New Year!

It may be a sign of getting older that a New Year doesn't quite inspire me as it once did. I used to feel I had a clean slate, a new beginning, practically a sense of redemption. It was the same in September with the start of the school year. Of course it's been decades since I went to university. And I never felt quite finished with 2021, or 2020 for that matter, not even 2019. I don't think I'm finished being 53 or thereabouts. Time really has begun to slide past, a rushing river rather than the trickle of molasses I used to experience. 

Nevertheless, the calendar says I must learn to write another set of digits and so I sit me down to see where I might push myself for a while before getting, not discouraged so much as, distracted. I struggle to remember what seemed so important in January that I can't do something different in February or March. 

Bill and I returned to pilates class yesterday. We even paid for new instruments of torture: a squishy ball  each and some exercise bands. He is very good at finding a quiet moment to practice in the dining room. I quit trying to do this because he always seemed catch me out and want to watch. I'm better at ignoring him, I guess. Our instructor keeps asking me if I'm not really proud of him, which I am, though it's becoming rather annoying how she fawns over him. He is often the only man in the class. I'm mostly proud that this doesn't bother him like it would many men. The other guy that sometimes shows up is also a long distance walker, but probably closer to 64 than to Bill's (very soon) 74. 

Bill and I have been doing some running "together" several days a week. We've been doing something called 'parlauf', which apparently just means paired interval training. Bill has always used the term to refer to running in circles. We used to do this with the running club where he paired the fastest runner with the slowest then the next fastest with next slowest and so on. As part of a group, each pair would run around the pond at Exhibition Park until they met their partner, then they would each turn around and run until they met again and so on. This meant each person ran to their ability, with the faster person running further. Bill and I have a circular course that includes our front gate and circles the Metro station. My side of the course is slightly hilly, into the sun and wind on the way back and passes two bus stops (people waiting surely wonder what I'm up to if their bus is slow); I've no idea about his side of the circle. Of course I'm familiar with the route, but things look altogether different when running. The fact that I can't do more than two out-and-back efforts tells me I'm ridiculously unfit.

I've been moving our (my) diet towards being more plant-based, and seasonal. My current rotation for main courses through the week is (Sunday) soup/stew, roasted vegetables, beans, lentils, grain, fish, meat or cheese (Saturday). We each cook our own lunch and Bill frequently chooses sausage or beef burgers. I try to keep my opinions to myself, but of course I don't succeed. He is aware of both the personal health and the environmental issues associated with these choices and that's all that I can do. He nearly always eats whatever else I put in front of him cheerfully, so I can't complain. While I'm not likely to ever be vegetarian, never mind vegan, when I do eat meat I really appreciate it. 

I have pages and pages of other wishful thinking I'll not even mention now, but if anything comes of it I'll try to let you know. 

A lovely Christmas present from Helen & Martin.

December Book List

We had a lovely Christmas at Sarah and Gareth's house (with 3-year old Struan and 7-month old Ilsa). Then we gathered at Helen and Martin's house (with 9-year old Charlotte) where Sarah's family and Simon and his wife Katie were also to be found. It's the first time we've all been together at the same time in far more than two years, so it was very special. We all took lateral flow tests on the morning of each gathering so I felt relatively safe. It's to the point where 'normal' feels a bit odd...

Looking forward to 2022, other than a little concern about what the final consequences of Brexit may bring us, with lots of staying at home over the winter (love my solitude!) and planned visits one-on-one with friends.  

- Grave Mistake, Ngaio Marsh

- *How to Cook a Wolf, MFK Fisher

- *Codebreaking Sisters - Our Secret War, Patricia and Jean Owtram

- *The Five: the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold

- The Wardrobe Mistress, Natalie Meg Evans

*Non-fiction

Vegetable Tangerine

Our next WI has started having Zoom coffee mornings with a theme. The next Saturday's theme is 'Positive things that came out of the pandemic'. I'm still thinking on this, but one of them I think is that people got re-acquainted with their kitchens. I think cooking from ingredients is a vital life skill and that it is idiocy to be dependent on eating out / fast food / processed convenience foods. I almost see it as a form of slow suicide. I've noticed the older I get the less moderate my opinions.

