I didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day way back when I was in a relationship, so I pretty much ignore it now, I’m happy for the people who get what they need from the day and that works fine.
However, any problem I might have with Valentine’s Day is about the idea that human beings are not worthy of respect unless they are in a relationship. I’ve talked about this before, as a single and childless woman (it’s bad for men but it is infinitely worse for women), I come up against this a lot.
Look, romantic love is not the be all and end all of existence. Ironically, I re-read Cyrano by Geraldine McCaughrean over the weekend and that is all about romantic and unrequited love (although I will never understand Cyrano’s love for Roxanne because she’s an airhead!) and this always strikes me as perfect for people who don’t have or don’t want a romantic partner
There are other things besides Love. It does not occupy every corner of every minute. It does not perch on the door to every room. It does not hang on every coat-hook in the hall. It is not an ingredient of every meal. There are the realms of Nature, Politics, Mathematics, Science. There are other things besides Love.
For a Man with an enquiring mind and any kind of genius there is always plenty to do.
Cyrano – Geraldine McCaughrean
This is the thing, no one’s life is worthless if we use it well. No-one is incomplete without a partner, in fact studies have shown that single people are more altruistic than people in couples and often happier. I’ve linked to in before but Bella DePaulo did a whole TED talk on it.
Guys being single is not the worst thing that can happen to you, if you are, please don’t think you are lesser, because one is a whole number….
The week before last, my hoover died. I think actually it died way before that as it wasn’t working before that as it didn’t do a great job of taking up the pine needles after Christmas but such is my aversion to hoovering (look, I come by it honestly, my mum hates hoovering too!) that I finally had to admit when I tried to hoover again the week before last.
So it was time to buy a new hoover and I did and it was the cheapest one I could get away with and would do double duty as a dust buster (because that also died this year!), apparently all hoovers in my house (however infrequently used) have a 10 year shelf life. It’s gone up in price since last week but and I have to say this, it’s very impressive and because I’ve been indoors a lot this week, it was freezing and there was snow, so my lunchtime walk was housework, there was loads of hoovering this week. Lockdown has turned me into a person I don’t recognise anymore…
Also this Saturday we did the family Champions League draw via Zoom, it’s weird, we now have a WhatsApp group for all five of us, that Oli set up (called CL Rivals!) it’s lovely but slightly weird that he’s grown enough to be in a WhatsApp group with us and to set it up! Ben and I are close to Mum but we aren’t at all close with our aunts and uncles and our parents weren’t close with their siblings, it’s nice to think that we still are and that we’re finding ways to include Oli (and eventually Joe). Ben also has this theory that in order to stop an emu attacking you, you have to put your hands above its head. That sounds to me like a ‘Dad fact’ and in particular, a Noel Dempsey special – this was the man that told me that ‘Hey Jude’ was written for my Aunt Jude! Anyway, my Champions League draw was Porto, PSG and Chelsea. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it!
My plans for this week are to spend some time on the plot, to take advantage of half term and some key people being out of the office to do some longer term work, instead of the fire fighting I’ve been doing so far this year! We had a really good year in 2020 and considering 9 months of it was mostly us all at home, it was a stellar year. Unfortunately, or fortunately for our long term job prospects, there is always more to do and every day is (or should be) a learning day!
Lent starts on Wednesday, so Tuesday is all about pancakes and excess because after that, I’m not eating sweets, crisps, cake, ice cream, biscuits or chocolate (we’re no fun until Easter, I’m allowing myself sugar free jelly and tinned fruit). I’m doing other stuff for Lent too, I’m bedding in my no meat or fish eating Monday to Friday, upping my food bank donations, and adding 30 minutes of prayer and meditation to my days. This Lent feels a little different, last year I leaned into it because we were in lockdown and it seemed to fit. This year, it feels like it’ll be easier or harder to do. After the first lockdown, the only change in my life was that I was working from home every day and I didn’t get to see my nephews, I’m not madly social, I still got to see my mum and while I didn’t see everyone as much as usual, there hadn’t been a huge change. Our third lockdown, feels like a massive change, I’ve seen Sue every week for a walk, I’ve seen the godchildren (Ryan and Miss T excepted) for walks, but I haven’t seen Ma and everything seems to be dragging. To say nothing of doing Spring on the plot solo again, I guess it’s just going to be a case of do it and see what happens..
