Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

I’m sure anyone with a pulse has noticed that there has been a reasonable covering of snow about this last week. I wasn’t going to blog about it because snow is one of those phenomenon guaranteed to make the press, and most of the public incandescent with tales of their own self importance, and I for one am just not interested in playing that game.

The press has been full of stories of people “battling” their way to work (one man taking 8 hours to hitch his way from Kent to London) and these people are lauded as heroes. Why? What does your average desk jockey contribute to society that means they cannot stay at home for a few days rather than put the already stretched emergency and recovery services under more strain when they inevitably have to drag these people’s sorry backsides out of a ditch? People bringing their kids to work (for shame!!) and insisting that they have to make their meetings (right because otherwise civilisation as we know it would cease to exist, yeah?).

Personally, we have taken a contrary view, and judging by the number of other snowmen in the locality, so have plenty of other people: when the snow comes and the roads look like they’re going to rip you a new one do yourself and everyone else a favour and take the opportunity to rediscover your inner child.

Oops

It has been brought to my attention that I have singularly failed to mention my recent DIY triumph!!!

There are no words that need accompany this latest feat of engineering prowess so I will merely say BEHOLD ......

Creole Lady Marmalade

I'm probably just getting old and grumpy, but it recently occurred to me that jam just seems a little bit, well, childish. It seems to me a little like the breakfast equivalent of sticking your face in a Dib Dab and inhaling deeply. From now on, I’ll be dedicating my attention to jellies and marmalades which are far more grown up, and considerably less temperamental.

To celebrate this decision, and the short Seville Orange season, I decided to make some very grown up Seville Orange and Whiskey Marmalade.

I learned a few small lessons in the course of this latest venture to add to the cannon of housewifely knowledge:

1. Marmalade is made over 24 hours, and not in a Sunday afternoon as planned
2. Whiskey and boiling hot sugar are not the best of friends. Neither are they happy bedfellows with skin.

Other than that, the whole process seemed suspiciously easy and worryingly satisfying. I mean I had even sterilised the right number of jars and wait as I might for something to go wrong … it just didn’t!!

At the end of the second day I was left with a line of the most beautiful clear amber marmalade studded with shards of soft bitter peel. It was, quite frankly, a complete bloody triumph!! So much so I burned the roof off my mouth tasting the superheated marmalade until I was lacking pretty much any feeling in my chops ... and possibly a little longer too if I’m honest.

Oh and for any of you finding yourself overrun by squashes and pumpkins (it is the season after all) and wondering what to do with all those seeds and mush, I have a yummy way of making use of them.

Tip all the seeds and smoosh into a colander and wash until you’re left with just the seeds. Stick them on a tray and sprinkle liberally with salt. Stick the tray in a 150o oven for an hour and you will have an incredible snacky type food. Simples!!

Join me next time for more fun ways to chunk up this winter ….

Redressing the Balance

Just when you think the month can't possibly kick you in the butt any more, Karma takes pity and gives you a break.

This weekend Keith and I packed up the hounds and went to Maldon for the weekend for a mini fishing trip.

Despite too much wine and not enough sleep, we saddled up and moved out to the secret location scoped out by Cap'n Bill at stupid o'clock on Saturday morning.

It was chaotic, it was freezing, it was too bloody early, but imagine the sight as you reach the brow of the hill and lying there, like little gnarled lumps of manna, were oysters as far as the eye can see. Not attached to rocks and needing to be hacked off, not empty shells already guzzled by some predator, but proper living, honest to goodness oysters.

I looked at my companions for some kind of confirmation of what I'm seeing but all I saw were sleepy eyes and hyperactive hounds.

I must still be asleep then. It's not normal to feel so chuffing cold in one's sleep, but it must be so, because after the epic fail of previous foraging trips, surely Keith would be a little more excited about the prospect of as many free oysters as our little hands can carry.

Clearly I have underestimated the lure of the fish ... and the stomach. Keith isn't disinterested in the prospect of free oysters, he is just more interested in Lindsey and I cooking him a bacon roll and collecting bait before the tide comes in.

Well not I!!

