Thankful: A Plan for Autumn

Posted on September 10, 2023 by nicdempsey

Way back in 2011, when I was really struggling with life, depression and everything else I started listing things I for which I was thankful. While there were times I was bitterly resentful of needing to find things to be cheerful about, I know that as a strategy for coping with misery, it’s effective.

I’m not even slightly depressed at the more but I am slightly more stressed coming into this autumn than I have been in previous years, I’m trying to learn a new role and do all things and menopause is not helping.

Stress for me can manifest as whining and I really don’t want to let my brain create those pathways, because they are easy for me to find, so I’m going to do a little bit of proactive self care and to hold myself accountable from now until December, every Sunday, I’m going to show or write about something that brought me joy or that I was thankful for in the previous week.

This week it was these things:

The morning sun in the park on my way to work.

The violas are flowering and they are so pretty

The allotment is wild and its not been a brilliant year but it’s still pumping out produce and we are getting ready for Autumn

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Friday Links: Entitled and Petty

Posted on September 8, 2023 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

This week a commentator on the radio said that the Government risked coming across as entitled and petty, I was surprised that they didn’t think they were already coming across as entitled and petty. The truth is the Tories think they were born to rule and they hate to be questioned, which is a problem because the country is falling apart. There’s nothing left to sell off, even the schools that aren’t literally falling apart are on their knees, councils are in trouble so services are falling apart not just social care, healthcare has been in crisis for so long I’m not sure it can still be called a crisis anymore, even air traffic control doesn’t work. We’re not quite a failed state but the things we used to rely can’t be relied on anymore. Things don’t quite work.

Some of that is Brexit, most of it is government not able to govern and please don’t get me started on Gillian ‘doing a good job’ Keegan, the absolute state of it!!

Here are this week’s links….

Inquiries launched after terror suspect Daniel Khalife’s prison escape. Of course it was Wandsworth, I don’t think anything good comes out of Wandsworth especially not since Youngs Brewery moved out to Bedford.

Amid prison break and collapsing schools, Tory backbenchers pray for the torture to end

Councils, sewage, school buildings: Britain has neglected the dull but vital stuff – and is paying a heavy price

Ultra-processed foods: the 19 things everyone needs to know. Things to think about, I maybe need to give up my root beer habit!

Councils going bust, schools crumbling, the NHS in crisis: the answer is more tax

Labour, we know how terrible the Tories are. What we need from you is hope for the future.

A different kind of pothead: the Le Creuset cookware supercollectors. I like Le Creuset but this seems a little extreme. (for the record I own no Le Creuset, I have two Lidl ‘Le Creuset-likes’ that I bought for the new kitchen!)

I have created a monster. Can nothing save me from the tomato plant from hell? The ‘joy’ of growing stuff!

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Allotment Adventures: End of Season Disconnect

Posted on September 6, 2023 by nicdempsey

Sometimes, something pops up on social media that is just what I need to hear. Jess at Roots and Refuge has managed it twice in the last month. At about 8:08, she talks about the struggle this time of year to stay connected to the joy of the garden, at about 12:57, she talks about what to do if you’re feeling that.

I’m there right now. The tomatoes have blight, the weeds are going nuts, everything is a mess and I can’t get it back under control because there is not enough time and I don’t have enough physical energy. This week a fellow allotmenter mentioned that a lot of the issues would just have to wait until next year.

I look at the plot and think how did it get this messy, so quickly? Ma says “you wanted some wildness and you’ve worked really hard for seven years to improve the soil in the paths as well as the beds.” Basically, I asked for it.

The question is what happens next?

We just need to keep plugging on. We have made a start by clearing the weeks in the main path..

I’ve potted up the viola’s and cauliflowers. Given the tomatoes the blight chop and stopped watering them, yes even in the current heat, I’m not finished eating them but I’m done with nurturing them any more.

blight

This weekend has to be about weeding, planting and tearing things out. The cukes in the poly are going, the french beans are done too. The courgettes are having a resurgence, so their going to stay for September. The brassicas need to go out – brussels, cauliflowers and kale, we have more kale, chard and swede coming this week too. I need to get them out asap.

