Last week felt pretty busy, well work felt busy and I got some other stuff done too!
Highlights this week.
A haircut (which I really needed – look at that fringe!)
Saturday breakfast before the Avengers
Monday breakfast. Hash, black pudding and perfect poached eggs. Two pots of coffee aren’t pictured
Monday walk through the parks with sunshine and baby ducks 
April was a pretty good month. There were birthdays and chocolate and Bank Holidays. the lighter days are helping my mood enormously too. 
So let’s look at how I got on in April.
May Plans and Goals
There are no big plans for May, I have the day after Election Day off because we are babysitting Oliver, I’m expecting that Grandma will get all the love and I’ll get lots of grumpy faces and ‘yucks’! We didn’t make the The National Portrait Gallery has an exhibition about Wellington so I’d still like to get to that, but the rest of my diary for May is completely empty, which I’m delighted about!
BODY
More of the same in May, I want to get to at least 2 classes a week maybe even 3 and hit 10,000 steps every day or at least get 70,000 across 7 days, it can be done so I need to work on doing it. I’m toying with the idea of running again so I want to go for at least one ‘run’ a week and see how it goes.
HOME & MIND (BOOKS)
No book buying again this month, ideally, I’d like to have my 10 left for October and a trip to Barter Books!
HOME GENERAL
This is a straight repeat from last month, I really need to clean the oven. A focus on the kitchen and clean cupboards and maybe get rid of some kitchen things that I don’t use.
MONEY
Spend no more than £150 on everything after rent and bills.
Happy Friday! Happy May Day.
It’s been a busy week around here, so links are few, so you can spend the Bank Holiday weekend (assuming that you’re lucky enough to have one) doing something other than reading stuff online!
Dehumanising people who claim benefit.
‘tippy-tappy football is great but you’re not going to win the league’ Until we actually get the points, I’m not going to say that Chelsea have won anything but John Terry has just summed up what almost every football fan ever (ok apparently not Arsenal fans – which is rich because I remember Arsenal under George Graham) would say.
For the second week, I have a frog story…
London Zoo breeds rare frog. A frog that has 12 sets of chromosomes and lives in one lake in Cameroon and doesn’t have a tongue. Amazing.
I’ve been thinking about food and cooking recently. I’ve been watching, Back in Time for Dinner and it’s been really interesting. Basically, a family has committed to spending 10 days in a decade from the 50’s onwards, eating, cooking and living as they would have in that decade. I’ve found it really interesting, especially, from the 70’s onwards. As I remember that food (there’s a chopping board in the 70’s programme that I remember from home!)
Watching the changes of a decade over 10 days really highlighted how much drudgery was involved in cooking but also why ready meals and convenience foods were and have been so readily accepted. Ma’s has also been watching this and she lived through all of the decades featured. She remembers (just) rationing and the other changes. I remember my childhood, Ma would pick us up from playcentre and as soon as we got home she’d start peeling potatoes for Dad’s dinner, making our dinner and doing anything else that needed doing, probably mending and washing and checking homework and getting us ready for bed. It was hard work and took lots of planning. So the idea of being able to take something out of the fridge, put it in the oven and not have to do anything else must have been like manna from heaven.
It’s been a running joke in my family how much my mother hates to cook and how she was the queen of ‘pierce and ping’ cookery although that really didn’t take hold until we were teenagers and after we left home. Which highlights the other thing that I noticed watching the programme, how much of our cooking and eating style is determined by the food and cooking choices of our parents.
Lots has been said and will continue to be said about how and why we all eat the way we do, but thinking about it, I eat an awful lot like I did when I was 10. There is some adaptation, I make bread more than my mother did (in fact I don’t think she ever did!) but I have more time than she did and I like to cook. However, I cook most days and I don’t eat much processed food, ok all food in the supermarket is processed to some extent, yoghurt doesn’t come out of the cow like that but what I mean by processed food is convenience food.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the ease of convenience food or even that I hate the taste, it’s that for the money I can do better. I make pizza a couple of times a month and it’s cheaper, tastes better than most ready made ones and I know exactly what’s in it. It takes a little bit more work but that’s a trade off I’m happy to make. (Of course, I could go to Santa Maria and have a pizza that was 100 times better than both the home-made and bought from supermarket options)
It’s the thing that works best for me but what really helped is realising that cooking dinner is work. Like all the other housework it can be boring and tiring and feel never-ending and some days, if I had the money, I’d just rather order in. I’ve had to learn to accommodate that and work with it, which means that I do have to menu plan and food prep and that I try to have stuff in the freezer that I can ‘cook’ with minimum fuss for days when I’m busy. It also means that I don’t beat myself up if dinner is scrambled eggs on toast with a side of cut up carrots and peppers.
