Awright Treacle?

Er, not really, no.

On Wednesday night I got it into my head that I wanted to make a treacle tart.  I had leftover lemons, sans their zesty coats thanks to my Christmas Cake adventures over the weekend and some old bread kicking about.  'Yay for me' I thought to myself - 'I will not waste these bountiful items, I shall turn them into a beauteous pudding.' 

Meh. 

Really, I should have known better.  I was almost scuppered by my lack of double cream, but a quick flit to the shop on Wednesday before work solved that one.  On Thursday morning, before Oliver even surfaced, I had made a sweet pastry (never before been attempted in the house of Janice) and was bouncing around riding high on my achievement - I was officially Ahead Of The Game. 

I thought that the recommended thirty minutes chilling time was a mere guideline, and alllowed it to stretch into five hours.  It came out of the fridge as heavy as concrete and with a similar malleable texture.  Buggeration.  It took a lot of coaxing (and swearing) to get it 'rolled' out and into the tin and baked blind.  Baking blind, to my mind, is adding another process into an already lengthy affair.  Tsk.  I despise cooking things which involve more than one step.  Mashed potato falls into this category. 

At this point of the day, my kitchen was filled with the smell of baking pastry, Oliver was happily painting jars for Christmas purposes and Radio 2 was doing its soothing thing in the background.  It was at this point that my SiL knocked on the door.  I was thrilled to be chanced upon with my pinny on being motherly, housewifely and homely all at once.  The atmosphere was calm and welcoming and spoke nothing of the pastry tantrum which had passed before it nor the filling fury that was to come. 

I discovered that the bread I intended to use for breadcrumbs was mouldy and smelt dangerous to humankind and then I knocked over the little pot containing my squeezed lemon juice.  Through gritted teeth I announced to Oliver that another trip to the shops was necessary.

Fast forward several more hours, and the thing was finally ready to consume.  My calculations on the carb content of a sixth of this tart meant that we were giving Oliver a lot of insulin.  It was either wrongly calculated, or badly timed, because his blood sugar plummeted severely enough to cause him blurry vision and sent us into a bit of a panic of loading him up with fruit juice, milk and biscuits.  Hence at 2am his blood sugar was as high as it was when he went into hospital in March at diagnosis.

Treacle tart will not feature on the menu for some time.

I will not bore you with the tale of Friday's baking efforts where I put a cake in the oven only to turn around and find a carefully weighed out bowl of ground almonds on the worktop.  These should have been in the cake, in the oven.  My scream was heard in space. 

Fuxom. 

a different path

 

 

Like little boats upon the sea

tossed and turned around are we.

 

 

I wrote this many years ago as part of a longer piece during a period of poetry-churning angst.  I don't even know if it is original, truth be told, I didn't and don't care.

 

Point is,  I am reading a book called 'Overcoming Anger And Irritability'.  My reason for this seemingly very personal and exposing post is that over the last few days, I have come to realise Something Very Important- for me a bit of a light bulb moment, and these always feel great. 

 

I have struggled all my life with anger, mostly driven by irritability and intolerance.  It has blighted my friendships and relationships.  I have been unable to control my annoyance at many, many situations and it is always blindingly obvious to all and sundry thereby polluting the trust and warmth needed to make and maintain human connections.  To say I am fed up being this way is an understatement.  I have spent many hours seeking counselling to help me be different in this respect - This aspect of my personality is tiring - and I am so very tired of it. 

 

I grew up in an atmosphere of (not physical) volatility.  My father was (is) very vocal, narcissistic and big with the old emotions.  My mother decided early on to keep her mouth shut, only entering into screaming matches when it suited her.  My brothers and I sadly seemed to gravitate towards the open shouty and angry lifestyle adopted by my father, and a childhood peppered with shows of great fury and great forgiveness ensued.  Whoever shouted loudest got seen.  There is nothing wrong with anger - it is a very useful and powerful emotion to have in ones arsenal.  However, the way in which I experience it is damaging for all concerned. 

