Monday Miscellany

Posted on May 7, 2018 by nicdempsey

It’s a bank holiday! So today I’m not starting the week of work but running off to the allotment.

Last week was another not good week for my clothing, or more accurately my shoes, the zip of my favourite black work boots died, while I was at work. I had to go home with a hairband around my boot to hold it up. It was not fun. They and the other pair of boots that have a hole in them will have to go to the menders in the vain hope they can be saved.

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day in the US. So my social media at the moment is all about Mother’s Day. Here we did it in March so I’m slightly bemused. It’s also worth pointing out that every day is Mother’s Day in our family, every day I pick up a copy of the Evening Standard so she can do the codeword and I am her supplier of marmalade and rhubarb compote and bread pudding (all the major food groups). I’m also waiting for the onslaught of ‘why Mother’s Day is really hard for some people’ posts too…Other than watering, I haven’t done much work on the plot, that happens today but I did get to the community work day on Saturday and we worked hard. Every time I go to one of those days, I feel better for making the effort, knackered but better and every time, I am thankful for the committee who do so much to make the site such a nice place to be and grow.I went to dinner at Christelle and Mike’s on Saturday and we walked the dog on Sunday morning. Some of my friends have children, others have dogs. Of course some of them have children and dogs but not at the same time, the dogs arrived when the children left! But this is the newest, she’s a lovely dog, mostly very well behaved for a puppy and like her owners, likes her own way, so just occasionally….

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Friday Links

Posted on May 4, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

Yesterday there were local elections in the UK. At the time of writing this post I don’t know the results but there was time for my usual election tweet

And I wasn’t the only one. These were my favourite

https://twitter.com/Harkaway/status/991916488025104384

This week’s posts

This week is the first week of May so after Monday Miscellany, there was the usual goals recap for April and set for May post, Allotment Adventures and the What I’ve Read post for April, with an added side of ‘why I’m not reading a lot this month’

Links

Dawn Foster says what I have been saying for oh about 20 years! Young or old, we private renters are being locked out of our dream homes and it’s not our dream homes, it’s any secure home. It’s being called a housing crisis because the middle classes are suffering now, but working class kids have had this problem for an age. The only people went to school with still living in Fulham are the ones who live in social housing because no one else can afford it.

I’m no great fan of Vincent Nichols but when he’s right, he’s right. Archbishop hits out at ‘political aims’ of some Alfie Evans campaigners

Anyone who’s been following along for a while, will probably guess that how I felt about the Alfie Evans campaign. I felt sad for the parents and also angry at what they were doing, as if doctors and nurses who had looked after that child for 18 months would want to ‘kill’ him. I was also really upset for the parents and children who were also being treated at Alder Hey who suffered when ‘Alfie’s Army’ invaded the hospital. Most of my anger is aimed at the people who egged his parents on, it seems to me like this was a deliberate attack on the NHS and I think Gaby Hinsliff summed it up pretty well here. Alfie Evans’ parents needed help. The vultures came instead and if you still think that the NHS wanted him dead because of the cost and have some US based argument about socialised medicine, please read this from a doctor, As an NHS palliative care doctor, I say: let Alfie Evans die with dignity

the NHS has kept Alfie alive for nearly two years, at no cost to his family, and without any judgments concerning the value of his life. But intensive care is only ever a temporary support for failing organs while a reversible pathology is treated. In Alfie’s case, multiple doctors from multiple countries have all agreed that his illness is irreversible, progressive and terminal. Withdrawal of care is therefore neither killing nor murder, but enables him to die with comfort and dignity.

Loneliness isn’t inevitable – a guide to making new friends as an adult.  I’ve found that you have to develop a fondness for your own company, don’t expect best friends, be friendly and open and occupy yourself. I have lots of different communities that I am a part of but I notice that the people who find themselves feeling lonely are the people who want instant friends and not to have to do too much, that never works

Frank Lampard: ‘I’ve hardly kicked a ball since I finished and I’ve got no craving to’ Super Frank! I have a lot of time for him (if only he weren’t a Tory!) but on the few occasions I’ve seen it, I’ve really enjoyed his analysis on MoTD, I hope he does well in management (certainly better than Steven Gerrard – Rangers indeed!)

Trump even manages to ruin football, actual football as opposed to that game they play that is the bastard love child of rugby and padding.

Stopping the rot: the distressing condition that makes​ children’s teeth crumble This was interesting, though probably not if you are losing your teeth!

