Happy, Happy Days….

Well, we had such a great weekend we didn’t want the two days to be over. Woo predicted we’d get on well with FP and she was right – what a wonderful person. She fitted straight  in!

I was working away at my laptop on the dining room table when I saw this raven-haired amazon go striding past, clearly bent on discovery. And I soon discovered it was she – the Grand Sophy of the piece! R was shy for all of about thirty seconds, and then this:

As you can see he’s really shy. Painfully, desperately shy! That, in case you wonder, is an Apple laptop case, and R tried it on as a sleeping bag before he realised his legs were just a bit too long…

J brought the best presents. She’s a present goddess. R received a DIYnosaur lamp, which J and I managed to fathom the instructions for and which is now assembled, waiting for a bulb. It has been christened Mr Growl, is a Tyrannosaur complete with vestigial flappy arms, and manages to look both fierce and funny at the same time. R is quite captivated, and it really is a clever present for a boy of his age. It’ll last him ages.

The presents didn’t stop there. No, no. This girl has Homeric generosity. the BB was handed a large bottle of Doublewood, spookily enough; he had reached the last dram or three in his previous bottle and was worried it was going to vanish before Christmas – now the worry is past! and I know it was much appreciated.

I got deluged, positively deluged in presents, and they were the sort of presents you’d buy for yourself if you were feeling totally unguilty and as though you totally deserved a flutter. And we all know how infrequently we feel like that. So J became my lack of conscience, in the best possible way, and spoiled me rotten. Firstly, a Nigella Lawson chocolate Christmas Cake, made by her own fair hand (how did she know I wasn’t making a cake? Magic! (and this reminds me I forgot to give her the Tupperware back – a cardinal sin. J, I’ll post it to your mum’s!!))

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, the most beautiful and exquisite book. Maggie Beer’s Maggies Harvest. This woman writes with all her strength and fervour about food, she lives food and the country she loves – Australia. She’s got the taste of Elizabeth David, the enthusiasm of Jamie Oliver, and the culture of an Escoffier. Amazing. The book itself is a thing of beauty. Those who know me know that there’s little I like more than curling up with a book about food and taking total gustatory delight in the word made, literally, bread. This elegant tome is hardback, but padded and upholstered in dun canvas, embroidered all over wth green and orange  stylised leaves and fruits. It is a thing to treasure for ever.

More gifts were showered upon me as the weekend went on – I felt quite happily overwhelmed. A white, heavy, squat candle, perfumed heavily with tuberose, is now sitting on the sitting room table, sending its scent throught the room, calming us all. Wine. A helping hand with the dinner. Cheer. Humour. Great gossip.

We had some wonderful mooching and browsing, J recommending books she liked which I had no hesitation in buying. Dodging the terrible rainstorms, basking in the infrequent but surprisingly warm sunny spells, talking about her writing course, learning about her life and her about mine.

Of course, in the end, I realise that the best present she brought was herself.

 

FP Looms Closer…

She’ll be here tomorrow! Hurrah! Coming round the mountain in pink pyjamas, arriving on her chariot, flying in HALO to land on the roof. We’ve got food. More importantly, we’ve got floorboards. We’ve got hot water and fluffy towels. We’ve got hot water bottles, electric blankets, roaring heating and dogs enough to go around. We’ve got coffee. We will have fresh bread (swansea-tastic baking morning coming my way tomorrow, juch he!) We have all the porky breakfast fare we’re ever likely to need. The coal hole and log basket are full. The weather is set fair to be dreadful, windy, rainy and cold – but this can be a good thing when you’ve the makings of warmth and cheer within.

There’s nothing quite like welcoming friends. And I think we aim to take pix and share the weekend with you all – this is really the start of the festive cheer for me. Mouse wants to start decorating the Christmas trees already, but it seems ever so slightly previous to me even though every shop, garage and public area is already festooned and caparisoned with glitz. So instead of decorations, we’re going to get into the spirit of the season and bid our friends to come awa’ in! and warm their tootsies by our fire.

