Yesterday, I spent most of the day with a spider on my head, dishing up to mulled wine to visitors for the allotment Halloween Pumpkin Walk. So something Halloween-ish felt like is was in order. This felt right.
It’s The Heavy, who I’ve been taken with for quite a while…
Trump’s words have consequences, and he can no longer deny it
We’re in a new era of slum landlords and tenant squalor. Lammy was part of a Labour government that did nothing to reform housing over 13 years, it can’t all be blamed on the Tories..a lot of it can but not all…
Who will protect tenants from rogue landlords? Certainly not the Tories.
Is gratitude the secret of happiness? I spent a month finding out. This was interesting, I do this largely because it helps me focus. Especially in winter, keeping my brain from being too negative is helpful. It doesn’t mean that I’m happy all the time, or things are easy but it does help me focus on the things I can do. I do agree that if you are in really dire straits then this is tricky, but gratitude is helpful for me because I do have things to be thankful for, even when my life generally is difficult.
At 63, I Threw Away My Prized Portrait of Robert E. Lee. This is worth reading, because how does one person deal with the conflicting narratives of the history of his country?
World’s oldest intact shipwreck discovered in Black Sea
David Cameron led us to this calamity. Yet he stays quiet and hides in his hut
A politician who bumped into Cameron said he thinks the referendum result must be respected, but that Britain should protect living standards by going for the softest Brexit imaginable and staying in the single market. This is a compromise well to the “left” of Theresa May and Corbyn’s plans and is worth discussing. Whatever his critics say, David Cameron is a former PM. He not only has the right to offer his solution but a duty. If he is to earn the right to a hearing, however, he must first find not only self-knowledge and courage, but an un-English seriousness of purpose he has evaded all his life.
Can’t sleep? Perhaps you’re overtired
Rising Early Is Clearly a Good Idea. But Stop Pretending We Need to Do It Perfectly or Only for Productivity. Monday to Fridays, I’m currently rocking a 6am wake up time, which means after the 6am news, so about 6.10am and I’m out of the house around 7am. (I can make this go faster though, last week, I got up at 5.44am and was out of the house at 6.15am to get the train to Southampton) I’m generally at my desk about 8.25am. I like getting in early, we hotdesk and this way I get a desk. I like the time to look at my day and work out what my ‘people’ are doing and make sure that they have everything they need. I started this back in August because I knew that I’d have to bed the habit in before it got dark. It is habit. Left to myself, I would get up about 30 minutes to an hour past sunrise, which is 7:38 at the moment. In the summer, I have the occasional 5.30am get out of bed but mostly, before 6am is a step too far! There is no virtue in this, I do it because it makes my day go better but I don’t enjoy it. Recently, it’s been easier, I think it’s middle-age..
Happy Monday!
After last week, which involved a very early morning for a trip to Southampton, a cocktail making class and having the nephews on Saturday night. Which was much easier than you’d imagine but involved more cooking than I thought it would, I’m ready for a peaceful week!
I seem to have caught the office cold but so far it’s really not that bad, I’m just quite tired, last night’s bedtime was 8:30pm, I’m pretty sure the eldest nephew can be up longer than that!
It is half term this week so trains are quieter which is nice, when you are feeling sub par not being able to sit down is a special kind of hell!
Plans for this week are work and rest for today through Thursday. Friday night is haircut which, as I missed the last one, my hair really needs!
At the weekend, we are going to be on the allotment site, After a spot of Halloween decorating, for the pumpkin walk, I’ll be slinging mulled wine and Ma will be manning the cake stall all afternoon!
I’m hoping I’ll have vanquished this sniffle and be fighting for for it!
This week we had a team meeting and lunch and this was playing over lunch and I love it so here it is…
I’m a known hater of ironing, I iron as little as possible and only do the bare minimum (which includes pillowcases and tea towels – yes I know it’s weird, I blame my mother!).
This is relatively easy to do in winter because honestly I don’t have much that needs ironing but in summer I wear a lot of linen and so need to do more ironing. I’ve tried to make it fun, I’ve tried to make it smell better but none of it sticks. I don’t much like ironing and avoid it when I can but sometimes you have to get it done.
You may have noticed that I had goal in September of getting ironing done and not leaving it hanging around for weeks, so I have returned to using ironing water, smells nice.
Happy Friday!
US embassy apologises after mistakenly sending Cookie Monster cat invitation The US should have cat-pyjama-jam parties. We’d like them so much more!