“After returning for two years to Tel Aviv, and many visits to the occupied Palestinian territories, I understood that Israel doesn’t live up to its professed high moral standards. The lesson learned from the Holocaust was ‘Never again!’ But is it intended only to protect us Jews? For me ‘Never again!’ must include ‘never again to racism, oppression, ethnic cleansing anywhere – as well as never again to antisemitism’.”
I am so sick of being asked if I regret not having children. Mum sent this to me, I think she might also be tired of being asked if I have a partner and why I don’t have children. I don’t think she’s been asked if I’m gay yet though but it’s only a matter of time!
Happy Friday! I’ve been staying away from social media for a while, I’m just tapped out and working on my kindle paperwhite being the only screen I go near.
A Reader’s Guide to the Novels Behind ‘Bridgerton’. This is worth reading but there is one thing about the ‘Duke and I’ and the issues around consent. Daphne doesn’t get Simon’s in one instance but Simon has spent their entire marriage lying to Daphne and using her ignorance against her, she hasn’t thinks, and Simon knows this, that he couldn’t have children, her is ignorant of everything to do with sex, apart from what he choses to tell her. What Daphne does is wrong, but (and I except that I’m in a minority here) it’s understandable. Simon’s behaviour is also appalling, he’s supposed to be in love with Daphne and he takes shameless advantage of her. So in issues of consent, true consent, they both do wrong.
It’s February and my back is a mess. Well technically, it’s not my back, it’s my piriformis which is a form of sciatica. Joy, I know that if I don’t get to it now, I’m going to end up really throwing my back out and it won’t be pretty. I’m doing the stretches and releasing the muscle (and trying not to swear really loudly because there is a newborn living downstairs).
This is the downside of middle age, however, I know what works is yoga. So for February, I’m going to do it every day, I won’t like it but my back will!
Hopefully, by the end of the month, I’ll be as bendy as the little nephew…
January has been a slog, and honestly I think February is likely to be a slog too but it’ll be March in four weeks time!
Good news for the last day of January, is that Ma has had her first vaccination, which is a relief! There are also new babies, Tom had a girl and my downstairs neighbours had a boy. Whether I’m able to leave the house or not, the world carries on and I’m really grateful for the people who do the work that makes it continue.
But I’m finding this wearing, I miss my family, I miss the pub and going out for dinner and yes I know that I didn’t often do those things, I miss having the option. There are babies I cannot cuddle and parents I can’t hug. This generally sucks. I know that I’m lucky to be employed, housed and healthy. I’m grateful for those things, I’m just also very tired of not having options.
This week, I need to get a grip. I need to do yoga in the evening, I really need to tidy my flat and get my act together…
Happy Friday! Well the USA has a new President so I guess that’s one good thing in the world. The daily death rate in the UK is appallingly high, and I just heard a member of Radiohead say that it feels as though we are being governed like an essay crisis. Which seems about right…
It’s Blue Monday today, which is basically the worst day of the year. It’s three weeks into the New Year and no-one has any money, there isn’t another Bank Holiday until April and Christmas feels like a distant memory. That’s in normal times, but we are in the middle of a global pandemic and in the UK, in our third lockdown. So added to the usual misery we are sitting in our houses all alone trying to summon up the will to live and some enthusiasm for work without any actual human contact or trying to homeschool disregulated children and keep all the work/home things in balance. That’s bad, but worse that that is that the situations above are best case scenarios. Other people are having to go out and work in shops (not exactly safe) or have no work and are quietly panicking about how to feed children/pay bills.