With my parents, brother and close girlfriend coming for Christmas Day, and afterwards Woo arriving, and also the BBs son and girlfriend coming over from South Africa, it’s as if a flock of glorious passenger birds have come to our shores for a while. Wonderful at any time of year, but especially Christmas.

Schnozz, p94 & Woo-nderful news

..so the BB brought Barty home last night, rolled into a shivering ball in his arms, feeling icky-poo from the anaesthetic and sneezing rather less than he had been. Apparently, he has the bitch and pups of a sinus infection and they’ve drained something and poked something else; whatever they did, it made his eyes point in different directions for most of the rest of the evening, which was moderately disconcerting. We tucked him up on his bed in front of the fire with a blanket and watched as the pathetic beast shivered abjectly and hung on for dear life to his pofty ostrich; the equivalent of a blanky for most human children, I suppose. This morning he’s revived; I fed him chicken and buttered toast as he lay on his special chair and reminded him in no uncertain terms not to get too used to the soft treatment. His dad looked on askance, but I know the moment I left this morning he’ll have been tucked up on the sofa with Jeremy Kyle on, being fed individual Dr John’s biscuits, by hand, and teaspoonfuls of water from a silver ewer.

My delight to learn that Woo will be coming to see us after Christmas really knows no bounds. I have missed her so terribly since she went away. Granted, she and I lived on opposite sides of this watery isle for many years but she was there, if either of us ever overcame the velleity to see each other and got in the car. Since she’s moved to Australia I’ve seen her come into her own, and I know in any case that it was entirely the right thing for her to have done. It seemd to me for a long time that she would never realise her potential in the UK; things were constricting her spirit and proscribing the ways she could live. Not any more, I am so pleased to see. And she’s coming back to see us and show us her new bright feathers. It took a fine bird to grow those feathers, something she won’t thank me for saying; I’m just so enthused to have two Sydneysiders coming to our sleepy neck o’ the woods that I’m waxing all lyrical all of a sudden. I’m sure you’ll let me off!

Carpetastic

…how excited am I? The hall, stairs and landing are nearly ready for floor coverings. This is a major watershed for the BB and me. There’s been so much ard work on the landing in particular, to renovate and improve the landing door and to put in place the correct architraves, dado rails and coving to fit in with a Victorian house. The previous owners had a mania for cherry-red woodstain, one of my utter hates. We’re also finding incredible trouble in sourcing a small figured, light and appropriately period-style wallpaper for under £30 a roll. However, we look like we’ve got a solution. Sisal or coir for the floor, and this beautiful cream paper with a toile de jouy motif of flowers and birds in a warm dusty pink.

Really, carpet shouldn’t do this to me, but I can’t help it – the house is coming together, just the final push for the top now. All my favourite bits – picking items to display, hanging paintings, getting curtains altered, arranging the thousands of books we both have. Making the house warm, comforting, welcoming and above all an expression of us both.

This will be the fifth consecutive doer-upper I have lived in since getting onto the property ladder in 1999. I really, really hope that this will be the last one for a while. This is the nicest-tempered house, the most elegant house, the most friendly house I’ve ever been into. It likes what we’re doing and is waking up after years of being neglected. Can’t wait to see her all decked out with holly and candles and tinsel.

Seeds in the hooter

Judging by Barty’s pained looks, his unwillingness to move from his special armchair, his constant tickety-tacketting around after dark on restless paws and his volcanic, near-constant sneezing, we conclude that he has the abovementioned complaint. Not to mention the strings and ropes of snot, discarded all over the house at nose-level.

The poor beast is also off his food, but he forgot this when presented with R’s dinner remains (mash, sausages, peas, onion gravy) and bolted it down, before going back to looking really miserable once more.

The BB is contemplating taking him across the road to the vet, which must be Barty’s least favourite place to be unless you count the bath. This hasn’t been a very auspicious week for him, all in all – I got home on Saturday to find him gleaming pearly-white, fluffy, furious and smelling of the BB’s shampoo. Sunday morning saw him up to his hocks in the muddy puddles on my run, so his honour – and odour – were restored. The seeds in the schnozz, however, are somewhat more difficult to rectify.