I can't say the pandemic reintroduced me to my kitchen, but rather it reminded me I had a load of cookbooks - and acquired more - with recipes I'd never tried. I started our WI's Food Group on Facebook and the lady who agreed to take it over - I can't run everything - felt that photos were important so I've tried to take pictures. Mine are never as good as hers - my kitchen must not have the right lighting, but Bill and I have enjoyed greater variety in our meals. 

The Food Group also introduced me to some new cookbooks called A Pinch of Nom. I guess 'nom' must be the British version of 'yum'? I like these books because they have calorie counts. I'm only interested in those under 300 calories. I generally find I can make the recipes faster each time I make them and find shortcuts. For example, I make cauliflower rice in the microwave rather than adding it to the chicken and spices in a Harry Dieters Fast Food recipe. 

One of Bill's favourites is from A Pinch of Nom and it is called Vegetable Tagine. I'm still working on finding shortcuts for this, but I already have substituted potato for the parsnip and swede I didn't have; also tumeric for the saffron I'm not likely to ever have and ground cinnamon instead of sticks. Also, this recipe says to use a large frying pan on top of the stove, not the conical shaped clay dish which is also called a tagine. The first time I made it I sent Bill after a pomegranate to garnish the dish, my first ever encounter with a pomegranate. I thought it was delicious, but awfully fiddly, even with instructions from the internet. Subsequent uses of this recipe have omitted that garnish.

 I struggle to say this word, wanting to make it tan-gine and then Bill turned that into tangerine. We're pretty silly around here sometimes. I wondered how one should actually say 'tagine'. It turns out that there are two ways, a British and an American pronunciation. The British word sounds like 'ta-ching' as in money. No doubt Bill will have fun playing with that as well. I notice the American pronunciation has a softer 'g', like the French use. Doing something other than way the French speak seems to be a hallmark in British differences. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

No book to write about today. I'm in the midst of two: one of my favourites of the Sue Grafton alphabet detective stories (a re-read of course): S is for Silence. The other, Mrs Lincoln by Janis Cooke Newman. It is gripping, but of course it is fiction. However, Mary Todd Lincoln's Wikipedia entry suggests the novel is close to her life story and from that entry I gather she may have suffered from bipolar illness.

I went for a walk yesterday, something I've not done much of in weeks due to icy weather and then just lack of habit. I remembered to take my camera and take photos of the daffodils I passed - I've been watching them for a while now. I never cease to be uplifted by the long swathes of daffs the council have planted around the area. (Did you know that by definition a 'swath or swathe' is the width of a scythe stroke? - I didn't until just now).

I learned last week that a cousin had died from complications of Covid. He wasn't a close family member, but rather a genealogical discovery from some years back. I met him when we were invited to a wonderful cabin on Torch Lake, Michigan. Bryan was a few months younger than I. I particularly feel for his father, John, who is nearly 96. No one wants to outlive a child. 

Bill is out for a walk. I will venture into the pharmacy later today to pick up a prescription. We had tofu for dinner last night for the first time ever. It was a recipe from my Aunt Rita's Weight Watchers cookbook. 

It used a combination of hoisin sauce, chicken stock powder and garlic to flavour the tofu and broccoli. It was OK but nothing to be excited about. Given that the tofu cost about the same as stewing steak - bought for beef bourguignon later this week - I think I'd rather just eat beans than try to fake myself out with tofu. Should we ever completely give up meat, I might revisit that opinion.

This past week we've been arguing with a bird who wants to build its nest on the chimney pot of our dining room fire. It was winning, with us vacuuming the carpet in front of the fireplace twice a day and picking up the sticks that fell through. We don't begrudge it the space, it simply isn't safe and we didn't want to be picking up a dead bird or having cooked eggs on the hearth. So, we are now the proud owners of a 'seagull cage'. Only it turned out to be a black bird - probably a crow - who broke a twig off the tree just as the cage man was standing at the front door telling us of his arrival. The cage covers the neighbour's pots as well but rather than ask for half we just got permission to do the work. 

Earlier this month we had the tree 'trimmed'. Butchered would be more apt but, hey, it takes longer to grow back to a pesky height that way. 