What Fullness Is Roxanne Gay on weight loss surgery. I don’t know that enjoy is the word I’d use about reading this but maybe understood. This is I think is a pretty universal feeling for the overweight..

I am, however, sometimes fine with my body. I am fine with my curves, the solidity of me. I am strong and tall. I enjoy the way I take up space, that I have presence. I have someone who appreciates my body and only hates everything I must deal with by virtue of living in this world in this body.

Sometimes I hate my body, the unruliness of it. I hate all my limitations. I hate my lack of discipline. I hate how my unhappiness is never enough to truly motivate me to regain control of myself, once and for all. I hate the way I hunger but never find satisfaction. I want and want and want but never allow myself to reach for what I truly want, leaving that want raging desperately beneath the surface of my skin.

 Bring your own picnic: royal wedding guests bemused by lack of catering The royal family really are cheeky and entitled.

After the murders in Toronto, there has been much writing about incels and their views on women and sex. Would you like a poem based on ‘His Coy Mistress’ to stab the heart of their ridiculous views on sex and women. Slate has you covered. The redistribution of sex

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What I’ve Read: April 2018

Posted on May 3, 2018 by nicdempsey

I need to confess, I’ve been in a tiny reading slump. For me, a tiny reading slump feels like a massive canyon of ‘I don’t want to read, who the hell am I?’. Reading is such a key part of my identity that I’m always really confused by a slump. However, when I think about it, it has happened before and being in a slump now makes perfect sense. I’m in a slump in other areas of my life (witness my inability to hoover the stairs for the last 7 weeks!). This is also not the only time (remember February 2011 where I read one new book the whole month?)

I know what this is. It’s stress. I’m worried about my lack of a permanent job which translates to being worried about money and in a roundabout fashion about my whole entire life. I’m working but it’s insecure and I’m not feeling that my work is particularly appreciated because I was told three months temp to perm and it’s five months later and no permanent job has appeared. Which means that I spend quite a bit of time applying for other permanent positions and that leads to a degree of introspection that it quite tricky to deal with especially when it doesn’t seem to be paying off. It makes it hard to shrug off the question ‘what is wrong with me?’. Constantly having to describe yourself and your skills and what you’re good at is really hard on the mind, soul and ego.

All of this is why I’m finding it hard to read. Reading makes me think and because I’m doing a lot of thinking right now, some of it, I’d rather not think about, reading is hard. In my downtime I’m doing things that switch my brain off, watching films, looking at pictures on instagram and watching videos that my brother sends me of my youngest nephew saying his name and asking for ‘pudding please’ and then specifying apples and/or grapes. That’s all my brain can handle at the moment.

That was a very long explanation for this short list of books.

Hello Stranger – Lisa Kleypas

I had held off reading this, because of this review.  I wanted to leave it for a bit and see if the  version updated and it did. It’s still not great and it’s a shame because I love Lisa Kleypas, I’m loving this series and I loved this story. Although I’m calling bullshit on someone being born and raised in London with Irish parents keeping his accent but that’s my own stuff. It’s ‘blarney-fication’ and it needs to stop.

After the Wedding – Courtney Milan

Another Courtney Milan book – take all my money. This is lovely, it felt to me that Camilla should have been older to be so worn down and not angry. Milan works hard to include diversity in her books and this is no different. Adrian is a child of the daughter of a duke and an abolitionist, a black abolitionist. He’s in a weird position because he’s black and wealthy and Camilla, the daughter of an earl isn’t. So there’s an element of role reversal. This is just so good and you know I’m going to read all of them as they come out but hopefully not after the years we waited for this. There is a reason for that and this feels like a ‘me too’ book. Go read

Chaser – Kylie Scott

This is the last of three books about a bar. I wondered how she was going to deal with Eric, he’s an immature pain in the neck and he let another character down hugely. The book is told all the way through from his point of view. His behaviour doesn’t suddenly change for the love of a good woman and her baby. You see the change in him, he’s not really sure what’s going on at first. The truth is, he was ready to be a grown up and she was part of the reason he wants to. Easy and fun to read.