I go on a collecting mission, only to find my best efforts thwarted by the fact that my hands are small and I had no bag to hand.

Still, I collected a decent haul which survived long enough for the second minor miracle of the day ... Keith and Bill cooked dinner!!!

Not just dinner, they paid luscious, aromatic justice to those oysters, turning them into an incredible grown-up version of surf and turf with an immense dipping sauce.

Sunday evening came with another redressing of the Karmic Balance ... our bathroom window was smashed.

Well in actual fact what happened was we came home, Keith went into the bathroom while I put things away and noticed a note had been put through our door. The note was from the secretary of the social club apologising for the smashing of our window and wanting to pay for a new one.

When I mentioned to Keith that he might want to turn around and look at the window I was met with the sort of surprise I would have expected if I had just informed him an elephant had moved in for the winter.

How you can spend five minutes in a room and notice a hole the size of a fist in the window is beyond me, but there it is.

So in just a few short days, life has once again proven that sometimes, the best things come if you keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.

Oooh and one last thing: this is a photo of the best Christmas Gift I have ever received, a sign loving made for me by my wonderful husband. It says better than anything I could ever write what FTC is about.

Just in case you wondered, yes those are bits of Volkswagens. Did you really expect anything else?

January - Who's stupid idea was that then?

January really is a rotten month, with the dark and the gloom and the cold and the unremitting bad news. It feels to me like swimming through treacle and everything seems like more hassle than it is worth.

You’ll be in no way surprised to learn that progress has been conducted at a leisurely pace this month.

I took a spade to the garden in a bid to prepare the ground for a frenzied attack of “planning” from the male half of the partnership, and then I planted sticks. I was proud.

Only joking, I have in fact planted broad beans – they just look like sticks.

I also fixed the fence after the recent high winds. It was long overdue really but still slightly depressing to see the garden take a step back. Not to be deterred though, I went round to the Social Club side (which is on higher ground) armed with a pair of garden canes and some cable ties to splint the trellis back into place. Luckily for me, two fine examples of Arlesey localdom were stood outside at the time smoking and contemplating life. Better still, they were in the mood to “chat” ... by which I mean they insisted on walking up and down the length of the wall identifying each of my plants to me (Yes I know what they are, I planted them!!) and then commenting on the fact that the fence was, in fact, broken (do you think???) and needed something to tie it up (thanks, because quite clearly I was standing here trying to play the bagpipes). I found myself thanking the good lord for his bountiful gift of cable ties and the speed with which they allowed me to make my escape.

Inside the house, I decided to attack an unsuspecting hallway wall in the hope that I might have a quick and easy morale boost.

Foolish, foolish child.

When we moved in, the textured wallpaper in the hallway looked for all the world like it was put up by the first owners of the house. I had visions of blushing maidens being heaved over the threshold in full skirts and excitedly furnishing her new house (before a few decades of domestic drudgery and child bearing took over) and that the paper had been part of that first flush of domestic bliss.

Well, it might have been I suppose, but only if the house were previously owned by the “El Gringo” family because, when I had stripped the paper, I was faced with an English approximation to Mexican Cantina. Seriously people, it’s Room 101 time here. Who under the big blue sky goes into a DIY shop and says “I know darling, we’ll use sponges and bits of cut out plastic and make our house look like a mud hut in Tijuana”. Does that come shortly before or after you’ve discovered the racy new dish called chicken faj-eye-tas?

On the plus side, at least there was no mould (a first at FTC) and the plaster stayed in place – apart from the corner that Harry had decided to use as a chew toy of course.

Next on the hit list is the plate rack – abandon hope all ye who enter here!!!

We W'issssh you a Merry Christmas ...

Why is it that Christmas always seems to become an endurance test? Midnight mass, feeding the 5,000, gifts, chickens, work parties, the inevitable bout of sniffles.

First prize to those eagled eyed people who picked out the word chicken from that list, it wasn’t a typo, Christmas this year really did involve Operation Cluck. It came about during the day I last reported on here, when me and the senior Mrs B spent a Saturday idly shopping and lunching in those halcyon days before Christmas preparations reach fever pitch. A throwaway comment about Adrian liking chickens (in an entirely appropriate way, of course) and we were soon hatching (arf, arf) a plan to surprise him with a brood of his very own.


