Things I now know

Firstly: that when faced with a real bargain in John Lewis, and with no real justification - let's rephrase that: no justification whatsoever - for replacing my old computer, I am unable to turn down a 20" Mac on sale. This afternoon I'm going in to pay for it (with the roof money - don't ask) and bring it home.


Secondly: that browsing, choosing and buying wool is a most seductive experience - why didn't anyone tell me that it might become a dangerously addictive activity? I must steer clear of wool shops until the roof money has been re-saved up.

Thirdly: that knitting is easy after a 30-odd year break, until you try, when you find you can't count stitches and rows and watch tv at the same time. I am becoming skilled at pulling my few rows out and starting again, muttering under my breath.

Fourthly: that knitting is hard when you have a cat or two hanging on to the end of your needles. Oddly, they ignore the wool; it's the waving needles that lure them.


It's a feckless life, but it's fun.

Light (splashy) relief

After the emotional harrowing of Remembrance Day, it's time for something not very serious.





Now I know why there is always such a mess round the bowl.

He's getting water wings for Christmas, and next year, bathtub-diving lessons.

Remembrance Sunday

Busy?

I emailed a friend the other day, and mentioned that November 5th had been my retirement anniversary, adding that it was about time I found something useful to do (no, not paid work, sillies!) as I had been dossing about for two years.

And in reply came this indignant ticking-off:

Two years??? it doesn't seem that long, and yet it seems forever that you have not had to drag yourself into the civic. Don't be too hard on yourself, you have not spent the time dossing around. You have been recovering from a serious illness. And thinking about your future, making major improvements in the house, helping your friends and ex relatives, entertaining visitors, nursing sick cats (and one dog) taking in four legged waifs, battling with the allotment... I could go on but I hope the point is made.

I was touched and a bit comforted. And I added the cakes, the reduced ironing mountain and the rather improved tidiness to her list. Then I read Kitty B's post in Village Fate, the one in which she described the hundred and one things she was involved in doing, and felt that perhaps dossing was indeed the better term to describe my daily life.

Her customer's theory that busy young people became busy old people doesn't seem to hold true in my case; I was hectically, ridiculously busy for many years, and now seem to have completely lost the taste for it. I am a chronically unbusy middle-aged woman now, easily given to staring into the middle distance, thinking about nothing very much, taking a casual approach to the proper time to get dressed each day, and a blank calendar is a cause to rejoice. A day with one appointment is a reasonably full day; two appointments are a busy day, and three (o horror!) make for an early night and a day off the next day to recover.

Note: by appointments I mean really important and challenging things like walking the dog round to Posh Pups for her expensive haircut, waiting for the Virgin Media engineer (yay! one came today, sorted the modem, and as a former tiler, complimented me on my bathroom tiles), and knocking up some scones and tea for a visitor. I have lost all tact and diplomacy in turning down invitations; I can now say in a tone that brooks no argument: "No thank you. That would mean going out!" And it feels utterly liberating.

But I wonder what I'll be like when I'm an unbusy old woman. I just can't imagine....

Knitting together nicely

This afternoon Charlotte came round, resplendent in orange and pink, colours that I recall were predominant in her degree show. Just what a gloomy afternoon required.

She showed me how to cast on with needles, rather than with my thumb, and discussed the knitting-up qualities of different types of wool mixes. We dipped into the internet to compare prices and admire the lovely Japanese yarns.

Later we ate huge amounts of spaghetti bolognaise with hidden vegetables, and Charlotte had a second helping.

Neither of us needed to do this:

The Penguin Max - Giovannetti 1962

And after dinner we sat peaceably in armchairs, chatting and reading crochet and knitting books, like two companionable nanas, about 37 years between us in age, surrounded by little animals, the house warm and cosy.

A very pleasant way to spend time together.

Post-celebration

After locking the cats and the dog indoors and leaving radios blaring, I went off with neighbours to watch the council-organised display about 10 minutes away from here. It's always a good one, and this year seemed to go on for much longer than ever before and to have about half a million additional and excitable young students taking photos on their phones while trying not to set fire to their hair with sparklers.

I was modest, and didn't announce that this was My Very Own Display; they seemed to appreciate it, anyway, and everyone clapped at the end.

Tomorrow young Charlotte is coming over to talk me through the complexities of modern knitting wools. I have just taken up knitting again, bidding like a (successful) demon on eBay for needles, but as it's been about 34 years since I knitted anything, wools (yarns) seem to have changed a great deal, and to now cost the earth, so Charlotte, who has just obtained her fashion degree in knitwear, is just the person to ask.