 

Familiar with yelling about whatever crap is upsetting me at any given moment is second nature to me.  Apologising afterwards with great feeling and genuine warmth is easy for me.  This way of behaviour served me very well living in my cosseted family environment.  The open shows of conflict were the way we lived. 

 

Fast forward to my thirties, and suddenly open displays of temper are not OK.  Not only are they not OK, they are not forgiven, forgotten or acceptable on any level in my new marriage.  I find myself in a new realm of fear.  I find myself not knowing how to behave, not having the 'right' tools in the box to do the job in hand.  Now I suddenly find myself taking myself off to counselling because I am in a relationship I desperately want to be in, but realise I cannot without some drastic changes.  Over the next ten years I change a bit, I see my family and childhood in a different light, I calm the raging at my husband which drove him into an impenetrable shell of misery for days.  I have a son whom I adore and would go to the ends of the earth for to give him the love and security he deserves.  Both of these people have suffered and continue to suffer the unhappiness of my anger. 

 

My book talks about triggers to anger.  I recognise them all.  In fact I can feel my anger stirring when I read them.  Then there is 'appraisal', then response.  From what I have read thus far, my appraisal stage is ill-conceived and too instant to act upon before the response is rearing its very ugly head. 

 

Anyhoo, to get (eventually) to the point.  In reading up to the halfway point in this book, it has dawned on me that I could decide to respond differently to these triggers.  I have begun to see that my belief that everyone is out to get me with deliberate ignorance and provocation is simply unfounded.  When this realisation struck I felt like laughing out loud.  A true lol.  A wave of happiness and relief washed over me - I can be calm.  I can - I really can have the life I want - it is not out of my reach, it is achievable.  All this time I have been feeling angry and looking to Mark to be different.  All this time I have carried resentment that he has provoked me and not made things easier for me.  And all this time I could have just appraised things differently - and saved us both a whole heap of anguish.  

 

I really want to not feel like a little boat upon the sea.  I want to steer my own ship through choppy waters.  The sudden realisation that I always could have feels like an icy wind blowing across the years. 

 

On y va.   

that was the week that was

This week I did a spot of poll-clerking at a local polling station.  When I say 'a spot of', what I actually mean is that I was stuck in the same room with two complete strangers for 15 hours handing out ballot papers for the Police and Crime Commissioners election.  Yawn.  It is a very, very, very, very, very long day.  I ate lots of food, drank lots of caffeine and focused very hard on the dosh I would get paid for such tedium.  It isn't megabucks, but in terms of being paid to sit on my arse all day, it's pretty damn fine.

The book which I downloaded onto my kindle the night before hadn't synched.  I have to say that this didn't surprise me one iota, and so was forced to read the books I already have loaded on there.  These include the Works Of Dickens, Pride And Prejudice and the Holy Bible.  Because they were all free.  I got through a couple of chapters of P&P, but find it quite spoilt by the images and shrill tones of Alison Steadman as Mrs Bennet floating around stubbornly inside my head.  I can certainly see the merit in having read books before the power of TV/film restrict your own imagination.  To this end I am happy to have read all the Harry Potter stories before they came out as films, and sad that I didn't read the Twilight saga before devouring the DVDs. 

I also cracked on with the Navajo ripple.  There has been much debate about the inclusion of white in this colour scheme (well, between me and my SiL anyway) and Wednesday saw me taking a panicked 15 mile round trip to buy said ball of white before my sentence at the polling station on Thursday.  I am extremely unsure about this bloody white.  In fact, I have never been so inclined to frog back a blanket in my life - it really looks wrong to me, but my polling sidekicks (both blokes who clearly regarded me as some sort of woollen oddity) said the white was fine, and in fact, one said as I draped it across the polling booths for maximum effect, 'those colours are very North American Indian aren't they?' I could have kissed him. 