One of the ways I do that is harness my natural inability to cook for one person. I take the leftovers and put them in the freezer. 
The containers come from Wilkinsons and are 10 for £1. Dinner becomes really easy on hard days.
Basically, what I’ve learnt about cooking is that food doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to look perfect, you’re just making something to eat, it’s not rocket science and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
I know there are lots of barriers to eating well; money, time, energy bills, education. I’m not going to lecture anyone on how they eat because I’m not living their circumstances, but I do think that if your circumstances allow, cooking almost every day is a good habit to get into, precisely because it’s a chore, the more you do it the easier it becomes. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, it just has to feed you.
Breaking All Her Rules – Maisy Yates (library e-book)
Buttoned-up financial consultant Grace Song lives life by her own strict rules. Spontaneity leads to chaos. Always play it safe. So when she shares a Manhattan cab with a handsome stranger and they accidentally swap cell phones, her first instinct is to track him down and put things right. Stay on track. Stick with the plan.
But when beyond-gorgeous Zack Camden answers the door draped only in a towel, Grace is suddenly inspired to ditch her rules for a day…and a night. Indulging in one delicious encounter with a perfect stranger is just the break she needs. But one turns into two, then three mind-blowing nights—and soon Grace is in danger of breaking the biggest rule of them all—never fall in love….
Still traumatised from ‘Only Ever Yours‘ last month. I found this on the e-book site and read it on the morning commute. It was simple, straightforward and happy.
Anticipation – Sarah Mayberry (borrowed from Ruth)
Blue Sullivan knows a player when she sees one. And Eddie Oliveira—charm and sex personified—was born to play. She never wanted him to say goodbye, so for the last ten years she’s ignored the sizzling attraction between them and focused on being the best sidekick a guy could have. Smart girl, right?
Then Blue has a serious accident, and overnight Eddie changes. Suddenly he’s more intense and singularly devoted…to her. With all this sexy attention, it’s hard to stay within the boundaries she’s scrupulously drawn. The temptation, the anticipation builds and, finally, she has to have what he’s offering. Of course Eddie proves to be brilliant. Now, she worries he’s ruined her forever, as well as the friendship that is so important to her….
Ruth was all ‘you have to read this, it gives me, the happy book noise’ I read it in a day. Happy book noise… and just what I needed before diving into River of Stars.
River of Stars – Guy Gavriel Kay (Kindle TBR)
In his critically acclaimed novel Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay told a vivid and powerful story inspired by China’s Tang Dynasty. Now, the international bestselling and multiple award-winning author revisits that invented setting four centuries later – a world inspired this time by the glittering, decadent Song Dynasty.
Ren Daiyan was still just a boy when he took the lives of seven men while guarding an imperial magistrate of Kitai. That moment on a lonely road changed his life—in entirely unexpected ways, sending him into the forests of Kitai among the outlaws. From there he emerges years later—and his life changes again, dramatically, as he circles towards the court and emperor, while war approaches Kitai from the north.
Lin Shan is the daughter of a scholar, his beloved only child. Educated by him in ways young women never are, gifted as a songwriter and calligrapher, she finds herself living a life suspended between two worlds. Her intelligence captivates an emperor—and alienates women at the court. But when her father’s life is endangered by the savage politics of the day, Shan must act in ways no woman ever has.
In an empire divided by bitter factions circling an exquisitely cultured emperor who loves his gardens and his art far more than the burdens of governing, dramatic events on the northern steppe alter the balance of power in the world, leading to events no one could have foretold, under the river of stars.
I really enjoyed this and now I need to know more about the Chinese history on which this is based. It’s just epic and I got caught up in it. I guessed it wasn’t going to have a ‘happy’ ending and it really didn’t which I think is why it took so long for me to read.
Glamour in Glass – Mary Robinette Kowal (Library Book)
Jane and David Vincent, both glamourists of some repute, are enjoying a blissful honeymoon on the continent when their romantic getaway goes horribly awry.
They are in Belgium when they learn that Napoleon Bonaparte, the deposed emperor, has fled from exile throwing Europe into turmoil. Suddenly Jane and David find themselves in great danger, with no easy way back home to England, no possibility of rescue from abroad, and no real way to tell friend from foe.