Did she want to stay for tea, I asked. Oh yes please, said the bored unemployed graduate, whose Handsome Young Policeman is on 'lates' this week. What would she like to eat? "Not vegetables or anything with gravy."

Now, of course, I can't think of a meal that consists of anything else.

Celebration time!

Yes, it's that time again - the day when all the fireworks I'll see tonight are for me, announcing noisily that I AM FREE!!

It's two years since I was told I could retire early. The intense feeling of relief, and later, overwhelming joy, is still there.

I love, love, love November 5th....

Techno torment

My problems with modern technology just go on and on.... because of our frequent contact over the last 4 weeks, Virgin Media and I are now on first name terms, although the name I use for VM is too rude to enter here. Loss of broadband and television (intermittent but frequent), loss of phone service (lengthy, twice).

My phonelessness was sorted yesterday, thanks to a cancellation appointment becoming available sooner than my booked one, and to the persistence of the very nice young woman from the call centre in India taking it very seriously She rang my mobile numerous times to tell me that she was still searching, and sounding genuinely pleased in the end to have found me an engineer two days earlier than expected. And for once I managed to keep my mobile charged, switched on, and somewhere where I could hear and find it.

Today, no computer. My modem appeared to be dead. But at least I had a landline again, the only means of making that triumphantly-announced "Absolutely Free!" call to VM. After going through the laborious button-pressing rigmarole to get to the bit where you can report a fault ("You now have 43 options....if your call is about hamsters nesting in your capacitator, press 1... if it's about the damp weather causing crackling on the line and frizziness in your hair, press 37... zzzz.... if you think (think!!) you may have a fault, press 43 and please don't shout at us, we're only the oppressed employees...")

So I pressed the 'think/don't shout' button, and got a message telling me that all the oppressed employees were busy, and if I held on, my call might take ten minutes to be answered. So I chose to hold on, having nothing better to do with my life, and a cup of tea to hand. And then I was given another, new, option: choose your own music to be driven demented to while you hang on and slowly lose the will to live. The recorded voice sounded proud to be offering this novel choice.

So what to choose? I felt I wasn't up to urban, hip-hop, pop, techno, house or supermarket-ambient, and predictably chose classical. I could just cope with speeded-up electronic renditions of Mozart's greatest hits, having encountered them so many times when making internal calls at the Civic Centre. But no - what I got was vague themes from the classics, jazzed/popped/hiphopped up with accompanying crackles and electronic plinky-plonkiness, and I'm sure some of those tunes were actually film music, or maybe even thinly-disguised soap opera, and not Wolfgang Amadeus and his chums being murdered.

Thankfully, it was still just audible enough, without causing significant brain damage, if the phone was tucked inside my clothing while I carried on with my daily life, feeding the cats, medicating the dog, having breakfast, answering the door to the postman (ooh, my first birthday present this year! a tantalising 44 days early!) until I finally got a human being, a cheerful chap from Liverpool, on the other end of the line.

After I had obeyed his instructions, which entailed undignified crawling about under my desk, disturbing the tangled heaps of cables, not to mention the hamsters nesting in the capacitator, and I had swapped cable ends around, the modem was pronounced Dead. A new one could be couriered (is that a verb now?) which might take till Saturday, or an engineer could bring one round. On Friday afternoon. No contest then, it being Tuesday today. Let's take the speedy option.

I would have to send an email from a neighbour's computer to all those people who might still think I was without a phone, to tell them I wasn't ignoring their emails, and that I wasn't dead behind the door either, being eaten by my pets, my absence unnoticed for weeks, but no one was home this morning. No one to whine to about my email lifeline being brutally withdrawn till Friday! I would have to face this crisis alone.

But hours later when I went back upstairs, I saw that the modem had flickered feebly into life. I'd like to think it was the nesting hamsters that did it, out of pity. But I shall await the new modem, and the next, inevitable, VM service breakdown.

If you are calling to express sympathy, press #. Your call may be placed in a queue.....

Better?

This proved a little more toothsome at teatime. But what's happened to my greedy, thieving Millie, willing to try anything edible?

Birthday Girl

Millie is one year old today. Happy Birthday, dear heart! Have a little smoked trout for your birthday lunch.

Don't want it. Don't like it.

Am very disappointed.

Not sure I want chicken either.

Lottie can have it.

And Scooter. He eats anything.

A fine birthday this is turning out to be.

What's all this, then?

It's a blob of cake mix, that's what it is. Cake mix that erupted at slow, slo-o-o-ow speed from the wrong-sized springform tin, and would have coated the bottom of my none-too-clean oven with a mass of black baking-lava, had I not had the belated good sense to slide a baking tray onto the shelf beneath.

Result? Something unpretty but surprisingly delicious, tasting delicately of ground almonds.