So, I am still unsure.  Oliver said it's fine, and past history has shown his colour choices to be more on the ball than my own, so it stays.  For now. 

What do you think?

Today I made my Christmas cake.  I have deviated from my normal recipe, and gone with Queen Mary Berry's cake, largely because I saw it on someone else's blog and I am easily internet-influenced.  What swung it for me though was the tin preparation.  I hate pissing around with tin prep, and this one seemed a tad easier because there was no fiddling and farting with reams of brown paper on the outside as well as lining the inside as I normally do.  I had a bit of a moment after it went in the oven when I came across two carefully cut out parchment squares lying on the kitchen worktop.  Cripes!  Did I line the base of the tin??!! 

 

After some bad swear words and deep breathing, I managed to convince myself that I did base-line the tin, and that all will be well.  Guess I'll find out in nearly FIVE hours.  It's been in four hours now and I can barely smell it cooking because it's on such a low temperature.  It would probably cook just as fast if I shone a bloody torch at it for the same length of time.

After this drama, I took a sulky stomp down the garden to clear it of leaves:

What a grim job this turned out to be.  I have blogged my garden antipathy before, but really, some of these annual shitty jobs don't even register on my radar.  I only went out to do it because Mark hinted that it needed to be done and I felt duty-bound.  It was cold outside and I had a headache when I started.  All that physical raking and wheelbarrowing manky leaves and apples around didn't help.  The two paracetamol and litre of water I drank halfway through seemed to though.  Ha ha.

Ta da indeed.

Oh, and yesterday I took Oliver to see Breaking Dawn part 2.  I have to say, it was, in my opinion, rather entertaining and most excellent.  It is the first one of the whole saga I have seen at the cinema.  In fact, I only got wind of the whole Twilight thing because my niece badgered my to watch the first one on DVD.  I put in on one day because I wanted some background while I was scrapbooking, and it was great - bit different, and interesting.   It reminds me of my Harry Potter introduction - I was not one bit interested in it at all, but my stepson had The Prisoner Of Azkaban for school reading and kept on at me to read it. I reluctantly started it one evening in the bath, and hey presto, I was off to Waterstones the very next day.  I am, I am realising, startlingly open to persuasion. 

 

 

This is one persistent moggy.

new projects and hateful housekeeping

My new ripple blanket in lovely muted shades of Debbie Bliss eco yarn was just not working out.  I find cotton difficult to work with and I seem to periodically forget this, and keep buying the bloody stuff.  Sooooo, I have had a rethink, and when I came across one of my Babette blanket squares I was struck by how lovely and bold these colours are together.  It is now Autumn/Winter and with this in mind I have gone back to good ol' Stylecraft and chosen this colour palette:

To the right is the inspirational Babette square, and to the left are the beginnings of my New ripple.  I am calling this the Navajo blanket because a) that is the name which popped into my head when I chose these colours, and b) a Google search reveals that some of these colours (black, turquoise, yellow and white) are actually considered colours of the Navajo, so I feel vindicated. 

Crochet aside,  I have decided to pull myself together a bit.  I have been spiralling down into gloom a little too much lately, what with being ill, and family and stuff.  I have still been keeping on top of Oliver's life - all is well there, but for my own stuff - missing work through illness, not having the house 'organised', not feeling on top of 'going somewhere' - is starting to overwhelm me.  I don't run a pristine home - housework bores the tits off of me truth be told, although I derive a great sense of satisfaction from when it is done thoroughly.  The vision I like to give the world of me is of a laid back cool housewife who cleans when I absolutely have to because we might get some sort of disease from a rare mould growing in our dust bowl home.  The reality is a me who gets quite freaked out by the enormity of the task of cleaning and therefore can't start.  The rare times I do, I don't stop, and hours pass with me hoovering and wiping and  bleaching.  And then the guilt starts again.  It fucking annoys me.  And this house is terrible for mould and it depresses me intensely. 

