Life Happened – Migraine, Theatre and Allotments

Posted on June 8, 2015 by nicdempsey

This week did not start well, it didn’t start badly but I had a migraine on Tuesday and there was a sense of things not being good, I didn’t get to the gym once because I felt so bad and just not good, like exercise would make me sick. I did manage to turn my mood around somewhat. On Thursday night I was at Kathy and Adam’s for tea and chat and being entertained by the Baxter babies. There were ballet outfits and books and two children who were very proud of their pajamas…

I took Friday off and achieved things, mostly I cleaned the floors, hands and knees job, it doesn’t look much cleaner but I know it is. I also (finally) got around to cleaning the oven and hoovering was done but not by me, which is always fantastic, as I hate all housework involving floors but hoovering most of all!

Friday night was spent at the theatre, The Beaux’ Stratagem. Very funny and the sky during the interval was beautiful. I live in the best city!IMG_3098I was up and out of the house by 8am on Saturday morning to shop and then to go and spend time on the allotments helping to clear the hedgerow. One of the members took this photo we found a well and a water butt, also lots of metal cans, bottles, and crisp packets. (Photo taken by Marien because I didn’t have my phone with me!)

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It was 3 hours of hard work, at 1pm we finished and as Christelle was coming over for a visit, I ran, walked as fast as my sore legs would allow home for a shower.

After lunch and a catch up, Christelle and I went for a walk. This was plonked in Walpole Park, no idea what, why or who!IMG_3100Home to eat cherriesIMG_3102Ma came over for dinner but first there was Plymouth Fruit CupIMG_3104Then dinnerIMG_3106On Sunday, Ma helped me sort out the drawers in the living room and some of the bedroom ones. Then she went home and I took a book back to the library. On Sundays, if I visit the library I try to walk the least direct route, it was a lovely walk and on the way back there was a banana ice lolly (because they are the best!)

I feel that the weekend really helped me re-focus ready for next week, it’s a busy week work wise but I need to get to Body Balance because when I’m stressed, it helps!

 

 

 

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Sunday Music

Posted on June 7, 2015 by nicdempsey

On Friday, I was home doing housework and this came on the radio and it was so pretty and just right..

 

 

 

 

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Friday Links

Posted on June 5, 2015 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! 

John Crace on parliamentary reaction to the FIFA scandal.

for once his skills deserted him. On this form, any defendant he was prosecuting would be guaranteed an acquittal. He acted as if he had been given one of Harry Redknapp’s infamous team talks. “Just fucking run around a bit, son.”

Robert Fisk on Tony Blair’s resignation  and failure as Middle East peace envoy. I’m convinced that he’s going to put himself forward as a replacement for Sepp Blatter at FIFA!

Giles Fraser on Temple and the fallout from the Occupy protests at St Pauls. I really want to see that play and not only because SRB is in it but it’s at the Donmar aka the tiny theatre and tickets are predictably like gold-dust.

The insults of age.

The Tory housing policy with no redeeming features.

Charles Kennedy died this week. I once met him when I was doing A levels and he (along with Ken Livingstone) stayed and continued talking to us after the event we were at had finished. Based on that 10 minute encounter, I’ve always liked him and was sad when I heard about his struggles with alcohol and more recently when he lost his seat. Alistair Campbell wrote this about him, which is lovely.

Despite the occasional blip when the drink interfered, he was a terrific communicator and a fine orator. He spoke fluent human, because he had humanity in every vein and every cell. Above all, he was a doting dad of his son, whose loss is going to be greater than for any of us, and who will be reminded of his father every time he looks in the mirror and sees his red hair and cheeky smile coming back. And he was a very good friend. I just wish that we, his friends, had been able to help him more, and that he was still with us today, adding a bit of light to an increasingly gloomy political landscape.

Hadley Freeman on the British attitude to drinking. I’d actually seen her tweets about this and about the reaction to Charles Kennedy and part of me wants dismiss her as a ‘puritanical American’ but she has a point. With Charles Kennedy though, I think she’s missing the point, in him, we all recognised that it could so very easily be us, that just tipped over the edge and couldn’t get back up and it frightened the stuffing out of us. So people joked and laughed and maybe went along with his denial that he was an alcoholic but more that he just needed to ‘cut down’. It’s the same reason fat jokes are so popular, ‘there but for the grace of God’. My father claimed not to have a drink problem, he could go weeks without a drink but he could never stop at one. What can you do? Well you can tell them, you can offer support but in the end, they have to admit there’s a problem.