I have a bunch of herby plants that need planting out too, which means weeding where they need to go. There is always work to do.

The melons aren’t very well either
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Book Squee: The Scholomance Books

Posted on September 5, 2023 by nicdempsey

2023 has not been a year of prolific reading. However, I got book tokens for my birthday.

If you didn’t know a book token is an amazing gift, it involves guilt free book buying and a chance to spend a happy hour (or three) in a bookshop. It’s a perfect gift.

So I bought some books…

I have loved all of the Naomi Novik books I have read and I also enjoy that they are very different I bought and devoured all three of the Scholomance Trilogy (A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, The Golden Enclaves).

It’s a magic boarding school, and it’s not in anyway lovely or cosy. Despite that, it’s about family and friendship and choices and how easy it is to live with bad things because everyone else is. And it’s funny, I was so taken with this at the beginning of the second book

Most of the religious or spiritual people I know – and to be fair, they’re mostly the sort of people who land in a vaguely pagan commune in Wales, or else they’re terrified wizard kids crammed into a school that’s trying to kill them – regularly beseech a benevolent and loving all-wise deity to provide them with useful advice through the medium of miraculous signs and portents. Speaking as my mother’s daughter, I can say with authority that they wouldn’t like it if they got it.

The Last Gradute – Naomi Novik

Aside from the part about communes and wizard school, it’s very true.

I really struggle to articulate why I like the books I like, it’s why I suck at English Lit. Anyway, I really enjoyed them and they are worth reading.

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Monday Miscellany: September

Posted on September 4, 2023 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday!

Violas already in flower…

It’s autumn, so naturally the weather has improved markedly! Apparently by the end of the week, we’ll have met heatwave conditions. I’m so confused not least because Friday was so wet…

I did three days at work last week and it was full on. I had Friday off for a haircut and the weekend was a write off because I wasn’t well, this time cystitis, which is possibly my least favourite peri menopause side effect. I’ve been off HRT for a month as I transition to a new one and it’s definitely confirmed that HRT helps because this month hasn’t been fun at all…

This week is reporting week and a training day in Southampton. We have four training days a year, they are always in Southampton and they require me to do a lot of running around mostly making sure people are fed and watered.

Other than work and seeing Ma, I have no plans except to remember to buy the youngest nephew a birthday present as he’s eight at the end of the week.

Can you buy Lego vouchers?
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Friday Links: Crumbling Schools…

Posted on September 1, 2023 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

Ministers face calls to explain delay in closing schools over concrete crisis. In the very early 90’s, at 6th form college, we had to have lessons in portacabins, they were not in great shape and I remember one had a massive hole in the back of it. So large that there were always less people at the end of the lessons than at the beginning of it, as the less interested would just disappear out of the back of the portacabin. In 1997, one of the reasons that the Tory’s lost was the absolute state of public buildings, schools and hospitals were falling apart. Here we are at the end of 13 years of Tory government and public buildings are in a bad way again. Yes there was a Labour gov in between that last Tory government and the absolute shower of chaos that’s been in charge since 2010. I’d like to remind you that Michael Gove shut down the school building fund in 2010.

Greek temple-style house rescued from two centuries of Northumberland damp. I love Belsay, I need to go and visit again.

‘Oh my God’: live worm found in Australian woman’s brain in world-first discovery. Oh my god, that’s horrifying…

Ex-Tory MP threatens to sue Cambridge University over slavery research. It’s interesting to me that the MP in question feels so threatened by the truth about her ancestors. I don’t know how I would react, although I’m pretty sure that my ancestors didn’t do anything of the sort (too poor).

Cleverly’s humiliating China visit was the perfect symbol of isolated, ill-led ‘global Britain’ James Cleverly is the most misnamed man in politics right now. He’s also (typically of his peers) completely unable to see that the world is not as he would wish it, it’s a special talent of this crop of Tories that they seem to think things are so because they wish it was so. And this is why and how we got in the current state.

Trinny Woodall: ‘I didn’t stop caring when I turned 50 – I stopped worrying’ It is terrible that the thing that stood out for me was that she sold £60,000 worth of clothes? I don’t think I have £600 of clothing in my possession…

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Monday Miscellany: The Last Bank Holiday

Posted on August 28, 2023 by nicdempsey

Happy Tuesday!

