Recommendation: Elvis Juice

Posted on August 4, 2018 by nicdempsey

I quite like Brewdog beers (I also like the Lone Wolf gin they make but like the navy strength over the ordinary one, of course I do!).

This one is my favourite, Elvis Juice

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Friday Links

Posted on August 3, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

People I have not had a fantastic week, but from 5pm today, I’m on holiday, which I really, really need!

This week, I managed a post every day except Sunday. You may have noticed but over the last two Saturday’s, I’ve had short posts about things that I’m loving/finding useful. They aren’t long posts and I’m not being paid to recommend them or anything, I’m just finding them useful and/or good and I thought it would be good to share. This week was all about my new love of the nightdress, just as the weather broke, but it’s back to being stupidly hot so still useful. Monday Miscellany, on Tuesday I was all about granita, the usual allotment post on Wednesday and a July goal recap yesterday!

Here are this week’s links….

This has been getting lots of mentions, I don’t read Goop, I’m never going to steam my vagina but I found this fascinating nethertheless. How Goop’s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow’s Company Worth $250 Million. Also funny….

Charles to treat palace visitors to his 70th birthday pick and mix. Including a cloak of Napoleon’s. Of course Charles likes/admires/whatever Napoleon, who was an emperor not a republican, he rose in the first republic then seized power in a military coup and proclaimed himself emperor. He wasn’t a fan of existing monarchies but he had no issue with overthrowing them and installing his own. Would his brother Jerome been better or worse as a king that our ‘fat friend’ George IV, it’s debatable…

Mesut Özil reminds us why minorities have more than one identity. I’ve always said that assimilation in the UK is harder for black and other people who can’t just blend in once the language barrier is gone. There is a double standard here, in the way that second generation white immigrants can do this without having their loyalty to Britain questioned. I got really mad in 2012 and very time after that someone described Mo Farrah as an immigrant but not Bradley Wiggins (for the record because it bears repeating. Both Farah and Wiggins were born abroad and have one British parent. Both came to Britain as children and lived with their British parent. Neither are immigrants.) Sarah, Tom and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. Sarah and I have some Irish heritage and Tom is Irish but committed to being in England at least as long as he is raising his daughter and he’s been pondering how or whether he needs to instill ‘Irishness’ in her.  I have a fairly strong position on this, I like Ireland and am entitled, with some arsing about, to an Irish passport, but I don’t feel Irish because fundamentally, I’m not. My dad was occasionally very insightful and made the point that Britain was where he was born, had paid his taxes, where he lived, been  educated and where he had more freedom religiously and socially than any of his Irish relatives did. He felt and I agree that there was a danger in feeling closer to “your country of heritage” than you did to the one you live in. This danger is seen in the way that Özil allowed himself to be used by Erdogan (you can be proud of your country and heritage and not supportive of dictators in your country of heritage). I also feel that proclaiming myself Irish is pretty insulting to my Irish relatives that did not grow up with the freedoms and privileges that I did. I would imagine that goes more when your country of heritage is poorer than the one you grew up in.

Universities want ‘bums on seats’ because you created a market, minister. Politicians who don’t understand the potential impact of the policies they create…

No bosses, no managers: the truth behind the ‘flat hierarchy’ facade

Don’t call it a wholphin: first sighting of rare whale-dolphin hybrid

Why aren’t British workers calling in sick. For me, it’s because I can work from home. Last year when I sprained my ankle and couldn’t walk for a week, I didn’t take any time off because I worked from home, if I couldn’t have, I’d have been off sick!

Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece of literary genius that is incredibly unpleasant to read. Of the Bronte’s, I’d pick Anne over Charlotte or Emily. And if you say that Wuthering Heights is your favourite book, I will judge

Create a Brexit-ready food cupboard? Many can’t afford their next meal

BBC’s Today programme sheds 800,000 listeners. I blame Sarah Sands…

So Jeremy Hunt is the Tories’ capable one? Let’s look at the evidence …

Middle-aged non-drinkers may have ‘higher risk’ of dementia. Finally some good news….

Somebody at Fitbit needs a lesson on the menstrual cycle. Good point, well made. The tracker also doesn’t let you alter stuff like ovulation date, which I generally know is happening.

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Monthly Goals – July/August 2018

Posted on August 2, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy August! August is my birthday month so I have next week off and fun times planned.

Things that happened in July – I went to a school fete, France won the World Cup, I did not get a team to the final – again!, Jo came back for summer and she and I spent an afternoon wondering around Ham House, it was very hot, I went to the Southampton office for work a couple of times, Max came for a visit and there was wine. It was a good month.