And a good texture. Shame about the shape, and the rest of the oozing lava deciding to stick to the shelf instead of dropping downwards.

But even unprettier is the wreck of the plum and almond crumble cake that burst its banks owing to the baker being a mindless twit, making up recipes as she went along, watching The Politics Show on the kitchen telly, and blithely adding a layer of spiced crumble mix to an already-full tin.

Despite this disaster, the house smells very nicely of plums, and almonds, and buttery cake. Who knows, the finished article (the word 'finished' being used loosely here) could even be edible, once it has cooled enough to be poked into. Custard and spoons may be required rather than genteel little cake forks, but, as the rain and wind lash the windows, I can tell myself truthfully that it's just the weather for a nice hot pud.

There may not be further pictures to follow; I still have some remnants of self-respect.

Not moaning

Just saying.

I was woken at 3.15 a.m. this morning by the sound of someone repeatedly moving crates of bottles (well, that's what it sounded like) in their back yard. Clink. Thump. Bang. Clink. Rattle. Clink. For at least five minutes, in a systematic way, loud enough and for long enough to make sure the neighbours were fully awake. Silly questions like "WTF? Why?" came to mind.

The only lights on were at that house (the one where Millie was exposed to some choice language not long ago) across and up from the back of my house - the back being where I choose to sleep, instead of in my beloved white attic at the front, because it's quieter there than facing the street, where shouting and roaring happens at any time throughout the night as drink-fuelled students roll home, their volume levels set to Raucous. Not that I'm moaning about that either, you understand.

After a while the mysterious bottle-bank racket stopped, but I was beyond sleep by now, so I got up and made a cup of tea. I sat at the kitchen table and read for a while, gradually joined by bemused little creatures who know it isn't really getting-up time, but hope that it might be breakfast or catflap-unlocking time, and eventually went back to bed at 7 for an hour. (I would tell you what highly entertaining book I was reading, but it's someone's Christmas present, and I don't want to spoil the surprise. I can read books so carefully that they remain pristine, so long as I can stop cats from clambering over them to get onto my knee.)

The bemused little creatures came with me, but two of them couldn't sleep either, and leap-frogged enthusiastically over and onto my head until it was time for us all to get up for the second time. I'm seriously underslept today. But I shan't moan. A Zen-like calm acceptance suffuses my very being.

Yesterday my phone had worked only intermittently. Today it doesn't work at all. Virgin Media, whose services have been decidedly poor for most of October, and whose accessibility to customers is even poorer, tell me that a technician will call out next Thursday. It's only Saturday today.

I'm not complaining though. I am not ranting. I am not encouraging my blood pressure or my voice to rise further. I am breathing deeply, trying not to clench my jaw, or think murderous thoughts. I am staying caaaaaalm.

But I am plotting my escape, to somewhere that is definitely not a university town, and where sorting the recycling might be seen as a daytime occupation. Efficient telephony, however, may be a wish too far. The little creatures and I are off for an early night now, to try to cram a few hours of sleep before the Hallowe'en parties rev up.

Operation? What operation?

I'm busy. These mice need to be well hidden in the dog's basket.

Sleep-eating

I'm home. Not sure what all that was about.

I'm not quite awake or with it. I wobble a bit. Someone's bitten some fur off my front leg.

Something strange has happened behind me too. I'm not showing you though!

I'll investigate later.

I really need to sleep, but I'm starving!

Oh, this is more like it. A bit of chicken, a little pool of special cat milk.

And a few biscuits to finish. That's better. Now I can sleep. Ni-night!

Listening in

I've heard my name a few times lately in a soppy sympathetic tone, along with another word that sounds like it. "Scooter...." And "Nooter....", something like that. And "Scooter.... Vet....".

"Wednesday" is also mentioned. What's a Wednesday? Or a Nooter? Or a Vet?

I don't know. Nothing to do with me, probably.

So I won't worry about it.

Multi-skilled Millie

The glazier had a new and very attentive student today.

She seems very suited to home maintenance. I wonder if I should enrol her in one of those modern apprenticeship schemes?

The anti-pumpkin recipe

It's the turn of the humble pumpkin for this week's Dim Sum Sunday at The Karmic Kitchen. Having arrived too late to enter anything for the apple theme the previous week, despite the apple pie rapture I've been experiencing this week, I'm searching for something interesting to submit this Sunday.

Hmmm... roasted, spiced, baked, pureed, in soup, risotto, pies, er... curries... crepes... cupcakes, candlelit on doorsteps, smuggled into the dog's dinner - no, that's just silly - nope, nothing interesting comes to mind. Pumpkins just don't inspire me much as food, lovely though they may look, and I use butternut squash instead, in a fairly unthrilling and familiar range of soups and roasts.