A house was sourced from eBay and collected by some friends of the family to stash away from prying eyes. Chickens were liberated from a battery farm via Jamie at the farm and, most importantly, a scheme to sneak said chucks into the garden.


Boxing Day, a quick call to say the coast was clear, and I loaded up the car with all our necessaries, two dogs and three chickens.


Let us speak no further of the journey, suffice to say everyone arrived at chateau Batsford alive. Just.


Thinking the worst was over, I happily tucked into a much needed cuppa and released the chickens into the garden to roam. Unfortunately, there’s no fence along the back of the garden. There is however an extremely spiky hedgerow which I had to leap through on a regular basis to chase chickens back into the garden, a task not made easier by Harry standing guard in the house and scaring the living bejeesus out of the chickens every time they came into view. I hadn’t even unpacked the chicken house and I was already trying to decide who I wanted to strangle more – hounds or chickens.


And while we’re on the subject of chicken houses, don’t buy flat packed houses from the ‘bay and expect either of the following:


1. Intelligent instructions
2. Well fitting panels


With darkness threatening, Jan and I got our backsides in gear and started putting the house together. Well, we tried, but Jan isn’t a natural DIYer and I was about as frazzled as I’ve ever been, so we called in help. With an hour or so, we had the house together (and only a small bag of screws left over) and now there was nothing between us and a much needed lie down in a darkened room except getting 3 chickens into their new home.


I’ll summarise this part – I jumped through more hedges, Harry barked lots, the neighbour came round and proved a dab hand at grabbing chickens by their tails, and I went one on one with the smallest, but most spirited of the birds who decided that despite being called by Jan, prodded by me and lunged at by the neighbour, she was going to duck and dive her way round the garden until there was muttered threats of stuffing and roasting. It worked out in the end though, and I hear that Vera, Mabel and Daisy are now settled into their new home.


After recovering from the adventures in poultry, we had a relatively relaxed New Year. Four friends came over and we had an Italian feast, set off some of those beautiful paper lanterns at midnight, drank lots of cocktails and watched some comedy.


More wonderful still was New Year’s Day when we did …. Nothing. I mean nothing on a biblical level too. We stayed in our jammies all day, made the fire roar and tucked into bowls of roast potatoes and gravy while watching films. For dinner we treated ourselves to cheese on toast and champagne, which for some strange reason felt like the most decadent dinner in the world.


I have to admit, I still feel as if I’m recovering from the whole ordeal of the festive season - and for Christmas 2009 we are determined to do things very, very differently - but now that the dust has settled somewhat, I can take my lessons and look to the rest of this year with hope.

We wish you all peace and happiness this year, in whatever form that takes.

Crayfish and Christmas

A curious thing happened to me at the end of November, I turned 31. I’m not sure why I found it curious, but I did. Not scary, or depressing, but just curious. And while I was looking forward to getting up to some cool stuff I was actually pretty apathetic about my birthday itself despite a pretty extensive schedule planned for a long weekend starting with a cook along to the effervescent Mr Ramsey.

Bill and Lindsey arrived just in time for the off and the ladies grabbed a welcome glass of vino while the boys donned aprons. The hound supervised from the confines of the hallway.

The first recipe involved shredding lettuce, mixing mayo and ketchup, mushing avocado and layering with prawns in a suitably artistic glass. Some know it as a prawn cocktail. Not a personal favourite of mine since I loathe mayo and all other yacky type sauces, but no worry, it’s easy enough to leave the sauce off one portion isn’t it? Apparently not. Pretty soon we had 5, count them, FIVE portions of prawn cocktail, each of them delicately anointed with sauce. I’m told it was a tasty treat for all the family, but I wasn’t buying, especially when I knew how amazing the main course would be.

Steak Diane, a classic with a pile of sautéed potatoes all smothered in creamy mushroom sauce, nyom, nyom, nyom!!!