I say all this not to make you feel worse but to share a tiny flash that has illuminated all this gloom. My brother send me flowers on Friday and I won the office quiz!
My brother never ceases to surprise me!
Other things I did to cheer myself up over the weekend. I made marmalade, I changed my bed*, I broke open the sour cherry compote (which was truly the best thing I preserved last year) and I did some other preserving, marmalade (which didn’t set properly – I’ll sort that out tonight!), chicken stock and chickpeas. I also read two books and watched ‘A History of Swearing’ on Netflix. I also reached out for some human connection and called my brother, my mother and some friends. I wrote postcards. I had therapy and did yoga.
This morning, I’m not the most cheerful person in the world (I never am and it’s January!) but I’m more balanced than expected. That’s really my trick, I don’t reach for perfect, I reach for balance. It’s much more achievable than perfect and ultimately better for you!
So that’s what I’m thinking about this week. Balance. Working out what small things will make me more cheerful and doing them. Today that means cherry compote and yoghurt for breakfast, an afternoon walk, doing the ironing tonight and having a bath before bedtime.
That’s all I’ve got. I hope you all have a great week and can think of some small, cheerful things that will give you balance!
*the best housekeeping habit you can ever get into is that of changing your bed weekly. Clean beds are the best thing in the world for comforting troubled minds and bodies and it’s a treat you can give yourself every week. If you can, I really recommend it.
Schools in England told not to provide free school meals at half-term. What is wrong with the government? I’m not expecting them to be brilliant or even good but they don’t have the brains God gave a fucking sheep. We’ve been over this, as a general rule everyone objects to children going hungry. We did this in the summer, we did it before Christmas, we did it last fucking week. Just accept that people think it’s important and sort it out, implement a system that ensures that the 1.4 million children entitled to free school meals get fed in the holidays or when schools aren’t open. It’s not fucking rocket science….
We are now in our third lockdown in the UK, with the way the infection rates are climbing Mum and I have decided that it was better that she didn’t come over on the bus to see me or work on the allotment. Which means that I’m solo on the plot and missing the weeding help.
This weekend, I visited the plot to fill up the birdfeeders and paint the shed.
Painted shed
It will need another couple of coats, but at least it’s a start.
The week before last we split the rhubarb and moved the gooseberry bushes and Ma did amazing work on the weeding the front of the plot. So work was done and next weekend, I’ll be weeding, I’m not as thorough as Ma – well that’s what she tells me but needs must…
So as it’s January, I thought that I’d talk about what we are going to grow this year! When Boris Johnson announced the second lockdown back in November, Ma and I panic bought seeds.
Over the last year, with Brexit looming, I took a look at the food I eat and buy. I’ve talked about this a bit, I’ve talked about changing how and where I buy meat, I’ve talked about cooking more vegetarian food, I’ve talked about buying more UK produced food. and so with this in mind, we made a decision to try and use UK produced seeds. I’m not ever going to get it 100% right, we live in a global world but I think it’s important to try as much as you are able given your circumstances. So we most the majority of our seeds from Real Seeds but we are also going to fill in with the seeds we already have and that we get from magazines.
So what are we going to grow next season?
Garlic, onions and shallots are already in the ground. We also have cabbages, kale and chard that will take us through to Feb/Mar and lettuces that may or may not last the winter.
Kale
In February we’ll sow the broadbeans (Aquadulce Longpod), peas and carrots, I bought some of the tri coloured ones carrots we had last year from Wilko and we have loads of free carrot seeds to use up. I’m going to do spring sowing and a later June/July sowing to see if we can eek out the carrot season a bit more this year.
We’ve already ordered seed and sweet potatoes this year from DT Brown, the potatoes are Nicola, International Kidney and Acoustic (these are a replacement for the Lady Christl that we ordered) and we’ll grow them in tubs as usual. The sweet potato slips are also from DT Brown, the sweet potato collection, it’s 15 slips and we have purple ones too. I probably won’t plant all 15 slips, but Laura and Dionne will have some and someone else on the allotment site couldn’t get purple ones, so I’ll find homes for them. My lesson from last year is to leave them until well into October, so we’ll see how we go.
