How did it get to be Monday already?
The only plans I have for the week are to get through it and not melt. It’s hot around here at the moment and yes, there are other places in the world where it’s hotter and people survive but we are English and don’t cope well with extreme weather.
Oli takes selfies now and that face (unhappy with the blue tongue) sums up how I feel about Monday!
It’s Friday but honestly, today I can’t say it feels happy. The situation in the Ukraine is about to go bang due to a plane being shot down and 298 dead people. Israel has just upped the ante with a ground invasion of Gaza and so far the death count is Israel 200 – Hamas 1. It feels like the world is going to hell in a handcart.
This week’s links
1) Stupid, stupid, stupid. What not to do with contact lenses, more horrifying are the horror story comments.
2) An Israeli explaining why Israel bombing the Palestinians won’t work. Also the best explanation of what is actually happening over there.
Even after operations such as Defensive Shield, Summer Rains, Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, and the Second Lebanon War, I still cannot get used to the unshakable consensus that takes hold of the Israeli public. I would still like to believe that this whole thing is a misunderstanding, and that if my own people would only give some more thought to the reality in the occupied territories, they would change their minds overnight. I want to believe that they don’t fully grasp the nature of the occupation, which is why they are so enraged by whatever the Palestinians do. This mindset leads to yet another violent Israeli response, which only paves the way for the next escalation. I do not know if this line of thinking is more naïve or more patronizing on my part, but what other explanations are there?
3) The perfect old-fashioned, or my version, or the ‘improved’ version I think I prefer them with rye but I’m all about experimentation!
4) Does reading make you short sighted? I have no-one to blame but my book worm habits!
5) Mark Steele on the Israeli bombing. Which points out the ridiculousness of the Israeli campaign.
6) Israel has lost it’s ability to think strategically.
This week has not been epic. I’ve been struggling to hang onto my usually sunny mood, yesterday to remind myself that life was not terrible I made a list of good things. Here it is
1) Books, a world with books is a great place to be.
2) Which leads on to the amazingness of living in this time, in this place. Where working class girls are taught to read and write. Where it’s expected that we can and education is right not a privilege. My Granddad left school at 14 like most of the boys in his class, I’m not that far away from literacy being unusual among my class and sex and there are places in the world where that’s still the case.
3) Watching Oli win his races at the school sports days thanks to the wonders of video, he was so pleased with himself!
4) Sarah calling on Monday, just to say hi. Sarah has the best timing in the world – thanks, lovely!
5) Godchildren 2 to 5 calling to sing La Marseillaise on Bastille Day
6) Cherries
7) Gin….(and whiskey and champagne and the ability to make cocktails!)
8) Sunshine. Yes is it really hot at the moment and my breathing is a bit screwy but London in the sunshine is lovely.
9) Also London. I really love my city…
10) My family are pretty fantastic too.
This is just 10 easy things, there are lots of others and it’s impossible to be uncheered when I actually think about what is good in my life instead of what is bad!
What are the good things that cheer you up when life is less than fantastic?
Sometimes I don’t think there has been a day in the past 10 years when I’ve woken up feeling refreshed by a good nights sleep. Most days, I stagger out of bed wishing I could go back to it. If asked how I am the first thing that springs to mind is ‘tired’.
I’ve written about my before and the things I do that help and they do help, but they don’t cure and recently my sleep woe has been compounded by my next door neighbours baby. That baby cries and cries and cries. Yeah I know it’s what babies do, but I don’t have a baby but because the baby and I share a bedroom wall, I’m as awake as it’s parents are when that baby is crying. On Friday, that was from about 9.30pm to 4am, I didn’t sleep well at all and feel like I’ve been playing catch up ever since..
This week, I just gave up and have been going to bed really early. I’m normally in bed at 10pm on school nights anyway but on Monday night, I was so tired, I just did what needed to be done at home, dinner, lunch making, washing up, removing makeup and brushing teeth and went to bed. At 8.45pm. I read for half an hour and then went to sleep.
I did the same yesterday. I don’t know that it’s helping me feel less tired but I’m finding getting up a bit easier. Does that count?
I love cherries. I love everything vaguely cherry flavoured. Cherry flavoured slush puppies, cherry brandy ice lollies, cherry jam, cherry coke (and Dr Pepper), cocktail cherries, even the bright red full of bad chemicals maraschino cocktail cherries which I can eat straight from the jar.
So right now, in the middle of cherry season, I am in heaven. I’ve been buying about 2 kilos of cherries a week!
Mostly eating them just as they come and they really don’t last all that long. I’ve made a batch of cocktail cherries and a batch of cherry brandy and I decided this week would be the week of the cherry pie.