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Flatbreads

Posted on June 3, 2015 by nicdempsey

I’m not a huge bread eater, I can demolish a baguette at warp speed, especially if there are also cheese and grapes, I love all sorts of bread and last summer had a whole weekly menu planned around a loaf of sourdough, some hummus and cous cous salad.

But it’s not something I always have in the house, I rarely buy it and my sourdough starter has learned to survive with my neglectful ways. Sometimes though you just need something bready and then you google flatbreads and it comes up with Jamie Oliver’s recipe, which by some miracle, you have all the ingredients for so you halve the recipe and there you are. Flatbreads.    IMG_3082
Sometimes the best tasting things come from a few really simple ingredients and this is one of those times.  I had some left over and they were great with lunches for the rest of the week, I would imagine that they’d freeze well and they’d be a great thing to get little children cooking in the kitchen.

This is also a place to talk about now useful natural yoghurt is. I really didn’t much care for it, but I started to eat it about five years ago because there isn’t a lot of calcium in my diet (except for cheese) so I made a concerted effort to learn to like it. Nowadays, it’s one of the things I always have in my fridge. I buy 3, 500ml tubs at least every other week (£1.29 well spent!), it goes as is into baking and pancakes or is strained and is my much cheaper version of greek yoghurt, which I eat for breakfast and/or use in the place of sour cream. So natural yoghurt is one of my most useful staples and good in flatbread, where I can pretend that it’s adding some nutrition to the flour in these!

The only change I made is that instead of flouring everything and rolling the flatbreads out, I used oil because it makes everything less sticky and easier to clean.

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Reasons to be Cheerful – May 2015

Posted on June 2, 2015 by nicdempsey

1) Haircuts always make me feel better especially when the fringe is this out of control.IMG_30232) Breakfasts with Ma.IMG_30253) Ducklings. If the sight of ducklings don’t make you smile, then I don’t know what to do with you…IMG_30314) Democracy and the Right to Vote. (Even when you don’t like the results!)IMG_30355) Paper aeroplanes and ‘how hot is it in other places?’ with the nephew. Also watching a five year old experience every football supporters worse nightmare, when your team is relegated and Aunty Nic’s team wins the Premiership (I’m not happy QPR went down but disappointment with your team is a rite of passage, especially if you opt to support QPR!)IMG_30436) Self portraits and a toddler offering to kiss a sore knee better!IMG_30587) Helping others. I don’t think that a stint in the Foodbank or helping someone clean their house makes me a good or better person, but it does put my ‘rubbish’ days in perspective.IMG_3064

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Life Happened – Short Week

Posted on June 1, 2015 by nicdempsey

I only had 4 days at work this week and they really, really dragged!

Highlights of the week, included, this is the scary advertising fish outside the Park Cafe. So tell me does it make you more or less likely to eat there?IMG_3084This sort of summed up my week, on Thursday, I was lying in bed, just about to switch the lights off and I realised that I hadn’t made the pizza dough for Friday night. Fortunately the DALS pizza dough, which is my go-to dough is simple and quick but it’s not something I want to be doing when it’s bedtime.IMG_3085I was overly optimistic about the weatherIMG_3088Friday Night Pizza with MaIMG_3090Not pictured is dinner at Sarah and Justin’s, shopping, reading and generally lazing about on Sunday!

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Sunday Music

Posted on May 31, 2015 by nicdempsey

For this week, this just feels right, also Huey played it this week. sometimes it happens like that.

But 1993, such a long time ago…

 

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May Recap and June Goals

Posted on May 30, 2015 by nicdempsey

It’s that time again. Like April, May was a pretty good month, the weather is weird but the lighter mornings and evenings have had such an impact on my mood. Work has not been so good but overall, life feels much more positive. So let’s look at how I got on in May.

  • I hit 10,000 steps 20 of the 31 days of May. Not brilliant but ok, I really need to work on getting out on lazy days.
  • I got to more 11 body balance classes in May and the work is really showing in my shape and strength. I had one really busy week at work, where I missed a couple of classes and I really missed them so I need to work on making the time.
  • My eating has been pretty healthy (except for the Randoms that Ma and I seem to be addicted to!) My sleep hasn’t got any better but it’s not got any worse. I have been getting to bed by 10pm on schoolnights and kept up with the no screens before bed.
  • I’ve abandoned the yoga before bedtime because it didn’t seem to be helping.
  • Another month with no book buying and I still can buy 10 this year
  • The house is tidy but I’ve been really bad about the deep cleaning. I had a lovely afternoon sorting through old paper and tidying that up and I’ve managed to clean the oven but that’s about it.
  • This month was a bad month for the budget, however, I’ve had some remedial help and how have more control and focus, the situation is not dire and I’m in a much better position than lots of other people so I’m not feeling too terrible about it.
  • Aside from my monthly goals, I volunteered at the Food Bank for a day, cleaned a friend’s kitchen and babysat the nephew. While I can’t say that I really enjoyed those things, doing stuff for other people is good for me because it gets me out of my own head and issues and reminds me of how lucky I am to be able to do those things.