Step 1, par boil spuds. Or, if you are my husband, leave spuds intact on worktop and swear vigorously at the television when told to drain them and put them in the pan of hot oil. Then, get best friend to help juggle frying pans, miss, throw half the spuds on the floor, shout at thieving hound to leave, give up and toss him some ketchup to go with them and swear at the television again.

About 15 minutes, lots of pan banging and more swearing later, we reach step 12, add brandy to pan to make sauce. Tip pan with gusto in order to add sauce to hob rather than flame to pan. Flambé hob until the flame gets high enough to catch the pan anyway and then stand back as the merest smell of singed hair fills the air.

Steak Diane with sautéed spuds. Done.

As hoped, it was absolutely delicious, and even more amazing for not having cooked it myself. No time to appreciate it though as the lads high tail it back to the kitchen for the final assault – cheesecake.

It took some time, some more pan banging but eventually the cheesecake was wheeled in with much aplomb. So happy was I, so eager my anticipation, I didn’t notice the slightly concerned looks flickering between the two lads, let alone the muttering and nervous laughter as they dished it up.

I noticed it pretty damn quick when I took my first mouthful though, the oddest, lightest texture I have ever known a cheesecake to have. It was almost mousse-like. Almost as if … oh dear lord no … they’d forgotten to add the cream cheese. In terms of inventing a pudding revolution, I wouldn’t be tempted to try it if I were you.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny with few dinner based ill effects and thanks to a cookbook given to me by Beth I was in the mood for some crayfish. Rumour had it, there might be some in the local river and luckily there is never much persuasion needed to get the boys interested in a fishing adventure. Wandering back from the fields Bill spotted some old tree protectors that were now redundant, and we collected an armful to create our very own crayfish net.

We pondered, and prevaricated and after a collecting as many ‘potentially helpful’ bits as we could find, we constructed, and I think you’ll agree, we didn’t do a bad job.

Night fell, and after a snifter for courage we went down to the river to cast our net into the raging torrent. We had plans for our bounty and I had issued a half serious threat that if there was nothing come the next day, we’d all be going hungry.

That would never happen though, we were confident in our construction and we hurried home to toast how fantastically clever we were.

The next morning, we trudged back down to the river, this time with the hounds in a supporting roll, just so that this time there would be an audience to appreciate how fantastically clever we were. Untying the tether, Keith took up the slack and gave an almighty tug. The line snapped, and right there in the middle of that field, shoulders slumped, smiles faded, and the sense of anticlimax was palpable.

A few days later was my birthday proper and Keith had given me carte blanche for us to spend it as I wanted. What I wanted, for some strange reason was to go to a museum in London and then to see the Christmas lights. We eventually settled on the Science Museum for our visit and we bounced round trying all the exhibits. Keith even snuck onto a few while small children were looking the other way, hence his expression in this particular photo.

The rest of the day was lovely, familiar, with bright restaurants and shops cosy against the chill dark outside. Feet aching, we wended our way home clutching bags of goodies, tummies full of Ramen and collapsed on the sofa in the way you do after a frenzied day sightseeing in town.
In a quirk of the calendar this year, no sooner had I woken up as a 31 year old than it was time to start thinking about putting up the old Christmas tree. In an even stranger turn of events, my birthday excitement having been misplaced, suddenly turned up alive and well and singing jingle bells.

Far be it from me to question these things, instead I decided to make the most of this newfound joie de vivre and get some of the preparation done. So, after some gentle encouragement, Keith went to the loft and dusted off the decorations and I set about last year’s Christmas cards with a pair of scissors to make some snowflakes.

As an aside: I just want to say that I thought everyone was taught in primary school how to make snowflakes from pieces of paper, so imagine my horror when I had to explain the whole process to Keith. I know he’s trailing a few years on me, but what has become of the school system when basic skills like making paper snowflakes is so cruelly cast aside!! Replaced by something “useful” like French no doubt!!

Anyway, back to the task in hand. I think the reason I am so excited about Christmas this year is because for the first time we are actually making good on having Christmas in the barn. It took me time, tears and tantrums to get the barn to the stage where we can now have civilised dinners and I was determined to make the most of it this year by turning it into an absolute haven of Christmas cheer. Therefore I was more than happy to accommodate Keith’s sole request of a “tree taller than him” … that’s 6ft to the uninitiated.