Hurts to Love You – Alisha Rai

I’ve read the other two and had pre-ordered this, all of these books have so much angst. Here’s the thing I found tricky, through the books, Rai has written about flawed characters doing the best they can and coming to some kind of resolution. Except one. He’s a complete bastard from start to finish and the only ‘reason’ offered for it is that he was in love and rejected. All of the people in this book trying so hard to be their best selves and deal with their (considerable) shit, except him. Everyone seems to get a resolution but this one character. Everyone gets to live in big, happy and sometimes tricky relationship, except him. He gets to go off and be malevolent and that’s it. It felt unfinished because Rai has spent three books telling me that hard stuff can be overcome and people are good and bad. It just felt off. But I will love this book for the heroine’s description of the hero as ‘sex closed captioning’

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Allotment Adventures: Winter returns

Posted on May 2, 2018 by nicdempsey

Ma and I went to the plot on Sunday and it was so cold. Despite that, things were happening…Cornflowers…Carrots and radishesRaspberriesPlums

The warm and then wet weather meant that the grass had gone nuts and needed cutting, so that was on the list. Saturday had been so wet, a bonfire was out of the question, so we spent sometime composting some of the things we’d intended to set on fire.I cut the grass, it’ll need a bit more next week and I need to spend some time weeding the edges to beat the couch grass back but thats for a warmer day.

Last week, we saw that one of our allotment neighbours had used pallets outside their shed as a patio and we thought that might work for us. So we moved the pallet we had to see if we thought it would work. We’ve decided that it will so we need to get more pallets and paint them to match the shed, then there will be somewhere to sit on the plot.

We used the three edging pieces that I had to paint grey last week, to edge the patch where the pallet had been, I totally forgot to photograph it but trust me, it looks good!

The rest of the plot is looking good (do I say that every week!), the peas are coming upAs are the beetroot and spinach and lettuce. I took the fleece off and netted them to protect from the fox.The fox had a go at my bathtub of strawberries so I brought out the chicken wire to prevent them. All of the strawberries are flowering, so hopefully, we won’t have a late frost to kill off the flowers.We did cover the potatoes in case we do have a frost this week.

We picked rhubarb and chard.

There is a list for next week but it’s not a massive list

  • sow peas
  • earth up the potatoes
  • frame the bed at the top of the plot
  • weed the edges of plot
  • compost the squash beds – the two that have just been framed and the boxes
  • plant new mint (yeah I killed a mint plant!)

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Monthly Goals – April/May 2018

Posted on May 1, 2018 by nicdempsey

It’s the 1st of May, time does fly!

April was an odd month, we had weather, I got sunburnt and it was freezing. Health wise I’m a bit more even, I’m tired because I’m always tired but other than that feeling pretty good. April was pretty quiet, there was work and home and not a lot of people. Here’s the recap of the goals…

Mind and Body

  • 10,000 steps a day.
  • Vitamins every day.
  • Feet and Hands.
  • Golden hour

I nailed all of these, go me…

Budget & Spending

  • Stick to the spending budgets for food and household.
  • No card use. Let’s see if I can make this work for April

There was some card use but not a lot so I’m calling these good.

House Beautiful

This is pretty much all repeats of March because I didn’t get it done last month and I didn’t get them done this month either. I failed these so hard!

  • Hoover once a week, my dislike of hoovering is well known, so I need to make it a weekly habit.
  • Sort out underbed storage
  • Clean oven
  • Defrost fridge
  • Curtains in the bedroom

Allotment  (still the longest list!)

  • bonfire
  • sowing seeds indoors (summer and winter squash, cucumbers etc)
  • start sowing seeds outdoors (beetroot, carrots, radishes, peas, salad, herbs)
  • sowing flowers in various places around the plot
  • greenhouse – we’ve decided not to have one this year!
  • sort out the section at the top of the plot where the squash are going
  • compost
  • finish planting the potatoes
  • another coat of paint on the shed

I’m calling that a good allotment month!

Year so far

Reading – The TBR list on the Kindle stands at 93 and the physical pile of books is at 32.

Household budget – I started with £52.00 and ended with £43.75. So I have £83.75 for May, and I’ll really need spend that because I’ve run out of everything…

Food Budget – I had £5.26 left over which went in the jar.

Saving – The jar now contains £111.44

May Goals

Hopefully the weather is going to cheer up this month. There will be lots of allotment work this month and we have two bank holidays. I’m going for calm and consistent as the theme of this month. I want to plan the weeks more effectively and spent less time noodling about on the computer and social media and more time doing things that I need to do and reading…

Mind and Body

  • 10,000 steps a day.
  • Vitamins every day.
  • Feet and Hands.
  • Golden hour

Budget & Spending

  • Stick to the spending budgets for food and household.

