Ealing is a great place to live, it’s got really good transport links, it’s got lots of shops and green spaces. One of those green spaces is Walpole Park and the park has Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery.
The restoration has been interestingly done and explains some of the design choices and how they link in with Soane’s other designs and life generally. I got side tracked by the wallpapers
But it’s worth a visit.
Happy Monday!
Today is our last Bank Holiday until Christmas and next week schools are gearing up for the new term, it always feels like the end of summer.
Last week featured another migraine and I got hold of a doctor and we talked HRT, which I can have but only after I’ve been weighed and measured so that’s happening on tomorrow. I’m in the office Tues to Thursday next week, which is going to be a huge shock to the system!
Ma and I spent Saturday and Sunday on the plot and my plan for today is sort myself out. Shopping, food prep, housework so I don’t have to do anything next week but work and maybe read!
Have a good week!
Because it’s amazing and it’s lovely to listen to a song about heartbreak when you’re not heartbroken.
Happy Friday!
It’s been a week and the news is not getting any happier. Here are this week’s links:
Tony Blair damns the Afghan withdrawal but he would do better to show remorse
UK truck driver shortage signals a broken labour market
Ian Botham as trade envoy? Never fear, it’s a job even Prince Andrew could do
Warrington council lends billionaire founder of The Hut Group £151m. What the actual fuck? This is a Labour council. This is ridiculous and wrong. Socialism for billionaires and capitalism for working people.
Not Everyone Can Afford to ‘Learn to Live With’ COVID-19
I’ll Tell You the Secret of Cancer. This is lovely and not soppy at all
The Coronavirus Is Here Forever. This Is How We Live With It.
If prisoners are to help with the UK’s labour shortages, they must not be exploited
2021 will mark the year that I ate more potatoes than I have never eaten. Potatoes have featured in every Oddbox I’ve had and we grew quite a few of them this year. It’s not a problem, I quite like potatoes, but there is a limit to how many times even I can eat potato salad.
So I have this thing that I do with them. It’s not really a recipe, although the idea is from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s recipe for roasted new potatoes and asparagus.
Take potatoes and chop them to a new potato-ish size. Chop up an onion or a couple of shallots and toss both of them in olive oil and stick in an overproof pan (I use my cast iron one) bake for about 20/25 minutes. Then add some chopped veg, asparagus works, so does broccoli, cauliflower and Romanesco. Add to the pan, toss and put it back in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Finally take it out of the oven again and make a well, crack an egg into the pan and back into the oven for about 3 to 5 minutes. If you don’t like or eat eggs, some mozzarella works well instead of the egg.
Our scheduled Saturday at the allotment was cut short on account of the rain and various other small calamities..
The good news it that we got to harvest one straightneck summer squash and two of the round courgettes. The cucumbers also sprung into action and we had 10!
But the tomato plants were too far gone for hope. Some of the tomatoes had started to ripen so we took them all off and cleared the beds. I washed the tomatoes and we’ll see what ripens! That does mean that I have three clear beds for overwintering onions and garlic. We’re going to sow more garlic this year and just onions as Ma was not keen on the shallots, I reckon by the time we’ve got the garlic, onions and broad beans in, we’ll probably only have the current winter squash bed empty for winter. We are replacing most of the lawn edging beds this winter so they won’t be used at all but even so, I’m pleased that we are growing things throughout the winter, sometimes I think I’m better at growing in winter than in summer I suspect because the plants aren’t as needy.
We also built the a small bed in front of the shed and planted my birthday present from Jo. I will probably end up planting something else in this bed as there is just too much bare soil at the moment. I’m thinking more lavender, maybe a munstead as it’s much more compact, but I think that can probably wait for a bit.
We got about two hours on the plot and that was that.
The plot does need some work and we’ll get to it, we have a pretty large list of winter work (again, I kid myself that this year it will be a bit easier as it’s less than last year and there shouldn’t be too much more to do, there certainly won’t be anymore room on the plot and we are not up for another plot!) but it does look lovely right now.