You Have to Stop Canceling and Rescheduling Things. Really. This. So much this.
Paddington Bear and the Displaced Child. The great thing about stories is how they can mean completely different things to different people.
Savannah Police Look for Person Who Put Googly Eyes on a Statue: “It’s No Laughing Matter” I’m laughing
Why ‘no surrender’ on Brexit is a bad strategy for the DUP. This is so reasonable and balanced, I’m getting to the stage where I want to bash their (the DUP’s) heads together, which is probably how we got here in the first place.
Invasion of the ‘frankenbees’: the danger of building a better bee
‘Hope has started to grow’: Maxine Peake on Corbyn, people power and Peterloo’s radical legacy
Britain fell for a neoliberal con trick – even the IMF says so
In my experience, everyone has something they can’t cook. One of the most accomplished cooks I ever knew, could not bake.
I have a epic problem with key lime pie that I really need to deal with at some point. It’s so bad my friends have been known to send me recipes in the post that might work. (yes they do love me and they express that affection with mockery – we’re English, it’s what we do!) Until about 10 years ago, meringue was my nemesis or as we sometimes refer to it in this house ‘that greek chap’ (it’s a Georgette Heyer joke from Friday’s Child).
But eventually I conquered that fear and I made a perfect pavlova. 
In fact, I make it for family lunches all the time because in my experience if you find something that your family will eat, you just keep doing it. My brother still can’t say pavlova (pavilova) but everyone eats it.
So this is what I made for Ben’s birthday last Sunday. With flakes because went Ben and I were talking about fruit he misheard grape as flake and I may never let him forget it!
The basic rule is 60g of sugar to 1 egg white. You are supposed to use caster sugar but honestly as part of being casual about it now, I just use granulated
So first line your baking sheet with baking parchment and start your oven to preheat to 150C
Then take 3 egg whites and beat them until they form peaks that look like this.
Then add 180g sugar (caster for preference but I use what I have) and beat it some more, the books always say stiff peaks but mine look like this (it’s a poor photo but you get the idea)
Put you mixture out on your baking tray, in a circle and in the oven for about 50 minutes
You can just turn your oven off at this point and leave it there until it’s cool (don’t do what I did once and turn the oven up not off – I was not joking about it being something I couldn’t do!) or take it out to allow it to cool. Don’t worry about the cracks, your going to cover it with cream and fruit, no one will notice!
There isn’t an awful lot to do right now, which is good because we didn’t have a lot of time. We picked kale, chard, parsley, coriander, salad leaves and a couple of leeks.
We did a bit of weeding and we thought about what we need to do in the next couple of weeks.
We really need to buy some compost, manure and some garlic.
That done, we need to top up the beds that are going to be growing through winter (so the garlic and broad bean beds) and the beds that we are going to cover. I want to manure the rhubarb and the beds that took a real hammering this summer, so the squash beds and boxes. They are also the beds that aren’t very full at the moment so they also need some extra bulk, so the manure and compost should help with that.
All the other beds going to sleep for winter will get chicken pellets and compost and will be covered. Of our 16 beds we’ll have 7/8 growing over winter, which is pretty good.
I need to paint the shed and we need to set up decorations for Halloween, we have an enormous spider, solar lights on the edge of the plot, a grave – with bones and a skull that we’re going to put on top of something to make a ghost. We’ve really thought about this!
We also need to sow sweet peas, broad beans and the garlic.
All the longer term stuff still needs to be done and at the end of this month the clocks will go back making it so much harder to do it all in the daylight, not that there is much daylight it’s under 12 hours and only going to get darker. Ridiculously, for mid October, there are lots of flowers. We have verbena bonariesis, marigolds, dianthus, Californian poppies, the rosemary is flowering, and the aramanth and nasturtiums are holding on.
It’s all good, I may not get everything done, this year or ever but the plot is productive, even in autumn so I’m going to be happy with that.
It’s taken me forever to get around to this because I felt like I sort of lost my reading mojo over August and September but 17 books and 1 short story isn’t exactly a slump although I had to immerse myself in a series before that feeling went away.
All Over But the Shoutin’ – Rick Bragg
This is a memoir of growing up poor and white in the South of the US. It’s not a happy read, Bragg is harder on himself than he is on his parents. I recognise some of that, you try to understand the ‘terrible’ parent, in this case his father and you idolize the one that stays and tries, his mother. He’s a talented writer and the book is worth reading but not very happy.
