June Goals

Posted on June 1, 2017 by nicdempsey

So I didn’t set any proper goals for May last month and it’s time to announce goals for June. June is shaping up to be busy for me. I’m doing things that involve more than me, Ma and the allotment, three weekends of the four and Ma is away in the last week so I’ll be allotmenting solo, which will mean weeding!

So what’s planned. Next weekend, I’m going to celebrate Mike and Jill’s 25th wedding anniversary, which they’ve cunning planned for half term (teachers!), the next day is allotment volunteering and babysitting for the Baxters. The following weekend is Junipalooza, then I get a weekend off and the last weekend is Charles and Eileen’s wedding. My introvert soul is trembling somewhat.

So knowing what I’m like and what I need to do to cope because that’s a lot of being around other people, I’m keeping goals on focus…

Self Care

Turn over, turn out. I’ve not been sleeping well recently or more to the point, not staying asleep. I’ve been waking before dawn (about 4:40am-ish) and tossing and turning until it’s time to get out of bed at which point I fall asleep and finally get out of bed at 6:30am feeling groggy and confused and it absolutely makes me a joy to be around! So for Monday to Friday, it’s time to practice the Duke of Wellington’s mantra “when it’s time to turn over, it’s time to turn out”. If I wake up earlier than I should, I’m just going to start the day. I’ve been doing this all week and I’m much more cheery and productive even though I’m significantly underslept. It should also help me sort my bedtimes out.

Sunblock and moisturise. I’m pretty good about sunblock but the bits that aren’t exposed to the sun are itchy and flaky, so back to the day moisturising routine.

Feet. Summer means footcare, I’ve been ok at this, but I need to moisturise my feet every night and give them a mini pedicure very week.

Money

Update the spreadsheet every week. Knowing where you are is helpful.

£15 a week on food, keep money for food and everything else separate.

Keep to overall goals. Think about spending and put aside money in savings account, practice no spend week (actually that last one is happening now!)

Allotment

June should see things really start to grow. By the end of the month the broad beans should be done and more leeks planted out. The onions will be up and I’m thinking about what we’ll put in that bed. I want to have the other tomatoes planted out and I wanted to extend the strawberry bed but I may just leave that a year and use that space for something else. Other than that, June is going to be about watering, weeding and defending from slugs, bugs, digging foxes and the pigeons…

House

The focus in June is going to be about maintenance, keeping it clean and tidy and making sure that the regular things are done. So kitchen, bathroom, hoovering, laundry, rubbish and recycling.

June is going to be more of the same, sticking to what works and taking care of myself and my environment. What are your plans for June?

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Allotment Adventures: Not much to report.

Posted on May 31, 2017 by nicdempsey

If traditionally a Bank Holiday weekend means lots of time on the plot, then I broke with tradition this weekend. I’m blaming the hives…

We got to the plot on Saturday and watered and weeded and planted out some squash and that was pretty much it and I didn’t take many photos. The rain on Sunday and Monday has greened things up considerably and things are happening. The crookneck has fruit. The potatoes are going mad The borage is about to flower.Work on the plot in the next couple of weeks will be about finding space and things for winter. Laura gave me a bunch of plants this weekendMore tomatoes, a cucumber, some peppers and broccoli. The onions and broad beans will come up by the end of June and that gives me some space and I’ll make some space in the green house for the cucumber and a pepper, but I need to find space for the rest of the squash (one butternut, one baby blue hubbard) all the tomatoes, some more leeks, the broccoli and cavolo nero and I really want to plant some sweetcorn…

We’ll see.

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Gin Club

Posted on May 30, 2017 by nicdempsey

Last Christmas, Ma and I went to a gin speed tasting. Which was fun and as a result of that Ma, Christelle and I are going to Junipalooza in June. There are lots of gin in the world and I don’t see the people I like enough (except Ma, who I love to see but probably would like more of an opportunity to miss me except she is the weeding monkey and only gets paid in dinner at my house – sorry Ma), I decided to put the two together and invented Gin Club.The idea, like me, is very simple. We buy a bottle of gin and we taste it. If the gin has a suggested serve or cocktail we try to do that too. I’ll provide food to soak up the alcohol and a night of shennanigans is born.

Last Friday was the second gin club. Attending were me, Ma  and Sarah.

The gin was Jawbox. All mixers were Fever Tree. Jawbox is a Northern Irish gin, that claims to be the first single estate gin, I guess they are talking about the grain for the spirit and not the botanicals because I can’t see that they would all grow in Ireland!). It comes in at 43% ABV and  the botanicals are Juniper Berries, Coriander Seed, Cassia Quills, Angelica Root, Black Mountain Heather, Lemon Peel, Cardamon, Liqourice Root, Grains of Paradise, Orris Root and Cubebs. I bought ours from Marks & Spencers and it was on offer with £3 of it’s usual price of £30 for 70cl.