It took me all afternoon, a Johnny Cash CD and several cuppas to get the place just right and I have to admit, I’m a bit proud of how it has turned out.

Dry Martini for the lady?

After having been outbid for the umpteenth time on fleabay, I felt a bit like I was going through the motions putting a bid on a little Art Nouveau enamelled burner. I didn’t even bother to stay up for the end of the auction. So imagine my surprise when I was half woken by my beloved husband to tell me that we had won the auction. I don’t imagine my response was more accomplished than a grunt, it never is when someone is foolish enough to interrupt my slumber, and my usual state of confusion was in no way diminished the next morning when I tried to work out whether I had imagined the entire thing.

Seems I hadn’t, and so it was that we found ourselves driving through the beautiful Norfolk autumn following signs to Arse-end-by-Nowhere to eventually be confronted with possibly the nicest ‘bayers I have ever met. This bloke had bought himself a chunk of forest and had created the most incredible haven. He was also a very interesting guy, and what started as a quick stop, ended up as a long chat putting the world to rights, and discussing the perils of pig ownership. Seriously.


It wasn’t until we got home that we really looked at the fire, and realised that the ‘repairs’ to the inner box were actually nice bloke code for “total basket case” and while I flounced into the house to do something I was good at (cooking stew and dumplings) Keith retired to the barn to do what he was good at (poking rusty things with a screwdriver).The fire is now waiting for us to make tracks to the local scrappy to grab some sheet metal. I have to admit, I’m very excited about this fire. Excited to the same degree that the Grim Reaper arriving at your dinner party might cast a bit of a gloom over the evening (those of you who aren’t familiar with Monty Python will now be breaking out in a sweat, don’t worry, he’s not a regular guest at FTC!!)

There is something about the delicate chinchilla grey enamelling, and gentle swooping metalwork that makes me do a frighteningly good impression of a Lemming (by which I mean the computer game, not the actual critter, naturally) and occasionally, when I think nobody is looking, even a quick “WOOT!!”.

Moving swiftly on, I’m sure I have already mentioned that we were going to be the new home of a wall unit which until now had held pride of place at Casa Batsford Snr. If I haven’t, my apologies, but suffice to say, the barn has been waiting for the delivery of the wall unit since The Cleanup, and I have fought, sometimes with flaming torches and pitchforks, to prevent the spread of general crap into the space I had worked so hard to clear. I even took it upon myself to sell a load of “stuff that might become useful” in a bid to make some extra room and finally, just as I thought my finger was going to pop out of that dam, we took delivery of the wall unit .... and a sofa bed ... which was something of a surprise to me, I have to admit, and did raise the merest wobble of my chin at the sight of my hard won floorspace so dramatically filled.

It all felt very unnatural you know, the delivery I mean. I’m used to renting/begging/borrowing vans, lugging (with family sized helpings of blood, sweat and tears) and then assembling without another soul in sight, and it felt wrong to have two strapping lads not only arriving with the van already full with furniture, but for them to unload said furniture, carry it into the barn and then, THEN, to assemble it as well!!!

I was most put out. Not because I could have lifted the top of the unit on by myself, but because it just, well it just felt wrong, and I couldn’t stand it. Having waved them off with a smile, I turned tail and ran full tilt back into the barn and did the only thing I could under the circumstances: I lifted the whole unit out and attacked the fixing brackets with gusto. I didn’t need to do it, the damn thing weighs more than a cow and there was no way the top was going to part company with the bottom without the help of a crowbar and tub of Vaseline, but I needed to do it. And yes, I did feel better afterwards.

Soon I was running back and forward from the house to the barn, freeing up cluttered cupboards of “occasional use” items which were far better sited in the barn of joy. We took another giant leap into retro-land with this drinks cabinet (complete with sherry and martini glasses I hope you’ll note!!) and a stack of our more popular board games. For the discerning gentleman, you can just see the twin stacks of 1950s Practical Motorist magazines, perfect for anyone needing hints on overwintering their Ford Anglia, or perhaps feeling the need to build a caravan from scratch (I kid you not!!) The rather large stack of 1950s Italian records we found when we moved into FTC is also now on display, although we are still missing any way of playing them until we find ourselves a records player.