The BB’s rule of thumb with pet animals is to spend no more on their vet bills than the animal actually cost to purchase in the beginning. I think the implication is they get the chop after this point has been reached, but knowing how besotted the BB and Barty are with each other, I can’t see this coming to pass. Even though Barty follows me round constantly, sleeps on my side of the bed and insists on sitting on top of me whenever I come to a halt, the BB is still his first love.

In other news, I’m thinking about writing my Christmas cards but don’t want to tempt fate; I have found my large Spode achet for the turkey; the Christmas puddings have had their bonne bouche of brandy; the table and indeed the house is now at full complement for Christmas itself (6 adults and the mouse, who eats enough to be one). The invitation for our housewarming party have been printed and despatched; and I’m just about to buy the first module of my Diploma to give me something while away all the idle hours I’m going to have between now and the exams in June. Ha!

Meanwhile, we have Fugitive Pieces arriving to spend a jolly weekend on Saturday morning, which we’re all looking forward to. R said, ‘but mummy! I don’t know her! I be shy!’ So I told him that I don’t know her either, really, but that she sounds, seems and is lovely, and that she is a friend to Trucie (‘….remember Trucie, darling?’…. ‘Es’) So she’s a friend to us too. Perfick.

I’ve got buns in the oven

Nooo, not the metaphorical type; literal buns! In fact, bread, and shortly chocolate chip cookies, if I don’t eat all the dough.

It’s a grey, dank and cold day here at Three Chimneys. I went out running with the dog this morning at 8am alongside the river, which was roaring and churning, the ducks prudently staying in the few shallow bits. I saw a heron trying to spot fish but he looked like nothing so much as an angular and grey pensioner, hair awry, peering myopically both ways into heavy traffic, looking for a gap in which to shamble across the road. Eventually he gave up and creaked skywards, his body language unmissable in its defeat. No breakfast for you, mate.

The dog took to every rut and muddy puddle down the lane on the way back, and one comedy moment thankfully didn’t go down in history, but only because there was no-one else there to see me; clinging to the hedge and teetering on the edge of diaster, as I inched my way past a puddle the size of the Red Sea, which I know to be lined with brick fragments and assorted building rubble, and which I did NOT want to fall into.

 Back home and a nifty attempt by the dog to go and dry off in our bed was foiled at the off; now he’s sulking in his special armchair in the sitting room, clearly underwhelmed and wanting to sleep the day away. Myself, I’m deep into culinary pursuits; I have found a glorious recipe for mincemeat (tip to our overseas friends – mincemeat comprises currants, raisins, mixed peel, cherries, butter, brandy and spices. I eat it from the jar, which I believe is a shameful thing to admit, but you can put it in a pastry case and call it a tart. It won’t mind). I’m intending to fill medium Kilner jars with this unctuous mixture (heavy on the Cognac, GW) and offer them as gifts to friends.

There’s also a rather amazing sweet-sour tomato preserve which I have found in one of my Elizabeth David anthologies; it comes up garnet rich and cornelian red and sparkling through glass jars. A perfect selection for the upcoming Christmas fairs locally. There’s thirty pounds of regular marmalade to make before the big guns come out and I have orders for a further thirty pounds of proper, amber-coloured thick-cut Seville orange marmalade to placate my stepfather and my best beloved, who both dote on the stuff and feel totally deprived if there is none in the larder, or if, god help us, they have to go out and buy some sub-standard simulacrum in the shops.

Pausa there as I went to take a large Swansea loaf out of the oven. Golden brown and crusty, risen high in the centre and with a cross cut into its floury top, I’m hoping it measures up against the ones we buy, which have the distinction of being utterly delicious even when three or four days old, and manage (somehow) to combine all the chewy, tasty character of a sourdough with the crisp crust of proper English bread.