The drinks

Neat and cut with water. We really liked it neat. The gin was smooth and junipery with a hint of something citrus. (None of us are super tasters, so this isn’t going to be overly descriptive!). Cut with water, we got more of the botanicals at the end. This is a gin you could to quote Sarah “chuck a couple of ice cubes in and sip”.

Gin and Ginger Ale (50ml gin, ginger ale). The suggested serve. We didn’t like this, we all like the individual elements but they didn’t go well together. I couldn’t find the gin in this drink and Ma was suprised that the gin, which had been so sure of itself when drunk straight just vanished here. Sarah (again) asked “if this was a drink for people that don’t like drinking”

Gin and Tonic, lime garnish (50ml gin, tonic, lime). This was a hit. It made a lovely G&T, the smoothness of the gin still present but with a proper ‘ginny’ hit. I prefer a juniper hit in my gins and this gave me that but it worked for Sarah who isn’t so keen on those types of gins. This was lovely. I’d like to try it with different garnishes to see what they could bring out of this gin. Definitely a drink for a summer’s day.

French 75 (45ml Dry Gin, 10ml lemon juice, 5ml sugar syrup, top up with fizz). This drink is traditionally made with champagne but we didn’t have any, what we had was a bottle of prosecco, so we used that and renamed the drink, The Italian Retreat. I was worried that this would be too sweet and initially it was, given a little time to settle it worked fine. We  (Ma) was so impressed, I was instructed to make another round.

I’ve still got some gin left, so I will at some point make a martini and update these notes. Overall, we wouldn’t have any issue recommending or serving it to friends, which is always a good thing!

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Best/Worst 22 to 28 May 2017

Posted on May 29, 2017 by nicdempsey

Bank Holidays are lovely! 

Best

Sunshine. The weather has been lovely this week. Ok it has required a lot of watering at the plot but it’s been lovely.

A little crookneck squash. Summer squash, remind me how excited I was about this in August…

Worst

Manchester. On Monday night, there was a suicide bomber and people died and everytime something happens like this, it’s just horrific.

Migraine. I thought I’d gotten away with it but it hit on Tuesday and it was not good.

The unexplained hives. Not comfortable.

Honourable mentions to gin club, getting up at 5am on Friday, pay day, the worse film I’ve seen in ages, the Pope not being happy about meeting Trump and then Macron trolling Trump at Nato,

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What did I just see?

Posted on May 27, 2017 by nicdempsey

My lovely sister in law gets free film tickets which she sometimes give to me and Ma. This week there wasn’t much on so we went to see Arthur: Legend of the Sword. We knew it would be bad, but I was hopeful that it would be good bad.

It was not.

Where to start with it’s problems. First up, it doesn’t know what story it’s trying to tell and there was too much skipping over things, Arthur’s childhood, why Mordred and Vortigen allied and wanted to overthrow the kingdom (also both Mordred and Vortigen are in the wrong generations), what happened to the mages and Merlin- they’ve been slaughtered but one pops up to help – are they in France maybe? as the mage that does turn up is French. What happened to Uther’s ‘loyal’ knights, we see two of them but how do they leave, form the resistance etc, there is a whole plot like about one of them and a vendetta with the leader of the guards which is never properly explained and as it gets the ‘heros’ into trouble at one point it should have been. Arthur’s trip through the badlands was a whole movie in itself. I personally wanted to know how the ladies of the brothel came to be running it.

There is too much going on and none of it is coherrent…

There are other troubling questions raised by the film. The time travelling Vikings for example. The size of ‘Londinium’ – yes really, Arthur’s accent which is too northern for a child raised in ‘Londinium’ but isn’t quite sure where in the north to locate itself, sometimes Manchester, sometimes Liverpool and sometimes ‘I don’t know where’. Why there is a kung fu school in London. Where the ‘badlands’ are – my best guess Wales. The distance between Camelot and ‘Londinium’, the cliffs of Camelot, the size of Camelot. The bridges in London that have houses on them (not in the dark ages). The clothes which can’t settle on any kind of internal consistency of time period. The Nazi salutes of the bad guy. The King of all England (yeah right) and an army of 100,000 (erm…)

The saddest thing about the film was that it took itself too seriously. If it had approached any of this with a lightness of touch (think Alan Rickman in Prince of Thieves) but it was trying too hard to be a Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones thing and it was funny but in all the wrong places…

So people, don’t go and see this even if it’s free. Just don’t. I haven’t been this appalled by a film since I saw the last Indiana Jones film. However, I’m pretty sure this must have been the subject of an epic Mark Kermode rant. So there is a bright side…..