June Plans and Goals

June is a lovely short month, my plans so far, include dinner at Sarah and Justin’s, theatre (The Beaux’ Stratagem at the National), volunteering at the allotments, I haven’t been for ages and I feel bad about it. I’ve also signed up to this, because why not? and there will probably be some other Waterloo related shenanigans because it’s the 200th anniversary and I may need to see the Battle of Waterloo re-enacted via the medium of vegetables.. The French

The French

BODY

I’m feeling good about what I’m doing at the moment and this month I really started to see and feel the results of the regular classes, I’ve not lost any weight but my clothes fit better and that makes me happy. So more of the same.IMG_2825

HOME & MIND (BOOKS)

This is another more of the same, no book buying this month, ideally, I’d like to have my 10 left for October and a trip to Barter Books at the moment the library is keeping me occupied.photo

HOME GENERAL

Again the house is pretty tidy, I want to have another bash at sorting out the cupboard (it needs going through at least once a year) with an emphasis on throwing out/giving away things.

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MONEY

I have a budget now, so it’s just a matter of sticking to it!

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Friday Links

Posted on May 29, 2015 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! Although it’s been a short work week, I’m still happy to get to the end of it! Here are this week’s links…

Grace Dent on the death of a Grange Hill star, watching telly in the 70’s and 80’s and social media and how we keep in touch with people.

This from Slate is just scary. I could just file it in the ‘people in the US are strange’ category but I think it’s really about what happens when one parent wants to win, more than they want what’s best for their child.

Things I have never really thought about. What wasn’t Big Ben bombed in WWII? Short answer, luck!

This week was the Queen’s Speech and this almost sums up what I’m feeling about it. I don’t have children, but don’t want it for ANYONE’S children.

Steve Bell on the FIFA arrests. What I’m finding really funny is that there is anyone out there that thinks that FIFA isn’t corrupt and that Sepp Blatter doesn’t need to step down.

For those of you who either don’t know or don’t really care, here’s a quick primer. FIFA’s huge corruption and bribery scandal, explained

I’m pretty much for gin and tonic anything! Who’s for a gin and tonic ice cream?

This review of Polly Vernon’s ‘Hot Feminist’ is very good (unlike the book apparently!)

Here, the writing has an honesty and simplicity not found elsewhere. For once, Vernon drops the manic chirpiness – which is like being locked in a bathroom during a police raid with a children’s TV presenter who has swallowed their whole stash..

India is having a heatwave. Tell me again that climate change isn’t real.

This review of an American reality show, is scary because the narrative of why people are poor and what is ‘real poverty’ is where we’re going here.

America perceives poverty as a moral failure, which is why the participants on The Briefcase have to perform generosity to such an extreme degree. These people have to “prove” themselves as virtuous — to themselves, to one another, but in particular to a viewing audience at home — to show how unlike other poor people they are. We’re not really poor, we just had a string of really bad luck, unlike those other people who are poor on purpose

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Mushroom Tart

Posted on May 28, 2015 by nicdempsey

Although I cook most things from scratch, puff pastry is not one of them. If life is too short to stuff a mushroom, then it’s way to short to make puff pastry.

So I buy it. Most often because I’m really lazy, I buy it ready rolled. However, it is one of those really handy things to have in the freezer and I most often use it for leek and anchovy tart.

However, this weekend, I made a mushroom tart for Saturday dinnerIMG_3079

 

Into a pan with a tablespoon of oil, went a sliced red onion and two mashed up cloves of garlic. When they had softened, I added 400g of sliced brown mushrooms and cooked for about five minutes. Then I added a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes, about a tablespoon of tomato puree and four shakes of Hendersons Relish (you can use Worcestershire Sauce or Mushroom Ketchup if you don’t have/can’t get that) and let it simmer until most of the liquid had gone.

I put this mixture on the rolled out puff pastry, added a little cheese and baked in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes.

Dinner was served and I’d have taken more photos but we were too busy stuffing our faces!

 

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