I finished a longstanding project in time for WI Craft Group last night. It is a birthday present for Simon's girlfriend - who is now his wife of almost two years. I had initially tried to line it using some upcycled plastic but it was too stiff, so I had to take it apart and re-do the straps and lining. 

So I need to tidy the East Wing as it looks like the usual wreckage following a project. Yesterday I filed my FBAR form. This is the one where I tell the US government about the most money held in each of my foreign (British) accounts during the Calendar Year 2020. Nosy of them, isn't it? I'm almost used to the intrusion, but not just quite.

I've also nearly got my US taxes done, or rather the accountant in California has. Every single year I have to tell them to correct the same mistake; I shudder to think what other errors they make that I've no hope of catching. 

I've decided to bite the bullet and pay an accountant to do my UK taxes this year and - gasp - to do them early on rather than in January (when the payment is due). They no longer seem to me as simple as they once were, not least because I had endless trouble signing into the online account. I feel too old for this sort of hassle.

I planted two "chicken boxes" (black plastic trays that 20-some chicken breasts come in) with various lettuces. I hope to plant more with basil, coriander and parsley.  Bill found a text on his phone that our GP had tried to reach him with, but since he's already got his first Covid-19 vaccine from the national system, he's stuck with it. We both struggled to book my vaccination appointments on the national system but finally did - only one is 50 miles away in Darlington (in late Apr) and the other 12 miles away in Washington (in late Jun). So when he found this text with a GP's booking website, I had a go and got two appointments two miles away - the first is on Friday! When all goes well with that I'll ring up and cancel the other ones. The wonderful NHS is free, but rarely convenient or straightforward. 

I'm feeling rather sanguine as I have two purchased birthday presents in hand for Bill's upcoming birthday (73). One is a book that I think we would both enjoy (and he heartily approves of such purchases). The other is the biggest box of chocolates I could buy him without feeling I was hastening his demise.

Those are all my thoughts on this day. Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

Learning New Tricks

One thing that has seemed to fill a lot of people's time during this pandemic has been cooking. I think that's brilliant as people can only control what they y eat by cooking their own meals. I've often seen a sign on local restaurants 'Don't Cook Just Eat', which infuriates me. Turns out this is a delivery service that restaurants can contract with to do deliveries. I gather it isn't cheap and they collect their money whether or not the restaurant is selling delivered food, though I could be wrong about this. 

In any case, Bill and I have been out of the habit of eating out much for years now. Once I retired, cooking dinner didn't seem particularly onerous, particularly since I had any number of 'recipes' memorised. My favourite involved starting with sauteed onions and then adding whatever vegetables and possibly meats were on hand. Stir fries cook up quickly and you don't have to use a lot of oil. 

However, I must admit it started to get a bit boring and, far worse, I started gaining weight. So I got out my Betty Crocker's Cook Book from 1987, which has calorie counts for each of its recipes. I had at some point circled the calorie count of any recipe under 300 calories and those are the ones I focussed on. Besides calories, I've been trying to cook less and less red meat and more whole grains and vegetables. I frequently substitute yoghurt for sour cream or oil for bacon fat (it is an American cookbook after all). 

Some of Bill's favourite recipes of late have been cream of mushroom soup and Pennsylvania red cabbage (cooked with brown sugar and apples). I've never, in the 30+ years I've owned this book, looked at the vegetable recipes. We've also discovered that bulgar wheat cooks up as easily as rice and tastes something between white and brown rice. 

So, amazingly, some bulgar wheat cooked up with a vegetable stock cube and some red cabbage and some Brussel's sprouts (shredded and stir fried with a diced onion) is a pretty satisfying meal. Who would have thought?

Sewing a Bit

 My WI Craft group has motivated me to sew where little else has. In the good old days we met each month and I would have a teacher lined up to show people embroidery, needle-felting, patchwork, making wax wraps, all sorts of things. We each would take a turn demonstrating something we knew how to do. I think those are the best groups - where everyone participates, giving and taking in turn.

We still meet each month, but on Zoom. Since the technicalities of demonstrating a craft on Zoom are beyond what most of us have the patience for, we've each been released to do our own thing. Eventually we decided to have a theme for each month, with each of us making an interpretation of that - or not. It has yielded some fascinating results. 