House Beautiful

This is pretty much all repeats of March because I didn’t get it done last month

  • Hoover once a week
  • Clean oven
  • Defrost fridge

Allotment  (still the longest list!)

  • bonfire
  • sowing seeds indoors (sweetcorn, kale, more tomatoes, chard)
  • sowing seeds outdoors (french beans)
  • plant out tomatoes, cucumbers etc
  • frame in the bed at the top of the plot
  • compost (more compost)
  • seating area (more about that tomorrow)
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Monday Miscellany

Posted on April 30, 2018 by nicdempsey

Welcome to the last day of the month.

Today is the first day of National Gardening Week, I’m doing my usual allotmenting and volunteering at the plots on Saturday but very week seems to be gardening week for me!I was scanning photos last week and I love this one, taken by my Mum way back in the 80’s. I remember this day, we went for a picnic at Richmond Park, there was paddling. We don’t have that many pictures from when B and I were children and given that Ma couldn’t get Dad’s head in, you can tell why!

You know how last week, I said that now I’d bought summer clothes, I fully expected the weather to turn? It did, this weekend, I put the heating on. It’s my fault, sorry guys! And I’ve painted mine and Ma’s toenails too…We went to see the Avengers: Infinity War last week, I really enjoy Marvel films, but that one had a tough ending..

What did you do last week?

 

 

 

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Friday Links

Posted on April 27, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! Honestly, I’ve not been at my shiny best this week. It’s mostly work, I’m currently in diary hell and it seems like every morning, I come into work to re-arrange the work I did the day before! On the plus side, this week, I also planted more tomatoes, the cucumbers came up, I met Jess for lunch and Ma and I went to see the new Avengers movies. Good and bad.

This week,  I tried to keep you all amused and entertained with the following posts: Monday Miscellany, Allotment Adventures, a post about my lovely Grandad and I rambled on about hummus. While I’m thinking about it if the post about Grandad, inspired you to try his Bread Pudding, you should. That is the most popular post on this blog with the most comments so there’s lot’s of other suggestions for making it but trust me, Grandad’s is the best!

On other blogs

Cassie wrote about how to build her awesome raised beds.  Which I should consider for when I get my other half of the allotment. Although I don’t have a weed problem like that (raspberries excluded) or a mole problem!

This post on how to spot an English, Spanish or hybrid bluebell is useful as we are right in the middle of bluebell season. Although now I have my mother’s famous bluebell song going through my head!

Haymans are calling time on fake gin. Yes I signed! We are hitting peak gin because of idiots and I don’t want it to go back to the gin wasteland of my youth!

With Windrush, Theresa May mistook a national treasure for an easy target. I can’t tell you how disgusting I think this whole thing is. The decision in the first place, ignoring the issues as they were happening, blaming your civil servants and generally pretending that this terrible thing couldn’t have been foreseen when you were told it would happen. Honestly, I think it was deliberate, the people most effected by this are the poorest and the brown people, the Tories gambled that people wouldn’t care. The thing is for most people, this isn’t about immigration or race, it’s about keeping your promises and being fair. Even the most ‘ukip-y’ people I know, are outraged by this. The government broke a promise and it’s not fair to get people to work and pay taxes and then decide that they aren’t British enough. It’s not complicated and anyone with a working brain and heart would know that. Theresa May doesn’t.

 

Inside Rex Tillerson’s Ouster. Good grief it makes the mess that is Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary look orderly and controlled.

Congratulations, William and Kate – you can afford a third child

How to redesign the vaginal speculum

Even social housing is unaffordable now in some parts of England

Trump-Macron: unrequited love in the White House. This is hilarious!

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Quick and Dirty Hummus

Posted on April 26, 2018 by nicdempsey

I love chickpeas. I use chickpeas and black beans in chilli, instead of kidney beans. Chana masala is one of my favourite indian dishes to make at home. Chickpeas and spinach is still a standard comfort food for me. Hummus is the gateway food for most chickpeas lovers, most people that claim to hate chickpeas, will eat hummus.

There are lots of hummus recipes out in the world, my two favourites are Felicity Cloake’s in the Guardian and the Food 52 recipe. I’ve made both and they are both really good. Both use dried chickpeas and often I don’t have the time to soak and cook chickpeas from scratch. So most often I make hummus from a can of chickpeas and I don’t really have a recipe.

Sometimes, I add a roasted aubergine, or roasted peppers or onions. This week it was an aubergine.

Two tablespoons of tahini or (most often) peanut butter, the juice of a lemon, two or three cloves of garlic, a can of chickpeas, a teaspoon of cumin and roughly the same amount of salt.