July goals were more or less a repeat of June, so I’m going to be quick to recap

Mind and Body

I’m still doing well

  • 10,000 steps a day. or at least more than 70,000 steps a week
  • Vitamins every day.
  • Feet and Hands.
  • Golden hour – More or less
  • Therapy – We’re going to spend August working on slowing down, it was really good to do and right now I’m leaning towards doing a monthly check in session after August. we’ll see.
  • Good things journal everyday – This has been really useful, even last week, when I did not have a great week

 

Budget & Spending

  • Get through the month without financial explosion. – I’m all on track

House Beautiful

Keep the house tidy – it’ll do, I’ve cleaned the bath more than once in July!

So this is where I tell you what August has in store. I have a week off, there will be family lunch, I’m going to the theatre, making cake for a wedding, working on the plot, hopefully eating all the homegrown tomatoes and sweetcorn I can manage, going to a gin tasting and probably being hot.

I’m going to take my usual month off from goal setting but as you’ll notice if you’ve been following my goal posts, I have most of this under control so I’ll be doing it, just not recapping/thinking about it too much in August!

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Allotment Adventures: Breaking weather

Posted on August 1, 2018 by nicdempsey

Finally, the heatwave broke. On Friday, it finally got cooler. There was some rain too but Sunday was the day for rain in Ealing.

We didn’t plan on doing a lot on the plot this week. Watering, feeding, picking produce.The corn is doing it’s thing and the tomatoes are getting ripe (and I promise that this week, I won’t eat them but will leave them for a bit!)Lessons from this year, sow more beetroot. Our beetroot bed is done. Leeks will go in that bed next week and I’ll sow some more in the salad bed because that is also done for the summer. The other lesson is more space for a three sisters bed because a metre square is too small!The other squash beds are doing quite well thoughNext week’s work list is mostly about tidying..

  • remove things that Joe can really get into
  • plant leeks
  • plant other kale
  • weed the paths
  • put the verbena plants out
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Raspberry Granita

Posted on July 31, 2018 by nicdempsey

Food has been absent from this space for a while. Not because I’m not cooking but because I’ve not been doing anything new, or I have but I haven’t thought to write it up or I have thought about writing about it but time, work, my need to sleep have all got in the way of me actually doing something about it. 

Ages ago, back when I had raspberries growing on the plot (mine have finished now but most other people might still have them or be on the way to autumn raspberries) I made Smitten Kitchen’s raspberry granita. 

It’s very good, you should go and make some, or at the very least put the mixture in an ice lolly mold…

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Monday Miscellany

Posted on July 30, 2018 by nicdempsey

Sunday morning looked like this.

It made me very, very happy! This and the predicted temps for this week not going above 30 degrees mean that I won’t be watering every day and/or feeling guilty for the days that I don’t water!

It’s been quite a productive weekend, I’ve bought a dress that I intend to wear to Christina’s wedding, footwear is (as always an issue!) can I wear converse to a wedding? Maybe I need to ask the bride and groom, although honestly I really need to get myself together as I am making cake for the wedding. Fortunately, they aren’t having a ‘wedding cake’ but big plies of cake, which is fab because we all know I suck at cake decoration! It will look more like this, which is the original cake pile that Tina asked me to bake for her, this is from 2006 and I did it again in 2009. Christina clearly remembers it and thus, I’m making cake for her wedding to the lovely Fred (Christina is also lovely and it is a measure of my love for her that I’m going to spend the August bank holiday baking said cake!). Now I have a dress to wear to the wedding too…

It’s ridiculously early but Ma and I went blackberrying this weekend and collected over two kilos of blackberries. There has been jam made and gin started.

Actually, all round it’s been a busy weekend but it hasn’t felt busy. I had a haircut, picked fruit, read a book, bought some more gin (I know it’s a sickness!), started blackberry and plum gin, spent some time on the allotment, made jam, and ate a lot of courgettes. Ma and I also spent some time talking about our various home improvement plans. It’s been good.

This week is all about crossing things off the list so I can go on holiday next week and enjoy my birthday week. I also need to prep my flat for the invasion of Joe, who is delightful but inclined to wrecking his aunty’s flat though good at feeding sheep!

 

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Recommendation: Nightdress

Posted on July 28, 2018 by nicdempsey

In recent years, I have embraced sleepwear, I refused to wear clothes in bed until my 30’s and now I am a firm wearer of pyjamas. I generally find it difficult to get night ‘jamas though.