Still itching slightly from the lack of DIY opportunities, I managed to find myself something else to do. One of my Freecycle acquisitions was a fabulous lamp base which was followed a few months later by an equally fabulous lampshade. There was however a gaping hole in my knowledge of all things lampish which resulted in the rather unfortunate situation of the shade fixing being about 3 times the size of the lamp. Clearly I was missing some vital gubbins to make one fit the other, but my limited lamp based vocabulary means I have no idea what I am missing, or what in fact it is called. I decided instead to try and make use of the things around me, and construct an adaptor myself. I had Green Day cheering me on, and a workshop of tools at my disposal so clearly this was going to be a walk in the park. Two hours later I looked down at the mangled remains of a wire coathanger, and several cable ties and realised that some ideas were best left to people with precision instruments and solder torches.

Bring on the plan B – what I needed was something bowl shaped. Something which had a wide enough rim to support the shade and that was soft enough for me to cut a hole to fit the lamp fixing. Something heat proof. Something, a little like the plastic Christmas pud basin that was currently guarding a hoard of old nuts and bolts. HAH!! Scrap metal evicted, I was soon throwing caution, and the fate of my finger, to the winds and wielding a Stanley knife at the base of the bowl.


A few short, triumphal minutes after that, the butchered bowl was firmly clamped onto the lamp base and the shade was delicately balanced on top.

Now, I felt better again –pride restored I even went so far as to turn the lamp on, and while the bowl did get pretty warm, my educated guess that a pudding bowl would be heat proof seems to have been a good one and my lamp remained stubbornly un-Dali like and fabulous.

Oh, and just to close, I wanted to share something very exciting that happened to me today ... I found my first grey hair!!!

Thou shalt not …

Today we shall examine a few of the 10 Commandments and perhaps their lesser known applications in modern life:

Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vein.

Although to be honest, it wasn’t exclusively the Lord’s name I was taking, there was a fairly indiscriminate taking of anyone’s name in a 2 mile radius peppered with a robust dose of more general Anglo Saxon.

Our fire traumas continue. Having been outbid on the umpteenth fire, I decided to go for a buy-it-now-brand-new-deal instead. Money paid, I waited for a week in eager anticipation of the delivery. Unfortunately it seems I was under a false impression of what I was expecting to have delivered. I thought I had paid for a wood burning stove. Turns out I paid for a pile of mangled metal doing a rather jolly impression of a piece of modern sculpture.

After some furious messaging, we are currently waiting collection of the ex-logburner and I am back to that familiar old place I like to call Square 1.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work … unless you are on a flexible working initiative.

And so it came to pass that yesterday, after weeks of prevaricating, I finally got off my backside and decorated the landing. Well, most of it anyway, the thought of wielding a roller at the top of a ladder overhanging the stairwell was a little too much.

To make up for my attack of waftiness, I tackled another of my least favourite pastimes and changed the light switch instead; which I’m sure to you seems worthy of a shrug, but to me is enough to make my blood run cold. It comes from having woken up one morning in a previous, more haphazard existence, and flicked a half installed light switch, at which point the entire lighting loom went KAMBALM!! lovely scorch marks appeared around all the ceiling roses, and I danced round the flat, shaking my hand and cursing the day Faraday was born.

Anyway, I digress. The hall is now (mostly) the colour of the rest of the house, which has meant that I have now started to put up the pictures that I have been collecting for the last few months. There is still a lot of wall left to fill, largely due to a lack of frames, so if anyone is lost for gift ideas in the coming months, please, please, please can we have some frames. Preferably from a charity shop, preferably all different and any size smaller than A4. The plan for the opposite (and still unpainted) wall is even more grand, but I won’t tell you about that just yet.


And finally:
Thou shalt not covert thy neighbour’s teddy.