Our theme for January was 'snow'. I couldn't come up with anything but 'make something white' which turned out to be a cross body bag from white scraps. I'm not happy with the finished product: it's too wide and the strap is too narrow. So it's likely not finished but just at a resting point.

Our theme for February was 'red', for George Washington's birthday (cherries), the Chinese New Year (red is an auspicious colour in that culture) and of course Valentine's Day. So I made yet another tote bag. 

I can remember where quite of bit of these fabrics originated. Some belonged to Rita. I have a photo of her wearing a red dress made of the taffeta-like fabric of the front pocket. Others were from upholstery fabric samples. The French toile picture is from having my kitchen curtains made at an outlet in Blaydon. I asked for the scraps left over - I'd paid for the fabric after all. 

The inner pocket has some cross-stitching on it. I lined that pocket to protect the back of the stitches. Both the cross-stitch and the lining fabric came from Jan, a lady formerly in my Thursday night craft group. Jan is terminally ill and no longer crafts so she handed over her enormous stash, some of which came my way. I will share photos of this bag with that group and perhaps it will get back to her. Leslie, another lady from that group, gave me quite a bit of the patchwork cottons. She is a crafter who buys the materials for a project, finishes the project and discards any leftovers. About as opposite to me in every way!

The theme for March is 'Easter'. I've no interest in eggs or rabbits, so will likely make another tote bag...perhaps in green.

Strange Lights

Somewhere around Christmas I read that it was OK to leave the tree and decorations up longer this year as they lifted peoples' spirits. I had a think about this but still opted to take it all down in the first week of January as per usual.

I did suggest to Bill we try putting some lights up, though. We have red lights in the dining room (red is supposed to stimulate appetite, not that ours generally is in need of help) and white lights along the stairs. I had it in mind they would be on the bannister, but Bill put them on the ground.

These have turned out to be rather practical, lighting our way without having to turn on either the downstairs lights (even if I did feel that turning on the upstairs lights produced a slightly better photo).

We may need to keep those even after the pandemic (if such a thing happens). I see the neighbours across the street left some lights up in the doorway between kitchen and dining room, also some on one of the trees in their back yard. Another neighbour has lights up in their conservatory. 

Have you done anything to keep a festive/light-hearted spirit in this dark time?

Caveat Emptor

Bill and I went into lockdown the evening of 16 March. I'd intended to nip into the Coop convenience store for milk and cookies for the WI Craft group that evening but when several members sent emails saying they wouldn't be coming because of the PM's announcement telling people to stay home, we cancelled Craft Group. I went to the Coop anyhow to pick up some fresh fruit and veg, not knowing what arrangements for shopping would be in future. Bill came home from his running club that evening and we were AT HOME.

Just that day, we'd been into every shop in North Shields looking to buy hand sanitiser and paracetamol. We found some water soluable paracetamol (horrible tasting stuff, but needs must) but no hand sanitiser in any shop whatsoever.

So I got onto eBay and ordered some. As I recall there wasn't a lot of reasonably priced stuff on offer, but I selected a seller that offered a reasonably large bottle for £11 and I ordered two, which somehow gave me a discount. We never had need of it since we didn't go out except to walk and we never needed to touch anything while walking (well, I never did, Bill forgets occasionally). So I forgot about having ordered the stuff until a few months later when I sat down with a bunch of papers to figure out where my money had gone. When I found the Paypal charge I realised I'd never received the hand sanitiser. It was by then too late to claim back from eBay.

The £17.60 wasn't going to break me, but I was annoyed with myself for not looking more closely at this seller. It was also my own fault for a) not following up promptly and b) being too lazy to read through all the instructions on eBay...all their FAQs are for irrelevancies and I couldn't find an actual person to write to for the protocol. So I figured the seller would likely continue to get away with this, though I see she's not sold anything for the past month, so perhaps there is a limit to fraudulent behaviour that even eBay will tolerate.

Then it occurred to me to contact Paypal. Fortunately their complaints procedure is much simpler. I just got in touch with the Chat line and they transferred me to the complaints department. It took a couple of weeks, but even though the seller never replied to their inquiries, they refunded my £17.60! I'm pleased I didn't give up even if I was very late in following up. Sadly I suspect this is like with bankruptcies, where the costs to the businesses are passed on to other customers. 

