Monday Miscellany: Sick

Posted on January 17, 2022 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday!

I woke up the Tuesday before last, with a cold, I’d had an itchy throat for a couple of days, but was testing negative on the many LFT’s, I couldn’t get a PCR test because they didn’t have any but it just felt like a bad cold and that’s what it’s proved to to be, but I’ve spent most of the first two weeks of the New Year indoors, working, dealing with nose bleeds and sleeping.

If my new year has not got off to the best of starts with the cold, the flat seems to be having a moment too. The toilet flush is broken (basically it won’t stop flushing unless you lift the cistern lid up!) and the centre bracket of the curtain rod in the living room has decided to come away from the wall. They are being fixed but it’s a pain.

On paper it’s not been a brilliant start to 2022 for me, on the other hand other people are having a worse start to the year (Boris Johnson, the England Cricket Team, Rafael Benítez, anyone working at 10 Downing Street!). All that to say, it’s not been the best start to the year but I’ve seen worse and I’m committed to survival.

So, in good things in 2022, despite a cold and the flat being a tiny bit broken, things are good for January.

I also got a thank you postcard from Ms T, aka god-daughter number six, her mother and I met when we did history A level on Reformation Europe and we’ve been to Hampton Court twice this year. Jo has form for sending me Tudor postcards, I’m really happy to see Ms T picking up the baton with my favourite of Henry VIII’s wives, Anne of Cleves. (Look she didn’t have to stay married to him, kept her head, got a palace, and got out from the control of her brothers, who married her off in the first place. That’s the definition of living your best life Tudor style!)

I have a walk planned on two days this week, I’ve done all the food prep and I’d like to get back to yoga every day again. Mostly, it’s work and reading and sleep because who is really all that energetic in January?

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Recommended: Ethique Heali Kiwi

Posted on January 15, 2022 by nicdempsey

As part of my ongoing less rubbish, less plastic mission, I decided to try switching to solid shampoo.

I tried a sample of Ethique’s Heali Kiwi and it’s been life changing. It’s expensive but I’ve bought a full sized bar, I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and my hair is really shiny and clean after washing and while it hasn’t completely gotten rid of my dandruff, my head doesn’t itch, even when I haven’t washed my hair for over a week.

It’s lasted ages, even if you weren’t trying to reduce your plastic consumption, I’d recommend it!

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Changing up the hall bookcase.

Posted on January 11, 2022 by nicdempsey

Way back when I moved into the flat, I bought a bookcase to put in the hall to store my cook books. As you can see I ran out of space pretty quickly, as this photo ripped from my timehop proves.

So we went to Ikea on New Year’s Day, which sounds like the very definition of hell, but was actually really quiet. We were in and out within about an hour and I only bought what I went in for (shelves, food bags, tea towels).

We put it together, culled some cook books and there is now room for everything, including the cocktail books that used to live in the living room, and the phone and internet stuff. It’s a relatively small thing but it feels more tidy.

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Recommended: Little Silver Cloud

Posted on January 8, 2022 by nicdempsey

I have three pairs of earrings from Little Silver Clouds Co and they are all lovely and easy to wear.

I should declare at this point, that I found them via a Facebook friend. Rebecca who makes the jewellery, is the sister of the sister in law of an ex (which is overly complicated!), but I’ve never met her and and I bought the earrings on Etsy at full price, without mentioning this connection to her.

Everyone says that you should support independent makers or shop local and sometimes that’s difficult, because you don’t know who really is making the things you buy or if the things you buy in the local shop aren’t actually from China.

Rebecca uses seaglass from Seaham in Co.Durham and makes the jewellery herself (and her stuff is pretty without being fussy, which is right in my comfort zone. I’ve bought them for friends and I’ve bought them for me and they are always great, the one issue I had, she sorted out straight away and the things I’ve bought have always arrived beautifully packaged and in good time.

So if you’re in the market for one of a kind jewellery, I’d recommend Rebecca’s.

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Friday Links: Selfish…

Posted on January 7, 2022 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

So yesterday, childless people with pets were put on the Pope’s shit list but only if they are married. I guess he’s the Pope and not known for understanding the strain of everyday live but really….

Liz Truss wants to lunch, and only a Tory donor’s place will do. The corruption, it burns…

Here’s what a Tory donor and a lavish Liz Truss lunch in Mayfair tells us about British politics

Hiding behind the loophole of a dead sex trafficker? Stay classy, Andrew

A hard lesson for Novak Djokovic: patience with vaccine sceptics is wearing thin

The cost-of-living crisis is going to upend British politics in 2022

How Britain Falls Apart. Not sure I agree with all of this but it’s worth a read.

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Low Spend January

Posted on January 6, 2022 by nicdempsey

On Tuesday, I talked about what I want to do/achieve this month. One of those things was low spend January.