The Governess Game – Tessa Dare
This was typical Dare and I really enjoyed it and I liked it, but I was more interested in her friends than I was in her love interest!
One and Only (Canton 1) – Viv Daniels
Sweet and Wild (Canton 2) – Viv Daniels
Viv Daniels is another pen name for Diana Peterfreund, who wrote one of my favourite books ‘For the Darkness Shows the Stars’ so I wanted to see what she’d do in a different genre. And it was pretty good, no one is perfect, people are kind enough but the parents, ye gods the parents. I read them both on a lazy afternoon but they haven’t really stayed with me, except for the awfulness of the parent.
Made for Us (The Shaughnessys) – Samantha Chase
I didn’t mind it but it was familiar in a way that series that have big families are. I felt I knew all the beats of this story.
Delicious Temptation – Sabrina Sol
I just wanted to slap both the hero, the heroine and their families. Sorry bossy parents who walk over children isn’t my jam. I have a bossy parent, but I can’t bear overbearing parents.
This started so well, the premise is extreme but it doesn’t feel that extreme given the trash fire that the world is right now. My discontent was caused by how tidy it was. The government is overturned, democracy is rescued and everything goes back to normal. Also the narrator gets a ridiculous happy ending, with a man who wouldn’t have put up with this treatment of his woman, while the husband dies heroically. It’s all too neat, there’s no damage and there would be damage.
Goody Two Shoes – Janet Elizabeth Henderson
I don’t know when this was written but it felt old fashioned. Another trope I couldn’t deal with is the controlling heroine, who has a heart of gold but just needs the love of a good man to loosen her up. I would have preferred to see the heroine learn or know herself a bit better.
Born to be Wilde – Eloisa James
I loved this, not as much as I loved the first one but Eloisa James is a one click buy for me. She publishes a book and I just give her my money.
A Trail Through Time (The Chronicles of St Mary’s 4) – Jodi Taylor
No Time Like The Past (The Chronicles of St Mary’s 5) – Jodi Taylor
What Could Possibly Go Wrong (The Chronicles of St Mary’s 6) – Jodi Taylor
Lies, Damned Lies, and History (The Chronicles of St Mary’s 7) – Jodi Taylor
And The Rest is History (The Chronicles of St Mary’s 8) – Jodi Taylor
An Argumentation of Historians (The Chronicles of St Mary’s 9) – Jodi Taylor
So I’d read and enjoyed the first three of these and started 4 and just read through all of them. They are funny (though some horrible stuff happened) and I love the idea of mad historians, marauding through history.
The Battersea Barricades: A Chronicles of St Mary’s Short Story – Jodi Taylor
There are short stories, I’m working my way through them.
Wallbanger (The Cocktail Series) – Alice Clayton
I finished this but only just, there was a story I wanted to read in here, but it was buried under nonsense.
Mister Hockey (Hellions Angels) – Lia Riley
Head Coach (Hellions Angels) – Lia Riley
Virgin Territory (Hellions Angels) – Lia Riley
I read all of these one after the other and all of them suffered (for me) with the same issue, it was too easy. Riley set up some nasty issues that the hero and heroine’s just shook off. No it’s not that easy and it annoyed me.
Happy Monday!
Those of you following along on Instagram, will already see that I was a horsie yesterday. We had played the ‘wrap J in a blanket, put him on the sofa and then ask where he’s gone’ game, several times. But after lunch I was sitting on the floor and found myself being climbed on! He’s at that whirlwind stage, the eldest is at that ‘grown ups are boring’ phase and we hardly saw him!
The rest of last week was standard, the weather was lovely for most of it and my lunchtime walks have been delightful. Also for our emphasis on mental health at work (the Thrive programme), I shared about my SAD and what I do to survive winter. Lot’s of people are telling me I’m brave, I don’t think I am but it’s nice that people think so!
The big news is my walks with Fred and S are soon to be over, so I’ll have to make the most of them between now and Christmas
Although they are going somewhere, we don’t stop being friends who are like family and there will be other walks but I will miss these ones…
Finally, my lovely friend Jen, along with some others has launched a kickstarter for their project ‘Out of the Box Cards’. Jen was really tired of only being able to buy girly pink princess cards for her nieces and granddaughters. So she’s doing something about it…
Nic Dempsey 