I will definitely be more cautious in my eBay purchases from now on.

Putting a Mask on It

I've been absent the last couple of posting days. On Tuesday last week the neighbours (the ones from which we are 'semi-detached') began a major overhaul of their kitchen / dining / utility room by taking out a wall and putting a door to the outside where a window once was. This is the second wall they've removed and Bill teased me that their house was going to fall down and take ours with it. I didn't find that in the least funny. I'm hoping they aren't creating an echo chamber next door as we already hear far too much of their lives as it is. However, it's out of my hands and I try not to worry about things I can't do anything about.

I had the bad timing on Tuesday to have a migraine about the time the hammering and drilling began. I took some ibuprofen and went to find refuge in the back seat of our car. After a couple of hours I felt well enough to finish the post I'd started but that was all I could manage on my Writing Day. And strangely enough I forgot all about this blog over the weekend. So while the plasterers and electricians carry on their work today, I'm very pleased to say I have no headache.

On the inside. You can see how the wire bends over Bill's nose.

A couple of weeks ago, Bill had asked me to make him a mask. I've been going through all the fabric stash in my craft room and pulling out what I thought were suitable cottons, zigzagging the edges and putting them through the wash. I expect I could make a couple hundred masks if I needed to, but I think half a dozen for each of us should be ample, particularly since we largely stay at home. I went into the post office last Monday to send off my US tax returns (because I'm married to a foreigner and filing separately I'm not allowed to file my taxes online). It was fairly scary but I think I may have got away with it. Bill just went into a small local DIY store this morning, having scoped it out at the weekend. He chose it because a) they are a local one-off shop and b) they hardly have any customers in ordinary times. We have groceries delivered or Bill goes to shops or cafes that serve at their front doors. We have no plans to visit any pubs, restaurants or supermarkets for the foreseeable future. We both feel very fortunate that we are able to stay safe at home most of the time.

So I wasn't in any hurry to make him a mask, but I finally did. Out of Winnie-the-Pooh fabric.

From the outside. 

I chose a pattern by a German lady named Iris Luckhaus, who was a professional pattern drafter at one time. She reviewed a lot of different patterns for masks, decided they all had shortcomings and then drafted her own. She explains it all here. I will make this again, I think, only I may try to figure out how to put a filter between the two cotton layers. It's a pretty straightforward pattern using two 8" squares and two small rectangles and two lengths of elastic. It also has a channel in the top for a piece of wire which can be removed for washing. I used florist wire. The hardest part was figuring out the pleats - I've never made anything with pleats in my life - but I eventually got there. She has quite a few diagrams and I finally found the one that clicked with my somewhat deficient brain. 

I put the elastic through the tubes made by the small rectangles and then had Bill put it on. I tied the elastic behind each ear and adjusted the fit per his instructions, tying a double knot on each side. Then I tightened the knots, trimmed the excess elastic and pulled the knots into the tubes on each side to keep them out of the way.

Sadly, you can't tell it's Winnie the Pooh fabric, but I have a number of other children's cotton prints that I put aside for Bill. Those of you who know him will likely agree this is entirely suitable. 

Hearts

Our WI Craft group Zoomed in May to chat and share what each of us had made during the past month or so. Someone suggested we have a theme for what we made in June and they came up with 'hearts'.  After we all signed off, I promptly forgot all about it.

The committee for our WI decided we should join Zoom for the £12-13 a month it costs so that we didn't need to bother with the 40 minute limit. We Zoom for our regular meetings, for committee meetings, book groups and book social meetings, craft group and other chat meetings and, soon, coffee mornings. While it is true we aren't bringing in money at face to face meetings we do have a substantial financial cushion and the Zoom fee is something like 20% of the rent we paid to rent the Parish Hall.

Some email or other about booking the Zoom call reminded me about hearts and so that very Monday I sat down with my three cookie cutters (bought for crafting, not baking) and came up with lavender bags. I have about three years' worth of dried lavender from my seven or eight bushes which are growing nicely just now, but not yet in flower. Except for the French lavender which has done it's best ever this year. 