My intention is not to buy anything (aside from food) for the month of January. I live in a small flat and while I’m not the worst person in the world for this, I feel I have too many things and at the same time need to replace and repair some furniture (my living room chairs need re-upholstering and I still don’t have a wardrobe). So not bringing anything into the house while I think about what I actually need and focussing a bit to prevent some mindless spending is helpful.

There is also a money saving element to this, food and energy costs are rising, in April I’ll pay more National Insurance and I expect that other utilities and council tax costs will rise too. So I need restructure my spending to account for this and so it’s probably a good time to focus a bit on that.

I’m also choosing to use this month as a chance to make some space in the freezer and ‘pantry’ and reset my food spending a little. I used to spend £15 a week on food, I have an allotment and I use Oddbox and that doesn’t change this month. But I’ve decided that for January aside from my two Oddbox deliveries, I will spend no more than £5 a week. So £64 for the month or just under £12 a week. I try and have a week a month without food shopping (and I will pick that up again after January), it’s always helpful as it helps me think more creatively about food and cooking and I’m hoping that a low spend month will help me do the same and re-assess my diet a little and maybe stop me falling back on the same old meals.

I do need to point out that I’m lucky not to have to reduce my food spending out of necessity and to know that this won’t lead me to have a month lacking in food or nutrition. I will be blogging about what I cook and eat this month a little bit more than usual to hold myself accountable. Watch this space.

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Allotment Adventures: Stolen

Posted on January 5, 2022 by nicdempsey

We’ve not done masses of work on the plot over Christmas, but we have finally got all the raised beds assembled and in place. The last ones to go in were in the polytunnel.

Ready for spring

As usual, there is less actual room than I thought. We won’t be putting in shelves and for winter there is just enough room for the table and chairs to go in for when we want a break or a cup of tea. Next week I’m going to sow some leeks and sweet peas and those pots will end up resting on the beds, for a bit. We’ll find space somehow.

After we did the raised beds, we were talking about the blueberries and which ones we needed to repot, when I noticed that I was missing one of the blueberry bushes in the grey pots. This is one of the harder things about allotment life, there are over 100 plot holders on site, I don’t know all of them but someone has walked to the back of the plot and stolen an entire blueberry bush. The two in the grey pots were the oldest ones and I’ve waited years for them to be really productive, so it sucks.

I have posted on the site’s Facebook page and asked them to give it back but I think it’s gone, I am so cross about it. It’s horrible to think that there is someone in our allotment community that steals things, not just the bush itself but all the work I put into growing it. I can buy another but it won’t be as productive for a good long while.

The winter plot

The work list is growing and spring is almost upon us, but these are the things I’d like to get done over Jan and Feb. Some of that is going to be money dependent (compost and raspberry cages) but I’m confident that we’ll be in good shape for Spring.

  • weed paths not already wood chipped and wood chip them
  • cut back and transplant various roses
  • weed rose garden and pond area
  • weed and clear iris garden next to herbs
  • sow leeks and sweet peas in the polytunnel
  • sort out planting in the new flower bed next to polytunnel
  • sort out boysenberry/gooseberries next to new flowerbed
  • sort out caging for raspberries so they have support and don’t take out anyone’s eyes next year
  • top up compost on beds that need it (all of them that aren’t actively growing anything!)
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Things to do in 2022

Posted on January 4, 2022 by nicdempsey

I used to try and set goals every year but I haven’t for a while, especially over the last couple of years, the plague and peri menopause have sort have driven everything else out of my head. Having said that, I’ve radically changed my attitude to how I source my food and I’ve worked to try and do less damage to the environment.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve struggled a bit, it’s working from home, it’s SAD, it’s peri and I’m a bit less in control than I’d like to be and that gives me some low level stress. The thing about this feeling is that I know I need to kick it out and I know how to do it (which is annoying because why can’t someone wave a magic wand?)

Yesterday I was saying that I had a good rest over Christmas so now is the time to take some action. This is not going to be be a veganuary, or dry January thing, I’m not going to be doing something radical and a bit harsh for a month and slump back into my bad habits in February (which, with the exception of November, is the worst of all months). I also remember back in 2013, I had a revelation about how attitude follows action and that this is a lesson that I often need to remind myself.

This January, I’m setting some intentions to help me with that lesson, so I have a couple of things to do this month..