I don’t want teddy bears or floral prints on my normal clothes and as I use my ‘jamas as lounge wear (when I was recovering from the osteotomy, and mostly housebound, I just had a new pair of ‘jamas very day and the laundry was very easy) I’m fussy about what passes muster, so I spend lots of time wondering around shops muttering about how I don’t want anything frilly to sleep in! However, you may have noticed that it’s been hot around these parts and ‘jamas are too hot to be sleeping in.

Enter my new favourite nightie!

It’s not appearing on the website right now but it’s perfect, relatively plain soft washes well and lightweight and cool. It was £12.50 from Marks and Spencer and I’ve been known to wash it in the morning on a quick wash so it’ll be ready to wear when I get home, because I do wear it as lounge wear too!

Slightly more patterned but also very comfy is this one, which I also own!

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Friday Links 27.07

Posted on July 27, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!  I’m still too hot and praying for rain, hopefully you’ve all had cooler weeks…

How to transform the way we work: scrap Fridays. Today that would be lovely…

It’s never their fault: why the Brexiteers love to cry betrayal. I’ve not said a lot about Brexit because I tend to start shouting about how stupid the whole thing is and that shouting generally starts with “it was a sodding ADVISORY referendum, am I the only person who read it?” (and yes I am tremendous fun at parties!). However, this feels true, it’s never them, it’s the EU or Theresa May or business, they couldn’t possibly have been wrong.

The big heatwave: from Algeria to the Arctic. But what’s the cause?

Will Theresa May finally stand up to the DUP and help restore Stormont? No, probably not. I keep saying it, May is a tactician not a strategist. She made a tactical move to stay in power after the election but didn’t think through any of the consequences. This is one. May doesn’t lead, she reacts, the Tory party took stubbornness for strength. She’s not strong.

How to be an excellent landlord (Christmas sherry not mandatory)

Netanyahu will be known as the first prime minister of Israeli apartheid

‘I felt colossally naive’: the backlash against the birth control app You felt colossally naïve because you were colossally naïve. This is called the rhythm method. A shiny app doesn’t make it any less like the rhythm method and there’s the joke which tells you everything you need to know. “what  do you call people who use the rhythm method for contraception? Mummy and Daddy”

Sorry, you can’t be working class and socialist in the new authentocracy. Yep, my brother the taxi driver is considered to be more working class than me.

This racist new law makes me ashamed to be Israeli.

Beware the coming of Jacob Rees-Mogg and his Brexit apocalypse

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Allotment Adventures: Too Darn Hot

Posted on July 25, 2018 by nicdempsey

The hot weather continues. I’m over it..

This week we headed to the plot without a huge amount of work to do. We started off by gathering produce, eight courgettes, five crookneck squash, three cucumbers, six beetroot, a massive bag of French beans.  After watering, I spent some time in the tomatoes, because the heat is making them wayward. We called it quits with the French beans because they really were not doing well with the heat and Ma pulled them up.

That left me with two beds for kale! So we planted the kale and then netted it to protect it from the pigeons – with much swearing! We also netted the chard because I’d like my winter greens to get to winter!

Ma tidied the shed and now feels much better about life!

I found a pumpkin…this is the plant that Laura gave me, so it only has to grow one, that I can give to Oli!

The to-do list is not long and in this heat unlikely to get done in favour of watering and lying down complaining about how hot I am, if the weather breaks here is the list…

  • Weed
  • Sow pak choi
  • Pull up the salad, which has started to bolt
  • Sow more beetroot where the salad was. This will be the last, hopefully we’ll get a small crop before the autumn
  • Sow the leeks in the old beetroot bed
  • Find a place for the verbena and lavender.
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Monday Miscellany

Posted on July 23, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday!I’m counting down the days until I have a whole week off, but I have a ton of things to do at work before that.

The schools have broken up for the summer, which should mean that the commute is a bit easier but actually means that the trains are going to be full of adults and children who don’t understand how the tube works. I know, it’s a London problem, however, if you are not from London and coming to visit can I please direct you to my previous post on the do’s and don’t’s of being a tourist.

We still haven’t had any significant rain, I felt sure that the schools breaking up would shake some raindrops loose but it’s going to be in the 30’s this week, so daily watering is back and no cooking. I roasted a chicken, so that will form the basis of all my meals this week!

My week is shaping up to be busy, aside from the watering, I’m seeing Max and Chrissy on Tuesday, going to Southampton on Wednesday and having a haircut on Friday. It really is all go here!

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