I started with some black net fabric that was in my Aunt Rita's stash. Sadly the plastic red hearts stamped on the netting stuck together after being folded for years. I liked the silver back better than the now patchy red and silver fronts. My sewing machine didn't like any of it, so I sat down to do some hand sewing. I don't care for the look of the lavender through the net, but Bill liked it.

Years ago I played around making heart and star shapes out of sheer fabric bits in my stash. My sewing machine liked this sheer fabric better, apparently (a sharp, new needle, perhaps) and I sort of got away with making these shapes. I called them 'fairy bandaids'... no comment. Anyhow, I found a couple of these and stitched them together for another lavender bag.

Finally, I tried something larger with some more solid fabrics. The back solid is a kind of textured silk I imagine Rita making a cocktail dress from. The front vintage print is in polyester. I think it was given me by one of the sewing ladies from the Linskill group and I imagine it dates back to at least the 70s if not 60s. I had to look up how to do a blanket stitch again and putting this last one together took the most time, but I think I like it the best. They all smell delicious!

The two other ladies produced hearts in a similar fashion as lavender bags, though I think theirs may have been stuffed with something else. One new person had made a great hanging of three hearts in different blue fabrics from old clothes plus some twine and a couple of sticks. Someone else had worked on a cross-stitch for their first grandchild, a girl, which had lots of hearts in it. One lady made some paper cards which employed hearts; I envy her great eye for design. And one of our very clever knitters knitted a three-dimensional snail character whose shell was in the shape of a heart. 

Our theme for next month is flowers. I'll be working on the knitted flower squares of a blanket I'm making, which is a bit boring, but I'm looking forward to seeing what the others come up with!

Breakfast

On Fridays at our house Bill makes bread in the bread maker. I stocked a small tin of yeast for Brexit last year and had a few part-bags of various bread flours when we went into lock down. Since then we've shopped at Buy-the-Kilo, just down the street at the Metro station, to top up the strong white flour. 'Strong flour' has plenty of gluten, needed for making most breads, and is made from durum wheat. This is what all regular flour in the US is made from, apparently, something I only learned in the past few years. We enjoy toast and home made jam on Saturday and Sunday mornings - in bed, to be completely decadent.

The last of the birthday flowers: lavender alliums and some sort of white filler flowers.

During the week, however, we have breakfast at the dining table. Following advice from a former blog Like Merchant Ships (she stopped writing her blog in 2010, but carried on at Tumblr until October last year) to avoid using commercial labels at the table, we have decanted porridge oats (oatmeal) and Grape Nuts into glass jars. Also my instant coffee. In winter we have hot porridge.

The circular metal tray on a hardboard place mat (a British thing, most place mats in the US are fabric) acts almost as well as a Lazy Susan (I wonder, who was Susan?). In addition to cereals, coffee and sweeteners are containers with Bill's 'medications' recommended un-officially by his consultant after he cracked a knee cap while running a couple of years ago: glucosamine and cod liver oil (he pays me no attention when I mention dioxin concentration in fish oils). His knee no longer bothers him - other than I think he drags that foot a bit and needs physio / exercises - and he's thinking of giving these meds a miss when they run out to see what happens. He buys them by the million on eBay. (I see he has put them in plastic food containers that still have a label - must try harder!)

As well as the circular tray, we have our good china and silver, a teapot (full of tea) for Bill and another pot of hot water for me. Bill likes to chop his fresh fruit each morning. I make a box of a wider variety of fruits - including some tinned peaches or fruit cocktail - on Sunday afternoon in preparation for the week. There is also a small creamer jug filled with the last of a wine bottle of orange syrup, or sometimes rose hip syrup, and a large jug of milk.

We eat, then drink hot beverages until we are sloshing, or out of conversation, and then get on with our day.

Changing Flowers

You may or may not remember that I got some gorgeous flowers for my birthday. I was a bit surprised that it was the carnations that died off first, though the roses looked a bit elderly from the start. At first all I did was to remove the dead carnations, rinse and trim the stems, scrub out the vase and replace it all with fresh water. (I'd forgotten that flowers require a fair amount of attention).

The other thing I did was to remove the lilies and put them in a vase by themselves. The strong smell didn't work very well at the dining table, which I chose as a location because it doesn't get direct sun and we spend a fair amount of time there, morning and evening. I put the vase of lilies in the North Wing (the small room off the hallway leading to the downstairs loo) thinking the smell would be the least obtrusive there. 