Self Care and Exercise

Self care is different things to different people, I need a little more structure, I’m great at unwinding, not saying yes when I should say no, protecting my space. That’s fine, I don’t need any reason or feel any guilt about staying indoors and reading all day. Self care for me is more about giving myself a kick up the backside and doing the other things to show care for myself, the exercise, the care for my body and mind. So my goals are more rule based than yours might be…

  • Yoga – I’m going to do yoga every morning, I’ve signed up to this year’s Yoga with Adriene 30 Day Yoga thingie and I’m just committing to turning up every morning, even if I don’t want to and end up doing it in my ‘jamas
  • Walking – I’m going to aim for 70,000 steps a week
  • Bedtime – I’ve been so slack about this so back to being a bedtime nazi and being in bed at 10pm Sundays to Thursdays
  • Drinking – I’m going to save the big cafetiere for Fridays, drink two litres of water a day and cut out the booze on school nights, I’m not too bad at that but Christmas and work from home has sort of eroded that!

Home and Food

I’ve done my annual furniture change to the house which I’ll talk about next week but I know how much better I feel when the house is tidy and I know where things are:

  • Weekly Chores – I do the laundry but I need to clean floors and hoover, every bleeding week
  • Declutter and the cupboard of doom. I need less stuff, I need to work out what to get rid of and what to keep.
  • Low spend January – I’ll talk more about this on Thursday but the bones of it are don’t buy anything. No clothes, books, cosmetics, toiletries. Obviously I will need to buy food but (and this ties in with the declutter) I want to use up the food already in the house, so I’ll keep my Oddbox deliveries on the 9th and 23rd January, eat from the allotment and then give myself £5 a week for essentials like eggs and milk and stuff like that. There is one exception and that’s the allotment, we have money for allotment spending budgeted and spending planned, mostly for compost, so that will happened.
  • No treats I don’t make myself, this was such a good idea, so it’s time to put down the Minter Wonderland and do this again.

I think that’s enough to be going on with for January. None of it is all that burdensome, it’s just a case of giving myself the gift of discipline, I also promise that on the 1 February, I’ll report on how I did and talk about what I’m going to do in February.

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Monday Miscellany: 2022

Posted on January 3, 2022 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday and Happy New Year!

It’s still up

The weird time between Christmas and New Year is nearly at an end and I’m back at work tomorrow. I didn’t realise how much I needed the break, I feel better for having a rest, hanging out with my family and friends and having time to get to doing things at my pace. I fully accept that in the winter, my brain is slower than is idea and peri menopause has made that worse, so it was lovely to get around to things at my own pace. (This is hard on my mother who thinks at 1000 miles an hour and didn’t have any brain fog that I could see when she was going through peri!)

Hampton Court Kitchen Garden

Ma and I had a second Christmas dinner (beef) I got to hang out with the Gaulds at Hampton Court, go for a walk with Sue, there was some home improvement and general shenanigans. It was a good break and I’m heading into 2022 feeling refreshed if not entirely ready!

Today is a Bank Holiday here and I’m squeezing the last bit of fun with a visit to see Christina, Fred and Edie. There will be cocktails and baked goods and lots of admiring baby Edie and if I’m very lucky, seeing Tom, Yoey and Ivy and lots of admiring baby Ivy!

All in all I was thinking that 2022 was off to the best of starts given the circumstances. Yesterday there were two slight clouds on my horizon, my missing blueberry bush at the plot and last night’s encounter with a mouse. Goddamnit. It was running across the kitchen floor from the area around the fridge to the area around the washing machine, which is where I think they are coming in. It’s always January, they make themselves known. I spent this morning bleaching everything and redoing all the traps but I’m very, extremely unhappy about this.

Perfect Yorkshire Puddings (again)

The rest of the week will be working, we’re still working from home, so at least I can sleep in a bit later than if I was office bound. Obviously, the COVID/Omicron situation is fluid, but I’m expecting to be at home for at least the next two months, we’ll see.

Other things for next week, yoga everyday, sleep and getting back to a 10pm bedtime, getting the house tidy after the tree goes on Wednesday night and taking the first lot of decluttered stuff to the charity shop (it’s heavy and it’ll need to be done in sections!)

I hope that Christmas/New Year’s was kind to you and that you are able to head into this week and the rest of 2022 with enthusiasm and joy. Have a good week.

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Friday Links: New Year’s Eve

Posted on December 31, 2021 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday and well done for all of us still standing after another year of the plague and the Tories..

A message for 2022

You Have No Idea How Hard It Is to Get a Hamster Drunk

It Keeps on Raining Too Much Too Fast

The Tories call it electoral reform. Looks more like a bid to rig the system. They are handling COVID badly but the things they are doing are just as dangerous…

The One Thing Biden Is Doing Exceptionally Well

Anti-apartheid hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu dies aged 90. It’s not sad for him, he goes to God, but it’s sad for us because truly good men are vanishingly rare…

A Holiday Feast, Cooked in the Cab of a Truck

Dominic Raab photographed at Chelsea game without a mask. Oh FFS, as if drawing that game wasn’t bad enough bloody Dominic Raab was there…

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