When David is taken prisoner, Jane determines to put herself at risk, using her most cunning, strongest magic to save her beloved, herself, and their unborn child from harm. . .
This is the sequel to ‘Shades of Milk and Honey‘ (and I’m sensing a pattern, as I read that straight after Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven – also set in China). I liked this just as much as the first one. I enjoyed watching Jane (and Vincent) learn how to be married and deal with the expectations and limitations placed on her. I really like that although she’s strong enough to rescue her husband and take risks, she’s not stupid or headstrong about it. It’s lovely to read a book set in the Regency, that reads like it could have been written in the era.
Without a Summer – Mary Robinette Kowal (Library Book)
Summer, 1816. Glamourists Jane and David Vincent return home to an unseasonably cold Long Parkmeade. Cooped up inside with Jane’s fretful sister and father, they soon become restless, so when they receive a commission from a prominent family in London, they decide to go – taking Melody with them. Perhaps the change of scenery will brighten their moods (and Melody’s marriage prospects).
The capital is fizzing with talk of crop failures and unemployment riots in the north. Finding it difficult to avoid getting embroiled in the intrigue, it’s not long before Jane and David realise they must use their magic to solve a crisis of international proportions . . . and get Melody to the church on time.
Because I reserved books 2,3 and 4 in the series, I get to read straight through, which is always fun. I was still completely absorbed by the story and the sense that even after two years, Jane and Vincent are still learning about each other. I can’t recommend them enough. The Prince Regent makes an appearance here and I’m afraid that I really didn’t think that he was self aware enough to know that he was fundamentally useless (he was actually too busy pretending that he single handedly won the Battle of Waterloo!
One issue, this is the back of the book.
Yes, that does say 1916, for a book set in 1816. Whoops!
Valour and Vanity – Mary Robinette Kowal (library book)
When a family celebration brings Glamourists Jane and David Vincent to the Continent, they seize the opportunity to voyage for Murano, to study the world-renowned glassblowers at work. But their ship is set upon by Barbary corsairs en route – and they arrive in Murano penniless.
Fortunately, they meet a gentleman banker who arranges for a line of credit and a place to live. But just as the Vincents start to relax, a solicitor arrives at their house and it becomes clear they have been the victims of an elaborate heist.
The fourth in the series, there’s one more that hasn’t been released yet, this is also good and features Bryon, who was in Venice at the time! Once of the things I really enjoy about this series is the way that three years after these two got married they are still working through how to be married and things that come up take time to be worked out, no-one waves a magic wand, Jane is still working out stuff that happened in previous books, I really like that, to see Jane and Vincent growing and changing as the reality of their partnership affects how they deal with things. Also the nuns were pretty amazing!
The Darkest Part of the Forest – Holly Black (library book)
Near the little town of Fairfold, in the darkest part of the forest, lies a glass casket. Inside the casket lies a sleeping faerie prince that none can rouse. He’s the most fascinating thing Hazel and her brother Ben have ever seen. They dream of waking him – but what happens when dreams come true? In the darkest part of the forest, you must be careful what you wish for..
I loved Holly Black’s last book (The Coldest Girl in Coldtown) and I’ve been wanting to read this for a while, thankfully the library reserve service is my friend and unfortunately works faster than I thought it would, I have a 9 books out at the moment all of them from my reserve list, they’re coming in faster than I can read them. I also thought that it would be good to have a small break from The Glamourist Histories. This was perfect. Hazel is a frustrating ‘hero’ but that’s understandable given her history and relationships. I liked almost all of it. Hazel rescues herself even though she’s not quite aware she’s doing it and even though she’s scared and the fairies are really scary and not human. Some of this book is about parents, all of the major characters have parent issues and I like that the book shows consequences good and bad of parenting choices. The writing of the book felt like a fairy tale too.
Getting Out of Hand: Sapphire Falls Book One – Erin Nicholas (Kindle free)
Genius scientist Mason Riley can cure world hunger, impress the media and piss off the Vice President of the United States all before breakfast. But he’s not sure he can get through his high school class reunion.
Then he meets the new girl in town. Adrianne Scott loves Sapphire Falls. The sleepy little town has been the perfect place to escape her fast-paced, high stress lifestyle. Her only plans now include opening her candy shop and living a quiet, drama-free life. Until Mason Riley bids four hundred dollars just to dance with her.