However, I did grow pumpkins. And this is what I did with my last batch of home grown beauties, seen here two years ago with the beloved and much-missed Harry.


Ingredients:

• 4 pumpkins (no, size doesn't matter).

Method:

• Haul heavy, muddy pumpkins up steep hill from allotment. Groan loudly en route, to encourage yourself.

• Wash pumpkins thoroughly; dry. Stand back and admire their sheen and colour. Take photos for posterity. Leave in kitchen for a while to allow cats and visitors to admire.

• Look at pumpkins every day and think about what to do with them. Acknowledge that you may have met your match: single woman versus four pumpkins = un-level playing field.

• Give three pumpkins to unwary visitors who may have admired too enthusiastically. Smile brightly, accept no protestations.

• Look at remaining pumpkin every day. Notice that the part of your brain that devises meals goes blank within a nano-second of doing this. Live on toast and Marmite.

• After some weeks, Google websites specialising in 'How to Freeze Pumpkin'. Set mouth in grim expression, don pinny, take sharp knife, seize pumpkin and chop it up. Notice that it appears to have filled two sinks and three large mixing bowls.

• Stay focused. These are dark, dangerous moments, and it is important not to lose one's nerve.

• In batches, roast pumpkin till soft and kitchen is all steamed up. Remove skin. Allow to cool thoroughly.
  

• Find largest freezer bags and boxes, pack them with cooled pumpkin, label and freeze.

• Two years later, remove pumpkin from freezer containers and place reverently in dustbin, humming cheerful little ditty about freezer burn as the guiding demon who rescues the wasteful. Tell no one.
  

• Sigh with relief. Ponder on the versatility of millions of North American cooks who deal with trillions of pumpkins each autumn, and decide that pumpkins will not be grown on the allotment next year.

PS

Gotcha!

Well, that was easy: that glorious Algonquin apple pie recipe wasn't in Bee Drunken's blog as I'd first thought (and I searched and searched!) but in her other food-collaborative blog: Domestic Sensualist. That I'd just read a couple of days earlier.... I have the memory of a hen....

Anyway, go and have a look, and have a go - it's well worth it. Thank you, Bee.

PS Want to know how I found out in the end? So simple! I copied a couple of sentences from the saved draft of the recipe (the one where I'd managed to cut out all the clues to authorship) and put them in the Google searchbox with quotation marks at each end. And up she popped. Maybe everyone knew all this already, but if you didn't, it's the quotation marks that get you there.

Off now to make a large Victoria sponge (with whipped cream) as requested by her Four Doors Down, who has a houseful of guests who will need something reviving later on, after spending the day Going Ape in Northumberland. It involves swinging through trees on ropes, apparently. And it's raining today. Generous application of cake will be essential.

Was it you?

I've never had a good hand with pastry. Home made or shop bought, it would refuse to roll out evenly, or break, or shrink away from the dish; the contents would leak, and the result was always amateurish and sometimes downright nasty. Until today! I'm squeaky with excitement about this apple pie, made from scratch this afternoon.

Somebody posted a recipe on their blog for the Algonquin's famous apple pie, perhaps even tasted by Dorothy Parker and amusing chums, and in a fit of fancying myself, I copied out the recipe and tried it. I actually made the pastry! Me, myself! Squeak!

And now I'm horrified to find that I can't remember who that sainted blogger was, and until they show their shining face to me, can't bow down before them, awe-struck and tearful with gratitude, and tell her (I can recall that it was a Her) "You Have Changed My Life!". Or post a link to the recipe on her blog so that you can all join in the beatification of the author.

If it was you, please tell me, and I'll insert a link; this recipe is too good not to be shared with the pie-eating world. Come on, step forward for your standing ovation!

No shrinking, leaking, overdone bits surrounding raw bits, this light, flaky pastry was so forgiving, even to a heavy-handed patcher-upper of pastry like me, and tasted just divine. I know this without cutting into the prize exhibit above because there was enough left over to make a smaller pie, now devoured by two timely visitors (they do have a nose for tea and treats in this street!) and me. With double cream. I'm not cutting into this one till tomorrow, when I'm taking a wedge of it to friends.

I'll certainly make it again - and possibly again and again, till I am so huge I have to be winched out of my house by firemen and heavy lifting gear - but I'll tinker with the filling. Cox's Orange Pippins make a fine pie, but I do prefer the tang of a Bramley, and a clove or two. I'm not sure that the freckled result of the final butter-dotting is attractive either, but really, who cares? Let's cut another wedge, pour that second cup of tea, and tuck in.