Best Christmas Prezzies - Part II

There are at least two other fabulous Christmas presents I must mention:

Having confessed to being hopelessly in love with this TV series - even if I did only discover in at the next-to-last-episode (so typical of me), it was an obvious score for Bill to indulge me with the DVD set.  I was very controlled and only watched one episode per day, starting on Boxing Day.  At this writing, I have one or two more to go.  I've no doubt I will start over again with episode one, and enjoy them all over again, only I'll be taking notes and possibly making sketches.  

After only a few exposures, I practically salivate like Pavlov's dogs at the sound of the music that introduces each episode.  I'm not going to be given doggie biscuits, obviously, but I am about to receive visual treats that flood my brain with endorphins.  I won't likely ever have floor-to-ceiling windows with folding shutters, but I could manage white roses in a crystal vase.  I won't ever have servant's bells in my house (though George and Elsie, next door, had them in the smallest bedroom when they first bought their house 47 years ago); but  I can acquire the wooden letter box and I have a small version of a chandelier (alright, yes, it's from B&Q) in my dining room.  I don't really need a copper pot, but Bill has copper teapots on display (they need polishing, of course) and I could conceivably own a Labrador Retriever some day.  Those are just some of the beautiful things shown during the opening credits, but they are inspiring all the same.

The other fabulous present I got was a mantle clock.  When I was working, I made a point not to wear my wrist watch at the weekend to emphasise the fact that I didn't have to be any where at a certain time.  Now that I don't go to work every day I rarely wear it at all unless I'm going out and will want to know the time.  I know I could use my mobile phone as a watch, but since I also equate that with work, I rarely carry it or even keep it charged; can you tell how much I hated work?  Anyhow, since the only clocks we have in the house are in the living room and the kitchen, I decided it would be nice to collect some mantle clocks for the 3 other rooms that have mantles.  Only, when it came to putting it up, the dining room mantle is already quite busily occupied and the buffet cabinet seemed the right place.  You can see it in the last picture here.

What's your favourite Christmas present?

Bestest Christmas Prezzies!

The people who know me best know I love books, so I got a stack of 'em:

The Happiness Project was on my wish list.  I've been reading Gretchen Rubin's blog for months now and so although I knew I'd be familiar with much of the book's content, it did give a bigger picture of how she went about this project.  About every other page she would write something that I'd have to laugh out loud about how many traits we share.  Love of books and pens for two, but also her interest in understanding spiritual ideas - why she thinks non-religious people read biographies - and her compulsion to take notes for no explicable reason.  In some ways I felt I got a book written by my unknown twin.  Then again, I would never have gone to law school, would be unlikely to chose to live in NYC and certainly wouldn't have lived  hundreds of miles from my parents when they were living.   

I've already finished this book and am looking forward to reading it a second time - this time, taking notes!

Earlier this year, my friend Vivien sent me a newspaper clipping about Kirstie Allsop's upcoming TV series, Homemade Home, in which the presenter/author wanted to encourage people to furnish their homes with second hand and handcrafted items.  We were both sure I would enjoy watching it.  Then I went and completely forgot about it until Vivien and I met up again and the series was over.  Bill and I did find 5 of the 6 programmes on ITV iPlayer and I did enjoy them, particularly mixed in with watching Amanda Vickery's At Home with the Georgians, on BBC iPlayer.  (I took loads of notes on all those shows!)  As I told Vivien, the minute I opened this present, I sat down and devoured it like a bag of crisps. 

You may or may not have ever heard of A.A. Fair.  It's a pseudonym used by Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the Perry Mason stories.  I'm pretty sure most people have heard of Perry Mason.  He and Della are pretty cool, but I always preferred Donald Lam and Elsie.    Actually, Bertha Cool owns the detective agency and hires Donald, who later becomes a partner.  Elsie is the faithful secretary.  The stories are set in the 1930's.  Mom and Daddy used to have stacks of these paperbacks along with Perry Masons and various science fiction authors.  I never really got into sci-fi, but I've never gotten over detective stories.  I also got a copy of Lam to the Slaughter for Christmas.   I hope to collect the more reasonably priced books. 

