab soaps in lovely tins, and I got some really cool Amazon vouchers - enough to be waiting for some fantastic books to be arriving at some point over the next week or so. Don't you just hate Amazon's 'this book is available for immediate delivery' and then you get through to the payment page, and they tell you they won't be delivering your stuff for at least three weeks? It's a real swizz if you ask me. I was talking to Jane, a friend at work, about it, and she was saying she always orders from the used section because of this, and normally I would too, but these are medieval history books, and they don't always have used one's available. I think they get delayed because they have to print them off. Medieval history books often don't have a large print run to start off, they advertise them and wait to see how many orders they get for 'em. Alas but it's the way of the world, and at least it does give you the opportunity to buy some medieval books you otherwise wouldn't get. Anyhow, I've bought a history of the Neville family, a history of the Woodvilles, a biography of Anne Neville, a biography of Elizabeth Woodville, and a crime book. It's the Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, but I can't remember who's written it, but it might be good. It's had good reviews.

One should try something new every now and again - I would never have found and enjoyed the Jasper Fforde books if you don't just every now and again go with a new writer. And I bought the first Laurie R King book after reading a good review, and I love those. There will be those of you who will draw in a sharp intake of breath when I tell you that these are books about a crime solving heroine who is the wife of Sherlock Holmes - yes I know, it should be ghastly, but trust me on this, they are very well written, and excellently plotted crime books set around the turn of the 19/20th centuries - lord, I was going to write the turn of the last century there, but heaven's that's only seven years ago now. Anyway, if you look past the Sherlock Holmes thing (if you're a dedicated Holmesian) (Holmeist?? Whatever.) They're very enjoyable.

I've also read HP and the Deathly Hallows. It's an excellent book. No doubt I'll write about it in detail at some point, but I'll leave it for a while, because a) it's good that these things simmer in the brain for a little while, and b) I don't want to bust anybody's bubble, so we'll give it a while longer. I know it's all over the net etc, but what the hell - this is turning into the post from Marathon anyway. If I kick in on the Deathly Hallows now, I'll be here for the rest of the night.
Speaking of which I should be heading for bed! It's 1:58, and I'd like some sleep tonight...!!!

Sunday 5th August, 01.09 am!

Yeah, I know it's late and I should be on my way to bed - I was watching what I'm afraid was a truly terrible film (Lake Placid, I would have been so way better off with Gregory's Girl) and then I started - or I went to switch off the computer, and of course before I knew where I was, I was browsing Flickr.

The good news in my life is that I'm on my way to recovery from the gastro-enteritis - the worst is definitely over,  and I'll be back at work soon. Unfortunately I'm not really ok to go home this weekend, so my plans there have changed - going to visit on Wednesday now.

 

So, being ill and all, I've been watching some truly awful television. There's something about being ill that makes dreadful tv about the only thing you can do.  What have I been watching? Oh God, I shudder to tell you. Midsomer Murder - who dreamt that one up?   But it is actually topped by something that for some unknown reason, ITV seem to have taken to showing instead of the kids' tv programmes - what's happened to kids tv by the way?  It appears to have totally gone from ITV, on the beeb has any kind of kids stuff on it.  Anyway instead of it, ITV have been showing something called Rosemary and Thyme. This extremely odd programme is centred around two women who seem to be some sort of gardeners, of which on every single job they take, someone is murdered. Even judging by the episodes I've seen, you'd think word would have got round among their customers by now. Don't hire those two, you'll be up to your eyes in incompetent police officers at any moment. Because not only do their clients get bumped off, the victims have the misfortune of having their demise investigated by the worlds biggest collection of incompetent coppers.

Now I thought Midsummer Murder was about the worst that British tv could get in the line of crime drama. Dear old John Nettles pottering about a disparate collection of picturesque villages with  a higher murder rate than that of the darkest inner city, forget New York, we're talking the Favellas here, followed doggedly by his semi-literate sergeant, as he sets about solving a case that you can be pretty sure was either a) the wife, b) the husband, c) the girlfriend or d) the vicar.  Or some combination therein.  But this is as nothing to this Rosemary and Thyme.  Extraordinarily, these two are played by two actors who really should have known better - and one can only assume that the paycheques for this must have been quite as incredible as the plots.  In the past week, I've seen them  - turn up at a cathedral to re-lay a medieval herbal garden (I think this was the dean being knocked off by the chapter, or was it the daughter that did it? At any rate there was a body in a well, which was momentarily diverting.)  Then there was one set in some species of municipal park. What that council was doing wasting its council tax hiring gardeners is beyond me, when surely they must have a parks department?  This one involved a foreign nanny, being blackmailed into stealing her employer's jewellery at the behest of someone purporting to be a university lecturer. Or at least, that was the best sense I could make of it.  Its by far the most ludicrous piece of trash I've seen in I don't know how long, and at least if I'm confronted by it again, I shall reach for a dvd. Even the most watched, scratched, ancient piece of stuff on the shelves is better watching than this drivel!

 

So that's my blast for the day. Catch you later!