The cookies will be coming to work with me tomorrow, to be devoured by the wastrels in my co-employ; really, I don’t mind, it’s great to watch people eat things you’ve made. I’ve always been far more of a savoury person than a sweet, temperamentally speaking; this comes out in my cooking to a great degree. Now I’m feeling light, happy and settled for the first time in years, I seem to have fallen into a routine of cooking for pleasure on the weekends; baking pies and cakes, making bread and scones, planning storecupboard batches of chutneys, pickles and jam.

My BB is upstairs planing wood and making a lovely job of finishing the landing. I’m settled in the kitchen, off in another part of the house, listening to Radio 3 and pottering happily. Work again tomorrow; but this isn’t a bad thing. I’m just loving the creativity that seems to be flowing through me at the moment. This evening, beading, I think. Mmmmm.

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Postscriptum – The bread has cooled sufficiently for me to pick it up; the smell coming from the still-warm crust defies description. Is there anything more simultaneously comforting and quickening to the appetite than freshly-baked bread? I’m in bliss, just hugging the bread I made and breathing in its spicy, fresh yeastiness and savour. Delightful.

Duvet Nostalgia

I stayed at the Little House last night – gotta start packing, omg – and in the midst of pulling out my winter-weight quilt and a lovely furry flanellette bed set from the cupboard, a whole load of memories got pulled out too.

I remember buying that flannelette bedset; I remember the incredulity with which I met the fact of the stinging cold in Edinburgh when I spent the winter up there for the first time. Even when I moved into a properly heated flat in a well-kept building it still bit into me every winter. Sharing a flat with Woo on South Park Terrace, I discovered a drapers around the corner, a real old-fashioned local store, which had these duvet sets at £20 a pop. I promptly bought one in beige and white stripes, and if I’m not very much mistaken the Woo bought one in blue and white. I still have mine, 14 years later; it’s still keeping me snuggly-warm and happy, and I was glad to remember the happy times I shared with Woo in that flat, with that bizarre and singular collection of people. Galaxy and a gigglefest, your room 10pm, Woo?

Galloping towards Christmas….

Again, whole weeks gone and nothing bloggish to show for it.

It’s amazing to me how we drop into a sort of busy neutral; the world flows past us or we whizz past thr world and don’t make contact much along the way. Time to slow down and think of 10 lovely or striking things that happened this last few weeks - to prove I was paying attention, even though I looked like I was feet-up at the back of the class, dozing:

I saw a kingfisher on the brook outside Three Chimneys, along with two dippers. The dippers are inky black with a white throat and look like 18th century clerics, small, rotund and portentous as they dip. The kingfisher appeared below me from the arch of the bridge and arrowed away, wings going too fast to see, reduced to a blur of stinging azure.

I bought a new pair of riding boots, jodhs and a hacking jacket as I mean without question to get up on horseback before the Winter is out. The PF seemed to think I looked good in my new ensemble, which is an added bonus.

I have filled the urns outside the front door with pink tinged cordyline, ivy, pink cyclamen, heuchera, golden thyme and bellis daisies. Pretty, cheering, and Christmassy at the same time.

The PF is making major strides with the house and things are starting to look really splendid. It’s such a welcoming place to arrive at in the raw cold of the evening – fire burning and everything shipshape.

My Mousekin keeps telling me I’m pretty and how much he loves me and misses me when he’s not with me. He makes me little pretend suppers and watches as I eat them, and then checks me over and ‘makes me better’ when he’s got his doctor-hat on. This, from your own son, is a rare and precious and wonderful thing and it makes me so proud of him. We have never stinted on showing affection – a gift for now, and one for later on as I hope it will enable him to show unstinting affection to the people in his life who he will come to love.

Work’s going really well, I’ve found an area in which I am sincerely interested (at last!) and I took the first steps to becoming Chartered by joining the Institute, and getting preliminary approval from the Directors to begin the three-year course that leads to professional qualification. It sounds like a long haul but I’ll be working at the same time. Roll on!

I haven’t had a drink for 72 hours! The background to this one is that the PF and I had got into the very very bad habit of knocking off a bottle of wine in the evenings, which (especially in my case) is calories I just don’t need. So we’re off wine in the week and I must say it feels good.