I had pastry in the freezer, (this one, although I use the ‘bung it all in food processor’ method to make it) which I use for mince pies at Christmas and should give you an idea of how long it’s been in the freezer and I had this recipe for the filling, I used less sugar than suggested (1/2 a cup) and the result was very tasty but not too pretty.
It tasted great though!
Happy Monday. Actually, at 6am this morning, I was not happy at all. The thoughts going through my head were more of the ‘How can it be Monday already?’ possibly..ok, almost certainly..more sweary than that but in that ballpark.
Then I dragged myself out of bed, ate some toast, said hi to Ma (who stayed the night), Ma was mostly singing the German national anthem and being very happy (some would say she was gloating, she was definitely gloating) about her winning the family World Cup bet.
But the sun is shining, godchildren 2 to 5, called me and left a message on my phone singing La Marseillaise because it’s Bastille Day! Sarah called to say hi and I got over my slight ‘Oh my God, Monday’ mood and started to enter into the week with some enthusiasm.
On to this weeks menu plan. I’m still working on using what’s in the freezer a bit more but there are loads of leftovers in the fridge so that’s what I’m trying to use up. I made a loaf of sourdough yesterday so breakfast will probably be toast and eggs. There is a ton of aubergine parmigiana from River Cottage Veg (this is the recipe) leftover from yesterday’s lunch and that with some salad will be lunch for a couple of days.
There is also half a cherry pie in the fridge and I don’t think that will last long at all!
Dinners will be the spinach/chickpea thing, a hash of lentils, vegetables and chicken (also leftovers from the weekend), and a frittata, the remains of this will be lunch once the aubergine parm has gone.
Friday is as ever, pain au raisin and coffee for breakfast and pizza for dinner!
What are you eating this week?
Happy Friday or as I like to call it ‘Pain au raisin’ day. I caused general cultural confusion in a cafe in DC this year when I asked for a coffee and a pain au raisin. It took some pointing but in DC they’re ‘raisin escargot’, which I found baffling, if you’re going to use a French word for something surely it makes more sense to use the correct one? Two peoples divided by a common language..so true.
How was your week? Mine was busier than I expected with later nights due a busy work week, a migraine on Monday and the football, especially on Wednesday night when Argentina v. Holland went into extra time and penalties. Yes, I did go to bed at 9.30pm yesterday and I am not ashamed. All in all though it feels like it was a pretty successful week, I finally sat down and wrote the paper that I’d been putting off because I hate writing those things. People should just do what I say, not ask me to justify my reasons! You may call it bossy, a colleague in jest called it authoritarian, I call it directive!
My weekend plans are limited to not doing much and Sunday lunch with my mother, which if the weather continues in it’s grey and dreary vein is not too much of an issue. Here are this week’s links…
2) Candidate for office admits that she had a termination because she wasn’t ready to be a mother. My first thought when I read this was something along the lines of “that’s brave”, why it’s brave for a woman to be open about having a legal medical procedure says a lot about the general attitude to abortion and woman who have them.
3) I thought that everyone knew that the British plug was a design classic. Apparently not.
4) Good reviews for The Crucible, which is good because I’m going to see it on my birthday and it’s nearly 4 hours long…
5) Lost in Showbusiness on tax avoidance with style.
6) This. What’s the worst thing about cycling? Other cyclists. I don’t drive and I don’t cycle but my daily walk to King’s Cross from the office is made more dangerous by cyclists going through red lights and then calling me names for having the temerity to be walking across the road. I do think that we should have proper cycle lanes, separated from the road but I also think that cyclists should have to take a test to cycle on the roads in the same way that drivers do, because, as a pedestrian, cyclists scare me in a way that car drivers don’t.
7) Food banks and why demand is up. Just read it.
1) Brazil oh dear God, Brazil. I didn’t have much hope that you’d beat Germany but that was abject.
2) Argentina, all my hope rests on you…
3) I want to be on holiday, I have another 2 months but I want to be there now…
4) I think I may have eaten my own weight in cherries over the last 2 weeks…I’m still not bored of them.
6) I’m also increasingly obsessed with Starbars. Seriously if my cravings had their way I would be living on a diet of cherries, starbars and gin. Maybe I should just put it down to PMT
This week I have been mostly listening to the new Old Crow Medicine Show album, Remedy.
I did tell you I’d be unbearable about it! Apart from Sweet Amarillo, which has already featured, I can’t find anything from the album on You Tube. Which is sad because the album is great. But OCMS are a band best experienced live, so instead here they are doing Mama Don’t Allow with The Del McCoury Band..
Yesterday I celebrated 5 years in the same place. I think it’s the longest time I’ve lived in the same flat as an adult. I’ve written before about the flat and what it means to me so instead here are some now and then photos.
The books