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Friday Links

Posted on May 26, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! This Friday is especially wonderfull as it marks the beginning of a Bank Holiday weekend and tonight is Gin Club!

Here are this week’s links…

I’m not keen on people emoting about parenting but this is worth reading because it’s important.

The actual termination, I was unconscious. I just remember everyone was so nice. There’s no way this isn’t political: I had a late-term abortion, and I felt so lucky. It was the actual worst thing that could have happened in my life, and I had it as easy as could be. My doctor was supportive, I was in a major city with a nice hospital, I didn’t have to cross picket lines. Nobody argued with me. I’m so angry I have to be thankful for that. It should be that easy for everybody.

A moment that changed me: Living on my own for the first time. It may be that I’ve read a couple of articles recently, by women droning on and on about how freeing living alone is. . I live on my own and yes it can be, it can also be bloody awful – falling down the stairs and spraining my ankle being my most recent terribleness. I guess that what I’m really struggling with in this article and the others I’ve read, is their naval gazing self indulgence, like they are the first person ever to experience this so it must be entirely new. It’s like how teenagers believe they are the first people ever to have sex and do drugs.

However, if you live in London, then living on your own is much harder to do because it’s so expensive. Whenever, I feel that paying over half my net income on rent is too much, I’m going to re-read this article. The great London property squeeze.

I’ve actually been talking to a couple of people this week about how this plays out in their lives.

Don’t let psychopathic murderers suppress our common humanity. I know I’m a leftie snowflake but this pretty much sums up my opinion every time there is a terrorist attack because they win if we change who we are…

The terrorists want to drive us apart, to sow suspicion and fear, to oblige us to replace liberty with security and answer them with bombs and bullets of our own. For a terrorist organisation any of this, if implemented, would mean mission accomplished. So we should do the opposite. We defy them by proving that this is not what we are

What I’m really thinking, the insomniac I had a bout of it after Stef died, I think that I’m mostly cured of it. I’ve learned to do with less and nowadays going to sleep is fine, staying asleep is more tricky!

Roger Moore died this week. Rather than talking about Bond or whatever, here is his recipe for a perfect martini. Much better than Bond’s….

Why we put things off.

10 of the UK’s best castles for a family day out. I’ve been to 3 of the ten and I prefer my castles more ruined. Although I see from the comments that you can get a steam train to Bodium Castle, which is Ma’s 70th birthday present sorted!

If we’re not reading, why do we expect our children will? Confession, I didn’t pass my English Lit GCSE first time around. I took it again and passed. I didn’t read any of the set texts the two I remember were Fahrenheit 451 and A View from the Bridge (we covered that play the year before GCSE and then I did it twice with exams and retakes and my views on Eddie, who I did not see as a tragic figure but as a creeper with a completely inappropriate fondness for his niece, didn’t go down well any of the three years that I expressed it! We also did poems Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and WB Yeats and I didn’t really enjoy it. I choose not to do English at A level because I was afraid that it would ruin reading for me.  I read quite a bit now but I read much more as a teenager and more serious books too (I had the head space!). However, I was encouraged, Ma read, my English teacher gave me books to read, our school librarian encouraged us to hang out and read (which was a sacrifice as Ruth doesn’t really like teenagers!), the library staff who let me have first pick of the new books. Reading was encouraged, there were always books. This isn’t the case for everyone.

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A couple of hours later…

Posted on May 25, 2017 by nicdempsey

I went to water and close the greenhouse and there was woodchip and a couple of things to do. Two hours later, hot and sweaty, I walked home.I regret nothing….

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Allotment Adventures: Rain almost stops play

Posted on May 24, 2017 by nicdempsey

We went to the allotment on Saturday full of good intentions and almost as soon at it was there, it started pouring down. So we had a cup of tea, which is the fulfillment of all my shed/greenhouse based dreams. So I’m not complaining about the rain at all, the plot needs it and hopefully my rhubarb will perk up.The rain stopped and we ventured out again, Ma to weed and me to sow radishes and work out what to do next. Then it rained some more. This happened twice and we decided to go home. We’d managed to lay some paving outside the greenhouse where it got really muddy, weed, sow raddishes and spray the broad beans with soap spray to deter the blackfly. I’m considering some ant killer on that bed because the little buggers are farming the aphids but I’ll soap spray them and see how it goes. I also tackled a couple of stray raspberries coming up in the raised beds.On Sunday, we started early. Ma tackled the grass on the edge of plot and weeded the rhubarb. I didn’t take a photo but I should have, she did an amazing job. I got the easier task of sowing things in big middle bed.More rocket, another row of lettuce, lambs lettuce, spinach, beetroot, nasturtiums, cosmos and stock. I have no idea if sowing flowers in the middle of a salad bed is a good idea but I’ve done it.More rocket, another row of lettuce, lambs lettuce, spinach, beetroot, nasturtiums, cosmos and stock. I have no idea if sowing flowers in the middle of a salad bed is a good idea but I’ve done it.I also planted some leeks out. I think I did it wrong but I’ve done it. If they die, the die, we did cover them with net to stop the bastard foxes digging in the bed, they’ve already killed a couple of my cucumber plants.By this point Ma was done, so she made tea and I sowed some more cucumbers and some beetroot and spinach as a back up against slugs.

