Spring has Sprung

I will open with an apology, because I feel bad that I have been so quiet on this blog recently. However, like a little place called Naseby on 14th June 1645, the mists are starting to roll back and the situation is about to change – radically.

FTC has been besieged in recent weeks by all manner of deliveries, and a small army of men sucking their teeth, kicking metaphorical tyres and making my inner fishwife come to the fore at the revelation of their estimates. I think what I resent the most is the fact that we could do a lot of this work ourselves. Were it not for my current condition, we probably would. Instead I am relegated to tea making and photographic duties.

On that note, I would just like to say that part of the hold up recently has been around the fact that our camera battery seems to have taken off without leaving a forwarding address, and the collection of snaps Keith had managed to acquire on his new phone was somewhat hindered by the incompatibility of mobile phones with brake fluid. Now that both have been put to rights, hopefully the flow of photos will pick up.

So to open the batting for the next few months, I give you the progress of the garden (selected highlights).


First, I want to point out the fact that our Rhubarb, seems to be slightly in love with our soil. Before any smartypants decides to inform me that I should have cut the flower off to encourage growth, I didn’t want to, so there.

The rest of the veg beds are starting to yawn and stretch into life after the recent sunny spell too. I am especially proud to announce that the asparagus has made a return visit, although it has displayed a distinct lack of progress from last year.










The blueberry and strawberries have shown no such coyness and have embraced flowering with admirable gusto. I give the blueberry about 5 months until Harry rediscovers it and chews it to matchsticks.





Finally for the garden roundup, I have to mention the chilli plants. Not because I actually care about them, but because my beloved is still obsessed by all things chilli-fied and will whinge at me if I don’t. As you can see we are growing a range of tongue killers, some I have high hopes for, some I suspect are heading for the compost heap. I try not to interfere in this area of the gardening however, that way divorce lies.

Freecycle In Restoring Faith Shocker

Firstly, I'm sorry things have been a little quiet recently. There are big changes afoot at FTC which will become apparent over the next weeks and months and these have rather taken over recently.

I just wanted to let you all know that we're still alive, back safely from our trip to Gib and that Freecycle is truly the antidote to modern living.

Our TV blew up two nights ago. well perhaps not blew up exactly, it was more of a "Phhhhhht" followed by a nasty burning smell than a full on crater in the floor.

But either way, we were looking at life without TV. A spine chilling and frankly quite horrifying proposition so I asked on Freecycle if anyone might have an old set gathering dust in the garage.

Not 24 hours after our dear TV had departed this world, we were unloading a very nearly new flat screen TV of fairly similar proportions from a fantastically giving young couple who had answered my cry for help.

Now I don't usually get overwhelmed by random acts of kindness, but in this case I am, and it made me think about Freecycle in general.

We are forever being told of how cutthroat and relentlessly commercial our society is and Freecycle is the very antithesis of that. It restores my faith in the sense of community that we are forever being told has disappeared.

Long may it continue I say!!

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!!!