This is a little story I thought might cheer up those of you that are in need of a smile. Keith and I came home the other day expecting the usual barrage of over friendly dog to greet us and were a little surprised to see that the welcoming committee had been reduced by half. We assumed that Harry had managed to lock himself in the bathroom again, which is something that happens with regularity as he still, at the noble age of 3, hasn’t quite come to terms with his own body length. Keith wandered round the ground floor calling as he went, but nothing, no sign of Harry.

The next thing we heard was “f’dump” ….. “f’dump”, “f’dump”, “f’dump”, as Harry flumped his way down the staircase and sat on the wrong side of the locked baby gate, quite obviously having just woken up and now just as confused as we are as to how he has managed to spirit himself through a childproof gate.

Fearing for Colin’s life, we hustled the dog back through the gate and went to view the damage.
Everything still in place and Colin, although slightly grumpier than normal, was clearly still in one piece. On the way back downstairs however, something caught my eye.

Keith, did you move my teddy? No? Well why is it on our bed then?

To explain, I have an old fashioned, scruffy teddy that sits on a chair in our room. Except it wasn’t sitting on the chair, it was sitting in the middle of our bed, looking for all the world like it had decided to take a stroll.

The only clue was one slightly damp arm.

Harry, it would seem, having surveyed the upstairs, had decided that he would curl up on our bed for a snooze. Not wanting to be lonely without his usual partner in crime, he had picked up my ted by his arm, jumped up onto the bed and curled himself around it.
That hound never ceases to amaze me with his soppiness.

Motorcycles and Mushrooms

There’s not an immediate connection between the two, but stick with me folks.

As is the want at FTC, there’s a vehicle shuffle going on at the moment. Due to the strict “one in, one out” policy currently in force, my beloved husband has spent some time recently weighing up the relative pros and cons of 2 wheels Vs 4. Needless to say after a break of 5 years, 2 wheels won and a slightly bedraggled BSM Bantam has found its way to the workshop for some pre-MOT fettling. In honour of this retro-fest, Keith has seen fit to grow what can only be described as a lip slug in something of an homage to the late great Paul Newman. I am not a fan. He has promised that when he I took a photo of him on the bike with said facial hair, he would shave it off. So here he is and may we never speak of this again.


Now, onto the mushrooms. One of the joys of getting up early of a weekend and wandering around the fields in the first mists of autumn is that there are numerous opportunities to forage. Some of them entirely unexpected, as it was today. We had passed the river with only a small detour made by the hound to test whether the water really was as cold as it looked, and proceeded in an unusually orderly and calm way into the farmer’s fields which have recently been ploughed and planted.


As we headed towards the first of the duck ponds, Keith spotted something in the margins of the field. We paused, looked, and looked again. It wasn’t there yesterday was it? No, I think we would have noticed. Well maybe it’s just a stone? No, it really is, a mushroom. Do you think it’s poisonous? Oh no, it’s just a field mushroom. Do we have a carrier bag? OK, let’s get picking!!
About an hour, and an entire bag of ‘shooms later, we were on our way home, pausing again to herd the hound out of the river and chase him around the field when he took exception to his swim being cut short.


Once through the door it was down with the newspaper and out of the bag with the mushrooms. What a mighty haul!! We can make several meals out of these, risotto, spaghetti, we can even save some for the dinner party next weekend. Even better, we’ll use the book Sal and Dave gave us for our anniversary to check them out!!!


The book was lifted reverently out of the cupboard, Antonio Carluccio smiling benevolently at us like some kind of mushroom gnome. OK I know the drill here. Take mushroom, cut in half so we can check the stalk and the base for colouration and potential evilness. Check. Open book to field mushroom section. Check. Ah, here we are, field mushrooms, looks right, but the gills look a bit pale. Maybe they’re just young? There’s a poison version but no, the base of ours doesn’t turn yellow if bruised. Phew!! I was worried there, cos after last time I was expecting to find out these were the only strain of inedible field mushrooms in euro …. Hold up. What do you mean avoid white gills. What’s wrong with white gills? See page 27. Right. Ah here we are … Amanita Verna aka Fool’s Mushroom … A lethal and deadly mushroom.


Bugger.


So once again the mushrooms gods have turned their backs on us and walked briskly in the other direction. Discretion being the better part of valour, we’ll let them go … this time.