I start with two tablespoons of tahini or peanut butter and the juice of a lemon in the food processor, scraping down the sides often and then add two or three cloves of garlic. Once that’s all incorporated, I chuck in a can of drained chickpeas, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of salt and roasted veg if I’m using (the insides of a roasted aubergine, two roasted peppers with the skins and insides removed are all good but experiment). The way to get smooth and creamy hummus is to process it more than you think it needs. When you think it looks about right, scrape the sides down and process some more. Then do it again. Then taste it and if you think it needs more seasoning, season it and process it some more. Trust me on this.

That’s how hummus mostly gets made in my house. It’s quick, simple and really useful to have in the fridge. If I’m not sure how my week is going to pan out, I’ll often just make hummus and flatbread dough because with some vegetables that is dinner!

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Francis Thomas Harold Hull

Posted on April 25, 2018 by nicdempsey

Today marks 20 years since my Grandad died. Which means it’s been a bit more than that since he walked me through his bread pudding recipe. I write about my Grandad a lot, because as I get older, I’ve realised that his influence on me is growing.

He wasn’t my only grandparent but he was the only one I ever got to meet.

He wasn’t an easy man, I know that he wasn’t a great parent and as a younger man had a temper. Some of that can explained by the fact that he didn’t have an easy life.

Born in 1914, eldest of four and the only boy. His mum died in or post childbirth when he was 10 (and he wasn’t around because he was bunking off Sunday school, so they couldn’t find him). His dad wasn’t easy, how much of that was that he was just miserable or how much of it was as a result of a full four years as a soldier during WWI, I can’t say but Grandad and his dad were not on good terms.That wasn’t helped by his father’s decision not to let him stay on at school past 14. You see Grandad was bright (the maths thing that Ma and Ben do, that came from Grandad) but you had to pay for school past 14 in 1928 and I’m guessing that my great grandfather couldn’t afford it.

Grandad got married in 1944, I don’t think it was the most successful marriage in the world. It’s pretty open knowledge now that my uncle is not my Grandad’s son, although it wasn’t then, but Ma says that when she found out, it made a lot of Grandad’s behaviour make sense to her. Grandad never said a word, not even after Iris died in 1962.If you had asked me about him when I was little, I would have told you that Grandad worked three days a week, came for dinner on Tuesdays and came over on Saturday mornings, usually bringing us pocket money and lots of fruit and kit kats. Ma banned sweets, the other cousins got sweets (and I’m still not over it!). He belonged to the Salvation Army and he went to Belgium on the ferry from Ramsgate, for two weeks every year and came back very tanned and with Toberones for all.

I would also tell you about when we all went on holiday to Minorca, Ma remembers that as plane was about to take off, Grandad looked a bit nervous and she asked him if he’d flow before, his reply “not since the war”.

He came to church with us at Christmas and I spent every Christmas of my life from 1973 to 1997 with him, he took us to watch Fulham at Craven Cottage, he was delighted when as a teenager, I helped out at the youth club at the Salvation Army and always came to every midnight Mass that I was serving at (you could always hear his singing!)

There is a lot I don’t know about my Grandad. What I do know, what he taught me is that he never stopped trying and neither should I. He made mistakes but he carried on, he did he best. He wasn’t perfect but he really loved us and he always tried to show us that.

He didn’t talk a lot about his feelings but I always knew he loved me, from the way he would wait for us on his working days and walk with us, when I was at secondary school and I had to walk past his house and he’ll always be there waving and commenting on my lateness. If you mentioned that you loved choc ices, he’d bring you choc ices every week.

My Grandad was also one of the best examples of faith I have. Fail, fall down, get up, try again. Carry on walking, know that God is with you, even and especially when it’s hard.

So whenever I get a bit soppy about him, I remember that the example he gave me was of carrying on and trusting God and I try and do that. I also make bread pudding, which I’m did last night and I’m going to eat tonight with a cup of tea.

 

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Allotment Adventures: The War on Raspberries

Posted on April 24, 2018 by nicdempsey

It was hot this week, and everything in the allotment decided to pop up, the raspberries especially. So Ma and I spent a good hour digging the ones that weren’t where we wanted them to be..We also watered everything. The strawberries have flowersAs do the broad beansEverything else is doing it’s thing. Check out my blueberry sticksAnd we got rhubarb and chard to take home Amazing what a bit of hot weather does….

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