I put in the notification to my landlord that I will be vacating the Little House in December. This makes me feel happy, anticipatory; I can’t wait to move to Three Chimneys permanently. Mouse knows which room is to be his, and which bathroom; he has toys over there and books and partshares in a great and friendly dog. We’ve found him a tiny gem of a school (intake: 10 children) which has amazing resources, including a market garden and all sorts. He wants to go there now…!

I got some great feedback form a client last week – 100% good, in fact, which pleased me no end, I can tell you!

Last, but not least, it’s my favourite season – Autumn, going on Christmas. More on that anon, suffice to say I’ve made friends with the oven and it will bake for me now (any cook will tell you that making friends with a new oven is like lion-taming – a tricky business, doomed to failure sooner if not later) and I’m turning out cakes and scones, and this weekend iiiit’s…. Christmas Pudding time!

Happy, happy, happy- happy happy.

Pop Pop, Bang Bang

…and so to Three Chimneys, for a wonderful weekend of digging, garden fettling, bulb planting and skip filling. Things continue apace and the house, which Ro dourly prognosticates to be ’falling down’, is now rising, phoenix-like, out of the ashes. It has been sorely neglected, it is true. The previous owners did all sorts of unnamably evil things to the plumbing, bodge job after bodge job and then covered the whole lot with plasterboard and prayer. The window frames are all rotten. The gutters were falling off. But the PF is a man of many talents, not least of which are his practical home-renovation skills. My contributions are, as always, on the decorational and garden side, but I hope none the less useful for that. I did get a chance to wield a prybar this weekend, and cheerfully smashed away at the horrid fixings from the landing shower room in preparation to turn it into a walk-in linen closet. How luxurious!

We were supposed to go off to a shoot on Sunday; Piereth’s first attempt with a shotgun. I have to say that I favour Eddie Izzard’s approach to clay pigeon shooting – wait till they land and then you’ve got a guaranteed hit. Hindsight tells me it’s a good thing I didn’t go in the end – I haven’t shot any sort of firearm since CCF days at school and even then it was a rifle, the L98A1 SA 80 of dread memory. The PF tells me that I need to establish which is my ‘dominant eye’. As I didn’t even know I had one, I think it safe to assume that I have been shooting incorrectly for my entire life. What fun! Maybe I’ll turn out to be able to hit stuff after all! More on this anon.

I got 70 daffodils into the borders, transplanted a whole load of perennials including osteospermums and stoechas lavenders, and got to thinking about the other 35 foot of border that I haven’t dug yet, what needs doing, what can be moved, what will look good; in short, I dropped into the mindless, happy, serene state which always attends me when I’m gardening.

In other news, I bought Ro a pair of goggles at a table sale in the High Street, for him to use in the bath – and which he’ll love. While browsing the table sale I met a person I was at school with and the mother of another. Really lovely natter ensued in the sunshine and breeze. Bonhomonious, if that’s a word. And if it isn’t, it should be.

Things I Loved About my Weekend in Cornwall…

Seeing my family. There’s nothing quite like the seaside for inspiring a little bit of giddy irresponsibility, as seen by my brother’s eyebrows taking on a life of their own…

 The wonderful weather. No rain, no wind to speak of, sunshine, warmth, sweet breezes and heavy dew. The scenery was amazing, all the nostalgia of my childhood, condensed into one circular walk from the harbour across the cliffs, past the house, back down the lane, up the path by Caunce Head, past the cross then across the fields to the Porth and back to the cove. Two miles of total recall. The views. I never tire of them. The drama and quiet of the cliffs, the distance and the seabirds.

I took a little movie of my brother throwing stones into the sea, skipping the flatter ones across the surface and cawing with delight when he managed a good one. At one point, he turned, threw his arms wide and said, ‘I’m not going home! I’m gonna stay here!’; he looked so happy at that moment. Just one of the reasons I’m so happy I went.

 There’s also the sweetness of the air and the wonderful warmth that comes up from the turf and the wildflowers – the gorse, the heather, the pinks which were sadly over by this time. All the unnamed and unknown little flowers in the heath, sending up their perfume and sugar into the air.