Simon bought this one for me.  I was fairly stunned when I opened it, wondering how he managed to have so much insight into what I would like.  Then I realised it was probbly on my Amazon wish list.   I put all sorts of stuff on that list to review when I make my wish list.  It's amazing how many things I tag that don't really appeal when I go back and look at them again.  [A real lesson for me in not impulse buying, that.]  Just glancing through it, I had some doubts but now that I've started reading it, I like it a lot.  The topics she's selected as 'exquisite' (from a Latin word about seeking out) reflect her personal interests, not always mine, but I'm enjoying it all the same. 

Bill gave me this book, a compilation of articles from the 1930's in The Daily Mail, a British newspaper.  This cover, listed in Amazon.com is much prettier than the British version, but I'm sure the content is the same and it's very fun.  I may have to share a few recipes or fashion ideas with you.

On the day of this writing [28 Dec], Bill had gone on an un-cluttering frenzy, the likes of which I've never seen him undertake before.  Unfortunately he discovered that much of what we had considered to be 'his' space was in fact taken up with my stuff, so his complaints - the verity of which I've never denied - are entirely justified.  A little while later, I was watching a video and he came up to hand me a book.  I pressed 'pause' and he explained that he'd been searching for a lost Christmas present, this book by Clarissa Dickson Wright.  I didn't ask for this, I've no idea what it's about, but I'll let you know if I can recommend it.

Technically, not a Christmas present, perhaps, unless one I gave to myself.  When Simon was up the other weekend and we visited the Flea Market, I spotted this and another book about Pre-Raphaelite art.  Bill is nuts about both, but particularly the latter and so I bought the two books - one for him and one for me.  I promise I'll share with him - and perhaps with you as well.

Again, not a present, just a loan, but I've just finished this Kinsey Millhone mystery.  Just as with Gretchen Rubin, I have loads in common with Kinsey:  I do the occasional run (she runs 5 days a week), we both love Quarter Pounders with Cheese almost better than life itself and we're both given to clipping away at our own hair with only the occasional professional hair cut.  Never mind, I have a couple of new hair dressers to check out, ones that do 'dry' haircuts; after all, why do I need to pay for someone to wash my hair when I just did that myself?

So you see why I've been having such a wonderful time of late, with so many great things to read.  Of one thing I'm pretty certain, if there is a Heaven, it has a great library.  


Don't you agree?

Happy New Year!

I love the 1st of January!  Not only because Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve are all behind me, but there is a whole new year of blank pages in front of me.  I love new beginnings - New Year, birthdays, new seasons - just like I used to love the first day of a new school year.  It was scary but also exciting.  Nothing beats a new notebook, pens and books.  

Not only is it a new year, but a whole new chapter, with Bill soon to be semi-(as in about 90%) retired.  I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with his time and how his retirement influences what we do together.  

All this exuberance gets dulled down to my usual level by about mid-February, sure, but right now I'm full of optimism.  And today, I'm going to enjoy writing 1/1/11 (feeble, I know).

Happy 2011! 

First Footers

On some of the first few New Years Eve's I wound up at Ray and Norma's party.  There wasn't a lot went on in the lead up to midnight, but it was an excuse to get 'gussied up' and I knew several of the other guests, so it was pretty comfortable.  There were loads of snack-y foods and the odd drink, but alcohol wasn't the point.

The point seemed to be for everyone to gather in a circle at midnight to sing Auld Lang Syne and then to admit a First Footer.  This was something I'd not heard of before and I thought I ought to mention it to you in case you've not heard it either.  Ray would seek the tallest dark haired male amongst the company and send him out before midnight, only to answer the door when he knocked and to invite him back in soon after!  The idea was that if a tall, dark man was the first person to step across your threshold in the New Year and this person carried with him a lump of coal, a loaf of bread or a bottle of whiskey - this is a Scottish tradition, remember - then one could reasonably expect to have good fortune in the coming year.  