Bill opened a wing of the gate leg table in the hall and moved them there, saying the smell would dissipate sufficiently for him. He has an experience of surveying a house in which an elderly woman had died and not been discovered for an unfortunate length of time. Someone had attempted to hide the resulting smell with lilies and this association has remained with him. I don't like strong smells to interfere with the taste of my food, but I could live with a passing waft now and then.

When the next change of water was needed I didn't feel the flowers filled the blue jug well enough anymore, so I broke up the flowers into smaller containers: on the kitchen window sill, on the upstairs landing, in the living room (a bad idea as the damp weather has led me to turn on the fire and flowers don't like heat at all), as well as the dining table. 

They've all pretty much faded now and will need further culling to see if any further blooms are worth re-homing. I'm not sure whether two weeks is a great run for Bill's money, but they were glorious while they lasted.

Our next Women's Institute meeting for July will be a Zoom meeting with a florist and I'm looking forward to picking up some tips from her!

The Lodgers

On one of the really warm nights we had last month I opened both bedroom windows as we were getting ready for bed. The next morning Bill opened the curtains and remarked that we had a wasps' nest in the eve above the north side of the bay window. 

We debated who to call about this and Bill said he would consult a friend in the Long Distance Walkers' Association that he calls The Rat Man, as John works in extermination - and apparently has tons of fascinating stories to tell on long walks. 

I watched them for a while and decided these weren't wasps, they were bees. This complicated the matter. I'm ready to kill wasps but not bees. I'd rather not kill either, frankly, but my home has priority over wasps. I've already had uninvited guests in my roof and it was a real nuisance. 

The Rat Man's reply was that by the time a bee hive is noticed, the activity is at its peak and they'll move along by themselves eventually. So I'm happy to leave it a few months. Come autumn I may need him to come over with his tall ladder and remove them to another location so I can repair the tiny droop in a corner piece of wood that allowed them entry. I'm learning that triangular pieces of wood are vulnerable locations.

In the meantime we co-exist reasonably well. They only seem to buzz around in daylight when it gets warm enough, so opening the windows at night isn't a problem especially since we keep the curtains shut for privacy. Our favourite sitting place is below them, next to the front porch where it is sunny and sheltered, but they don't come visit much. I had one light on my leg once but a casual wave of my hand sent him away. I'm terrified of wasps but bees don't bother me. They kindly share their flowers with me. 

Bill refers to these creatures as The Lodgers; he seems to have a nickname for most things. This reminds me of the film Gosford Park. There is a scene with Jeremy Northam and Maggie Smith that always makes me smile. If you've not seen Gosford Park, I highly recommend it. 

From Some Walks

I've skipped over a lot of photos taken while out on walks. I'm not walking miuch these days. I've been trying to get out and run / jog / hobble short distances each morning when I wake, sometime between 5 and 6 AM. It took a lot of time to get used to doing this first thing but experience tells me that a) I'll put it off indefinitely unless it is first thing and b) there are a lot fewer people out to dodge at that time in the morning. I'm hoping to increase my time/distance gradually in the coming months, but we'll see how it goes. One thing is for sure, it doesn't facilitate taking more photos. So I'll share a few here:

Does anyone know what this plant is? It grows well in the gardens right on the seafront at Cullercoats. I really like the grey-green foliage.

St Paul's Church in Whitley Bay, is beautifully lit, only one of the lights was malfunctioning and the flashing light / giant tree gave it more a Frankenstein air than one of lovely serenity.

 Monkseaton moon at dusk.

This lighthouse on the roundabout at Whitley Bay is a piece of art, perhaps 6-7 feet tall.

Tulips against a stone wall at Marden. I'm sure Bill thought I was barmy, dashing off to snap this. I just love stone walls ... and pink tulips. 

And besides, beauty comforts me.

A Practically Perfect Day

Sunday was my birthday. I turned 64 (Bill says yes he will). Brits (or perhaps it's just Bill) don't seem to treat birthdays with quite the enthusiasm that I grew up with. So to avoid being disappointed I gave Bill very specific instructions, along with all the information he needed to carry them out. He was very good and did as asked, even coming up with a surprise. 