A pony in Kingston, I did have to double check I wasn’t hallucinating…

Yesterday was the last Bank Holiday until Christmas and I just realised last week that it’s starting to get dark at night. Yes, I know it happens every year. Yes, I know that I should be used to it by now. And yes, I know I whine about it every year, this is my space where I get to do that if I want to but if you need to go elsewhere because you want to be excited about autumn, please go and do that. Why do you think I use this space to whine about it. Everyone I know in real life is very tired of the whinging on!

All that to say, I suddenly realised we are four months away from the end of the year and I’m going to have to get a lot more organised, if I want to get through it without sinking into a depression…

Aside from my existential dread of the cold, dark part of the year, last week was fine, I guess. I still didn’t feel much better but by Friday was so incredibly bored of it, I decided that if rest wasn’t working, I’d just burn it out with activity. This was partially fuelled by the knowledge that Josephine was coming to dinner on Monday and she hasn’t seen it since the work and I do like my living space to look nice for other people.

Washing was done and ironed and put away, things were tidied. Ma and I had a really good day on the plot on Saturday and while I’m never really ready to go back to work, I’m feeling that the work is doable rather than last week’s feeling that I was in way over my head!

A godchild!

Jo and T came over for dinner last night and goodness, the godchild is looking very grown up!

Plans for the rest of this week are very quiet. I have a Grace dinner on Wednesday and a haircut on Friday and everything else is the usual work, housework, allotment and for added fun jam making!

It’s all go for the middle aged this week!

Have a good week!

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Friday Links: Just before a Bank Holiday

Posted on August 25, 2023 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

It’s the end of August and there is a surprising amount of news for the silly season. Although, I seem to be all about housing and cost of living this week:

Inverclyde named most affordable place to buy a home in Great Britain. So move to Scotland?

Third of working tenants in England ‘lack savings to pay rent if they lose job’

Energy bills: 13m British homes ‘did not turn on heating when cold last winter’. It’s beginning to feel more and more like Victorian England, maybe that’s the plan to bring back the workhouse?

‘We have brothers, sons, lovers – but they can’t live here!’ The happy home shared by 26 women

This horror story visited on South Wales by Suella Braverman could be coming to a street near you

A letter has laid bare the scale of poverty in Britain – but will Rishi Sunak be moved?. Probably not but £37 a week for food. I remember doing it for £15, which would be impossible now.

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Preserving the Plot: Cassis

Posted on August 24, 2023 by nicdempsey

We had an abundance of blackcurrants this year. More than enough for jam, I have some in the freezer and I made cassis.

I have no idea how authentic it is, I saw a lot of recipes using vodka, a couple involving wine and eau de vie, but this one using brandy seemed simplest and more french than vodka.

We had 800g of blackcurrants so adjusted the other ingredients accordingly. If you’ve been around here for a while or seen my other experiments in alcohol and fruit (here and here), you will know that while I have no opinions on brandy, I do have an opinion on the alcohol you should use when making fruit liquors.

I know people say use whatever cheap booze works for you and if you want to do that, please do, I won’t worry about it at all. However, I firmly believe that if you wouldn’t drink it normally, don’t use it for this. I don’t as a general rule drink brandy, so the hill I decided to die was the ABV (alcohol by volume) of 40%. The Courvoisier VS was on offer and that’s what I went for.

So far, so good!

Plans for this, are to drink it, or to use for Christmas presents (see Tuesday’s post), I have plans that I’ll show you nearer Christmas!

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Allotment Adventures: And Just Like That, Tomatoes

Posted on August 23, 2023 by nicdempsey

This week we finally got tomatoes. Not many but they are starting….

There are bits of the plot that need weeding so badly and things that really need to get in the ground and there may be blight but there are actually tomatoes…

I got the tomatoes more or less under control too.

The cucumbers are giving and trying to take over the polytunnel and we have a baby aubergine…I’m excited..

We are also getting a ton of french beans and now I just have to sort out autumn/winter crops and tidy up and week, so not much!

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