Geordies often seem to pick up Scottish ideas, but according to Wikipedia, other parts of England have picked up their own versions of this tradition and another website talks about this tradition in the 19th century in Kansas and Minnesota.  Bill said as a youth he and his friends would visit all the houses in the street, serving as first footers and being invited in for a drink.  It was good for a laugh and a neighbourly thing to do. 

I expect we'll be in the street singing at midnight as we were last year and, if Elsie feels up to it, visiting at George and Elsie's afterwards.  All the neighbours I know, mind, are bald and/or grey so they'll need to find someone further afield for their good luck.  Not that I pay much attention to First Footing.  However, I have my black-eyed peas soaking and they'll be in the crock pot with some onion and ham, ready to eat on New Year's Day for our 2011 luck!

Creature Comforts

Essays in this chapter, the last post about Simple Pleasures, include:

Grooming the dog

In pursuit of the purple emperor (watching butterflies)

Porcine pleasures (pigs, apparently, make good pets?)

Lambing at Wimpole

Walking the dog

Collecting the eggs

In praise of zoos

Owls at night

Other posts about this book can be found here:

Pleasures of the Table

A Sense of Place

Talking and Ruminating
The Great Outdoors
Hearth and Home

I can tell you that Brits really love their dogs; I think that every time I see someone huddled up in a raincoat, shoulders hunched against the cold and wet, walking their dog, morning and evening.  It's a common sight.

Strangely enough, allotments 'gardens' aren't always given over to growing food or flowers, some allow poultry and some folks love their fowls.  Pigs are also said to make marvelous pets and lambs bouncing around in the spring are adorable, but I don't want to own any or be responsible for them.  Still, I know that whether grooming a pet or observing an unusual creature, there is a lot of pleasure to be had from animals.  I only have to think about warm, furry puppies and I feel better.

I love dogs and would love to have one again.  I'm just not certain we're in a position to be completely responsible dog owners just now.  We enjoy talking about the possibilities, though.  Bill favours Jack Russells because they are clever and small.  I think Golden or Labrador Retrievers are the best friends in the world, they are so good natured.  We recently read that the retired greyhound/ whippet/ lurcher charity near us need help finding homes or fostering dogs, because of the cold weather.  Once I took a dog, though, I'm certain I wouldn't wish to give it back.

I would have to learn to walk it, mind.  For all my years in the States, the dog was just let outside in the back yard to its business.  Now that ours is all brickwork or vegetable garden, that wouldn't work here.   The neighbours have a King Charles Spaniel who is so fat and lazy they have to drag it down the street.  I worried that he was too old and tired until I saw him springing up the street on the return.  He's just a homebody, I suppose.  Other neighbours have a grand-dog that their Audi-driving daughter drops off each morning.  It's a huge short-haired black ball of muscle, some sort of bull dog, named 'Lulu'.  With a name like that I think it should be required to sport a pink tutu, or at least a pink collar.  Lulu drags Sarah down the street twice a day.  Sarah says it's great exercise. 

I've had three dogs that were mine.  One was Pepe, a toy poodle that I got for Christmas when I was 7 or 8.   (His registered name was Mon Ami Petite Pepe - nauseating, isn't it?) He didn't last long.  That summer I was hit by a car and spent a couple of weeks in hospital recovering from a ruptured kidney.  Upon returning home - to my Grandmother's as it happened - I contracted scarlet fever.  Things coming in threes, Mom had the sad chore of telling me Pepe had died from leptospirosis, a disease for which there was no vaccine back then. 

It was another couple of years before Mom's old friend, Jack, had me come out for a visit to see the puppies his Border Collie, Princess, had birthed.  Their father was a standard-sized silver poodle that lived nearby.  I remember riding home from his house in Shawnee, in the front seat of his van with a lap full of drooling puppies, three or four there must have been.  It was all I could do to keep them in my lap and me on the seat (this was long before the days of seat belts).  We kept the one that came out from under Mom's couch to play when I got down on the floor and called.  Being the daughter of a Princess, she was named Duchess.  Of course, Dutch and I were inseparable for many years.  She was without question the smartest dog I ever had.  I left her at Mom's when I moved away from home, barely being able to look after myself, fledgling bird that I was.  She died of old age in Mom's lap, one summer day in the back yard.  