It was on Smart Bitches and lots of people liked it and it was free. I know, I’m easy when it comes to books and this was fun and I liked it, although it was all a bit too easy!
A King’s Ransom – Sharon Kay Penman (library book)
This was fairly delightful. I never expected to feel sympathy with Richard I but Penman makes a convincing case for PTSD and the changes after he was ransomed. As ever, the book is pretty well researched and easy to read.
Last week was a low key week.
The sun shone, there were blue skies… 
I went for a run. When I say run, I mean mostly walking with a tiny bit of running but it all counts towards my step total for the day!
Otherwise it was a fairly normal week. I celebrated Thursday with a Gin Rickey 
There are some changes at work, my entire team is moving departments (again) and this week and next week are going to be pretty busy because of extra meetings but that’s just more of the same. There was more team building on Friday, lunch and then I got another opportunity to show my colleagues how rubbish I am at 10 pin bowling. I suck so badly… 
Ma did not come over on Saturday night because she was at Westminster Cathedral, protesting about there not being women priests and it was Vocations Sunday over the weekend. I spent Saturday indoors with some housework and reading.
On Sunday, I did venture out of the house to do some shopping and popped into Kathy and Adam’s to drop some stuff off to Kathy. I got bonus Bex, Al and baby and to meet Kathy’s cousins who where visiting AND to pogo with the small children to ‘Nelly the Elephant’ (my poor knees!)
The weekend ended with another book and here I am ready to start the week. Plans for this week include 4 body balance classes, dinner with Kathy on Wed and a haircut on Friday, because if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room!
Happy Friday! This weeks links…
1) Why we loved Gilbert Blythe. As played by Jonathan Crombie, who died last week, which is sad because he was only 48, it prompted a re-watch of Anne of Green Gables at the weekend and I still cried like a baby when Matthew died.
2) I chose not to vote. So young, so stupid.
3) Frogs stage a pitch invasion
4) Premier League teams popularity around the world. Interesting. As a side note, I saw more Chelsea shirts in Cote d’Ivoire than I did in Chelsea
5) Everyone loves my dad – they just don’t know he’s an alcoholic. I recognise a lot of this.
I can tell from my dad’s voice alone how much he’s had to drink. He wasn’t yet on a second glass, so had hit a chatty peak: not slurred or over-emotional, but repeatedly saying how much he loves me, how proud he is of me – but failing to ask about my life (it’s easier that way; knowing what we’re up to and realising what he’s lost is, after all, part of what the alcohol anaesthetises)
6) Jack Monroe on the Trussell Trust figures that were released this week. Ma volunteers at the food bank in Kingston and she’d mentioned to me that no one was talking about the report.
Nobody who has received this help would deny that it is a good thing. But it’s a disgrace that food banks are needed in the first place, patching up the holes left by an inefficient and downright barbaric attack on the meagre safety net of what remains of a notion of “social security”.
Ma and I seem to have settled into a Saturday ritual. It’s not every Saturday, but she comes for dinner, bringing a bottle of wine and I cook. It’s easy when you live alone to get stuck into a rut, cooking the same thing day in and out, so Saturday night dinners are good practice for me. Helping me to think a little more creatively about food or to try new recipes.
This week, I gave myself a bit of a challenge and made dinner from what was in the fridge on Saturday morning. I had half a packet of feta, a packet of bacon lardons, garlic, onions, mushrooms, peppers and half a carton of passata. I decided on stuffed peppers and they were pretty good. Because I was making this up as I went along this is actually a meal for 3 people, which means that I got to eat the same thing for dinner on Tuesday night. 
What
3 sweet peppers
130g smoked bacon lardons
2 red onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
100g mushrooms, chopped
100g pearl barley
200ml passata
130g feta
How
1) Bring a pot of water to the boil. Cut the peppers in half and remove the stalk and seeds. Drop the pepper halves in the boiling water and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes.
2) Remove the peppers from the pot and add the pearl barley, simmer for 25 minutes or until the pearl barley is cooked, drain and set to one side.
3) Add the bacon to a frying pan over a medium heat and cook until lightly browned.
4) Depending on how much fat the bacon has released, you may need to add a tablespoon of olive oil to the pan with the bacon, add the garlic and onion to the pan and cook for another 5 or so minutes.
5) Add the mushrooms, and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes. You’re looking for everything to be cooked through and the water to have cooked out of the mushrooms.