Last year wasn’t a great year for summer squash, this year we’re going to grow our usual Summer Crookneck, but also the Early Prolific Straightneck, Benning’s Green Tint Patty Pan and Tondo di Piacenza Round Courgette. All of those seeds can be found here
Patty Pan
For winter squash, we already have some ‘Jack be little’ seeds and to that we’re adding Waltham Butternut Squash, Hokkaido, Galeuse d’Eysines, Anna Swartz Hubbard, Sibley Storage Squash, I will harvest some seeds from my candy roaster and crown prince and see if we can get a squash from them but only one from each. We are changing the beds, this year, so probably won’t be growing as many as we did last year. Although having said we had too many this year, Ma and I are watching them go down and wondering if we’ll get through the winter!
We’re going to grow three cucumbers types, two are new to us, Tamra Slicing and Early Fortune and the usual Boothby’s Blonde.
I love growing tomatoes and bizarrely for someone who didn’t eat raw tomatoes until I grew them, I love the big tomatoes and they are the ones I want to grow. Last year we grew tomatoes that we’ve grown before and of those we’ll repeat three, Orange Banana, Amish Paste, Cour di Bue and I may sneak in some Marmande. For new tomatoes we’re going to grow Ethel Watkins Best, Feo de Rio Gordo and Peche Vilmorin Andrieux, this is pink, fuzzy tomato that’s good for stuffing, so that will be fun to try! Ma loves cherry tomatoes, and she eats the majority of the cherries that we grow, this season we’re going to try Gardener’s Sweetheart and Millefleur Yellow Vine, this is a centiflor type and I’m hoping that it’ll prevent the wicked splitting issues we had with the yellow cherries last year.
I do some preserving with the tomatoes I grow, this year all the salsa came from my tomatoes but for canning, I mostly bought tomatoes from the Isle of Wight because of the quantity I needed them in, I did my canning in two sections, one of 18kg of tomatoes and another of 9kg. I don’t have the space to grow enough to can with, I’d need another plot and that is not happening especially given how many people we have on the waiting list at the moment. I waited about 18 months for my first half and I think I just got in at a good time, because the list quadrupled last year!
Tomatoes for salsa
Finally, beans. We have purple and green french beans saved so we’llprobably use them again. We’re also going to grow Aida Gold Dwarf Beans, they are yellow so we’re growing the spectrum. We’re also going to grow Gigantes Soup Runner Beans, runner beans grown them for the beans not the pods and I thought it would be fun to experiment with beans for drying. We also have some borlotti bean seeds floating about so if I have room, I’ll try and squeeze them in! Although this year I really need to work on bean frames that don’t collapse under the weight of the plants. I was thinking about these, anyone used them before?
The things that we usually grow, kale, chard, leeks, cabbages and cauliflower we have loads of seeds for and we’ll not sure if we’re going to grow from seed or cheat like we did last year and buy plugs, to be honest it’s going to depend on the length of lockdown and how much I get done in the next couple of weeks! Things I hope to grow this year, we’ll have parnips and salsify, sweetcorn, spinach, salad, fennel (third time lucky), pak choi and turnips and swedes, Ma also really wants to grow celeriac and if I can find or build, a spare bed, we will.
We’ll have fruit, as usual, I split the rhubarb and moved the gooseberries so I’m not expecting loads of that, but we should have a good-ish crop of blueberries (one of my spring projects is to get some of the plants into bigger pots) and raspberries. I’m not expecting many blackcurrants but a handful would be nice and hopefully, the plum tree is ready for a really good year, despite the haircut it’s going to get in June!
For soft herbs, we’ll grow parsley, basil and dill and I want to get some more thyme plants because I really like it. I’m expecting that the verbena, borage, rocket, marigolds, aramanth and mallow will just do what they do and grow. But I am going to try and grow a row of orache from the seeds I collected last year.