Duchess

My Golden Retriever was a gift from husband #1. Sunny was short for 'Shelley's Golden Sunrise', only he ate his registration papers before they got filed.  He was beautiful and just as good natured as Dutch, but not terribly smart.  Maybe the problem was that I worked full time by then and didn't train him soon enough.  He just didn't seem able to catch on initially and by the time he had sufficient attention span, he was so large that he was difficult to control.  I managed to teach him basic manners and left it at that.  Sunny was a homing dog, and when I divorced and moved to another house, he kept jumping the fence and going back to the old house.  I'd drive over looking for him and always found him on the front porch.  Eventually, he got the idea that I'd got custody of him.  

Sunny

Unfortunately, this homing instinct struck again when we moved to Salt Lake City.  He disappeared only a couple of weeks after I'd started a new job, with no leave and 17 animal shelters in the vicinity to visit, I never did find him again.  I hope someone recognized what a great dog he was and took him for their own.  Once I got a new husband, a surprise 20-month step son to raise, was finishing my master's degree and learning a new professional job, not to mention keep up with the laundry, Sunny didn't get much attention, not nearly as much has he'd been accustomed to.  I never blamed him for leaving, and this is why I've never got another dog.

I've only ever had one cat, Mom's last cat.  He never really had a name.  She considered 'Sammy' as her last cat, a female, was 'Samantha', but Mom never really settled on a name for this lovely white cat.  He didn't seem to need one, somehow.  He was the most affectionate cat I've ever encountered - more like a dog, really.  He would be waiting for me in the front yard when I pulled into the drive after work.  He would sit in my lap with one paw either side of my face and rub his cheek against mine, purring.  He also liked to wake me up by chewing on my hair, which was more painful than cute, but still was somehow endearing. I had to find him a new home to come to England, as I wasn't prepared to put him in quarantine for 6-months, the observation period for rabies, about which Britain is quite paranoid.  Giving up Mom's cat was probably the hardest thing I did to embark on this adventure.

Mom's cat

I won't have another pet until I know I can be a better owner.  I've always believed that children should grow up thinking they were desperately loved, just as I did.  I think exactly the same about dogs and cats.

The Xmas that Almost Wasn't

We've had a strange holiday season this year.  Seems like weather isn't the only thing that can shatter your plans - illness descended upon us as well.  Mind, Bill and I are both mostly OK.  He had a terrible cold and I've not caught it as bad, but my asthma is rather stirred up.  What disrupted our Christmas - which we celebrate with Bill's kids on Boxing Day - was some sort of tummy bug that was going around their mother's house.  Martin, Bill's son-in-law, wasn't able to join us, which meant even more leftovers:  Martin's appetite putting him in the Olympic class and us having catered for it.

Still we enjoyed seeing Sarah and Helen and doing our gift exchange.  The paper didn't quite fly as much with two people short, but we still had a good time. 

 

I'd finished off decorating that morning, putting the out the sequined table runner Mom made years ago.  

Rita had also made a red table runner with 4 matching napkins, but (I thought) we needed 5 napkins and the runner was too thick to allow the board place mats commonly used here in Britain.  I put Rita's runner on the bottom shelf of the serving table and then stitched the napkins together at the corners.  They just reached the length of the table and were thin enough to provide a sufficiently flat surface.  

 

While I was doing that, Bill was cooking.  We had ham, Brussels sprouts, peas and carrots, roasted potatoes and parsnips, cornbread stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie and Christmas pudding.   Makes my tummy ache just typing all that.

It was a quiet visit and they stayed until it was getting dark and then made their way back to Woolsingham.   Sarah was fast developing a sore throat and they planned to put on their jammies just as soon as they got back home.  

 

Big flannel pants with elastic waists are just the ticket this time of year, aren't they?

Merry Christmas!

With love from Shelley