6) Turn down the heat and add the pearl barley and passata to the pan. Stir it all through and leave over a low heat for about 5 to 10 minutes, until the passata had thickened slightly. Then take off the heat.
7) Crumble the feta into the pearl barley mixture and stir through. Then fill the pepper halves with it.
8) At this point, you can cover the peppers and leave in the fridge until you’re ready to cook them. Or you can put them in a pre-heated oven at 180C to 200C for 25 to 35 minutes. (remember my oven runs hot so know your oven!)
I love to read. I am never knowingly book and/or a Kindle. I will choose to read over pretty much any activity in the world. I spent an awful lot of my childhood being told to “stop reading and pay attention” by teachers and relatives. I spent most of my teenage years in libraries.
Many of the people I know think I have too many books (like there could be such a thing, there are just too small houses!) and I think that used to be true before I got a Kindle and after a couple of book purges. Now the books at home, the ones that take up room in my physical space, they’re the books I couldn’t bear to live without. So inspired by Verity at Verity Reads Books, I thought that as well as charting what I read each month, I’d take some time to write about those books.
First up is the Chalet School collection.
I read my way through Enid Blyton‘s Malory Towers and St Clare’s when I was a child but the boarding school stories I loved best were by Elinor M. Brent Dyer. I really wanted to be a Chalet School girl with all the enthusiasm my 10 year old heart could muster. Like a lot of my book loves, this one was inherited from my mother and I got my first Chalet School book as a Christmas present from her.
The series of 60-ish books (published between 1925 and 1970) starts with The School at the Chalet. In which, Madge Bettany, responsible for her invalid sister, Joey decides that starting a school would be a good way of providing some income when her twin brother, Dick, goes off to India to work for the Forestry Commission.
The stories centre mainly on the school, which moves from Austria, to Guernsey, Wales and eventually settles in Switzerland, all the girls eventually turn out to be good at heart. Chalet girls grow up speaking English, German and French because they are taught in those languages on alternate days. The food is always good, the adventures thrilling.
Joey is centre to the books at the beginning and even when she grows up and marries Jack Maynard, a doctor at the sanatorium that’s connected to the school, she’s featured. Brent-Dyer perhaps because she never experienced it herself and converted to Catholicism (a conversion that Joey has too but because she marries a Catholic), really likes big families, Joey ends up with 11 children, Madge with six, and many old girls end up married to doctors with families of at least 4 children. I really like the books about Joey’s family that take place outside of the school, in part because everything is so easy and happens like magic, the only time the difficulties of a large family show up is in the issue of the boys school fees.
Many of the stories are about the perils of spoiling children and dangers of not letting them be children. Joey has a ‘horror of sophisticated children’ and keeps them to the nursery for quite a while and many of the school stories are about girls who have had irregular lives and/or selfish parents and centre on how difficult it is to live in community. Naturally, the Chalet School straightens them out, although in two notable exceptions, girls are expelled, even then Brent-Dyer doesn’t give up and they go on to change and become nicer people, in part because of their experiences at the school. 
Within the books, there is a strong theme of getting along, Catholics and Protestants are separated for prayers but sectarianism is discouraged, the books set during WWII are clear that there are good German (and Austrian) people and that the issue is the government. For their time they are quite forward thinking, bearing in mind that Brent-Dyer was born in 1894, they are quite feminist, it’s important for girls to be educated. The last book ends with Len (Jo’s eldest daughter) getting engaged at 18, but not before she has a degree because its a useful thing to have.
However, most of the attitudes are old fashioned. One of the books, starts with Jo having a fainting fit, caused by one of her sons deciding to climb down a cliff (I know) and when her sister tells her that said son is having a hard time of it because no-one will talk to him, she can’t understand why someone “didn’t give him a good whipping” because she “loathes punishments that go on and on”. Married ladies are wives and mothers first, although Joey is a prolific writer of children’s books. 
The later books are interesting because you can see Brent-Dyer struggling to come to terms with a changing world. One of the triplets, trying out a ‘pony-tail’ which Jo objects to as it will result in tangled hair but allows her to try. Jo wanting maybe one more daughter and being asked if she’s a feminist, but clarifying that she’d like to use up all the triplets frocks (like she couldn’t donate them to the San!).
The Chalet School series are my comfort reading and I think I read through all of them about once a year, as evidenced by the state of the books!
Nic Dempsey 