There is still a list of outstanding work so next week in addition to watering  and weeding, we need to:

  • plant the strawberry runners into pots
  • plant out the winter squash
  • drill some holes in the tank we’re not growing anything in, it’s waterlogged right now
  • plant out the chives in the herb patch
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Don’t worry too much

Posted on May 23, 2017 by nicdempsey

I’m quite shortsighted, my world without glasses or contact lenses is extremely blurry. So I’m pretty realiant on my glasses and contact lenses. I’ve had lenses since I was 17 but over the years my eyes have become much less tolerant of them. Apparently it happens to women of a certain age, yours eyes get drier. This couples with the amount of time that I spend at a computer every day and that a working day would mean wearing them for more than the recommended no more than 8 hours a day. Does anyone ever stick to that rule, anyone?

This means that I wear glasses during the week and contacts at the weekend. I mainly wear these glasses. And apologies for the several bad photos of me frowning at the camera (I have resting ‘really annoyed’ face!)However, the stratch proof coating has decided to degrade and it’s annoying, because my prescription hasn’t changed, last week I wore a different pair of glasses to work every day. Now I know that my glasses are similiar but no-one noticed. Not one person, not even my mother.Most of us put a huge amount of effort into our appearance, with make-up and glasses and hairstyles. It makes a huge difference in how we feel about ourselves, but the truth is that hardly anyone notices.

What has this got to do with the price of fish? Well I have a wedding to go to this year and I’ve been worrying about what to wear. I saw a dress I thought would do and I looked horrendous. Ok, not horrendous but not all that good. I don’t often pay that much attention to what I look like, I look like me and get on with it but 43 has been the year I’ve stopped looking like myself. 

I’m greyer, my face seems to be changing shape, I’ve developed the exact same frown line by my right eyebrow that Ma has and wrinkles are becoming more pronounced. I’m not sure that I mind exactly, it’s just that I don’t quite recognise myself in the same way when I look in the mirror. Oh God, I’m having a mid-life crisis….Well maybe not a midlife crisis but certainly, I’m firmly middle-aged and although I’m mostly quite happy about it and not that concerned about getting old, it’s strange to not quite recognise your face.

This week, I realised that while it’s an issue for me, probably, no-one else has noticed. So there is that!

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Best/Worse 15 to 21 May 2017

Posted on May 22, 2017 by nicdempsey

Before I do a best/worst of last week, a plea, if you live in the UK and are eligible to vote and haven’t registered. Today is the last day to do it. Please do it. You can register online. I say it all the time because it’s true. Democracy won’t work if the electorate doesn’t. Please, even if you think politicians are all a bunch of lying liars, vote. People died so you could and it won’t change if you don’t participate.

Best

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The film was good but it’s more about finally having got to see it on the third attempt. Also Ma’s comment after seeing it “It was fun but a bit soppy, I like more crash bang”. She is awesome but bloodthirsty….

First crop. I love growing things to eat!

Rain. Oh thank goodness finally. We’ve had rain, lots of lovely rain.

Worst

Commuting. I don’t like it but I can normally handle it but my ankle is still really sore (this one is going to run and run) and the commute involves too many people and too much standing and not being able to read. Also on Friday morning, I got trodden on and pushed by a horrible little woman who couldn’t wait for everyone else to get off the train because she was in a hurry. People like this make life worse for everyone. She didn’t get off any faster either.

The bastard foxes. They visited and dug things and killed two tomato plants and a cucumber. Then to add insult to injury pooed on my leeks. I’m not that keen on foxes anyway but they are on the list right now.

The honourable mentions are finishing some work that I didn’t want to do ahead of time, getting out of the house on time every morning, the sunset on Tuesday night, an almost empty laundry basket, pictures of the nephew in his new big boy bed and his first encounter with Ikea meatballs, having a cup of tea in the shed while waiting for the rain to stop.

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