The optimistic list for next week is all about tidying up, this time year is all about preventing a descent into chaos, the more work you do now, the less you have to contend with next Spring. There are lots of arguments about leaving areas for wildlife, which we do but some of it (borage, I’m looking at you!) needs clearing. Here’s the list:
Good job it’s a back holiday and I have an extra day but more seriously, this year hasn’t been epic for summer growing and even when it is, the end of August, beginning of September is when a lot of allotment holders stop going for the year. They’ll come back in March and April and wonder why their plots are a mess. This is why I’ve always tried to overwinter some things, it gives you a reason to check in with the plot and do a bit of prep for spring. Ma and I are gluttons for punishment, but I’m really hoping that this winter will be the last ‘construction’ winter for a while. We have a polytunnel to put up, six new beds and I need to move some of the gooseberries and roses to better spots but then I really just want to have a year of growing, weeding and maintenance.
Much to the amusement of my Irish neighbour, the day before my birthday I went to Battle. Yes, it’s an actual place, in East Sussex, quite near Hastings, and the site of the Battle of Hastings and Battle Abbey
In 1070, Pope Alexander II ordered the Normans to do penance for killing so many English people while conquering the country. So William I vowed to build an abbey on the site of the Battle of Hastings. The Benedictine Abbey was begun and the church was finally consecrated in 1094 and called the Church of St Martin of Battle (the Martin in question was also known as the ‘apostle of the Gauls’). It was a pretty significant Abbey in it’s time due to being outside of episcopal jurisdiction (so on a level with Canterbury!). It stopped being an abbey in 1538 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries and eventually fell into ruin.
The site is run by English Heritage nowadays and anyone who been reading this a while will know about my love of old and ruined things and my love of my English Heritage membership. Look I’m middle aged now and it’s in the job description, I’m embracing it! So Ma and I took a day trip during my week off work to look around and be frankly terrified by the stone spiral staircases.
I didn’t bring a proper camera with me but it was very ruined and picturesque, well worth a visit especially if you have small children that are doing 1066 at school. There’s a great and small exhibition about the lead up to the invasion and you can walk around the battlefield.
Happy Monday!
There has been a whole lot of not very much happening this week. Two days in the office, another sodding migraine (apparently a rash of them at work – a couple of us have been suffering this week), maybe it was the weather which was pretty grey and cold for this time of year. Apparently we’ve had 30% less sunshine in August than is usual for this time of year, as I write this, it’s raining.
For the rest of this week, I finally got to catch up with Jo and Sarah, which was great. I also got to experience parsnip burn in real life, I thought I might be coming down with measles until I realised it was just on my forearms and the spots started to blister, so I currently look like I’ve had mild chicken pox on my forearms. Which is quite the look.
I’m currently working on my annual get everything back under control because winter is coming plan, I know that I can’t be as relaxed about anything in autumn/winter as I am in summer because I’m usually so miserable. The extreme dull and cold-ish weather last week felt autumnal and kicked me into thinking about this earlier than usual.
The way I survive the winter is to be fairly rigid about things like chores and bedtimes, otherwise I would just live in chaos and hate myself while refusing to leave my bed. Last year was pretty easy because I was working from home, being able to spend the week days not getting up at 6am and having to commute was much better for my SAD. However, this winter I’ll have to be in the office a couple of days a week, so I need to crack on and make sure that by the time the clocks go back I have a routine embedded.
Plans for this week are pretty much all about that, setting a routine for chores, exercise and bedtimes around being in the office for two days and I have a bunch of work I want to crack on with for work too. So it’s pretty dull.
Next Monday is the last Bank Holiday until Christmas, I have very excitingly arranged to be on the plot for Saturday and Sunday (I’m middle aged, I like to garden) but other than that, I have no plans and that feels rather marvellous.
Have a good week!
This is on the soundtrack from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It’s one of those songs you feel like you’ve heard before, it feels old even though it’s not.
I’ve been going into the office at least twice a week since July. It’s been a bit of a shock to the system but I did take the opportunity to get some new commuting equipment. The first thing being a new water bottle. I’ve had a variety of water bottles in the last 10 years, all plastic and they’ve worked ok. One was 750ml and lived at my office because it the lid leaked and one was 500ml and didn’t leak but was a bit small (I do drink a lot of water in a day!). Aside from those flaws, the cold water didn’t stay cold and the bottles sweated so everything in my bag ended up a bit damp.
So it was time to upgrade to one that wouldn’t need replacing for a long time and had none of these flaws. I went with a ProWorks 750ml bottle. It’s a basic double walled bottle, keeps things cold for up to 24 hours (I haven’t tried it for hot drinks) and so far has survived being bounced around my bag or the allotment without any major scratchest
Nic Dempsey 