In my first marriage, in my early 20's sans kids career days, I got into a routine of getting up on a Saturday morning, going for a run (I was living through my training-because-I-felt-guilty-if-I-didn't time back then) dusting, polishing, and hoovering the entire house and finishing off with sterilising the bathroom.  Only then could I allow myself to go out anywhere or meet anyone and enjoy my weekend.  It got so that I could not enjoy Saturday until these rituals were performed.  I did try rebelling, and not doing it once,  but the feeling of failure, guilt and disgust were too much to bear.  Once the marriage was over, I swore I would never again be a slave to keeping house in such a fashion.  Which has left Mark feeling a little cheated I expect.  I am sure he must feel he has ended up with the dregs of me - the older, chubbier, slobbier me.  But in my defence, I was more mental back then and quite unsuited to the compromises needed to form and maintain relationships.  I'm still not very good at it... 

You can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs.

Anyhow, I have drifted off piste again, and so would like to bring you back into the room - and - back into the room. 

I leave you with Flash, the cat with the annoyingly persistent and loud miaow, who has taken a shine to cosying up to Oliver at any given opportunity.

Laters.

This is a post just for me. Self-indulgent, but one I want to write, and therefore will make no apology for.  Read it if you will, or skip it, I don't mind in the least.

A few weeks ago, my cousin, age 47, died suddenly of a massive heart attack.  He was, to all intents and purposes healthy, fit and well, and living a relatively stress-free and blameless, childless life filled with friends, family and pursuing his own interests which included photography, ecology and a massive restoration project for which he was well known and respected.

Bizarre.  And a very dark time for his parents, my Aunt and Uncle, who are still very much alive and kicking.  No one should attend the funeral of their own child.  And it was vile in that sense, but a good funeral (in my thankfully limited experience).  It seems he had loads of friends - which apparently surprised my Aunt and Uncle, who thought he was a very quiet and private person.  It was of some comfort to them,  I would imagine that there was standing room only at the back on the day of the funeral.  His best friend from childhood gave a eulogy talking about Pollyanna, and played the Glad Game which was very touching.  The vicar, who said although Tim (my cousin) was not religious, he respected Christian beliefs, and the service was so thoughtfully and sincerely given, I thought that he had known him personally, but it seems he has only met with my Aunt and Uncle a few times recently about the funeral.  He talked about immortality being seen in the ways a person has touched your life - maybe in things they have said to you or in experiences you have had with them.  I am sure these are bog standard things to be said at funerals, but I can see that there is some comfort to be drawn from them in the future. Now there's a bloke who's good at his job. 

This is my fathers side of the family who live in Bristol, (about an hour or so away from us)  and although we have not seen much of them over the years, I like them a lot, and found my cousin a profound and interesting bloke.  On the day I shed tears, mostly because I was sitting in the row behind my Uncle, whom I like and respect enormously, and he was visibly heartbroken by having to attend his son's funeral. 

When I came home I looked on the internet out of interest at the project my cousin had been involved in - The Kings Weston Action Group - and I was bowled over by his involvement and his apparent popularity - and by his photographic skills which I stumbled across on his Flickr photostream.  I wish I had kept up a correspondence with him over the years.  I would have loved to have followed this project, and been a regular commenter on his photos.

I don't think there is anything I can say to end this post which can capture my feelings about this.  So there is this, the front of the order of service which my Uncle produced, because he is clever like that.

Edited to add: Thank you for the thoughtful comments I received on this post.  I have not published them as it felt unseemly to do so.  But I am glad of the kindness shown in your words.

A plop-di-doo-dah sort of weekend

We have returned from a break-ette in south Cornwall.  It was all a bit grim, truth be told, as Mark and I were ill all weekend.  Really, I am not ill that often, (despite all whingeing evidence to the contrary) but boy, almost every moment of the misery and gloom of it all seeps into every pore of my memory and colours the days dark and bleak. 