The things I said I wanted were:

1. Flowers in pink, white, purple or blue, no yellow, orange or red (from Pansy's Florist in North Shields). An enormous bouquet was delivered on Saturday. They were parked in water at the time and then on Sunday I enjoyed trimming and arranging them in a large blue jug, a souvenir of a day trip to Juarez, Mexico back in the 1980s.

2. Two books: The Cut Flower Patch, by Louise Curley and The Late Scholar, by Jill Paton Walsh (from Waterstones). The former was a whim, but a good whim as the book is delicious. The latter turned out to be a re-read, but one from so long ago that it was only faintly familiar and I'd no clue about the plot. Bill was happy to buy this as he is also a fan of this author's Lord Peter Wimsey books.

I've been re-arranging my fabrics to improve access (and because they all came tumbling down a couple of weeks ago when I pulled out the wrong piece of the stack). This has allowed me to set aside any patchwork cotton fabric I come across, all of it given to me as I'd never pay that much for fabric! I've slowly zigzagged the raw edges and put them through the wash in preparation for making masks. Bill does most of the ironing around here, so he's had the pleasure of ironing all these colourful prints. He cleverly used one to wrap my two books.

We pottered around with plants for a while in the morning and then as the sun came around to the front of the house I put on shorts and sat in the nearly private front garden while Bill went out for a long walk. He's been doing some sort of challenge set up by the Long Distance Walkers Association; he did 220 miles in May. I put up my feet, read my Paton Walsh book and sipped a gin and tonic in the sun. Bill surprised me when he came home, handing me a small tub of ice cream from the Bistro du Parc, a local cafe that has supplied us with milk, cake, wine, beer and the occasional sandwich or loaf of break - and now ice cream. I didn't ask for a birthday cake, as it's a lot of bother for something I don't like that much, but ice cream is always welcome!

3. Steak for dinner (from Nicholson's butchers in Whitley Bay). We have steak perhaps once or twice a year, so it is a very special treat. Since I grew up in cattle country with a father who loved a nice rare steak, I have particular views about how steaks should taste. For probably the first 20 years I lived in Britain I was always disappointed in any steaks I bought, no matter how carefully they were cooked. I saved trips to Spain or to the Canary Islands or the occasional Venezuelan restaurant I found in London to order steaks that were well worth the price. Then we found an Italian restaurant in Jesmond , Avanti, that knew about steaks and they told me where to buy aged steaks in Gateshead, but I've forgotten the name of the place. It was ridiculously expensive anyhow, just as cheap to eat out instead. We've never shopped at Nicholson's but their steaks were wonderful, even without the benefit of steak tenderiser. We also had a vegetable salad and a baked potato with butter to go with the rather large and very tender, medium rare steaks, all accompanied by red wine.

After dinner we watched my birthday present from Vivien, the Downton Abbey film. Bill pretended he wasn't that fussed about seeing it, but given that he practically binged on the six series once I made him watch the first one, I paid him no attention. (And all our other television viewing is dictated by his rather narrow tastes, I this was another small treat for me). We did enjoy seeing it, but it seemed to all move very quickly and it felt as though the camera was much further away than usual. This meant not getting the pleasure from seeing the clothes as much. I told Vivien that I am guessing Fellowes had actually written another series but then just crammed it all into the one film. 

On Saturday evening, getting ready to watch some old Lewis detective programme on telly, I happened to look out the bedroom window to see a man walking past on the opposite side of the road. He was walking slowly and seemed rather meditative and I mentally sent him happy thoughts in case he was sad. Then all the sudden my friend Pat popped into view as she was crossing from in front of my house over to the man I suddenly realised was her husband, Stephen. I knocked on the window and she turned around so I was able to wave and throw kisses, which she returned. I went downstairs to tell Bill and spotted that she'd put a birthday card through my door. 

So all in all I had a wonderful birthday - even the weather cooperated. I had loads of birthday wishes from friends and family and I spent the day doing only things that I love. I can't actually think of any birthday that I've enjoyed more, in spite of - or perhaps because of? - the current lockdown restrictions. 

I think knowing what I do really enjoy is useful knowledge, along with a habit of having relatively modest desires. I hope your birthdays in future are wonderful too!