It all started off so well.  We stopped on the way down at Flambards, where we had never been before, thinking this to be an ace idea, since we had a friend of Oliver's with us this time.  Turns out he is one of those kids who doesn't go on rides.  Honestly, what is the matter with children these days.  I have a theory that too much indoor play and computer crap has rendered them soft and incapable of handling fairground rides at speed and spin.  We grew up being outside all the time and hence were incredibly physically active, on bikes, climbing through bushes and trees, playing tag-type games and generally became pretty robust.  Therefore rides of any sort were not to be feared as they were seen as an extension of the mindless physical play we already indulged in.  I have no memory of EVER choosing to stay inside to watch the TV!!!! Cripes what an idea.  We had three channels to choose from in black and white up until about 1978, video didn't exist and the internet a mere cursor on the horizon.  Hells Bells, it seems like the dark ages, it really does.

Anyway, I digress.  With Oliver's friend refusing point blank to partake of any thrills and spills, I went on this with him:

 

I think I should point out that I was feeling not ill at that time, and this was a bearable foray into white-knuckle world.  It was pretty high though.  One of those rides that suddenly plummets down from a great height.  I am a big fan of these.  I like that rush in the tummy and that sense of falling.  I will do a skydive one day. 

That's Mark down there, between my boots.  Ha ha.

The victorian village and England in the blitz were very good, and I wish I hadn't been feeling the first throes of quesiness, because I really love things like this, and had been looking forward to it.

Leaving there and on to Sea Acres, Oliver's friend suffered from travel sickness.  Bloody hell.  This I have sympathy with.  I absolutely don't mind at all - what I minded was that his mother hadn't said anything to me about it, and neither had he, but he admitted he had been sick on a coach before, and that he had a bag with him for vomit purposes.  This, in my opinion, is a vital piece of information which parents should pass on, as the consequences of potentially having puke in the car for the whole weekend are a) considerably vile and b) considerably expensive to get valeted as there would be no way I would be cleaning that up.  In fact, I am pretty sure his mum asked about the travel sick issue when he rang her in the evening, judging by his mumbled response 'yeah, a little bit'.  I was fuming about this all weekend.  I would have liked a heads up about his potential heads down. 

Skimming the details, the weekend was spent with Mark and I barely managing the essentials of looking after two boys with whoever felt the least ill at the time flinging together the crappiest and simplest of meals for them - pasta and a jar of pesto almost defeated me on Saturday night.  Bless them, they had a good time being together and at least got to swim, play crazy golf and Halo lego endlessly.  With the arrival of the super plops on Sunday morning, I was veeerrrrrry glad to see home on Sunday afternoon.

Nuff said.

Last night was bonfire night, Guy Fawkes night, whatever.  My childhood memories of the 5th November are full of real live bonfires in our garden, which started when it got dark, and went on for hours.  Every year we tried to cook potatoes in it, every year they were still raw despite being in the inferno for ever.  We had fireworks but a few times, as they were costly and caused much grumbling from my father about value for money.  I know where he is coming from.  Yesterday, after desperate pleas from Oliver,  I purchased some from Sainsburys.  I got the sense that it was akin to buying cocaine.  It was so cloak and dagger.  I am glad I had Oliver with me or I felt I would have had to prove they were for 'personal use' and that I wouldn't stick them up someone's exhaust pipe or try to light them all at once in my handbag with a blowtorch. 

Unsurprisingly they were a let down.  Our rockets expended so much energy getting up into the air that they didn't so much explode as just drop out of the sky.  The ones labelled 'laser blast' and 'dragons breath' had us yelling down the garden 'is that it?' as they gave off as much light display as a swan vesta at two hundred paces and the sound level of a packet of crisps being opened down the road.  Still, there was one which let off such a loud bang over our heads that I screamed and virtually threw myself down in terror onto the decking.  They are made of real gunpowder you know.  Anyhow, there was ironic giggling to be enjoyed and there were sparklers - there always are, and Mr Pumpkin got another outing. 

Next year we will save ourselves a few quid and just set the shed on fire instead.